WEEKLY WATCH number 233
from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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Dear all:

Opposition to GM crops is hardening in Europe (EUROPE).

Meanwhile, Canadian research puts paid to the old industry lie that if transgenes escaped into the wild, they almost certainly wouldn't persist (NEW RESEARCH).

And Australia's largest food maufacturer is pitching in against a corporate political fix in States like Victoria - a fix intended to exclude not just Australia's farmers and consumers from having a say on the future of their food and farming but that even bypasses Government-supporting Members of Parliament. Now that's what I call a mandate. (AUSTRALASIA)

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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AUSTRALASIA
EUROPE
GM RICE CONTAMINATION: INDIA, UK
ASIA
NEW RESEARCH
AFRICA
THE AMERICAS
LOBBYWATCH
AGROFUELS

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AUSTRALASIA
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+ BRUMBY'S FIX RUMBLED
With a decision by State governments in New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria regarding the lifting of State moratoria on GM crops expected within the next week, the Premier of Victoria John Brumby's role in the GM debate has come under scrutiny. Brumby is a known GM supporter and his handling of the issue has caused concern among some state Labor MPs, not least because they will get no say in the final decision on whether to lift the ban.

According to reports in The Age, people are also incensed that the Premier had allowed his parliamentary secretary to lead the pro-GM push within the party. Questions have also been raised about the independence of the head of the 'independent panel' - Sir Gus - appointed by the Government to consider lifting the ban. Sir Gus had previously expressed his support for getting rid of the ban, saying it amounted to 'crass populism' and he considered it 'bad politics'.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8469

Recent surveys show most farmers and consumers in Australia are unhappy with GM crops.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8421
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8343

+ AUSTRALIA'S LARGEST FOOD MANUFACTURER BACKS GM MORATORIUM
Food giant Goodman Fielder has urged all state governments to continue their moratorium on GM food crops. In a letter to all state premiers, Goodman Fielder chief executive Peter Margin said consumers preferred GM-free food because of the uncertainty surrounding the long-term effects of GM crops on human health. He added that Australia's current competitive advantage on international grain markets because of its GM-free status, and uncertainty about the performance of GM crops compared to traditional crops, were further reasons to continue the moratorium. Margin told the state premiers, 'Australia's current status as a GM-free producer gives the company an essential international competitive advantage.'
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8463
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8469

+ WHERE'S THE EVIDENCE OF GM BENEFITS FOR AUSTRALIA?
There's a report out by pro-GM lobbyist Rick Roush of Melbourne University claiming Australian yields of canola (oilseed rape) are in decline because farmers there haven't been able to grow GM canola. However, as Kim Chance, Western Australia's agriculture minister, has noted, this claim conveniently ignores the climatic conditions in recent years when Australia has experienced some of the worst droughts in its history.

Now Chance has called for independent performance trials before any recommendation of GM crops to Western Australian farmers. Said Chance, 'There is no firm evidence, from the limited Australian trials, of increased yields from using GM canola varieties.'

The Roush report also claims that Canada's farmers are reaping massive benefits from GM canola. But this hardly tallies with the falling net farm income, rising debt and increasing dependence on off-farm income and massive subsidies being experienced by Canadian farmers.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8453
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8454

+ AUSTRALIAN FARMERS CALL FOR GM PERFORMANCE TRIALS
The Network of Concerned Farmers (NCF), a coalition of farmers with concerns over GM crops, has called for accurate economic reports based on independent performance trials on GM canola prior to any lifting of State GM moratoria.

'Positive economic reports have been based on misleading information of advantages that are not offered and costs that are not included,' said Julie Newman, WA farmer and NCF national spokesperson.

Farmers are not being offered any GM variety better than the non-GM varieties we already have, yet we are being promised a range of misleading promises.'

NCF points out that both New South Wales and Western Australia offered to allow plantings of GM canola in independent performance trials which would establish if a yield advantage is offered but GM companies refused to participate.

