Issue 227: January-February 2005

 Never, no never,

look upstream

Just who put all those chickens in one barn, all those cattle in one feedlot, all those fish in one aquaculture net-cage. . . ?

The one place we will not look for the cause of animal and human health problems: the factory! The CFIA, the Minister of Agriculture, Health Canada all tell us, ad nauseam, that we have the safest food system in the world and that Canada's food safety regime is “science-based” – yet actual facts seem to escape notice and consideration. For example, in the recent Avian Flu epidemic in the Fraser Valley of BC, the CFIA insisted on destroying more than 18,000 backyard birds of various species, even though with one exception the disease was confined to the factory farms. That one exception was a backyard flock which tested positive for the flu three days after a commercial farm located 400 metres away was depopulated, according to testimony from local experts to a Parliamentary agriculture committee. The committee was also told that the purpose of the CFIA's actions was political, not scientific: to re-open international trade as soon as possible for the mainstream poultry operations.

Like the Fraser Valley farmers, we suspect that the source and cause of animal (and human?) disease pandemics may well be the existence and continual expansion and intensification of livestock and poultry production and deconstruction systems. It would be nice to have policies based on real science rather than the unshakeable ideological and economic commitment of the Canadian government to the transnational corporations who are responsible for the problems.

“We have the safest food in the world.” But for goodness sake, cook your meat throroughly, and scrub your produce with detergent, and forget steak tartare! Children musntn't lick out the cookie bowl because it probably contains residues of uncooked eggs and therefore salmonella. The advisors remain silent on factory production of eggs and their inevitable salmonella. Rather, this so-called “science-based” food safety regime seems determined to wipe out our immune systems by “protecting” us from all the bacteria that form an integral part of our environment and that nurture our immune systems. We are, apparently, supposed to grow to resemble the hybrid monoculture corn that has no immune system and is therefore totally dependent on “crop protection agents” – i.e., agrotoxins – to protect it from the environment and synthetic fertilizers for food because the ground they are supposed to be growing in has been rendered sterile in the name of productivity. The transnational “food” companies will feed us with sterile food just as they do the hybrid corn . . . and the soybeans, and the canola. . . .

Dare we say that BSE is a natural outcome of an unnatural system and that it will be with us until we change the system? And there will be others.

Deborah Mackenzie, writing in New Scientist , comments:

“For years we have forced countless chickens to live short, miserable lives in huge, crammed hen houses in the name of intensive agriculture. In 2004, they started to wreak their revenge.

“Somewhere in east Asia these birds have been breeding a flu virus that, according to the World Health Organization, could eventually kill millions of people. Called H5N1, it has been causing regular, if unreported, outbreaks in poultry in China for years, as intensive poultry production has skyrocketed. This year the virus spread beyond China's borders, as far afield as Indonesia, forcing China at last to admit to its existence. It will take years to eradicate. And there is now so much of the virus about that the chances are some of it, somewhere, will acquire a taste for humans.

“The WHO says H5N1 could potentially cause a human pandemic that claims 100 million lives, but this is little more than an educated guess. . . To cause a pandemic, H5N1 will have to learn how to spread between people, and we don't know if that will make it more or less deadly. But so far, we know it has killed not 5 per cent but 70 per cent of its victims.

“So experts are feverishly working to create a vaccine and governments are beginning to stockpile antiviral drugs. But we can't start production of a vaccine until we know exactly what any pandemic virus looks like. And there aren't many antiviral drugs to go around. So we wait and hope.” – NS, 25/12/04

Surely a rethinking of the system that foments such diseases would be more effective than “wait and hope”?

 

#227: January - February 2005 TOC
Never, No, Never Look Upstream: Immune systems, Avian Flu and natural disasters
Capital Rules: The Sask Wheat Pool slips into its grave
Bring Back the Bison: grassland beef as a strategy to reduce obesity
"Cinnamon Toast" - the fine points of "Intellectual Property":Kellogg sues General Mills over language and labels
Forum on Privatization and the Public Domain: update

 

Issue 228: March 2005

 Avoiding Risk

Which is better, to avoid risk, or to set up a system which induces risk and then try to manage it? The British Columbia government's new Regulation for livestock slaughter in the province is an excellent example of the problems inherent in the ‘risk management' approach.

The new Regulation is described as ‘outcomes-based', the outcomes being population health and a viable, sustainable agriculture. However, to achieve such outcomes a livestock slaughter regime must be based in practices which avoid health risk, such as

• small numbers of animals being processed at a time (hands-on operations)
• minimal trucking distances for animals (minimal stress on animals – and farmers – and reduced stress-induced disease and filth)
• limited market scope – i.e. the meat is sold within the region (easy to trace)

Think of this as an exercise in the precautionary principle. The health of the system is based on healthy livestock, the avoidance of stress, and direct relationships between producer, processor, and consumer.

The clear prejudice of the CFIA and BC Centres for Disease Control towards large-scale, industrial, paper-trail, export-oriented models, on the other hand, is reflected in their rigid requirements for abattoir construction and their touching faith in the power of stainless steel. The cost of upgrading to these requirements has already caused a number of local small abattoirs in BC to close (a process described by one farmer as “a train wreck in slow motion”.) By September 2006, when the regulation will be fully in force, we will see:

• the closure of most if not all currently operating fixed and mobile slaughter facilities
• the exit of many small and specialty livestock producers from production
• the consequent decline of small-scale, diversified agriculture in BC – including fruit and vegetable production on mixed farms
• the consequent decline of rural communities
• the loss of healthy local food production capacity
• reduction in population health as we become increasingly reliant on imported produce at a cost determined by outside forces
• increased risk in the meat business related to long-distance trucking and large-scale processing, paper trails etc. notwithstanding

In other words, the exact opposite of the stated outcomes of the Regulation.

Time to blow the whistle on the CFIA

It is time to label the CFIA – the Canadian Food Inspection Agency – for what it is: corrupt and incompetent. The CFIA came into being April 1, 1997, and it has been a bad – and costly – joke ever since. It was set up to make it appear as a credible, independent agency of the Canadian Government, to “consolidate inspection, and animal and plant health services of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Health Canada, and Fisheries and Oceans Canada” reporting to the Minister of Agriculture. Its prime objectives were announced to be “consumer protection and the promotion of Canadian trade and commerce”. At the time it appeared to be little more than a re-labelling of the Biotechnology Strategies Coordination Office of Agriculture Canada, as its staff were the same people at the same desks with the same phone numbers.

The Government has never been apologetic about the dual – and contradictory – mandates of the CFIA even though this dual mandate has destroyed the credibility of the organization. Of more concern to the government, it would seem, are the benefits that accrue to its corporate cronies, at public expense, in the name of “food safety” and trade.

Nowhere has this been more evident than in the shameless and relentless promotion of genetic engineering by the CFIA. From the day of its establishment, the CFIA has functioned as a lobby for Monsanto and the rest of the biotech industry. Its contempt for the public has been most explicitly expressed in its adamant refusal to require the labelling of GE food. Despite loud claims that all of its work is “science-based,” the CFIA's procedures for approving genetically engineered crops and foods are based on the information it receives from the petitioners, that is, Monsanto et.al. But it could hardly be otherwise – and was not intended to be otherwise – when the government closed the laboratories and got rid of the scientists that might actually have tested, and not just ‘assessed,' the GE crops offered for approval.

