GMWatch News Review archive

from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
------------------------------------------------------------

Last week the news that Thailand's Prime Minister was giving the green light to GMOs was said to be sending out signals right across Asia. By the end of this week it all looked very different thanks to Thailand's brilliant campaigners and to all those who lobbied the Thai PM and his ministerial colleagues.

Spurred by the powerful campaign of opposition, ministers failed to endorse the Prime Minister's proposal to take his country down the GM route. Following a Cabinet meeting, it was announced that the Government is now convening a group to report on the issue. The battle is far from over, however, as Thailand's campaign groups now have to focus on ensuring that the proposed committee of "academics" isn't stacked with the usual pro-GM lobbyists (See THAILAND LATEST).

There's also more work for us all to do in stopping the unelected outgoing EU Commission forcing through GM contamination tolerances for seeds (EUROPE). Please send a letter, fax or email to the Commissioners listed to let them know that this is completely unacceptable.

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

------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
------------------------------------------------------------
LOBBYWATCH
THAILAND LATEST
OTHER NEWS FROM ASIA
FOCUS ON AFRICA
EUROPE
THE AMERICAS
FOOD SECURITY
CORPORATE TAKEOVER OF SCIENCE
DONATIONS

------------------------------------------------------------
LOBBYWATCH
http://www.lobbywatch.org
------------------------------------------------------------

+ MONSANTO'S ATTACK DOG LECTURES NATIONAL CATTLEMEN
America's National Cattlemen's Beef Association has been warned by "advocacy group watchdog" Jay Byrne that, "The number of advocacy groups targeting beef, animal agriculture and agriculture in general are growing daily. Many of these groups are portrayed as having grassroots agendas, when in fact they are fronts for a much larger hidden agenda".

The attack on "fronts" by the President of v-Fluence Interactive Public Relations is interesting as GM WATCH's research pinpoints Byrne as the chief architect of a covert Monsanto PR campaign involving poison-pen attacks on the company's critics via front e-mails, such as those of fake "citizens" such as Andura Smetacek and Mary Murphy, and via a fake agricultural institute, the Center For Food and Agricultural Research (CFFAR). The Berkeley scientist Dr Ignacio Chapela was among the principal targets of this malicious campaign.

In fact, Smetacek, Murphy and CFFAR targeted many of the same individuals and organisations criticised by Byrne in his talk to the cattlemen, and in very similar terms. For instance, Michael Hansen of the Consumer Policy Institute, who is one of two people Byrne singles out in his beef industry presentation, was one of two people who had a poison-pen 'biography' faxed to the press from the non-existent agricultural institute, CFFAR, ahead of a press conference they were giving on GM.

Similarly, a number of the claims posted via the Monsanto PR fronts recurr in Byrne's advice to the cattlemen to beware of front groups. Byrne attacks environmental, organic and consumer groups who criticize aspects of the beef industry, accusing them of scaremongering and "black" marketing in the service of a hidden agenda. He claims these groups are not grassroots but are massively funded by philanthropic foundations and corporate and individual donors who should know better.

Byrne also directs the cattlemen to the website ActivistCash. Both ActivistCash and the group behind it - Consumer Freedom - are fronts of the PR firm, Berman & Co. Consumer Freedom is also known to have received a $200,000 "donation" from Monsanto. Byrne is Monsanto's former Director of Public Affairs and the company's former Internet Outreach Programs Director.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4273
For links to profiles of all the individuals and organisations involved in the Monsanto dirty tricks campaign here:
http://www.gmwatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=28&page=1
For articles from the press on the campaign:
http://www.gmwatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=25&page=1

+ SPIN AND CORPORATE POWER
A two day research seminar at Strathclyde University in Scotland on November 18 & 19, 2004, will discuss how spin works and how it might be countered. Among the speakers is the investigative journalist Andy Rowell, author of Don't Worry, It's Safe to Eat and The Green Backlash. Further details from http://www.strath.ac.uk/Departments/Geography/html/news%20items/Nov_confefence.htm Or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

------------------------------------------------------------
THAILAND LATEST
------------------------------------------------------------

+ THAI CABINET OVERTURNS GM APPROVAL
Thailand's cabinet decided on 31 August to keep a three-year ban on planting GM crops, overturning a decision by a panel chaired by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Instead, it decided to set up a panel to hear the arguments for and against GMO crops from state agencies and biotech lecturers at all Thai universities, Science Minister Korn Dabbaransi told reporters.

