Indigenous voices challenge Royal Bank tar sands policies, supported by hundreds at shareholder meeting

 

On March 2, more than 170 people rallied outside of the Royal Bank of Canada’s (RBC’s) Annual General Shareholder meeting (AGM) in Toronto after a series of creative non-violent actions all morning. Inside, First Nations Chiefs and community representatives from four different Nations demanded RBC phase out of its Tar Sands financingand to recognize the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent for Indigenous communities. Afterward, Indigenous leaders lead the crowd in a march to rally outside both RBC Headquarters buildings.

Other cities across Canada supported the First Nations voices inside the AGM as well with solidarity actions from (click on a city for pictures) London, Calgary, Vancouver,Edmonton, Victoria and more. Check out photos from those and our events in Toronto.

And see some preliminary media coverage from the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo, theEdmonton Journal and the Dominion.

Since 2007 RBC has backed more than $16.7 billion (USD) in loans to companies operating in the tar sands-more than any other bank. Called, ‘the most destructive project on Earth,’ Alberta’s tar sands projects will eventually transform a Boreal forest the size of England into an industrial sacrifice zone complete with lakes full of toxic waste and man-made volcanoes spewing out clouds of global warming emissions.

Outside the shareholder meeting school children, bank customers of every age, First Nations community representatives joined Rainforest Action Network, Indigenous Environmental Network, No One Is Illegal and Council of Canadians made their outrage at RBC’s investments heard — to the thumping beats of street Samba band, the crowd shouted “Cultural Genocide: who do we thank? Dirty investments from Royal Bank!”

Inside the shareholder meeting, Chief Al Lameman of Beaver Lake First Nation, Alberta,Vice Chief Terry Teegee of the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council of BC, Hereditary Chief Warner Naziel of the Wet’suwe’ten First Nation of BC, and Gitz Crazyboy of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation addressed RBC CEO Gordon Nixon directly about the way tar sands extraction projects have jeopardized their health and their rights.

Downstream communities have experienced polluted water, water reductions in rivers and aquifers, declines in wildlife populations such as moose and muskrat, and significant declines in fish populations. Tar sands has all but destroyed the traditional livelihood of First Nations in the northern Athabasca watershed.

RBC is clearly feeling the public pressure over their tar sands financing. They spent half their shareholder meeting addressing the issue. Recently, the bank convened a high-level meeting with more than a dozen international banks for a ‘day of learning’ about the reputational risks associated with the tar sands. In addition, according to information the bank provided to RAN during a February meeting in San Francisco, RBC is currently evaluating new lending criteria that would apply to the oil and gas sector, in particular to the tar sands. However, the bank has been reticent to include Free, Prior and Informed Consent in its policy, which would ensure that First Nations communities are respected in lending practices.

“RBC’s significant financial relationship with companies pursuing tar sands development activities within our traditional territory and without consent warrants close attention,” said Chief Al Lameman of Beaver Lake First Nation. “RBC should update their policies to include a recognition of Free, Prior and Informed consent for Indigenous communities; this globally recognized concept was adopted by TD Bank Financial Group in 2007 and is endorsed by Indigenous communities across the political spectrum.”

Internationally, tar sands financing is gaining tremendous negative attention. An increasingly vocal group of shareholders and environmentalists turned last month’s BP, Shell and Royal Bank of Scotland annual meetings into a referendum on the oil extraction projects.

This week’s marches, rallies and actions were a triumphant roar of grassroots power from across the spectrum. The day concluded with an apt chant to RBC Headquarters, foreshadowing the growing flame of tar sands resistance across Canada, “Native communities under attack! We won’t stop until you act!”

reference: http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/joshua-kahn-russell/2010/03/indigenous-voices-challenge-royal-bank-tar-sands-policies

Uranium Mining Begins Near Grand Canyon

Posted by admin On February – 23 – 2010

Thousands of Claims Threaten Public Health & Sacred Lands

By Klee Benally

Grand Canyon, AZ — In defiance of legal challenges and a U.S. Government moratorium, Canadian company Denison Mines has started mining uranium on the north rim of the Grand Canyon. According to the Arizona Daily Sun the mine has been operating since December 2009.

Denison plans on extracting 335 tons of uranium ore per day out of the “Arizona 1 Mine”, which is set to operate four days per week. The hazardous ore will be hauled by truck more than 300 miles through towns and communities to the company’s White Mesa mill located near Blanding, Utah.

After being pressured by environmental groups, U.S. Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar initially called for a two-year moratorium on new mining claims in a buffer zone of 1 million acres around Grand Canyon National Park, but the moratorium doesn’t include existing claims such as Denison’s. The moratorium also doesn’t address mining claims outside of the buffer zone.

The Grand Canyon is ancestral homeland to the Havasupai and Hualapai Nations. Although both Indigenous Nations have banned uranium mining on their reservations the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management may permit thousands of mining claims on surrounding lands.

Due to recent increases in the price of uranium and the push for nuclear power nearly 8,000 new mining claims now threaten Northern Arizona. Uranium mined from the Southwestern U.S. is predominately purchased by countries such as France (Areva) & Korea for nuclear energy.

In July of 2009 members of the Havasupai Nation and their allies gathered for four days on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon at their sacred site Red Butte to address the renewed threat. Red Butte has long been endangered by the on-going threat of uranium mining.

Under an anachronistic 1872 mining law, created when pick axes and shovels were used, mining companies freely file claims on public lands. The law permits mining regardless of cultural impacts.

OBAMA APPROVES NEW NUCLEAR REACTORS AND INCREASED NEED FOR URANIUM

Currently there are 104 nuclear reactors in the United States which supply 20% of the U.S.’s electricity. In January the Obama administration approved a $54 billion dollar taxpayer loan in a guarantee program for new nuclear reactor construction, three times what Bush previously promised in 2005.

Since 2007, seventeen companies have now sought government approval for 26 more reactors with plans to complete four by 2018 and up to eight by 2020. New reactors are estimated to cost more than $12 billion each.

Although nuclear energy is hailed by some as a solution to the current U.S. energy crisis and global warming, those more closely impacted by uranium mining and transportation recognize the severity of the threat.

THE COLORADO RIVER, WATER & URANIUM’S DEADLY LEGACY

Uranium is a known cause of cancers, organ damage, miscarriages & birth defects.

Drilling for the radioactive material has been found to contaminate underground aquifers that drain into the Colorado River, and sacred springs that have sustained Indigenous Peoples in the region. In addition, surface water can flow into drill holes and mine shafts which can also poison underground water sources.

Emerging in the Rocky Mountains in North Central Colorado and winding 1,450 miles to the Gulf of California, the Colorado River is held sacred by more than 34 Indigenous Nations. The Colorado also provides drinking water for up to 27 million people in seven states throughout the Southwest.

The river that carves the Grand Canyon has been extensively used by the agricultural industry and cities that are dependent for drinking water, so much so that it now ceases to flow to the Gulf of California, forcing members of the Cocopah Nation (The People of the River) in Northern Mexico to abandon their homelands and relocate elsewhere.

Today there are more than 2,000 abandoned uranium mines in the Southwest. U.S. government agencies have done little or nothing to clean up contaminated sites and abandoned mines. At Rare Metals near Tuba City on the Diné (Navajo) Nation a layer of soil and rock is the only covering over 2.3 million tons of hazardous waste. A rock dam surrounds the radioactive waste to control runoff water that flows into nearby Moenkopi Wash. Throughout the Diné Nation,  Diné families have been subject to decades of radioactive contamination ranging from unsafe mining conditions to living in houses built from uranium tailings.  Well water is documented by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as undrinkable in at least 22 communities such as Black Falls on the Dine’ Nation. According to the EPA, “Approximately 30 percent of the Navajo population does not have access to a public drinking water system and may be using unregulated water sources with uranium contamination.”
Flocks of sheep and other livestock still graze among radioactive tailing piles and ingest radioactive water.

