from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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Dear all:
A federal district judge has ruled that the US Dept of Agriculture broke the law and put endangered species at risk in allowing GM pharma crops to be cultivated in Hawaii (THE AMERICAS).
And Monsanto needs watching still more carefully now they're taking over Terminator firm Delta & Pine Land (COMPANY NEWS).
Claire
www.gmwatch.org / www.lobbywatch.org
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CONTENTS
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COMPANY NEWS
RESEARCH
LOBBYWATCH
THE AMERICAS
EUROPE
AFRICA
AUSTRALASIA
ASIA
GM MEDICINES
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
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COMPANY NEWS
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+ MONSANTO TO BUY DELTA AND PINE LAND FOR USD 1.5 BILLION
Monsanto has agreed to buy cotton seed maker Delta and Pine Land Co. for $1.5 billion. According to the Ban Terminator Campaign, Delta & Pine Land:
*is the 11th largest seed company in the world
*is the largest cotton seed company in the world
*produces and sells conventional and GM soy and cotton seed.
Delta & Pine has publicly declared its intention to commercialize Terminator.
Delta & Pine holds three patents jointly with the United States Department of Agriculture. These were the first patents on Terminator. Delta & Pine is conducting greenhouse tests of Terminator in the US and has new glossy promotional material on Terminator. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6892
+ WHAT THE MONSANTO TAKEOVER MEANS
ETC Group comments on Monsanto's takeover of Delta & Pine Land (EXCERPT):
With D&PL subsidiaries in 13 countries - including major markets such as China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Turkey and Pakistan - the takeover means that Monsanto will command a dominant position in one of the world's most important agricultural trade commodities and that millions of cotton farmers will be under increased pressure to accept GM cottonseed.
"This merger," says Ibrahim Coulibaly, President of the National Coordination of Peasants' Organizations of Mali, "guarantees an intensification of the already immense political pressure on West African governments to accept GM seeds. Delta & Pine Land couldn't exercise the kind of clout Monsanto can. This deal is a major threat to our farmers and food sovereignty. African farmers' groups and civil society organizations need international support to resist the pressure of multinational corporations and USAID on African governments to adopt GMOs." http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6898
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RESEARCH
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+ NEW STUDIES HIGHLIGHT THE FAILURES OF GM COTTON - podcast and transcript
The latest GM Watch podcast looks at the new evidence on how GM cotton is failing to deliver, especially for farmers in the developing world.
We look at a whole series of recent studies that have come out of China, South Africa and the USA, including two brand new studies yet to be published, and we also discuss a disturbing report about new problems that are emerging this year in the GM cotton fields of Arkansas.
For the first time, the transcript - complete with references for the research - is available on the GM Watch website at http://www.gmwatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=86&page=1
You can listen to the podcast on your computer (eg with QuickTime) via indymedia: http://biotech.indymedia.org/or/2006/08/5288.shtml
or on your computer or MP3 player via iTunes http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=158600210
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LOBBYWATCH
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+ GM CROPS AND DDT: CONNECT THE DOTS
In an article in the Cape Times in response to one by the neo-liberal Free Market Foundation, Glenn Ashton writes (EXCERPT):
Jasson Urbach attempts, on behalf of the neo-liberal Free Market Foundation (FMF), to make a case that GM crops are necessary to improve the food security of Africa ...
This is not the first time Urbach has attempted to hoodwink the public with pseudo-science. He recently penned a paean of support for DDT as a mechanism to reduce the incidence of Malaria in Africa. In that article he directly compared the toxicity of DDT to coffee, beer and peanut butter and went so far as to claim that there was no substantial evidence to show DTT was dangerous to humans.
Besides the tacit admission that DDT thus does affect other living organisms besides humans, Urbach's claim of lack of evidence of danger to humans is incorrect. A study by the University of Berkley showed the ability of DDT to slow childhood development. Another study by the National Institute of Environmental Health Services showed a strong relationship between prematurely delivered and low birth weight babies and mothers' blood levels of DDE, the metabolic breakdown product of DDT. It is not by chance that international health interests have called for its total withdrawal.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6900
GM Watch comment: the Free Market Foundation has been caught before exploiting the poor for ideological purposes: http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6900
+ THE INCESTUOUS WORLD OF THE GM LOBBYIST
Ian Gibson, the GM-supporting Member of Parliament for Norwich North (in Norfolk, UK) has had to issue an unreserved apology for suggesting that people in Norfolk are susceptible to diabetes because they are "inbred"!
