Hearing a Victorian farmer admitting on the ABC TV Landline program last Sunday that his genetically modified canola test plot took more time and money to raise than his adjoining non-GM plot, I began to feel that North Coast Voices has lately been a bit neglectful of the job security of that Monsanto employee paid to monitor the blogosphere.
To make it up to Mr. Monsanto as he/she is affectionately known Down Under, here are a few updates.
From AFN in late September:Ninety per cent of Australians want all genetically modified (GM) products labelled and are less likely to purchase such products, according to a recent Newspoll poll.According to the poll, which was commissioned by anti-GM campaigners Greenpeace, when asked if food products from GM crops and animals fed with GM feed should or should not be labelled, 90% of the respondents said they should be labelled. The 25-34 age group was the most keen for labelling of GM food (95%), with the 18-24 age group indicating the least support for GM labelling (86%).
Fifty-four per cent of respondents outlined they would be less likely to purchase GM food if given a choice, while 2% said they would be more likely to buy it and 42 per cent suggested it would have no impact on their purchase. The 18-24 age group was once again the least concerned about GM-food, as 61 per cent reported that it would have no impact on their purchases. Across states the statistics were similar, except in Western Australia and Tasmania. WA consumers were more likely to show little concern as only 45% would be less likely to purchase compared to the Australia-wide leaders Tasmania - where 71% said they would be less likely to purchase GM-food.
The survey questions are here.
In the United States, industry leader Monsanto has pursued thousands of farmers for allegedly saving and replanting its patented Roundup Ready soybean seeds. An analysis by the Center for Food Safety documented court-imposed payments of more than $21 million from farmers to Monsanto for alleged patent infringement. However, when one includes the much greater number of pre-trial settlements, the total jumps to more than $85 million, collected from several thousand farmers.
Monsanto has filed about 125 lawsuits to stop patent infringement, and it has been able to avoid court in all but eight of those cases, winning those eight.
Some of the country's first GM canola crops are struggling with the drought. Northern Victorian grain grower Evan Ryan from Yarrawonga says if the rain stays away he may even have to cut his valuable crop for hay.
Monsanto Co., the world's largest seed maker, said Wednesday its loss narrowed to $172 million in its fourth fiscal quarter as sales rose 35 percent. Its loss amounted to 31 cents a share in the three months ended Aug. 31, versus a loss of $210 million, or 39 cents a share, in the same period a year ago. Sales rose to $2.05 billion from $1.5 billion last year. Monsanto also reported a smaller loss of 3 cents a share from ongoing business during the quarter, down from 18 cents year ago. Those figures factor in the one-time sale of its Posilac milk hormone business, and a separate legal settlement.
As well as this growing consumer rejection of GM food in America, GM companies have had to face opposition by US farmers and regulatory authorities to a series of new GM products.
Both GM rice and GM wheat faced such strong opposition from farmers that they never made it out of field trials, and have never been grown commercially in the USA.
Hardly any GM sweet corn1 for human consumption is grown either (as opposed to maize grown for animal feed), for the simple reason that it tastes so bad that consumers wonít buy it. Attempts to launch GM alfalfa, Americaís fourth most widely grown crop, have also fallen flat. Farmers took legal action against the release of the crop and won.
In 2007 the USDA was ordered to withdraw its approval of the GM alfalfa, a ban was placed on all planting of the crop and the sale of GM alfalfa seeds has now been prohibited throughout the USA. There is also evidence that US plant breeders are rejecting GM technology in favour of more reliable and effective methods such as marker assisted selection. Despite soya being one of the most widely grown GM crops, the newest high-yielding soya strains are non-GM.
For the first time in the USA, a major labelling initiative is underway that will finally provide consumers with the option of choosing a wide range of non-GM foods. The biggest companies in the natural and organic industry have united to develop a non-GMO label scheme that offers consumers the choice they clearly wish for, backed up by a robust verification system to ensure that it is a claim they can trust.
This new ëNon-GMO Projectí will be launched next year. It is led by a group of companies with combined annual sales of at least $12 billion - equivalent to almost 10% of the entire UK food and drink industry.
Around four hundred companies across the US and Canada have pledged their support, and at the outset around 28,000 different products are likely to be covered by the scheme. With US consumers, farmers and politicians losing their enthusiasm for GM crops, it is not surprising that the GM industry has scaled up its efforts to find a new market in the EU.
But in Europe, over 175 regions and over 4,500 municipalities and local areas have declared themselves GMO-free.
Major countries that once supported GM, like France and Germany, no longer do so, and the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are all committed to GM-free policies.
Land of the GM-free report
here.
So to recap: Monsanto - with uncertainty growing in its 'home' market - is setting Australian farmers up to produce grain crops that many consumers do not really want to use or eat, and probably intends to sue the pants off some of these same farmers to help protect its not so healthy corporate bottom line.
Bravo, Monsanto!
Portrait of the dozy dastard from the National Museum of Australia What can't Malcolm do? 
