from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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Dear all:
This week there's lots more evidence of how the biotech industry has poisoned the well for US farmers. And if you've been wondering how pro-GM lobbyist C S Prakash is coping with the recent GM disasters (GM rice contamination, Bt cotton farmer suicides, and India's Supreme Court ordering a ban on new GM approvals), then don't miss this week's 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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GM RICE CONTAMINATION SCANDAL
ASIA
AFRICA
THE AMERICAS
EUROPE
AUSTRALASIA
LOBBYWATCH
RESEARCH
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GM RICE CONTAMINATION SCANDAL
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+ WORLD'S BIGGEST RICE PROCESSOR SUSPENDS ALL US IMPORTS
Spain's Ebro Puleva said on Friday (29th) it suspended rice imports from the United States in August over fears that shipments contained genetically-modified grain. "We are importing from other countries, except for China, which also uses transgenic seeds," an Ebro spokeswoman said..
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7085
+ JAPAN WIDENS TESTING FOR LLRICE601
Japan's ministry of agriculture, fisheries, and forestry (MAFF) will start testing all US short- and medium-grain rice imports and existing rice stocks for the presence of Bayer's illegal GM rice, LLRICE601. Japan has already banned the import of US long-grain rice.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7073
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7074
+ CALIFORNIA RICE COULD BE CONTAMINATED
The short- and medium-grain rice comes from California and Dr Brian John of GM Free Cymru has warned, "Since most of the development work on LL601 appears to have been done in California ... it is highly likely that Californian medium-grain rice is now contaminated with LL601 and with various other abandoned GM lines."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7073
+ JAPAN REFUSES TO ACCEPT US CERTIFICATION
The increased testing in Japan for the unauthorised presence of the illegal GM rice line LL601 involves the taking of samples from cargoes before they are allowed to leave the US, flying those samples to Japan, and testing the samples in Japanese laboratories. Only then, once they have confirmed a cargo to be GM-free, will they allow a ship to cross the Pacific. Dr Brian John comments, "The Japanese authorities have clearly decided that the American certificates declaring rice cargoes to be 'GM free' are not worth the paper they are written on."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7083
+ "GM-FREE" RICE NOT GM-FREE - EU BOOSTS CHECKS
The European Union said it would reinforce controls on US long grain rice imports, after Dutch officials found an unauthorized GM variety in shipments certified as non-GM. Yet spot checks by Dutch officials found traces of Bayer's GM Liberty Link Rice 601.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7052
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7056
+ CALL TO BLOCK ALL U.S. LONG-GRAIN RICE
Commenting on the revelation of unauthorised GM rice in shipments declared GM-free, Greenpeace called on the European Commission not only to ask all EU member states to block long-grain rice imports from the US with or without GM-free certification, but also to let the US authorities know that no more imports of US rice will be allowed into Europe until the US authorities have established a trustworthy certification scheme and ensured that the contamination in the US has been contained.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7071
+ ILLEGAL RICE FOUND IN IRISH SUPERMARKETS
Fury erupted after illegal GM rice slipped through both EU and national food safety checks and onto Irish supermarket shelves.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7052
+ WHY IS ILLEGAL RICE STILL ON SALE IN IRELAND?
The GM-free Ireland Network has written to the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) demanding to know why American GM long-grain rice is still on sale in Ireland and drawing attention to the fact that FSAI's CEO Dr John O'Brien is a former director of the International Life Sciences Institute biotech industry lobby group. GM-free Ireland coordinator Michael O'Callaghan said, "Dr John O'Brien's ties to the biotech industry present a clear conflict of interest. Having a former director of a biotech industry lobby group in charge of Ireland's food safety is not acceptable."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7060
+ DAILY MAIL (IRELAND) COMMENT ON ILLEGAL RICE
"For the short term gain of a few, we run the risk of creating monopolies in food production, damaging small farmers, making a mockery of consumer choice, and abusing nature. And tragically, the ecological consequences of this reckless folly may be with us forever."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7052
+ BRITONS EATING GM RICE AS WATCHDOG FAILS TO TEST IMPORTS
EXCERPT from article in the Daily Mail (UK): Official watchdogs have admitted that a huge gap in the policing of food imports allowed GM rice to end up on the nation's dinner tables. Millions of families are believed to have been eating American imported long-grain rice tainted with GM genes for at least eight months...
