Category Archives: Tonu’s Diary

Here I might end up writing things that are less generic, and more to do with me and my day to day experience and interaction with life.

Ukraine, Crimea and Russia – my first impression

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Ukraine has been in the news, for the past few days, but for the wrong reason.

Today I saw a video clip of Pro-Russian Soldiers patting the hand of a Pro-Ukraine counter part in a friendly gesture. This prompted me to write my first impression of the place. I remember visiting parts of Ukraine when I was 20 years old, on a ship, as a junior engineer. The ship was a general cargo vessel of 10,000 ton size and carried a variety of goods from India, to be off loaded in various Soviet Ports. My first port of call was Odessa, a black sea port, not far from the Rumanian border.

Yes, it was part of the Soviet Union at that time.

I remember the intense cold and mounds of snow everywhere. I remember visiting some of their large department stores. I remember the blast of hot air that came through the air ducts and me standing right next to it warming my hands. I was wearing a parka that I had bought just a few weeks before, in Las Palmas, which was a Spanish island at the entrance to the Mediterranean.

I remember visiting the Interclub, a sort of “foreigners club” that the Soviets set up for those that could not speak the local language. The club had an English Language Library, where there were not only English translations of Great Russian authors like Tolstoy, but also books like The Catcher in the Rye.

I had almost no money in my pocket, since the pay for a junior engineer working in an Indian shipping company was really poor those days. I had something like 5 US dollars to spend over the next ten days in Ukraine.

And yet, I had lots of fun. First of all, I got a free bus ride to the Interclub, from the port area. Since I did not know where to go, or how to get there and how much it might cost, I took the free ride.

Next, the women that attended the club, who spoke English, did help me get a booklet of transport tickets. These are actually very similar to the ones in Vancouver these days. The same passes can be used on a bus, a train, or a ferry. What was different for me, is that I got a booklet of a dozen or so tickets (forgot how many where there) without having to pay for it. Apparently, it was a present, from the Soviet Union.

So, armed with that booklet, I was free to take any bus or other transport anywhere, and it cost me absolutely nothing. This was a novel experience for me, since I had never been given a free travel pass in any other country.

I also remember few other incidences of basically meeting up young people that wished to speak with me, on the street, or in a cafe, but we could not manage much of a talk because they spoke Ukrainian, Russian or Romanian, and I spoke only Bengali, Hindi and English. Nonetheless, we smiled at each other a lot, shook hands, and I got patted on my back often.

A young women kissed me on my cheek, which caused quite a bit of embarrassment for me. Coming fresh from India, I was not used to sudden display of affection from strangers on streets. On the whole, I came away with really nice feelings about the people of the Soviet Union.

My next stop was in Kherson, at the mouth of Dnieper River. I was there for only a few days. The place needed a different set of travel tickets. I also managed to see a sort of musical play. It was not quite the Bolshoi ballet, but it was very good, in my untrained eye. How did I afford to buy the ticket? Well, once again, I was gifted by a free pass by the Soviet Union. It was one of the best seats, in the second row from the front.

I was invited to a “chess” game. Russians were champion chess players. But the game was invented in India. So I went to play. I knew the basic rules, but was less than an average player. Consequently, I lost both the games, one as white and the next as black. The opponent was a man about twice my age.

What I remember from the game is – we were sitting on the sidewalk across a small round table with the chess board on it. I had a mug of hot Russian tea (actually the tea came from India), while the opponent had Vodka.

People stopped to watch the game. Some stood around us, and spoke among themselves in whispers – probably discussing the game, and no doubt wondering why I was not making smarter moves. Some looked at me encouragingly and even tried giving me advise, which of course I could not follow.

My last stop was in Crimea itself, a small jetty near the Naval port of Sevastopol. I had learned about the recent Russian history, about Balaclava and the Charge of the Light Brigade. About the Yalta conference between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin. But it was while in Sevastopol that I learned that, for most of history, Crimea had been a part of Russia, and that a majority of the population in crimea were ethnic Russian. I knew by then that Russians were not exactly same as the Ukrainians. I had by then also learned a bit more about the links the place had with Tartars, Greeks and even Romans.

I did not know at the time, that I was never to return to those places again. I have had opportunity to visit the northern parts of Russia as well as parts of the former Soviet block nations by the North Sea. I was also to visit neighbouring Rumania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia etc subsequently. But never again did I get a chance to visit Ukraine on the black sea, or Crimea.

On the whole, I only have pleasant memories of the place.

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.

Harold Steves – and his battle to save British Columbia from GMO attack

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British Columbia, as much as all of Canada, needs a a few saviours that will stand tall, and fight long and hard, to save this land from the ravages brought on by mindless greed that brings toxicity into our food, our water, our air, and our lives, through GMO and its associated pesticide culture.

Harold Steves

And just like weeds and organisms are known to develop resistance to poison over time, some people seem to rise to challenge this newfangled toxic invasion in our lives.

Harold Steves of Richmond, BC is one such – a hero just in time, whose singular vision and effort may yet save British Columbian farmlands, as well as residents, from the ravages of GMO, and who efforts are being recognized and copied across the land, within and without British Columbia.

It is our hope, that Canada produces scores of Harold Steves across the land, and return Canada to what this country was decades ago, a land so beautiful and pure that it compared with our notions of Gods own land.

Apart from being an organic farmer that raises grass fed beef, Harold has been a city Councillor for Richmond, BC, continuously since 1977. His efforts to move the region against further encroachment of Genetically Engineered Organisms is an excellent example of how democracy can be taken back by the people, community by community, and municipality by municipality, from the clutches of Industrial greed, lobby power of the biotech corporations, and corrupt politicians.

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Why Canada is failing to protect itself from GMO

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Why Canada is failing to protect itself from GMO

I have been thinking of writing a few eBooks on the GMO, vaccine and stuff – and have decided to dip my toe into it within the next month. This will not be the first time I created an eBook, but it would be the first time it will be put up on the web, for purchase by prospective readers. Price – 1 dollar, or perhaps 99 cents, if that is possible.

Why ? Well, the trend these days is to have printed matter no more printed but available online. Also, this brings down cost of publication, and removes the need to have a middleman (publishing house), while, properly advertised (think Global) – it can have wide reach – from pole to pole and from pillar to post. Hahh !

Corporate encroachment into public health through corrupt politicians has been an engaging topic – but I have not had much chance to discuss how these could be turned into eBook this with anybody, barring perhaps Shiv Chopra.

There are lots of people that write important articles – Debal Deb, Jagannath Chatterjee and Devinder Sharma of India come to mind. There are many others across the world. Or one could consider the case of MP Alex Atamanenko of BC. He is serving his third term. He has been a friend of the farmers, or sustainable living, and of resisting degradation to environment and against encroachment of GMOs. He has issued bill after bill to try and stop the GMO juggernaut. But the bills don’t pass because not all MPs share his principles, nor ability to rise above parti politics and corporate pressure and to judge issues on their own merit, and keep focus on what serves the constituent’s best interest.

