GMWatch News Review archive

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WEEKLY WATCH number 267
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from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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Dear all:

There's lots of good news this week, especially from Germany, which is taking the lead in Europe in scepticism over GM hype (EUROPE). Farmers in Brazil's top soy state are shunning GM soy (THE AMERICAS). A pro-GM lobby group has been caught using an undeclared Monsanto "ghost writer" (LOBBYWATCH). And don't miss the Pope's uncompromising condemnation of GM multinationals (CATHOLIC CHURCH).

Claire <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
www.gmwatch.org / www.lobbywatch.org

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CONTENTS
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CATHOLIC CHURCH
LOBBYWATCH
THE AMERICAS
EUROPE
SUPPORT THE HUNGER STRIKERS
AFRICA
AUSTRALASIA
U.S. REGULATORY SYSTEM
AGROFUELS
CORPORATE CRIMES
FOOD CRISIS
FACT SHEET ON GM
BOOK
GARAGE BIOTECH
MEDIAWATCH

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CATHOLIC CHURCH
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+ POPE CONDEMNS GM MULTINATIONALS
The Times (London) reports how Pope Benedict XVI has given African bishops a draft document that specifically attacks producers of genetically modified foods, in the context of a more general condemnation of multinationals for "invading" Africa and damaging the environment by "defiling God's creation".  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5939789.ece

+ SYNOD WORKING DOCUMENT WARNS AGAINST GM CROPS
The Catholic News Service (CNS) reports that the 62-page working document ("instrumentum laboris") for this fall's Synod of Bishops for Africa, to be held in the Vatican in October, is especially critical of the economic and social effects of globalization. It also strongly warned against thinking GM crops would solve Africa's food crises. Using GM crops, the document says, risks "ruining small landholders, abolishing traditional methods of seeding and making farmers dependent on the production companies" selling their GM seeds, it said. The document said no one should overlook the real agricultural problems on the continent, which include a lack of cultivatable land, water, energy, credit, local markets and infrastructure for transporting products.
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0901274.htm

+ VATICAN MEETING TO PROMOTE GM
A closed-door meeting is to be held at the Vatican in Rome in May to discuss a campaign backing GM crops. The study week has apparently been organized by Ingo Potrykus, co-inventor of Golden Rice, under the auspices of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. In spite of the concern over GM crops in Catholic circles, Potrykus is quoted in a news piece in Nature Biotechnology as saying that the meeting will give GM the "moral high ground of the Vatican". "I think we are heading in the right direction with this meeting and it will help to dispel some of the myths about GM crops," argues Peter Raven, director of the Monsanto-backed Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis and an academy member.
http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v27/n3/full/nbt0309-214a.html
More on Raven: http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=191&page=R
GMWatch comment: The Pontifical Academy has regularly been hijacked to punt industry interests such as nuclear power, without it in any way reflecting official blessing. The news coming out of Africa, where the Pope has just released a working document highly critical of GMOs (see above), clearly shows that not only do the aims of this meeting of GM lobbyists not have official blessing, they are actually immoral.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5939789.ece
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0901274.htm

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LOBBYWATCH
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+ MONSANTO SCIENTIST HELPED AUTHOR GM GUIDE
The pro-GM lobby group Sense About Science (SAS) has been caught with its pants down by Private Eye. The famous satirical magazine has obtained a confidential draft copy of SAS's recently published GM guide which shows it had a "ghost writer" that SAS failed to declare. Here's the article.

Private Eye No. 1232, 20 March - 2 April 2009, Books and Bookmen (p.26)
A spat has broken out over a Times Higher Education article highlighting the failure of a new guide to GM food, 'Making Sense of GM', to disclose its industry connections. Tracey Brown of Sense About Science, publisher of the guide, condemned the T.H.E. article as "mischievous" and "rude" and claimed it relied on "tortuously indirect links" between the authors and the GM industry.

