Dear President Obama,

We urge you to withdraw the nomination of Islam Siddiqui as Chief Agriculture Negotiator and to reconsider your support of Roger Beachy as director of the new National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). Siddiqui is CropLife’s current vice president of science and regulatory affairs, and until last month, Beachy was the head of Monsanto’s de facto nonprofit research arm. As two textbook cases of the “revolving door” between industry and the agencies meant to keep watch, Siddiqui and Beachy’s industry ties demonstrate that both men are too beholden to corporate agriculture to serve the public interest.

Appointing Siddiqui to this critical post within the U.S. Trade Representative’s office sends a clear signal to the rest of the world that the U.S. plans to continue down the worn and failed path of chemical-intensive industrial agriculture by pushing pesticides, inappropriate biotechnologies and unfair trade arrangements on nations that do not want and can least afford them. Siddiqui’s professional record is revealing on several points:

• Siddiqui was a paid lobbyist for 3 years for Croplife America, which represents the chemical pesticide and ag biotechnology interests. Members include Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta.
• CropLife America’s regional partner had notoriously “shuddered” at Michelle Obama’s organic White House garden for failing to use chemical pesticides and launched a letter petition drive, urging the First Lady to consider using insecticides and herbicides in her garden.
• CropLife America has consistently lobbied the U.S government to weaken and thwart international treaties governing the use and export of toxic chemicals such as PCBs, DDT and dioxins.
• Siddiqui’s past service at the USDA included overseeing the initial development of national organic food standards that would have allowed GMOs and toxic sludge to be labeled “organic”— until over 230,000 consumers forced their revision.

As the global food crisis deepens and we head into the Doha round of trade talks at the WTO, the U.S. needs a lead negotiator who understands that the current configuration of trade agreements works neither for farmers nor for the world’s hungry. All eyes are on the U.S. to demonstrate international leadership in this arena by withdrawing support for an industrial model of agriculture that imperils both people and the planet, by undermining food security and worsening climate change.

In his capacity as director of NIFA, Roger Beachy will be in charge of the nation’s agricultural research agenda and purse strings for the next six years. Given Beachy’s previous career running the Danforth Plant Science Center, a nonprofit closely linked to and funded by Monsanto, we believe that billions more in government funding will be funneled into genetic engineering and chemical pesticide research. Meanwhile the real solutions to our growing agricultural problems, provided by sustainable and organic agriculture research, will suffer from a lack of federal funding and attention.

Despite 20 years of research and 13 years of commercialization, agricultural biotechnology—of the kind aggressively promoted and marketed by CropLife— has failed to deliver on any of its promises of higher yields for U.S. farmers, “enhanced nutrition” or drought-resistance for developing country farmers. What Monsanto’s research agenda has yielded is skyrocketing herbicide use, resistant “super-weeds”, rising debt for farmers, polluted waterways, threats to the health of farmworkers and rural communities, and unparalleled corporate consolidation in the agrochemical and seed industries. The top 10 agribusinesses control 89% of the agrochemicals market, 66% of the modern biotech market and 67% of the global seed market.

With farmers here and abroad struggling to respond to water scarcity and increasingly volatile growing conditions, we need a resilient and restorative model of agriculture that adapts to and mitigates these effects of climate change. In the most comprehensive analysis of global agriculture to date, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), states unequivocally that “business as usual is not an option.” We need a model of agriculture that regenerates soil health, sequesters carbon, feeds communities, and puts profits back in the hands of farmers and rural communities. Industrial agriculture—and Roger Beachy, Islam Siddiqui and CropLife in particular—favor none of these solutions.

While we appreciate your Administration’s recent gestures in support of local food systems, we fear these initiatives will not fulfill their potential unless the monopolistic power and political influence of the agricultural input industry is directly confronted. We therefore respectfully ask you to withdraw your appointments of Siddiqui and Beachy, and replace them with candidates who have a sustainable vision for U.S. agriculture and trade.

As parents, farmers, advocates, scientists and people who eat food, we remember your promise on the campaign trail: “We’ll tell ConAgra that it’s not the Department of Agribusiness. It’s the Department of Agriculture. We’re going to put the people’s interests ahead of the special interests.” We, the undersigned, are writing to hold you to that promise.

Almost 70 years later, with the advent and adoption of GM crops succeeding the mislabelled ‘Green Revolution’, these words have returned to haunt us. “Today, as a consequence of technologies introduced by the green revolution, India loses six billion tons of topsoil every year. Ten million hectares of India’s irrigated land is now waterlogged and saline. Pesticide poisoning has caused epidemics of cancers. Water tables are falling by twenty feet every year. The soil fertility and water resources that had been carefully managed for generations in the Punjab were wasted in a few short years of industrial abuses. If India’s masses have avoided starvation, they have endured chronic and debilitating hunger and poverty”.¹ India exports food, but 200 million of mainly rural, women and children go to bed hungry (Global Hunger Index). The ongoing commercialisation of agriculture in India continues, with the US extracting many pounds of flesh through trade agreements like the Indo-US Knowledge Initiative in Agriculture and US AID and USDA investments in agricultural universities to bring Indian agriculture under the full sway of genetically modified crops controlled by Monsanto the 90% market leader. Monsanto is also on the Board of this ‘Initiative’ representing US interests, along with other agri giants.

Global hunger already at an unprecedented level is growing. Those who are the most hungry are the farmers who produce our food. The causes are mainly man-made attributable squarely to the free trade policies championed by the WTO, and manoeuvred through the chicanery of these processes to the detriment of the developing nations and backed by the IMF and the World Bank. The FAO contributes to this through its ambivalent stance, refusing to provide the kind of clarity that would encourage real solutions to the crises. Developing Countries have been forced to open up their markets to western agri-business giants and face a price war on cotton for example in India, because of huge US subsidies provided to American farmers exporting mainly GM cotton to India. We have the astonishing spectacle of poor Indian farmers not being able to compete with US farmers and they are committing suicide. It is called ‘competitive advantage’, which essentially means the Indian government is not able to protect our markets under the WTO policies, doesn’t feel obliged to provide the right level of support prices and/or just can’t compete with the magnitude of US government handouts to their farmers. Indian farmers are also GM cotton farmers facing higher input costs and of course, without the competitive advantage of their American counterparts. They also seem to have lost or have been deprived of the “more sophisticated agricultural wisdom that has served Indian farmers for centuries.”¹ (emphasis mine)

Corporations now own 98 per cent of patents in agriculture, own seed monopolies, and are extending their control of genetic stock (plant and livestock).² Unless this trend is reversed, whole communities and countries will lose control over the production of their food and national food security. Fortunately, strongly echoing Sir Albert Howard, we have a new ‘avatar’ of him in the collective effort of 400 scientists, to champion our cause of how to produce enough to food to feed the world over the next 50 years.

The IAASTD

The UN International Assessment of Agricultural Science & Technology for Development sees no role for GM crops or Modern Biotechnology, in a road map for agriculture for the next 50 years. Authored by 400 and scientists and signed by 60 countries, including India, it took four years to complete. In its published conclusions in 2008, it states that there is no evidence that GM crops increase yield. Some biotech companies were so disgruntled by the report’s lack of support that they pulled out of the entire process. The IAASTD makes it clear that the road map for agriculture for the next 50 years must be through localised solutions, combining scientific research with traditional knowledge in partnership with farmers and consumers. The report calls for a systematic redirection of investment, funding, research and policy focus toward these alternative technologies and the needs of small-farmers. Therefore, the IAASTD has clearly shown the international response to the WAY FORWARD which is sustainable agriculture that is biodiversity-based.

In his widely referenced report, ‘Organic Agriculture is the Future’, Doug Gurian Sherman of the Union of Concerned Scientists shows that organic farming systems round the world are often as productive as current industrial agriculture not only in developed countries, but more so in the developing world; that green and animal manures employed in organic agriculture can produce “enough fixed nitrogen to support high crop yields.”