Jeremy Tager adds that Bayer backed out of the trials after the Agriculture Minister of New South Wales insisted that they would be comparative, independent and that all results would be publicly released.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8453
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8454

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EUROPE
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+ UK: SMOOTHIE MAKER LIQUIDIZES PLA TRIAL AMID GM CONCERN
Smoothie drinks firm Innocent has said the UK's waste infrastructure isn't ready for polylactic acid (PLA) packaging, which it is now abandoning in favour of recycled PET (Polyethylene terephthalate, a type of plastic).

A spokesperson said: 'We have concerns about the sourcing of the corn starch material, for increasing amounts of land are being put over for it. So it's a virgin material although it's a renewable material. There is also some use of genetically modified corn in PLA which we aren't keen on.'
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8465

+ UK: COEXISTENCE FARCE
GM Freeze has described the Ministerial Statement on the Coexistence of GM and non-GM crops made by Defra (ag ministry) minister Phil Woolas as a farce. In his statement the minister said: 'It is clear that before our coexistence plans can be finalised we should await various developments that could have an important bearing on how we move forward.' The reason listed in the statement included:

***Waiting for outstanding research results
***Commissioning new research
***Waiting for an agreement of thresholds for GM presence in seeds.

Over 11,600 people and organisations responded to Defra coexistence consultation paper in 2006. The Soil Association says Defra's summary showed that more than 95% of public responses were opposed to Defra's proposals allowing GM crops to 'co-exist' with non-GM.

Beekeepers were concerned that Defra's proposals failed to deal with the impact of GM pollen on honey. Commenting on Woolas's statement, Pete Riley of GM Freeze said: 'We made the point in our submission to the consultation that Defra's evidence base for their proposals was weak and that key policies like seed threshold were needed before decisions could be made about 'coexistence'. The minister now apparently agrees with us.

'So why did Defra go ahead with the consultation in the absence of these vital bits of the jigsaw? ... The Government's policy on GM crops is a farce and has been since 1997.'
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8459

+ USEFUL FACTS ON GM IN EU
Recently, there have been industry claims that EU cultivation of GM crops has been rising sharply but the figures are highly misleading, counting in GM soya cultivation in Romania, which is now illegal and being phased out, and GM cultivation in France, which has recently been banned. With the figures adjusted to take account of these factors, the already minimal level of GM crop cultivation in the EU turns out to be in decline!

The total area of GM crop cultivation across all parts of the EU is 0.05% of arable land - a hundred times less than organic farming - and there is no GM crop cultivation at all in many parts of the EU.

Only one variety of GM crop (Monsanto's patented MON810 maize) is authorised for commercial cultivation in the EU, but only for use as animal feed. However, as of October 2007, MON810 is banned in Austria, France, Greece, Hungary and Poland; and other EU member states may ban it soon. Switzerland has a total moratorium on GM crops and GM livestock.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8468

Is this the beginning of the end of GM crops in Europe? asks Maewan Ho in an article for ISIS: http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8468

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GM RICE CONTAMINATION: INDIA, UK
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+ COSTS OF BAYER GM RICE CONTAMINATION COULD EXCEED 1.2 BILLION USD
The total costs of the contamination of US rice by an unapproved Bayer GM variety could exceed USD$1.2 billion, according to a report from an independent economist commissioned by Greenpeace. In spite of this, in India, the pro-GM government, its regulators, and companies such as Monsanto are preparing to start field trials of GM crops next month. The decision ignores the will of farmers and traders and even the Indian Supreme court.

The decision also threatens the Indian basmati rice industry, which is committed to remaining GM-free. Many of the planned GM field trials will take place next to where basmati is grown. If their rice gets contaminated, it is Indian farmers, traders and millers whose livelihoods could be destroyed. India and the rest of the world must learn the lessons from the US disaster.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8450

+ UK: TAKE ACTION
The UK's Food Standards Agency (FSA) has announced the date for its official review of how it handled the GM rice contamination scandal - Thursday 29 November at 2 pm. FSA are calling for feedback from stakeholders and inviting them to attend the review meeting in London - details at http://www.food.gov.uk/news/newsarchive/2007/nov/gmrice. The deadline for public and stakeholders to send in their feedback for the review (and to notify the FSA if they are attending) is Monday 19 November.

