GMWatch News Review archive

from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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Dear all:

Tony Hall, the U.S. ambassador to the FAO, has renewed his call for African leaders who refuse the U.S.'s GM-contaminated food aid to be tried for "crimes against humanity". It appears to be part of a viral marketing strategy aimed at painting the U.S. and biotech as the saviours of Africa and those that raise concerns as genocidal villains. And lobbyists like CS Prakash and Willie DeGreef have been joining in the chorus. (LOBBYWATCH)

The most important piece of news this week is the TERMINATOR ACTION ALERT - our first item below. leaked documents reveal how the Canadian government has been secretly planning to unleash the hated Terminator sterile-seed technology upon the world. They must be stopped and time is running short. Please act IMMEDIATELY to prevent this catastrophe - a series of simple actions are outlined.

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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TERMINATOR ACTION ALERT
TOP TEN GM READS
LOBBYWATCH
EUROPE
THE AMERICAS
ASIA
AUSTRALASIA
FOOD SAFETY
MORE TERMINATOR ACTION DETAILS

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TERMINATOR ACTION ALERT!!!
- PLEASE FORWARD TO ALL YOUR CONTACTS
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+ EMAIL THE CANADIAN GOVT TODAY PROTESTING PLAN TO UNLEASH TERMINATOR
Canada with the support of New Zealand and Australia is working to break the seal on the current moratorium on Terminator, a leaked Canadian document seen by The Guardian newspaper amongst others reveals:
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4876

+ GUARDIAN'S JOHN VIDAL ON CANADIAN TERMINATOR MOVE
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4885

+ ACTION STATIONS!
PLEASE e-mail, fax or phone the HEAD OF CANADA'S DELEGATION in Bangkok, the Canadian Prime Minister, the Minister of Agriculture and the President of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency TODAY.

*Head of the Canadian Delegation in Bangkok, Robert McLean, Environment Canada, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Tel +1 (819) 9971303*

For easy e-mail action on Canadian government visit the following web address to TAKE ACTION NOW:
http://www.thecampaign.org/alert_terminator.php

OTHER CONTACT DETAILS FOR CANADIANS & EXAMPLE LETTER AT END OF WEEKLY WATCH

*For more information on Terminator Technology:
www.etcgroup.org/documents/TermCom03.pdf

+ EMAIL NEW ZEALAND GOVT TODAY
New Zealand and Australia are the only two nations backing Canada's attempt to overturn the ban on Terminator technologies at the UN Conference in Bangkok. GE Free NZ and the NZ Green Party have called on the NZ Government to oppose Terminator. The NZ Government is refusing, stating that "opinion is divided", i.e. they, with Canada and Australia are divided from the rest of the world!

To send your protest to New Zealand Ministers email:
-Environment Minister: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
-Trade Negotiations Minister: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
-Research, Science & Tech Minister: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
-Economic Development Minister: jim.anderton at parliament.govt.nz
-Foreign Affairs Minister: phil.goff at parliament.govt.nz
Urge them to change New Zealand's stance on Terminator technology at Friday's final meeting.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4890

+ UK: MORLEY URGED TO OPPOSE TERMINATOR GENES
The Five Year Freeze, a campaign supported by around 200 National organisations and companies, representing over 4 million people, plus 500 local councils, has urged UK environment minister Elliott Morley to oppose the Canadian government's attempt to railroad in Terminator.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4879

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TOP TEN GM READS
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The current edition of The Ecologist (Vol. 35, No.1, Feb 2005) lists GM Watch's "top reads" on GM.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4888

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LOBBYWATCH
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+ NEW U.S. CALL FOR AFRICAN LEADERS TO BE TRIED FOR "CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY"
Tony Hall, the US ambassador to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, has repeated his call for African leaders who refuse the US's GM-contaminated food aid to be tried for "crimes against humanity".

When Hall originally called in 2002 for these leaders to be tried, organisations from over 30 different countries around the world responded with a powerful open letter calling for an apology for a "reckless comment" which "reeks of hypocrisy and bad political judgment and has no legal basis in international law". Hall's comment, the letter said, "serves only to further damage the reputation of the US government already suffering for its unilateral, aggressive and abusive foreign policy."

