from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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Dear all,
Africa is still the biotech hotspot, with the US Dept of Ag pumping out propaganda at the GM conference it sponsored in Burkina Faso (FOCUS ON AFRICA). Look out for the excerpt from an interview Voice of America in the Ivory Coast did with GM WATCH's Jonathan Matthews.
Also please visit, and tell all your contacts about, our new FOCUS ON AFRICA web page. It will help keep you abreast of all the latest developments in the unprecedented US/biotech industry assault on Africa, as well as linking you into Africa's resistance and the inspiring alternatives that make another Africa possible. http://www.gmwatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=37&page=1
Meanwhile, away from the roar of US-industry propaganda, a little GM truth has emerged blinking into the daylight this week. A New Zealand genetic engineer has deplored the sloppiness and rude, crude nature of genetic engineering in food crops (HONEST SCIENTIST OF THE WEEK). And a report in Medical News Today highlights the true state of GM food safety research (FOOD SAFETY), via a research paper that though not new deserves far greater attention.
And last but not least, someone has leaked a secret study to Greenpeace revealing the presence of GM material in milk from GM-fed cows. The Food Standards Agency and the supermarket chains have maintained for years that milk from GM-fed animals is the same as that from non-GM fed animals and that labelling of dairy products is therefore unnecessary. We wonder if they will change their line and policy now? (Don't hold your breath, but do take every opportunity of embarrassing them on the subject.)
Claire This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
www.ngin.org.uk / www.gmwatch.org / www.lobbywatch.org
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CONTENTS
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FOCUS ON AFRICA
HONEST SCIENTIST OF THE WEEK
RESEARCH NEWS
FOOD SAFETY
ACTIONS
BIO CONFERENCE NEWS
GM MELTDOWN CONTINUES
BAD-IDEA VIRUS LATEST
LOBBYWATCH
DONATIONS
ARCHIVE
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FOCUS ON AFRICA
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+ US BIOTECH BASH IN BURKINA FASO
Delegates from 15 West African nations gathered in Burkina Faso on 21 June for a three-day US-backed conference on GM crops. The US Department of Agriculture says, "It is a response to the needs of hundreds of millions of people who don't have enough food."
What hypocrisy! The following quotes give a truer picture of the motives of the conference organisers:
***"This is being promoted by the United States. Now the United States has just been in trouble themselves with the World Trade Organization over their massive subsidies to cotton, which of course are hitting West Africa. So if they really wanted to do something to help Africa, there are very simple things that they could do which do not involve an introduction of very sophisticated and expensive technology with a number of risks associated with it." - Jonathan Matthews of GM Watch, in an interview with Voice of America
***"The W.T.O. report, which was not made public, upheld a preliminary ruling in April... that the more than $3 billion in subsidies the United States pays its cotton farmers distorts global prices and violates international trade rules. If Washington scrapped the subsidies... [it] would lead to a 12.6 percent increase in world cotton prices, helping struggling cotton farmers from Brazil to West Africa." - New York Times
***"We will defend U.S. agricultural interests in every form we need to" - Richard Mills, a spokesman for the United States trade representative, Robert B. Zoellick
***"GM involves large scale farming accompanied with highly modernized technology, hence it is likely to kill the livelihood of peasantry farming in Tanzania." - Said Hassan, a farmer from the suburbs of Dar es Salaam.
***"Zambia has re-affirmed that it will not allow modified foods to enter the country without further research, with deputy Agriculture Minister Chance Kabaghe saying in Lusaka that there is a lack of evidence that it is harmless to human health and the environment." - BBC news report
All the above quotes can be followed up, and you can read press coverage of the Burkina Faso biotech bash, at
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3857
+ FIRST WE IMPOVERISH YOU, THEN WE ENSLAVE YOU (GM WATCH COMMENT)
Pamela Bridgewater, US deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs, who helped to run the GM crop promotional in Burkina Faso, claims West African presidents support "biotechnology" because it has the potential to increase agricultural production and improve the standard of living in their countries. According to the US Dept of State, "The presidents realize that agriculture - the largest part of Africa's economy - is essential to economic and human development throughout the continent." And the US of course is doing everything it can to assist that development.
