GMWatch News Review archive

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WEEKLY WATCH number 305
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from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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Dear all:

Just days after the US Dept of Agriculture de-regulated GM alfalfa, it defied a court order and gave the go-ahead to the planting of GM sugar beet. In matters of food and ag policy, it must be crystal-clear to every American citizen by now that President Obama and his agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack are not out to protect their interests, but Monsanto's. Fortunately, America has the Center for Food Safety, which will take the USDA to court over its decisions on both GM crops (U.S. GREEN LIGHT FOR GM ALFALFA AND SUGAR BEETS).

European regulators are also in legal hot water over some decidedly dodgy GM-related activities (EUROPE).

Finally, if you're in Canada make sure you're supporting Bill C-174 which will help to stop GM seed approvals being made at the expense of farmers. Final vote: February 9th. Act now! http://www.cban.ca

Claire <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
www.gmwatch.org / www.lobbywatch.org
Profiles: http://bit.ly/12UAI2
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GMWatch
Facebook: http://bit.ly/c6OnaX

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CONTENTS
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U.S. GREEN LIGHT FOR GM ALFALFA AND SUGAR BEETS
CORPORATE CRIMES
EUROPE
LOBBYWATCH
CLONING
ASIA
AFRICA
FEEDING THE WORLD

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U.S. GREEN LIGHT FOR GM ALFALFA AND SUGAR BEETS
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+ GM ALFALFA - BAD SOLUTION TO PROBLEM THAT DOESN'T EXIST
Following the US Dept of Agriculture's announcement that it has de-regulated Monsanto's GM Roundup Ready alfalfa, sustainable food systems advocate and author Michael Pollan commented, "93 percent of alfalfa hay is grown without any herbicide at all", which means that the GM RR alfalfa "is a bad solution to a problem that doesn't exist".
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12844

+ ROUNDUP - THE PESTICIDE POISED TO "PUSH US OFF THE CLIFF"
The USDA's approval of yet another crop (GM alfalfa) dependent on dousings with Roundup raises serious human health concerns involving the pesticide, says an article from the Rodale Institute. You can't wash it off your fruit and veg because it builds up in the plant. And the Roundup Ready system means there's much more of it in the food supply than ever before. Plant pathologist Dr Don Huber, professor emeritus of Purdue University, says, "It's the most abused chemical we've ever had in agriculture. We're using chemical quantities we never would have imagined in the past."

When looking at all the negative effects of Roundup, Huber says the repercussions of introducing Roundup Ready technology to another crop, like alfalfa, could be disastrous. "If indications hold true, we're set up for the greatest disaster that this country or the world has ever seen, that will dwarf any major famine or drought that has ever been recorded," says Huber. He believes going through with the newly-approved GM alfalfa plantings will "push us off of the cliff" in terms of irreversible damage to the food supply. It would be impossible, he says, to reverse widespread GM contamination, particularly in a perennial crop like alfalfa, which also grows feral on roadsides and in yards.
http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/12853

+ ROW IN ORGANIC COMMUNITY OVER ALFALFA
Ronnie Cummins of the Organic Consumers Association criticized Whole Foods Market (WFM) and other big organic companies for "surrendering" to Monsanto and betraying organic consumers and producers. WFM had advised people to lobby the USDA to to approve the "conditional deregulation" of Monsanto's GM Roundup Ready alfalfa. WFM defended its position by saying that the USDA had made it clear to them that an outright ban on GM alfalfa plantings, while officially one of the options that the USDA was putting forward, wasn't in fact an option at all. So WFM told people to lobby for what it saw as the realistic option of "conditional deregulation" and "co-existence", saying it wanted to ensure GM companies paid compensation to organic and conventional farmers whose crop was contaminated. As it turned out, USDA gave the finger to the entire organic community, realists and idealists alike - and simply de-regulated GM alfalfa with no conditions at all.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_22449.cfm
http://blog.wholefoodsmarket.com/2011/01/urgent-action-needed-to-support-organics-and-non-ge-crops/

+ OPPONENTS OF GM ALFALFA BRACE FOR LEGAL FIGHT
The Center for Food Safety will sue the USDA for its "improper and illegal approval" of GM alfalfa. You can contribute to CFS's legal fighting fund here:
http://bit.ly/hBCShc
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12844

+ USDA ALLOWS PLANTING OF GM SUGAR BEETS DESPITE COURT ORDER
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA)'s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has defied a court order and issued a new decision to allow the US sugar beet industry to continue growing Monsanto's Roundup Ready GM sugar beets. The decision will be immediately challenged in court by a coalition of farmers and conservation groups: the Center for Food Safety, Organic Seed Alliance, High Mowing Organic Seeds, and the Sierra Club. This is the same coalition that in August last year had APHIS's previous decision to allow planting thrown out because it violated environmental laws. The coalition declared the new decision unlawful as well, and vowed to overturn it.

