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Letters to the Editor
Printed in the Ukiah Daily Journal, January 3, 2004
To the Editor,
On Friday the Journal reported on the lawsuit filed against the language of the ballot argument in support of Measure H, the voter initiative to prohibit GMO plants in Mendocino County.
The lawsuit was filed by the California Plant Health Association—the name seems benign enough, after all, who is not in favor of healthy plants. The Journal reported part of the identity of this group—representatives of “fertilizer and soil amendment manufacturers”—but not all of it. CPHA’s board of directors reads like a who’s who of the biotechnology and agri-chemical industry. In fact, they claim to represent 90% of that industry.
Let’s look behind that innocent-sounding name. Are you ready? It’s a virtual world-wide web of an industry-education-government triumvirate that is woven into what we eat, what farmers grow and how they grow it, the research agenda in our universities, government agricultural policy, even what children are taught about biotechnology in public schools.
Look who’s represented on the board of directors of CPHA: Monsanto Company, Bayer Corporation, Syngenta Crop Protection, and Dow AgroSciences, along with twenty or so lesser-known players, as well as the California Farm Bureau Association and Wells Fargo Bank. Now, this web stretches around the world—there are “plant health” and “crop protection” associations in virtually every major agricultural country on our planet.
CropLife International (formerly the Global Crop Protection Federation) seems to be at the center of the web. They claim to be in service to sustainable agriculture. According to their own website, CropLife “…is led by companies such as BASF, Bayer CropScience, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, FMS, Monsanto, Sumitomo and Syngenta” (do you notice that four of these are on the CPHA board?). Now let’s see, the last time I checked, this band of multi-national corporations includes the leaders in the genetic engineering of food crops. Incidentally, they just happen to be the leading producers of the herbicides and pesticides which their patented GMO seeds are designed to use exclusively.
It’s also interesting to note a November 2003 study from the Northwest Science and Environmental Policy Center in Idaho, which “…concludes that the 550 million acres of GM corn, soybeans and cotton planted in the US since 1996 has increased pesticide use (herbicides and insecticides) by about 50 million pounds” (emphasis is mine).
So I ask you, dear reader, what possible interest might the CPHA have in our Mendocino County initiative to prohibit the growing of GMO plants?! Hmm, I wonder…do you see any dots connecting here?
Please vote YES on Measure H and let these agri-industry giants know what you think!
Doug Mosel, Measure H campaign coordinator
Redwood Valley
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