Sadly, the second part of 2006 turned out to be even worse than the first when it came to the aggressive and deceptive push behind GMOs. The final couple of months were so bad, in fact, that they require a section all to themselves, still to come - PART 3!

Previously in this series:
THE WORST OF 2006 - PART 1
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7456
Also available in German:
DIE SCHLECHTESTEN NACHRICHTEN DES JAHRES 2006 - TEIL 1
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7459

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THE WORST OF 2006 - PART 2: JULY-OCTOBER

JULY

+ July: AUSTRALIA'S NEW CHIEF SCIENTIST: CONFLICTED OUT
Australia's new chief scientist, Dr Jim Peacock, aggressively lobbied for removal of the Australian states' GM moratoriums. But Peacock hadn't disclosed that he not only had GM patents but was on the board of three biotech companies and on the payroll of one as an 'advisor'.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6744

+ July: HOW TO WORK WITH "FAR RIGHT-WING NUTSO ACTIVISTS"
Katherine Wilson reported on a workshop in Melbourne, Australia, run by biotech PR consultant Ross Irvine, that taught "the best strategies to win against activists". She learned how to create bogus community groups, false statistics, and, in Irvine's words, build links with "far-right-wing nutso activists". She also learned to conflate environmental "activist" with "terrorist" and "security threat". Irvine's workshop was attended by a Who's Who of powerful industry and government PR flacks.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6738

+ July: ROUNDUP READY MILITARY
The US military, under the excuse of fighting terrorism, established bases and new collaborations with the Paraguayan military that were said to include advice and support on dealing with indigenous farmers resisting the GM soy expansion.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6742
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6850
EXTRACT from a commentary by Dr Ignacio Chapela:
... internal military and paramilitary repression has found an immediate use in promoting the spread of GMO soy. Herbicide resistant transgenic soy has brought to this South American region a form of agriculture that is incompatible with campesino or indigenous ways of life. Instead of changing agriculture to fit people, the landscape is being cleansed through violence to make it fit mechanized, high-input, monoculture soybean production. National armies are now protecting GMO export-oriented soybean plants against the diverse ecosystems of the region, but also against the citizens of those countries who insist on rejecting them. Infusing the CIA and the US military into this formula simply adds deadly power to an already raging fire.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6794

+ July: MYTH OF THE "INDEPENDENT EXPERTS" WHO SUPPORT GM
Throughout the year pro-GM lobbyists kept passing themselves off as representing a wealth of independent experts, rather than a small self-interested clique. Here's a classic case. An article in the journal Science reported that a paper - on how the non-GM approach of marker-assisted selection (MAS) was eclipsing the crude technology of genetic engineering - had been rejected by "many in the scientific community". However, the the small number of scientists quoted in the article all came from a very narrow sector of the scientific community, were all long-established GM supporters, and mostly had strong vested interests in its acceptance!
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6687

+ July: LAUNCH OF "ASK-FARCE"
A new pro-GM lobby group - "ASK-FORCE" - was launched by Prof Klaus Ammann to expose the "hidden agendas" of the critics of GM crops. GM Watch wondered why, if it disliked hidden agendas so much, ASK-FORCE hadn't explained in its launch document that the groups with which it said it was intending to cooperate all had either biotech industry membership or backing.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6720

+ July: NFU VICE-PRESIDENT LINKED TO LOBBYISTS
The UK's Nation Farmers' Union's vice-president Paul Temple headed the NFU's development of policy on GM "coexistence" - a policy described by John Vidal of the Guardian as "gagging for" GMOs. That was perhaps not so surprising given the ubiquity of Temple's biotech industry associations. It was, however, at total odds with the wishes of UK farmers, who seem to have developing GM almost at the very bottom of their wish-list.*
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6712
* http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7245

AUGUST

+ August: US KNOWINGLY SHIPPED BANNED FOOD
The rice contamination scandal involving an unapproved Bayer GM rice, LL601, contaminating the US rice supply, was not made public until August. But the contamination was first brought to the attention of US rice marketer Riceland Foods back in January. Bayer knew about it in May, but apparently did not get round to informing the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) until July. And USDA decided not to go public until several weeks later.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6927

SEPTEMBER

+ September: IN A PANIC? BLAME ORGANIC!
September was the month that the New York Times featured the suicide of an Indian Bt cotton farmer, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post reported on the gravity of the GM rice crisis under headlines like "Gene-altered profit killer", the South Australian government extended its GM ban, and India's Supreme Court called a halt to new GM trials. No wonder then that CS Prakash's AgBioView took to only reporting on issues like a US E.coli outbreak linked to spinach. Unfortunately for Prakash, after he had posted a score of articles from the usual suspects laying the blame for the food poisoning, and a whole lot beside, at the door of organic farming, all the spinach samples testing positive for E. coli O157:H7 turned out to be from conventional spinach!
http://www.dailyevergreen.com/story/19810

+ September: ROYAL SOCIETY BLASTS ITS PALS
The UK's Royal Society lambasted Exxon for funding climate-change-denying lobby groups but failed to mention that the groups in question included some of the Royal Society's staunchest allies in the GM debate!
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7050