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7060
+ ITALY FINDS GM RICE IN IMPORTS
Italy has found the unauthorized GM rice in shipments from North America, the health ministry said. "It's a very serious episode," health minister Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio said. "We need more checks and rules to safeguard consumers' health."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7060
+ EFSA SAFETY STATEMENT WORTHLESS - PROOF
The statement issued by the European Food Safety Authority on 15 September relating to the safety of GM contaminated rice was scientifically irresponsible, says GM Free Cymru. It was based only upon highly selective data provided to it by Bayer, with large sections of the key scientific documentation blanked out.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7054
+ LOUISIANA FARMERS FILE FEDERAL SUITS
Louisiana farmers have filed four federal lawsuits alleging Bayer CropScience allowed GM rice strain to escape from test plots into commercial fields. The Louisiana lawsuits seek damages for falling market prices and to offset the increased cost of testing rice crops and ensuring that fields are free of LL601.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7058
+ CONTAMINATION INEVITABLE
GM Watch comment: Coexistence doesn't work. Bayer officials claim the company acted in compliance with regulations in testing the experimental strain of GM rice. Steve Linscombe, who heads the research station where a number of the trials were run, says, "Our isolation and distances (in tests) were always more than called for. We tried to eliminate any chance for this to happen."
As former EPA biotech specialist Dr Doug Gurian-Sherman has pointed out, "It is intrinsically impossible to assure that contamination will not occur, it is not just a matter of sloppiness. That was the conclusion of a US National Academy of Sciences report from two years ago... there is no easy remedy."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7058
+ KEEP IT IN THE LAB!
The US rice industry needs to take a lesson from Hawaiian coffee growers, says author Jeffrey Smith. Growers throughout the state stopped their coffee becoming contaminated with GM varieties by insisting on a halt to studies that could lead to outdoor GM coffee trials. "Not so for the rice industry... Amid the lawsuits and rejected shipments, the rice industry must now decide whether to belatedly follow the coffee growers' example. They can tell the government and five multinational GM crop companies, 'No more GM rice trials!' Or they can continue to risk costly episodes of contamination."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7083
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ASIA
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+ INDIA: SUPREME COURT SAYS NO TO GM PRODUCTS TILL FURTHER ORDERS
The Supreme Court has asked the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) not to give approvals to GM products until further orders. A three-judge bench gave the direction on an application filed by Aruna Rodrigues and three others in a public interest litigation seeking a ban on the release of GMOs having the potential to cause major health hazards.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7059
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7063
+ HIGHER YIELDS, LOWER COSTS WITH ORGANIC COTTON
With India's indebted cotton farmers taking their own lives in ever increasing numbers after being ruined by expensive Bt seeds and other input costs, here's an eye catching study on organic cotton production in India.