Gibson is a geneticist and former chair of the House of Commons' Science and Technology committee, a position that he has used to vigorously promote GM. Despite his scientific background, Gibson's comments about inbreeding and diabetes displayed such a striking ignorance of the science that Dr Ketan Dhatariya, diabetologist at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, called his remarks "disgraceful".
This is not the first time Gibson has exposed his ignorance while posing as a scientific expert. Indeed, his arguments in favour of GM in Parliament were shown to be not just fanciful but more than a little inbred! His pro-GM comments echoed pro-GM campaigner Derek Burke's so exactly that Gibson's local newspaper commented that he had "been exposed as a parrot in the House of Commons". When pressed, Gibson admitted, "We are working together to try and erode the anti-GM debate." http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6881
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THE AMERICAS
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+ U.S. FEDERAL COURT RULES BIOPHARM PERMITS ILLEGAL
Citing possible harm to Hawaii's 329 endangered and threatened species, a federal district judge has ruled that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) violated the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in permitting the cultivation of drug-producing GM crops throughout Hawaii.
US District Judge Michael Seabright said the Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service flouted both the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act by not conducting preliminary environmental reviews before issuing the planting permits.
"APHIS's utter disregard for this simple investigation requirement, especially given the extraordinary number of endangered and threatened plants and animals in Hawaii, constitutes an unequivocal violation of a clear congressional mandate," the judge said in the order.
The corn and sugar cane plants, already harvested because the experiments involving them were completed before the case was decided, had been modified to produce human hormones, drugs and ingredients for vaccines against AIDS and hepatitis B.
Said Bill Freese, science policy analyst for the Washington-based Center for Food Safety, one of four plaintiffs in the case, "I think this court ruling shows once again that the USDA is not doing their job. They're being negligent - not regulating these crops. They're not up to the job of regulating these crops."
The ruling may make it harder to win permits to grow GM crops across the country. Said Honolulu Earthjustice attorney Paul Achitoff, "The days of rubber-stamping these (genetically engineered crop permits) are over. Whenever (the USDA) proposes to issue permits, they're going to have to examine their impact." http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6888
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6891
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6894
+ MORE ON GM GRASS FOUND IN THE WILD
The New York Times reports on the unapproved GM grass found growing in the wild in Oregon:
EXCERPT:
The GM grass, called creeping bentgrass, is being developed by the Scotts Miracle-Gro Company and Monsanto for use on golf courses. It contains a bacterial gene that makes the grass resistant to the herbicide Roundup, known generically as glyphosate.
A spokesman for Monsanto said that creeping bentgrass lacked the characteristics needed to become a weed ... But Norman C. Ellstrand, a professor of genetics at the University of California, Riverside, said that in some parts of the country bentgrass was considered a problem and was controlled.
Tom Stohlgren, an ecologist at the US Geological Survey's National Institute of Invasive Species Science in Fort Collins, Colorado, said the most worrying aspect of the escape was the effect the grasses might have on other local grass species. Plants of this type, called "sod-forming" grasses, can spread rapidly because they can reproduce sexually, through widely dispersing pollen and seeds, and also asexually, by forming a dense mat of roots from which more shoots emerge.
Stohlgren said, "Sod-forming grasses can tend to outcompete other species. It doesn't need to sexually reproduce - it's like The Blob. It could potentially hit rare species or national parks." http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6897
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6899
+ DEBATE OVER GM CROPS HEATS UP IN CALIFORNIA
Negotiations are heating up over legislation that would prevent local governments from banning GM seeds. Senate Bill 1056, by Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, was introduced last year in response to moves by several counties to prohibit biotech farming.
