Reviewing
F. William Engdahl's
Seeds Of Destruction - Part III
By
Stephen Lendman
05 January,
2008
Countercurrents.org
Read
Part I
Read
Part II
This
is the third and final part of William Engdahl's powerfully important
book about four Anglo-American agribusiness giants and their aim to
control world food supply, make it all genetically engineered, and use
it as a geopolitical weapon. The story is chilling and needs to be read
in full to learn the type future they plan for us. Parts I and II were
published and are available on this web site. Part III follows below.
Food is Power
Rockefeller
Foundation funding was the Gene Revolution's catalyst in 1985 with big
aims - to learn if GMO plants were commercially feasible and if so spread
them everywhere. It was the "new eugenics" and the culmination
of earlier research from the 1930s. It was also based on the idea that
human problems can be "solved by genetic and chemical manipulations....as
the ultimate means of social control and social engineering." Foundation
scientists sought ways to do it by reducing infinite life complexities
to "simple, deterministic and predictive models" under their
diabolical scheme - mapping gene structures to "correct social
and moral problems including crime, poverty, hunger and political instability."
With the development of essential genetic engineering techniques in
1973, they were on their way.
They're based
on what's called recombitant DNA (rDNA), and it works by genetically
introducing foreign DNA into plants to create genetically modified organisms,
but not without risks. London Institute of Science in Society chief
biologist, Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, explained the dangers because the process
is imprecise. "It is uncontrollable and unreliable, and typically
ends up damaging and scrambling the host genome, with entirely unpredictable
consequences" that might unleash a deadly unrecallable "Andromeda
Strain." Research continued anyway amidst lies that risks were
minimal and a promised future lay ahead. All that mattered were huge
potential profits and geopolitical gain so let the good times roll and
the chips fall where they may.
One project
was to map the rice genome. It launched a 17 year effort to spread GMO
rice around the world with Rockefeller Foundation money behind it. It
spent millions funding 46 worldwide science labs. It also financed the
training of hundreds of graduate students and developed an "elite
fraternity" of top scientific researchers at Foundation-backed
research institutes. It was a diabolical scheme aiming big - to control
the staple food for 2.4 billion people and in the process destroy the
biological diversity of over 140,000 developed varieties that can withstand
droughts, pests and grow in every imaginable climate.
Asia was
the prime target, and Engdahl explained the sinister tale of a Philippines-based
Foundation-funded institute (IRRI). It had a gene bank with "every
significant rice variety known" that comprised one-fifth of them
all. IRRI let agribusiness giants illegally use the seeds for exclusive
patented genetic modification so they could introduce them in markets
and dominate them by requiring farmers be licensed and forced to pay
annual royalty fees.
By 2000,
a successful "Golden Rice" was developed that was beta-carotene
(Vitamin A) enriched. It was marketed on the fraudulent claim that a
daily bowl could prevent blindness and other Vitamin A deficiencies.
It was a scam as other products are far better sources of this nutrient
and to get enough of it from any type rice requires eating an impossible
nine kilograms daily (about 20 pounds). Nonetheless, gene revolution
backers were ready for their next move: "the consolidation of global
control over humankind's food supply" with a new tool to do it
- the WTO. Corporate giants wrote its rules favoring them at the expense
of developing nations shut out.
Unleashing
GMO Seeds - A Revolution in World Food Production Begins
Argentina
became the first "guinea pig" nation in a reckless experiment
with untested and potentially hazardous new foods. No matter, potential
profits are enormous so concerns for public safety and human health
are ignored. Let the revolution begin in real time.
