[escepticos] Multinacionales agroalimentarias

["EZS" <diotalle@...>]

Hola...

El otro dia me baje de 'Le monde diplomatique' el articulo que ahora os envio;
aunque no es precisamente "el tono" que a mi me gustaria, sobre como 
funcionan las multinacionales ya hemos hablando hace unos meses por el
asunto de The Ecologist, y hay en la corrala una considerable opinion contraria
a como estan manejando todo el asunto, a la vista esta en los ultimos 
mensajes, asi que...

Ah, y me ha venido a la memoria que en las contraportadas de 'Mundo Cientifico'
se alternan, entre otros, anuncios en ocasiones de Novartis y en ocasiones de la
Feria de BioCultura; no tiene directamente nada que ver, la publicidad, las pelas,
son las pelas... pero XDD

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LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE - March 1999

ORGANIC FOOD: LIES AND PROFITS
Bio business is big business


What is the future for suppliers of organic produce now that the big marketing and distribution companies are moving in? Will they survive the shock? As a result of the "mad cow disease" panic, organic farming is enjoying an unprecedented boom. Consumer demand has never been so strong. The major retail stores are filling more and more of their shelves with organic produce. Organic shops and supermarkets - or at least claiming to be organic - are shooting up everywhere. However, now that organic farming is coming into its own and is also receiving subsidies, it has become a juicy market niche ripe for exploitation. Faced with the encroachment of big business, the organic lobby seems uncertain which way to turn. 
by CHANTAL LE NOALLEC * 

Buying organic food is a statement of principle. It means supporting a model of agriculture that is on the side of life, and resisting the destruction of our environment. It means rejecting the madness of consumer society, respecting animals, and looking after our bodies. It also means taking responsibility for our choices in one of the few areas where it can still be done. It is a form of freedom and of hope, and a way of fighting for a better world.

In the spring of 1998 various "biocoops" (1) in Brittany were selling yoghurt under the brand name of Grandeur Nature. However this brand label - distributed by Le Gall dairies, with only their own name featuring on the packaging - conceals the real source of the product: a company called Even, which is a major player in the agribusiness sector in Brittany, and a supplier of pesticides. Somebody had something to hide. 

In another example, the Bio d'Armor yoghurts which sell in the Géant hypermarkets are also sold under another label in organic food shops - Grandeur Nature. The only difference is the packaging and the price. Then there is the Triballat company, also from Brittany, which produces organic milk products under the Vrai brand name for the large stores, and as Les Fromagers de Tradition for the specialist market. But in the second case Triballat's name does not feature! The same thing happens with Distriborg, which is distributing the same organic range under two brand names, Bjorg and Evernat. Where is consumer choice if the basic information is so misleading?

Selling these goods, sometimes produced or distributed by companies whose primary interest is in making money, hardly fits with the ethos of the organic movement. "Is this really the kind of development that we want to encourage when we buy organic?" asks the editor of an organic gardening magazine, Antoine Bosse-Platière (2).

The danger lying behind these smokescreen brands is that the organic sector is about to become industrialised, because the agribusinesses are beginning to take a big interest in it. Farmland is increasingly being switched to organic, and an organic industry is developing based on mono-cropping. More seriously, a number of companies are pressing for the present specifications to be relaxed, under the pretext of speeding up conversion and making it possible to supply more products at ever-lower prices. So is this what the future holds? A downmarket and standardised organic sector run at rock-bottom costs? 

Key figures in the organic movement say they have to make organic produce available to people on lower incomes. This is an admirable sentiment, but in attempting to combat charges of elitism, it is not being completely straight. After all, even the Carrefour supermarket chain has committed itself to "making organic food more accessible to ordinary people". What this will mean is price-cutting, following the same neo-liberal logic that has reduced conventional agriculture to its present state of paralysis. Cutting costs will means cutting jobs and wages, increasing output, intensifying organic agriculture, and creating an organic industry - with the inevitable consequence of the disappearance of smaller producers.

The alternative approach is to guarantee a fair remuneration for both producers and processors, geared to the quality of the product and the work that goes into it. This is the only way that small and medium-size organic producers will preserve their independence. And down the line it will lead to the creation of jobs and more people buying organic. Failing this, we will have to invent other guarantees, another label, and other places where produce can be bought. And the charge that organic produce is too costly does not stand up to analysis if we look at the costs of conventional products in terms of subsidies, damage to health and pollution.

