News Items
What Bill Gates doesn't know about GMOs
Saturday, 04 February 2012 18:19
The Flip-Side: What Bill Gates Doesn't Know About GMOsTake Part, 2 February 2012
http://www.takepart.com/article/2012/02/02/the-flip-side-what-bill-gates-doesnt-know-about-gmos
*The Pesticide Action Network explores the side of the story Gates left out last week.
If you assume that Bill Gates is so well informed about all his philanthropic targets that you take his word at face value, you would be in good company, but you might be terribly wrong. Organizations well versed in the agricultural issues facing developing nations are saying his annual letter, released last week, is completely mistaken when it asserts that a lack of support for GMO crop development is responsible, in part, for allowing world hunger to endure. We interviewed Heather Pilatic, Ph.D., co-director of the Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA), to show us the other, important side of the story.
TakePart: In the introduction to his letter, Bill Gates cites the Green Revolution of the 1960s and '70s, saying scientists created new seed varieties for rice, wheat, and maize, and that this resulted in increased crop yield and a decrease in extreme poverty around the world. Do you agree that this is a model to use moving forward?
Heather Pilatic: The Green Revolution is a story that some people like to tell, but it has little basis in historical fact. Take the Green Revolution’s origins in 1940s Mexico, for instance. It was not really about feeding the world; Mexico was a food exporter at the time. Rather, the aims included stabilizing restive rural populations in our neighbor to the south, and making friends with a government that at the time was selling supplies to the World War II Axis powers and confiscating oil fields held by Standard Oil (a funding source for the Rockefeller Foundation, one of the key architects of the Green Revolution).
We can also learn from India, the Green Revolution’s next stop after Mexico. India embraced the Green Revolution model of chemical-intensive agriculture. Now it is the world’s second biggest rice grower with surplus grain in government warehouses. Yet India has more starving people than sub-Saharan Africa—at more than 200 million, that’s nearly a quarter of its population. History shows that a narrow focus on increasing crop yield through chemical-seed packages reduces neither hunger nor poverty.
So no, we do not agree that the Green Revolution offers a promising model for addressing poverty.
TakePart: Bill Gates is urging that more money be donated to agricultural innovation, including crop GMOs, because "one in seven people will continue living needlessly on the edge of starvation." Of course, this argument worries all of us. Will you explain PANNA's perspective?
Heather Pilatic: We could not agree with Gates more on the first point. Investment in agriculture in the developing world is enormously efficient and more impactful on the ground than investment in just about any other sector. It is also true that more people than ever before are going hungry, needlessly. We have enough food to go around now. We disagree with Gates on two points—one scientific and one political.
First, the science. Most of the rest of the world's experts agree that GMOs are not what the world's poor need to feed themselves. The science simply doesn't bear this claim out. Our staff scientist was a lead author in the most comprehensive analysis of global agriculture ever undertaken, the UN & World Bank's International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (the IAASTD). After four years and with the input of over 400 experts, and reams of evidence, the IAASTD concluded that the developing world's best bet for feeding itself in the 21st century was explicitly not the kind of chemically intensive farming that accompanies GMO seeds. Rather, these experts found that smaller scale, farmer-driven, knowledge-intensive, ecological agriculture is one of the most promising ways forward for the developing world in particular. The U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food has reported that ecological farming can double food production with in 10 years. This is the kind of agriculture we should be investing in.
Second, the political—and this cuts two ways. We must finally recognize that hunger is a problem of poverty and access to resources, especially land, not agricultural yield. The solution to world hunger is a political one: stop kicking farmers off their land and dumping product on the world market that puts them out of business; protect farmers’ rights to save and exchange seed; kick the bankers out of food-crop commodities speculation, they're playing roulette with our food system; write fair trade policies; listen to the world's poor, they know what they need...in short, democratize food and farming if you want to address hunger.
Finally, here in the U.S., kick the farm lobby out of Congress and the pesticide industry out of our federal regulatory agencies (EPA & USDA). Together, these two special interests have a chokehold on U.S. farm, aid and trade policy, and dominate our agricultural research agenda in ways that make it possible for a smart man like Bill Gates to believe and prosyletize on behalf of an approach to agriculture that A, the rest of the world knows is defunct; and B, has failed—after 14 years of commercialization and billions of dollars in public research funding—to deliver on a single one of its promises to the public.
TakePart: Gates says that resistance to these technologies is causing people in developing countries to suffer the brunt of the repercussions to climate change (i.e. crop destruction from droughts and floods), when they "had nothing to do with climate change happening." Tell us your take on that.
Heather Pilatic: It is absolutely true that the people who had nothing to do with creating climate change are and will remain on the front lines. This fact is one of our generation's greatest injustices and we have to face that. The notion that global resistance to GMO technologies is causing the developing world to bear the brunt of climate change is a form of political blackmail. It is so far-fetched and ideologically inflected that we have a hard time believing that Gates truly believes that talking point.
TakePart: What is the best way to protect high-yield crops from disease?
Heather Pilatic: The best insurance against pests and disease is healthy soil and integrated pest management—a whole-farm approach. You need a diverse and resilient ecosystem both below and above ground to get good yields and protect crops. In practice, that means rotating crops, building soil organic matter, and creating spaces for beneficial insects like bees and natural pest controllers, like bats (who eat insects) and owls (who eat rodents).
In contrast to these tried-and-true farming practices, "Green Revolution"-style agriculture undermines soil fertility and accelerates the pesticide treadmill. It is the opposite of the kind of knowledge-intensive, ecological agriculture described by the IAASTD. The fact that the Gates foundation has spent ten times as much on GM technologies ($214 million since 2005) as they have allocated for soil research ($20 million) indicates a profound misalignment of priorities-agronomically speaking.
Will farmers reach justice in Monsanto lawsuit?
Saturday, 04 February 2012 16:38
NOTE: You can listen to an excellent discussion of this lawsuit on Occupy Wall Street Radio http://archive.wbai.org/files/mp3/wbai_120201_183052owsr.mp3---
---
OSGATA et al v Monsanto: Will Farmers Receive Justice?
OSGATA, 03 February 2012
http://www.enewspf.com/latest-news/science-a-environmental/30640
WASHINGTON - It was standing room only as family farmers from around North America filled Federal Court Judge Naomi Buchwald's courtroom in Manhattan on Tuesday, January 31. The topic was the landmark organic community lawsuit OSGATA et al v. Monsanto and the Oral Argument Monsanto's pre-trial motion to dismiss which it filed last July. Plaintiffs from at least 21 States and Provinces were in the courtroom including Oregon, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Saskatchewan, Missouri, Iowa, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine. Meanwhile, outside the courthouse in Foley Square, hundreds turned out for the Citizen's Assembly of support for family farmers, an action organized by several groups including Occupy Food Justice. A depiction of Monsanto's infamous 100 year history including Agent Orange, Dioxin, PCBs and now gene-spliced food was presented. Speakers addressed topics ranging from sustainable agriculture to risks associated with GMOs to issues of good food and food justice. After the conclusion of the courtroom Oral Argument, the plaintiff farmers and their legal team from the Public Patent Foundation provided details and comments on the courtroom proceedings, to supporters at the Citizens' Assembly.
"We were very pleased that the court granted our request to have oral argument regarding Monsanto's motion to dismiss our case today," said Daniel Ravicher of the Public Patent Foundation, lead lawyer for the Plaintiffs. "The judge graciously permitted both parties to raise all the points they wished in a session that lasted over an hour. While Monsanto's attorney attempted to portray the risk organic farmers face from being contaminated and then accused of patent infringement as hypothetical and abstract, we rebutted those arguments with the concrete proof of the harm being suffered by our clients in their attempts to avoid such accusations. The judge indicated she will issue her ruling within two months. We expect she will deny the motion and the case will then proceed forward. If she should happen to grant the motion, we will most likely appeal to the Court of Appeals who will review her decision without deference."
The large group of 83 Plaintiffs in OSGATA v. Monsanto is comprised of individual family farmers, independent seed companies and agricultural organizations. The total number of members within the plaintiff group exceeds 300,000 and includes many thousands of certified organic farmers. The Plaintiffs are not seeking any monetary compensation. Instead, the farmers are pre-emptively suing Monsanto and seeking court protection from Monsanto-initiated patent infringement lawsuits under the Declaratory Judgment Act.
President of lead Plaintiff, Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, Maine organic seed farmer Jim Gerritsen was in the courtroom and witnessed the Oral Argument. Gerritsen had this to say, "Our lawyer did a good job explaining the current injustice farmers face. We have a right to be secure on our farms and to be free from Monsanto's GMO trespass. If we become contaminated by Monsanto, not only is the value of our organic seed crop extinguished but we could also be sued by Monsanto for patent infringement because their contamination results in our 'possession' of their GMO technology. We have farmers who have stopped growing organic corn, organic canola and organic soybeans because they can't risk being sued by Monsanto. It's not fair and it's not right. Family farmers need justice and we deserve protection from the court."
Early on in the legal process, Monsanto was asked by lawyers for the Plaintiffs to provide a binding legal covenant not to sue. Monsanto refused this request and in doing so made clear that it would not give up its option to sue contaminated innocent family farmers who want nothing to do with Monsanto's GMO technology.
In a remarkable demonstration of solid support by American citizens for family farmers, co-plaintiff Food Democracy Now! has collected over 100,000 signatures on it's petition supporting the rights of family farmers against Monsanto. "For the past 12,000 years farmers have saved the best seeds each year to increase yields and improve traits for the food we eat," said Dave Murphy, founder and Executive Director of Food Democracy Now! "In 1996, when Monsanto sold its first patented genetically modified (GMO) seed to farmers, this radically changed the idea of how farmers planted and saved seed. Less than two decades later, Monsanto's aggressive patent infringement lawsuits have created a climate of fear in rural America among farmers. It's time for that to end. Farmers should not have to live in fear because they are growing our food."
A complete 36 page transcript of the Oral Argument is available here.
Further information on OSGATA et al. v. Monsanto is available at osgata.org and pubpat.org.
###
The Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association is a not-for-profit agricultural organization made up of organic farmers, seed growers, seed businesses and supporters. OSGATA is committed to developing and protecting organic seed and it's growers in order to ensure the organic community has access to excellent quality organic seed free of contaminants and adapted to the diverse needs of local organic agriculture. www.osgata.org
Data from Monsanto don't meet basic scientific standards
Saturday, 04 February 2012 15:31
Data from Monsanto do not meet basic scientific standardsGeneWatch and Testbiotech, 2 February 2012
http://www.genewatch.org/article.shtml?als [cid]=569457&als[itemid]=569586
*Rising doubts about safety of genetically engineered plants
Bruxelles - In a letter to Commissioner Dalli, Testbiotech and GeneWatch UK give new evidence of EFSA's failure to perform risk assessment of genetically engineered plants. A detailed analysis of original documents as filed by Monsanto for their genetically engineered maize sold under brand of Genuity VT Triple PRO shows that crucial documents do not meet the standards of so called Good Laboratory Practice (GLP standards). As for example the company states in their investigation of the combinatorial toxicity of insecticides produced in the plants, "there was no intention to conduct this study according to Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) Standards." Nevertheless the data were accepted by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the plants were accepted as being safe.
"EU Regulations require that highest possible standards are applied during risk assessment. But EFSA accepted data for risk assessment of a questionable product that would have been rejected for any scientific publication", said Helen Wallace from GeneWatch UK. "In conclusion, current practice is not in line with legal requirements."
The detailed analysis of the documents was conducted after the EU Commission rejected a formal complaint of GeneWatch (UK) and Testbiotech against the market authorisation of Monsanto's maize that is a combination of two genetically engineered plants (MON89034XMON88017, nickname SynthiToxStax). The Commission is of the opinion that risk assessment was conducted in accordance with EU regulations.
