China destroys three shipments of GM corn from US
1. Wanzai Port in Zhuhai City destroyed two shipments of imported GM foods
2. Harbin intercepted a total of 115 kgs of GM corn seeds, which will be destroyed
NOTE: The news items below report that in May, the Chinese government destroyed three shipments of GM corn from the US. The shipments were illegal under China’s GMO biosafety law.
The law says that the Ministry of Agriculture must require environmental and food safety tests to be carried out by Chinese institutions, in order to verify data provided by the seed developer. All these documents must be reviewed by the National Biosafety Committee before the MOA can issue a safety certificate.
http://bit.ly/10jvwaa
Yet these shipments of US corn did not have the relevant safety certificates and approval documents, according to the news reports below.
A Chinese citizen, whom we call Mr Li, calls the new government’s decisive move to destroy the illegal GMOs “progressive, encouraging, and satisfying”. He regards it as a sign that it is keeping its promise to work for the people and the nation.
Mr Li said: “The deeply pro-GMO old government would not have made such a thing public. It would have secretly returned the shipments, or in most cases it would not even have inspected shipments that could contain GM ingredients.”
The Ministry of Agriculture of the previous government raised the anger of citizens when it failed to require any independent experiments to test the safety of Monsanto's GM soybeans, in violation of Chinese law:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/micro-reading/dzh/2012-06-12/content_6157498.html (bilingual article over 3 pages)
However, Mr Li says the new government still has a long way to go to eliminate the GMOs that he and others believe are being grown across the country and to impose a ban on domestically grown and imported GMOs.
The news of the new Chinese government’s actions comes shortly after China told a delegation of Brazilian soy producers that the better-off part of its population wants non-GM soy, even if they have to pay more:
http://gmwatch.org/latest-listing/52-2013/14778
---
---
1. Wanzai Port in Zhuhai City destroyed two shipments of imported GM foods
Zhuhai Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau, 7 May 2013
http://www.zhciq.gov.cn/showInfo.do?infoId=26648
(translated from the Chinese by Mr Li)
Recently, during inspection and quarantine of imported food from USA by a certain company, the Wanzai Office of Zhuhai Inspection and Quarantine Bureau (in Guangdong Province in the south of China) detected two shipments containing GM corn products, which are not in compliance with China's "Entry and Exit of Genetically Modified Products Inspection and Quarantine Management Approach". The Office destroyed the two shipments of corn according to the provisions.
---
---
2. Harbin intercepted a total of 115 kgs of GM corn seeds, which will be destroyed
news.china.com.cn, 19 May 2013
http://news.china.com.cn/politics/2013-05/19/content_28867193.htm
(translated from the Chinese by Mr Li)
Recently, the Harbin Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau intercepted inbound mail of 21 cartons of corn seeds from USA, totaling 115 kgs, which were detected as GM seeds. This is the first time that the Heilongjiang Provincial Inspection and Quarantine System has intercepted inbound corn seeds containing GM ingredients. These corn seeds will be destroyed.
Because the USA is a corn bacterial wilt infected area, China has banned import of US corn seeds. The above-mentioned corn seeds were shipped from the same US company to two seed companies in Heilongjiang Province. According to China's relevant provisions, all agricultural GMOs imported from abroad should be cleared with the relevant departments in advance. However, this shipment of corn seed did not have the relevant safety certificates and approval documents.
According to the relevant person in charge of the inspection and quarantine, if an import contains GM ingredients without risk assessment and approval, there is a great possibility that pests will sneak in at the same time. If not strictly controlled, this could pose a significant threat to agricultural production and public health.
Scientists from Brazil's GMO regulatory agency protest dismissal of Seralini study
1. Scientists from Brazil's GMO regulatory agency protest dismissal of Seralini study
2. Monsanto's NK603 corn safety meets no consensus in Brazil
---
---
1. Scientists from Brazil's GMO regulatory agency protest dismissal of Seralini study
GMWatch comment
21 May 2013
The outrageous behaviour of government GMO regulatory bodies around the world in trying to discredit the 2012 Seralini study continues to be exposed. The latest episode concerns CTNBio, the Brazilian commission that regulates GMOs.
Seralini's study found that a Monsanto GM maize, NK603, and Roundup herbicide caused organ damage and increased rates of tumours and premature death in rats.
In Brazil, four pro-GM scientists, two of whom were members of CTNBio, criticized Seralini's study in a report of October 2012. Their report was published as the view of CNTBio as a whole, in combination with Brazil's Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation:
http://www.ctnbio.gov.br/upd_blob/0001/1752.pdf (in Portuguese)
But now it's clear that no consensus existed in CTNBio. In March 2013, 15 scientist members and former members of CNTBio wrote a detailed scientific counter-report which debunks the arguments of the four pro-GM scientists' report and supports the validity of Seralini's findings.
The counter-report, addressed to the president of CTNBio, says that the four pro-GM scientists' report "cannot be considered to be the position of the Commission, given that it was not evaluated by a plenary session. Even if it had been, the opinion issued by these doctors does not represent a consensus in this Commission."
The counter-report concludes, "The study that is the object of this letter raises pertinent scientific questions about the chronic toxicity of a certain transgenic corn, NK603… In our understanding, the statistical analysis of the biochemical and biological data is sufficient to support the finding of what is called a situation of risk. Moreover, it supports the conclusions and title of the article [by Seralini et al], corroborating the clinical and anatomopathological observations and those with optical and electronic microscopy. In addition to the toxicological data provided about the long term consumption of NK603 corn, with or without the associated herbicide, the article by Seralini et al. (2012) supports questionings about the biosecurity and risk evaluation of the transgenic plants."
CTNBio in a plenary session subsequently voted in favour of the original critique of Seralini and against the counter-report. But CTNBio and its president, Flavio Finardi Filho, stand accused by the landless peasant farmers' movement MST of having strong ties to the biotech industry:
http://bit.ly/14sndwc (Google translation)
The Brazilian counter-report on Seralini's study, signed by ten current members of CTNBio and five former members, is available in Portuguese here:
http://aspta.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/parecer-NK-603.pdf
The English translation of the counter-report is here:
http://aspta.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/NK603-20may2013.pdf
The Brazilian episode reflects what happened in Belgium, where an expert panel consulted by the Belgian Biosafety Advisory Council issued a nuanced opinion on Seralini's study, with a dissenting minority opinion:
http://gmwatch.org/latest-listing/52-2013/14674
The arguments against Seralini's study have been answered by Seralini's team (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23146697) as well as on the public information website, gmoseralini.org.
---
---
2. Monsanto's NK603 corn safety meets no consensus in Brazil
Official body rejects French study but decision was reached by vote, researchers complain
Press release
Grupo de Estudos em Agrobiodiversidade GEA, May 20 2013
http://aspta.org.br/campanha/press-release-nk603/
[Slightly edited by GMWatch; original at link above]
On September 2012, another study associating the consumption of genetically modified crops with health risks appeared in the scientific literature. Food and Chemical Toxicology published a study headed by Gilles-Eric Seralini, from the French University of Caen, showing that rats fed GM maize NK603 tolerant to glyphosate herbicides (Roundup), as well as rats exposed to Roundup alone, showed higher propensity to develop tumours. The authors thus concluded that “All treatments in both sexes enhanced large tumor incidence by 2–3-fold in comparison to our controls but also for the number of mammary tumors in comparison to the same Harlan Sprague Dawley strain”.
The study provoked furor among official biosafety bodies. Besides demonstrating serious problems caused by a product already on the market, it highlighted major flaws in the risk assessment criteria used by regulators. The first large tumours, for instance, appeared in the 4th and 7th months of the study, in males and females respectively, though regulators never ask for tests longer than 3 months.
It was no different in Brazil. The Foreign Affair Ministry (MRE) asked CTNBio – National Biosafety Commission to report on the issue. Its president replied that he had nominated a special committee to answer MRE's demand. The document produced was signed by four experts and repeats criticisms already answered by Seralini and colleagues in several interviews and in a letter to the editors published by the same journal, Food and Chemical Toxicology.
