WEEKLY WATCH number 293
from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
Dear all:
Look out for an astonishing article in the Wall St Journal about the explosion of glyphosate resistant superweeds in the US (SUPERWEEDS). It points out that farmers are being driven to use old herbicides to combat these weeds - and that biotech companies are now rushing to engineer crops that are resistant to these more toxic chemicals. So this is where the great GM revolution is taking us - towards multiple-pesticide promoting crops laden with toxic residues.
And with the UK Food Standards Agency's "public dialogue" on GM revealed to be more of a monologue by the biotech industry (LOBBYWATCH), it's important to take action to ask MPs to bring this shameful waste of taxpayers’ money to an end.
Claire <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Website: http//www.gmwatch.org
Profiles: http://bit.ly/12UAI2
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GMWatch
Facebook: http://bit.ly/c6OnaX
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CONTENTS
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GREENWASH
EUROPE
SUPERWEEDS
LOBBYWATCH
GM ANIMALS
RESEARCH
NON-GM BREAKTHROUGHS
THE AMERICAS
AFRICA
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GREENWASH
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+ “RESPONSIBLE” SOY ROUND TABLE A GREENWASH
The Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS), a greenwash initiative of WWF and the food and biotech industries, is expected to launch its "responsible soy" label after its conference 9-10 June 2010 in Sao Paolo, Brazil. The label is expected to include GM soy, as well as soy grown in monocultures in areas deforested for the purpose, as certifiably "responsible". Among the members of RTRS is Monsanto, with a world monopoly on GM Roundup Ready soybeans and a near-monopoly on other seeds.
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12245
+ 230 GROUPS CONDEMN RTRS GREENWASH
The RTRS attempt to greenwash highly damaging soy production as "responsible" has been condemned by an alliance of over 230 international environment, farming and consumer organizations from over 30 countries. The groups pointed out that the criteria for assessing "responsible" soy have now been widely discredited. The group lists 13 reasons why supermarkets should not back the initiative, including:
*Failure to protect forest and other habitats from clearance
*Failure to protect rural communities and public health
*The inclusion of unsustainable GM soy production as "responsible"
*Lack of credible traceability and enforcement or compliance with the criteria
*Lack of any credible alternative soy production system to replace the industrial monocultures dominating North and South American soy.
Pete Riley of GM Freeze, one of the groups concerned, commented:"Supermarkets would be taking a big risk if they buy into this label when what their customers want is real, honest information. Many people are already aware of the threat to biodiversity and people from soy production, and the fig-leaf offered by the RTRS will not convince them."
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12270
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EUROPE
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+ EU COMMISSION TRIES TO UNBLOCK GMOs
The European Commission is examining the possibility of allowing greater flexibility for the member states to ban the cultivation of GM seeds in their own territories, even if they have been authorised at the European level. In exchange, countries hostile to GM would have to stop blocking the approval of new transgenic varieties. Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have strongly criticised the Commission’s proposal, saying they confirm the Commission's determination to push GM crops onto an unwilling European public
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12277
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12280
+ FRANCE INSISTS ON REVIEW OF GM ASSESSMENT CRITERIA
France has said it would not support draft proposals to allow European Union governments to grow or ban GM crops before a complete review of the bloc's GM approval system. The EU's executive, the European Commission, argues that giving member states the option of banning GM cultivation will remove their current opposition to approving new varieties. But France's Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said the proposals did not address the demand for a complete review of the bloc's assessment system for GM crops, made by all 27 EU nations in December 2008. A key complaint was that EFSA, the European GM food safety regulator, was too reliant on data provided by biotech multinationals including Monsanto, BASF and Syngenta for its assessments.
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12280
+ BANNED GM MAIZE SOWN IN GERMANY
A GM maize banned in the EU, NK603, has been sown accidentally across Germany. It is not clear how the contamination occurred, but it could cost farmers millions of euros, as crops will have to be destroyed. Said Stefanie Becker, spokeswoman for Lower Saxony's Environment Ministry, "Fields will have to be ploughed up before the maize blooms - it is still possible to halt the uncontrolled spread [of the GM variety]." It looks like the contamination was discovered at the beginning of March, but the information was not passed on until the end of April.
