[news] CKUT Radio: Sacramento Mobilization - Resistance is Rising

[Stefan Christoff]

CKUT Radio: Sacramento Mobilization - Resistance is Rising

An interview with Luke Anderson author of Genetic Engineering Food & Our
Environment about the coming Sacramento mobilization opposing a "Corporate
Agriculture Ministerial" being held in Sacramento from June 20-25. The
Bush administration, USAID, United States Department of Agriculture, and
the State Department will be hosting government ministers from 180 nations
and transitional corporate reps to a meeting in Sacramento California, to
pave the way for trade agreements like the Free Trade Area of the Americas
(FTAA), which means in concrete terms the privatization of water, genetic
engineering and factory farming. These meetings in Sacramento, like the
WTO mini-ministerial meeting set to take place in Montreal from July
28-30th are key stepping stones for the US, other G8 nations and their
corporate backers to push through their agenda in the lead up to the next
World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun in September.

Activists involved with various social movements from throughout the world
are currently organizing to confront these meetings in the streets of
Sacramento, California for a five-day festival of diverse resistance to
biotechnology, "free trade" agreements like the FTAA and institutions like
the WTO. Currently there are non-violent direct actions, marches, rallies
and teach-ins planned for Sacramento.

-> To listen to the interview with Luke Anderson visit:
http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=7248

-> To get more information about the Sacramento mobilization visit:
http://www.sacmobilization.org

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Shodown in Sacramento? Bush's Biotech Bullies Vs. The World
By Aziz Choudry

The Bush Administration, in the interests of Corporate America (how can
anyone tell where one ends and the other begins?) is on the warpath again.
Like its Òwar on terrorÓ, it is fighting on several fronts.

Its goal is to force food and seeds containing genetically modified
organisms into mouths and fields across the planet, by any means
necessary. After brutally bombing Afghanistan and Iraq it ÒdonatedÓ food
aid contaminated with GMOs. Now the ÒUnited States Leadership Against
HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria ActÓ ties US international medical
assistance for HIV/AIDS victims to countriesÕ acceptance of US food aid
containing GMOs.

Claims that the US WTO challenge against the EU moratorium on genetically
engineered (GE) food and crops is driven by (in DubyaÕs words) Òthe great
cause of ending hunger in AfricaÓ, make me wonder if Bush and co. will
re-record USA for AfricaÕs ÒWe Are The WorldÓ. Just imagine. Senior US
politicians linking arms, swaying and singing with agribusiness
executivesÉ. ÒThere's a choice we're making, we're saving our own lives,
it's true we'll make a better day just you and meÓ. Ugh!

This biotech offensive offers the world an unoriginal ÒchoiceÓ. YouÕre
either with us or against us. Bush and his trade representative, former
Enron consultant Robert Zoellick portray themselves as champions of the
poor, standing up to the elitist European anti-biotech scaremongerers, who
are denying food to starving simple Africans who donÕt really understand
much about anything. ItÕs US agribusiness to the rescue! Who said they
were only interested in new markets and higher profits? Monopoly control
over the worldÕs food supply Ð surely not? Billions of dollars in markets
for GM crops and seeds? No way! Ah, the white manÕs burdenÉ

They will take their song and dance to WTO mini-ministerials in Egypt
(June) Montreal (July) the Cancun WTO Ministerial Meeting, and beyond. But
a major performance will be in Sacramento next month.

The Ministerial Conference and Expo on Agricultural Science and
Technology, sponsored by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), State
Department, and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), takes
place in Sacramento from 23-25 June. The USDA calls it Ò2003Õs premier
forum for top-level policy and industry dialogue relating to agricultural
technology.Ó

Neither are public events Ð entry is by invitation only. Agriculture,
trade, science, health and environment ministers from 180 countries have
been invited. So far, 125 ministers from 75 countries have confirmed their
attendance. Hosted in SacramentoÕs Convention Center, it will be the
largest international conference ever held in CaliforniaÕs state capitol.
US taxpayers will pay the expenses for ministers from some countries,
including Afghanistan, to attend. Total expenses for the conference are $3
million so far, according to media reports.