On 21 June in an interview with Voice of America, GM WATCH coordinator Jonathan Matthews drew attention to the irony of the US' pushing GM crops like Bt cotton as a way of improving the lot of West African farmers, noting the US's record of impoverishing those same farmers through the massive subsidies it gives to its own farmers.
See an ActionAid breakdown of US subsidy figures and how they impoverish farmers in Africa: http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3857
If the US really wanted to help people in West Africa, it would do what groups like Action Aid are asking:
- announce the immediate elimination of all forms of trade distorting subsidies to the cotton sector
- provide compensation and support to those involved in the cotton production sectors of poor countries who have suffered as a result of its policies. http://allafrica.com/stories/200406170658.html
But far from offering poor countries even a modicum of hope or redress in this area, a spokesman for the United States trade representative, Robert B. Zoellick, was quoted this week as responding to the WTO's ruling by defending the US's $18+ billion farm subsidies, saying, "We will defend US agricultural interests in every form we need to." http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3857
The truth is that the US government is not concerned about the farmers of West Africa. It is in the business of defending and promoting US agricultural interests.
For all its grandstanding in Burkina Faso, the US spends less than one-half of 1 percent of the federal budget on aid, making it the smallest contributor of foreign aid among major donor governments in terms of national wealth (GNP). The real motives behind the current conference in West Africa can, in fact, best be understood in the terms in which the US itself frames its aid programmes: "Foreign aid is a tool of US foreign policy" which is in turn a tool of the Bush administration's economic agenda and support for its own giant corporations.
http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/action_foreignaid.html#_edn2
Or in the candid words of USAID, "The principal beneficiary of America's foreign assistance programs has always been the United States... Foreign assistance programs have helped create major markets for agricultural goods, created new markets for American industrial exports and meant hundreds of thousands of jobs for Americans."
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=165
+ AGREEMENT WILL GIVE AFRICAN RESEARCHERS ACCESS TO "TECHNOLOGIES"
A memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed at the Burkina Faso conference June 21 by the United States and the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) will help give farmers in Africa access to existing agricultural technologies [read: GM] to farmers in Africa, J.B. Penn, US under secretary for farm and foreign agricultural services says. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3880
+ WHO'S BEHIND AATF
For more on who's really behind the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), see the GM WATCH profile:
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=163&page=A
Funding for the MOU initiative comes from the Rockefeller Foundation, USAID and the UK Department for International Development. All three are known for their big financial support for GM projects - DfID alone is said to have quietly sunk over 13 million pounds into such projects - but this is also only part of the story. AATF's full and undisclosed list of backers is said to include Monsanto, Dupont, Dow Agro Sciences and Syngenta.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3901
+ VENEMAN ANNOUNCES TRAINING OF AFRICAN AG RESEARCHERS
US Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said a new US science and technology program, the Norman E. Borlaug International Science and Technology Fellows Program, launched in late March, will fund the training of several African agricultural researchers, policymakers and professors at US universities, USDA and other government agencies, international organizations and private companies. The fellows program is named for Norman Borlaug, known as the "father of the green revolution".
Scary quote from Veneman: "The US-African relationship is growing, and the US commitment to Africa's success has never been stronger." The "relationship" is that of cat and mouse; Africa's "success" will be measured by how many of the US's unwanted GM crops it manages to swallow before it is gobbled up by the likes of Monsanto. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3880
+ FOOD SECURITY MEANS FOOD SAFETY
Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure, one of four heads of state at the US-sponsored Burkina Faso conference, said: "Our obligation is to our people, to provide them not only with food security but also food safety. We should not stand firm in the face of agricultural innovation, but we should also take all precautions to minimize the risk."