And now, Alex is retiring from politics. He did not make a public comment on the real reason for his retirement. Age of course is a factor. But, I suspect, he lost heart because of the level of corruption that has entered politics.

We can draw a lesson here – good politicians are either leaving, or converting to bad politicians. And this is Canada – not a Mickey mouse country five miles long.

You can consider David Suzuki’s comments on the Harper Government. You could discuss issues till the cows come home. But instead of discussing, I though tI would place them on the web and let the experience teach me if it was a good idea, or if the format, the content, the length, language or tone etc – needs to be altered for higher penetration and sale.

There are, of course, lots of people with lots of opinion on GMO. Take mainstream media – every Tom Dick and Harry, as well as every other name in between, are busy writing about it, whether they understand the wider effect of the issue or not. But mainstream writers have one major advantage and a major drawback. The advantage is that they get corporate funding. The disadvantage ? The same. I, on the other had stand on the opposite end – with a disadvantage (no corporate fund) and an advantage – free from the clutches of corporate diktat.

Mainstream writers do it for their job – so they can and do write crap. I do it because I care for the planet. OK, so the mainstream is taken care of. But how about others that also write on passion?

Look, I am fairly well versed on the eBook and Audio Book scene. I am a heavy consumer of both. There are NO good eBooks or audio Books on GMO, or on sustainable agriculture, or the menace behind biotech promoted vaccines, or the biotic control of the medical practices. There are a small number of audio books out there – such as “A town that food saved”. But these are like needles in a haystack. Not enough by any count.

Besides, not many can write outside of their comfort zone of a single nation, a province, a continent, or a sector. Very few have a global perspective on food security or agribusiness and the element of exploitation that goes with it. People like Vandana Shiva are a rarity. But even Vandana, who I have spoken with at length once to create an audio podcast – does not have a single audio or eBook.

Besides – Vandana writes what I consider to be a more generic and single minded attack on the biotech corporations, along with a necessary promotion of seed ownership and supporting local farmers. But she does not dwell on the unpopular task of why the resistance to GMO is having such a hard time. That the biotech industry is steamrolling across the planet is known to any serious observer. But why is that happening, especially in the west where “democracy” is supposed to be well entrenched ? Why ? The clue must point to a fault in the functioning of that democracy. The fault, ultimately, must lie at the feet of the people.

Monsanto may not be as big a culprit for hijacking the worlds agriculture, as the common man is, for allowing Monsanto to get away with it.

But, the common man is today hard to define – it is not a homogenous body, even in the North American continent. I would rather look at the groups that exist just above the lowest strata – various organizations whose projected goal is to protect the people, from such abuse of power from the big. These organizations, both public funded and private – are failing in their primary duty. It makes one think why and how these organizations – Government departments at federal, provincial and municipal level, are failing in their duty. How private NGOs and various sustainable groups are failing in their duty.

Nobody admits they are failing – but then none of them produce any record, any analysis, of what the situation was, say with regard to GMO, last year and how it is this year, and thus, has the situation changed for the better or the worse. This analysis should be simple to make, and by that, one should be able draw a conclusion on if these organizations are making any meaningful difference, or not. To me, pretty much every organization within Canada that claims to work towards safeguarding Canadian food, health and environment, is failing and it know it is failing.

And yet, business as usual is the norm. The NGOs and groupings keep passing posters, pamphlets and postcards, they keep asking folks to sign petitions. They keep asking for volunteers and for donations. And while all these noble tasks are underway, Canadian food and health is literally being raped, by biotech corporations that dictate terms with the politicians.

Some even believe that kicking out Stephen Harper will change things for the better. They spend their energy to that end. I shall leave it to you to decide if they are making any headway.

Folks in the US thought kicking out the Republicans and bringing in Obama, will solve all their problems. Even the Nobel committee did the extraordinary thing of awarding the Nobel peace prize to Obama, not because of his achievements, but merely on the promise he made, and subsequently failed to follow through.

Changing the political head did not make a difference in the past, and my guess is – it will not make much of a difference if the current leaders are booted out. These are not leaders – they are just masks of leaders, like puppets. One needs to think who the puppeteers are.

Stephen Harper is not why Canada is being massacred with GMO. It is not about Conservatives, or liberals or NDP. It is not about CBAN or The Council of Canadians, or Vandana Shiva’s Navdanya or David Suzuki’s foundation or GE free BC. None of them are going to make any difference while all of them will ask you for donations and support.

Canadians are scared to face truth. Americans are scared to face truth. People like Vandana, or David, due respect to their great achievements, who have become public icons, make lot of noise noise in an already noisy place. A thousand Vanadnas and a thousand Davids will make no difference except increase the din.

And that is where the crux, in my thinking, lies. It is the Canadian public that have failed themselves.

My writings will dwell on these. Of course, I could be wrong. I could be an opinionated so and so. But I intend to write all that down and place it on the web as essays on an eBook. This is going to be perhaps the first chapter of the book, or the prolog. It took me 35 minutes to write. I usually dislike checking spelling or grammar but would do so before the eBook is put online in a store. Spelling and grammar are important, but not more important than the message itself.

We are crossing the ’T’s and dotting the ‘i;s to death, so our literature about the dangers of GMO are linguistically perfect, and functionally useless on the street and deserving to stay in a library for ever.

I intend to collate a few such writings together and put up the first eBook on the web, and try charging a dollar for it, and tell folks I know to help sell a few, even if it criticizes them. They in turn are free to call me an opinionated son of a gun or whatever. I had already sent out a sample of this writing on an email to one of my group lists. It had some 400 recipients from around the world. about 25 responded within a few hours – mostly encouraging. One of the briefest but cutest support note came from Felix Padel. Some day, I shall have to write something about that mystic Englishman that made India his home. Meanwhile my friend Rose Stevens from Manitoba, who I sometimes refer to as the Fire-Eating-Woman, promises to be the first to buy the eBook and to promote it. Shiv Chopra sent a note – calling this an inexpensive gem, and the idea very well worth exploring. Each of these people and the others who respond, have their own followings, their own circles – word can spread – about an opinionated so and so writing dollar novels as eBooks, where the hero and the heroine are undefined, but the villains are in sharp focus.

The whole proceeds of the sale are not to go in my pocket. My idea at the moment is to split the proceeds half and half, with half going to my own upkeep and the other half going towards charity work relating to resisting GMO in unconventional ways. What the ways are – I have not the faintest clue at this time, except that it has to be legal, and grassroots, and different from whatever folks are doing right now. Whatever everyone is doing now – is not working. More of the same will not solve anything. SO this is my first chapter, or rather – the prolog.

