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from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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Dear all:
The regulatory noose is tightening on the biotech industry.
In the big story of the week, the Supreme Court in India has placed stringent new conditions on GM crop trials that could make them all but impossible to conduct. (SUPREME COURT BATTLE HOTS UP)
Germany too is cracking down on Monsanto's GM corn by issuing requirements that the company seems unlikely to be able to fulfill. (EUROPE)
And there's also a call for the GM alfalfa ban imposed in the United States to be extended to Canada. (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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EUROPE
COSTS OF CONTAMINATION
THE AMERICAS
ASIA
FOOD SECURITY
SUPREME COURT BATTLE HOTS UP
NEW RESEARCH
COMPANY NEWS
LOBBYWATCH
BIOFUELS
CAMPAIGN OF THE WEEK
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EUROPE
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+ DE FACTO BAN ON GM CORN IN GERMANY
The German government has imposed much stricter regulations on Monsanto regarding the sale of GM corn (maize) seeds. According to the leading German newspaper, Der Spiegel, the new rules are tantamount to an outright ban.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7854
+ NETHERLANDS REFUSES CORN FROM U.S.
The Netherlands will either return or burn a US shipment of GM corn that lacks clearance from European authorities, the Dutch food safety authority said. They also say they will increase import checks in the light of the discovery. Described as 'GM-free' on official documents, the GM contamination was identified in corn samples taken from a ship by Greenpeace.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7865
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7854
+ TONY BLAIR TO QUIT
Tony Blair is to finally stand down as Britain's Prime Minister in the next few weeks. Under Blair the UK has been the only European Union country to consistently vote to oppose all other countries' national bans on specific GM crops and foods. According to Blair's former Environment Minister, Michael Meacher, "Tony's natural mates are his big business friends."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7861
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COSTS OF CONTAMINATION
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+ CONTAMINATION SHOWS FOOD SAFETY TRUMPS PRICE
An article by the editor of the food industry portal FoodProductionDaily.com says recent contamination scandals, including illegal GM rice from China that ended up in the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Poland, Spain and Cyprus, have shown that cheap ingredients are not cheap at all.
He notes that, "While the ingredients may have seemed cheap to processors at the time, they ended up costing a lot in terms of the subsequent withdrawals, the loss of consumer confidence in brands, increased regulatory scrutiny, and the effort it took some companies to search for alternate sources."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7844
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THE AMERICAS
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+ RABOBANK - LESS U.S. RICE FARMING DUE TO GM
According to a report from Rabobank, rice acreage in the US in 2007-08 is likely to decline due to concerns over the effects of GM contamination, which has already led to the loss of a major share of the EU market.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7866
+ PROTESTS IN BOSTON
Several hundred lively protesters led by a marching band and giant puppets marched through Roxbury to protest the Biotech Industry Organisation (BIO) conference in Boston and the Boston University Bio-Terror Lab. View pictures at http://boston.indymedia.org/feature/display/199290/index.php
+ AMERICANS NOT COMFORTABLE WITH GM FOODS
A poll commissioned by BIO to coincide with its Boston conference (see above) shows that less than half of all Americans view GM foods in a positive light, and more than half American women find GM foods troubling.
http://business.bostonherald.com/businessNews/view.bg?articleid=198965
+ NINE MASSACHUSETTS TOWNS VOTE AGAINST GM
Since May 1 nine towns in Western Massachusetts have passed resolutions at their annual Town Meetings opposing genetic engineering of food and crops. "The success of these resolutions at town meetings this year reflects a deepening opposition to genetic engineering in Massachusetts and across New England," said Ben Grosscup of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Massachusetts.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7847
+ MORE ON GM ALFALFA BAN: HOW WILL CANADA REACT?
Though US judge Charles Breyer has made his temporary ban on GM alfalfa in the US permanent on the grounds that the US government has so far failed to follow its own rules for assessing GMOs, it remains to be seen how the Canadian government, which first approved GM alfalfa in 2004, will react.