"There is clear evidence of harm to the environment from GE sugar beets," said Paige Tomaselli, Staff Attorney for the Center for Food Safety. "Because USDA continues to bow to industry pressure and permits further commercial production of Roundup Ready sugar beets, without first preparing an EIS or protecting the public, the Center for Food Safety will once again seek to halt the planting in court."

A Reuters report said of the move that it marked "the second-such boost by the United States for contested biotech crops in a week, and underscores US determination to expand the use of GMO crops amid rising global fears over food security and surging prices." The Wall Street Journal said, "The USDA decision is the second big victory for the crop-biotechnology industry in a week."
http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/12861
http://bit.ly/gH9Lir

And check out Tom Philpott's latest take on the USDA's most recent cave-in to the biotech industry.
http://bit.ly/gH9Lir

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CORPORATE CRIMES
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+ ARGENTINA: ANOTHER RTRS COMPANY CHARGED WITH SLAVE-LIKE TREATMENT OF WORKERS
Argentine authorities have charged agribusiness company Pioneer SA, a subsidiary of GM/chemical company DuPont, with human trafficking, keeping workers in slave-labour conditions in its facility in Cordoba, and tax evasion, according to an article in an Argentine newspaper. Pioneer and DuPont are members of the soy producers' association AAPRESID (members include Monsanto, BASF, Bunge, Bayer, and Syngenta), which in turn is a member of the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS). RTRS will launch its "responsible soy" greenwash label this spring. This report follows a similar case of GM seed company and RTRS member Nidera being accused by the authorities of keeping workers in slave-like conditions and tax evasion. Nidera was reportedly fined, though it is unclear on which particular charge.
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12845

+ EUROPE: DUTCH NGOs CRITICIZED FOR SUPPORTING "RESPONSIBLE" SOY LABEL
Nine Belgian environmental and North/South organisations have expressed their concern about a "responsible" label on toxic soy, much of which will be GM. The letter has been sent to their colleagues in the Dutch NGOs Solidaridad, WWF, IUCN, Both Ends, ICCO and SNM. These organisations have backed the RTRS by writing to retailers and asking them to buy "responsible" soy.

The nine organisations say in their letter: "In our opinion the RTRS criteria do not offer 'responsible soy'. On the contrary, they legitimise a system of production that is not sustainable: the large scale cultivation of herbicide-resistant crops. This approach is misleading the critical consumer. It delays other necessary approaches like slowing down of intensive animal industry and transition to locally produced animal feed. A 'responsible' RTRS label for industrial soy means nothing substantial for humans or environment. It does mislead consumers. It provides greenwash for companies like Monsanto, Cargill and Unilever."
http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/12860

+ LAND GRAB IN ARGENTINA FOR SOY PRODUCTION
The Government of the Province of Rio Negro, Argentina and one of China's largest agribusiness companies are moving forward on an agreement that hands over thousands of hectares of land in Argentina for the production of soybean and cereal crops for export. Much of the soy will be GM.
http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/12860

+ GERMANY: AUTHOR OF ANTI-GM PAMPHLET IN PRISON FOR LIBERATING GM FIELD
Recently we announced the publication of the English translation of the German pamphlet, 'Organised Irresponsibility', which exposes the close networks of government, industry and PR people based in Germany who promote GM. We've just been told that the author of the pamphlet, Jorg Bergstedt, is in prison. He is serving a six-month sentence for "liberating" a field of GM barley, a field trial of the University of Giessen. He will be released around 20 March.
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12845

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EUROPE
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+ EU COMMISSION PREPARES (DODGY) LIST FOR BANNING GM CROPS
The EU Commission has proposed that issues of public morals, public order and "historical heritage" could be cited by member state governments as grounds for imposing a national ban on the cultivation of GM crops. National experts and the Commission will discuss the issue this coming week, as part of the process of changing the rules of the EU's system for approving GM crops for cultivation. Since the draft directive on GM cultivation was published last June, talks have become entangled in legal issues. Several member states doubt the robustness of the Commission's proposal and think that bans imposed on such grounds would be subject to challenge by the WTO (World Trade Organisation) and GM companies. The plan, presented by John Dalli, the European commissioner for health and consumer policy, is to give governments greater leeway to ban GM crop cultivation, as long as they do not base their decision on health or environmental grounds.

