1.Go beyond scare biotechnology issues – African Journalists urged
2.LIES, DAMN LIES AND ISAAA
COMMENT
The biggest number of dubious stories out of Africa have involved bogus "miracle" claims about GM, and woldly exaggerated claims about the number of farmers taking up GM crops, but there's no warning here about that kind of hype.
That's no wonder once you realise that ISAAA are a key player in this initiative to improve the reporting on GMOs by African journalists. ISSAA have been more guilty of encouraging media hype on GM than almost anybody else in the world - see item 2 - and that's saying something! Also involved in the media training project are ABSPII - a US-based USAID-backed initiative to push GM crops into Africa.
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=165
Quoted below addressing the journalists is Dr Margaret Karembu, the Director of ISAAA's AfriCentre. Karembu's own hype is typified by a recent article she wrote on the WTO decision headlined "Free African Women with Biotechnology"!
http://www.truthabouttrade.org/article.asp?id=5231
The previous Director of ISAAA's AfriCentre was Florence Wambugu whose hyping of GM was even more spectacular than even Karembu's - earning her a PANTS ON FIRE award for media deception!
http://www.gmwatch.org/p2temp2.asp?aid=59&page=1&op=2
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1.Go beyond scare biotechnology issues - African Journalists urged
From Linda Asante Agyei, GNA Correspondent, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Regional News of Saturday, 11 February 2006
http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/regional/artikel.php?ID=99174
Addis Ababa, Feb. 11, GNA - African Journalists have been urged to go beyond the usual concentration on scare issues of biotechnology to harness it for progress and conservation.
Mr Josue Dione, Director of the Sustainable Development Division of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), said this at the end of a three-day regional hands-on training for some journalists on "Improving Media Coverage on Biotechnology in Eastern and Central Africa".
He said, "Biotechnology is a tool of great of opportunities and many challenges. Its potential impacts and benefits are enormous in the areas of agriculture development, health care, trade, environment and natural resources management, industry and energy development.
"No tool in recent times has been as scrutinized and beset with controversies as modern biotechnology and these controversies are particularly overwhelming in food and agriculture".
He said there was the need for journalists to understand the issues of biotechnology and if "they understand the truth about biotech, then, they would be able to report more accurately in a manner that clarifies".
The workshop was organized by the International Service for Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) AfriCentre based in Nairobi in collaboration with UNECA, UNESCO and Agricultural Biotechnology Support Program (ABSPII).
It was to enhance the capacities of the journalists reporting on biotechnology, introduce them to crop biotechnology basics in the context of sustainable agriculture and food security as well as test, adopt and publish a multi media biotechnology training kit for journalists.
The participants were from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi, Cote d'Iviore and Ghana.
Mr Dione said biotechnology, which was a term used to represent a continuum of different bio-techniques ranging from simple non-controversial tissue culture to genetic engineering or gene-splicing embodied in modern biotechnology has now been considered as the "leading technology of the 21st century with tremendous potential to address economic, social and environmental issues afflicting the poor in the developing nations", he added.
Dr Strike Mkandla, United Nations Environment Programme Representative to the African Union (AU), said UNECA's cultural shift of taking inter-agency cooperation seriously to the extent of being tempted to fly the flag of one's organisation had enabled the UN-Biotech /Africa to build on strengths of partner organisations to a unified service to African institutions like the AU and NEPAD.
He urged journalists to serve as libraries who would ignite interests and awareness and convey the simple truth where they were needed for the general public who needed the information to make their daily decisions on what to grow, what was safe to eat and what would have consequences for the plants and animals resources they chose. Dr Margaret Karembu, Director of ISAAA, AfriCentre, said biotechnology had become the focus of global war of rhetoric, which had not spared Africa.
She noted that some other parts of the world were increasingly adopting and mainstreaming biotechnology products in their agricultural systems with Africa lagging behind due to the lack of bio-safety laws and regulations as well and biotechnology policies.
Dr Karembu mentioned other areas lacking as low investment in biotechnology research and development, accurate understanding of biotech among policy makers and consumers, limited competent institutional and human capacities, inadequate and sensational coverage of biotechnology and the controversy over genetically modified foods. The participants visited the Armauer Hansen Research Institute in Addis Ababa, which is the research centre on leprosy and Tuberculosis for Africa.
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2.LIES, DAMN LIES AND ISAAA
A profile of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=66&page=I
The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA) is funded by Northern developers of GMOs, with the aim of helping developing countries in the South take up GM technology.
Funders include Bayer CropScience, Monsanto, Syngenta, Pioneer Hi-Bred and the BBSRC. ISAAA's multi-million dollar budget is matched by high-profile board members, past and present, such as: Monsanto's Robert Fraley, Wally Beversdorf of Syngenta, and Gabrielle Persley, Executive Director of AusBiotech Alliance and advisor to the World Bank. ISAAA has no representatives, however, from farmer organizations in areas like Africa.
One of ISAAA's goals is to 'facilitate a knowledge-based, better informed public debate.' To help it achieve its aim ISAAA has three 'Knowledge Centers' - the 'AmeriCenter' at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; the 'SEAsiaCenter' in Los Banos, Laguna, Philippines; and the 'AfriCenter' in Nairobi, Kenya. Florence Wambugu headed ISAAA's Africa office before establishing her own biotech advocacy organisation - A Harvest Biotechnology Foundation International.
Aaron deGrassi of the Institute of Development Studies says that in Africa the ISAAA has 'spun off a number of innocuously named pro-biotech NGOs, such as the African Biotechnology Stakeholders' Forum and African Biotechnology Trust. Pro-biotech Western aid agencies have joined with these organizations to quietly conduct one-sided conferences at up-scale venues around the continent, such as Kenya's Windsor Golf and Country Club, aimed to swing high-level officials in favor of GM. But critics charge these forums are facades for large corporations. The NGOs consist of a website and a few staff, they charge.' In a report on ISAAA's activities in Asia, GRAIN concluded that its role was one of 'promoting corporate profit in the name of the poor'.
ISAAA's chairman is Clive James. ISAAA's annual reports on the global uptake of GMOs, 'Global Review of Commercialized Transgenic Crops', commissioned by the biotech industry and conducted by James, are widely reported in the media. However, there are serious question marks over the accuracy of their claims as regards the extent of the uptake of GM crops around the world and the supposed benefits experienced by producers. Many claims are made purely on the basis of producer estimates and some have been shown to be contrary to the findings of properly controlled scientific studies.
DeGrassi provides an example of how questionable ISAAA figures are in relation to GM cotton farming in South Africa: 'ISAAA implies that small farmers have been using the technology on a hundred thousand hectares. Agricultural Biotechnology in Europe - an industry coalition - suggests 5,000 ha of "smallholder cotton." The survey team suggests 3,000 ha.' In other words ISAAA's figures are 20 times higher than even those claimed by a biotech industry source.
It is also possible to compare some of the figures in previous ISAAA's Global Review of Commercialized Transgenic Crops with scientific research findings. For instance, in the 1998 Global Review a figure of 12% was given by American farmers for GM soy yield improvements. However, a review of the results of over 8,200 university-based controlled varietal trials in 1998 showed an almost 7% average yield reduction in the case of the GM soy, ie the diametric opposite.