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12267
+ EUROPEAN UNION: NO TO CLONED MEAT
The European Parliament's environment committee has voted not to authorise the entry of any food derived from cloned animals onto EU markets, putting MEPs on a collision course with the European Commission and the EU's Council of Ministers. A new Testbiotech report prepared for German MEP Martin Häusling (Greens) concludes that cloning could have adverse human health effects. Häusling said, "Higher rates of infection, along with diseases and malformations in liver and brains of mice, sheep and cows, have been reported. Furthermore, these effects could also be detected in subsequent generations of these cloned animals. From a consumer perspective it is alarming that US research has shown in a few cases that even the composition of milk can differ between a cloned and non-cloned animal,"
http://www.gmwatch.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12251
+ WARNING OVER UK GM POTATO TRIALS
The first British field trial of GM potatoes has been planted - in defiance of public opinion and complaints from green campaigners. The test, funded by the taxpayer, is designed to create a crop resistant to a serious disease called late blight. But critics argue the experiment is a waste of public money because blight-resistant potatoes produced through natural techniques already exist. They also say the GM crops could be a risk to food safety. The trial is being carried out on a plot in Norfolk by scientists from the Sainsbury Laboratory, which specialises in plant research. It is part of a programme that has cost taxpayers GBP1.7million since 2001. Approval was granted by the department of the new Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman, who has a long history of support for GM farming. Formal approval came from one of her ministers, Lord Henley.
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12271
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12273
The Sainsbury Laboratory's senior scientist, Jonathan Jones, is in charge of the project. Jones has a long history of ardent support for GM crops and is a co-founder of Mendel Biotechnology, which has Monsanto as a key investor and collaborator.
http://spinprofiles.org/index.php/Jonathan_Jones
+ CONVENTIONAL BREEDING MILES AHEAD OF GM AGAIN
GM Freeze says when it comes to blight-resistant potatoes, "Conventional breeding is miles ahead of GM in producing very good resistance in varieties that are already on the market. This has been achieved without the benefit of the massive public research funding that has been poured into GM blight resistance research, which after a decade has resulted in one test site and no sign of a variety of value to growers or gardeners. This is the same story for most 'miracle' GM crops." GM Freeze names the Sarvari Research Trust in North Wales as a leader inbreeding conventional blight resistant potatoes.
http://gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12269
+ SCOTTISH ANGER AS UK MINISTER BACKS GM CROPS
The Scottish and UK governments could be set for a clash over GM crops after a key Tory minister appeared to back growing them in Britain. The newly installed UK Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman, said she was in favour of GM foods "in the right circumstances" during a newspaper interview. However, the Scottish Government rushed to make clear its "fundamental" opposition to the move, which could potentially mean GM crops being grown in Border areas such as Northumberland and Cumbria, affecting Scotland.
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12266
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SUPERWEEDS
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+ SUPERWEED OUTBREAK TRIGGERS ARMS RACE
Hardy superweeds immune to Roundup are invading fields, prompting a counterattack from agribusiness that could leave farmers using greater amounts of harsh old-line herbicides, reports the Wall Street Journal. The article reports: “As nasty invaders with names like pigweed, horseweed and Johnsongrass develop immunity to the mighty Roundup, chemical companies are dusting off the potent herbicides of old for an attack on the new superweeds. And big chemical companies - taking a page from Monsanto's book - are engineering crop varieties that will enable farmers to spray on the tough old weedkillers freely, instead of having to apply them surgically in order to spare crops. "Dow Chemical Co., DuPont Co., Bayer AG, BASF SE and Syngenta AG are together spending hundreds of millions of dollars to develop genetically modified soybean, corn and cotton seeds that can survive a dousing by their herbicides, many decades old." Dan Dyer, head of soybean research and development at Syngenta, is
quoted as saying, "The herbicide business used to be good before Roundup nearly wiped it out. Now it is getting fun again."
