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Dear all:
This week the focus is on India - the spate of suicides among Bt cotton farmers; the scandal of secret GM crop trials with massive biosafety failings; and the fight back by activists, farmers' unions and state governments (ASIA).
Don't miss a stunning conflict of interest in the Ministry overseeing GM crop trials in Kenya (Africa), a scathing expose by its own auditors of the US Department of Agriculture's lax regulation of GM crop trials (THE AMERICAS) and some new research on soya, which apparently shows that a soya-based diet worsens heart disease in mice (FOOD SAFETY). The researchers do not discriminate between GM and non-GM soya, but as the study was done in the US, it seems probable it's GM.
A happy new year to all our readers and supporters.
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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THE AMERICAS
ASIA
EUROPE
AFRICA
FOOD SAFETY
LOBBYWATCH
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THE AMERICAS
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+ VENTRIA CANCELS MOVE TO NW MISSOURI
Pharma company Ventria Bioscience has announced that it won't be moving to Northwest Missouri State University.
Ventria, which is currently based in Sacramento, California, had planned to remove proteins from GM rice at a facility under construction at the university.
The collapse of the deal follows major opposition to Ventria's proposal to grow GM pharma rice in Missouri's rice-growing region.
When the deal was first announced, it was claimed 2,000 acres of Ventria crops would be grown in Missouri in 2005, with Missouri farmers eventually growing more than 70% of Ventria's US field production. However, Missouri farmers and rice buyers united in opposition to the idea of even Ventria's field trials being held in the state.
Major Missouri corporations, including Anheuser-Busch and Riceland Foods, strongly opposed Ventria's plans, with Anheuser-Busch at one point vowing to boycott Missouri's 30 million-bushel rice crop if pharma plants were grown in the state.
As a result of the opposition, no pharma rice trials took place in Missouri in 2005.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6091
+ REPORT BLASTS OVERSIGHT OF TEST FIELDS
The US Dept of Agriculture has failed to properly oversee field trials of GM crops, including plants designed to produce chemicals for medical and industrial uses, investigators say.
A report released by the USDA's inspector general said the department "lacks basic information" on where field tests are or what is done with the crops after they are harvested.
The report is the latest blow to prospects for developing an industry based on mass-producing pharmaceutical chemicals from GM corn. Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack once called the idea the "future of our state."
During the inspector general investigation, auditors found that two large harvests of pharmaceutical crops remained in storage at test sites without the USDA's knowledge or approval.
The investigators also said that in 2003 the department failed to inspect fields of pharmaceutical crops with the frequency that officials said they would. "Current (USDA) regulations, policies and procedures do not go far enough to ensure the safe introduction of agricultural biotechnology," the report said.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6086
The full USDA report is at http://www.usda.gov/oig/webdocs/50601-08-TE.pdf
Greenpeace's Jeremy Tager comments on the USDA report:
Considering it is a US government document, it is an extraordinary read! APHIS [the US Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service] doesn't know where the trial crops are - even pharma and industrial crops - because a single permit allows multiple plantings in multiple states. APHIS doesn't monitor, doesn't track disposition of trials (including pharma crops - at least 2 cases are noted of large quantities of pharma crops stored on-farm for over a year - the storage facilities never assessed. Serious violations ignored - planting of a commercial, unregulated crop in the same field as a pharma crop.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6093
+ VERMONT SENATE WATERS DOWN GM SEED BILL
A long-debated measure designed to hold seed manufacturers liable for the accidental spread of GM crops was narrowly defeated in the Vermont Senate.
The House passed a less stringent version of the bill, which requires that lawsuits over the unintentional spread of GM crops be filed in Vermont courts and affirms farmers' rights to sue companies under consumer protection law.
It is not the end of the issue, however, because the Senate passed the tougher proposal last year and a compromise will have to be worked out with the House before the end of the session.
House agriculture committee Chairman David Zuckerman maintains that it is imperative to protect Vermont farmers with a bill that puts liability for GM contamination not on fellow farmers, but on the seed dealers.
"Farmers are the ones really having their necks put on the line ”¦ because of the contracts they sign either with ink or by opening the bag," said Zuckerman.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6095
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6090
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ASIA
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+ INDIA: STATE GOVT TO TAKE BT COMPANIES TO COURT OVER ROYALTIES
The Andhra Pradesh government plans to take Mahyco-Monsanto to the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission (MRTPC) for the discriminatory royalties collected by it for Bt cotton, state agriculture minister N. Raghuveera Reddy said.
The minister said the seed company had been forcibly collecting a royalty of Rs 1,250 per packet of 450 grams of Bt cottonseeds, for which the farmers have to shell out Rs 1,850. This has resulted in a significant increase in the cost of production.
The state government plans to file a case before the commission on January 2 seeking its intervention to reduce the royalty collected in India by Monsanto.