By the end
of the 1980s, a global network of genetically-trained molecular biologists
were ready to kick it off, Argentina was their first test laboratory,
and it was hailed as a "Second Green Revolution." Look what
followed. From 1996 to 2004, worldwide GMO crop planting expanded to
167 million acres, a 40-fold increase using 25% of total worldwide arable
land. An astonishing two-thirds of the acreage (106 million acres) was
in the US. By 2004, Argentina was in second place with 34 million acres
while production is expanding in Brazil, China, Canada, South Africa,
Indonesia, India, the Philippines, Colombia, Honduras, Spain and Eastern
Europe (Poland, Romania and Bulgaria). The revolution was on a roll
and looks unstoppable.
Argentina
was an easy mark when Carlos Menem became President. He's a corporatist's
dream, a willing Washington Consensus subject, and he even let David
Rockefeller's New York and Washington friends draft his economic program
with Chicago School dogma at its heart - privatizations, deregulation,
local markets open to imports, and cuts in already reduced social services.
By the mid-1990s,
Menem was "revolutioniz(ing) Argentina's traditional productive
agriculture" to one based on monoculture for global export. He
took office in July, 1989. By 1991, Argentina was already a "secret
experimental laboratory for developing genetically engineered crops"
with its people unknowing human guinea pigs. In effect, the country's
agriculture was handed to Monsanto, Dow, DuPont and other GMO giants
to exploit for profit with untested and potentially hazardous new products.
Things would never be the same again.
In 1995,
Monsanto introduced Roundup Ready (RR) soybeans with its special gene
gun-inserted bacterium that allows the plant to survive being sprayed
by the glyphosate herbicide, Roundup. GMO soybeans are thus protected
from the same product used in Colombia to eradicate drugs that also
harms legal crops and humans at the same time.
Foreign investors
have large land holdings in Argentina, the late 1990s - early 2000s
economic crisis made vast more amounts available, and bankrupted farmers
had to give it up for pennies on the dollar. Corporate predators and
Latifundista landholders took full advantage, but look what for.
After Monsanto's
Roundup Ready soybeans were licensed in 1996, "a once-productive
national family farm-based agriculture system (was turned into) a neo-feudal
state system dominated by a handful of powerful, wealthy" owners
to exploit for profit. Menem went along. In less than a decade, he allowed
the nation's corn, wheat and cattle diversity to be replaced by corporate-controlled
monoculture. It was a Faustian sellout, and it helped Monsanto's stock
price hit an all-time high near year end 2007.
Earlier decades
of diversity and crop rotation preserved the country's soil quality.
That changed after soybean monoculture moved in with its heavy dependence
on chemical fertilizers. Traditional Argentine crops vanished, and cattle
were forced into cramped feedlots the way they are in the US. Engdahl
quoted a leading country agro-ecologist predicting these practices will
destroy the land in 50 years if they continue. Nothing suggests a stoppage,
and by 2004, nearly half the nation's crop land was for soybeans and
over 90% of it solely for Monsanto's Roundup Ready brand. Engdahl put
it this way: "Argentina had become the world's largest uncontrolled
experimental laboratory for GMO" and its people unwitting lab rats.
Mechanized
GMO soybean monoculture took over, the country's dairy farms were reduced
by half, and "hundreds of thousands of workers (were forced) off
the land" into poverty. Monsanto was on a roll and used various
exploitive schemes. Included were ploys to ignore Argentine law against
collecting royalty payments. Smuggling Roundup soybean seeds illegally
into Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia and Uruguay also went on sub rosa. In
addition, the company got Menem to allow it to collect "extended
royalties" in 1999 even though Argentine law prohibited the practice.
Monsanto
then pressured the government to recognize its "technology license
fee." A Technology Compensation Fund was established and managed
by the Ministry of Agriculture. It forced farmers to pay a near-1% fee
on GMO soybean sales. Monsanto and other GMO seed suppliers got the
funds. By 2005, Brazil's government relented. It legalized GMO seeds
for the first time, and by 2006, the US, Argentina and Brazil accounted
for over 81% of world soybean production. It "ensure(s) that practically
every animal in the world fed soymeal (is) eating genetically engineered
soybeans." It also means everyone eating these animals does the
same thing unwittingly.