"We will have academics from all universities to hear their view on three options - 1) to promote GMOs freely in Thailand, 2) to allow the co-existence of GM and non-GM crops, or 3) to ban GMOs completely," Korn said after the weekly cabinet meeting.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4268

+ DECISION DUE TO STRONG OPPOSITION
While the Cabinet met representatives from consumer groups, organic farmers, organic farm-product exporters and environmental groups, demonstrated outside Government House in a show of force against the policy.

Government spokesman Jakrapob Penkair admitted the decision was partly due to strong opposition from various Thai groups. "Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra decided not to consider putting the resolution on the Cabinet's agenda due to it being a debatable issue academically, with controversy among various groups," he said. "More information needs to be gathered before a decision can be made."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4278

+ GM WATCH "WADES INTO GM ROW"
At the suggestion of the Thai environmental group BioThai, the campaign to get the Thai government to change course included an open letter of concern to the Thai Prime Minister from GM WATCH. Over four hundred people also sent their own letters of concern to the Prime Minister via our website.
http://www.gmwatch.org/proemail1.asp?id=4

Biothai translated the GM WATCH letter into Thai and it made the front page of 4 Thai newspapers. The English language Bangkok Post also carried the letter in full while another leading English language paper The Nation ran an article around GM Watch's concerns - "Watchdog wades into GMO row".
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4265

GM WATCH editor Jonathan Matthews also did an intervew with the BBC's Thai service on how the biotech industry with unprecedented backing from the US were targeting Asian countries like Thailand.

+ THE BATTLE GOES ON
While activists welcomed the Thai prime minister's reversal of a recent decision to allow the commercial growing of GM crops, and hailed it as a people's victory, they warned that a national committee set up by the government to study the issue could run the risk of being hijacked by scientists having links to biotechnology companies.

Activists said they would only accept the committee if members of civil society and environmentalists were on it. "We will push the government to accept independent members," said Witoon Lianchamroon, the director of BioThai.

Withoon wants the government committee to include organic agriculturalists and independent researchers and says the government-appointed academics have an agenda to promote GM crops.

"These scientists and academics have links with multinational companies that supply GM seeds. They are in it for the money," says withoon. "BioThai will not agree to the public shut out from such an important decision."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4282

+ GERMAN FOOD DISTRIBUTOR CANCELS ORDER
A well-known German food distributor has banned fruit cocktail products from a Thai exporter for fear the products contain GM papaya. The German importer has stopped ordering canned fruit cocktail from a Chiang Mai-based processed fruits exporter following a report of the illegal spread of GM papaya from the Agriculture Department's Khon Kaen research station to local farms. The German company said exports of the fruit cocktail, which contains papaya, pineapple and guava, would be banned indefinitely until there was proof the papayas were grown from GM-free seeds. The company has apparently switched to buying papayas from the southern provinces pending an investigation of the GM papaya scandal in Khon Kaen. Food exporters have confronted a series of trade obstacles since GMO contamination in local farms was publicised, including a GM-free labelling requirement in South Africa on Thai rice and an order to delay shipments of Thai papaya products by Carrefour superstore in France.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4291

------------------------------------------------------------
OTHER NEWS FROM ASIA
http://www.gmwatch.org/asia.asp
------------------------------------------------------------

+ ASIAN FARMERS SUCKING THE CONTINENT DRY
An article in New Scientist reports how Asia is on the brink of a water crisis as, depleted by farm irrigation, water supplies dwindle.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4267

What the article fails to mention is the role of the Green Revolution in this crisis. The Green Revolution brought seeds that need intensive irrigation to thrive. Those who brought this first green revolution are those who are leading the charge on the second "gene revolution". Their strategies of intensification remain the same.
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=291&page=S

+ GM WILL "MAKE POOREST OF POOR MILLIONAIRES"
Two articles, one from Malaysia and the other from Nigeria, provide extraordinary examples of what the economist Joseph Cortright has termed the "bad-idea virus" - the fever that sweeps through political leaders leaving them believing the money-losing biotech industry is about to generate a wealth-creating bonanza in their locality. Cortright's research on the biotech industry has led him to conclude: "This notion that you lure biotech to your community to save its economy is laughable."

