Big Biotech Seeks to Rule EU

Heather Callaghan
Activist Post

Just on the heels of France banning all GMO cultivation, big biotech companies like Monsanto and Syngenta have been working to permeate and rise above EU government with what sounds like a corporate tribunal.

DuPont and Dow Chemical are poised to crash the EU with their co-created genetically modified 1507 Pioneer corn as well.

A corporatocracy didn’t just occur out the blue, however. It’s potentially being handed to biotech by the European Environmental Ministers with a law that sounds like a national ban (but actually isn’t.)

Get this: according to Stop the Crop, the new “proposal gives biotech companies the power to decide whether a national ban is permitted or not.” Gee, which way will biotech decide?

If biotech decides not, EU member states must submit a formal argument to companies like Monsanto and Syngenta with reasons why they want a crop ban. Will their arguments hold up in court? Basically, biotech gets significant legal say in the future decisions of the nations regarding GMOs. In that sense, it seems to place biotech corporations above European government and certainly above the individual member states and their people.

Discussion for the proposal takes place tomorrow, May 28th. For more information, Stop the Crop is referring people to Friends of the Earth Europe’s short document entitled: “A poisoned chalice. Why the Greek Opt-out proposal for GM crops will do more harm than good.”

Sustainable Pulse explains “A poisoned chalice…” this way:

The new law is being promoted as a way to give governments more sovereignty over decisions on whether to ban GM crops. However, the current proposals give biotech companies the legal right to decide whether a ban should be allowed. If companies refuse, governments are forced to fall back on vague, non-scientific legal grounds upon which to ban GM crops, opening the door to legal challenges

Adrian Bebb of FOE Europe said:

It is an affront to democracy that companies like Monsanto will be given legal status in any decision to ban their products. Governments must be able to ban unwanted and risky GM crops without needing the permission of the companies who profit from them.

For more than 15 years national governments have fought against new GM crops and strongly defended their rights to ban them. This proposal is a poisoned chalice that fails to give member states the solid legal grounds to ban genetically modified crops.

So the idea for GMO opponents moving forward is to bring out awareness of the new plan and seek to strengthen already existing, legitimate powers – not let them fade away into semantic, corporate-controlled legal oblivion.

The United States parallels the EU in a similar regard. Just on the heels of Vermont passing the first state GMO food labeling law, the DARK Act of 2014 (actual name is Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act’) threatens to nullify any past and future state laws regarding GMO labeling and bans.

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