Argentina
experienced more fallout as well that threatens to spread. Its soybean
monoculture affects the countryside hugely. Traditional farmers close
to soybean ones are seriously harmed by aerial Roundup spraying. Their
crops are destroyed as that's how this herbicide works. It kills all
plants without gene-modified resistance. It also kills animals with
farmers reporting their chickens died and horses were gravely harmed.
Humans are affected as well and show violent symptoms of nausea, diarrhea,
vomiting and herbicide-inflicted skin lesions. Other reports claimed
further fallout - animals born with severe organ deformities, deformed
bananas and sweet potatoes, and lakes filled with dead fish. In addition,
rural families said their children developed "grotesque blotches
on their bodies."
Forest lands
were also damaged as vast acreage was cleared for soybean planting.
Their loss "created an explosion of medical problems because Roundup
is toxic, kills every non-GMO plant that grows and, it harms animals
and humans as well that come in contact with it.
As for higher
promised yields, results showed reduced harvests of between 5% and 15%
compared with traditional soybean crops plus "vicious new weeds"
that need up to triple the amount of spraying to destroy. By the time
farmers learn this, it's too late. By 2004, GMO soybean plantings spread
across the country, they cost more to produce and yield less, and Engdahl
summarized farmers' plight: "A more perfect scheme of human bondage
would be hard to imagine," and it was even worse than that. Argentina
was the first test case "in a global plan that was decades in the
making and absolutely shocking and awesome in its scope."
Iraq Gets
American Seeds of Democracy
Democracy
for Iraq meant erasing the "cradle of civilization" for unfettered
free market capitalism. Iraq was conquered for its oil but also to make
the country a giant free trade paradise. The scheme was diabolical,
elaborate and ugly - blitzkrieg "shock and awe," elaborate
PsyOps, fear as a weapon, repressive occupation, mass detention and
torture, and the fastest, most sweeping country remake in history. It
happened in weeks, Iraq no longer exists, the country is a wasteland,
its people are devastated, and a blank slate was created for unrestrained
corporate pillage on a near- unimaginable scale.
Part of the
scheme was for GMO agribusiness giants to have free reign over that
part of the economy - to radically transform Iraq's food production
system into a model for GMO seeds and plants. One hundred swiftly implemented
Bremer laws mandated it, but Iraqis had no say about them as the country
is now governed out of Washington and its branch office inside the heavily-fortified
Green Zone in the largest US embassy in the world by far.
Bremer laws
imposed the harshest ever Chicago School-style "shock therapy"
of the kind that devastated countries around the world since first introduced
in Chile under Pinochet in 1973. The formula was familiar - mass firings
of state employees in the hundreds of thousands; unrestricted imports
with no tariffs, duties, inspections or taxes; deregulation; and the
largest state liquidation sale and privatization plan since the Soviet
Union collapsed.
Corporate
taxes were lowered as well from 40% to a flat 15%, and foreign investors
could own 100% of Iraqi assets other than oil. They could also repatriate
all their profits, had no obligation to reinvest in the country and
wouldn't be taxed. They were further given 40 year leases, and the only
Saddam era laws remaining were those restricting trade unions and collective
bargaining. Foreign transnationals, mainly US ones, swooped in and devoured
everything. Iraqis couldn't compete, and the occupation laws assured
it.
Consider
Bremer Order 81. It covered patents, their duration and stated: "Farmers
shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties or any
variety" the edict covered. It gave plant varieties patent holders
absolute rights over farmers' using their seeds for 20 years. They'd
be genetically engineered, owned by transnationals, and Iraqi farmers
using them had to sign an agreement stipulating they'll pay a "technology
fee" as well as an annual license fee.
Plant Variety
Protection (PVP) was the core of this order. It made seed saving and
reuse illegal. Even using "similar" seeds could result in
severe fines and imprisonment. GMO seeds got protection to displace
10,000 years of developed plant varieties being sacrificed.