According to the Navajo Nation up to 2.5 million gallons of uranium contaminated water is leaching out of the Shiprock Uranium Mill near Shiprock, New Mexico into the San Juan River every year. At the Church Rock Mine in New Mexico, which is now attempting to re-open, up to 875,000 cubic yards of radioactive waste continue to contaminate the land.

In July 1979 a dirt dam breached on the Navajo Nation at a uranium processing plant releasing more than 1,100 tons of radioactive waste and nearly 100 million gallons of contaminated fluid into the Rio Puerco (which ultimately flows into the Colorado River) near Church Rock, NM. This was the single largest nuclear accident in US history. Thousands of Diné families that live in the region, including those forced to relocate from the Joint Use Area due to coal mining, continue to suffer health impacts resulting from the spill.

In 2005 the Diné Nation government banned uranium mining and processing within its borders due to uranium’s harmful legacy of severe health impacts and poisoning of the environment.  And yet, high cancer rates, birth defects and other health impacts still bear out  the uranium industry’s dangerous legacy.

NUCLEAR WASTE & INDIGENOUS SACRED LANDS

Today the US has nearly 60,000 tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear waste stored in concrete dams at nuclear power plants throughout the country. The waste increases at a rate of 2,000 tons per year.  Depleted Uranium (DU) is a byproduct of uranium enrichment and reprocessing which has controversial military uses including armor piercing projectiles. DU has been found to cause long-term health effects ranging from harming organs to causing miscarriages and birth defects.

In 1987 Congress initiated a controversial project to transport and store almost all of the U.S.’s toxic waste at Yucca Mountain located about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada. Yucca Mountain has been held holy to the Paiute and Western Shoshone Nations since time immemorial.

In February 2009 Obama met a campaign promise to cut funding for the multibillion dollar Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository project. The controversial project was initially proposed in 1987 with radioactive waste to be shipped from all over the U.S. via rails and highways. Currently a new proposal for an experimental method of extracting additional fuel from nuclear waste called “reprocessing” renews the threat to desecrate the sacred mountain on Western Shoshone lands.

Western Shoshone lands, which have never been ceeded to the U.S. government, have long been under attack by the military and nuclear industry. Between 1951 and 1992 more than 1,000 nuclear bombs have been detonated above and below the surface at an area called the Nevada Test Site on Western Shoshone lands which make it one of the most bombed nations on earth. Communities in areas around the test site faced exposure to radioactive fallout which has caused cancers, leukemia & other illnesses. Western Shoshone spiritual practitioner Corbin Harney, who has since passed on, helped initiate a grassroots effort to shutdown the test site and abolish nuclear weapons.

Indigenous Peoples in the Marshall Islands have also faced serious impacts due to U.S. nuclear testing. In her book, Conquest: Sexual Violence & American Indian Genocide, Andrea Smith reports that some Indigenous Peoples in the islands have all together stopped reproducing due to the severity of cancer and birth defects they have faced.

CONTINUING RESISTANCE

In March 1988 more than 8,000 people converged for massive 10 day direct action to “reclaim” the test site, nearly 3,000 people were arrested. Groups such as the Nevada Desert Experience (NDE) and Shundahai Network continue their work to shut down the test site and resist the corporate and military nuclear industry.

Throughout the 1980′s a fierce movement of grassroots resistance and direct action against uranium mining near the Grand Canyon had taken shape, galvanized by the Havasupai, Hopi, Diné (Navajo), Hualapai tribes and a Flagstaff group, Canyon Under Siege.  Prayerful and strategic meetings were held once a year throughout the 80s. In 1989 a group known as the ‘Arizona 5′ were charged for eco-actions including cutting power-lines to the Canyon Uranium Mine. Attributable in some part to the resistance and but mainly to a sharp drop in the price of uranium, companies like Dennison were forced to shut their mines down.

Mt. Taylor, located on Forest Service managed lands in New Mexico between Albuquerque and Gallup, has also faced the threat of uranium mining. The mountain sits upon one of the richest reservers of uranium ore in the country, it is held holy by the Diné, Acoma, Laguna, Zuni & Hopi Nations. In June 2009 Indigenous Nations and environmental groups unified to protect the holy Mountain and through their efforts Mt. Taylor was given temporary protection as a Traditional Cultural Property.

For 7 years Indigenous People from throughout the world have gathered to organize against the nuclear industry at the Southwest Indigenous Uranium Forum on the Acoma Nation.

At the 2006 Indigenous World Uranium Summit on the Diné Nation, community organizations such as Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining (ENDAUM) joined participants from Australia, India, Africa, Pacific Islands, and throughout North America in issuing a declaration demanding “a worldwide ban on uranium mining, processing, enrichment, fuel use, and weapons testing and deployment, and nuclear waste dumping on native lands.”

reference: http://www.indigenousaction.org/uranium-mining-begins-near-grand-canyon/

Bitter Sweet or Toxic?

 

Indigenous people, diabetes and the burden of pollution

by JOHN SCHERTOW

or not we get enough exercise. According to several new studies, it may be the result of our exposure to Persistent Organic Pollutants. 

WINNIPEG—Diabetes is now widely regarded as the 21st century epidemic. With some 284 million people currently diagnosed with the disease, it’s certainly no exaggeration—least of all for Indigenous people.

According to the State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples Report by the United Nations, more than 50 per cent of Indigenous adults over the age of 35 have Type 2 Diabetes, “and these numbers are predicted to rise.”

Diabetes is referred to as a “lifestyle disease,” its rampant spread believed to be caused by obesity due to our increased reliance on the western diet (also known as the “meat-sweet” diet) and our avoidance of regular exercise.

While these may certainly be contributing factors, there is growing evidence that diabetes is closely linked with our environment. More than a dozen studies have been published that show a connection between Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs); carcinogenic hydrocarbons known as Dioxins; and the “violently deadly” synthetic pesticide, DDT and higher rates of the disease.

“If it is the POPs, not the obesity that causes diabetes, this is really striking if true,” says Dr. David O. Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University of Albany.

One out of four Indigenous adults living on reserves in Canada have been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes, the most common form of diabetes. The prevalence of the disease appears to be so great that the number of new cases being diagnosed in Canada may exceed the growth of the Indigenous population. It’s no longer uncommon to find children as young as three with the disease. According to government statistics, 27 per cent of all Indigenous people in Canada will have Type 2 Diabetes in the next ten years.

Sandy Lake First Nation, in the Sioux Lookout Zone of northern Ontario, has all but met the mark. A March 2009 study co-authored by Dr. Stewart Harris found that 26 per cent of the community has the disease, the highest recorded rate of diabetes in Canada. With a population of 2,500, the northern Cree community was recently described as an “epicentre” of the epidemic.

There has been little research on the levels of persistent organic pollutants in Sandy Lake; however, according to the First Nations Environmental Health Innovation Network, several neighboring communities who also have high rates of diabetes, like Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation, are known to have elevated levels of PCBs in their blood.

The Mohawk community of Akwesasne has its own conflict with diabetes and exposure to POPs. Located across the New York-Ontario-Quebec borders along the St. Lawrence River, three aluminum foundries upriver from the reserve dumped PCBs into the river for decades, contaminating the water, soil, and vegetation.