To avoid public and independent scientific scrutiny, the CFIA routinely declares all information it receives from its ‘clients' as proprietary, or confidential business information. Translated, this means, “It's none of your business.” We are simply supposed to trust the CFIA, even though all the evidence suggests that it acts solely in the interest of its corporate clients, not the public interest. That the companies whose products have been approved – primarily Monsanto, Syngenta and Bayer – are not remotely Canadian makes it clear that it is trade and commerce per sethat the CFIA is to promote, regardless of the consequences for Canadians or the environment.

Consider recent events:

BSE

The first case of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE, so called because it causes sponge-like lesions in the brain) was found in a beef cow in Alberta in May 2003. Prior to that, a different form of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE), Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), was found in Canadian game-farm elk in 1996 and confirmed in wild deer in 2001. The CFIA has insisted that it is not possible for CWD to pass from wild animals to cattle. In 2002 the CFIA declared that CWD had been eradicated in farmed elk, though there is no empirical basis for such a claim.

When BSE was identified in the Alberta cow, the US shut off the flow of live cattle from Canada. (The previous year, Canada exported 1.6 million head of cattle for slaughter in the USA.) Closing of the border has had a devastating effect on Canadian cattle prices and Canadian farmers, while the major beef slaughtering plants – Cargill and Tyson, both in Alberta and both US-owned – appear to have benefitted handsomely from the depressed prices for slaughter animals while retail prices did not plummet. Since then Canadian cattle producers have been pleading with the CFIA to introduce mandatory testing of all slaughter animals for BSE to ensure that no BSE gets into the food system (for humans or livestock) but the CFIA has not only refused, but has not allowed such testing even by those smaller slaughterhouses that wish to introduce it. Thus it appears that the CFIA is far more interested in the “trade and commerce” of Cargill and Tyson than in the welfare of Canadian farmers or the health of Canadian meat eaters.

The presence of BSE in Canadian cattle has been attributed to the recycling of animal protein in animal feed – feeding cows to cows – which transmits a prion which is believed to be the causal agent. More remains unknown than known about the ways of these disease-causing ‘prions', but it would seem to be prudent, to say the least, to institute an immediate ban on including blood and bone meal in any animal feed. This did not happen. The Government implemented a feed ban in 1997 prohibiting the feeding of ruminant animals with “most mammalian proteins.” However, it did not prohibit the manufacturing of such feed for other classes of livestock and pets. The assumption obviously was that there would never be a mix-up in the feed, whether in the feed mill or on the farm. This assumption could be said to be naive at best.

Not until December 2004 did the CFIA move to prohibit the use of specified risk material or SRM (that is, material rendered from cattle parts such as brains and spinal cord, known to be the most active sites of BSE) in all animal feeds, including pet food.

Either the CFIA cares more about the health of transnational agribusiness and trade than about Canada's farm animals and food sources or it is simply incompetent and out of touch with reality.

Avian Flu: Virus H7N3

The Avian Flu outbreak in British Columbia's Fraser Valley in 2004 led to the killing of 19 million chickens and related poultry under orders from the CFIA. About 1.2 million of these birds tested positive for the H7N3 virus and were composted, incinerated or landfilled; the rest of the birds went to market. Among the birds eliminated were those of specialty poultry (rare breeds and Certified Organic) and ‘backyard' flocks, that is, small flocks raised for home consumption. Now their owners are calling for an independent inquiry to probe the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's “mismanagement” of the avian flu outbreak.

A Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture that held hearings in January into the whole sad affair learned that only one backyard flock was infected with the avian flu, rather than 12, as the CFIA had stated. Dr. Barbara Fisher, a backyard flock owner in Abbotsford, testified that the CFIA unnecessarily killed more than 18,000 backyard birds, of various species, even though other countries dealing with an avian flu outbreak offered alternatives, such as isolation, to backyard bird owners. Fisher observed that the one backyard flock that was infected tested positive for the flu three days after a commercial farm located 400 metres away was depopulated.

Ken Falk, spokesman for the Specialty Bird producers told the Committee “politics appeared to drive disease management strategies rather than basing decisions on science” – the purpose being to re-open international trade as soon as possible for the four industrial ‘feather' producer groups (chicken, egg layers, broiler hatching and turkeys). He said the CFIA ran rough-shod over the specialty bird producers and backyard flock owners and didn't care if small businesses, such as his, survived or died. “I quote one high-ranking CFIA official who said to me: ‘I am well aware of your business issues Mr. Falk and they are of no concern to me.'” – BC Newspaper Group 31/1/05

Terminator Technology

Bangkok, February 2005: A striking example of the CFIA doing the dirty work for its corporate clients occurred in Bangkok at a meeting of “ SBSTTA 10” (a scientific advisory body to the Convention on Biological Diversity) in February. According to a confidential document leaked to ETC Group, the Canadian delegation was instructed to overturn an international moratorium on genetic seed sterilisation technology (known universally as Terminator), and, even worse, to “block consensus” on any other option. Thankfully, ETC Group reported, disaster was averted due to key interventions by the governments of Norway, Sweden, Austria, the European Community, Cuba, Peru and Liberia on behalf of the African Group.

According to the leaked instructions to Canadian negotiators, Canada was to insist that governments accept the field testing and commercialization of Terminator varieties (referred to as GURTS – Genetic Use Restriction Technologies). As a result of the leaked documents being made public, Pat Mooney reports, during the plenary debate Canada took a low-key role and did not call for field trials or commercialization and did not speak out against the moratorium other than to suggest that national governments might make independent decisions and, again, to suggest that national capacity-building might be useful to understand Terminator technologies. The Canadian delegation apparently made no attempt to deny the authenticity of the leaked report. Mooney added,

“We have the distinct impression that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is taking the lead within the Canadian delegation on this issue.” – ETC Group report 9/2/05

The comment of Stephen Yarrow, national manager of the Plant Biosafety Office at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, confirms this: “There's no scientific reason why GURTs should be banned before we've been able to evaluate them in field trials. The Canadian government supports farmers and seed saving. However GURTs are a whole class of new technologies that offer a number of potential advantages.” – Stephen Leahy, IPS news, 11/2/05

Advantages to Monsanto and Syngenta, obviously, but certainly not to, the Canadian public, the Third World, or farmers anywhere.

Slaughterhouse regulation

The final item in this brief litany of deceit has to do with the shifting sands of regulation in the meat industry and the even larger issue of the CFIA seeking to modernize and harmonize its regulation and integrate its information systems with those of the paranoid US and its Patriot Act.

This is the intent of Bill C-27, the CFIA Enforcement Act on “smart regulation”. If passed, Bill C-27 will give the CFIA new powers to make regulations that will:

• lock us into the US regulatory system,
• increase privatization of the regulatory system,
• cripple our ability to protect our food system and diversify our trading relationships,
• make it even harder for the family farm and the small food processor to survive.

For more information and how to take action, seewww.beyondfactoryfarming.org/cgi-bin/index.pl

As the example of the new provincial Regulation in BC shows, the obvious intent of the CFIA's moves to increase “food safety” in the slaughtering and processing meat in Canada is to drive all the small local slaughter facilities (including mobile abattoirs) out of business by requiring them to meet the standards expected of factories slaughtering thousands of animal a day for export (Cargill, Tyson, Maple Leaf). The fact that it is on the factory farms and in the processing factories that all the disease problems arise seems to be irrelevant. In all the discussion there is never any consideration of where the pathogens come from and why. As a consequence, the countryside is to be tidied up and all meat production delivered into the hands of transnational agribusiness.

