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from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH guest editor
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Dear all
Welcome to WW40 bringing you all the latest news in brief on the GM issue.
This week saw the heroic action of the African countries who walked out of the World Trade Organisation talks in Cancun, refusing to capitulate to the bullying of the U.S., E.U. and Japan and the multinationals that lurk behind them. The Africans did the same in Seattle, and we hope they can stand firm until the rich world agrees to genuinely even-handed trade practices. (see HIGHLIGHTS OF THE WEEK)
But watch out! While the rich world stalls on making the policy changes so desperately needed, the U.S. is working flat out to force open markets for its genetically engineered crops and other goods, whether via the WTO, regional trade pacts or bilateral agreements.
As U.S. agriculture correspondent Alan Guebert reported from Cancun, "If they don't want to talk, [U.S. trade representative Zoellick] added darkly, then the U.S. is prepared to move forward bilaterally, meaning outside the multilateral WTO, with nations that do."
It's a tactic the U.S. is using increasingly. Already Australia's Prime Minister has offered to consider U.S. proposals for unfettered investment access for U.S. multinationals and "relaxed labelling for genetically modified food" in exchange for a bilateral "free trade agreement".
http://www.smh.co.com/articles/2002/11/14/1037080851435.html
So the pressure's on from Brazil to Burkino Faso with even some of the world's poorest countries in the U.S.'s sites. Zoellick and Bush haven't been touring Africa for nothing. This is where the Americans can extract the maximum PR advantage from GM crop acceptance (see REPORT OF THE WEEK).
This is why, as George Monbiot suggests, George Bush may be among those who'd be happy to see the back of the WTO "because it impedes his plans for direct U.S. control of other nations' economies" (HIGHLIGHTS OF THE WEEK).
But global resistance just keeps growing. This week saw the 3.2 million strong Congress of South African Trade Unions call for a moratorium on GMOs in the only African country whose government has really been pushing the Bush/Monsanto agenda on GM. (see SETBACKS TO THE GM LOBBY)
WW40 may be of particular interest to any friends or contacts finding it hard to keep up with all the breaking news, so please circulate widely!
Claire <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
www.ngin.org.uk
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CONTENTS
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SETBACKS TO THE GM LOBBY
FAIRYTALES FROM THE BIOTECH INDUSTRY
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE WEEK
REPORT OF THE WEEK: GM Crops Irrelevant for Africa
QUOTE OF THE WEEK + WTO FACTS OF THE WEEK
HEADLINES OF THE WEEK
SUBSCRIPTIONS
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SETBACKS TO THE GM LOBBY
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CONGRESS OF SOUTH AFRICAN TRADE UNIONS CALLS FOR MORATORIUM ON GMOS
While the South African Dept. of Agriculture has capitulated to US corporate interests and blindly promotes GMOs at every opportunity, the 3.2 million strong Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has called for a moratorium.
http://www.cosatu.org.za/cong2003/congweb/res.pdf
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1421
DANISH WATER CONTAMINATED BY ROUNDUP, TEMPORARY AND PARTIAL RESTRICTION IMPOSED
Glyphosate, Monsanto's "Roundup" herbicide - for which its GM crops are designed to be resistant - has been banned in Denmark because it is contaminating water supplies.
Denmark has imposed a temporary ban on the autumn spraying of glyphosate as of 15 September 2003, on sites where leaching is extensive following heavy rain. The ban follows the release of data which found that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, has been contaminating drinking water.
The chemical has been sieving down through the soil and polluting ground water at a rate of five times more than the allowed level for drinking water, according to tests done by the Denmark and Greenland Geological Research Institution (DGGRI).
"When we spray glyphosate on the fields by the rules it has been shown that it is washed down into the upper ground water with a concentration of 0.54 micrograms per litre. This is very surprising, because we had previously believed that bacteria in the soil broke down the glyphosate before it reached the ground water," says DGGRI.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1424
FOLLOWING GM PROTEST, SHIP TURNS BACK TO U.S.
The first attempt to undermine the Biosafety Protocol - an international law which came into force September 12 2003 allowing countries to reject GMOs - appeared to have failed as the captain of a ship carrying GE contaminated US corn bound for the Mexican port of Veracruz, turned back to the US after a 13 hour Greenpeace protest.
