Nexus - 0903 - New Times Magazine-pages

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The Indian government's pretext for banning mustard oil was —— market in that country for vegetable oil. And, if traders cannot that it's "unhygienic and therefore unsafe". And the populace had __ sell mustard oil, they will not buy mustard from farmers and farm- to be protected from this 'dangerous menace’. Dr Shiva says:” ers will stop growing it... This will lead to the extinction of a crop "It is nice to know that our government is so concerned about that is central to India's farming system and we would remain the health of the people who elected it to power. But why has it dependent on soyabean for our edible oil... shown so little interest in this issue before? It has never taken "There is a precedent for this phenomenon. In Indonesia, the any action to limit the use of the carcinogenic pesticides... It has recent food riots were largely caused by massive imports of soy- never taken any action to prevent the radioactive pollution... abean oil, on which the Indonesian people had become crippling- Why, then, this sudden concern with public health?" ly dependent. When the Indonesian currency collapsed, the retail The first hint that there was more to this story was in July 1998, price of soya escalated, making the cooking oil far too expensive when the Indian government announced plans to import as much _for the bulk of people to afford. India would be put in a similarly as one million tons of soyabean as oilseed. Then, on 27 August — vulnerable position if we were to become dependent on imported 1998, the same day that the government soya for cooking oil." announced a ban on sales of mustard oil, it announced wat al import resiric- "By encou raging the Indian Monsanto's Soyabean Recipe for tions were to be lifted on soyabeans— nfertility now predominantly a GM multinational government to ban the sale Vandana Shiva's Ecologist report corporation product. Indian opposition of mustard oil throughout then goes on to discuss the chemical party concerns were raised over the fact properties of the soyabean:* that mustard oil was perfectly satisfac- the country, the food "Soyabeans contain phytic acid tory, that imported soyabean was not multinationals were provided which can reduce the bioavailability necessary and that imported soyabean 9 9 of essential minerals such as calcium, seed might well include genetically with a perfect market opening magnesium, zinc, copper and iron. modified varieties, leading to wide- for their products..." They also contain phytoestrogens spread cross-contamination. which are above the levels required, Resistance to the soyabean import rul- and are established carcinogens. ing was steadfast. The arguments put They can have an impact on the foetus forward by the Indian government so far were not convincing which can lead to the abnormal formation of reproductive organs, enough. Says Dr Shiva:*' to sterility, and to the inhibition of sexual maturation. "In the face of this opposition, the government needed to find a "Calculations have shown that an infant fed with soyabean- more convincing justification for their action." based formula is ingesting oestrogen equivalent to that obtained And almost immediately, in Delhi and elsewhere, there was a —_ from 8 to 12 contraceptive pills per day..." horrible ‘outbreak’, which was reported as a 'dropsy' epidemic, in Given the underhand, focused manner in which these multina- which 41 people died and some 2,300 people were affected by tional corporations are attempting to (a) control worldwide food symptoms including nausea, vomiting, kidney damage, fluid on distribution and (b) implement worldwide population control the lungs and heart failure. The mysterious outbreak was soon —_— measures, can we really believe it is mere chance that mass ton- traced to a very large batch of mustard oil that had somehow been nage of essential foodstuffs, high in oestrogen levels,“ is now adulterated with diesel oil, waste industrial oil and argemone—a flooding into the poorer nations of the world? poisonous black seed that grows alongside the mustard plant. As if these activities weren't distasteful enough, Monsanto cou- Argemone has previously been found as a contaminant in mus- led its soyabean drive with a public relations exercise under the tard oil, but never in more than 0.1 per cent of the mustard oil on anner of "Monsanto's care and concern" for the poor. It the market. In this case, Shiva says, 10-30 per cent of the oil had launched a global campaign in the major newspapers of the world, been adulterated. India's health minister at the time admitted that imploring the citizenry to trust Monsanto to develop genetically this could only have been the result of some sort of conspiracy, so engineered crops to feed the starving millions. extensive was the contamination. Beginning its US$1.6 billion advertising campaign two days Meanwhile, back in America, at the same time as all of this was efore World Food Day and using emotive pictures of starving taking place, the Monsanto Corporation was in the embarrassing African children, Monsanto's 1998 "Let The Harvest Begin" cam- position of sitting on almost 18 million acres of an increasingly aign opened thus:** unsaleable "Round-up Ready" soyabean crop. Bad publicity sur- "We all share the same planet—and the same needs. In agri- rounding Monsanto's latest Round-up formula meant their 18 mil- culture, many of our needs have an ally in biotechnology and the lion acres' worth were not exactly flying out of the door. How promising advances it offers for our future... Healthier, more and where on Earth were they going to get rid of it? Could the = abundant yields. Reduced reliance on pesticides and fossil fuels... answer lie in dumping it upon a Third World nation, where the —_ A cleaner environment... As we stand on the edge of a new mil- public was yet to be more fully alerted to the possible dangers of — lennium, we dream of a tomorrow without hunger..." GM crops? And if this were a viable option, then how would However, in February 1999, researchers Daniel Doerge and Monsanto go about achieving its objective? Daniel Sheehan, two of the Food and Drug Administration's Vandana Shiva believes there is a strong possibility that the experts on soy, sent a letter of protest to the FDA, pointing to sabotage of the mustard oil and Monsanto's own particular busi- studies that show a link between soy and health problems in cer- ness predicament are all very much interconnected:* tain animals which they projected would also have an adverse "By encouraging the Indian government to ban the sale of mus- effect on humans. Doerge and Sheehan say they tried to stop the tard oil throughout the country, the food multinationals were pro- FDA approval of soy, but their efforts were in vain. Their full vided with a perfect market opening for their products—which and frank report® bears out everything written by Dr Vandana would enable them to dominate, and on a permanent basis, the Shiva with regard to soy and infertility. APRIL — MAY 2002 NEXUS ¢ 19 www.nexusmagazine.com