Got this from another list - another thing to worry about with our food
supplies

Evi

>Article from "The Guardian Weekly" , Sept 28, 1997
>
>"It's easy to miss even the biggest newspaper ads when you're not looking
>out for them. The three pages in Britain's Financial Times devoted to the
>corporate de-merger of a chemical company called Monsanto were not exactly
>riveting, but could not be ignored. It is one of the few public indications
>of a new chapter in the world's economic history.
>
>The publicity, aimed at shareholders and corporate customers, announced that
>Monsanto is to split into two firms, to pursue "applied chemistry" and "life
>sciences". The life-science division will "provide better food, better
>nutrition, and better health for all people." With this, Monsanto has
>embarked on one of the most extraordinary and amibitious corporate
>strategies ever launched.
>
>The story begins simply enough, with a single chemical. Glyphosate, sould as
>"Roundup", is the world's biggest-selling herbicide. Last year, it earned
>Monsanto nearly $1.5 billion, but its patent on Roundup runs out in 2000.
>Far from sowing corporate catastrophe, however, this event seems likely only
>to enhance Monsanto's market value. For the past 10 years it has cleverly
>been developing a range of new crops, genetically engineered to resist
>glyphosate. Spraying them with Roundup does them no harm, but destroys all
>the weeds that compete. New patent legislation in Europe and the United
>States allows Monsanto to secure exclusive rights to their production. The
>first "Roundup-Ready" plant that Monsanto released was a genetically
>engineered soya bean. Between 50 and 60 per cent of processed foods contain
>soya, so the potential market is enormous.
>
>Alarmed at possible increases in the use of herbicides,as well as the health
>effects of genetically engineered crops in general, environmentalists and
>consumer groups in Europe started calling for products containing the new
>beans to be clearly labelled. But in the U.S. - from where most of Britain's
>soya comes - Monsanto insisted that it would be impossible to keep
>Roundup-Ready beans apart from ordinary ones. About 15 per cent of this
>year's U.S. crop is Roundup-Ready: the chances are that nearly all of us
>will soon be consuming manipulated soya beans every week.
>
>As the new beans were snapped up by growers in the U.S., Monsanto began an
>extraordinary round of acquisitions, buying shares in seed and biotechnology
>companies worth nearly $2 billion in the past 18 months alone. Among its
>purchases are companies that produce the famous "Flavr-savr" tomato, own the
>U.S. patent on all genetic manipulations of cotton, and control around 35
>per cent of the germlines of American maize. Monsanto is now experimenting
>with new rice, maize, potato, sugarbeet, rape and cotton varieties. It has
>suggested that within a few years all the major staple crops on Earth should
>be genetically engineered. The new products are so attractive to many
>farmers that the company has managed to get them to sign away their future
>rights to the seed they grow, and allow Monsanto to inspect their fields
>whenever it wants.
>
>Monsanto's new crops could not have become commercially viable without major
>legislateive change. As members of the trade lobby Europabio, Monsanto and
>the other big biotech companies have mastered the legal climate in which
>they operate. Despite significant public opposion, Europabio in July managed
>to persuade the European Parliament to adopt a new directive, allowing
>companies to patent manipulated plants and aminals.LAST WEEK, THE EUROPEAN
>COMMISSION ANNOUNCED THAT IT WOULD FORCE AUSTRIA, ITALY AND LUXEMBOURG TO
>REPEAL THEIR LAWS BANNING THE IMPORT OF GENETICALLY ENGINEERED MAIZE.
>
>In the U.S. a Monsanto vice-president is reportedly a "top candidate" to
>become commissioner of the food and drug administration, which regulates the
>food industry. Researchers and lawyers from Monsanto already occupy
>important posts in the FDA. It has approved some of the company's most
>controversial products, including the artificial sweetener aspartame and an
>injectable growth hormone for cattle. Only the New York attorney general's
>office has taken the company to task, forcing it to withdraw advrts claiming
>that Roundup is biodegradable and environmentally friendly.
>
>But Monsanto has been most successful when appealing to multilateral bodies.
>Last month, the WTO confirmed its ruling that the European Union can no
>longer exclude meat and milk from cattle treated with bovine growth hormone,
>despite the protests of farmers, retailers and consumers.
>
>As Scientific American magazine claimed, Monsanto's trials were incompletely
>analysed, obscuring the fact that it increases infected udder cells in cows
>by about 20 per cent. Biotech firms are now tryiing to persuade the WTO to
>forbid the labelling of genetically engineered foods. Any country whose
>retailers tell consumers what they are eating would be subject to punitive
>sanctions.
>
>With astonishing rapidity, a tiny handful of companies is coming to govern
>the global development, production, processing and marketing of our most
>fundamental commodity -- food."