If the CFIA were actually concerned about public health, it would put real regulations in place that would govern line speeds, worker safety, cleanliness and plant size. It would also outlaw the trucking of live animals long distances (except for valuable breeding stock) on the grounds of cruelty to animals and food safety (stress-induced disease). At the same time, it would find ways to provide inspection services to small local slaughterhouses, including mobile plants, to serve diversified small scale agriculture. Of course this would destroy the meat packing industry as it is, but that would serve the public interest. It would help to put control of the food system back in the hands of farmers and communities, where it should be.

It is not reasonable, however, to expect the CFIA to perform such a radical operation on itself. Therefore, the first step would be the dismantling of the CFIA and the creation of an independent food regulatory agency responsible not to Transnational Agribusiness and Market ideology but to Parliament and the Canadian public.

 

#228: March 2005 TOC
Avoiding Risk:the CFIA avoids precaution in meat processing
Time to blow the whistle on the CFIA: BSE; Avian Flu; Terminator
Technology; Slaughterhouse Regulation
Ripe for Attack: US businessmen recognize the vulnerability of integrated food system
Chiquita McDonald? Chiquita buys Fresh Express, sells salad and fruit to McD
Corporate Profile: Unilever -- some background on the global food giant
The retail food police: moratorium is now lifted, stores can label GE food
Potatoes: Not an amusing diversion - PEI farmers are asked to dump potatoes; Organic option - blight resistant varieties developed in Europe; Why vaccination by potato got chopped
Hungry Pigs: a proponent of factory farming changes heart
More trade, more toxins: Chilean farm workers suffer from export crop production
Globalization tidbits

 

Issue 229: April/May 2005

 Sustainable Soy

Argentina has become the world's second largest producer and exporter of soy (after the USA) . Most of it is genetically engineered Roundup Ready soy acquired without payment of technology use fees or royalties to Monsanto. Our view is that this was deliberately encouraged by Monsanto as a major tactic in its drive to contaminate the global food system with its transgenic crops. Now Monsanto is trying to find a way to collect the royalties it chose to forgo in order to get its RR soy widely grown in Argentina (and Brazil).

“Sustainable Soy” is the rallying cry of a new partnership of transnational agribusiness and transnational environmentalism in South America. On the transnational agribusiness side one finds Unilever, Cargill, DuPont and others, while on the transnational environmentalism side, the World Wide Fund for Nature (known as World Wildlife Fund in N. America), with an intimate crossover in the person of Hector Laurence, the head of the Fundació n Vida Silvestre (FVSA) in Argentina, president of the Argentine Association of Agrobusinesses and vice president of Pioneer Overseas Corp, owned by DuPont.

In March, this unholy alliance organized a Roundtable on Sustainable Soy , with an organizing committee consisting of representatives from:

• World Conservation Union
• Coop Switzerland.
• Cordaid (NL), a Catholic relief and development organization
• Fetraf-Sul/CUT (BR), Workers Federation in Family Agriculture
• Grupo André Maggi (BR), Brazil's largest soy producer based in the area of Mato Grosso.
• Unilever (NL)
• World Wide Fund for Nature

The Roundtable on Sustainable Soy lists the following four objectives:

• To reach consensus among critical stakeholders.
• To develop and promote criteria for sustainable soy production.
• To promote and replicate pilot projects on sustainable soy.
• To monitor the status of soy production in terms of sustainability.

[ see www.sustainablesoy.org ]

More common definitions notwithstanding, the term “sustainable” or “sustainability” appears to refer merely to the continued production of soy for domestic consumption and export, primarily for livestock feed in Europe and other wealthy markets no longer able to feed themselves.

To counter this nefarious campaign, MOCASE (Via Campesina Argentina) and the Grupo de Reflexion Rural (GRR) organized a counter conference which produced the following statement, signed by Via Campesina Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, GRR Argentina, Coordinadora Antitransgenicos del Uruguay and others:

We resolve:

To struggle and mobilise, jointly with other movements and organisations, against the present model of development, agro exports and the proliferation of transgenic crops, which tragically affect the peoples of South America, which attack the environment and peasant societies through monocultures;

To denounce the false concept of sustainable soya mono crops, officially promoted at the First Round Table Conference on Sustainable Soy, held at Foz do Iguaz ú , in the interests of the North and of the agribusinesses, with the scandalous support of some large national and international NGOs;

To assert that sustainability and monoculture are fundamentally irreconcilable, as are the interests of peasant societies and agribusiness;

To denounce the relationship between agro businesses and hydro businesses, that entrenches the privatisation of water supplies and destroys the aquifers of Latin America;

To defend water as a universal right and a common good, in opposition to the logic of transitional corporations, who view it as a mere commodity;

To accuse the agribusinesses as responsible for the mercantilisation of life and of land;

To denounce the governments for a failure to pursue policies of agrarian reform;

To defend the cultures, territories and traditional economies of indigenous peoples and peasants, while building unity with urban movements.

To encourage and disseminate the agro ecological experience of peasant societies, not merely as alternative modes of cultivation, production and consumption, but as a radical, alternative vision of life and the world, transforming the relationship between nature and human beings.

– Final Document of the Iguaz ú Counter Conference on the Impacts of Soya and Monocultures, San Miguel de Iguaz ú , Brazil, 16-18/05/05.

[See RH #218, Feb 2004, pp 1-4, RH 224, Sept/Oct 2004 p.7, for background ]

The latest chapter in this story is that Cargill (as a major soy processor and exporter in Argentina) joined the “Sustainable Soy” team as a processor and marketer of organic soy which would bear the WWF Panda seal of approval in the European market. Environmental NGOs would contribute their support, presumably for a sliver of financial support for their conservation work, by promoting Cargill as an environmentally responsible corporate citizen.

The ‘sustainably' produced monoculture soy, in combination with beef feedlots, is to be certified and sold as organic in the high-price European market. But should monoculture soy, even grown according to organic standards, qualify for an ‘organic' label when it contributes to the destruction of small farms and forests and seeks to replace the traditional diet with an alien and nutritionally questionable soy-based diet?

To be certified organic by any recognized standard, of course, requires that the land be free of agro-toxins, which means that the land cannot have been used in ‘conventional' soy production for at least 3 years. It is unlikely that the ‘sustainable soy' gang will want to wait that long, which means that uncontaminated land will have to be brought into production. Does that mean cleared forest land and the farms of small traditional farmers? Soy production in Argentina seems simply to go from bad to worse. An organic label will not sanctify evil practices!

In March, the Gaia Foundation published a case study on the impact of genetically engineered soya which argues that agriculture based on soya monocultures can never be sustainable.

“The ‘sustainable soya' proposal to rotate soya monocultures with cattle production merely implies alternating extensive monocultures with intensive livestock production, both heavily mechanised and reliant on chemicals. Both occupy vast stretches of land, displacing other crops, whilst using minimal labour.

“Industry's main obligation is to maximise profits which means seeking immediate returns. It understands sustainability merely as the way to achieve sustained commercial benefits.

