<!–William Engdahl–>
William Engdahl is an award-winning geopolitical analyst and strategic risk consultant whose internationally best-selling books have been translated into thirteen foreign languages.
On May 31 world media headlines read “Monsanto backing away from GMO crops in Europe.” But before the world opens the champagne to celebrate the death of GMO, it is worthwhile to look more closely at what was officially said and what not.
The original source for the story is attributed to a German left
daily, TAZ which printed excerpts from an interview with an
official spokeswoman of Monsanto Germany.
Ursula Lüttmer-Ouazane reportedly told Taz “We’ve come to the
conclusion that this has no broad acceptance at the moment.”
Her remarks were circulated worldwide and Reuters interviewed
Monsanto corporate spokesman Thomas Helscher who reportedly said,
“We’re going to sell the GM seeds only where they enjoy broad
farmer support, broad political support and a functioning
regulatory system. As far as we’re convinced this only applies to
a few countries in Europe today, primarily Spain and
Portugal.”
A Monsanto interview with a leftist German paper created the
impression around the world that the world’s largest
patent-holder of GMO seeds is in full retreat from pushing their GMO seeds, at
least in the European Union. The reality is anything but
that. Among other things, on June 10 the EU Commission
plans to approve a new Monsanto GMO maize sort.
What Monsanto really says
A visit to the official website of Monsanto Germany presents
an
official company press release referring to the media
statements, where the essential part says, ”Right now the
media is flooded with reports that Monsanto has stopped the
marketing of GMO seeds in Germany and the EU. That is not
correct…”
Then on the parent website of Monsanto in St. Louis, the following statement appears: “We have a
robust business selling high-quality, conventional corn, oilseed
rape and vegetable seeds to our farmer customers in Europe. We’ve
been telling people in Europe for several years now that we’ll
only sell biotech seeds where they enjoy broad farmer support,
broad political support and a functioning regulatory system. As
Hugh Grant, our CEO told the Financial Times in 2009, ‘Europe’s
going to make up its own mind in its own time.’ The only GM trait
grown in Europe today is a corn resistant to the European corn
borer, an insect that can do considerable damage to crops. Its
cultivation accounts for less than 1% of the all corn cultivated
in Europe (by hectares).”
Both statements are worth closer attention. First the German
statement is a bit different from the US version. It officially
denies as false the press reports that they have ceased marketing
of GMO seeds in the EU. Second, their statement that they
concentrate on breeding and sale of conventional seeds and plant
protection chemicals is nothing other than a description of what
the present status of Monsanto sales in the EU, nothing more.
Because of the limited use so far of Monsanto GMO seeds in the
EU, Monsanto business by definition focuses now where it earns
money. However the “plant protection chemicals” Monsanto refers
to primarily its own Roundup herbicide, which by license
agreement with farmers must be sold paired with all Monsanto GMO
seeds, but is also the number one weed killer sold in Europe and
the world. It has also been proven to be highly toxic even to
human embryo cells.
The US statement has interesting important differences. First it
gives no hint of any change in Monsanto policy towards spreading
GMO seeds in the EU. It states explicitly they will continue to
spread GMO seeds in Spain and Portugal, both EU countries. And it
quotes chairman Hugh Grant, not to be confused with the Hollywood
actor, indicating the company expects the EU to come around on
allowing its GMO. And it cites the present status of its GMO corn
in the EU. Nothing more. No statement of a stop to GMO in the
EU.
And the Monsanto beat goes on, the beat goes on, on, on…
The EU Commission has announced it will meet to vote on approving
licensing of a new Monsanto GMO patented maize, SmartStax, on
June 10, ten days after the carefully formulated Monsanto FAZ
interview. Monsanto shares the patent with Dow AgroSciences.
SmartStax supposedly produces six different insecticides. It has
been approved by the EUs food safety agency, EFSA despite absence
of critical safety tests and Commission approval is reported
certain by Brussels sources.
According to Dr. Christopher Then of TestBiotech, SmartStax
was given the safety OK from the (Monsanto influenced-w.e.) EFSA,
the European food safety body, despite provable lack of serious
safety tests by Monsanto/Dow AgroSciences.
Suspicious Timing…
Yet for most of the world who don’t have time to research the
official statements of Monsanto but merely glance at a Reuters or
TAZ headline, the message has been delivered that Monsanto has
given up its EU effort on proliferating its GMO seeds. The timing
of the TAZ interview is suggestive of what seems to be a
carefully orchestrated Monsanto PR deception campaign. The TAZ
original by writer Jost Maurin appeared on the same day, May 31,
less than one week after March against Monsanto , a worldwide protest demonstrations against Monsanto,
that took place in more than 400 cities in some 52 countries
around the world. The TAZ article that was then used as
reference for all world media after, appeared under the emotional
and factually misleading headline: Sieg für
Anti-Gentech-Bewegung: Monsanto gibt Europa auf (Victory for
anti-GMO Movement: Monsanto Gives up Europe).
The March against Monsanto was notable in several key
respects. Most alarming for Monsanto and the GMO cartel was the
fact that it was the first such demonstration not organized by
anti-GMO NGOs such as Greenpeace or BUND or Friends of the Earth.