+ September: OZ BULLDUST EXTRAVAGANZA
Australia is renowned for its ardent pro-GM lobbyists and their apparently poor contact with reality. In September, it was the turn of plant geneticist, Mark Tester, of Australia's Centre for Plant Functional Genomics. "The US farmers have no problems exporting their GM crops and I think the Australian farmer is seeing that," he claimed.
GM WATCH commented: Sure, Mark, that's why the US went to the WTO complaining about lost markets; and why US rice farmers have been burying Bayer in lawsuits to try and recoup their losses; and why US corn farmers have lost their export market to Europe; and why US soybean exports to the EU have "dropped to almost economically insignificant levels"; and why nobody dares commercialise GM wheat... because there's absolutely no problem about exporting GM crops.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7045

OCTOBER

+ October: LEADING INDIAN GM REGULATOR PART OF GM LOBBY GROUP
The Times of India reported that Charudatta Mayee, the co-chairman of India's apex GM regulatory body, is on the board of directors of ISAAA - a GM propaganda and 'technology transfer' outfit whose funders include Bayer CropScience, Monsanto, Syngenta and Pioneer Hi-Bred and whose board members, past and present, have included leading lights of Monsanto, Syngenta, and the AusBiotech Alliance.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7141

+ October: INDUSTRY PR TACTICS FOR DEFEATING LOCAL BALLOTS
An important article in California's Terrain Magazine provided a very useful analysis of how the biotech lobby successfully changed its PR tactics after losing the local ballot in Mendocino County on the measure to make the County GM-free. CropLife America, which represents big agrochemical corporations like Monsanto, poured in over half a million dollars to a campaign against the ballot measure that seemed constantly on the defensive.
After the ballot initiative passed, the industry reversed a strategy which had allowed them to be portrayed as giant corporations hell-bent on overwhelming local interests. In opposing a similar ballot in Sonoma County the opposition began to project a farmer-friendly image, using the Sonoma County Farm Bureau and other commercial growers to form the "Family Farmers Alliance" to oppose the Measure.
"The Farm Bureau campaigns now look almost exactly like ours but reversed," says Doug Mosel, who acted as spokesperson for GMO-Free-Mendocino. Dave Henson, who directed the GM-Free Sonoma campaign, agrees with Mosel, saying, "They learned to get the Monsanto corporation logo out of the front line and not directly send any money to the Sonoma campaign." $150,000 in borrowing by the Family Farmers Alliance remains unexplained. "It's not illegal, it's a way to avoid having the public see who is behind a campaign."
The irony of the farmer friendly image, they explained, is that Monsanto has devoted an annual budget of ten million dollars, and a staff of 75, solely to investigating and prosecuting farmers. "The old narrative is that environmentalists are trying to take farmers' rights away, but in this particular case, the exact opposite is true."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7164

+ October: MONSANTO VICE PRESIDENT JOINS THE GATES FOUNDATION
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hired Monsanto's vice president Rob Horsch to work on projects for sub-Saharan Africa. Horsch's most famous project for Monsanto was also for Africa - the GM sweet potato - and in practical terms it was a complete dud. But, in fairness, the project did serve its purpose as a vehicle for poor-washing GM while driving forward the regulatory frameworks and the technical capacity that US corporations require to build-up global markets for their GM crops. (See 'Monsanto's showcase project in Africa fails', New Scientist)
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7158

+ October: MANUFACTURING LIES ABOUT ZAMBIA
In 2006 the lies continued unabated about people having starved to death in Zambia as a result of the country's rejection of GM food aid back in 2002. Even though the Zambian Red Cross is on record as saying, "We didn't record a single death arising out of hunger," 2006 saw articles with headlines like, "As millions starve, alarmists block famine solutions", claiming the exact opposite.
CS Prakash's AgBioView even featured articles that claimed environmentalists were collectively hell-bent on "man's extinction" and that Zambia's foolish leaders were hoodwinked by Greenpeace into committing crimes against humanity. One of the articles asked, "Can you f@#$!*g believe that?" Not easily, is the answer.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7174
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7330
http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7092
For more on the manufacturing of crimes against humanity, see 'Fake Blood on the Maize':
http://freezerbox.com/archive/article.asp?id=339

+ October: GM LOBBY EXPLOITS DROUGHT
As Australian farmers grappled with a record-breaking lack of rainfall, Australia's Agriculture Minister, Peter McGauran, and a coterie of pro-GM lobbyists rushed to exploit the distress over the drought by demanding an end to the GM moratoriums operated by Australia's state governments. The fact that there are no GM drought-resistant crops available did nothing to stop the lobbyists' spin. "GMO Pundit", a.k.a. Oz GM-zealot David Tribe, highlighted an article on his blog that made it look like the US was laughing all the way to the bank, thanks to GM, while Australian farmers continued to suffer. Tribes' headline declared: "ONLY IN AMERICA: GM crops saving farm economy from drought". The actual article, however, was a vacuous and misleading propaganda piece c/o the rightwing Heartland Institute, which fights climate-change science and regulations on smoking just as vociferously as it promotes GMOs.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7105