It's hard to laugh, though, when that idea is being fed to the leaders of countries facing problems that include desperate poverty, hunger and disease. It's even harder to laugh when one hears these leaders talking about impoverished farmers being turned into millionaires by GMOs, or blithely claiming biotech as the answer to almost every ill known to man.

Note that all the examples of the brilliance of biotech in the second article are not only years old but discredited. The storage-friendly GM tomato sounds suspiciously like the Flavr Savr, which was withdrawn from the market after it failed to live up to any of its promises. Dolly the cloned sheep, far from showing "better animal performance", contracted arthritis and died prematurely, followed by the company that financed her creation. The Third World is being sold down the river on a decidedly leaky raft.

And is it just coicidence that Malaysia like Thailand is trying to win a bilateral Free Trade Agreement from the US?

1) Excerpt from Malaysian article:

Since taking over from Mahathir last October, Abdullah [newly elected Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi] has relentlessly pushed to regenerate and modernise the agriculture sector with an infusion of capital, bio-technology and the introduction of new, genetically modified (GM) seeds that proponents claim would turn poverty stricken farmers into millionaires.
- Baradan Kuppusamy, Abdullah Plans to Make Poorest of Poor "Millionaires", Inter Press Service News Agency, 24 August 2004

2) Excerpt from Nigerian article, an interview with the Director General of the National Biotechnology Agency, Prof Chukwuemeka Omaliko:

To a weak economy like Nigeria's, of what effect would biotechnology be?

[Omaliko:] Quite tremendous! We have quite a lot of things we can gain... Let's start with our stomach: food and agriculture, you find that definitely it is going to help us a lot, first in having the inputs more available, much more empowered. They are going to be modified in a way that they can on their own do better than their parents were doing. It will come to the point of production itself, because the production inputs are improved upon, then you have something that will have a higher productivity, you come to the post-harvest processing, you also have a better storage in some of the instances like in tomato, where we can now have tomatoes that can stay on the table for two or three weeks without spoiling against the three or four days of the normal tomatoes. .. You go to the animals, you also find genetic improvement. I think globally we know Dolly, where we now clone the sheep so as to have a better animal performance. You find it in fish and we have it with catfish, which is a popular fish in Nigeria. And you go to health - biotech helps us to have a cheaper, more efficient healthcare delivery system.
- Chuks Okocha, "How Bio-Tech Can Drive National Economy", This Day (Lagos), 25 August 2004
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4277

------------------------------------------------------------
FOCUS ON AFRICA
http://www.gmwatch.org/africa.asp
------------------------------------------------------------

+ AFRICABIO TRAINS SOUTHERN AFRICA IN TALKING UP BIOTECH
A Southern Africa Biotechnology Communications Training Workshop organized by AfricaBio in Pretoria, South Africa attracted more than 70 delegates from 10 of the 14 Southern African Development Community countries for training on "communicating biotechnology to the public of Southern African countries". AfricaBio is an industry front group which refuses to disclose its level of industry control and backing.
http://www.gmwatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=41&page=1

An article in the science journal Nature described AfricaBio as, "along with agribiotech companies and other pro-biotech campaigners... fighting tooth and nail, often by somewhat controversial methods, to spread the word about GM crops... the idea is to improve GM's image."

The article also says of AfricaBio, "the group's methods would be considered in some countries to be blatant media manipulation. [Prof Jocelyn] Webster [AfricaBio's Executive Director] talks about training journalists how to report GM stories, telling them that the term 'genetically improved' is more accurate than 'genetically modified'."

Now we find Webster training representatives of a whole array of Southern African countries in "communicating biotechnology". No wonder a spokesman for Monsanto recently described South Africa as its gateway to the continent.