According to Eric Darier of Greenpeace, "It was reviewed using criteria similar to those used in the US, which even the Royal Society of Canada considered to lack scientific rigour in 2001. We have every right to doubt the seriousness of the GMO assessments conducted by Ottawa." Greenpeace is demanding that Canada now withdraw approval of the GM alfalfa.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7836
+ CONSUMERS FLOOD FDA WITH OVER 130,000 OBJECTIONS TO CLONED FOOD
A coalition of consumer, environmental and animal welfare organizations have announced the submission of more than 130,000 comments to the Food and Drug Administration from consumers who oppose the Agency's proposed plan to introduce food from cloned animals into the US food supply. A December 2006 poll by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology found that nearly two-thirds of US consumers were unhappy with animal cloning.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7835
+ WAYS TO AVOID GM FOOD - CHICAGO TRIBUNE
An article for the Chicago Tribune tells consumers how to avoid GM food. The key, unsurprisingly, is to eat organic and unprocessed food and avoid non-organic farmed fish and Hawaiian papaya. The article might have included US-grown rice, which has been widely contaminated by unapproved GM varieties.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7837
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ASIA
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+ BT COTTON HAS FAILED IN VIDHARBHA - MINISTER
At the end of last week the Times of India reported - under the headline above - that, "If any proof about failure of genetically modified Bt cotton in the main cotton growing area of Vidarbha was needed, it came on Wednesday from Maharashtra agriculture minister Balasaheb Thorat... Thorat admitted that the much-hyped, and high-priced Bt seeds were only adding to the burden of Vidarbha's farmers." This is an important admission from a state government that has been very much to the fore in the hyping of Bt cotton.
Nowhere in India has there been a bigger take up of Monsanto's expensive Bt cotton seeds than in Maharashtra. But official reports have repeatedly noted that the Bt seeds have not performed well. And last year 1,448 farmers, mostly cotton growers, committed suicide. Maharashtra's agriculture minister admitted to Reuters, "High input cost for cotton cultivation and lower output is one of the major reasons for farmers' suicides." http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7859
+ DEMAND FOR A GM-FREE TAMIL NADU
A big rally in the South Indian city of Chennai last week - organised by South Against Genetic Engineering (SAGE) - called for for GM crops to be made illegal in Tamil Nadu. More than 10,000 farmers in the state are said to have lost heavily by cultivating Bt cotton.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7855
+ ANOTHER POLITICAL PARTY CALLS FOR GM BAN
A second Indian political party (AIADMK) is calling for an immediate ban on GM crops, following a huge rally said to have involved around 8,000 farmers.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7864
+ PLAN FOR GM CROP TRIALS REVIVED IN THAILAND
Thailand's Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry has revived a plan to conduct field trials of GM crops. If it gets cabinet approval, the potential GM crops which could be planted would be papaya, tomato, chilli, and pineapple. Previous Thai trials of GM papayas triggered an ongoing contamination problem as well as lost exports.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7840
For GM Watch's detailed comments on the economic impact of GM trials http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7840
+ TAIWAN: GROUP PROTESTS FLUORESCENT PIGS
An animal rights group has protested against Taiwanese scientists' genetically engineering two pink fluorescent pigs, calling the project "absurd" and "meaningless."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7856
+ WORLD BANK AND FARMER SUICIDES
In an incisive article for the Times of India, Vandana Shiva writes, "...[World] Bank pressure enabled the entry of seed corporations like Monsanto. Today, most farmer suicides are precisely in those areas where Monsanto's seeds have spread."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7839
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FOOD SECURITY
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+ MEETING THE FOOD SECURITY CHALLENGE THROUGH ORGANICS
Researchers have told a UN conference that a large-scale shift to organic agriculture could help fight world hunger while improving the environment. The researchers presented their study at an International Conference on Organic Agriculture and Food Security in Rome (3-5 May 2007). http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7850
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7833
+ VISION FOR A GLOBAL AGRICULTURE
Article by the Indian trade policy analyst, Devinder Sharma, on the crisis brought about by industrialized and globalized agriculture. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7850
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SUPREME COURT BATTLE HOTS UP
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+ INDIAN GOVERNMENT MISLEADS PRESS AND PUBLIC
The aftermath of a Supreme Court hearing last week has shown all too clearly that the Government of India sees its role as one of promoting rather than regulating GM crops.