Now a tabled overview on the factual findings about SynthiToxStax, sent to the Commission today, shows the opposite. It is also shown that statements being made by EFSA's own experts give evidence that EFSA's current procedure of risk assessment is based on a flawed concept: The investigation of substantial equivalence is based on a comparison between the genetically engineered plants and their conventional counterparts. This comparison is regarded as the most crucial element in risk assessment as performed by EFSA. However, as a quote from one of the leading members of EFSA's GMO panel, Joe Perry, shows, this concept is flawed because EFSA is accepting a database set up by the International Life Science Institute (ILSI) for this purpose. In a public hearing in March 2011 Joe Perry stated that "at the present time we can't trust the ILSI database". But it was just this database from ILSI that was used by Monsanto to show safety of its SynthiToxStax. ILSI has strong ties with the biotech industry.
"While even statements from EFSA's own experts show that current risk assessment is not reliable, the Commission is still defending the opinions of the Food Safety Authority. So which interests does the Commission really serve?" asked Christoph Then from Testbiotech.
The genetically engineered maize is sold by Monsanto under brand Genuity VT Triple PRO Corn (event MON89034 x MON 88017). It produces a synthetic toxin, intended to kill insect pests. This maize was approved for usage in food and feed by the EU Commission on 17th of June 2011. It produces a combination of three different insecticidal toxins, one of which is synthesised artificially. Further, the plants are made tolerant to the herbicide glyphosate (known as Roundup).
Contact:
Helen Wallace, + 44 7903 311584, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Christoph Then, + 49 151 54638040, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .,
Joint letter to EU Commissioner Dalli: http://www.testbiotech.de/node/616
Tabled overview on risk assessment of SynthiToxStax:http://www.testbiotech.de/node/615
Original complaint from Testbiotech and GeneWatch UK, July 2011: http://www.testbiotech.org/node/528
Answer from EU Commissioner Dalli, November 2011: http://www.testbiotech.de/node/617
Tabled overview of comments on new draft EU Regulation on implementing risk assessment of genetically engineered plants: http://www.testbiotech.org/node/614
Steve Chu fulfills Eisenhower's darkest nightmare
Friday, 03 February 2012 14:21
NOTE: This post is taken from Richard Brenneman's excellent blog which bears this incisive quote from Aldous Huxley: "Armaments, universal debt and planned obsolescence - those are the three pillars of Western prosperity."Brenneman is a journalist and author in the San Francisco Bay Area and as such has covered the huge controversy surrounding the Energy Biosciences Institute. EBI is funded primarily by BP as part of a joint initiative that includes the University of California, Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It is one of the largest joint initiatives between a private corporation and a public university in history, and follows on from UC Berkeley's previous hugely controversial tie-up with GM giant Syngenta.
The EBI's aims include the development of biofuels via synthetic biology - extreme genetic engineering. Local people as well as UC Berkeley's students and staff have expressed strong opposition to the planned EBI building which would also house a phalanx of BP scientists.
Steve Chu is US Secretary of Energy.
---
---
Steve Chu fulfills Eisenhower's darkest nightmare
Richard Brenneman
eats shoots n leaves, 2 February 2012
http://richardbrenneman.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/steve-chu-fulfills-eisenhowers-darkest-nightmare/
The headline of the announcement from Julie Chao of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory [LBNL] says it all: "National Labs Seek Closer Industry Ties."
In his farewell address to the nation, Dwight David Eisenhower sounded the now-familiar alarm of the danger of growing power of the military/industrial complex, a power that might be said to have its foundation in Berkeley, a point we'll take up later.
But less familiar to most is that the military and industry were only two of three components of the force force Eisenhower saw gaining ascendancy over the nation.
Here's the part of that same address which rarely, if ever, gets noted [emphasis added]:
"Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society."
The national labs operate under the aegis of the U.S. Department of Energy, and the Secretary of Energy who is greasing the skids for Eisenhower's nightmare is Steve Chu, who came to Washington from the helm of LBNL, where he played a leading role in landing the $500 million BP grant now being used to build the Energy Biosciences Institute [EBI].
The EBI's where corporate and academic scientists are told to create new crop-based fuels for BP [which gets first dibs on all the research] and other oil giants. Needless to say, the ecological devastation on Africa, Latin America, and Asia will be immense in the land grab that follows any successful development of fuel crops and the microbes to turn them into stuff to fill our tanks.
And LBNL will be building a whole new campus on the San Francisco Bay shore in nearby Richmond specifically focused on genetic engineering to develop fuels and other products that will further enrich America's bloated corporate elite.
Imagining the brave new corporate world
With that as preamble, here's Chao's announcement:
"The network of national laboratories run by the Department of Energy (DOE) has spawned countless scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs in the last 80 years. Now with the global economic climate more competitive than ever and the need for energy solutions more urgent, the labs are looking to develop closer ties with industry in an effort to speed up the pace at which discoveries reach the marketplace.
To kick off the conversation Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is hosting the Materials for Energy Applications workshop from Jan. 30 to Feb. 1 in Berkeley. The conference will be an opportunity for representatives from all 17 DOE laboratories to have in-depth discussions with dozens of representatives from the private sector, ranging from startups such as Alphabet Energy to smaller Silicon Valley companies such as Nanosys to major corporations such as Chevron, Procter & Gamble, Honeywell and United Technologies.
'In this competitive international environment, we have to make sure that what the labs develop gets quickly into the hands of industry so industry can turn it to the benefit of the country,' said Berkeley Lab Deputy Director Horst Simon. 'We need to be better at bridging the gap between the basic research done at the labs and the applied research done by industry.'
The goals of the workshop are tri-fold: to increase industry awareness of relevant capabilities within the DOE national laboratories, to deepen the national laboratories’ understanding of the technical challenges facing industry, and to identify and improve paths forward for collaboration.
'Public-private partnerships are absolutely critical to accelerating advanced materials developments, especially in the energy space,' said Theresa Kotanchek, Vice President Sustainable Technologies & Innovation Sourcing at The Dow Chemical Company who is also on the organizing committee for the conference. 'Events like the Materials for Energy Applications workshop lay the foundation on which these innovative partnerships can be built.'
The idea for the industry-laboratory workshop was formed last year when Secretary of Energy Steven Chu hosted a dinner with senior industry executives and laboratory directors to discuss ways to strengthen the country’s innovation ecosystem. Executives expressed desire to work with the labs but also said it was difficult to access the labs and find the right contacts.
Thus was born the idea to hold a series of workshops to enhance mutual understanding and close cultural gaps between government-funded research and private enterprise. Some of the cultural differences arise from their fundamentally divergent missions—labs are engaged in more basic, long-term research while the private sector is looking to innovate for more business-oriented purposes.
'We have recognized over time there are very different cultures and missions between the labs and private industry, making alignment of interests sometimes difficult,' said Cheryl Fragiadakis, director of technology transfer at Berkeley Lab. 'I think the direct face-to-face communication will really help improve the understanding of the two cultures. Also, many people in private industry do not know how open the labs really are.'
Simon added that many companies don't realize how much intellectual property is available for licensing at the national labs: 'We need to make sure our industry colleagues know that each lab has a technology transfer department and that there are literally hundreds of inventions ready to be licensed,' he said. Simon said he would also like to see joint public-private R&D projects come out of the workshop.
The Materials for Energy Applications workshop will include a panel on 'Technology Gaps Ripe for Industry Collaboration' and poster sessions on areas such as lightweight materials, low-power electronics and carbon capture and sequestration. 'We're trying to do new things in areas such as photovoltaics, batteries and energy efficiency technology for buildings. All these depend on developing new materials,' said Simon. 'This is one of the strengths of national labs; in particular, in the materials science area, the five nanoscience research centers created in early 2000s—including the Molecular Foundry at Berkeley Lab—have developed a lot of new ideas.'
The second workshop in the series will be hosted by Oak Ridge National Laboratory on the topic of modeling and simulation. It will take place March 7-8 in Austin, Texas."
Industry has responded positively, and representatives from at least four dozen companies will be attending the Berkeley workshop. 'To effectively leverage our capabilities we must rapidly connect the talent with the energy opportunities and overcome barriers to collaboration,' said Ned Niccolls, Senior Consulting Materials Engineer at Chevron who is also on the organizing committee. 'These are key to U.S. competitiveness, and to help meet the huge scale of the world's future energy demands.'
Chu will give a keynote address on Feb. 1. From Berkeley Lab, Lab Director Paul Alivisatos and Molecular Foundry Director Omar Yaghi will give keynotes on Jan. 31. Speakers from industry include Michael McQuade of United Technologies, Steve Koonin of the Institute for Defense Analyses, and Vinod Khosla, whose venture capital firm Khosla Ventures has invested in dozens of cleantech startups. Several other venture capital firms will also be attending.
An added benefit of these workshops is that they will spur the national labs to work more closely together rather than in isolation of each other. “In the past, integration of the labs has been lacking,” Simon said. 'Now we're doing more to stress the lab complex as one system, and there’s a new collaborative spirit. Improved industry collaboration is just one way the national labs can help strengthen the country’s technology base.'"
But the story gets even stranger
Note that yesterday's keynote address feature Chu and Steve Koonin, identified only as "of the Institute for Defense Analyses." Koonin, it should be noted, is a former Cal Tech scientist who was brought to Berkeley to serve on BP's payroll as the company's chief scientist at the EBI.
Consider the following, from a post from two years back:
"EBI Director Chris Somerville, the head of the public aspect of the program, repeatedly told audiences that the program was designed to make the U.S. energy independent growing crops on marginal land “east of the Mississippi [where] there is adequate rainfall to grow very highly productive species.”
Somerville repeated his claim at a June 13, 2007, breakfast session in Washington sponsored by the U.S. Energy Association, only to be immediately corrected by Steve Koonin, then the head of BP’s secret proprietary research at the EBI.
'BP is a global company,' he said. 'And of course, while the U.S. may be currently 25 percent of worldwide petrol use or crude use, there’s a whole other world out there. And so we are interested in feedstocks and fuels for many different locales around the globe.'
Asked if BP was looking at Africa, Koonin responded: 'If you look at a picture of the globe … it's pretty easy to see where the green parts are, and those are the places where one would perhaps optimally grow feedstocks.'"
So Koonin, the academic turned corporateer, was frank to admit BP's goal for gaining control of the globe's "green parts" for the profits of Big Oil.
After Barack Obama won the presidency, he brought Chu on board as Secretary of Energy, and Chu prompotly hired Koonin to run the department's science programs.
So we were surprised to learn that Koonin is now "of the IDA."
And what, you might ask, is the IDA?
Well, it's a Pentagon-created private think tank we only learned of five years ago when we noted that the Association of Bay Area Governments, a state-created alliance of city and county governments in the San France metropolitan region, had lent it nearly $12 million.
As we reported at the time for the Berkeley Daily Planet:
"The IDA is a Pentagon-funded think tank whose head at the time ABAG arranged the funds was subsequently forced to resign after a private watchdog group revealed he had advocated for a controversial jet fighter program in which he held direct financial interests.
The IDA is a federally created non-profit based in Virginia.
According to its own website, the organization is a think tank which traces its roots to 1947, when Secretary of Defense and Cold War architect James Forrestal created the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group.
In 1958, the group tasked the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with creating a non-profit think tank to work with university scientists on critical national security problems.
IDA is now entirely federally funded and conducts research for the Pentagon, much of it classified.
In July 2006, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), a non-profit private watchdog group, released a report called 'Preying on the Taxpayer: The F-22A Raptor.'