Over a period of two years, an Indo-Swiss research team collected and compared agronomic data on 60 organic and conventional farms. They found the organic producers benefitted from:
*40% lower input costs
*13-20% lower production costs
*a far lower need for loans
*total labour inputs not significantly higher, and
*4-6% higher cotton yields
GM WATCH COMMENT: This research comes on the heels of other strikingly successful examples of sustainable cotton production without pesticides or GMOs. The Indian government has an increasingly clear choice. It can either get behind such approaches and help farmers escape the debt-trap and the burgeoning scandal of farm suicides, or it can continue to cosy up to Bush and Monsanto and hype expensive GM seeds to its farmers.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7077
+ INDEPENDENT EXPERT COMMITTEE SET UP ON BT BRINJAL
Indian civil society groups announced the setting up of an "Independent Expert Committee" to look into the biosafety claims for BT Brinjal (eggplant), to assess the need for Bt brinjal in India and to suggest a future course of action to the government.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7062
+ INDIA, FOOD, AND MODERNIZATION
A must read article by Tom Philpott for GRIST.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7061
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AFRICA
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+ OPPOSITION TO GM FIELD TRIALS IN SOUTH AFRICA
The Agricultural Research Council has applied to run field trials of GM virus-resistant cassava near Nelspruit in Mpumalanga. It has advertised its intention and the public may object.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7067
+ MONSANTO WAITS AS SOUTH AFRICA STALLS DECISION ON GM MAIZE
Monsanto is battling to get government approval to launch a new variety of GM maize. The seed is a "stacked gene" variety that combines two GM traits: a built-in resistance to weedkiller and an insecticide.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7067
MONSANTO AND SYNGENTA TO EXPAND TESTING OF GM COTTON IN BURKINA FASO
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7067
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THE AMERICAS
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+ MONSANTO TRIES TO GRAB ARGENTINIAN ROYALTIES IN EUROPE
Monsanto's legal hacks are in European courts suing to block millions of tons of Argentine soybean meal from docking on the continent. By using its European patent to disrupt Argentina's lucrative soy-meal trade with Europe, the company hopes to strong-arm Argentine farmers into paying up.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7065
+ ROUNDUP-RESISTANT PIGWEED A "NIGHTMARE" FOR NORTH CAROLINA FARMER
Based on his experience thus far, this is how farmer Bill McGoogan plans to tackle his Roundup-resistant pigweed problem next year:
"In 2007, McGoogan says he will probably go back to more cultivation, use pre-plant residual herbicides, most likely Prowl, then come back at the four leaf stage and apply Weathermax. Within a week or so after applying Weathermax, he will likely come back and cultivate and use a post-directed spray, probably Cotoran and MSMA."
Ironically, this level of weed management complexity is the direct result of Roundup Ready crops that were supposed to make weed management ultra-convenient!
But as Stanley Culpepper, a University of Georgia weed specialist, has pointed out, the problem of resistance is the direct result of farmers having relied too heavily for their weed control on Roundup (active ingredient: glyphosate).
Now they're faced with a resistant weed which can grow more than 8 feet tall with a thick stalk and suck valuable nutrients from nearby plants. It can clog a cotton picker, too, making it hard to harvest the crop.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7072
+ NON-GM HYPOALLERGENIC CATS GO ON SALE
US biotech firm Allerca says it has managed to selectively breed hypoallergenic cats by reducing a protein that triggers allergic reactions. Despite costing $3,950, there is already a waiting list to get one. GM Watch comment: Interesting that this biotech firm has already produced hypoallergenic cats through selective breeding, i.e. without resorting to GM, when less than 2 years ago exactly the same firm was talking about how it would be able to do this via GM for a higher price by 2007!
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7068
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EUROPE
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+ BIOTECH CHIEF HELD IN HONOURS PROBE
The arrest last week of Sir Christopher Evans, a leading figure in the biotech industry, as part of the police inquiry into cash for honours, is piling further pressure onto Britain's beleaguered Prime Minister. 80% of the money donated to Labour by individuals comes from people who've been honoured!
GM Watch comment: Former biotech entrepreneur and lobbyist, Lord Drayson is one of the the Labour Party's biggest individual donors and he not only got made a Lord but also a government minister. Lord Sainsbury is the Labour Party's biggest individual donor. He was also made a peer and a government minister after he began making big donations. He is also an investor in biotech. Thus far, neither Drayson nor Sainsbury has been arrested, although Sainsbury was interviewed by police as part of their cash for honours inquiry.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7064
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AUSTRALASIA
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+ MORE BULLDUST FROM OZ LOBBYISTS
Australia continues to boast some of the world's most shameless GM promoters.
ABC News reports that CSIRO's plant industry deputy chief, Dr T J Higgins, claims that buyers overseas such as Japan are opening up to GM products, despite voicing opposition in the past.
