2. 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
3. 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
4. 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
5. Michael Pollan
The Botany of
Desire (2002)
The Omnivore’s
Dilemma (2007)
In Defense of
Food (2009)
Food Rules (2009)
On the Daily Show
6. 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
7. 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.
8. 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
9. 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.
10. 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 Source:
soon became rich and also honored,
as the orchids were often named after http://www.maljonicsdreams.com/orc
the finder.
11. 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
12. 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
13. 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.