Iraq's fertile
valley between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is ideal for crop planting.
Since 8000 BC, farmers used it to develop "rich seeds of almost
every variety of wheat used in the world today." They were erased
through a GMO modernization and industrialization scheme so agribusiness
can get a foothold in the region and supply the world market. While
Iraqis suffer and starve, GMO giants run the country's agriculture for
export. Iraqi farmers are now agribusiness serfs and are forced to grow
products foreign to the native diet like wheat designed for pasta.
Bremer laws
mandated it and are inviolable under Article 26 of the US-drafted constitution.
It states that the Iraqi government is powerless to change laws a foreign
occupier made. To assure it, US-sympathizers are in every ministry with
those most trusted in key ones. Engdahl sums up the damage to agriculture:
"The forced transformation of Iraq's food production into patented
GMO crops is one of the clearest examples of (how) Monsanto and other
GMO giants are forcing (these) crops onto an unwilling or unknowing
world population." They're infesting the planet with them one country
at a time so it's futile trying to undo the damage they cause.
Planting
the "Garden of Earthly Delights"
On January
1, 1995, the WTO was officially established with powers to enforce its
corporate-written laws on member states. US agribusiness was already
dominant, but it now had a new unelected supranational body to advance
its private agenda on a global scale. WTO is a "policeman"
for global free trade and "a (predatory) battering ram for the
trillion dollar annual world agribusiness" part of it for its giants.
Its rules are written with teeth for "punitive leverage" to
levy heavy financial and other penalties on rule violators. Under them,
agriculture is a priority because American companies are dominant.
Cargill wrote
the rules that Engdahl calls the "Cargill Plan." They:
-- ban all
government farm programs and price supports worldwide (but wink and
nod at massive US subsidies);
-- prohibit
countries from imposing import controls to defend their own agricultural
production;
-- ban agricultural
export controls even in times of famine so Cargill can dominate world
export grain trade; and
-- forbid
countries from restricting trade through food safety laws called trade
barriers; this demand also opens world markets to unrestricted GMO food
imports with no need to prove their safety.
The International
Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council lobby (IPC) worked with Cargill
and US agribusiness to advance this agenda. Four so-called Group of
Four QUAD countries took the lead - the US, Canada, Japan and EU. Meeting
in secret, they set policy for all 134 WTO members that for agriculture
was drafted by US agribusiness giants like Cargill, Monsanto, ADM and
DuPont along with EU giants, Nestle and Unilever. They were designed
to erase national laws and safeguards in favor of unrestricted free
markets favoring Global North countries.
Through patents,
GMO giants control staple crop seeds and need WTO leverage to force
them on a skeptical world. It's done through WTO's Agreement on Agriculture
(AoA) along with its Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).
Until the advent of agribusiness, food production and its markets were
local. That's now changed with corporate giants in control and able
to set prices by manipulating supply.
AoA rules
were established to help. They also enforce agribusiness' highest priority
- "a free and integrated global market for its products."
Included are GMO ones the senior Bush administration ruled are "substantially
equivalent" to ordinary seeds and crops and need no government
regulation.
That provision
is written into WTO rules under its "Sanitary and Phytosanitary
Agreement (SPS). It states that national laws banning GMO products are
"unfair trade practices" even when they endanger human health.
Other WTO rules (called "Technical Barriers to Trade") are
in place as well. They prohibit GMO labeling so consumers don't know
what they're eating and can't avoid these potentially hazardous foods.
The 1996
Biosafety Protocol was drafted to solve this problem, and it should
be in place for that purpose. Developing country demands, however, were
"ambushed by the powerful organized government and agribusiness
lobby." It sabotaged talks and insisted biosafety measures be subordinate
to WTO trade rules favoring developed states. As a result, talks collapsed,
safety concerns are ignored, and the path was cleared for the unrestricted
spread of GMO seeds worldwide.