But the Eye has a copy of an unpublished draft of the guide - and it seems it wasn't just the industry links of some of its authors that didn't appear in the final published version. One of the guide's listed authors, Andrew Cockburn, is also missing. Who he? None other than GM giant, Monsanto's former director of scientific affairs, and a figure so controversial that when former PM Tony Blair invited him to author part of the government's official GM Science Review, it led to questions being raised in the House and the resignation of one of the expert panellists. No wonder Sense About Science felt erasure was the better form of valour.
(For the Times Higher Education article which originally reported on the failure to disclose the vested interests of the authors of Making Sense of GM, see
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=405427 )

+ BIOTECH UNDER BARACK
Barack Obama came into office with campaign promises of keen interest to the biotech industry, reports the pro-GM journal Nature Biotechnology in an interesting overview with lots of comment from leading GM supporters.
http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v27/n3/full/nbt0309-237.html

+ MONSANTO SEEDING ITS PR ON THE NET
As part of its new internet PR campaign, involving a deliberate effort to exploit social media to get its message out, Monsanto has not only launched a new blog and twitter feed, but its PR people are busy trying to seed its PR pieces much more widely on the net. And it’s already causing controversy. As a result of the progressive website OpEdNews being used by a Monsanto Director of Public Affairs to repost a series of articles lifted from its blog and its main Monsanto site, OEN has just started polling its readers on whether they’re happy for the site to be used in this way by Monsanto operatives.
http://www.opednews.com/Poll/Should-OpEdNews-Publish-Ar-by-Rob-Kall-090322-222.html
One reader commented on a Monsanto piece on yields reposted from the main Monsanto site, "I didn't realise that OpEdNews was intended for the dissemination of corporate propaganda by MNCs. Surely they have more than sufficient resources and outlets of their own, given their multi-million dollar PR budgets, without colonising independent media."
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Do-GM-Crops-Increase-Yield-by-Brad-Mitchell-090 316-227.html

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THE AMERICAS
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+ BIGGEST BRAZIL SOY STATE LOSES TASTE FOR GMOs
Farmers in Brazil's Mato Grosso, the country's top soy state, are shunning GM soy varieties in favor of conventional seeds after the hi-tech type showed poor yields. "We're seeing less and less planting of GMO soy around here. It doesn't give consistent performance," said Jeferson Bif, who grows soy and corn. He said he obtained average yields of 58 bags (60 kg) per hectare with conventional soy last season while fields planted with GM soy in the same year yielded 10 bags less.
http://www.reuters.com/article/internal_ReutersNewsRoom_BehindTheScenes_MOLT/idUSTRE52C5AB20090313

+ GM CORN GETS GREEN LIGHT IN MEXICO
Mexico has revised its biosafety law to reverse a nationwide ban on GM corn, the country's most important crop and the centerpiece of the Mexican diet, and allow the varieties to be used in experiments.
http://www.latinamericapress.org/articles.asp?art=5814
Miguel Colunga, leader of the Democratic Campesino Front (FDC) in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, said "the government made a terrible mistake when it allowed these experiments, because it has put (the country's) biodiversity and food sovereignty at risk." Colunga also accused the members of industry group Agrobio of bribing large farmers in the north of the country to keep pressing for the experiments to be allowed. http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46121
GMWatch comment: For what's really happening in Mexico, see the video of the interview with Silvia Ribeiro:
http://www.grain.org/videos/?id=195
and the article, 'Fighting GMO contamination around the world'
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=575

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EUROPE
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+ MAJOR GM-FREE ANIMAL FEED BREAKTHROUGH IN GERMANY
Germany's No.2 poultry producer, Gebr. Stolle GmbH & Co. KG, is the first major supplier of animal products in Germany to commit to using the new “GM-free” label as a guarantee that no GM animal feed has been used in producing its products, putting pressure on other big companies to follow suit.
http://www.hna.de/breakingnews/00_20090319144800_Grillhaehnchen_ohne_Gentechnik.html

+ GERMAN FARM MINISTER WANTS GM-FREE ZONES
German agriculture minister Ilse Aigner is aiming to shift decisions about the cultivation of GM crops from federal level to the country's regional governments. She also wants to explore whether it is possible within national law to define GM-free regions.
http://www.agra-net.com/portal (requires subscription)
GMWatch comment: This follows on from Germany's farm minister, Ilse Aigner, previously saying that "Genetic engineering for agriculture has no benefits" and that she wanted to ban it. She's also been reported as saying that whether or not a blanket ban could be achieved, she would want to ban Monsanto's MON810 maize - the only GM crop that can legally be grown in Germany. The Bavarian environment and health minister, Markus Soder, has said he doesn't just favour a MON810 ban, he also wants a stop to all GM field trials. The Bavarian government is already opposed to any field trials with Bt maize being conducted in Bavaria.

