- 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.
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- Food is Power
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- Afterward
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- 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
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
-
- 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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