“Soya produced on a mass scale in countries where it is not part of the food culture but is simply a commodity for export, upsets the social, cultural, ecological, political and economic balance. It destroys the human rights of peasant and indigenous communities as well as the knowledge and practice of diverse farming and food production.” –www.gaiafoundation.org

 

#229: April/May 2005 TOC
"Sustainable Soy" - an unholy alliance of transnational agribusiness and transnational environmentalism pushes GM soy in Argentina
In Memoriam - a celebration of the life of Cathleen's mother, Anna M. Rosenberg
Cargill updates: Fertiliser and Beef
Saskatchewan Organic Farmers lose - for now: the farmers will appeal a negative ruling on their class action
Life Giving Agriculture - Brewster reports on a global forum in Korea
Confusion - the state of GE regulation in Europe is, actually, confused
Statistics of Interest
Poisoning Pigeons in the Park - Roundup is found to kill frogs
Louse-ridden farms infect wild fish - farmed salmon in BC threaten the wild stocks

 

Issue 230: June 2005

 Contradictions & Irrationalities

“Predictions of a bumper world harvest in coming decades have been put on hold because climate change is set to do much worse damage to global food production than even the gloomiest forecasts have so far predicted.”

This comment, in a short report in New Scientist (30/4/05) , made me realize that, among its overweening claims to solve world hunger, I have never heard the biotech industry promising that g.e. crops (GMOs) would make up for climate change.

What would affect climate change, of course, is a massive reduction in our energy consumption. We could start with eating closer to home. This would do more to address the problem of hunger than genetically engineered crops, and would not require the massive public subsidies the biotech industry enjoys. We could then take the resources currently lavished on the operation of the food-hauling industry (trucks, ships, planes) and apply them to public transportation.

Logic notwithstanding, actual reduction in energy consumption is seldom mentioned in polite company. Most of the attention goes to alternative fuels to keep the destructive machine going at the same pace – or faster – while the peace of the summer lake is shattered by the shrill whine of ‘personal watercraft' and our roads (even urban streets) are clogged with incredibly inefficient four-wheel drive vehicles of all sorts. Ethanol and biodiesel are the fashionable alternative vehicle fuels, though the public subsidies required to make ethanol (produced from corn or soybeans) the least bit economically attractive are seldom mentioned.

The contradictions are rife, and were highlighted for us recently by a visit to the farm (well, the organic brewery, really) by two guys from Winnipeg who came to pick up some good beer. They were travelling in a diesel Toyota pick-up powered by used cooking oil. Fast food takes on a whole new meaning! except that Steve commented that some used cooking oil is so foul that they cannot use it. And to think this was used to cook your food – well, somebody's.

Because there are no service stations to serve such conservative practices, the guys have to carry a bunch of 4-gallon containers in the back of the truck that they fill up when they can. A filtering system for the cooking oil has been installed in a box in a back corner of the truck. It is the most crucial and expensive part of the system (for the filter elements). The truck can be converted back to regular diesel with a turn of a tap, so to speak.

Ethanol production in the US is subsidized by the US Government at 17cents per litre, the subsidy going to the oil companies that blend it with their gasoline, not to the farmers growing the corn the ethanol is refined from. Canada offers only a 10cent per litre subsidy in the form of an exemption on the federal fuel excise tax, but that again benefits the refiners because the tax break is offered on cheap ethanol imported from the US or Brazil (produced from sugar cane). 
– see: WP, 9/6/05

What's more, the Canadian government's $100 million Ethanol Expansion Program provides up-front money to companies such as Husky Oil to build or expand ethanol refining capacity. Just who owns Husky – and receives the public's money – is an interesting question. Husky has been, and may now be, owned by Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing, but there are reports that the Chinese government is in talks to buy the energy giant. 
– See: orwelltoday.com/chinahuskyoil.shtml

Canola has been a darling of prairie agriculture for several decades now, and the prime oilseed crop. However, it has been running into problems as a result of its dependence on the export market, and its more recent genetic manipulation and capture by Monsanto. Canola's promiscuous habit of spreading its manipulated genes all over the countryside have meant that virtually all Canadian canola is GMO, which has meant the loss of some overseas markets. This may indeed be the death of it if Japan, which has been a consistent buyer of half the crop, turns against it.

The new ‘solution' is to use canola as a feedstock for fuel production. It's going to have to compete, however, with US biodiesel produced from oilseeds such as canola and soy. Cargill, already the third-largest producer of ethanol in the US (Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) is the largest) is now going to build a soybean-processing facility in Iowa that will by able to turn out 37.5 million gallons of biodiesel a year, substantially more that the US used (30 million gallons) in 2004. It would seem reasonable that Cargill has its eye on Canada as a market. 
– Mpls. Star-Tribune, 9/6/05

Perhaps both industrial monoculture farming and the profligate transportation of everything (including ourselves) need to be radically reconsidered.

 

#230: June 2005 TOC
Contradictions & Irrationalities
Are Plants Intelligent? - Florianne Koechlin reports from Switzerland on new research
GM Contamination Updates - compiled by Greenpeace International and GeneWatch UK
I Wonder Why? - Wal-Mart's quarterly fiscal results are poor
Meat ... and Potatoes - Canadian cattlemen realize they are too dependent on US; potato growers seek supply management of a sort
Update on EU ban on import of hormone-beef
Mastitis is a dead duck - why, because of a genetically-engineered cow, of course
Daycare protects against leukaemia - early exposure to infections
strengthens the immune system
Diet may hold key to disruption - ADHD etc. can be addressed by correct food
The Beehive Design Collective - introducing an exciting group concocting social change through public art

 

Issue 231: July 2005

 “The Centre calls the shots...”

While we may wonder at and despair over the weakness of Parliament, the confusing role played by senior civil servants – deputy ministers in particular – and the intimacy between senior politicians, civil servants and the corporate sector, we remain almost willfully short of understanding the real structure of political power in Canada. Maybe we just really want to believe we live in a representative democracy.

It is also highly unusual for the press in Canada to actually identify where power lies, by whom it is exercised, and to whose benefit. Therefore it was a pleasant surprise to see the headline “‘The Centre calls the shots so don't blame minister” on Barry Wilson's column in the July 7 th edition of Western Producer. (Western Producer is the major farm weekly of the Canadian prairies, founded in 1923 by the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, but now owned by a non-farm business enterprise.) Wilson's been reporting from Ottawa for as long as I can remember and knows his way around.

“The Centre” is not a term frequently heard or read in the Canadian media or political discussions, although it is a term commonly used in the Indian media with reference to the power centre of the Indian government. (To see for yourself, go to www.flonnet.com where the complete text of this excellent bi-weekly magazine is available. Frontline puts every other English-language news magazine I know of to shame with its literacy, coverage and analysis.)

It is worth wondering why two former British colonies, Canada and India, have such different political cultures. In India, as expressed in Frontline, there is intense detailed discussion of personalities and policies, while in Canada we seem to allow the politics and realities of power in Ottawa to be hidden behind the facade of an extraordinarily weak Parliament. In turn, it is considered bad taste to demand of political candidates what policies they advocate. I recall, for example, when Brian Mulroney was campaigning in Pictou County, Nova Scotia, for his first seat in Parliament when we were farming there. We were told to shut up when we tried to ask questions about policy. The political game was to pick and vote for ”the winner” and enjoy the favours which would presumably follow. So we get media-concocted side shows while the cronyism, corruption and power games, however brutal and anti-democratic and destructive they may be, go unattended and unilluminated.

You won't find The Centre listed in a directory of either government or parliamentary offices. As Wilson describes it, The Centre refers to a combination of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and the Privy Council Office (PCO). The PMO is filled with appointed political advisors, often long-time business associates of the Prime Minister, while the PCO consists of trusted (and also appointed) senior civil servants, in particular, deputy ministers. The Centre both makes and manages policy decisions.