The CTNBio president's paper was only discussed by CTNBio's other members in April. After a hot debate, four members voted against it, stating that, given the way the rapporteurs were chosen, the document failed to consider contradictory views that emerged inside the Commission. Fourteen members were in favour of the document, although one knows that science is not made on a vote base.
On the same occasion a vote was taken on a request presented by the National Consumers Forum (FNEDC) demanding CTNBio to reassess the decision which released NK603 for commercial cultivation in the country and asking for the suspension of all seed containing this GM event. Also by a 14 to 4 vote the Commission refused the consumers' petition.
A third debate still on NK603 took place. Fourteen members and former CTNBio members [this now seems to have grown to 15, judging by the signatures on the counter-report] presented a counter-report citing studies in support of the French group and their data and contesting the critiques they received. The counter-report also mentions different levels of rigour [applied to studies supportive and critical of GMOs], which could be understood as double standards, since a great deal of the criticism of the original study would perfectly fit the data submitted to CTNBio by the company that developed NK603. Experts say they would welcome the same rigorous standards being applied to all applications examined by CTNBio. Unless, that is, only studies showing negative impacts of GMs should be reviewed with such care. Again the debate ended with a 14 to 4 vote [against the counter-report].
The refusal to repeat a study correcting its methodological failings is a symptom of the prevalence of a belief that overcomes the scientific method, sounding more like a desire to support the technology and a dismissal of the opportunity to better understand the risks posed by GM crops.
…
An English translation of the Brazilian document in support of Séralini's et al study can be found here: http://aspta.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/NK603-20may2013.pdf
- Media contacts:
Paulo Kageyama (English) -
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Antonio Andrioli (German) –
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Gilles Ferment (French) –
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Crackdown aims to silence dissent from NGOs
EXTRACTS: “The government’s action is aimed at curbing our democratic right to dissent and disagree,” Anil Chaudhary, who heads an NGO that trains activists and is part of the INSAF network, said Tuesday. “We dared to challenge the government’s new foreign donation rules in the court. We opposed nuclear energy, we campaigned against genetically modified food. We have spoiled the sleep of our prime minister.”
But the government’s action appears to have had its desired effect. “NGOs are too scared to visit Koodankulam or associate with us now,” said anti-nuclear activist S. P. Udayakumar.
Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said many NGOs are afraid to speak up about the suspension of their foreign funding approval, which is “being used to intimidate organizations and activists”.
Analysts say the government’s way of dealing with dissent is a throwback to an earlier era. But Indian authorities have been particularly squeamish about criticism of late. As citizens have protested corruption and sexual assaults on women and demanded greater accountability from public officials, authorities have often reacted clumsily — including beating up peaceful protesters and cracking down on satirical cartoons, Facebook posts and Twitter accounts.
“It is not a question about money, it is a fight for our right to dissent,” said Chaudhary.
---
---
Activists bristle as India cracks down on foreign funding of NGOs
Rama Lakshmi,
Washington Post, May 20 2013
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/activists-bristle-as-india-cracks-down-on-foreign-funding-of-ngos/2013/05/19/a647ff80-bcaf-11e2-b537-ab47f0325f7c_story.html
NEW DELHI — Amid an intensifying crackdown on nongovernmental groups that receive foreign funding, Indian activists are accusing the government of stifling their right to dissent in the world’s largest democracy.
India has tightened the rules on non-governmental organizations over the past two years, following protests that delayed several important industrial projects. About a dozen NGOs that the government said engaged in activities that harm the public interest have seen their permission to receive foreign donations revoked, as have nearly 4,000 small NGOs for what officials said was inadequate compliance with reporting requirements.
The government stepped up its campaign this month, suspending the permission that Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF), a network of more than 700 NGOs across India, had to receive foreign funds. Groups in the network campaign for indigenous peoples’ rights over their mineral-rich land and against nuclear energy, human rights violations and religious fundamentalism; nearly 90 percent of the network’s funding comes from overseas.
“The government’s action is aimed at curbing our democratic right to dissent and disagree,” Anil Chaudhary, who heads an NGO that trains activists and is part of the INSAF network, said Tuesday. “We dared to challenge the government’s new foreign donation rules in the court. We opposed nuclear energy, we campaigned against genetically modified food. We have spoiled the sleep of our prime minister.”
In its letter to INSAF, the Home Ministry said the group’s bank accounts were frozen and foreign funding approval suspended because it was likely to “prejudicially affect the public interest.”
A government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said the government is not against criticism. But when an NGO uses foreign donations to criticize Indian policies, “things get complicated, and you never know what the plot is,” the official said, adding that NGOs should use foreign donations to do development work instead.
The United States is the top donor nation to Indian NGOs, followed by Britain and Germany, according to figures compiled by the Indian government, with Indian NGOs receiving funds from both the U.S. government and private U.S. institutions. In the year ending in March 2011, the most recent period for which data are available, about 22,000 NGOs received a total of more than $2 billion from abroad, of which $650 million came from the United States.
Asked last week about the Indian government’s moves against foreign-funded NGOs, a U.S. State Department spokesman said the department was not aware of any U.S. government involvement in the cases. The spokesman said such civil society groups around the world “are among the essential building blocks of any healthy democracy”.
The situation in India is not unlike the problems that similar groups face in Russia, where a law passed last year requires foreign-funded NGOs that engage in loosely defined political activities to register as “foreign agents”.
Action after nuclear protests
Trouble for many nonprofit activist groups here began more than a year ago when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh blamed groups from the United States for fomenting anti-nuclear protests that have stalled the commissioning of India’s biggest reactor, a Russian-backed project in Koodankulam in power-starved Tamil Nadu state.
U.S. officials, including Peter Burleigh, the American ambassador at the time, quickly moved to assure Indian officials that the U.S. government supports India’s civil nuclear power program. And Victoria Nuland, then the State Department spokeswoman, said the United States does not provide support for nonprofit groups to protest nuclear power plants. “Our NGO support goes for development, and it goes for democracy programs,” Nuland said.
Although Singh was widely criticized for his fears, the government froze the accounts of several NGOs in southern India within weeks.
“All our work has come to a stop,” said Henri Tiphagne, head of a human rights group called People’s Watch. “I had visited [the] Koodankulam protest site once. Is that a banned territory?”
But the government’s action appears to have had its desired effect. “NGOs are too scared to visit Koodankulam or associate with us now,” said anti-nuclear activist S. P. Udayakumar.
Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said many NGOs are afraid to speak up about the suspension of their foreign funding approval, which is “being used to intimidate organizations and activists”.
Analysts say the government’s way of dealing with dissent is a throwback to an earlier era. But Indian authorities have been particularly squeamish about criticism of late. As citizens have protested corruption and sexual assaults on women and demanded greater accountability from public officials, authorities have often reacted clumsily — including beating up peaceful protesters and cracking down on satirical cartoons, Facebook posts and Twitter accounts.
Donors look elsewhere
Officials say NGOs are free to use Indian money for their protests. But activists say Indian money is hard to find, with many Indians preferring to donate to charities.
A recent report by Bain & Co. said that about two-thirds of Indian donors surveyed said that NGOs have room to improve the impact they are making in the lives of beneficiaries. It said that a quarter of donors are holding back on increased donations until they perceive evidence that their donations are having an effect.
“They give blankets to the homeless, sponsor poor children, or support cow shelters,” said Wilfred Dcosta, coordinator of INSAF. “They do not want to support causes where you question the state, demand environmental justice or fight for the land rights of tribal people pitted against mighty mining companies.”
INSAF, whose acronym means “justice” in Urdu, has seen its portion of foreign funding increase significantly during the past 15 years. Now it receives funds from many international groups, including the American Jewish World Service and Global Greengrants Fund in the United States, and groups in Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.
The top American donors to Indian NGOs include Colorado-based Compassion International, District-based Population Services International and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“It is not a question about money, it is a fight for our right to dissent,” said Chaudhary. “I don’t need dollars to block a road."
Pro-GM minister's daughter on BRAI panel
NOTE: Sharad Pawar is India's notoriously pro-GM agriculture minister - see item 2 - and no stranger to political controversies, including ones involving his own family.
