from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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Dear all:
There's inspiring news this week from India, where the entire state of Andhra Pradesh has banned Monsanto from marketing and selling its Bt cotton seeds after the failure of the crop and the company's refusal to pay compensation to farmers (ASIA).
Another welcome event is former Health Canada scientist Dr Shiv Chopra, who was fired after he opposed the approval of Monsanto's bovine growth hormone, speaking out about the toxic filth that the chemicals and drug industries put into our food (FOOD SAFETY).
Don't miss a fascinating lowdown on the shady world of corporate lobbying in Brussels (LOBBYWATCH). And read how the Brazilian and New Zealand government delegations - against the wishes of the people of those nations - sabotaged the biosafety negotiations in Montreal (CARTAGENA PROTOCOL LATEST).
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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ASIA - India awakes!
Bt10 CONTAMINATION LATEST
LOBBYWATCH
CARTAGENA PROTOCOL ROUNDUP
THE AMERICAS
EUROPE
FOOD SAFETY
CAMPAIGNS OF THE WEEK
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ASIA
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+ ANDHRA PRADESH BANS MONSANTO
Andhra Pradesh, considered the seed capital of India, has banned Monsanto from marketing and selling its Bt cotton varieties in the state and from conducting any trials. The reasons are the failure of the company's seeds in previous crops and its refusal to pay 450 million rupees compensation to farmers as decided by the agricultural commissioner of the state.
This is perhaps the first time that a state government has blacklisted a corporate entity from marketing its products.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5326
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5328
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5332
The AP government has suspended the joint director of agriculture, Warangal for complicity in fudging the Bt cotton records.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5335
+ MONSANTO'S COTTON HAS DEFICIENCIES - NEW STUDY
New research into Monsanto's Bt cotton cultivation in Maharashtra by scientists at the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (GIPE) shows the costs are significantly higher than for non-Bt cotton. They also report numerous complaints of Bt cotton suffering from bollworm and other pest/disease attacks.
The researchers recommend that the government should investigate and that if they find Bt cotton is being damaged by bollworm attack, they should not only help the farmers get proper compensation but should also penalise "the companies for making false propaganda about their seed varieties".
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5330
+ SEEDS OF CONTROVERSY
India's national magazine FRONTLINE has published a very useful roundup on the new Bt cotton approvals in India and the state of the evidence on the problems with its cultivation.
The article notes, "The All India Coordinated Cotton Improvement Project (AICCIP) corroborates, in its 2004-05 annual report, the arguments made in different studies by civil society organisations and independent scientific bodies about the failure of Bt cotton in the 2004 season. It also justifies the demand of Andhra Pradesh Bt cotton growers for compensation for crop loss."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5332
+ INDIA: CALLS TO BAN GM CROPS INTENSIFY AFTER RATS SUFFER
Environmentalists and food security activists in India have renewed calls for a moratorium on GM foods and crops after rats secretly tested with GM corn diets by Monsanto developed blood and organ abnormalities.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5336
The dangers of GM were splashed across the front page of a leading national newspaper read by millions in India.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5328
+ THAI WATCHDOG SET TO PROBE CROSS-BREEDING CLAIMS
Thailand's National Human Rights Commission will probe alleged cross breeding of GM and ordinary papaya plants found in Khamphaeng Phet province, said a commissioner.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5333
+ BIOSAFETY TIMEBOMB IN CHINA
EXCERPTS from a Nature Biotechnology article:
...observers warn that without proper regulatory oversight and agricultural management, GM rice cultivation poses a potential environmental time bomb. Compounding those fears, illegal planting of unapproved varieties of GM rice has been reported, despite government attempts to introduce a media blackout.
China's Ministry of Agriculture dismissed these claims and promised to investigate the issue but the results of the enquiry are not available. Meanwhile, the local agricultural authorities in Hubei have allegedly punished people responsible for the leak. In May, the potential for negative media coverage was such that the Chinese government banned all media coverage of the GM rice leak until further notice.