Calling the shots from centre ice

To illustrate the point about the power of The Centre, Wilson looks at the strange public behaviour of the current Minister of Agriculture, Andy Mitchell. It's a bit like looking behind the curtain to see who is pulling the puppet's strings, and it does not give one much confidence in the parliamentary process in Canada. Or is it just corruption (not a word we hear spoken with any frequency) that is spoiling the process?

One could equally well examine the behaviour of our neo-liberal provincial governments which, at least in British Columbia, are following the same script of concentrating all power in the office of the Premier, while frequently shuffled Cabinet ministers scramble to figure out how to preside over ministries which are high-handedly reconfigured with no consultation with the senior management or the government's own human relations staff, let alone the front-line civil servants or, heaven forbid, the public. The latest transfiguration in BC is the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, which has become the Ministry of Agriculture and Land and has (or is trying to) swallow some 600 more staff and a whole new set of responsibilities for the Land Commissions with, apparently, absolutely no forewarning. It only make sense if, in fact, they are not supposed to do anything.

“The PCO sits at the top of the federal civil service. Unlike the PMO, it is supposed to provide the government, primarily the Prime Minister, with non-partisan advice and support. People in the PCO are typically very sharp and determined and most have spent years working their way up the public service ladder. The PCO takes its cues from the PM and then manages the government. . . The PCO also, in the words of Donald Savoie (Governing from the Centre: Concentration of Power in Canadian Politics, Univ. of Toronto Press,1996), “supports the Prime Minister's power to recommend appointments by providing substantive policy and management advice on certain senior appointments, including the appointment of deputy ministers and heads of agencies.” This is a very important point to bear in mind, especially when it comes to Deputy Ministers. . .

“It is the PM, working with the PCO, that appoints the Deputy Ministers; the Cabinet Ministers have virtually no say. . . Through the Deputy Ministers, the PM and his advisors can keep a very tight reign on Cabinet Ministers. This chain of command makes the Deputy Ministers powerful instruments in the exercise of the PM's orders. . . The Cabinet Ministers have lost out as power has shifted to the PCO and the Deputy Ministers. . . The voices of elected officials are excluded. The voices of self-serving non-elected officials set public policy.” – Devlin Kuyek, The Real Board of Directors , The Ram's Horn, 2002, pp.43-46 (This study is available in PDF at www.ramshorn.ca )

We may not like Devlin Kuyek's conclusions, but until we are prepared to be inquisitive, rude and demanding of our elected “representatives,” The Centre will continue to govern as its corporate bosses think is in their best interests, privatization will march ‘ahead' and the public subsidies will continue to go to the wealthy and powerful. – BK

 

#231: July 2005 TOC
The Centre Calls the Shots 
Biofuel: what is the real cost-benefit? 
The Myth of Development: funding from international financial institutions pretends that everyone can live like the wealthy Northerners 
Organic Soy and Corn Beat Conventional: a new study proves organics better, especially in drought 
PBR Legislation in Cold Storage: no new seed law in Canada -- for now 
Food Sovereignty: local production is what will feed the world 
Dow-Cargill partnership crumbles

 

Issue 232: August/September 2005

 The Right to Food

How can we usefully describe the movement of people around the world to ensure that people have the means to feed themselves in a satisfactory and sustainable manner? The term ‘food security' is problematic. Since security is generally understood as protection against external threats and powers, food security can mean being assured of an adequate food supply for your own survival, whether ‘your own' is you individually or as a family or community. By itself, however, the term food security does not necessarily mean enough food for everyone. On the contrary, it implies that there is not enough for everyone, and therefore I, or we, have to secure enough for ourselves over against the needs of others.

La Via Campesina, along with other peasant and aboriginal groups, uses the term food sovereignty (see the last issue of The Ram's Horn). The clearly political implications of the word sovereignty have, however, made it problematic for NGOs (non-government organizations) working in international fora such as the United Nations/FAO. Building on a long history in the area of human rights, they propose that the issue be addressed through the right to food.But this language carries its own pitfalls.

In the secular tradition of the Enlightenment, a right , whether human or property, is a license, allowance, exception or privilege granted by a secular power. The doctrine itself arose out of the religious doctrine of the ‘divine right of kings,' but when the religious authority claimed by or attributed to the king and the church were secularized by the Enlightenment, the privilege of granting rights fell to the state. The secular state then became the source and guarantor of both human and property rights, even though, theoretically, the state is simply recognizing natural rights.

In using the language of human rights to address the state, however, there is an implicit recognition of the authority, if not legitimacy, of the state, which is the only power in a position to give substance to rights. Furthermore, while natural rights may be formally recognized by the society and even the state on the basis of a higher moral authority of some sort, functionally they remain to be implemented by the state. (Meanwhile, of course, people in communities around the world continue to feed the hungry with no reference to state or other authority.)

“The human right to adequate food is a legal right which addresses head-on the moral, political and social issues relating to food poverty and food insecurity in Canada at the present time. . . Food insecurity for many Canadians raises issues of human rights and distributive justice culminating in state action and policies or programs implemented through legislation .” – (Right to Food Case Study: Canada, Graham Riches, 2004, emphasis added)

"Please, sir, I want some more" - Oliver Twist

Behind the state, under the current neoliberal regime of capital-and-market, stands the corporation. Assuming the prerogatives of royalty, the corporation utilizes the state as its proxy, rewarding well the agents of the state that execute the corporate will. Rights, both human and property, are assumed by the corporate persona and given, by the corporation, priority over the rights of natural persons.The rights of natural persons, such as you and me, become highly contingent privileges recognized by the corporation and granted by the state. (This has become explicit and legal in the context of NAFTA and other trade agreements executed under the WTO and bilaterally by the USA.)

What we seem to have inherited from the historic pragmatic choice (or default) to utilize the discourse and claims of rights is the domination of a rights discourse over more explicit political and social discourse and program.

Rights has moved from being a matter of means in a particular context to a matter of universal ends.

Rights, however, do not, by themselves, constitute a society, a civil order, or even a political program. The USA has had a Bill of Rights from its infancy, but that has not ensured the practice of social, economic, political or legal justice. Canada got along without a Charter of Rights until quite recently, with arguably more social justice than is to be found in the USA, and the United Kingdom has neither a written constitution nor a ‘declaration' of rights. Today the beneficiaries of the language of rights and their advocacy are more likely to be the corporations than any mere people, individually or collectively, as communities or the public.

The basic failing of the concept of rights is that it assumes an apposition. Being relational, a right without a context is meaningless. To exist, rights have to be recognized and granted; to be functional, they have to have legal authority. What power, class, institution or structure is expected to fulfill the expectations or demands of rights, and for whom? Corporations seem to have the power to simply seize and exploit rights; in contrast, the claims of rights by the less powerful have to be argued in the courts of the dominant power, which means from a position of weakness. Beyond that, even if rights are granted and/or recognized, they still have to be given substantive meaning: there is no inherent nutrition in the ‘right to food.' Such a right must be given meaning by providing real food to real people.