That study revealed that IDA President and retired Admiral Dennis C. Blair owned stock in two companies with financial interests in the jet fighter project during the time when IDA had urged the Pentagon to fund it in an analysis which the Defense Department paid for.
As a result of the ensuing bad publicity, Blair resigned first from the board of EDO corporation, which manufactures missile-launching gear for the fighter, and then from IDA itself.
POGO's findings were confirmed in December in a report by the Pentagon's Office of the Inspector General, which concluded that he had violated conflict of interest rules by his involvement in reports on companies in which he had financial interests.
In September, 2006, one year after ABAG loaned the $12 million, Blair resigned from IDA. Replacing him was retired Gen. Larry D. Welch, a former Air Force Chief of Staff.
According to a Dec. 20 report by R. Jeffrey Smith of the Washington Post, Blair donated his EDO stock to a fund for injured veterans and surrendered his stock options.
One of the IDA's specialties is communications security, and the organization helped the Pentagon implement battlefield command and control systems used in the occupation of Iraq, according to the Spring, 2006, issue of IDA Research Notes.
The non-profit also analyzed communications systems used in the invasion itself."
And what's Koonin thinking about these days?
Social engineering, judging by a December interview he gave David Kramer of physicstoday:
"My interests are now infusing the social sciences and policy together with technology. For some of our biggest problems, whether energy or other big problems in society, the technology is in many ways the easy part. The rate-limiting steps for many of our problems are societal: How people behave, what incentives there are, etc. I think the social sciences have a lot to bring to that discussion that has not really been exploited yet. That's the direction I'm headed in; it's still science, and it's still in some ways goal-driven. But we've got to pay attention and better understand the human issues here: Policy, behavior, economics, perception, and how we fuse that with technology. I'm looking for a venue in which to execute that program, and several universities seem to be pretty interested."
It simply doesn't get any scarier than that. Chu, as head of the federal agency that runs all the national labs, has finally fulfilled Ike's darkest vision about the future of America.
And given the lab's latest announcement, we're sure Koonin, who has now served all three components of the military/industrial/corporate axis, would find himself welcomed with open arms right back here at Cal.
We'll close with this, one of the greatest movie soliloquys ever, from Paddy Chayevsky's Network:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NKkRDMil0bw
Henry Miller raves but we should take him seriously
Thursday, 02 February 2012 18:27
NOTE: According to Henry I. Miller, who claims to "debunk the worst, most damaging, most hypocritical junk science", US National Public Radio is biased against genetic engineering.In an op-ed in Forbes, Miller tells us: "Among the most egregious previous transgressions by NPR of fair, professional journalism was a series of programs called 'The DNA Files,' which set up a false moral equivalence by juxtaposing the views of polymathic Princeton Professor Lee Silver against those of Margaret Mellon, long-time NGO-dweller, troglodyte and antagonist of any and all applications of biotechnology." According to Miller, "This pairing was a typical example of NPR's notion of 'balance' – really 'pseudo-balance': an eminent mainstream, nonideological academic versus an intransigent, anti-industry, anti-technology, uneducable activist."
Margaret Mellon is a senior scientist with the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. She holds a doctorate in molecular biology and a law degree from the University of Virginia. She was formerly a research fellow in molecular virology at Purdue University and program director for the Environmental Law Institute.
http://www.ucsusa.org/news/experts/margaret-mellon.html
What about Lee Silver? Miller describes Silver as "an eminent mainstream, nonideological academic". In reality, Silver, an avid supporter of genetic engineering, is such an extreme techno-utopian that he was already predicting a decade ago that by around 2010, parents would be able to genetically ensure their babies wouldn't grow up to be fat or alcoholic!!! By 2050, according to Silver, parents would be able to arrange to insert an extra gene into embryos within 24 hours of conception to make babies resistant to AIDS. And even further into the future, Silver looks forward to a day when there are two distinct species of humans - the 'Naturals' and the 'Gene-enriched,' an elite class whose parents bought them designer genes. The 'Naturals' will be untermensch, reduced to working as low-paid service providers or laborers. Such a scenario, according to Silver, is the inevitable result of an unbuckable free market.
http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/6705
http://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=260
If this seems to undermine Miller's description of Silver as "mainstream" and "nonideological", Marcy Darnovsky of the Center for Genetics and Society has a warning: "When I first read Silver's book, I imagined that these sorts of bizarre prognostications must be the musings of a lab researcher indulging in mad-scientist mode. I soon learned differently. They are not ravings from the margins of modern science, but emanations from its prestigious and respected core. Silver vividly and accurately represents a technical and political agenda for the human future that is shared by a disturbing number of Nobel laureate scientists, biotech entrepreneurs, social theorists, bioethicists, and journalists."
http://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=260
There are many who not only take the techno-utopian views of Miller and Silver seriously but actually share them, and their impact is not confined to ivory towers or even op-ed pieces in Forbes. Miller, after all, was the founding director of the US Food and Drug Administration's Office of Biotechnology.
http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Henry_I._Miller
---
---
NPR's Bias Against Genetic Engineering
Henry I. Miller
Forbes, 1 February 2012
http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2012/02/01/nprs-bias-against-genetic-engineering/
National Public Radio's treatment of scientific and environmental issues is puzzling — and irritating. While its programs cover global warming and the environment from every angle, embracing the most recent apocalyptic predictions, they permit continual attacks on genetic engineering applied to agriculture. This technology – an extension, or refinement, of widely used, less precise, less predictable techniques –is friendly to the environment, reduces CO2 released to the atmosphere and contributes to sustainable agriculture, yet NPR regularly exaggerates its risks and ignores its benefits.
The most recent example was the Jan. 3 program of syndicated talk show host Diane Rehm, a bash-fest dominated by her anti-genetic engineering chum who heads an organic yogurt company. Predictably, he advocated government-mandated labeling of foods that contain genetically engineered ingredients – never mind that such a (completely unnecessary) requirement would be costly, mislead consumers and violate the constitutional guarantee of commercial free speech.
Among the most egregious previous transgressions by NPR of fair, professional journalism was a series of programs called "The DNA Files," which set up a false moral equivalence by juxtaposing the views of polymathic Princeton Professor Lee Silver against those of Margaret Mellon, long-time NGO-dweller, troglodyte and antagonist of any and all applications of biotechnology. This pairing was a typical example of NPR's notion of "balance" – really "pseudo-balance": an eminent mainstream, nonideological academic versus an intransigent, anti-industry, anti-technology, uneducable activist.
Another abdication of fair, professional journalism occurred on Dec. 12, 2011, on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation.” That day the World Wildlife Fund’s Jason Clay appeared on the program and proceeded to bash the genetic engineering of plants. The subject of the segment was “A Planet Running Low on Water.”
Clay's rant, however, was completely misinformed, and ironic considering genetic engineering's greatest long-term boon to food security and the environment is the creation of new crop varieties that tolerate periods of drought and other water-related stresses.
Where water is scarce, the development of crop varieties that grow under conditions of low moisture or temporary drought could boost yields and lengthen the time that farmland is productive. Even where irrigation is feasible, plants that use water more efficiently are needed. Agriculture accounts for about 70% of the world’s freshwater consumption — and more in areas of intensive farming and arid or semi-arid conditions, such as California. Thus, the introduction of plants that grow with less water would free up much of that essential resource for other uses.
Where does genetic engineering come in? Plant biologists have identified genes that regulate water use and transferred them into important crop plants. These new varieties grow with smaller amounts of water or with lower-quality water, such as recycled water or water high in natural mineral salts. Egyptian researchers have shown that the transfer of a single gene from barley to wheat enables the plants to tolerate reduced watering for a longer period of time. This new, drought-resistant variety requires one-eighth the irrigation of conventional wheat and in some deserts can be cultivated with rainfall alone.
NPR has also aired a lot of uninformed commentary about a genetically engineered, fast-growing Atlantic salmon called AquAdvantage. This fish is indistinguishable from its wild cohorts except that it reaches its mature size in about 40% less time because it contains a new growth hormone gene from a Chinook salmon. Last year I discussed the scientific and regulatory aspects of the salmon on the NPR program “Forum,” at NPR’s KQED in San Francisco, paired with Consumers Union’s Michael Hansen, who, unlike me, possessed no credentials or credibility for discussing genetic engineering.
NPR aired another fishy salmon-focused segment during "Science Friday" on Dec. 9, 2011, pitting distinguished lab scientist Alison Van Eenennaam against Anne Kapuscinski, a "professor in sustainability science" (which sounds like something from The Onion) and veteran anti-science alarmist, fabulist and darling of radical environmental NGOs.
The basic scientific and risk-assessment questions surrounding the fast-growing salmon were resolved long ago, but you wouldn’t know it from the discussion. As responsible scientists are wont to do, Van Eenennaam made only carefully qualified, measured statements, while Kapuscinski prattled on and on about small risks and expressed concern about the regulatory approval of this salmon being a worrisome "precedent" for future animals. (In spite of the fact that every such animal undergoes an intensive — and excessive — case by case review by FDA.) Kapuscinski spouted a lot of obfuscatory gobbledygook about the need for worst-case scenarios that make about as much sense as planning for July snowstorms in Phoenix.
Furthermore, Kapuscinski never acknowledged that more efficient and productive fish-farming would greatly benefit human and environmental health. As Steven Salzberg, professor of medicine and bioinformatics at the Johns Hopkins Medical School, wrote in a Forbes commentary last year, “Sadly, environmentalists who oppose the [AquAdvantage] salmon don’t seem to realize that they are acting against their own interests. The same is true of the fishing industry. If they [succeed at banning genetically engineered fish], the result will be the eventual extinction of many wild fish species, with unpredictable consequences for the ocean’s ecosystem.” Wild Atlantic salmon is listed as an endangered species in the United States and is “threatened” in most of the rest of the North Atlantic.
Moreover, Randall Lutter (Resources for the Future) and Katherine Tucker (Tufts University) have concluded that the marketing of genetically engineered salmon “will lower salmon prices and increase consumption of salmon, an exceptionally good source of omega-3 fatty acids linked to lower risk of heart disease.” They “estimate that the resulting increase in omega-3 intake will prevent between 600 and 2,600 deaths per year in the United States.” But activists of the Mellon-Kapuscinski mold are unmoved by such considerations.
The management, producers and program hosts at NPR fail to realize that not every issue has two sides. They have instead attached equal value to various points of view in a clumsy attempt to approximate fairness. But decision-makers in academia and government as well as the media make such decisions routinely. For example, in the 21st century we no longer argue about whether vaccines prevent childhood diseases, and financial writers don’t cover companies whose business is the development of perpetual-motion machines. By pretending that certain viewpoints are legitimate long after they have been discredited, the media prolong the pseudo-controversies and mislead their audience.
Media bias on a variety of issues is nothing new, but NPR’s biotech-bashing is an affront to two of the constituencies that provide generous subsidies to the network — the federal government and various high-tech companies. Do they really want to support a forum for baseless, mendacious anti-technology propaganda?
Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He was the founding director of the FDA's Office of Biotechnology from 1989 to 1993.
Untangling India's Bt cotton fraud
Wednesday, 01 February 2012 19:24
NEWS FROM INDIA1.Untangling India's Bt cotton fraud - Latha Jishnu
2.Gandhi's Martyrdom day celebrated with a thought for safe food - Pari Trivedi
3.Monsanto and news as product placement - Chandrahas Choudhury
4.Industry meeting on GM crops for food security - Business Line
5.From food security to food justice - Ananya Mukherjee
NOTE: Some must read pieces here.