GMWatch comment: We are not lawyers, but it seems to us that it might be difficult to prove in court that allowing the planting of GM crops would undermine public morals. Dalli's proposal seems intended to provide an inadequate national fig leaf in exchange for speeding up EU-wide GM approvals.
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12847

+ COMMISSIONER DALLI GIVES FALSE TESTIMONY ON LONG-TERM TESTS ON GMOs
During a hearing conducted by the European Parliament on 12 January 2011 on the safety assessments of GMOs, Commissioner John Dalli was asked why the EFSA/EU Commission don't conduct the long term tests that are explicitly prescribed by European law. Dalli answered that the conducting of long term tests "is not a commission function, but member state function". But this is false, says Dr Christoph Palme, legal advisor, Court Action GMOs (Aktion Genklage), Germany. Palme says in law, the safety assessment is the sole responsibility of the EU Commission and member states don't have any say in it.
http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/12855

+ SENIOR U.S. GM SCIENTIST GIVES MISLEADING EVIDENCE IN EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
US GM scientist Prof. Martina Nevell-McGloughin told the European Parliament on 12 January 2011 that the US regulatory system was supervising GMOs extremely well and that the GM risk assessment in the US was thorough and reliable, reports lawyer Dr Christoph Palme, legal advisor, Court Action GMOs (Aktion Genklage), Germany.

Palme says that US courts have shown Nevell-McGloughin's claims to be false in two cases over the past three years: "Those decisions, which both concerned Monsanto products, rocked the whole US regulatory system. It is hardly imaginable that an expert like Nevell-McGloughin, who has been working on prominent position since 1992 in the field of GMOs, didn't know that, when she gave her speech in the EP claiming just the opposite. This is even more true, as the first court order of this kind has been given by a district court in California ... Nevell-McGloughin has been working since 1992 at the University of California, Davis."
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12849

+ EU COMMISSION FACES TWO LAWSUITS OVER RELEASE OF GM AMFLORA POTATO
The legal organisation Justice & Environment is suing the EU Commission over the release of the Amflora GM potato. J & E argues that the Commission was acting in defiance of its own laws. This is a separate lawsuit from the one that is being brought by the Hungarian government against the Commission for its authorisation of Amflora.
http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/12854

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LOBBYWATCH
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+ FORESIGHT REPORT IS "DESPERATE PLEA" FOR GM
The UK's Foresight report, Global Food and Farming Futures, delivered by the UK's chief scientist John Beddington on 24 January 2011, provides few surprises and offers no new proposals, says Patrick Mulvany of the development charity Practical Action. Mulvany writes:

"It could have been different and saved the taxpayer a lot of money had government and the scientific establishment not been so 'willfully deaf' about recognising and taking forward the findings of the World Bank and UN sponsored global scientific assessment of the future of agriculture - the IAASTD reports (International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development) - approved by the UK government and 57 others in 2008.

"IAASTD ... found that small-scale, more agroecological and organic production methods, based on local knowledge and especially women's skills and protected from damaging globalised markets, were the way forward to avert hunger, improve equity and restore the environment now and in the next 40 years.

"What the Foresight report does do, though, is make the almost desperate plea that for UK science to be involved in what it claims is globally relevant research for food and agriculture the UK must embrace GM foods - a somewhat odd conclusion given that most people in the world eat GM-free food produced locally by small-scale food providers: farmers, livestock keepers, artisanal fishers."
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12842

+ THE LAST THING OUR HUNGRY WORLD NEEDS IS MORE FOOD
Acclaimed science writer, Fred Pearce, also takes apart the Foresight report's assumptions.
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12863

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CLONING
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+ CLONING FARM ANIMALS - NEW BRIEFING
GM Freeze has published a briefing on the introduction of products from the offspring of cloned farm animals into the UK food chain. The briefing looks at the current positions of the Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Food Standards Agency (FSA). Despite deep public concern about the ethics and safety of cloning, both organisations want to allow products such as meat and milk from clone offspring to enter the food chain without mandatory regulatory safety approval and without labels.