Pawar's avidly pro-GM stance is despite his powerbase being in Maharashtra where Bt cotton has proven a disaster and has contributed to many farmer suicides, particularly among endebted farmers on unirrigated lands.
http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/49-2010/11920
Sharad Pawar's nephew, Ajit Pawar, had to resign as Maharashtra's Deputy Chief Minister "following allegations of an irrigation scam when he was state's water resource minister." It has even been alleged that one of the brands of Bt cotton seeds on sale in Maharashtra - "Ajit Bt" - is actually owned by Ajit Pawar.
http://gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=14402
---
---
Pawar's daughter on panel that will examine biotechnology Bill
Jyotika Sood
Down To Earth, May 20 2013
http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/pawars-daughter-panel-will-examine-biotechnology-bill
*Supriya Sule joins Parliament panel on science and technology; panel to submit report on Bill that gives easy access to GM crops in three months
By a strange coincidence, daughter of agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, Supriya Sule, has been appointed member of the very panel to which the controversial Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) Bill has been referred. The agriculture ministry, under the present minister, is known for its pro-GM stand, which gives rise to speculation about the timing of his daughter's appointment to the Parliament Committee on science and technology and environment and forests from May 1.
The Bill was referred to the standing committee last week by Rajya Sabha chairperson in consultation with Lok Sabha speaker. BRAI Bill proposes easy access to GM crops in India through a single-window clearance. The parliament committee headed by Congress member of Rajya Sabha, T Subbarami Reddy, has been asked to submit its report within three months.
Pro-GM minister
Pawar and his ministry has been promoting GM crops in their reports and communiqués for a long time. Sule’s appointment came just over a week after science and technology minister Jaipal Reddy introduced the Bill in Lok Sabha after budget recess.
Even in March 2012, in its State of Indian Agriculture report submitted to Parliament, the agriculture ministry had stated that “a number of transgenics, particularly in cotton and vegetable crops, are sought to be introduced in the country.” While the moratorium on Bt Brinjal, the first transgenic food crop, still prevails in India, the agriculture ministry report says “The national policy on GM food crops needs to develop GM crop-based agriculture in cost-effective and high-yielding crop varieties.”
Another panel had criticised Bill
In contrast to agriculture ministry’s stand, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture last year had recommended to the government that the Bill was not the way forward to regulate GM crops.
Interestingly, there were reports that science and technology minister Reddy had requested Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar to constitute a joint committee of both houses on BRAI Bill. However, this wasn’t confirmed till the filing of this report.
The parliament standing committee on science and technology, environment and forests comprises of 30 members, 10 from Rajya Sabha and 20 from Lok Sabha. At present, two seats are vacant in the committee.
The Goodman affair: Monsanto targets the heart of science
EXCERPTS: [In] September 2012... the scientific journal Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT) published a study that caused an international storm (Séralini, et al. 2012). The study, led by Prof Gilles-Eric Séralini of the University of Caen, France, suggested a Monsanto genetically modified (GM) maize, and the Roundup herbicide it is grown with, pose serious health risks....
An orchestrated campaign was launched to discredit the study in the media and persuade the journal to retract it... The journal did not retract the study. But just a few months later, in early 2013 the FCT editorial board acquired a new “Associate Editor for biotechnology”, Richard E. Goodman. This was a new position, seemingly established especially for Goodman in the wake of the “Séralini affair”.
Richard E. Goodman is professor at the Food Allergy Research and Resource Program, University of Nebraska. But he is also a former Monsanto employee, who worked for the company between 1997 and 2004. While at Monsanto he assessed the allergenicity of the company’s GM crops and published papers on its behalf on allergenicity and safety issues relating to GM food (Goodman and Leach 2004).
Goodman had no documented connection to the journal until February 2013. His fast-tracked appointment, directly onto the upper editorial board raises urgent questions. Does Monsanto now effectively decide which papers on biotechnology are published in FCT? And is this part of an attempt by Monsanto and the life science industry to seize control of science?
---
---
The Goodman affair: Monsanto targets the heart of science
by Claire Robinson and Jonathan Latham, PhD
Independent Science News and Earth Open Source, 20 May 2013
http://bit.ly/10GScQz
and
http://bit.ly/189Ff88
[Links to sources at the above URLs]
Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal, has jested that instead of scientific peer review, its rival The Lancet had a system of throwing a pile of papers down the stairs and publishing those that reached the bottom. On another occasion, Smith was challenged to publish an issue of the BMJ exclusively comprising papers that had failed peer review and see if anybody noticed. He replied, “How do you know I haven't already done it?”
As Smith’s stories show, journal editors have a lot of power in science – power that provides opportunities for abuse. The life science industry knows this, and has increasingly moved to influence and control science publishing.
The strategy, often with the willing cooperation of publishers, is effective and sometimes blatant. In 2009, the scientific publishing giant Elsevier was found to have invented an entire medical journal, complete with editorial board, in order to publish papers promoting the products of the pharmaceutical manufacturer Merck. Merck provided the papers, Elsevier published them, and doctors read them, unaware that the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine was simply a stuffed dummy.
Fast forward to September 2012, when the scientific journal Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT) published a study that caused an international storm (Séralini, et al. 2012). The study, led by Prof Gilles-Eric Séralini of the University of Caen, France, suggested a Monsanto genetically modified (GM) maize, and the Roundup herbicide it is grown with, pose serious health risks. The two-year feeding study found that rats fed both suffered severe organ damage and increased rates of tumors and premature death. Both the herbicide (Roundup) and the GM maize are Monsanto products. Corinne Lepage, France’s former environment minister, called the study “a bomb”.
Subsequently, an orchestrated campaign was launched to discredit the study in the media and persuade the journal to retract it. Many of those who wrote letters to FCT (which is published by Elsevier) had conflicts of interest with the GM industry and its lobby groups, though these were not publicly disclosed.
The journal did not retract the study. But just a few months later, in early 2013 the FCT editorial board acquired a new “Associate Editor for biotechnology”, Richard E. Goodman. This was a new position, seemingly established especially for Goodman in the wake of the “Séralini affair”.
Richard E. Goodman is professor at the Food Allergy Research and Resource Program, University of Nebraska. But he is also a former Monsanto employee, who worked for the company between 1997 and 2004. While at Monsanto he assessed the allergenicity of the company’s GM crops and published papers on its behalf on allergenicity and safety issues relating to GM food (Goodman and Leach 2004).
Goodman had no documented connection to the journal until February 2013. His fast-tracked appointment, directly onto the upper editorial board raises urgent questions. Does Monsanto now effectively decide which papers on biotechnology are published in FCT? And is this part of an attempt by Monsanto and the life science industry to seize control of science?
To equate one journal with “science” may seem like an exaggeration. But peer-reviewed publication, in the minds of most scientists, is science. Once a paper is published in an academic journal it enters the canon and stands with the discovery of plate tectonics or the structure of DNA. All other research, no matter how groundbreaking or true, is irrelevant. As a scientist once scathingly said of the “commercially confidential” industry safety data that underpin approvals of chemicals and GM foods, “If it isn’t published, it doesn’t exist.”
Goodman’s ILSI links
The industry affiliations of FCT’s new gatekeeper for biotechnology are not restricted to having worked directly for Monsanto. Goodman has an active and ongoing involvement with the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI). ILSI is funded by the multinational GM and agrochemical companies, including Monsanto. It develops industry-friendly risk assessment methods for GM foods and chemical food contaminants and inserts them into government regulations.
ILSI describes itself as a public interest non-profit but its infiltration of regulatory agencies and influence on risk assessment policy has become highly controversial in North America and Europe. In 2005 US-based non-profits and trade unions wrote to the World Health Organization (WHO) protesting against ILSI’s influence on international health standards protecting food and water supplies. As a result, the WHO barred ILSI from taking part in WHO activities setting safety standards, because of its funding sources. And in Europe in 2012, Diana Banati, then head of the management board at the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), had to resign over her undisclosed long-standing involvement with ILSI (Robinson et al. 2013).