This can be done via the feedback form on the FSA website, or answers to those questions and comments can be sent to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Responses must reach them by the by 19 November.

This is a good opportunity to put pressure on the FSA to tighten up controls on GM and put in place strong enforcement systems to protect consumers from GM contamination and stop contaminated foods from entering the country. (For example, FSA should ensure testing of potentially contaminated imports at ports and respond to incidents quickly and effectively.)
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8459

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ASIA
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+ GM IN INDIA - POOR REGULATION AND CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
Kavitha Kuruganti of Centre for Sustainable Agriculture notes in an article in the Deccan Herald how India's regulators like genetic engineering approval committee (GEAC) do a bad job of functioning with 'around 92 applications processed in an hour'. There is also a conflict of interest with many members being GM crop developers.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8457

+ DIET FOR A DYING PLANET
EXCERPT from interview with Indian activist and author Vandana Shiva:
SHIVA: The connections between the environment and agriculture, and food systems, and the issues of poverty really came home to me in the 80s... In December of 1984, we had the worst industrial disaster in Bhopal [at a pesticide factory], which killed 3,000 people in one night, 30,000 people since then, and I was forced to wake up and ask the question: why are we involved in an agriculture that is killing hundreds of thousands, that is so violent, and pretends to be feeding the world? And I started to do scientific research on this. My book 'The Violence of the Green Revolution' came out of the research that I was doing at that point for the United Nations. And increasingly, I have realized that if farmers in India are getting into debt and committing suicide, it's because of these industrially driven agricultural systems that are also destroying the environment. If children are going hungry today and are being denied food, it's because the money is being spent on buying toxic chemicals and costly seeds rather than being spent on feeding children, clothing them, and sending them to school. So chemical agriculture really is a theft from nature and a theft from the poor.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8447

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NEW RESEARCH
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+ ESCAPED TRANSGENES PERSIST IN NATURE - NEW STUDY
There have been repeated claims that if transgenes do escape into the wild, they're unlikely to persist. But new research on GM oilseed rape (canola) conducted in Canada and published in Molecular Ecology shows that this is just another lie.

EXTRACTS: The existence of transgenic hybrids resulting from transgene escape from genetically modified (GM) crops to wild or weedy relatives is well documented... This is the first report of the persistence and apparent introgression, i.e. stable incorporation of genes from one differentiated gene pool into another, of an herbicide resistance [HR] transgene from Brassica napus into the gene pool of its weedy relative, Brassica rapa, monitored under natural commercial field conditions.

... These observations confirm the persistence of the HR trait over time. Persistence occurred over a 6-year period, in the absence of herbicide selection pressure ... and in spite of the fitness cost associated with hybridization.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8467

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AFRICA
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+ OUTRAGEOUS COURT DECISION ON BIOWATCH COSTS APPEAL
The Pretoria High Court has handed down judgment in Biowatch's costs appeal. The appeal was dismissed and Biowatch was ordered to pay the legal costs of the Minister of Agriculture, the Registrar Genetic Resources, the Executive Council for Genetically Modified Organisms and Monsanto South Africa.

Biowatch South Africa's appeal in April 2007 was for a withdrawal of the order that it pay the legal costs of Monsanto South Africa (Pty) Ltd and for the statutory bodies to be ordered to pay Biowatch's legal costs.

GM WATCH comment: This is a total farce. Biowatch acts in the public interest, wins the right to information that should have been made public in the first place, but are then still ordered to pay Monsanto's ruinous costs!
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8452

+ KENYAN MINISTER DISOWNS BIOSAFETY LAW
The controversy surrounding the planned introduction of GMOs into Kenya has blown up again, with the government distancing itself from the draft Biosafety Bill. Environment and natural resources minister David Mwiraria told a gathering of scientists in Nairobi that the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA) does not have adequate capacity to make decisions regarding introduction of GMOs to the environment and market.