Climbers from Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and Australia from the Greenpeace ship MV Arctic Sunrise, sustained a daylong protest on the anchor chain of the Alta Mira, which contained a 40,000 ton shipment of US GM corn.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1422
GM ANIMALS NOT WANTED
Excerpts from interesting article at
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1426:
"Despite 20 years of effort in private and public laboratories around the world and millions of dollars spent, no genetically modified farm animals have made the leap to the marketplace."
"An American company in Massachusetts, Aqua Bounty Technologies Inc., has been widely anticipated to be the first to serve consumers genetically modified meat. It makes salmon engineered for speedy growth. Company President Elliot Entis expressed hopes in an interview with The Bee in 2001 that the fish would be ready for sale in 2002. But today, the company still is in the midst of studies to demonstrate to the US Food and Drug Administration that its fish are healthy, safe to eat and won't harm the environment."
"Animal Science Professor James Murray ... said in an interview that the [GM animal-produced] milk killed harmful E. coli bacteria in petri dishes. It also killed a type of bacteria that's responsible for spoiling milk. That suggests, Murray said, that the lysozyme-containing milk would have a longer shelf life." [GMWATCH comment: yet another brilliant "fix" for contaminated agrichemical-produced food. What else does this bactericidal milk kill?]
PPL GIVEN THE CHOP
Dolly-the-sheep firm PPL Therapeutics, once seen as the darling of the Scottish biotech sector, has put itself up for sale and announced the departure of most of its board after failing to find a way to move the ailing firm forward. In June, the Roslin-based company said it was shedding most of its workforce after its partner, German pharma/biotech giant Bayer, put on hold the development of a key lung disorder treatment. During the summer, PPL began a mass slaughter of its flock of GM sheep to cut costs. It has scrapped plans to build a multi-million pound manufacturing plant at Gowkley Moss in Midlothian.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1426
SPANISH PROTESTERS INVADE GM MAIZE FIELDS
Spanish farmers and environmentalists invaded fields of GM maize last Saturday to protest against cultivation of the crop in the only European country where it is grown on a commercial scale.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1421
SCIENTISTS FRET OVER WEEDS' GROWING RESISTANCE TO ROUNDUP HERBICIDE
An Associated Press report shows how unsustainable is Monsanto's Roundup Resistant GM technology:
"Farmers are planting too many Roundup Ready crops," said Stephen Powles, an expert on weed resistance at the University of Western Australia. Should weed resistance become widespread, he said, "The problem will become a crisis."
In 1996, Australia noted that weed resistance to glyphosate was developing in rigid ryegrass found in a few grain and sorghum fields. Five years later, South Africa reported seeing the resilient rigid ryegrass had infested a few hundred acres of vineyards. In 2000, University of Delaware scientists reported that in some soybean fields, mare's tail was resisting glyphosate. Since then, resistant weeds been reported in Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Iowa, Illinois and Missouri.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1421
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FAIRYTALES FROM THE BIOTECH INDUSTRY
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PRO-CORPORATE COUNTER-PROTEST STUNTS AT THE WTO C/O THE USUAL SUSPECTS.
1. "Biotech food bonanza shakes Mexican village"
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N12162344.htm
According to this report, conservative US group Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) attending a World Trade Organization meeting in the Mexican resort of Cancun handed out boxes of GM food to peasants in the nearby village of Valle Verde in an effort to show that biotech food is safe. But Friends of the Earth activists disrupted the handout, which erupted into chaos as baffled residents looked on.
"You are letting them starve, I hope you know that," said Monica Gonzalez, an American in favour of GM foods, shouted at the environmentalists. Gonzalez and a dozen other volunteers from CFACT gave out packets of rice, sugar and other GM staples in the village's main square. Most villagers carted off the free food packets and small children left their classes in a wooden shack school to snap up genetically-modified lollipops included in the hand outs.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1428
GMWATCH comment: in fact, there doesn't seem to be enough GM food available for this last claim about GM sugar and rice - let alone LOLLIPOPS - to be true. The far-right mag Reason reported more modestly that the freebies were "corn meal, cooking oil, beans, and a large box of Kellogg's cornflakes" and that "Some of these items contained ingredients made from genetically enhanced crops like corn and canola." Reason also pointed out that the stunt was jointly organised by Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).
The Competitive Enterprise Institute are the founders of the Prakash AgBioWorld campaign - see them lurking in the background at the WTO jamboree in Johannesburg with the Fake Parade:
http://ngin.tripod.com/041202d.htm
And black journalists have described CORE as "a tin cup outstretched to every Hard Right political campaign or cause that finds it convenient - or a sick joke - to hire Black cheerleaders".
http://www.blackcommentator.com/20_commentary_1_pr.html
Read on for more about CORE...