A Burkina-based group of anti-GMO organizations was quoted as saying in a statement that, "Faced with the dangers that GMOs represent for our health, our land and future generations, we cannot in good conscience move forward without a clear understanding of its consequences for health of humans, animals and plants. Relying on genetically-modified foods is only a short-term solution that will, in the long run, only breed dependence on multinational corporations."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3882
+ EGYPT WILL HELP TANZANIA WITH "INEVITABLE" GM CROPS
Egypt is to provide training and other forms of technical assistance to Tanzania to help it develop the capacity to produce GM crops. The offer was made during talks between the countries on the sensitive issue of access to water from the River Nile.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3857
+ BURKINA FASO GROWING GM COTTON
The Burkina Faso government has already accepted proposals from Monsanto to allow the planting of GM cotton, the first country in West Africa to do so. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3857
See the report, "GM cotton set to invade West Africa"
http://www.grain.org/briefings/?id=184
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NEW GM WATCH PAGE ON AFRICA, THE NEW BIOTECH FRONTIER
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African countries are being targeted by the biotech industry and its lobbyists in collusion with the US administration. Even food aid has been used to push GM into Africa.
We've launched a new page, FOCUS ON AFRICA, as a resource on who's pushing GM in Africa, what their strategies are, who pays them, who's resisting and and what the alternatives are.
http://www.gmwatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=37&page=1
A key part of the US-industry campaign involves locking African countries into weak biosafety regimes like that introduced under the old apartheid regime in South Africa, a country where the uptake of GM crops has been amongst the most rapid anywhere in the world and where the line between corporate lobbyists and regulators seems hard to draw.
Kenya has also been developed as a biotech industry bridgehead. It has been targeted consistently by the biotech corporations and USAID since the days of the corrupt Moi administration. Like South Africa, Kenya has also become a centre for aggressive lobbying, aimed not only at influencing other countries in Africa but at generating positive PR for the global stage.
USEFUL PRESS ARTICLES AND GM WATCH COMMENT
The new page (URL above) features links to relevant articles. Here's a sampler:
Push to spread GM crops in Africa - BBC
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3857
GM crops irrelevant for Africa - Jonathan Matthews
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1431
The Fake Parade: Under the banner of populist protest, multinational corporations manufacture the poor - Jonathan Matthews
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?ArcId=288
The biotech take-over in Kenya - the role of Monsanto, Syngenta and USAID - GM WATCH comment
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3632
USAID targets Africa - GM WATCH comment
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3630
New studies contradict FAO report and show genetically engineered Bt cotton fails to benefit farmers
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3829
Regulatory capture in South Africa - the extraordinary tale of Muffy Koch - GM WATCH comment and profile
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3633
WHO'S PUSHING GM IN AFRICA?
There's also a directory of those scientists, lobbyists and organisations who claim to speak for the people of Africa, with thumbnail sketches of the players linked to our in-depth profiles and relevant articles.
http://www.gmwatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=37&page=1
AFRICAN RESISTANCE
Websites where you can find out more:
Biowatch South Africa
http://www.biowatch.org.za
GM-FREE AFRICA
http://www.gmfreeafrica.org
SAFeAGE
http://www.safeage.org/
Earthlife Africa
http://www.earthlife-ct.org.za/ct/index.php
Environmental Justice Networking Forum
http://www.ejnf.org.za/
"ANOTHER AFRICA IS POSSIBLE"
as delegates declared in 2002 at the African Social Forum in Bamako, Mali
ARTICLES & REPORTS on GM and the alternatives:
Feeding or Fooling the World - Can GM really feed the hungry?
http://www.fiveyearfreeze.org/Feed_Fool_World.pdf (pdf)
Patents and Intellenctual Property Rights in African Agriculture-
Implicatons for small farmers
http://www.grain.org/publications/africa-ipr-2002-en.cfm
Farming solutions without GM crops
http://www.farmingsolutions.org
A New Green Revolution in Africa?
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~degrassi/gra.htm (pdf)
African Organic Success - New Scientist
http://www.biotech-info.net/ordinary_miracle.html
Sustainable Farming Has Sustained Our Lives
http://www.acts.or.ke/sacred/Report%20-%20ORGANIC%20FARMING.pdf
SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE: GLOBAL HIGHLIGHTS
http://www.members.tripod.com/~ngin/article2.htm
Sustainable Ag Centre for R&D in Africa
http://www.acts.or.ke/sacred
Greening Ethiopia
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GreeningEthiopia.php
QUOTES ON GM & AFRICA
"History has many records of crimes against humanity, which were also justified by dominant commercial interests and governments of the day... Today, patenting of life forms and the genetic engineering which it stimulates, is being justified on the grounds that it will benefit society, especially the poor, by providing better and more food and medicine. But in fact, by monopolising the 'raw' biological materials, the development of other options is deliberately blocked. Farmers therefore, become totally dependent on the corporations for seeds."