Anxious to stave off and discredit planned opposition to the meeting,
officials deny any relationship between the Sacramento meetings and the
WTO. In an interview with the Sacramento Bee (May 8), Christian Foster,
assistant deputy administrator of the USDA's Foreign Agriculture Service,
claimed: "The WTO has absolutely nothing to do with it."

It may not be a WTO meeting but for the US government and agribusiness,
Sacramento has everything to do with their global trade and investment
agenda. Informal pressure can be just as effective in securing results as
binding trade agreements. The US administration uses every opportunity to
coerce the rest of the world into compliance with its economic and
geopolitical interests, through its aid budget, its embassies, and through
meetings like this. Sacramento brings together many of the same players Ð
officials and corporations - behind the controversial addition of
agriculture and intellectual property rights on the world trade agenda
during the GATT Uruguay Round which set up the WTO. These agreements
protect the corporate players that now dominate vast areas of the worldÕs
food supply while undermining the rights and lives of small farmers,
peasant and indigenous communities.

The conference opening plenary says it all: ÒHow science and technology,
in a supportive policy environment, can drive agricultural productivity
increases and economic growth to alleviate world hunger and povertyÓ.

Other sessions include: ÒFood security and the promise of new
technologiesÓ, ÒAttracting foreign and domestic investment in the
agricultural economyÓ, ÒFighting Hunger and increasing incomes with
biotechnologyÓ, and ÒCombating Malnutrition, disease, and HIV/AIDS:
Food-based interventionÓ.

As Hope Shand of the ETC Group recently wrote in the NY Times (27 May):
ÒThere is no scientific evidence that genetically modified foods are
cheaper, safer, better-tasting or more nutritious. Lacking consumer
benefits for its genetically modified crops, the biotech industry is
desperately seeking moral legitimacyÓ. Expo exhibitors include biotech
giants Monsanto and DuPont (Qualicon), CropLife America (whose members
read like a whoÕs who of US agribusiness/biotechnology corporations), and
DC-based International Food Information Council (funded by US food,
beverage and agricultural industry and an advocate of biotech). Food
irradiation corporations like Ottawa-headquartered MDS Nordion, and San
Diego-based Surebeam (sponsor for the Expo grand opening) will also be
there. Food irradiation, a technology which brings together the food
processing, agribusiness, medical science and nuclear industries is highly
controversial. US agribusiness researcher and campaigner Al Krebs writes:
ÒCritics of irradiation believe it is really not only just a quick (and
temporary) fix for poor slaughterhouse sanitation, but also a way of
disposing of nuclear wastes by selling them to private industry and
leaving the taxpayers to fund the inevitable clean-up costs.Ó

Agriculture remains a hugely contentious trade issue, with the EU and US
in apparent stalemate in WTO negotiations. Many countries in the South are
resisting pressure to make yet more concessions on a range of issues,
including agriculture, saying that the system is based on double standards
which favour the powerful, and that the promised benefits of free trade
have not materialized.

The USDA, USAID and the State Department are advancing US geopolitical and
corporate interests internationally, and a market model of development
which has caused ecological and human devastation, both in the South and
in the USA. These agencies work to promote biotechnology as a ÒsolutionÓ
to hunger. USAID has been promoting agricultural biotechnology for over a
decade. The title of its recent policy document, ÒForeign Policy in the
National Interest: Promoting Freedom, Security and OpportunityÓ speaks
volumes about the agencyÕs agenda. Hegemony, not humanitarian assistance.
Principled opposition to biotechnology on health, environmental, ethical
and other grounds, such as African countries decisions to refuse GE food
aid are viewed as a new Òaxis of evilÓ to be overcome.

The international peasant and small farmer movement, Via Campesina,
accuses the US of Òtrying to usurp the process of the World Food Summit
held in June 2002 by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) by claiming that Sacramento is a Òfollow up to the Rome Summit.Ó Via
Campesina has denounced the Sacramento meetings urging governments not to
attend. Via Campesina believes that another "Blair House Agreement"
between the US and the European Commission Ð may be under negotiation.
This agreement broke the standoff between the US and EU during the Uruguay
Round, and maintained support for corporate, export-oriented agriculture
at the expense of small farmers, peasants, and food producers worldwide.

