Biotech Giants Using GMOs to Build Food Tyranny

Source: (https://bit.ly/3DqdiPf)
We are currently seeing rising food prices due to a combination
of an engineered food crisis for geopolitical reasons, financial
speculation by hedge funds, pension funds and investment banks
and profiteeringby global grain trade conglomerates like Cargill,
Louis Dreyfus, ADM and Bunge.
In addition, agri firms like Bayer, Syngenta (ChemChina) and
Corteva cynically regard current circumstances as an opportunity
to promote their agenda and seek commercialisation of unregulated
and improperly tested genetically engineered (GE) technologies.
These companies have long promoted the false narrative that their
hybrid seeds and their GE seeds, along with their agrichemicals,
are essential for feeding a growing global population. This agenda
is orchestrated by vested interests and career scientists - many
of whom long ago sold their objectivity for biotech money - lobby
groups and disgraced politiciansand journalists.
Meanwhile, in an attempt to deflect and sway opinion, these industry
shills also try to depict their critics as being Luddites and
ideologically driven and for depriving the poor of (GE) food and
farmers of technology.
This type of bombast disintegrates when confronted with the evidence
of a failing GE project.
As well as this kind of emotional blackmail, prominent lobbyists like
Mark Lynas- unable or unwilling to acknowledge that genuine food
security and food sovereignty can be achieved withoutproprietary
products - trot out other baseless and absurd claims that industry
critics are Kremlin stooges, while displaying their ignorance
of geopolitics.
Indeed, who would you turn to for an analysis of current US-Russia
relations? An advocate for GE foods and pesticides who makes
inaccurate claims from his perch at the Gates Foundation-funded
Cornell Alliance for Science. Or a renowned academic like Professor
Michael Hudsonwhose specialist field covers geopolitics.
But it would not be the first time that an industry activist like
Lynas has ventured beyond his field of claimed expertise to try
to score points.
However, dirty tricks and smears are par for the course because the
agri biotech emperor has been shown to have no clothes time and
again - GE is a failing, often detrimental technology in search
of a problem. And if the problem does not exist, the reality of food
insecurity will be twisted to serve the industry agenda, and
regulatory bodies and institutions supposedly set up to serve the
public interest will be placed under intense pressure or subverted.
The performance of GE crops has been a hotly contested issue and,
as highlighted in a 2018 piece by PC Kesavan and MS Swaminathan
in the journal Current Science, there is sufficiently strong evidence
to question their efficacy and the devastating impacts on the
environment, human health and food security, not least in places
like Latin America.
A new report by Friends of the Earth (FoE) Europe shows that big
global biotech corporations like Bayer and Corteva, which together
already control 40% of the global commercial seed market, are now
trying to cement complete dominance. Industry watchdog GMWatch
notes these companies are seeking to increase their control over the
future of food and farming by extensively patenting plants and
developing a new generation of genetically modified organisms
(GMOs).
These companies are moving to patent plant genetic information that
can occur naturally or as a result of genetic modification. They
claim all plants with those genetic traits as their "invention". Such
patents on plants would restrict farmers' access to seeds and impede
breeders from developing new plants as both would have to ask for
consent and pay fees to the biotech companies.
Corteva has applied for some 1,430 patents on new GMOs, while
Bayer has applications for 119 patents.
Mute Schimpf, food campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe, says:
Big biotech's strategy is to apply for wide patents that would also
cover plants which naturally present the same genetic characteristics
as the GMOs they engineered. They will be lining their pockets from
farmers and plant breeders, who in turn will have a restricted access
to what they can grow and work with."
For instance, GMWatch notes that Corteva holds a patent for a process
modifying the genome of a cell using the CRISPR technique and claims
the intellectual property rights to any cells, seeds and plants that
include the same genetic information, whether in broccoli, maize,
soy, rice, wheat, cotton, barley or sunflower.
The agri biotech sector is engaged in a corporate hijack
of agriculture while attempting to portray itself as being involved
in some kind of service to humanity.