EXTRACTS: What is surprising is why the elite Bikaneri Narma, a popular variety cultivated in Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana, should have failed so badly when it was genetically modified. Although farmers cultivating the BN Bt and Bt NHH 44 for Mahabeej reported abysmally low yields, the ICAR meeting of December 2009 surmised that the poor performance was "due to inappropriate management practices". [item 1]
"...the BRAI bill is anti-Gandhi in nature and against the Swaraj [self-rule] movement as the bill will ensure that the foreign biotech companies shall gain a monopoly over our local agriculture..." [item 2]
"Some 100,000 women practise organic farming and more wish to. Kudumbashree farmers speak passionately about preventing ecological devastation through alternative farming methods." [item 5]
---
---
1.Untangling India's Bt cotton fraud
Latha Jishnu
Down To Earth, Issue: Feb 15, 2012
http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/untangling-india-s-bt-cotton-fraud
*ICAR's top research institutes and GEAC exposed in Bt cotton research scam
WHEN the much-awaited public sector Bt or genetically modified (GM) cotton was released for cultivation in 2009, there was celebration in the scientific establishment. And in the farming community Bikaneri Narma (BN Bt) was trumpeted as India's "completely indigenous Bt variety" and farmers were looking forward to cheaper cotton seeds. There was an added advantage to BN Bt: unlike the Bt hybrids of private companies the Bt variety could be reused by cultivators. Along with the variety, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) also released the Bt NHH 44 hybrid.
That euphoria was short-lived because the seeds were withdrawn from the market after the first season. The reasons given at the time were poor performance of the seed and reports of "contamination". There was also speculation at the time of sabotage. Now, almost two years down the line the full details of the unsavoury episode have emerged and, according to old ICAR hands, this is possibly the biggest research scandal involving as it does the Indian Agriculture Research Institute’s prestigious National Research Centre for Plant Biotechnology (NRCPB).
Along with NRCPB, whose director Polumetla Ananda Kumar supplied the unique Cry1Ac gene construct for the project, a premier academic institution, the University of Agricultural Sciences-Dharwad (UAS-D), is at the heart of this scandal. What the episode reveals is the hubris of some of the scientists involved in the project, the lack of scientific rigour in ICAR to understand the complexities of such a project and, worst of all, the conflict of interest between crop developers and the regulator, the Genetic Engineering Approval (now changed to Appraisal) Committee (GEAC). Also exposed is the GEAC’s lax scrutiny of data submitted by crop developers. Tainted, too, by association is the Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR), Nagpur, which conducted the field trials and was given the task of commercialising the Bt seeds.
It transpires that the primary reason why these seeds were pulled back was the widespread presence of MON 531, the genetic event that is the intellectual property (IP) of global agrobiotech giant Monsanto, instead of the BNLA 106 event claimed by the authors. MON 531 is the most widely used event in the hybrids sold in the Indian market. The BNLA 106 event was developed by UAS-D and NRCPB under ICAR's generously funded National Agricultural Technology Project. Event here means the site of integration of the Bt gene at a fixed location on the chromosome of the plant.
Documents available with Down To Earth (DTE) reveal that ICAR repeatedly glossed over complaints of poor performance and "contamination" of the seeds. Instead, there appears to have been an unseemly rush to take the seed to market—and with disastrous consequences.
The genesis of ICAR's ambitions to launch its GM cotton started more than a decade ago when Ishwarappa S Katageri of UAS-D developed the variety using a truncated Cry1Ac gene construct given by Ananda Kumar. This gene construct was reportedly "borrowed" from Illimar Altosaar, director, Agricultural Biotechnology Laboratories at the University of Ottawa, Canada. Altosaar is described by the university as "a world-renowned expert on plant biology and GM organisms".
The first time that research on this project was made public was at World Cotton Research Conference in Lubbock, Texas, in September 2007. That paper, Genetic Transformation of an Elite Indian Genotype of Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) for Insect Resistance, was presented by Katageri, the lead author. The other authors were H M Vamadevaiah (also from UAS-D), Basavaraj M Khadi (also from UAS-D who served as director of CICR from 2005 to 2008) and Ananda Kumar. The paper was published with same title in Current Science in December 2007.
The key issue that is being debated is how and where the "contamination” took place. But many scientists pooh-pooh the theory of contamination. They point out that Monsanto’s gene Cry1Ac could have appeared in National Agriculture Technology Project either inadvertently or through deliberate fraud. Inadvertent contamination could occur through cross-pollination by honeybees from Monsanto's Bt hybrids into any variety and result in the presence of just one to five per cent Monsanto’s gene/event in the seeds. This is because cotton pollen is heavy and sticky and wind-borne pollination is reportedly low.
In the case of a fraud, breeders could have used—or have been given—any of Monsanto's Bt hybrids in their programme to transfer the gene/event into any variety through simple plant breeding techniques. In tests conducted by ICAR in 2008 all the BN Bt seeds tested contained MON 531. Even as early as May 2005, results indicated that all the samples possible contained a full length Cry1Ac gene and the probability of the presence of MON 531 event in the material used, according to review undertaken by ICAR.
Khadi was told of this result in August 2005. Thereafter, BN Bt was field tested with all the material and seeds coming from UAS-D. Thereafter biosafety reports and field data was submitted to GEAC and approved for commercial cultivation on May 2, 2008. Khadi was then a member of GEAC and had pushed for approval. Two days later, Khadi sent 10 seeds to the Bt referral laboratory which confirmed presence of MON 531 in eight of the samples on May 5, although Avasthagen, a Bengaluru-based biotech company, said there was no such contamination in any of the samples.
At an urgent meeting convened by P L Gautam, then deputy director-general (crop sciences), ICAR, on May 21, the results were discussed with all those involved in the project. Although some of the participating scientists pointed out that Avasthagen data was flawed and urged that a third opinion be sought to reconfirm the event, the project directors insisted the UAS-D event was unique and different from that of other known Bt transgene events. Minutes of the meeting reveal that Gautam took the view that the presence of MON 531 was not an issue because of the evidence provided by Kumar. He then directed CICR to take forward the commercialisation of BN Bt and Bt NHH 44 "with full zeal".
UAS-D, accordingly, took up seed production and only by the original breeders. They produced 24,900 kg of BN Bt and 1,500 kg of Bt NHH 44, which was distributed to Mahabeej, the Maharashtra state-owned seed corporation, for multiplication. However, farmers growing these seeds for Mahabeej began complaining of poor performance—the yield was half to a quarter of the normal—and lack of purity of trait. These reports were checked by six independent teams from CICR. At an emergency meeting called by the Maharashtra government in October 2009 to institute remedial measures, Katageri convinced the officials that the BNLA 106 event had been tested and re-tested, with molecular analysis being carried out by NRCPB. But, finally, at December 2009 meeting chaired by Swapan Kumar Datta, deputy director-general (crop sciences), ICAR, it was decided to immediately suspend production and sale of the BN Bt seeds.
What is surprising is why the elite Bikaneri Narma, a popular variety cultivated in Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana, should have failed so badly when it was genetically modified. Although farmers cultivating the BN Bt and Bt NHH 44 for Mahabeej reported abysmally low yields, the ICAR meeting of December 2009 surmised that the poor performance was "due to inappropriate management practices".
Despite repeated mails and calls, ICAR chief S Ayyappan did not respond to questions from DTE about the action taken in such a serious case or if a fresh inquiry was under way. Ayyappan only took over as ICAR director-general on January 1, 2010, from Mangala Rai who served till December 31, 2009. Nor were the scientists involved in this fiasco— Khadi, Katageri or Kumar—willing to comment on the issue. Two of them said an inquiry was under way and it would not be proper to talk about the matter. Even Keshav Kranthi, who was acting director, CICR, when it packed the seeds received from UAS-D and despatched them to various seed multipliers, refused to comment on the issue.
---
---
2.Gandhi's Martyrdom day celebrated with a thought for safe food
via Pari Trivedi of Greenpeace India
New Delhi, 30 January 2012: On the martyrdom anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, Delhiites gathered at Dilli Haat to reflect on his philosophy of Swaraj and safe food. In the wake of the growing unrest about Genetically Modified (GM) crops and the issues surrounding the controversial Biotechnology Authority of India (BRAI) Bill, a street-play was performed at the venue that looked into the dangerous implications of GM CROPS if the BRAI bill is introduced in the parliament this time.
The event also saw eminent food activist, Ajay Mahajan from Beej Bachao Andolan take the centre and discuss the issue of safe food with the concerned citizens. He opined that "the BRAI bill is anti-Gandhi in nature and against the Swaraj movement as the bill will ensure that the foreign biotech companies shall gain a monopoly over our local agriculture if passed in the parliament." The speech was followed by the display of a massive public art that read 'We say NO to BRAI bill'.
To protect the food safety and biodiversity of the country, Greenpeace believes that the government should stop the tabling of the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India Bill 2011 (Draft), which will form a single-clearance window for GM crops in India and instead promote sustainable, ecological agriculture.
---
---
3.Monsanto and news as product placement
Extract from an essay by the novelist Chandrahas Choudhury: India's Top Newspapers Battle for Readers' Hearts and Souls
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-31/india-s-top-newspapers-battle-for-readers-hearts-and-souls-choudhury.html [showing as error, which apparently works now]
...it's hard to escape the impression, reading the Times, that debate on issues of great importance is being skewed by interests that have the money to do so, and can buy credibility through the mass medium of a respected newspaper. A case in point is a recent full-page story that the Times ran on Aug. 28, 2011 about the Indian arm of the multinational biotechnology company Monsanto Co.
I came across this story on that day while in the south Indian city of Bangalore, on page 13 of the local edition of the Times. Called "Reaping Gold through Bt Cotton," the report by a correspondent, Snehlata Shrivastav, addressed in a few slack, airy paragraphs the complex and controversial issue of farmer suicides in the cotton-growing districts of the Indian state of Maharashtra, and their alleged relationship to economic distress caused by the use of BT cotton seeds, a strain sold in India by Monsanto. The article began:
Yavatmal district is known as the Suicide Capital of the state [of Maharashtra], but two villages - Bhambraja and Antargaon - are an aberration for the better. Not a single person from the two villages has committed suicide. So much so, several families have shut the door on private moneylenders and started side business. The turnaround has been brought about by BT Cotton, Snehlata Shrivastav finds out.
The piece ended with the blithe disclosure, which would trouble any serious journalist, that "The trip to Yavatmal was arranged by Mahyco Monsanto Biotech." Further evidence of conflict of interest was supplied at the bottom of a box accompanying the text. The box provided pen-portraits and photographs of farmers and families from Yavatmal who had become prosperous through the use of BT seeds, but ended with the admission that this story had appeared in an earlier edition of The Times in Nagpur, on Oct. 31, 2008, almost three years before.
What might have happened to the farmers in the time between October 2008 and August 2011? The Times wasn't interested in knowing. Or, as Akash Kapur wrote in a recent piece in the New York Times, "In India, sometimes news is just a product placement."
---
---
4.Meet on biotech crops for food security
Business Line, Jan 31 2012 [shortened]
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/industry-and-economy/agri-biz/article2848140.ece
Hyderabad: Foundation for Biotechnology Awareness and Education (FBAE) and the Association of Biotechnology-Led Enterprises (ABLE) will hold a conference on ‘Biotechnology crops for food security in India' in February 27 in Bangalore.
---
---
5.From food security to food justice
Ananya Mukherjee
The Hindu, 1 February 2012
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article2848305.ece
*A quarter of a million women in Kerala are showing us how to earn livelihoods with dignity.
If the malnourished in India formed a country, it would be the world's fifth largest — almost the size of Indonesia. According to Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), 237.7 million Indians are currently undernourished (up from 224.6 million in 2008). And it is far worse if we use the minimal calorie intake norms accepted officially in India. By those counts (2200 rural/2100 urban), the number of Indians who cannot afford the daily minimum could equal the entire population of Europe.