2. CORE up to its old tricks
At a mock awards ceremony in Cancun sponsored by a coalition of free market groups, actors playing the grim reaper handed out "awards" to environmental groups and other organizations that they accuse of promoting "poverty, misery, disease and premature death to billions of people in developing countries."
The awards ceremony was led by the conservative Congress Of Racial Equality (CORE), described as an African-American civil rights group.
Niger Innis, CORE's national spokesman, presented the three awards which included one for Greenpeace, one for the European Union and an "Uncle Tom" award for the Malaysia-based Pesticide Action Network which it accused of "selling out its own people." PAN, according to Innis, opposes pesticides and biotechnology "in exchange for funding from wealthy foundations".
Innis called the three award winners advocates of "lethal eco-imperialism." "Their opposition to genetically engineered foods, pesticides and energy development devastates families and communities and kills millions every year," Innis said.
http://www.townhall.com/news/politics/200309/FOR20030912c.shtml
All this from the man whose father, Roy Innis who heads CORE, has been called a "gangster". CORE's founder - the legendary civil rights leader James Farmer, says Innis has turned CORE into a "shakedown gang".
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HIGHLIGHTS OF THE WEEK
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CANCUN FAILURE: AFRICA SHOWED THE WAY
The WTO failed at Cancun. The underdogs of economic development - the African block - walked out of the trade talks, ending the meeting. The walkout, led by Kenya and also supported by some Caribbean nations, was over the four issues of investment, competition policy, government procurement and facilitation - which the United States, the European Union and Japan were pushing in aggressively. These issues, called "the Singapore issues", were aimed at simplifying cross-border traffic and increasing market access for multinationals. The walkout by the Africans was the second in the history of the WTO - the first was in Seattle in 1999. Read the full report by Devinder Sharma
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1422
See also Alan Guebert's breakdown of Cancun:
http://www.foodroutes.org/fwissue.jsp?item=74
Also: George Monbiot's 'Time for transformation' - Feeble and corrupted, the WTO is now ineffective. It needs transformation to allow the poor of the world to overthrow the power of the rich.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/wto/article/0,2763,1036422,00.html
GM COTTON NOT THE ANSWER TO AFRICA'S PROBLEMS - STOPPING COTTON DUMPING IS
African country Burkina Faso is considering growing GM cotton and is working on research projects with Monsanto. But not everyone is convinced GMOs will save Africa's ailing cotton industry.
Some excerpts from an excellent article:
"Rather than adopting the GMO technological fix, what is needed is the ending of the massive cotton subsidies which have had a devastating impact on the lives of millions of cotton farmers and consumers in Africa. That is the message we took to the WTO in Cancún."
"The primary problem faced by Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad and Benin is not one of low crop yields due to insect attack but the absence of an equitable price for the cotton they produce. Despite a 14 per cent increase in cotton yields, export receipts of countries in West and Central Africa have fallen by 31 per cent in recent times. Producers now earn only 60 per cent of their costs, although they can produce a kilogram of cotton at half the cost of their competitors in the developed world."
"The facts are startling. US cotton farmers receive subsidies worth $3.7 billion a year, Chinese cotton farmers $1.2 billion, and European cotton farmers $700 million. These subsidies have been devastating for West African countries."
"Africa's agricultural development does not rest on a technological fix, and GM seeds are not the miracle they are claimed to be. In India, despite promising results in Monsanto-sponsored field trials, when Bt cotton was commercially released it failed in several states, resulting in lower yields, lower quality and increased pesticide use. In the USA, despite a reduction in pesticide use in dry states such as Texas, pesticide use has risen in the Mississippi delta. Clearly, Bt cotton does not necessarily benefit farmers."
http://www.oneworld.net/article/view/68080/1/
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1423
GM NOT THE ANSWER FOR AFRICA SAYS UN AMBASSADOR
A Canadian Press story reports UN ambassador Stephen Lewis as saying that human disease, not drought, is destroying Africa's ability to feed itself and pushing unwanted GM food on the continent will not change that. "So many farmers had died or were sick that there was inevitably in various communities a decline in food production," Lewis told a conference of officials of companies promoting and developing GM crops. Lewis, the United Nation's special ambassador for HIV-AIDS in Africa, said he saw this during a tour of the continent last December.
He said about nine million farmers have died in Africa since 1985, mostly of HIV-AIDS. Lewis, a former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, admits he is not a personal fan of GM food. But he suggested Africa's problems are too deep for GM crops to solve, even if they deliver all the benefits their backers claim.
