from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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Dear all:
Yet another study, this time from the US, shows that GM cotton neither improves biodiversity or yield. And a GM grass has escaped into the wild in Oregon (RESEARCH).
Worth reading in full is Nathaniel C. Comfort's incisive review of GM fundamentalist Lee Silver's new book (for excerpt, see SCIENCE & RELIGION).
Claire
www.gmwatch.org / www.lobbywatch.org
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CONTENTS
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RESEARCH
SCIENCE & RELIGION
LOBBYWATCH
AFRICA
THE AMERICAS
ASIA
EUROPE
AUSTRALASIA
GM MEDICINES
TAKE ACTION!
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RESEARCH
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+ GM COTTON FAILS TO IMPROVE BIODIVERSITY OR YIELD
Another hammer blow for the hyping of GM cotton as a miracle crop has been struck by a large-scale study showing no benefits for biodiversity, no yield increases, no reductions in herbicide use, and increasing problems with secondary pests. The research was carried out by ecologist Yves Carriere of the University of Arizona and published in Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6857
+ GOLF COURSE GM GRASS ESCAPES IN OREGON
A glyphosate-resistant GM grass designed for golf-courses has escaped into the wild in Oregon, USA. The manufacturer is the Scotts Company, Marysville, Ohio.
Jay Reichman and colleagues at the US Environmental Protection Agency's labs in Corvallis, Oregon, identified nine escapees among grass varieties sampled within a 4.8-kilometre radius of the site where the bentgrass is being cultivated, the most distant 3.8 kilometres away. The team showed that the GM grass has spread both by pollinating non-GM plants to form hybrids, and by seed movement.
The escape is worrying the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) enough that it is running its first full environmental impact assessment of a GM plant.
Lawn and grass seed is exported from Oregon all over the world, including to the UK. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6872
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SCIENCE & RELIGION
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Lee M. Silver is currently flavour of the month among biotech promoters with the publication of his new book attacking biotech critics as irrationalists driven by "subliminal" embedded religious beliefs. But 'Challenging Nature: The Clash of Science and Spirituality at the New Frontiers of Life' is actually a testament to the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of most biotech promoters.
+ LEE M. SILVER - CHALLENGING NATURE
A review for the CENTER FOR GENETICS AND SOCIETY of of Silver's new book, describes it as "a really bad book about what he thinks other people think."
Silver is a Princeton professor with a background in mouse genetics who caused a stir with his 1997 book, 'Remaking Eden', which asserted the inevitability of using human genetic engineering to manipulate future generations. Its terms "GenRich" and "Naturals" neatly encapsulated the possibility of an entrenched genetic aristocracy.
In 'Challenging Nature' Silver moves on to analyzing the supposed belief systems of biotechnology critics. But virtually the whole book is an assault upon a straw target of Silver's own creation, spiced with irrelevant criticisms of outdated examples of unscientific thinking.
He is notably unfair, disingenuous and sloppy. He misrepresents several scandals in the field of agricultural biotech. Some of his quotes are mangled; some of his citations are wrong. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6873
+ SILVER-TONGUED NONSENSE - GM WATCH REVIEW
In 'Challenging Nature' Silver claims people in Asia accept biotech without demur. This is because, according to the author, "Playing god only makes sense in the context of the traditional monotheism that prevails in America or the post-Christian monotheism of Mother Nature common in Europe. In Asian culture it doesn't make sense, which is the reason why there's no grassroots opposition there to either embryo research or genetically engineered crops."
This is nonsense. Asia has seen some of the most vociferous and effective opposition to GM crops anywhere in the world. In Thailand not only commercial GM crops but even GM trials are banned. India has also been a hotbed of opposition, and the global prospects for GM wheat commercialisation hit the buffers because of the strength of opposition in Japan, a country where millions of concerned citizens have signed petitions opposing GMOs. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6873
+ REVIEW OF SILVER'S BOOK FOR 'AMERICAN SCIENTIST'
An excellent review of Silver's book by Nathaniel C. Comfort.
EXCERPTS:
... the history of science is more than the conquering of spiritual darkness by the light of reason. Both religion and science have mixed legacies; both have done harm as well as good. And both tend to be most dangerous when they become dogmatic and intolerant, and when they confuse faith with knowledge...
Strange to say, but Challenging Nature ... shows a Victorian perspective on science versus religion to be ideally suited to cheerleading for modern biotechnology and genomics. Silver uses the unreconstructed science-religion conflict as a foil for that old-time scientism: the belief that true knowledge can come only from natural science and that technology can therefore solve all social problems. So convinced is he that technology - especially biotechnology - is good for what ails us that he can see only one reason someone would disagree: Any opponents of biotechnology, he says, must be blinded by spirituality...
