Subject: Tale of the Soy Bean and the Giant
from the Victoria Times Columnist, Victoria, BC Canada
Sunday November 16
Pleasures of the Table
The Tale of the Soya Bean and the Giant, by Pam Freir
This week's story is a scary one. It's the tale of the soya bean plant and a very rich, very clever giant named Monsanto.
Not everyone in the land fears this giant, Monsanto. In fact, many would argue that this is a most benign and gentle giant dedicated, as the glossy brochures will tell you, to "better food, better nutrition, and better health for all people"? That's Monsanto's mission statement. The soya bean unfortunately does not, as far as I know, have a mission statement. We just know it's good.
The soya bean is one of the richest, cheapest and most readily accessible sources of protein in the world. We drink its "milk" and toss its sprouted seeds into stir-fries. We splash its oil on salads. Tofu, soy sauce, margarine, mayonnaise, baby food and ice cream all utilize the soya bean in some form or another.
About 60% of all processed foods on the market contain soy. Which is what makes the story of the corporate giant, Monsanto, so unsettling.
At the heart of the tale is a chemical called Glyphosate. It's sold under the name Roundup and is the world's biggest selling herbicide. Monsanto's patent on Roundup, which earned the company nearly $1.5 billion last year, runs out in the year 2000.
But not to worry. Our clever giant has not been sleeping. For the past ten years Monsanto has been engaged in some genetic juggling a concept that never fails to make my tummy wobble and has successfully manipulated a whole range of crops to make them resistant to Glyphosate. This means that a farmer can drench his fields in his favourite chemical bath which will kill the weeds and leave the magically altered Monsanto Super Plants unaffected.
Happily for Monsanto, new patent legislation in Europe and the US gives it exclusive rights, world wide, to these genetically discombobulated crops.
And first off the assembly line is the new-generation soya bean.
Isn't that good news? Now we can look forward to new, improved, magically reconfigured, chemical-immune soya bean products to bulk up our weenies and slather on our bread. Yummy.
Environmentalists and consumer groups have responded to this free-wheeling interference with howls of protest, demanding that food with genetically altered soya beans be labeled as such.
Gosh now, we can't do that, said the giant with a smile. Why, we can't be sorting through all those trillions of itty-bitty beans that come tumbling down the production line now can we? Besides you can't tell a Roundup-ready bean from a regular bean anyway. Sorry. But the soya bean is just one small ingredient in this spicy global stew.
In the last two years alone Monsanto has been gobbling up shares in seed and biotechnology companies. It now owns the genetically warped Flavr-Savr tomato. It has purchased the US patent on all genetic manipulations of cotton, and controls 35% of the germlines on American maize. Monsanto's "life-scientists" are, even as we speak, experimenting with new strains of maize as well as potatoes, rice, sugar beet and rape. And these new products are so popular with farmers that Monsanto has even managed to persuade to them to sign away their rights to the seeds they grow.
Pretty soon this insatiable giant will own the world's entire supply of food. It won't be the old fashioned kind of food that that reliable old warhorse Mother Nature has been delivering to us all these years. It will be food conceived in the name of science and, until someone beats Monsanto at their own game, it will be the only food that can withstand the onslaught of the world's largest selling herbicide. Just think of it! How could this possibly happen?
It's called lobbying. I'm not entirely sure where lobbying ends and influence peddling begins but I suspect they both involve golf. And Monsanto has "golfed" every major player in government and trade organizations around the world. It has managed to persuade the European parliament to permit companies to patent "genetically enhanced" plants and animals. It lobbied for the repeal of laws banning the import of genetically manipulated maize. And in the US a Monsanto vice-president is reportedly a top candidate for commissioner of the FDA (food and drug administration), the US regulatory body for the food industry on which a significant contingent of Monsanto heavies already holds key posts.
I quote from The Guardian Weekly where this story appeared: "With astonishing rapidity, a tiny handful of companies is coming to govern the global development, production, processing and marketing of our most fundamental commodity--food."
I don't want to sound alarmist here but I think we'd better start growing things. We need to create our own supply of safe, natural, honest-to-goodness food. We need to grow wheat on our front lawns. Plant tomatoes on our rooftops. Turn our driveways into cornfields. Cultivate mushrooms. Raise chickens in our basements.
I'd suggest adopting a cow but it's likely to have been injected with bovine growth hormone. BVH. Yet another better-health-for-all-people product from the friendly giant, Monsanto.