How do you like it so far ? Tony Mitra

tony.mitra@gmail.com

Dark halo behind Golden Rice

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It is always a pleasure and enlightening, to speak with good people. There are those that have an unbiased knowledge and analytical prowess. These abilities help them to peer through the smoke and mirror of industry spin and the cobwebs created by science, pseudo-science and voodoo science. Looking through all that, some can still emerge with clear thinking that cuts to the bone of an issue without circling around in the periphery. It is even better when such a person is not afraid to call a spade a spade, and do not sanitize a topic to the extent that it loses its texture and depth, to become a politically correct blend of bland gray that is both confusing and misleading, to the casual public.Devinder Sharma

Devinder Sharma is among those few. And it is a privilege to speak with him.

 I called Devinder the other day to ask about Golden Rice. I have spoken with Debal Deb once about it, and created a podcast and a video, which one can find on my blog (www.tonu.org). I had checked with others too on the issue. But lately, the subject has resurfaced partly due to the famous televised debate between Canadian school girl and young anti-GMO crusader Rachel Parent and Kevin O’Leary where she blew away the industry shills, where the issue of Golden Rice was touched upon by Kevin, using an emotional pitch that poor kids in Asia are going blind and dying due to vitamin deficiency, which this Golden Rice will solve etc. This sentimental pitch is the worst kind of emotional blackmail that the media savvy people try to use to befuddle the listeners. But Rachel did not fall for it and cut him short stating that Golden rice does not even work, so lets stop talking about it.

The issue is of course a lot deeper than that, and encompasses the whole gamut of malnutrition and hunger on a global scale, and if that is because there is insufficient food, or there are too many middlemen making a buck and ensuring food prices remain high, even going waste if it has to, so the middlemen can make a profit, which the poor starve because they cannot afford the artificially jacked up high cost of food.

It is ironic that India has stockpiles of excess cereals, and exports large quantities of it, while there are more hungry children in India than likely in any other country. The reason for this is – some folks make money through the export, and it increases GDP and stock market values of nations and corporations. This helps investors with spare cash get richer. And if in the bargain there are millions of people starve – then why not use that as a tool to gain further access into the market, so some of the middle men can make even more money?

Food as a commodity is subjected to the same calculations that go beyond creation of a smart phone or an automobile – how to make more money out of it. These commodities are not designed to solve world hunger, or planet ecology, and national economy, or food security. These are created to make corporations and their stock holders rich. Period.

Food needs to be de-commoditized. Agriculture universities and colleges need to be funded by the public and not by biotech industries. It is better for the public taxes to be spent to safeguard public interest, than to hand over the stewardship of public policy making into the hands of corporations that created half the problems of the world to start with.

Like Einstein had said – the kind of logic that became the cause for subsequent problems, cannot be used to solve those problems. New logic and a different mindset is needed here.

Lately some documents on Golden Rice is being circulated in Canada for distribution among the sceptics of GMO. But I find the critic to be lukewarm and bypasses most of the serious issues behind it – including the exploitative philosophy behind the very creation of transgenic foods including Golden Rice. Even more importantly, Canadians, I feel, are in dire need to save themselves first from the bad-food epidemic that is sweeping across the nation, instead of pondering difficult issues of the third world and what Golden Rice can or cannot do.

The statistics of obesity, dramatically rising percentage of overweight people, of people with rising levels of various hitherto less known ailments and autism – should be life and death issues for Canadians. Let them concentrate on their own pathetic situation and leave the third world alone to solve their problems. Without intentional and unintentional western meddling, the third world can and will likely solve their own problems without having to be enslaved to western corporate interests.

Anyhow, Devinder Sharma provides another fresh outlook on the issue of Golden Rice. Important issues here might be :

  • How western media is used to present muddied and misguiding news about technological breakthrough in agriculture. One good example is the case with DDT which drew cover page rave reviews on the most famous western magazines, only to be banned across the planet a generation later, but not before it did irrecoverable damage to the planet.
  • How Ingo Potrykus, the creator of Golden Rice, had a less than pleasant exchange with Devinder Sharma.
  • How Ingo Otrykus was against independent verification of the value and utility of Golden Rice.
  • The humbug of Pro-tato, Po-mato and all other kinds of similar absurdities.
  • The famous case of agricultural development model pushed in India and exposed by Devinder Sharma and others, where nutritious human food grown in India was to be exported as cattle feed for the west, and cattle food grown in the west was to be imported into India for human consumption – all in the name of development and westernization.
  • The food storages are full in India, and yet the poor do not have access to it. The issue of hunger is not related to quality or quantity of food. it is related to structural injustice where the food is out of reach of the poor due to distribution issues and profiteering. Biotech cannot solve that – in fact biotech products are designed to increase profiteering by the middle man.
  • World Food summit followed up by the World Hunger Summit in Bonn around 2001, which Devinder attended, and how the conferences goal of abolishing half of world hunger by 2015 – was a joke and only helped muddying the issue of hunger – and displays part of the international dishonesty, in dealing with world hunger.
  • Last year, the world produced enough food for 13 billion people, almost twice the current population and higher than the projected maximum world population (2060) before it starts coming down. So, the world has far in excess of what food it needs for its people – now and generations into the future.
  • The hunger is a product of the systems put in place large through western efforts into the pricing, subsidy, trade negotiations and arm twisting in creating a warped distribution and trade infrastructure. There is a whole lot of bogus talk and untruths going around in the name of helping the poor.

The podcast can be listened to by clicking on the play button at the bottom, or finding it on iTunes by searching my name among the podcasts.

The original talk with Devinder covered more than an hour. Here the topic of Golden Rice is covered in 30 minutes.

I shall be glad to hear your comments on it. You may respond back to tony.mitra@gmail.com

A talk with Devinder Sharma – Part 1

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Devinder Sharma

Mr. Devinder Sharma is an agricultural scientist, journalist, writer and policy analyst who is well known around the world.

He had been called as an expert to be part of a working group in Geneva to prepare the groundwork on rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas, conducted in July 2013. Mr. Sharma had presented his paper there, and some of his points appears to have been adopted into the background paper since published by the Geneva Academy, of which I have a copy for personal study.

The first paragraph of the last page of the report by Christophe Golay on the Legal Reflections on the rights of peasants and other working groups in rural areas, prepared based on the above meeting of the working committee states :

  • The negotiation that begins within the working group mandated to elaborate a UN Declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas is a new exercise for peasant organizations, and in particular La Via Campesina. But it is not a new exercise for the UN and states that have been engaged in similar negotiation in the last 40 years, when they drafted international instruments protecting the rights of women, children, migrant workers and members of their families, persons belonging to minorities, human rights defenders, persons with disabilities, and indigenous peoples. 

