1. bits from FarmPowerNews
2. biotech bits from BioDemocracy News
3. MPs to cast doubt on organics
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1. bits from FarmPowerNews
Germany's Schroeder reportedly ends support for GMO crops: German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has withdrawn his support for the cultivation of genetically-modified crops in Germany, newspaper Berliner Zeitung said today (Ag.Web.com News 1/23/01) ... Japan's StarLink Sample One in Five from U.S. (Reuters, /24/01) [Japanese reportedly livid] Text: http://live.altavista.com/scripts/editorial.dll?ei=2366878&ern=y Excerpt: TOKYO, Japan's Health Ministry said on Wednesday it has found traces of the unapproved biotech StarLink corn in one of five samples sent on January 15 by the United States [which are supposed to have already tested negative in the US!!] ... GM Bacteria Accidents at Damsco Prompt Investigation (www.JustFood.com news 1/24/01) http://just-food.com/news_detail.asp?art=22878 Excerpt: Investigations have been initiated in Denmark after accidents with genetically manipulated bacteria occurred at Danisco Cultor. The local authority's technical and environmental committee decided on Thursday to call in the Danish Forest and Nature agency, the highest environmental power in the field.
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Organic Farming Gaining Ground (www.AgWeb.com News 1/23/01) More producers may consider organic agriculture as chemical prices rise, according to Brad Brummond, North Dakota State University Extension agent.
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Scots Parliament Committee Backs GM Farm Testing (Reuters, 23 Jan 01) http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010123/sc/food_britain_dc_1.html Protesters against genetically modified (GM) farming suffered a setback on Tuesday, after a Scottish Parliament committee ruled large scale open air trials were necessary for research into new types of crops.
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2. the biotech bits from BioDemocracy News]
BioDemocracy News #31 (Jan. 2001) America's Food Safety Crisis News & Analysis on Genetic Engineering, Factory Farming, & Organics by: Ronnie Cummins BioDemocracy News is a publication of the Organic Consumers Association <www.purefood.org> <www.organicconsumers.org> ________________________________________________________________
Frankenfoods, Antibiotics, & Mad Cow: America's Food Safety Crisis Intensifies
Quotes of the Month:
"She is an independent thinker of sound judgment and vast experience. She knows the science, the politics, and she knows how to make a sound decision on complicated and difficult issues. We are delighted with her selection, it is hard to imagine a better choice."
Biotechnology Industry Organization <www.bio.org> commenting on the nomination of former agbiotech executive Ann Veneman as George Bush's Secretary of Agriculture
"The StarLink controversy in the United States could cost the food industry billions of dollars and has thrown the future of genetically modified foods into doubt... Already, 70 per cent of Americans told a Reuters poll last year that (genetically modified) GM foods should be treated with caution." Stuart Laidlaw, "StarLink Fallout Could Cost Billions," The Toronto Star, Jan. 9, 2001
"agribusiness... fight any effort to tell consumers more about how their food is made... stories about our food system that do get out don't do much for the appetite. There's the one about how genetically engineered StarLink corn deemed unfit for human consumption somehow found its way into tacos and breakfast cereal. Then there's the mad-cow story, which brought us the disquieting news that beef cattle in this country routinely dine not only on hormones and antibiotics but also on bits of other beef cattle (not to mention pellets made from their own manure)." Michael Pollan, "Produce Politics," The New York Times Magazine, Jan. 14, 2001
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"Bad Hair" Year for Biotech & Factory Farming
Corporate agribusiness and the biotech industry had a "bad hair" year in 2000. After promising Wall Street that genetic engineering and American-style factory farming were about to conquer the world and that free trade, monopoly patents on living organisms, and the enforcement powers of the World Trade Organization were going to whip consumers and the world's 2.4 billion farmers and rural villagers into line, Year One of the Biotech Century turned out to be something of a disaster. Behind the bravado of public relations and the reassurances of government bureaucrats, the food industry and the Gene Giants are in serious disarray. For the first time in five years the amount of global acreage devoted to biotech crops has leveled off and appears headed in 2001 for significant decreases. Longstanding industrial agriculture practices such as feeding antibiotics and rendered animal protein to animals are being banned in Europe and are generating controversy even in the US. The second wave of the Mad Cow crisis is sweeping across Europe, prompting a massive decline in beef sales--with recent revelations suggesting that North America may be heading for a similar crisis of its own. As Andrew Kimbrell of the Center for Food Safety states, a "funny thing has happened" on the way to the hi-tech future of industrial agriculture:
"Despite untold billions spent in research and advertising, the public en masse has begun to reject this vision of industrial food and all that accompanies it. We have begun to understand that these chemical and biological techno-fixes come with hidden and terrible costs to human health and to the environment. We have seen cancer epidemics, widespread pollution of water and air, exponential loss of topsoil and biodiversity, terrible cruelty to animals and, most directly, tasteless and unhealthy food. Tens of millions of Americans have decided to vote, day after day, with their food dollars. More of us are eating organic than ever before, and organic food production is the fastest-growing segment in US agriculture today." (The Kimbrell quote is from our new book, Genetically Engineered Food: A Self-Defense Guide for Consumers by Ronnie Cummins & Ben Lilliston).
