Big global biotech corporations like Bayer and Corteva, which together already control 40% of the global seed market, are dangerously trying to reinforce their monopoly and threatening food security. In a new report, a group of seed saving, environmental and consumer organisations reveals how these companies seek to increase their control over the future of food and farming by extensively patenting plants and developing a new generation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Global biotech leaders Bayer and Corteva (formerly Pioneer Dupont) are moving to patent plant genetic information that can occur both naturally or as a result of genetic modification - claiming all plants with those genetic traits as their “invention”. Such patents on plants, which have been controversial for decades, would restrict farmers’ access to seeds and impede breeders from developing urgently needed plants adaptable to extreme weather conditions, as both would have to ask for consent and pay fees to the biotech companies. GMWatch

 

 

In the EU, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are strictly regulated in order to protect human and animal health and the environment. The European Non-GMO Industry Association (ENGA) explains why the current EU legislation works well for both the industry and the consumer. It says the current EU GMO regulation is balanced – it enables authorisation and placing on the market of GMOs and it allows those that want to, to avoid them. ENGA adds, "Throughout the entire food sector, the trend is towards more transparency; why then do the proponents of New GMOs (and it seems the European Commission) want to hide GMOs? It would be impossible to convey to a predominantly GMO-critical public that there is a backward step in transparency in a technology as controversial as genetic engineering." ENGA

 

 

For decades, Swiss chemical giant Syngenta has manufactured and marketed a widely used weedkilling chemical called paraquat, and for much of that time the company has been dealing with external concerns that long-term exposure to the chemical may be a cause of the incurable brain ailment known as Parkinson’s disease. Syngenta has repeatedly told customers and regulators that scientific research does not prove a connection between its weedkiller and the disease, insisting that the chemical does not readily cross the blood-brain barrier, and does not affect brain cells in ways that cause Parkinson’s. But a cache of internal corporate documents dating back to the 1950s reviewed by the Guardian suggests that the public narrative put forward by Syngenta and the corporate entities that preceded it has at times contradicted the company’s own research and knowledge. The Guardian

 

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