"You've got to go way beyond that. You have women in the fields in crippling positions with primitive hoes, working round the clock. You have children being taken out of school in order to work the farms because they've got sick and dying parents."
Lewis said western governments and corporations have not stepped up to provide the level of help required. "On drugs, as in agriculture, Canada is privately in alliance with the United States and Europe and resisting change which would benefit the developing world."
But, as the article goes on to say, Monsanto sidekick Florence Wambugu was at the conference to push GMOs. Dr. Wambugu continues to showcase a GM sweet potato project - which she says should be able to produce 10 tonnes of vegetables per hectare which she says compares "with a natural Kenyan crop that yields four tonnes per hectare".
At 10 tonnes per hectare, Wambugu's GM crop appears to be yielding 250% more than a typical non-GM crop - a very impressive yield gain. The only problem for Wambugu is that Aaron deGrassi has meticulously examined all the available data for his report on GM crops in Africa (see REPORT OF THE WEEK below) and FAO statistics indicate the average non-GM yield is not 4 tonnes but 9.7 tons, while official statistics in Kenya report 10.4 tonnes per hectare, i.e. Wambugu understates the typical yield by 60%!!!
This in turn means that her figure on the performance of the GM sweet potato - "10 tonnes of vegetables per hectare" - far from being the 250% increase on normal yields it appears, is more or less the same as that which the FAO and Kenya's official statistics give for the average yield for non-GM sweet potatoes. An apparent 250% gain turns out to be no gain at all!
The tragedy is, as development specialist Aaron deGrassi points out in his report, "the excitement over certain genetic engineering procedures can divert financial, human, and intellectual resources from focusing on productive research that meets the needs of poor farmers."
DeGrassi shows that with Wambugu's GM project in Kenya, "At the farm level, there is currently no evidence about the performance of transgenic sweet potatoes. ...KARI researchers have refused to state how the trials, now in their third year, have performed."
And the indications are on the basis of what Wambugu herself has said that any appearance of success has been achieved only by understating the yields of non-GM crops!!
Compare that to the *100% gain* that deGrassi points to, from a new non-GM high-yielding and resistant variety of sweet potato.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1429
FOR MORE ON THE DEGRASSI REPORT - SEE REPORT OF THE WEEK.
WAS NATURAL 'GOLDEN RICE' KNOWN TO INDIAN FARMERS LONG AGO?
A non-GM 'Golden Rice' may have been known to Indian farmers and cultivated in some parts of the country a few hundred years ago. The ancient manuscript Kashyapiya Krishisukti, a treatise on agriculture written by Kashyapa around 700-800 AD, mentions 'Peetavarna Vrihi' or yellow rice, which Kashyapa claimed to improve digestion and a 'Sambaka' variety called 'Hema' or golden. Both could have been sources of vitamin A, says Dr Y.L. Nene, who is heading the Asian Agri- History Foundation (AAHF). Dr Nene said, "There is a definite case to revisit the existing rice germ plasm and analyse 'golden' coloured farmers' varieties for the vitamin A content".
No survey of traditional rice varieties was carried out to see if any were naturally higher in Vitamin A. No attempt was made by the Golden Rice scientists or their sponsors to use conventional breeding methods to develop this product.
This follows the news in January that a non-GM rice with extra vitamin A, iron and zinc (called IR-68114) had independently been developed through traditional breeding in the Philippines without any great fanfare of publicity. [See http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=17506]
Of course the discovery or development of a natural Golden Rice would be of no use to the biotech industry because it could not be patented and would have no PR value.
This story reminds us of an interchange between a pro-GM scientist and a representative of the organic gardening body, The Henry Doubleday Research Association, which preserves traditional seed varieties, from the days of yore when the GM lobby was still hopeful that GM varieties would be eagerly taken up by the organic movement.
GM scientist: But wouldn't your members love to have a beautiful white carrot?
HDRA person: We've got one, thanks.
GM scientist: What about a striped 'designer' bean?
HDRA person: We've got several of those, too. They come in pink striped, purple striped...
GM scientist: Well, what about pest-resistant vegetables that don't need spraying?
HDRA person: Too many to mention. Look, why don't I send you a copy of our seed catalogue, it might save you some time and money...