Give him an "A" for effort: He goes to extraordinary lengths to force reality to fit his conclusion. He portrays his opponents in the weakest light, considering only their flimsiest arguments and knocking down straw men. For example, in his sometimes trenchant critique of organic farming, he implies that the entire modern enterprise is infected with the mysticism of Rudolf Steiner (the 19th-century German philosopher and educator who coined the term), ignoring the many hard-headed and scientific organic farmers today...
...Silver insists that we not let sentimental attachment to some vaporous ideal of pure nature or spirit stand in the way of creating true happiness and harmony with technology.
The problem is that we don't know what we don't know. Like reading glasses, technology magnifies and sharpens the near field but makes the distance blurry. The history of science and technology is stuffed with examples of shortsightedness and unintended consequences. Just after 1900, when Mendel's laws of heredity came to light, geneticists thought that they now had enough knowledge to take control of human evolution. Their false confidence contributed to a eugenics movement that sterilized thousands of Americans and provided the blueprint for the Nazi race-hygiene program. Similarly, no one intended to melt the icecaps, decimate wildlife populations, fill fish with mercury or wreathe our cities in toxic chemicals. Those things have happened accidentally, as the long-term effects of short-term solutions. Such disasters might have been lessened had we been more aware of our own ignorance. Humility in the face of nature's complexity is not spiritualism. It is realism. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6874
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LOBBYWATCH
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+ JENNIFER THOMSON LYING DOWN UNDER
The South African GM lobbyist Jennifer Thompson told the Australian press, "As European governments sit and contemplate the possible danger of GM foods, they commit Africans and those in other developing countries to years even decades of starvation."
"The European countries are not in favour of it [GM] and they're trying to sway the opinion of the people in African countries, saying if you eat GM foods you will be sterilised and totally appalling things like that. It's very inconsiderate and actually very cruel, to the extent that the Zambian Government will not even accept food aid, not even if it's milk."
Presumably Thompson thinks Australians are stupid and will be taken in by this fiction. Before the Zambian government made its decision not to accept GM maize (not milk!) as food aid, it ordered a careful assessment by its own team of experts of the possible impact of accepting GM grain. They travelled to South Africa, the US and Europe to meet GM regulators and scientific supporters and critics of GM.
Thompson is on the board of the biotech industry backed lobby group AfricaBio. She is also an advisor to the biotech-industry funded Council for Biotechnology Information in the US, a Board Member of the biotech-industry backed ISAAA and Chair of the African Agricultural Technology Foundation, which receives backing from the industry and USAID to introduce GM crops into Africa. Yet despite all this backing from wealthy and powerful Northern promoters of biotech, she likes to present GM as something craved in the South and obstructed from the North! http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6859
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6860
+ THOMSON AT IT AGAIN
In an article in The Australian, GM lobbyist Jennifer Thomson writes, "Another trait that is being developed in important African crops is drought tolerance. The lack of water is surely one of the greatest problems facing agriculture in Africa."
And Thompson herself, it seems, is leading the way in this important area of drought resistance. We're told Thomson's own "research has led to the development of genetically modified maize resistant to the African maize streak virus and drought."
Thompson is based in South Africa. So too is Mariam Mayet of the African Centre for Biosafety. Curiously, Mariam reports, "I have a piece of paper, in black and white, from the National Dept of Agriculture, saying they have no record whatsover, of any research with drought resistant GM maize." http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6862
See also AUSTRALASIA.
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AFRICA
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+ REGULATORY RED LIGHT FUELS GM RESEARCH DEBATE
Mariam Mayet of the African Centre for Biosafety has commented on the South African regulator's refusal of an application by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to conduct greenhouse experiments on GM sorghum, a project much hyped by Monsanto-trained scientist Dr Florence Wambugu:
"As with the GM sweet potato project, which was developed by Monsanto, brought to Africa in collaboration with Dr Wambugu, and was a spectacular failure in its objective of achieving virus-resistance, Wambugu is taking every opportunity to tout this new 'Super Sorghum' project as Africa-driven, and to use it to convince the world that GM will solve hunger in Africa." Mayet adds that, even if the project comes to nothing, Wambugu and partners may still consider it to be a public relations success. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6875
+ PLAN TO GROW AIDS CREAM IN TOBACCO PLANTS IN EAST AFRICA
A team of scientists led by Dr Julian Ma of the University of London is using transgenic tobacco plants to make Cyanovarin-N for microbicidal vaginal creams aimed at preventing HIV transmission.
