(1)   Japan Groups Ask To Ban On U.S. Biotech Corn Seed. http://just-food.com/news_detail.asp?art=30697&app=1 20 Apr 2001 By Jae Hur TOKYO, April 20 (Reuters) - Japan's consumer groups urged on Friday the government impose a ban on domestic sales of corn seeds imported from the United States on fears over contamination by unapproved genetically modified StarLink corn.

StarLink was found last October in food products in Japan, where it is not approved for food or animal feed use, prompting the single biggest U.S. corn buyer to sharply cut its buying and to find other supply sources...

        (2)   Protesters Cast Shadow Over Americas Summit  (Canada) http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010419/wl/americas_summit_dc_4.html By Angus MacSwan, QUEBEC (Reuters, 19 April 2001) - The historic city of Quebec boarded up and stood guard against the foot soldiers of an anti-globalization army on Thursday on the eve of a summit intended to pull down trade barriers across the Americas.

Leaders of 34 nations, from the mighty United States and Brazil to tiny Caribbean island states, began to arrive in the French Canadian city for the three-day Summit of the Americas.

Its main purpose is to reinvigorate the drive to create a vast trading bloc from Canada in the north to Chile in the south, encompassing 800 million people and with a combined output of $11 trillion in goods and services.

Arrayed against them is an international activist army that says any such pact will only make the rich richer and the poor poorer, and will hasten destruction of the environment. Up to 20,000 protesters are converging on Quebec and militants have threatened violence of the sort that turned the World Trade Organization (news - web sites) meeting in Seattle in December 1999 into a tear-gas-filled battleground.  Canadian authorities are taking no chances, deploying....  

(3)   French activist Urges Canadians to ruin GM crops
www.organicTS.com news. By David Ljunggren

QUEBEC CITY, April 19 (Reuters) - Rebel French farmers' leader Jose Bove on Thursday urged Canadians to destroy genetically-modified "seeds of death" and attack laboratories where the controversial crops were being developed.  Bove, best known for attacking a McDonald's restaurant in France in 1999 to protest against the United States, said Canadians should attack facilities owned by two major GM crop producers -- the U.S. biotech group Monsanto and Swiss-based Novartis AG.  The walrus-moustachioed Bove told a cheering crowd of 300 demonstrators -- in Quebec City to demonstrate at the Summit of Americas -- that it was especially important to act in Canada, which is one of the world's largest producers of GM crops. "That means people here must also join the resistance movement and not just make speeches," thundered Bove, who has been tried twice in France for various acts of sabotage.  Supporters say the crops will help develop hardier crop types to help feed the world's poor. Opponents say they could lead to the uncontrolled spread of modified genes and thereby harm insects and humans. "This means that GM crops must....  

(4)  Japan to Start Mandatory Checks for GM Feed
http://just-food.com/news_detail.asp?art=30577&app=1

19 Apr 2001 TOKYO, April 19 (Reuters) - Japan's Agriculture Ministry said on Thursday it will introduce mandatory safety checks to guard against imports of unapproved genetically modified (GM) crops for animal feed, following a recommendation by a government panel. The ministry said in a statement the 10-member panel of experts had proposed setting a framework to measure acceptable levels of GM content since a zero-tolerance policy would be difficult to implement. "If the new rules are completed, the government can impose a ban on unapproved gene-altered products or order recalls of the products," said a ministry official. Currently, the ministry can only ask domestic importers not to import unapproved GM products for animal feed use through administrative instruction. Details of the new rules, including the standard of testing and the level of tolerance, are subject to further discussions, the ministry said. The move by the ministry, which oversees animal feed products, follows stricter legislation setting zero tolerance for food imports containing unapproved gene-spliced products that took effect from April 1.  From this month, the Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry has begun checks for StarLink biotech corn in food imports at unloading ports and in domestic food products. StarLink was found....  

(5)   Bove Presses Activists to Fight GM in Americas

http://asia.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/world/  QUEBEC CITY, Canada, April 19 (AFP) - Rebel French farmer Jose Bove, infamous for trashing a McDonald's in 1999, on Thursday pressed activists here to fight by any means necessary the spread of using genetically modified organisms (GMOs), ahead of a summit this weekend.

