Journey Of A Tomato Seed To (Not My) Dinner Table

Journey Of A Tomato Seed To (Not My) Dinner Table

The tomato seed is a hybrid owned and patented by Calgene, Inc., who purchased it from the University of California at Davis where it was developed with research grants of tax money from the Department of Agriculture. The seeds were treated with mercury processed by Monsanto to ensure a higher percentage of germination...
The land was purchased by the Jolly Green Giant Company along with the Mexican Development Corporation. It was previously owned by independent Mexican farmers who have now been turned into day laborers dependent on the corporation for wages of as little as $2.50 a day, not even enough to feed their families.
The fields, hundreds of acres in size, were first fumigated with methylobromide made by CF Industries, a chemical 100 times more destructive to the ozone layer than CFC. A chemical fertilizer made by Cargill, which destroys millions of beneficial microorganisms per square inch was added to the soil with the seeds. This type of monoculture, which eliminates natural diversity, requires massive doses of pesticides and herbicides; these came from Union Carbide. The farm workers receive no protective masks or gloves, no access to health care and no instructions for the safe use of these toxic chemicals.
The tomato was picked green and placed in a plastic tray covered with plastic wrapping, then packed into a cardboard box. The plastic was made with petrochemicals and chlorien by the Formosa Company. Their workers and the residents in the area of Point Comfort, Texas, suffer from significantly higher than average rates of cancer and birth defects due to dioxin exposure, which is a byproduct of the manufacturing process.
The cardboard was made from wood of 300-year-old trees growing in British Columbia, and was processed in a mill on Lake Ontario where residents are warned not to eat the contaminated fish. The boxed tomato was gassed with ethylene chlorohydrin made by American Cyanamid in order to turn it red, and was sent by refrigerated truck to a warehouse. The truck and the warehouse are temperature controlled with CFC coolants made by Dupont.
After the harvest the plants were ploughed back into the soil with the pesticide residues. After several years of drenching the soil with chemicals it becomes so depleted of natural nutrients and living organisms it is virtually dead, and when the harvest declines appreciably the corporation simply moves on to other fields leaving behind a ruined land, a ruined local economy, and ruined lives.
Thought the journey, hundreds of gallons of fossil fuel were used to make and operate the machinery and the vehicles.
After the tomato was purchased the wrapper was thrown into the trash and trucked to a burn facility owned by Energy Answers whose other incinerators were shut down because of severe air pollution from the polyvinyl chloride and other toxic substances.
At the same time the public is continually being reassured of the safety of that tomato by the Food and Drug Administration who are paid by the taxpayers, but support the corporations and the thousands of poisons they pour into the environment and into the food supply. When we buy that tomato we also support that economic system.
Lucille Salitan
Director, Center for Farm and Food Research, Inc.
Radical Glare, Vol 9, No 2, April-May 1996

And Lucille doesn’t even mention how crappy that store-bought tomato tastes!!