from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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Dear all:

A gruesome report has emerged from China, where biotech companies are providing the cosmetics industry with skins of executed prisoners for manufacture of the collagen that Western women are fond of having injected into their lips (ASIA).

China has begun a practice of naming and shaming scientists found guilty of misconduct, though conspicuously absent from the blacklist is the man that the Chinese press has accused of systematically contaminating the Chinese rice supply with a GM rice he developed (ASIA).

Don't miss Dr Mae-Wan Ho's comprehensive roundup of research showing the problems found with Bt crops worldwide (RESEARCH).

Oh, and you might enjoy the US's advisor to Codex's assessment of the current state of the GM revolution:

"agbiotech already is moribund in the US (and international) public sector, little better in industry, and dead and buried in the developing world."

His solution? The United States should cut off funding and all other assistance to any country or agency (from the UN down) that dares to place any regulatory controls on GMOs. (LOBBYWATCH)

Claire This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
www.gmwatch.org / www.lobbywatch.org

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CONTENTS
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THE AMERICAS
ASIA
LOBBYWATCH
EUROPE
AFRICA
MIDDLE EAST
RESEARCH
OIL AND SUSTAINABILITY
CAMPAIGN OF THE WEEK

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THE AMERICAS
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+ CORRUPTING AMERICA'S HEARTLAND
Monsanto's attempt to corrupt US Public Broadcasting and greenwash biotech and industrial agriculture by sponsoring an agricultural TV programme, America's Heartland, is turning into a significant issue.

It follows the controversy over the past year about Republicans trying to take over public broadcasting, which is one of the last bastions of non-corporate-controlled US media.

The director of programme marketing for the makers of the Monsanto-backed PBS series (KVIE-TV in Sacramento CA), Jim O'Donnell, is trying to play up the fact that no one outside of the programme makers has actually seen America's Heartland.

"I'm surprised at the criticism," says O'Donnell. "Nobody's seen the show... I'm not sure how anybody who has any opinion is basing that in fact."

But Dr Doug Gurian-Sherman, a Senior Scientist at the Center for Food Safety, has seen a precursor series to America's Heartland, called California Heartland, that the producers said accurately reflects the content of the new national series, and he reports that it is extremely one-sided.

O'Donnell has also apparently been telling complainers who call KVIE that none of the critics want to meet with him. We hear that requests to meet with O'Donnell have actually been ignored!
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5776

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ASIA
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+ WORKING MIRACLES IN NEPAL'S NON-GM RICE FIELDS
SciDev.net carries an article expressing amazement at the bumper rice harvests being obtained in Nepal and other countries using local, non-GM varieties and no chemicals. Farmers are obtaining harvests of double or triple the usual size using the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) method, which uses less water and seed.

The pro-corporate International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is, predictably, unimpressed, claiming SRI showed no advantages over conventional methods in its trials.

One of the interesting aspects of this article is the nature of the surprise about the high yields obtained: "It sounds too good to be true. After all, this is not a high-yielding variety of genetically modified rice but the normal local variety, mansuli."

The joke is that there have been no GM crops successfully engineered for increased yield - just questionable claims of indirect yield gains plus consistent reports of yield losses.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5774

+ INDEPENDENT INQUIRY DEMANDED ON BT COTTON
Gene Campaign reports that the story of Bt cotton is getting murkier by the day: "Dr Kranthi, a scientist from the prestigious cotton research institute in Nagpur publishes a paper providing the scientific data that provides evidence that Bt cotton is not very effective in India, then writes an article in a newspaper recanting pretty much all that he has said in the scientific publication! Not only does he deny his earlier findings and assertions, he springs to the defense of his boss, the DG of ICAR , absolving him of any responsibility in the questionable decisions taken to release Bt cotton.

"If there has been any pressure on Dr Kranthi to revise his views as published in Current Science, this must come out in a careful enquiry. It is highly unusual for a scientist to present another view of his data in a newspaper article after publishing a scientific paper."

Gene Campaign is demanding an independent enquiry on all aspects of Bt cotton.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5778
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5782

+ INDIAN MEDICS CALL FOR MANDATORY GM LABELLLING
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has called for mandatory labelling of GM foods. It said that imported foods containing traces of GMOs should be tested for safety in labs in the country.