The case will be filed against Monsanto and four other Indian seed companies, which sold Bt cottonseeds under manufacturing license in the country. These companies include Mahyco Ltd, Pro-Agro, Nuzibveedu Seeds, and Rasi Seeds.
"The company is compelling cotton farmers at gunpoint to pay the extra amount, even as it collected lesser and variable royalties in other countries," Reddy said.
Monsanto is banned from selling its products directly in Andhra Pradesh since 2004 after it failed to compensate farmers for loss of the Bt cotton crop.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6092
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6085
+ MOST FARMERS WHO COMMITTED SUICIDE WERE BT COTTON GROWERS
According to the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS, People's Movement in Vidarbha) 170 cotton growers from Western Vidarbha who had opted to sow Bt cotton committed suicide from June to December last year.
The number of farmers in Vidarbha as a whole who committed suicide during the period was 212, of whom 182 were from Western Vidarbha, VJAS president Kishore Tiwari said in a statement. Among the 182 suicides in Western Vidarbha, 170 were by farmers said to be Bt cotton growers.
Farmers in Vidarbha had sown Bt cotton on the assurance that the minimum yield would be 20 quintals per acre, the statement said. However, the average yield per acre was only two to three quintals per acre.
The VJAS proposes to initiate legal action against the US-based seeds company demanding compensation for farmers who had been ''misled by false assurances''.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6092
+ GM CROP TRIAL SCANDAL IN INDIA
The scandal of secret GM crop trials in India has been blown wide open by a team led by the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture (CSA).
The CSA has exposed how Mahyco - Monsanto's partner in India - has been conducting secret trials on GM vegetables in Narakoduru village in Andhra Pradesh which violate all biosafety norms. The CSA revealed that even the farmer whose land was being used for the trials had not been informed that it was a GM crop.
The farmer's only point of contact with Mahyco was with a temporary employee whose contract with the company was terminated soon after a team of university scientists came and visited the trial plots. The farmer was then left not knowing what to do with the crop which was just left standing in his field. This despite biosafety guidelines that say that all material from the field trials should be destroyed by burning.
It also emerged that the farmer and other local people had been consuming the vegetable without knowing it was GM or that it had never been approved for human consumption.
Some of the crop may even have reached the open market. The person employed by Mahyco was reported to have sold off vegetables from the plots in the local market, contaminating the supply chain.
As a result of the revelations, the Andhra Pradesh Rythu Sangam - the largest farmers' union in AP - visited the field in Narakoduru village on 29th of December and destroyed the GM crop.
The Andhra Pradesh government has also reacted robustly, pointing out that neither the Agriculture Department nor the Horticulture Department at the state level had been informed about the trials, nor had their consent been obtained. Because of this, the AP government has stopped the ANGR Agricultural University team of scientists who had visited the trial plot at the request of India's Department of Biotechnology from sending their report on to the department. The AP government is also writing to the Department of Biotechnology to remind it that permissions for trials cannot be given without communicating with the state governments.
Field trials of GM crops in India have repeatedly been shrouded in secrecy. This includes the trials on Bt cotton.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6085
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6096
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6100
+ GM FOODS CAN HARM INDIGENOUS FARMING NOBEL LAUREATE
GM foods could harm the interests of the indigenous farming community, Nobel laureate Professor Richard R Ernst cautioned.
GM foods pose a potential danger to the very existence of small farmers, including those in developing countries, Ernst said in a lecture on 'Academic Responsibility and Our Goal' at the 93rd Indian Science Congress (ISC) in Hyderabad.
He said that governments should adopt new policies to ensure that the traditional farming community survive the onslaught of GM foods.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6098
+ THE PRICE OF HYPE: S. KOREA'S STEM CELL SCIENTIST DISGRACED
South Korea's disgraced human cloning scientist did not produce any stem cells tailored to individual patients as claimed, a panel has concluded. A Seoul National University panel said it believed that Hwang Woo-suk never had the data he said he had. Dr Hwang quit last week after the panel said some research was fabricated.
The row over the apparently fabricated scientific research should alert us to the enormity of biotech hype.
Have a look at the stamp that S. Korea had designed to celebrate Dr Hwang's work and what it termed the "procedure of establishing stem cells and hope." The stamp shows a series of silhouettes in which a man in a wheelchair gets out of his wheelchair, takes his first step, jumps and finally embraces a woman.
As one commentator noted, "Billions of tax payer Won have been wasted [on this fake research], that could have gone to wheelchair ramps, elevators, and other aids for people who also suffer discrimination because of their disabilities."
It's also interesting that the problems with Hwang's research were not originally exposed by the scientific community but by investigative journalists who were told it was unpatriotic to challenge someone who had given the country a lead in such a promising new area.