+MONSANTO'S UPHILL BATTLE IN GERMANY
In Germany, an alliance of beekeepers, protestors and politicians are in the process of chasing Monsanto and its GM crops out of the country, says an interesting article in Der Spiegel that's worth reading in full.
http://greenbio.checkbiotech.org/news/monsantos_uphill_battle_germany

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SUPPORT THE HUNGER STRIKERS
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+ FARMERS ON HUNGER STRIKE AGAINST GMOs IN POLAND
Two women farmers have started a hunger strike against GMO cultivation in front of Ministry of Agriculture, Warsaw, Poland. Both women, together with other members of the Coalition for a GMO Free Poland, joined a meeting of the Polish government's Agricultural Committee in the Senate. The committee was discussing the future of GMOs in Poland. After a few hours of debate they concluded, "There's no political will within the Polish government to stop corporations from illegal planting of the GM maize variety MON 810 - and to ensure that Poland is kept GMO free. This opens the possibility of the widespread planting of MON 810 during this year. So we don't have another choice other than to stay here and fight!" See photos http://icppc.pl/pl/gmo/index.php?id=470

+ LETTERS OF SUPPORT FOR HUNGER STRIKERS NEEDED
The goals of the fasting ladies and the Coalition for a GMO Free Poland are:
1. To reinforce the BAN of all GM plants and - and as a fast-track - ban the maize MON 810.
2. To introduce labelling of all GM foods and gradually withdraw these foods from the market.
3. To introduce a BAN on GM animal feed.
4. To use social/public funds (taxpayer's money) to support traditional and organic farming.
Please send a letter of support for the hunger strikers to to: The Prime Minister - Donald Tusk, The Chancellery of the Prime Minister, Al. Ujazdowskie 1/3, 00-583 Warszawa, Poland
e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ; fax. +48 22 6252637
and send a copy to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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AFRICA
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+ 40,000 HECTARES OF GM MAIZE FAIL
According to an article in the 6 March edition of South Africa's 'Farmers Weekly' ("40,000 ha of maize may yield nothing"), thousands of hectares of Monsanto's GM maize cultivars have "failed to pollinate this planting season, leaving farmers with seedless cobs". This story is also reported in South Africa's Sunday Times.
http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/Article.aspx?id=964062

+ NIGERIA DOES NOT NEED GM CASSAVA
Civil society groups have condemned the Nigerian Biosafety Committee's approval for the Nigerian National Root Crops Research Institute (NRCRI), in collaboration with the US-based and Monsanto-backed Danforth Center, to conduct "contained" field trials of GM cassava. The GM cassava is claimed to contain "30 times as much beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A, as its normal counterpart” as well as increased levels of iron, protein, zinc and vitamin E.
http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=20380

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AUSTRALASIA
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+ LAWSUIT FILED OVER GM ANIMALS IN NEW ZEALAND
GE Free NZ in food and environment has filed a lawsuit after AgResearch made four applications that seek to develop, import and commercialise GM animals from nine species of animals. "These four generic applications seek the right to use animals as bio factories anywhere, anytime, and in any way that the applicant wants. They are so broad that they make it impossible for people to know if and how they will be affected now or at any time in the future,” said Claire Bleakley, president of GE Free NZ in food and environment.
http://www.infonews.co.nz/news.cfm?l=1&t=103&id=34182