These highly productive methods are needed to produce enough food without converting uncultivated land—such as forests that are important for biodiversity and slowing climate change—into crop fields. They build deep, rich soils that hold water, sequester carbon, and resist erosion. And they don’t poison the air, drinking water, and fisheries with excess fertilizers and toxic pesticides. Some have dismissed the promise of these methods. Among these are State Department Science Advisor Nina Federoff, who in recent interviews characterized organic agriculture as some kind of retreat to a quaint past. She and others characterize organic farming and similar systems as inherently unproductive, sometimes suggesting that such methods are capable of supporting only about half the current world’s population.

Federoff’s view is at odds with the latest science, and represents a status quo kind of thinking. Today’s dominant industrial U.S. agriculture relies on huge monocultures of a few major crops like corn and soybeans, and requires large inputs of fossil-fuel based synthetic chemicals to control pests and fertilize the crops. Such an agriculture churns out a lot of commodity crops (most of which are turned into meat and processed foods) while also contributing greatly to air and water pollution. Industrial agriculture is a major contributor of heat-trapping emissions and a major cause of so-called dead zones such as that in the Gulf of Mexico. And industrial agriculture is ultimately its own worst enemy, as it causes massive degradation of the very soil that is vital to farming itself. This kind of agriculture is unsustainable.

The MYTH of High Yields

GM Crops will neither feed India nor the world. After 20 years of research and 13 years of commercialisation, genetic engineering has not demonstrated sustainable benefits to farmers. 99% of GM crops, which have been commercialised, are either engineered (a) to contain the Bt gene, or (b) are herbicide tolerant (HT) GM crops as in Roundup Ready soybean. Neither of these is engineered for intrinsic yield gain. This is the plain science. The US Department’s Agriculture’s Review of 10 years of GM crop cultivation in the States, which has the longest history of GM crops, has concluded:

Currently available GM crops do not increase the yield potential… In fact, yield may even decrease if the varieties used to carry the herbicide tolerant or insect-resistant genes are not the highest yielding cultivars… Perhaps the biggest issue raised by these results is how to explain the rapid adoption of GE crops when farm financial impacts appear to be mixed or even negative.

‘Failure to Yield’ released by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) considers the technology’s potential to increase food production over the next few decades.

The intrinsic yields of corn and soybeans did rise during the twentieth century, but not as a result of GE traits. Rather, they were due to successes in traditional breeding… Cutting through the rhetoric, overall pesticide use (herbicides, insecticides and fungicides) has not been reduced through GE… recent U.S. data suggest that herbicide use in GE crops is now significantly higher than it was prior to their introduction. Weeds that have developed resistance to the herbicide used with GE crops now infest several million acres, forcing greater herbicide use. Insect-resistant GE crops have reduced overall insecticide use somewhat, but on balance GE crops have not reduced our dependence on pesticides… It makes little sense to support genetic engineering at the expense of technologies that have proven to substantially increase yields, especially in developing countries… these include modern, conventional plant breeding methods, sustainable and organic farming and other sophisticated farming practices that do not require farmers to pay significant upfront costs… (emphasis mine)

Agriculture that is Biodiversity-based: The Irrelevance of GE Crops

These reports bring us full circle to the evidence provided by Howard 70 years ago, as well as to the agricultural science and wisdom of Indian farming practices, which find their counterpoint in the wisdom of farmers in all traditional cultures and which scientists like Gurian-Sherman and of the IAASTD describe as “sophisticated.”

Our health and nutrition are tied in with seed quality, variety and abundance. In over 10,000 years of agriculture, farmers have selected seed, exchanged seed, preserved biodiversity and delivered safe crops. It is noteworthy and a tribute to their acumen that over the past many centuries, not a single plant has been added to the list of major domesticated crops. On the other hand, with GM crops we cannot make an “outcome prediction of the type that can be made when crossing two strains such as wheat that have been safely eaten for two thousand years.”³ In the span of 12 short years of GM crops, we are faced with major problems of safety and testing and billions of dollars are being spent in damage control and clean-up operations. GM is also drawing a disproportionate quantum of investment in research despite its weak performance to date. Instead, these billions of dollars of public money should be invested in now proven, modern alternative agricultural technologies.

* The urgent question that must be asked is how much more of our scarce research dollars will be diverted to this controversial and unproven technology?

The health and ecological risks of GM crops are well documented in the scientific literature. Now, the research on their contribution to CC (Climate Change) is gathering momentum. The new report published by GRAIN⁴ on the 7th Oct ’09, shows that agriculture has a pivotal role in sequestering carbon, and that it is small farmers that hold the key to ‘cooling the world’. The evidence highlights the fact that the global industrial food system is the most important “single factor behind global warming, responsible for almost half of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions” and that its role in the climate crisis has been seriously underestimated. Soils contain enormous amounts of organic matter and therefore, carbon. Calculations in the report show that the organic matter that has been lost over the past decades can be gradually rebuilt, if policy is oriented to agriculture in the hands of small farmers and their ability through alternative farming practices to restoring soil fertility. “In 50 years the soils could capture about 450 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, which is more than two thirds of the current excess in the atmosphere”, a huge contribution to resolving CC. “The evidence is irrefutable. If we can change the way we farm and the way we produce and distribute food, then we have a powerful solution for combating the climate crisis. There are no technical hurdles to achieving these results, it is only a matter of political will.”⁵

On the other hand, with GM crops we face a dangerous pincer attack that we must demolish if we are to survive and thrive: (a) on the one hand, the massive disinformation that GM crops will feed the world including India through mythical high yields and without harm, is reminiscent of the 30 years of disinformation that surrounded Climate Change. The IPCC Report (with Pachauri as Chairman) though almost too late, was nevertheless required to change those perceptions and get consensus across borders on urgent climate mitigation solutions. Fortunately for the world, the International solutions for agriculture proposed by the IAASTD Report and the evidence for the potential contribution of agriculture in the carbon sequestering solutions of organic farming and the role of small farmers, are TIMELY. We must heed these; and (b) on the other hand, a comprehensive deregulation of the kind that led to the melt down of global financial markets. The clear evidence is that the US has similarly shown the way to a dangerous and unscientific deregulation of GM crops first in the US and that role-model is being pushed in India and other developing countries.

The FAO must take note of the sanity of these road maps for urgent change, and the great irrelevance of GM crops, which are seriously and it must be said, dangerously hindering that vital focus and redirection of resources that are required in agriculture. If the FAO will lead this process for change, then it must encourage and broker that change without ambivalence, and support national and sovereign governments in India and the developing world in these solutions, no matter what pressures a ‘misguided’ US policy may impose on all parties.

On the ‘hope’ that the IAASTD generates:

   While here I stand, not only with the sense
   Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
   That in this moment there is life and food
   For future years.

– William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey

1. Alexis Lathem Community College of Vermont, “Assessing the Legacy of Barlaug…”
2. Jesse Lerner-Kinglake of War on Want: Global Food Fight.
3. David Schubert (Salk Institute) and William Freese, “Safety Testing and Regulation of Genetically Engineered Foods,” Biotechnol Genet Eng Rev, 2004, 21:299-324.
4. GRAIN: “Small Farmers Can Cool the World“
5. Henk Hobbelink: coordinator of GRAIN

The Indian Biotechnology sector is gaining global visibility and is being picked for emerging investment opportunities. India has 40 state agriculture universities, five deemed universities, one central agricultural university and more than 200 agricultural colleges. These institutions produce about 14,000 graduates and 7,800 postgraduate and Ph.D. scholars every year.

With Monsanto’s progress in European markets frozen, growing economies like India and their markets took on greater significance. The company urgently needed to expand the market for its GM crops internationally. Monsanto’s agriculture division had already begun to focus on Asian, African and Latin American markets in the early 1990s, towards the goal of “transforming agriculture” in a number of countries, a target that became known as the “developing country goal”. Monsanto’s commercial vision has been projected as a benevolent vision for the world. When Robert Shapiro was appointed as Monsanto’s new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in 1995, he engaged in a program to reorient the company’s business around “sustainability”. He linked the urgent need to grow enough food to feed a growing population with “inadequate” existing technologies and agricultural practices. So Monsanto’s “sustainability” vision, it is claimed, could be realized through GM technology.

