These four companies own 54 percent of the global pesticide market and have taken over 36 percent of the global seed market. All that stands in their way is a generation of informed people who might reject this monopoly on seeds and chemical assault on natural foods. That’s why the industry is now striving to indoctrinate schoolchildren on the benefits of GMOs, why GMOs must feed the world, and why pesticides are so safe.
The program’s lesson plans teach “how important it is to make informed decisions which are based on fact.” Of course the industry’s propaganda is to be accepted blindly as fact.
The Canadian Biotechnology Action Network is speaking out against this insidious corporate product promotion which is now taking place in Canadian schools. “This webinar is blatant corporate product promotion for the GM apple. It’s certainly not a neutral presentation of genetic modification to students,” said Lucy Sharratt of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network.
The program’s webinar, presented on March 7, 2017, blatantly promoted a newly developed strain of genetically modified apple that doesn't brown. The natural enzymes that cause the apple to brown have been altered. This creates a new kind of apple "property" that corporations can claim intellectual property rights to. The new product is called the "Arctic Apple." Even so, it won’t be labeled as genetically modified, and will be promoted as natural. Even though the natural enzymes have been changed (which could change how it's digested), this apple will be promoted as superior to apples that brown and degrade. These kinds of genetic modifications allow corporations to sell genetically-manipulated designer foods that can better appeal to uninformed, supermarket shoppers.
“This is an industry attempting to manufacture a need for its product by implanting the idea in school children that browning apples are not fit to eat,” said Sharon Labchuk of Earth Action PEI. “The Arctic Apple seems destined for the sliced and bagged fresh apple market. Eating whole apples is better for the environment and our health, but fresh sliced apples dipped in Vitamin C to prevent browning are already available in grocery stores.”
This kind of propaganda has already been used in U.S. schools, especially at the university level. Not everyone is taking it submissively. Canadian farmers are rejecting the GM apple in droves. Former high-school administrator and now Vice-Chair of the Council of Canadians, Leo Broderick, spoke out, “This corporate intrusion into our schools is unacceptable. We can’t let corporations teach our students and we are calling on all provincial Ministers of Education to put a halt to this webinar and protect students from this corporate propaganda.”
He's right: the world's largest pesticide corporations have no business indoctrinating students. The industry has already taken over much of the natural world. All they need now are young minds.
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