Last September India's Supreme Court slapped a ban on fresh GM field trials but allowed GM crop trials that were already approved to continue. But following last week's hearing India's environment ministry issued a press release claiming that the Court's stay on GM crops had now been vacated.
This is far from the case but that didn't stop India's minister of state for environment and forests, Namo Narain Meena, making exactly the same misleading claim in a speech in which he proclaimed that biotechnology would dominate the 21st century.
But, as the lawyer for the petitioners in the case has pointed out in a legal notice to the ministry, the Supreme Court has not vacated its order as regards fresh field trials of GM crops. Those trials that haven't already had approval remain banned. What the Supreme Court has done is simply add stringent *new conditions* onto the trials that already had approval.
In addition, the Supreme Court - in the words of the Times of India - tightened "the leash on the government" still further, by ordering it to release toxicity and allergenicity data. As the Times of India notes, this "precedent setting order has elated the green groups as they have been constantly asking for such data to be put out in the public domain."
*Read the Times of India article
'Ban on trials of GM crops to continue'
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Ban_on_trials_of_*GM_crops_to_continue/articleshow/2036223.cms
Read the legal notice sent to the Ministry
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7863
+ SUPREME COURT IMPOSES NEW CONDITIONS ON FIELD TRIALS
These are the new conditions that the Supreme Court has imposed onto the ongoing and previously approved trials of GM crops it's allowing to continue:
(a) Isolation distances will be increased to 200m around the test field (comment: something that will be extremely hard to achieve given the size of most Indian landholdings);
(b) A lead scientist will be named who will assume full responsibity for the field trial in all its aspects, most importantly for contamination;
(c) The regulator will specify a validated test protocol for contamination with a LOD (level of detection) of 0.01% so that neighbouring crops can be tested for GM contamination.
While the Court also allowed the commercial release of four already approved Bt cotton varieties (Bt cotton to date is the only GM crop with commercial approval in India), it said no new varieties should be introduced.
The bench said GEAC, the apex GM regulator, should submit detailed data, if any is available (!), about toxicity and allergic reactions before the court. (comment: Regulators have until now refused to do so and they'll be extremely unhappy about this precedent setting order by the Court.)
Aruna Rodrigues, the chief petitioner in the public interest litigation (PIL) before the Court, commented on the court order as follows: "The restrictions that the GEAC are bound up in, place the most severe conditions on them and open up a whole arena of action for farmers and civil society groups. If the Union of India and its Regulator do not comply, they will face contempt of court."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7852
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NEW RESEARCH
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+ REPORT REVEALS BT CROP RISKS TO INSECTS AND SOIL
Plants containing Bt toxins could severely damage soil and beneficial insect populations, suggests a published review of international scientific studies.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7830
+ NEW RUSSIAN STUDY REVEALS SERIOUS DAMAGE TO MICE FED GM SOY
Some very preliminary unpublished research in Russia has found serious pathological damage in mice fed a Monsanto GM Roundup Ready soy that has been approved for human consumption.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7853
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COMPANY NEWS
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+ EUROPEAN PATENT OFFICE REVOKES MONSANTO'S SPECIES PATENT ON GM SOY
The European Patent Office has revoked a species-wide patent on GM soy held by Monsanto. Reasons were that parts of the patent were not new and details were not described in a way that the invention could be repeated.
The final decision was the outcome of appeals filed by ETC Group and Syngenta. Further oppositions were filed by the NGO 'No Patents on Life!' and four other companies when the patent was granted in 1994. Even Monsanto filed an opposition, but then bought the company Agracetus which originally owned the patent, withdrew its opposition and started to defend the patent!
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7832
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LOBBYWATCH
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+ GM WATCH PART OF "NETWORK OF McCARTHYITES"!
