the REN DAO Wellness Center Blog

The answer to big profits and market domination for Monsanto, is blowing in the wind.

Flowers from the rapeseed plant (actually a weed) produces a large quantity of seeds that have a high oil content. This oil has been traditionally used for centuries, but is unsafe for animal or human consumption. In the early 1970’s, Canadian plant breeders bread a rapeseed plant extremely low in erucic acid and gluconsinolates, the seeds toxic components. These plants paved the way for the edible rapeseed oil market. Canola is not a true biological plant species, it is a trade name. It stands for “Can” (for Canada) and “ola” (for oil low acid). The internationally regulated definition of canola is rapeseed oil having less than two percent erucic acid and less than 30 umoles glucosinolates. Only oils meeting these requirements can use the trade name “Canola”.

Monsanto has the patent on Canola seeds resistant to its highly profitable “Roundup” herbicide. Well, one day, on the way to market, some of these seeds took flight, got wind and propagated non-Monsanto, non-GMO canola farms. Unsurprisingly, Monsanto found these fields and sued the farmers for patent license infringements. Canadian courts ruled in favor of Monsanto. Farmers were forced to pay settlement fees, destroy their non-GMO seed stocks and buy Monsanto’s seeds and herbicides. Here in America, Canola is not a major cash crop, most of our canola oil is exported from Canada. But Monsanto has received approval from the USDA to commercial grow it’s GMO Alfa and GMO sugar beets here. Grassroot consumer organizations stood up and sued the USDA. As a result the U.S. District Courts reversed USDA approvals for both GM Alfa and sugar beets, on the grounds that no testing was done to show the environment impact of growing these corps and insure there are no issues with cross-contamination to non-GM corps.

Getting products containing GMO’s labeled should be a primary goal of every consumer. We need to know what is in the foods we are purchasing and eating.

As a side-note; when doing web research, it is important to watch the release dates on posted web sites. The GMO industry is dynamic and fast moving. When I started my research, I found articles stating GM wheat was being readied for market, Monsanto has since dropped release of this product. I found articles stating GM sugar would soon hit the markets only to read the District Court recently halted commercial planting of GMO sugar beets. The news still buzzes about terminator seeds (the USDA shares the patent for this technology . Monsanto has presently stated it will not use this technology.