The language of rights, then, is essentially about power. Rights may be granted as a privilege by the powerful, in the form of a state, class or corporation, as an exception to its rule, while the more powerful assume privileges for themselves. Thus it is now corporations which would assume for themselves ‘Plant Breeders Rights' – with approval by the state – while they in turn would grant farmers the privilege of saving their own seeds for a season. Rights have been transformed into a surrogate for “the real thing.” That is, the right to food as a political demand has come to replace the ability to feed oneself as a matter of social justice, just as the farmer's right to save seeds replaces the practice of actually doing so.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that's all.” – Lewis Carroll, Alice Through the Looking Glass “Food as a human right”: The UN Special Rapporteur has attempted to address the concerns for food sovereignty by stretching the term ‘right to food' to cover them. “The obligation to respect means that Governments must not violate the right to food (e.g. evict people from their land, destroy crops),” he says. “The obligation to protect means that governments must protect their citizens against violations by other actors (e.g. by instituting regulations on food safety). The third obligation to fulfill the right to food means the Government must first facilitate the right to food by providing an enabling environment for people to feed themselves (e.g. engage in land reform, stimulate employment).”– United Nations Economic and Social Council, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: The Right to Food, 1/03 “Food security”: Here in BC, the BC Food Systems Networkadopted the term ‘food systems' in an attempt to avoid the confusion inherent in ‘food security', which it also redefined to include a economically viable and ecologically sustainable system in which access to appropriate food is assured and food is celebrated as central to culture and community. Food Secure Canada /Alliance Canadianne pour le s é curit é alimentaire – the fledgling national organization to unite people and organizations working for food security nationally and globally – continues to use the term with a small twist in its English name. In the USA, the Community Food Security Coalition depends on its community development focus to add nuance to its name.

 

#232: August/September 2005 TOC
The Right to Food
The Cargill Column: ongoing coverage of one of the world's leading corporations: 
* $71.1 billion and growing 
* How it grows 
* If it can be turned into a commodity, Cargill will market it 
Niger: Starving in the Midst of Plenty - an article from the Guardian Weekly 
Does inequality really matter? - from a review by Polly Toynbee of a book by Richard Wilkinson, pointing out that it is social equity which makes populations healthy 
Court Case to Proceed - the Saskatchewan farmers may pursue their class action suit against biotech giants contaminating their crops 
A different view of the world: Bold New Markets - how to do well by doing good; Drugs are the Answer - anti-obesity drugs hailed as the answer to childhood obesity 
"Modern, Improved Maize" and Diabetes - research shows changes in the ancient corn varieties have reduced anti-oxidants 
New corn is a breed apart - fighting back against genetic contamination by breeding corn which blocks external pollination 
Monsanto Watch: Patenting pigs - in a move which left even critics breathless, Monsanto has moved to patent the processes of breeding pigs; Charity - Monsanto Malawi donates $1 million to the World Food Programme; Ethics Oversight - shareholders call for an independent ethics committee for the corporation 

 

Issue 233: October 2005

 Food Secure Canada

For more than five years, people involved in ‘food security' in Canada have been trying to get together to create a common voice. It's not an easy task. As food banks have become institutionalized as a regular part of the food system, and as farmers' real incomes have dipped below zero, the questions of how to feed all Canadians (not to mention issues of trade or genetic engineering) have tended to drive activists into separate solitudes, if not outright conflict. Last year at the second national Food Security Assembly, a first step towards unity was taken in the recognition that the three distinct areas of concern are, in fact, linked. Ecological sustainability, economic justice, and the integrity of both the food system and the food itself are essential if the goal of “zero hunger” is to be achieved.

The organizers of the third Assembly, held at the end of September in Waterloo, Ontario (notably Ellen Desjardins and Sanjay Govindaraj) aimed to move beyond this high-minded rhetoric, by ensuring that all delegates participated in sessions addressing each of the three themes identified at the previous Assembly: zero hunger, sustainable food systems, and safe and healthy food. Canada's role in trade, aid, biotechnology and international agriculture and rural development formed a fourth theme. The goal was to emerge from the conference with a clear set of policy priorities for a new national organization, tentatively named Food Secure Canada – and it worked! While Food Secure Canada is not yet a formal organization, the Assembly ratified a Constitution, agreed on the formation of a Steering Committee, and accepted several policy proposals, including development of a ‘report card' on food security, an agreement to join the International Alliance Against Hunger, and designing a broad initiative for ‘food localism'.

In fact, there were 81 specific recommendations from the workshops, reflecting the broad diversity of the participants, which included rural, urban, northern and indigenous people. It would not be an exaggeration to say that everyone came with their own agenda – things like

• mandatory labelling of GMOs
• a campaign to oppose factory farming
• a ‘local' label to increase the market for locally produced food
• championing the concept of the ‘right to food' in domestic and international policy
• a campaign against advertising junk food to children
• joining the ‘Ban Terminator' campaign
• ‘environmental tax credits' to support sustainable agriculture
• regulatory regimes that support community-focussed, low-impact agriculture
• support of indigenous access to traditional lands.

Some of these received wide-spread support while others sparked strong debate. The resulting conflicts were avoided to some extent by a commitment that the Steering Committee will develop a policy document which will include all the recommendations, organized according to which are most urgent and achievable. The spirit of collaboration was also enhanced by the leadership of the conference, particularly Mustafa Koc from Ryerson University in Toronto, who spoke passionately and persuasively about the absolute necessity of working together.

While there is still much organizational work to do, the critical steps have now been taken to establish a voice for civil society in Canada which can address food policy at the federal as well as the regional and local levels. The positive energy generated by Waterloo will help as the group works in the next year to include all its constituents in a meaningful way in developing that voice.

The Giant Made Visible

I have to wonder what the Cargillites think when Invisible Giant and I turn up in yet another corner of their empire, the latest being Argentina. “Gigante Invisible - Cargill y sus estrategias transnacionales,” the Spanish edition of Invisible Giant, was published in Argentina in October as a cooperative effort of GRAIN, REDES-AT (Friends of the Earth) in Uruguay, and Grupo de Reflexi ó n Rural (GRR) in Argentina. In honour of the occasion, Cathleen and I burned up some of our airmiles and after attending the founding conference of Food Secure Canada in Kitchener, Ontario, we flew on to Buenos Aires. Actually, we were all set to go to Argentina four years ago just as the economy collapsed. Our friends advised us not to come at that time, being unsure what might happen. Memories of the dictatorship (1976-1983) were all too powerful.

“The armed forces applied harsh measures against terrorists and many suspected of being their sympathizers. They restored basic order, but the human costs of what became known as “El Proceso,” or the “Dirty War” were high. Conservative counts list between 10,000 and 30,000 persons as “disappeared” during the 1976-83 period.” – US State Dept. Background Note, 9/05

What the US refers to as “terrorists” were virtually all the progressive student, union and political leaders in a country of (now) 38.6 million people.

Our 9-day visit actually included two days in Montevideo, Uruguay, which is a three-hour fast-ferry catamaran (70 km/hr) ride from Buenos Aires across the mouth of the Rio de la Plata. In Montevideo we met with leaders and staff of the World Rainforest Movement, REDES-AT, and RA-PAL (Pesticide Action Network Latin America), trade unionists and a representative from the organic farmers, as well as presenting the book at a public meeting.

Our first night in Buenos Aires was spent at the Cooperativa Bauen Hotel. This hotel was privatized and operated for about ten years, during which time the owner did not make any payments to the government. Finally the hotel was to be closed but the workers formed a cooperative and took over management under legislation brought in after the 2001 collapse. It is now a workers hotel and the locus of many social justice activities and organizations. We met some of our hosts in the hotel café .

