[LINK] The Main Problem With GM Food Is The Patent, Not The GM

[Frank O'Connor]

On 08/01/2013, at 11:02 AM, Janet Hawtin <janet at hawtin.net.au> wrote:

> Quarantine should be the responsibility of the GM producer and there
> need to be penalties for breeches so that it is real for them.
> ie treat organic crops as the safe default and have controls for other
> approaches which have related ecological risks.

That's a big one for me. At the moment Monsanto and the like try to extract damages from those who own the properties adjoining the GM crop on the basis that by having their non-GM crop corrupted by GM they have somehow violated the patent/copyright of Monsanto by allowing their crop to be corrupted. I'm only aware of a couple of cases in the US where this has succeeded (as a counter claim), but it seems to me that both the farmer planting the GM crop and the company providing the GM crop should be liable for damages to the farmer whose non-GM crop was contaminated ... not the other way around.

> It should not be legal for a company to ban farmers from growing from
> their own harvesting of seed for the next season even if it is GM.
> (Indian farmer suicides
> http://naturalsociety.com/monsantos-gmo-seeds-farmer-suicides-every-30-minutes/)
> 

Mmmm ... a heavy price to pay for GM. One would think that the company could create GM product that produced sterile seed to protect their business model rather than nailing farmers for doing what they have done for thousands of years (in their own form of genetic manipulation and crop development and optimisation).

> Perhaps there should be a commitment to and branding for crops which
> are 'open standards' in the same way that document formats and
> technologies offer advantages to people working with them, even if
> there is a graduation between heritage varieties, hybrid varieties and
> GM at least flagging which is what makes it possible to see if there
> are issues with any.
> 

Mmmm. I have problems considering a GM modification that prevents a specific crop from being affected by a weed-killer (Round-Up) marketed by the creator of the GM crop as a 'great leap forward' in genetic engineering. Call me cynical but that's just a marketing device, not a revolution in agriculture.

Other GM modifications (crops that require less water, are more heat tolerant, require less fertiliser, can be grown more intensively etc etc) are advances worth talking about that could benefit farmers and societies that use them ... but mean that the alternatives (e.g. looking after the environment to ensure that 'old model' crops continue to flourish) tend to go by the wayside.

Sometimes technology and science gets adopted for the wrong reasons, or simply staves off a crisis until it effectively becomes catastrophic and unstoppable.

What I worry about with GM is not what it does to us when we consume it (hey, there's no evidence of any harm there, and not likely to be given the fact that the same proteins, chemicals, taste or whatever tends to coexist in GM and non-GM foods) ... I worry about a narrowing of the gene base, a concentration on particular crops that may carry their own vulnerabilities, to disease or changes in environmental conditions, that nature hasn't weeded out with 3.5 billion years of evolution.

> Would it be reasonable to brand the proportion of vegetable fruit meat
> prices goes to the farmer and what is retail so people could shop for
> products which are domestically Fair Trade? Or perhaps we need to ask
> for Fair Trade domestically? Would be nice to have a way of seeing
> which Australian Made products are returning enough to farmers.

'Fair Trade' in any farm produce has already gone by the board. Big trade combines, supermarket chains and the futures markets have taken over, and leave the little operator, the family farmer, pretty much at their mercy. That said, economies of scale and the capital intensive nature of modern farming have been pushing farming in this direction for decades anyway. In the future, big farming projects and enterprises will tend to rule - especially if economic, meteorological and other conditions impacting farming get more tenuous.

> I worry that the historical record(and current process) of changes in
> policy and negotiations including trade agreements is not transparent.

Trade agreements should never be viewed as anything but two or more parties fighting in their own economic interests. Sometimes this results in a 'win-win' situation for all, but mostly one party or another uses its muscle to gain more beneficial terms in trade/economic relationships. The GATT (and particularly the recent US-Australian free trade agreements) are dotted with such arrangements in which winners are few and losers have to live with it.

> The commitments our government makes are opaque and so we do not know
> what we are losing. Suddenly there are proposals for mining around the
> Barrier Reef, Tasmanian Forests, Kangaroo Island. What has changed,
> what have we conceded to make this possible?

In the last 50 years we've conceded much, presumably countered by gains we have received by way of recompense. Sometimes we've simply given it away. After September 2001, in a fit of fear and paranoia we gave away our privacy and any number of privileges and rights for security (a bad bargain IMHO), we elected to spend more of defence, policing and blood and treasure on overseas wars for the same security. Personally I have no problems with the transience of life, the ephemeral nature of existence, living with risk and the like ... but it seems our society wants a guarantee of security and their 'standard of living' that is incompatible with privacy, liberty and personal rights.

And we make these life choices ourselves with the technology we adopt, with services we pay for, with all manner of decisions we make in life. Can't just blame business and government (although it pays to keep an eagle eye on same.)

>  Media do not cover this kind of material in a
> comprehensive and thorough way. Perhaps people would not watch. Would
> people vote their perspectives on these issues as much as they would
> for BigBrother?

We do not live in the Golden Age of Journalism. 

Perhaps that's a function of the tenuous nature of the traditional media at the moment, perhaps its a function of the concentration of ownership, perhaps its a result of the descent into the trite and inconsequential amongst the exhausted jaded media consumers, or perhaps its a result of a huge slippage in journalism standards. Whatever ... they are losing consumers to the Internet and more engaging media, and I don't see now as the time to change the rules for an already decayed and probably dying business model. Traditional media will go the way of the dinosaurs no matter how it is regulated.

> 
> Universities in Canada are losing engineering and social
> science/humanities courses in favour of medical and legal courses
> because they have adopted the same approach we are taking where the
> student choice determines the possible scope of programs. This means
> nationally we will not have a mix of offerings with a relationship to
> 'skill security'?.

Actually the last couple of years have seen science and engineering regaining popularity. Arts is still on the outer (hey, we are charging these prospective students like wounded bulls to do the courses they want to do, so they do need to adopt study programs with at least a reasonable probability of a good economic return) ... but given how the employment situation sucks for the younger generation at the moment, you can't blame them for following the money and demand.

> Combined with transient cultural record and the
> defunding of student politics as a forum for learning democratic
> process it feels as though nationally it will be difficult to sustain
> critical thought about national governance if the data infrastructure,
> skills and fora for discussion are lost.
> 

Given that student politics has produced Gillard, Abbott and a host of other politicians from Labor, LNP and other persuasions ... who have added so little in the way of value, satisfaction and engagement to we of the voter fraternity/sorority over the last 30 years ... I don't see much of a downside to defunding student politics. I remember a time at University when the only way you could get a crowd together was by cracking a free barrel of booze, or announcing a party ... student politics just poisoned this atmosphere. (About its only benefit in my time was that it sequestered 90% of the university's assholes together - and away from the rest of us.)

Just my 2 cents worth ...