The Food for health manifesto aims to build a united front to change a productive, political and economic model that continues to demonstrate its lethal unsustainability. The editorial by Navdanya International.
News from the United States, where Monsanto has been found liable for a cancer case caused by the use of the weedkiller Roundup, based on glyphosate, is making headlines around the world just as Navdanya International prepares to present the Food for health manifesto, a policy document that not only seeks to denounce the shortcomings of the current food production system and the human health risks associated with it, but also to serve as a tool and starting point for a mobilisation demanding a transition towards local, ecological and diversified food systems.
The fact that Monsanto has been ordered to pay 289 million dollars to claimant Dewayne Lee Johnson confirms what Navdanya has been denouncing for years, and makes the presentation of the Food for health manifesto all the more timely. The manifesto, published by Terra Nuova Edizioni, was edited by Navdanya International, which brought together some of the leading international experts in the fields of food and health to develop it, as part of the international Food for health campaign and in continuation of the work of the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture.
On the basis of scientific evidence, the document denounces the industrial model that is stifling free small-scale farming and killing biodiversity. It also denounces the growing standardisation of foods, stripped of their natural nutrients, and the enormous interests that drive multinationals and governments, affording citizens and consumers ever fewer protections.
Monsanto, recently acquired by Bayer, reconfirms itself as one of the leading companies of a development model that can no longer be considered sustainable. In addition to the scientific evidence already mentioned, legal cases now further confirm this: according to Reuters, the lawsuits filed against Monsanto number approximately eight thousand in the United States alone.
The company's past, despite all efforts to the contrary, thus seems destined to trouble Bayer: in the week following the verdict, Bayer shares lost between 10 and 12 per cent (approximately 12.5 billion dollars). United Nations expert Hilal Elver, special rapporteur on the right to food and one of the authors of the Food for Health manifesto, described the ruling as "a significant recognition of the human rights of victims and of the responsibilities of chemical companies".
The troubles for Monsanto and other major conglomerates in the sector do not end there. The revelations in reports published last year — in particular the Monsanto papers and the Poison papers — shed light on the strategies used by major agrochemical groups to expand their empires: from pressure and interference in the proceedings of government agencies, to attacks on independent science and to mega mergers and acquisitions.
For the first time, some of these documents were presented to a jury, which was able to establish that "at least from 20 years ago, Monsanto was aware that its product could cause cancer, and did everything it could to ignore it and/or combat any scientific evidence suggesting a real link," as stated to Democracy Now by Brent Wisner, the attorney who led the prosecution for Dewayne Lee Johnson in his case against Monsanto. Added to this is the fact that in the same week, the Supreme Court of California rejected an appeal filed by Monsanto against the state's decision to include glyphosate on the list of carcinogenic substances under Proposition 65.
On other fronts, further lawsuits have been filed in the United States by groups of farmers, and seed sellers are putting pressure on environmental regulators to prevent growers from spraying the herbicide dicamba, the active ingredient in several new Monsanto-Bayer and Basf products, which over the past two years has caused extensive drift damage to various crops, affecting a large part of rural America.
In Europe, the special committee on pesticide authorisation reacted to the American court's ruling by once again calling for a ban on the use of glyphosate on the continent; in Sri Lanka, where a fatal chronic kidney disease (CKDu) has been linked to glyphosate use, a group made up of farmers' organisations, scientists and families declared itself ready to take Bayer/Monsanto and other producers of glyphosate-based herbicides before the Supreme Court. Vietnam, finally, is seeking compensation for victims of exposure to Agent Orange, the chemical produced by Monsanto for the United States armed forces during the war.
The actions of civil society, of independent scientists and of the judiciary have shown that they can expose major multinational companies — concerned above all with their profits and very little with the damage caused to the environment and to human health — to public scrutiny. The Food for Health manifesto represents an attempt to bring forces together and create a united front to change a productive, political and economic model that continues to demonstrate its lethal unsustainability.
