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  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Once Again, the Killer Tomato
  • Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2006 20:18:44 -0700


Once Again, the Killer Tomato
http://www.purewatergazette.net/secret.htm

People joke about the deplorable quality of produce and say "tomatoes don't
taste like they used to," but few realize fully the torture that modern
agribusiness inflicts on standard food plants. Peter Bahouth, former
director of Greenpeace, was eating a salad one day in Toronto and became
curious about the tomato's origin. His research resulted in an article
called "Attack of the Killer Tomato," which appeared in the 1994 Seeds of
Change Catalog and was excerpted in Vegetarian Voice (Vol. 20, No. 3).

The tomato, Bahouth discovered, was grown on Mexican land that had once
been publicly owned "ejidos," or small collective farms worked by local
farmers. It was now controlled by a partnership of the Jolly Green Giant
Company and the Mexican Development Corp. The killer tomato was grown from
a hybrid seed developed from a Mexican strain at U.S. taxpayer expense by
the University of California, then sold to Calgene, Inc., which obtained a
patent.

The land was "prepared" by fumigation with methylbromide, said to be an
ozone depleter 120 times more potent than CFC-111, then treated with
Monsanto pesticides by $2.50-per-day unprotected Mexican farm workers.
Production waste was shipped to the world's largest hazardous waste
landfill in Emelle, Alabama.

After harvest, the tomato was wrapped in plastic, placed in a plastic tray,
and put in a cardboard box. Citizens of Point Comfort, Texas get the brunt
of the health problems from making the plastic, while 300-year-old trees in
British Columbia and Great Lakes area residents downstream from pulp mills
take the hit for the boxes.

The tasteless tomato, once boxed, was reddened by ether and shipped to
Canada in CFC-refrigerated trucks at great expenditure of energy. In
Toronto, the plastic was discarded and shipped to Detroit for incineration.
The amount of fuel used for the entire process is staggering. Behouth
concludes:

The Toronto tomato probably cost 50 cents, but we can see that if we
really look at the true economics of an everyday item like a tomato we are
not folding in the social costs of this type of production. That's what is
really driving this type of economic system. You realize that having your
own garden and growing your own tomatoes can be a very subversive and
radical act. And it makes the fruit taste that much sweeter.

The Gazette challenges you do do something radical. Grow a tomato!
-----------------------------

paul tradingpost@lobo.net






  • [Livingontheland] Once Again, the Killer Tomato, TradingPostPaul, 11/19/2006

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