Under WTO's
TRIPS rules, all member states must pass patent-protecting intellectual
property laws that make knowledge property. That, in turn, "open(s)
the floodgates" nearly everywhere for the proliferation of GMO
seeds and foods, even in violation of national food safety laws.
GMO giants
have powerful friends in government backing their agenda. George Bush
is one of them, and in 2003 he made the proliferation of GMO seeds his
top priority after the Iraq war. With that support, GMO companies are
pushing things to the limit with a brazen example Engdahl gave involving
the Texas biotech company, RiceTec.
It schemed
to patent Basmati rice, the dietary staple across Asia for thousands
of years. With IRRI collusion, the company stole the seeds, patented
them under Rockefeller Foundation-crafted rules, and the 2001 Supreme
Court decision in Ag Supply v. Pioneer Hi-Bred made it possible. It
"enshrined the principle of allowing patents on plant forms and
other forms of life in (this) groundbreaking case." Under the ruling,
GMO plant breeds can be patented, and US government agencies are complicit
in helping agribusiness giants ensure nothing stops them from doing
it.
As a result,
the GMO monoculture onslaught threatens plant species diversity everywhere.
With full Washington and WTO backing, major biotech companies are patenting
every plant imaginable in GMO form. By the beginning of the new millennium,
Engdahl referred to a "Gene Revolution (as a) monsoon force in
world agriculture" with four dominant companies controlling GMOs
and related agrichemical markets" - Monsanto, DuPont, Dow Agrisciences
and Syngenta in Switzerland from the merger of the agriculture divisions
of Novartis and AstraZeneca.
The "world's
number one" is Monsanto. The company was discussed in Part I of
this review, and Engdahl quoted its chairman saying his goal is a global
fusion of "three of the largest industries in the world - agriculture,
food and health - that now operate (separately, but) changes....will
lead to their integration." That was over seven years ago. Now
it's happening.
Engdahl covered
pertinent information on the industry that might otherwise have gone
unnoticed - that the three US GMO giants have a long sordid association
with the Pentagon supplying massively destructive chemicals like Agent
Orange, napalm and others. They now want to be trusted with the most
important things we ingest - our food and drugs in the face of strong
evidence their GMO varieties harm human health and their history of
public safety concern is atrocious.
Like it or
not, they're advancing their agenda, and a 2004 Rockefeller Foundation
report shows it. GM crop production achieved nine consecutive double
digit year increases since 1996. More than eight million farmers in
17 countries now plant them, over 90% in developing nations. Far and
away, the US is the world's leader "with aggressive Government
promotion, absence of labeling, and the domination of US farm production."
Here, "genetically engineered crops (have) essentially taken over
the American food chain." In 2004, over 85% of soybeans were genetically
modified, 45% of corn, and since animal feed is mainly from these crops
"the entire meat production of the nation (and exports) has been
fed on genetically modified animal feed." What animals eat, so
do humans.
It gets even
worse. Wind and air proliferate GM seeds to adjacent fields, including
organic ones that are now to some degree contaminated. Engdahl explained
that "after just six years, an estimated 67% of all US farm acreage
has been (irremedially) contaminated with genetically engineered seeds.
The genie was out of the bottle" as nothing known to science can
reverse this condition.
It renders
the notion of pure organic impossible except from perhaps very isolated
farms that comprise a small percent of the industry. Even so, organic
crops are safer than chemically-treated ones and hugely preferable to
any that are genetically modified. That said, as the Gene Revolution
advances worldwide, the future of organic farming is imperiled to the
horror of people like this writer dependent on them.
Consider
further the way GMO giants gain market share with government and WTO
backing. It's also helped by imposing rigid licensing and technology
agreements on farmers who must pay annual fees. They're binding and
enforced through Technology Use Agreements farmers have to sign, and
by so doing, entrap themselves in a "new form of serfdom."