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U.S. REGULATORY SYSTEM
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+ BIOTECH COMPANIES LIMITING INDEPENDENT ANALYSIS OF GM
Another article on how 24 leading corn insect scientists working at public research institutions in 17 corn-producing states have sent a statement to the Environmental Protection Agency about how biotech corporations are restricting independent research on GM crops. The companies are using technology/stewardship agreements required for the purchase of GM seed to explicitly prohibit research or else control and manipulate it. The scientists didn't sign their EPA petition in person because they feared being blacklisted. Scientists in the early years of their career were told not to have anything to do with the petition because it could be career suicide -- they need to be able to publish in order to achieve promotion and tenure.
http://tiny.cc/7Pkwn

+ IMPORTING U.S. FOOD SYSTEM INJURIOUS TO INDIA'S HEALTH
An agricultural partnership launched during the Bush regime, the Indo-US Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture (KIA), is seeking to replicate U.S. food regulatory policies in India - and India should be worried, says an excellent article in Business Standard.
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/latha-jishnu-unwholesome-regulationsfood/351734/

+ USDA ANNOUNCES MEETINGS ON GM REGULATION
The USDA has invited interested parties to take part in a scoping session on the agenda for meetings discussing a proposed rule for GMOs in April. The proposed rule will revise existing regulations for the importation, interstate movement and environmental release of certain GMOs - regulations which have not been subject to a comprehensive review since they were first introduced in 1987.
The initial public comment period attracted over 15,000 comments after the proposal was first published in October, prompting the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) to extend its public comment period for a further 60 days.
http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/Publications/Food-Beverage-Nutrition/FoodNavigator-USA.com/Legislation/USDA-announces-meetings-on-GE-regulation-revision
The number of the docket for comments is:
Docket ID APHIS-2008-0023
Docket Title Importation, Interstate Movement, and Release into the Environment of Certain Genetically Engineered Organisms
***See the brilliant comment by David Gould
http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main?main=DocketDetail&d=APHIS-2008-0023

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AGROFUELS
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+ HARD CHOICE ON GM CORN
Syngenta has developed a new GM corn for ethanol but companies that turn cornstarch into food ingredients fear the Syngenta corn could get into their grain supplies inadvertently. They've asked the US Dept of Agriculture to delay approving the corn. Interestingly, the letter to the USDA from trade groups representing food industry giants such as General Mills, ConAgra and Archer Daniels Midland makes the point that the U.S. government lacks "adequate scientific data or documentation necessary" to evaluate the crop's impact on food and feed products. The spat raises the question of which corporate lobby new ag secretary Tom Vilsack will bow to.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com:80/article/20090215/BUSINESS01/902150322/1029/BUSINESS

+ BERKELEY AGROFUEL RESEARCH HITS ROADBLOCKS
http://tiny.cc/hW5ql

+ 70 PERCENT MORE ENERGY REQUIRED TO MAKE ETHANOL THAN IT PRODUCES
"Abusing our precious croplands to grow corn for an energy-inefficient process that yields low-grade automobile fuel amounts to unsustainable, subsidized food burning," says Cornell professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, David Pimentel. About 70 percent more energy is required to produce ethanol than the energy that actually is in ethanol.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_17166.cfm

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CORPORATE CRIMES
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+ END OF THE ROAD FOR AGENT ORANGE VICTIMS?
The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear a final appeal by Vietnamese plaintiffs against Dow and Monsanto. The Vietnamese plaintiffs and the Vietnamese government want compensation for birth defects suffered as a result of the US government’s spraying of their country with Agent Orange, a toxic defoliant manufactured by Dow and Monsanto.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46112

+ UK GOVERNMENT IN COSY DISCUSSIONS WITH MANUFACTURERS OF AGENT ORANGE
An Early Day Motion (no. 406) has been introduced into the UK Parliament which expresses “concern for the implications for food and the environment of Government discussions with companies of the Agriculture Biotechnology Council which includes Monsanto and Dow Chemicals; notes that these were two of the manufacturers of Agent Orange used by US forces in Vietnam ”¦ and believes that these two companies should not be in cosy discussions with the Government on this matter whilst still not properly fulfilling their compensatory responsibility to the people of Vietnam.” Twenty-six MPs have signed. What are the others waiting for?
http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=37421&SESSION=899