For many years, Dr. Carpenter has been involved in the study of Adult Mohawks at Akwesasne. Most recently, in 2007, he took part in a study to examine the diabetes/pollution link in the community. “Our study of adult Mohawks showed a striking elevation in rates of diabetes in relation to blood levels of three persistent organic pollutants, DDE, the metabolite of DDT, hexachlorobenzene and PCBs,” Dr. Carpenter explains. “Our results are quite compatible with those of Lee et al.”

In 2006, Dr. Dae-Hee Lee and her colleagues showed that people with the highest rate of exposure to POPs were roughly 38 times more likely to have diabetes than those with the lowest rate of exposure. Further, “they showed that people who were obese but did not have high levels of POPs were not at increased risk of developing diabetes,” continues Dr. Carpenter. “Probably the reason most people get obese is that they eat too many animal fats, and this is where the POPs are.”

The dietary source of POPs was confirmed by the US Environmental Protection Agency in their Draft 1994 Dioxin Reassessment, which has never been formally released to the public. According to the Draft Reassessment, 93 per cent of our exposure to Dioxin comes from the consumption of beef, dairy, milk, chicken, pork, fish, and eggs; in other words, the western diet.

A May 2001 study published in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health drew similar conclusions to the EPA Reassessment. In addition, the study found that “nursing infants have a far higher intake of dioxins relative to body weight than do all older age groups,” and that human breast milk was twice as toxic as dairy milk. It also found that vegans had the overall lowest rate of POPs in their bodies.

According to an October 2009 paper by the Research Centre for Environmental Chemistry and Ecotoxicology at Masaryk University, another major source of POPs, specifically DDT, is the world’s oceans. The paper also found that despite restrictions placed on the use of DDT more than 30 years ago, concentrations of the toxin are on the rise.

Indigenous people carry an unequally high proportion of this global toxic burden. For instance, according to Environment Canada’s National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI) there are 212 Indigenous communities in Canada living near or downstream from pulp mills and other facilities that produce dioxins and furans. One striking example is the old Dryden pulp mill near Grassy Narrows which, according to the Grassy Narrows and Islington Bands Mercury Disability Board, dumped tonnes of dioxin-laced mercury wastewater into the English-Wabigoon River system from 1962-70.

Forty years later, the poisonous waste continues to pose a “serious health threat” to Grassy Narrows and the Wabaseemoong First Nations, says the Disability Board. No formal steps have been taken toward remediation by federal or provincial governments.

The Tohono O’odham Nation’s experience bears a close resemblance to Grassy Narrows: the world’s highest rate of diabetes can be found in southwest Arizona nation. According to Tribal health officials, nearly 70 per cent of the population of 28,000 has been diagnosed with the illness. The O’odham People make up the second largest Indigenous Nation in the United States.

Lori Riddle is a member of Aquimel O’odham Community and founder of the Gila River Alliance for a Clean Environment (GRACE).

GRACE was instrumental in the 10 year struggle against a hazardous waste recycling plant that operated without full permits on O’odham land for decades. Owned by Romic Environmental Technologies Corporation, the plant continuously spewed effluents into the air until it was finally shut down in 2007.

The Romic plant was not the first contributor to the O’odham’s toxic burden, explained Riddle. Looking back to her childhood, she recalled: “For nearly a year, [when] a plane would go over our heads, you could see the mist. We never thought to cover our water. The chemicals just took over and they became a part of us.”

From the early 1950s until the late 60s, cotton farmers in the Gila River watershed routinely sprayed DDT onto their crops to protect them from bollworms. According to the Agency of Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), each and every year the farmers used roughly twenty-three pounds of DDT per acre.

In 1969, the State of Arizona banned the use of DDT; by this time the river was gravely contaminated. According to the ATSDR, farmers then switched to Toxaphene, a substitute for DDT—until it was banned by the US government in 1990.

Because of these chemicals, Riddle explains, the O’odham were forced to abandon their traditional foods and adopt a western diet. Farms also went into a recession, forcing many families to leave their communities. Companies, such as Romic, began moving on to their territory, exasperating the situation. “It’s taken a toll on our quality of life,” she says. “I’ve cried myself to sleep.”

The O’odham are dealing with what Riddle terms “cluster symptoms,” including miscarriages, arthritis in the spine, breathing problems, unexplainable skin rashes and problems regenerating blood cells. This is in addition to diabetes, which frequently leads to renal failure, blindness, heart disease, and amputations.

More and more studies are showing the link between diabetes and persistent organic pollutants like DDT—stemming from the landmark Ranch Hand study. In 1998, the study found a 166 per cent increase in diabetes (requiring insulin control) in US Air Force personnel who were sprayed with the herbicide and defoliant Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. The study also found that as dioxin levels increased so did the presence and severity of Type 2 Diabetes, and the time to onset declined following a similar trend.

However, Dr. Carpenter notes that because of the widely-endorsed belief that diabetes is a life-style disease related to diet and exercise, the link is gaining little attention by governments, news agencies, or by any of the hundreds of non-profit diabetes foundations around the world. “[It] hasn’t even made it into the medical community at this point,” Dr. Carpenter adds. “It takes a long time to change both medical and public opinion.”

“Clearly one thing everyone can do is to eat less animal fats,” suggests Dr. Carpenter. Several Indigenous communities in northern Manitoba and British Columbia have begun to do this, planting their own gardens and building greenhouses; returning, in a traditional sense, to some of the foods that sustained them for millennia. Others are turning to exercise, which plays a vital role not just in the prevention of diabetes, but in their overall health.

“Also, we must find ways of getting the POPs out of the animals that we eat. That is not going to be easy, given how contaminated we have made the world,” adds Dr. Carpenter. For this, Lori Riddle, who is herself a diabetic, points to the Tribal Council and the Federal Government.

John Schertow is an Indigenous rights advocate and author of the blogIntercontinental Cry.

reference: http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/3129

Dirty, Dangerous and Expensive: The Truth About Nuclear Power

The nuclear industry seeks to revitalize itself by manipulating the public’s concerns about global warming and energy insecurity to promote nuclear power as a clean and safe way to curb emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce dependence on foreign energy resources.  Despite these claims by industry proponents, a thorough examination of the full life-cycle of nuclear power generation reveals nuclear power to be a dirty, dangerous and expensive form of energy that poses serious risks to human health, national security and U.S. taxpayers.

Nuclear Power is Dirty

Each year, enormous quantities of radioactive waste are created during the nuclear fuel process, including 2,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste(1)  and 12 million cubic feet of low-level radioactive waste(2) in the U.S. alone. More than 58,000 metric tons of highly radioactive spent fuel already has accumulated at reactor sites around the U.S. for which there currently is no permanent repository.  Even without new nuclear production, the inventory of commercial spent fuel in the U.S. already exceeds the 63,000 metric ton statutory capacity of the controversial Yucca Mountain repository, which has yet to receive a license to operate.  Even if Yucca Mountain is licensed, the Department of Energy has stated that it would not open before 2017.

Uranium, which must be removed from the ground, is used to fuel nuclear reactors.  Uranium mining, which creates serious health and environmental problems, has disproportionately impacted indigenous people because much of the world’s uranium is located under indigenous land.  Uranium miners experience higher rates of lung cancer, tuberculosis and other respiratory diseases. The production of 1,000 tons of uranium fuel generates approximately 100,000 tons of radioactive tailings and nearly one million gallons of liquid waste containing heavy metals and arsenic in addition to radioactivity.(3)  These uranium tailings have contaminated rivers and lakes. A new method of uranium mining, known as in-situ leaching, does not produce tailings but it does threaten contamination of groundwater water supplies.