Even if a GM rice is legally commercialized, Chinese scientists... admit that China's poor control of agricultural management practices opens the possibility for gene flow from transgenic varieties.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5350
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Bt10 CONTAMINATION LATEST
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+ SECOND BT10 CONTAMINATION INCIDENT IN JAPAN
The Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) announced on 3 June that unapproved Syngenta GM maize Bt10 has been detected in Tomakomai port, Hokkaido Prefecture, in an 822 tonne shipment of fodder maize from the USA. This is the second discovery of unapproved Bt10 in Japan, following the first detection of 390 tonnes of contaminated maize on 26 May in Nagoya port, Aichi Prefecture.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5341
+ BT10 LIKELY TO BE IN HUMAN FOOD CHAIN - SYNGENTA
In an email to the UK's Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), obtained by GM Free Cymru through the Freedom of Information Act, Syngenta has admitted that all five Bt10 breeding lines were yellow field corn lines. This type of corn is used in a wide range of processed foods with maize ingredients intended for human consumption.
This admission directly contradicts the assurances given by UK's Food Standards Agency and by the European Commission that all of the Bt10 went into animal feed and is therefore relatively harmless.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5346
NB It was exactly the same corporation that was active in the Brazilian delegation in Montreal last week which played such a key part in derailing the biosafety protocal negotiations, thus assisting global genetic contamination - see CARTAGENA PROTOCOL LATEST below.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5345
+ AMPICILLIN THREAT LEADS TO WIDER TRANSGENE CONCERN
A letter from the Soil Association's Gundula Azeez to the journal Nature outlines the safety risk of antibiotic resistance due to horizontal gene transfer from GMOs and points out that this is not the only risk that needs to be urgently addressed by the authorities.
EXCERPTS:
.. the US Food and Drug Administration does not consider the presence of the ampicillin-resistance gene in Syngenta's unapproved variety of genetically modified Bt10 maize to represent a safety problem.
This is not the view of the UK government's scientific advisers (the DEFRA Antimicrobial Resistance Coordination Group), who state that some important veterinary pathogens remain susceptible to ampicillin... They state that there is "extremely low or no detected resistance in certain bacterial species", so that "any occasional transfer of resistance genes to these organisms would be a very significant event". If, as a result of such horizontal gene transfer, it became necessary to use more modern antimicrobials to treat animal disease, they write, "then there could be significant consequences for the consumer through the food chain".
The risk of horizontal gene transfer from genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is not a theoretical one. One study found that, after Bt genes in plasmid form were incubated in the saliva in a sheep's mouth for a few minutes, they could still transform Escherichia coli bacteria so that they developed antibiotic resistance (P. S. Duggan et al. Br. J. Nutr. 89, 2003).
... There is no reason to believe that any health implications are confined to antibiotic-resistance marker genes; they could, for example, equally apply to the inserted Bt toxin genes present in all genetically modified Bt crops. However, the transfer of antibiotic resistance is the only such risk currently being addressed by the authorities that regulate GMOs.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5324
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LOBBYWATCH
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+ ISAAA INFLATED U.S. GM CROP PLANTING FIGURES
Following the press release we recently posted from IFOAM which criticised the annual reports on global GM crop acreage of the biotech industry-backed International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA), consultant Huib de Vriend has contacted us to say he found a similar pattern of inflation when he compared US Dept of Ag figures over a 5-year period with ISAAA's - see the table of figures here:
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5343
+ THE MURKY WORLD OF CORPORATE LOBBYISTS IN EUROPE
In March, EU Commissioner Siim Kallas inaugurated the 'European Transparency Initiative' with the aim of casting light on the EU lobbying industry. The industry has since mobilised to defeat the plans for regulation and to maintain its secrecy.
An insight into this subterranean world was provided by a recent interview with Brussels lobbying veteran, Daniel Gueguen Rogier, who heads an institute which trains many of the lobbyists. In the interview he predicted that the industry "will tend to adopt ever tougher lobbying strategies and ever more sophisticated approaches to economic intelligence that will probably involve practices such as manipulation, destabilization or disinformation."
Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) has done a brilliant job of publicising the activities of the Brussels lobbyists and forwarding the need for transparency.
http://www.corporateeurope.org/
An extract from a fascinating article - well worth reading in full - drawing on CEO's research into the murky world of corporate lobbying in Brussels, is at
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5339
Although the article illuminatingly covers the whole terrain (including why we can't buy a mattress, carpet or sofa that hasn't been soaked in the chemical industry's toxic bromine flame retardants), here are bits relating to the GM debate:
EXCERPTS:
A review of the career of Burson-Marsteller's Brussels office head, David Earnshaw, shows the interconnections between the lobbyists, industry, NGOs (some of which are big businesses in their own right), and the EU. He had previously been in Oxfam's Brussels office and before that had driven the industry lobby campaign for the EU's Patents on Life Directive.
Another powerful group has been the biotech lobby, including the European Seeds Association (ESA) and EuropaBio, an umbrella group of the entire sector. Four of the world's largest agribusiness and biotech concerns - Monsanto, Syngenta, Pioneer (Du Pont) and Bayer - are members of both groups and also have their own offices [in Brussels].
ESA wants the EU Seeds Directive, which determines the labeling requirements and limits for GM seeds, watered down. Initially very successful in getting the policies it wanted, the biotech industry has faced a consumer backlash and national governments have stalled any new products. Now the industry, after bitter and expensive campaigns against environmental groups, has developed several important EU proposals on "coexistence" between GM and conventional and organic agriculture, and the Seeds Directive, which will establish the thresholds above which labeling is required for GM seeds.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5339
+ PUSZTAI ANWERS HIGGINS' ATTACK
Recently a letter highly critical of Dr Arpad Pusztai and his research on GM potatoes was published in the Australian press. The letter came from the plant biotechnologist, Dr T.J. Higgins, and it has been widely circulated on pro-GM lists.
Dr Pusztai's reply can be seen at http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5348
EXCERPT:
Rather interestingly I have several letters from Dr Higgins in which he asked for my help to do a proper nutritional testing of a GM pea line expressing a bean alpha-amylase inhibitor that he and Dr Chrispeels had developed. This we did and the results have been published in 1999 [in the Journal of Nutrition]...
Hopefully, Dr Higgins is aware of the fact that the design of this study that he happily co-authored at the time was exactly the same as that GM potato study he now criticizes. Or perhaps he did not understand this at the time, but now as he realizes his mistake that he co-authored a study that was as "flawed" as the GM potato study, to quote the favourite phrase of our Royal Society, Dr Higgins will now write to the editors of the Journal of Nutrition to withdraw his name from our paper. I am waiting for this to happen with bated breath.
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CARTAGENA PROTOCOL ROUNDUP
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+ TWO COUNTRIES BLOCK TIGHTER RULES ON GM CROPS
Key UN negotiations on the safe trade of GM crops and foods ended 3 June in acrimony. Despite over 100 countries demanding comprehensive controls to limit GM contamination, the move was blocked by just two countries that shamelessly sided with the GM industry: New Zealand and Brazil.
Last week's negotiations on the United Nations' Biosafety Protocol were aimed at bringing in international rules to reduce contamination from imports of GM crops and to introduce full labelling.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5327
+ NZ DOING GM EXPORTERS' DIRTY WORK
New Zealand was doing the dirty work for pro-GM countries outside the Cartagena Protocol on biosafety by trying to unravel the deal from the inside, says NZ's Green co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons.
Greenpeace International, the Third World Network and the Friends of the Earth condemned what they called "the lone attempts" of the New Zealand government to "derail" Cartagena, an international agreement setting rules on trade in GMOs, at talks in Montreal. This follows criticism of New Zealand earlier in the week from the Malaysian delegate, Gurdial Singh Nijar.