Monsanto India (MI), which began its operations in 1949 as a trader of industrial chemicals and later an agrochemical company in 1975 with the launch of the herbicide, Machete (butachlor), has evolved into an agribusiness giant of GM seeds. The Monsanto research centre established at Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc), Bangalore in 1998 is the only R&D centre established outside the US.

The foundation for Monsanto to tap into the research potential of students as well as the research facilities available in Indian universities was laid by a trade agreement between India and the United States, known as the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture (KIA) or Agricultural Knowledge Initiative (AKI). This trade deal was influenced by Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland Company and Wal-Mart.

Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture (KIA)

The India-US Agreement on Agriculture and Science and Technology emerged from a joint statement by Dr. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India, and George W. Bush, then US President, on July 18, 2005. This far-reaching bilateral pronouncement was the genesis of the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture (KIA). Later, in March 2006 Singh and Bush signed a joint declaration on enhanced cooperation in agricultural education and research. This cooperation is based on the KIA.

The KIA is implemented through KIA Board, which consists of US and Indian members from government, universities, and the private sector. Dr. Norman Borlaug and Dr. M.S. Swaminathan are honorary advisors for the KIA. The US private sector members are: Monsanto, the largest seller of GM seeds in the world; Archer Daniels Midland, a US grain purchaser and trader and is, with Cargill, one of the companies that maintains “oligopolistic control of the American food-manufacturing and food-processing markets”; and Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer.

The Board has decided to focus initially on four core areas: agricultural education, food processing and marketing, biotechnology and water management.¹ “The KIA is part of the US comprehensive strategy on revitalizing the bilateral relationship in agriculture with India,” said Susan Owens, director of the FAS Research and Scientific Exchanges Division. A key feature of KIA is university-business partnership. Owen stated: “We want to broaden the scope of the AKI beyond just research…We want to use the AKI to increase agricultural production in India….”² That means, industry helps in not only reshaping the universities’ curricula, but also identifying research areas that have the potential for rapid commercialization.¹ This new Knowledge Initiative required development of “effective policy, regulatory, and institutional frameworks.”¹ As Owen said, “The AKI aims to promote science and technology to create a sound regulatory environment that promotes investment and trade.”²

The KIA Board discussed rights (Intellectual Property Rights) to products that the research in public-funded universities will develop. US land-grant universities and industry representatives are asked to help reshape the curricula of Agricultural education. Some of suggested new courses were in entrepreneurship development, agribusiness, biotechnology, international trade, patent regimes and environmental science in various disciplines. Under KIA endowment of industry-sponsored chairs in Indian universities are allowed.

However, there is fear that India’s Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers Rights Act could face threats under US pressure. Along with multinationals such as Monsanto, the US has been lobbying for a change in India’s intellectual property laws, to introduce patents on seeds and genes and dilute the provisions protecting farmers’ rights. Vandana Shiva, a physicist and environmentalist, said,

The Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement between the US and India establishes intellectual property protocols of research, bypassing consultation with Indian scientists and the Indian public which has been resisting IPR regimes that force countries to patent life, and create monopolies on seeds, medicine and software…For us, these agreements are instruments of corporate dictatorship; they are not instruments of democracy. And as dictatorship, they will fuel more anger, more discontent, more frustration.³

The Protection and Utilization of Public Funded Intellectual Property Bill 2008

Yielding to the pressures of both the US government and the MNCs such as Monsanto, Indian government introduced in the Parliament a controversial legislation titled “The Protection and Utilization of Public Funded Intellectual Property Bill 2008”. The Bill is modeled on the US’ 1980 Bayh-Dole Act. It provides for the protection and utilization of intellectual property originating from public-funded research. It would alter the existing IP rules to allow government funded universities and autonomous research institutions, rather than the government, to patent their innovations and research outcomes, and to reward institutions and inventors with a share of the royalties and licensing fees generated from the commercial products that result.⁴ It also recommends universities to have a committee, called an intellectual property management committee, to “identify, assess, document and protect public funded intellectual property having commercial potential.” The objective of the IP Bill, it is claimed, is to create an environment in which wealth can be generated from the university system, stimulate national competitiveness, and forge closer academia-industry partnerships.

The IP Bill has attracted considerable debate due to its perceived and potential adverse impact on the R&D, innovation and public interest.⁵ Pushpa Bhargava, who resigned in 2007 as vice-chairman of National Knowledge Commission, an Indian government advisory body that recommended the Bill, says that there was no major open discussion at the commission and he was “taken aback” by the recommendation. The IP Bill also goes against the National Knowledge Commission’s policy objectives of promoting, sharing and using new knowledge to maximize public good.

Supporters of the Bill, mostly government officials and some section of industry argued that “protection of IP creates incentive for more knowledge and technology generation as innovators are recognized and rewarded.”⁶ Officials from India’s Department of Biotechnology, which helped draft the bill, say that the Bill will promote innovation in Indian universities and research institutes by generating funds through patents. According to Somenath Ghosh, managing director of India’s National Research Development Corporation, it has brought “much-needed change,” as “there was no mechanism or incentive to protect knowledge and their research networks have limited interaction with industry.”

IP Legislation and Corporate Knowledge

Since “The Protection and Utilization of Public Funded Intellectual Property Bill 2008” is modeled on the 1980 US’ Bayh-Dole Act, the latter’s impact on US universities imparts some important lessons to Indian academia.

Jim Patrico gives three reasons for bringing US public universities and private companies closer⁷ :

1. Stagnant levels of public research funding by the Federal Government for agriculture research since 1980s. In 2008 National Budget under George Bush, surprisingly there was nearly one third cut in the public funding for agriculture research at the land grant institutions. This seems to be the government’s strategy to gradually eliminate regular public research funding. Giving the rationale for the massive reduction in grants, a USDA deputy secretary said, “We feel like our agricultural research should not be earmarked; it should be competitively awarded, and that’s how you’re going to get the most bang for the buck.”

Due to increase in cost of research, universities had to find their own ways to raise the extra amount of money from outside sources such as big companies. Because of its partnership with Monsanto, University of Missouri was nicknamed “University of Monsanto.”

2. The 1980’s US Bayh-Dole Act, which gave US universities, for the first time, ownership of patents arising from government funded research.

3. The 1980 US Supreme Court verdict that life forms could be patented. This made agriculture a prime target for patents. Private industry and universities mainly focused on the promising field of biotechnology. Patrico notes, “Within months of that Supreme Court decision, faculty members of UC-Davis created Calgene, a private company and one of the first biotech companies of the chute.”

Although the university-corporate relationship existed even before 1980, Boyh-Dole Act gave public institutions a kick towards the market by encouraging them to patent their public funded research. A shift in universities’ research focus towards creation of marketable products has dawned. The habit of patenting their research has developed a taste for private business deals. This put the public funded institutions in a conundrum, because they no longer existed as “public” institutions. Paul Gepts, professor of agronomy and plant genetics at UC Davis, says, “Public universities are a contradiction.”⁷

Patenting of research and university-industry alliance raise troublesome questions about academic freedom, the purity of research, and research agendas. Patenting of research necessitates confidentiality. Agricultural universities and research centers become no longer places of open academic sharing and collaboration. William Folk, a plant geneticist at the University of Missouri says, “When I started in the 70s, meetings were filled with people criticizing each other and sharing ideas…(But today) if you have an idea that has any potential commercial value, you are reluctant to share.”⁷ Thus, colleagues are seen as potential competitors.

Moreover, scientists who perform industry-sponsored research routinely sign agreements requiring them to keep both the methods and the results of their work confidential for a certain period of time. As biotech and pharmaceutical companies involve more in funding research, confidentiality becomes very important for the funding company. From a company’s point of view, confidentiality may be necessary to prevent potential competitors from pilfering ideas. However, one of the basic tenets of science is open sharing of ideas and information. That is why Steven Rosenberg, cancer researcher of the National Cancer Institute, says, “The ethics of business and the ethics of science do not mix well.”