For profiles of all GM promoters in Africa (Webster, AfricaBio, ISAAA, USAID etc.), see
http://www.gmwatch.org/africa.asp
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4276

+ SOUTH AFRICA A HANDY LABORATORY
An article from Florence Wambugu's PR outfit - Africa Harvest Biotech Foundation International - claims to explain why "anti-GM activists" regard South Africa as such an important front in the GM war. In fact, it precisely delineates the industry's reasons for targeting SA - "our continent's food chains are dominated by South Africa", says the article.

And when Rosa Seleke of A Harvet claims SA is "the main focus for anti-GM activity", just substitute the word "pro" for "anti" and you get a real insight into the industry's agenda - something confirmed by Monsanto's MD for Southern Africa in an article in the South african press headlined: MONSANTO FINDS SA A HANDY LABORATORY AND THE GATEWAY TO AFRICA.

Just what kind of laboratory we're talking about is highlighted in a quote from Peter Lowins, a South African farmer who represents the local grain growers committee. Lowins and his fellow grain growers are worried that the GM pharma crops planned for testing in SA will have unintended consequences: "And that's why they try using Third World countries to do these experiments. If it's wrong or if it's a failure in the future, it doesn't affect them."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4285

+ BIOSAFETY BILL ENDANGERS KENYA
Kenya's new draft Biosafety Bill is weak, and does more to allow approvals of GMOs than to regulate them, according to a coalition of Kenyan NGOs. After South Africa, Kenya is the industry's prime target in Africa and Kenya's pro-GM industry front groups appear to have been closely involved in the development process for this Bill. According to Eric Kisiangani of the Intermediate Technology Development Group - East Africa (ITDG-EA), "this draft Bill seems to be more of a mechanism to facilitate and approve GMOs, rather than to regulate them."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4287

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
EUROPE
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

+ EU COMMISSION VOTE ON GM CONTAMINATION IN SEEDS - ACT NOW - BEFORE 8 SEPT!!!
'Save Our Seeds' warns that the European Commission plans to allow for unlabelled contamination of conventional and organic seeds with GM varieties. SOS asks for your swift and active support as there is an immediate threat that a high seed contamination threshold will be established by the Commission on 8 September.

The EU Commission is in transition. A new president will take over 1 November and some Commissioners will leave. Until then the old Commission under President Romano Prodi is still in power. Margot Wallstršm, the outgoing Commissioner for Environment on 8 September will propose to the old Commission a draft "Commission decision establishing minimum thresholds for adventitious or technically unavoidable traces of genetically modified seeds in other products", which sets thresholds for unlabelled GM contamination of seeds at 0.3% for maize and oilseed rape. If adopted, only a 2/3 majority of the Council of Ministers could stop this proposal from entering into force under the legal 'comitology' procedure chosen by the Commission.

SOS points out that the old EU Commission hasn't dared to put this highly unpopular measure through for the past three years they have been in power. Now, in their last days, making use of the current vacuum of political power (and at the end of the summer holidays, when most of us have other things on our minds), they hope they can sneak it through.

Please send faxes and letters to the Commissioners responsible, and especially to their President, Romano Prodi to let the Commissioners know that society is following their plans and does not approve this attempt to introduce fundamental and highly contentious legislation in their last days. Ask them to raise their voices and vote in the College of Commissioners against the adoption of the GM seed proposal. Please also say that it should be left to the new Commissioners in charge to find an integrated solution in co-operation with the EU Parliament. Please maintain a polite tone.

Sample letter at http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4283

Send your letters/emails/faxes to:
1) Romano Prodi, present President of the Commission, Rue de la Loi 200, 1049 Brussels, Belgium. Tel: +32.2.2967246; +32.2.2991563. Fax: +32-2 295 0138/39/40; +32.2.2956336. Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
2) Margot Wallstršm, present Commissioner for Environment and future Vice President of the Commission. Address same as Prodi's, above. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Phone: + 322 2981800. Fax: + 322 2981899
3) Stavros Dimas, future Commissioner for Environment, present Commissioner for Social Affairs. Address same as Prodi's, above. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Fax: +32 2 2982 099
4) Markos Kyprianou, future Commissioner for Cosumer protection and present Commissioner without portfolio. Address same as Prodi's, above. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
5) Else Mariann Fischer Boel, future Commissioner for Agriculture and presently Danish Minister for Agriculture. Address same as Prodi's, above. Fax: +32/2/29-59 225
[no individual contact details available yet]
To look up your Members of the European Parliament go to
http://wwwdb.europarl.eu.int/ep6/owa/p_meps2.repartition?ilg=EN