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12263
+ IMPACT OF GLYPHOSATE RESISTANT PIGWEED ON U.S. AGRICULTURE
The rapid spread of glyphosate resistant Palmer pigweed constitutes a major agronomic failure of GM Roundup Ready (RR) seeds. The spread of glyphosate resistant weeds is causing problems more severe and widespread than any GM crop failure recorded to date. It is negating the supposed benefits of GM herbicide tolerant crops, engineered to withstand applications of herbicide so that only weeds are killed, and shows why GM herbicide tolerance is a dead end strategy for farmers and the environment. A new paper from Third World Network examines the phenomenon of glyphosate resistant Palmer pigweed and its impacts on US agriculture.
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12249
New paper available as a PDF here: http://bit.ly/9HQYzw
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LOBBYWATCH
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+ TAKE ACTION: WRITE TO YOUR MP
Please write urgently to MPs to protest at FSA bias and the outrageous waste of taxpayers' money:
http://bit.ly/but2sn
http://www.gmwatch.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12255
+ UK: LEADING ACADEMIC RESIGNS FROM FSA "PUBLIC DIALOGUE" ON GM
A leading academic has resigned from the Government's food watchdog in protest at the use of taxpayer's money to promote pro-GM propaganda. Professor Brian Wynne was vice chairman of a steering group set up by the Food Standards Agency to gauge the public mood on GM food. But he said the public consultation was "rigged" from the start in favour of the controversial new technology.
"It is another arm of propaganda to try and push the opinion of the British public in the right direction. In that sense it is in line with so much public policy in Britain that assumes the public is anti-science," he said. "Apparently No. 10 was lobbied by the food industry on GM, the so-called public dialogue was agreed to and passed onto the FSA"
In his resignation letter, Wynne wrote: "I am not prepared by default to aid and abet this kind of systematic failure of institutional integrity in what is a crucial public arena, involving deep questions of science and public good. ”¦ This GM-obsessed, narrow commitment from the very top of FSA only tells me that whatever the efforts we have made, and whatever we tell a dialogue-contractor, the signals from upstairs remain narrow and dogmatically narrow-minded.
"It is worse than disappointing that good officials in such public institutions, as well as academics and others putting in our time (and our names) willingly for free, should have their honest efforts distorted systematically by this kind of unaccountable and dogmatic culture which remains obsessed with GM when there are wider and more diverse questions and options which need to be assessed and explored."
Wynne was the second prominent member of the FSA steering group to walk out. Earlier in the week another member of the group Dr Helen Wallace resigned in protest at the FSA's allegedly close links with the agri-chemical industry. "Taxpayers will be shocked that the FSA is blowing public money on a PR exercise on behalf of GM companies," she said.
The Food Standards Agency, which had been commissioned by the former Labour government to gauge the public mood on growing and eating the controversial foods, said that it would ask the new coalition government if it should continue with the dialogue.
http://www.gmwatch.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12253
http://www.gmwatch.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12254
http://www.gmwatch.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12257
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12258
+ SINISTER BID TO TWIST PUBLIC OPINION - FOOD WRITER BLYTHMAN
Joanna Blythman is an award-winning British investigative food journalist and writer. She commented on the FSA GM "public dialogue": "As part of its drive to rebuild Britain's shattered public finances, the new coalition Government has pledged to reduce the number of bloated, expensive and undemocratic quangos that infest our public life. One of the first for the chop should be the Food Standards Agency, a GBP135 million drain on the taxpayer and a menace to the public. Originally set up to give protection to the consumer, it now acts as a mouthpiece for big business. In its eager embrace of the agro-chemical giants, the FSA has betrayed its founding principle to maintain food safety. The lack of ethics can be seen at its most glaring in the agency's support for genetically modified (GM) foods. Given the huge levels of public concern over GM produce, the Food Standards Agency should have approached this issue with extreme caution, conducting genuine, independent studies into the
risks. Instead, it has abandoned any attempt at balance. Not only has it acted like a cheerleader for the big GM companies, it has also tried to twist public opinion in favour of their sinister agenda."
