EU-US trade deal threat to food safety

The launch of EU-US negotiations on a new trade deal should set alarm bells ringing for food producers and consumers throughout Europe. If successful the deal will sweep away environmental, health, privacy and cultural standards.

For decades, these have given a measure of protection to the European food industry from incursion by the predominantly US-based global agri-business corporations.

The talks are intended to promote growth by eliminating all trade tariffs and “harmonising” regulations which act as barriers to trade. The G8 announcement of the July 8 start of talks sees the two parties aiming to sign the deal by the end of 2014.

The launch of the new deal – a second-best attempt at the failed World Trade Organisation’s Doha trade talks – will be seen as a direct response to the mounting anger against profit-driven food production manifested in the two million strong worldwide march against Monsanto in hundreds of cities in 52 countries last month.

The ConDem government, in a coalition with lobbyists for the biotech companies, is spearheading the corporations’ campaign.

Britain’s science minister, David Willetts and environment secretary Owen Paterson are pushing for EU controls on new genetically-modified crops and food to be relaxed. Willetts, who has been heavily lobbied by GM campaigners and scientists funded by the GM industry, insists biotech crops could feed the world.

Eight European governments have banned cultivation of a Monsanto GM maize called MON 810, which is genetically modified to kill pests which feed on it, on the basis it might cause harm to other important insects. The eight are Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Hungary, Luxembourg and most recently Poland, while Italy said it plans to follow suit.

As a result, Monsanto says it has effectively given up on lobbying for approval for new GM crops to be grown in Europe, though it is certain to be active in the negotiations for the new bilateral deal.

The ban on the maize and other forms of GM has been made under an EU environmental protection provision known as the “Safeguard Clause”. Even so large quantities of GM soya and maize are imported into Europe, including Britain, entering the food chain as animal feed.  

Monsanto’s bid for domination of the global food chain received a major setback in May, when Japan and parts of South Korea banned US wheat imports after the discovery of a unlicensed genetically-modified crop growing in Oregon. The corporation is now facing a class action lawsuit from farmers in the state.

The company is, however, celebrating its defence of patents – intellectual copyright controls over food - in a court victory against farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman. Having bought Roundup-ready soybean seeds, he had the temerity and ingenuity to find a way, he thought, of bypassing the company’s patent. This would have allowed him to reinstate ancient farming practices and replant the seed he’d grown. No such luck.

But no court action, worldwide protests, nor import bans will be sufficient to stop Monsanto in its tracks. Monsanto, producer of the infamous Roundup herbicide, has been in this sordid business for decades, originally with its manufacture of PCBs and Agent Orange, as well as Bovine Growth Hormone, banned in Europe.

Since 2011 it has been advising US farmers to engage in an arms race to protect their crops, using a cocktail of their pesticides when Roundup resistant “superweed” mutants developed and infested millions of acres of farmland.   

Meanwhile radical alternatives are beginning to emerge. Following a showing of the World According to Monsanto film in a quiet rural Welsh pub, organised by the local Transition Town group, the audience, including farmers, unanimously voted for a proposal to set up a country-wide, not-for-profit seed co-operative. It’s the way to go!

Gerry Gold

Economics editor

Drought is good - for Monsanto's profits, that is

The drive to put the chemical industry totally in control of agriculture is resulting in record profits for agri-chemical giant Monsanto and record droughts last year for the United States, Brazil and other parts of South America.

Hang on – isn’t it a bit tenuous to directly connect the one to the other, the profits to the drought? Well, the global corporations and their servile governments would say so, but if you unpick the relationship it is clear enough.

Monsanto’s earnings in the three months to November 2012 were $339 billion, up from $126 billion the previous year, that’s two and a half times greater. This resulted from a 27% increase in sales of genetically modified corn seeds, mainly to farmers in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico, and of pesticides, particularly the weed killer Roundup.

It is axiomatic that if Monsanto sells more GM corn seed it will sell more Roundup, because the main characteristic of GM corn is that it “Roundup ready” and can tolerate repeated applications. It’s a deadly symbiotic relationship that is polluting land and water supply throughout the world.

Of course, all this intensive cropping needs more fertiliser. Since 1990, consumption of fertiliser in Brazil has increased by 7% every single year and in China and India by 5%.

This intensive style of agriculture abuses the soil by forcing it to produce more than it is organically able to. As the soil become impoverished, more and more fertiliser and pesticides are applied. As the markets for grain increase, more and more land is drawn into this cycle of degradation.

Over the past five decades, global arable land increased by 67 million hectares, much of it from cleared forests or scrub, transforming carbon sinks into carbon emitters.

Why do we need these vast quantities of grain and oil crops? It is not for food, but to service the expansion of the highly profitable (deeply unhealthy) meat diet from the developed capitalist economies to the rest of the world. And it is also to expand into the highly profitable (and subsidised by us) bioethanol market.

The global industrialised food system is responsible for one-third of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, according to a report from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), a partnership of 15 research centres around the world. And agriculture is responsible for 86% of that, closely followed by fertiliser manufacture and refrigeration.

Last year was the hottest in US history (as far back as the records go) with more than 62% of the land mass suffering some level of drought. The drought has continued into winter and next year’s early wheat may not germinate. There have been wildfires in December.

In north-eastern Brazil, cattle are dying in thousands and farmers are reduced to feeding them cactus. The drought threatens power cuts in big cities like Salvador and Recife, as the water falls below the levels where hydro-electric power stations can function.

But Monsanto’s US order book is reported to be extremely healthy. The drought has made American farmers fear a seed shortage so they are getting their orders in early. Monsanto’s scientists are working flat out on “drought-resistant” seed – so they can profit further from the climate crisis they helped create.

This is entirely in line with the logic of a system that

- squanders billions of tons of animal, including human, waste instead of composting it into organic fertiliser

- feeds protein and carbohydrate to cattle while humans starve

- clears rainforest to grow palm to make bioethanol, and calls it “tackling climate change”

- adds to greenhouse gas emissions by transporting food thousands of miles from places where people are starving, to places where they are dying from obesity-related diseases.

Penny Cole

Environment editor