After several days of meetings and interviews about my book, the food economy of the country and possible alternatives, as well as some sightseeing around the city (and enjoying the compulsory tango show, excellent beef and vino tinto ), we headed by car 300 km north up the Parana River to Rosario, the third largest city (pop.1.3 million) in Argentina, a hub of agroindustrial activity and a deep-water port. After emerging from the sprawling city, we travelled the flat land of the Pampas looking at hectare after hectare of brown stubble – including most of the road verges – on a warm spring day when everything else was turning green. The fields had all been ‘burned off' with glyphosate herbicide in preparation for the planting of transgenic soja (soy). Much of the glyphosate comes from China at a much lower cost than Monsanto's Roundup (the patent has expired, enabling the generics to come in).

Traditional agriculture on the Pampas was a sustainable alteration of five years in pasture for beef and some sheep and five years of cropping (which they refer to as ‘agriculture') without fertilizers or pesticides. Now the vast plains of central and northern Argentina, all the way up through Paraguay, are dedicated to a perpetual monoculture of transgenic herbicide-tolerant soy, pesticides and imported (by Cargill) fertilizers. (The people who get “fumigated,” as they say, by the aerial spraying are not as “tolerant” of glyphosate as the transgenic soy.)

At two well-attended meetings in Rosario we followed our now-customary pattern of presentations: Carlos Vicente of GRAIN, Adolfo Boy of GRR, and myself. My role was to describe Cargill's operating strategies and practices since the company is building a very large port and soy processing facility in what was a residential/agricultural area on the south side of Rosario. The land Cargill is building on was zoned agricultural and growing vegetables, but with the promise of paying a good price for it, Cargill (typically) got the farmer who owned it to get the zoning changed to industrial rather than trying to get it rezoned itself. Then Cargill bought it and proceeded to start construction of a loading/unloading pier 300 metres into the river and the sprawling storage and processing facility with only the flimsiest of environmental assessments. The local fishermen are particularly concerned about the effects of the pier on the river and the fish. At this time, Cargill has permission to build the plant but not to operate it. Needless to say, it is not investing a reputed $200 million without the assurance of being able to operate the plant, which will employ only 165 people.

Meanwhile the nearby residents and many others are trying to win concessions from Cargill and the government, such as relocation of the road serving the port that will have to serve 500 trucks a day delivering soy so that it does not go through a residential area of the city.

Monoculture GE soy may be satisfying the demands of Argentina's creditors and enriching the few transnational corporations which are processing and exporting it, but it provides a poor diet for Argentinians. Around San Pedro, for example, where we stopped for lunch on the way to Rosario, our host Adolfo Boy told us that when he was working there as an agronomist, sweet potatoes were the major crop. Of course they were a highly nutritious food, consumed locally, and easy to grow. Farmers did not need to buy seed, he told us, because the sweet potatoes would grow if you just dropped a piece of one on the ground. They also grew peas and oranges, most of which were replaced by lemons – for export – and now soy, for export.

The moral of the story: Industrial agriculture is bad, from beginning to end. Argentinians, who used to be among the best fed people anywhere, are now being, quite literally, forced to consume soy in place of milk, meat, vegetables and pulses such as lentils which were once produced in abundance on the small farms that have been overrun by large landowners growing soy. Lentils are now imported from Canada, of all absurdities. One does not even want to wonder how many of the ubiquitous garbage pickers on the streets of Buenos Aires were once small farmers.

Now it is GE soy, from roadside to horizon. Such monoculture production is degrading the land, is responsible for poor nutrition and high food costs, and is expressing its environmental impact on the roads and waterways. Changing course back to a sustainable, local food system becomes increasingly difficult as corporations such as Cargill gain increasing control through their massive investments and skilful political policy work.

Gone forever are my romantic images of the Pampas as rolling green fields and herds of range cattle.

 

#233: October 2005 TOC
Food Secure Canada
The Giant Made Visible
Argentina and soja (soy) - statistics on production 
Cargill Argentina - a thumbnail history 
Herbicide-Resistant Weeds - Horseweed and Pigweed have both been found to resist glyphosate 
'Co-existence' impossible - GM crops contaminate the countryside for up to 15 years later 
Small Scale Producers - a helpful conference statement 
Priceless? Not any more - selling breastmilk 
Fair Trade Nestle? - the food and drink giant will now sell one line of Fair Trade coffee 
We Don't Need Genetically Modified Foods - a statement from Ghana 

 

Issue 234: November-December 2005

 LIGHTNING STRIKES

by Brewster Kneen

I have long been somewhat puzzled by the very aggressive role played by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in the promotion of biotechnology and genetically engineered crops around the world, particularly in Africa. The most obvious explanation: the US Government is simply exercising its neo-liberal function of promoting and financing corporate welfare. But this has never felt to me like an entirely adequate explanation.

Then, like a bolt of lightening, a thought struck me as I was reading an article by Philip Agee on “How United States Intervention Against Venezuela Works.” Agee is a former CIA operative who left the agency in 1967 after becoming disillusioned by the CIA's role in Latin America.

In this article, Agee describes and documents how the US has carried out covert operations in various countries to try to keep them in line with US foreign policy and receptive to US business interests. He uses an analysis of US covert operations in Nicaragua as a template for his documented analysis of what the US has been and continues doing in Venezuela to bring down President Hugo Chavez.

What struck me was the thought that the aggressive US promotion of biotechnology worldwide, and particularly in Africa, might actually be a cover for even more evil intentions, namely, the nurturing of quasi-democratic governments in Africa that would not threaten the commercial and strategic interests of the US and its corporations. Perhaps Monsanto and Syngenta, along with USAID and ‘NGOs' such as the Rockefeller/industry-funded ISAAA, are actually pursuing a more despicable agenda than simply the spread of biotech crops for control of the global food system and corporate profit.

All the biotech ‘research' centres, educational programs, capacity building workshops etc. and all the contacts and networks established through these programs – with their salaries and gratuities (pay-offs) – may well be the vehicles of subversion to ensure that African governments are compliant with US government-corporate interests in mineral resources and OIL.

In How United States Intervention Against Venezuela Works,Philip Agee says this about the US actions in Venezuela:

“It is no secret that the government of the United States is carrying out a program of operations in favor of the Venezuelan political opposition to remove President Hugo Chávez Frías and the coalition of parties that supports him from power. The budget for this program, initiated by the administration of Bill Clinton and intensified under George W. Bush, has risen from some $2 million in 2001 to $9 million in 2005, and it disguises itself as activities to “promote democracy,” “resolve conflicts,” and “strengthen civic life.” It consists of providing money, training, counsel and direction to an extensive network of political parties, NGO's, mass media, unions, and businessmen, all determined to end the bolivarian revolutionary process. . . The program of political intervention in Venezuela is one more of various in the world principally directed by the Department of State (DS), the Agency for International Development (USAID), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) along with its four associated foundations. . .

