Our Food: Our Future. - Free Food Fair
TODAY - Saturday 21st April
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Reporting Breaking News in the Biotech Food Debate
The DAILY BRIEF for Saturday, 21 April, 2001 (11 Items)
Archived: http://208.141.36.73/listarchive/index.cfm?list_id=30
(1) US Wheat Groups Work to Calm Japanese Fear Biotech Wheat
April 20, 2001 By Bill Tomson Washington, April 19 (BridgeNews) - It will be a couple of years before genetically modified wheat goes on the market in the U.S., but customers in Japan are already saying they won't buy it. And because that attitude may affect Japan's purchase of about 3 million tonnes yearly from the U.S., two U.S. producer groups have responded by sending a team there to work to avoid trade disruptions, a spokeswoman for U.S. Wheat Associates (USW) said Thursday. Japanese concerns were summed up in the following statement from the Japan Flour Millers Association, according to USW: "Japanese consumers are highly suspicious and skeptical about safety of GM farm products, which may be hazardous to human health and environment. Under the circumstances, flour millers strongly doubt that any bakery noodle and confectionery products made of GM wheat or even conventional wheat that may contain GM wheat will be accepted in the Japanese market. The flour milling industry will not use any raw ingredients that will be unacceptable to consumers." That sentiment might not be threatening to the U.S. share of Japan's market for wheat--half of its yearly 6 million tonnes of imports--if the U.S. Department of Agriculture could guarantee that biotech wheat could be kept completely separate from non-biotech. But it can't. The USDA now provides letters stating that there are no biotech wheat varieties in U.S. exports for....
(2) New Plant Sciences Are Flipping the Switches. Company Profile, Seattle -area EDEN® Bioscience. www.AgWeb.com news, 20 April 2001. by Bob Coffman, An exclusive feature for AgWeb.com. Bothell, WA. Excerpts: The new face of plant protection and plant health is not tied to carbon molecules and clay granules.... EDEN® Bioscience is a plant technology company focused on developing, manufacturing and marketing innovative natural products for agriculture.
Their intent is to offer to the agricultural marketplace superiors alternatives to existing plant protection and crop yield enhancement products. Compounds currently under development, along with initial product offerings already approved by regulatory agencies, are leveraging new science based on naturally- occurring proteins called "harpins" which activate a plant's natural plant defense mechanisms to ward off disease and pest threats, and to simultaneously activate plant growth systems. The first commercial...
(3) European Parliament Directiive on GMO's. DIRECTIVE 2001/18/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 March 2001 on the deliberate release into the environment of genetically modified organisms and repealing Council Directive 90/220/EEC has been published (PDF Format) in the Official Journal: http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/dat/2001/l_106/l_10620010417en00010038.p df <http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/dat/2001/l_106/l_10620010417en00010038. pdf>
(4) Press Release, 20 April 2001, Keep Crop Seeds Patent-Free in order to Maintain World Food Security (by RAFI and GRAIN networks) 255 Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) from 54 countries call on negotiators to endorse an agreement that will keep open access for all to the seeds of the world's most important crops, unrestricted by patents and intellectual property rights. ((Full text of the CSO letter and signatories and explanatory documents are available at: UK Agricultural Biodiversity Coalition www.ukabc.org; Berne Declaration www.evb.ch/bd/food.htm ))
Next week (23-28 April 2001) in Spoleto, Italy, negotiations on the revised International Undertaking at FAO will continue. The outcome of the 41 countries' deliberations will decide the fate of billions of people who currently depend on freely exchanged farmers' seeds. These seeds provide the diversity of food for the world. Unless free access is guaranteed the world's ability to ensure food security will be profoundly affected. Failure to achieve agreement will lead to a rapid reduction in the....
(5) International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources A new RAFI Communique attempts to address ten unasked questions governments and farmers should know about the draft treaty of the International Undertaking. RAFI Communique No. 69 (March/April, 2001) is available in text or PDF format at RAFI's website www.rafi.org If the burning public environmental issue is global warming and the collapse of the Kyoto Agreement, the "hot topic" for poor farmers is access to agricultural biodiversity and a new treaty being negotiated next week in Spoleto, Italy. Crop genetic diversity makes it possible for farmers to feed people and to develop new plant varieties capable of managing climate change. The International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources at FAO is intended to become a legally-binding treaty to ensure the conservation, exchange, and enhancement of crop genetic resources as the best way to address climate change as it affects food security. The negotiations are in trouble. Ongoing for six years now - the last two years within a 40 country Contact Group, battle fatigue is grinding diplomats down. At the heart of the revised Undertaking lies a multilateral system (MLS) that would assure "facilitated access" within its membership to an annexed list of food crop species. Despite endless deliberations, senior policymakers, the media, and the public are unaware of the issues involved or their importance to world food security. The major barriers to the agreement are six countries: four in the "North" and two in the "South". RAFI believes that some of them - including the USA - are not essential to a successful treaty. Just as with the greenhouse gas agreement in Kyoto, the U.S. will not join the global initiative to protect the greenhouse in Spoleto either.
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Issue: The Biodiversity Convention adopted at the Rio Earth Summit almost ten years ago reaffirmed national sovereignty over genetic resources. But Rio left unresolved the unique problem of crop germplasm critical to world food security, the status of genetic resources collected before the treaty, and the central role of Farmers' Rights. Now the unresolved issues from Rio have come home to roost in Rome. Sovereignty, security, benefit sharing, the role of public science, and private monopolies seem to be in conflict. The search for common ground is being conducted through an obscure but vital International Undertaking at FAO. The little teapot tempest is also threatening to....