+ UK: CONSUMERS SHUN GM FOODS
Britons are increasingly concerned about GM foods, a survey by consumer magazine Which? suggests. Of the 1,000 people polled, 61% said they were concerned about the use of GM material in food production. The poll also suggested more consumers are trying not to buy GM food, while fewer back GM crops in the UK. According to the poll, the number of people who are wary of GM foods and try to avoid them has gone up from 45% in 2002 to 58%.

"Consumers clearly don't want GM food and are hardening their stance against it," said the editor of Which?, Malcolm Coles.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4286

+ CZECH GOVT WANTS PUBLIC CHANCE TO DECIDE ON GMOS
The cabinet of Stanislav Gross (Social Democrat- CSSD) would like Parliament to return the chance to decide on GMOs to the public, and has submitted a bill to the Chamber of Deputies that would allow for this.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4272

+ GM PROTEST IN SLOVAKIA
Activists staged protests at a Tesco store in Bratislava, Slovakia. While Tesco was moving to ensure own label products in the UK and Hungary were non-GM, it had not offered such reassurances to Slovakian customers, claimed the pressure group.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4272

------------------------------------------------------------
THE AMERICAS
------------------------------------------------------------

+ GUYANA: THE ONLY GM COFFEE CROP IS DESTROYED
The only experimental crop of GM coffee, planted in Sinnamary (Guyana), was destroyed by unknown individuals, reported the CIRAD (Center for international co-operation in agronomic research for development).
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4292

+ ARGENTINA: GREENPEACE JAGUARS CAGED
The team of Greenpeace Jaguars who have been protecting the ancient forests of Argentina from the expansion of GM soya has been arrested while documenting the deforestation in northern Argentina some 1800 km north of Buenos Aires in the city of Tartagal, north of Salta province.

Among the nine is Martin Prieto, Executive Director of Greenpeace Argentina. The Jaguars' lawyer was also thrown into jail, thus depriving them of legal representation.

TAKE ACTION: Write to the President of Argentina asking him to ensure the activists are promptly released from jail and the problem of GE soya expansion is tackled instead.
http://act.greenpeace.org/ams/e?a=1499&s=gen
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4280

+ COLOMBIA: NEW SUPER COCA STUNS ANTI-DRUG OFFICIALS
Drug traffickers have created a new strain of coca plant that yields up to four times more cocaine than existing plants and promises to revolutionise Colombia's drugs industry. The new variety of coca, the raw material for cocaine, was found in an anti-drug operation on the Caribbean coast, on the mountainsides of the Sierra Nevada, long known as a drug-growing region.

A toxicologist, Camilo Uribe, who studied the coca, said: "The quality and percentage of hydrochloride from each leaf is much better, between 97 and 98 per cent. A normal plant does not get more than 25 per cent, meaning that more drugs and of a higher purity can be extracted."

Experts estimate that the drugs traffickers spent GBP60 million to develop the new plant, using strains from Peru and crossbreeding them with potent Colombian varieties, as well as, it is said, engaging in genetic engineering.

GM WATCH comment: This plant sounds far too good to be GM! If it were GM and was higher yielding, it would represent a massive breakthrough - the GM industry has never successfully increased yield before despite countless claims to the contrary - and Monsanto scientists would doubtless be scrambling to get to Colombia to sit at the feet of the drug barrons!

However it is possible that this plant has been bred, one way or another, to resist the glyphosate chemicals developed in the US that are sprayed on drugs crops across Colombia.

In the southern province of Putumayo, once the coca capital of Colombia, drug farmers have changed the way they sow crops in the face of repeated aerial fumigations. "We know the spray planes need a target area of three hectares," said Sebastian Umaya. "Now we just have smaller fields, but with more intensive farming of the coca bushes."

