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from Claire Robinson, REVIEW editor

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Dear all:

There's been a disastrous spill of GM canola in Western Australia (AUSTRALASIA). In the US, more and more experts are speaking out about the hazards of Roundup herbicide (THE AMERICAS). And in India, Monsanto and its subsidiary Mahyco are to be prosecuted for stealing local germplasm to create GM Bt eggplants (ASIA).

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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A headline from the UK's Farmers Weekly says, "Shoppers back GM in face of rising food costs". This suggests a majority of shoppers "back GM", but when one comes to the detail of the Crop Protection Association's survey, it turns out that only around a third of shoppers think GM foods should even be allowed to be sold in the UK, unless they are given inducements. The inducements include GM foods being shown to keep prices down, be more nutritious or "proved safe for the environment". And even under those entirely hypothetical conditions, there is still a majority (over 50%) of UK shoppers who do not think GM foods should even be allowed to be sold in the UK.

This is dreadful news for the GM industry. It means a clear majority of shoppers – about two-thirds except under hypothetical conditions – don't even want it allowed on the shelves, let alone to buy it! 

And it gets worse. Well over 50% of shoppers wouldn't buy GM, or allow it into UK shops, even if it were cheaper, more nutritious and safe for the environment. What a rejection! It's hard to think of any other product which would still be rejected – let alone by a clear majority of shoppers – in such circumstances. Yet the "crop protection" industry and its supporters conclude: "Shoppers back GM". How desperate is that?

The New York Times has published an op-ed promoting GM crops called Engineering Food for All, by Nina Fedoroff, the former science adviser to Hillary Clinton. The piece was full of promotional claims that were discredited years ago by hard scientific evidence. Fedoroff's piece was pulled apart by Anna Lappe. Lynette Evans in an article for the San Francisco Chronicle and Pamela Drew on Newsvine have pulled apart a previous Fedoroff piece in the NYT.

Read all three articles here:

http://gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13374  

In December 2010, an international workshop for Islamic scholars was held in Penang, Malaysia on the theme "Agribiotechnology: Shariah Compliance". The little-publicized event was not attended by any of the NGOs in Malaysia with a background in biotech issues. In fact, anyone with differing views from the organisers was not invited. The discussion was limited to the issue of what is allowed and forbidden under Islamic law and, not surprisingly, resulted in a decree that GM is permissable in Islam. But Mohideen Abdul Kader, Vice President of the Consumer Association of Penang Malaysia in Eco Islam, said the workshop ignored fundamental values in the Islamic worldview:

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Several tonnes of GM canola have been spilled in Williams, Western Australia. A fire split the truck trailer and GM canola seed spilled along the roadway and verges.

"The Albany Highway for several kilometers needs quarantining, cleanup and monitoring for at least the next decade," said Gene Ethics Director Bob Phelps. "GM canola contamination is now likely over large areas from Perth to Albany. The Tasmanian government is still monitoring and cleaning up GM contamination at 50 sites where GM canola trials were planted in 1998." 

Following the incident, the Safe Food Foundation has retained Slater & Gordon lawyers to provide legal advice and support to the local GM free grain growers. The Safe Food Foundation will also provide free GM test kits for the local GM free grain growers who want to test their crops this coming harvest.

A week after the GM canola spill, a farmer, Geoff Reed, has reported seeing seen flocks of parrots feeding on GM canola seed outside his front fence in Williams, Western Australia. The seed is now germinating on the roadside after rain. Mr Reed has lived on the 400 acre farm all his life.

"My non-GM and no-chemical production systems are threatened by the GM seed, spread by birds and humans," said Reed. "The authorities and their contractors scooped up the GM canola seed spilled last week but they obviously didn't get it all. A bobcat [mechanical excavator] spread what was left on the roadside with soil and the GM seed is already germinating along at least 50 metres of road at my fence line. Me and my neighbours wanted to stay GM-free but our worst nightmare is now outside our front gates. We want real action not promises."

American GM lobbyists are busy in Australia trying to bring GM wheat to market with minimal controversy, says the chief executice officer of the Washington-based American National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG), Dana Peterson.

Read Greenpeace's report about CSIRO's GM wheat trials in Australia:

http://www.greenpeace.org/australia/en/what-we-do/Food/resources/reports/Australias-wheat-scandal/

TAKE ACTION: Tell the Australian government to end its controversial GM wheat trials

https://www.greenpeace.org.au/action/index.php?cid=19

Why Greenpeace's opposition to GM wheat trials is not "anti-science":

The GM industry is trying to paint organic farmer Steve Marsh as a bully because he is suing his neighbour who contaminated him by growing GM canola. Steve Marsh lost his organic status as a result of the GM contamination and suffered income loss. His farm may remain contaminated for years. In an illuminating article, Fran Murrell of anti-GM campaign group MADGE asks "Who's the GM bully?"

High profile law firm Slater & Gordon will take up the case of decertified organic farmer Steve Marsh, who grows wheat and barley in Western Australia.