+ RULING BRINGS SHAME ON SUPREME COURT AND U.S.
Len Aldis, Secretary of the Britain-Vietnam Friendship Society, says, "Time to Round Up Monsanto the makers of Agent Orange. Don't buy their products. Please ask your Member of Parliament to support Early Day Motion 406." And in an open letter to Barack Obama he says: "To deny an appeal that requested a trial by jury of the companies that manufactured Agent Orange brings shame on the Supreme Court and on the United States itself."
http://www.rinf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8489

+ COLOMBIA'S DESERT WAR
Grace Livingstone, writing in The Guardian, reports on the horrifying effects of the US’s ‘war on drugs’ in Colombia, where pesticides, in particular glyphosate, are aerially sprayed over vast areas to kill coca crops.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/12/colombia-drug-war
GMWatch comment: Monsanto has received millions from the US government for providing a glyphosate formulation for the US spraying campaign in Colombia. Not mentioned in this article is the evidence published in the journal Genetics and Molecular Biology that aerial spraying of Roundup on the border of Colombia and Ecuador has caused a high degree of DNA damage in local Ecuadorian people.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7899

+ GOLDEN RICE HUMANITARIAN BOARD ADMITS TO HUMAN FEEDING TRIALS
The Golden Rice Project has admitted on its web site that it was involved in a number of projects involving the feeding of unauthorized GM rice to both adults and children in China and the USA. The admission was made following a formal protest from a group of scientists from across the world on the grounds that Golden Rice is inadequately characterized in the literature, unauthorized anywhere in the world, and untested on animals.  The protest letter, signed by 32 senior scientists from a number of disciplines and sent to the Tufts University Medical School in the USA, claimed that the feeding trials were in breach of the Nuremberg Code, brought in at the end of the Second World War to prevent any repetition of the experiments conducted by Nazi scientists - many of them involving children. Read: The Golden Rice Scandal Unfolds
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/goldenRiceScandal.php

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FOOD CRISIS
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+ FEEDING THE WORLD: ARE GM CROPS FIT FOR PURPOSE?
Presentations and sound files from this important conference are now available.
http://www.feedingtheworldconference.org/presentations.html

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FACT SHEET ON GM
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Useful "fact sheet" on GM in English:
http://www.gmwatch.eu/archives/59-FACT-FILE-ON-GM-CROPS.html
and translated into German:
http://www.gmwatch.eu/archives/58-DATEN-UND-FAKTEN-ZU-GENTECH-PFLANZEN.html

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BOOK
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+ STUFFED AND STARVED - REVIEWED
Read a great review by Iain Boal, the social historian of science and technics at the University of California, Berkeley, of Raj Patel's important book, Stuffed and Starved.
http://www.grassrootsnetroots.org/articles/article_17302.cfm

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GARAGE BIOTECH
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+ THE GENETICIST IN THE GARAGE
Are bio-hackers a danger to us all? http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/mar/19/biohacking-genetics-research

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MEDIAWATCH
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+ GM CROPS HAVE NOTHING TO OFFER
A recent article in The (UK) Independent claimed organic farming doesn't add up; ancient forests must be axed; nature needs GM crops; more coal-fired power stations are vital; and nuclear power and buying goods from China are the best way to combat climate change:
http://wildsingaporenews.blogspot.com/2009/03/inconvenient-truths-dont-believe.html
Clio Turton of the Soil Association responded: "In many parts of the world, modern organic systems can, and do, produce as much or more food than both oil/chemical-based non-organic farming and traditional systems. GM crops do not increase yields, as GM campaigners claim. In the real world, the latest, higher-yielding varieties of soya sold in the US are not GM but from normal crop breeding. As labelling of GM (which Barack Obama favours) starts to force its way into the US marketplace, the last stronghold of GM food is crumbling. This is an old technology with nothing to offer the future. "
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/letters/letters-the-northern-irish-educational-system-1644914.html
More comments
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/inconvenient-truths-dont-believe-the-greenwash-1635867.html