Prof. Wangari Mathai of the Green Belt Movement Kenya
"Dodgy industries selling dubious wares have long headed for the Third World when their activities have been questioned in the West. The biotech industry has been following this well-trodden path ever since consumers in Europe turned against GM food and crops. And these wares have had unprecedented backing from the US government, which has relentlessly bullied reluctant governments in developing countries to accept them."
- Independent on Sunday, "GM by the back door", September 15, 2002
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HONEST SCIENTIST OF THE WEEK
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+ "CRUDE AND RUDE" GM CONDEMNED
A New Zealand geneticist working in the US says he abhors the "sloppiness" of inter-species gene transfer.
Dr David Williams, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, leads a team who are trying to inject a gene into the back of the eye to restore sight to people with a rare genetic mutation called Usher Syndrome.
But he says his kind of "gene therapy", replacing a mutant gene with a normal one from the same species, is different from inserting a gene from a different species into a crop. Last year, Dr Williams made a submission against an application by Crop & Food Research to modify onions to resist Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller, saying the institute had failed to investigate all the changes that its experiments would induce in onions.
"I just abhor sloppiness," he said. "The problem with this GE approach is not GE per se - I do this stuff myself. It's the fact that they are going ahead with a crude-and-rude approach and throwing these things into the food chain."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3916
For similar concerns from an eminent biotechnologist see, Prof David Schubert's Nature, article:
http://www.biotech-info.net/different_perspective.html
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RESEARCH NEWS
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+ LET'S SEE THE DATA - PHARMA BARES ALL?
On 18 June, the British parliament announced an investigation into the pharmaceutical industry. The wide-ranging investigation, due to begin in September, will look at the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on medical research, the promotion of drugs and regulatory reviews of drug safety and efficacy.
Dr Michael Antoniou, who told us of this development, says the same should happen with the biotech industry. Why can't we see the data?
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3917
+ DRUGS FIRM TO PUT DATA ONLINE AS CRITICISM MOUNTS
Also on 18 June, Britain's largest drugs firm, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), said that it would make all clinical trial data for marketed drugs available online to the public. GSK's pledge came in the wake of a legal challenge launched earlier this month by Eliot Spitzer, New York state's attorney-general.
But two days later, British lawyers representing patient groups announced fresh legal action against GSK.
The company's online data registry, due to launch later this year, will include summaries of trial protocols and data for everything from initial toxicology and safety studies to trials run on drugs after they have been licensed.
Results from one such post-licensing trial are important to Spitzer's case. The attorney-general alleges that GSK failed to disclose data showing that the antidepressant paroxetine, known as Paxil in the US and Seroxat in Britain, is no more effective than a placebo for depressed young people and might increase the risk of suicide in this group (see Nature 429, 589; 2004).
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3917
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FOOD SAFETY
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+ TRACES OF GENETIC ENGINEERING DETECTED IN MILK
On 21 June Greenpeace published the results of a study showing for the first time the detection of GM contamination in milk samples. The scientists found parts of the gene substance of biotech soya and biotech maize in the milk of a farmer in Bavaria who had fed these plants to his animals.
"Scientific research finding this impossible so far now has to be re-evaluated", says Henning Strodthoff, biotechnology expert at Greenpeace. So far it has been assumed that GMO plants are degraded during digestion and that they do not find their way into meat or milk. According to the EU labeling regulation for genetically modified food there is no labeling requirement for animal products. "This gap on the labeling must be closed immediately", demands Strodthoff.
The study of the Research Center for Milk and Foodstuffs in Weihenstephan, Bavaria, was kept under lock and key for three years. Greenpeace is demanding further research and labeling of animal products fed with GMO feed.