Yet, the Indian elite shrieks at the prospect of formalising a universal right to food. Notwithstanding the collective moral deficit this reveals, it also shows that the millions of Indians whose food rights are so flagrantly violated are completely voiceless in the policy space. India's problem is not only to secure food, but to secure food justice.
What can food justice practically mean? First, to prevent situations where grains rot while people die — a very basic principle of distributive justice. But it has to mean a lot more: people must have the right to produce food with dignity, have control over the parameters of production, get just value for their labour and their produce. Mainstream notions of food security ignore this dimension.
Food justice must entail both production and distribution. Its fundamental premise must be that governments have a non-negotiable obligation to address food insecurity. They must also address the structural factors that engender that insecurity. Most governments, however, appear neither willing nor able to deliver food justice. It needs therefore the devolution of power and resources to the local level, where millions of protagonists, with their knowledge of local needs and situations, can create a just food economy.
Collective struggle
This is not quite as utopian as it may sound.
Something on these lines has been unfolding in Kerala — a collective struggle of close to a quarter million women who are farming nearly 10 million acres of land. The experiment, "Sangha Krishi," or group farming, is part of Kerala's anti-poverty programme "Kudumbashree." Initiated in 2007, it was seen as a means to enhance local food production. Kerala's women embraced this vision enthusiastically. As many as 44, 225 collectives of women farmers have sprung up across the State. These collectives lease fallow land, rejuvenate it, farm it and then either sell the produce or use it for consumption, depending on the needs of members. On an average, Kudumbashree farmers earn Rs.15,000-25,000 per year (sometimes higher, depending on the crops and the number of yields annually).
Kudumbashree is a network of 4 million women, mostly below the poverty line. It is not a mere 'project' or a 'programme' but a social space where marginalised women can collectively pursue their needs and aspirations. The primary unit of Kudumbashree is the neighbourhood group (NHG). Each NHG consists of 10-20 women; for an overwhelming majority, the NHG is their first ever space outside the home. NHGs are federated into an Area Development Society (ADS) and these are in turn federated into Community Development Societies (CDSs) at the panchayat level. Today, there are 213,000 NHGs all over Kerala. Kudumbashree office-bearers are elected, a crucial process for its members. "We are poor. We don't have money or connections to get elected — only our service," is a common refrain. These elections bring women into politics. And they bring with them a different set of values that can change politics.
The NHG is very different from a self-help group (SHG) in that it is structurally linked to the State (through the institutions of local self-government). This ensures that local development reflects the needs and aspirations of communities, who are not reduced to mere "executors" of government programmes. What is sought is a synergy between democratisation and poverty reduction; with Kudumbashree, this occurs through the mobilisation of poor women's leadership and solidarity. "Sangha Krishi" or group farming is just one example of how this works. It is transforming the socio-political space that women inhabit — who in turn transform that space in vital ways.
This experiment is having three major consequences.
First, there is a palpable shift in the role of women in Kerala's agriculture. This was earlier limited to daily wage work in plantations — at wages much lower than those earned by men. Thousands of Kudumbashree women — hitherto underpaid agricultural labourers — have abandoned wage work to become independent producers. Many others combine wage work with farming. With independent production comes control over one's time and labour, over crops and production methods and, most significantly, over the produce. Since the farmers are primarily poor women, they often decide to use a part of their produce to meet their own needs, rather than selling it. Every group takes this decision democratically, depending on levels of food insecurity of their members. In Idukki, where the terrain prevents easy market access and food insecurity is higher, farmers take more of their produce home — as opposed to Thiruvananthapuram where market access is better and returns are higher.
Sangha Krishi
Second, "Sangha Krishi" has enabled women to salvage their dignity and livelihoods amidst immense adversity. Take the story of Subaida in Malappuram. Once widowed and once deserted, with three young children, she found no means of survival other than cleaning dead bodies. Hardly adequate as a livelihood, it also brought her unbearable social ostracism. Now Subaida is a proud member of a farming collective and wants to enter politics. In the nine districts this writer visited, there was a visible, passionate commitment to social inclusion amongst Kudumbashree farmers.
Our survey of 100 collectives across 14 districts found that 15 per cent of the farmers were Dalits and Adivasis and 32 per cent came from the minority communities.
Third, "Sangha Krishi" is producing important consequences for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in Kerala. Because of Kerala's high wages for men, the MGNREGS in Kerala has become predominantly a space for women (93 per cent of the employment generated has gone to women where the national average is 50). From the beginning, synergies were sought between the MGNREGS, the People's Plan and Kudumbashree. Kudumbashree farmers strongly feel this has transformed MGNREGS work.
"We have created life … and food, which gives life, not just 100 days of manual labour," said a Perambra farmer. In Perambra, Kudumbashree women, working with the panchayat, have rejuvenated 140 acres that lay fallow for 26 years. It now grows rice, vegetables and tapioca. Farmers also receive two special incentives — an 'area incentive' for developing land and a 'production incentive' for achieving certain levels of productivity. These amounted to over Rs.200 million in 2009-10. They were combined with subsidised loans from banks and the State, and seeds, input and equipment from Krishi Bhavan and the panchayats.
Challenges
However, serious challenges remain. Kudumbashree farmers are predominantly landless women working on leased land; there is no certainty of tenure. Lack of ownership also restricts access to credit, since they cannot offer formal guarantees on the land they farm. Whenever possible, Kudumbashree collectives have started buying land to overcome this uncertainty. But an alternative institutional solution is clearly needed. It is also difficult for women to access resources and technical know-how — the relevant institutions (such as crop committees) are oriented towards male farmers. There is also no mechanism of risk insurance.
Is this a sustainable, replicable model of food security? It is certainly one worth serious analysis.
First, this concerted effort to encourage agriculture is occurring when farmers elsewhere are forced to exit farming — in large numbers. It re-connects food security to livelihoods, as any serious food policy must. But more importantly, the value of Sangha Krishi lies in that it has become the manifestation of a deep-rooted consciousness about food justice amongst Kerala's women. Kannyama, the president of Idamalakudy, Kerala's first tribal panchayat, says she wants to make her community entirely self-sufficient in food. She wants Sangha Krishi produce to feed every school and anganwadi in her panchayat — to ensure that children get local, chemical-free food. Elsewhere, Kudumbashree farmers plan to protest the commercialisation of land. Even in the tough terrain of Idukki's Vathikudy panchayat, women were taking a census of fallow land in the area that they could cultivate. Some 100,000 women practise organic farming and more wish to. Kudumbashree farmers speak passionate
ly about
preventing ecological devastation through alternative farming methods.
In the world of Sangha Krishi, food is a reflection of social relations. And only new social relations of food, not political manoeuvres, can combat the twin violence of hunger and injustice.
(Ananya Mukherjee is Professor and Chair of Political Science at York University, Toronto. Her latest work is a co-edited volume in collaboration with UNRISD, Geneva (Business Regulation and Non-state actors: Whose Standards? Whose Development? Routledge Studies in Development Economics, 2012.))
China says 'no' to genetically engineered rice
Wednesday, 01 February 2012 19:03
NOTE: See the full story in Greenpeace East Asia's online magazine + lots of great photos.http://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/specials/gpm01/
EXTRACT: "For a scientist to have a high level of credibility they need to be separated from approval bodies and industry. But in China, GE scientists are such a close knit gang that the people sitting on approval boards for research money, biosafety boards that approve product safety, the scientists at public research institutes, and those at biotech companies who plan to produce and profit from GE rice are either one and the same, or closely connected," explains Sze Pang Cheung. [Sounds familiar! - GMW]
---
---
China says 'no' to genetically engineered rice
Greenpeace feature story, January 31 2012
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/features/China-says-no-to-genetically-engineered-rice/
*It took seven years, teams of young campaigners and hordes of devoted supporters, but September 2011 the Chinese government finally said it was suspending the commercialisation of genetically-engineered (GE) rice.
The origins of rice cultivation can be traced to the valleys of China's Yangtze River, with some estimates putting it at over 7,000 years ago. In that time, rice has become an integral part of Chinese life and culture. It dictates the lives of millions of farmers in the Chinese countryside, feeds over a billion Chinese citizens each year and is synonymous with Chinese cuisine and culture. And Yunnan, in southwestern China is where much of this rice originates from.
Back in 2004, the GE rice campaign was one of the first campaigns for our new team in mainland China. Campaign Director of Greenpeace East Asia, Sze Pang Cheung, remembers those early days with a smile. "We launched the campaign with a five-day bus tour of Guangzhou," he says. "Actually it was more like a van than a bus, and it wasn't even ours. We borrowed it from another environmental NGO."
In October 2004, Sze Pang Cheung and his team headed to Yunnan where many of the locals employ traditional sustainable farming methods. They provided cameras so that the locals could record their rice lives including "duck-rice" farming where ducks paddle about the flooded rice paddies, eating up pests and fertilizing fields with their manure. Duck-rice farming has been around for 2,000 years.
The tour was such a success that the cameras were lent out for an extended period of a year and a beautiful book was made to record the images. But just as they were about to head south, the team got some bad news; Chinese scientists had applied to commercialise four varieties of Chinese GE rice. While the scientists' move didn't mean that GE rice would be commercialised any time soon, it was a major step towards commercialisation.
Rice dictates the lives of millions of farmers in the Chinese countryside, feeds over a billion Chinese citizens each year and is synonymous with Chinese cuisine and culture. And Yunnan, in southwestern China is where much of this rice originates from. There was no doubt about it - this was a critical fight. So when the team got back from the duck-rice fields, they devoted themselves to the campaign. First they unraveled the complex web of players involved in the push for commercialisation.
"For a scientist to have a high level of credibility they need to be separated from approval bodies and industry. But in China, GE scientists are such a close knit gang that the people sitting on approval boards for research money, biosafety boards that approve product safety, the scientists at public research institutes, and those at biotech companies who plan to produce and profit from GE rice are either one and the same, or closely connected," explains Sze Pang Cheung.
We leaked their findings to the press. The web of deceit was published in the Southern Weekend, a Guangdong-based newspaper. "After that story came out the GE rice scientists and experts were inundated with so many calls they appear to have shut their phones down for three months," says Sze Pang Cheung.
Swiss-born Isabelle Meister was a veteran campaigner by the time she joined the China team in 2005. "It's easier to attack a corporation for their dirty methods or products," she muses. "But what do you do when the bad guys are scientists in publicly-funded institutes or sitting on a government board? Scientists should be neutral. They shouldn't be the ones you want to attack. So this was a big shock to me."
Isabelle decided to use a campaign method with Chinese characteristics: China is a country where money talks, patriotism is prevalent and people take their food seriously. So the campaign focused on GE rice was a threat to food sovereignty. Multi-national companies – not Chinese farmers – stand to profit from the commercialization of GE rice from investments in technology and patents.
By the end of 2009 it looked all but inevitable that rice produced in China would be predominantly genetically engineered. Long after the fact, the Chinese government announced that a secret multi-ministerial meeting had passed two GE rice lines – even though they had not received biosafety certificates at the time.
Chinese politicians began raising doubts over genetic engineering, followed by a string of Chinese celebrities including Mao Zedong's daughter, and the father of China's hybrid rice, Yuan Longping. Several Chinese scholars signed a petition urging caution on GE rice and submitted it to the Parliament.
"The pressure on the Ministry of Agriculture was so high it was actually forced to announce that no approval of GE rice had been given and that GE rice remains illegal," says Isabelle.
The time was ripe for us to begin a large-scale anti-GE rice campaign. The team exposed American retail giant Walmart for selling GE rice in China and filed a legal case against it. The team distributed a GE shopper's guide to half a million Chinese consumers through mobile and Internet services. Chinese consumers joined the campaign, ringing up companies and demanding they go non-GE.
