Monsanto loses in Mexico

In a small victory in the ongoing fight against GMOs, beekeepers in Mexico dependent on selling GMO free honey to European customers, have won a suspension in the planting of GMO soy.  Now the fight continues to make this ban permanent

It goes to show how many of these fights come down to what we as consumers are willing to buy, and how linked together our world has become.

Cynthia, a long time reader and commenter here just sent me this link.

Europe to Subsidize GMOs via Plastic Bag Tax

In most of Europe we have to bag our own groceries in supermarkets.  If we don’t provide our own bags, we need to buy them.

It’s been a battle for some years now.  Supermarkets always want to offer free bags as a convenience.  They don’t usually like it when customers bring their own backpacks and the like, for fear of shoplifting.

In recent years a number of EU countries have started to impose bag or packaging taxes, presumably in order to further reduce the use of plastics in supermarkets.  Now suddenly GMO plastics have started to replace petroleum based plastics, and national governments are beginning to exempt GMO plastics from these taxes, in effect subsidizing their use.

The Netherlands has a tax scheme that strongly favors GMO plastics, taxing them at a lower rate.  Germany has exempted GMO plastics from their bag tax completely.  In other countries like Ireland, governments are being lobbied to scrap their taxes on GMO plastics.

Here’s a bag I bought from a local supermarket a few days ago:

Notice the logo in the upper corner:

It says ‘This bag is made from corn and fully compostable’.  I bought another bag from a natural foods store a few days ago, and it had this on it:

On the bottom is says ‘This bag is biodegradable’.  The clerk who sold me the bag said it was made from potatoes.

Is it a coincidence that the only two GM crops approved for planting in Europe are a ‘high starch’ potato and a corn variety?  I don’t think so.  We’ve been told for years now these two varieties are not destined for human consumption.

For the record I want to say to both Marqt and Ekoplaza that I’m very disappointed they would sell GMOs to their customers in this way, especially as they are not even clearly labelled for what they are.  This is a very misleading and dishonest thing to do.

Greenwashing

The argument goes that plastics are a huge environmental problem — so far I guess we all agree.  Therefore compostable or biodegradable GMO plastics are better — I guess this is where the agreement ends.

The argument is not unlike how expensive mercury filled bulbs imported from China are supposed to be better for us than cheaper locally made standard light bulbs.  The argument is not complete and not accurate.

Netherlands

Here in the Netherlands the argument goes that we are a coastal area, with canals that carry water out to sea.  A percentage of litter falls into these canals, and ultimately contributes to the ‘big plastic soup’ in the oceans.  What’s missing of course in this argument are actual statistics or studies that show how much this is as a proportion of the plastics in the sea, if there aren’t better ways of managing the problem for example filtering the water as it leaves land, and any sort of proof or explanation as to why GMO plastics are in any way better for the environment.

Certainly, if you as a consumer properly dispose of your waste and don’t throw it in the ocean, the entire argument of GMO plastics being better vanishes.

Compostable or Biodegradable

Biodegradable is a legally defined term, that indicates something will break down into naturally occurring components.  Compostable is a looser term, that simply means it will break down into something supposedly harmless, but not necessarily naturally occurring.

In either case, these plastics do not break down at all, except in industrial processes.  You can’t compost these plastics at home in your own garden, and there is no guarantee they will breakdown in the environment in any sort of reasonable time frame.  Once they do break down, all we have is the word of the manufactures that they will break down into something harmless.  In particular, it seems unlikely they would breakdown quickly in the cold dark oceans.

If they are disposed of properly, they are certainly of no added environmental benefit.  In a landfill they would still take up the same space as normal plastic, and if incinerated they would also break down in a similar way as ordinary plastic.  There are unlikely to be more or better recycling possibilities when compared to ordinary plastic.  In fact the presence of even a very small amount of GMO plastic can contaminate a batch of traditional PET or other plastics and undermine recycling efforts.

Agriculture is the Single Most Important Contributor to Climate Change

It’s highly unlikely GMO plastic can be produced with less impact to the environment as ordinary plastic.  This is the tiresome argument of biofuels, which take more energy to produce than is in the resulting product.

GMO crops still need chemicals and fertilizers, which are based on fossil fuels and impact the environment.

Labelling

In Europe there are labelling laws requiring the labelling of most GMO foods.  Packaging and plastics should not be exempt!  Consumers should have the right to choose alternatives.

Sun Scald and Blue Tomatoes

Like on the leaves above, from time to time I have problems with sun scald on tomato plants, both on the leaves and fruits.  This is especially true the last few years as the ozone layer has been thinning over Europe.

One of the things Tom Wagner mentioned when I visited him, was with the new blue tomatoes, the blue pigment reacts to sunlight not only to intensify the blue color, but also to protect the plant against sun scald!

The tomato here was close to the one above, but you can see instead of getting scalded, it’s acquiring blue pigment in the leaves.  This is one of Tom’s Helsing Junction Blues tomatoes.  The seeds he gave me were F2 or F3, so still very variable.  If you’re growing the same tomato, it might look different.  Also, I have a few others of the same variety, and they are also different.

To be honest, I hardly bother to grow tomatoes anymore.  There are just too many instantly fatal things that can happen with them, the most serious being the blight we get every year.  I was interested in trying a blue variety, and I’m also growing one of Tom’s blight resistant Skykomish tomatoes next to it, so the blue variety is sort of acting as a control plant.

Stoddart Family Farm

This is probably only interesting for those of you out there living in southern Ontario, but I was emailing recently with Harry Stoddart of the Stoddart Family Farm about some seeds.  Our email exchange together with his website, gave me a really good impression of the kind of person he is and the sort of farm he has.  I thought I would mention him here, embed his promotional video, and encourage those of you who live nearby to get in touch.

If you’re vegetarian like me, you might not find his meat interesting, but it’s still very nice to know there are people out there like him raising meat humanely in environmentally friendly ways.

In particular his mentioning animals who eat grass just don’t get sick, goes along with a discussion I had a few months ago with a local farmer who also raises his animals on grass.  He referred to his cows as their own pharmacist.  He said, he could watch them eat, and when they weren’t feeling well, they would eat the plants in the pasture their bodies needed, in the right amounts.  He said he could just sit on the fence, watch them, and could tell all kinds of things about them by what they were eating at any given moment.