Should the new strain be introduced, these smaller fields could yield up to four times more drugs and be immune to aerial eradication, meaning anti-narcotic police would have to eradicate them manually, an impossible task in the southern jungle provinces controlled by Marxist rebels.

GM WATCH comment: hand weeding has also been resorted to by Monsanto in the US where glyphosate-resistant (Roundup Ready) plants have been springing up unwanted on farms. The political climate in the US is, of course, somewhat more accommodating.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4274

See also below ROUNDUP RESISTANT WEEDS CAUSE BIG TROUBLE IN US

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOOD SECURITY
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

+ BIO-IMPERIALISM: GM AND LOSS OF FOOD SECURITY
An excellent, if rather depressing, article on this topic is at
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4284

Note especially the section called "A bio-imperialism", on USAID. Excerpt:

USAID finances US corporations such as Monsanto to run GM research programs in Africa. A former Monsanto official is USAID consultant on use of GM in food aid. Recently USAID granted $100 million for a 10-year program, "Collaborative Agriculture Biotechnology Initiative or CABIO, to 'help developing countries access and manage the tools of modern biotechnology.'"

To help this along, USAID has pressured numerous developing governments in Africa and elsewhere to pass national laws on "intellectual property rights (IPR's)." Given the fact that GM companies like Monsanto and Syngenta are filing patents on GM maize, rice, soya and other natural crops, the day is approaching where a Kenyan traditional farmer or Indian peasant must pay a "technology fee" to plant rice or corn grown by their ancestors for thousands of years simply because a DNA gene has been altered. The WTO is in charge of enforcing these IPR's. Washington has the largest weight in WTO.

USAID also funds the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA). The ISAAA promotes GM crops for the developing world, from Africa to Asia and Latin America, including GM bananas, sweet potatoes, maize and papaya. ISAAA is funded by USAID together with Monsanto, Bayer AG, Syngenta, Cargill, Dow AgroSciences, and the US Department of Agriculture.

------------------------------------------------------------
CORPORATE TAKEOVER OF SCIENCE
------------------------------------------------------------

+ TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS: CGIAR AND GM CONTAMINATION
In a remarkable departure from its role as a public science network, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is huddling with the biotech industry (including Monsanto and DuPont) to craft a policy response to the unwelcome and ongoing spread of DNA from GM plants to farmers' varieties.

The meeting began in Rome on 30 August and came three years after scientists first confirmed GM contamination in Mexico's maize crop - and two and a half years after farmers' organizations and their civil society allies called upon CGIAR and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to take action.

[Note: The world's most important collections of seeds, the vast majority of which were collected from farming communities in the South, are maintained in a network of 16 gene banks overseen by the CGIAR. In 1994, the FAO and CGIAR signed agreements placing most of the seed collections under the auspices of the United Nations.]

At the meeting, CGIAR examined the implications of GM contamination for gene bank collections it holds in trust for the international community. The meeting heard from government institutes such as EMBRAPA in Brazil, CGEN in Netherlands and the USDA. The agenda also called for presentations from three industry representatives including Monsanto and DuPont - the world's two largest seed corporations.

Missing from the speakers list are the representatives of farmers' organizations, South government policymakers, development agencies, and civil society organizations familiar with the issues. FAO was invited but not offered a place on the agenda.

"The CGIAR has mandated itself to use science for 'poverty alleviation' but now seems to be more concerned with helping the agbiotech industry get through the crisis created by their own sloppy science," says Pat Mooney of the Canadian-based ETC Group.

"The CGIAR network has always had a paternalistic approach to farmers and their organizations," Mooney adds, "but this is the first time we have known them - as an international consortium of public sector scientists - to side so thoroughly with industry. It is farmers' seeds that are being contaminated. Industry's GM crops are causing the contamination. Whose business is the CGIAR taking care of?"
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4269

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
MEDICAL GM
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

+ GM INSULIN PROBLEMS CONTINUE
The latest article on the sometimes horrific effects of GM 'human' insulin prescribed to diabetics, and controversial withdrawal by drug companies of the old animal insulin, is at
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4281

Telling quote from a diabetic after being put on the GM insulin (which she wasn't told was different from her old animal insulin): "I just fell so ill all the time. I had never felt so ill. I couldn't think, everything was cloudy. I genuinely thought I had cancer or a tumour. It was the worst nightmare I have ever been through.... Even if going back on human insulin keeps me alive, given the quality of life for me, I would rather not be alive."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
REST OF THE MONTH'S TOP STORIES
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

+ GM CROPS HURTING MONARCH LARVAE
The number of milkweed plants in the Upper Midwest carrying the monarch butterfly's larvae is in its third consecutive slump. Research by the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project at the University of Minnesota shows that the numbers are below average and at their lowest level since 1998. Milkweed is the only plant on which monarchs will lay their eggs, and also serves as the sole food source for larvae.

