GM WATCH QUIZ - ANSWERS AND WINNERS

We recently launched a series of GM Watch quizes. Here are the answers to the first one, which drew a great response so thanks to all who entered.

We'd planned to give prizes to the 2 people getting the highest score, but in fact 3 entrants tied in first place, so a copy of the DVD of Marie Robin's brilliant new movie The World According to Monsanto, will be winging its way to Joanne, Carole and Todd - well done!

Well done too to all our entrants as the standard was uniformly high - shows just how well informed our readers are, or the power of a bit of well-directed googling!

The quiz came about as a fun way to celebrate 10 years of GM Watch but there is a more serious side. Most people if asked to nominate the greatest calamities of the 20th Century, would place the holocaust and the development of nuclear weapons right at the top of their lists. As our quiz makes clear, the corporations now designing our food played a significant role in both. They also, of course, helped bring the world a toxic legacy that includes napalm, agent orange, dioxin, and PCBs. As for their standards of business ethics”¦

10 YEARS OF GM WATCH - QUIZ TIME: THE ANSWERS!

Condition: No squabbling over the answers!

QUIZ 1: So who's designing your food?

1.Which biotech corporation was involved in research on uranium for the Manhattan Project and operated a nuclear facility for the US government until the late 1980s?

ANSWER: Monsanto
http://stlcin.missouri.org/history/peopledetail.cfm?Master_ID=1826
http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/05.11.00/cover/gen-food2-0019.html

2.Name two biotech corporations that were once part of the German chemical firm at the financial core of the Nazi regime and which supplied Zyklon-B during the extermination phase of the Holocaust?

ANSWER: Bayer and BASF
http://www.answers.com/topic/ig-farben
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IG_Farben

3.Which biotech firm other than Monsanto was a major supplier of Agent Orange, as well as manufacturing napalm?

ANSWER: Dow
http://www.studentsforbhopal.org/DirtyDow.htm http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Monsanto%2C_Agent_Orange_and_Dioxins

4.In relation to which Alabama town, where the undertaker who lived across the street from the Monsanto plant said he always thought he was burying too many children, was the company found guilty of conduct "so outrageous in character and extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency so as to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in civilized society"?

ANSWER: Anniston
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Monsanto%27s_Global_Pollution_Legacy

5.What happened on October 21 2007 to Valmir Mota de Oliveira, also known as Keno, during a protest at an experimental GMO farm owned by Syngenta?

ANSWER: He was killed with two shots to the chest at point-blank range by militiamen employed by Syngenta. (The company denies responsibility)
http://stuffedandstarved.org/drupal/node/235

6.In 2005 the Bollywood star, Nana Patekar toured India's main cotton growing area of Maharashtra, promoting Monsanto's Bt cotton to farmers. What made him announce the following year that he would no longer support Monsanto or promote its Bollgard Bt cotton?

ANSWER: Two reasons were given in press reports: the large scale losses caused to cotton farmers across the state and the impact of Bt Cotton cultivation on farmer suicides.
http://www.indiagminfo.org/Independent%20studies%20&%20papers%20on%20GM%20crops% 20in%20India/STUDIES%20ON%20PERFORMANCE%20OF%20BT%20COTTON/Maharashtra-Bt%20Cott on%20Vs.%20Non%20Bt%20Cotton%20-%20MEC%20study%20report-2005-06.pdf

7.Monsanto says, "Integrity is the foundation for all that we do". How many current and former Indonesian government officials and their family members are known to have received illicit payments on the company's behalf?

ANSWER: At least 140, according to the US Securities & Exchange Commission.
http://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/comp19023.pdf

8.Who was in overall charge of business operations in Indonesia when the bribes scandal got underway?

ANSWER: Hugh Grant, Monsanto's current Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President. He was managing director of Monsanto's Asia Pacific division. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2005/jan/19/environment.environment?commentpag e=1

9.Which country has a bilateral agreement with the US for the development of its agriculture, including the promotion of GMOs, overseen by a board that includes Monsanto, ADM and Wal-Mart?

ANSWER: India (Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture)
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/vandana_shiva/2006/07/wto_is_dead_long_live_ free_tra.html

10.Which Health Canada scientist told a Canadian Senate committee of being in a meeting where officials from Monsanto made an offer of between $1-2 million to the scientists from Health Canada -- an offer that she told the senators could only have been interpreted as a bribe. Additionally, she also recounted how notes and files critical of scientific data provided by Monsanto were stolen from a locked filing cabinet in her office.

ANSWER: Dr. Margaret Haydon
http://www.ethicalinvesting.com/monsanto/news/10009.htm