There is also genuine fear that university-corporate relationship might lead to tampering the research manuscripts to serve corporate commercial interests. In 1996 four researchers working on a study of calcium channel blockers accused their sponsor Sandoz that passages highlighting the drug’s potential dangers were removed from a draft manuscript. They wrote in a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association: “We believed that the sponsor…was attempting to wield undue influence on the nature of the final paper. This effort was so oppressive that we felt it inhibited academic freedom.”⁷

As the research in the public institutions is market-driven, there is a potential danger that the research focus or agenda of universities converge with corporate agendas and interests. The one possibly negative impact of research collaboration with industry is the impact on public sector research priorities. Major victim will be the “minor crops”, which are commercially not profitable for the companies. Market-driven research also suppresses ideas that may not have immediate commercial value. Organic farming will get affected for lack of not only public funds, but also enthusiasm among agricultural researchers. Students, who wish to pursue their research in organic farming, will face a bleak future.

University-Corporation relationship gives legitimacy to the company and its products. The company can use this legitimacy to promote its products. In 2007, Monsanto gave royalty-free license of its GM papaya seeds to the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, India. License will be valid for ten years and royalty will be decided thereafter. “This is the first product delivery from Monsanto to the university, and Monsanto has been working on this for the past year,” said Bhagirath Choudhary, National Coordinator, International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications that assists universities acquire technology from private companies.⁸ The reason for the collaboration between the university and Monsanto was that famers buy papaya seeds from the university.

Therefore, IP law makes public funded universities and research centers excessively focus on income generation and sharing of royalties. This may derail public funded academic institutions from their mission of unqualified pursuit and public dissemination of truth and knowledge. The university serves the broad public interest, to the extent that it treasures informed analysis, critical inquiry and uncompromising standards of intellectual integrity. However, university-industry alliance converts these public centers of knowledge into centers to serve the greed of private companies. However, Rob Hersch, Monsanto’s vice president of product and technology cooperation, disagrees. He says, “The No.1 issue for us with universities and with science is to get good information…unbiased, believable, reproducible information.”⁷ Ignacio Chapela, a UC-Berkeley professor of microbial ecology, admits that a deal between university and company “institutionalizes the university’s relationship with one company, whose interest is profit. Our role should be to serve the public good.”⁹ Therefore, there is a real danger of “business of the universities” becoming business. Consequentially, the knowledge of universities will help widen the gap between the rich and the poor by providing knowledge that helps rich to become richer, rather than bridging the gap between the rich and the poor. So, research will be geared towards making profit for the big corporations.

Thus, university education system is converted to essentially profit making commercial enterprise. It is structured like any other commercial enterprise that looks primarily at its bottom line. A deeper analysis of nature, which has no immediate commercial market, is now being downgraded in favor of what the industry considers as “lucrative” research. It shifts research priorities away from what society needs as a whole to the greed of the corporations. Science is no longer for advancing knowledge and the well-being of society but almost entirely for generating profits for the educational enterprise, and consequently to the funding corporations. Professor Steve Rose of UK’s Open University, succinctly puts it,

Well I think there is a very real problem from the point of view of university research in the way that private companies have entered the university, both with direct companies in the universities and with contracts to university researchers. So that in fact the whole climate of what might be open and independent scientific research has disappeared, the old idea that universities were a place of independence has gone. Instead of which one’s got secrecy, one’s got patents, one’s got contracts and one’s got shareholders.

Stifling downstream R&D, hindering free scientific exchange of scientific information, data and materials and increasing opportunities for conflict of interest and other unethical practices not consistent with the best interests of science is not the way to go.

In India Monsanto has started country-wide campaign to attract research talent into the development of hybrid rice and wheat. For this, it has linked with some of the country’s premier universities and research institutes. In 2009 Monsanto announced $10 million grant to establish Monsanto’s Beachell-Borlaug International Scholars Program (MBBISP) to improve research on breeding techniques for rice and wheat. The program will be administered by Texas AgriLife Research, and agency of the Texas A&M University system, for the next five years. What is alarming is not that agribusiness giant Monsanto is seeking answers from the Indian public funded universities and research institutions. It is that Monsanto is the one asking the questions at Indian public funded institutions. As Andrew Neighbour, former administrator at Washington University in St. Louis, who managed the university’s multiyear and multimillion dollar relationship with Monsanto, admits, “There’s no question that industry money comes with strings. It limits what you can do, when you can do it, who it has to be approved by.”⁷ This raises the question: if Agribusiness giant Monsanto is funding the research, will Indian agricultural researchers pursue such lines of scientific inquiry as “How will this new rice or wheat variety impact the Indian farmer, or health of Indian public?” The reality is, Monsanto is funding the research not for the benefit of either Indian farmer or public, but for its profit. It is paying researchers to ask questions that it is most interested in having answered.

Now, the basic role of the public funded agricultural institutions and research centers in a democratic society is at risk. The new developments in India are vehicles to empower food giants such as Monsanto, destroy small farmers, and harm the public health. In 1970 Henry Kissinger said: “Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control people.”¹⁰ What we are witnessing in India today are developments towards that end, under the disguise of “food security.” Concentrating control in the hands of the US Agbusiness company Monsanto (and few others) places Indian public at risk, and leads to its control of India, as the British East India Company did.

1. Dinesh C. Sharma, “Preparing for New Challenges,” Span, March/April 2007.
2. Julia Debes, “U.S.-India Agricultural Cooperation: A New Beginning,” FAS Worldwide, September 2006.
3. Rahul Goswami, “A Bargain-Basement Knowledge ‘Mandi’,” InfoChange News &Features, August 2006.
4. Rahul Vartak and Manish Saurashtri, “The Indian Version of Bayh-Dole Act,” Intellectual Asset Management, March/April 2009.
5. “The Indian Public Funded IP Bill: Are We Ready?” Indian J Med Res, 128, December 2008, 682-685.
6. Sharad Pawar, India’s Union Minister for Agriculture, at Conference of Vice-Chancellors of Agricultural Universities, New Delhi, February 16-17, 2009.
7. Jim Patrico, “Universities for Sale?” Progressive Farmer, November 2001.
8. Padmaparna Ghosh, “Monsanto’s Gift to Tamil Nadu University: GM Papaya Licence,” livemint.com,india, October 24, 2007.
9. Eyal Press and Jennifer Washburn, “The Kept University,” The Atlantic Monthly, 285/3, March 2000, 39-54.
10. Stephen Lendman, “Destroying America’s Family Farm: HR 2749. A Stealth Agribusiness Empowering Act,” Global Research, June 12, 2009.

Monsanto established “Monsanto Fund” in 1964 as the charitable arm of the company. It states that “our philanthropic goal has been to bridge the gap between people’s needs and their available resources. We want to help people realize their dreams, and hopefully inspire them to enroll others in their vision.”

Monsanto has also Monsanto Fund Matching Gifts Program. This program “gives permanent Monsanto employees and active members of the Monsanto Board of Directors an opportunity to join Monsanto Fund’s support of not-for-profit institutions.” Monsanto makes it candid that the request for support of an NGO is honored “if the recipient organization adheres to the guidelines of the Matching Gifts Program.” “Eligible organizations include, but are not limited to: Colleges and universities, private and public elementary and secondary schools, organizations that serve youth, museums, libraries, health and human service agencies, environmental, community and cultural organizations.” World Vision is one of the recipients of the “matching gifts”.

Monsanto’s philanthropic activities are meant to not only improve its image, but also provide key relationships. It understands better than anyone that relationships, partnerships and network are the key for success of the company.

On November 1, 2006, in his 2006 IBM lecture at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, on “Sabina Xhosa and the New Shoes: Introducing Technologies into Developing Countries”, Hugh Grant, Chairman, President, and CEO of Monsanto, focused on agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa. He took Malawi as a model. Agriculture is the primary industry in Malawi. According to him, “seventy-two percent of the people’s caloric intake depends on maize, or corn.”¹ Maize or corn is the staple food in most Sub-Sahara African countries.