Serious Safety Concerns

Despite proponents’ claims that it is safe, the history of nuclear energy is marked by a number of disasters and near disasters. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine is one of the most frightening examples of the potentially catastrophic consequences of a nuclear accident.  An estimated 220,000 people were displaced from their homes, and the radioactive fallout from the accident made 4,440 square kilometers of agricultural land and 6,820 square kilometers of forests in Belarus and Ukraine unusable.  It is extremely difficult to get accurate information about the health effects from Chernobyl.  Government agencies in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus estimate that about 25,000 of the 600,000 involved in fire-fighting and clean up operations have died so far because of radiation exposure from the accident.(4)  According to an April 2006 report commissioned by the European Greens for the European Parliament, there will be an additional 30,000 to 60,000 fatal cancer deaths worldwide from the accident.(5)

In 1979, the United States had its own disaster following an accident at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Reactor in Pennsylvania.  Although there were no immediate deaths, the incident had serious health consequences for the surrounding area.  A 1997 study found that those people living downwind of the reactor at the time of the event were two to ten times more likely to contract lung cancer or leukemia than those living upwind of the radioactive fallout.(6)   The dangers of nuclear power have been underscored more recently by the close call of a catastrophic meltdown at the Davis-Besse reactor in Ohio in 2002, which in the years preceding the incident had received a near-perfect safety score.(3)

Climate change may further increase the risk of nuclear accidents.  Heat waves, which are expected to become more frequent and intense as a result of global warming, can force the shut down or the power output reduction of reactors.  During the 2006 heat wave, reactors in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Minnesota, as well as in France, Spain and Germany, were impacted.  The European heat wave in the summer of 2003 caused cooling problems at French reactors that forced engineers to tell the government that they could no longer guarantee the safety of the country’s 58 nuclear power reactors.(3)

Proliferation, Loose Nukes and Terrorism

The inextricable link between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons is arguably the greatest danger of nuclear power.  The same process used to manufacture low-enriched uranium for nuclear fuel also can be employed for the production of highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.  As it has in the past, expansion of nuclear power could lead to an increase in the number of both nuclear weapons states and ‘threshold’ nuclear states that could quickly produce weapons by utilizing facilities and materials from their ‘civil’ nuclear programs a scenario many fear may be playing out in Iran.  Expanded use of nuclear power would increase the risk that commercial nuclear technology will be used to construct clandestine weapons facilities, as was done by Pakistan.

In addition to uranium, plutonium can also be used to make a nuclear bomb.  Plutonium, which is found only in extremely small quantities in nature, is produced in nuclear reactors.  Reprocessing spent fuel to separate plutonium from the highly radioactive barrier in spent fuel rods, as is being proposed as a ‘waste solution’ under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership program, increases the risk that the plutonium can be diverted or stolen for the production of nuclear weapons or radioactive ‘dirty’ bombs.  Reprocessing is also the most polluting part of the nuclear fuel cycle.  The reprocessing facility in France, La Hague, is the world’s largest anthropogenic source of radioactivity and its releases have been found in the Arctic Circle.

In addition to the threat of nuclear materials, nuclear reactors are themselves potential terrorist targets.  Nuclear reactors are not designed to withstand attacks using large aircraft, such as those used on the September 11, 2001.(7)  A well-coordinated attack could have severe consequences for human health and the environment.  A study by the Union of Concerned Scientists concluded that a major attack on the Indian Point Reactor in Westchester County, New York, could result in 44,000 near-term deaths from acute radiation sickness and more than 500,000 long-term deaths from cancer among individuals within 50 miles of the reactor.(8)

Nuclear Power Doesn’t Mean Energy Independence

Assertions that nuclear power can lead us to energy independence are incorrect.  In 2007, more than 90 percent of the uranium used in U.S. nuclear power reactors was imported.(9)  The U.S. only has the ninth largest reasonably assured uranium resources in the world.(10)  Most of it is low to medium grade, which is not only more polluting but also less economical than uranium found in other nations.  The U.S.’s high-priced uranium resources and world uranium price volatility mean that current dependence on foreign sources of uranium is not likely to change significantly in the future.

One country that the U.S. continues to rely on for uranium is Russia.  The Continuing Resolution signed into law in September 2008 extended and expanded the program to import Russian highly enriched uranium that has been down-blended for use in U.S. commercial reactors.  This program, which was set to expire in 2013, has been extended through 2020 and expanded to allow more uranium imports per year from Russia.  While the program is an important non-proliferation measure (highly enriched uranium can be used to make a nuclear weapon), it means that the U.S. will continue to rely on Russia for a significant amount of uranium for commercial nuclear reactors.

Nuclear is Expensive

In 1954, then Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission Lewis Strauss promised that the nuclear industry would one day provide energy “too cheap to meter.”(5)  More than 50 years and tens of billions of dollars in federal subsidies later, nuclear power remains prohibitively expensive.  Even among the business and financial communities, it is widely accepted that nuclear power would not be economically viable without government support.(11)  Despite this poor economic performance, the federal government has continued to pour money into the nuclear industry the Energy Policy Act of 2005 included more than $13 billion in production subsidies, tax breaks and other incentives for nuclear power.

The most important subsidy for the nuclear industry and the most expensive for U.S. taxpayers comes in the form of loan guarantees, which are promises that taxpayers will bail out the nuclear utilities by paying back their loans when the projects fail.  According to the Congressional Budget Office, the failure rate for nuclear projects is “very high well above 50 percent.”(12)   The nuclear industry is demanding $122 billion in federal loan guarantees for 21 reactors.  If these guarantees were authorized, taxpayers would be on the hook for at least $61 billion.

Making the Safe, Sustainable Investment

It is clear that alternatives to fossil fuels must be developed on a large scale.  However, nuclear power is neither renewable nor clean and therefore not a wise option.  Even if one were to disregard the waste problems, safety risks and dismal economics, nuclear power is both too slow and too limited a solution to global warming and energy insecurity.  Given the urgent need to begin reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the long lead times required for the design, permitting and construction of nuclear reactors render nuclear power an ineffective option for addressing global warming.

Taxpayer dollars would be better spent on increasing energy conservation, efficiency and developing renewable energy resources.  In fact, numerous studies have shown that improving energy efficiency is the most cost-effective and sustainable way to concurrently reduce energy demand and curb greenhouse gas emissions. Wind power already is less expensive than nuclear power.  And while photovoltaic power is currently more expensive than nuclear energy, the price of electricity produced by the sun, as with wind and other forms of renewable energy, is falling quickly.  Conversely, the cost of nuclear power is rising.(3,11)

When the very serious risk of accidents, proliferation, terrorism and nuclear war are considered, it is clear that investment in nuclear power as a climate change solution is not only misguided, but also highly dangerous.  As we look for solutions to the dual threats of global warming and energy insecurity, we should focus our efforts on improving energy conservation and efficiency and expanding the use of safe, clean renewable forms of energy to build a new energy future for the nation.

Call the Capital Switch Board (1-202-224-3121) to ask for your Congressional Representative and your Senators and urge them to oppose subsidies to the dirty, dangerous and expensive nuclear industry.

reference: http://www.psr.org/resources/nuclear-power-factsheet.html

Conservation Value of the North American Boreal Forest from an Ethnobotanical Perspective

Traditional knowledge held by Canada’s Aboriginal people about the Boreal Forest offers western scientists a vitally important information source. With the Boreal Forest facing increasing threats from climate change, habitat loss and fragmentation, and invasive species, this knowledge is more important than ever.

