World According to Monsanto, pt 3

This segment starts out with a heavy emphasis on the safety angle. Monsanto's genetically engineered crops (and everyone else's genetically modified organisms) haven't been tested for safety, they were just declared to be safe.

We've been eating them for years, so they're safe. This is medically unsound, unscientific reasoning.

But Congress doesn't give a damn about safety until people are actually dropping dead from your product, so, on to the next thing. Biotech representatives will insist that depriving poor countries of biotech seeds is a hateful, possibly racist act, spawned of a lack of concern for the starving and poverty-stricken.

Erm, about that, from the Center for Food Safety:

Washington D.C., February 11, 2009 - A new report released today by the Center for Food Safety and Friends of the Earth International warned that genetically modified (GM) crops are benefiting biotech food giants instead of the worldís hungry population, which is projected to increase to 1.2 billion by the year 2025 due to the global food crisis.

The report explains how biotech firms like Monsanto are exploiting the dramatic rise in world grain prices that are responsible for the global food crisis by sharply increasing the prices of GM seeds and chemicals they sell to farmers, even as hundreds of millions go hungry.

The findings of the report support a comprehensive United Nationsí assessment of world agriculture ñ the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) - which in 2008 concluded that GM crops have little potential to alleviate poverty and hunger in the world. IAASTD experts recommended instead low-cost, low-input agroecological farming methods.

... "GM seeds and the pesticides used with them are much too expensive for Africaís small farmers. Those who promote this technology in developing countries are completely out of touch with reality," he added.

"U.S. farmers are facing dramatic increases in the price of GM seeds and the chemicals used with them," said Bill Freese, science policy analyst at the US-based Center for Food Safety and co-author of the report. "Farmers in any developing country that welcomes Monsanto and other biotech companies can expect the same fate - sharply rising seed and pesticide costs, and a radical decline in the availability of conventional seeds," he added.

GM seeds cost from two to over four times as much as conventional, non-GM seeds, and the price disparity is increasing. From 80% to over 90% of the soybean, corn and cotton seeds planted in the U.S. are GM varieties. Thanks to GM trait fee increases, average U.S. seed prices for these crops have risen by over 50% in just the past two to three years. ...

The world's poor can't afford this. They need low cost solutions that have a chance at profitability even when the fertilizer budget runs low.