Glyphosate Stench Reaches SCOTUS
American novelist Upton Sinclair famously said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it”
Recently, a consortium of 54 farm organizations and commodity groups joined together to call on President Biden to withdraw an Amicus brief filed by his Solicitor General at the Supreme Court. The brief advises the Supreme Court against taking up a case dealing with pesticide labels. The question is actually about California’s right to label glyphosate with a cancer warning, a warning that conflicts with the federal label. Curiously, almost all organizations complaining about California’s labeling rights are dominated by conservative Republicans who champion state’s rights.
Their point of view is further conflicted by the inference that law makers and scientists in 27 other countries (including Russia) were wrong to ban GMOs. These countries include France, Germany, Austria, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Bulgaria, Poland, Denmark, Malta, Slovenia, Italy and Croatia.
Also, 64 countries around the world require genetically modified foods to be labeled. These countries include all EU members plus Australia and Japan, among others.
Ironically, almost every American farm organization and commodity group stood by silently and allowed pesticide and herbicide companies to join with drug companies to purchase the American plant seed industry. These companies are using seed patents to eliminate a farmer’s right to retain seed for the following year’s planting. Monsanto has sued farmers who kept their seed if any trace of GMO technology was present in their seed stock. As a result, hundreds of thousands of American farmers lost sovereignty over their plant seed and the courts ruled in favor of Monsanto.
Most farm organizations have allowed the rights of their most vulnerable members to be stripped away by a technology that should never be used for weed control in a growing crop, or to kill a mature crop to dry it for harvest. Glyphosate has allowed farmers to replace mechanical tillage with spraying. It’s a cheap tool for weed control which removes labor from farming and propels the larger farmers to become even larger.
Our big city brethren stare in disbelief when they learn that plants are genetically modified so they can withstand glyphosate spraying, mainly for cheap weed control. Some argue that it can’t be happening, but when they see the evidence, they get angry and that takes us back to the Amicus Brief at the Supreme Court..
Now, the opponents of California’s right to label Glyphosate as a possible carcinogen are asking the Supreme Court to intervene.
Obviously, non GMO farmers who manage their operations without glyphosate want it labeled. They want to educate the consumer about genetic modifications that have made glyphosate a substitute for mechanical cultivation. Those who benefit from the technology want their opponents silenced and one opponent is the government of California.
Each year, non GMO farmers live with the fear that neighbors will spray Glyphosate on on a windy day, or that the wind will change directions while their neighbor is spraying. Non GMO farmers in every community are helpless against this friendly fire.
At some point, there will be a day of reckoning, but by that time, the damage done by farm chemicals could be so extensive that it could be impossible to reverse. Eventually, comparisons between the health of Americans and those populations that banned GMOs will lay the truth bare. For now, the original Monsanto technology will continue to transform farming in the 21st century.