See the stamp here: http://www.pennfamily.org/KSS-USA/linns-world-of-new-issues-02282005.htm
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6094
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EUROPE
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+ WTO AGAIN DELAYS RULING IN ROW OVER EU GM POLICY
A world trade ruling in a high-stakes row between the EU and the US and others over GM crops has been delayed and is unlikely before February. A preliminary decision by a panel of judges appointed by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) had been expected in early January.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6097
+ GM FOODS VERDICT UNLIKELY TO ALTER EU RULES
A story in the Financial Times reports that the WTO ruling is likely to have more political resonance than actual impact on European food and agriculture sectors, according to officials and experts.
The European Commission said that, whatever the WTO ruling, it would not force further adjustments to EU approval procedures and regulations. It said: "Only products recognised as safe will be allowed and the WTO report will not influence the decision-making process in the EU. Any idea that there is going to be a flood of GMOs is simply not the case."
Of course, the EU Commission may just be trying to reassure consumers, who overwhelmingly reject GMOs.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6099
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AFRICA
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+ KENYA'S AG SECRETARY SEES NO CONFLICT BETWEEN HIS ROLE AND DIRECTORSHIP OF GM CROP BODY
Kenya's new Permanent Secretary for agriculture, Dr Romano Kiome, is the former executive director of the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), which has been involved in a series of controversial GM-crop collaborations with the likes of Monsanto, USAID, the Danforth Center and the Syngenta Foundation.
One of these projects - the Syngenta Foundation's Insect Resistant Maize for Africa (IRMA) project - is being jointly implemented by KARI and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT). CIMMYT's funding for the project comes from Syngenta via its Foundation.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3632
Dr Kiome is on CIMMYT's board and he has said he will not be resigning his directorship, despite the organisation's involvement in GM crop experiments in Kenya, unless the other trustees felt it was the right thing to do.
He said he saw no conflict of interest in his continued membership and his position as permanent secretary for Agriculture, the ministry which regulates GM crops and grants permits for plant research activities to both local and international organisations (ie the likes of KARI and CIMMYT).
Devlin Kuyek of GRAIN points out that, "Dr Kiome is also the Chair of the Steering Committee of the Biosciences Eastern and Central Africa (BECA) Centre of Excellence. Among other things, BECA is the main partner in the African Biotechnology Cassava Consortium." See: http://www.biosciencesafrica.org/cassava/index.html
This means Kiome's intimately involved in at least two of the GM crops up for approval in Kenya.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6089
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FOOD SAFETY
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+ SOYA DIET WORSENS HEART DISEASE IN MICE
A University of Colorado at Boulder study has shown the health of mice carrying a genetic mutation for a disease that is the leading cause of sudden cardiac death in people under 30 worsened considerably when the animals were fed a soya-based diet.
Male mice carrying the mutation for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, or HCM, were severely affected by the soya diet, exhibiting progressively enlarged heart muscles and eventual heart failure, said CU-Boulder Professor Leslie Leinwand. When the mice in the study were switched to a diet of the milk protein, casein, the condition of the males improved markedly, said Leinwand, chief author of the study.
Female mice carrying the mutation for HCM, which is characterized by the thickening of heart muscle that can obstruct blood flow, were relatively unaffected, she said. The research team hypothesized that heart deterioration in male mice was due at least in part to plant-based estrogens in the soya food diet that triggered a cascade of biochemical reactions and ultimately increased apoptosis, or programmed cell death, in the heart.
"We were shocked by the results," said Leinwand, chair of the molecular, cellular and developmental biology department and chief study author. "This study shows that at least in mice, diet can have a more profound effect on heart disease than any drug that we could imagine."
NB: We do not know what type of soya the researchers used for their study. Conventional soy and GM soy may lead to different conclusions. Previous studies have found that GM soy increases the death risk in mice. As this research was undertaken in the US, it seems probable that the soya used was, in fact, GM.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6101
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LOBBYWATCH
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+ UK: KREBS DAZZLES KIDS WITH GM ONION
This year's Royal Institution Christmas lectures for children have been given by bird expert and ardent GM supporter, Prof Sir John Krebs, on the subject of food. Here's how the pro-GM Daily Telegraph reported the lectures:
An onion has been genetically altered with jellyfish genes to make it glow green and help children understand GM food.
The experiment, a part of the Royal Institution Christmas lectures that started on Channel 5 ”¦ is aimed at informing youngsters that GM crops could help feed the world. Prof Sir John Krebs, who has locked horns with ministers, farmers, green activists, major companies [???] and environmentalists, will be shown conducting experiments that should prove politically explosive.
Sir John, the former Food Standards Agency chairman, said: "Whether we use GM food or not isn't up to the scientists, but up to the children. We have a huge mountain to climb to keep up with population growth and we should not throw any tools out of the toolbox."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6087