Monsanto was seeking a foothold in the Sub-Sahara Africa. Grant said:

We haven’t broken through in Africa in any of the Sub-Sahara African countries. So what do we need? We need one African country to say yes. One African country to start field trials. We need to start the field trials and start testing this in African soil, and at Monsanto we’re ready to work with an array of partners to make happen.¹

The opportune time for Monsanto arrived with the arrival of severe drought in Malawi in 2004. Any predator looks for a vulnerable prey. Malawi, after the drought, was just the kind of prey predator companies like Monsanto look for. According to Grant, Monsanto held “a discussion with relief organizations, non-government organizations, the Malawi government, and some of the relief agencies, particularly an agency called World Vision. We got together and said this is going to keep on happening unless we take a different approach. And that’s what we did.”¹ On December 20, 2005 Monsanto announced its intention to donate 700 metric tons of “quality hybrid maize seeds” to farmers in Malawi. This “high quality seed” was “donated” to the farmers through “some of the NGOs and government and relief agencies working on delivery and distribution systems.”¹

U.S. Ambassador to Malawi Alan Eastham praised Monsanto for its donation. He said, “The donation of hybrid seed to local farmers will potentially have a significant impact on the quality of next year’s harvest and represents the best tradition of socially responsible giving by the U.S. private sector.”² A representative of World Vision Malawi, one of seven members of the NGO consortium, said, “This donation is addressing both the short-term and the long-term needs of the people in Malawi, and fits very well with our programs in this country.”² The nexus between the US government and Monsanto is evident by not only the statement of the US Ambassador to Malawi, but also a highly positive report given by Charles Corey, Washington File Staff Writer. The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, US Department of State (Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov).³

Therefore, Monsanto’s “donation” of seeds to Malawi farmers through its partners like the World Vision was to get a foothold in the Sub-Sahara Africa. What are its interests?

Monsanto pledges “Growth for a Better World”: “We want to make the world a better place for future generations.” Increased yields are the core of this agenda. To achieve this Monsanto provides “the products and systems” to farmers. Its main product is Roundup herbicide. Monsanto also produces GM seeds. The GM crop is resistant to the herbicide, Roundup, offering farmers a convenient way to spray fields with weed killer without affecting crops. These are known as Roundup Ready Crops. The genes contained in the GM seeds are patented.

Patenting means that farmers who buy GM seeds enter into a licensing agreement with Monsanto for the use of that particular gene. They are forbidden from saving seeds for the next season. They must buy new seed from the company each season. This denies farmers’ right to save seed. The implications of this are huge for poor farmers. Saved seed is the one resource that the poor farmers depend upon to carry them through the year. Denial of this right will greatly impact them economically. For they have to pay more each season to buy new seed. Although Monsanto purports to help farmers “improve their lives” through the supply of GM seed, the reality is that it places unbearable economic burden on the poor farmers. Teresa Anderson says, “Social and economic risks from GM crops are equally weighty. They will increase dependence on outside technologies, marginalize farmers from R&D, and consequently exacerbate the social and economic difficulties….”⁴

The implications of patenting of the gene in the GM seed go further than forbidding seed saving. If a GM crop cross-pollinates with a neighboring crop through the movement of wind, insects, birds, or accidental seed mixing, the neighboring harvest would be likely to carry the patented gene also. Monsanto could then claim that the neighboring farm has infringed their patent. The farmer, who was unintentionally contaminated by somebody else’s GM crop, would be breaking the law if he saved his seed and planted it. Monsanto goes after farmers, farmers’ co-ops, seed dealers or anyone it suspects may have infringed its patents of genetically modified seeds. Ever since commercial introduction of its GM seeds, in 1996, Monsanto has launched thousands of investigations and filed lawsuits against hundreds of farmers and seed dealers.

All this boils down to the dreadful result, that is, Monsanto controlling much of the world’s food supply. Control of food supply leads to control of people.

Genesis of Monsanto

Hugh Grant says, “As an agricultural and technology company committed to human rights, we have a unique opportunity to protect and advance human rights. We have a responsibility to consider not only how our business can benefit consumers, farmers, and food processors, but how it can protect the human rights of both Monsanto’s employees and our business partners’ employees.” However, this statement needs to be verified with the “gene” of Monsanto.

Monsanto was founded in 1901 by John Francis Queeny as a saccharin producing company. Giving his wife’s maiden name Monsanto to the company, he called it the Monsanto Chemical Works. His steady customer was a new company in Georgia named Coca-Cola.

Later Monsanto extended its list of products to vanillin, caffeine, drugs used as sedatives and laxatives, plastics, resins, rubber goods, fuel additives, artificial caffeine, industrial fluids, vinyl siding, dishwasher detergent, anti-freeze, fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. From 1929 to 1971, Monsanto produced PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) as industrial coolants and insulating fluids for transformers and other electrical equipment.

In the 1960s, Monsanto manufactured Agent Orange, a poisonous chemical toxin. Agent Orange is the code name for a powerful herbicide and defoliant. This is “a chemical that strips trees and plants of their leaves and is sometimes used in warfare to deny cover to enemy forces.” The US military used this toxin in Vietnam War. It sprayed an estimated 21,136,000 gallons of Agent Orange across South Vietnam to defoliate jungles.⁵ This chemical has been reported to cause serious skin diseases as well as a vast variety of cancers in the lungs, larynx, and prostate. Children in the areas where Agent Orange was used have been affected and have multiple health problems including cleft palate, mental retardation, hernias, and extra fingers and toes. According to Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 4.8 million Vietnamese people were exposed to Agent Orange, resulting in 400,000 deaths and disabilities, and 500,000 children born with birth defects.⁶

In February 2004, the Vietnamese Association of Victims of Agent Orange (VAVA) filed a class action law suit against Monsanto in a New York court. On March 10, 2005, Judge Jack B. Weinstein, who defended the U.S. veterans affected by Agent Orange, dismissed the suit, ruling that there was no legal basis for the plaintiffs’ claims.

During the 1970s, Monsanto shifted more resources into biotechnology. In the 1980s it decided to become one of the key players in the worldwide agricultural biotechnology market. In 1981 the company created a molecular-biology group for research in plant genetics. The next year, Monsanto became the first to genetically modify a plant cell. Over the next few years, it developed genetically modified seeds of cotton, soybeans, corn and canola.

In the late 1990s after restructuring the company, Monsanto was rebranded as a “life sciences” company. A new company Solutia was named for the chemical and fibers operations. Then after additional reorganization in 2002 Monsanto officially declared itself an “agricultural company”, dedicated to making the world “a better place for future generations”.

Reality Check

GTM (Gaming The Market) gives a short list of grievances against Monsanto⁵ :

1. 1917 US government suit against Monsanto over the safety of saccharin;
2. 1965-1972 UK landfill illegal toxic waste dumping;
3. Agent Orange chemical warfare;
4. 1979 dioxin chemical spill Kemner v. Monsanto longest civil jury trial in U.S. history;
5. Responsible for 56 contaminated Superfund sites;
6. Anniston, Alabama mercury and PCB-laden waste discharged into local creeks over 40 years;
7. Terminator seeds that lead to world food shortages, poverty, and death;
8. Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone Posilac (rBST) (rBGH);
9. Using coercive tactics to monopolize world markets;
10. Pursuing 500 cases annually against customers for “seed fraud”;
11. Andhra Pradesh Government vs. Monsanto on India seed price fixing;
12. US Department of Justice and US Securities and Exchange Commission criminal and civil charges for international bribing;
13. False advertising for “biodegradable” Roundup weed killer;
14. India child labor abuse in the manufacture of cotton-seeds;
15. Farmers suicides in India;⁷
16. Corporate tax evasion at Sauget, Illinois facility;
17. Campaign against dairies which do not inject bovine growth hormone from advertising.

On March 11, 2008 a documentary was aired on French television (ARTE – French-German Cultural TV channel) by French journalist and film maker Marie-Monique Robin, entitled The World According to Monsanto (Le Monde selon Monsanto). Over a period of three years Robin has collected material for her documentary, through numerous interviews with people of different backgrounds. She traveled widely, from Latin America, to Asia, through Europe and the United States, to personally interview farmers and people in influential positions. This documentary dealt a severe blow to the credibility of Monsanto.