Goodman’s appointment to FCT is surprising also for the fact that the journal already has expertise in GM food safety. Of the four senior editors, José L. Domingo is a professor of toxicology and environmental health and author of two comprehensive reviews of GM food safety studies (Domingo 2007; Domingo and Bordonaba 2011). Both reviews expressed skepticism of the thesis that GMOs are safe. Consequently, it is far from clear why FCT needs an “associate editor for biotechnology”, but it is clear why Monsanto would have an interest in ensuring that the “Séralini affair” is never repeated.
Editing the scientific record: The case of Paul Christou
FCT is not the only academic journal that appears to have been captured by commercial interests. After the initial campaign failed to get FCT to retract the Séralini study, the journal Transgenic Research published a heavy-handed critique of the study and of the researchers themselves (Arjo et al., 2013). The lead author of that critique was Paul Christou.
Christou and co-authors castigated the editor of FCT for publishing the study, calling it “a clear and egregious breach of the standards of scientific publishing”. They insisted that the journal editor retract the study “based on its clearly flawed data, its breaches of ethical standards, and the strong evidence for scientific misconduct and abuse of the peer-review process”. “Even a full retraction of the Séralini article” wrote Christou, “will not cleanse the Internet of the inflammatory images of tumorous rats.”
The same writers further implied that the Séralini study was “fraudulent”, that the researchers failed to analyse the data objectively, and that the treatment of the experimental animals was inhumane.
This is not the first time Christou has attacked scientific findings that have raised doubts about GM crops. In 2001 Ignacio Chapela and David Quist of the University of California, Berkeley, reported in the journal Nature that indigenous Mexican maize varieties had become contaminated with GM genes (Quist and Chapela, 2001). This issue was, and remains, highly controversial since Mexico is the genetic centre of origin for maize. In an exact parallel with the Séralini study, an internet campaign was waged against Chapela and Quist demanding that the journal retract the study. Then Christou, just as he was later to do with the Séralini study, attacked Chapela and Quist’s paper in an article in Transgenic Research. The title said it all: “No credible scientific evidence is presented to support claims that transgenic DNA was introgressed into traditional maize landraces in Oaxaca, Mexico” (Christou, 2002).
Responding to the campaign, Nature editor Philip Campbell asked Chapela and Quist for more data, which they provided, and arranged another round of peer review. Only one reviewer in the final group of three supported retraction, and no one had presented any data or analysis that contradicted Chapela and Quist’s main finding. Nevertheless, Nature asserted, “The evidence available is not sufficient to justify the publication of the original paper”. Some subsequent investigations, testing different samples, reported finding GM genes in native landraces of Mexican corn (Pineyro-Nelson et al. 2009), while others did not (Ortiz-Garcia et al. 2005).
Paul Christou, in contrast, probably did not have much trouble getting either of his critiques published in Transgenic Research. He is the journal’s editor-in-chief. And, like Goodman, Christou is connected to Monsanto. Monsanto bought the GM seed company Agracetus (Christou’s former employer) and Monsanto now holds patents for the production of GM crops on which Christou is named as the inventor. It is normal practice to declare inventor status on patents as a competing interest in scientific articles, but Christou did not disclose either conflict of interest – his editorship of the journal or his patent inventor status – in his critique of the Séralini study.
The Ermakova affair: Preemptive editing of the scientific record
Not only can journal editors prevent the publication of research showing problems with GM crops in their own journals – they can effectively prevent publication elsewhere. In 2007, the leading academic journal Nature Biotechnology featured an extraordinary attack on the work of Russian scientist, Irina Ermakova (Marshall, 2007). Her laboratory research had found decreased weight gain, increased mortality, and decreased fertility in rats fed GM Roundup-tolerant soy over several generations (Ermakova, 2006; Ermakova, 2009).
The editor of Nature Biotechnology, Andrew Marshall, contacted Ermakova, inviting her to answer questions about her findings, which she had only presented at conferences. He told her it was “an opportunity to present your own findings and conclusions in your own words, rather than a critique from one side”. Ermakova agreed.
The process that followed was as deceptive as it was irregular. The editor sent Ermakova a set of questions about her research, which she answered. In due course she was sent a proof of what she thought was to be "her" article, with her byline as author.
However, the article that was finally published was very different. Ermakova’s byline had been removed and Marshall’s substituted. Each of Ermakova’s answers to the questions was followed by a lengthy critique by four pro-GM scientists (Marshall, 2007). The proof sent to Ermakova, now revealed as a "dummy proof", had not included these critical comments. Consequently, she was denied the chance to address them in the same issue of the journal. And in the final article the editor had preserved the critics’ references but removed many of Ermakova’s, with the effect that her statements appeared unsubstantiated.
Nature Biotechnology’s treatment of Ermakova attracted condemnation from many scientists. It was also strongly criticized in some media outlets. Harvey Marcovitch, former editor of a scientific journal and now director of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), which sets ethical standards for academic journals, commented, “This is a type of publication which I have never encountered.” He said that while reading it he was struck by “some surprising things”. He was unwilling to speculate as to what exactly happened: “Either the editor was trying out a new form of experimentation, in which not everything went according to plan, or there was indeed a conspiracy or whatever one wants to call it.”
Dr Brian John of the Wales-based campaign group GM-Free Cymru was more blunt, calling the process “tabloid academic publishing involving deception, lies, duplicity, and editorial malpractice”.
Amid the uproar, editor Marshall released his email correspondence with Ermakova on the internet. It showed that far from his having “solicited” the comments from the critics, as he had originally claimed, the four pro-GM scientists had themselves approached the journal proposing their “critique”, and even though none of them are toxicologists, Marshall had agreed. The self-selected critics judged Ermakova’s research – which they had never even seen in its complete form – “demonstrably flawed”.
Nature Biotechnology also failed to fully disclose the conflicts of interest of Ermakova’s critics. Bruce Chassy was lead author on two influential ILSI publications, which defined weak risk assessment methodologies for GM crops that were later inserted into the guidelines of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). Vivian Moses was chairman of CropGen, a GM industry lobby group with Monsanto among its funders. L. Val Giddings, an industry consultant, was described in the article as formerly of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO). Nature Biotechnology omitted to say that Giddings occupied a senior position at BIO – vice president for food and agriculture – and that BIO’s funders include the GM crop companies, Monsanto, Dow and DuPont. The last of the four critics, Alan McHughen, developed a GM flax called Triffid that in 2009 was found to have contaminated flax supplies coming into Europe from Canada. If these interests had been disclosed, readers might have judged the criticism of Ermakova differently.
Open-source scientific publishing?
These examples show that the threat to scientific publishing from industry influence is real. The avenues for researchers to publish critical views in science are already few. This is especially true for the high-impact journals that the media notices and that therefore influence public discourse. Equally problematic is that few scientific institutions will support researchers whose findings contradict industry viewpoints, as Chapela found out when UC Berkeley tried to deny him tenure following the controversial maize study. Even fewer funding sources will give to such researchers. Consequently almost all funding of biosafety research finds its way into the hands of researchers with industry ties.
This directly affects the quality of the science produced. A recent literature review found that most studies concluding that GM foods are as safe as non-GM counterparts were performed by the developer companies or their associates (Domingo and Bordonaba, 2011). . It is no coincidence that Norway, a country without an agricultural industry lobby, hosts the only publicly funded institute in the world with a mission to conduct research on the environmental, health and social consequences of genetic engineering.
There are, in principle, ways within the existing system to mitigate or neutralize the influence of industry on the ability of scientists to publish independent and critical research. The first is transparency in publishing. Journal editors should adopt the COPE guidelines and publish all conflicts of interest among staff and editors.
Also in line with COPE’s stipulation, peer reviewers should be selected to avoid conflicts of interest. If this proves impossible due to the spread of patents and industry research funding, then care must be taken to select a balanced panel representing a plurality of views. FCT is a member of COPE, but does not publish information on editors’ conflicts of interest, and its appointment of Goodman over Domingo shows that it does not seek to avoid them.
There may in fact be a need to critically examine the entire concept of peer review. The limitations of all types of expert opinion – whether that of an individual expert or of an expert panel – are recognized in the field of evidence-based medicine. To address this problem, bodies such as the non-profit Cochrane Collaboration have developed systematic and transparent methodologies to review and evaluate data on the effectiveness of different medical interventions. The aim is to enable healthcare practitioners to make well-informed clinical decisions. The reviewing criteria are transparently set out in advance, so there is less scope for bias in evaluations of studies. When disagreements do occur, it is easy to pinpoint the reason and resolve the problem. Cochrane also implements rules to prevent conflicts of interest among its reviewers and editorial board.
