“History shows again and again how nature points up the folly of men…”
The Washington Post reports:
Japan, the largest market for U.S. wheat exports, suspended imports from the United States and canceled a major purchase of white wheat on Thursday after the recent discovery of unapproved genetically modified wheat in an 80-acre field in Oregon.
How the altered crop made its way to the Oregon field remains a mystery. The strain was developed by Monsanto to make wheat resistant to the company’s own industry-leading weed killer. Monsanto tested the type of altered seed in more than a dozen states, including Oregon, between 1994 and 2005, but it was never approved for commercial use…
It’s a mystery how a Monsanto “engineered” crop is found outside of a field where it has been specifically planted right up to the point where the progeny of that crop trespasses upon the field of a farmer who isn’t a Monsanto customer.
At that point the Monsanto legal department suddenly is able to not only trace the distribution of the crop but also to characterize the trespass and polution of what was probably a healthy and self reproducing [true to form] crop as some sort of theft on the part of the non-customer farmer.
Japan changed its shopping habits, slightly. Notice they didn’t turn around and place orders with Canada or the Ukraine. And notice they didn’t impound the wheat already in the pipeline, such as cargoes at port or in storage. They want to be seen to be “doing something” when actually not doing much at all.
They might take the step of testing grain stocks, but even if they got a shipment more or less entirely from Oregon — the ‘epicenter’ of the GMO wheat discovery — the concentration of GMO wheat will likely be far, far below the detection limit of something like 1 in 100,000 kernels.
The facts are not all in yet, but stay tuned, this is bound to become very interesting.
I have sympathy for the farmers and don’t wish to take advantage of their problem. On the other hand if Japan and other countries are scared off by this irrational fear then the price of wheat will come down in the U.S. and I will but some and take advantage of the bargin. I only wish we had GMO gasoline too so the price of that would fall also.