Sharma had started out studying Plant Breeding and Genetics and holds a Masters degree. He has been working for ten years with a mainstream Indian newspaper as an agricultural expert. During this time, the newspaper encouraged him to go to remote corners of India and spend sufficient time there to soak in the ambience and lifestyle, and the trials and tribulations of rural India, before composing his articles on what works and what might not, to improve rural Indian agriculture, lifestyle or economy.

 This is something the media did in the past, as a social duty. This is also what the media does not engage with any more, ever since corporate moguls began controlling most of the world media, and kept profit as the main goal for their existence – quality and breadth of news delivered was no more to be the focus.

The first part of the talk covers basically the following points:

  • Extreme bias towards the west and high-tech solutions within the Indian education system, and the thinking of both the educated class and the policy makers. This is pushing India towards economic dependence and subservience to the west. India will have to find its own solutions by thinking outside of the western box. Unfortunately, not enough folks are listening. This however, is a global problem, and not just an Indian problem. I can relate to this sitting in Canada.
  • Exploitation of the rural landscape by the urban culture: this was noted and eloquently penned by Tagore a century ago. This has been the topic of discussion between greats of the time, including conversation between Tagore and Gandhi, towards seeking a solution for a free India of the future. Tagore had rightly realized that pushing the British out would not solve the problem of exploitation, which was systemic, and would need a change in paradigm – a new thinking and a new system to redress the relationship between urban and rural societies. Mr. Devinder Sharma has pointed out that this exploitation has not only not been eradicated by Independent India after the end of British Rule – it has in fact increased. While exploitation was limited to the labour of the rural population, now it has expanded to the resources lying under the feet of Rural india, and also to the very land they had been using for millennia. Everything is now being stolen. Again, this is not just a problem of India – but a global problem, created by free trade, corporatocracy and a hegemony of the west.
  • Biodiversity – this is the saddest story of all – how the worlds biodiversity and richness of natural biomass or poorer nations is being stolen and those life forms being patented by foreign nations and corporations, with collusion and help from the very elite of those nations. How the Indian elite is knowingly or unknowingly being used as pawns to hand over their national resources to foreign corporations and governments. The extent of this mechanism created for international long term exploitation is both mind boggling, and depressing.

 That is life, and that is what has been covered so far with the interview with Mr. Devinder Sharma of India. It was interesting to hear Mr. Sharma mention Vavilov of the Soviet Union, a brilliant man that attempted to collect food plant samples from around the world, and identified the Indian subcontinent as one of the hot spots of biodiversity. Stalin eventually got him killed in prison, because Vavilog’s ideas on genetics did not fit the then prevalent Communist ideas, where people’s or plants biological heritage was not supposed to matter, and excellence was solely to be saught from after-birth factors, and that all plants, like all men, were created equal. That, of course, was outside of the scope of this discussion, and was not covered.

You can find the talk listed at the bottom of this page. It can be playing directly by clicking on it. You can also find it in iTunes, if you look for a podcast under the name of Tony Mitra, and go through the list of episodes. It can be identified by the logo at left.

 i hope the readers will like this podcast and will look forward for the rest of it.

Letter to a mayor

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A letter to a Mayor: We are writing letters to all mayors and councillors of all municipalities of British Columbia, requesting them to vote favourably towards declaring the province as GE/GMO free in the Annual General Meeting of the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) come september.

I personally have written to six municipalities, one email to each mayor and each councillor of these places. I intend to send many more. There are other volunteers also engaged similarly. We sometimes get a response from them, sometimes not.

Here is a sample:

Dear xxxx,

This letter requests your support for the resolution on genetically engineered (GE, also known as GMO) crops and animals at the 2013 UBCM Convention. The resolution reads:

that UBCM ask the British Columbia government to legislate the prohibition of importing, exporting and growing plants and seeds containing genetically engineered DNA, and raising GE animals within BC, and to declare, through legislation, that BC is a GE Free area in respect to all plant and animal species.

Serious concern has been expressed across BC about genetically engineered crops and animals. To date: 12 municipalities have passed individual resolutions declaring themselves a GE Free zone (Powell River, Salt Spring Island, Denman Island, Nelson, Kaslo, New Denver, Rossland, Richmond, Saanich, Metchosin, Telkwa, City of North Vancouver). At the Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities meeting in April 2013, the same resolution as above was adopted by 51 municipalities.  In addition the UBCM has endorsed four resolutions expressing concern about genetically engineered crops in 1999 concerning monopolization of our food supply, 20006 and 2009 concerning mandatory labeling, and 2012 concerning the GE apple.  

My concerns about genetically engineered crops and animals are as follows:

Safety Questions

  • GE crops are not an extension of traditional breeding methods (or hybridization), they are created by inserting new gene sequences into organisms, often from unrelated species. 
  • GE crops have not been demonstrated to be safe; the standards for judgment by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and Health Canada are lax. When the CFIA reviews an application for a novel food, its “evidence” comes from the corporation making the application and this data is kept secret. There is no independent testing of GE crops or animals in Canada, so the bottom line is we don’t know if these crops are safe or not. 
  • Unlike 166 other countries, Canada, has not ratified nor put into effect the articles of the Cartagena Protocol which provides guidelines to be adopted for placing rigorous safety checks before GMO is introduced into a region and an environment. As a result, there are insufficient safeguards at the federal level against damage to health and environment through GMO.

Corporate control

  • GE crops are about making profits for companies, often large multinationals. Five agricultural biotechnology corporations now control most of the technology needed to develop GM crops, as well as the agrochemicals and crop germplasm and seeds.  
  • GE seeds are patented which allows companies to take control over living organisms. 

 

Pollen drift

  • Contamination of non-GE crops by GE crops is inevitable
  • Some species, such as canola, cross-pollinate more easily than others. If you are next to a farm growing GE canola it is impossible to grow non-GE canola because of contamination from GE pollen.  
  • The same is likely with some of the GE crops that have recently been approved or are now being developed, for example the GE alfafa (recently approved) GE apple (under development). This will lead to significant economic loss for organic farmers, who use alfalfa as a rotational crop.
  • Now GE alfalfa has been approved it will make growing conventional and organic alfalfa impossible over the long term.

There is consensus across British Columbia that we urgently need to consider other possibilities than GE crops, and to support farmers transitioning away from growing GE crops to sustainable farming practices.

May I recommend three important sources of information on GE crops and animals?