The Cochrane approach is widely respected and the lessons learned in evidence-based medicine about conflicts of interest and resisting industry pressure are being applied to other fields, such as hazardous environmental exposures (Woodruff et al., 2011). There is no reason why scientific journals, including those publishing GMO research, cannot use similar methods to evaluate papers, so that less discretion is given to experts with conflicts of interest.
Implementing such policies presumes strong support among the scientific community for independent science. But this support may not exist outside of medical research.
FCT took on Goodman, a former Monsanto employee and well-known supporter of industry viewpoints, immediately following the publication of a controversial paper that was critical of Monsanto’s principal products. In doing so, FCT senior management bypassed the normal scientific editorial culture of gradual promotion from within.
Meanwhile, two other prominent academic journals have served as platforms for their editors to generate unsubstantiated and unscientific abuse without any repercussions for their editorial positions. Marshall remains editor of Nature Biotechnology. The fact that journal editors get away with such behavior suggests that support for independent research among scientists is generally lacking and that accountability within the scientific publishing world barely exists.
It seems unlikely that scientific journals will address unaided the defects in scientific publishing at FCT and elsewhere. To do so would require confronting the fundamental problem that academic science now largely makes its money from exploiting conflicts of interest. This has become the underlying business model of science. Universities offer "independent" advice to governments while taking corporate money for "research". Corporations offer that money to universities, not for the knowledge it generates, but primarily for the influence it buys.
These same incentives are reinforced at the personal level as well. Individual scientists occupy taxpayer-funded academic positions while benefitting from patents, stocks and industry consultancies. If journals and government agencies took action to eliminate conflicts of interest, the corporate money for science would dry up, because industry-funded scientists would lose influence.
But if scientific journals do not find a way to level the playing field for critical studies, the few scientists who are still able to carry out independent public interest research may need to find an alternative publishing model: public peer review, or ‘open-source science’. Such online collaborative approaches could even revitalize scientific publishing.
Unless radical reform is achieved, peer-reviewed publication, which many hold to be the defining characteristic of science, will have undergone a remarkable inversion. From its origin as a safeguard of quality and independence, it will have become a tool through which one vision, that of corporate science, came to assert ultimate control. Richard Goodman, FCT’s new Associate Editor for biotechnology, now has the opportunity to throw down the stairs only those papers marked “industry approved”.
References
Arjo G, et al. (2013). Plurality of opinion, scientific discourse and pseudoscience: an in depth analysis of the Séralini et al. study claiming that Roundup Ready corn or the herbicide Roundup cause cancer in rats. Transgenic Research 22: 2 255-267
Christou P (2002). No credible scientific evidence is presented to support claims that transgenic DNA was introgressed into traditional maize landraces in Oaxaca, Mexico. Transgenic Research 11: iii–v
Domingo JL (2007). Toxicity studies of genetically modified plants: a review of the published literature. Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr 47(8): 721-733
Domingo JL and JG Bordonaba (2011). A literature review on the safety assessment of genetically modified plants. Environ Int 37: 734–742.
Ermakova I (2006). Genetically modified soy leads to the decrease of weight and high mortality of rat pups of the first generation. Preliminary studies. Ecosinform. 2006;1:4–9.
Ermakova I (2009). [Influence of soy with gene EPSPS CP4 on the physiological state and reproductive function of rats in the first two generations] [Russian text]. Contemporary Problems in Science and Education 5:15–20.
Marshall A (2007). GM soybeans and health safety – a controversy reexamined. Nat Biotechnol 25: 981–987.
Ortiz-Garcia S, et al. (2005). Absence of detectable transgenes in local landraces of maize in Oaxaca, Mexico. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102: 18242.
Pineyro-Nelson A, et al. (2009). Transgenes in Mexican maize: molecular evidence and methodological considerations for GMO detection in landrace populations. Mol Ecol 18(4): 750-761.
Quist D and IH Chapela (2001). Transgenic DNA introgressed into traditional maize landraces in Oaxaca, Mexico. Nature 414(6863): 541-543.
Robinson, C, et al. (2013). Conflicts of interest at the European Food Safety Authority erode public confidence. J Epidemiol Community Health.doi:10.1136/jech-2012-202185.
Séralini GE, et al. (2012). Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize. Food and Chemical Toxicology 50(11): 4221-4231.
Woodruff TJ, et al. (2011). An evidence-based medicine methodology to bridge the gap between clinical and environmental health sciences. Health Aff (Millwood) 30(5): 931-937.
Claire Robinson is research director, Earth Open Source; editor, GMWatch; and editor, GMOSeralini.org
Former Monsanto employee put in charge of GMO papers at journal
Former Monsanto employee put in charge of GMO papers at journal
New article exposes industry attempts to control scientific publishing
Press release
Independent Science News and Earth Open Source
20 May 2013
http://www.earthopensource.org/index.php/news/148
Just months after a study was published showing that two Monsanto products, a genetically modified (GM) maize and Roundup herbicide, damaged the health of rats, the journal that published the study appointed a former Monsanto scientist to decide which papers on GM foods and crops should be published, a new article reveals[1].
Monsanto and GM foods suffered a storm of bad publicity after a study published in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT) in September 2012 reported that a GM corn and Roundup caused organ damage and increased rates of tumors and premature death in rats[2].
But in early 2013 Richard E. Goodman, a former Monsanto researcher with close ties to the biotech industry, joined the senior editorial staff of FCT. Goodman was given the specially created position of associate editor for biotechnology.
Claire Robinson, research director at the science policy platform Earth Open Source and co-author of the new article, said, "Goodman's fast-tracked appointment straight onto FCT’s upper editorial board raises the question of whether Monsanto is now effectively deciding which papers on GM foods and crops should be published and which should not.”
The article explains that Goodman's appointment is just the latest in a long series of episodes in which people with interests in the agricultural biotech industry have attempted to control or prevent the publication of inconvenient research.
In other cases, the pages of scientific journals were given over to extraordinary attacks on scientists whose research revealed problems with GM crops and foods. Often, the critics did not disclose their conflicts of interest with the GM industry, and the journals failed to make them do so.
Dr Jonathan Latham, executive director of the nonprofit Bioscience Resource Project and co-author of the new article, said, "Unfortunately, the public and the scientific community can no longer trust that peer-reviewed journals reflect the true state of scientific knowledge. Some journals have become a vehicle for a narrow interest group – biotechnology corporations – to control scientific discourse."
Robinson and Latham note that the crisis in scientific publishing reflects the wider problem that scientific research is increasingly dependent on industry funding. Latham said, “Conflicts of interest have become the defining problem of modern science and limiting them amongst public sector scientists has become a fundamental necessity.”
The authors challenge scientific journals to level the playing field and apply the same critical standards to studies that conclude that GM foods and crops pose risks as to studies that conclude safety. They should also publish all conflicts of interest among their editorial staff.
If journals fail to reform, scientists who carry out public interest research may need to create an alternative publication model: public peer review, or "open source science".
Notes
1. Claire Robinson and Jonathan Latham, The Goodman affair: Monsanto targets the heart of Science. Independent Science News and Earth Open Source. 20 May 2013. http://independentsciencenews.org/science-media/the-goodman-affair-monsanto-targets-the-heart-of-science/
and http://bit.ly/189Ff88
2. GE Séralini et al. (2012). Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize. Food and Chemical Toxicology 50(11): 4221-4231.
Contact: Claire Robinson
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Research director, Earth Open Source
Tel: +44 (0)752 753 6923 (UK)
Jonathan Latham, PhD
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Executive director, Bioscience Resource Project
Tel: +1 607 319 0279 (USA)
Recognise the politics of science
1.Challenge, don't worship, the chiefs and high priestesses of science
2.When scholars sell out, the consequences are grave
---
---
1.Challenge, don't worship, the chiefs and high priestesses of science
Alice Bell
The Guardian, May 17 2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/political-science/2013/may/17/science-policy1
*If we don't recognise the politics of science, we will just get played by those who do
[Picture caption: The Royal Society motto, "Nullius in verba", which roughly translates as "Take nobody's word for it".]