Conservation Value of the North American Boreal Forest from an Ethnobotanical Perspective describes the deep botanical and ecological knowledge that Canada’s Aboriginal peoples have gained over thousands of years of using the Boreal Forest as grocery, pharmacy, school, and spiritual centre. The report notes that the value of the Canada’s Boreal Forest to Aboriginal people in terms of subsistence (plant and animal) foods alone could reach up to $575.1 million.

The report illustrates how scientists and policymakers often overlook ecological issues until a crisis arises. For example, although few plants species in the boreal region are classified as threatened or endangered under the federal Species at Risk Act or provincial and territorial species legislation, many face widespread human-induced pressures, including habitat loss and climate change.

reference: http://www.davidsuzuki.org/publications/reports/2010/conservation-value-of-the-north-american-boreal-forest-from-an-ethnobotanical-pe/

A Record 5,000 Sea Turtles Cold-Stunned in Florida

Frigid waters in Florida during the first two weeks in January shocked a record number of sea turtles into a coma-like state that would have killed nearly all of them — had state and federal wildlife workers not come to the rescue.

Several officials interviewed for this article say that while it’s to early to know the precise number of “cold-stunned” turtles rescued in the event, they all estimated that the number is at least 5,000. That is an order of magnitude larger than the worst previous incident (400 turtles in 2001).

While the cold-stun event itself was a natural occurrence, the potential impact on sea turtles — all species are threatened or endangered — has more to do with human activity.

“If populations were at normal levels, sea turtle species would do just fine with an event like this every thirty or forty years,” says Allen Foley, a wildlife biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). But today’s populations are a fraction of what they were historically.

Once numbering in the tens of millions, sea turtles were nearly hunted to extinction throughout the Caribbean, following the arrival of Europeans. Since the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973, habit loss and fisheries “bycatch” (accidently catch in fishing gear) has replaced hunting as gravest threats to sea turtles in US waters.

Losing Ground: Sea Turtle Habitat

Part of the problem, says Foley, is identifying sea turtle habitat in the first place. For rainforest wildlife, researchers can use satellite imagery. Sea turtles present a much greater challenge.

“They migrate hundreds and even thousands of miles,” Foley points out. “A turtle that nests here in Florida, could have a foraging area that’s somewhere far off in the Gulf of Mexico.”

A renewed effort to open the Florida coastline to drilling for oil may also threaten turtle habitat, according to the Caribbean Conservation Corporation (CCC), which has been working to protect sea turtles and their habitat for fifty years:

Turtles not only depend on Florida’s world class beaches for nesting, but also sea grass beds, unique coral and rock reefs, inshore lagoons, and estuaries are all important habitats utilized by different species of sea turtles during all their life stages. All these resources are at risk if Florida opens the doors to oil drilling near the coast.

Net Losses

Most of the cold-stuned turtles were from the species commonly called the green sea turtle. Their numbers have been trending upwards for several years due to conservation efforts. For the loggerhead turtle, however, the trend has been in the opposite direction: a dramatic loss that troubles sea turtle biologist Anne Meylan, who during an interview, referred to the chart below.

 

After peaking in the mid-1990s, the number of loggerhead nests recorded on Florida beaches has been cut in half. This decline is significant for the species worldwide, since Florida is one of only two major nesting sites for loggerheads on the planet (the other site is in Oman).

“We don’t really know what accounts for the decline,” says Meylan, who is Research Administrator for the FWC. “But fisheries bycatch seems the most likely explanation from what we do know at this time.”

A (Possible) Major Step

Just as the cold-stunning event was starting in Florida, a possible major step in sea turtle conservation was taking place on the opposite side of the country. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) proposed designating 70,000 square miles of the Pacific ocean off the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington as “critical habitat” for the largest of all sea turtles, the leatherback.

The proposal is open for public comment through March 5. If accepted, the rule would create the first marine critical habitat area in waters off the continental United States to protect sea turtles.

But even while welcoming the proposal, some biologists and environmental groups are saying that the designation doesn’t go far enough.

Simply designating an area as “critical habitat” doesn’t, in itself, exclude the kind of commercial fishing that has played a leading role in driving the leatherback to the edge of extinction (the population has been reduced by 90 percent.)

The Sea Turtle Restoration Project (STRP) recently started a petition calling on NOAA to include language that addresses the bycatch mortality. It begins:

“I urge NOAA to strengthen it by addressing the threats from commercial fisheries, especially longline fishing and drift-gill net fishing, both of which are deadly to sea turtles. Derelict gear from both these fisheries also directly impact habitat when leatherbacks become entangled, drown, or are seriously injured. These threats are direct and also impede safe passage for the species during their migration.”

Longlines May be the Problem

In Florida, too, there is action to force the government to close down longline fishing in areas that may be critical habitat for loggerheads — albeit undesignated as such. The CCC filed a law suit in December charging that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) had used “incomplete science” in writing a new assessment of the fishing industries effect on Loggerhead turtle populations.

In an email, CCC executive director, David Godfrey, wrote that his group believes there is adequate evidence proving that the longline fishery is “a major culprit in the decline of loggerheads.”

The fact that the recent cold-stun event affected mostly green turtles should not be seen as a positive sign for loggerheads, says Godfrey. On the contrary, he writes, “the noticeable lack of sub-adult age class loggerheads may be an ominous sign.”

Most of the cold-stunned turtles have already been returned to the ocean, after the cold-blooded reptiles had been warmed up. While clearly harmful in the shortrun, the unique event may have a positive outcome — if the attention it brings to sea turtles translates into action to save from extinction, creatures that have existed since the age of dinosaurs.

reference: http://www.onearth.org/node/1806

Mawkish, maybe. But Avatar is a profound, insightful, important film

A critique of ‘avatar’; looking at american history

Cameron’s blockbuster offers a chilling metaphor for European butchery of the Americas. No wonder the US right hates it

Avatar, James ­Cameron’s blockbusting 3D film, is both profoundly silly and profound. It’s ­profound because, like most films about aliens, it is a metaphor for contact between different human cultures. But in this case the metaphor is conscious and precise: this is the story of European engagement with the native peoples of the Americas. It’s profoundly silly because engineering a happy ending demands a plot so stupid and predictable that it rips the heart out of the film. The fate of the native ­Americans is much closer to the story told in another new film, The Road, in which a remnant population flees in ­terror as it is hunted to extinction.

But this is a story no one wants to hear, because of the challenge it presents to the way we choose to see ourselves. Europe was massively enriched by the genocides in the Americas; the American nations were founded on them. This is a history we cannot accept.

In his book American Holocaust, the US scholar David Stannard ­documents the greatest acts of genocide the world has ever experienced. In 1492, some 100 million native people lived in the Americas. By the end of the 19th century almost all of them had been exterminated. Many died as a result of disease, but the mass extinction was also engineered.

When the Spanish arrived in the Americas, they described a world which could scarcely have been more different to their own. Europe was ravaged by war, oppression, slavery, fanaticism, disease and starvation. The populations they encountered were healthy, well-nourished and mostly (with exceptions like the Aztecs and Incas) peaceable, democratic and egalitarian. Throughout the Americas the earliest explorers, including Columbus, remarked on the natives’ extraordinary hospitality. The conquistadores marvelled at the ­amazing roads, canals, buildings and art they found, which in some cases outstripped anything they had seen at home. None of this stopped them destroying everything and everyone they encountered.