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12259
+ MORE LEADING ACADEMICS CONDEMN FSA GM “DIALOGUE”
Other leading academics have written to the Telegraph newspaper condemning the FSA’s GM “dialogue”.
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12265
+ FSA BOSS CONDEMNED FOR BRANDING PUBLIC "ANTI-SCIENCE"
The boss of Britain's Food Standards Agency, Lord Jeff Rooker, has been condemned for criticising opponents of GM food as “anti-science”. Rooker was appointed in the dying days of the Labour administration to the powerful post of running the nation's supposedly independent food watchdog. He is paid GBP54,000 a year for a two-day week. Now a coalition of GM critics and NGOs has written an open letter to Rooker condemning his bias. The group, which includes the Soil Association, Friends of the Earth, GM Freeze, GMWatch and the Soy Alliance, say his views are irrational. They said: "We are very disturbed to learn that you believe that the British public are anti-science, and that as GM is a scientific issue, public opposition to GM is automatically irrational and anti-science." The group said that the FSA, under Rooker's leadership, has given the GM industry special access to its policy makers while locking out critics. The complained that the dialogue is a "silly waste of money,
adding: "As public interest groups who oppose the use of expensive, unproven and environmentally and socially damaging GM technology in farming and food, we do not intend to have anything to do with your GM assessment, and this GBP500,000 waste of public money, and we will encourage our supporters and others to avoid giving any spurious legitimacy to this exercise," it reads.
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12274
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12272
+ GM LOBBY HELPED DRAW UP CRUCIAL REPORT ON UK FOOD SUPPLIES
A powerful lobbying organisation representing biotech business interests helped draft a key FSA report. Emails between the FSA and the Agricultural Biotechnology Council (ABC) show the council inserted key sentences strengthening the case for GM food that ended up in the final report. The report, "Food Standards Agency work on changes in the market and the GM regulatory system", examined how GM products are entering the UK, where the growing of GM products is banned, through the animal feed system. It said food prices could go up if GM products continue to be excluded. Emails from the ABC - which represents leading GM food companies such as Monsanto and Bayer - to Dr Clair Baynton, the then head of novel foods at the FSA and a former employee of GM food producer Syngenta, show a close dialogue between both sides between 2008 and August 2009, when the report was published. The ABC suggested a series of changes that promoted the idea that GM food was playing an increasingly important
role in global agriculture and was helping bring down food prices.
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12265
+ SCIENTIST CALLS FSA "PIONEER IN TRANSPARENCY"
Neuroscientist Colin Blakemore has defended the FSA, calling it “a pioneer in transparency”, with a “rigorous commitment to the best evidence” and to making "efforts to consult widely and without bias in the development of advice to government"! He also calls the criticism of GM foods a "witch-hunt".
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12265
For more details on the FSA's actual record and how it has been condemned for extreme bias:
http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php?title=Food_Standards_Agency
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GM ANIMALS
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+ STOP THIS LITTLE GM PIGGY
As technology grows increasingly complex and our environmental problems ever more serious, the proposed "technological fixes" from industry grow more ludicrous and dangerous, says Lucy Sharratt in an article about the Enviropig, genetically engineered to produce less phosphorus in its faeces as a solution to water pollution caused by run-off from factory farms. Sharratt says Enviropig is “a classic false technological fix that ignores the real causes of a problem and instead tries to develop, at great cost, a shiny, new, patented product for sale to mask the symptoms. Enviropig is expressly designed to support existing factory farming practices. In the early days, before the advent of extensive public relations, University of Guelph scientist and Enviropig developer John Philips said as much.”
http://www.gmwatch.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12252
TAKE ACTION: The Canadian Biotechnology Action Network has started a new campaign, "Stop Enviropig": http://www.cban.ca/enviropig
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RESEARCH
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+ UNINTENDED EFFECTS FOUND IN GM RICE
In research carried out by Chinese scientists, three kinds of GM rice with resistance to fungal diseases or insect pests were comparatively studied with the non-GM counterparts in terms of key nutrients such as protein, amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins, elements, and antinutrient phytic acid. Significant differences for these compounds ranged from 20 to 74% for amino acids, from 19 to 38% for fatty acids, from 25 to 57% for vitamins, from 20 to 50% for elements, and 25% for protein, whereas phytic acid content did not change significantly.
