The Monsanto Protection Act

President Obama outraged food activists last week when he signed into law a spending bill with a controversial rider attached. Critics have dubbed the rider the “Monsanto Protection Act.” That’s because it effectively says the government must allow the planting of genetically modified crops even if courts rule they pose health risks. The provision calls on the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the USDA, to, “grant temporary permit(s) or temporary deregulation,” to the crop growers until an environmental review is completed. In other words, plant the GE crop first and assess the impact later.

One of the biggest supporters of the provision was Republican Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, Monsanto’s home state. Blunt reportedly crafted the bill’s language with Monsato’s help.
On the other side was the lone member of the Senate who’s also an active farmer, Democrat Jon Tester of Montana. Senator Tester tried to remove the rider when the budget bill made its way through Congress last month.

Senator Tester’s effort failed, and the rider was included in last month’s legislation that avoided a government shutdown.

Now that President Obama has signed the spending bill into law, some uncertainty remains over whether it introduces a new policy or whether it codifies existing government practice. But regardless, it’s galvanized the food justice movement here in the U.S., renewing calls for greater oversight of genetically modified foods and of corporate control of the food chain. And although they may have lost the first round, food activists are gearing up for another fight later this year: Because it was passed as a rider and not as its own legislation, the provision will expire in six months, when it will surely come up again.

Wenonah Hauter, talking:

this rider is unprecedented and really outrageous interference with our courts and the separation of powers. Now, the biotech industry has been working to get a rider like this into federal legislation since early last spring, when they attempted to attach it to the farm bill, which actually never passed. Now, what happened is, in all of the pressure to pass a spending bill that would allow government agencies to continue operating, the rider was attached, and it went through Senator Barbara Mikulski’s Appropriations Committee. And she left this rider in the bill, and we hold her responsible. Now, part of the problem with these large spending bills that have to pass very quickly is there’s a lot of room for this kind of mischief. And these spending bills are a response to the dysfunction in Congress when we can’t have a normal budgeting process.

And what this rider actually does is it prevents the courts from stepping in under our most important environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act, which gives citizens the right to sue: If they believe that the government is about to make a very large and important decision that will have many impacts, they can sue for judicial review. And this rider will prevent that in the case of genetically engineered crops being planted after a court says that there hasn’t been a proper environmental assessment. We’re very concerned about this, because there are a number of crops in the pipeline, like 2,4-D corn, which could actually be impacted by this rider.

Now, because this is a budget bill and the budget bill will run out at the end of this fiscal year, which is September 31st, this bill or this rider will no longer be in effect. However, we should be concerned. Because of the dysfunction in Congress, it’s possible that the spending bill that was just passed could just be reauthorized for the coming months until a new budget could be debated and passed. So, activists are organizing around the country to put pressure on elected officials to make sure that this doesn’t happen.

one of the changes is that it has delayed these crops getting into the food system. But I don’t think we want to get caught up in the technical details of how these crops are laxly approved. What we have here is Monsanto flexing its political muscle, because it’s not only trying to pass riders like the current one on judicial review, it’s been trying to get riders on these big spending bills or the farm bill that would actually prohibit any review and would be a rubber stamp of these crops. I think we have to look at the enormous amount of power, political power, that Monsanto has, that it can actually get this kind of precedent-changing rider that could have effects in other areas, because we don’t like to see this kind of precedent that really prohibits judicial review.

And I think we have to look at how much money that the biotech industry has spent on lobbying. I mean, over the last 10 years, the biotech industry has spent $272 million on lobbying and campaign contributions. They have a hundred lobby shops in Washington. They’ve hired 13 former members of Congress. They’ve hired 300 former staffers for the White House and for Congress. And Monsanto alone has spent $63 million over the last 12 years on lobbying and campaign contributions. This is about political muscle and forcing their will on the American people. And if we don’t put a stop to it here, we’re going to see many, many more serious violations.

there’s a lot of concern in places like Europe, where we have the precautionary principle, about genetically engineered foods. And there actually is a body of research that shows that genetically engineered soy and corn have health effects. These studies are feeding studies on animals, which is how this research is generally done. They show liver and kidney impairment—there are a number of studies showing this. Rat pups whose mothers ate genetically engineered soy had high mortality rates. And the genetically engineered hormone that’s used to—it’s actually injected into cows so that they produce more milk. Italian research has found that those transgenes actually survive—they survive pasteurization, and they end up in the milk.

