Monitoring the newsfeeds here at GM Watch, it's not been hard to spot that someone at Reuters UK has been suckered big time!
A series of heavily spun GM stories have come tumbling out in the last few hours.
We've had:
China Seen Opening Door Soon to Biotech Rice
(see below)
Red tape, media stop Russia growing GMO crops
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L28457533.htm
S.Africa leads on GMO, other African states wary
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L28700039.htm
Spanish farmers want more GM crops
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2005-02-28T130435Z_01_DEN847030_RTRUKOC_0_FOOD-GMO-SPAIN.xml
We're talking journalism that is embarrassingly one-sided. An article that admits a great deal of wariness of GM in Africa, focuses on apparent enthusiasm in South Africa and even misleads as to the type of crops being grown. An article on Europe doesn't focus on the almost continent-wide market exclusion and massive movement for GMO Free zones but on the one EU country with any significant cultivation of a GM crop. An article on Russia puts down the strong opposition to GMOs to red tape and stories in the media.
There's a clear pattern here: South Africa leads in Africa, China leads in Asia, Spain leads in Europe and poor old unregenerate Russia lags behind a victim of media scare stories and the kind of red tape no modern economy would wish to be burdened with.
Where could Reuters be getting this one-sided propaganda? A possible clue can be found in the article on China (below) which is entirely attributable not to any source in China but to Clive James of the GM-industry backed lobby group, ISAAA. The article does not include a single comment that appears to come from any other source. Indeed, the entire content of the article reads as if provided by ISAAA.
What makes this particularly unforgivable is the nature of the content. China may, as James suggests, commercialise GM rice some time in the future, but on the other hand it may not. If China does what James hopes, then this may have a knock on effect elsewhere in Asia. But all of this is speculative and an industry lobbyist's speculations on what may or may not happen in the next few years hardly justifies the headline "China Seen Opening Door Soon to Biotech Rice".
The Russian story is also almost entirely from one source. This time it's a GM researcher whose project is going nowhere because of Russia's lack of enthusiasm for GMOs. Who could have suggested this disgruntled researcher would make the ideal person to give perspective on Russia and GMOs? Interestingly, the article contains a reference to - wait for it! - ISAAA.
Now as it happens, ISAAA's Clive James has recently been on a lobbying tour around the UK. Is it too cynical to speculate that a stop off at Reuters' UK offices may have occurred, if not lunch with an editor? Or perhaps it was just a chat over the telephone?
Whatever the explanation, this is a case of seriously bad journalism.
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China Seen Opening Door Soon to Biotech Rice
Mon Feb 28, 2005 08:35 AM ET
By Jeremy Smith
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=NHBTQETRVYMF4CRBAEKSFEY?type=scienceNews&storyID=7758218&pageNumber=1
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - China could open the door to
biotech rice within two years, paving the way for the GMO crop to enter the food stream across Asia, the head of a trade group said Monday.
"Rice is likely to be approved in China in the near term, maybe in two years," said Clive James, chairman and founder of ISAAA, a group with industry and public foundation support that promotes biotech as a way to halt global hunger.
"And once China approves rice, this will move through the rice countries of Asia -- like India, Pakistan and the Philippines -- where rice is king," he said in an interview.
Knocking down the barriers to using GMO (genetically modified organism) rice would be a major coup for industry and other backers of GMO crops.
Rice is the staple of half the world's more than six billion people. China has long been seen as the pioneer in GMO rice, and is the world's top producer and consumer of the commodity.
As yet no GMO rice is produced commercially, but China is at the forefront of developments and is poised to approve the commercialization of modified strains that can resist insects and diseases.
Many governments are wary about authorizing GMO crops due to consumer concern over possible risks to human and animal health. But the global biotech industry says GMO crops can help feed millions of the world's hungry, particularly in developing countries.
Pressure to launch GMO rice comes at a time when Beijing faces a tough task in raising the country's grain output and in narrowing the income gap between farmers and urban citizens.
China's 2004 rice crop is expected to rise to about 180 million tons from 161 million last year, the lowest since 1994. The country's supply deficit is around 10 million tons.
"Once China does (approves) rice, it's a momentous decision. It's the most important food crop in the world. They've worked on this very carefully and had large-scale field trials for several years, so there's a substantial database," said James, the full name of whose organization is the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications.
China is already the world's top grower of insect resistant GMO cotton, known as bacillus thuringiensis cotton, which has been effective in controlling damage from the bollworm pest.
Around 20 percent of China's annual investments in crop biotechnology were earmarked for rice, and the country looked set to become the world's second largest investor in this area after the United States, he said.
"There's fairly good evidence that in China, they are investing $200 million minimum a year, with the intention to increase that to $500 million. And that's only in crop biotechnology -- China is already a very significant player."
Maize was another area where China was likely to develop GMO strains since demand was expected to jump by 80 percent between 1997 and 2020, he said, adding that consumer demand for a richer diet meant that more maize would be used in animal feed.
"China and India alone have tremendous opportunities," said James. "The policy of China is to be least dependent on outside territories: rice, maize and, maybe in the medium term, wheat."