  1. The first is GMO Myths and Truths, a synthesis of 600 scientific studies carried out by three geneticists, and published in 2012. http://earthopensource.org/index.php/reports/58
  2. The second is a TED talk given by geneticist Dr. Thierry Vrain, who formerly worked as a Federal spokesperson for GE crops but, after analysis of recent studies, is seriously concerned about their health and environmental impact, which can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQkQXyiynYs
  3. The third is an expert panel report prepared by the Royal Society of Canada on request received from Health Canada, Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Environment Canada, on the future of Food Biotechnology. The report stresses on the need for precaution and conducting rigorous and independent testing of GMO for health and environmental effects before they are to be approved. These recommendations are not being followed. http://rsc-src.ca/sites/default/files/pdf/GMreportEN.pdf

I hope I can count on your support in this crucial matter. Should you have further questions, I shall be more than happy to answer them on phone or face to face.

Sincerely,

Tony Mitra

No need to follow USA on GMO issues:

I have been observing the unfolding situation in Canada with regard to GMO for some years now. Initially, I used to sign petitions and consider that as the discharge of my civic duty. I have seen how those discharge of our civic duty failed to stem the rot.

Of late, I have been questioning myself, ourselves, and the methods used so far to keep the Canadian environment clean and our food healthy and our lives less contaminated by unnatural substances. Along with that, I have come to question the deep link Canadians have with Americans, on the issue of GMO.

I used to live in the US for many years before I migrated to Canada. While being fond of both, I have one critical comment to make about the US when it comes to GMO. By far the majority of the corporations producing GMO and agricultural toxins are from the US. US has, again, by far the most number of GMO being grown there. US has been feeding GMO to its people for the longest time and in the widest scope. Americans have been exposed to GMO more than any other nation on the planet. USA has not yet allowed GMO to be labelled in the food stores, nor set up mandatory independent tests on the safety of GMO. USA has systematically refused to sign or ratify any of the international conventions of protocols when it comes to GMO and its potential hazards.

For all these reasons – USA is the very worst place to be in this entire planet, if one wishes to keep GMO away from his/her dinner plate.

And, American people, with all due respect, have not been able to do anything worth bragging about – when it comes to pushing back at the corporations that enjoy total control of the executive, legislative and judiciary branches of the Government as well as the media.

And Canada of late has been busy trying to swallow the “Copy Americans” pill in many ways, particularly on GMO.

In the process, Canada has tarnished its stellar image of the past of being environmentally and socially conscious nation. Things have gone so bad that the rest of the world now laughs at Canada as an insignificant poodle of USA when it comes to GMO, climate change and such.

Therefore, taking example from USA, in my mind, is trying to reproduce the failures of the American people of keeping their lands free of dangerous chemicals and transgene crops.

The solution cannot be found by copying somebody. The solution has to be found by sitting outside of the box and thinking Canadians. Americans cannot solve Canada’s problem, not that the US is at all interested in it. Likewise, Europe, or even Ottawa, cannot solve these problems. It is a problem that needs involvement of the people, and novel methods to deal with.

I often hear, in Canada, with regard to motions to label GMO – about waiting for Americans to first label it. Without that, Canada has no chance of getting its GMO labelled. I find this statement not only unacceptable, but tantamount to capitulation to American hegemony.

If labeling is desired by the people – they must follow this up with their respective governments regardless of what the people of US do.

Canada does not, and should not, wait for the US, or any other country, to take the lead in food security.

Canada is supposed to be a free and independent country. Its people need to mull over the definition of “independence”.

Think outside the box. Observe what is happening in the US, but give much more weightage to other nations that are doing a whole lot better than the US on this issue.

If you have to follow examples – at least try to find the best example to follow, instead of the worst one.

This is not to disrespect either American or Canadian or any other people.

LINKS:

Monsanto’s GMO Killer Seeds: Profits Above Human Health. This is a recent article from Global Research, dated May 26, 2013. Click on the image for the link.

The Non-GMO Project is a non-profit organization committed to preserving and building sources of non-GMO products, educating consumers, and providing verified non-GMO choices. Shared belief is that everyone deserves an informed choice about whether or not to consume genetically modified organisms.

Genetically modified (GM) crops are promoted on the basis of a range of far-reaching claims from the GM crop industry and its supporters. They say that GM crops:

  • Are an extension of natural breeding and do not pose different risks from naturally bred crops
  • Are safe to eat and can be more nutritious than naturally bred crops
  • Are strictly regulated for safety
  • Increase crop yields
  • Reduce pesticide use
  • Benefit farmers and make their lives easier
  • Bring economic benefits
  • Benefit the environment
  • Can help solve problems caused by climate change
  • Reduce energy use
  • Will help feed the world.

All these are false claims – as explained in GMO Myths and Truths.

Thanks.

Hudson, Quebec sets legal precedence in banning federally approved pesticide at Municipal level

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Hudson is a township sandwiched between the city of Montreal, to the east and the farms and forests to the west, in the province of Quebec, Canada.

And through the last decade of the last millennia on to the first years of this one, she created history of a kind – she withstood several levels of high profile legal challenges, all the way till the supreme court of Canada, on its Municipal level ban of cosmetic and other lawn pesticides.

This became a precedence making event, and the cascading effect was various other provinces ended up enacting bans on cosmetic lawn pesticides at the municipal level as well as initiatives taken at provincial levels to ban harmful pesticides.

A full length documentary video has been produced named “A Chemical Reaction – The story of a true green revolution” whose web description goes as – “

A Chemical Reaction, is a 70 minute feature documentary movie that tells the story of one of the most powerful and effective community initiatives in the history of North America.  It started with one lone voice in 1984.  Dr. June Irwin, a dermatologist, noticed a connection between her patients’ health conditions and their exposure to chemical pesticides and herbicides.  With relentless persistence she brought her concerns to town meetings to warn her fellow citizens that the chemicals they were putting on their lawns posed severe health risks and had unknown side effects on the environment.”

Jennifer Dumoulin

To learn more about the case, and to understand how Canadian law works with regard to Municipalities jurisdiction in banning what it might consider to be harmful to its residents and environment, I tried to call the persons involved. The key person was Ms June Irwin, who as a doctor first noticed the link between ill health and exposure to pesticides in her own patients, and single handedly pushed the issue through the Municipality of Hudson, which eventually, through initiatives and efforts of the then mayor, environmental agent and councillors, ended up in an enforced by-law that banned application of all pesticides in the town without specific permit, and where violators were subject to heavy fines.

June Irwin was not available, as she was on a holiday. So I got the next best person – the current Environmental agent in the town of Hudson – Ms Jennifer Dumoulin, to speak with me on record, for the purpose of creating this audio podcast, as an educational tool for the public and to raise awareness. There appears to be significant level of interest outside of Hudson and Quebec, and even outside of Canada, to learn how Municipalities might address such concerns from its residents, through actions taken initially at the level of Municipal Councils.