Economical with the truth
Another sign of the industrialisation of the organic sector relates to a concession which allows the introduction of non-organic and occasionally dubious ingredients up to 5% of content. At present this generally involves thickeners and gelling agents - such as carrageenan, guar flour, carob flour and xanthan gum - which are all moisture retainers used in the food industry, with effects that some people think may be harmful to health (3).

In addition, for some months many shops in France have been selling chocolates and cakes containing lecithin which is not always organic, which means there is no guarantee as to the origins of the soya used. Is it genetically modified or not? When you try to ask, you are told that these articles carry the AB logo (4), that there are not sufficient supplies of organic soya lecithin available, and that this non-organic lecithin is permitted as part of the 5% allowable non-organic content. And anyway, these products have been classified and even approved by Biocoop (5), so there is no reason to remove them from the shelves. Or they tell you that in due course the supplier intends to become "100% organic".

It is not enough to raise a public debate on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and in particular on Novartis's maize. The only coherent position is a total boycott. Otherwise we abuse the good faith of the many customers who buy without reading labels, who trust the AB logo and may believe that "organic" products are actually 100% organic and therefore carry no risk of GMOs. 

If you look further, what do you find behind the soya-based organic produce marketed under the Soy label (produced by Nutrition et Soja) and sold in many organic food shops in France? You find Novartis, the giant drugs and agro-chemical multinational whose genetically modified anti-meal-moth maize has been under cultivation in France since spring 1998. That means each time you buy or sell a Soy product you are contributing to the expansion of Novartis and encouraging their kind of agriculture, and the kind of civilisation it conjures up. But Biocoop and some sections of the eco-organic community suppress this information in order, as they put it, "not to spread panic among consumers". 

Biocoop decided to grant its seal of approval to the Soy label back in October 1996, even though it knew perfectly well that it was owned by Sandoz, another seed and agro-chemical giant - known as the "polluter of the Rhine" (after the notorious incident at the Sandoz factories in Basle on 31 October 1986 when tons of insecticides and mercury-based fungicides were released into the river). Sandoz had also bought the Céréal brand name. It was not until early 1998 that people heard of the so-called "issue of conscience" posed by this decision, as described in Comsom'action magazine published by Biocoop. Subsequently there was no mention of the Sandoz-Ciba-Geigy merger which gave birth to Novartis in April 1997, not even in the acceptance documentation for Soy on 17 March 1998. 

Biocoop has gone to great lengths to justify taking Soy on board, as shown by the reply to an inquiry from a consumer in June 1998: "We find ourselves in a situation where a company that belongs to the major producer of genetically modified foods in France is collaborating with the organic sector in order to set up a traceability procedure so that the absence of genetically modified elements can be properly guaranteed." Here you have two propositions that are hard to reconcile: collaborating with Novartis in order to "protect soya seeds" in the future! Even basic information is manipulated: "Soy is currently the only producer in this sector prioritising the use of French organic soya; all the other processors work with soya imported from the Canada and the USA" (documentation of 17 March 1998). 

This is quite untrue. Tofoulie, a cooperative set up in 1991 and operating in the Drôme in Provence, has always worked solely with French organic soya - unlike Soy, which uses both non-organic soya (25% of its total output) and foreign organic soya (7.5%) (6) and hence runs the risk of contamination by genetically modified soya. And soya certainly does not represent the totality of leguminous vegetable valuable for crop rotation. "Ethics" come a poor second to the harsh logic of business: if it stopped selling Soy, how would it stock its shelves? 

What seems to be happening is that the acquisition of Soy has given Novartis a key to entry into the organic market that will enable it to pull soya producers more or less directly into its sphere of influence. This means the soya producers of south-west France, who also grow cereals; other organic suppliers of Soy (Markal, Celnat, Hervé, Lima, Petite, Viver etc); the distributors (Biocoop, Distriborg, etc); and consumers. As things stand, Novartis is able to use the organic sector as an alibi, to create a brand image for "ecological capitalism".

