from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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Dear all:
In late September the Indian Supreme Court placed a ban on new GM field trials - but then made an exception in response to an application from Delhi University to allow field trials of a GM mustard. What the Court wasn't told was that the GM crop contains Terminator-style genes that represent a serious threat to crops and the environment (ASIA).
Also being economical with the truth are New Zealand gene-bashers who are willfully ignoring scientific evidence in an attempt to push through approvals for their GM brassicas (AUSTRALASIA).
Those of you who are celebrating the fall of Donald Rumsfeld in the US might be interested in news of a class action lawsuit for racketeering against the former president of Searle Pharmaceuticals, a company owned by Monsanto (THE AMERICAS).
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 AND HEALTH RESEARCH - CORRECTION
ASIA
LOBBYWATCH
AUSTRALASIA
THE AMERICAS
EUROPE
AFRICA
CATHOLIC CHURCH
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GM AND HEALTH RESEARCH - CORRECTION
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In last week's Weekly Watch we included details of a very important new paper by Traavik and Heinemann, "Genetic Engineering and Omitted Health Research..." Unfortunately, a draft version of the paper had been circulated. A final and correct version of the paper is now available as a pdf: http://www.biosafety-info.net/file_dir/719762120455431f1a3942.pdf
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ASIA
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+ TERMINATOR-STYLE FIELD TRIALS IN INDIA
The case brought before the Supreme Court in India by Aruna Rodrigues and her co-petitioners has already led to a temporary ban on new GM field trials in India, starting from 22 September.
But on 13 October, the Supreme Court, in response to an application from Delhi University, agreed to make an exception. Based on the evidence before it, the Supreme Court agreed to allow Delhi University to conduct field trials of their new GM mustard.
Aruna Rodrigues has now brought forward startling new evidence that suggests that in making its application to the Supreme Court, Delhi University may have suppressed important scientific information.
Rodrigues' Reply Affidavit draws on the expert evidence of 3 leading international scientists, and it states unequivocally that the GM mustard in question contains a Barnase and Barstar system, making it potentially a Terminator-style plant that can spread sterility to its many wild and cultivated relatives worldwide.
The petitioners are therefore calling for no exception for GM mustard, i.e. a total ban on *all* GM field trials.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7251
+ INDIA: SUPREME COURT ISSUES NOTICE
The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued notice to the Indian government of another public Interest lawsuit seeking a moratorium on commercialization of GM crops until a competent regulatory structure and rules were put in place.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7249
+ FARMERS' UNION STOPS IMPENDING CONTAMINATION FROM ANOTHER GM RICE PLOT
The leading farmers' union Bhartiya Kissan Union (BKU) and the President of the Panchayat of Rudrapur village lodged a police complaint against Mahyco-Monsanto, the government's department of biotechnology, and the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee, for various violations found in a GM rice plot in Rudrapur village of Gorakhpur district of Uttar Pradesh. BKU say the village and district authorities were not informed about the trial, grain from the trial was left lying unattended, volunteer plants were growing in the plot, and the trial was not monitored.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7237
+ BT BHINDI TRIAL VIOLATIONS
Gross violations of regulatory guidelines have occurred in a field trial of Bt bhindi (okra) in the Gulbarga region of Karnataka, according to an investigation by Indian TV station NDTV. The farmer who leased the land for the trial of the GM crop had eaten some of the crop and even sold some in the market, even though Bt bhindi has not been cleared for human consumption. "I sold some in the Guntur market but I didn't get much for it. We ate some but did not find it tasty, so stopped eating it," said Koteswara Rao, farmer. In addition, the village authorities had no information on the field trial.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7246
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7252
+ INDIA'S REGULATORS ADMIT GAP IN SYSTEM
As numbers of GM crop field tests grow - there are 85 trial sites in India - activists and regulators are cautioning that the regulatory mechanism needs to run to the village level, to keep pace with new trial sites.
The Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU), whose activists torched a Bt rice trial field in Karnal last week, alleged that seeds had been left unattended after harvesting at a Bt rice trial field in Gorakhpur and grains removed for storage in a rented room in a village. The field, the BKU claimed, was leased to Mahyco by an absentee landowner.
After the Karnal incident, Greenpeace said it had learnt from local functionaries, including the director of agriculture in the district, that they had no knowledge about these trials.
In the minutes of the meetings of the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), the regulatory body for GMOs, there is an admission that a gap in the regulatory system needs to be addressed. It has to be decentralized further and state governments need to get actively involved in monitoring these sites.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7241
+ ANDHRA PRADESH GOVT SEEKS SAY IN FIELD TRIALS, STOPS MONSANTO SELLING BOLLGARD
After its mixed experience with Bt cotton and field trials of GM food crops, the Andhra Pradesh government wants a say in what new crop is allowed and what is not. It is also seeking representation in the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC).