The destructive effects of genetically engineered crops are worldwide, but the extensive damage done in India has been widely documented by Vandana Shiva, a physicist and environmentalist. She is an activist and author of many books concerning the nefarious consequences of GM farming as opposed to the wisdom of traditional family and biological farming. Commenting on the consequences on farms and human life in India due to the use of hybrid seeds, she said,

Recently I was visiting Bhatinda in Punjab because of an epidemic of farmers’ suicides. Punjab used to be the most prosperous agricultural region in India. Today every farmer is in debt and despair. Vast stretches of land have become waterlogged desert. And, as an old farmer pointed out, even the trees have stopped bearing fruit because heavy use of pesticides has killed the pollinators — the bees and butterflies…And Punjab is not alone in experiencing this ecological and social disaster. Last year I was in Warangal, Andhra Pradesh, where farmers have also been committing suicide. Farmers who traditionally grew pulses and millets and paddy have been lured by seed companies to buy hybrid cotton seeds referred to as “white gold”, which were supposed to make them millionaires. Instead they became paupers.

In India and China it has been proved that the promises of Monsanto that BT cotton (genetically engineered cotton) would produce a far higher yield and prove less costly in terms of herbicide and fertilizer required has been proved devious.

Monsanto (and its partners like World Vision) is not held back by any considerations of ethics. Monsanto does its business exclusively with the intent of increasing its own profit at the cost of farmers worldwide. If left to its own devices it will most certainly destroy not only the livelihood of millions of farmers, but also their very life.

Conclusion

Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds have transformed the company and are radically altering global agriculture. The company has produced GM seeds for soybeans, corn, canola and cotton. More products have been developed or are in the pipeline, including seeds for sugar beets and alfalfa. The company is also seeking to extend its reach into milk production by marketing an artificial growth hormone for cows that increases their output.

On April 25, 2009 Monsanto announced in India a special fellowship program for research on rice and wheat plant breeding. Under the program, the company will allocate $10 million to encourage young Ph.D. scholars to pursue their research in rice and wheat breeding. Edward Runge, Director of Monsanto’s Beachell-Borlaug International Scholars Program, told that the company was looking at attracting students from India and China, two of the fastest growing economies and the largest populated countries. Also rice and wheat are staple food in these countries.

1. Hugh Grant, “Sabina Xhosa and the New Shoes: Introducing Technologies into Developing Countries,” 2006 IBM Lecture at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, on November 1, 2006.
2. Charles W. Corey, “U.S. Company Donates Maize Seed to Farmers in Malawi: Monsanto’s Contribution Expected to Feed More Than 1 Million People.”
3. In order to understand the nexus among the US government, Corporations and NGOs one may read about US Global Leadership Campaign (USGLC). USGLC is an influential network of over 400 organizations and thousands of individuals. Corporations and NGOs such as Monsanto, Lockheed Martin, Mercy Corps, CARE, World Vision, Caterpiller, AIPAC, Motorola “joined together in a coalition with a common message and a common mission.”
4. Teresa Anderson, “Patented GM Crops: Making Seed Saving Illegal?”
5. “Monsanto: Profiting without Conscience.”
6. Watch the documentary on the effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam.
7. “Vandana Shiva on Farmer Suicides, the U.S.-India Nuclear Deal, Wal-Mart in India and More,” www.democracynow.org, 13.12.2006.

   According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data record, there have been 166,304 farmers’ suicides in a decade since 1997 in India. Of these, 78,737 occurred in five years between 1997 and 2001. The next five years – from 2002 to 2006 – proved worse, seeing 87,567 take their lives. This means that on an average, there has been one farmer’s suicide every 30 minutes since 2002. www.hindu.com, 31.1.2008.

Face it: Meat — cloned or not — is about as “safe” as a troubled celebrity behind the wheel of a car. It’s high in cholesterol, saturated fat and concentrated protein — all of which contribute to heart disease. Research shows that meat-eaters are 50 percent more likely to develop heart disease than vegetarians are. A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that 26 percent of meat-eaters studied suffered from high blood pressure — the No. 1 risk factor for strokes – compared to only 2 percent of vegetarians. The American Dietetic Association acknowledges that people who eat animal products are more likely to be overweight than people who do not.

In a 2007 joint report, the American Institute for Cancer Research and the World Cancer Research Fund advised people to lose weight and reduce their consumption of red and processed meats to help prevent certain cancers, including colorectal and breast cancers. Scientists with the University of Minnesota, the Harvard School of Public Health and other institutions have cautioned that eating red and processed meats can also cause diabetes. Other meats aren’t any better: According to a 2006 Harvard study, people who frequently eat grilled skinless chicken have a 52 percent higher chance of developing bladder cancer than people who don’t.

Add to this the risk of illness from consuming meat and milk tainted with dangerous bacteria. Just last week, the Rochester Meat Co. in Minnesota recalled 188,000 pounds of ground beef potentially contaminated with E. coli. There’ve been at least eight other E. coli-related meat recalls since October. In September, the Topps Meat Co. in New Jersey recalled more than 21 million pounds of beef after 100 people became sick. Since June, three elderly men have died and one woman has miscarried after drinking listeria-contaminated milk from a Boston-area dairy plant.

Yet instead of at least encouraging people to be wary when eating animal products, the FDA is allowing meat and milk from the offspring of cloned animals to enter the food supply — and consumers are supposed to swallow this? Only in America. The European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies says that it doesn’t see convincing arguments to justify the production of food from clones and their offspring.

Nothing can justify this. Not only are meat and milk unhealthy, the process of cloning animals is also unethical. Cloned animals pose a risk to their surrogate mothers because they tend to be too large for their mothers to deliver. Many clones have birth defects, and cloned calves have died of respiratory, digestive, circulatory, nervous, muscular and skeletal abnormalities. But, according to the FDA, if the animals survive more than a few months, they appear normal in most ways. How comforting: If they live long enough, they can be slaughtered in the same terrifying ways that other animals are.

The FDA is moving in the wrong direction. More and more consumers are resolving to make healthy, humane food choices. They’re choosing truly safe “meats” — mock meats — and other vegetarian options. A 2005 Mintel survey indicated that U.S. sales of vegetarian food increased by 64 percent from 2000 to 2005 and predicted that the vegetarian food market will continue to grow in the next few years. This represents progress – engineering animals and marketing unhealthy food does not.

I won’t say that Canadian farmer Percy Schmiester deserves support because of what Monsanto did to him. Schmiester was sued by Monsanto. In fact, so many farmers have been sued by Monsanto that a national hotline was set up to assist them.

I won’t say that Monsanto puts profits ahead of the health of all of us. I won’t say any of these things because I don’t have a legal defense fund sufficient to wage a battle against the giant Monsanto. In this land of free speech, sometimes only those with power and wealth have freedom of speech.

What I will say is that, in my opinion, what Monsanto is doing to Ben & Jerry’s is an udder disgrace. Monsanto, known for its strong-arm legal tactics, is opposing the labeling of ice cream. Why would Monsanto want information withheld from consumers? It’s all about money. Allowing consumers to have the facts could affect the corporation’s bottom line. BGH, otherwise known as Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone, is a drug developed to increase bovine milk production. Ben & Jerry’s is fighting for the right to continue to label ice cream that is made with milk from BGH-free cows.

The food chain is under worldwide assault by U.S. corporations. The Master Race of corporations has seized control of the very essence of life itself. We are now in the age of Genetically Modified Doomsday Seeds. Why has there been no public discussion on who should have control of the planetary gene pool?

I applaud vegans. They have reached a higher moral plane than the rest of us; but even they are at risk of Monsantoitis. They must be vigilant if they want to avoid GMOs and “Roundup Ready” soy products.

It must be emphasized that all in this article is just my opinion — no Monsanto Process Servers knocking on my door, please.

I vaguely remember, a few years back, Monsanto ran the most oppressive lobbying campaign in the history of the State of Vermont. The crux of the controversy was the labeling of milk – not exactly nuclear physics or brain surgery. Some citizens and members of the State Legislature thought that it was a good idea to indicate on the label if milk came from cows that had not been injected with Monsanto’s money-making BGH. This would allow consumers the freedom to make an informed choice in the super market. Monsanto’s position, which was supported by the USDA — no surprise there — was that consumers did not have the right to that information.

The milk labeling controversy — and other corporate practices of Monsanto — have been issues for years. For a while every time I saw my Senator, I would greet him with the same comment, “Hey Bernie, when are you going to do something about Monsanto?” Senator Bernie would shake his head and raise his hands in frustration.

