EXTRACTS: The Foundation for Biotechnology Awareness and Education has accused NGOs and activists opposing genetically-modified crops as being ill-informed and motivated by financial gains.
...S. Shantharam, President of the foundation, said that many activists were heavily funded by foreign agencies.
GM Watch comment: Attributing one's own undesirable charateristics to others is known to psychotherapists as projection. It's what leads a cheat to accuse his critics of dishonesty.
And judging by this article, there's plenty of projection going on in the case of Dr. Shantharam and his Foundation, with their accusations of conflicts of interest and foreign money and 'agencies' lurking behind concern over GM in India.
Dr. Shantharam, it may be remembered, is a former employee of both the U.S. Dept of Agriculture and Syngenta - the biotech giant based in Basel, Switzerland.
He is also a senior advisor to the Sehgal Family Foundation, whose Founder and Chairman, Suri Sehgal, is also the Founder and Chairman of the Proagro Seed Company Ltd., India - a company that has been seeking to commercialise GM crops on behalf of Bayer CropScience - the agri-biotech subsidiary of the German-based giant corporation, Bayer AG.
Meanwhile, the person previously styled President of Shantharam's Foundation - Dr. Sharan Angadi - is General Manager of Nunhems Seeds India - a wholly owned subsidiary of Bayer CropScience.
And, on top of the direct personal ties that the Foundation's leading lights enjoy to foreign interests, the Foundation itself has undertaken contractual work for Syngenta.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=336
As for Dr. Shantharam accusing GM critics of misinformation, not only do many of his own claims bare precious little scrutiny, but earlier this year the Executive Secretary of Shantharam's Foundation - Dr. C. Kameswara Rao - managed to win GM Watch's Pants on Fire Award for the 'BIGGEST PACK OF LIES' in 2006!
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7495
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7904
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4757
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Anti-GM crop activism motivated, says Foundation
The Hindu, 8 September 2007 http://www.hindu.com/2007/09/08/stories/2007090855160800.htm
Bangalore: The Foundation for Biotechnology Awareness and Education has accused NGOs and activists opposing genetically-modified crops as being ill-informed and motivated by financial gains. Speaking to presspersons here on Thursday, S. Shantharam, President of the foundation, said that many activists were heavily funded by foreign agencies. This included even the late M.D. Nanjundaswamy, the founder-president of the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS), he added. The farmer leader's daughter, Chukki Nanjundaswamy, also an activist, is not equipped with 'verifiable scientific data' in her criticisms against BT cotton and other genetically-modified crops, he alleged.
Criticism
International organisations such as Greenpeace, Mr. Shantharam alleged, were even manipulating scientific data in an effort to further their anti-GM crop campaigns. The organisation worked with a global fund of 200 million dollars exclusively for the anti-GM campaign, he said. Mr. Shantharam and other members of the foundation claimed that many criticisms levelled by the anti-GM campaigners on the crops' ill-effects were not grounded in scientific reasoning. The foundation is holding a colloquium on 'The March of Agricultural Biotechnology in India' on September 11.