Not so long ago Argentina topped the world for meat production, but here there was not a cow in sight. It is a picture replicated across the country. The transformation has taken little more than a decade and the vast majority of soya seed in Argentina is provided by US chemical giant Monsanto.
alJazeera
alJazeera
I bet you know where this post is going.
The company’s genetically-modified seed was designed to withstand their glyphosate-based pesticide, Round-up, which is routinely used in huge quantities across the country. But - according to numerous medical experts - in the process of using such pesticides everything else is being poisoned, including people. The doctors and scientists claim that babies are being born with crippling birth malformations and that in recent years the incidence of childhood cancer has soared. It is a phenomenon, they say, that has coincided with the introduction of Monsanto's seed.
[...]
Cristina Kirchner, the president of Argentina, is one of Monsanto’s strongest advocates.
[...]
For much of the past decade Argentina has seen a commodities-driven export boom, built largely on genetically-modified soy bean crops and the aggressive use of pesticides.
Argentina's leaders say it has turned the country's economy around.
[...]
Doctor [Maria Del Carmen] Seveso’s assertion that glyphosate based pesticide was responsible for what she referred to as ‘an epidemic of birth malformations’ is supported by Argentina’s leading embryologist, Professor Andres Carrasco, who runs the Molecular Embryology Laboratory at the University of Buenos Aires.
[...]
Monsanto completely disagrees – or at least as far as their chemicals are concerned. Although the company declined to be interviewed on camera, it did give us a written statement in which it said:
“Roundup® brand agricultural herbicides have a long history of safe use when used according to label directions in more than 100 countries around the world. Comprehensive toxicological studies have demonstrated that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup® branded agricultural herbicides, does not cause birth defects or reproductive problems.”
[...]
Cristina Kirchner, the president of Argentina, is one of Monsanto’s strongest advocates.
[...]
For much of the past decade Argentina has seen a commodities-driven export boom, built largely on genetically-modified soy bean crops and the aggressive use of pesticides.
Argentina's leaders say it has turned the country's economy around.
[...]
Doctor [Maria Del Carmen] Seveso’s assertion that glyphosate based pesticide was responsible for what she referred to as ‘an epidemic of birth malformations’ is supported by Argentina’s leading embryologist, Professor Andres Carrasco, who runs the Molecular Embryology Laboratory at the University of Buenos Aires.
[...]
Monsanto completely disagrees – or at least as far as their chemicals are concerned. Although the company declined to be interviewed on camera, it did give us a written statement in which it said:
“Roundup® brand agricultural herbicides have a long history of safe use when used according to label directions in more than 100 countries around the world. Comprehensive toxicological studies have demonstrated that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup® branded agricultural herbicides, does not cause birth defects or reproductive problems.”
”Comprehensive toxicological studies” for chemicals, as you may know, are conducted by the companies who manufacture them, not by any independent agency, federal or otherwise.
But, medical issues are not the only problem.
The vast amounts of money that can be made by growing soya are attracting a new breed of land-grabbers, wanting to displace villages with plantations. […C]ampesinos and Amerindians [are] being violently driven from their land.
We met torture victims, saw various stretches of farmland set ablaze and visited a small village whose only water source had been poisoned. In one community we interviewed Mirta, the mother of Cristian Ferreira who was murdered for refusing to move – shot point blank in the leg by gunmen working for a local land owner. His mother heard the news from Ferreira’s wife. "I went with her, and found my son. His leg had been severed.
[...]
"They pay private security firms who burn down huge areas, and if there are farms or houses in the way, they destroy them too. And then they sow soya, and then the planes arrive spraying agrochemicals and the cycle starts again."
[...]
Buenos Aires is hundreds of miles from the suffering in the north of the country and the national media, based in the capitol, have remained silent on the issue, for once, unquestioning of the government, whose assertion that there are no health problems arising from soya goes unchallenged.
We met torture victims, saw various stretches of farmland set ablaze and visited a small village whose only water source had been poisoned. In one community we interviewed Mirta, the mother of Cristian Ferreira who was murdered for refusing to move – shot point blank in the leg by gunmen working for a local land owner. His mother heard the news from Ferreira’s wife. "I went with her, and found my son. His leg had been severed.
[...]
"They pay private security firms who burn down huge areas, and if there are farms or houses in the way, they destroy them too. And then they sow soya, and then the planes arrive spraying agrochemicals and the cycle starts again."
[...]
Buenos Aires is hundreds of miles from the suffering in the north of the country and the national media, based in the capitol, have remained silent on the issue, for once, unquestioning of the government, whose assertion that there are no health problems arising from soya goes unchallenged.
The same relationship Obama has with the US media. Decry the “leftist” government as a threat to the good life, but support, or remain silent, when it backs corporate crime and environmental degradation.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
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