But, however ludicrous and inflammatory Hall's comments may have been, it has played its part in a viral marketing strategy aimed at painting the US and biotech as the saviours of Africa and those that raise concerns as villains. This can be seen from an article for FrontPageMagazine.com in which the refusal of GM food aid in Africa is listed by an American commentator, in a piece marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, as an example of a modern crime against humanity.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4889

+ BIOTECH REJECTION AN "OUTRAGE" AND "TRAGEDY" IN DEVELOPING WORLD
Willie DeGreef, described as "a biotechnology consultant from Belgium", has told a US Grains Council meeting in California that it is an outrage and tragedy when third world policy makers reject "genetically enhanced foods" and "state that they'd rather have their children starve than to eat".

DeGreef is quoted as saying, "How did we get that far; who was responsible for whispering (those) messages to those policy makers," who rejected GM food aid. "That is something that I would rather sooner or later want to find out, because you're talking about literally crimes against humanity."

This is fantastically misleading. In the case of Zambia, the country that is most often quoted in relation to the rejection of GM food aid, president Levy Mwanawasa only reaffirmed his rejection of US GM maize on the advice of his own experts.

This was a transparent process in which pro-GM scientists had ample opportunity to more than whisper their messages. A delegation of Zambian scientists and economists, headed by Dr Wilson Mwenya of the National Science and Technology Council, completed a fact-finding tour of laboratories and regulatory offices in South Africa, Europe and the US, before reporting back to the president. The report concluded that studies on the safety of GM foods are inconclusive, and the US maize should be rejected as a precautionary measure. And there is absolutely no evidence that anybody died as a consequence of the president's decision.

Willie DeGreef somehow fails to mention that he used to punt GM foods for Syngenta.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4883

+ ROCKEFELLER PRESIDENT IS NEW MAN AT DFID
A campaign to push more public money into GMOs has received a major boost with the appointment of a leading GM proponent to help oversee the international aid programmes of Britain's Department for International Development (DFID).

The campaign has been underway for some time on both sides of the Atlantic. Only last week, for instance, the Rockefeller-funded Center for Science in the Public Interest called for extra public investment into GMOs.

In the UK, as the biotech industry has gone into almost total retreat, the pro-GM lobby group Sense About Science has been seeking to fill the vacuum via a lengthy campaign in support of "public good plant breeding". The aim of this campaign, backed by the John Innes Centre amongst others, is to help raise more public and foundation money for the introduction of plants developed through biotechnology into the developing world.
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=151

Sense About Science works in close coordination with the Royal Society, the UK's pro-GM national academy of science. The RS has strongly lobbied for a post of "chief scientist" to be established at DFID to oversee the UK government's international aid programmes.

DFID has now appointed Gordon Conway as its chief scientific adviser. Until recently, Conway was president of the Rockefeller Foundation. Predictably, the appointment has been warmly welcomed by the Royal Society.

In 1999, Conway, the author of "The Doubly Green Revolution: Food for All in the 21st Century", was able to tell a meeting organised by Monsanto that "the Rockefeller Foundation has funded over $100 million dollars of plant biotechnology research and trained over four hundred scientists from Asia, Africa and Latin America". Not all of that money was spent on promoting GM, but a sizeable amount was, with Golden Rice being notable among the Foundation's pet projects. And Conway has made clear his own personal support for the technology.
More: http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4881

+ PRAKASH PUSHING GMOS IN AFRICA
CS Prakash has written a piece for the Nigerian press with the sub-heading, "Africa needs GMOs to survive the impending continental famine". In his usual shameless manner, Prakash warns that yields of sweet potato in "African nations are dangerously low - in some cases losing up to 80 per cent of expected yields due to the sweet potato weevil and also the feathery mottle virus (SPFMV)". Prakash then goes on to say, "Research is under way on sweet potatoes that produce their own protection against SPFMV".

But the impact of SPFMV has been shown to have been hugely overstated and not even to be the main viral risk for sweet potatoes. And when Prakash says the "research is underway" he fails to mention that it's already been "underway" for over 12 years, that it has wasted millions of dollars and that it has proved totally useless! Despite which, Prakash has repeatedly cited the GM sweet potato as an example of a GM success for Africa!
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4889
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=131
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=106
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=131

+ FUREDI REHAB EFFORT
An article in the Times Higher Education Supplement focuses on the Godfather of the ferociously pro-GM "LM" network, Frank Furedi.