And this is a global endeavour, which is also currently being played
out in India.
A recent report on the Down to Earth website stated that the Genetic
Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), India's apex regulatory
body, might approve the commercial cultivation of GM mustard. In
response, concerned citizens have written to the government,
objecting to the potential approval of unsafe, unneeded and unwanted
GMOs.
The decision whether to allow the commercialisation of what would
be the first GE food crop in India has been dragging on for years.
COVID delayed the process, but a decision on GM mustard now
appears to be close.
However, serious conflicts of interest, sleight of hand and
regulatory delinquency - not to mention outright fraud - could mean
the decision coming down in favour of commercialisation.
The bottom line is government collusion with global agribusiness,
which is trying to hide in the background, despite much talk
of Professor Pental and his team at Delhi University being
independent developers of GM mustard (DMH 11).
GM mustard presents an opportunity to make various herbicide
tolerant (HT) mustard hybrids using India's best germ plasm, which
would be an irresistible money spinner for the seed and chemical
manufacturers.
In 2016, campaigner Aruna Rodrigues petitioned India's Supreme
Court seeking a moratorium on the release of any GMOs into the
environment pending a comprehensive, transparent and rigorous
biosafety protocol in the public domain conducted by agencies
of independent expert bodies, the results of which are made public.
In her writ, Rodrigues stated:
In 2002, Proagro Seed Company (now Bayer), applied for commercial
approval for exactly the same construct that Prof Pental and his team
are now promoting as HT Mustard DMH 11. The reason today matches
Bayer's claim then of 20% better yield increase (than conventional
mustard). Bayer was turned down because the ICAR [Indian Council
of Agricultural Research] said that their field trials did not give
evidence of superior yield."
The petition says that 14 years later invalid field trials and
unremittingly fraudulent data now supposedly provide evidence
of a superior yield of 25%.
Rodrigues continues:
HT DMH 11 is the same Bayer HT GMO construct - a herbicide
tolerant GMO of three alien genes. It employs, like the Bayer
construct, pollen sterilisation technology BARNASE, with the
fertility restorer gene BARSTAR (B & B system) (modified from
the original genes sourced from a soil bacterium) and the herbicidal
bar gene in each GMO parental line. The employment of the B & B
system is to facilitate the making of hybrids as mustard is largely
a self-pollinating crop (but outcrosses at rates of up to 20%). There
is no trait for yield. HT DMH 11 is straightforwardly an herbicide
tolerant (HT) crop, though this aspect has been consistently
marginalised by the developers over the last several years."
In order to produce a hybrid, two parent lines had to be genetically
modified. Barnase and barstar technology was used in the parent
lines. And the outcome is three GMOs: the two parents and the
offspring, DMH 11, which will be ideal for working with glufosinate
(Bayer's 'Liberty' and 'Basta').
According to Rodrigues:
… the plan is that the official route for the first-time release
of a HT crop and a food crop will be through HT DMH 11 and/or
its two HT parental lines by stealth. Since the claimed YIELD
superiority of HT DMH 11 through the B & B system over non-GMO
varieties and hybrids is quite simply NOT TRUE…"
In her numerous affidavits submitted to India's Supreme Court,
Rodrigues has set out in some detail why GE crops are a threat to
human health and the environment and are unsuitable for India.
She briefly communicated some of her concerns in a 2020 interview
titled GMO Issue Reaches Boiling Point in India: Interview with
Aruna Rodrigues.
Moreover, various high-level reports have advised against introducing
GM food crops to India: The 'Jairam Ramesh Report' of February 2010,
imposing an indefinite moratorium on Bt Brinjal; The 'Sopory
Committee Report' (August 2012); The 'Parliamentary Standing
Committee' (PSC) Report on GM crops (August 2012); and The
'Technical Expert Committee (TEC) Final Report' (June-July 2013).
These reports conclude that GM crops are unsuitable for India and
that existing biosafety and regulatory procedures are inadequate.