At the BSA Science Communication conference this week, I was invited to speak about science policy, under the title "All hail to the chief". Except, I think science involves way too much hailing already. I'm not about to start bowing to Sir Mark Walport, just because he's the government chief scientific adviser. Neither do I think we should be worshiping Science Media Centre CEO, Fiona Fox as a "high priestess" ([Science journalist] Roger Highfield's rather telling nickname for her).
Science today, and the way we share it with the rest of the world, is based on layers upon layers of deference. We spend our lives crawling up to senior scientists, and those who pay them, sitting and waiting to be told what to think. We shouldn't be so complacent.
The Government Office of Science and Technology, the Science Media Centre, journalists, museums, school curricula and a host of other systems for sharing science act as filters for scientific information, choosing which is the most important and useful. This is what makes them so useful, but such choices are always going to involve more than simply science and we need to recognise this.
We've been here before. It's the critique of the so-called "deficit model" many of us have been dancing to for decades. The deficit model, if you're lucky enough not to have come across the term, assumes science has the knowledge the public are deficient in, and that many of our social ills will be solved if we all listened to the experts. It'd be a nice idea maybe if science, the media, policy or people were that simple, but they're not (I talked about similar issues in my Radio Four piece on scientific literacy last year).
The deficit model sticks around partly because it feeds scientists' social status, implicitly underlining their powerful position as people who get to define what counts as important, true, reliable knowledge. Stephen Hilgartner put it well back in 1990, saying such top down approaches implicitly provide the scientific establishment with the epistemological right to print money.
Something we don't appreciate enough though is that also serves the handmaidens of the deficit model – science communication professionals, less powerful scientists, many science "fans" – offering them some social status by association. Play into a game of hierarchies, and even if you don't get to the top, you get to climb a bit. Pierre Bourdieu, in his classic sociology of the university campus, Homo Academicus, talks about the way students are happy to submit to the idea that they are inferior to senior academics because doing so earns them subsequent admittance to a distinguished club of graduates. I think we can see similar patterns at work in terms of the way academic ideas are shared outside of universities too.
Less cynically, top down models also stick around because scientists do, genuinely, have special ideas and information to share. We pool our resources to allow a few people to cut themselves off and become experts in particular subjects. We do this so that they might feed back their knowledge and we can, collectively, try to make a better world. We should listen to them.
As David Dickson wrote in 2005, factual reporting of science can be socially empowering for audiences. It's worth remembering this. Political systems of scientific advice in government are built partly for this reason too, to make best use of scientific expertise. I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and lazy critique of science is not just silly, it can be dangerous (if you've never read "Merchants of Doubt", do).
But valuing expertise in society doesn't mean you have to unquestionably listen to those labelled as expert.
Earlier this week, George Monbiot neatly pulled out Mark Walport's suggestion that a prime function of his role in government was to ensure science translates to economic growth. Firstly, is that really Walport's job? Really? Secondly, even if it is, what kind of growth are we talking about? To serve which parts of society? To go in what directions? Drawing on what resources? These are very serious questions with multiple possible answers, many of which science will be a necessary, but insufficient part of. We should be invited to access, or at least view, these less than simply scientific decision-making process.
When I was looking into the Big Bang Fair last term, I learned that volunteers were briefed not to get pulled into debating "politics" of arms dealing or the fossil fuel industry, lest it distracted from the science. I've since heard similar briefings have been issued for science events running over the summer. It's also a line I heard all too often when I worked at Imperial College.
It's bullshit. Simple bullshit. Politics doesn't distract from the science. An over-emphasis on de-contextualised science is used to distract from the politics.
It is often assumed science is somehow above political issues, but just because disinterestedness is an aspiration doesn't mean it's true in practice. It can be hard to spot ideologies you're part of, so decent public engagement – which is honest about the uncertainties and arguments in science and actively invites questioning – can help science uncover itself more clearly. This is vitally important, because if you don't recognise how routinely political science is, you just get played by those who do.
---
---
2.La Nouvelle Trahison des Clercs
George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 14th May 2013
http://www.monbiot.com/2013/05/14/la-nouvelle-trahison-des-clercs/
*When scholars sell out, the consequences are grave.
In 1927 the French philosopher Julien Benda published a piercing attack on the intellectuals of his day. They should, he argued in La Trahison des Clercs (the treason of the scholars) act as a check on popular passions[1]. Civilisation, he claimed, is possible only if intellectuals stand in opposition to the demands of political “realism” by upholding universal principles. “Thanks to the scholars,” Benda maintained, “humanity did evil for two thousand years, but honoured good.” Europe might have been lying in the gutter, but it was looking at the stars.
But those ideals, he argued, had been lost. Europe was now lying in the gutter, looking in the gutter. The “immense majority” of intellectuals, artists and clergy had joined “the chorus of hatreds”: nationalism, racism, the worship of power and war. In doing so, they justified and magnified political passions. Across Europe, scholars on both the left and the right had become “ready to support in their own countries the most flagrant injustices”, to abandon universal principles in favour of national exceptionalism and to proclaim “the supreme morality of violence”. He quoted the French anarcho-syndicalist Georges Sorel, who eulogised “the superb blond beast wandering in search of prey and carnage”.
The result of this intellectual support for domination, Benda argued, was that there was now no moral check on the pursuit of self-interest. Rather than forming a bulwark against popular delusions, Europe’s thinkers turned them into doctrines. With remarkable foresight, he predicted that this would lead inexorably to “the greatest and most perfect war ever seen in the world”. This war would be genocidal in intent[2], and would not be stopped by any treaties or institutions. In 1927 these were bold claims.
I’m not suggesting an equivalence between those times and these. I’m summarising Benda to highlight a general principle: the need for a disinterested class of intellectuals which acts as a counterweight to prevailing mores. Racism, nationalism and war are only three of the many hazards to which society is exposed if that challenge should fail: if, that is, most scholars side with the soldiers or the sellers.
Today the dominant forces have changed. Now the weak state, not the strong state, is fetishised by those in power, who insist that its functions be devolved to “the market”, meaning corporations and the very rich. Economic growth and the forces that drive it, whether they enhance or harm people’s lives, are venerated. And too many scholars seem prepared to support the new dispensation.
Two weeks ago I castigated the new chief scientist, Sir Mark Walport, for misinforming the public about risk, making unscientific and emotionally manipulative claims and indulging in scaremongering and wild exaggeration in defence of the government’s position[3]. Since then I have seen his first speech in his new role, and realised that the problem runs deeper than I thought.
Speaking at the Centre for Science and Policy at Cambridge University, Walport maintained that scientific advisors had five main functions, and the first of these was “ensuring that scientific knowledge translates to economic growth”(4). No statement could more clearly reveal what Benda called the “assimilation” of the intellectual. As if to drive the point home, the press release summarising his speech revealed that the centre is sponsored, among others, by BAE Systems, BP, and Lloyd’s[5].
Last week, two days before CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere reached 400 parts per million, Oxford University opened a new geoscience laboratory, named after its sponsor, Shell. Among its roles is helping to find and develop new sources of fossil fuel[6].
This is one of many such collaborations. Last year, for example, BP announced that it will spend £60m on research at Manchester University, partly to help it drill deeper for oil[7]. In the US and Canada universities go further: David Lynch, dean of engineering at the University of Alberta, appears in advertisements by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, whose purpose is to justify and normalise tar sands extraction[8].
As the campaign group People and Planet points out, universities help provide fossil fuel corporations not only with expertise but also with a “social licence to operate”[9]. Climate change is one of the great moral issues of our age, but the scholars in the strongest position to challenge the industry responsible are, instead, lending it what Benda calls their “moral prestige”. Neoliberal economists, imperialist historians, warmongering philosophers, pliable chief scientists, compromised energy researchers: all are propelling us into the arms of power.
