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EU Blocks France's Ban of Monsanto's GM Maize
redletterdave writes with an update to news from a few months ago that France had banned the growing of Monsanto's genetically modified corn. After reviewing the evidence France submitted in support of the ban, the European Food Safety Authority has now rejected it. An official opinion (PDF) stated that they "could not identify any new science-based evidence indicating that maize MON 810 cultivation in the EU poses a significant and imminent risk to the human and animal health or the environment."
.. Amaizing
What about people not wanting massive use of round-up chemicals, small farmers being sued out of existence, and one corporation monopolising the entire seed supply?
Not because the EU overturned the ban, but because the EU can overrule national decisions in such important matters, and a vast majority of other matters in almost all aspects of life.
French authorities may or may not be right about not trusting Monsanto's GMOs, I am not qualified to have an opinion on the subject, but what I see here is that, in effect, they only have a consulting role since a another body in Brussels disagreed and decided otherwise. That's what you get when you relinquish your national sovereignty to a half-assed de-facto federal government that doesn't speak its name.
It's the same for the ability to lower certain taxes, doing protectionism, devaluing the currency they no longer have control of, and a whole slew of important and less important things that define an independent nation. EU member states don't have any real say over these things anymore. That's why I'm amazed to see people in the streets of France celebrate the election of their new prez, hoping for a brighter future with him, when in reality he's just a figurehead with almost no power to do anything meaningful.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
huh. they couldn't prove God ~doesn't~ exist.
gonna need a better argument than that, though i'm not Monsanto's biggest fan.
The French are not big eaters of corn, anyways.
Considering France is the 7th largerst producer of maize in the world that may not be true.
The French are not big eaters of corn, anyways.
They may not enjoy corn on the cob, but they eat corn alright, as does most of the world, in the form of processed food. You find corn derivatives in a bewildering varieties of industrial foods.
France also produces a lot of corn, amazingly, considering the problems they have with water table depletion every other summer.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
but it could get worse: See The Windup Girl
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
Somehow, the media is hooked onto the theory that GM modified crops will make us all Zombies.
That is not the problem. I really doubt that these modifications will create crops which will cause health problems.
The actual problem is licensing and economics.
A seed is a thing which cannot be contained. If you neighbor has a crop, seeds will come to you farm.
If its a resilient crop, it may dominate too.
And then they lawyers come with their army, and drag you to court. How many small farmers can afford to fight.
Yes, there will be farmers who will willfully cheat, but right now the licensing model, and the law does not recognize this difference.
To be frank, GM crops can actually help coping with food shortage, but the licensing model has made something which is a boon, a bane.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
Yes, there is no shortage of french people ready to go burn GM crop fields. And jailing them pushes the issue into the political field. Add to that the new socialist government who's allied with the green party ; I don't see a bright future for Monsanto GM crops in France.
This is the actual conclusion;
In conclusion, the EFSA GMO Panel considers that, based on the documentation submitted by France, there is no specific scientific evidence, in terms of risk to human and animal health or the environment, that would support the notification of an emergency measure under Article 34 of Regulation (EC) No 1829/2003 and that would invalidate its previous risk assessments of maize MON 810.
Basically, the "significant imminent risk" standard is for the use of "emergency measure[s]". That does not mean that after study it will not be banned but that the emergency powers do not fit.
With GM food crops, the danger is more from handing of control of your seed stock to a potentially malevolent vendor, than to the health of consumers.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
As I heard in French news a few month ago, It was planned that Monsanto will won at EU. The plan for this year was that. It's almost impossible with a court decision in May to buy and grow seeds for this year in France. Everyone who want to plant corn has already bought real corn seeds for 2012 so France won almost one year.
The "crop yield increases" so frequently touted as the great advantage disappear after a few years.
There is so much disinformation about the drop yield of GMOs (from both sides) that I have given up trying to figure out the truth. Anyway, this might also be the case for other cultivars, and isn't relevant in whether we allow people to use it, only to whether it is a good idea for the individual farmer to use it.
Herbs become roundup-resistant, requiring the use of more roundup, leading to more pollution
This would be a problem for any herbicide-resistant cultivar. If we are going to pollute, let's at least pollute with Roundup, which is not harmful for mammals, and is mostly bound to the soil. It is by far the least bad of the pesticides (not that that makes it good, but if spraying with Roundup is a problem, we should ban all pesticides).
, and the destruction of bee populations (like there's no tomorrow)
This is not caused by roundup. The best guess we have is a new insecticide (I forget which).