Biotech Bytes: FDA Says No Labeling, No Safety-Testing Required
On Jan. 17, the Food and Drug Administration issued its long-awaited proposed federal regulations on genetically engineered foods and crops. As anticipated the FDA refused to call for mandatory labeling or mandatory safety-testing--despite numerous polls showing 80-95% of Americans want labeling and safety-testing, or, better yet, no genetically engineered foods at all. There will now be a 75-day period for the public to comment on the FDA rules, and to demand a moratorium. Stay tuned to <www.organicconsumers.org> or <www.gefoodalert.org> for guidelines on how to send a letter or fax to the feds on this issue. In a Washington, DC press conference on Jan. 17 the Organic Consumers Association's national coalition, the Genetically Engineered Food Alert, strongly condemned the FDA for utterly failing to regulate agricultural biotechnology. Unless rigorous, independent, premarket safety testing can demonstrate that GE foods and crops are safe, these products must not be allowed on the market.
The FDA's proposed regulations simply throw more fuel on the fire of the Frankenfoods debate. But of course the additional controversy that this now official FDA "no labeling, no safety-testing" policy will generate is just part of the growing global food fight. Over the past few months, things have gone from bad to worse for the agbiotech lobby. Among recent developments are the following:
* An internal industry study, conducted for Kellogg, ConAgra, Unilever, and Aventis, publicized in the Toronto Star Jan. 9, flatly predicted up to "billions" of dollars in food industry losses in the aftermath of the recent StarLink corn scandal (see BioDemocracy News #30). Dr. Ann Clark, a plant researcher at the University of Guelph (Canada), said StarLink, an illegal and likely allergenic variety of GE corn found in taco shells and over 300 brand-name products this fall, could prove to be "the beginning of the end" for genetically engineered crops if food companies decide the costs outweigh the benefits. "The food companies are not going to bite the bullet on this one for the industry," Clark said.
* In related news, two potentially massive class-action lawsuits were filed in December in Illinois and Iowa by farmers against Aventis, the manufacturer of StarLink seeds. According to the plaintiffs in Iowa, they suffered severe financial losses after "Japan cut its US corn purchases by more than 50% and South Korea, the second largest U.S. corn export market, banned the importation of U.S. corn altogether.'' In late-December, Reuters reported that Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon demanded that Aventis post a $25 million bond "to ensure the company had sufficient funds to compensate farmers and grain handlers hit financially by StarLink." Of the 340,908 acres planted with StarLink corn in the US last year, 134,910 acres were in Iowa and 18,702 acres in Missouri. StarLink was also planted on a significant scale in Nebraska, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Kansas. Last October a group of consumers filed a lawsuit in Chicago, alleging they were poisoned by StarLink-tainted Kraft Taco Bell shells, while recently 44 people filed complaints with the FDA claiming StarLink products caused them to suffer rashes, diarrhea, vomiting, itching and life-threatening anaphylactic shock.
* In the wake of the StarLink disaster, Monsanto announced Nov. 27 it would restrict plantings next year of a new herbicide resistant variety of corn and delay commercialization of another Bt-spliced corn variety until 2002. On Dec. 17, ConAgra, America's second largest food processor, announced a recall of 1.5 million pounds of baking ingredients used by restaurants and institutional food buyers. The same week in a letter mailed to farmers, giant corn processor A.E. Staley stated, "The only truly safe seed selection [next year] will be seed corn free of any genetic modification."