In the milk samples that were analysed, DNA from genetically modified Roundup Ready Soya and genetically modified Bt176 maize were detected. Furthermore, the research report points out several possibilities as to how the gene segments may have found their way into the milk: Via the GMO feed that was fed to the animals, or via the dust from the feed in case the air was contaminated with it. So far, no further studies have been conducted in order to clarify the exact way of the DNA fragments into the milk. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3878
Thanks to GM-free animal feed supplier AgroTrace for details and translation of this story from whom a copy of the Bavarian study in pdf format may be requested: http://www.agrotrace.biz
+ STUDY SHOWS LACK OF RESEARCH INTO GM HEALTH EFFECTS
Finally, the implications of Pryme and Lembcke's review of the extent of food safety testing of GM foods seems to have sunk into some sections of the media. The following report appeared in Medical News Today, 24 Jun 2004 http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=9876 :
A study by scientists in Norway and Denmark shows a serious lack of published research into the health effects of GMOs (genetically modified organisms).
The study by Professor Ian Pryme and Rolf Lembcke was published in the journal Nutrition and Health earlier this year (2003). It says that there have only been ten published studies of the health effects of GM food or feed. The researchers found that the quality of some of these was inadequate.
Over half were undertaken in collaboration with companies (fully or partially), and these found no negative effects on body organs. The other studies were independent and looked more closely at the effects on the gut lining. Several of these found potentially negative changes which have not been explained.
As we know, similar effects on the gut lining were found in the unpublished animal feeding study on the Flavr Savr tomato. Also unpublished is the human feeding trial by Newcastle University which found that transgenes transfer out of GM food into gut bacteria at detectable levels after only one GM meal.
The biotechnology companies often refer to some 100 animal feeding studies as proof of safety. However, these were designed to test the commercial value of the animal feed, not safety. Furthermore, many of these studies were duplicates and not all were published.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3920
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ACTIONS
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+ GM CAMPAIGNERS ARRESTED AFTER STORMING CARGO SHIP
Twelve Greenpeace campaigners who invaded and held up a cargo ship said to be carrying GM food were arrested by police who winched down onto the vessel from a helicopter.
The dozen began their protest on the Panamanian-registered MV Etoile moments before it was due to dock at Rhoose, south Wales, on 20 June.
Greenpeace claims the vessel is carrying GM crops intended for use in feed for dairy cattle in Britain. It is believed the vessel had set sail from Louisiana, loaded with crops from Archer Daniels Midland.
Greenpeace spokesman Ben Stewart claimed success in the protest. "Tonight we thwarted a third opportunity to bring the boat into the dock," he said. "This was a result of the actions of two brave campaigners who suspended themselves above the propeller so the ship could not move.
"We hope people are now more aware that supermarkets like Sainsbury's, which claim to be GM free, are supporting huge imports of GM crops by selling milk from cows fed on GM products."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3879
+ PROTESTERS FELL FINLAND'S ONLY GM TREE STUDY
Protesters have torn up 400 GM birch trees in Finland. Police said they did not yet know who was behind the attack on the Punkaharju site in eastern Finland. The trees were chopped down or torn up by their roots over the weekend on the fenced but unguarded site.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3919
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BIO CONFERENCE NEWS
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+ INDUSTRY WARNED OF ACTIVIST THREAT
"One of the most compelling speakers at the recent Biotechnology Industry Organization conference in San Francisco wasn't a researcher or a venture capitalist, but a representative of a special agency with the FBI," Paul Holmes writes for PR Week.
Conference attendees were warned that "most of their companies were on a list of more than 1,000 potential corporate targets circulating among activists" and urged "to take a more public stand on the issue." Radical animal rights groups were described as "the country's leading domestic terrorist threat." http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3902
The Feds are, of course, the people who go around arresting activist art professors for having GM detection kits.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3667
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GM MELTDOWN CONTINUES
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+ MOTHER NATURE'S DECAFF COFFEE OUTCLASSES GM
After all the hype about the need for GM coffee, it turns out there's a naturally decaffeinated version of the world's most popular coffee bean. One again we find this is a technology in search of a problem.
A report in the UK's Daily Telegraph says, "The plants, which offer a more consumer-friendly alternative to genetically modified plants, produce up to 70 per cent less of the stimulant than normal plants, bringing their levels in line with chemically decaffeinated beans. However, the GM plant belongs to C. canephora, a species that makes low quality beans."
