GM Watch brings you”¦ THE WORST OF 2006 - PART 1
2006 brought a litany of examples of how GMOs are promoted and imposed around the world by sidestepping critical scrutiny and overcoming opposition via lies and disinformation, hype and false promises, corruption and double dealing, diplomatic stratagems and trade pressure, and even violence and oppression.
Incidentally, if you're in need a pick-me-up after reading this, don't forget to remind yourself of all the good news last year - THE BEST OF 2006
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7438
Also available in German - BESTE NEUIGKEITEN 2006
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7439
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THE WORST OF 2006 - PART 1: JANUARY - JUNE
JANUARY
+ January: FUMENTO SACKED OVER MONSANTO PAYMENT
2006 got off to a flying start with the news that Scripps Howard News Service had severed all ties with the US columnist Michael Fumento because of his failure to disclose payments from Monsanto - a corporation that had been a frequent subject of praise in Fumento's opinion pieces. Fumento connects to both the Hudson Institute - home of Dennis and Alex Avery - and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the corporate libertarians who co-founded CS Prakash's AgBioWorld. (A Columnist Backed by Monsanto, Business Week, January 13 2006)
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6132
+ January: USDA BLASTED
Quietly released in the dying days of 2005, a shocking report from the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) went almost unreported at the time, even though it roundly criticized many aspects of the oversight of GM crops. The report said the USDA "lacks basic information" on where field tests are or what is done with the crops after they are harvested, even in the case of pharma and industrial crops. Some of the media, though, did pick up on the report later in 2006 after GM contamination badly damaged US rice exports. (see AUGUST in PART 2)
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6086
+ January: TAVERNE DOES MONSANTO PROMOTIONAL
Lord Taverne, chairman of the pro-GM lobby group Sense About Science, did a GM-promotional for Monsanto. In a video promoting the corporation, Taverne claimed that Bt cotton is "benefiting small farmers all over the world". This in spite of all the evidence of the Bt crop's damaging agronomic and economic impact on small farmers, particularly in developing countries.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7432
Although Taverne heads Sense About Science, he has no background in science and has been accused of using scientific evidence selectively and unscrupulously to bolster his own prejudices - exactly the charge he levels at others!
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6148
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6115
+ January: KENYA'S AG SECRETARY IN CONFLICT OF INTEREST
Kenya's new Permanent Secretary for Agriculture, Dr Romano Kiome, turned out to be the former executive director of the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), which has been involved in a series of controversial GM-crop collaborations with the likes of Monsanto, USAID and the Syngenta Foundation. Dr Kiome said he saw no conflict of interest in his being permanent secretary for the ministry which regulates GM crops and grants permits for plant research activities to the likes of”¦ er, KARI.http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6089
+ January: DAMNING ERMAKOVA STUDY WITH”¦
The UK's GM food regulatory body, the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes (ACNFP), drew a critical comparison between a study by Dr Erina Ermakova of the Russian Academy of Sciences into the effects on reproduction of feeding rats GM soy, and one by Brake and Evenson involving mice. While Dr Ermakova's study found that female rats fed on GM soya had progeny that were five times more likely to die within three weeks of birth compared to mothers fed on normal soya, the Brake and Evenson study found no adverse effects in the case of mice. ACNFP described the Brake and Evenson study as "well controlled" but the nutritional science expert Dr Arpad Pusztai suggested the Brake and Evenson study had such poor nutritional design that it provided "no feeding protocol, no data, no weights, no feed intake, no growth pattern related to feed intake, absolutely nothing!"
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7080
FEBRUARY
+ February: FRENCH FARMER BANNED FROM 'LAND OF THE FREE'
Pro-GM lobbyists were cock-a-hoop in February when French GM crop-puller Jose Bove was stopped upon arrival at JFK airport, denied entry to the US and put on a plane back to France. Bove had been set to speak in New York at an event sponsored by Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. CS Prakash's AgBioView delightedly declared: "And Now for Some Really Good News... Jose Bove Sent Packing by U.S."
GM WATCH commented, "It's interesting that the banning of people who challenge major corporations is considered 'Really Good News', while the exclusion of those companies' suspect imports is considered an 'Outrage!'”¦ 'But Bove has been to prison', we hear Prakash protest. Well, so too has Prakash's fellow GM propagandist, Dr Douglas Powell, and for far worse than tearing up GM crops, yet steps were specifically taken to get round Powell's criminal convictions in order to allow him to continue to enter the United States. And we don't remember Prakash calling that an 'Outrage!'"
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6224
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6232
+ February: NEW ATTEMPT TO NOBBLE JOURNALISTS IN AFRICA
GM industry body ISAAA was a key player in a new training initiative to "improve" the reporting on GMOs by African journalists. In a three-day seminar, journalists were told to "go beyond the usual concentration on scare issues of biotechnology to harness it for progress and conservation."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6242
MARCH
+ March: WTO RULES, OK?
The World Trade Organisation ruled that Europe had broken international trade rules by imposing a de facto ban on GM food imports. The WTO simly sidestepped the vexed issue of safety.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6218
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6234
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6217
+ March: AMERICA'S MASTERPLAN - TO FORCE GM ON THE WORLD
John Vidal in The (UK) Guardian said the US intended to bypass European hostility to GMOs by using the WTO ruling to bully developing countries into growing them.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=
+ March: BIO SEES NO EVIL!
