The death of bees, Indian farmers and the emergence of super rats

All could have ties to one company. Monsanto.

The death of bees in Germany and the United States led to the question of what might be causing the Colony Collapse Disorder. There has been a suggestion that the genetically modified crops might be doing something weird; I thought there might be a fungus or bacteria being encouraged to grow because of global warming.

There was a suggestion I might research Monsanto's GM crops. I found Monsanto suing a farmer for having their GM DNA in his canola crop even though the DNA was either blown in or brought in by bees. Monsanto is modifying crops to be immune to their herbicides.

The odd thing is farmers found they had to use more pesticides rather than less on the GM crops:

In December 1999, the American Soybean Association warned producers not to claim that they are supplying anything that's 100 percent gmo-free "or anything free, because it's not," says Tony Anderson, president of the Association.

All of this leads Rodney to ask: "If you can't buy pure seed, how can you supply a market that wants pure (non-gmo) soybeans?"

The words frustration and expensive sum up the Nelsons experience with Monsanto and transgenic soybeans.

Rodney says he's spending six times as much for gmo seed as he would for saved seed, getting less yield, and receiving less for his crop. Conventional seeds cost $13 per 50-pound bag, half the price of a bag of biotech seed of the same weight.

And the recent high rate of suicides of farmers in India goes unnoticed:

Knowing well that the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is aimed at destroying the foundations of food self-sufficiency so assiduously built over the past three decades, the government merrily goes about dismantling the planks of food security and in the process driving millions of farmers from their meager land holdings to head for the urban centers looking for menial jobs. Agriculture instead is being assigned to the corporate and business houses. Government has no money to buy foodgrains from farmers, it's fiscal deficit grows when farmers demand an increase of Rs 10 in procurement price (hike of Rs 10 means a burden of Rs 100 crore - Rs 1000 million), but doesn't even flinch an eyelid while allocating Rs 140,000 crore ( Rs 14,00,000 million) for the agri-business industry for the next ten years.

The attack on the Indian peasantry is not only from the WTO but also from the genetic engineering industry, both of which work in close tandem. The entire scientific community (including the Indian Council of Agricultural Research) and the bureaucracy at the national and the State levels is being lined up to pave a way for the smooth entry of the genetically modified crops. Very conveniently diverting the national attention from the more pressing crisis afflicting the farming sector, agricultural scientists have joined the orchestrated campaign to bring in the GM crops keeping the country's growing food need in the year 2030. On the other hand, there has not been a single effort by the nations' agricultural research community to address the shameful crisis that continues to plague the countryside.

And then I found this interesting item: The Terminator Gene. One way to own the plant. Make the farmer have to buy seeds every year.

The terminator gene is a specific genetic sequence inserted into a seed's DNA. Once activated by a synthetic chemical catalyst of the manufacturer's choosing, the sequence renders the seed and crop it produces sterile. Patented by the USDA and Delta and Pine Land Co., now owned by Monsanto, this terminator technology has no agricultural or economic benefits for farmers or consumers. The only motivation is to protect intellectual property rights, according to owners of the technology. They claim that it allows them to be able to recover investments on research, and produce profits from their technology, as planters must re-purchase seeds every year. Opponents claim that corporations will only use this to squeeze more money out of dependent farmers, and begin a monopoly of chemically saturated suicide seeds.

The genetically modified plants 'leak': (my bold)

Transgenic plants have already been shown to transfer certain genes to wild relatives or bacteria. The possibility that the terminator gene could be transferred is not denied by anyone. In fact, the tendency of genetically manipulated plants to "leak" traits is greater than others. "They learned that the transgenic plants were 20 times more likely to outcross than the mutants-they were "promiscuous," as a headline in the journal Nature put it. "Nobody knows why," Bergelson says. "We're still trying to find the mechanism that drives the pattern we saw. There's a lot we don't understand, including how common it is." "It's inevitable that they will get out," says ecologist Joy Bergelson of the University of Chicago. "That doesn't necessarily mean that there will be negative repercussions. But there could be some. And right now we don't know enough about what they could be and when they could occur."' There is some speculation on the subject, however, despite the limited empirical evidence. Even if the terminator gene were to spread to wild weedy relatives, then it could help control the spread of genetic hybrids and accompanying artificial traits. "Moreover, if Terminator genes were packaged with other transgenic traits, they could help ensure that crop-weed hybrids would be sterile-potentially eliminating a difficult problem." In fact, some believe that an added attraction to use of the terminator gene is the possibility that it will prevent more genetic transfer from occurring.

In fact, common sense recommends that the terminator gene would not spread far, because gene transfer through hybridization relies on fertile gametes of each species, the production of which is suppressed by this gene.

So... could it be we have a bee die off or bee confusion because of both global warming allowing bacteria or fungus to grow instead of dying off in the winter; along with GM leaking 'traits' out into the fields with no oversight and no controls? What does a bee get out of sterile plants? Are they starving to death? Being poisoned? Fertilizing as normal? Could there be something here or is it nothing?

So I asked myself if Monsanto had any dealings with Germany, where they were also having problems with Colony Collapse Disorder.

The answer is hell, yes:

Monsanto and BASF announced a partnership Wednesday to develop new genetically engineered crops.

The partnership is the first of its kind for St. Louis-based Monsanto Co. (nyse: MON - news - people ), the world's largest biotech seed company, and BASF (nyse: BF - news - people ) AG, the world's largest chemical company based in Ludwigshafen, Germany.

And here:

Düsseldorf, November 24th, 2004. Monsanto welcomes the results of the test cultivation with genetically modified corn, which was presented today at a press conference called by the Federal Land of Saxony-Anhalt and the association InnoPlanta e.V.

Monsanto supplied the seed for the test cultivation; implemented in the spring of 2004, of the pest-resistant corn line MON810.

It became apparent that in Germany as well, it is feasible to ensure the co-existence of genetically modified and conventional varieties of corn, using simple and practical means. The concerns voiced from certain quarters with regard to possible negative impacts arising from the cultivation of genetically modified corn have proved to be unfounded.

And the most frightening, this:

Monsanto's GE Corn Experiments on Rats Continue to Generate Global Controversy.
[snip]
After an extended campaign from NGOs to achieve the publication of Dr Pusztai's evaluation, Monsanto's UK head of Corporate Affairs, Tony Combes, has now written to GM Free Cymru (1) to say that the company has not been responsible for the suppression of this Report, and claiming that the refusal to release it into the public domain was entirely down to the German Regulatory Authorities. Some of the findings of the rat feeding study were exposed in a special feature in the "Independent on Sunday" newspaper on 22 May 2005 (2), and the repercussions of the newspaper coverage have gone around the world.

I posted this just four days ago about German rats: Super rats: immune to poisons.

At the time I found it somewhat amusing.

Now I don't.