I often heard him say that no matter how bad you think things are in Washington, they are really much worse. While the Congress is distracted with growth hormones taken by sports figures, our farm animals are being abused with other hormones. Baseball players have a free choice. Cows don’t.

The current attack by the giant Monsanto on our beloved Ben & Jerry’s shows the dark underside of the corporate culture. Monsanto should back off. They should keep their drugs out of our cows and keep their hands off our ice cream. Is there nothing sacred? Do they have no shame? This is the stuff of summer time picnics, church socials, and children’s birthday parties. Sometimes it is only ice cream that can put a smile on the face of Grandpa. Ice cream — the magic potion that was fed to kids in the old days to soothe painful throats after tonsillectomies.

Giant corporations intent on waging battles against the little guys should chill out. It’s time for those corporate execs to feast on some Chunky Monkey or maybe a little Cherry Garcia. It just might be the perfect medicine to soothe the savage beast inside their desolate corporate souls.

Toy clones manufactured for children aged three and up, sold by Club Earth, a Rhode Island company. Photo by Lee Hall, who thanks Lisa M. Stanley for finding them.

The European Union is poised to follow along, clearing the way for international trade to accept clone-derived flesh and dairy products. The European Food Safety Authority has announced, “[A]ssuming that unhealthy clones are removed from entering the food chain, it is very unlikely that any difference exists in terms of food safety between food products originating from clones and their progeny compared with those derived from conventionally bred animals.”

What are these people thinking?

The FDA is pushing this plan at the behest of a few heads of companies who promise replicas of animals most likely to be transformed into prime beef and bacon, or prolific milk producers. The dairy industry, which is already so prolific that taxpayers must buy surplus milk, has not championed the idea. Expecting to benefit most from the approval are the actual clonemakers, like Texas-based ViaGen, Inc., which is backed by billionaire investor John Sperling.¹ ViaGen’s website boasts of cloning the “legendary barrel racing champion Scamper” and shows “calves cloned from Kung Fu, the mother of many famous rodeo bulls.”

The Federation of Animal Science Societies has run a PR campaign for cloning. “The entertainment industry has used the word ‘clone’ in a negative context,” said Jerry Baker, the group’s chief executive. “That’s a hard one for us to overcome, but we have to continue to try.”²

While nonhuman cloning has always been legal in the United States, a voluntary moratorium on the sales of clones’ milk and flesh has applied since 2001. A 2002 National Academy of Science report concluded that products derived from cloned animals do not “present a food safety concern,” and the FDA gave a tentative approval in 2003, but retreated after its advisory panel reported a lack of consensus.

But they’ve gone and done it now.

“Meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones is as safe to eat as the food we eat every day,” said Stephen Sundlof, the FDA’s head vet. Sounds like the vet from Hell. Clones die from respiratory, digestive, circulatory, nervous, muscular, skeletal and placental abnormalities. Cows die trying to bear grotesquely oversized calves. Piglets have been born without anuses and tails — a fatal condition. Far more cloning attempts fail than succeed.³ All beside the point, Sundlof says. “There is just not anything there that is conceivably hazardous to the public health.”

So there we have it: Cows, pigs and goats, our species has spoken. You’re cleared for cloning.⁴ Far be it for this government to have spent its time on actually helpful ideas, like cleaning up some of those toxic lagoons streaming from the many millions of farm animals already existing.

Rock Stars of the Barnyard

This month has seen the human cloning debate revived in light of some startling events. Not only did the CEO of a small California biotech company put DNA from his own skin into a human egg to begin the process of making human clones⁵; additionally, Britain’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has just cleared the way for cow-human hybrid embryos to be created for disease research.⁶

The United Nations’ Declaration on Human Cloning asks member states to “prohibit all forms of human cloning inasmuch as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life.” The dignity of nonhuman life attracts far less notice. A widely cited series of polls carried out by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology reported that over 60 percent of U.S. consumers are uncomfortable with animal cloning, but only about 10 percent of those respondents saw the animals at the core of their discomfort.

The cloning companies dismiss their concerns with the most cavalier statements. “Cloning enhances animal wellbeing,” declares the Biotechnology Industry Organization; and Clonesafety.org, sponsored by cloning firms Cyagra, stART Licensing, and ViaGen, assures us: “In fact, clones are the ‘rock stars’ of the barnyard, and therefore are treated like royalty.”

With a strained informality, proponents speak of clones as later-born twins of their originals, and of cloning as merely expanding the reproduction technology available to farmers since the 1950s.

Early last year, when a calf of a cloned cow was born in Britain, Simon Gee of the breeder’s group Holstein UK said the calf, Dundee Paradise, resulted from “conventional breeding technology” and was “born as the majority of the 220,000 animals that we register in the U.K. every year are born — as a result of artificial insemination.”⁷

But the majority of those registered animals don’t come from embryos imported from U.S. labs, as Dundee Paradise did.

Still, if domination and control is at the core of cloning, then the basis of the problem is the public’s willingness to consume animals in the first place. If animals can be bred, born and viewed as food items, virtually any manipulation will, sooner or later, be allowed. At a fundamental level, that’s why statements from the Organic Consumers Association, or from any other well-meaning group that declines to question the commodification of animals, lack the power to stop this.

Cloners will even have the audacity to put on environmentalist airs. ViaGen, which currently charges $17,500 to clone a cow and $4,000 for a pig, and which, over the past few years, has provided more than 400 cloned animals to government scientists⁸, has also mused about one day offering pro bono services to stave off extinctions. But any serious bid to protect vulnerable groups of animals would confront habitat degradation and other causes of accelerated extinction. And scientists who plan to routinely clone for animal agribusiness are supporting the very industry that’s ruining habitats throughout the world.

Procedure Is Everything

Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski accused the U.S. government of acting “recklessly”; but Mikulski’s concern was focused on a lack of labels to show which flesh and milk is which.⁹ The cloning companies said they could keep track of the animals.¹⁰ Kind of. “The progeny of clones aren’t clones, so there’s really nothing to track anyway,” ViaGen’s president has said.¹¹

The European Commission has vowed to consult consumers before its final ruling in May. British supermarket chains are rushing to voice their policies against stocking cloned products, but how they’d identify products from clones’ offspring is a mystery.

A group whose role actually allows ethics to be considered did officially weigh in. After several months (months!) of internal meetings, of discussions with experts, and of gathering public views through the Internet, the European Group on Ethics of science and new technologies presented its opinion to the EC.¹²

But the opinion of the ethics group speaks mainly of food safety. It wants “consumer rights and freedoms” respected even as it invokes the Amsterdam Treaty (which views animals as sentient beings) and the World Organisation for Animal Health’s “five freedoms” for animals: to behave normally and avoid malnutrition, fear, physical discomfort, injury and disease. Freedom from cloners didn’t make the list.

The ethics bureaucrats ask the Commission to say whether patents will apply, and to regulate it all through a “Code of Conduct on responsible farm animal breeding, including animal cloning.”

But a glimmer of hope remains, says the Daily Mail: The recently appointed environment secretary, Hilary Benn, is “a vegetarian who takes the suffering of farm animals particularly seriously.”¹³

Sort of. Benn duly pledged to “wholeheartedly support beef, pork and chicken farmers and the meat industry” after being named Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs last summer.”¹⁴

On the 19th of January, eight days after the European Food Safety Authority gave its preliminary nod to cloned groceries, I visited Benn’s website, entered “cloning” into the search field, and watched the result appear.

“Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn’t here.”

1. For related history see Renuka Rayasam, “FDA Ruling Could Boost Texas Biotech Firm,” U.S. News & World Report, December 28, 2006, explaining:

   Privately held ViaGen, started in 2001 and backed by billionaire investor John Sperling, hasn’t had the money troubles that have plagued rivals. The octogenarian Sperling founded the for-profit University of Phoenix in 1976, now part of the publicly traded Apollo Group. For almost 10 years, he has doled out money to back a number of projects, including a failed attempt to clone his dog Missy. Her picture now hangs in ViaGen’s office as inspiration.

