Monsanto Gives Up on GM Wheat

Monsanto has decided to stop trying to sell genetically-modified wheat?at least for now. This is good for those of us who like variety, because GM corn has been shown to quickly contaminate nearby fields, ending crop diversity. While most corn is fed to cattle, wheat is consumed by people and GM wheat could put an end to organic bread products.

Alex Kirby writes in bbcnews that they haven’t given up completely. Monsanto’s Carl Casale says, “We will continue to monitor the wheat industry’s desire for crop improvements… to determine if and when it might be practical to move forward with a biotech wheat product.”

U.K. Soil Association’s Gundula Azeez says, “We eat wheat in bread, while [corn] is mainly a forage crop grown for animal feed. The biotech industry is going ahead with GM [corn], cotton and [soy]?but they’re not used directly for human consumption?The majority of North American farmers and the continent’s wheat industry have been actively lobbying against the introduction of GM wheat. In March, the Canadian wheat board said 87% of its buyers wanted guarantees the grain was GM-free, up from 65% three years ago. In Europe, we depend on North American wheat, and we’d have been eating this next season?This decision basically says there isn’t a market for GM food. The biotech industry has kept going with the wheat for so long because it believes its own propaganda.” Jeremy Lovell quotes Ben Ayliffe of Greenpeace as saying, “Monsanto spent a great deal of time and money trying to push this stuff on farmers and consumers, but despite their best efforts?even in countries that have historically been very pro-GM?they have managed to fail. This is certainly a significant setback for GM. It is fantastic news because this was Monsanto’s big flagship product. It was the product that they thought was going to finally break the consumer rejection of GM?The markets are not expanding for GM crops. The consumer rejection is there…and I don’t think it is going to go away fast.”

This week on Mysterious Powers, Anne Strieber interviews singer Carnie Wilson, who has lost hundreds of pounds and says, I’m Still Hungry. Her courage and spirit are an inspiration to any dieter.

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