April 11, 2012
Criticisms of Corporate Capitalism
 Too much power
 Not enough public oversight
 Short-term profit orientation
 Insufficient loyalty to traditional local communities
 Willingness to engage in questionable practices:
 Industrial espionage, pretexting
 Advertising unhealthy products, espec. to children
 Corporate responsibility PR as cover for unethical
activities
What’s Wrong with Corporate Food?
 Favor monoculture forms of agriculture which
undermines biodiversity
 Favor “high-priced, high-margin luxury items –
flowers, potted plants, beef, shrimp, cotton, coffee –
for export to already overfed countries”
 Favor “machine-intensive production” also called
factory farms
Ruth Ozeki
 Two great books: All Over Creation (2004) and My Year
of Meats (1999)
 Web site: http://ruthozeki.com
 Basic premise of All Over Creation: struggle over
factory potato farms in Idaho
 Intro of genetically modified potatoes
 Purpose to reduce overuse of fertilizers and pesticides
 “The terminator” – genetic modification to prevent
farmer sales of seeds of new organisms
Michael Pollan
 The Botany of
Desire (2002)
 The Omnivore’s
Dilemma (2007)
 In Defense of
Food (2009)
 Food Rules (2009)
On the Daily Show
The Slow Food Movement
 Carlo Petrini
 McDonald’s at the
Spanish Steps in
Rome
 Global movement
with local chapters
called Convivia
Video about Slow Food in Toronto
Diversity
 Biodiversity
 Economic Diversity
 Cultural Diversity
Need to ask whether the preservation of economic
and cultural diversity has the same moral/political
standing as the preservation of biodiversity.
Threats to the Genetic Commons
 “…now subject to reinvention through genetic
engineering and transformed into patentable
commodities.”
 Who benefits from stricter intellectual property
protection for new organisms?
 Monsanto
 Novartis
 Dupont
 Pioneer
Source: Alternatives to Globalization,
pp. 113-114
Bio-Prospecting
 “Pharmaceutical companies are especially eager for
access and the rights to patent genetic material. Their
representatives travel the globe, exploring traditional
native remedies in jungles and fields. They also extract
blood and scrape “buccal mucosa” from skins of native
peoples wherever they can, hoping to find genes that
contain natural resistance to certain maladies.”
The rosy periwinkle which grows in Madagascar
Is used to treat diabetes and cancer.
Old Bio-Prospecting: The Case of Orchid
Hunters
 These adventurous men would often
risk their lives to earn the huge sums
of money that were on offer. In their
quest they had to cope with tropical
diseases, swarms of insects, venomous
snakes, giant spiders, wild animals,
hostile tribesmen and floods. In
addition, they had to contend with
competition from other hunters,
corruption, intrigue, spying and
probably murder, too. Whoever
managed to survive these perils and
bring the plants back safely to Europe
soon became rich and also honored,
as the orchids were often named after
the finder.
Source:
http://www.maljonicsdre
ams.com/orchids/orchid
_history.htm
The New Bio-Prospecting: The
Case of Thermus aquaticus
 1966 discovery of microorganisms living in
Yellowstone’s hot springs
 1985 Cetus Corporation discovers new way to duplicate
genetic material via polymerase chain reaction (PCR)
 PCR required high temperatures that often destroyed
the enzymes created
 A high-temperature tolerant enzyme was isolated from
Thermus aquaticus and added to PCR to make it work
better
Source: http://www.nature.nps.gov/benefitssharing/whatis.cfm
Can the New Bio-Prospecting Help to Preserve
Global Cultural and Bio-diversity?
 Makes indigenous peoples stakeholders in the new
bio-sciences
 Own the land where new organisms are found
 Invented the folk medicines that may become
patentable pharmaceuticals via bio-prospecting
 Gives the ethnic communities in rain forests and other
remote locations a potential new source of
income/wealth and an incentive to manage natural
resources wisely
The Precautionary Principle
 “When there are threats of serious or irreversible
damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be
used as a reason for postponing cost-effective
measures to prevent environmental damage.”
(Alternatives to Globalization, p. 101)
The original source is the Declaration of Rio signed at
the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.