The butchery began with ­Columbus. He slaughtered the native people of Hispaniola (now Haiti and the ­Dominican Republic) by unimaginably brutal means. His soldiers tore babies from their mothers and dashed their heads against rocks. They fed their dogs on ­living children. On one occasion they hung 13 Indians in honour of Christ and the 12 disciples, on a gibbet just low enough for their toes to touch the ground, then disembowelled them and burnt them alive. ­Columbus ordered all the native people to deliver a ­certain amount of gold every three months; anyone who failed had his hands cut off. By 1535 the native ­population of Hispaniola had fallen from eight ­million to zero: partly as a result of disease, partly due to murder, overwork and starvation.

The conquistadores spread this civilising mission across central and south America. When they failed to reveal where their mythical treasures were hidden, the indigenous people were flogged, hanged, drowned, dismembered, ripped apart by dogs, buried alive or burnt. The soldiers cut off women’s breasts, sent people back to their villages with their severed hands and noses hung round their necks and hunted them with dogs for sport. But most were killed by enslavement and disease. The Spanish discovered that it was cheaper to work the native Americans to death and replace them than to keep them alive: the life expectancy in their mines and plantations was three to four months. Within a century of their arrival, about 95% of the population of South and Central America were dead.

In California during the 18th century the Spanish systematised this extermination. A Franciscan missionary called Junípero Serra set up a series of “missions”: in reality concentration camps using slave labour. The native people were herded in under force of arms and made to work in the fields on one fifth of the calories fed to African American slaves in the 19th century. They died from overwork, starvation and disease at astonishing rates, and were continually replaced, wiping out the indigenous populations. Junípero Serra, the Eichmann of California, was beatified by the Vatican in 1988. He now requires one more miracle to be pronounced a saint.

While the Spanish were mostly driven by the lust for gold, the British who colonised North America wanted land. In New England they surrounded the villages of the native Americans and murdered them as they slept. As genocide spread westwards, it was endorsed at the highest levels. George Washington ordered the total destruction of the homes and land of the Iroquois. Thomas Jefferson declared that his nation’s wars with the Indians should be pursued until each tribe “is exterminated or is driven beyond the Mississippi”. During the Sand Creek massacre of 1864, troops in Colorado slaughtered unarmed ­people gathered under a flag of peace, killing children and babies, mutilating all the corpses and keeping their ­victims’ genitals to use as tobacco pouches or to wear on their hats. ­Theodore Roosevelt called this event “as rightful and beneficial a deed as ever took place on the frontier”.

The butchery hasn’t yet ended: last month the Guardian reported that ­Brazilian ranchers in the western ­Amazon, having slaughtered all the rest, tried to kill the last surviving member of a forest tribe. Yet the greatest acts of genocide in history scarcely ruffle our collective conscience. Perhaps this is what would have happened had the Nazis won the second world war: the Holocaust would have been denied, excused or minimised in the same way, even as it continued. The people of the nations responsible – Spain, Britain, the US and others – will tolerate no comparisons, but the final solutions pursued in the Americas were far more successful. Those who commissioned or endorsed them remain national or religious heroes. Those who seek to prompt our memories are ignored or condemned.

This is why the right hates Avatar. In the neocon Weekly Standard, John Podhoretz complains that the film resembles a “revisionist western” in which “the Indians became the good guys and the Americans the bad guys”. He says it asks the audience “to root for the defeat of American soldiers at the hands of an insurgency”. Insurgency is an interesting word for an attempt to resist invasion: insurgent, like savage, is what you call someone who has something you want. L’Osservatore Romano, the official newspaper of the Vatican, condemned the film as “just an anti-imperialistic, anti-militaristic parable”.

But at least the right knows what it is attacking. In the New York Times the liberal critic Adam Cohen praises Avatar for championing the need to see clearly. It reveals, he says, “a well-known ­principle of totalitarianism and genocide – that it is easiest to oppress those we cannot see”. But in a marvellous unconscious irony, he bypasses the crashingly obvious metaphor and talks instead about the light it casts on Nazi and Soviet atrocities. We have all become skilled in the art of not seeing.

I agree with its rightwing critics that Avatar is crass, mawkish and cliched. But it speaks of a truth more important – and more dangerous – than those contained in a thousand arthouse movies.

reference: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/jan/11/mawkish-maybe-avatar-profound-important

Three Approved GMOs Linked to Organ Damage

In what is being described as the first ever and most comprehensive study of the effects of genetically modified foods on mammalian health, researchers have linked organ damage with consumption of Monsanto’s GM maize.

Three varieties of Monsanto’s GM corn – Mon 863, insecticide-producing Mon 810, and Roundup® herbicide-absorbing NK 603 – were approved for consumption by US, European and several other national food safety authorities. The data used for this approval, ironically, is the same data that independent researchers studied to make the organ damage link.

The Committee of Independent Research and Information on Genetic Engineering (CRIIGEN) and Universities of Caen and Rouen obtained Monsanto’s confidential raw data of its 2002 feeding trials on rats after a European court made it public in 2005.

The data “clearly underlines adverse impacts on kidneys and liver, the dietary detoxifying organs, as well as different levels of damages to heart, adrenal glands, spleen and haematopoietic system,” reported Gilles-Eric Séralini, a molecular biologist at the University of Caen.

Although different levels of adverse impact on vital organs were noticed between the three GMOs, the 2009 research shows specific effects associated with consumption of each, differentiated by sex and dose.

Their December 2009 study appears in the International Journal of Biological Sciences (IJBS). This latest study conforms with a2007 analysis by CRIIGEN on Mon 863, published inEnvironmental Contamination and Toxicology, using the same data.

Monsanto rejected the 2007 conclusions, stating:

“The analyses conducted by these authors are not consistent with what has been traditionally accepted for use by regulatory toxicologists for analysis of rat toxicology data.”

[Also see Doull J, Gaylor D, Greim HA, et al. “Report of an expert panel on the reanalysis by Séralini et al. (2007) of a 90-day study conducted by Monsanto in support of the safety of a genetically modified corn variety (MON 863).” Food Chem Toxicol. 2007; 45:2073-2085.]

In an email to me, Séralini explained that their study goes beyond Monsanto’s analysis by exploring the sex-differentiated health effects on mammals, which Doull, et al. ignored:

“Our study contradicts Monsanto conclusions because Monsanto systematically neglects significant health effects in mammals that are different in males and females eating GMOs, or not proportional to the dose. This is a very serious mistake, dramatic for public health. This is the major conclusion revealed by our work, the only careful reanalysis of Monsanto crude statistical data.”

Other problems with Monsanto’s conclusions

When testing for drug or pesticide safety, the standard protocol uses three mammalian species. The subject studies only used rats, yet won GMO approval in more than a dozen nations.

Chronic problems are rarely discovered in 90 days; most often such tests run for up to two years. Tests “lasting longer than three months give more chances to reveal metabolic, nervous, immune, hormonal or cancer diseases,” wrote Seralini, et al. in their Doull rebuttal. [See “How Subchronic and Chronic Health Effects can be Neglected for GMOs, Pesticides or Chemicals.” IJBS; 2009; 5(5):438-443.]

Further, Monsanto’s analysis compared unrelated feeding groups, muddying the results. The June 2009 rebuttal explains, “In order to isolate the effect of the GM transformation process from other variables, it is only valid to compare the GMO … with its isogenicnon-GM equivalent.”

The researchers conclude that the raw data from all three GMO studies reveal novel pesticide residues will be present in food and feed and may pose grave health risks to those consuming them.