Already people are talking about "bio-industry", a term they use to refer both to the industrialisation of the organic sector and the massive industrialisation of life forms themselves, which is likely to be the future with the emerging revolution in biotechnology (7). This conflation and ambiguity is uncomfortably open to exploitation. In this situation, how can we properly engage our responsibilities in the future of the organic sector? And how are we going to find ways to fight multinationals whose aims are a maximisation of profits and unlimited growth, and certainly not respect for nature? The danger is that in putting in so much effort to "save soya" people are forgetting the basic issue, which is the very survival of organic agriculture in the world of genetic manipulation which is opening before us.

Is it really the case that in order to resist being taken over by agribusiness, the organic sector has no choice but to adopt its models (competition, emphasising productivity, chasing profits, etc) and accept ways of operating that it has for so long rejected? The danger is that the organic sector is going to lose its identity. Too often in this debate "ethics" is simply a publicity catch-all which bears no relation to reality. "Transparency, quality, living together, ecology, organic food, consumer action" are all becoming mere slogans in the mouths of many organic sector professionals - particularly in distribution - who are fast turning into marketing technicians. The tendency is towards mergers between firms, a proliferation of anonymous products and distributor brand-names, and bio-business. 

All this is now becoming the norm, to such an extent that the organic and ecological sectors are now tolerating compromises which would have been unthinkable only a short while ago. There are fewer and fewer independent organic companies. In the longer term, the independence of organic farming is seriously at risk. One solution might be "autarchic organic farming" (8) that aims to return to its roots. Such farming would be local and respectful of the environment; it would preserve small-scale operations and bring life back to deserted rural communities; and it would put consumers and producers onto a more equal footing. 

Present tendencies in some parts of the organic sector are putting all this at risk. As big multinational companies are eyeing the sector, it is becoming urgent for organic consumers to stand up and make their feelings known. Do we want be witnesses, or rather accomplices, in what is being prepared for us, or will we opt for real organic choices and quality of life? This is going to involve questioning the currently fashionable behaviour patterns of "consumer activists" and "eco-consumers" (9), and also analysing the notion of sustainable development within which people are trying to confine organic agriculture.

These are choices about the kind of society that we want to live in. They lie at the heart of a debate whose outcome will dictate our ways of feeding ourselves, our health, and our ways of thinking both about ourselves and about the universe.

* President of the Union des Consommateurs de la Bio (UCBio)

Translated by Ed Emery

(1) The Biocoop federation was set up in 1987. It is a distribution network for organic produce, representing around 180 biocoops whose aim is to establish a new kind of relationship between producers and consumers.

(2) See the article by Antoine Bosse-Plantière, "Où acheter bio demain?", Les Quatre Saisons du Jardinage, no. 110, Editions Terre Vivante, May-June 1998.

(3) Fabien Perucca and Gérard Pouradier, Des Poubelles dans nos Assiettes, Michel Lafon, Paris, 1996.

(4) Organic agriculture is a method of farming which uses no synthetic chemicals and is controlled by certificating bodies recognised by the French ministry of agriculture. Once an organic product has been certified as conforming to government standards, it has the right to the label "AB product" or "AB-based product" and, if required, can use the ministry's green and white AB logo.

Biocoop recognition is given to organic suppliers who request it, as long as they meet the following requirements: independence, support for organic production, reduction of middlemen and information on the source of supplies. The Biocoop product service then draws up the recognition documentation. This can then be consulted by consumers, and gives information on the supplier in question: company structure, supplier policies, distribution policy, etc. 
See the acceptance documentation for Soy, 17 March 1998.
(7) See Jeremy Rifkin, The Biotech Century: Harnessing the Gene and Remaking the World, JP Tarcher, 1998 (hardback, paperback forthcoming).

(8) See the editorial in Nature & Progrès, May-June 1998.

(9) See Raoul Vaneigem, Nous qui désirons sans fin, Le Cherche Midi, Paris 1996. 

(10) See Bernard Charbonneau: une vie entière à dénoncer la grande imposture, Erès, Ramonville-Saint-Agne, 1997. This collected volume is dedicated to Bernard Charbonneau (1910-96) who throughout his life denounced "the dictatorship of economics", "the lie of technoscience" and "the mistakes of political ecology". 

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Eduardo