“From the beginning of covert actions, the CIA was plagued by the perennial difficulty faced by their beneficiaries to justify or conceal the funds the Agency gave them. To resolve this problem in part, the CIA established relations with cooperating U.S. foundations through which it channelled funds to foreign recipients. It also created a network of its own foundations that sometimes were nothing more than paper entities managed by lawyers on contract with the Agency. . . These foundations supported political parties and other organizations abroad that shared their political persuasions. . . The NED and its associated foundations were conceived as a mechanism to channel funds toward political parties and other foreign civil society institutions that favoured US interests, above all the neo-liberal agenda of privatization, deregulation, control of unions, reduction of social services, elimination of tariffs, and free access to markets. The entire mechanism was, and is, nothing more than an instrument of US government foreign policy. . . . Since the adoption of Project Democracy in 1983, the US has attempted to establish and strengthen, in various countries around the world, pro-US ‘democracies' controlled by elites who identify with the US political class and who can take advantage of the ‘bought democracy' that the US seeks to impose. In this way the US aims to eliminate the danger that a truly democratic government of working people would represent to its interests.” – Znet, September 09, 2005

One could be forgiven for thinking that the network of agencies, departments, committees and projects put in place all over Africa for the promotion of genetically engineered crops and the deliberate creation of dependency through the dismemberment of local and traditional agriculture would be bad enough, without also providing the infrastructure open to utilization and manipulation by agents working not only to promote US corporate interests, but also US foreign policy objectives. Think of the biotech infrastructure financed by the US as a comprehensive network of ‘lite' military establishments or foreign bases of operations. The number of names and acronyms to be found even in the brief items below is impressive – and so are the lies so easily told about the benefits of biotechnology!!

EXAMPLES: The following reports are verbatim, though severely edited for length.

“The USAID country mission through PBS is assisting Ghana to build that capacity for the safe handling of Genetically Modified Organisms and for export as necessary.” The group has a three-year lifespan to correspond with the project with funding of about $750,000 from USAID and includes USAID on its advisory board. – Ghana News Agency 2/11/05

 

The Nigeria Agricultural Biotechnology Project (NABP) awareness workshop noted that research has proved that biotechnology can be used to improve the insect and pest resistance of our crops and livestock which will reduce cost of production and improve income of farmers. Workshop collaborators were the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture(IITA), the national Biotechnology Agency and the United States Agency for International Development ( USAID ) – Business Day, Nigeria, 6 /6/05

 

Ghana's Programme for Bio-safety Systems (PBS) is a three-year USAID supported project as part of their collaborative agricultural biotechnology initiative. It is to empower partner countries for science-based bio-safety decision making while strengthening capacity to implement it through an innovative system. Bio-safety is also a term used to describe efforts to reduce and eliminate the potential risks resulting from modern bio-technology and its products. – Ghana News Agency, 29/6/05

 

A number of journalists from Anglophone West African countries including Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and The Gambia, have had frank discussions with African scientists on biotechnology and related issues at a two-day workshop in Accra in June at the end of which they agreed that there is the urgent need for African scientists to employ biotechnology to help address food security and health matters on the continent. The workshop was organised by the Forum in Agricultural Research for Africa, FARA, with funding fromUSAID , to expose media persons to the reality of biotechnology in order to properly position them to engage in positive debates on the subject. – Accra Mail, Ghana, 22/6/05

 

NABP Director General Professor Omaliko said that NABP resulted from an agreement between the Federal Government of Nigeria, through the National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA), the United States Agency for International Development ( USAID ) and International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). He said The project, which was launched with the sum $2.1 million has the purpose of laying the foundation for Nigeria to take advantage of biotechnology and its applications to improve agriculture. It will be implemented over a three-year period and will address the following specific mandates: - To improved biotechnology capacity for Nigerian scientists and institutions; - To enhanced public awareness on biotechnology and - To support the implementation of biosafety policies. The NABP is structured into advocacy, capacity building and research component for the purposes of implementation. . . NABDA is the Nigerian Government's Institutional framework with a clear mandate to promote, coordinate and regulate biotechnology in the country. – This Day, Nigeria, 6/6/05

 

The United States Department of Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman announced several initiatives that will be implemented in Africa to strengthen biotechnology research and development. Veneman said a US private and public sector team of cotton experts will travel to West Africa to look into the cotton industry. The team will recommend how best West African cotton industries can become more efficient and competitive. This will serve as a model for cooperation in other parts of Africa. A second activity will be a follow-up conference later this year in Mali to be hosted by West African countries that attended the Burkina Faso Ministerial. In addition, the US will help West Africa achieve its goal of creating a regional African Center of Excellence for Biotechnology. A variety of technical assistance, training, and cooperative research, exchange, and development programs will be provided to facilitate and accelerate the transfer and adaptation of biotechnology to the region. Guidance on establishing appropriate biotechnology standards and regulatory systems will be provided as well. – CropBiotech Update, 24/9/04

 

A US expert on biotechnology, Dr. Vernon Gracen from Cornell University, is visiting Tanzania to discuss with Tanzanian agriculture stakeholders the application of advances in biotechnology in the agricultural sector. According to a statement from the US Embassy in Dar es Salaam, the workshops will be a good opportunity for stakeholders and policy makers to share experiences on biotechnology, especially at this time when the government of Tanzania is debating on biotechnology policy and application of GMOs. US Embassy's Spokesperson John Haynes, said the Embassy decided to invite Dr. Gracen to the country because biotechnology has great potential for protecting Tanzania against food scarcity, and increasing productivity by developing insect, drought, and virus resistant crops. Haynes noted that commercially available foods and crops using biotechnology have been subjected to more testing and regulation than any other agricultural products and have been found safe. Dr. Gracen is also involved with the Agricultural Biotechnology Support Program (ABSPII) as an advisor on the development of product commercialization packages. – United States Department of State / U.S. Embassy in Tanzania, 1/4/05

Memo from an NGO observer at the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) Ministerial Meeting, June 2005 to gaia@gaianet.org

. . . a disturbing trend is gathering pace across Africa. While policymakers rightly call for Biosafety laws to be put into place, this is more and more being seen as a preliminary to GM acceptance, rather than an actual means to regulate GM crops and prevent risks. Of course with many countries getting their Biosafety advice and funding from USAID , this is hardly surprising.

We also continue to see a blurring of the lines between “biotechnology” and “genetic engineering”. Promoters of GMOs can appear reasonable by talking about a variety of biotechnology techniques, and pointing out that genetic engineering is only one of those techniques – whilst really channelling the majority of their funding and effort towards GM. By referring to brewing of beers, bread and yogurt as biotechnology, they are able to claim that biotechnology has been around for hundreds of years and is nothing new. This, obviously, distracts from the fact that the moving of genes between species in a laboratory environment and patenting the crop, is a very new development that has barely been tested.

Biotechnology is also increasingly being seen as such an incredible technology with all the answers, that ECOWAS discussions have led to the recommendation that countries prioritize biotechnology research in their budgets. GM will therefore be getting the lion's share of funding, at the expense of sustainable, ecological and socially responsible solutions. USAID must be happy.

 

#234: November-December 2005 TOC
Lightning Strikes -- Brewster suddenly realizes how USAID is clearing the way for US power in Venezuela as in Africa 
People's Victory in Switzerland -- Florianne Koechlin reports on the Swiss referendum for a moratorium on GMOs 
PEI decides against a ban on GMOs
Terminate Terminator -- the real scoop from Pat Mooney; and a postcard campaign to the Federal Government 
Feathers of Mass Destruction -- the connection between Avian Flu and intensive poultry rearing 
Pork Concentrate -- Get Bigger, Get Subsidies
Soybeans and Guns in Rural Paraguay -- Kregg Heatherington reports on the sobering situation in the pampas of Latin America 
Hunger Count -- Canada's food banks issue a new report showing hunger is on the rise