Greenpeace campaigner Lorena Luo will never forget one reader who was so dedicated that she voluntarily checked all her favorite food brands at her local supermarket against our shopper's guide . The woman then called red listed brands and told them that as a consumer she would like them to become non-GE. She showed a kind of persistence that would match any of our in-house campaigners.
GE rice was big news: TV, magazines, newspapers and online media joined the debate. Isabelle urged her team to get companies to make non-GE pledges. Two huge corporations, Cofco and Yihai Kerry readily obliged and a string of supermarkets also pledged not to use GE ingredients in their own brands and with their fresh unpacked fruits, vegetables and grains.
And then, in September 2011, came the big news we had all been waiting for. China's major financial weekly, the Economic Observer quoted an information source close to the Ministry of Agriculture saying that China had suspended the commercialisation of GE rice.
While the fight is not yet over, we still need the Chinese government to reassess its GE investments and focus on sustainable agriculture, there is no doubt that our seven-year GE rice campaign has been a success.
Thanks to our members, activists, mothers, supportive scientists, volunteers and concerned citizens, we took on Goliath and won!
The controversial release of GM insects
Wednesday, 01 February 2012 13:24
EXTRACTS: The experiment will go down in scientific history as the first release of GM insects that could bite humans. What's scandalous about this field trial is that it was largely conducted in secret. Few people on Grand Cayman knew the mosquitoes were genetically modified. The local population was largely kept in the dark.The Grand Cayman experiment wasn't an exception; a mere oversight by muddle-headed scientists that somehow forgot to inform the local population adequately on their way from the lab to the field.
"Whatever happened in the Caymans is quite likely to be used as a model for releases in your community, wherever you live in the world," Reeves suggests.
In other words, the approach used in the Caymans was well thought out, as if a small group of ambitious biotech managers were trying to introduce a completely new technology through the back door.
"Oxitec wants to become the next Monsanto," says Gerald Franz, the molecular geneticist at the International Atomic Energy Agency's insect laboratory in the Austrian town of Seibersdorf, referring to the American biotech giant that dominates the business in GM agricultural plants. Indeed, Oxitec already has a monopoly on genetically-modified insects.
NOTE: The January 2012 Issue of the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases has a number of important articles on GM insects and their regulation.
http://www.plosntds.org/article/browseIssue.action?issue=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fissue.pntd.v06.i01
The informative Spiegel article below refers in particular to the article by Reeves et al: "Scientific Standards and the Regulation of Genetically Modified Insects"
http://www.plosntds.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pntd.0001502
---
---
Genetically Modified Pests
The Controversial Release of Frankenstein Mosquitoes
Rafaela von Bredow
Der Spiegel, 1 February 2012
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,812283,00.html
A British biotech lab has released huge numbers of genetically modified mosquitoes in an effort to combat dengue fever. But locals, some say, were not adequately informed of the experiment -- and now a debate has erupted over the potential dangers to humans.
Info
They buzz very, very quietly. That infuriating high-pitched whirring that can rob you of your sleep on summer nights is not part of their repertoire. At this small laboratory near the English university town of Oxford, maintained at a steady 28 degrees Celsius (82 degrees Fahrenheit), the mosquitoes emit no more than a light purr. Their victims can't hear them it until it's almost too late.
Insectophiles might find these animals pretty because of the white markings on their dark bodies. Only the dried drops of blood -- horse blood -- on the gauze lining of their cages reveal how these animals feed.
The insects in question are female yellow-fever mosquitoes, some of the most dangerous animals on the planet. In addition to the illness after which they were named, they also transmit the dengue virus.
Dengue fever is on the rise worldwide and spreading faster than any other insect-borne viral disease. Every year, female mosquitoes infect at least 50 million people in tropical and subtropical regions (the males don't bite). More than 20,000 of their victims -- most of them children -- succumb to their illness.
The mosquitoes at the lab near Oxford serve a rather different purpose: To save human lives. Scientists have implanted a gene they hope will wipe out these mosquitoes' wild cousins. When males from the lab mate with wild females, their larval offspring die within a short space of time. The lab insects have been produced to commit infanticide.
Not Exactly a Villain
Yet something of a scientific thriller has developed around these designer animals. Were anyone to turn it into a horror movie, the story would go something like this: At the heart of the tale there are the managers and scientists at a British biotech firm. These are the bad guys. Their crime: Secretly exposing the unsuspecting inhabitants of a faraway Caribbean island to mutant mosquitoes; a flying army of horrific creatures hungry for people to prey upon. The company -- of course -- is only interested in the huge profits it hopes to make. And then there are the good guys; upstanding researchers and idealistic activists determined to ruin the bad guys' evil plans.
By this interpretation, Luke Alphey would be the head villain of the story, though his boyish looks and lean stature wouldn't exactly typecast him for the role. At the most, his occasional braying laughter would fit the character. Alphey, 48, is the co-founder and chief scientific officer of Oxitec, an Oxford University spin-off. Oxitec headquarters is located in a brick building covered with wild grape in Milton Park, an industrial zone by the road leading to the famous university town.
It was Alphey, a genetic engineer, who dreamed up the idea of the novel insects while he was at Oxford. Today, standing next to the blood-spotted mosquito cages in a disposable lab coat, he defends himself, his company and his mosquitoes. "It was the right time to go out into the field," he insists.
Alphey is referring to the fall of 2009, when he and his colleagues released their designer mosquitoes on Grand Cayman, an island in the Caribbean. The following year they released over three million more of these genetically-modified (GM) mosquitoes.
The experiment will go down in scientific history as the first release of GM insects that could bite humans. What's scandalous about this field trial is that it was largely conducted in secret. Few people on Grand Cayman knew the mosquitoes were genetically modified. The local population was largely kept in the dark.
When the trials were made public a year after the first release of the insects, the locals wondered whether they'd been bitten by these potentially dangerous Frankenstein mosquitoes. Understandably, they felt taken advantage of. "I believe that we are the guinea pigs here," wrote a disgruntled islander on the website of the Cayman News Service. Another asked: "Are we considered so dim-witted and unlearned that we cannot participate in our own environment? Were we considered to be a calculated risk?" Nongovernmental organizations like GeneWatch, a British NGO, have condemned the experiments with GM mosquitoes.
Moths Too
The key question is about what scientists may and may not do. Can they simply release flying, human-biting laboratory-made creatures into the air? And who controls such activity if this is undertaken for a firm that seeks to profit from it?
Companies don't like divulging their plans, preferring to keep their technology under wraps, particularly when it comes to potential dangers. As such, the work of biotech companies must necessarily be the exact opposite of what scientific research ought to be: transparent. That's the crux of the matter.
Despite the Cayman PR debacle, Oxitec is moving forward undeterred. The yellow-fever mosquitoes from Milton Park have since been released in Malaysia. More trials are planned for inhabited areas there, because that's where yellow-fever mosquitoes thrive. They specialize in feeding on humans.
The genetically-modified creatures are also currently buzzing around near the city of Juazeiro in eastern Brazil. Mosquitoes are due to be released in other dengue-plagued countries too, including Panama, India, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. They could also soon turn up in Key West, Florida as early as March; preparations there are underway.
And that's just the mosquitoes.
Swarms of genetically modified pink bollworm moths, a plant pest in their natural state, have already been unleashed over the fields of Arizona. Oxitec's latest plan involves another genetically engineered moth, the diamond-back or cabbage moth, which it wants to release in England. In the future, it is hoped, these agricultural pests will likewise mate with naturally-occurring animals to produce dead offspring.
"Oxitec wants to become the next Monsanto," says Gerald Franz, the molecular geneticist at the International Atomic Energy Agency's insect laboratory in the Austrian town of Seibersdorf, referring to the American biotech giant that dominates the business in GM agricultural plants. Indeed, Oxitec already has a monopoly on genetically-modified insects.
Part 2: Exploring the Potential Dangers
The findings of a study published in the renowned scientific journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases on Tuesday could well make life even more difficult for Oxitec. The paper was written by Guy Reeves and his colleagues. The 39-year-old Briton with curly blond locks is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, northern Germany.
The geneticist has searched through scientific journals, permit applications and regulations. His findings, reviewed and approved by his peers, primarily reveal one thing: The Grand Cayman experiment wasn't an exception; a mere oversight by muddle-headed scientists that somehow forgot to inform the local population adequately on their way from the lab to the field.
"Whatever happened in the Caymans is quite likely to be used as a model for releases in your community, wherever you live in the world," Reeves suggests.
Through the Back Door
In other words, the approach used in the Caymans was well thought out, as if a small group of ambitious biotech managers were trying to introduce a completely new technology through the back door. There are a number of factors that helped them in their endeavor:
*The novelty of the technology, which makes it harder for regulatory authorities to assess the risks associated with the field trials;
*The desperation of countries with a high prevalence of dengue, whose willingness to take risks is therefore all the greater;
*The fact that there are no drugs or approved vaccines yet, and conventional methods for combating mosquitoes -- for instance insecticides -- are insufficient in tackling the problem. Every new weapon is therefore welcome;
*Good contacts to decision-makers at US approval bodies, whose assessments of risk are valued by experts in other countries.
And it is quite possible that Luke Alphey's lab-tweaked creatures will indeed prove to be a blessing for humanity, especially in countries plagued by dengue. The way these creatures precipitate their own demise is extremely ingenious.
Ever since the 1950s, male pests have typically been sterilized by exposing them to radioactivity, and then released to mate with females in the wild. Today a similar effect is created by inserting malevolent genes. Alphey has given his yellow-fever mosquitoes genetic material that the males pass onto their offspring when they mate with wild females. This genetic material could be called a "suicide gene" because the protein it produces poisons the larvae. As a result, the hosts gradually wipe themselves out.
According to Oxitec, this suicide system works not only in the lab, but also in the field, as the trials on Grand Cayman proved. Eighty mating waves with the lab-manipulated males over a period of 11 weeks allegedly reduced the local mosquito population by 80 percent.
Unknown Consequences
And the potential risks? These are only now coming to light in full, partly thanks to the efforts of Guy Reeves.
The problem is that genetically-modified female mosquitoes can still bite humans. This means the protein which kills their own larvae might be injected into humans when the mosquitoes suck their prey's blood, with unknown consequences for the human organism.
However Luke Alphey has a plausible-sounding set of arguments to allay such fears. "We only release males," he says. What's more, he claims the protein isn't produced in the salivary glands, so it isn't in the female mosquito's saliva in the first place. Being bitten by Oxitec's mosquitoes is therefore allegedly just like being bitten by "normal mosquitoes."
It does indeed seem unlikely that the lab animals could cause damage. Nonetheless Alphey admits his technique isn't perfect yet, and GM females may therefore also be released accidentally. And we have to take him at his word that the larva-killing protein definitely can't be injected into the human blood stream. Unfortunately, like so much else, he can offer not peer-reviewed scientific proof.
Alphey says Oxitec spoke to people on Grand Cayman, and that the locals didn't express concern about being bitten by GM mosquitoes. He claims the islanders hadn't even asked him about it. "It's not really for us to tell them what their concerns should be," he says.
Fundamental Questions
It is precisely this attitude -- this lack of openness -- that isn't exactly making Oxitec many friends. Guy Reeves says: "One has to answer these fundamental questions that most people will have before releasing the animals."
The geneticist doesn't think Oxitec's techniques are "particularly risky" either. He simply wants more transparency. "Companies shouldn't keep scientifically important facts secret where human health and environmental safety are concerned," he says.
Reeves himself is working on even riskier techniques, ones that could permanently change the genetic makeup of entire insect populations. That's why he so vehemently opposes Oxitec's rash field trials: He believes they could trigger a public backlash against this relatively promising new approach, thereby halting research into genetic modification of pests before it really gets off the ground.