In 1998, the vice-chancellors of the UK’s universities decided that they would no longer take money for cancer research from tobacco firms[10]. Over the past few days, I have asked the Shell Professor of Earth Sciences at Oxford, the university itself and the umbrella body Universities UK to explain the ethical difference between taking tobacco money for cancer research and taking fossil fuel money for energy research. None of these great heads, despite my repeated attempts to engage them, were prepared even to attempt an answer.
So perhaps this is where hope lies: unlike Benda’s scholars, these people have not yet developed a justifying ideology, which permits them to excuse or glorify the compromises they have made with power. Perhaps we have not yet abandoned the redeeming hypocrisy of what Benda called “honouring good”.
www.monbiot.com
References:
1. Julien Benda, 1927. The Treason of the Intellectuals. Translated by Richard Aldington, 2007. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick.
2. The term he used for genocidal war, following Renan, was “zoological”.
3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/29/beware-rise-government-scientists-lobbyists
4. http://www.csap.cam.ac.uk/news/article-sir-mark-walport-set-out-his-priorities/
5. http://www.csap.cam.ac.uk/news/article-sir-mark-walport-set-out-his-priorities/
6. http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2013/130509_1.html
7. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/9457340/BP-invests-in-UK-research-to-help-it-drill-deeper.html
8. http://www.capp.ca/canadaIndustry/oilSands/Innovation/media/Pages/David.aspx
9. People and Planet, pers comm.
10. The Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals of the Universities of the UK, quoted in The Times, 15th December 1998.
No power, no say - BRAI bill
Stage set for GM crops
Jyotika Sood
Down To Earth, May 31 2013
http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/stage-set-gm-crops
*Centre hastily tables Bill on biotech regulation in Parliament
SIDE BOX: Where BRAI Bill fails
*Since the ministry of science and technology is a promoter of biotechnology it would not take environment and health safety as a priority
*Agriculture is a state subject, but the Bill gives control to the Union government
*Gives edge to [GM] biotechnology over alternative technologies
*Environment ministry will lose authority over GM crops
It was in 2003 that a task force set up by the agriculture ministry and headed by M S Swaminathan floated the idea of an independent authority for biotechnology regulation called the National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority (NBRA). The idea was mooted following the introduction of Bt cotton in the country.
Five years later, the Ministry of Science and Technology drafted the NBRA Bill. But it was soon withdrawn following severe criticism during public consultation. In 2009, the ministry drafted another version of the Bill, this time titled Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) Bill. Contents of the draft were kept under wraps.
In February 2010, the science ministry suffered a setback when the environment minister imposed a moratorium on Bt Brinjal and other GM crops in the country. This started a silent war within the government. There was discomfort in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), too.
But with the UPA term ending in 2014, a communication came from PMO to the science ministry, asking it to speed up the process of tabling the Bill. There was unrest within the ministry because of five years of protests by scientists and public but the communication could not be ignored. So the BRAI Bill, which gives easy access to GM crops in India, was tabled by science minister Jaipal Reddy in Parliament on April 22.
Three days later, CPI (M) leader Basudeb Acharia, along with 15 MPs, wrote to Reddy, requesting him to withdraw the Bill for pre-legislative consultations. They said there is growing evidence on the adverse impacts of GM crops on food and the environment and the Bill is a single-window clearance mechanism for GM crops. The politicians alleged the introduction of the Bill is an attempt by the UPA government to circumvent the opposition to GM crops. Acharia says, “The fact that Reddy chose to introduce the Bill on the first day of the house reconvening after the budget session recess, a time when there was pandemonium on various matters, raises questions on the intention of the government.” There is also conflict of interest with the science ministry introducing the Bill. “It is the promoter of biotechnology and has now become its protector,” says Acharia. He alleges the Bill states it complies with the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (international agreement on biosafety) signed by India but does not follow it in letter and spirit. The government has also ignored recommendations agreed to by 32 MPs cutting across party lines, nine of whom were from the Congress, says Acharia. Last year, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture had also recommended to the government that the Bill was not the way forward to regulate GM crops. Instead, it said, there was a need for a biosafety protection regime that puts safety of citizens and the environment before industry.
No power, no say
The BRAI Bill overrides states’ authority over agriculture and health. It envisages only an advisory role for the states in the form of a state biotechnology regulatory advisory committee. The committee has no powers to enable the state to take any decision on introduction of modern biotechnology. At present, the environment ministry has given states the right to allow or disallow GM trials in their territories. States, including Bihar, Odisha, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, and Kerala, have said no to GM crops.
On May 1, Madhya Pradesh agriculture minister Ramkrishna Kusmaria wrote to Reddy to protest dilution of states’ powers. The Bill seeks to violate the spirit of federal polity; agriculture is a state subject. “It is not just about space for states in decision-making in the national authority but also about decision-making powers in their respective states that should be upheld in any regulatory statute,” wrote Kusmaria.
The Bill through its Section 28 classifies some information as “confidential commercial information” and leaves it to the discretion of BRAI officials to share information. It also has a clause where the authority chair and members will subscribe to an oath of secrecy. Critics say the oath is a measure to make biotech non-transparent in the country.
Aruna Roy, member of National Advisory Council (NAC), headed by UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, says, “The Bill is a travesty of transparency and democratic decision-making on a matter that will affect every citizen as it intends to promote use of modern biotechnology in agriculture.” Roy also wrote to Gandhi, saying the Bill has provisions to override the Right To Information (RTI) Act. Other flaws of the Bill include no mechanism for risk management and no say on issues related to genetically-modified organisms (GMO) imports and overrides the Biodiversity Act that places technology over environment.
Sridhar Radhakrishnan, convenor of Coalition for a GM-Free India, says instead of expressing a mandate to protect biosafety, the Bill accepts modern biotechnology. “It overlooks the increasing evidence on the impact of GMOs on health, biodiversity and lacks scientific assessment to look at the safety and need of GMOs before their release,” he says, adding, “this bill is anti-farmer and anti-consumer. If passed, it will result in people losing control over food choices and seed sovereignty.”
Given the circumstances, the rising demand is to either withdraw the Bill or send it to a joint parliamentary committee to ensure all concerns are addressed. Officials in the science ministry say only Parliament can decide the fate of the Bill.
US State Dept is Monsanto's global marketing arm
NOTE: Biotech Ambassadors report – US version:
http://foodandwaterwatch.org/reports/biotech-ambassadors/
Biotech Ambassadors report – EU version:
http://foodandwaterwatch.org/reports/biotech-ambassadors-eu/
---
---
Taxpayer Dollars Are Helping Monsanto Sell Seeds Abroad
Tom Philpott
Mother Jones, May 18 2013
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/05/us-state-department-global-marketing-arm-gmo-seed-industry
Nearly two decades after their mid-'90s debut in US farm fields, GMO seeds are looking less and less promising. Do the industry's products ramp up crop yields? The Union of Concerned Scientists looked at that question in detail for a 2009 study. Short answer: marginally, if at all. Do they lead to reduced pesticide use? No, in fact, the opposite.
And why would they, when the handful of companies that dominate GMO seeds—Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, Dow—are also among the globe's largest pesticide makers? Monsanto's Roundup Ready seeds have given rise to an upsurge of herbicide-resistant superweeds and a torrent of herbicides, while insects are showing resistance to its pesticide-containing Bt crops and causing farmers to boost insecticide use. What about wonder crops that would be genetically engineered to withstand drought or require less nitrogen fertilizer? So far, they haven't panned out—and there's little evidence they ever will.
Yet despite all of these problems, the US State Department has been essentially acting as a de facto global-marketing arm of the ag-biotech industry, complete with figures as high-ranking as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton mouthing industry talking points as if they were gospel, a new Food & Water Watch analysis of internal documents finds.
The FWW report is based on an analysis of diplomatic cables, written between 2005 and 2009 and released in the big Wikileaks document dump of 2010. FWW sums it up: "a concerted strategy to promote agricultural biotechnology overseas, compel countries to import biotech crops and foods that they do not want, and lobby foreign governments—especially in the developing world—to adopt policies to pave the way to cultivate biotech crops."