Industrial farming and the reorientation of agriculture to a corporate
model is a human and ecological disaster. Under free trade, the dumping of
subsidised (and often genetically modified) imports on the Third World is
destroying the livelihoods of millions of farmers, many of them women, who
simply cannot compete. The free market model which the US so ardently
supports is behind much of the social and economic injustice which
underpins food insecurity Ð not inadequate access to biotechnology.

The US backs international institutions like the IMF and the World Bank
which force countries to deregulate and open up their economies, and
reorient their agricultural production away from meeting domestic needs to
growing cash crops for export. Via Campesina is campaigning to get the WTO
out of agriculture altogether.

The fact that an official meeting and a business expo are taking place
side by side in Sacramento neatly illustrates the cosy relationship
between the US administration and big business. Secretary of Agriculture
Anne Veneman is a former director of Calgene (now a Monsanto subsidiary)
the first company to bring genetically-engineered food, the Flavr Savr
tomato, to consumers.

When Veneman recently proclaimed that the WTO case against the EU
represents Òfighting for the interests of American agricultureÓ she
clearly means US agribusiness. It is merely a different way of saying what
Robert Fraley (co-president of MonsantoÕs agricultural sector) told the
Farm Journal in 1996 Ð ÒWhat you are seeing is not just an consolidation
of seed companies, it's really a consolidation of the entire food chain."

While the Expo will promote US corporate agriculture products and
technology, the Ministerial allows the Bush administration and US
biotechnology/agribusiness corporations to lobby and bully officials and
ministers of other governments to fall into line with their pro-biotech,
industrial farming, agricultural trade and investment liberalisation
agenda before Cancun.

Planting high-yield crops, maintained by imported fertilizers and
insecticides reinforces farmersÕ dependency on patent holders like
Monsanto and Cargill, which increasingly insist on the use of genetically
modified seeds and threaten farmers who generate their seeds saved from
last seasonÕs crop. The US wants to turn farmers into bioserfs and strip
communities and countries of their rights to determine what they grown and
eat.

As a January 21, 2001 Guardian article suggested, the Òreal strategyÓ of
North American agribusiness Òis to introduce so much genetic pollution
that meeting the consumer demand for GM-free food is seen as not possible.
The idea, quite simply, is to pollute faster than the countries can
legislate Ð then change the laws to fit the contamination.Ó

Meanwhile in Sacramento, there is the usual media beat-up predicting
violent protests next monthÉnotwithstanding the fact that calls to action
are explicitly committed to non-violent principles. Conference opponents
include Sacramento community organisers involved in a battle to save the
cityÕs oldest organic community garden from out-of-state developers, who
see the local/global connections to the conferenceÕs agenda to promote
industrial agriculture, biotechnology and the corporate control over
farming. Bay Area anti-war groups which have linked the war on Iraq,
corporate US interests, and neoliberal globalisation also promise to join
the Sacramento mobilization. Across the US, and beyond, many small farmers
organisations, environmental and global justice campaigners see Sacramento
as a highly significant meeting in local and global struggles for
ecological and social justice.

While the US Administration perpetuates a racist worldview that people in
the South are too dumb to make up their own minds about biotechnology, it
studiously overlooks mass opposition to genetic engineering by small and
peasant farmers movements in both North and South. Many US family farmersÕ
organisations strongly oppose genetic engineering. Over 70 towns in
Vermont have passed resolutions opposing the planting of GE crops, and
calling for the labeling of GE foods. In 2000, the City and County of San
Francisco passed a resolution calling on the Food and Drug Authority, the
Environmental Protection Authority and the USDA to consider a moratorium
on all GE foods, urging that consumers be provided with information about
the use of GE ingredients in food products

Not far from the conference venue, SacramentoÕs civic square is named the
Cesar Chavez Plaza. Cesar Chavez Park is close by. Ten years after his
death, Chavez is revered as a David who stood up to the Goliath of US
agribusiness corporations, environmental racism and social and economic
injustice using non-violent direct action and won. Who can forget the 1966
march on Sacramento demanding justice for farmworkers which he led and the
grape boycotts which followed? With the Sacramento meeting only weeks
away, I am struck by the relevance of his words from a January 1990 speech
in honour of Martin Luther King. "The powers that be make themselves
richer by exploiting the poor. Our nation continues to allow children to
go hungry, and will not even house its own people. The time is now for
people, of all races and backgrounds, to sound the trumpets of change".

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