Three generations of women attended Monsanto's shareholder meeting Friday and presented multiple reasons why Monsanto should mitigate risks from Roundup, support labeling of genetically-engineered foods and change the direction of their business.
Anne Temple, mother and midwest leader of Moms Across America representing John Harrington of Harrington Investments, went to the meeting with Rachel Parent, 16-year-old and founder of Kids Right to Know from Canada who representing Moms Across America, and Beth Savitt, grandmother and president of the Shaka Movement of Maui representing and As You Sow.
“Our loved ones are getting sick and dying at alarming rates," Temple said at the shareholder meeting. "We find however that our families' health improves when they eat organic to avoid GMOs and toxic chemicals."
In fact, Moms Across America posted this billboard in west St. Louis County, Missouri, in Creve Coeur, near Monsanto headquarters, stating just that:
At the shareholder meeting, Parent explained that “nearly two decades after genetically engineered crops have been incorporated into our food, no long-term human health studies have been performed. However, feeding studies have been done on animals and the results are sobering: organ damage, digestive disorders, tumors, infertility and stillbirths."
Then Savitt pointed out that “the president's cancer panel of 2008 recommended the precautionary principle in relation to pesticides. Can we stop and test? Can we practice the hippocratic oath and first do no harm? That's all we are asking for."
Savitt's Shaka Movement passed a GMO moratorium in Maui, requiring that the planting of GMOs stop until safety testing is concluded that shows the chemical combinations used were safe. Monsanto spent more than $9 million to fight the passing of the moratorium, far more than would have been spent on the testing. The moratorium passed anyway, but a local judge overturned the law. Currently, an appeal is in process. The concern by the three women is that in the meantime, Monsanto is allowed to continue to poison our food, water and planet.
Savitt insists, “Maui is an open air experiment and the land and people are paying a price, our health. We assert our right to health."
John Harrington of Harrington Investments said, “It's truly amazing to me that Monsanto is allowed to continue endangering public health and safety."
The choices of Monsanto are not without repercussions, however. Monsanto has experienced heavy losses over the past year due to several factors including:
1. The increase of more than 250 super weeds on 300 million acres resisting Roundup
2. The World Health Organization's declaration that glyphosate in Roundup is a probable carcinogen
3. Growing consumer resistance
Since Zen Honeycutt of Moms Across America spoke at last year's shareholder meeting, there has been a 34 percent drop in stock value and 16 percent of the workforce will be laid off.
Although considered safe for nearly 40 years, serious evidence regarding the health risks of glyphosate in Roundup has recently surfaced, including the destruction of the gut bacteria which leads to a weakened immune system, neurotoxicity, hormone disrupting effects which can lead to endocrine disruption (birth defects and miscarriage) at very low levels, non Hodgkin's Lymphoma, breast cancer cell growth and placental cell death.
These three women went to the shareholder meeting because they do not see how Monsanto can ignore the risks associated with Roundup and knowingly continue down a path that will lead to decreased profit margins and job loss.
During the shareholder meeting, Monsanto CEO and board chair Hugh Grant extolled the virtues of GMOs and glyphosate, declaring them safe and the tools needed to solve the problem of feeding a hungry world.
Parent, who has been speaking up for GMO labels since she was 11 years old, said, “If you truly believe your GM technology is safe, if you truly believe it has the potential to feed the world, why are you treating it like a dirty little secret that can't be shown on food labels? Why, if it's such proven technology, are you fighting it, rather than promoting it?"
Grant went on to say that Monsanto is for voluntary GMO labeling and supports QR codes.
Temple pointed out that the QR code option is “discriminatory because not everyone can afford a smartphone."
Listen here to the full recording of the meeting:
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Though made in large part of plastic, glass, ceramics, gold and copper, they also contain critical resources. The gallium used for LEDs and the camera flash, the tantalum in capacitors and indium that powers the display were all pulled from the ground — at a price for nature and people.
"Mining raw materials is always problematic, both with regard to human rights and ecology," said Melanie Müller, raw materials expert of the German think tank SWP. "Their production process is pretty toxic."
The gallium and indium in many phones comes from China or South Korea, the tantalum from the Democratic Republic of Congo or Rwanda. All in, such materials comprise less than ten grams of a phone's weight. But these grams finance an international mining industry that causes radioactive earth dumps, poisoned groundwater and Indigenous population displacement.
Environmental Damage: 'Nature Has Been Overexploited'
The problem is that modern technologies don't work without what are known as critical raw materials. Collectively, solar panels, drones, 3D printers and smartphone contain as many as 30 of these different elements sourced from around the globe. A prime example is lithium from Chile, which is essential in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles.
"No one, not even within the industry, would deny that mining lithium causes enormous environmental damage," Müller explained, in reference to the artificial lakes companies create when flushing the metal out of underground brine reservoirs. "The process uses vast amounts of water, so you end up with these huge flooded areas where the lithium settles."