2. As quoted by Karen Kaplan, “FDA Declares Cloned Meat, Milk Safe,” Los Angeles Times, January 16, 2008.
3. Moreover, experimenters test out the animal products from clones by forcing mice and other animals to ingest them. See Maggie Fox, “Cloned Animals Miserable, but Safe to Eat,” Herald Sun [Australia], January 16, 2008.
4. The U.S. Department of Agriculture “is encouraging the technology producers to maintain their voluntary moratorium on sending milk and meat from animal clones into the food supply during this transition time.” But suppliers aren’t expected to sell parts of cloned animals, who are seen as breeders. It’s the milk and meat from the cloned animals’ offspring that U.S. companies may now send into the retail market.
5. Delthia Ricks, “Scientists Make Human Embryo Clone,” Newsday [Long Island, NY], January 18, 2008, describing the project reported from the laboratories of Stemagen Corp.
6. Clive Cookson, “Go-ahead for Hybrid Embryo Work,” Financial Times, January 18, 2008, reporting on the approval made public the day before.
7. Similarly, Biotechnology Industry Organization chief Jim Greenwood has said, “Animal cloning is the latest step in a long history of reproductive tools for farmers and ranchers, and can effectively help livestock producers deliver what consumers want: high-quality, safe, abundant and nutritious foods in a conscientious and consistent manner.” BIO press release: “FDA Announces Safety of Food Products from Cloned Animals and Their Offspring,” December 28, 2006.
8. See Note 2.
9. “U.S. Authorities Approve Cloned Animal Foods,” Agence France-Presse, January 15, 2008.
10. See Andrew Pollack, “System to Track Cloned Animals Is Planned,” New York Times, December 19, 2007. ViaGen and Trans Ova Genetics of Iowa claim to have devised an electronic registry system to track cloned animals for a substantial fee.
11. See Note 2 above; quoting ViaGen’s Mark Walton.
12. In February 2007, following the FDA announcement concerning possible approval of products derived from cloned cattle, pigs and goats for the grocery market, European Commission president José Manuel Barroso requested the opinion. Press release: “European Group on Ethics adopts its opinion nr. 23 on ethical aspects of animal cloning for food supply,” January 16, 2008.
13. Sean Poulter, “EU Gives Green Light for Cloned Food to Go on Sale in U.K. shops,” Daily Mail, January 11, 2008; reporting on the European Food Safety Authority’s draft opinion.
14. “Vegetarian Benn Takes Charge of Environment,” Telegraph, June 29, 2007.

Bourgeois romantics are neo liberals who emphasize free market methods in lieu of a better global civil society. They envisage a global market composed of different ethnicities and cultures in which all will be able to trade and share resources in a mutually beneficial manner. They are the CEOs who give a portion of their profit to Southern aid programs. They are the corporate industrialists who argue modernity and technology will enhance Southern economies. They are even the so-called “humanitarians” that coerce third world markets into the global market arena promising to ameliorate mass poverty. They are everywhere. They exist in all forms, colors, professions, religions and political spheres. In short, a bourgeois romantic is a hypocritical capitalist: one whose intentions are socialist but whose priorities are capitalist. They are the “good intentioned” proponents of free trade.

What they refuse to acknowledge is that free trade is anything but free. Although it allows the global North free market range, it leaves the global South in shackles. Free trade is a modern euphemism for unrestricted global capitalism. We call it free trade when national and corporate interests unite to increase their profit margin while simultaneously manipulating international trade pacts. We call it free trade when established institutions like the IMF or World Bank, whose sole purpose is to aid the poorest of nations, operate under the biases of wealthy nations.

However, it is not just the WTO, IMF and World Bank that attempt to blur the line between corporate and humanitarian interests. The biotech industry is one of massive concern for the global community and definitely worth taking a look at. However, it is not surprising that very little dialogue regarding the issue exists within the U.S. This is largely due to the fact that humanitarian efforts are being used to shield the ploy of corporate profits. Corporations view the global South as an “untapped” market, whose dependency on foreign aid makes them convenient need-based consumers. Many aid and development programs, under the guise of federal governance, are largely aligned with corporate initiatives. Monsanto, the world’s leading chemical company, invests millions each year by creating GM foods resistant to their best-selling weed killer, Round-Up ®. The super objective of Monsanto would be to make pesticides commonplace among agricultural production and consequently maximize their product sales. The problem now is that Monsanto has found a market in hunger and starvation. In attempts to play off the humanitarian sympathies of other nations and individuals, Monsanto launched an aggressive publicity campaign (1998) in Europe featuring the slogan, “Let the Harvest Begin.” This campaign promoted the research and utilization of GM foods to feed the famished nations of Africa. The response by the global South was one of outrage!

Why? After all, from a bourgeois romantic’s perspective: food is food! Especially for the starving and impoverished peoples of Africa! Ah, but a closer look at the true effect that these multi-national corporate interests have on developing economies explains the severe resistance to GM crops. The Institute for Food and Development Policy (IFDP) addresses three destabilizing factors that posit GM foods as a threat to the global South. These include 1) corporate welfare schemes, 2) the denial to the right of information, and 3) an inappropriate response to hunger.

Corporate welfare schemes are funds established to assist the poor, but in turn, serve the pockets of the corporate multinationals. The IFDP asserts that “taxpayer dollars are being used to turn countries in the South into alternative markets for GE products, particularly through foreign assistance programs.” While USAID and the World Food Program continue to bask in the facade of altruism; they vehemently oppose the labeling of GM crops. In 2004, excessive US trade sanctions cost Thailand $8.7 billion US dollars- forcing them to begin the integration of unmarked GM crops.

The mass quantities of shipped food are not labeled “organic” or “genetically engineered” making it difficult for farmers and sustainable communities to survive. The patent rights of GM crops promote a dependent domestic economy. If a farmer attempts to plant GM seeds without consent, s/he is essentially violating the patent rights on Monsanto’s GM seeds. In some cases, GM seeds have blown over into independent farms and put farmers at legal liability to compensate the corporate patent-holders. Not only is this a legal and economic stress, but it contaminates organic farming methods. Therefore, patent rights are viewed as an adversary to sustainable progress and economic stability in developing countries. This theory relies on two very false premises: that hunger is caused by insufficient food and that potential health benefits of GMOs outweigh that of their risk. However, research shows that the world pumps out more food per person than ever in history. It is definitely not an issue of food shortage. Thus, the problem is not the production of food, but the ability for the impoverished to access it.

Development programs continue to exploit the famished and impoverished countries of developing countries by coercing them to perform actions against their will: the acceptance of “aid” that counteracts the sustainable development process. Once GM food crosses the borders, developing countries will be unable to escape the financial power of corporate imperialism on their agricultural economy. Africa, is one example, in which a collective group of developing nations stand united in its opposition to the biotech industry and its exploitation of struggling nations. Catherine Bernini, Executive Director of the WFP exemplified the capitalist ideal when she said, “Food is power. We use it to change behavior. Some may call that bribery. We do not apologize.” Meanwhile, the rest of us sit at home — complacent with the idea that our tax dollars are doing what we cannot — assisting those that really truly need it.

The fact is there are two casualties in this “foreign aid” façade: one being the exploited economies of developing nations and the other being us, the citizenry. However, we are only casualties in our convictions- equally exploited to serve, in turn, as the advocates of such misleading “foreign aid” and “assistance” programs. How do we escape such false convictions? The American people, complacent in their isolationist views of the world, rest assured that their government (one of the people, by the people and for the people…or so they say) is taking care of the “bigger” issues at hand. It is far past the time to re-educate ourselves. Not on just the issues pertaining to our own government and the big issues of war and conflict, but even in our international role as “humanitarians.” Foreign “aid” programs are no more than misleading titles that alleviate the capitalist guilt of our citizenry while surreptitiously building entire markets on the strife of the third world. Do you still wonder why the rest of the world holds so much contempt for America? Bourgeois Romanticism has permeated past Foreign Aid efforts and even covertly into our non-profit sectors and religious missions. So, before you rest morally appeased on your stance with globalization, ask yourself: Have you escaped the deception of the Bourgeois Romantic? Or are you, like so many others, merely one of them?