Comment from Prof Joe Cummins: In North America [as elsewhere] GM crops have been evaluated for safety based on superstition and the use of the magic words 'substantial equivalence'. The GM rice paper shows how the numerous real differences between GM and conventional crops can be evaluated scientifically.
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12278
http://bit.ly/cSpos7
+ UNINTENDED EFFECTS FOUND IN GM MAIZE
In an earlier study, wild type and GM Bt maize transformed by a single gene insertion, grown side-by-side in the same conditions, were compared. The GM maize had many differently expressed genes compared with the wild type - rather than just one, as might be expected from a single gene insertion. There appeared to be no pattern to the changes. One spot that was newly expressed in the GM maize was that of gamma-zein, a known allergen. In addition, some storage proteins such as globulins were truncated with respect to their controls, which may be due to gene insertion.
Comment from Dr Michael Antoniou: Even by current gross analysis no GM crop is found to be "substantially equivalent" to its non-GM isogenic parental line if the two are grown appropriately side-by-side at the same time and conditions to minimise environmentally induced variables and so isolate and reveal the effect of the GM transformation process.
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12278
http://bit.ly/cSpos7
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NON-GM BREAKTHROUGHS
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+ LOW-ALLERGY PEANUTS COMING
Scientists in the US are developing “low-allergy” peanuts by conventional, non-GM methods.
http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report_low-allergy-peanuts-on-the-anvil_1393475
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THE AMERICAS
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+ BRAZIL BREAKS THE RECORD ON PESTICIDES - AGAIN
In 2008 Brazil was the world leader in pesticide use and in 2009 it broke its own record. Over one million tons were sold, which means an average of 49 pounds per hectare in the 2009/10 harvest, or 11 pounds per inhabitant! This data was collected by Sindag, the national union of the pesticides industry. Herbicides used on soybeans were responsible for the rise in the total use of agrochemicals. There was also a rise of 14.8% in the use of fungicide for soybean for the control of Asian rust in the regions of the south and middle west compared with last year. Even though 2009/10 was the first GM corn harvest in Brazil - with the promise of a decreased use of pesticides - the use of toxic chemicals remained the same for the crop.
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12279
+ WAR ON WANT SUPPORTS GM-FREE AGRICULTURE IN BRAZIL
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12279
+ 10,000 PEASANTS MARCH AGAINST MONSANTO IN HAITI
An estimated 10,000 peasants gathered for a massive march in Central Haiti on June 4, 2010, to protest what has been described as "the next earthquake for Haiti" - a donation of 475 tons of hybrid corn seeds and vegetable seeds by the US-based agribusiness giant Monsanto, in partnership with USAID. While this move comes at a time of dire need in Haiti, many feel it will undermine rather than bolster the country’s food security. According to Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, leader of the Peasant Movement of Papaye (MPP) and spokesperson for the National Peasant Movement of the Congress of Papaye (MPNKP), the entry of Monsanto seeds into Haiti is "a very strong attack on small agriculture, on farmers, on biodiversity, on Creole seeds... and on what is left our environment in Haiti."
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12276
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AFRICA
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+ BIOTECH IN AFRICA
The role of GM in improving crop production in Africa has been overhyped by the Gates Foundation and other US-based interests, says an article for the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. The article says what’s really needed is better infrastructure and basic training in farming methods - as well as a solution to the climate change that is resulting in droughts on the continent.
http://www.gmwatch.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12250
Non-GM plant breeding forges ahead in drought tolerant varieties:
http://www.bangmfood.org/feed-the-world/17-feeding-the-world/14-non-gm-breakthroughs