Canada giving control of our food systems to companies like Monsanto

This is on the edge of what falls under MVB topics, but it is of great importance.

Long story short: Canada and the EU are negotiating an agreement (CETA) that would essentially give control of all seeds and farming in Canada to private companies, like Monsanto.

You can watch Food Inc. or The World According to Monsanto (documentary) to learn more about such companies.



In brief:

The Canada-E.U. Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement negotiations...

- are progressing quickly and with little public scrutiny until now.

- will concentrate even more power in the hands of corporations.

- would give biotech, pharmaceutical, pesticide, seed, and grain companies powerful new tools to force farmers to buy seeds at high prices, on corporate terms, giving corporations even more power to ultimately decide who farms and how.

- would almost entirely eliminate the rights of farmers to save, reuse, and sell seed.

- allow plant varieties to be protected as intellectual property through Plant Breeders Rights as well as patents on genes, giving rights holders an unprecedented degree of control over seeds and farming.

- give seed breeders the right to collect royalties on seed at any point in the food chain.

- allow biotech corporations to seize the crops, equipment, and farms, and freeze the bank accounts of farmers who are deemed patent infringers, like farmers who find unwanted contamination in their fields.

- would commit Canada to reducing or eliminating agricultural subsidies and other government supports to farmers over time.

Call me a conspiracy-theorist, but that doesn't sound good to me.

I used this site as one easy way to speak up.

(Thanks to Jenny for passing on Mary Lowther's letter from the TC. )