Appointed by the Supreme Court, the TEC was scathing about the
regulatory system prevailing in India, highlighting its inadequacies
and inherent serious conflicts of interest. The TEC recommended
a 10-year moratorium on commercial release of GM crops. The PSC
also arrived at similar conclusions.
According to eminent lawyer Prashant Bhushan, these official reports
attest to just how negligent India's regulators are and to a serious
lack of expertise on GM issues within official circles.
Aruna Rodrigues long ago noted the abysmal state of GMO regulatory
oversight in the country and the need for the precautionary principle
to be applied without delay. But not much has changed and the
regulatory position basically remains the same.
Rodrigues asserts that the two parent lines and the hybrid DMH-11
require full independent testing, which has not occurred. And it has
not occurred because of a conflict of interest and regulatory delinquency.
Rodrigues notes:
India is suddenly faced with the deregulation of GMOs. This is
disastrous and alarming, without ethics and a scientific rationale."
GM mustard is said to out-yield India's best cultivars by 25-30%.
The choice of the correct 'comparators' is an absolute requirement
for the testing of any GMO to establish whether it is required in
the first place. But Rodrigues argues that the choice of deliberately
poor 'comparators' is at the heart of the fraud.
In the absence of adequate and proper testing and sufficient data, no
statistically valid conclusions of mean seed yield (MSY) of DMH 11
could be drawn anyhow. Yet they were drawn by both the regulators
and developers who furthermore self-conducted and supervised the
trials. Without valid data to justify it, DMH 11 was allowed in
pre-commercial large scale field trials in 2014-15.
For an adequate basis for a comparative assessment of MSY, Rodrigues
argues it was absolutely necessary for the comparison to include the
cross (hybrid) between the non-modified parental lines (nearest
isogenic line), at the very start of the risk assessment process and
throughout the subsequent stages of field testing, in addition to
other recommended 'comparators'. None of this was done.
Deliberately poor non-GMO mustard varieties were chosen to promote
prospects for DMH 11 as a superior yielding GMO hybrid, which then
passed through 'the system' and was allowed by the regulators,
a classic non-sequitur by both the regulators and Dr Pental.
The fraud continued, according to Rodrigues, by actively fudging
yield data of DMH 11 by 15.2% to show higher MSY. In her various
Supreme Court petitions, she has offered a good deal of evidence
to show how it was done.
Rodrigues says:
It matters not a jot if HT DMH 11 is not approved. What does matter
is that its two HT (GMO) parental lines are: HT Varuna-barnase and
HT EH 2-barstar will be used 'for introgressing the bar-barnase and
bar barstar genes into new set of parental line to develop next
generation of hybrids with higher yields" (according to the developer
and regulator)."
She says this extraordinary admission confirms that the route to any
number of 'versions' of HT mustard DMH 11 is invested in these
two GMOs as parents - India will have hundreds of low-yielding HT
mustard hybrids, using India's best mustard cultivars at great harm
to farmers and contaminating the country's seeds and mustard germ
plasm irreversibly.
In effect, according to Rodrigues, India faces a three-in-one
regulatory jugglery in a brazen display of collusion to fraud the
nation by regulatory institutions of governance.
Moreover, HT mustard DMH 11 will make no impact on the domestic
production of mustard oil, which was a major reason why it was being
pushed in the first place. The argument was that GM mustard would
increase productivity and this would help reduce imports of edible
oils.
Until the mid-1990s, India was virtually self-sufficient in edible
oils. Then import tariffs were reduced, leading to an influx of cheap
(subsidised) edible oil imports that domestic farmers could not
compete with. This effectively devastated the home-grown edible
oils sector and served the interests of palm oil growers and US grain
and agriculture commodity company Cargill.
It came as little surprise that in 2013 India's then Agriculture
Minister Sharad Pawar accused US companies of derailing the
nation's oil seeds production programme.
Whether in India, Europe or elsewhere, the industry's agenda is to
use GE technology to secure intellectual property rights over all
seeds (and chemical inputs) and thus gain total control over food
and farming. And given what has been set out here - they seek to
achieve this by all means necessary.