* The Wall Street Journal reported on Nov. 20 that Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. "is beginning to air ads on 24 Iowa and Illinois radio stations warning farmers that ADM mills will buy only crops 'that have full feed and food approval world-wide.' " "We don't want another StarLink," said Larry Cunningham, an ADM spokesman. In a further blow to the industry, Aventis announced in late-November that it found some of the same Cry9C protein--the key component of StarLink corn--in another variety of 1998 corn seed produced by Garst Seed Co. of Iowa. USDA officials admitted that they "didn't understand" how this 1998 contamination could have occurred.
* US activists delivered a blunt warning to the Environmental Protection Agency on Nov. 16 in San Francisco. Campaigners from Greenpeace, joined by the Organic Consumers Association, Center for Food Safety, Ruckus Society, the Ecology Center, and Pesticide Action Network, wearing biohazard suits, dumped two tons of StarLink contaminated corn in front of the EPA headquarters, demanding that the agency deny approval of the gene-altered corn for human consumption and take action regarding the environmental damage already being inflicted by genetically engineered crops. "EPA's own scientific advisors say they don't know if this corn is safe for people," said Simon Harris of the Organic Consumers Association. "The health of Americans should not be put at risk simply for the convenience of the biotech industry." On November 28, the EPA heard from a Scientific Advisory Panel that StarLink may be already setting off food allergies. For the full testimony of Dr. Michael Hansen from the Consumers Union on StarLink and Bt corn allergenicity see <www.purefood.org/ge/hansenstarlink.cfm>
* On Nov. 14, responding to pressure from Greenpeace and others, McDonald's announced that by April 2001 all its restaurants in Germany, Denmark and Sweden will serve only chicken raised on GE-free feed. Five days later McDonald's UK made a similar announcement. According to the European press, other large food chains are likely to follow suit. The move by McDonald's is especially significant since almost all US genetically engineered soybeans exported to Europe are now funneled into animal feeds. McDonald's is the largest buyer of agricultural commodities in Europe.
* The safety of genetically engineered foods once again came into question Dec. 15 when the prestigious journal, Science, published an article by two fellows from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The article, by Dr. LaReesa Wolfenbarger and Dr. Paul Phifer, emphasized that there has been almost no peer-reviewed scientific research published which shows that GE crops are safe for the environment. In their study, Wolfenbarger and Phifer state that researching environmental risks is likely to be complicated, with risks varying over time among crops, among strains of a single crop, and between environments. Some risks, they say, may be all but impossible to assess. In a related story, Dr. Arpad Pusztai, the UK's most well-know critic of biotech, after surveying the world scientific literature on animal feeding studies, found a grand total of only four peer-reviewed articles on genetically engineered foods, despite Monsanto and industry claims that scores of scientific papers have proven their safety. Pusztai's own safety studies in the late 1990s, conducted at the Rowett Institute in Scotland, caused a major stir in Europe, when lab rats fed genetically engineered potatoes spliced with lectin suffered serious damage to their vital organs.
* In other science news, an Expert Panel of the International Cotton Advisory Committee reported in November that in the Yauggu and Xiuxiang provinces of China, cotton boll worms, a major pest, are developing resistance to genetically engineered cotton plants spliced with Bt. Critics of Bt crops have warned for years that "superpests" will inevitably develop, threatening the livelihood of organic or low-chemical input farmers who use non-genetically engineered Bt sprays as an emergency pest control tool on cotton, corn, and other crops. Meanwhile Bt-resistant pests have been reported in Australia and perhaps at a "threateningly high level" according to scientific experts. For more information see <www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex>
* Barbara Keeler and Marc Lappe reported in a potentially explosive story in the Los Angeles Times on Jan. 7 that the FDA apparently ignored troubling data which Monsanto published in the Journal of Nutrition in March 1996--data which strongly suggests that Roundup Ready soybeans, the world's most widely cultivated genetically engineered crop, may set off food allergies in humans. According to the authors, data in Monsanto's study "shows that, relative to conventional soy meal, raw Roundup Ready soy meal contained 27% more trypsin inhibitor, a potential allergen that interferes with protein digestion and has been associated with enlarged cells in rat pancreases." According to Keeler and Lappe "This important measurement was camouflaged in a table on unrelated information." After toasting the GE soy meal several times, the levels of another allergen, called lectin, were nearly double those in conventional soybeans. Scientists have warned for years that