Each year, they must buy new seeds, and they're forbidden to reuse any
from previous years as was customary before GMO introductions. Failure
to observe the agreements can result in severe legal damages or even
imprisonment and possible loss of their land.
Complicit
government agencies and clever marketing schemes aid the "Gene
Revolution" through "lies and damn lies" that GMO crops
have higher yields and can solve world hunger problems. The evidence
proves otherwise. In addition, resistant "superweeds" develop
over time, crop yields drop, farmers must use greater amounts of herbicides,
they're locked into high user fees, and they end up losing money. Bottom
line - the case for "genetically engineered seeds for agriculture
had been based on a citadel of scientific fraud and corporate lies."
This information is hidden from the public, and it's too late once unwary
farmers learn they've been had.
Besides that,
Russian science showed GMOs harm unborn babies as over half the rat
offsring fed a genetically modified soybean diet died in their first
three weeks of life - six times the normal rate. Evidence was growing
on GMO dangers, and the industry was alarmed. In 1999, it "required
an extraordinary intervention by its patron saint, the Rockefeller Foundation,"
to pull its fat out of the fire.
Population
Control - Terminators, Traitors, Spermicidal Corn
Crucial to
its strategy, GMO giants needed a "new technology which would allow
them to sell seed that would not reproduce." They developed one
called GURTs (Genetic Use Restriction Technologies) that became known
as "Terminator" seeds. The process is patented, it applies
to all plant and seed species, and replanting them doesn't work. They
won't grow. It's the industry's solution to controlling world food production
and assuring themselves big profits as a result. What a discovery. Terminator
corn, soybean and other seeds have been "genetically modified to
'commit suicide' after one harvest season" by a toxin-producing
inbuilt gene.
A closely
related technology is called T-GURT seeds, or second generation Terminators,
nicknamed "Traitor." The technology relies on controlling
both plant fertility and its genetic characteristics with "an inducible
gene promoter" called a "gene switch." GMO pest and disease-resistant
crops only work by using a specific chemical compound companies like
Monsanto make. Farmers buying seeds illegally won't get the compound
to "turn on" the resistant gene. Traitor technology thus creates
a captive new market for the GMO giants, and Traitor is cheaper to produce
than Terminator seeds.
Combined,
these two technologies give agribusiness giants unprecedented powers.
"For the first time in history, it (lets) three or four private
multinational seed companies....dictate terms to world farmers for their
seed." It's a biological warfare tool almost "too good to
believe" in the face of open citizen opposition the industry and
US Department of Agriculture (USDA) aim to quash.
Engdahl quoted
USDA spokesman Willard Phelps from a June, 1998 interview saying the
agency wanted Terminator technology to be "widely licensed and
made expeditiously available to many seed companies." Hidden was
the reason why - to introduce these seeds to the developing world as
the prime Rockefeller Foundation strategy. Engdahl called it a "Trojan
Horse for Western GMO seed giants to get control over Third World food
supplies in areas with weak or non-existent patent laws." It became
an urgent Foundation priority to spread the seeds worldwide to irreversibly
capture world markets. USDA fully backed the scheme.
That kind
of muscle (along with WTO rules) is overwhelming. It's the tactic used
when the US departments of state and agriculture coordinate famine relief
using genetically engineered US surplus commodities. Farmers getting
GMO seeds aren't told what they are, they plant them unwittingly for
the next harvest, get hooked, and the proliferation isn't restricted
to Africa. Through coercion, bribery and other illegal tactics, the
industry's goal is to introduce them everywhere but especially in highly
indebted developing states. In the case of Poland, it was in a country
with some of the richest European soil that's now spoiled by genetic
contamination.
Consider
how the scheme ties in with Rockefeller Foundation population control
strategy. In 2001, it was aided when the privately-owned biotech company,
Epicyte, announced it successfully developed the "ultimate GMO
crop" - contraceptive corn. It was called a solution to world "over-population,"
but news about it vanished after Biolex acquired the company.