The call follows a previous report from The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) that noted, "Specific safety issues associated with GM foods include direct or indirect consequences of new gene product or altered levels of existing gene product due to GM, possibility of gene transfer from ingested GM food and potential adverse effect like allergenicity and toxic effects."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5780

+ INDIAN SOYMEAL EXPORTERS EYE BIG SALES
India's soymeal exports are expected to pick up after a slow start with countries like Japan showing keen interest in the meal because it is non-GM, a leading exporter said.

Davish Jain, managing director of the Indore-based Prestige Group, said Japan was keen to pick up more Indian soymeal because of its natural purity: "The volume of exports for Japanese markets could be doubled or trebled from this year's 250,000-300,000 tonnes if right efforts are made to meet their requirements. There is demand from Japan for non-GMO soymeal. India produces this kind of soymeal and does not allow GM seeds."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5768

+ CHINA "NAMES AND SHAMES" SCIENTISTS FOR MISCONDUCT
The National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) has published on its website the names of three scientists punished for misconduct. The disclosure is part of a campaign to improve the research ethics among China's scientific community, and is a first for the country.

But if China really wants to tackle its scientists' ethics, GM WATCH suggests it should start with its biotech sector.

Top of the list for disgusting ethics and gross misconduct has to be "China's leading biotechnology scientist" - Zhang Qifa.

If the South China Morning Post is to be believed, Zhang Qifa has systematically colluded in contaminating China and the world's most important staple crop with an illegal GM rice variety that he and his institute developed.

If so, Zhang Qifa is guilty not just of serious illegality but something which could have seriously unpredictable consequences for the world's food supply - truly an act of bio-terrorism.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5777

+ EXECUTED PRISONERS SKINNED FOR BIOTECH COMPANIES
A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe, an investigation by The Guardian has discovered.

Agents for the firm have told would-be customers it is developing collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments from skin taken from prisoners after they have been shot. The agents say some of the company's products have been exported to the UK, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts is "traditional" and nothing to "make such a big fuss about".

One agent told the Guardian's researcher: "A lot of the research is still carried out in the traditional manner using skin from the executed prisoner and aborted foetus." This material, he said, was being bought from "biotech" companies based in the northern province of Heilongjiang, and was being developed elsewhere in China.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5777

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LOBBYWATCH
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+ HENRY I. MILLER LOBBIES FOR LESS GM REGULATIONS
It's time for John Bolton, US ambassador to the UN, and Condi Rice to kick ass over GMOs, says Henry I. Miller of the Hoover Institution. Miller writes, "agbiotech already is moribund in the US (and international) public sector, little better in industry, and dead and buried in the developing world. It's time to stop the hemorrhaging."

What to do?

"The United States should cut off funding and all other assistance to foreign governments, United Nations agencies, and other international bodies that implement, collude, or cooperate in any way with unscientific policies."

Translation: "unscientific policies" = any attempt to regulate GMOs.

Miller claims regulations on GMOs are unnecessary because genetic engineering is a fantastically exact technology that only involves the precise transference of a single gene with a known and entirely predictable effect.

By contrast, traditional plant breeding is a nightmarishly inexact "science" which could give rise to all kinds of dangerous, messy and unpredictable consequences.

Therefore, opines Miller, GMOs should be the subject not of greater but of less regulation than foods and crops produced by the recklessly imprecise processes of conventional breeding.

GM WATCH COMMENT: Miller's account of genetic engineering is about as precise and reliable as the technology itself!

The more honest GM proponents are willing to concede that genetic engineering is not remotely as specific a process as the likes of Miller would lead us to believe. When a novel gene is engineered into a plant, it takes a whole "cassette" of genetic material to make it happen and there is no control over exactly where it will be added in the plant's DNA. This means there's inevitable uncertainty over what the effects may be.

Professor James (the main architect of the UK Food Standards Agency and who has been both a UK and European GM regulator) has said of Milleresque accounts of GM food: "The perception that everything is totally straightforward and safe is utterly naive."

Prof. James has also said, "There is... a need to develop more effective and appropriate screening methods to alert companies and government agencies to the unexpected consequences of the often random insertion of genetic traits into plants." But such methods have never been developed.