Unfortunately for Dr Higgins, this improbable claim comes at the same time that Japan is not only banning American long-grain rice because of possible GM contamination, but is also introducing testing on short- and mid-grain rice.
It also comes at the same week as reports that Japanese foodmakers are incrasingly seeking new suppliers of other foods "in an effort to meet demand from local consumers who are wary of food containing modified ingredients." And Australian soybean suppliers are among the beneficiaries.
Higgins, though, complains that Australia does not get a premium for its non-GM oilseed (canola) in Japan, but fails to mention that Japan is not Australia's only significant oilseed market.
Recently Richard Koch, the managing director of Profarmer, explained to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) how being GM free is helping Australia escape very low oilseed [canola] prices: "Where Australia has been benefited is that our rapeseed is GM-free... so we have been their preferred supplier into that EU market for the past 18 months or so."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7076
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LOBBYWATCH
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+ AGBIOVIEW'S WORLD OF GAMMON AND SPINACH
"What a world of gammon and spinach it is, though, ain't it?" - Charles Dickens
Faced with a succession of setbacks and calamities, AgBioView, CS Prakash's regular round up of global GM news, has taken metaphorically to the hills, where it covers anything but the real GM issues of the day. The recent outbreak in the States of E. coli O157:H7 linked to spinach has come in useful. Here are the first 6 items from last Tuesday's bulletin:
* When Spinach Is Bad For You
* Organic Company Disputes Tainted Spinach Claim
* Utah family joins suit against spinach producer
* Restaurant sues over lost spinach
* 21 reasons not to waste your money on organic
* Question and some answers on spinach
The "21 Reasons Not to Waste Your Money on Organic" came courtesy of that old organic-hating war horse, Tony Trewavas FRS. The reasons included such sinister claims as, "Organic food may contain more carcinogens, nerve toxins and oestrogen mimics"!
On other days, AgBioView brought us much more of the same, including 'Iowa seeks manure ban on soybean crops' and much praise for the World Health Organisation for approving the use of DDT against malaria.
Of course, you can't entirely blame the GM lobby for "Operation: Anything But!" It was the week in which the New York Times featured the suicide of a Bt cotton farmer in India, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post reported on the GM rice crisis with headlines like "Gene-altered profit killer", the South Australian government was extending its GM ban, India's Supreme Court was calling a halt to new GM trials... oh, and the Royal Society lambasted Exxon for funding climate-change-denying lobby groups like the one that co-founded Prakash's AgBioView!
Clearly, not a lot there to encourage the troops, hence the relentless diet of spinach, washed down with liberal helpings of DDT and manure.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7066
+ FAMILY FARM DEFENDERS' COMMENT ON E. COLI IN SPINACH STORY
EXCERPT from "Tainted Spinach is Just Another Sign of a Sick Food/Farm System":
Infectious disease specialists such as Prof. Lee Riley at UC-Berkeley are right on target when they remark that such food-borne outbreaks do not occur in Africa or Asia since this type of disaster was basically created by corporate agribusiness practices. Academic studies have shown time and again that livestock force-fed grain in confinement have up to 300 times more pathogenic bacteria in their system as compared to cows allowed to freely graze on grass outdoors. And one of the dirty little secrets behind California's new found status as the number one dairy state is that it is literally awash in factory farm manure, which enters as runoff into channels designed to irrigate vegetables and blows as clouds of dust onto nearby produce fields.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7066
+ BIOTECH BOSS SMEARS ORGANIC IN NEW YORK TIMES
The New York Times has published a letter from someone called Elliot Entis claiming, "The spinach from Natural Selection Foods that has been implicated in the E. coli outbreak was produced to supply the organic foods industry, whose standards demand the use of supposedly safe natural fertilizers like sterilized cow manure. But the use of that manure - as opposed to the use of presumably less safe manmade fertilizers - could well be the source of the current outbreak.