In 2002, the project found that about 7 percent of milkweed plants examined in the Upper Midwest carried larvae. In 2003, that number was about 8 percent. This year, volunteers are finding that slightly fewer than 5 percent of milkweed plants carry larvae. That's extremely low, said Karen Oberhauser, the project's founder and an assistant professor in the university's Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology.

In 2001, nearly 25 percent of all milkweed plants carried larvae. Since the project began keeping tabs in 1996, the average has been 13 percent.

Although a link has not been proved, Oberhauser said, one factor in the decline in the number of egg-carrying plants could be the growing use of herbicide-tolerant soybeans, which are genetically engineered to permit larger amounts of weed-killing chemicals to be applied without hurting the crop. This may have increased the spraying of herbicides and thereby the destruction of milkweed. The project's findings show that the use of herbicide-tolerant soybeans grew from 50 percent in 2000 to 85 percent in 2003.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4241

+ ROUNDUP RESISTANT WEEDS CAUSE BIG TROUBLE IN US
Just a few years after its adoption of GM crops, North America has a serious problem with herbicide resistant weeds. A debate has sprung up about how to deal with them. Experts variously recommend mixtures of chemicals, or older, more toxic chemicals, or as yet undiscovered new chemicals. Some believe the weed plague may spell the end of so-called 'conservation tillage' or 'no-till'. This is a no-plough method which relies on burning off weeds with liberal amounts of herbicide, pushed by chemical/GM companies as a way of preventing soil erosion and, of course, selling more chemicals. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4223

For more on this and 2 serious outbreaks of glyphosate resistant weeds see:
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4263

+ EU MORATORIUM STILL APPLIES
According to an article on AgBioView, what was heralded as a turning point for accepting GM crops in the EU now appears to be "a farce". When the EU decided to allow imports of Syngenta's biotech Bt-11 sweet corn last spring, the industry breathed a sigh of relief. It was the first biotech approval in six years. Was the EU finally making strides to end its five-year moratorium on approval of new biotech crops? It seems not.

According to WTO rules, says Kim Nill, technical issues director for the American Soybean Association, "If the EU approves one new biotech product, they're no longer considered to be blocking biotech's progress. In this case, they (EU) knew Syngenta wasn't going to actively market sweet corn there."

The fallout is that the EU has as much as two to three more years before they'll have to approve another biotech product to remain in compliance with WTO rules. "The farce of Bt-11 approval has given them (EU) breathing space," says Nill. "This whole approval issue has taken a step backward. It's a joke."

Currently, there are about 30 GM products and foods awaiting approval for import into the EU. "Even if they march forward at one every six months, it's just too slow," says Nill. "The products are already outdated in the US by the time they get through the approvals."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4260

+ GM TRADE WAR DELAYED: US FIGHTS TO PREVENT SCIENTISTS BEING CALLED IN
The outcome of the transatlantic trade dispute on GM foods has been substantially delayed as scientists are called in to debate the safety of GM foods and crops. The move is a blow to the Bush Administration who fought to stop any debate over scientific safety.
The US had argued in its WTO submission 'Comments on the EC's final position whether to seek scientific advice', that there is "no need or value in consulting experts". See
http://www.foeeurope.org/biteback/US_comments_whether_seek_expert_advice.pdf
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4264

TELLING QUOTE: "GM lobbyists accuse us [anti-GM campaigners] of being anti-science Luddites. But we are the ones who are asking for more science." - Jeffrey Smith, author of Seeds of Deception, on a 2004 UK lecture tour

