Despite declining bee and butterfly populations from agricultural chemicals, and over the objections of numerous environmental groups, on Saturday the US Senate approved President Barack Obama's nomination for chief agricultural negotiator in the Office of the US Trade Representative, Monsanto lobbyist Islam Siddiqui.
“Dr. Siddiqui’s confirmation is a step backward,” said Tierra Curry, a scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity (the "Center"). “His appointment ensures the perpetuation of pesticide- and fossil-fuel-intensive policies, which undermine global food security and imperil public health and wildlife.”
As undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Siddiqui oversaw the development of the first national organic labeling standards, which allowed sewage sludge-fertilized, genetically modified, and irradiated food to be labeled as organic, reports the Center. After a nationwide campaign spearheaded by the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) in which the USDA was deluged with 280,000 irate letters and emails, Siddiqui, Monsanto, and the USDA backed off.
Apparently to no avail.
Siddiqui is a former pesticide lobbyist and is currently vice president of science and regulatory affairs at CropLife America, a biotech and pesticide trade group that lobbies to weaken environmental laws. He takes the absurd position that pesticides are not pollutants because they're not intended to be pollutants.
He also posits that regulations of pesticide use in the name of human health and other concerns violates international trade laws. Spoken like a true corporatist: profits supercede health.
CropLife has lobbied to allow pesticides to be tested on children and to allow the continued use of persistent organic pollutants and ozone-depleting chemicals, like methyl bromide, Pesticide Action Network reports. CropLife also petitioned Michelle Obama to use pesticides in the organic White House garden and fought county initiatives in California banning genetically modified foods.
Siddiqui vowed to further pressure the European Union to accept more genetically modified crops.
Choosing Siddiqui, according to OCA, "signals to the rest of the world that the United States plans to continue down the failed path of high-input and energy-intensive industrial agriculture by promoting toxic pesticides, inappropriate seed biotechnologies, and unfair trade agreements on nations that do not want and can least afford them."
Third World Ag Experiment in Detroit
In a related current event, biotech ag developers and investors are buying up parcels of land throughout the economically depressed city of Detroit, which was once the fourth most-populated city in the U.S. Lots are monocultured with genetically modified corn for use as a biofuel, or monocultured with organic veggies for food, or with trees.
Several questions arise with this plan. Is biotech the best use of that land, considering all the petro-ag chemicals that will toxify Lake Michigan and the groundwater? Also consider that that land and water table has suffered decades of industrial waste abuse; and now Monsanto’s going to subject them to ag waste? (Or Dow, or Syngenta, or Cargill, etc.) Also, how do owners plan to protect organic lots from contamination by petro-ag chemicals?
When biotech ag developers go after the land of poor folks (as in Africa or India, Brazil or Peru), poor folks lose. One has to wonder if in the Detroit experiment we'll see a recipe for Love Canal, Motown Style.
Sources
Center for Biological
Diversity, Obama Puts
Pesticide Pusher in Charge of Agricultural Trade Relations, 28 Mar 2010.
Environmental Justice,
Dioxin Homepage (Monsanto's Dioxin-Agent Orange in Love Canal),
2006.
Dr. Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, Backgrounder on Siddiqui and
CropLife America, FoodFirst, Sep 2009
GMWatch, Obama Backs
Public Subsidy of Biofuels despite Eco-trash, Food Shortages, 16 Mar 2010; includes:
Ethan Huff, Investors are buying up
Detroit and turning it into farmland, Natural News, 27 Mar 2010.
Organic Consumers
Assn, 98 Organizations
Oppose Obama's Monsanto Man, Islam Siddiqui, for US Agricultural Trade
Representative, Feb
2010.
Sonia Shah, Behind Mass Die-Offs, Pesticides
Lurk as Culprit, Yale e-360, 1
Jan 2010.
Survival
International, Genocide for Land Grab: News
from Survival Tribes, Aug
2009.
Frosty Woolridge,
Woolridge Report of Detroit
and Why the US Is Next, Oct
2009.
(Updated to attribute Pesticide Action Network for Backgrounder on Siddiqui
and CropLife America)
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