Occupying Monsanto – A global protest for the right to safe food and the end to a monopoly
From Chanel Williams
Imagine a world where one corporation controls the type of food your family eats from the mustard, the okra, the bringe oil, the rice, and the cauliflower. Monsanto is a provider of agricultural products for farmers and they currently own 90 percent of the world’s patents for genetically modified (GMO) seed including cotton, soy-beans, corn, sugar beets and canola. GMOs are extremely detrimental to human body causing life threatening illness.
Monsanto is infamous for taking advantage of small farmers, and with the advent of MoU’s they are doing so with governmental license. Countries like India, Pakistan, Australia, and New Zealand have all executed MoU’s with Monsanto. MoU’s or memorandum’s of understanding permit Monsanto to use publicly owned lands to create so called demonstration farms (GMO breeding camps) which in turn -at least in the case of Rajasthan – are subsidized by the government.
Once they have established the norm, that seed can be owned as their property; royalties can be collected. We will depend on them for every seed we grow of every crop we grow. If they control seed, they control food, they know it – it’s strategic. It’s more powerful than bombs. It’s more powerful than guns. This is the best way to control the populations of the world.
The story starts in the White House, where Monsanto often got its way by exerting disproportionate influence over policymakers via the “revolving door”. One example is Michael Taylor, who worked for Monsanto as an attorney before being appointed as deputy commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1991. While at the FDA, the authority that deals with all US food approvals, Taylor made crucial decisions that led to the approval of GE foods and crops. Then he returned to Monsanto, becoming the company’s vice president for public policy.
On May 25 more than two million protesters in 436 cities across the world took to the streets in a unified charge against agribusiness company and genetically modified foods. The AP reported that the “March Against Monsanto” protests took place in at least 52 countries and 436 cities.
The March Against Monsanto movement began when founder and organizer Tami Canal created a Facebook page on Feb. 28 calling for a rally against the company’s practices.
“If I had gotten 3,000 people to join me, I would have considered that a success,” she said Saturday. Instead, she said an “incredible” number of people responded to her message and turned out to rally.
“It was empowering and inspiring to see so many people, from different walks of life, put aside their differences and come together today,” Canal said. The group plans to harness the success of the event to continue its anti-GMO cause.
“We will continue until Monsanto complies with consumer
demand. They are poisoning our children, poisoning our pla-net,” she said. “If we don’t act, who’s going to?”