Prof. James has also remarked that the current regulatory system for GM foods is open to challenge simply because "we are making all sorts of judgments with so little evidence at hand." Yet Miller wants the US to insist this system is not improved but abandoned!

The reality is that, "Potentially disastrous effects may come from undetected harmful substances in genetically modified foods." Those are the words of Dr Andrew Chesson, when the vice chairman of the European Commission scientific committee on animal nutrition.
http://ngin.tripod.com/foodstatements.htm

But while Miller's account of genetic engineering may be nothing more than an exercise in wishful thinking by a rabid libertarian, he and his rightwing pals remain extraordinarily close to the Bush administration.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5781

+ AVERY ET AL ATTACK JEFFREY SMITH
Letters attacking the author Jeffrey Smith, who is lecturing in South Africa on the risks of GM foods, have been published in the South African newspaper, Business Day.

They come from the usual suspects. Alex Avery and the Hudson Institute need no introduction. The other letter writer, Gurudev Singh (Khush), is a green revolution plant breeder who acts as an advisor to Ventria Bioscience - the firm who are having so much trouble getting American rice farmers and retailers to accept open field trials of their GM drug-producing rice.

Just as predictable as the background of the attackers is (a) the aggression - "it is time that fools like Smith are given the cold shoulder by the media" - and (b) the deceitful and illogical arguments they deploy.

In particular, Avery makes a claim for "a decade of safe planting and eating of biotech crops", while Gurudev Singh spells out an exactly similar argument, "They have been on the market for 10 years now. There can be few Americans who have not eaten them. And there are not casualties so far."

This has to be one of the most fallacious pro-GM claims of all time.

Even some supporters of GM are willing to own up to this, as an article in the journal Nature noted a few years back. Ben Miflin, former director of the Institute of Arable Crops at Rothamsted (UK), told Nature that under current monitoring conditions, "any unanticipated health impact of such foods would need to be a 'monumental disaster' to be detectable".

Despite which, Avery asserts that, "Foods from biotech crops have not caused even a hiccup." How can he know that, given there are no mechanisms for monitoring the impacts of GM foods?

Miflin points out that "a general increase in gastrointestinal disorders, for example, would be difficult to attribute to a particular food, given the diverse possible origins of such symptoms." That's quite apart from the fact that foods with GM ingredients aren't even labelled in the United States!
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5769

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EUROPE
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+ POLISH MARSHALS WANT GM-FREE POLAND
The Assembly of Marshals of the Polish Provinces (the opinion-making and advisory body representing the interests of all provinces) has concluded that the Polish Government should prepare a motion to the European Commission to ban the import of GM products in all areas of the country. The Assembly stated, "approval for cultivation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can damage the public image of the Polish countryside which nowadays is considered as the source of healthy, ecological and high quality food".
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5779

+ GM VINES WORRY FRENCH WINEMAKERS
In the heart of the Alsace wine region, researchers have planted France's only GM vines in the hope of finding a way to battle the ''court-noue'' virus afflicting a third of the country's vines. But many local winegrowers fear the plants will contaminate their vineyards and ruin the reputation of France's wine sector.

''It makes me angry because this is imposed on everyone without us being informed about the risk,'' Pierre-Paul Humbrecht, a maker of biodynamic wines, said in his vineyard just a few km away from the open-air experiment. "If there's a problem, it concerns us all. We fear for our vines.''

GM WATCH comment: If this virus is such a problem, then a naturally resistant variety should be found among the hundreds available. This applies to all crops currently being genetically modified for so-called "virus resistance".
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5767

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AFRICA
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+ SUSPEND ALL CROP TRIALS - MP
A Kenyan MP [Member of Parliament] has asked the Kenyan government to suspend all trials on GM crops, pending development of strong biosafety policies and legal framework. Mr David Nakitare (Saboti) also said further field trials on GM crops should be stopped until the technology was proved safe to the environment.