The audio podcast is just over 17 minutes long. It can be listened by clicking the player button at the bottom of this blog. Alternately it can also be downloaded and stored for listening at leisure, through iPhone or iPod and similar devices through iTunes store, free of charge. To find this Podcast and other episodes from me, search for Tony Mitra in the search field in iTunes Store and you should find it. The name of this specific Podcast is – Jennifer Dumoulin of Hudson Quebec on pesticide ban.

I hope this Podcast and information will be of value to the discerning listeners. My thanks go to Jennifer Dumoulin for agreeing to speak with me on record, for taking time out to do so, and for being patient with my questions.

Above is a recorded talk with Ms. Jennifer Dumoulin of the Municipality of Hudson in 2013.

Below is a link to part of the movie made on June Irwin.

Update on July 2, 2018

This is the story of June Irwin, the lone Canadian pesticide warrior that changed the face of Canadian law regarding rights of Municipalities with regard to controlling pesticides in residential areas.

June Irwin was a dermatologist that single handedly changed Canada, and strengthened the hand or ordinary citizens in protecting their neighbourhood from toxic chemical attack by pesticide peddling corporations.

Born in 1935, June was a doctor, a dermatologist, living in the town of Hudson, Quebec, Canada, back in the 1980s and 1990s. She noticed children coming to see her with rashes on their skin, that apparently developed after they played in the grass lawns outside their homes and in public spaces such as in schools and playgrounds.

After checking on the causes and noting the timing of herbicide spray (cosmetic pesticides application in residential areas) and almost synchronous ailments in children’s and pets skin problems, she came to the conclusion that lawn and other cosmetic pesticides were bad for human and animal health.

She contacted the town Municipality, and appealed that these pesticides be banned from residential and public areas. The Municipality declined to act, on the grounds that the pesticides and their application were federally approved and the issue is outside the jurisdiction of town Municipalities.

June disagreed. Undeterred, she appealed first to her clients, the parents of children and owners of pets that were getting sick while playing on the grass. Then she went door to door to meet everybody else.

June had a pleasant and helpful demeanour and was very well regarded in her town. She slowly started gathering the townspeople behind her on this issue.

In two years, the call to ban lawn and other cosmetic pesticides from the town became a political force that the Municipal councillors could no longer ignore. They were literally going to be kicked out of their office and replaced by a new breed, unless they worked to ban these pesticides and make the town safe for children to play in the grass.

The town of Hudson passed a law, banning use of cosmetic pesticides.

Hudson got promptly sued by the spraying companies, supported by the pesticide promoters, in the provincial Court, on the grounds that the Municipality had neither the scientific proof of harm nor the legal jurisdiction, to ban these chemicals.

The town fought the case and won the battle on two provisions of the law:
1) Even if a product or practice is approved federally, it may be restricted locally if it is deemed unsafe for the people.
2) A town did not need to provide absolute and irrefutable proof that a chemical is directly responsible for diseases. A town may have a reasonable suspicion of harm, for passing laws to protect its citizens from the suspected harm.

The chemical lobby did not give up, and sued the town in the Canadian Supreme Court. By then, the province of Quebec had risen to support its small but valiant little town of Hudson, championed by this courageous little lady. So the province of Quebec passed a province wide law banning the use of cosmetic lawn pesticides, and promptly inserted itself into the Supreme Court case, as co-defendant alongside the little town of Hudson.

A few years down the line, the town of Hudson and the province of Quebec won the Supreme Court case. Neither the town, nor the province, needed to produce irrefutable proof of harm. All they needed was a reasonable suspicion of harm, in order to ban these pesticides.

This provided the legal basis, the jurisprudence, for the rest of Canada to follow. Town after town passed these laws, and were never to be legally challenged again.

Today, in my own hometown of Delta, BC, Canada, lawn and residential area weeds may not be killed by any pesticides. The town corporation uses mechanical means and labour to control roadside weeds. Pesticides and herbicides are not only banned in residential and public spaces, but they cannot even be sold in local stores.

The only area the towns are yet unable or unwilling to push back at herbicides, is its use in agriculture, prairie, forests and marshes.

June Irwin showed the path and proved that just a single frail lady is all it takes to change your neighbourhood and the world.

I spoke with June Irwin time to time from some ten years ago, to learn more of her work in Hudson and to catch up on the story. About three years ago I learned she was unwell and might be battling cancer.

She passed away last year at age 83.

Margaret Meade was spot on when she said:
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

I love you, June. I shall never forget you.

Relevant Links:

Carmen Wakeling – Part 2

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It has been two months since I sat across Carmen at her beautiful farm in Comox Valley, Vancouver Island, to hear the story of Eatmore Sprouts farm and her love for the land, the lifestyle, and the community.

The first part of our talk has been up on an earlier blog linked here. Today, I cover the second part, almost without editing. Since the recording was done outdoors, on a windy day, and with birds chirping, and a other man made sounds of farm activity in the background, the audio is more lively, real and rustic, instead of hospital clean and lab produced.

Her farm produces, among other things around 4,000 pounds of organic alfalfa sprouts every week, which she sells wholesale and can be found in stores in the island, in the lower mainlands, as well as in other provinces. This is a significant part of her business.

But, is Health Canada approving GM alfalfa, the future of that business looks uncertain. Genetic pollution may finish off all sources of organic alfalfa seeds in Canada. She ponders the future and watches the dark clouds gather over the horizon, with events that might change the face of traditional farming in Canada.

Her objection to GM food, she claims in her own blog on her web site, is multifaceted and relates to seed independence, health concerns, fact that independent safety tests are not done in Canada, genetic pollution, use of chemicals, the difficulty of organic and genetic farmers to co-exist without contamination, the consumer;s inability to choose or reject GMO due absence of labelling, to name a few.

As I sat listening to her, my mind wandered, to lands near and far, to far off regions, nation and continent, where people like Carmen are watching the gathering clouds over the horizon, and pondering the future of our collective food security, health, and fate of the traditional organic farmers.

The second part covers a half hour where she explains her work, and the issues with GM crops in the valley, were some of the dairy farmers prefer to feed their cattle with GM corn. As a result, tension may be rising in the community, as various communities in the island are having their municipalities declaring themselves GE free, and the dairy farmers are resisting any move that they see as a threat to their survival.

These are questions that are not just valid for the Comox valley, but for the entire planet.

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BRAI bill – India’s Monsanto protection act

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Ex Health Canada Scientist and whistleblower Dr. Shiv Chopra had stated that the war on GMO, along with that of vaccines, might be won or lost in India. Following the same view, Teresa Lynn, a mother and a grandmother born and raised in British Columbia, sends a letter to the Government of India, requesting it to reject the newly proposed BRAI bill.