The work was carried out by Prof Paulo Mazzafera of State University of Campinas, Brazil, and colleagues at the Agronomic Institute of Campinas, and reported in the journal Nature.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3918
+ "SAFER" GM TOBACCO NOT SO SAFE
A new type of cigarette that contains less cancer-causing substances than conventional brands may not be doing much to protect smokers, according to new research. [Journal of the National Cancer Institute, June 2, 2004]
Although testing of the new OMNI cigarettes showed that they contain 50 percent less of a particular carcinogen, or substance that causes cancer, smokers who switched to the OMNI cigarette had only 20 percent less of the carcinogen in their bodies than they did while smoking conventional cigarettes.
This relatively small drop in carcinogen levels may not be enough to reduce a smoker's chance of developing cancer, study author Dr Dorothy K. Hatsukami told Reuters Health. "Does that (20 percent difference) really translate to reduced cancer risk? We're not sure," she said. She warned that smokers should not believe that by switching to a less carcinogenic brand, they are sidestepping the dangers of smoking.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3843
+ GM FIRM ASTRAZENECA IMPLICATED IN TAX AVOIDANCE SCAM
From Private Eye no 1109, 25 Jun-8Jul 2004:
Why was Jon Symonds, chief financial officer of drugs giant AstraZeneca so worried about the government's threat earlier this year to "name and shame" companies engaged in tax avoidance?
After all Mr Symonds is co-chairman, with Dave Hartnett, the "business friendly" head of tax policy at the Inland Revenue, of the Revenue's extremely "business friendly" Business Tax Forum, and is always keen to make clear that business leaders work closely with government in stamping out tax avoidance.
So why did he tell the Financial Times on 2 April that "naming and shaming is not going to be very constructive"? Here's a clue. In a case currently before the courts in the US, tax avoidance specialists KPMG refused to disclose the names of the purchasers of a complex but very lucrative tax avoidance scheme called the "contested liability acceleration scheme". This seam "saved" rich taxpayers $1.7bn in tax (and brought a handy $20m in fees to KPMG).
The judges decided that KPMG had taken steps "designed to hide its tax shelter activities", and ordered the firm to disclose the names of its lucky clients that bought into the scheme. KPMG has now done so. The list of the "named and shamed" consists of 29 of the richest corporations in the world. Top of the list'? Er, yes: AstraZeneca plc.
GMWATCH note: Another firm on the "named and shamed" list, medical care company Fresenius, also has a biotech drug arm.
+ GMO CONTROVERSY REACHES THE FOOD ENZYME MARKET
The recent controversy over GMOs is set to scratch into market growth as food makers think twice before investing in recombinant enzymes, claims a new report from Frost & Sullivan.
http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/news/news-NG.asp?id=52985
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BAD-IDEA VIRUS LATEST
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**"This notion that you lure biotech to your community to save its economy is laughable," said Joseph Cortright, a Portland, Ore. economist who co-wrote a report on the subject. "This is a bad-idea virus that has swept through governors, mayors and economic development officials."**
+ PHILIPPINES: BISHOP BLAMES GOVERNMENT FOR FARMERS' POVERTY
The government is to be blamed for the poor state of Filipino farmers, a high-ranking Catholic bishop said, citing the country's trade liberalization policy as the "foremost stumbling block" in the growth of this sector.
Marbel Bishop Dinualdo Gutierrez, chairman of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines-Episcopal Commission on Social Action, Justice and Peace, said many of the problems confronting Filipino farmers are rooted in the country's "blind ambition to clash with giants in the field of globalization."
"Insensitive to their deplorable plight, the government has enacted laws and other measures that expose Filipino farmers to the claws of globalization. Because of liberalization policies, cheap imported farm products such as fruits and vegetables flood the local market," he said.
A prominent critic of Bt corn, Gutierrez also slammed the decision of the government allowing its commercialization. "Under the pretext of solving the country's food insecurity, the government has approved the commercialization of Bt corn. With the policy in place, the government offers the country as a market to a product that only multinational companies can produce given their financial and technological resources," Gutierrez stressed.