The Andhra Pradesh government has also stopped Mahyco-Monsanto from selling Bollgard-II (Bt-II) cottonseed in the state pending its investigation into the economic viability report.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7252
+ INDIAN BIOTECH INDUSTRY SHOWING SIGNS OF INSANITY?
Robert Vint comments: In the face of global mass opposition to GM crops from farmers, consumers, development and environmental organisations the advocates of biotechnology are increasingly showing signs of insanity.
The article (at http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7244) by C Kameswara Rao of the Foundation for Biotech Awareness and Education is in response to the burning of a rice trial by 400 Indian farmers and the landowner - who had not been informed in advance that it was a GM crop.
Rao states that "rice pollen are viable only for about five minutes during which they cannot be carried over more than a few meters and after that period they cannot 'contaminate' any other rice variety" - he says this at a time when most of America's rice exports are being returned home because rice across six states has been contaminated by GM trials.
He claims that Monsanto (Mahyco) did not need to inform the landowner about the nature of the trial crop. He believes that GM crop trials should be carried out secretly behind high-security fences under 24-hour surveillance and that GM seeds should be stored in bomb-proof bunkers. It is fairly obvious that he also advocates mass 're-education' of the entire population.
Why not instead develop the kinds of seeds farmers and consumers want?
(GM Watch comment: Rao also make claims in his article that are not just misleading but totally false.)
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7244
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LOBBYWATCH
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+ WHY NATURE BIOTECHNOLOGY'S "TRUTH" IS A DODGY OPTION
An editorial from the journal Nature Biotechnology tells pro-GM scientists that only the constant repetition of "basic truths" will establish "the facts" and counter the "myths" about the hazards of GM food. But, revealingly, the editorial is itself built upon a lie.
The editorial begins by contrasting the publicity surrounding the recent E. coli O157 contamination of spinach in the US with that surrounding the contamination of US rice by the unapproved GM rice, LL601.
On the one hand, claims the editorial, the publicity surrounding the unapproved rice was full of alarm and misinformation. On the other hand, the truth of the E. coli outbreak was that organic spinach apparently caused significant numbers of people to get sick and some possibly to die. Yet the publicity surrounding this calamity was very moderate and restrained.
The reality, however, is that there is no scientific evidence that organic spinach caused anyone to get sick or die. All 13 of the bags of spinach which were found to contain E. Coli O157 came from conventional farms - not one was organic.
And much of the impression otherwise is thanks to alarmist and misleading propaganda pieces from GM proponents (prominently circulated by CS Prakash's AgBioView), which seems to be where the editorial writers of Nature Biotechnology get their "facts".
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7243
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AUSTRALASIA
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+ NZ RESEARCHERS NOT TELLING TRUTH ABOUT GM BRASSICAS
A letter in the New Zealand press about Crop and Food Research's proposed GM Bt brassica field trial accuses GM researchers at Crop and Food Research of deliberately misleading the public. Interestingly, the letter comes from Dr Elvira Dommisse, herself a former GM researcher at Crop and Food Research.
Dr Dommisse's letter comments critically on claims by Dr Mary Christey that there is no scientific evidence of insects becoming resistant to the Bt toxin and no evidence that the toxin would harm any other organisms apart from pest caterpillars. In reality, says Dr Dommisse, there is published peer-reviewed scientific evidence of both. She concludes, "It is time that GM scientists made themselves familiar with all the scientific research relevant to their work."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7253
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THE AMERICAS
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+ RUMSFELD - WAR CRIMINAL, MONSANTO MAN, RACKETEER?
Much of the world welcomed the electoral rebuke given President Bush's Republican Party and the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Wednesday.
In an extraordinary joint statement, more than 200 members of the European Parliament hailed the American election results as "the beginning of the end of a six-year nightmare for the world."
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was president of Searle Pharmaceuticals, a company owned by Monsanto. Rumsfeld is believed to have earned around US$12 million from the sale of Searle to Monsanto.
Racketeering charges have been filed against Rumsfeld, Monsanto, and NutraSweet Co., amongst others, for distributing toxic aspartame, in a class action representing many plaintiffs, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, seeking $350 million in damages.
The suit charges the defendants with manufacturing and marketing a deadly neurotoxin unfit for human consumption. US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, is mentioned throughout the lawsuit.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7250
+ RICE FARMERS BIGGEST LOSERS OVER GM RICE, EXEC SAYS
Roughly 40 percent of US rice exports have been negatively affected by what many experts consider to be their industry's worst crisis, a USA Rice Federation official said.
Speaking in Little Rock to the Arkansas Rice Research and Promotion Board, federation vice president Bob Cummings discussed the damage caused to the $1.3 billion US rice export market after traces of an unapproved, GM rice were discovered in US rice supplies.
