Monsanto has been under fire lately, and things aren’t much different in Puerto Rico. The biotech giant is being criticized for refusing to testify at a government hearing regarding the sale on the island of their own genetically-modified seeds.
The website Corpwatch cites a recent article from the
commonwealth’s Spanish-language El Nuevo Dia newspaper in which
Monsanto is reported to have shut-down requests to send a
representative to an upcoming GMO hearing.
The hearing, a meeting of the Puerto Rican Senate Agriculture
Committee, involved the potential creation of a “Seed Board” and
certification and licensing system that would regulate the
development and sale of seeds on the island.
According to Corpwatch, Monsanto spokesperson Eric Torres-Collazo
told the committee that "Monsanto does not produce, sell (or)
offer... basic or certified seed with the purpose of planting in
Puerto Rico.” That hasn’t satisfied the committee members,
though, since Monsanto does indeed engage in some sort of GMO
operations on the island.
“Among Monsanto's arguments for refusing to offer testimony to
the Puerto Rican senate committee is that it doesn't grow GMO
agricultural products for consumption on the island,” wrote
Mark Karlin for Truth-Out, “it just creates the Frankenstein
seeds there through research.”
Corpwatch, a blog specializing in corporate accountability, added
that Monsanto’s operations in Puerto Rico, while not involving
the planting of GMO seeds, are indeed extensive and not without
controversy.
“Monsanto has also been embroiled in a legal controversy over
the fact it plants crops on 1,500 acres, despite the fact that
Puerto Rico's 1952 constitution prohibits agricultural
landholdings larger than 500 acres,” Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
wrote for Corpwatch this week. Meanwhile, he continued,
“[l]ocal media reports have pointed out the irony that despite
the fact that Monsanto is in apparent violation of the Puerto
Rico constitution, it has received $4.9 million in subsidies from
the local Agriculture Department to help it cover payroll
expenses from 2006 to 2013.”
Senator Ramón Ruiz-Nieves, a member of the Popular Democratic
Party and the chair of the Agricultural Committee, told reporters
that he will ask Monsanto again to weigh in on an upcoming seed
hearing. The full Senate Health Committee is slated to go over
the creation of the potential Seed Board later this year.
According to the investigative journalism site Counterpunch, no
state in the US aside from Hawaii has had as many GM crop
experiments-per-mile than Puerto Rico as of 2005. "Puerto Rico
attracts agricultural biotechnology companies because of the
tropical climate that permits up to four harvests yearly and the
willingness of the government to fast-track permits,”
Counterpunch quoted Margarita Irizarry and José Rodríguez Orengo
of the University of Puerto Rico’s Medical Sciences Campus.
"Furthermore, the opposition to GM foods is almost
non-existent on the island and no particular environmental group
is protesting the presence of Dow, Syngenta Seeds, Pioneer
HiBred, Mycogen Seeds, Rice Tech, AgReliant Genetics, Bayer
Croposcience and Monsanto."
Monsanto has come under increased scrutiny as of late for its
questionable farming and litigation practices that have been
condemned by organic farmers across the globe. International
protests against the GMO giant occurred last month in six
continents across the globe, including one in San Juan, Puerto
Rico.