"On Tuesday, [NZ environment minister] Marian Hobbs claimed in Parliament that Mr Nijar's statements were untrue and denied that New Zealand was trying to undermine the Cartagena Protocol. This information received last night from NGO observers at the Montreal conference confirms Mr Nijar's concerns," said Ms Fitzsimons.
"Ms Hobbs said New Zealand is 'inside the tent' on Cartagena, but this report suggests that we're trying to tear 'the tent' down."
Doreen Stabinsky of Greenpeace International said, "There is no way to describe New Zealand's behaviour at these talks as other than obstructionist. They don't want this agreement to happen and they are doing everything they can to stop it - even if that means isolating New Zealand from the entire rest of the world."
Ms Fitzsimons said, "New Zealand is being a poor international citizen, acting on behalf of other pro-GE countries which have not ratified the Protocol and so don't get a vote. We should not be doing the dirty work of the US and others who are standing aside from this treaty."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5320
+ SHAME ON BRAZIL AND NEW ZEALAND!
Two powerful speeches given to delegates at the end of the Meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety in Montreal (MOP2), which broke up after the negotiations had been wrecked by New Zealand and Brazil, are at
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5331
Juan Lopez from FoE's statement was headed, "SHAME ON BRAZIL AND NEW ZEALAND!" Others in the hall held up placards expressing the same sentiments:
http://www.iisd.ca/biodiv/bs-copmop2/
Particularly galling, as Juan notes, was the fact that the Brazilian and New Zealand delegations lacked the biosafety expertise and arguments to back up their position.
Speaking before Juan, Marijane Lisboa of IDEC Brazil stressed that the Brazilian delegation did not represent the real interests of the Brazilian people.
We've had many emails from people in New Zealand expressing their disgust at the behaviour of the NZ delegation. NZ's wrecking tactics in Montreal follow its playing patsy for the US and the GM industry over Terminator and the WTO action against the EU.
+ SYNGENTA ACTIVE IN BRAZIL DELEGATION
According to campaign group Campanha Livre de Transgenicos, GM giant Syngenta was very active in the Brazilian delegation that derailed the biosafety negotiations in Montreal.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5345
+ NZ GOVT LIES EXPOSED OVER WRECKING ROLE IN MONTREAL
The New Zealand government has been claiming domestically that it didn't play a wrecking role in Montreal. This idea, they say, has been got up by their domestic opposition in concert with "NGOs" and it's based on "false information".
But the agricultural correspondent of India's Financial Express, Ashok Sharma, was at the negotiations in Montreal and saw what happened. He makes plain that Brazil and New Zealand blocked "the birth of an effective global regime for disciplining transboundary movement, handling and packaging of living modified organisms (LMOs)". It was a proposal to which "all other countries had agreed to" and what occurred was a triumph of trade interests over biosafety.
Ashok Sharma's article: http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5334
+ ENABLING GENETIC POLLUTION - LOWDOWN ON MONTREAL
An excellent article by Lim Li Ching and Lim Li Lin explains that New Zealand and Brazil's derailing of the talks will allow, in the words of one of the delegates, "global genetic pollution to escape unnoticed and unscathed".
The article notes how the New Zealand government in the run-up to the talks prevented agreement on decisions being taken by a two-thirds majority when attempts to achieve a consensus had been exhausted. It was this which then laid the ground for NZ and Brazil being able to derail the talks - something which otherwise would have been impossible.
Although the authors don't say as much, it now looks suspiciously like the NZ government signed up to the Biosafety Protocol with the undeclared intention of wrecking it. No wonder people were holding up placards at the end of the conference bearing the word "SHAME".
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5344
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THE AMERICAS
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+ FIRST EVER GM LABELING IN U.S. BECOMES LAW IN ALASKA
Statement from Tracie Letterman, Fish Program Director for Center for Food Safety, following Alaska's signing into law the nation's first labeling legislation for GM food, governing GM fish: "Alaska has become the first state to give its citizens what 90 percent of Americans want - labels for GE foods. We anticipate that this legislation will be a bellwether for other state efforts to label biotech foods. It's only a matter of time before all states move to fill in the regulatory gap left by the federal government's failure to require mandatory labeling."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5338
+ FLORIDA COUNTY LEADERS VOTE TO OPPOSE ACTIVISTS ON BIOTECH SITE
Despite protests and threats of lawsuits from environmental and other groups, Palm Beach County Commissioners have voted unanimously to start building a multi-million dollar biotech headquarters for the Scripps Research Institute in wetlands along the edge of the Everglades.