Keith Glover, president and chief executive officer of Producers Rice Mill Inc. in Stuttgart, said that farmers have been some of the biggest losers in this case. "There's no doubt in my mind you'd be looking at 40 to 50 cents a bushel more for rice today than what it is... and when you look at 210 million bushels in Arkansas, you're talking about an $80 [million ] to $100 million hit," Glover said.
Cummings cast doubt on the truth of GM-free claims for any US rice supplies. "If you talk to the folks who are really up to speed on sampling and testing... they'll always say that where we are today we will never get a GE-free statement that's valid," Cummings said. "The traits are in the system, you cannot guarantee statistically that you'll ever get rid of them."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7233
+ BAYER AND REGULATORS UNDER SCRUTINY - WASHINGTON POST
An article in the Washington Post raises questions about both Bayer and the US government regulators who must consider Bayer's application to retrospectively deregulate its illegal GM rice.
EXCERPT:
... as federal regulators consider that belated application, they are finding themselves under scrutiny, too - from scientists and others who say the 20-year-old system of biotech crop oversight is failing.
The Bayer lapse is the latest in a string of problems, critics note, including taco shells and other foods contaminated in 2000 with unapproved StarLink corn, the accidental release in 2002 of crops engineered to make a pig diarrhea vaccine, and the growing prevalence of "superweeds" that have acquired biotech genes that make them impervious to weed killers...
Experts point to other troubling elements of the Bayer petition. Nearly 40 percent of its pages, for example, are blacked out as "CBI," or confidential business information, even though the approval process is by federal statute supposed to be public.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7238
+ MONSANTO BUY-OUT OF DELTA WILL LOCK UP COTTONSEED MARKET
Monsanto's offer to buy Delta & Pine Land Co. "will create a titan with a hammer lock on every corner of the cottonseed market - seed genetics, seed distribution and seed price," says an article for the JournalStar.
If the deal passes muster with the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice's antitrust division - a hurdle Monsanto could not clear under the Clinton Administration in its 1998 engagement to Delta - Monsanto will dominate the American cottonseed market.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7234
+ ACTIVISTS LEAVE OCCUPIED SYNGENTA GM FARM IN BRAZIL
Activists from the international anti-transgenic farming and agrarian reform group, Via Campesina, left a Syngenta experimental farm in Parana state that some 300 people had occupied since March. The group left the property peacefully by order of a Parana judge. The group had invaded Syngenta's GM soy and corn fields in protest at the farm's proximity to Iguacu National Park in western Parana.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7235
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EUROPE
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+ UK: BLAIR ATTACKS "IRRATIONAL ARGUMENTS" ON GM FOOD
Tony Blair has claimed the arguments against GM food are not "rational". The prime minister was making a keynote speech on science, in which he called for Britain to discuss technological innovations in a more "scientifically literate" fashion.
"Government must show leadership and courage in standing up for science and rejecting an irrational public debate around it," he said, attacking those who had "distorted" facts to oppose developments such as GM food.
GM WATCH COMMENT: For Blair to accuse others of having "distorted" the facts is quite something. The best comment we've seen on his speech: "Why is someone who spent billions of pounds and scores of British lives defending us against non existent WMDs surprised that we don't believe his fantasies about GM foods either?"
The big giveaway about Blair's ultimate agenda is his constant linkage of "science" (read very specific technologies with huge vested commercial interests) with "economics" and "prosperity".
This reality was writ large in his speech:
"UK universities now produce roughly equivalent number of patents as their US counterparts. They also produce a far higher number of spin-outs per GBP1 million of research. Since 1997, the value of collaborative research between universities and business has increased by more than 50 per cent. And 20 Knowledge Transfer Networks are being supported to bring together science and business communities."
Blair's boasts echo those repeatedly made by his science minister, Lord Sainsbury. Sainsbury delights in claims about the "stunning change in the entrepreneurial attitudes of our universities", the technology transfers from universities to business, the number of companies spun out of academia and how the UK "ratio of companies to research spending is more than six times higher than in the US."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7231
+ PRIME MINISTER UNSCIENTIFIC ABOUT SCIENCE - GENEWATCH
Responding to the prime minister's speech on science and the economy, Dr Sue Mayer, GeneWatch UK's Director said: "The prime minister is extraordinarily ignorant about the scientific method. This makes him blind to the dangers of corporate control of science and deaf to the genuine concerns that people have about the impacts of new technologies on society. There are real questions about whether science to meet the interests of big business will meet the need to improve people's health and protect the future of the environment."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7245
See also John Vidal on "Blair's science fiction": http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7245
+ PETER MELCHETT ON BLAIR'S SPEECH (EXCERPT)
... what the speech actually set out with depressing clarity was the views of a politician ignorant of the politics of science, confused and misled about public perceptions of science, and hopelessly muddled about the difference between science and technology. For example, when Tony Blair lists the scientific discoveries that "have transformed our lives" over the last century, he bizarrely finds room for the mass fluoridation of water - a highly controversial, and for that reason only partially implemented, mass medication, which few think has played a significant role in the recent improvement in dental health...