So, part of the problem is also that there isn’t enough research. We have a very lax regulatory system. The technology licensing agreements that Monsanto and other companies have for the biotech products that they develop mean that researchers can’t legally get a hold of these seeds or grow the crops to actually do testing. And there’s also not money for the kind of long-term health impact studies that there should be when you’re doing such a major change in our food system. So I think there are a lot of reasons to be concerned.

And we’re also talking about the immense control over seeds that, well, one company—I mean, we basically have three companies that dominate seeds in the world. So, if you’re saying that there’s no problem with genetically engineered seeds, you’re very narrowly looking at what the impacts could be on the developing world, even farmers here, where Monsanto regularly investigates 500 farmers, approximately, every year and sues them if they don’t adhere to their contract. Monsanto is very aggressive with farmers. And it’s very clear that this is simply a way to control seeds and profit from them, and from their co-branded chemicals, their herbicides like Roundup Ready, that are applied along with the genetically engineered crops that are sowed in the fields.

I don’t think that the science is as established. And I think you have to look at the enormous power that these companies have on our regulatory agencies here and increasingly in Europe. We at Food & Water Watch have a Brussels office, and one of our main jobs there is trying to document the footprint that our U.S. biotech industry is having in Europe, trying to influence their Food Safety Agency and the different governments that—some of which have bans on genetically engineered food.

I think that this is a political issue. This is not about the safety of these crops, because there really has never been long-term research on what the impact is, both on the diet and on the environment. And I’m concerned when I see that the immense amount of money that Monsanto and other companies are spending on trying to greenwash themselves, when they are able to persuade well-meaning advocates that they’ve done a good job.

I mean, I think we have to look at Monsanto. They have spent, just over a two-year period, $279 million on advertising, talking about how they want to feed the world and that they’re really doing this for the benefit of humankind, not to make money. But when you look at what they’re actually doing, they are making an enormous profit on seeds. Seeds are becoming increasingly expensive. And there are a lot of broader issues besides the few health impact and environment studies that have been done. I mean, we have to look at this in the broadest context of what it means to give one, two, three companies this much control over how seeds are sold and produced and food is produced.

consumers want, and should have the right, to know if their food is genetically engineered. And while many of the crops that have been genetically engineered do go into processed food, today we’re seeing the foods that end up on your plate being either already genetically engineered or in the pipeline for approval. I’m talking about the GE sweet corn that was approved last year. There has been a multi-year battle over GE salmon. And while we hope the FDA does not approve it, and there has been a huge outpouring of support for not approving it, we’re concerned that if they move ahead, it will not be labeled.

One of the health effects that we do know happens from eating genetically engineered products is an allergy to protein. So, for the genetically engineered salmon, there could be very serious allergic reactions that could occur, and the food should be labeled. And people believe that they have a right to know what’s in their food. So I think that voluntary labeling is not enough. And, in fact, what’s exciting is there is a backlash against the biotech industry. There are campaigns in more than 30 states fighting to get labeling for genetically engineered food. So, even though the biotech industry has spent a boatload of money to stop it, there is a movement growing, and I believe that we will see genetically engineered food labeled in the near future.

our findings are that Monsanto has so much power over the political process that it’s basically buying public policy. That’s why we’ve seen this terrible rider recently. It’s why we have such a lax process for approving genetically engineered crops. And it goes back all the way to the 1980s, when these crops were being developed, and Monsanto went into the Reagan administration and said, “You know, we’ve been involved in a lot of litigation.” Because Monsanto had been a producer of some of the most dangerous chemicals—PCBs, dioxin—they were involved in hundreds of lawsuits. So, they didn’t want a new law that would actually be a real review process for genetically engineered crops. They wanted to have a very lax set of bureaucratic hoops that they knew they could jump through and that their young startup competitors would not be able to jump through. And that’s how we’ve ended up with this mishmash of different agencies involved in approving genetically engineered crops.