He also cited the alleged health hazards of Bt corn to humans, taking into account the apparent illnesses caused by the transgenic plant to B'laans living near a Bt corn field in Polomolok, South Cotabato.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3856
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LOBBYWATCH
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+ FAO CRITICS WANT BLOOD
Eco sounding, The Guardian June 23, 2004:
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is reeling from one of the angriest letters it has ever received. Signed by more than 650 leading civil society groups and 800 individuals from 120 countries, it doesn't just condemn a recent FAO report on how to feed growing populations, but shreds it. International charities, social movements, networks of peasant farmers and hundreds of non-governmental organisations (NGOS) all accuse the FAO of "declaring war on poor farmers", of "disgraceful bias" and "incompetence in addressing scientific and technical issues", and "pandering to multinationals".
The FAO's crime? A 200-page report published last month that endorsed GM foods, despite rich countries' reservations, and advised the poor to start their own programmes. Jacques Diouf, the director-general of the FAO, has now replied to the critics, saying that GM is "not needed to meet current UN targets of halving hunger by 2015". But his critics want blood and say that they will meet "to determine what further actions should be taken".
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3900
+ WHO ARE THE BLOKES BEHIND THE FAO REPORT?
First supervisor of new FAO report: FAO Economist Prabhu Pingali
Before joining FAO, Pingali was Director of the Economic Program at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in, Mexico, the International Rice Research Institute at Los Ba os, Philippines and the World Bank's Agriculture and Rural Development Department. http://www.fao.org/english/newsroom/news/2003/21679-en.html
CIMMYT draws funding from USAID, Monsanto and Pioneer as well as from the World Bank, US Dept of Ag and UK's DfID. http://www.cimmyt.org/whatiscimmyt/recent_ar/Funding.htm
More on corporate-friendliness of World Bank: www.seen.org/PDFs/tnc_list_wb.pdf
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Globalization/EndWB_CorpWelfare_DGE.html
Second supervisor of FAO report: Dr Randy Stringer of the School of Economics, Univ of Adelaide.
Stringer has written a report on water trading for CSIRO, several divisions of which are headquartered at Univ of Adelaide.
Although ostensibly "publicly funded", CSIRO has, in reality, been encouraged to get 30% of its funding from business. The corporations listed by Richard Hindmarsh (in an article in the Journal of Australian Political Economy, no 44) as having direct financial connections with CSIRO include: Agrigenetics, Monsanto, Rhone Poulenc and AgrEvo (later part of Aventis and then Bayer). A collaboration between the CSIRO and Monsanto generated Australia's first major GM commercial crop.
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=187&page=C
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EURO-NEWS
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+ SPAIN QUESTIONS WISDOM OF LIFTING MORATORIUM, GROWING GMOS
According to a piece on the EU news and policy portal EurAtive.com, "Spain questions scientific advice on GMO crops", the government of Spain, the only country in the EU that has any commercial cultivation of GM crops, is preparing to challenge the recent so-called lifting of the six year long EU moratorium on new GMO products on 19 May 2004, when the Commission approved the genetically modified sweetcorn variety Bt11 - an issue the EU's member states were divided on. This happened after new EU rules on labelling and tracability had come into force.
Spain's environment minister Cristina Narbona has said the government would now seek the advice of independent researchers. According to the article the Minister also "questioned whether it was wise to continue the country's extensive cultivation of GMO crops, and went on to accuse the previous conservative government of authorising a massive extension of GMO crops without waiting for scientists to reach a definitive opinion, saying, "We want to reinforce independent research in this area, and I underline the word independent, because in this country, where there is little scientific investigation, many researchers are privately financed by companies that want the research to have a specific conclusion."
http://www.euractiv.com/cgi-bin/cgint.exe?204&OIDN=1507907&-home=home
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ENVIRONMENT
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+ MEXICO: GM-CONTAMINATED MAIZE FOUND IN NINE STATES
Conventional maize contaminated with GM material has been detected in nine Mexican states, says Greenpeace. The contaminated maize was found in the highest volumes in Chihuahua, the Federal District, Hidalgo, Oaxaca, Puebla, Tlaxcala and Veracruz http://www.just-food.com/news_detail.asp?art=57899
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