Over three years ago I wrote about the way pro-GMO forces within the unelected, autocratic European Union bureaucracy were planning to play whack-a-mole with federalism, in order to ensure maximum legal penetration for GMOs. Its not working at the centralized level? Re-disperse authority to the member states. Today were seeing the flip side of the plan. The European Court of Justice, really a European Commission (EC) bureaucratic tribunal (an unaccountable court run by the bureaucracy, similar to administrative court systems run by the Tsarist secret police and Nazi SS) has found that the European Council (another bureaucratic committee, albeit in theory answerable to the quasi-representative European Parliament) has been too dilatory in its assessment of Pioneers application for cultivation of its 1507 stacked maize variety. The police tribunal ordered the Council to vote on the application at its next meeting in December, with the strong implication that anything other than full approval will be overridden by the EC. At the same time, the European Commissioner said that such EC-level approval could be overridden by country-level bans, as per the existing federalism. In the case of MON810 maize, the only GMO currently authorized for commercial cultivation in the EU, many countries including Germany, France, Austria, Luxemburg, Hungary, Italy, and Poland have banned it. Here we see this propaganda aspect of the federalism plan (the subsidiarity plan, according to the translation I linked) - since member states can institute state-level bans, theres allegedly no reason not to give 1507 and the many other applications in the approval pipeline a smooth path to EU-level approval. But in fact there are many reasons not to do this. The whole plan is part of the typical Monsanto strategy to get the camels nose into the tent by any means necessary - anything from partial regulatory approval, as in this case, to illegal planting, as in the case of Mexico, Brazil, and India. Then, once the crop is in the field and polluting other crops, present its presence as an accomplished fact which should then be legally ratified. Governments so far have been happy to be thrown into this briar patch. In the case of the EU, once several more GMOs have been approved for cultivation at the central level, the next move will be to revoke the right of member states to ban them. If you doubt that, then consider how, right from the start, Monsanto and the US government have opposed any restrictions whatsoever on cultivation in Europe. This includes opposition to the federalism plan. Its similar to the Obama White Houses nixing in 2011 of a co-existence plan being negotiated between the industrial organic sector and Obamas own Agriculture Department. We see here how Monsanto is increasingly disdainful of any kind of subtlety or misdirection, but instead wants to bull ahead with main force. In the EU as well, the cartel and the US government comprise the aggressive totalitarian coalition. Do you have any doubt about their will to keep up the pressure on the EC until it tries to revoke the ability of member states to ban GMO cultivation? Especially since the EC has always wanted total power over this, has always been ardently pro-GMO, and promulgated the federalism policy only under great bottom-up duress, in an attempt to make EC-level approval less politically incendiary, as I described above. As for 1507 itself, its been in the approval pipeline since 2001, and in itself is becoming obsolete. Its one of the constituents of the SmartStax variety which recently was approved for EU importation in food products, and for field trials in various European countries. So why is it such a big deal to the cartel and the EC that this old variety be approved for cultivation? The SmartStax applications and approval justifications give the answer. Pro-GM regulatory bureaucracies in the UK, the Netherlands, and Romania parrot the line that because individual SmartStax genetic modifications (events), including 1507, are being cultivated elsewhere, theres no reason why the stacked product SmartStax should undergo any special assessment. As Ill write about in part 2 of my SmartStax post (I know everyones been waiting for it), this completely ignores everything we know about complex systems. Each individual genetic modification may have chaotic reverberations far beyond the intended effect. Denial of this, on the part of corporations, governments, and scientistic hacks, is one of the core reasons why GMO ideology is anti-scientific and anti-safety. Similarly, a stacked GMO like SmartStax (which has eight events - it endemically manufactures six Bt poisons which will then be part of the food we eat, and is tolerant to two herbicides) will add the chaotic interaction of the eight modifications to the reverb effects of each individual modification. As for 1507 itself, theres so many unanswered questions about its health and environmental safety that even the pro-GMO European Food Safety Authority has recommended the go-slow approach. So we see how the goal of the EUs federal policy on GMO approval is to help get more GMOs partially approved and cultivated in the first place, in whatever way is politically possible, and then later impose them on the entire EU. attempter.wordpress/2013/11/26/gmo-assault-on-europe-bureaucratic-slipperiness/
Posted on: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 10:52:17 +0000