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REPORT OF THE WEEK
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GM CROPS IRRELEVANT FOR AFRICA
This report for ISIS http://www.i-sis.org.uk by my GM WATCH co-editor Jonathan Matthews examines how Monsanto buys African farmers and it concludes GM crops do not address the real causes of poverty and hunger.
Excerpts:
Careful analysis of the evidence from the biotech industry's flagship projects in Africa shows that GM crops are irrelevant for Africa. The analysis comes in a damning report from Aaron deGrassi, a researcher in the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, UK.
The flagship projects analyzed include Monsanto's GM cotton in the Makhitini Flats in South Africa, Syngenta Foundation's GM maize project in Kenya, and another Kenyan project with GM sweet potatoes involving Monsanto, the World Bank and USAID. All have been showcased by the industry as huge successes for small-scale African farmers.
Significantly, deGrassi shows that the benefits from GM crops are much lower than can be obtained "with either conventional breeding or agroecology-based techniques" from just a tiny fraction of the investment in research.
The excitement over GM crops, the author shows, stems in reality from a PR strategy by the biotech industry trying to give itself the public legitimacy to help reduce "trade restrictions, biosaftey controls, and monopoly regulations."
... De Grassi states, "These South African farmers - whom representatives of Monsanto and other businesses call "basically representative farmers" and "representatives of the African smallholding community" - are plucked from South Africa, wined and dined, and given scripted statements about the benefits of GM. In an area where most farmers cultivate just a few hectares, and only half the population can read, Monsanto's "representative" farmers are school administrators and agricultural college graduates, owning dozens of hectares of land. Monsanto has been criticized for using these farmers as a part of a deliberate attempt to distort public debate on biotechnology. Critics have coined the nickname "Bt Buthelezi", to illustrate this farmer's unconditional support to Bt cotton: during a trip to Monsanto's headquarters in St. Louis, Buthelezi was quoted as saying, "I wouldn't care if it were from the devil himself." "
Read the full article at
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1431
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QUOTE OF THE WEEK + WTO FACTS OF THE WEEK
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"what Zoellick labels 'rhetoric' is reality for poor and developing nations where the overwhelming majority of the world's impoverished peoples barely survive on $1 to $2 USD daily while Japan allocates $7.50 per diem to every cow in its archipelago. With seven out of ten of the world's poor dependent upon agriculture, hunger, disease, and illiteracy are endemic in the rural south of the world.
"According to World Bank bean counters, the refusal of the U.S., the European Union, and Japan to cut subsidies and tariffs means that 144 million farmers and their families who might have been lifted out of poverty by first world concessions, will find no relief in the foreseeable future.
"The Cancun collapse is unquestionably a victory for those who oppose corporate globalization but it is not one to get drunk on. The lack of an agreement only sharpens contradictions between rich and poor agricultural producers and allows the first world to continue to lavash $300 billion in annual subsidies that are flattening the farmers of the south.
"Mexican campesinos know well this dark side of the money. Washington's hand-outs to its big farm combines allows them to dump 6,000,000 tons of below-cost, mostly genetically-modified corn on this side of the border. Unable to compete in the internal market, campesinos abandon their plots and migrate north. Since NAFTA, that beacon of globalization, kicked in ten years ago, over 3000 Mexicans, many of them displaced farmers, have died trying to get across the U.S. border, more than the number of those who lost their lives in the 9/11 terror attacks on New York and Washington."
from WTO Collapses in Cancun
Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
By JOHN ROSS, Counterpunch, September 20
http://www.counterpunch.org/ross09202003.html
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HEADLINES OF THE WEEK: from the GMWATCH archive
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13/9/2003 Fake Paraders at WTO - genetically-modified lollipops for small children/"Uncle Tom" award for Malaysians
13/9/2003 THE WEEKLY WATCH number 39
15/9/2003 Altered meat, milk waiting in the wings? / PPL to be sold off
15/9/2003 GM ship turns back to US/Cancun failure - the facts
15/9/2003 GMOs: The Wrong Answer to Cotton Dumping
15/9/2003 Spanish GM maize protests/South African Trade Unions reject GMOs/growing resistance to Roundup herbicide/illegal crops in India
16/9/2003 Glyphosate ban as water contaminated
16/9/2003 GM not the answer says United Nation's special ambassador for HIV-AIDS in Africa
17/9/2003 Was natural 'Golden Rice' known to Indian farmers centuries ago?/Bt cotton: promises and disappointment
18/9/2003 GM Crops Irrelevant for Africa
FOR THE COMPLETE GMWATCH ARCHIVE: http://www.gmwatch.org/archive.asp
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