Crop circle in protest against BRAI bill
Crop circle in protest against BRAI bill

Bt. Cotton enters India through the backdoor

Bt.Cotton entered India through the back door. By the time the Government had the item on its table, to approve of disapprove, the crop was already all over the place. Hence the Govt approved it, belatedly. In fact, it was suggested that the Govt might as well approve it, since it is already present everywhere.

The story of the cotton farming in India is shaping up to be an unmitigated disaster as well as a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions, with over a quarter million farmer suicides recorded in the past decade, mostly in the cotton belt, and driven by a debt spiral and economic collapse of the small farmers.

Bt. Brinjal is halted

IN the background of that episode, came the issue of bt.Brinjal (Bt.Eggplant). Brinjal (eggplant) originated in India. India enjoys the highest diversity of the plant, more than six thousand varieties of it. IN some areas, every twenty miles presents a different kind of Brinjal, evolved and hybridized over long experimentation to suit that soil, air, temperature, rainfall and humidity.

Monsanto and its Indian partner attempted to introduce the transgenic Bt.Brinjal in 2010, and the food security activists, farmers unions, sustainable agriculture promoters, and concerned citizens started a mega-mvoement to protest introduction of Bt. Brinjal. The movement got so big that the environment minister went into a fact finding spree and a public discussion with scientists and experts – to arrive at the decision that Bt. Brinjal posed an unacceptable risk to India’s food security and biodiversity, and blocked its introduction by a moratorium.

The citizens of India had won the day.

Provincial versus Federal Jurisdiction

While official introduction of GMO was halted, what remained was field trials of some GMO. Here the ministry of Agriculture maintained that field trials cannot be stopped. Needless to say, the Ministry of Agriculture, just like the Ministry of Science and Technology, is pushing for GMO, and show scant concern for either biosafety or food security.

However, when field tests were being planned, seven provincial Governments complained to the centre, that such field tests were planned in their territory without consulting with the provincial Government, and this was resisted by the state Government.

Subsequent to such pressure, the Federal Government passed a directive that the Provincial Governments should be consulted, and their approval obtained, before initiating field trials of GMO. Seven provinces did not agree to field trials. These are: Kerala, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Bihar and West Bengal, basically provinces of the South, centre and east of India. These are heavy in agriculture. As a result, even field trials became restricted. Future of GMO in India got into the doldrums.

Cartagena Protocol

The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity is an international agreement which aims to ensure the safe handling, transport and use of living modified organisms (LMOs) resulting from modern biotechnology that may have adverse effects on biological diversity, taking also into account risks to human health. It was adopted on 29 January 2000 and entered into force on 11 September 2003.

This Protocol apply to the transboundary movement, transit, handling and use of all living modified organisms that may have adverse effects on the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, taking also into account risks to human health. It calls for setting up risk management systems to ensure transgenic organisms imported into the country are going to be safe.

India is a signatory since 2003. Among many other provisions within the Protocol, one is exampled here –  Article 23, which deals with public awareness and participation in Government decision making with regard to GMO.

ARTICLE 23 – PUBLIC AWARENESS AND PARTICIPATION

1. The Parties shall:

(a) Promote and facilitate public awareness, education and participation concerning the safe transfer, handling and use of living modified organisms in relation to the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, taking also into account risks to human health. In doing so, the Parties shall cooperate, as appropriate, with other States and international bodies;

(b) Endeavour to ensure that public awareness and education encompass access to information on living modified organisms identified in accordance with this Protocol that may be imported.

2. The Parties shall, in accordance with their respective laws and regulations, consult the public in the decision-making process regarding living modified organisms and shall make the results of such decisions available to the public, while respecting confidential information in accordance with Article 21.

3. Each Party shall endeavour to inform its public about the means of public access to the Biosafety Clearing-House.

BRAI bill

The GMO promoters, which included the big money, corporate world, finance, banking and almost the entire political hierarchy of Delhi, got into higher gear to find ways and means to introduce GMO patented by foreign corporations.

Thus, the BRAI (Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India) bill came to be written – and awaits passage in Parliament. The details of this bill is regressive and is already being called India’s own Monsanto Protection Act. It tries to create a single window clearing house for approval of GMO, placing the regulatory (risk assessment) and the promotion of GMO under the same ministry (of Science and Technology) – a clear and deliberately created conflict of Interest.

The Government announced the bill on June 10, giving the public one month (till July 10) to respond to it.

Meanwhile, the Indian civil society has learned, that to ward off GMO in India, the public needs to exert sustained strong pressure to counter the GMO lobby, and be ever vigilant against it.

And thus, the civil society and the activist groups are gearing up again to counter this threat.

Public Response

There are two motions already unrolled by various groups. The first is to write a rebuttal to the Government, asking them to scrap the BRAI bill.

The second is a petition to allow more than one month, for the public awareness and participation. I wrote a letter to the Govt. of India, as did Teresa Lynn of British Columbia, Canada. My letter is copied here. Teresa’s letter is presented as an audio podcast at the bottom of this blog, and also in iTunes.

My letter to the Govt of India

I have sent my letter to the Govt. Of India by email, as below:

———————————————————————————

Mr. Alok Chatterjee, Director, Rajya Sabha Secretariat , Room # 005, Ground Floor, Parliament House Annexe, New Delhi 110001, India

Telephone +91-11-2303 4597, Fax +91-11-2301 5585,

Email : rsc-st@sansad.nic.in

Subject : Response to the proposed BRAI bill

Dear sir,

I am a non resident Indian citizen residing in Canada. I write this letter in response to the Governments invitation for feedback from the public regarding the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India act, published by the Govt. Of India on the 10th of June, 2013.

I believe this bill is regressive instead of progressive towards safety, and if implemented is going to be more harmful for the Indian public as well as its environment, than if the bill did not exist. Therefore, I believe this bill should be rejected. The reasons for the same are briefly listed below.

1. Wrong science

The biotechnology behind the creation of GMO is 70 years old, backdated, and proven to be faulty. The technology is based on the assumption that one gene in a plant genome codes for one protein and nothing else. Therefore, if that gene can be exchanged with another gene from another organism, then the implanted gene would only do what it was doing in its original host organism, and nothing more. This has proven to be wrong in the last ten years, ever since the human genome project was completed in year 2002. Everybody was expecting human genome to have over 100,000 genes, because it was known that the human body requires and produces, over 100,000 proteins. However, the genome project proved that humans have only around 20,000 genes and a lot of unrecognized “junk DNA”. Now it is understood that the junk DNA is not junk at all, but some sort of a control mechanism, the brain, of the DNA ecosystem, that tells individual genes what protein to produce and what not to, depending on situation. In other words, a gene first of all produces a lot more than a single protein, and secondly, what it may or may not produce is controlled often not just by the gene alone, but the entire genome ecosystem or control mechanism of the organism. Subsequently, independent studies have indicated that there are a lot of collateral DNA damage and unintended consequences in GMO crops, and that proteins that were not intended may also be produced as a side effect. A lot of proteins are very toxic, such as snake or scorpion venom. Independent study seems to indicate severe adverse effect on animals exposed either to GM crop or to accompanying GM herbicide. Also, detrimental side effects of consuming such crops can lead to all kinds of problems over the long term, sometimes evident after decades, or even in the next generation of children.

