29 January 2002
DUPONT ONE OF THE WORLD'S WORST POLLUTERS
Some info on the character and tactics of Dupont which, like Syngenta, has a multi-million pound alliance with the John Innes Centre and Plant Bioscience Ltd to develop new genetically engineered wheat varieties and wheat products with new agronomic, industrial, and food uses.
The Sainsbury Laboratory, located at the John Innes Centre is funded by the current UK Minister of Science's private foundation, the Gatsby Charitable Foundation.
Plant Bioscience is a technology interaction and intellectual property management company joint-owned by the Gatsby Foundation and the John Innes Centre.
The John Innes Centre is consulted by the UK government on key regulatory issues.
For more on the JIC's chronic pattern of disinformation to the government,
the media, the public and to educators:
https://members.tripod.com/~ngin/biospin.htm
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DuPont: corporate profile
According to www.groundup.org - the genetics section of the ASEED Europe website:
Dupont is the:
*Largest Chemical Company in the world
*Fifth Largest Agrochemical Company in the world
It has:
*165 manufacturing and processing facilities in 70 countries worldwide.
Via its acquisition of Pioneer-Hi-Bred it has gained control over:
<http://www.groundup.org/dupont/merger.htm>
The world's largest seed company and so:
Controls 42% of the US corn seed market alone (the next competitor holds 11%).
With Monsanto, Novartis, Dow, controls 69% of N.American seed corn market.
Controls 16% of US soybean market alone (purchased seed). (PR newswire, 23/8/99)
With Monsanto, Novartis and Dow, controls ca. 47% of the commercial soybean seed market.
With Dekalb (Monsanto subsidiary) and Cargill,controls almost 70% of the Asian seed market (Sources: RAFI, GRAIN, Bothai, MASIPAG, 1999)
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DuPont is one of the world's worst polluters.
<http://www.groundup.org/dupont/pp.htm>
Dupont the Polluter
Number Two of the Superfund polluters (Public Research Interest Groups 1999)
Dirty Five - the five biggest polluters in the US - that together spent $6,523,677 over the period 1991-1998 US policy-makers. (PIRG)
Among Top Ten Worst Corporations (Multinational Monitor, 1995; 1991)
Among Worst Environmental Offenders in the US, (1993 Council on Economic Priorities)
Largest Industrial Polluter in the US (1992, Mattera)
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Agricultural Empire
http://www.groundup.org/dupont/ae.htm
The primary focus of Dupont's agricultural research and commercial development is the output of genetically engineered food quality traits for food processing and livestock production.
Marketing Agreements for Optimum Quality Products: Archer Daniel Midlands Co. (4th largest US food company) and Conagra (50th largest US company and largest food company) for the international marketisation of its `traditionally bred' High Corn Oil. (Agreement June 1999). Cargill (largest US grain exporter) is to market the Oil domestically.
Patents
The company owns more than 17,000 patents which are filed worldwide, with more than 14,000 patent applications patents pending.
In 1998, DP was granted almost 400 U.S. patents and over 1,500 international patents.
The notorious Oncomouse project, conducted with Harvard University and Du Pont was granted patentability in the US in 1988. The patent is broad, covering all onco-mammals. The oncomouse is a laboratory mouse 'designed' to develop cancer for research purposes.
Patentability was also granted in Europe in 1992, but is currently under challenge. On two occasions, the Canadian patent office has rejected the patent, on the grounds that the mouse is not an invention.
Through acquisition of Pioneer Hi-Bred, DP has accessed a company with one of the largest private 'patent estates'. PHI was issued more GE-related patents in the US in 1998 than any other company, gaining a total of 108 wholly-owned patents and 18 jointly owned patents. (By comparison, Novartis was ranked 198th with 78 patents, and Monsanto 203th with 77 patents). As of August 31 1998, PHI held over 250 patents in the US and 300 abroad, and 900 pending. (Intellectual Property Owners Statistical Series No. 1, 1999).
Du Pont is developing "terminator" seed sterilisation technologies.