The real threat to "our progress and our prosperity", and the real threat to science, is the dogmatic support for any new technology which comes along that companies hope to make money from. Nothing reduces trust in scientists, and by extension, science, more effectively.
Those of us involved in the debate about GM crops over the last two decades have watched with disgust this abuse by Blair (and a succession of government scientists) of the good name of science - in the interests of corporate profits at the behest of a genuinely anti-science US Government. Sadly, for those who care about science, its degradation is Blair's legacy.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7247
+ GM CROPS ALMOST BOTTOM OF UK FARMER'S WISH-LIST
Exploiting GM crops came second to bottom out of a list of 27 possible areas of research topics that UK farmers would like to see pursued, according to a Home-Grown Cereals Authority (HGCA) questionnaire.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7245
+ UK GOVT'S PLANS ON "COEXISTENCE" FATALLY FLAWED - MELCHETT
Peter Melchett of the organic body the Soil Association says it has been advised by a top QC that the government's approach to "coexistence" is fatally flawed and unlawful.
EXCERPT: Our legal advice is that the government's proposal to set a 0.9% coexistence threshold for GM in non-GM crops is not compatible with European law. The government's attempts to exclude certain types of growing or farming activities like allotment holders, farmers producing their own fodder, and farmers who save seed, from the scope of the proposed coexistence measures are not compatible with European law. The government's proposal not to have a public register of all GM crop locations is clearly illegal.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7242
+ VIOLENT ATTACK ON FRENCH GM PROTESTORS
Police in southwestern France detained farmer Jose Bove after a protest against GM foods. About 150 activists doused water onto dried corn they suspected was GM at several silos in the town of in Belin-Beliet, near Bordeaux. Bove was detained after he and about 50 other protesters went to the local police station to file a complaint against the silos' manager, whom they said fired on them with a shotgun and rammed his truck into three cars. The man was also taken into custody. He acknowledged having fired the gun, but insisted he did so only into the air.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7232
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AFRICA
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+ UGANDA: NON-GM VITAMIN A-FORTIFIED SWEET POTATO TO COMBAT BLINDNESS
A team of researchers at Namulonge and Kabanyoro Research Institute have come up with a Vitamin A fortified sweet potato variety. The sweet potato has carotene, the most important source of Vitamin A. Vitamin A is essential for good eyesight and lack of it can cause blindness or, in milder cases, inability to see or drive at night. Prof Patrick Rubaihayo, a plant breeder, who led the team of researchers, said the variety was not GM, but a product of natural breeding.
This "Vitamin A Fortified Potato", which is already being tested with farmers, joins a series of other products of successful non-GM approaches to tackling malnutrition. These have received very limited publicity - as opposed to the much-hyped (GM) "golden rice", which made the front cover of Time magazine in about 2000 but still hasn't made it into the field!
Natural 'golden millet' rivals 'golden rice' - http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7182
Non-GM maize boosts vitamin A - http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7079
Dream (non-GM) rice to curb malnutrition - http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7078
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7248
+ SOUTH AFRICA'S LARGEST DAIRY NOW rBST-FREE
Clover Dairies, South Africa's largest dairy, is now carrying the "rBST-free" label on their cartons to certify that the cows that produce its milk are not injected with Monsanto's GM growth hormone.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7242
+ ***TAKE ACTION: STOP GM WINE!***
Hit the link! It only takes a minute to protest the first GM vines in Africa.
http://www.gmwatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=87&page=1
(please copy and paste the whole link, if broken)
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CATHOLIC CHURCH
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+ RESPONSE TO U.S. EMBASSY PRO-GM EVENT IN ROME
The US Embassy to the Holy See invited three American professors to Rome on Oct. 5-6, to present eight years of research on GM crops and their effect on farmers, industry and the environment. Though publicity surrounding the event presented the professors as having no particular axe to grind, one (Lawrence Kent) is director of international programs at the Donald Danforth Center - Monsanto's mission to the developing world. The others are known GM enthusiasts.
An excellent commentary on this event has been circulated by Elisabet Lopez of Progressio - formerly the Catholic Institute for International Relations - and Father Sean McDonagh, a Columban Missionary. The authors write, "Debate usually involves opposing or at least diverse viewpoints, but the US Embassy to the Holy See did not seek the views of farmers and scientists who contend that GM crops present more socio-economic and environmental threats than solutions. Such farmers and scientists would like support to be channelled into low-cost sustainable agricultural technologies that have been shown to work and benefit farmers, not agribusiness corporations."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7239