They have called for “an immediate ban on the import and cultivation of these GMOs and strongly recommend additional long-term (up to two years) and multi-generational animal feeding studies on at least three species to provide true scientifically valid data on the acute and chronic toxic effects of GM crops, feed and foods.”

Human health, of course, is of primary import to us, but ecological effects are also in play. Ninety-nine percent of GMO crops either tolerate or produce insecticide. This may be the reason we see bee colony collapse disorder and massive butterfly deaths. If GMOs are wiping out Earth’s pollinators, they are far more disastrous than the threat they pose to humans and other mammals.

reference: http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2010/01/01/three-approved-gmos-linked-to-organ-damage/

Nuclear plant spills tritium into lake

Workers at the Darlington nuclear station filled the wrong tank with a cocktail of water and a radioactive isotope Monday, spilling more than 200,000 litres into Lake Ontario.

Ontario Power Generation is investigating how the accident happened and officials say hourly tests of the lake water show that the level of tritium – the radioactive isotope of hydrogen – poses no harm to nearby residents.

The spilled water contained 0.1 per cent of the plant’s allowable monthly release of tritium, said OPG spokesman Ted Gruetzner.

“It was a very small amount that was in the tank,” he said.

However, the fact the spill happened is reason enough to worry, watchdogs say.

“Negligence at a nuclear plant can lead to catastrophic consequences. It’s an unforgiving technology,” said Shawn-Patrick Stensil, an energy campaigner with Greenpeace. “This may be presented as a pretty minor spill, but it’s a bad sign when you see these types of breakdowns.”

The accident happened around 3 p.m. at the Clarington facility, after which officials notified the Ministry of the Environment, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the Durham Medical Officer of Health and water treatment authorities.

The spilled water – enough to fill more than two Olympic-sized swimming pools – came from an underground tank that is used for backup cooling in the event of an emergency.

“We know what happened, we just don’t know why it happened,” said Gruetzner, explaining that staff charged with filling up the underground tanks inadvertently filled one that was already full.

The water also contained an unspecified amount of hydrazine, a toxic inorganic chemical compound that keeps pipes and tanks from rusting.

The tank overflowed and water ran onto the ground, much of it flowing into the lake. Cleanup crews have already taken care of the puddles of water that didn’t reach the lake, many of which froze over and had to be chipped out, Gruetzner said.

“Our priority right now is to make sure the testing is done and the cleanup is completed,” he said. “There will be an investigation to make sure this accident doesn’t happen again.”

Tritium can be harmful when ingested in enough quantity. It immediately travels to the gastrointestinal tract and is absorbed into the bloodstream within two hours.

Durham Region said in a statement that water sampling and testing is taking place at water supply plants in Oshawa, Bowmanville and Newcastle.

“Residents are advised that their water is safe to drink,” according to the statement.

Still, Oshawa city councillor Tito-Dante Marimpietri said the spill was worrisome.

“As a councillor and a parent, it’s concerning. But I’m confident that everyone involved will be working tirelessly to find out what happened and where to go from there,” said Marimpietri, a member of the city’s Environmental Advisory Committee.

The spill comes a month after the Sierra Club of Canada released a report warning that “routine and accidental releases of tritium” are rising and that accumulation in the environment is a growing health concern. It criticized Canada for allowing tritium levels in drinking water that are 70 times higher than in the European Union and 473 times higher than in California.

Canada’s nuclear safety commission dismissed the Sierra Club report as “junk science,” but Linda Keen, former head of the commission, told the Star that community concerns should be taken seriously. She said tritium is an operational by-product of Candu nuclear reactors, making Canada the world’s largest producer of the otherwise rare radioactive isotope.

“Accumulative effects of tritium are what really worried me (as head of the commission), not just the dose at a certain date,” she said.

reference: http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/742225–nuclear-plant-spills-tritium-into-lake?bn=1

Monsanto Squeezes Out Seed Business Competition, AP Investigation Finds

 

ST. LOUIS — Confidential contracts detailing Monsanto Co.’s business practices reveal how the world’s biggest seed developer is squeezing competitors, controlling smaller seed companies and protecting its dominance over the multibillion-dollar market for genetically altered crops, an Associated Press investigation has found.

With Monsanto’s patented genes being inserted into roughly 95 percent of all soybeans and 80 percent of all corn grown in the U.S., the company also is using its wide reach to control the ability of new biotech firms to get wide distribution for their products, according to a review of several Monsanto licensing agreements and dozens of interviews with seed industry participants, agriculture and legal experts.

Declining competition in the seed business could lead to price hikes that ripple out to every family’s dinner table. That’s because the corn flakes you had for breakfast, soda you drank at lunch and beef stew you ate for dinner likely were produced from crops grown with Monsanto’s patented genes.

Monsanto’s methods are spelled out in a series of confidential commercial licensing agreements obtained by the AP. The contracts, as long as 30 pages, include basic terms for the selling of engineered crops resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, along with shorter supplementary agreements that address new Monsanto traits or other contract amendments.

The company has used the agreements to spread its technology – giving some 200 smaller companies the right to insert Monsanto’s genes in their separate strains of corn and soybean plants. But, the AP found, access to Monsanto’s genes comes at a cost, and with plenty of strings attached.

For example, one contract provision bans independent companies from breeding plants that contain both Monsanto’s genes and the genes of any of its competitors, unless Monsanto gives prior written permission – giving Monsanto the ability to effectively lock out competitors from inserting their patented traits into the vast share of U.S. crops that already contain Monsanto’s genes.

Monsanto’s business strategies and licensing agreements are being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice and at least two state attorneys general, who are trying to determine if the practices violate U.S. antitrust laws. The practices also are at the heart of civil antitrust suits filed against Monsanto by its competitors, including a 2004 suit filed by Syngenta AG that was settled with an agreement and ongoing litigation filed this summer by DuPont in response to a Monsanto lawsuit.

The suburban St. Louis-based agricultural giant said it’s done nothing wrong.

“We do not believe there is any merit to allegations about our licensing agreement or the terms within,” said Monsanto spokesman Lee Quarles. He said he couldn’t comment on many specific provisions of the agreements because they are confidential and the subject of ongoing litigation.

 

“Our approach to licensing (with) many companies is pro-competitive and has enabled literally hundreds of seed companies, including all of our major direct competitors, to offer thousands of new seed products to farmers,” he said.

The benefit of Monsanto’s technology for farmers has been undeniable, but some of its major competitors and smaller seed firms claim the company is using strong-arm tactics to further its control.

“We now believe that Monsanto has control over as much as 90 percent of (seed genetics). This level of control is almost unbelievable,” said Neil Harl, agricultural economist at Iowa State University who has studied the seed industry for decades. “The upshot of that is that it’s tightening Monsanto’s control, and makes it possible for them to increase their prices long term. And we’ve seen this happening the last five years, and the end is not in sight.”

At issue is how much power one company can have over seeds, the foundation of the world’s food supply. Without stiff competition, Monsanto could raise its seed prices at will, which in turn could raise the cost of everything from animal feed to wheat bread and cookies.

The price of seeds is already rising. Monsanto increased some corn seed prices last year by 25 percent, with an additional 7 percent hike planned for corn seeds in 2010. Monsanto brand soybean seeds climbed 28 percent last year and will be flat or up 6 percent in 2010, said company spokeswoman Kelli Powers.

Monsanto’s broad use of licensing agreements has made its biotech traits among the most widely and rapidly adopted technologies in farming history. These days, when farmers buy bags of seed with obscure brand names like AgVenture or M-Pride Genetics, they are paying for Monsanto’s licensed products.