It’s why we don’t really have a regulatory system that is doing the research that’s looking at the long-term impacts that these crops have, not just in terms of health and safety, but the economic impacts because of the increasing price of seeds, the increasing use of the co-branded herbicides. Roundup Ready has doubled in use in the last few years. Now we’re seeing new genetically engineered seeds created that have even more dangerous chemicals that are co-branded with them. And so, we’re really on a downward spiral with these types of crops. And genetically engineered crops are the underpinning of our dysfunctional food system. As Greg mentioned, they are the components of processed food.

what’s happened over the past several decades is that it’s become increasingly impossible for farmers to make a living. And I mean even midsize and small commodity farmers. We have fewer than a million family farmers left. And if you look at what a midsize family farmer—and I’m talking about commodities—corn, wheat and soy—they make, on average, $19.2 thousand. And shockingly, half of that is from a government payment.

Now, there is a movement for community-supported agriculture. You know, I’m lucky. I grew up on a farm. I inherited my family’s farm. But my farm is 45 miles west of Washington, D.C., where there’s a huge market for foods that are grown with organic practices, where people want to bring their children out to see a farm. Now that’s very different from the vast majority of farms in this country. Only one-third of the farms in this country are anywhere near a metropolitan area. We need to shape a food system that allows farmers to make a living and transition into a sustainable farming future. And we can’t do that with the current rules in place. And I think that really that’s why I wrote Foodopoly, to lay out why we need to look at the bigger structural issues that are causing our dysfunctional food system. And I’m talking about the consolidation and concentration of power in the hands of just a few companies, and companies beyond Monsanto.

over the past few years, since the—well, it’s the past few decades, since the Reagan administration eviscerated antitrust law. Those are the rules that prevented companies from getting too big, from buying their competitors, from concentrating power in the hands of a just—just a few companies. Since that time, we’ve seen the grocery industry consolidate. We now have four grocery stores that control 50 percent of sales, and in many areas 70 to 90 percent of sales. Wal-Mart is the very largest. One out of three grocery dollars is spent at Wal-Mart. And if you look at the economic impact, the Wal-Mart heirs have as much wealth as the bottom 40 percent of Americans.

And what Wal-Mart has figured out, how they operate, is that they have a logistical system that sucks all of the profit out of the food chain. So, one thing is that they need enormous volume. So, they would much rather deal with a giant meatpacker like Tyson than a lot of smaller family farms or even midsize farms. They have a system where they force their suppliers to use their IT system, to track their own inventory, to use all of the contracting requirements that they put into writing. In fact, there are no contract negotiations with Wal-Mart. And so, even the largest food processors in this country have to do whatever Wal-Mart says.

And we have 20 food-processing companies that do control most of what Americans eat. So, you know, there’s all this rhetoric about competition and that our economic system is built on competition, but what we’ve actually seen, especially since the 1980s, is that all of the rules and regulations are geared at allowing enormous consolidation. And so, for the food industry, beyond Wal-Mart and the grocery retailers, we have the big food-processing companies. So when a consumer goes into the grocery store, they believe that there’s a lot of diversity and choice, but actually we have 20 food-processing companies that own most of the brands in the grocery store. And unfortunately, 14 of these large food processors also own many of the largest organic brands.

So this kind of concentration is making it very difficult for consumers to have real choices about what they eat. And it’s squeezing all of the profit out of actually producing food, even producing corn and soy. A conventional farmer makes about three to five cents off of a giant box of corn flakes, about three—two to three cents on a giant bag of corn chips, and under a penny on the high-fructose corn syrup in a can of soda.

I think the most surprised thing is the inability of farmers to really change what they grow because of their investment in their equipment, because of the lack of a fair marketplace, because of the adverse weather in large parts of this country, where it’s difficult to compete with California. And I think it’s also the impact of the so-called “free trade” agreements on our food system and the offshoring of food production and the impact that’s had on consumers and on farming in this country.

— source democracynow.org

Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. She recently wrote a book called Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America. On Wednesday, the organization is releasing a major new report called “Monsanto: A Corporate Profile.” Hauter’s family runs an organic farm that provides produce to hundreds of families as part of the growing nationwide community-supported agriculture movement.