The plan is to grow the product on tobacco farms in Kenya. "This is a very logical area for Africa to move into," said Dr Calestous Juma, a fervent biotech supporter at Harvard University. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6866
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THE AMERICAS
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+ BUSH NOMINATES ANTI-REGULATION ZEALOT TO HEAD REGULATORY POLICY
The White House has nominated Susan Dudley, an anti-regulatory extremist from the industry-funded Mercatus Center, to an obscure but powerful office where she would have the power to gut the federal government's very ability to protect the public.
Dudley would become the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an office in the White House Office of Management and Budget with enormous authority over environmental, health, and safety regulations.
You may have thought the largely voluntary US system for the regulation of GMOs somewhat lax, but here's what Dudley thinks: "Unscientific fears, fanned by activists and short-sighted government policies, have led to a regulatory framework that singles out genetically modified crops for greater scrutiny and even prohibition." http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6869
+ THE REIGN OF CORPORATIONS IN AMERICA
In the wake of a wave of bills at state level - introduced at the urging of biotech industry lobbyists - seeking to preempt local communities from passing legislation giving them control over GMOs, an article in Orion magazine lucidly captures the political context into which this legislation fits.
EXCERPT:
de Tocqueville had... detected a threat to the "equality of conditions" he so admired in America. "The friends of democracy should keep their eyes anxiously fixed," he warned, on an "industrial aristocracy... For if ever again permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy make their way into the world it will have been by that door that they entered." Under those conditions, he thought, life might very well be worse than it had been under the old regimes of Europe. The old land-based aristocracy of Europe at least felt obliged "to come to the help of its servants and relieve their distress. But the industrial aristocracy... when it has impoverished and brutalized the men it uses, abandons them in a time of crisis."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6867
+ THE PENTAGON AND GM SOYA
A shocking article continues to detail the carnage wrought with the support of the US military in Paraguay, where the countryside is being forcibly cleared to plant GM soya.
EXCERPTS:
The Pentagon seems to have understood the risks posed to the continuity of United States dominance by social movements in Latin America. The option of militarizing societies serves two aims: it guarantees control of natural resources and protects governments so as to block social movements' progress ...
In the last decade, the area sown with genetically manipulated soya went from 800,000 hectares to 2 million hectares, taking up 64% of the country's agricultural area. The soya frontier advances over communal lands and those of small farmers and has led to a dramatic clearance of rural working families from the land.
... Soya's advance was accompanied by the rise of the rural workers movement... Marches, roadblocks, land occupations and sit-ins in public buildings turned the rural workers movement into the most important in the country... But the Duarte Frutos government that took office in 2003 took a severe anti-popular and above all anti-rural workers line...
Around 100 rural workers have been murdered by the paramilitary groups and the state security services, more than 2000 are on trial and have to present themselves weekly to the authorities, nor can they take part in public demonstrations. Meanwhile, the soya business continues to strangle the subsistence economy of rural working families, killing children with pesticide induced poisoning. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6850
+ EU COMES DOWN AGAINST MONSANTO IN ARGENTINE SOY DISPUTE
The European Union has agreed with Argentina regarding complaints filed by Monsanto over roundup ready soybean products shipped from Argentina to Europe, Argentina's Economy Ministry said late Wednesday.
Monsanto has sought to show that soybean exports to the EU are derived from a Monsanto seed, whose patent is recognized in Europe but not in Argentina. The company has therefore claimed that Argentine soy exporters should pay royalties to Monsanto. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6876
Curious how Monsanto seems to end up at loggerheads even with countries that have embraced GM crops! And that's apart from all the other problems Monsanto brings in its wake. (see Argentina: Soya-Fication Brings Serious Problems) http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6793
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ASIA
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+ PROTEST IN BANGLADESH AGAINST GOLDEN RICE
A protest was organized August 6 in front of the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) against the introduction of Golden Rice. The meeting was organized by UBINIG and Nayakrishi Andolon. The meeting was attended by 100 farmers' representatives.
Protestors pointed out that there are plenty of foods available in Bangladesh rich in vitamin A. Farmers have identified 67 local varieties of rice rich in vitamin A. Midwives prescribe such rice for pregnant mothers and children. Moreover, there are many vitamin-rich vegetables. BR-29, from which the Golden Rice was developed, is a rice variety of Bangladesh. There is apprehension about the piracy of BR-29.