Therefore, precautionary principle calls for independent and rigorous test of the products for ill effects on humans and the environment, and not depend on test results provided by the patent holding biotech industry itself, which has a vested interest to see its product approved.

2. Wrong Ministry

The testing of bio-safety should be under the ministry of environment, and away from the ministry of Science and Technology. This product poses a serious and possibly irreversible threat to India’s biodiversity. The ministry of science has a mandate, to promote GMO without putting in place any mechanism to independently test GMO by labs and institutions that cannot be influenced by the ministry, or the industry.

3. Wrong examples : Canada’s example is what India should not follow

Here in Canada, the cross pollinated contamination of GM canola is so complete across the entire country that it is now virtually impossible to get organic, non-contaminated canola seed for a farmer. As the organic product becomes difficult to produce, and the regulations tend to promote GM crops and make it economically harder for farmers to produce traditional variety, the number of small farmers are decreasing, and agriculture is taken up by large agri-corporations that spray the fields with pesticides from the air, and raise mechanized GM crop, large cutting labor cost, and enjoying a temporary economic benefit of economics of scale. But in due course, insects and weeds develop resistance to the GM crops, thence requiring several times more pesticide, or stronger pesticide, all of which are patented and comes at a high cost.

By losing the organic Canola, Canada is lost a huge export market to the EU, who will not touch GM canola.

Today, less than 1 percent of Canadian population is engaged in farming. Average age of Canadian farmer is above 60. Half of the farmers will retire within the next five years. 75% of the farmers have no succession plan. Farmers in Canada is going extinct, to be replaced by robotic mechanized, industrial scale, chemical dependent, unnatural GM harvest, which is heading for a disaster, both for health and for environment.

Grassroots resistance is rising across the nation and may become a political issue in the coming election.

India cannot afford to make its farmers extinct and need not follow the Canadian, or Australian or the US trend. Natural, non GM farming is labor intensive and can employ a huge population – which has proven to be good for india. India does not need to change that model and push farmers out of farming.

4. Wrong security: Food security sacrificed

India should not hand over its food security to patent held in foreign corporations and take away the farmers rights to replant their seeds, like they have done for the past ten thousand years. India does not need to mortgage its food security to corporations.

This bill is dangerous for food security of a nation of over a billion people, and plays with the livelihood of hundreds of millions of farmers.

5. Wrong ecology : Loss of biodiversity

India is enormously rich in its biodiversity, all of it either naturally evolved or is a result of collective effort of generations of farmers across the land and across time. This rich heritage will prove useful and key for survival. GM crops promote mono-culture, where thousands of kinds of a plant go extinct and only one patented kind remains. This is a recipe for disaster. Climate change, loss of water resource, excess pesticidal toxins in the soil, extinction of beneficial insects bees and micro-organisms are all going to cumulatively make the GM crop unsustainable and India faces a crisis of a kind it may overcome only by using the heirloom seeds that have been specifically raised to deal with difficult conditions such as draught, flood, or incursion of saline or brackish water due sea level rise etc.

India had over 100,000 strains of rice a few decades ago. Today, it hardly has 2,000 strains and those too are disappearing rapidly, thanks to excessive dependence on an unsustainable agricultural model ever since the false green revolution. This is a crisis that is irreversible. Those special strains were generated through hit and trial on special conditions over millennia of experimentation and cannot be reproduced in a hurry, and certainly not by the biotech industry.

6. Wrong policy : Public discussion and access to information

By being signatory to the Cartagena Protocol, India has agreed to put in place various safeguards against inadvertent damage to the nations bio-safety through introduction of GMO. This included engaging in public debate and placing all relevant details in the public domain, so that independent verification can be done by people and institutions that do not have a conflict of interest. This bill attempts to bypass the public discourse as well as curtail access of bio-safety and other information because of proprietary confidential information of the patent holder. Safety information for public should always take precedence over proprietary intellectual property rights. If the biotech firm is not willing to divulge all details of the product and its safety tests for public scrutiny, then the products should be automatically considered unsafe and unsuitable.

7. Wrong characteristics : GMO do not increase yield

Despite being touted as the solution to population increase, GMO are not produced for higher yield. GMO are specifically produced so that their accompanying pesticide can be applied in greater quantity, thus increasing sale of the patented pesticide and herbicide. Besides, hunger is a function of poverty and not of availability of food. India itself is a good example of producing enough food but making to expensive for the poor man, thus allowing hunger and malnourishment to persist. GMO only accelerates the same – food will get most expensive, and the farmers get poorer and more debt ridden.

8. Wrong power : Concentration of authority in the hand of the Union Government

The control of bio-safety needs to be de-politicized and de-centralized. But the bill attempts to do the opposite and concentrates power within the science and technology ministry, so the regulators and the promoters of GMO are under the same roof and in the same bed – a serious conflict of interest and unacceptably dangerous concentration of power.

9. Wrong priority : GM crops being promoted for plants that do not need to be changed.

Plants that have no problem with pesticide or production and originated in the region and has the maximum diversity, do not need to be replaced by GMO. There has to be first of all an analysis of if the plant at all needs to be improved. Such “NO need evaluation” should be mandatory. Bt. Brinjal example highlights this case amply.

10. Wrong risk management

The bill proposes no risk management mechanism.

It is for all these reasons that I strongly urge the Government to reject his bill outright.

If one needs to create a bill for safety against GMO, suggest follow Norways “Act of 2nd April 1993 No. 38 Relating to the Production and Use of Genetically Modified Organisms, etc. (Gene Technology Act)”. It provides a good example of ensuring public and environmental safety with relation to GMO.

Thanking you

(name and address added)

——————————————–

Teresa Lynn‘s letter is included here as a podcast, linked at the bottom of this blog page. A lady born and raised in British Columbia, she believes, like Dr. Shiv Chopra mentioned, that this is a global struggle against GMO and India is a key battlefield where the war might be won or lost. And so, we lent her time, and her voice, in joining countless others in requesting the Government of India not to abandon its citizens, its food security, its ecology and its biodiversity, in favor of corporate profit. You can listen to this 4.5 minute podcast by clicking the triangular play button at the bottom of this page. You can also find  it in iTunes, by searching for podcasts under my name  – Tony Mitra. The logo of the iTunes podcast is shown at at left.

 

Reference links: