from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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Dear all:
The 200th edition of Weekly Watch is bursting with news and information from right around the world.
Amongst much else, watch out for a very important article from the Indian press - 'BT BUBBLE SET TO BURST - EXPERTS' - warning that pest resistance to GM cotton in Gujarat is making the technology redundant. "As for the rest of the country, it's only a question of time," says Dr K R Kranthi, a GM supporting scientist at the Central Institute of Cotton Research. This latest setback for the industry comes as opposition to GM is spreading like wildfire in India (ASIA).
Finally, for some extraordinary insights into the corporate character of Bayer and Monsanto, see CORPORATE CRIMES.
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
ASIA
LOBBYWATCH
AUSTRALASIA
AFRICA
THE AMERICAS
CORPORATE CRIMES
EUROPE
RESEARCH
GM TREES
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GM RICE CONTAMINATION
- THE INDUSTRY'S WORST EVER CRISIS
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An article from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, "Rice farmers biggest losers over altered rice, exec says", gives a graphic and revealing picture of just what GM contamination has meant for US farmers, millers and exporters.
It's a picture that should set alarm bells ringing worldwide whenever GM crop trials are proposed.
Remember: no GM rice has ever been grown commercially in the US. There were only ever trials, and those trials were completed five years ago - back in 2001.
So what has the GM contamination discovered some five years later meant for the US rice industry?
*The industry's worst ever crisis
*41% of US rice exports negatively affected
*More than 25 federal lawsuits filed
*Trade with the 25-nation EU at a standstill
*Other countries have banned US long-grain rice imports
*Many other countries requiring testing
*Some markets for medium- and short-grain rice also affected
*The problem involves not just Bayer's (GM) LL601 rice
*Another Bayer GM rice, LL62 has been detected in Europe and in US testing *32% of nearly 700 long-grain rice samples - including everything from unmilled to parboiled rice - tested positive for GM traits
*GM traits are so prevalent that "you cannot guarantee statistically that you'll ever get rid of them"
*US rice can never again be validly described as "GM-free".
As if all that weren't bad enough, another big headache for US rice farmers, as they struggle to eliminate GM contamination in order to try and regain market share in the future, is the lack of any certainty about the source of the problem.
In August this year, a sample of Cheniere foundation seed grown in 2003 was found to contain a trace amount of LL601. Cheniere is the only seed rice that has tested positive for LL601. However, in the US's biggest rice growing state of Arkansas only 11-12% of all the rice acres were planted in Cheniere while 31% of Arkansas rice has been testing positive.
In other words, three times more rice has been contaminated than one would predict if the Cheniere variety was the sole source of the contamination.
And although Bayer is widely blamed for the multiple problems and the massive losses, so far the company has not stumped up a cent.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7271
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ASIA
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+ BT BUBBLE SET TO BURST - EXPERTS
A very important article in the Deccan Herald quotes pro-GM Indian scientists as warning that bollworm resistance to Bt cotton is growing in Gujarat, making the technology redundant. "Pockets near Vadodara are the cause of immediate concern. As for the rest of the country, it's only a question of time," said Dr K R Kranthi from the Nagpur-based Central Institute of Cotton Research.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7275
+ TERMINATOR IN INDIA: TRIALS MAY HIT ROADBLOCK
India's Financial Express reports that Delhi University's GM mustard field trials may face difficult times ahead. Aruna Rodrigues has drawn the attention of India's Supreme Court to the suspected application of genetic use restriction technologies (GURTs) in the development of the crop.
The paper says that GURTs, known as terminator technology, produces terminator seeds which do not germinate when saved for the next crop season. India's Plant Varieties Protection & Farmers' Rights Act banned the use of such seeds in India.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7262
+ ANOTHER GM RICE TRIAL DESTROYED IN INDIA
Over 200 farmers, under the banner of the Tamil Nadu Farmers' Association, destroyed a GM Bt rice field trial in a village about 20 km from Coimbatore. Monsanto-Mahyco appears to have been carrying out the Bt rice trial without even telling the farmer it was GM.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7258
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7259
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7280
Suman Sahai writes in the Times of India that the GM rice trials destroyed by farmers were being conducted in violation of biosafety standards.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7292
+ FORMER CHIEF MINISTER CALLS FOR GM BAN
Jayalalithaa Jayaram, former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, and the current Leader of the Opposition in the legislative assembly, has called for a ban on all field tests of GM seeds.
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/004200611181863.htm
+ BJP DEMANDS DESTRUCTION OF GM RICE TRIALS
The Tamil Nadu unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has demanded the destruction of twelve GM rice trials in the state. Party state vice president H Raja said introducing GM crops was a "major conspiracy" of multinational companies to take control of the agriculture sector away from farmers.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7286
The BJP threatens to lead an agitation to fill the jails if the government goes ahead with GM crops:
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7274
+ FARMERS WANT GM TRIALS STOPPED
After destroying a GM rice trial in Coimbatore, the Tamil Nadu Velan Kappu Kuzhu (Tamil Nadu Agriculture Protection Group), a collective of farmers' associations, consumer groups and environmental organisations said they would not allow GM crops to be tested or cultivated anywhere in Tamil Nadu. The group has demanded that the Indian government ban all such experiments.
The group said that the government has failed to learn its lessons from the failed Bt cotton experiments in Vidharbha, Maharastra, and Andhra Pradesh, where farmers committed suicide.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7286
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7287
+ TAMIL NADU GOVT HAS "OPEN MIND" ON GM CROPS
The state government says it had an "open mind" on GM crop trials in the state. "It is too early to be concerned about this," says Tamil Nadu agriculture minister Veerapandi Arumugam.
GM WATCH COMMENT: Arumugam misses the point. It may easily be too late. The US rice industry faces its gravest crisis ever thanks to GM rice trials that finished 5 years ago. Now it's facing an export meltdown and a mess of litigation.
The state government's also claims that the trials in India are transparent and properly regulated. This is laughable. The trials have been both secretive and shambolic with multiple biosafety violations.
Interestingly, those who ran the GM rice trials in the US say they not only followed the required biosafety guidelines but exceeded them, yet the trials still plunged the US rice industry into its present crisis.
India's rice exporters and farmer organisations are alert to the danger. The problem is the corrupt and complacent governing elite who appear not to give a damn about lost markets or the impact on farmers.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7291
FOR AN IMPORTANT NEW REPORT ON ALTERNATIVES TO GM RICE IN INDIA, see RESEARCH
+ PHILIPPINES: GM BAN EYED
Oriental Negros Vice Gov. Jose Baldado said he will work to pass a law banning GMOs in the province.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7289
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LOBBYWATCH
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A revealing article has appeared on the pro-GM listserv AgBioView. Usually, GM lobbyists want us to believe that the onward march of GM crops across the globe is massive and inevitable. But the leading biotech lobbyists, Henry I. Miller and Greg Conko, tell a very different story. They describe an atrophying industry sunk in a "public policy miasma" that's "severe, worsening, and seemingly intractable".
Most people regard GMOs as massively over-hyped and seriously under-regulated, largely thanks to the efforts of the biotech industry and their US government backers. Conko and Miller see it contrariwise - GM crops for them are "overregulated and underappreciated" and it's the GM companies and the US authorities who they say are to blame for all the unnecessary red tape.
Despite this bizarre starting point, Miller and Conko give - from their outrageously contrarian perspective - a more honest account than usual of how the biotech industry is running into the sand. Amongst multiple failures, they note for instance how "the number of field trials in the United States involving gene-spliced horticulture crops plunged from approximately 120 in 1999 to about 20 in 2003."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7270
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AUSTRALASIA
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+ SOUTH AUSTRALIA EXTENDS GM BAN
The South Australian government has extended a ban on GM food crops until the end of April 2008.
The ban, first imposed in 2004, was due to have ended in 2007. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7289
+ GM BRASSICA SCIENTIST IGNORANT OF SCIENCE IN HUSBAND'S BOOK!
Dr Mary Christey is the project leader for the GM brassicas that Crop and Food Research are seeking to field test in New Zealand. In promoting the field tests, Dr Christey has been quoted in the NZ press saying there's no scientific evidence of insects becoming resistant to the Bt toxin deployed in GM plants like her GM brassicas.
However, Dr Elvira Dommisse, herself a former GM scientist at Crop and Food Research, has challenged the accuracy of Dr Christey's claims, which Dr Dommisse says do not tally with the scientific literature.
Now the plot has thickened. In 2000, Dr Christey's husband Travis Glare, also working at the Institute for Crop & Food Research, co-authored a book, Bacillus thuringiensis: Biology, Ecology and Safety.
Dr Dommisse points out that in this book Glare and O'Callaghan say (remembering this is 2000 and a lot has happened since): "Already about 17 insect species have become resistant to Bt in the laboratory, but only one species has shown widespread resistance in the field."
As Dr Christey keeps maintaining there's no scientific evidence of any insects becoming resistant to Bt, Dr Dommisse asks, "Am I to assume that Mary Christey has no idea about her husband's or many others' publications? Or are they just a little inconvenient?"
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7263
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AFRICA
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+ GM CROPS NOT GOOD FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES - ETHIOPIAN SCIENTIST
Technologies such as GM crops are ill-suited to developing nations, said Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher, general manager of Ethiopia's Environmental Protection Authority, in a lecture.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7261
+ GENETIC ENGINEERING NO MAGIC BULLET FOR AFRICA'S HUNGER
EXCERPT from excellent article in the Des Moines Register by Eric Holt-Gimenez of the Institute for Food and Development Policy: The Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recently announced their joint $150 million Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa for the continent's 180 million impoverished farmers who - they claim - were bypassed by the Green Revolution.
What? For 25 years, the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research - the entity that brings together the key Green Revolution institutions - invested 40 percent to 45 percent of its $350 million-a-year budget in Africa... The Green Revolution did not "bypass" Africa. It failed.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7288
+ PUSHING GM IN AFRICA - AATF
Monsanto has provided a royalty-free licence to the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) to use Monsanto's cry1Ab Bt gene for the development of GM insect-resistant cowpeas for Africa.
AATF presents itself as an independent charitable organisation but the selection of a board of directors for AATF was made with the assistance of its Design Advisory Committee (DAC). The committee included former Monsanto-trained scientist and lobbyist Florence Wambugu, as well as a number of biotech industry employees, including Monsanto's Gerard Barry. Barry is quoted as saying that getting involved with AATF "has been fantastic for us" [Monsanto]. AATF's backers include Monsanto, Dupont, Dow and Syngenta.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7285
+ NGOs WARN AFRICA OF DANGERS OF BIOFUELS AND GM IN FIGHT AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE
An open letter to the African delegates to the UN climate change talks urges them to call for rejection of large-scale biofuels and/or GM technology as ways to achieve fast growth or more efficient fuel conversion. They point out that dependence on biofuels and GM technology may exacerbate the problems of climate change, environmental degradation, social inequality and poverty, particularly in Africa.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7267
+ BIOWATCH RESPONDS TO GRAPE TRIALLISTS
Despite an international ban on GM wine and overwhelming consumer opposition to GM in Europe, South Africa's key wine export market, the University of Stellenbosch's Institute for Wine Biotechnology is determined to carry out open-air experiments with GM grapevines in Stellenbosch, reports Biowatch.
Biowatch says that field trials with GM grapevines that started in France last year appear to have far more stringent measures to prevent contamination than the planned South African trials.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7260
TAKE ACTION: STOP GM WINE!
http://www.gmwatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=87&page=1
(please copy and paste the whole link, if broken)
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THE AMERICAS
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+ BOLIVIA TO OUTLAW GM CROPS AND GO ORGANIC
According to a BBC World Service programme, the Bolivian government aims to transform the country into an organic oasis in South America and to outlaw GM crops.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7269
+ BRAZIL BANS GMOs IN INDIGENOUS TERRITORIES
Brazil has banned GM crops from indigenous territories but reduced the buffer zone separating them from conservation areas.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7268
+ BRAZIL: GM SOY INCREASES HERBICIDES
The Brazilian environmental institute Ibama reports that figures from 2000-2004 show the introduction of Monsanto's GM Roundup Ready soybeans seeds led to greater use of agrochemicals.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7290
+ ARGENTINA: "STOP THE SPRAYING!"
In Argentina, residents are mobilizing in an attempt to stop their neighbourhoods being sprayed with agrochemicals, mainly glyphosate, that have proliferated since the massive adoption of GM soy. The "Paren de fumigar" (Stop the Fumigation) campaign was started in January and covers all rural areas.
In 2002, the neighbourhood of Ituzaingo Anexo near Cordoba was declared a health emergency area after a study by the provincial ministry of health found higher incidences of leukemia, lupus, skin hemorrhages and genetic malformations.
Another report studied 30 children between the ages of seven and 14 in the neighbourhood. It found the presence of five agro-toxins in their blood, 25 with higher levels than considered safe by the health authorities.
Following this investigation, conducted by epidemiologist Edgardo Schneider, the city government "concluded that the neighbourhood had to be evacuated," said Gatica. But the residents remain there, alongside the soybeans, as the crop dusters continue to fly overhead, spraying the fields.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7290
+ MONSANTO STANDS FIRM ON GM MAIZE IN MEXICO
Monsanto maintains that it has a positive image around the world [!] and says that it will fight to ensure that Mexico, birthplace of maize, will open its doors to GM varieties.
An IPS News reporter put to a Monsanto representative that in 2002 the company was fined for paying 700,000 dollars to officials in Indonesia to convince them to allow GM crops. In reply, Eduardo Perez, director of technology development for Monsanto in northern Latin America, said, "It wasn't Monsanto that did it, it was an intermediary."
GM Watch comment:
"It wasn't Monsanto that did it"???
According to a criminal complaint by the Department of Justice under US anti-bribery laws, when Monsanto paid $50,000 to an unnamed senior Indonesian environmental official, it was a senior Monsanto official based in the US who ordered the bribing of the official.
According to the Security and Exchange Commission, "When it became clear that the lobbying efforts were having no effect on the Senior Environment Official, the Senior Monsanto Manager told the Consulting Firm Employee to 'incentivize' the official with a cash payment of $50,000." The Monsanto manager then concocted a scheme "involving false invoices" to hide the bribe.
In other words, an Indonesian intermediary may have handed over the money but *only on the orders of a senior Monsanto official back in the States*.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7257
+ BIOTECH IN PUERTO RICO
Puerto Rico's favorable climate and close relationship with the US makes it the perfect test ground for GMOs, says Luz Cruz-Flores, research manager for Monsanto Caribbean, Puerto Rico. The government of Puerto Rico is happy to oblige. It's betting on biotech as a way out of the economic debacle that the Caribbean island is suffering.
More: http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7276
+ SUPPORT A GM-FREE ECUADOR - TAKE ACTION!
The President of Ecuador is about to approve reforms to the country's Health Code, which contains provisions that further protect its citizens from the effects of GMOs. But the industry is putting pressure on the government to remove these provisions and allow the introduction of GMOs into Ecuador.
Please support the call from Ecuadorian environmental group Accion Ecologica to help keep Ecuador GM-free by emailing the President of Ecuador via a FoE International cyberaction. It takes 2 minutes.
http://www.foei.org/cyberaction/ecuador.php
+ FARMERS DENIED CLASS ACTION STATUS AGAINST MONSANTO
A seed company and a group of Midwestern farmers who sued Monsanto for allegedly monopolizing the biotech corn seed market were denied class-action status in federal court in Wilmington, Del.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7279
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CORPORATE CRIMES
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+ BOND HOLDERS OF SOLUTIA WANT TO GO AFTER MONSANTO
Bondholders of Solutia Inc. are asking a bankruptcy judge to end the company's control of its bankruptcy case and allow them to negotiate their own plan with the company's former parent, Monsanto. The bondholders argue that Solutia's proposed Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan offers an "exceptionally generous" settlement to Monsanto at the bondholders' expense.
GM WATCH COMMENT: Solutia Inc. was spun off from Monsanto as a way for Monsanto to divest itself of billions of dollars in environmental cleanup costs and other liabilities for its past actions - liabilities that eventually forced Solutia to seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
According to a spokesman for Solutia, "(Monsanto) sort of cherry-picked what they wanted and threw in all kinds of cats and dogs as part of a going-away present," including $1 billion in debt and environmental and litigation costs accrued by Monsanto (and Pharmacia, which at one time owned Monsanto).
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4745
+ SOLUTIA TO SELL ITSELF OFF IN NEW PLAN
In a new plan, Solutia has said it will sell itself off whole and hand out cash, rather than fragmented slices of equity, to satisfy stakeholders. These stakeholders include Monsanto.
Solutia was loaded with its former parent company Monsanto's retiree health care, pension and environmental liabilities, including cleanups of PCBs. These costs, totalling billions of dollars, drove Solutia into bankruptcy.
If Solutia should fail altogether, the liabilities would flow to the "new" Monsanto.
Monsanto will share environmental cleanup costs under both old and new reorganization plans. Along with Pharmacia, it also is defending a lawsuit by pre-bankruptcy Solutia equity holders who allege that Solutia was set up fraudulently and doomed to fail under the financial weight of the liabilities.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7282
+ LEADING SCIENTISTS SHIELD LINKS TO INDUSTRY IN PUBLISHED PAPERS
Swedish researchers report that Sir Richard Doll, co-author of a famous paper minimizing the role of chemicals in causing cancer, failed to disclose his industry funding for work on vinyl chloride, dioxin and phenoxy herbicides in papers published that were relevant to industry interests.
According to the findings of Lennart Hardell and his team, Doll had an undisclosed long-term financial relationship with Monsanto between 1970 and 1990. Hardell describes a letter a Monsanto epidemiologist renewing Doll's contract for GBP1000 per day from Monsanto.
Doll's work for Monsanto included reviews of the cancer risks of vinyl chloride, dioxin and phenoxy herbicides (2,4-D and 2,4,5-T). The vinyl chloride work led to a peer-reviewed paper published in 1988 in a Scandinavian journal reporting that vinyl chloride was not a significant carcinogen other than in the liver.
Doll's analysis became the gold standard on vinyl chloride toxicity, including being cited by the American Chemical Council (2001) as showing no link between vinyl chloride and brain cancer.
Hardell says this conflict of interest is not an isolated example, but a common situation in epidemiology.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7278
+ MONSANTO: AN ENVIRONMENTALLY DISASTROUS COMPANY
Martin J Walker writes: Monsanto has been identified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as "potentially responsible" for no fewer than ninety-three contaminated US sites under Superfund law.
In 1986, Monsanto was found guilty of negligently exposing a worker to benzene at its Chocolate Bayou Plant in Texas. It was forced to pay $100 million to the family of Wilbur Jack Skeen, a worker who died of leukaemia after repeated exposures.
In 1991, Monsanto was fined $1.2 million for trying to conceal discharge of contaminated waste water into the Mystic River in Connecticut. In 1993, the Food and Drug Administration approved Posilac, bovine somatropin (BST), despite constant alarms that it is a carcinogen. In 1995, Monsanto was sued after allegedly supplying radioactive material for a controversial study which involved feeding radioactive iron to 829 pregnant women. Also in 1995, the company was ordered to pay $41.1 million to a waste management company in Texas after criticism over hazardous waste dumping.
More: http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7278
+ BAYER HONOURS WAR CRIMINAL
The company Bayer continues to refuse to openly distance itself from the convicted war criminal Fritz ter Meer. On All Saints Day the corporation again had a wreath laid on ter Meer's grave in Krefeld-Uerdingen, Germany.
Ter Meer, born in 1884, was a board member of IG Farben from 1925. During the Second World War he was responsible for the construction of the IG Farben factory in Auschwitz, in which around 30,000 slave labourers went to their deaths. In July 1948 at the Nuremberg IG Farben trial ter Meer was sentenced to seven years in prison for enslavement and looting. During questioning he maintained that no specific suffering was inflicted on the slave labourers "because without this they would have been killed anyway".
After his release from prison, ter Meer became chairman of the board of Bayer. After his death in 1967 Bayer named a student support foundation the "Fritz ter Meer Foundation".
For decades Bayer refused to pay compensation to surviving slave labourers. Only when international protests threatened the company's reputation did it hesitantly agree to pay damages - more than 50 years after the end of the war.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7272
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EUROPE
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+ UK: LORD SAINSBURY QUITS!
Lord Sainsbury has quit as UK prime minister Tony Blair's science minister. Government sources claimed Labour's biggest donor was tired of being tainted in the cash-for-peerages affair.
GM WATCH comment:
Although unelected, Lord Sainsbury has been Science Minister in Tony Blair's government since 1998 from where he has made a huge contribution to the corporate take over of science in the UK.
A GM enthusiast with biotech business interests, he has also been a member of the cabinet biotechnology committee, Sci-Bio, responsible for national policy on GM crops and foods, and as such has been a key adviser to Blair on GM technology.
He has also been a key donor to Blair's Party. Mark Seddon, a member of Labour's National Executive Committee, told the BBC, "In any other country I think a government minister donating such vast amounts of money and effectively buying a political party would be seen for what it is, a form of corruption of the political process."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7256
+ IRINA ERMAKOVA APPOINTED TO GM FOOD SAFETY POSITION
Russian biologist Irina Ermakova, known for studying the risks of eating GM food, has been appointed vice president of the Russian National Genetic Safety Association (NGSA).
Dr Ermakova's research was on rats fed with GM soy two weeks before mating and during pregnancy. The study found that more than a half of newborn rats in the GM group died soon after birth. Forty per cent of those that survived fell behind in development of their internal organs compared with those not fed GM soy. Female rats and infant rats from the GM-fed group had a heightened level of anxiety and aggression. Some female rats had no maternal instinct.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7265
+ CARGO SHIP BOARDED IN GM PROTEST
Activists from Greenpeace chained themselves to a cargo ship carrying more than 5,000 tons of GM soya en route from Amsterdam to St Petersburg. The three activists, whose tests revealed the soya is GM, were detained by the police.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7273
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RESEARCH
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+ GM AND OMITTED HEALTH RESEARCH
The final version of a new paper by Dr Terje Traavik and Dr Jack Heinemann takes a critical look at the state of scientific knowledge about the potential human health effects of GMOS.
The authors identify some of the putative health hazards related to GM plants used as food or feed. They also identify numerous areas of omitted research, which need urgent investigation. This includes risks related to rearrangements of transgene inserts, the fate and consequences of DNA persistence and uptake in the mammalian gastro-intestinal tract, alteration in protein contents of GM food, the allergenicity of transgenic products, the implications of post-translational modifications and questions over the 35S CaMV promoter and the use of antibiotic resistance marker genes.
The authors call for publicly funded, independent biosafety research rooted in the Precautionary Principle, in order to address this situation. There is also a need to follow-up on "early warnings" of potential health and environmental impacts that are already in the literature.
The paper can also be found at TWN's Biosafety Information Centre, at
http://www.biosafety-info.net/file_dir/719762120455431f1a3942.pdf
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7264
+ NEW REPORT ON ALTERNATIVES TO GM RICE
New, environmentally sustainable and consumer-friendly technologies effectively render the imprecise technology of GM obsolete and unnecessary, according to a new report by Greenpeace.
The report, "Future of Rice", brings together the varied ways in which farmers and scientists are improving rice production and increasing farmer income through the use of technologies such as marker assisted selection (MAS). By highlighting an environmentally sustainable future for the world's most important staple food, the report debunks the myth that GM companies such as Monsanto can secure the future of rice.
At the launch of the report, Greenpeace was joined by Indian farmers protesting against GM field trials in India in calling for a global end to such field trials to protect the security of food supplies.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7277
+ NEW STUDY HYPES GM
A new study from the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy (NCFAP) makes extreme claims for what US farmers have supposedly gained due to GM crops.
EXCERPT from GM Watch profile of NCFAP: An article in the science journal Nature describes NCFAP as "a pro-GM industry group", and looking at the invariably industry-supporting claims emerging out of NCFAP studies, it may seem difficult to be certain where research ends and advocacy begins!
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7293
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GM TREES
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+ GROUPS SEEK BAN ON GM TREES
Environmental groups have urged United Nations treaty signatories to bar GM trees from the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
GM trees have been proposed for plantations created to offset carbon emissions as part of the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism, the organizations said in a news release. However, research has shown that native forests absorb and hold more carbon than industrial plantations.
The organizations said the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change must align its policies with the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, which already has taken a position against GM trees.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7281