The Palm Beach Business Development Board (BDB) courted the biotech firm to establish its 364,000-square-foot biotech research facility. The county and state together have pledged hundreds of millions to buy the land, build the research facility, pay its operating costs for seven years and develop a supporting biotech cluster around the institute.
In January, activists protested at BDB offices; several entered and threw rotten fruit and sawdust. They claimed that the facility's development would violate state land use laws, pose environmental hazards, and ruin the shores of the Loxahatchee River.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5329
More on Scripps: http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4134
+ WHISTLEBLOWER SPEAKS OUT ON GM CONTAINMENT
As we reported previously, Hawaii's state Board of Agriculture voted 6-3 against Mera Pharmaceutical's request to bring GM algae to the islands for large-scale "contained" cultivation. Thanks to the integrity of a whistleblower, we've been given an insight into the extraordinary gap that may exist between the claims made to regulators by biotech companies and the reality.
Mark Bilan, a former Mera employee who designed the GM algae's "containment" - which turns out to be a sort of plastic bag that can leak into surrounding water and soil - has testified that "there is no way for Mera to guarantee that they can grow anything there and it will absolutely not end up in the groundwater, out in the nearby shore or carried away by unknowing employees to who knows where."
Read the rest of Mark Bilan's detailed description of what counts as "containment" in the perverted logic of the biotech industry: http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5342
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EUROPE
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+ GREENPEACE PROTESTORS PLEAD NOT GUILTY
Greenpeace protesters have pleaded not guilty to causing a public nuisance after boarding a ship carrying GM crops off the South Wales coast. The trial at Cardiff Crown Court will begin August 30. The 10 men and three women were involved in boarding the MV Etoile in the Bristol Channel to prevent it unloading GM animal feed.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5329
+ PRINCE OF DARKNESS WANTS TO FAST-TRACK GM
Tony Blair shocked even his New Labour colleagues when he appointed his most trusted lieutenant, Peter Mandelson (dubbed "The Prince of Darkness'), to the European Commission despite his track record of failure and sleaze. The twice-disgraced former minister is now apparently leading the charge at Brussels to have GM approvals fast-tracked even where that doesn't enjoy majority support among the countries of the EU.
Michael Meacher, the former UK environment minister has commented, "Having a group of unelected bureaucrats deciding what food should be eaten is fundamentally undemocratic. It is intolerable that they can ride it through roughshod over the objections of member states. This is the very kind of thing that the peoples of France and the Netherlands were objecting to in their referendums last week." [in voting No to the proposed European Constitution]
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5333
NB According to Blair's former Environment Minister, Michael Meacher, Blair got his advice on GM from unelected science minister and biotech investor Lord Sainsbury. In the more than 6 years Michael Meacher was Environment Minister, Blair never talked to him once about his concerns about GM! But, says Meacher, "Tony Blair spoke with Lord Sainsbury and his unelected advisors frequently. I think this is wrong."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5340
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AUSTRALASIA
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+ GM COTTON COSTS UP 20%
Some Queensland cotton growers are considering abandoning GM Bollgard cotton because of a price increase. Monsanto confirms that it will be putting up the cost of its GM seed by at least 20 per cent which growers believe will eat into a forecast price rise for the fibre.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5333
+ AUSTRALIA THREATENS NZ OVER BIOSECURITY MEASURES
NZ Government ministers have admitted Australia threatened New Zealand with punitive sanctions if steps were taken to prevent inadvertent imports of glyphosate-resistant ryegrass as contamination in grain. Australia has the worst resistance problems in the world.
