Review of Documentary: Future of Food

Future of Food: Documentary
"Fighting for the Future of Food - Deborah Koons Garcia's film documents how genetically engineered foods slipped into our supply" - San Francisco Chronicle

History:
The film starts out with a little history of chemicals relevant to the topic of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) and Genetically Modified Foods (GMF).

Nitrogen-based chemicals started changing the face of the industry, when in:
WWI, Nitrogen Bomb inspired DDT.
WWII, Insecticides were the hero’s of this generation.
Vietnam Era’s had the infamous Agent Orange; this is where Monsanto first comes in the picture, as it’s main producer. Monsanto is a main player in this documentary.

How we reached the point of modifying life:
By the middle of the 20th century the “Green Revolution” started to take shape. The idea was to systemize agriculture to solve world hunger. Mechanizing agriculture led to the growth of monocultures, where only one crop is grown on extensive plots of land. This can be really dangerous as seen in the 1800’s when European farmers went with one type of potato. Then one type of insect wiped out there entire crops and many people died due to the fact that they had no potatoes, which were a staple food at the time. Today, 90 percent of crops grown in the 19th century are no longer grown. In the 1970s, Monsanto created Roundup. Roundup is a pesticide that usually kills anything that is green. So for crops to grow where Roundup is used, they need to be resistant to it. Unfortunately, the health risks of glyphosate, Roundup's active ingredient, are poorly understood, even though they may be significant. Some studies have linked glyphosate exposure to cancer, though others say the connection is tenuous. Glyphosate's been linked it to organ damage in animals; it could affect human reproduction and fetal development. In 1978, came the first Supreme Court decision allowing patenting of life — a microbe that had been genetically engineered to eat oil, which never really hit the market but opened the door for patenting life. Before this happened, patenting a part of nature was unthinkable. But after the 1980 decision for A.M. Chakrabarty, the only requirement to owning a part of nature required getting the patent before someone else, so the race was on. Monsanto is now the owner of more than 90% of all genetically engineered seed in the U.S. as well as some 11,000-plus genetically engineered seed patents across the globe. By 1995 the big pesticide companies bought and owned most all the seed companies.

Did you Know?
Only Between 1-2% of the US population are farmers! That means that there are more people locked up in prisons in the U.S. than there are farmers.

Lawsuits & Not Respecting the Farmer:
In the 1990s, Canadian canola farmer Percy Schmeiser who had been saving and developing his own seeds for 40 years. In 1997, he sprayed some of Monsanto’s Roundup pesticide at the edge of his canola fields around the power lines. He found that some canola grew anyway and when Monsanto found out they claimed Mr. Schmeiser infringed on its patent rights. Monsanto also sued Rodney Nelson, a North Dakota farmer for patent infringement. Neither Nelson, nor Schmeiser had purposely planting Monsanto’s genetically engineered (GE) seeds. The seeds had naturally drifted to their land with the power of wind, blowing off trucks that were driving by the farms. But Monsanto sued them and did the same by sending out 9,000 other letters. “They want to scare farmers into never saving their own seed again,” says Nelson. Schmeiser took the challenge and went to court: “People ask me why I didn’t settle. I said I couldn’t live with myself if I did that.” In the end the judge ruled that it did not matter how Monsanto’s seed got to Schmeiser’s land. Even though he did not want Monsanto’s canola growing on his property, his plants became Monsanto’s property and by the rule of law, he had violated Monsanto’s patent rights. This was interesting testimonial and makes it easy to be mad at Monsanto after hearing how they abused the farmers in the movie.

One part of the film that was interesting and leads to part of the reason GMF’s are controversial is when scientists show what it takes to insert a genetically engineered gene into a regular plant gene. It takes the likes of E.Coli bacteria and the cauliflower mosaic virus to break up the regular plant gene to make it possible to insert the genetically engineered cell into it. This was very interesting because scientists really have to play the part of a harmful virus to be able to infiltrate these genes. And this leads to the question of whether or not GMF’s are healthy or harmful.

"As we move on into this so-called biotech revolution and we start producing more and more transgenic manipulations, we'll start seeing pieces of DNA interacting with each other in ways that are totally unpredictable...

I think this is probably the largest biological experiment humanity has ever entered into."
- Ignacio Chapela
ecologist at the University of California at Berkeley



The Politics of it:
Big companies like Monsanto are playing both sides of the fence in the genetically engineered (GE) seed/food debate. When it comes to regulation and safety questions, they claim these products are considered safe because they are not substantially different than regular food items. Yet, when it comes to seeking patents, they claim their products are unique and should only be owned by them.

The next part of the film really opened my eyes when they show a number of government officials who have been going through a revolving door – working for Monsanto, then working for the government. FDA’s Michael Taylor, EPA’s Linda Fisher and former Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman are only a few of the names. Some have gone back and forth more than once!!

