GM Giants Throw Their Weight Around
For the good of humanity they said - remember
that?
The GM seed company Monsanto is flexing its
muscles again in Mississippi where soy farmer Homan McFarling has been the
subject of a demand from the company to pay it hundreds of thousands of dollars
for alleged technology piracy. McFarling did what his father did before him and
saved seed from a previous yeas crop in contravention of Monsanto' contract
under which they sell the seed. It was presumably to prevent this seed saving
that Monsanto proposed to introduce their 'stopper gene' to prevent the saved
seed from being viable. They obviously haven't done so or Mr McFarling would
have come up dry. The stopper gene was how the world was going to be protected
from the evils of GM spreading to the surrounding non-GM crops. So which is it?
No stopper gene and unopposed GM spread or stopper gene and depriving
under-developed countries from growing more than one crop - looks like they're
damned if they do and damned if they don't. Truly a time for a minor name change
to Monsatan.
Posted: Sat
- March 19, 2005 at 09:21 PM