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Sementes do poder
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Seeds of the power
Automatically translated into English thanks to WorldLingo
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Christina Palmeira, of Paris

the Monsanto produces 90% of the transgênicos planted in the world and is leader in the market of seeds. Such hegemony places the North American multinational in the center of the debate on the benefits and the risks of the use of grains genetically modified. For the defenders of the manipulation of the genes, the Monsanto represents the promising future of? green revolution. For on ecologists and social movements the small agriculturists, the company is the incarnation of the evil.

This last group finishes to gain a reinforcement its arguments. Results of a work of three years of inquiry of French journalist Marie-Monique Robin, the book Le Monde Selon Monsanto (the World According to Monsanto) and the documentary homonym are a libel against the products and the lobby of the multinational.

The work catalogues action of the Monsanto to divulge scientific studies doubtful of support to its research and products, the example of what it made per many years the industry of the tobacco, relates the expansion of the grains of the company with suicides of agriculturists in India, recollects cases of contamination for chemical product PCB and details the relations politics of the company that had allowed the release of the plantation of transgênicos in the United States. In 2007, it more than had 100 million hectares planted with seeds genetically modified, half in U.S.A. and the remain in emergent countries as Argentina, China and Brazil.

Marie-Monique Robin, famous investigativa journalist with 25 years of experience, brings unknown depositions of scientists, politicians and lawyers. The workmanship esmiúça the relations politics of the multinational with the democratical government of Bill Clinton (1993-2001), and with the cabinet of the former-premier British Tony Blair. Between the sources they are former-integrant of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the responsible agency for the food release and medicines in U.S.A.

The reporter, son of agriculturists, travelled to Great-Britain, India, Mexico, Paraguay, Vietnam, Norway and Italy to make the interviews. Before, it made a deep survey in the Internet and based its inquiry in documents on-line to prevent possible processes moved for the Monsanto. The company did not give interview to the journalist, but, she has few weeks, during a presentation in Paris of another set of documents of Robin, an employee of the multinational appeared and informed that the company followed its steps. Detail: the headquarters of the Monsanto are in Lyon, distant 465 kilometers of the French capital

Looked by CartaCapital, the Monsanto opposed to comment it accusations in the book. Uma assessora sugeriu uma visita ao site da Associação Francesa de Informação Científica, onde há artigos de cientistas com críticas ao livro de Robin. The magazine, duly authorized for the author, reproduces in the page 11 stretches of the article of one of these scientists, Marcel Kuntz, director of the National Center of Scientific Research of Grenoble.

It is not of today, it shows the book, that herbicidas of the Monsanto ambient and social problems cause. Robin tells the history of a process moved for inhabitants of the small Anniston, in the South of U.S.A., against the multinational, owner of a closed plant of PCB in 1971. Known in Brazil as Ascarel, the toxic substance was used in the manufacture of transforming and entered in the composition of the used ink in the painting of the hooves of the boats. Here it was forbidden in 1981.

The Monsanto, tells the reporter, wise person of the perverse effect of the product since 1937. But it more kept the plant in functioning per 34 years. In 2002, after seven years of fight, the inhabitants of Anniston had gained an indemnity of 700 million dollar. In the city, with less than 20 a thousand inhabitants, they had been registered 450 cases of children with a cerebral motor illness, beyond sets of ten of deaths provoked for the contamination with the PCB. It has 42 years, the proper Monsanto carried through a study with the water of Anniston: the fish had died in three minutes cuspindo blood.

Alert Robin who the tentáculos of the Monsanto reach until the White House. The influence retraces to the times of World War II and the period of the call Cold War. Donald Rumsfeld, former-secretary of Defense of the government Bush Júnior, directed the pharmaceutical division of the company. The multinational still kept a partnership with the military. 1942, the director Charles Thomas and the company had entered the Manhattan Project, that resulted in the production of the atomic bomb. The executive locked up the career in the presidency of the Monsanto (1951-1960).

In the War of the Vietnam (1959-1975), the company supplied the agent orange, whose effect last until today. The journalist visited the Museum of the Horrors of the Dioxina, in Ho Chi Minh (old Saigon), where if they can see the effect of the product on just-been born embryos and.

Alan Gibson, vice-president of the association of the North American veterans of the War of the Vietnam, spoke to the author of the effect of the agent orange: One day, was washing the feet and a bone piece was in my hand.

Good part of the work of Robin is dedicated to tell to the pressures suffered for researchers and employees of public agencies that had decided to denounce the effect of the products of the company. It is the example of Cate Jenkis, chemistry of the EPA, the ambient agency of the United States.

