Educational Media Reviews Online

This film explores the extent and implications of biotechnology as it applies to the production of genetically altered plants and animals. The reporter interviews a series of farmers, scientists and industry representatives standing on both sides of the issue in various Canadian provinces. A big question is the tight relationship between the use of genetically altered crop seeds and the corporations that have developed them. Monsanto, for example, has developed a variety of potato that is indistinguishable in taste from its relatives but which produces a toxin that kills a major potato pest, the Colorado potato beetle. The same company markets a variety of bio-engineered canola seed that is resistant to high concentrations of Roundup, an herbicide made by Monsanto. With both crops, Monsanto requires that farmers who grow them sign contracts restricting how they may dispose of excess production and requiring that unused seeds return to the company.

The companies that engage in biotechnology maintain that only movement in the direction of their products can assure the world of adequate food for a burgeoning population, but several of the farmers, ethicists and scientists interviewed in this film assert that biotechnology is done essentially to insure profits for corporations selling bio-engineered seeds. Some raise serious questions regarding the possibility that sooner or later bio-engineered crops may produce superpests by the process of natural selection.

Although the focus in this video is on Canada, the issues raised apply with equal validity to American or any other society. This film strives to present both sides of this sensitive issue in a careful and reasoned way.

Highly recommended.