Fwd: 'MonsantoLaws' Would Take Away Right 2 Ban GMOs

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'Monsanto Laws' Would Take Away Right To Ban GMOs

 

A Growing Stake In The Biotech Crops Debate

By Hope Shand

 

The News & Observer

http://rense.com/general65/righto.htm5-26-5

 

 

 

 

 

CARRBORO -- Goodness grows in North Carolina? Not if the General Assembly

approves bills that would pre-empt local regulations on genetically modified

crops and trees.

 

House Bill 671 and Senate Bill 631 aim to prevent towns, counties or cities from

passing any ordinance, regulation or resolution to control any kind of plant or

plant pest (including invasive plant species). The bills would usurp local

control by making the state Department of Agriculture the only body in North

Carolina with the authority to regulate plants.

 

 

 

These bills are not a homegrown initiative, but part of a nationwide biotech

industry campaign. Similar bills, containing identical language, have cropped up

in at least nine other states as part of a campaign by industry to prevent

citizen initiatives like those passed in three California counties last year

that prohibited cultivation of genetically modified crops.

 

 

 

Proponents of the seed pre-emption bills, including the Agriculture Department,

are championing the interests of corporate " gene giants " such as Monsanto and

Syngenta --

 

 

not citizens. Whether you're for or against genetically modified seeds, the

pre-emption bills represent an anti-democratic measure to take control away from

communities. Just as the corporate hog industry won legislation to prohibit

local jurisdictions from keeping out supersize hog farms in North Carolina, now

the gene giants are trying to muzzle debate by eliminating options for local

regulation of genetically modified crops.

 

 

 

 

 

The issue has immediate relevance in Eastern North Carolina, where Ventria

Bioscience has a permit to grow an open-air, experimental plot of rice

engineered with synthetic human genes (to produce artificial human milk

proteins) near the state Agriculture Department's Tidewater Research Station in

Plymouth, in Washington County. Two earlier attempts by Ventria to grow its

genetically modified " pharma rice " -- a crop that yields drugs for use in human

and veterinary medicines --

 

 

were opposed by farmers, food companies and environmentalists in California and

Missouri because of concerns that the genetically altered pharma rice could

cross-pollinate with conventional rice, thus contaminating the food supply.

 

 

 

 

 

Last month, California-based Ventria Bioscience requested a permit from the U.S.

Department of Agriculture to grow up to 70 acres of pharma rice on two

additional plots in Eastern North Carolina. If the pre-emption bills pass,

communities would have no authority to regulate genetically modified crops.

 

 

 

 

 

Everyone agrees that unintended gene flow from genetically modified plants is

unavoidable. The organic food market is the fastest-growing segment of the farm

economy, but organic farmers risk losing organic certification, and markets, if

genetically modified DNA contaminates their fields. Local governments should

have the ability to protect growers who worry about contamination.

 

 

 

 

 

The biotech industry and federal regulators have repeatedly failed to contain

and control genetically modified organisms. The science journal Nature revealed

in March that Syngenta had inadvertently sold an unapproved strain of

genetically modified corn to farmers for four years.

 

 

During that period, 146,000 tons of the corn were marketed as animal feed and

corn flour in the U.S., in Europe and in Asia. Syngenta informed federal

authorities about the illegal corn in late 2004, but the public and unsuspecting

farmers were in the dark until four months later. To keep out the unlicensed

strain, the European Union threatened to boycott U.S. corn imports valued at

$347 million. As usual, farmers were left holding the bag. Syngenta was let off

with a fine.

 

 

 

 

 

This was not the first time genetically modified corn has entered the food

supply. In 2000, Starlink corn, approved only for use as animal feed, was found

in taco shells, causing a nationwide recall of food products containing yellow

corn.

 

 

 

 

 

Eliminating options for local authority over plants/seeds is risky business. The

farm biotech business is controlled by five multinationals, the world's largest

seed and agrochemical companies: Monsanto, Dupont, Syngenta, Bayer and Dow.

Monsanto's genetically modified seed technology accounted for about 90 percent

of the total worldwide area devoted to such crops last year. Seed industry

concentration means fewer choices for farmers and consumers and unacceptable

levels of control over the seed supply.

 

 

 

 

 

For all these reasons, North Carolina towns and communities must preserve

options for local regulation of plants, and for public debate of genetically

modified crops and trees.

 

 

 

- Hope Shand is research director of the ETC Group in Carrboro, a non-profit

focusing on socioeconomic impacts of new agricultural technologies.

 

 

 

 

 

© Copyright 2005, The News & Observer Publishing Company

 

http://www.newsobserver.com/

 

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