Monthly Archives: January 2014

Allan Patton’s effort of stopping GMOs through the Municipalities of Canada

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Allan Patton is the Director for Electoral Area “C” (Rural Oliver) and has been a full-time Oliver area farmer since 1981. He is a Past Director and Vice-President of the BC Fruit Growers Association, Past Director for BC Agriculture Council, Past Chair of Area “C” Advisory Planning Commission as well as Past Oliver and District Community Economic Development Society Director.

Allan Patton

He has been active in getting the Union of British Columbia Municipalities to pass the recent resolution to declare itself wishing to be GMO free. He is currently proposing a similar motion to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) who will hold its Annual General Meeting (AGM) at Niagara Falls this summer.

The motion states :

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Claude Dauphin, President
Federation of Canadian Municipalities
24 Clarence Street
Ottawa, Ontario
K1N 5P3
 
WHEREAS The Okanagan Tree Fruit Industry and the Canadian Horticultural Council Apple Working Group are very concerned about protecting Food Safety and CanadaGap requirements and Asian and European export Markets;
 
AND WHEREAS Certified Organic producers and retailers have expressed grave concerns on the continued existence of their industry;
 
AND WHEREAS the public are expressing increased scepticism on the purported benefits of GE food and animal feed crops;
 
AND WHEREAS the Union of BC Municipalities, at their 2013 Annual General meeting, carried a resolution “to ask the Provincial Government to legislate the prohibition of importing, exporting and growing plants and seeds containing genetically engineered DNA, and raising GE Animals in BC and to declare through legislation that the Province o BC is a GE Free area in respect to all plants and animal species” and an identical addendum to send it to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities for similar consideration by the Federal Government;
 
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Federation of Canadian Municipalities recommend to the Government of Canada that:
A moratorium be placed on all present and future Food and Animal Feed Genetically Engineered registration application, subject to:
– a non-partisan review be undertaken by Parliament to assess all aspects of GE crops now in existence.
– a public and consumer input and consultation process be developed and undertaken across Canada with recommendations presented to parliament for consideration.

If you need any further information regarding this item please call Christy Malden, Deputy Corporate Officer at (250)-490-4146

Mark Pendergraft
RDOS Board Vice Chair

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I spoke with District Director Allan Patton about his efforts to see that this motion does get tabled at the coming FCM and go to a vote, and does not get rejected and end up under the carpet.

I also asked him what the listeners, or the people of Canada might do, to help this motion along.

This is one more example of democracy working from the bottom up. The municipalities are the lowest level of Government and the closest to the people, and it is through them, rather than through the provincial or federal Government, that the voice of the people may get heard.

You can hear the podcast by clicking on the play button at the bottom of this page. You may also save it through my podcast channel in iTunes (search Tony Mitra) and play it through your music player off line.

I would welcome feedback – at tony.mitra@gmail.com

Thank you.

Sheryl McCumsy of Alberta and her efforts to ban lawn pesticides

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I met Sheryl in December 2013 during the GE Foods Talk event at Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She is among the many ordinary citizens of Canada attempting to engage in extra-ordinary work, of singly and collectively trying to wrench Canadian democracy back from the clutches of lobby power, in the field of food, health and environment.

Sheryl McCumsy

It has been my perception that this war on our soil, water and air by an unending avalanche of toxic GMO and pesticides in the name of corporate profit, will be won or lost not so much by bigwigs, famous people, NGOs, politicians, scientists or activists, but by the ordinary people like Sheryl McCumsy that are coming out of the woodwork everywhere, in their effort to do something to resist this menace.

Sheryl is a homemaker and a student with a background in microbiology. She intends to meet with the Municipality of Edmonton, Alberta, to enquire and cajole them into adopting a by-law that bans use of harmful cosmetic lawn pesticides. This is something that has been done by hundreds of Municipalities across Canada, but not so much in Alberta and not in Edmonton. She also intends to work with groups such as Albertans for food safety, to further take on the issues of Municipalities adopting resolutions to declare themselves to be GMO free.