This means of extraction results in the destruction and contamination of the natural water system. Unique plants and animals lose access to groundwater and watering holes. There have also been reports of freshwater becoming salinated due to extensive acidic waste water during lithium mining.
But lithium is not the only raw material that causes damage. Securing just one ton of rare earth elements produces 2,000 tons of toxic waste, and has devastated large regions of China, said Günther Hilpert, head of the Asia Research Division of the German think tank SWP.
He says companies there have adopted a process of spraying acid over the mining areas in order to separate the rare earths from other ores, and that mined areas are often abandoned after excavation.
"They are no longer viable for agricultural use," Hilpert said. "Nature has been overexploited."
China is not the only country with low environmental mining standards and poor resource governance. In Madagascar, for example, a thriving illegal gem and metal mining sector has been linked to rainforest depletion and destruction of natural lemur habitats.
States like Madagascar, Rwanda and the DRC score poorly on the Environmental Performance Index that ranks 180 countries for their effort on factors including conservation, air quality, waste management and emissions. Environmentalists are therefore particularly concerned that these countries are mining highly toxic materials like beryllium, tantalum and cobalt.
But it is not only nature that suffers from the extraction of high-demand critical raw materials.
"It is a dirty, toxic, partly radioactive industry," Hilpert said. "China, for example, has never really cared about human rights when it comes to achieving production targets."
Dirty, Toxic, Radioactive: Working in the Mining Sector
One of the most extreme examples is Baotou, a Chinese city in Inner Mongolia, where rare earth mining poisoned surrounding farms and nearby villages, causing thousands of people to leave the area.
In 2012, The Guardian described a toxic lake created in conjunction with rare earth mining as "a murky expanse of water, in which no fish or algae can survive. The shore is coated with a black crust, so thick you can walk on it. Into this huge, 10 sq km tailings pond nearby factories discharge water loaded with chemicals used to process the 17 most sought after minerals in the world."
Local residents reported health issues including aching legs, diabetes, osteoporosis and chest problems, The Guardian wrote.
South Africa has also been held up for turning a blind eye to the health impacts of mining.
"The platinum sector in South Africa has been criticized for performing very poorly on human rights — even within the raw materials sector," Müller said.
In 2012, security forces killed 34 miners who had been protesting poor working conditions and low wages at a mine owned by the British company Lonmin. What became known as the "Marikana massacre" triggered several spontaneous strikes across the country's mining sector.
Müller says miners can still face exposure to acid drainage — a frequent byproduct of platinum mining — that can cause chemical burns and severe lung damage. Though this can be prevented by a careful waste system.
Some progress was made in 2016 when the South African government announced plans to make mining companies pay $800 million (€679 million) for recycling acid mine water. But they didn't all comply. In 2020, activists sued Australian-owned mining company Mintails and the government to cover the cost of environmental cleanup.
Another massive issue around mining is water consumption. Since the extraction of critical raw materials is very water intensive, drought prone countries such as South Africa, have witnessed an increase in conflicts over supply.
For years, industry, government and the South African public debated – without a clear agreement – whether companies should get privileged access to water and how much the population may suffer from shortages.
Mining in Brazil: Replacing Nature, People, Land Rights
Beyond the direct health and environmental impact of mining toxic substances, quarrying critical raw materials destroys livelihoods, as developments in Brazil demonstrate.
"Brazil is the major worldwide niobium producer and reserves in [the state of] Minas Gerais would last more than 200 years [at the current rate of demand]," said Juliana Siqueira-Gay, environmental engineer and Ph.D. student at the University of São Paulo.
While the overall number of niobium mining requests is stagnating, the share of claims for Indigenous land has skyrocketed from 3 to 36 percent within one year. If granted, 23 percent of the Amazon forest and the homeland of 222 Indigenous groups could fall victim to deforestation in the name of mining, a study by Siqueira-Gay finds.
In early 2020, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro signed a bill which would allow corporations to develop areas populated by Indigenous communities in the future. The law has not yet entered into force, but "this policy could have long-lasting negative effects on Brazil's socio-biodiversity," said Siqueira-Gay.
One example are the niobium reserves in Seis Lagos, in Brazil's northeast, which could be quarried to build electrolytic capacitors for smartphones.
"They overlap the Balaio Indigenous land and it would cause major impacts in Indigenous communities by clearing forests responsible for providing food, raw materials and regulating the local climate," Siqueira-Gay explained.
She says scientific good practice guidelines offer a blueprint for sustainable mining that adheres to human rights and protects forests. Quarries in South America — and especially Brazil — funded by multilaterial banks like the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group have to follow these guidelines, Siqueira-Gay said.
They force companies to develop sustainable water supply, minimize acid exposure and re-vegetate mined surfaces. "First, negative impacts must be avoided, then minimized and at last compensated — not the other way around."
Reposted with permission from DW.