Dr Gabor Lovei of the University of Nairobi commented at the meeting, 'It is only South Africa [in Africa] that GMOs are used but then it is also noted that this is done with inadequate research capabilities on the impacts to people and the environment ...'
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8451

+ IS AFRICA BEING BULLIED INTO GROWING GM CROPS?
EXCERPT from good article in Business Daily Africa:
Africa is rapidly becoming a focal point for multinational crop and chemical corporations clearing the way for the extended uptake of their products and technologies. In particular, African governments are facing enormous pressure to endorse and adopt GM crops.

Organisations like the Alliance for the Green Revolution in Africa - bankrolled by the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations - are partly to blame through their heavy investment in infrastructure aimed at supporting the development and distribution of GM crops and seeds.

But the African Union (AU) itself is now also encouraging the adoption of GM technology. Working in tandem with its development wing, the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), the AU's High Level Panel on Modern Biotechnology is soon to release a Freedom to Innovate plan - the clearest expression yet of the trend to back this controversial and risky technology.

And it does so uncritically, rather than taking a more rational precautionary position that would safeguard Africa's rich biodiversity and agriculture. ...

Support for GM technology, though, is by no means universal across the continent. ... The Freedom to Innovate document does little justice to the debate raging around Africa. Instead it seeks to institutionalise the pro-GM position of larger countries like Nigeria and South Africa for the entire continent.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8464

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THE AMERICAS
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+ MORE ON BRAZILIAN LAND ACTIVIST KILLED IN DISPUTE OVER GM FARM
Report from the UK Independent newspaper:
When a Brazilian peasant organiser led a group of landless farmers on to a European-owned farm last month he was making an environmental protest as well as seeking farmland for about 20 families to cultivate.

Within hours, Valmir Mota de Oliveira, 42, and known as 'Keno' would be dead, killed execution-style by two shots to the chest. A security guard was also killed in the shooting.

Keno died trying to stop the development of a research farm for GM soya and corn next to the environmentally sensitive Iguacu National Park, becoming in the process a martyr for the anti-GM movement.

What happened at the seeds research site of the Swiss multinational Syngenta is hotly disputed. What is agreed is that the land invaders - who had been evicted from the same farm in July - set off fireworks as they arrived on the morning of 21 October, causing the unarmed guards to flee and seek help. Within a few hours, an armed militia showed up at the farm on a minibus and, shortly afterwards, Keno was killed and several more protesters were seriously injured.

What role Syngenta may have played in ordering the militia to drive away the peasants is at the centre of a bitter dispute. It has turned the incident at its Cascavel research farm into a cause celebre for the landless workers movement in Brazil where four million peasant families are trying to get access to farmland.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8449

+ MORE ON DARK SIDE OF GM SOYA BOOM IN PARAGUAY
EXTRACT from article for Inter Press Service reporting on the continued devastation caused by GM soya in Paraguay:
The huge fields are planted with genetically modified soy, Paraguay's leading export product. But as it takes over more and more land, the crop is leaving sick people, displaced communities and trampled rights in its wake...

...the revenues from soy exports do not remain within the country, because they belong to large foreign producers and corporations.

[Said sociologist Tomas Palau:] 'Without realising it, we're finding ourselves in a situation where an extremely high percentage of Paraguayan exports is controlled by three or four multinational corporations: Monsanto, which supplies seeds to 90 percent of the producers, and companies like Cargill, Louis Dreyfus and ADM (Archer Daniels Midland).'

TAKE ACTION! Support Paraguayan campesino organisations by sending faxes and/or emails. Details at http://www.lasojamata.org/ http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8460

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LOBBYWATCH
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+ ANTI-GM ACTIVISM MOTIVATED BY FINANCIAL GAIN - SHANTHARAM
The Foundation for Biotechnology Awareness and Education has accused NGOs and activists opposing GM crops in India as being ill-informed and motivated by financial gains. S. Shantharam, President of the foundation, said that many activists were heavily funded by foreign agencies.