GM Watch comment:
In 2003 Gerard Barry, a Monsanto executive who had played a key role in achieving industry support for the Golden Rice project, was appointed coordinator of the International Rice Research Institute - IRRI's Golden Rice Network, of which BRRI forms a part. Barry's task was "to facilitate the development and deployment" in Asian countries of this GM rice. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6861
+ LEAVE INDIAN FARMERS ALONE, MONSANTO BOSS TOLD
Monsanto India's managing director Felipe Osorio was recently hyping Bt cotton at a business seminar. Representatives of government regulator GEAC and various industry-related bodies listened as Osorio claimed that the economic benefits to farmers from Bt cotton adoption "would be at least double this year as compared to last cropping season".
But his claims were powerfully contradicted by another of the speakers at the same event.
The token critic, Devinder Sharma lambasted biotech supporters for helping to destroy Indian agriculture and for "looting" India's farmers.
The following were among the points Devinder raised:
***Bt cotton approval in India was the biggest scientific fraud to have hit Indian science since Independence.
***Monsanto made available research trial data, published in Science, which was a "complete sham".
***GEAC - India's main GM regulatory body - has operated as a rubber stamp for the biotech industry.
***If Indian farmers are making such great gains from growing Bt cotton, why are they committing suicide and abandoning agriculture?
***Monsanto was robbing India's farmers with its astronomical seed price. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6854
+ GM EGGPLANT CHALLENGED IN SUPREME COURT OF INDIA
In a type of action not available in many countries, an Indian citizen is challenging proposed field trials of a GM brinjal (eggplant) via the Supreme Court. Several scientists have deposed statements in support. That of Robert Mann, Senior lecturer in Biochemistry (rtd) at University of Auckland, is at http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6868
EXCERPT:
One tawdry old argument we have heard since 1974 and can expect to hear again is the claim that gene transfers occur naturally so GM is only hastening them. This line of talk is a smokescreen designed to obscure the fact that GM usually performs artificial transfers which are not known to occur in nature. This fact is denied when possible harm is suggested, but is acknowledged, indeed emphasised, for claims of benefit. It is certainly true that no brinjal could arise in nature containing modified versions of a Bt toxin in most or all of its cells.
+ INDO-U.S. FARM PACT WILL FUEL TERRORISM - VANDANA SHIVA
Terrorism and Agriculture were among the issues raised in the Joint India-US statement issued during Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh's meeting with President Bush. The India-US farm pact entails the US making available nuclear technology to India in return for India's allowing the US access to its biodiversity and agricultural markets for genetically engineered products.
At the meeting, the two leaders resolved "to combat terrorism relentlessly".
Vandana Shiva comments: "This is not the first time a US driven agriculture agenda is being imposed on India. The so-called green revolution was introduced forty years ago. And it fuelled terrorism and extremism in the 1980's in Punjab. While the two leaders resolve, 'to combat terrorism relentlessly' they are promoting the technologies, and trade models, which serve the US corporate interests and destroy farmers' livelihood security thus becoming the breeding ground for terrorism..." http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6864
+ BHASKAR SAVE'S FARM, KALPAVRUKSHA
We recently circulated farmer Bhaskar Save's Open Letter to M S Swaminathan - the 'father' of India's 'Green Revolution' and a key promoter of GM crops in India - challenging him to find a new way forward for Indian agriculture, given "the tragic condition of our soils and our debt-burdened farmers, driven to suicide in increasing numbers every year." Those wishing to know more about Bhaskar Save and his work can read excerpts made available from 'The Vision of Natural Farming' by Bharat Mansata. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6856
+ TURF WAR AS INDIAN GOVT SETS UP COMMITTEE ON GM FOOD
The Indian government has set up a committee to ensure all GM food is labelled but it is at the centre of a ministerial turf war.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6851
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EUROPE
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+UNAPPROVED GM MAIZE CONTAMINATES SEED LOTS IN EUROPE
Tucked away in the latest minutes of Britain's GM regulatory body ACRE - the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment - is news that blows so called "coexistence" to pieces. Non-GM maize seed lots in Slovenia have been contaminated by two GMOs, Syngenta's Bt11 and Monsanto's MON810. Bt11 does not have approval to be grown in Slovenia or anywhere else in the EU. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6852
+ WTO IGNORED CARTAGENA PROTOCOL ON BIOSAFETY IN RULING AGAINST EUROPE ON GMOs
An interesting article reveals that the WTO Panel ignored the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety in reaching its decision that Europe illegally delayed importing GMOs.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6871
+ PHARMA CROPS IN GERMANY
One hundred and fifty square meters of GM maize were apparently destroyed in Germany by GM opponents recently. The pro-GM lobby group InnoPlanta says it's confronting a "Reign of Terror"!