The article provides Furedi with a platform to bemoan George Monbiot's December 2003 piece - drawing on research by GM WATCH - revealing how former members of Furedi's Revolutionary Communist Party have turned up in lobby groups used to promote GM and other controversial genetic technologies: Sense About Science, Science Media Centre, Genetic Interest Group, Progress, Genepool, etc.

Furedi claims to have been "dogged" by the Monbiot article. He tells the Times Higher that not only were copies sent to his vice-chancellor, but when he was in Phoenix, Arizona on a lecture tour, people were "coming up to me with copies of Monbiot's article asking me what I was up to".

For Furedi this constitutes persecution akin to the worst excesses of the last century. "It is so fascistic. It is McCarthyism," he complains. "It was characteristic of the Right to talk about masonic conspiracy, about Jewish plots, but now we are seeing parts of the Left being obsessed with this kind of stuff."

In view of the contempt Furedi often expresses for victim culture, it's interesting to note his equating of the sending of articles to his vice chancellor, or being asked questions in an Arizona meeting, with fascistic oppression, McCarthyite persecution and the scapegoating of Jews. In his own case, it seems, he's only too happy to invoke the victimhood he has always railed against.

Furedi's self-pity is also nauseating when one considers the real vilification and persecution experienced by those who've run up against the kinds of forces Furedi and his followers have happily excused and encouraged - from the Wise Users to ethically challenged corporations and the Serb and Hutu militias!

Perhaps the most incisive comments in the article are those of the sociologist Laurie Taylor who wonders why "all these former Trotskyists agree in detail on what appears to be in essence a right-wing platform and how can they call themselves academics if they appear to deny independent thought? You might have expected them to travel in a variety of directions after the collapse of their revolutionary dream in the Nineties, but many peddle similar lines."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4875

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EUROPE
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+ WALES LEADS EUROPE IN PROTECTING CROPS FROM GM THREAT
Wales has joined with other like-minded European regions in Florence to discuss measures for protecting conventional and organic agriculture from the risks of genetic modification. At a meeting of the European Regions Network (ERM), which was part founded by Wales, suggestions for strict coexistence measures were put forward to protect European farming from contamination from GM crops.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4887

+ EUROPEAN GM-FREE REGIONS NETWORK SET UP IN FLORENCE
Allowing regional governments to take a clear stance against GMOs is the goal of "OGM-free", a European regional governments network set up in Florence by the regional government of Tuscany. Nineteen regional governments have already signed a document named "Europe's Regional Governments and Local Authorities Charter", which aims at safeguarding genuine and high-quality products, increasing the autonomy of farmers.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4887

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THE AMERICAS
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+ ASSAULT ON LOCAL DEMOCRACY IN IOWA AND BEYOND
The last 12 months have been the most inspiring yet as far as local activism on GM in the US is concerned. In Vermont 79 towns passed resolutions against GMOs, while the state government passed a groundbreaking seed-labelling bill. In California, voters in Mendocino county passed the first law in the US to ban GM releases into the environment. Other counties have followed suit.

A backlash against local communities taking action was inevitable and here's an item that might set many good folks in Iowa and beyond up in arms as it is a direct assault on local democracy, and specifically local ordinances controlling GM seeds.

"HF 202" is being pushed (or should it be 'sneaked in'?) by Rep Sandy Greiner who, we're told, has previously been an advocate for special interests. The proposed bill is for "An Act relating to the regulation of agricultural seed, by providing for preemption of local legislation".

The ACT would stop "a local governmental entity, including a county, special district, township, or city, from adopting or enforcing legislation which relates to the production, use, advertising, sale, distribution, storage, transportation, formulation, packaging, labeling, certification, or registration of agricultural seed. The local legislation is void and unenforceable."