The European Group on Ethics (EGE) in Science and New Technologies report in 2008 said: "Considering the current level of suffering and health problems of surrogate dams and animal clones, the Group has doubts as to whether cloning for food is justified... At present, the EGE does not see convincing arguments to justify the production of food from clones and their offspring."
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12846
Download report: http://www.gmfreeze.org/uploads/clones_2011_FINAL.pdf

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ASIA
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+ INDIA: MORATORIUM SOUGHT ON GM CROPS
http://bit.ly/fZvGrb

+ INDIA: SEEDY DEALS
India is planning to replace its GMO regulations under the Environment Protection Act with a Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (Brai) Act, writes Vandana Shiva in an article for the Deccan Chronicle. This will give GMOs fast-track approvals and throw their critics into jail. The recently-appointed minister of science and technology, Ashwini Kumar, has announced that the Government of India is planning to introduce four bills in the upcoming Budget session that will prepare the path for GMOs. The Prime Minister's Office has already written to various state governments suggesting partnerships with corporations in the seed sector.

Shiva says, "In India, the same scientists who promote GMOs sit on regulatory bodies. When the environment minister asked six academies of science to provide their scientific inputs for the Bt brinjal moratorium, what they submitted was propaganda material lifted verbatim from industry literature."
http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/12856

+ PHILIPPINES: AGRICULTURE AGENCIES ILLEGALLY PROMOTING GM
http://bit.ly/dZHgA5

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THE AMERICAS
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+ URUGUAY: ANOTHER FAMILY POISONED BY SOY PRODUCERS
Another report has emerged of a rural family suffering severe long-term health problems from the aerial spraying of agrochemicals on GM soy. Unusual livestock deaths have also been linked to the spraying. The surface planted with GM soy in Uruguay has increased in the past five years, and now reaches 900 thousand hectares.
http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/12858

+ GM CORN MOVES FORWARD IN PARAGUAY
in January the Paraguayan Institute of Agricultural Technology (IPTA) - recently created by President Fernando Lugo - authorized Monsanto to experimentally grow GM corn. Paraguay is one of several Latin American countries where GM soy production has caused the destruction of forest and other vulnerable lands, violent land grabs, displacement of indigenous peoples. The huge increases in the use of Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller and other agrotoxins have caused major health problems in rural people.

The National Coordinator of Rural and Indigenous Women Workers (CONAMURI) commented on the GM corn development, "Genetically modified organisms and pesticides on the table mean more exclusion, more misery, more needless deaths, more dependence on multinational corporations and more humiliation for Paraguay."
http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/12857

+ MEXICO'S NOBLE GRAIN UNDER ASSAULT
Monsanto wants to expand GM maize planting in Mexico, but this would inevitably cause contamination of native varieties, said Elena Alvarez-Buylla Roces, a molecular geneticist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
http://bit.ly/gH9Lir

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AFRICA
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+ WATER-EFFICIENT MAIZE FOR AFRICA TO LEVER GM CROPS INTO AFRICA
A new paper in the Biosafety in Africa series looks at the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) project that forms part of the race by agribusiness corporations to bring climate change-related crops to the market. The paper explains the WEMA project within this context, outlining the players and the stakes involved. It looks at who stands to benefit from the project and what the African countries involved are asked to sacrifice. The paper also looks at Monsanto's strategic positioning within this climate change race and how it intends to use WEMA as leverage to bring its controversial crops to a wider global market, simultaneously opening up key markets in Africa for its GM crops. Finally, the African Centre for Biosafety makes recommendations for appropriate agricultural systems in Africa.
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12848

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FEEDING THE WORLD
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+ U.S. LOOKS TO MONSANTO TO FEED THE WORLD
At the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, US Agency for International Development (USAID) Director Rajiv Shah stood beside CEOs from Monsanto and other infamous giant corporations and announced US support for a "New Vision for Agriculture." Claiming that "large-scale private sector partnerships [can] achieve significant impact on global hunger and nutrition," Shah introduced the initiative's 17 agribusiness "champions": Archer Daniels Midland, BASF, Bunge Limited, Cargill, Coca-Cola, DuPont, General Mills, Kraft Foods, Metro AG, Monsanto Company, Nestle, PepsiCo, SABMiller, Syngenta, Unilever, Wal-Mart, and Yara International. Yes, we should be worried, says Marcia Ishii-Eiteman of PAN North America: "Most of these agribusiness giants could be listed in an edition of Who's Who in Environmental Destruction, Hunger and Human Rights Violations."
http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/12852

+ DO WE NEED GM?
GMWatch launches new resource on non-GM breakthroughs:
http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/12862