He praised the government for ordering the destruction of GM maize under field trial. The MP added that the same policy should be implemented against GM cotton, cassava and sweet potatoes.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5772
See also AVERY ET AL ATTACK JEFFREY SMITH in the LOBBYWATCH section

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MIDDLE EAST
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+ STRONG OPPOSITION TO GMOs IN WEST ASIA AND NORTH AFRICA
A survey undertaken during 2003 and 2004 showed that the public in West Asia and North Africa were strongly opposed to GM food. The survey was carried out in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on 1,000 participants representing the North African and West Asian regions.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5773

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RESEARCH
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+ NEW STUDY RAISES FEARS OVER LONG TERM IMPACTS OF GM CROPS
A follow-up study to the UK Government's GM crop trials has found that growing GM oilseed rape crops has negative impacts on farmland biodiversity in following years. The findings are yet another blow to the biotech industry.

The research, published 28 September in the Royal Society's journal Biology Letters, found that the immediate impacts on farmland wildlife found in the Farm Scale Evaluations persisted for at least two years. Growing GM oilseed rape led to significantly lower weed seedbanks two years later. Weed seeds are an important source of food for farmland birds and any reduction is likely to have a negative impact on their populations.

The results also showed that growing GM beet led to a reduced seedbank in the following year. Although the results showed that growing GM maize lead to an increase in the weed seedbanks compared with growing conventional maize, they are of little value because the weedkiller used on the conventional maize in the FSE, Atrazine, has now been banned in Europe. GM maize has not been compared with new conventional maize growing methods.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5778
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5775

+ SCIENTISTS CONFIRM FAILURES OF BT CROPS
Scientific studies from many countries have now backed up what farmers have known for years, that Bt crops - genetically engineered with Bt toxin proteins from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis targeted at insect pests - often fail to protect against pest attacks, and have other problems as well.

Here's a roundup of some of the studies considered in an excellent and comprehensive report by Dr Mae-Wan Ho:
***India, China and the United States: scientific studies found the levels of toxin produced by Bt crops varies substantially and is often insufficient to kill the targeted pests.
***Australia: pest resistance to a Bt toxin found.
***Canada: scientists found yield and economic disadvantage in Bt maize.
***Germany and Canada: researchers have found Bt maize is more "woody" due to unintentionally raised lignin.
***Other studies show Bt crops are harmful to health and biodiversity.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5783
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5770

+ EVIDENCE OF INSECT RESISTANCE TO BT CROPS
Some GM promoters have claimed that there are no field incidences of insect resistance to Bt crops. But a paper published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology provides "unequivocal evidence" that in Australia, a strain of cotton bollworm has developed resistance to the Bt transgene.

Ref: Robin V. Gunning et al, "New Resistance Mechanism in Helicoverpa armigera Threatens Transgenic Crops Expressing Bacillus thuringiensis Cry1Ac Toxin", Applied and Environmental Microbiology, May 2005, p. 2558-2563. Vol. 71, No.5
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5783

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OIL AND SUSTAINABILITY
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+ OIL UNCERTAINTY BAD NEWS FOR MONSANTO
If oil is running out or becomes uneconomical to extract, as seems likely, then this will severely impact the intensive cash crop economy that Monsanto's GM crops have been geared to. Intensive agriculture relies on cheap transport plus the availability of oil for the manufacture of agrochemicals.

In the absence to date of suitable alternative transport fuels, only those areas that favour low input agriculture and a more local food chain will prosper.
Read George Monbiot on the oil crisis: http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5771

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CAMPAIGN OF THE WEEK
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+UK: DEMAND A BAN ON MONSANTO'S GM OILSEED RAPE
The discovery of the first GM superweed in the UK failed to stop the European Commission approving Monsanto's GM oilseed rape GT73. Yet most EU member states voted against the application last year, or abstained.

Concerns were raised over the safety of the oilseed rape and the likelihood of GM seeds spilling into the environment. The European Commission accepted that seed spills are an area of concern. But it failed to specify any legally binding measures to deal with the issue.

Friends of the Earth is calling on member states to use provisions in EU law to impose national bans on the GM seed. The UK often votes in favour of GM applications, but unusually they abstained this time. This gives us a great opportunity to demand they take action.

Please email the Secretary of State for Environment, Margaret Beckett. A sample email that you can adapt is at:
http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/real_food/press_for_change/gm_ban/index.html