The California State Association of Counties and the League of California Cities fear the legislation is written too broadly. The bill prohibits local governments from regulating "any matter relating to the registration, labeling, sale, storage, transportation, distribution, notification of use, or use of seeds or nursery stock."
That would prevent cities and counties from doing things such as prohibiting seed trucks from parking in residential areas, according to a letter the two government groups sent to Assembly members last week.
The provisions are "so sweeping that they would restrict the ability of cities and counties to engage in basic local government regulation," the groups said. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6901
+ BATTLE ERUPTS OVER ILLEGAL GM COTTON IN BRAZIL
Following Brazilian regulator CNTbio's recommendation to destroy illegal GM cotton fields in Brazil, an open war has started between the producers and the seed companies. The producers, who do not wish to destroy their crops, argue that last year the CNTBio authorized the presence of 1% of transgenic traits in the cotton varieties and that it has become very difficult to find cotton seed free of transgenic traits.
Most of the illegal seeds are the property of Monsanto. According to a report by Monsantowatch, the multinational seems to be closing its eyes to this illegal trade which serves its objectives, protected by an unclear legislation which authorized conventional cotton to contain up to 1% of GM contamination. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6886
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EUROPE
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+ ACTIVISTS ARRESTED IN GERMANY AFTER GM MAIZE ACTION
Greenpeace activists destroyed about 50 square metres of GM maize near the village of Brunow near Brandenburg, Germany. The maize was being grown on a field owned by a farmer who supplies milk to Campina, one of the three largest German milk-processing companies. The activists planned to deliver some of the maize to the Heilbronn headquarters of Campina, which promotes its products as "earth friendly". But they were arrested before they made the delivery.
Said Alexander Hissting, one of the Greenpeace activists, "Gene-maize and gene-soy are grown for these products. The companies don't care about what consumers want. Campina and other large milk processors must forbid their suppliers to use gene-maize as feed." http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6887
+ PLANNED RELEASE OF GM WHEAT IN GERMANY
For the first time since 2004, there is in Germany once again an application for open-air field trials of GM wheat. A formal request has been filed by the Institute for Plant Genetics and Crop Research in Gatersleben with the Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety. The location of the field trial is in close proximity to fields used by the Gatersleben gene bank in Sachsen-Anhalt. There, hundreds of old wheat varieties are stored, which for preservation must be replanted again and again in the open.
The Munich Environmental Institute is calling for a widespread protest against the cultivation of gene-wheat. Download sample objection from http://www.umweltinstitut.org/genweizen
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6887
+ FRENCH ACTIVISTS HELD FOR DESTROYING GM CORN
Around 30 activists were held by French police for destroying two fields of GM corn in the villages of Villereau and Santilly. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6889
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AFRICA
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+ CONTAMINATING AFRICA - THAT'S THE GAME PLAN
Phil Bereano, professor emeritus of the department of technical communication, University of Washington, writes: "During the Jo-berg EarthSummit, I debated a very high-level USAID official on SA TV about such matters. It was very contentious. The arguments continued after the cameras went off and she said to me, 'In a few years we will have planted enough GE in Africa so that the whole continent will be "contaminated".'"
"That's the gameplan, and we should always keep it in mind, in my opinion. It's intentional, not 'adventitious'. It is a way of destroying the Protocol (which has always been the US objective)."
In particular, Kenya and South Africa have been targeted by the biotech industry and USAID as repositories for GM food and crops. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6882
+ GM SORGHUM THREAT TO LOCAL VARIETIES ACROSS AFRICA
According to Dr Florence Wambugu, the South African GMO regulatory body refused the application by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to carry out GM sorghum experiments in greenhouses because of inadequate containment plans.
Teresa Anderson of Gaia Foundation says that Wambugu seems to believe that once the application is re-written with stricter biosafety measures, it will be approved. However, Teresa points out that the purpose of the GM sorghum is ultimately for field trials and commercial release, so the potential for contamination and destruction of local varieties will still stand. It therefore makes no sense for any future GM sorghum applications by CSIR to be approved.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6880
+ SPARKS FLY AS PRO-GM LOBBYISTS DISRUPT PROTEST
When activists campaigning for the customer's right to choose whether to buy GM food or not in a Randburg Shopping Centre, the pro-GM lobby, funded by biotech multinationals, arrived bearing "I love GM food" placards.