GM Watch comment: Attributing one's own undesirable charateristics to others is known to psychotherapists as projection. It's what leads a cheat to accuse his critics of dishonesty. And there's plenty of projection going on in the case of Dr Shantharam and his Foundation, with their accusations of conflicts of interest and foreign money and 'agencies' lurking behind concern over GM in India. Dr Shantharam is a former employee of both the US Dept of Agriculture and Syngenta - the biotech giant based in Basel, Switzerland.

He is also a senior advisor to the Sehgal Family Foundation, whose Founder and Chairman, Suri Sehgal, is also the Founder and Chairman of the Proagro Seed Company Ltd., India - a company that has been seeking to commercialise GM crops on behalf of Bayer CropScience - the agri-biotech subsidiary of the German-based giant corporation, Bayer AG. READ ON
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8462

+ POLITICALLY MODIFIED
In the wake of several moves against GM crops in Europe, Martin Livermore has written an article for the Wall Street Journal sermonising about how decisions about GM in Europe are 'political' and not 'consistent with the science'.

The decisions that Livermore is complaining about are as follows:
***A majority of European environment ministers last week declined to overturn Austria's ban on the import of GM crops.
***Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas opposed the approval of two GM maize varieties for cultivation.
***French President Nicolas Sarkozy plans to suspend the growing of any GM crop in France.

Livermore omits to mention in his article that he is a prominent climate change sceptic who directs an anti-environmentalist front group - the Scientific Alliance - funded by a businessman with an extreme rightwing political agenda!

Livermore was formerly a PR flak on GM for Dupont and his firm Ascham Associates touts what he has to offer to firms with biotech interests, but none of this is mentioned in the WSJ piece, where we're told, 'Mr Livermore, a chemist by training, is a science commentator and analyst'!
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8455

+ PATRICK MOORE - 'DISPELLING MYTHS' FOR AGRIBIZ
EXCERPT from an extraordinarily credulous report for Canada's Regina Leader-Post:
By dispelling some myths about the effects of pesticides and GM foods, Canadians will be able to achieve sustainable agriculture, according to Patrick Moore of Greenspirit Strategies.

Moore was one of five speakers at Farm Credit Canada's AgriSuccess Forum, held in Regina ... The ex-activist spoke of the irrational fears surrounding the effects of GM foods on human health, the alleged link between pesticide residue and cancer, and renewable energy source myths.

Moore said not only are these myths ripe with fear, but the fear comes from misinformation and 'flat-out lies' by environmental extremists. He credits these extremists with infiltrating the political movement, 'bringing their neo-Marxism with them.' ...

'The campaign against GM foods is based on fantasy, contrivance, sensationalism and outright misinformation,' Moore said. 'I find this to be the most despicable campaign.' ...

'We do know that glaciers are retreating around the world,' Moore said. 'Why are glaciers perceived as something important? They are just big globs of frozen water.'

GM Watch comment: Patrick Moore likes to present himself as a leading environmentalist who was forced to turn his back on his Greenpeace colleagues due to his adherence to science, logic and GMOs, but in reality he's a man trading on a now distant Greenpeace past who has a proven track record of misinformation on behalf of environmentally-damaging industries.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8456

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AGROFUELS
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+ AN AGRICULTURAL CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY
EXCERPT from excellent article by George Monbiot in the UK Guardian:
It doesn't get madder than this. Swaziland is in the grip of a famine and receiving emergency food aid. Forty per cent of its people are facing acute food shortages. So what has the government decided to export? Biofuel made from one of its staple crops, cassava. The government has allocated several thousand hectares of farmland to ethanol production in the county of Lavumisa, which happens to be the place worst hit by drought. It would surely be quicker and more humane to refine the Swazi people and put them in our tanks. Doubtless a team of development consultants is already doing the sums.

This is one of many examples of a trade described last month by Jean Ziegler, the UN's special rapporteur, as 'a crime against humanity'. ...

