Every year, tropical forests equivalent to the size of the Netherlands are cleared in South America to make room for the cultivation of soy, even though the monocultures have already assumed unimaginable proportions: In Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, the genetically modified soy bean and corn variants of a single producer – the US corporation Monsanto – grow on 45 million hectares.
Monsanto’s chemists have made the plants’ genetic make-up immune to Roundup, Monsanto’s proprietary, non-selective herbicide. The active ingredient is glyphosate, a broad-spectrum systemic herbicide. While Monsanto’s patented beans survive the sprayings, all other vegetation dies.
Since the plantations are edging ever closer to human settlements, people living there become ill and even die from the sprayed poisons. Animals, the soil, rivers and the drinking water are being contaminated with Monsanto’s toxic cocktail as well. Scientists draw a connection between the use of Roundup and the worldwide decline in amphibians.
But nature is fighting back: On GMO plantations, wild herbs and insects that have evolved a resistance against the toxins are making inroads. Experts are not surprised, for this is the inevitable consequence of a perverse system that works against the principles of nature. In response, increasing quantities of ever more poisonous chemicals are being sprayed.
A great majority of people in the European Union opposes the genetic modification of our food – and yet for most of us, it is an invisible guest at our dinner tables. European chickens, pigs and cows are fed with 35 million tons of imported GMO soy made by Monsanto.
We demand an import ban on genetically modified animal feed into the European Union. Please sign our EU petition.