Then there's lock-in, aggressive law-suits by Monsanto to force other farmers to start using their products, etc.. Lots of problems that don't exist with other cultivars. (Because no, you cannot separate GMOs from their salesmen.)
That is a problem of contract law or IP law, let's fix it there in stead of banning a potentially useful tool.
That's correct. First, about half of it is exported, and 80% of the rest is animal feed. What remains is used mostly for starch (not all of it for eating). The sweet corn eaten in corn form is a tiny fraction.
Gravitation is a theory, not a fact.
The issue is that the ban in France was even overturned by their own courts as not being scientifically based. They then tried again to get it banned throughout the entire EU and failed again.
Here is a quote;"
EuropaBio, the European biotech industry group, urged French leaders to decide "whether they want to regain their position as a leader of agricultural innovation or support an anti-science agenda that weakens Europe's competitiveness" after a judgment on Monday from Paris's highest court.
You might also want to check this out. Notice how many countries have approved the corn.
Here is an interesting piece of information from this article;
“The new ban is not justified by scientific evidence,” John Combest, a spokesman for Monsanto, said in a e-mail today. The company does not market MON810 in France because “we seek planting where we have broad farmer and government support,” Combest said.
Now why would France want to ban something not even marketed in their country? Perhaps it is that they want to protect their own seed industry at the expense of growers in other EU countries.
Take a look at this article. The EU has yet to order France to lift the ban and nothing will happen till after the election and any new government has shown its intentions. That has not happened.
To summarize, the EU reviewed the corn last year and found no issues. France banned the corn, Their own courts overturned that ban. France banned it again. France applied to get the ban applied to all EU countries. The EU declined. That is where we stand today. The French ban is still in effect but there will be no EU ban.
Do you stop the sale of all new foods for 90 years? Where is the cutoff?
The cutoff is when you've done enough rigorous and open testing that nobody in the professional scientific community can raise any particular concerns.
Look, any time you introduce a new element into an ecosystem there WILL be impact of one sort or another. The people producing the GMO's have, for example, claimed there is no risk of their product escaping into other fields, which has been proven false over and over. Each time it happens, these assholes sue the farmers whose crops get contaminated for "illegally" using their patented product. That alone should have been enough to warrant a ban, cancer or not.
Then we have some very recent evidence that the rash of Colony Collapse Disorder among honey bee populations is being caused by a somewhat new pesticide. This just so happens to be the same pesticide which is integrated into the Monsanto corn, and preliminary tests indicate it DOES affect bee populations. While there isn't enough evidence to prove it yet, it's enough evidence to be very worrying. Especially when viewed in light of the other claims Monsanto has made about their product and have been shown to be false.
There just hasn't been enough testing of these products. What little testing has been done, is either not transparent enough or has to be done without their cooperation making it even more difficult. The judge should not have blocked this ban, if France doesn't want the product they shouldn't be forced to accept it.
Yes, as an EU 'citizen' and someone who worked for the EEC for about ten years [as a consultant, to my shame] I agree with this. The apparatus of Brussels is divorced from the wishes of the great unwashed [us], non-transparent, mediocre, subject to continual lobbying [Axa, Microsoft, Monsanto], undemocratic [the votes 'for' the Euro were exceptionally thin, even in France, had to be 'done again' in Ireland] and unresponsive.
This book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Democracy-Europe-Larry-Siedentop/dp/0140287930 deals with some of the arguments about drift, neo-liberalism and democratic deficit.
Sanity is a relative thing, it's saner than Gadaffi's Libya and probably saner than the worst of corporate America, but not healthy in many other ways.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Even though it's a pure flame against Monsanto, I would mod this up if I had any points.
You're right. Monsanto make life itself a business, and they do not seem to care at all how they make a profit. Where Google's motto is "Don't be evil", it seems Monsanto has the opposite motto: "Be evil". Kill small business. Own life. Then extort it for profit. If you own the food market, you own the world.
I cannot understand why anyone with a functioning brain would look for a job at Monsanto.
[...]a potentially malevolent vendor,[...]
You suggest that Monsanto is only "potentially malevolent"? They make a business of killing small farm businesses. Their legal department is larger than their scientific department. They created life that cannot reproduce, so that farmers have to come to them each year to buy new seeds. What makes you still doubt?
