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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] "Monsanto Laws" Sweeping the Nation Take Away Community/County Rights to Ban GMOs
  • Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 21:25:07 -0600


"Monsanto Laws" Sweeping the Nation Take Away Community/County Rights to
Ban GMOs

From: The News & Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina)
http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/columns/story/2420322p-8797890c.html
May 19, 2005

A growing stake in the biotech crops debate By HOPE SHAND 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 <www.etcgroup.org in Carrboro, North
Carolina, a non-profit focusing on socioeconomic impacts of new
agricultural technologies.)





  • [Livingontheland] "Monsanto Laws" Sweeping the Nation Take Away Community/County Rights to Ban GMOs, Tradingpost, 05/25/2005

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