The report brims with examples of the US government promoting the biotech industry abroad. Here are a few:
"The State Department encouraged embassies to bring visitors—especially reporters—to the United States, which has "proven to be effective ways of dispelling concerns about biotech [crops]". The State Department organized or sponsored 28 junkets from 17 countries between 2005 and 2009. In 2008, when the US embassy was trying to prevent Poland from adopting a ban on biotech livestock feed, the State Department brought a delegation of high-level Polish government agriculture officials to meet with the USDA in Washington, tour Michigan State University and visit the Chicago Board of Trade. The USDA sponsored a trip for El Salvador’s Minister of Agriculture and Livestock to visit Pioneer Hi-Bred’s Iowa facilities and to meet with USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack that was expected to "pay rich dividends by helping [the Minister] clearly advocate policy positions in our mutual bilateral interests.' "
Another example: this 2009 cable, referenced in the FWW report, shows a State Department functionary casually requesting US taxpayer funds to combat a popular effort to require labeling of GMO foods in Hong Kong—and boasting about successfully having done so in the past. Why focus on the GMO policy of a quasi-independent city? Hong Kong's rejection of a mandatory labeling policy "could have influential spillover effects in the region, including Taiwan, mainland China and Southeast Asia," the functionary writes, adding that her consulate had "intentionally designed [anti-labeling] programs other embassies and consulates" could use.
The report also shows how the State Department hotly pushed GMOs in low-income African nations—in the face of popular opposition. In a 2009 cable, FWW shows, the US embassy in Nigeria bragged that "U.S. government support in drafting [pro-biotech] legislation as well as sensitizing key stakeholders through a public outreach program" helped pass an industry-friendly law. Working with USAID—an independent US government agency that operates under the State Department's authority—the State Department pushed similar efforts in Kenya and Ghana, FWW shows.
Yet, as FWW points out, in so aggressively pushing biotech solutions abroad, the State Department is bucking against the global consensus of ag-development experts as expressed by the 2009 International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), a three-year project, convened by the World Bank and the United Nations and completed in 2008, to assess what forms of agriculture would best meet the world's needs in a time of rapid climate change. The IAASTD took such a skeptical view of deregulated biotech as a panacea for the globe's food challenges that Croplife America, the industry's main industry lobbying group, saw fit to denounce it. The US government backed up the biotech lobby on this one—just three of the 61 governments that participated refused to sign the IAASTD: the Bush II-led United States, Canada, and Australia.
So why are our corps of diplomats behaving as if they answered to Monsanto's shareholders with regard to ag policy? My guess is GMO seed technology, dominated by Monsanto, as well as our towering corn and soy crops (which are at this point almost completely from GM seeds) are two of the few areas of global trade wherein the US still generates a trade surplus. The website of the State Department's Biotechnology and Textile Trade Policy Division puts it like this:
"In 2013, the United States is forecasted to export $145 billion in agricultural products, which is $9.2 billion above fiscal 2012 exports, and have a trade surplus of $30 billion in our agricultural sector."
I guess US presidents, Democratic and Republican alike, are bent on preserving and expanding that surplus. President Obama altered much about US foreign policy when he took over for President Bush in 2009; but he doesn't seem to have changed a thing when it comes to pushing biotech on the global stage. And the impulse is not confined to the State Department. Back in 2009, when Obama needed to appoint someone to lead agriculture negotiations at the US Trade Office, he went straight to the ag-biotech industry, tapping the vice president for science and regulatory affairs at CropLife America, Islam A. Siddiqui, who still holds that post today.
Meanwhile, the State Department operates an Office of Agriculture, Biotechnology and Textile Trade Affairs, which exists in part to "maintain open markets for U.S. products derived from modern biotechnology" and "promote acceptance of this promising technology." The office's biotechnology page is larded with language that reads like boilerplate from Monsanto promo material: "Agricultural biotechnology helps farmers increase yields, enabling them to produce more food per acre while reducing the need for chemicals, pesticides, water, and tilling. This provides benefits to the environment as well as to the health and livelihood of farmers."
Monsanto loses in Supreme Court over illegally collected royalties/Pest problems due to GM maize
1. Monsanto suffers another defeat in court over patents
2. Emergency survey to control Helicoverpa caterpillar during Aprosoja tour
NOTE: Monsanto and GM crops have suffered a double blow in Brazil.
First, Brazil's Supreme Court has ruled in favour of soy producers in a class action they brought against Monsanto over the company's illegal collection of royalty payments for Roundup Ready soy. The court ruled that Monsanto will have to pay back to the farmers double the amount of illegally collected royalties (item 1).
Second, the cotton bollworm/corn earworm caterpillar, Helicoverpa zea, is decimating crops of various types (item 2). The president of the Brazilian Group of Cotton Consultants, Celito Eduardo Breda, has previously blamed the spread of GM Bt maize for the plague, among other factors. Breda said the Bt maize killed off a natural enemy of Helicoverpa zea, allowing the pest to spread uncontrolled. The plague is said to have caused huge losses to Brazilian farmers:
http://gmwatch.org/latest-listing/52-2013/14683
---
---
1. Monsanto suffers another defeat in court over patents
The Supreme Court judges reaffirmed the original decision of February, that the request for extension of the patent of Monsanto's RR soya is illegal
Ascom Aprosoja and Famato, 17/05/2013
http://www.aprosoja.com.br/comunicacao/noticias/Paginas/Monsanto-sofre-nova-derrota-judicial-em-rela%E7%E3o-a-patentes.aspx
[Slightly edited and cut Google translation of Portuguese original]
The [Brazilian] Supreme Court of Justice (STJ) ruled on Thursday 16 May that Monsanto's claim to extend the life of the patent on GM soybeans was illegal. In a unanimous ruling, the four judges of the Third Instance reaffirmed the initial decision of Judge Ricardo Cueva Villas Boas, who ruled that the 20-year patent, registered on August 31, 1990, had expired.
The appeal brought by Monsanto against Judge Cueva's decision had aimed to invalidate Brazilian legislation on patents.
The president of Famato, Rui Prado, said the decision of the Supreme Court reinforces what the soy producers have been fighting for since last year - for the judicial system to recognize that the patent had expired. "This decision of the Supreme Court is an important recognition. We advocate fair collection of royalties and practices supported by Brazilian patent law," said Prado.
According to the vice president of Aprosoja, Ricardo Tomczyk, the unanimous vote of the Superior Court judges has put an end to this matter. "The Supreme Court has put an end to the persistent decision by Monsanto to violate the law. The firm position of the STJ proves that we are on track and have won our rights," he added.
Explanation of the case - The Famato [farmers' union] in partnership with the rural Trade Unions and Aprosoja, filed in September 2012 a class action … requesting the suspension of the payment of royalties and fee for the use of the Roundup Ready (RR) technology, as well as the return [to the farmers] of double the amount improperly charged.
The claim was based on technical and legal study commissioned by Famato and Aprosoja-MT, confirming that the intellectual property rights relating to RR technology, owned by Monsanto, expired on September 1, 2010, making it public domain. Thus, the collection of fees by the company for use of this technology and for royalties is improper.
---
---
2. Emergency survey to control Helicoverpa caterpillar during Aprosoja tour
Delegation of the Ministry of Agriculture visits municipalities of Mato Grosso to check incidence of pests in crops
Ascom Aprosoja, 16/05/2013
http://www.aprosoja.com.br/comunicacao/noticias/Paginas/Mapa-alerta-para-controle-de-lagarta-helicoverpa-durante-Circuito-Aprosoja.aspx
[Excerpt from slightly edited Google translation of Portuguese original]
Farmers in Mato Grosso must pay attention to the control of the Helicoverpa caterpillar, which attacks all crops produced in the state (soybean, cotton, corn, sunflower, and millet). According to the coordinator of the Commission of Plant Health Protection of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (MAPA), Wanderlei Dias Guerra, this pest has caused major damage in Bahia and already there is concern over the incidence and need for spraying in the municipalities of Petrovina in Mato Grosso.
A delegation of the Ministry of Agriculture, consisting of the coordinator and four trainees in agronomy, is touring various cities of Mato Grosso, along with Aprosoja, to survey the distribution of Helicoverpa attacks. "Our concern is that the producers were unable to identify the pest and initially put in place controls that were not effective," said Guerra...
Page 1 of 1315