One way or
other, the Rockefeller Foundation aims to reduce population through
human reproduction by spreading GMO seeds. It's doing it cooperatively
with the UN World Health Organization (WHO) by quietly funding its "reproductive
health" program through the use of an innovative tetanus vaccine.
Combined with hCG natural hormones, it's an abortion agent preventing
pregnancies, but women getting it aren't told. Neither is anything said
about the Pentagon viewing population reduction as a sophisticated form
of "biological warfare" (to) solve world hunger."
Avian Flu
Panic and GMO Chickens
In 2005,
George Bush duped the public into believing a so-called Avian (bird
flu) epidemic threatened a pandemic if not addressed. The solution as
always is turn to the private sector and reward his friends. In this
case, he asked Congress to appropriate an emergency $1 billion taxpayer
dollars for a drug Tamiflu. Unmentioned was a key fact. It was developed
and patented by Gilead Science and, that prior to becoming Defense Secretary,
Donald Rumsfeld was its chairman and still a major stockholder.
The scare
combined with government funding and a rising stock price stood to make
him a fortune just as Dick Cheney profited as Vice-President from his
Halliburton ties. Engdahl asked: "Was the avian flu scare another
Pentagon hoax" with an unknown aim? Based on known and suppressed
past government actions, "a supposedly deadly" new flu strain
"had to be treated with more than a little suspicion."
It was being
used to advance global agribusiness and poultry factory farm interests
"along the model of Arkansas-based Tyson Foods." Consider
the facts. Factory farms are breeding grounds for potential disease
proliferation because of their cramped, overcrowded conditions, but
this was never mentioned as a threat. Instead, small family-run free-ranging
chicken farmers were cited as culprits, especially in Asia, when, in
fact, that notion is at least very unlikely.
Small farms
like these are the safest, but an industry-government propaganda campaign
claimed otherwise. The scheme is clear. Five multinational giants dominate
US chicken meat production and processing - Tyson (the largest), Gold
Kist, Pilgrim's Pride, ConAgra Poultry and Perdue Farms. They produce
chicken meat under "atrocious health and safety conditions."
According to the GAO, these plants had "one of the highest rates
of injury and illness of any industry."
Cited was
exposure to "dangerous chemicals, blood, fecal matter, exacerbated
by poor ventilation and often extreme temperatures....(In addition,
chickens are tightly cramped and) prevented from moving or getting any
exercise on factory farms (so they can) grow....much larger (and faster)
than ever before." Growth boosters are also used, they create health
problems, and growing numbers of animal experts believe these farms,
not small Asian ones, are the real source of dangerous new diseases
like avian flu. That information is suppressed in the mainstream so
the public is duped.
It's so chicken
processing giants can globalize world production with the avian flu
scare "gift from heaven" to help them. If small Asian chicken
farmers can be squeezed out, Tyson and the others can access the huge
Asian poultry market. That's their aim and removing competition their
method with help from friends in high places.
Creating
the first GMO animal population is also part of the scheme with the
prospect of transforming world chickens into GMO birds. Engdahl put
it this way: "By 2006, riding the fear of an avian flu human epidemic,
the GMO or Gene Revolution players were clearly aiming to conquer the
world's most important source of meat protein, poultry." But another
scheme to dominate world food production also lay ahead. "Terminator
was about to come into the control of the world's largest GMO agribusiness
seed giant."
Genetic Armageddon:
Terminator and Patents on Pigs
In 2007,
Monsanto acquired Delta & Pine Land (D&PL)to complete its aborted
1999 takeover attempt. D&PL had global Terminator patent rights
and successfully extended them on GURTs. The deal made Monsanto "the
overwhelming monopolist of agricultural seeds of nearly every variety"
that includes fruits and vegetables from the company's acquisition of
Seminis a year earlier. With that company, Monsanto is now first in
vegetables and fruits, second in agronomic crops, and the world's third
largest agrochemical company. With D&PL, the company has absolute
control over the majority of plant agricultural seeds as well. In addition,
they're getting into the genetic engineering and patenting of animal
seeds.