Some might think a more reasonable cause for concern were the over 2000 square meters of pharma crops due to be grown in Germany in the coming year. The Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) authorized an application by the University of Rostock on June 14. In the trial, three different GM potato lines will be used, which contain genes for different pharmaceutical or industrial compounds.
The Federal Agency for Nature Conservation and environmental organizations like the NABU and the Munich Environmental Institute had rejected the trial and raised severe objections. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6863
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AUSTRALASIA
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+ BIOTECH FIRM SEEKS APPROVAL TO CONTAMINATE FOOD CROPS
Concern is mounting that Food Standards Australia New Zealand is being pressured by biotech companies to officially approve contamination of food with GM crops designed for industrial and pharmaceutical production.
Syngenta has applied to FSANZ to allow a biofuel GM corn into the human food chain because of expectations that it will contaminate food anyway.
"The biotech companies are admitting that they have inadequate systems to segregate GM crops not intended for consumption." says Jon Carapiet from GE Free NZ. "But it seems instead of preventing contamination by containing their production, they want government approval to contaminate food so they are not held responsible."
Scientists and medical professionals have objected to the proposal, warning that such applications may be just the start of many aimed at officially sanctioning food contamination by pharmaceutical-producing crops. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6855
+ FSANZ FOOD REGULATOR CRITICISED OVER NEW GM CORN
Australia and New Zealand's food regulator is failing to apply its own safety standards, or those of international guidelines, in assessing a new-generation GM corn for human consumption, critics say.
But Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) defends its so-far favourable assessment of the high-lysine corn, which it says is intended for animal feed and is unlikely to enter the human food chain.
The Centre for Integrated Research on Biosafety at the University of Canterbury has twice formally notified FSANZ of its concerns about the GM corn, LY038, which has been engineered to contain a bacterial gene that allows the accumulation of high levels of lysine.
"Among the types of potential hazards that this food poses are the creation of compounds that are known to be associated with important diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer's, heart disease and cancer," says centre director Associate Professor Jack Heinemann.
Heinemann says while the compounds, advanced glycoxidation endproducts (AGEs), are also produced when cooking conventional foods, he is concerned about potential levels in LY038 corn. He says corn is normally extremely low in the compounds that combine to create AGEs. But higher-than-normal levels of lysine in the LY038 and high sugar levels, combining under heat, have the potential to raise AGE levels. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6858
+ TAXPAYERS FUND PRIVATE AGRIBIZ CONFERENCE
Taxpayers in the State of Victoria, Australia, are the top sponsors and funders of the private agricultural gene technology conference (ABIC2006) in Melbourne 6-9 August, says GeneEthics Network. Premier Bracks' government funding of private GM projects is undermining the state's moratorium on GM crops.
"Premier Bracks is pushing through his government's expensive pro-GM agenda without the consent of Victorian taxpayers," says Bob Phelps of GeneEthics Network. "The interested public was denied any role in planning or running the ABIC2006 conference, designed to promote the views of GM companies."
"Citizens with genuine concerns about GM are effectively excluded from the conference by the $500 a day attendance fee, while the promoters of gene technology will all be there - government officials, GM researchers, representatives of GM companies, and the PR companies," he says. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6855
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GM MEDICINES
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+ MORE ON VENTRIA PHARMA RICE TRIAL VICTIMS
We recently circulated an article on the serious allergies suffered by two Peruvian children after they were experimented on with Ventria Bioscience's GM-derived rehydration fluid. Another article on this subject is at http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6865
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TAKE ACTION!
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+ ENGLAND: GM CONTAMINATION - MATERIALS TO TAKE ACTION AND EVENT
Clare Oxborrow of Friends of the Earth sends details of their new website: www.stopgmcontamination.org which has been set up to help people have their say in the government's GM "coexistence" consultation for England.
They've made available more materials to help campaigners work on this locally - available at http://community.foe.co.uk/contamination
On Thursday 19 October they're holding an action in London to mark the end of the consultation, to give campaigners a chance to get together to publicly reject the government's GM contamination plans and insist they listen to demands for tough action to keep our food and farming GM-free. If you can go, please contact Richard Hines This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call 0113 242 8153.