If the governments promoting biofuels do not reverse their policies, the humanitarian impact will be greater than that of the Iraq war. Millions will be displaced, hundreds of millions more could go hungry. This crime against humanity is a complex one, but that neither lessens nor excuses it. If people starve because of biofuels, Ruth Kelly [British transport secretary] and her peers will have killed them. Like all such crimes it is perpetrated by cowards, attacking the weak to avoid confronting the strong.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8461

+ BAN EXPANSION OF AGROFUELS
EXTRACT from superb article in the Jerusalem Post by Yifat Susskind, communications director for the women's human rights organization MADRE:

Most of the policies being put forward envision substituting biofuels for fossil fuels without reducing our overall consumption of energy. These proposals are backed by agribusiness, biotech companies and oil interests that are now investing billions in ethanol and biodiesel plants, plantations of soy, corn, sugar cane and palm oil, as well as genetically engineered trees and microbes for future supplies of cellulosic ethanol.

The prefix 'bio' suggests that 'biofuels' are natural, renewable and safe, an appealing thought to those concerned with the toxic and unsustainable use of fossil fuels. But agrofuels (as they are known in Latin America) are not easily renewable because the Earth's landmass is itself a finite resource. To produce even 7 percent of the energy that the US currently gets from petroleum would require converting the country's entire corn crop to ethanol.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8461

+ ADDING FUEL TO THE FIRE
From an article by David Cronin for the UK Guardian:
Officials working for the European commission have ... allowed themselves to be convinced that biofuels provide some sort of miracle solution to climate change. In December, the commission ... put forward a law telling EU countries what they can and cannot do to ensure biofuels are produced 'sustainably'.

Rules in this area are unquestionably needed. Yet the problem is the commission already set a target earlier this year that biofuels will comprise one-tenth of all petrol and diesel used in the EU by 2010. So it has backed itself into a corner where it feels obliged to defend biofuels, despite a growing body of evidence on how they can be socially and ecologically destructive. ...

Over the past few years, the [European] commission has been formally advised by a body known as the Biofuels Research Advisory Council (Biofrac). In a 2006 paper, it spelled out a 'vision' whereby one-quarter of Europe's transport fuel should be 'clean and CO2-efficient' by 2030.

All very laudable - until you look at the membership list for this body. This included representatives of Shell, which describes itself as the 'world's largest distributor of transport agrofuels', EuropaBio (the umbrella group for the genetic engineering industry), Total (the French oil giant which counts Burma's military junta as a client), Volvo, Volkswagen and Peugeot.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8461

+ UC AND BP: A STEP IN THE WRONG DIRECTION
EXCERPT from commentary by Ignacio Chapela in the Berkeley Daily Planet:
When our students look back in time, it will be easy for them to recognize this as a key moment in history. The signing of the 'bioenergy' agreement between British Petroleum and the University of California, Berkeley for a reported $500 million will be clearly visible then, in the future, as a very big step indeed, a decisive step in the wrong direction.

At Berkeley, the bare promise of money has dulled the capacity for critical thinking and transformed our public institution into a secretive society manipulated by special interest grouplets. I shudder to think about the further consequences that the arrival of this money, and the BP associates carrying it, will have on our campus. Before today, the chancellor would already speak of 'we' to refer only to those on campus who identify with his ideas, while the others, like me, are already defined as 'them.'

Any disagreement continues to be suppressed, dismissed as simply part of the colorful character of our campus, and the signing of the contract will directly fund the mechanisms necessary to entrench this suppression. Nevertheless, biofuels are now known to have been the wrong answer to the global warming puzzle, and the approach to biofuels into which Berkeley will be locked by signing a contract with BP is also already known to bring with it serious problems for human and environmental health. This reality is clear for anyone with eyes to see, most certainly for those unfortunate enough to live under the immediate consequences of its pursuit in places like Argentina and Indonesia. Time, wind and water will bring those consequences back home to us. With information available today, the only reason one could have to go into the biofuel program of BP and its Berkeley associates is to make personal progress, financially for sure and maybe scholarly, from the very flare of public support created by one's own propagandizing.

TAKE ACTION: Register your objection to the BP-Berkeley deal. Sign here: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/international-petition-on-bps-500m-project-to-genetically-engineer-biofuels

More info: http://www.stopbp-berkeley.org/