"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States and its British counterpart have both gathered statistics suggesting that there is a substantially greater likelihood of contracting E. coli-based and similar illnesses from organic produce than from conventionally grown produce."
The trouble is, every one of these claims is a lie.
1.Manure use is a common agricultural practice for both conventional and organic food production, and conventional farms also use contaminated sewage sludge, so why the attack on organic?
2.The British statistics referred to here are totally unknown to us and we challenge Entis to produce them.
3.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is on record as disassociating itself from the evidence Entis attempts to lay at its door.
4. The E. coli O157:H7-infected spinach identified to date is NOT organic, in spite of the agrochem/biotech brigades' attempts to smear it as such. For confirmation, see the announcements on the website of Earthbound Farm, the subsidiary of Natural Selection Foods whose spinach was affected:
http://www.ebfarm.com/press/SpinachUpdates/
Although he fails to mention it in the Times, Entis is president of the biotech firm Aqua Bounty Technologies Inc., which has been trying unsuccessfully to bring GM salmon to market.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7069
+ MONBIOT'S CLIMATE LOBBYISTS INVOLVED IN ANTI-ORGANIC ATTACKS
An article by George Monbiot on climate-change-denying lobbyists identifies individuals and organisations who pose as experts contesting climate change but fail to reveal their industry connections.
To a man, these same individuals have been in the thick of attacks on organic agriculture and of pro-GM lobbying.
Take Julian Morris - the director of the International Policy Network (IPN). Morris is among the contributors to an IPN book which attacks the Kyoto protocol. The book's other contributors include several who connect to Morris and who have been active in the GM debate, including Martin Livermore, a Fellow of the International Policy Network.
Livermore is a former PR flak on GM for Dupont who now directs the Scientific Alliance, which has coauthored a climate-change denying report with the IPN. The Scientific Alliance's Advisory Forum is stuffed with GM supporters, such as the organic-hating GM scientist, Tony Trewavas FRS.
Also contributing to the IPN book were Barun Mitra and Philip Stott, both of whom have also been heavily involved in promoting GM and attacking sustainable agriculture.
In 2003 IPN co-sponsored a debate on GM food held at PR firm, Hill and Knowlton. The seminar was introduced by Greg Conko of the Monsanto-backed Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), an organisation which also gets money from Exxon and which has been at the heart of climate change denial in the US. Conko and the CEI are the co-founders of CS Prakash's GM-promoting AgBioWorld campaign.
Julian Morris has been a key contributor to several BBC programmes raising questions about organic food. One of these programmes ("Counterblast") was presented by Morris's sidekick Roger Bate, another of the climate change lobbyists fingered by Monbiot. Other contributors to the programme included GM scientist Tony Trewavas and GM-promoter and climate sceptic Philip Stott.
Bate and Morris also co-edited a book, Fearing Food: Risk, Health and the Environment, amongst whose contributors is Dennis Avery of the Hudson Institute. Avery has been at the centre of the anti-organic campaign. Bate and Morris appear unembarrassed by the dubious nature of Avery's claims, repeating them in the BBC programmes they contributed to and using them in a publicity stunt to launch their book in which they claimed, "organic food may well present a danger to children, the elderly and the sick... such people should be discouraged from eating so-called 'organic' or 'natural' foods."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7070
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RESEARCH
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+ WILL GM FOODS CAUSE ALLERGIC REACTIONS?
A Michigan State University researcher has developed the first animal model to test whether GM foods could cause human allergic reactions. Venu Gangur, MSU assistant professor of food science and human nutrition, has received a $447,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to validate the test.
GM WATCH COMMENT: This work, if successful, may allow a test to become commercially available in another 5 years, i.e. 15 years after GM foods started being widely consumed.
And it's worth remembering that, even if successful, it will only enable the testing of the target protein in the GM food, whereas the process of GM - with its random insertion of genetic material - is so inherently imprecise that it can trigger unpredictable changes in proteins. Such changes can be difficult to identify, let alone test for.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7075