+ FOOD COMPANIES FAIL TO DISCLOSE SHAREHOLDER RISK OF GM CROPS
Ninety-five percent of the top food companies in the US fail to properly inform shareholders about the risks posed by GE ingredients, according to Duty to Disclose: The Failure of Food Companies to Disclose Risks of Genetically Engineered Crops to Shareholders, a new report released 19 August by the US Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG).
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4243

+ ISAAA CHIEF BACKS TERMINATOR IN INDIA!
When confronted with the problem of cross-pollination of non-GM plants, the only solution Clive James, chairman of the industry-backed GM crop promotion body ISAAA, can offer is the Terminator! This, he complains, had had to be shelved at the behest of "the Greens". James was speaking at the recent big pro-GM "International Conference on Agricultural Biotechnology: Ushering in the Second Green Revolution" conference in New Delhi.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4237

+ GM CORN PLANTING PLATEAUS
In March a much-hyped USDA survey of corn farmers, done before corn planting was underway, projected that 46 percent of corn acres would be planted to GMO varieties in 2004. After planting was completed and the seed was in the ground an American Corn Growers Foundation (ACGF) survey found only 34.4 percent - almost the same as last year.

According to Dan McGuire, CEO of the ACGF, "This survey suggests that US corn farmers may well be taking the concerns and demands of foreign consumers and importers into account in their planting decisions by holding their GMO corn acres to only about a third of the total acres they planted to corn this year."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4232

+ FOOD INDUSTRY ALARMED ABOUT PHARMA CROPS
The Grocery Manufacturers of America, one of the biggest food industry trade groups, is speaking out against a plan by ProdiGene to cultivate GM pharmaceutical corn in Frio County, Texas. Texas-based ProdiGene gave the biotech industry a black eye two years ago when the company's pharmaceutical corn crops were mismanaged in Iowa and Nebraska. In a letter to the US Dept. of Agriculture, GMA said the government is not doing enough to regulate crops engineered for pharmaceutical and industrial purposes.

Spokeswoman Stephanie Childs said that if any of the plant-made pharmaceuticals made it into the food supply, "It's our brands that get damaged."
For more info visit: www.pharmcrops.com
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4240

+ MONSANTO STILL CONDUCTING SECRET GM WHEAT TRIALS IN CANADA
Monsanto is breaking a pledge made earlier this year that GM wheat testing would be abandoned.
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2004/08/17/587920-cp.html

+ FOCUS ON ASIA - NEW GM WATCH RESOURCE
We've launched a special section on our website - *FOCUS ON ASIA* - dedicated to keeping you up to date with GM news, research and resistance on that continent.
http://www.gmwatch.org/asia.asp

You'll also find a useful directory of GM pushers and shovers active in Asia, as well as links to the organisations leading the resistance. Please tell all your friends and contacts.

+ FAST-TRACK GM APPROVAL ARRIVES IN INDIA
India will put in place a single window regulatory body by January to consider permission for cultivation of GM crops in the country, according to the Minister of State for Science and Technology, Mr Kapil Sibal. He even suggested India might simply follow other countries' assessments of GM crops where they had already granted approvals.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4217
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4215

+ SURVEY REVEALS GM CONTAMINATION IN BRAZIL
Weaknesses in Brazilian soybean segregation were recently brought to light when the agriculture ministry released a report revealing that a high number of samples testing positive as biotech varieties came from farmers who were not supposed to be growing them.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4223

+ WESTERN AUSTRALIAN GOVT BLOCKS GM COTTON
The Western Australian Government has blocked plans for a GM cotton industry in west Kimberley. New South Wales company Western Agricultural Industries has spent $7 million over the past six years developing plans to grow up to 200,000 hectares of commercial crops, using GM cotton as a base. But following intense lobbying from Aboriginal and environmental groups, the State Government has decided not to extend its memorandum of understanding with the company.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4225

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
DONATIONS
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our thanks to all of you who have donated to GM WATCH. You can donate online in any one of five currencies via PayPal, at http://www.gmwatch.org/donate.asp OR by cheque or postal order payable to 'NGIN', to be sent to: NGIN, 26 Pottergate, Norwich, NR2 1DX, UK. We appreciate your support.