Bove, who was given a special ministerial permit to enter Canada for demonstrations against the April 20-22 summit, denounced a hemispheric trade pact to be discussed by leaders gathering here as a means of expanding GMO use throughout the Americas. The 48-year-old French sheep farmer and union leader told the nearly 300 activists gathered in front a provincial agricultural building that transnational corporations force GMO policy on farmers and eliminate alternative farming practices. Responding to a question on whether he was calling for violence, Bove said "when a situation imposes itself, one must resort to illegal (means) so that the rights of people are respected." "The fight against GMOs is a fundamental fight, whether you're a farmer or a citizen," he said, noting that Canada is the world's second largest producer of GMOs.

The 34 North, South and Central American leaders gathering for the Summit of the Americas must hear this because under a Free Trade Area of the Americas more transnational groups would impose their patented GM seeds on farmers, particularly corn growers in South America, he said. These seeds, Bove added, will contaminate neighboring fields and "destroy the biodiversity in this kind of land." "We have to fight against this because if this goes on that means the farmers can't decide anymore what they are going to put in their land," he stressed. Bove is facing a three-month prison sentence in France for ransacking a McDonald's fast-food restaurant in Millau, France in August 1999, but he is appealing the ruling. One of the organizers of the rally, Devlin Kuvek, said groups from throughout the Americas, including Brazil's Landless Peasants Movement (MST), came to the rally against GMOs because it "is not an issue people are really discussing" in the context of a hemispheric trade pact.  The activists, holding.....  

        (6)  Meeting: "The Challenge of Food Allergens" is the topic of an April 26 Joint Meeting of the Washington DC Section of the Institute of Food Technologists and the Metro-DC Affiliate of the Society for Nutrition Education. Speakers include Anne MuÃ’oz-Furlong of The Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network; Dr. Jupiter Yeung of the National Food Processors Association; and a US FDA Spokesperson to be determined. Details are available from the Chair of the Washington, DC Section of IFT, Joseph D. Eifert, Ph.D. who iswith the Department of Food Science and Technology at Virginia Tech at 540 231 3658; e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .  

        (7)  Pollination from Tainted Corn (Des Moines Register) http://www.progressivefarmer.com/today/archive.asp (Genetic Pollution. Legal Battles. Insurance. Industry. EU. Who Pays?) The Des Moines Register - April 17, 2001. Pollution costs organic farmers revenue
Susan and Mark Fitzgerald are victims of "genetic drift," a relatively new and disturbing phenomenon for corn producers. The Minnesota couple took all of the precautions they thought necessary to make sure their 100 acres of corn was organic, a feature that can double the earnings on their yield. They set up barriers of bushes, shrubs, and trees, planted the right crops in the right places, and bought corn seed guaranteed to be free of genetic engineering.

When the harvest came, though, they tested their corn. To their surprise and dismay, genetically engineered kernels showed up in the hopper: a pesticide-producing seed known as Bt whose pollen apparently made its way from a neighbor's field, swept by wind or carried by birds or insects. They had to pull 800 bushels from the organic market, a loss they put at nearly $2,000.  "Everyone's wondering what you do," Susan Fitzgerald said. "One can't speak alone; you're barking in the wind. It's you against Goliath."

The Fitzgeralds' story highlights a problem most recently brought to light by the lingering trouble caused by contamination from StarLink corn. Across the nation, the planting of genetically engineered seeds has surged since their introduction in 1996. It accounts for as much as a quarter of all corn grown in the United States.

One effect is that insects, birds, and the wind are spreading biotech pollen to fields planted with conventional or organic crops miles away. - As losses mount, the question is being asked: Who pays?

Some farmers say it's the problem of their neighbors, while others accuse the seed companies. The seed companies look for help from the government in setting more flexible standards. The government points back at the farmers as well as state courts hearing a growing number of lawsuits.

"We never really thought all this through," said Charles Hurburgh, director of the Iowa Grain Quality Initiative and an Iowa State University professor. "Who would have known 10 years ago that this would have been an issue? "

The most common recourse for such losses - insurance  - is one that's not yet available to the nation's nearly 2 million farms.

Insurance companies say their policies won't cover genetic drift, the term used to describe cross-pollination between biotech and nonbiotech fields. That reflects not only the novelty of the problem but also a sense that studies are still lacking on the scope of drift -how far pollen can travel, for instance, and how large farmers' losses might be.

On one level, those losses are already substantial. Since 1997, the European Union has effectively barred U.S. corn imports over ....  