He's not alone in his concerns. "If the end result is that this technology isn't accepted, then I've spent the last 20 years conducting research for nothing," says Ernst Wimmer, a developmental biologist at Germany's Göttingen University and one of the pioneers in this field. Nevertheless he says he understands Oxitec's secrecy: "We know about the opponents to genetic engineering, who have destroyed entire experimental crops after they were announced. That, of course, doesn't help us make progress either."
Translated from the German by Jan Liebelt
Protestors come out against Monsanto
Wednesday, 01 February 2012 12:40
NYC: Protestors Come Out Against MonsantoELEANOR WEST
Food Republic, Jan 31 2012
http://www.foodrepublic.com/2012/01/31/nyc-protestors-come-out-against-monsanto
*Farmers get their day in court
[image captions: Protestors create a human timeline of Monsanto's company history.
Many protestors were farmers themselves.]
If you happened to be walking around Lower Manhattan this morning, you might have noticed the anti-Monsanto chants echoing from Foley Square. In a protesting trifecta, Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Big Food, and Food Democracy Now joined forces to support family farmers as the first phase of their federal court case against food industry giant Monsanto. The crowd of around 200 people included farmers from as far away as Maine as well as local food activists and chefs.
The case against Monsanto (Organic Seed Growers Trade Association et al. v. Monsanto) aims to protect farmers against aggressive lawsuit and crop contamination from Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds. Organic and non-GMO crops can be severely damaged by the introduction of GMO seeds and farmers whose crops have been infiltrated are vulnerable to lawsuits from Monsanto who owns a vast majority of the genetics on commodity crops such as corn, soybeans and cotton.
Farmers’ fear of being sued by the multi-billion dollar company is not unfounded. According to Monsanto, since 1997, it has filed 145 lawsuits against farmers and settled 700 other disputes out of court.
Today in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Judge Naomi Buchwald will hear complaints from farmers and determine whether or not their case against Monsanto will move forward. Protestor and organic farmer Deb Taft of Mobius Fields in Westchester, New York said she was “cautiously optimistic” about the outcome of this morning's hearings.
Many protestors felt it was an accomplishment in itself that the case has made it to Federal District Court. An unnamed protestor and chef at a local private school said he came out to stand with farmers who finally got their day in court. He has been wary of Monsanto since the mid 1980s, when the issues of genetically modified organisms were mostly talk, rather than reality.
While all of the protestors united around their distrust of and frustration with Monsanto, their specific reasons for being there were varied. Some were concerned with the lack of seed choice now that Monsanto has put many local providers out of business while others were concerned with Monsanto’s global presence (Monsanto is currently being sued for biopiracy in India).
Protestors pointed to a long history of infractions on the part of Monsanto, which they demonstrated by creating a human timeline of the company’s history. Monsanto genetically modified its first plant in 1982, but the company’s story goes back to the beginning of the 20th century. John Francis Queeny, a pharmaceutical industry veteran, founded the company in 1901 and in 1902 Monsanto sold its first product to Coca-Cola — saccharin, the artificial sweetener that has been linked to cancer. Protestors this morning also referenced Monsanto's role as one of the companies that manufactured Agent Orange, an herbicide used by the U.S. Army in Vietnam that has been proven to cause severe health damage and birth defects.
But the protestors main focus today was the effect that that GMOs have on biodiversity and farmer livelihood. Andrew Faust, a permaculture teacher and founder of The Center for Bioregional Living in Ellenville, New York, urged consumers to use their buying power to boycott Monsanto products. Currently, advocacy groups working under the slogan “Right to Know” are lobbying for GMO labeling, which is already required in the European Union and China, and which Monsanto is fighting against.
According to a tweet from someone present in the courtroom, the judge will give her ruling on this morning’s hearings, which ended around 11:30 am, by March 31st. Those interested in supporting the farmers' cause can sign Food Democracy Now!’s pledge to support America’s farmers and donate to the Right to Know campaign.
Forty years with glyphosate
Tuesday, 31 January 2012 15:57
Forty Years with Glyphosate
by András Székács and Béla Darvas
Department of Ecotoxicology and Environmental Analysis, Plant Protection Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Hungary
http://www.intechopen.com/articles/show/title/forty-years-with-glyphosate
Chapter 14
EXTRACT:
6. Adverse environmental effects of glyphosate
6.1 Glyphosate and Fusarium species
Sanogo and co-workers (2000) observed that crop loss in soy due to infestation by Fusarium solani f. sp. glycines increased after glyphosate applications.
Kremer and co-workers (2005) described a stimulating effect of the root exsudate of GR soy sampled after glyphosate application on the growth of Fusarium sp. strains. Treatments caused concentration dependent increase on the mycelium mass of the fungus. Nonetheless, Powel and Swanton (2008) could not confirm these observations in their field study.
Kremer and Means (2009) claim that certain fungi utilise glyphosate released from plant roots into the soil as a nutritive, which facilitates their growth. Soil manganese content also affects the above consequence of glyphosate through chelating with the compound and thus, modifying its effects. Considering the fact that numerous plant pathogenic Fusarium species produce mycotoxins, an increasing proportion of these species is far not favourable as a side-effect.
Johal and Huber (2009) lists numbersome plant pathogens (e.g., Corynespora cassicola or Sclerotinia sclerotiorum on soy) they claim to grow increasingly after glyphosate treatments, and the list contains several Fusarium species (F. graminearum, F. oxysporum, F. solani). They hypothesize that glyphosate causes disturbances in microelement metabolism in plants, and in parallel, deteriorate the defense system of the plants, thereby increasing the virulence of certain plant pathogens. Zobiole and co-workers (2011) confirmed the above effects by their observation that glyphosate treatments facilitate colonisation of Fusarium species on the soy roots, but reduces the fluorescent Pseudomonas fraction of the rhizosphere, the level of manganese reducing bacteria and of the indoleacetic acid producing rhizobacteria. As a combined result of these effects, root and overall plant biomasses were found to be reduced.
6.2 Toxicity of glyphosate to aquatic ecosystems and amphibians
Substances occurring in surface waters deserve special attention by ecotoxicologists, as they enter a matrix that is the habitat of numerous aqueous organisms and the basis of our drinking water reserves. Drinking water is an irreplaceable essential part of our diet, and is a possible vehicle for chronic exposure (the basis of chronic diseases) in daily contact/consumption.
Glyphosate has been known to cause toxicity to microalgae and other aquatic microorganisms (Goldsborough and Brown 1988; Austin et al., 1991; Anton et al., 1993; Sáenz et al., 1997; DeLorenzo et al., 2001; Ma 2002; Ma et al., 2002; Ma et al., 2003), in fact a green algal toxicity test has been proposed for screening herbicide activity (Ma & Wang, 2002). In contrast, cyanobacteria have been found to show resistance against glyphosate (López-Rodas et al., 2007; Forlani et al., 2008). Tsui and Chu (2003) tested the effect of glyphosate, its most common polyoxyethyleneamine (POEA) type formulating materials, polyethoxylated tallowamines, and the formulated glyphosate preparation (Roundup) on model species from aquatic ecosystems, bacteria (Vibrio fischeri), microalgae (Selenastrum capricornutum, Skeletonema costatum), protozoas (Tetrahymena pyriformis, Euplotes vannus) and crustaceans (Ceriodaphnia dubia, Acartia tonsa). The most surprising result of the study was that the assumedly inert detergent formulating agent, POEA was found to be the most toxic component. In light of this it is far not surprising that Cox and Surgan (2006) and Reuben (2010) propounded the question, why tests only on the active ingredients are necessary to be specified in the documentation required by the Environmental Protection Agency of the Unites States (US EPA), when several of the used formulating components are known to exert biological activity.
Although acute toxicity and genotoxicity of glyphosate have been evidenced to certain fish (Langiano & Martinez, 2008; Cavalcante et al., 2008), glyphosate shows favourable acute toxicity parameters on most vertebrates, and therefore, has been classified as III toxicity category by US EPA. The European discretion is stricter, listing the compound among substances causing irritation (Xi) and severe ocular damage (R41). It has to be noted, however, that that model species of neither amphibians, not reptilians are represented in the toxicological documentations required nowadays. It may not be surprising, therefore, that after atrazine (Hayes et al., 2002; 2010), glyphosate is the second herbicide active ingredient that is questioned due to its detrimental effects on the animal class, considered the most endangered on Earth, amphibians.
Mann and Bidwell (1999) studied the toxicity of glyphosate on tadpoles of four Australian frogs (Crinia insignifera, Heleioporus eyrei, Limnodynastes dorsalis and Litoria moorei). The toxicity of Roundup and its 48-hour LC50 values were found to be 3-12 mg glyphosate equivalent/l. Tolerance of the adult frogs was substantially greater. A glyphosate-based formulated herbicide preparation (VisionMAX) caused no significant effects on the juvenile adults of the green frogs (Lithobates clamitans) when applied at field application doses, only marginal differences in statistics of infection rates and liver somatic indices in relation to exposure estimates (Edge et al., 2011). Chen et al. (2004) observed that the toxicity of glyphosate on the frog species Rana pipiens was greatly affected by lacking food resources and the pH of the medium as stress factors. Relyea (2005a) reported tadpole (Bufo americanus, Hyla versicolor, Rana sylvatica, R. pipiens, R. clamitans and R. catesbeiana) mortality related to glyphosate applications. The effect, occurred at 2-16 mg glyphosate equivalent/l concentrations, was linked with the stress caused by the predator of the tadpoles, salamander Notophthalmus viridescens. Later Relyea and Jones (2009) included further frog species (Bufo boreas, Pseudacris crucifer, Rana cascadea, R. sylvatica) into the study, and found LC50 values to be 0.8-2 mg glyphosate equivalent/l. Testing four salamander species (Amblystoma gracile, A. laterale, A. maculatum and N. viridescens), the corresponding values ranged between 2.7 and 3.2 mg glyphosate equivalent/l. In this case, glyphosate was formulated with detergent POEA. Further studies also shed light on the fact that another stress factor, population density, playing an important part in the competition of the tadpoles increased the toxic effect of glyphosate (Jones et al., 2010). Lajmanovich and coworkers (2010) detected lowered enzymatic activities (e.g., acetylcholine esterase and glutathion-S-transferase) in a frog species, Rhinella arenarum upon glyphosate treatments.
Sparling and co-workers (2006) detected lowered fecundity of the eggs of the semiaquatic turtle, red-eared slider (Trachemys scripta elegans) if treated with glyphosate at high doses.
6.3 Teratogenic activity of glyphosate
The teratogenicity of the pesticide preparations containing glyphosate deserves special attention. The very first examples of observed teratogenicity of glyphosate preparations have also been linked to amphibians. Using the so-called FETAX assay, Perkins and coworkers (2000) observed a formulation dependent teratogenic effect of glyphosate on embryos of the frog species Xenopus laevis. The concentrations that triggered the effect were relatively high (the highest dose applied in the study was 2.88 mg glyphosate equivalent/l), but not irrealisticly high with respect to field doses of glyphosate, indicating, that high allowed agricultural doses cause glyphosate levels close to the safety margin. Lajmanovich and co-workers (2005) studied the effects of a glyphosate preparation (Glyfos) on the tadpoles of Scinax nasicus, and found that a 2-4-day exposure to 3 mg/l glyphosate caused malformation in more than half of the test animals. The treatment was carried out nearly at the LC50 level of glyphosate. Dallegrave and co-workers (2003) found fetotoxic effects on rats treated with glyphosate at very high, 1000 mg/l concentration on the 6th-15th day after fertilisation. Nearly half of the newborn rat progeny in the experiments were born with skeletal development disorders.