conventional soybeans contain low levels of 14 proteins that can potentially set off food allergies in humans and that genetically engineering soybeans could possibly cause the level of one or more of these 14 proteins to significantly increase. However, hiding behind the doctrine of "substantial equivalence," the FDA did not require Monsanto to submit comprehensive data on herbicide resistant Roundup Ready soybeans before they were brought on the market. In effect this means that RR soybeans may already be setting off food allergies among large numbers of people, given that 54% of America's soybean crop is genetically engineered, while 60% of all processed foods contain soy or soy derivatives. In 1999 the York Nutritional Lab in the UK, commenting on a mysterious 50% rise in soy allergies among British consumers, attributed the increase in food allergies to the fact that consumers the previous year had begun ingesting large amount of imported GE soybeans. For the LA Times article see <www.purefood.org/gefood/fdaignoredata.cfm>
* On Nov. 11, speaking to a massive crowd at the Vatican, Pope John Paul II urged extreme caution concerning genetically engineered food, stating that the use of biotechnology in agriculture, "cannot be evaluated only on the basis of immediate economic interests. It is necessary to subject it in advance to rigorous scientific and ethical checking to prevent it ending up in disaster for... the future of the earth." On Nov. 14, the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism passed a resolution on labeling of genetically engineered food. The Commission called on the government to "monitor the health, ecological and religious liberty implications of genetic engineering." Among Protestant denominations the United Methodist Church recently called for mandatory labeling of all GE foods, with pre-market safety testing required. According to Jaydee Hansen of the UMC, "We call for policies that encourage the gradual transition to sustainable and organic agriculture."
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America and the world's 50-year experiment with chemical-intensive industrial agriculture and genetic engineering may soon be moving into its final, terminal stage. Mad Cow Disease and the growing global opposition to factory farming and genetic engineering may turn out to the harbingers of a new era of sustainable living and organic agriculture. One can only hope that we make the necessary transition to organic farming and ban the most dangerous practices of genetic engineering and industrial food production before it is too late. In the meantime, stay tuned to BioDemocracy News and the Organic Consumers Association website <www.organicconsumers.org> for the latest news and analysis.
By the way you can still get to the OCA website by going to <www.purefood.org> We're now using <www.organicconsumers.org> as our primary internet address simply because our adversaries have set up a counterfeit internet site, filled with lies and industry propaganda, at <www.purefoods.org> Take a look at this site if you want to see what we're up against. Keep in mind, however, that the “Bad Guys” wouldn’t be doing this except for the fact that we're winning the battle.
### End of BioDemocracy News #31 ### Organic Consumers Association 6101 Cliff Estate Road Little Marais, MN 55614
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3. MPs to cast doubt on organics
By Donald MacPhail
Farmers Weekly Interactive
24 January 2001
A CROSS-PARTY group of MPs is expected to deliver a mixed report on the organic sector in a report to be published on Wednesday (24 January) afternoon.
The Agriculture committee will deliver its appraisal after spending six months sifting through the evidence from 70 memoranda and five oral sessions.
Its findings come in a week when the high-flying sector's confidence was dented with news that frozen food chain Iceland is to downscale its organic range.
Poor figures over the past six months were blamed on the failure of a bold initiative to introduce large organic ranges at average prices.
But sector regulators the Soil Association claimed Iceland had not researched its market, and said organics continued to enjoy 40% annual growth.
The committee's report comes weeks after the Government's Organic Farming Scheme reopened after being fully subscribed with months last year.
Already applications for £3 million of the £13m available have been submitted, and critics say the stop-go funding disrupts farmers' conversion plans.
Benefits of organic food have come under scrutiny in recent months after Food Standards Agency head Sir John Krebs said the sector relied on image.
He claimed there was no evidence that organic food was healthier or safer than conventionally grown produce.
In evidence to the committee, junior farm minister Elliot Morley said the sector had to emphasise environmental benefits over controversial nutritional claims.
"There is very clear scientific evidence on the environmental side, but there is no clear scientific evidence on the nutritional side," he told the committee.
To address this, there have been calls for an organic stewardship scheme to be included in a 2003 Government review.
Around 3% of UK farmland is cultivated organically, and the market is expected to break through the £1bn mark by 2002.