"If this kind of blackmail is allowed it will make a shambles of our bio-security standards," says Jon Carapiet from GE Free NZ.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5346
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FOOD SAFETY
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+ CHOPRA WARNS OF SERIOUS ISSUES IN FOOD SAFETY
Dr Shiv Chopra was a Health Canada scientist who was fired from his job after raising concerns over the potential approval of Monsanto's GM bovine growth hormone in Canada.
In a talk at Powell River, Chopra said that while GM food is "the latest beast on the block," there are other serious issues about food safety. Those issues include hormones, antibiotics and rendered material going into animal feed. "They all have to be stopped," Chopra said. "They must all be taken out of food."
Hormones initiate and promote cancer in animals, Chopra said. "Even a single molecule of a cancer-causing chemical attached to a sensitive cell in the body can start cancer. Hormones also cause reproductive disorders in people and it's all happening through the food supply."
Widespread use of antibiotics in animals to prevent disease causes bacteria to become drug-resistant, he said. "People are dying because we have nothing left to treat them with. The bugs have become resistant." Antibiotics have been in the food supply system for more than 30 years, he said.
If these practices were banned in Canada, Chopra said, it would create a level playing field. "Food would automatically become organic," he said. "If we did this, it would generate jobs, create healthy food and a large export market." Organic farmers shouldn't have to fight for the changes, Chopra added. "It's the public that should demand these things be taken out."
Chopra also raised an alarm about two pending federal bills, Bill C-27, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency Enforcement Act, and Bill C-28, An Act to Amend the Food and Drugs Act. Bill C-27 would allow the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to accept testing and certification results from other countries. It would harmonize food inspection, food safety and environmental laws to conform with American regulations.
The US permits irradiation of meat, which is not allowed in Canada, and has failed to meet World Health Organization guidelines for preventing mad cow disease. Bill C-28 would allow Health Canada to give temporary approvals to drugs without data to back up the approvals. Chopra called that a "dangerous power."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5347
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CAMPAIGNS OF THE WEEK
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+ STOP EURO COMMISSION LIFTING NATIONAL BANS ON GM FOOD
The BiteBack campaign needs your urgent help to stop the European Commission from lifting the national bans on GM food and crops under WTO pressure!
The European Commission has called for a vote at the next Environmental Council in Luxembourg on 24 June, asking member states to vote on proposals to end national bans on GM food and crops. As you will recall, the Commission tried this last year and we succeeded in blocking their proposals but we didn't get quite enough votes to stop them altogether.
For EU countries to stop the Commission they must vote against their proposals with a so-called qualified majority. This is the weighted voting system used in Europe. Therefore it is very important that countries do not simply abstain but vote against the Commission. To see how your country voted last time see www.foeeurope.org/ban_risky_gm_food
**You can send a letter, fax or email to your government, asking them to vote AGAINST the European Commission proposals to end with the national bans at: www.foeeurope.org/ban_risky_gm_food/
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5337
+ HELP the George Fox 6 - the students at Britain's University of Lancaster who are facing charges of criminal trespass over peacefully protesting a meeting on campus involving arms dealers, Lord Sainsbury, GM firm Dupont, and Shell - the devastators of the Niger delta, amongst others!
SIGN THE ONLINE PETITION OF SUPPORT
http://www.petitiononline.com/gfox6/
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT HOW TO HELP HERE: http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5351
+ CALL TO ACTION ON GM ANIMAL FEED
The Milk Monitor: 13 - 17 June 2005
Below is a link to information about an exciting week long extravaganza of street theatre and protests, outside Sainsbury's HQ in the UK, against GM animal feed. Please have a read and help out if you can:
* Join in with the actions in London between 13 and 17 June in London (for more details ring the Genetic Engineering Network on 01803 840098).
* Write to the supermarkets demanding they stop selling GM-fed animal products, details are at the end of this email
* Forward this to anyone else who might be interested
Here's the link for more info: http://www.milkmonitor.co.nr/