Feelings ran high as the "right to choose" activists represented by Consumers International, The African Centre for Biosafety, Safeage, Earthlife Africa and numerous activists from around Africa asked the pro-GM people to please stop disrupting their street theatre.
Dr Michael Hansen, senior research associate of Consumers Union, is currently in South Africa running workshops to educate people about the need to accurately label foods containing GMOs.
"The reason we need to label GMOs is that they can fairly easily cause allergic reactions," he cautioned. "GMOs have also been implicated in immune problems and they threaten the livelihoods of small farmers who are then forced to continue buying seed and herbicide from the biotech companies." http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6878
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AUSTRALASIA
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+ GM CROPS WILL COST
If Australian farmers were to embrace GM canola, they would risk losing their export markets to Japan, China and the EU. Between 2001 and 2004 these markets collectively accounted for 65 per cent of their canola exports with a combined market value of A$829 million.
EXCERPT:
Indeed, consumer resistance to GE crops remains the strongest argument against its introduction. To date, Japan, China and the EU have instituted strict rules regarding the import and labelling of GE products, reflecting strong resistance to GE in those regions. Canada has already paid dearly for embracing GE in its canola industry. Canada currently produces 97 per cent of the world's canola, yet in 1998 (two years after it switched to GE crops) Canada lost its US$300-400 million annual canola sales to Europe because of European consumer resistance to GE.
It is little wonder then that the focus of the ABIC Conference [GM industry conference that began recently in Melbourne] is on looking at ways to convince a sceptical public to embrace GE in Australia. But the question that taxpayers might be asking is why is the Victorian Government funded a pro-GE conference when the economics and risks associated with GE just don't add up." http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6884
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ASIA
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+ UNIVERSITY RESPONSIBLE FOR AG CRISIS
Punjab Agricultural University is solely responsible for the agrarian crisis in the state, said policy analyst and agriculture scientist Devinder Sharma at a seminar organized by farmers' organisation Bhartiya Kissan Union (BKU).
Sharma said, "No doubt PAU has helped usher in the green revolution. For doing so, the top scientists of the university were given coveted national and international awards. However now when we have a crisis, there is no scientist who is accountable for the failure.
"Has the university ever tried to study the impact of Bt crops in the state? They just do not have the will to do so. Thus it is time that the farmers take matters into their own hands and force the university and government to toe their line. The farmers will have to stand up and say no to genetically modified crops, and the institutes will have to heed them." http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6883
+ HOPE HAS WITHERED FOR INDIA'S FARMERS
An article with this title in the Los Angeles Times on the farmer suicides in India following the failure of Bt cotton is at http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6879
EXCERPT:
"The costs have gone up immensely, like never before," said Arun Tulsiram Mahalle, 28, who lives here in Pahapal, a collection of narrow dirt lanes, mud homes and few modern amenities. "People can't take it anymore."
His and his neighbors' crops have been of uneven, often poor quality ever since agriculture officials encouraged them to switch over to more expensive, genetically modified seeds.
+ 1,864 SUICIDES AND RISING
A revealing article for Counterpunch reports on the farmer suicides in the Vidharba cotton belt of India, often prompted by the failure of Bt cotton:
EXCERPT:
Input costs ... have not been trifling. In some estimates, Bt cotton now accounts for 50-60 per cent of the total sown area. Even after the fall in its price, it costs much more than non-Bt seed. And despite all the claims made for it, input dealers here have seen no decline in pesticide sales as a result of its use. Some claim higher sales than before. If there is any fall now, it might be due to excess rain crippling farm operations. And many farms have reported failure with Bt anyway, long before the downpour. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6890
+ BT COTTON: FLAKY RESULTS, PREDETERMINED CONSENSUS
India Together carries a thoughtful and detailed article with the above title by Keya Acharya, a development journalist, on the erratic performance of Bt cotton in India.