Testing the effects of glyphosate preparations on the embryos of the sea urchin, Sphaerechinus granularis, Marc and co-workers (2004a) observed a collapse of cell cycle control. Inhibition affects DNA synthesis in the G2/M phase of the first cell cycle (Marc et al., 2004b). The authors estimate that glyphosate production workers inhale 500-5000-fold level of the effective concentration in these experiments. A marked toxicity of the formulating agent POEA has also been observed on sea urchins (Marc et al., 2005). The very early DNA damage was claimed to be related to tumour formation by Bellé and co-workers (2007), and the authors consider the sea urchin biotest they developed as a possible experimental model for testing this effect. Jayawardena and co-workers (2010) described nearly 60% developmental disorders on the tadpoles of a Sri Lanka frog (Polpedates cruciger) upon treatment with 1 ppm glyphosate.
The teratogenicity of herbicides of glyphosate as active ingredient have been tested lately on amphibian (X. laevis) and bird (Gallus domesticus) embryos. Applied with direct injection at sublethal doses caused modification of the position and pattern of rhobomeres, the area of the neural crest decreased, the anterior-posterior axis shortened and the occurrence of cephalic markers was inhibited at the embryonic development stage of the nervous system. As a result, frog embryos became of characteristic phenotype: the trunk is shortened, head size is reduced, eyes were improperly or not developed (microphthalmia), and additional cranial deformities occurred in later development. Similar teratogenic effects were seen on embryos of Amniotes e.g., chicken. These developmental disorders may be related to damages of the retinoic acid signal pathway, resulting in the inhibition of the expression of certain essential genes (shh, slug, otx2). These genes play crucial roles in the neurulation process of embryogenesis (Paganelli et al., 2010). These findings were later debated by several comments. On behalf of the producers, Saltmiras and co-workers (2011) questioned certain conclusions in the work of Paganelli and co-workers (2010), claiming that the standardised pilot teratogenicity tests, carried out under good laboratory practice (GLP) by the manufacturers, have been evaluated by independent experts of several international organisations. They also considered the dosages used by Paganelli and co-workers exceedingly high, and the mode of application (microinjection) irrealistic in nature. Similar criticism has been voiced by Mulet (2011) and Palma (2011). In his answer, Carrasco (2011) emphasised their opinion that the company representatives ignore scientific facts supporting teratogenicity of atrazine, glyphosate and triadimefon through retinoic acid biosynthesis. He also emphasized that of 180 research reports of Monsanto, 150 are not public, or have never been presented to the scientific community. He also included that they obtained similar phenotypes in their studies with microinjection, than by incubation of the preparations. As a follow-up, Antoniou and co-workers (2011) compiled an extensive review of 359 studies and publications on the teratogenicity and birth defects caused by glyphosate, and heavily criticize the European Union for not banning glyphosate, but rather postponing its re-evaluation until 2015 European Commission, 2010).
6.4 Genotoxicity of glyphosate
Occupational exposure to pesticides, including glyphosate as active ingredient, may lead to pregnancy problems even through exposure of men (Savitz et al., 1997). Such phenomenon has been first described in epidemiology with Vietnam War veterans exposed to Agent Orange with phenoxyacetic acid type active ingredients contaminated with dibenzodioxins. Although glyphosate has been claimed not to be genotoxic and its formulation Roundup “causing only a week effect” (Rank et al., 1993; Bolognesi et al., 1997), Kale and co-workers (1995) observed mutagenic effects of Roundup in Drosophila melanogaster recessive lethal mutation tests. Lioi and co-workers (1998) described increasing sister chromatide exchange in human lymphocytes with increasing glyphosate doses. Walsh and co-workers (2000) detected in murine tumour cells the inhibitory activity of Roundup on the biosynthesis of a protein (StAR) participating in the synthesis of sex steroids. This reduced the operation of the cholesterol - pregnenolon – progesteron transformation pathway to a minimal level. As it often happens in exploring mutagenic effects of chemical substances, additional studies have not found glyphosate mutagenic, and therefore, it is not so listed in the GAP2000 program compiled from US EPA/IARC databases. However, Cox (2004) describes chronic toxicity profile of several substances applied in the formulation of glyphosate.
Studying the activity of dehydrogenase enzymes in the liver, heart and brain of pregnant rats, Daruich and co-workers (2001) concluded that glyphosate causes various disorders both in the parent female and in the progeny. According to results of the study by Benedettia and co-workers (2004), aminotransferase enzyme activity decreased in the liver of rats, impairing lymphocytes, and leading to liver tissue damages. In in vitro tests McComb and co-workers (2008) found that glyphosate acts in the mitochondria of the rat liver cells as an oxidative phosphorylation decoupling agent. Mariana and co-workers (2009) observed oxidative stress status decay in the blood, liver and testicles upon injection administration of glyphosate, possibly linked to reproductional toxicity.Prasad and co-workers (2009) detected cytotoxic effects, as well as chromosomal disorders and micronucleus formation in murine bone-marrow. Poletta and co-workers (2009) described genotoxic effects of Roundup on the erythrocytes in the blood of caimans, correlated with DNA damages.
According to the survey of De Roos and co-workers (2003), the risk of the incidence of non- Hodgkin lymphoma is increased among pesticide users. As the authors found it, this applies to herbicide preparations with glyphosate as active ingredient. Focusing the study solely on glyphosate preparations a year later in the corn belt of the United States, of the majority of malignant diseases, only the incidence of abnormal plasma cell proliferation (myeloma multiplex, plasmocytoma) showed a slight rise (De Roos et al., 2004). Myeloma represents approximately 10% of the malignant haematological disorders. Although the cause of the disease is not yet known, its risk factors include autoimmune diseases, certain viruses (HIV and Herpes), and the frequent use of certain solvents as occupational hazard. On the basis of murine skin carcinogenesis, George and co-workers (2010) reported that glyphosate may act as a skin tumour promoter due to the induction of several special proteins.
6.5 Hormone modulant effects of glyphosate and POEA
Studying chronic exposure of tadpoles of Rana pipiens, Howe and co-workers (2004) found that in addition to developmental disorders, gonads in 15-20% of the treated animals developed erroneously, and these animals showed intersexual characteristics. Arbuckle and co-workers (2001) registered increased risk of abortion in agricultural farms after glyphosate applications. In addition, excretion of glyphosate has been determined in the urine of agricultural workers and their family members (Acquavella et al., 2004). Richard and co-workers (2005) evidenced toxicity of glyphosate on the JEG3 cells in the placenta. Formulated Roundup exerted stronger effect than glyphosate itself. Glyphosate inhibited aromatase enzymes of key importance in estrogen biosynthesis. This effect has also been evidenced in in vitro tests by binding to the active site of the purified enzyme. The formulating agent in the preparation enhanced the inhibitory effect in the microsomal fraction. Benachour and co-workers (2007) tested the effect of glyphosate and Roundup Bioforce on various cell lines, and also determined the aromatase inhibiting effect of glyphosate and the synergistic effect of the formulating agent. They suppose that the hormone modulant effect of Roundup may affect human reproduction and fetal development. Testing these human cell lines, Benachour and Séralini (2009) found that glyphosate alone induces apoptosis, and POEA and AMPA applied in combination exert synergistic effects, similarly to the synergy seen for Roundup. The synergy was reported to be further acerbated with activated Cry1Ab toxin related to that produced by insect resistant GM plants, raising concern regarding stacked genetic event GM crops exerting both glyphosate tolerance and Cry1Ab based insect resistance (Mesnage et al., 2011). Moreover, the combined effect caused cell necrosis as well. Effect enhancement is likely to be explained by the detergent activity of POEA facilitating the penetration of glyphosate through cell membranes and subsequent accumulation in the cells. The aromatase inhibitory effect of the formulated preparation was four-fold, as compared to the neat active ingredient. The authors consider it proven, that POEA, previously believed to be inert, is far not inactive biologically. As the authorised MRL of glyphosate in forage is as high as 400 mg/kg, Gasnier and co-workers (2009) studied in various in vitro tests, what effects this may cause in a human hepatic cell line. All treatments indicated a concentration-dependent effect in the toxicity tests were found genotoxic in the comet assay for DNA damages, moreover, displayed antiestrogenic and antiandrogenic effects.
6.6 Glyphosate resistance of weeds
Frequent applications of glyphosate and the spread of GT crops outside of Europe escalate the occurrence of glyphosate in the environment, exerting severe selection pressure on the weed species. It has been well known that certain weeds have native resistance against glyphosate e.g., the common lambsquarters (Chenopodium album), the velvetleaf (Abutilon theophrasti) and the common cocklebur (Xanthium strumarium).
The first population of GT Lolium rigidum was described in 1996 by Pratley and co-workers in Australia. This was followed in 1997 by GT goosegrass (Eleusine indica) in Malaysia (Lee & Ngim, 2000), GT horseweed (Conyza canadensis) in the United States (VanGessel, 2001), GT Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum) in Chile (Perez & Kogan, 2003). Further known GT weed species include Echinochloa colona (2007), Urochloa panicoides (2008) and Chloris truncata (2010) in Australia; Conyza bonariensis (2003) and ribwort plantain (Plantago lanceolata, 2003) in South Africa; ragweed (Ambrosia artemisifolia, 2004), Ambrosia trifida (2004), Amaranthus palmeri (2005), Amaranthus tuberculatus (2005), summer cypress (Bassia scoparia, 2007) and annual meadow grass (Poa annua, 2010) in the United States; Conyza sumatrensis (2009) in Spain; Johnsongrass (Sorghum halepense) (2005), Italian ryegrass (Lolium perene, 2008) in Argentina; Euphorbia heterophyla (2006) in Brazil; Parthenium hysterophorus (2004) in Colombia and Digitaria insularis (2006) in Paraguay (Heap, Epubl). GT Johnsongrass was reported in a continuous soybean field in Arkansas, United States (Riar et al., 2011). Price (2011) claims that agricultural conservation tillage is threatened in the United States by the rapid spread of GT Palmer amaranth (Amaranthus palmeri [S.] Wats.) due to wide range cultivation of transgenic, GT cultivars and corresponding broad use of glyphosate. GT amaranths were first identified in Georgia, and later reported in nine states, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee, and a closely related GT amaranth, common waterhemp (Amaranthus rudis Sauer) in four states, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Missouri. Moreover, GT Italian ryegrass populations collected in Oregon, United States appeared to show cross-resistance to another phosphonic acid type herbicide active ingredient, glufosinate (Avila-Garcia & Mallory-Smith, 2011).
Powles and co-workers (1998) described a L. rigidum population resisting 7-11-fold dosage of glyphosate in Australia. Shrestha and Hemree (2007) found GT subpopulations of 5-8 leaf stage Conyza canadensis surviving only 2-4-fold glyphosate doses. According to Powles (2008), it is not coincidental that in countries, where GT crops are on the rise (Argentina and Brazil), the occurrence of GT weeds is more frequent. Moreover, he considers this one of the main obstacles of the spread of GT crops in the agricultural practice. Glyphosate tolerance is an inherited property, therefore, accumulation of weeds in the treated areas is to be expected. Genomics studies of the GT populations revealed that mutation of the gene (epsps) encoding the target enzyme responsible for tolerance is not infrequent in nature. (The mutant alleles (mepsps, 2mepsps) responsible for tolerance has been found in maize as well, see Table 2.). Reduced or modified uptake or translocation of glyphosate has also
been 0bserved, and the metabolic fate of the compound may also become altered in the cell (Shaner, 2009), possibly resulting in GT populations. It is not difficult to predict, that prolonged cultivation of GT crops will necessitate supplemental herbicide administrations with active ingredients other than glyphosate.
Page 1 of 1172
<< Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next > End >>