Sean Darragh, who had recently taken over as food and agriculture chief for the Biotechnology Industry Organization, claimed he had never met anyone with a PhD in biology who didn't believe in the safety of GM foods. Among the angry respondents was Dr Doug Gurian-Sherman: "I have a PhD, worked for five years as a reviewer of the safety of genetically engineered crops with the Environmental Protection Agency, was a science adviser to the Food and Drug Administration for three years on GE food safety. I have plenty of objections. So do many other scientists."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6286
+ March: HUMAN RIGHTS-RESISTANT GM SOYA
A report by Grupo de Reflexion Rural provided detailed accounts of the violent campaign in Paraguay aimed at forcibly expanding GM soy production. Rural and indigenous communities have been expelled from their lands and have had their houses and crops burnt. Some have been detained and even killed. (see also JULY in PART 2)
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6337
+ March: SPINNING CAUTION INTO FERVOUR
Julie Newman of the Network of Concerned Farmers in Australia reported that the cautious policy on GM of the main farm lobby group in Western Australia, calling for an end to the moratorium only "when markets clearly indicate their preparedness to accept GM produce", had been twisted for media purposes into a demand for an immediate end to the moratorium and an assertion that markets were ready to accept GM!
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6296
+ March: PRO-GM LOBBY GROUP IN CURITIBA
Among the pro-GM lobby groups active in Curitiba, Brazil, at the 3rd Meeting of the Parties (MOP-3) to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety the most deceptive was the Public Research and Regulation Initiative - a group which, while proclaiming its independence, promotes more or less identical goals on GM to those of the industry. A profile of this industry-backed group, whose leading lobbyists in Curitiba included former Monsanto man Gerard Barry and Piet van der Meer, who is conveniently (and appropriately!) married to a lobbyist for the Global Industry Coalition, can be found at
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6336
+ March: GM PAPAYA HYPE TAKES A TUMBLE
GM papayas are often hyped as the saviour of the Hawaiian papaya industry. But an article in the Honolulu Advertiser revealed that since their introduction the industry had reached a more than 25 year low.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6395
APRIL
+ April: BIOFUELS TO RESCUE GM?
At the BIO 2006 conference in Chicago, biofuels were the industry's leading hope for spurring renewed interest and investment. On the heels of a speech by Bush in which he said the US was "addicted to oil", BIO released a letter to Congress requesting full funding for programmes that would support research and development of ethanol production. But critics dismissed ethanol and large-scale biofuel production as environmentally damaging ways of feeding cars at the expense of people.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7218
+ April : BOLLYWOOD STAR BACKS AWAY FROM MONSANTO
In April it emerged that in view of the cataclysmic impact of Bt Cotton cultivation on farmer suicides in India's main cotton growing area of Maharashtra, the Bollywood star Nana Patekar had announced that he would no longer support Monsanto or promote their Bollgard Bt cotton. In 2005 Patekar had toured the Maharashtra countryside, spreading Monsanto's message among rural audiences.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6462
+ April: EU APPROVED GM FOODS DESPITE SERIOUS CONCERNS
Documents released to Friends of the Earth revealed that the European Commission had been approving GM foods and crops despite having serious doubts over their health and environmental impacts. In the documents, the Commission admitted that there are "large areas of uncertainty" about GM foods and that "some issues have not yet been studied at all". They also revealed huge disagreements between the Commission and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), an EU agency. Adrian Bebb of Friends of the Earth Europe said, "This is a political scandal. When the EU Commission broke the moratorium and forced new genetically modified foods into Europe, it told the public they were safe. Now we know that behind closed doors the Commission was arguing the complete opposite."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6457
+ April: BUSH ANNOUNCED INDO-U.S. FARM PACT
George W. Bush announced a pact called the Indo-US Knowledge Initiative in Agricultural Research and Education, aimed at boosting Indian agriculture and biotechnology. The Initiative's board contains US multinationals like Walmart and Monsanto.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6315
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6305
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6303
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6383
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6781
MAY
+ May: ANOTHER PUNDIT FOR HIRE - STEVEN MILLOY
An excellent article in the New Republic revealed details of the corporate finance that flows to FoxNews.com science columnist Steven Milloy. Federal records also indicate Milloy lobbied for Monsanto in the late 1990s on GM foods. Fox News admitted being unaware of the corporate payments Milloy has been receiving, but continued to employ him nonetheless.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6525
+ May: CONGRESSMAN FOR SALE?
The leading Brazilian periodical Correio Braziliense published an article reporting that Monsanto sold Abelardo Lupion - a congressman in the state of Parana, a farm for one-third of its market value in return for Lupion using his political power to legalize glysophate, the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup herbicide. Syngenta has also enlisted the support of congressman Lupion to do its political bidding, despite the fact that there are currently two unresolved federal inquiries into his alleged corruption, including one into his connection to Monsanto.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=48&ItemID=11795
JUNE
+ June: BASF BOSS SAYS GET OUT OF THE EU!
Hans Kast, chairman of industry lobby group EuropaBio and CEO of the GM corporation BASF, said European countries which want to be GM free "should not be in the EU"!
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6601