"They created life that cannot reproduce, so that farmers have to come to them each year to buy new seeds." Actually they didn't the Agriculture department and two private companies did. Monsanto bought the two private companies in 2005 acquiring the rights but they didn't create the genes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technology
Actually, the pesticide that currently seems to be most strongly implicated in colony collapse disorder is imidacloprid, which is not the same as the bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) GMO corn toxin. Unless you have seen something even newer? Still, that of course doesn't preclude BT damaging other parts of the ecosystem.
Considering Monstantos corporate ethics, if they could create a corn variety that causes cancer in anyone eating it, I would bet they would. The company has such a history that trusting it with food is grossly negligent.
they eat corn alright, as does most of the world, in the form of processed food. You find corn derivatives in a bewildering varieties of industrial foods.
You imply that the French, and indeed the rest of the world, eat significant amount of processed food. It's difficult to get hard data on this, but my impression (from having lived there) is that processed food is a much smaller part of their diet than in the US. This article says that Americans eat rather more processed food than other countries, but it's difficult to compare because "baked goods" and "ready-to-eat" in the US and in France are rather different.
On the other hand, "most of the world" is certainly not eating significant amounts of industrial food - in China and India it's almost unheard of.
You do realize that if everyone started producing cash crops that the demand for food would go up at the same time that less was being produced?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Third world economies desperately need to transition from subsitence farming to producing cash crops. I'm no fan of Monsanto, but their actions will ultimately be beneficial.
Because Monsanto has been so successful in India and South America, right? There's a few documentaries on the subject, and I'm pretty sure they're on netflix. Monsanto really is one of the greatest evils in the world today, threatening human life far more seriously than any Muslim terrorist.
They created life that cannot reproduce, so that farmers have to come to them each year to buy new seeds.
The terminator genes were developed to limit the possibility of spreading traits, e.g. pesticide resistance, to weeds. It really is a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario.
They make a business of killing small farm businesses
Why exactly do they want less customers?
They created life that cannot reproduce, so that farmers have to come to them each year to buy new seeds.
No, they sell hybrid seed that produces genetically unstable seed. Welcome to the 1930's. They also have contracts that you must sign before buying seed, but that's contract law.
The cutoff is when you've done enough rigorous and open testing that nobody in the professional scientific community can raise any particular concerns.
Well, good news! Fact is, scientific consensus is that GE crops are safe and effective. Don't believe me? Go to your local university's agriculture, plant biology, genetics, or molecular biology/biochemistry department, or contact your local extension office (if you are in the US, you do have one). I have, and have yet to find a single person saying otherwise. Like evolution or vaccines, his is much more a popular controversy than a scientific one (discredited papers like the Pusztai study or the Séralini study notwithstanding).
The people producing the GMO's have, for example, claimed there is no risk of their product escaping into other fields, which has been proven false over and over.
Who? When? Plants cross pollinate. Everyone knows that, and problems from cross pollination are nothing new. That's why I put cheesecloth on my flowers when I garden. I grow stable lines and I don't want the to get cross pollinated, and others who grow open pollinated (or heirloom if you will) know the importance of preventing accidental pollenation. Or think of people who grow seedless fruits. What happens if you have a seedless citrus or persimmon orchard and someone decides to plant another variety? Seeds. Or what if you grow sweet corn next to field corn? The endosperm will be affected by what pollinates the corn, so your sweet corn will be ruined. So lets not act as if GE crops are the only thing where cross pollination occurs.
Each time it happens, these assholes sue the farmers whose crops get contaminated for "illegally" using their patented product.
No, they sue if you have an unnaturally large number of the transgene present, which is to say, when someone knowingly selects for the transgene (the morality of which is somewhat debatable, but lets not act as if it simply happens by accident). Can you show me a single case where they sued someone for simple cross pollination?
Then we have some very recent evidence that the rash of Colony Collapse Disorder among honey bee populations is being caused by a somewhat new pesticide. This just so happens to be the same pesticide which is integrated into the Monsanto corn, and preliminary tests indicate it DOES affect bee populations.
Absolutely false. CCD by the way occurs in areas where GE crops are not grown. The problem may be due to farming practices (like monoculture), or certain other pesticides, but there is no evidence to suggest that Bt crops are responsible in any way.
Especially when viewed in light of the other claims Monsanto has made about their product and have been shown to be false.
Which is why farmers keep buying their seed, right? Which is why we are actually seeing problems because farmers aren't planting enough non-GMO refuge area?
There just hasn't been enough testing of these products.
Everyone says this, but never says what would be considered sufficient testing. I think it is so the goalpost can keep moving.