Originally published September 23 2014
Trading giant Cargill sues Syngenta over lost profits due to unapproved GM corn
by PF Louis
(NaturalNews) Cargill is a vast USA-based agribusiness with a multinational empire that dominates the food industry in exporting grains, producing food additives and providing processed food products to McDonalds.
Cargill is in the food-trading business purely for control and profit, and they are pro-GMO, of course. Nutritional quality is of no concern. But they don't like it when their export sales are spoiled by a GMO company's effort to insert their corn product into a large shipment exported by Cargill to China, a nation that hasn't approved it.
The corn was from Syngenta's Agrisure Viptera (MIR162) seed, which was approved for cultivation in the United States in 2010. But the Chinese government had not approved this genetic strain. Earlier, China had declared GMOs safe and acceptable and became the target of GMO producers and grain traders, especially Cargill.
But the mood in China has been changing since then. In August of 2014, China's Ministry of Agriculture refused to renew certificates that allowed Chinese research groups to grow genetically modified rice and corn. China also refuses to import foods with genetic modifications not approved by the government.
Cargill says that, since November 2013, China's Ministry of Agriculture has refused more than 1.4 million metric tons of corn after finding traces of Viptera on corn-carrying ships. Cargill has filed a $90 million suit for damages from the rejections.
It doesn't seem like much among multi-billion-dollar multinationals and their billionaire owners. But that's only because the shipments rejected by China were diverted by Cargill to other ports where they were accepted. Observers feel that Cargill is imposing a punishment on Switzerland-based Syngenta for poor business conduct, basically being sneaky with their products.
Mark Stonacek, president of Cargill's grain and oilseed supply chain in North America, announced:
"Unlike other seed companies, Syngenta has not practiced responsible stewardship by broadly commercializing a new product before receiving approval from a key export market like China. Syngenta also put the ability of U.S. agriculture to serve global markets at risk, costing both Cargill and the entire U.S. agricultural industry significant damages."
Syngenta claims that the suit has no merit. But wouldn't it be nice if the Big Ag companies and GMO seed producers got involved with more conflicts among each other?
There are other incidents of food exports rejected because of GMO contamination
The worldwide effort by GMO seed companies to control all the planet's food has come across a shrinking market lately. There has been growing resistance to these GMO multinationals in Europe, South America, Mexico, Africa, Japan, South Korea, China and Russia, which gave a blanket nyet to GMOs in a very big way.
Now China refuses to accept dried distillers' grains, which are known in the industry as DDGS, a byproduct of corn used to manufacture ethanol. The Chinese government has declared them to have a high risk of MIR162 contamination potential.
Several US wheat farmers found their export trade hampered from Monsanto's contamination of their crops during field trials conducted in an effort to gain USDA approval. The approval never happened, but several non-GMO fields were contaminated, causing their exports to be rejected.
So far, there are no approvals for GM wheat. This means GM wheat is illegal, and instead of Monsanto having the legal ammunition to tyrannically sue farmers for patent infringements after their crops were involuntary contaminated from GMOs, now the worm turns.
The wheat farmers can go after Monsanto for its negligence to obtain damages legally. Because GM wheat is not legally sanctioned, even if Monsanto has the patent, they are now vulnerable for damages instead of having the legal upper hand to victimize the farmers with patent infringements after their fields are contaminated.
Japan and South Korea have nixed shipments of wheat from the USA because of GMO contamination concerns. Once GMO contamination is discovered in grain imports, that market becomes less inclined to have GMOs pushed on them or accept products from GMO exporters.
A shrinking GMO market is a good thing for the world. So far, America is too dumbed down and corrupt to help shrink that market in its own yard.
Sources for this article include:
http://archive.fortune.com
http://www.reuters.com
http://www.startribune.com
http://www.naturalnews.com
http://www.naturalnews.com
http://www.naturalnews.com
http://science.naturalnews.com
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