Em 1990, Jenkis fez um relatório sobre os efeitos da dioxina, o que lhe valeu a transferência para um posto burocrático. Thanks to the denunciation of the researcher, the American law moved and started to grant to aid the former-combatants of the Vietnam. After long judicial battle, Jenkis was reintegrated to the old rank.

It also has the story of Richard Burroughs, employee of the FDA in charge evaluating the hormone of bovine growth of the Monsanto. Burroughs says to have proven the harmful effect of the hormone for the health of men and animals and evidenced that, with the weak cattle, the pecuaristas used high doses of antibiotics. Result: milk finished contaminated. Burroughs, counts the journalist, was dismissed. But a recent study it discloses that the tax of cancer in the seio enters the North Americans with more than 50 years grew 55.3% between 1994, year of the launching of the hormone in the United States, and 2002.

Segundo Robin, the release of the transgênicas seeds in the United States was resulted of the lobby fort of the company in the White House, mainly during the Clinton government. One of? coincidences: who elaborated, in the FDA, the regulation of the grains genetically modified was Michael Taylor, who in years 90 is one of the vices-president of the Monsanto.

The reporter if withholds on? principle of equivalence in substance? , basic concept for regulation of the transgênicos in the whole world. The formula establishes that the components of foods of one plant transgênica will be same or the similar ones to the found ones in foods? conventionals.

Robin met with Dan Glickman, who was secretary of State of the Agriculture of the Clinton government, responsible for the authorization of the transgênicos in U.S.A. Glickman confessed, in 2006, to have moved of position and admitted to have been after pressured to suggest that the company carried through suplemental tests on the transgênicos. The critical ones had come of the colleagues of the area of foreign commerce.

It had pressures, according to book, also in the United kingdom. The scientist Arpad Pusztai, employee of the Rowett Institute, one of most famous of Great-Britain, would have been after punished to divulge resulted controversial on transgênicos foods. In 1998, Pusztai gave an interview to the net of tevê BBC. Asked if it would eat transgênicas potatoes, went off: Not. As a scientist who works actively in this sector, I consider that it is not just to take the British citizens for guineapigs. After the interview, the contract of Pusztai was suspended, its dissolved team, the confiscated documents and computers. Pusztai também foi proibido de falar com a imprensa. In the article reproduced to page 11, Kuntz affirms that the scientist lost the job for not presenting resulted consistent that based the declarations to the press.

Pusztai affirms that only it understood the situation, in 1999, when knowing that assessors of the British government had on for the direction of the institute in the day of its resignation. In 2003, Robert Orsko, former-integrant of the Rowett Institute, would have confirmed that? Monsanto had on for Bill Clinton, who, after that, bound for Tony Blair. E thus the scientist lost the job.

In the trips for emergent countries, Robin harvested histories of lack of control in the plantation of transgênicos and damages the small agriculturists. In Mexico, in Argentina and Brazil, plantations of conventional soy and maize had finished contaminated for transgênicos, what it forced, as in the Brazilian case, the release of the use of the seeds of the Monsanto (that invoice with royalties).

In accordance with the journalist, the use of the soy Roundup Ready (RR), much used in Brazil and Argentina, adds another profit to the Monsanto, provoking the increase of the use of the herbicida Roundup. In the age daily pay-RR, Argentina consumed 1 million of liters of glifosato, volume that jumped for 150 million in 2005. Since then, the company suppressed the discountings in the commercialization of the pesticide, increasing its profits.

One of the icons of the social drama of the transgênicos, says the book, is India. Between June of 2005 (he dates of the introduction of the transgênico cotton Bt in the Indian state of Maharashtra) and December of 2006, 1,280 agriculturists if had killed. A suicide to each eight hours. The majority for not obtaining to bank the costs with the plantation of grains genetically modified.

Robin tells the tragedy of these agriculturists, who, during centuries, had sown its fields now and if they come to the returns with the purchase of seeds, seasonings and pesticides, in a vicious circle that finishes in many cases in the ingestion of a bottle of Roundup.

The journalist still describes what she says to be the power of the Monsanto on the international media. Quotation, among others, the cases of the North American journalists Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, hardly sancionados for having carried through, in 1996, a set of documents on the hormone of the growth. Into the country of the democracy, the pair if transformed into symbol of the censorship.

Os cientistas, conta o livro, são frequentemente ?cooptados? for the North American giant. Between? vendidos? it is the famous cancerologista Richard Doll, recognized for works that had assisted in the combat to the industry of the tobacco. Doll faleceu in 2005. In the following year, the British periodical The Guardian disclosed that during 20 years the researcher worked for the Monsanto. Its task, with daily remuneration of 1,5 a thousand dollar, was to write articles proving that the environment has a function limited in the progression of the illnesses. He was an intense architect of? magical world? of the Monsanto.