(6) Midwestern farmers might be Overplanting Bt Corn (April 20, 2001 -- www.Cropchoice.com news) -- Farmers in the upper Midwestern states appear to be planting Bt corn as an insurance measure against the European corn borer, even though the pest isn't a big problem in the area. Monsanto created Bt corn through insertion of the insecticidal gene of the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) to control the European corn borer. Growers have been planting the Bt variety on 20 to 30 percent of their corn acreage despite the fact that the corn borer pressures only about 2 to 3 percent of that acreage, Iowa State University entomologist John Obrycki told Cropchoice. - In effect, he said, farmers are paying a high premium for protection where there wasn't much of a problem in the first place. The heavy planting of the transgenic corn does raise a concern about corn borers and other pests developing resistance to Bt. For more information, visit: www.kingcorn.org/news/articles.01/GMO_Issues-0312.html
(7) Philippine President Reverses Course on Transgenics (April 20, 2001 - www.Cropchoice.com news) -- The president of the Philippines made a 360-degree turn on transgenic foods. Cropchoice reported two weeks ago that the Crop Protection Association of the Philippines (CPAP) and members of the National Academy of Science and Technology of the Philippines (NAST) were pressuring President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to reconsider her stand against transgenic foods. -
It worked. She now wants to move ahead with the commercial planting of transgenic crops and sales of food with ingredients derived from the technology. At the same time, the president instructed the Agriculture, Health and Trade and Industry departments to develop mandatory labeling policies for transgenic foods so that consumers know what they're buying.
(8) KMP To Hound GMO Testing In The Provinces. Philippines http://lists.ifas.ufl.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A1=ind0103&L=sanet-mg#41 The militant Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) on Thursday vowed to hound the planned field testing of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) with protests in the six provinces and 32 villages in the country as they celebrated the International Peasants Day of Struggle Against Agro-chemical TNCs, GMOs and Patents on Life in a protest rally in front of the Department of Agriculture (DA) in Quezon City. KMP chair Rafael Mariano said "the peasantry will hound the planned field testing of the so-called "golden rice" with....
(9) Dakotas: Lawmakers Urge Study of GE Issues http://208.141.36.73/listarchive/index.cfm?list_id=30 (4/20 post) BYLINE: By DALE WETZEL, Associated Press Writer, 19 April 2001 DATELINE: BISMARCK, N.D. A proposal for a two-year ban on biotech wheat seed plantings has undergone its own mutations in the North Dakota Legislature. On Thursday, the state House approved the final product - a proposal for a study of the issues arising from genetic engineering. - Rep. Phillip Mueller, D-Wimbledon, the measure's sponsor, said he reluctantly supported what he called a "weakly worded study," even though it no longer contains a reference to North Dakota's biggest export crop. "We really don't need, in my opinion, a study of the general science of biotech," Mueller said. "That is being done all over the world." The House's 96-1 vote on Thursday to endorse the study sends the proposal to Gov. John Hoeven for his review. The measure is also the last of the Legislature's major bills on the handling of genetically engineered crops. Mueller introduced a bill to mandate a two-year ban on North Dakota use of genetically altered wheat seed in response, he said, to statements from some of the state's biggest export customers, who said they would not bu y the wheat. Representatives later changed the measure to allow genetically modified wheat plantings in North Dakota if the Canadian Wheat Board allowed production of biotech wheat. The board, which is....
(10) Board recommends Dismissal of Monsanto Lawsuit in Seed Dispute. By BRIAN WITTE, Associated Press Writer 19 April 2001 http://208.141.36.73/listarchive/index.cfm?list_id=30 BISMARCK, N.D. A state board says it has not found enough evidence to support a lawsuit against a Cass County farm accused of violating a company's patent by replanting genetically engineered soybean seeds without authorization. Nelson Farm, which is operated by Greg, Roger and Rodney Nelson near Amenia, is being sued in federal court in Missouri by St. Louis-based Monsanto, which develops the seeds. "The Nelsons presented substantial evidence suggesting that they did not save any of their seed from an earlier year and replant it," said Agriculture Commissioner Roger Johnson after Thursday's vote by the North Dakota Seed Arbitration Board... "We knew all along we hadn't done anything wrong," said Roger Nelson.... Lori Fisher, a spokeswoman for Monsanto, said in a telephone interview that the company did not attend the March hearing because it did not feel a state seed arbitration panel was the proper venue to talk about patent infringement. "Monsanto has been and continues to be ready to settle this entire matter with the Nelsons," she said.... The company sent an investigator to the farm in July 1999, after the company received an anonymous telephone call. The investigator called back several days later to tell Greg Nelson there had been no irregularities. But in November 1999, the Nelsons got a call from an Indianapolis firm that represented Monsanto. The company...
(11) Planned Protest at Kraft, Phillip-Morris Hqs, Shareholders http://208.141.36.73/listarchive/index.cfm?list_id=30 (4-20 Post) Activists from the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Organic Consumers Association, and local environmental groups plan to demonstrate at Phillip Morris headquarters in Richmond on Thursday, April 26th, the date of the company's annual shareholders' meeting, protesting the sale of genetically engineered (GE) foods by Kraft Foods, a subsidiary of the tobacco giant, and support a GE foods phase-out resolution to be voted on by shareholders on the 26th. Activists plan to dump Kraft products that may contain genetically engineered (GE) ingredients into a biopollution bin, to send shareholders a powerful message about the need to go GE-free. A 25-foot mutant Ear of Corn may also make....
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