It holds two patents: US 5,364,780 (15 Nov 94) and US 5,608,14 (4 Mar 97)
RAFI.
http://www.groundup.org/dupont/fields.htm
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Functional Foods
http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/publications/GEBriefings/funcfoods.html
DuPont & Pioneer Hi-Bred... have a joint venture called Optimum Quality Grains, LLC. They already produce several (non-GM) soybean oils, such as LoSatSoyŚ, which they claim are more healthy because they have lower levels of trans-fatty acids. These products are then used for example in products by DuPont subsidiary Protein Technologies International (PTI), one of the world‚s largest suppliers of soy. The joint venture and the acquisition of PTI "are important steps in our life sciences strategy to grow in the global food, feed and industrial markets with higher value products derived through biotechnology", says Bill Kirk, vice president of DuPont Agricultural Enterprise. He continues: "We have the most complete pipeline to move ingredients from the farmer all the way to the ultimate consumer; no other company can do that while bringing value to each segment of the agribusiness market."
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DuPont: Politics of Products, Politics in Production
http://www.groundup.org/dupont/pp.htm
Tetraethyl Lead (TEL), CFC's, Nylon Production in Goa, Lead Paint, Hormone Disruption, Military, Workers.
Throughout its near two centuries of commercial activity, DP has been one of the major industrial polluters in the US and worldwide.
Its product line has generated or provided for some of the most environmentally destructive industrial practices of this century, among them the manufacture of explosives and arms, oil exploitation, nuclear energy and weaponry, mining, industrial agricultural inputs, ozone-destroying substances such as CFCs, and the production of numerous energy intensive, chemical-based synthetic fibres. Toxic waste from its production facilities is routinely discharged into the oceans, soil and atmosphere, not to mention the daily pollution that results from the use of the end product. Now DP is shifting a substantial portion of its economic and production to what is feared to be a new form of pollution through the release into the environment of genetically engineered organisms.
Sabotaging Environmental Protection and Policy Progress DP is not only a polluting company. It is a company that has a history of dominating the political and scientific agenda on the serious ecological problems caused by its products. Inventor and market giant of ozone-destroying CFCs, DP is among the chemical industry giants that have stonewalled the degree of political commitment and regulation framework needed to seriously address one of the most urgent ecological issues of our time.
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Dupont Greenwash specialist
While involved in nuclear research, DuPont was allegedly represented by the notorious public relations company, Burson-Marsteller (Carmelo Ruiz, PR Watch, USA, July 1999)
DP has played a key role in the greenwashing of heavily polluting industries. Developing the language of sustainability, such as the company's latest pledge to build "a growing partnership with nature" as it moves deeper into world food systems.
In September 1999, DP launched the latest of its umbrella PR campaigns. The "to do list for the planet" is the first global level PR campaign. The campaign has been designed by McCann Erickson. (The company has represented Exxon for 87 years. General Motors for 69. Nestle for 59.)
Ross's M&R Gets Rebuffed Trying to Paint DuPont Green (from www.prwatch.org)
DuPont, one of the world's worst polluters hires PR firms with green credentials and access to environmental activists, firms such as Ecos in Australia and M&R Strategic Services in the U.S. M&R is a PR/lobby business begun and owned in part by Donald K. Ross, an advisor to foundations who is on the board of the League of Conservation Voters. Ross's PR firm M&R does business with dozens of major health and environmental non-profits, many of them funded by the individuals and foundations he advises. Recently M&R sent an urgent appeal to groups asking them to sign a joint letter to President Bush calling for "a major national initiative to end childhood lead poisoning."
However, M&R's appeal failed to reveal that M&R works for DuPont, a company now named with others in forty-five government lawsuits <http://www.aeclp.org/> to hold them accountable for contamination of U.S. housing with lead paint. Advocacy groups including the Alliance to End Childhood Lead Poisoning have rebuffed M&R and its client DuPont saying "their recommendations to the President are incomplete and out of balance." These groups are now circulating their own letter to the White House.