Vandana Shiva: 'We Must End Monsanto's Colonization, Its Enslavement of Farmers'

Vandana Shiva
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Citizens of the U.S. are being denied the right to know what they are feeding their families. Despite the fact that 90 percent of American citizens want GMO labeling on their food, big business is doing everything it can to prevent people from accessing their rights. Representative Pompeo's bill, popularly known as the DARK Act (Denying Americans the Right to Know), has been written almost entirely by the biotech industry lobby. While American citizens are advocating for their rights to knowledge and healthy, affordable food, Monsanto's legal team is busy on every legislative level trying to prevent this from happening.

Monsanto's subversion of democratic legal processes is not new. In fact, it is their modus operandi, be it the subversion of LA's decision to be GMO free by amending the California Seed Law--equating corporations with persons and making seed libraries and exchange of seed beyond 3 miles illegal--or suing Maui County for passing a law banning GMOs.

Decades before there was a "debate" over GMOs and Monsanto's PR and law firms became the busiest of bees, India was introduced to this corrupting, corporate giant that had no respect for the laws of the land. When this massive company did speak of laws, these laws had been framed, essentially, by their own lawyers.

Today, Indian cotton farmers are facing a genocide that has resulted in the death of at least 300,000 of their brothers and sisters between 1995 and 2013, averaging 14,462 per year (1995-2000) and 16,743 per year (2001-2011). This epidemic began in the cotton belt, in Maharashtra, where 53,818 farmers have taken their lives. Monsanto, on it's own website, admits that pink bollworm "resistance [to Bt] is natural and expected" and that the resistance to Bt "posed a significant threat to the nearly 5 million farmers who were planting the product in India." Eighty four percent of the farmer suicides have been attributed to Monsanto's Bt Cotton, placing the corporation's greed and lawlessness at the heart of India's agrarian crisis.

There are three outright illegalities to Monsanto's existence in India.

First, Monsanto undemocratically imposed the false idea of "manufacturing" and "inventing" a seed, undermining robust Indian laws--that do not allow patents on life--and by taking patents on life through international trade law. Since 1999, Monsanto has had the U.S. government do its dirty work, blocking the mandatory review of the Monsanto Law in TRIPS (the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement implemented through the WTO).

Second, since they do not have a patent for Bt-Cotton, Monsanto's collection of royalties as "trait value" or as a "fee for technology traits" (IPR category that does not exist in any legal framework and was concocted by Monsanto lawyers to work outside of the laws of the land) is illegal. These illegal royalty collections have been collected from the most marginal farmers, pushing them to take their own lives.

Third, the smuggling of a controlled substance without approvals (and thus Monsanto's very entry into India) is a violation and subversion of India's Biosafety Regulations. This includes the illegal introduction of GMOs into the food system in India, which poses grave risks to the health of ordinary Indian citizens.

Illegal entry of Bt Cotton into India

The Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), the apex body constituted in the Ministry of Environment and Forests, is solely entrusted with the responsibility of approving field trials of any genetically modified organisms (GMOs). India's biosafety framework--one of the strongest in the world--is governed by The Rules for the Manufacture, Use, Import, Export and Storage of Hazardous Micro Organisms, Genetically Engineered Organisms or Cells (notified under the Environment Protection Act, 1986).

ARTICLE (7) OF THE RULES STIPULATES:

APPROVAL AND PROHIBITIONS ETC.

(1) NO PERSON SHALL IMPORT, EXPORT, TRANSPORT, MANUFACTURE, PROCESS, USE OR SELL ANY HAZARDOUS MICROORGANISMS OF GENETICALLY ENGINEERED ORGANISMS/SUBSTANCES OR CELLS EXCEPT WITH THE APPROVAL OF THE GENETIC ENGINEERING APPROVAL COMMITTEE.

On 10 March 1995, MAHYCO (which became Monsanto-Mahyco in 1998) imported 100 grams of cottonseed that contained the MON531-Bt Gene into India without approval from the GEAC. MAHYCO, under undisclosed circumstances, had obtained permission from the RCGM (Review Committee of Genetic Manipulation under the Department of Biotechnology (DBT)), which does not have the authority to approve such an import. Without the approval of the governing body responsible for the approval of the import (GEAC) Monsanto had smuggled a controlled substance into India.