After considering in some detail how varied the performance of Bt cotton appears to have been at different times and in different parts of the country, Keya seeks to sum up the overall patterns affecting Bt cotton cultivation.
One of the patterns she identifies is a strong determination amongst India's governing and scientific elites to push transgenics - with Bt cotton very much the flagship - as the way forward for Indian agriculture, regardless of the actual evidence in the field.
This means, Acharya points out, that where Bt cotton fails there is silence on the poor results not only by the seed corporates themselves, but by India's regulators, with the GEAC failing to develop GM regulation accordingly. Thus, "The existing varieties that have had such disastrous results in the southern Indian region... are still allowed in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharastra till 2007."
This is what Acharya means by "Flaky results, pre-determined consensus." Meanwhile, India's poor farmers suffer the consequences of this unshakeable consensus, with no official voices raised or regulatory checks developed to hinder the industry's aggressive marketing.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6895
+ NEW GM WATCH PODCAST ON GM COTTON FAILURE
Listen to podcast on how a series of new studies show how GM cotton is failing to live up to its promises, particularly for farmers in the developing world: http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6904
+ "NOTHING UNSCIENTIFIC" ABOUT LOW-INPUT, LOW-RISK ORGANIC FARMING
An article for India Together says low-external input organic farming is the solution to farmer indebtedness and suicides, though it is largely ignored by the media and scorned by many scientists as "unscientific".
A recent presentation by three experts and farmers from Vidarbha who have opted for organic methods challenged these views. Dr Tarak Kate, from Dharamitra, an NGO in Wardha, has done a study on small and marginal farmers using organic methods to negate the charge that this alternative is "unscientific" and "unproven".
EXCERPTS:
[With "high input, high risk" farming] Dharamitra's calculations ... show that between Rs.2200 and Rs.2450 per acre of cotton - excluding the labour involved in applying chemicals - goes out of the village "in the name of external inputs and interest needed to be paid on cash capital borrowed from money lenders".
Dharamitra has organised farmers' study groups to demonstrate how organic farming can prove profitable. "Seeing is believing," [Dr Kate] says. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6896
+ INDIA IS DROWNING IN PESTICIDES
Vandana Shiva writes that the issue of toxics and poisons in India's food system has once again moved to the centre of national concern. India, she says, needs to be pesticide and GMO-free.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6902
+ INDIA: WHY SPARE HIDDEN VILLAIN PESTICIDE?
The recent finding of high levels of pesticide residues in beverages like Pepsi and Coca Cola has led to the Kerala chief minister banning their sale and production in the state. Karnataka, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Punjab imposed bans on sales of the two beverages in educational institutions, hospitals and state government offices.
But journalist Ashok Sharma points out in the Financial Express that the bans do not get to the root of the problem, which is, the drinks companies say, the presence of pesticide residues in water and sugar used as raw materials for the product. One of the culprits is Bt cotton, which, according to a recent Cornell study, does not lead to reductions in pesticide use.
Ashok Sharma writes:
The government, too, is playing safe in the situation by attempting to please all the three sectors of the industry. It is promoting integrated pest management (IPM) as a way out. But IPM has a component for use of chemical pesticides. Why can't government promote the concept of non-pesticide management (NPM) developed by the former director of Central Tobacco Research Institute? This concept, which is almost organic farming, has worked well with cotton cultivation in Andhra Pradesh and the state government is planning to promote this concept through its Indira Kranti Pratham scheme. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6883
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GM MEDICINES
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+ EXPERT TRANSLATION OF ARTICLE ON CHILDREN HARMED BY GM PHARMA RICE
We now have an expert translation by Dr Michael Melampy of the article in Spanish which reported on the impact of the Ventria GM rice pharmaceutical trial in Peru. It's at http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6893
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QUOTE OF THE WEEK
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"... it is worth asking what kind of society is it where anyone who raises criticisms of new technology is immediately derided as an ideologue and a luddite? It's almost as though science has achieved a quasi-religious status, where bio and nanotech might well be regarded as the new creationism."
- John Hepburn, "Bio to Nano: Technology, Risk and Democracy", ZNet, July 27, 2006 http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6885