In Germany where this author participated as a speaker in one of
the events, it was all organized by concerned activists via
facebook. But the NGOs who formally oppose GMO were reportedly
nowhere to be found as sponsors or even reportedly as active
organizers.
That march presented Monsanto and friends with a frightening new
element–the danger that that grass roots anti-GMO protest would
spread and make life even more difficult for GMO proliferation in
Africa, in China, India, Latin America and of course eastern and
western Europe. All indications are that the timing of the
well-formulated TAZ interview, notably with a left newspaper
openly opposed to Monsanto GMO, was an orchestrated attempt to
“manage perceptions” and take the headwind out of the sails of
the growing anti-GMO sentiment in the EU and abroad. For the
moment, Monsanto has gained a tactical victory in propaganda
points as the broad public takes the retreat at face value. As
one experienced opponent of Monsanto GMO put it in a private
e-mail to me, it bears all the hallmarks of a slick PR campaign,
“like a Burson & Marsteller tactic that applies to many
controversial bad practices and part of why it works is that it
takes a long time to build consumer/activist energy and momentum,
whereas the PR-company can start on a very short runway …”
What Monsanto has not done is to recall its already
commercialized GMO Maize in the EU, that despite damning
independent scientific study of some 200 rats over a two year
span showing rats fed GMO maize and Monsanto Roundup herbicide
showed dramatically more cancer tumors, higher death rates and
organ damage compared with non-GMO-fed rats.
Moreover, Monsanto openly admits it is pushing its way deep into
the eastern European market for seeds, though mentioning only
conventional seeds. Monsanto Vice President for International
Corporate Affairs, Jesus Madrazo, stated that the company
has been focusing on gaining market share in the
conventional corn market in Ukraine, and that Eastern Europe and
South America are key growth areas for the company now.
Then in the USA, it has leaked out that Monsanto directly worked with
its apparent current favorite US Senator, Roy Blunt, a Republican
from Monsanto’s home state of Missouri and one of the major
recipients of Monsanto campaign finance, to draft for Blunt an
obscure paragraph Blunt got into a spending bill, a bombshell
that exempts Monsanto from being sued for any damage its crops or
chemicals cause.
Called by opponents the Monsanto Protection Act, many members of
Congress were apparently unaware that the Monsanto Protection Act
was a part of the spending bill that they were voting on. The
Monsanto bill, signed into law by President Obama despite
hundreds of thousands of protest petitions not to, essentially
gives Monsanto and other GMO purveyors legal immunity, even if
future research shows that GMO seeds cause significant health
problems, cancer, anything. The federal courts no longer have any
power to stop their spread, use, or sales. The only other
corporations in the US enjoying such outrageous legal immunity
are the pharmaceutical vaccine makers.
What we have is a quite different picture from the slick spin
reported by TAZ and from there picked up worldwide uncritically
by mainstream media. Monsanto by its own open admission has not
ceased marketing its GMO products and herbicides in the EU. It
has not ceased imports of its GMO soybeans and GMO corn into the
EU where it has managed to escape the EU GMO labeling law.
Monsanto also states it is concentrating on building market share
in eastern Europe, where often regulators are more “relaxed” and
in the notoriously corrupt Ukraine. They do not deny promoting
GMOs there either; rather they state positively their focus on
conventional seeds only. Simply put, the geopolitical stakes
behind Monsanto and the attempt to control the world’s most vital
seeds of life are far too high for the company to raise the white
flag of surrender so easily.
A Monsanto precedent
There is a relevant precedent for this Monsanto PR deception
campaign. In 1999, after months of growing worldwide
anti-Monsanto protest over the fact Monsanto had made a takeover
bid to buy Mississippi company, Delta & Pine Land in order to
acquire Delta’s patent on a radical new GMO technique known
officially as GURTS (Genetic Use Restriction Technology) and
popularly as Terminator technology. Delta has won a patent
together with the US Government’s USDA for the Terminator. It
would force a GMO seed or plant to “commit suicide” after only
one harvest, forcing the farmer to return each year to Monsanto
to buy new seeds regardless the price or availability.
The Terminator image threatened to derail the entire fledgling
GMO project at the outset such that Rockefeller University
President and GMO financial sponsor, Gordon Conway, president of
the Rockefeller Foundation, made a rush visit to meet Monsanto’s
board and convince them to make what was a tactical retreat in
order to limit damage to a very fragile GMO campaign worldwide.
Monsanto announced, deceptively it proved, that it would not
pursue “commercialization” of Terminator technology and it
dropped its takeover bid for patent holder Delta & Pine Land.
The anti-GMO NGOs claimed a huge victory and nothing was heard
for seven years until, with no fanfare, in 2006 Monsanto
announced it was acquiring Terminator patent co-holder Delta
& Pine Land. This time there was scarcely a peep from the
anti-GMO lobby. They had lost momentum and the deal went ahead.
It remains to be seen if the forces for healthy non-GMO
agriculture today prove as gullible as in 1999.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
This article originally appeared on: RT