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In Spain, Valencia's local government revoked the permit of an Italian pharmaceutical company to experiment with GM rice engineered with human genes after protests from social, ecologist and peasant organizations. The aim of the GM trial was to obtain enzymes to treat Gaucher's disease. However, there are several treatments for this disease that are obtained through genetic engineering in confined environments.

A new application for a GM wheat trial was announced in July 2011. The Soil Association has submitted information to the consultation highlighting how the trial is potentially risky, unnecessary and a waste of public money. The GM wheat has been engineered to repel aphids, using a technique which has already been shown to work using non GM methods. 

In the face of huge resistance in Poland and abroad, on 31 July the Senate of the Polish parliament voted to pass into law the Seeds Act which legalises the planting of GM seeds in Poland. The move led to a demonstration in Warsaw calling for President Komorowski not to sign off on the new law. Klaudia Wojciechowicz from the "GMO Is Not It" initiative told the rally, "If we do not protest now then when will we? When our children and grandchildren ask us in ten or twenty years: mom, dad, where were you when GMO food was introduced in Poland? Do you really want to answer that you were on vacation?" After the protests, the President delayed making a decision.

Actions against GM toxic soy took place at an AHOLD supermarket in Amsterdam, following similar actions in Nijmegen, Wageningen, Groningen and Antwerp (Belgium). The actions are protesting against the greenwashing of GM soy sprayed with glyphosate herbicide, which is being imported into Europe under the Round Table on Responsible Soy initiative of WWF and GM firms including Monsanto. Leaflets were handed out to the public and non-organic meat products, eggs and dairy were stickered with "made with toxic soy" stickers.  

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Scientists are seeing new, alarming patterns in plants and animals due to increased use of the herbicide Roundup, said Michael McNeill, an agronomist who owns Ag Advisory Ltd. in Algona, Iowa. McNeill cited Roundup-resistant superweeds in the Midwest and other areas of the country and Roundup's tendency to make important nutrients unavailable to plants, thereby harming crops and making them vulnerable to disease. "When you spray glyphosate on a plant, it's like giving it AIDS," he said.

He said he and his colleagues are seeing a higher incidence of infertility and early-term abortion in cattle and hogs that are fed on GM crops. He adds that poultry fed on the suspect crops have been exhibiting reduced fertility rates. McNeill advises his farmer clients to rotate chemicals — or not use them at all.

GMWatch comment: The number of mainstream agricultural experts raising serious concerns over Monsanto's Roundup herbicide is growing all the time. McNeill joins Robert Kremer, a microbiologist with the US Dept of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service and plant pathologist and former Purdue University professor Don Huber.

Monsanto will launch this fall a GM sweet corn seed for farmers to grow. The corn will then be sold in grocery stores in the US and Canada. While the sweetcorn is being hailed as a "consumer-oriented vegetable product", it has been genetically modified to contain an insecticide and to tolerate being sprayed with Roundup herbicide. Yum.

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In an unprecedented decision, the National Biodiversity Authority of India (NBA) has decided to prosecute Monsanto and its Indian collaborator Mahyco for allegedly "stealing" indigenous plant material for developing GM Bt brinjal (eggplant/aubergine). Taking plant material without any permission and using it for commercial purposes is considered an act of biopiracy. Monsanto could face criminal proceedings.

On Quit India Day, August 9, thousands of Indians vowed to uphold the country's food and seed sovereignty and resist the increasing corporate takeover of agriculture. From remote tribal hamlets in Orissa to the national capital, more than a hundred events were organized by civil society groups and concerned individuals to highlight the peril to India's Food, Farmers and Freedom. Across the country, the demands to the governments were: 

*no collaborative research partnerships with companies like Monsanto in the state agriculture universities and other institutions in the NARS *no GM crop trials *no public-private-partnerships in the name of improving productivity *setting up grassroots systems of seed-self reliance, recognizing farmers' skills and knowledge.

India's proposed BRAI (Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India) bill is coming under heavy criticism. More than 50,000 people have signed a petition opposing the bill, which Greenpeace said will create "a single window clearance system for GM crops". Coalition for the GM-Free India called the bill "a blatant attempt to bulldoze through the public resistance and genuine concerns about GM crops, and to deny state governments their Constitutional authority over Agriculture and Health. The Coalition added that it was the "wrong bill by the wrong people for the wrong reasons".

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-08-19/pune/29905017_1_gm-crops-gm-food-biotechnology-regulatory-authority

Sign petition against bad bill: 

Apart from issues related to seed monopoly and rural livelihood, there are serious biosafety concerns about GM crops all over the world, writes Basudev Acharya, chair of the Indian parliament's standing committee on agriculture, in an extremely well-informed article. He calls the regulatory system "defunct" and points out: "For any GM crop that is being developed in any part of the world right now, there exists ecological alternatives which are economically and socially sustainable."

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This video features an interview with Prof Gilles-Eric Seralini, the leader of the research team that obtained Monsanto's confidential raw data of its GM maize feeding trials on rats, after a European court made it public. Seralini says the data "clearly underlines adverse impacts on kidneys and liver, the dietary detoxifying organs," as well as other bodily organs and systems.

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