One of the numerous provisions in the licensing agreements is a ban on mixing genes – or “stacking” in industry lingo – that enhance Monsanto’s power.

One contract provision likely helped Monsanto buy 24 independent seed companies throughout the Farm Belt over the last few years: that corn seed agreement says that if a smaller company changes ownership, its inventory with Monsanto’s traits “shall be destroyed immediately.”

Another provision from contracts earlier this decade_ regarding rebates – also help explain Monsanto’s rapid growth as it rolled out new products.

One contract gave an independent seed company deep discounts if the company ensured that Monsanto’s products would make up 70 percent of its total corn seed inventory. In its 2004 lawsuit, Syngenta called the discounts part of Monsanto’s “scorched earth campaign” to keep Syngenta’s new traits out of the market.

Quarles said the discounts were used to entice seed companies to carry Monsanto products when the technology was new and farmers hadn’t yet used it. Now that the products are widespread, Monsanto has discontinued the discounts, he said.

The Monsanto contracts reviewed by the AP prohibit seed companies from discussing terms, and Monsanto has the right to cancel deals and wipe out the inventory of a business if the confidentiality clauses are violated.

Thomas Terral, chief executive officer of Terral Seed in Louisiana, said he recently rejected a Monsanto contract because it put too many restrictions on his business. But Terral refused to provide the unsigned contract to AP or even discuss its contents because he was afraid Monsanto would retaliate and cancel the rest of his agreements.

“I would be so tied up in what I was able to do that basically I would have no value to anybody else,” he said. “The only person I would have value to is Monsanto, and I would continue to pay them millions in fees.”

Independent seed company owners could drop their contracts with Monsanto and return to selling conventional seed, but they say it could be financially ruinous. Monsanto’s Roundup Ready gene has become the industry standard over the last decade, and small companies fear losing customers if they drop it. It also can take years of breeding and investment to mix Monsanto’s genes into a seed company’s product line, so dropping the genes can be costly.

Monsanto acknowledged that U.S. Department of Justice lawyers are seeking documents and interviewing company employees about its marketing practices. The DOJ wouldn’t comment.

A spokesman for Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said the office is examining possible antitrust violations. Additionally, two sources familiar with an investigation in Texas said state Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office is considering the same issues. States have the authority to enforce federal antitrust law, and attorneys general are often involved in such cases.

Monsanto chairman and chief executive officer Hugh Grant told investment analysts during a conference call this fall that the price increases are justified by the productivity boost farmers get from the company’s seeds. Farmers and seed company owners agree that Monsanto’s technology has boosted yields and profits, saving farmers time they once spent weeding and money they once spent on pesticides.

But recent price hikes have still been tough to swallow on the farm.

“It’s just like I got hit with bad weather and got a poor yield. It just means I’ve got less in the bottom line,” said Markus Reinke, a corn and soybean farmer near Concordia, Mo. who took over his family’s farm in 1965. “They can charge because they can do it, and get away with it. And us farmers just complain, and shake our heads and go along with it.”

Any Justice Department case against Monsanto could break new ground in balancing a company’s right to control its patented products while protecting competitors’ right to free and open competition, said Kevin Arquit, former director of the Federal Trade Commission competition bureau and now a antitrust attorney with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP in New York.

“These are very interesting issues, and not just for the companies, but for the Justice Department,” Arquit said. “They’re in an area where there is uncertainty in the law and there are consumer welfare implications and government policy implications for whatever the result is.”

Other seed companies have followed Monsanto’s lead by including restrictive clauses in their licensing agreements, but their products only penetrate smaller segments of the U.S. seed market. Monsanto’s Roundup Ready gene, on the other hand, is in such a wide array of crops that its licensing agreements can have a massive effect on the rules of the marketplace.

Monsanto was only a niche player in the seed business just 12 years ago. It rose to the top thanks to innovation by its scientists and aggressive use of patent law by its attorneys.

First came the science, when Monsanto in 1996 introduced the world’s first commercial strain of genetically engineered soybeans. The Roundup Ready plants were resistant to the herbicide, allowing farmers to spray Roundup whenever they wanted rather than wait until the soybeans had grown enough to withstand the chemical.

The company soon released other genetically altered crops, such as corn plants that produced a natural pesticide to ward off bugs. While Monsanto had blockbuster products, it didn’t yet have a big foothold in a seed industry made up of hundreds of companies that supplied farmers.

That’s where the legal innovations came in, as Monsanto became among the first to widely patent its genes and gain the right to strictly control how they were used. That control let it spread its technology through licensing agreements, while shaping the marketplace around them.

Back in the 1970s, public universities developed new traits for corn and soybean seeds that made them grow hardy and resist pests. Small seed companies got the traits cheaply and could blend them to breed superior crops without restriction. But the agreements give Monsanto control over mixing multiple biotech traits into crops.

The restrictions even apply to taxpayer-funded researchers.

Roger Boerma, a research professor at the University of Georgia, is developing specialized strains of soybeans that grow well in southeastern states, but his current research is tangled up in such restrictions from Monsanto and its competitors.

“It’s made one level of our life incredibly challenging and difficult,” Boerma said.

The rules also can restrict research. Boerma halted research on a line of new soybean plants that contain a trait from a Monsanto competitor when he learned that the trait was ineffective unless it could be mixed with Monsanto’s Roundup Ready gene.

Boerma said he hasn’t considered asking Monsanto’s permission to mix its traits with the competitor’s trait.

“I think the co-mingling of their trait technology with another company’s trait technology would likely be a serious problem for them,” he said.

Quarles pointed out that Monsanto has signed agreements with several companies allowing them to stack their traits with Monsanto’s. After Syngenta settled its lawsuit, for example, the companies struck a broad cross-licensing accord.

At the same time, Monsanto’s patent rights give it the authority to say how independent companies use its traits, Quarles said.

“Please also keep in mind that, as the (intellectual property developer), it is our right to determine who will obtain rights to our technology and for what purpose,” he said.

Monsanto’s provision requiring companies to destroy seeds containing Monsanto’s traits if a competitor buys them prohibited DuPont or other big firms from bidding against Monsanto when it snapped up two dozen smaller seed companies over the last five years, said David Boies, a lawyer representing DuPont who previously was a prosecutor on the federal antitrust case against Microsoft Corp.

Competitive bids from companies like DuPont could have made it far more expensive for Monsanto to bring the smaller companies into its fold. But that contract provision prevented bidding wars, according to DuPont.

“If the independent seed company is losing their license and has to destroy their seeds, they’re not going to have anything, in effect, to sell,” Boies said. “It requires them to destroy things – destroy things they paid for – if they go competitive. That’s exactly the kind of restriction on competitive choice that the antitrust laws outlaw.”

Quarles said some of the Monsanto contracts let companies sell their inventory for a period of time, rather than be required to destroy it. Seed companies also don’t have to pay royalty fees on the bags of seed they destroyed.

“Simply put, it was designed to facilitate early adoption of the technology,” he said.

Some independent seed company owners say they feel increasingly pinched as Monsanto cements its leadership in the industry.

“They have the capital, they have the resources, they own lots of companies, and buying more. We’re small town, they’re Wall Street,” said Bill Cook, co-owner of M-Pride Genetics seed company in Garden City, Mo., who also declined to discuss or provide the agreements. “It’s very difficult to compete in this environment against companies like Monsanto.”

reference: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/13/monsanto-squeezes-out-see_n_390354.html