Iowa is not the only front for "pre-emption": it seems a broader effort is under way to nullify the voter initiatives that began in Mendocino County last year and spread to Marin, San Luis Obispo, Butte, Humboldt and, most recently, Sonoma counties.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4886

+ HAWAII: GOVT FORCED TO REVEAL PHARMCROP TEST SITES
In a first step toward public disclosure of test sites of biopharmaceutical crops, the US Department of Agriculture was forced by court order on February 4 to reveal the locations of these sites in Hawaii. Following the ruling, representatives of the USDA handed over to Earthjustice attorneys information on the precise locations of open-air field tests of biopharmaceutical crops genetically engineered to produce industrial chemicals and drugs. This marks the first time the federal government has been forced to disclose the location of field tests of GM crops since it began systematically hiding these locations from the public.

"Allowing food crops to be engineered to produce chemicals or drugs is bad enough," said Peter Jenkins of the Center for Food Safety, one of the groups fighting the case, "but hiding the location of the test fields from an at-risk public is indefensible. Yet we find our own government fighting on the side of the biotech industry to keep the public in the dark about drug-laced food crops."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4884

+ PHARMCROPS AND BIOTERROR
In a letter to Nature Biotechnology, US EPA toxicologist Suzanne Wuerthele criticizes an article which recommended the production, through GM, of pathogen-resistant crops and animals as counterattacks to bioterror agents that might be used against the US.

Wuerthele says, "It might be productive for the biotech industry to first consider how genetically modified crops themselves could contribute to terrorist attacks. Just a few bushels of 'pharmcorn' producing a swine vaccine could, if strategically planted by terrorists, contaminate virtually the entire US corn supply and close international markets to us for years."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4873

+ ARKANSAS RICE GROWERS REJECT "PHARMA RICE"
The Arkansas Rice Growers Association has voted to approve legislative efforts to ban the production of pharmaceutical or industrial rice in Arkansas. Because of the imminent threat that "pharma" rice will be planted in the Missouri Bootheel this spring, the potential for domestic and export market disruption from even a small acreage of rice containing human genes is serious, according to Greg Yielding, executive director of ARGA.

The vote came in response to Ventria Bioscience's leaving California and relocating to Missouri, where they hope to plant their GM drug-producing rice this year.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4873

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ASIA
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+ FOOD, HEALTH AND BRIBES
For decades Monsanto has been claiming that their GM crops are tested and safe. But in Indonesia, Monsanto employees used bribery to try to buy the company out of the need for an environmental impact statement. The questions now go beyond Indonesia. If Monsanto finds it necessary to bribe at least 140 officials and family members for half a decade in a country that only makes less then 1% of its overall revenue ... what can we expect in other places where there's more at stake? All human safety data for Monsanto's GM crops - if indeed any exists - are provided to regulators in countries around the world by Monsanto itself.

Excellent article on the Indonesian scandal at http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4874

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AUSTRALASIA
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+ AUSTRALIA: POULTRY GIANTS QUAIL AT GM FOOD PROTESTS
A consumer backlash against GM food has prompted the three largest poultry companies, which produce 80 per cent of chicken sold in Australia, to stop using GM feed. Inghams, Bartter Steggles and Baiada are expected to announce that they will phase out the use of imported GM soy. The decision has been described by Greenpeace as "a major win for consumer power", and follows thousands of phone calls, faxes and letters to the poultry companies.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4891

+ GM COTTON FOR USE IN NZ FOODS: PUBLIC COMMENTS SOUGHT
The trans-Tasman food standards authority says it is safe to eat foods containing ingredients made from some GM cotton. Food Standards Australia New Zealand has announced it is seeking public submissions, by March 23, on the use in foods of GE cotton from the Monsanto strain MON88913, which has been engineered to tolerate glyphosate herbicides, such as the company's Roundup.

At the end of last year, Food Standards' managing director, Ian Lindenmayer announced the approval of foods made using oil and "linters" from Syngenta's GM cotton, COT102, Bollgard II. It was the 20th GM food ingredient to be approved for sale by Food Standards, which said that foods containing oil and linters from the GM cotton would be exempt from GM labelling, because those two parts of the cotton did not contain engineered proteins. [GM WATCH comment: this is unconfirmed. Samples of soy oil have been found to contain detectable GM proteins.]
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4891

+ NEW ZEALAND: EMAIL BLAST PUTS HEAT ON GM BEANS
In case anyone doubts the value of a good old e-mail protest...

