Review: The Future of Food

This past week, we had watched a film titled "The Future of Food". While the movie had a lot of interesting facts, it was not too entertaining for me. The film had covered the history of genetically engineered food, patents on seeds and focused on a company titled Monsanto who had taken many people in the farm industry to court for using their patented seeds.

Summary:

Starting in the 20th century, nitrogen was being used as a fertilizer for many farm field, nerve gas was modified to be used as insecticides, and there was much more technology available which was suppose to make certain foods more readily available and cheaper. The era of having food production being able to keep up with the increase in population is called the "Green Revolution". The green revolution had created a spread in technology throughout the world. "These technologies included pesticides, herbicides, irrigation projects, synthetic nitrogen fertilizer and improved crop varieties developed through the conventional (that is, not using biotechnology), science-based breeding methods available at the time". A popular herbicide many farms were using during the Green Revolution and are currently using on their land is called Roundup.

Ever since farming had started, families have saved their crop seeds to use and plant a new crop the following year. A company called Monsanto put an end to this. Currently, Monsanto has 11,000 patents of seeds and when a farmer purchases seeds from the Monsanto company, they are forced to sign an agreement that once the years crop is over with, they will NOT safe any of their seeds to use the following year and all of their previous seeds must be destroyed as well.


A specific part of the movie that stood out to me, was the case of Percy Schmeiser vs. Monsanto. For many years, Percy had used the herbicide, Roundup, on his farm. One year while spraying Roundup on his crops, Percy noticed that there were some areas around the power lines did not die from the spray. It wasn't something that struck Percy as odd, and word had somehow spread to the Monsanto company. Without any notice to Percy, Monsanto was quickly on his land, testing hiscanola oil seeds. Monsanto had made the decision to sue Percy for using a "Roundup ready seeds that he had probably purchased or borrowed from a neighbor so he did not have to spend the money himself". Monsanto had assumed Percy was breaking their patent and was not going to allow it. After further research, I had found that "In an out of court settlement finalized on March 19, 2008, Percy Schmeiser has settled his lawsuit with Monsanto. Monsanto has agreed to pay all the clean-up costs of the Roundup Ready canola that contaminated Schmeiser's fields. Also part of the agreement was that there was no gag-order on the settlement and that Monsanto could be sued again if further contamination occurred. Schmeiser believes this precedent setting agreement ensures that farmers will be entitled to reimbursement when their fields become contaminated with unwanted Roundup Ready canola or any other unwanted GMO plants".

Other important facts:

• The flavor saver tomato was the first genetically engineered food product introduced to the public
• 2001 was the first year people had realized they were eating large amounts of genetically engineered foods (they are not required to be labeled)
  
• Starlink (corn products) was found to be unsafe for humans - there was a massive recall
• In order for a seed to be patented, it must be different from all others
• Mexico does not used genetically engineered seeds
• A terminator seed has been introducted. It is engineered so that the seed cannot be used the following year

What I thought: After watching this video, I think that there are a lot of people in this world that are very money hungry. Monsanto is a huge corperation that is sueing over 9,000 individuals because they're suspicious of where these farms are getting their seeds from. How is it possible to prove which seeds are who's and why would a company waste their time hurting farms that are providing a service to our country, along with the ones we export to. I also believe that labeling genetically engineered foods is important. If a child has an allergic reaction to something they ate, it would be impossible to figure out which gene in a genetically engineered food item flaired the reaction. The more movies we watch about food throughout the semester, convice me I need to start getting a majority of my food from co-ops rather than just some.
Other view points/websites:

A website that has information about NOT patenting seeds and a link to information on patent cases.

An article on what Monsanto plants seeds

Monsanto's website

Website with more information on Percy's case