U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich has been trying to pass a bill that will require label’s on GE Food’s but, it has yet to pass as of the film. Without labeling, there is no way to trace the health effects of these foods on human beings. That’s because, a long list of government officials, starting with Dan Quayle in 1992, have been calling for no regulations on these foods. The European Union has required the labeling of genetically engineered foods.

Even though the U.S. government saw no harm in GE foods, in 1998 Mexico banned GE corn to protect its corn heritage. In 2001, Berkeley ecologist Ignacio Chapela tells the story of how he found traces of GE corn in the wild Mexican maize after the ’98 ban. Chapela also found out that many Mexican farmers are buying American seed because it is so much cheaper, the reason for this is that the US subsidizes the farming industry to the price tag of $20 billion. Chapela wrote a peer-reviewed article about his findings in the journal Nature, but the magazine story got retracted shortly after. Not only did this happen to the highly credible Chapela but he also had his name dragged through the mud for challenging the industry. The film also brings out the story of Dr. Arpad Puzstai’s, who was put on leave after his critical work about the genetic engineering industry. Director Deborah Koons Garcia has interviewed highly credible sources such as Chuck Benbrook, the former agriculture board director for the National Academy of Sciences, and Fred Kirshenman, director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture.

The Future:
Four companies produce Eighty percent of all beef. Four companies own Ninety percent of all seed. Soon, only six retail firms will control the distribution of the majority of food items, of which only one will be American based, that company is Wal-Mart. This will everyone less opportunity to choose what they want to eat as their will be less variety. The new thing is Terminator Technology seeds – Monsanto has at least 15 patents to those. They are the ones that a farmer can only grow for one year, because the seeds go sterile after that, which requires a small farmer to buy seed every year, instead of being able to save their own. There are also seeds that won’t germinate until they are sprayed. They also mentioned that these companies are also engineering fish, chicken, livestock, trees and also insects. We’ll have to wait to see what happens with all this new technology.

This is where we the consumer comes in and as we briefly talked about in class every consumer votes with his or her dollar every time we shop. The good news is that more and more shoppers are making educated decisions. Consumers are starting to spend their dollars away from the genetically engineered foods and giving them to organic food companies, local farmer’s markets and Community Supported Agriculture programs.

Some thoughts:
If this is all true and it looks pretty apparent that it is, I will try to boycott buying anything from Monsanto. They seem to have a total disregard for rights of farmers, or for that matter anybody. Only to make as much money as they can with no responsibility. I still don’t really know why they are able to own life. Also, any industry that is self-regulated, ya right, what’s up with that, carte blanche to do what they want. The whole industry seems a bit shady to me. It all seems like something you might see on TV when the bad guy wants to take over the world HA HA HA!!
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Directed by Deborah Koons Garcia
2004 Lily Films


Terms:
Maize: (IPA: /ˈmeɪz/) (Zea mays L. ssp. mays), known as corn in some countries, is a cereal grain domesticated in Mesoamerica and subsequently spread throughout the American continents. After European contact with the Americas in the late 15th and early 16th century, maize spread to the rest of the world.

Cauliflower Mosaic Virus: (CaMV) is the type member of the caulimoviruses, one of the six genera in the Caulimoviridae family, pararetroviruses that infect plants (Pringle, 1999). Pararetroviruses replicate through reverse transcription just like retroviruses, but the viral particles contain DNA instead of RNA

E.Coli: Escherichia coli; pronounced, is a Gram negative bacterium that is commonly found in the lower intestine of warm-blooded animals. Most E. coli strains are harmless, but some, such as serotype O157:H7, can cause serious food poisoning in humans, and are occasionally responsible for costly product recalls.^[1][2] The harmless strains are part of the normal flora of the gut, and can benefit their hosts by producing vitamin K₂, or by preventing the establishment of pathogenic bacteria within the intestine.

Glyphosate: (N-(phosphonomethyl) glycine) is a non-selective systemic herbicide, absorbed through the leaves, injected into the trunk, or applied to the stump of a tree, used to kill weeds, especially perennials and broadcast or used in the cut-stump treatment as a forestry herbicide. Some crops have been genetically engineered to be resistant to it. Initially, Glyphosate was sold only by Monsanto under the Monsanto tradename Roundup, but is no longer under patent. It is now also available in other formulations, e.g. Resolva 24H, which contains glyphosate and diquat.

DDT: (from its trivial name, Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane) is one of the best known synthetic pesticides. It is a chemical with a long, unique, and controversial history.

Agent Orange: is the code name for a powerful herbicide and defoliant used by the U.S. military in its Herbicidal Warfare program during the Vietnam War. During the Vietnam War, an estimated 21,136,000 gal. (80 000 m³) of Agent Orange was sprayed across South Vietnam.

Additional Resource:
Monsanto