(8)  Bt Corn Seed -- "Don't Need It? Don't Use It"
http://208.141.36.73/listarchive/index.cfm?list_id=30 (4/19 posting)

Editors, Progressive Farmer -- Thursday, April 19, 2001

Does anyone remember when John Obryckil asked why so many fields were planted to Bt corn when they probably do not need the protection? "I have seen where only a very small percent of the corn needs this protection from the insect," Obryckil said last summer. "Why have the poison in the pollen where you don't need it?"

The researcher was not popular last summer. The Iowa State University entomologist had released more research that raised questions about Bt corn and its threat to butterflies. Now, months later, others are asking Obrycikil's question as planters start rolling in the Corn Belt.  "None of the currently available insect-resistant or herbicide-tolerant corn or soybean varieties is critical for the success of Indiana farmers," says Bob Nielsen, Purdue Cooperative Extension Service corn specialist, echoing comments coming from Extension in  Iowa, Kentucky and Illinois. "Because these transgenic crop traits are not critical for Indiana farmers, the choice of whether to grow them or not depends primarily on the farmer's assessment of the uncertainty of market acceptance for such products and/or the available seed supply of alternative non-transgenic varieties," says Nielsen.

Because corn borer infestations are historically infrequent across Indiana, transgenic hybrids offer little economic advantage to most farmers, Nielsen says. Bt varieties were most effective in controlling corn borer if planted very early or late in the season, he says. (StarLink corn is not being sold.) "Unfortunately, seed companies cannot guarantee zero presence of Cry9C in any seed lot," Nielsen says. "The currently available quantitative tests, when used with appropriate sampling intensities, are capable of detecting the presence of the Cry9C protein at the minimum detectable level of no less than about 0.2 percent, with a 99% probability."  

        (9)   A Biotech Glossary, which can be consulted on the U.N. Forum website at http://www.fao.org/biotech/gloss.htm, aims to provide a convenient reference source for researchers, students and technicians, especially those whose native language is not English. The terms listed are also relevant for governmental and inter-governmental activities and discussions in the areas of biosafety, biodiversity, intellectual property rights and connected sectors.  

        (10)   GM Alfalfa Research, Comments, Articles, Web Sites: http://208.141.36.73/listarchive/index.cfm?list_id=30 (4/20 Post).

1)  Comments by Michael Russelle on GE Alfalfa Developments, 4/19

2)  New AMERICAN SCIENTIST article on Alfalfa, by Michael Russelle

3)  Comments on GE Alfalfa, by Joe Cummins, 19 April 2001.

4)  Web Sites with Updates on Alfalfa Developments

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        (11)  Bangkok Post: GMO Labelling may Frighten Consumers www.bangkokPost.com news, Thu Apr 19, 2001.   or www.checkbiotech.org news. Thailand should not rush to label GM food products, the director of Thailand Biodiversity Centre suggested yesterday. Sutat Sriwatanapongse expressed concern that GM food labelling might bring two adverse effects. First, food prices could rise by at least 20-30 % because manufacturers would have t...   

        (12)   SRI Lanka: Importers Unhappy with Ban on GE Food www.checkbiotech.org news.    COLOMBO, April 20 (IPS) - Public health and green groups in Sri Lanka are overjoyed by the government's decision to ban all types of 'genetically-engineered' (GE) foods, starting May. Environmentalists here say that Sri Lanka is the first Asian country to do so and one of the few in the world. Many...  

        `(13)   BIO-SPINOLOGY IN OUR SCIENCE COMMUNICATION?

http://members.tripod.com/~ngin/biospin.htm

Report on the science communication activities of the John Innes Centre (JIC).  A key element in any resolution of the current controversy over GM crops is access to accurate, understandable and unbiased information. The  John Innes Centre (JIC), Europe's leading plant biotechnology institute, promotes itself as an impartial and expert source of such information and advice to government, the farming industry, educators, the media, and the general public. The JIC's science communication activities encompass public meetings, press articles, advice to political leaders, exhibitions, conferences, a special GM website, a schools' project, and even plays.

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The JIC appears well able to command a special status for its science communication, as illustrated by the... The purpose of this report is to analyse, through specific examples, just how well JIC scientists are living up to the special status afforded to their science communication. In short, can it really be categorised as expertise imparted with honesty and impartiality?.....    

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