Rogers Sugar/Lantic chose to bow to Monsanto and accept GM sugar beet - despite over 4000 emails, letters and cards from consumers asking them to stay GM-Free. GM sugar beets have been planted in Alberta and when they are harvested in the Fall of 2009, Rogers Sugar/Lantic will be selling Canadians GM sugar. Lantic Inc. is the only company in Canada that processes sugar beet. You may recognize the packaging from Rogers/Lantic – you may have some of their sugar in your kitchen cupboard.

You can take action:

1) Write to Cadbury (a Lantic customer) and ask them to source GM-Free Sugar!
2) Companies can sign on to the No-GM Beet Sugar Registry here!
3) Don't buy Rogers Sugar and Lantic brand sugar products:

Instead you can buy:

• Organic Sugar from other companies (Lantic has its own brand of organic sugar)
• Cane Sugar and products with cane sugar ingredients (cane sugar has not yet been genetically modified - though Monsanto plans to do this)
• Redpath Sugar (all Redpath products use only cane sugar)
• Other sweeteners like: Honey, Maple Syrup, Molasses

4) Contact your local bakery and chocolate company and ask them to stop buying Lantic sugar.

This sugar beet is genetically engineered to be resistant to Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup and is currently applied to sugar beet used for processing into sugar – as opposed to red table beets. GM sugar beets are wind pollinated, and there is a strong possibility that pollen from GM sugar beets could contaminate non-GM sugar beets as well as chard, and red and yellow beets (or “table beets”). Read the concerns in CBAN's letter to Lantic Inc.

Monsanto's Global Plans for Sugar

"The success of the RR [Monsanto's GE] sugar beet launch has positive implications for sugarcane, (80% of global sugar production is from cane) for which several biotech traits are at an advanced stage of development in several countries." - industry biased ISAAA

Approximately 10% of Lantic sugar comes from sugar beet and the rest from imported cane sugar. “Monsanto worked behind the scenes for years to reverse a previous consensus in the North American sugar industry against GM sugar because the biotech company wants to genetically modify sugar cane and control this major crop as well,” said Lucy Sharratt, Coordinator of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network. “Lantic has played right into Monsanto’s hands and it is Canadian consumers that will suffer.” Monsanto is the largest seed company in the world and owns approximately 90% of all the GM seed sown across the world. - See the full press release

Read about sugar cane in "Corporate Candyland" by GRAIN One of the most destructive developments in agriculture over the past two decades has been the boom in soya production in the southern cone of Latin America. The corporations that led that boom are now moving aggressively into sugar cane, focusing on large tracts of land in southern countries where sugar can be produced cheaply. If these developments are not resisted, the impacts are likely to be severe: local food production will be overrun, workers and communities will face displacement and exposure to increased levels of pesticides, and foreign agribusiness will tighten its grip on sugar production. We look at the intersection between the development of genetically modified sugar cane and transformations in the global sugar industry.

Alert! GM Sugar beet biofuels trying to move to Nova Scotia

Denied entry to PEI where public protest forced the provincial government to announce public consultations, the company Atlantec BioEnergy now plans to open a sugar beet biofuels plant on the TrentonWorks site in Pictou County Nova Scotia by fall 2009 (Click here to read the CBC story). The company wants to convince Nova Scotia farmers to produce 6,070 hectares of sugar beets - these will likely be Monsanto's GE sugar beets. This will create an entirely new market for Monsanto’s new GE sugar beet as Nova Scotia's farmers do not currently grow sugar beet.

Click to read the Press Release: P.E.I Biofuels Plant Under Fire at House of Commons Agriculture Committee Hearing

GM sugar beet grown in Canada for the first time in 2008:

In Canada, sugar beet is only grown in Alberta (for Rogers Sugar/Lantic Inc.) and in Ontario (sent directly to the US for processing by Michigan Sugar). Ontario farmers (in Lambton County and Chatham-Kent) planted GM sugar beet in 2008 and Alberta farmers have planted the GM sugar beet for the first time this year (2009). The Ontario farmers grow on contract to the US sugar company Michigan Sugar and the sugar beet is sent straight there.

Write to:
Glenn Jack, Chair, Ontario Sugar Beet Growers' Association
825 Park Avenue West
Chatham Ontario
N7M 5J6
Phone: (519) 352-6710
Fax: (519) 352-0526
osga@ciaccess.com
gjack@kent.net

Write to Michigan Sugar
2600 South Euclid Avenue, Bay City
Michigan, 48706 (989) 686-0161

In the United States, the Center for Food Safety, the Sierra Club US, Organic Seed Alliance, and High Mowing Seeds have filed a lawsuit to challenge the United States Department of Agriculture's approval of Monsanto's GM sugar beet. The groups have stated concerns about contamination of conventional sugar beets, organic chard and table beet crops as well as increased development of herbicide-resistant weeds, now a major problem in the US and, to a lesser degree, in Canada.