In 2005,
Monsanto applied to the WTO for international patent rights for its
claimed genetic engineering of a means to identify pig genes derived
from patented male swine semen. The company also wants patents and the
right to collect license fees for particular farm animals and livestock
herds. If granted, "Any pigs that would be produced using this
reproductive technique would be covered by these patents." Several
techniques are being used and patented as fast as GMO lawyers can submit
applications to lock up animal life as intellectual property.
Companies
like Monsanto and Cargill have invested huge amounts to genetically
modify animals for profit. They thus want patent and licensing rights
to the results even though this represents a controversial goal to patent
life itself. A 1980 Supreme Court decision in Diamond v. Chakrabarty,
however, gave them an opening by ruling "anything under the sun
that is made by man" is patentable. It paved the way for a landmark
patent of the "Harvard mouse" that was genetically engineered
to be susceptible to cancer.
Engdahl explained
how four agribusiness giants used "stealth, system, and a well-supported
campaign of lies and distortion" to progress toward Henry Kissinger's
ultimate goal - controlling oil to control nations and food to control
people. The pursuit of both are ongoing with little public knowledge
of how far advanced things are and how reckless the scheme is - to genetically
engineer all plants and life forms and to control world population by
culling its "unwanted" parts.
Afterward
A September,
2006 WTO tribunal ruled for the US and against the EU. In so doing,
it threatens to open this important agricultural region to the "forced
introduction (of) genetically-manipulated plants and food products."
It recommended the WTO Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) require the EU
to conform with its obligations under WTO's SPS Agreement that lets
agribusiness ignore national laws and rights to protect public health
and safety. Failure to comply can cost EU countries hundreds of millions
of dollars in annual fines, so this issue is crucial to both sides.
At the time
of Engdahl's writing, it was unclear if the "GMO juggernaut would
be stopped globally." It's still uncertain, but as of December,
only nine biotech products are authorized for sale in the EU. So far,
most US corn exports are blocked and trade in other products is hindered
in spite of dozens of applications pending in the pipeline with their
fate undecided.
Several EU
countries, including France, Germany, Austria and Denmark, even ban
some EU-approved biotech products to further cloud the outlook. Polls
show why with European public opinion strongly opposed to GMO foods
and ingredients with hostility levels in France as high as 89% and 79%
wanting governments to ban them. This shows European consumers are far
ahead of Americans and much better protected (so far) by their overall
exclusion as well as having labeling requirements for those allowed
to be sold. That provision is crucial as it empowers consumers to use
or avoid eating these foods. If enough people abstain, food outlets
won't carry them.
Engdahl ends
on a high note by observing how vulnerable GMO giants are to criticism.
Thrusting untested products down consumer throats is "grounds for
organizing a global ban or moratorium on them" if enough vocal
opposition can be marshaled. Throughout his book, he sounds the alarm
with reams of carefully documented facts on the industry, its products
and goals. Converting world agriculture to GMOs, allowing agribusiness
free reign over them, and combining that scheme with a diabolical population
culling agenda adds up to solving world hunger through genocide and
endangering the rest of us in the process.
So far, Washington
and the industry are on a roll toward controlling oil and food. Hundreds
of millions around the world stand opposed, but it's unclear if that's
enough. Engdahl's book is a wake-up call for every friend of the earth
to understand issues this crucial can't be left in the hands of unscrupulous
business giants and their supportive friends in high places everywhere.
The book has reams of ammunition against them. It needs to be thoroughly
read and used. The stakes are much too high - human health and safety
must never be compromised for profit.
Stephen
Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected].
Also visit
his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen
to The Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on TheMicroEffect.com
Mondays at noon US Central time.
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