I spoke with Sheryl on phone on December 22, 2013, to prepare this podcast of her hopes and plans. It is a 20 minute podcast. You can listen to it by directly clicking the player at the bottom of this page. You can also subscribe to it through iTunes, where my podcasts are available under my name – Tony Mitra – save it on your iPod, iPhone or other music players, and listen to them at leisure. The logo of my podcast in iTunes is shown at right.

Cartagena Protocol, GMO, and Canada

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Saturday, January 4, 2014

Bt.Eggplant, or BT-Brinjal, as it is called in the Indian subcontinent – is a Monsanto product that is banned in India for multiple reasons, the primary one being huge ground swell of resistance from the public. This was the first ever GM food being introduced into India on a commercial scale (the other product already introduced was Bt-Cotton).

The product was approved by the Agriculture Ministry. IN that sense – the ministry of Agriculture in India is very similar to that in Canada, and appear to be sharing its bed with the devil himself.

However, the product was banned through the Ministry of Environment, raising the issue that Genetically Modified crops are not only an subject of agriculture, but also an Environmental concern.

 There are two related court cases on this subject that is not so well known outside of India. These are :

Aruna Rodrigues versus India : An ordinary citizen of India, Ms Aruna Rodrigues, had taken the Government of India to the Supreme Court in a Public Interest Litigation, for releasing potentially harmful GMO products on the population without proper independent health and safety analysis. She has an even chance of winning her case. That case has brought lots of information to light, including how Monsanto may have been falsifying its own test records on the safety of its products. These issues strengthen the argument that asking the promoter of GM products to carry out honest safety tests produces a conflict of interest and should not be encouraged. I have spoken with Aruna myself, and created an awareness Podcast on it. You can find it here.

 The UN Convension on preservation of biological diversity is another watershed event in the sense that it encouraged individual nations to safeguard their biological diversity and prevent its contamination or theft by biotech corporations or unfair trade deals etc. The specific meeting that resulted in creating the frame work that nations could follow, happened in the town of Cartagena, and hence it is also often referred to as the Cartagena Protocol. Hundreds of countries signed into it. Canada signed it, but did not follow through. USA did not even sign it.

But, nations like India not only signed it, but created a special law following the guidelines of this UN convention. The law is called “Preservation of Biological Diversity” – an act brought into force in 2002. It stated that all organisms, be it plants, animals or micro organisms, that either lived in the land, waters of airs of the nation, whether naturally evolved or through generations of selective breeding by the people of India – are the collective intellectual property of the nation. No corporation may study, analyze, sequence, modify, tamper with, produce, patent, or aim to sell a product made from these organisms, without express agreement with the Government. Failing to do so places the offending body liable to be sued.

India versus Monsanto on Biopiracy: And then, another activist and member of an Indian NGO named Environment Support Group (ESG), Mr. Leo Saldana, found out that Monsanto had broken this law when it developed the Bt_Eggplant by “stealing” the genome of three kinds of Indian eggplant (eggplants originated in the Indian subcontinent, and India boasts 6,000 varieties of it today). So, Leo, on behalf of ESG sued the Govt of India in a provincial high-court, providing evidence that Monsanto and its partner had broken the Indian law, and therefore it was the duty of the Govt of India to sue Monsanto for “biopiracy”.

The court saw the evidence, was convinced of the misdeed, and has instructed the Govt to sue Monsanto. The Govt, wishing more to be in bed rather than estranged with Monsanto, has been dragged willy nilly by the court order and has now filed a case against Monsanto for stealing the Eggplant genome and breaking the indian .

I spoke with Leo Saldana about it and have covered it on another podcast.

I find both these court cases to be very relevant not just for India – but even for Canada. There is much to learn from these. To start with, there should be a push for Canada to enact a law like the one India has, so that Canadian biodiversity is not stolen from under Canada’s feet.

Canola is a good example. It was a Canadian invention. But now, it is owned by Monsanto. More thefts are on the way – Alfalfa, Salmon, apple, etc.

To stop all these and further thefts, Canadians should, I feel, push its Government to protect Canada’s biodiversity, instead of confusing and obfuscating the issue to promote biotech corporate interests in the name of “Development”.

Meanwhile, having failed in India, Monsanto is busy trying to introduce it in neighbouring Bangladesh. Resistance groups in Bangladesh meanwhile seem to have coined a new phrase : BT = Biological Terrorism !