A can of chilli beans containing GM corn may be withdrawn from New Zealand supermarkets after opponents swamped the importer with protest emails. The Australasian general manager of the US-based importer Hormel Foods, Scott Martin, said yesterday that he had received 1000 emails from New Zealand "Green Party supporters" in the past week asking him to withdraw the product, and he was considering doing so.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4878

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FOOD SAFETY
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+ GM FOOD FIGHT: DAVID SCHUBERT
An article on the lack of safety tests on GM foods, citing various scientists, is at
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4882

EXCERPT:
GE food skeptic Dave R. Schubert can't be dismissed as some granola-brained ecohippie. He is head of the Salk Institute's Cellular and Neurobiology Lab, with a doctorate in cell biology from UC San Diego.

"The problem is that experimental biotechnology is applied to food with no mandatory safety testing," Schubert said. Allergies have gone up considerably in the decade since genetically engineered foods were introduced, he said.

Schubert carefully adds that he is not saying such a link exists; there just isn't enough evidence to say either way. That's what bothers him.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4882

+ MONSANTO'S BOVINE GROWTH HORMONE STILL THREATENS HEALTH
The Cancer Prevention Coalition and Organic Consumers Association have released a statement replying to the Hudson Institute's agribusiness-funded Center for Global Food Issues' "Milk is Milk" campaign. "Milk is Milk" assures consumers that there is no difference between natural milk and that from cows injected with Monsanto's GM Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH).

The statement is by Samuel S. Epstein, MD, of the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health and chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition; and Ronnie Cummins, director of the Organic Consumers Association.

The statement says that contrary to Hudson's claims, there is a wealth of scientific information on the toxic veterinary effects of rBGH, major differences between rBGH and natural milk, and cancer risks posed by rBGH milk.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4872

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ACTION ALERT - CONTACT DETAILS
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Head of the Canadian Delegation in Bangkok, Robert McLean, Environment Canada, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Tel +1 (819) 9971303

Canada's Prime Minister Right Hon. Paul Martin This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Fax: (613) 941-6900, Tel: (613) 992-4211

Hon. Andy Mitchell, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Fax: (613) 991-2147 Tel: (613) 996-3434

F.B. Fadden, President, Canadian Food Inspection Agency This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Fax: 228 6608 Tel: (613) 225-2342 extension 3737

SAMPLE LETTER (also at http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4877):

Prime Minister Paul Martin, House of Commons, Ottawa, Ontario

Dear Mr Martin,

I am writing to urgently request that you continue support for the current international ban on Terminator Technology, officially known as Genetic Use Restriction Technologies (GURTS).

Terminator technology was developed jointly by the US government and the seed industry to prevent farmers from saving seed from one year's harvest and replanting it the next season. It is considered the most controversial and immoral agricultural application of genetic engineering to date. Massive public opposition to the introduction of these "suicide seeds" in 1998 forced the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to impose a de facto moratorium on further development of GURTS.

Until recently, only a few multinational seed companies and the US government were pressing for a lifting of the ban on GURTS. But it now appears that the Canadian government is aiding and abetting these vested interests.

According to leaked instructions to the Canadian delegation at SBSTTA 10 (a scientific advisory body to the CBD) in Bangkok, Thailand, Canada will insist on Wednesday, February 9, 2005, that governments accept the field testing and commercialization of GURTS varieties. Canadian negotiators have been instructed to undermine an official UN report recommending that governments seek prohibitions on GURTS technology. They have also been instructed to "block consensus" on other options if the ban is not lifted.

Farmers have an inalienable right to save, re-use, and exchange seed based on the traditional practices of thousands of generations of cultivators worldwide. The lifting of the moratorium on GURTS would effectively end farmers' rights to save seed and pose a serious threat to food sovereignty.

It is appalling that the Canadian government is adopting such heavy-handed tactics in support of multinational seed companies and the US government. The Canadian delegation's strategy in Bangkok has to be abandoned. The Canadian government must reverse its stand on this issue and join with other governments to prohibit the GURTS technology once and for all.

In the interests of the world's farmers and people everywhere, I urge you, as Prime Minister, to immediately take action on this critical issue by directing the Canadian delegation to support the moratorium on GURTS.

Sincerely,
..