GM Watch and others, including the writer and journalist George Monbiot, have been attacked in the most lurid terms by Frank Furedi, the 'Godfather' of the far right (and GM-loving) LM group, whose supporters have become the leading lights of UK pro-GM lobby groups like the Science Media Centre, Sense About Science etc.
To celebrate his 60th birthday, Spiked has just published an interview with its most influential columnist, Frank Furedi, in which he "discusses environmentalism, conspiracy theories and the 'network of McCarthyites' slurring his name". This network, according to Spiked's editor Brendan O'Neill, is clustered around Guardian columnist George Monbiot and includes LobbyWatch, GM Watch and SpinWatch (see below).
The Furedi piece seems to have been triggered by an interview we published in which George Monbiot discusses the politics and tactics of the LM group.
Furedi seems pretty miffed about it, comparing us not just to McCarthyites but to the Spanish Inquisition, not to mention anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists!
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7851
+ COINCIDENCE OR CONSPIRACY?
In an article for SpinWatch, investigative journalist Andy Rowell replies to Furedi's accusations of McCarthyism.
EXCERPT: According to a recent interview in Spiked, Furedi claimed that the stories being spun about him "have all the hallmarks of a classical conspiracy theory".
Having written about LM and Furedi on and off for a number of years, as well as hundreds of other environmental, health and political stories, I am afraid I don't believe in conspiracy theories... but this degree of concentration and activity in... [science based organisations by Furedi's supporters] seems beyond the possibility of coincidence. READ ON AT
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7857
+ UK: FARMING REGS UNFAIR TO GM CROPS, CLAIM ADVISORS
Advisers to the UK government have claimed that the farming regulatory regime is unfairly weighted against the growing of GM crops. ACRE - the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment - wants a lighter touch system that concentrates more on the claimed benefits of GM farming rather than any potential harm to the countryside and health.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7838
The latest move is headed by the chairman of ACRE, Prof Chris Pollock, a master of willful blindness to potential harm from GM crops:
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=825
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BIOFUELS
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+ IPPC CALL FOR LARGE-SCALE BIOFUELS CONDEMNED
A group of NGOs has condemned the International Panel on Climate Change's (IPPC) call for large-scale cultivation of GM crops for biofuels. Almuth Ernsting of Biofuelwatch says: "It is already clear that the burgeoning demand for biofuels that has been created to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is actually increasing them by deforestation in the tropics and accelerating climate change. So far, only 1% of global transport fuel comes from biofuels, yet already biofuels cause steep rises in grain and vegetable oil prices, threatening the food security of poor people and spurring agricultural expansion into forests and grasslands, on which we depend for a stable climate".
The NGOs also caution that the use of GM crops is inherently risky.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7834
+ BIOFUELS THREATEN FAMINE - UN
The global rush to energy crops threatens to bring food shortages and increase poverty, says a UN report. The report also says the crops are not guaranteed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Producing and using biofuels results in some reductions in emissions compared to petroleum fuels, it says, but this is provided there is no clearing of forest or peat that store centuries of carbon.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7849
+ BIOFUELS THE NEXT THREAT TO AFRICA
Even if the UK were to turn over all of its land to growing biofuels instead of food, it would need 4 times the amount of land to make enough fuel to meet its current needs, warns Teresa Anderson of the Gaia Foundation. Europe is therefore looking to Africa to provide the land that will grow the fuel.
But large-scale biofuels projects launched in Africa are meeting with intense opposition, reports Teresa. Protests, riots and arrests broke out in Uganda last month over the government's plans to allow Mabira Forest, the largest rainforest area in the country, to be handed over and cut down for sugar plantations - some of which would go to producing biofuel ethanol.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7834
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CAMPAIGN OF THE WEEK
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ACTION - URGENT: Comments Needed to Help Stop Genetically Engineered Eucalyptus in Southern US
http://www.stopgetrees.org/staticpages/index.php?page=20070509150330962
DEADLINE: MONDAY, MAY 21 2007, 5pm Eastern For more information http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7860