from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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The clear light of public scrutiny could be shed on the biotech industry's shady dealings in the case of victimised scientist Ignacio Chapela, who was denied tenure after criticizing his university's pact with Novartis and publishing a paper exposing GM contamination of native Mexican maize. Chapela has rejected a deal put forward by the university that would require him to drop charges against it in return for another, possibly cosmetic, review of the tenure refusal. Chapela believes his case must now be fought openly in the courts - a prospect which must horrify some elements within the university and their friends in the industry. (See LOBBYWATCH.)
Don't miss Dr Charles Benbrook's latest paper (NEW REPORT), which, using US government data, confirms that GM crops have led to an increase in pesticide use in the country. Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of US grain elevators are demanding segregation of GM crops, a large coalition of Canada's civil society groups are seeking a GM moratorium, and ballots on a GM ban are due in California. (THE AMERICAS) The industry's running scared and is there a hint of the fake persuaders?(LOBBYWATCH SPECIAL).
Finally, please support the people of Mauritius and farmers in France in their struggles against biotech interests (see CAMPAIGNS OF THE WEEK).
Claire This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
www.lobbywatch.org / www.gmwatch.org
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CONTENTS
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LOBBYWATCH
NEW REPORT
ASIA
AFRICA
EUROPE
MIDDLE EAST
THE AMERICAS
LOBBYWATCH SPECIAL: more fake persuaders?
CAMPAIGNS OF THE WEEK
DONATIONS
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LOBBYWATCH
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+ IGNACIO CHAPELA WILL TAKE HIS TENURE CASE TO COURT
There has been a new development in UC Berkeley scientist Ignacio Chapela's legal fight to gain tenure, which was refused amid a furore about conflicts of interest within the university. The university's Academic Senate tenure committee is now recommending a formal senate hearing, which could drag on for months.
Chapela, a microbial ecologist, was an outspoken critic of a $25 million agreement between the school's College of Natural Resources and biotech giant Novartis. He was also the first to report the contamination of backyard maize plots in the Mexican state of Oaxaca with DNA from GM corn - part of a paper that was published and later more or less disowned by the journal Nature after it was attacked by pro-biotech interests.
Administrators offered Chapela a deal last month: If he would drop two claims he has filed with government agencies - that the university is discriminating against him because he is Hispanic, and that it is punishing him for speaking out against the Novartis deal - then a new budget committee would reconsider his tenure bid.
Chapela, however, refuses to waive the claims. He is eager for a public airing of the process, which he hopes will clear his name. Barring that, he's determined to take it to the courts. "It's obvious to me that negotiations in the university are not going to lead to a resolution of my case," he says. "I wish I was in court right now."
Chapela came up for review in September 2001. His colleagues in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management backed him 32-1. Their decision was approved by the college's acting dean, and then by a campus-wide tenure-review committee which voted unanimously in Chapela's favor - although its chair resigned shortly thereafter and mysteriously disavowed himself of the decision. The next step, which tends to be a formality, requires approval of the candidate by a campus budget committee. In this case, the committee, which makes final recommendations to the chancellor, voted to deny tenure.
Campus administrators were unwilling to comment on how this happened. But the Academic Senate's own tenure committee, to which Chapela has submitted fourteen grievances related to the process, concluded this summer that Chapela's "rights and privileges were violated, citing both a conflict of interest and an "unjustifiable delay" in the process.
The former involved Jasper Rine, a professor of genetics and developmental biology who sat on the budget committee when it authored the initial decision to nix Chapela's bid. His former company, Acacia Biosciences, had business dealings with Novartis, and Rine also served on a committee that oversaw the controversial Novartis pact. The chair of the campus tenure-review committee and the dean of the College of Natural Resources both had asked him to remove himself from the Chapela decision, but to no avail.
Rine declined to comment, but Chapela's attorney was more than willing. "People who have a clear interest in the corporate development of genetic engineering should not be involved in academic decisions of this nature," says the lawyer, Daniel Siegel. "This is so obvious. It's like asking Dick Cheney to choose the Democratic vice presidential candidate."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4559
+ AFRICA: TOGOLESE YOUTH CONDEMN GMOS
Togo's Young Volunteers for the Environment on World Food Day issued a press release condemning "the false promises of biotech industries". Curiously, this is the very same group that was recently listed among those supporting the FAO's promotion of GMOs!
Sena Alouka, the group's Executive Director and Cultural Biodiversity Campaign Coordinator, says that their name should never have been included.
This is not the only questionable example of such support. The Sindh Rural Women's Up-lift Group in Pakistan was the one apparently genuine Third World civil society group which signed on to another - "NGO" - letter in support of the FAO's recent pro-GM stance, although there were a number of far right groups like Barun Mitra's Liberty Institute which also signed on to the letter. The letter was organised by pro-GM lobbyist CS Prakash.
We asked the Group's President, Farzana Panhwar, about this. She had previously sent us a paper about biotechnology which expressed caution on the subject, not least about the issue of corporate control. CS Prakash had harshly criticised the paper when he posted it on his list, saying it sang along to "the acopalyptic tunes of socialism" and suggesting Mrs Panhwar should undergo "a compulsory reading" of the free market economist FA Hayek's The Road To Serfdom "as a beginning therapy".
From her subsequent support for Prakash's FAO letter, and from a new paper she had written - "The use of biotechnology in Sindh, Pakistan to improve Agriculture, its growth and bring Sustainable Development in the country" - it seemed that Mrs Panhwar might have indeed undergone Prakash's prescribed course of re-education.
In reply to our enquiry, however, Farzana Panhwar told us, "I am completely against GM techology" but added that her group got no support for organic agriculture, which they also practised, and that they needed means to improve agricultural production.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4567
For more on CS Prakash
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=106
+ CIIR - GOD, NOT MONSANTO, CREATES LIFE
Following a massive lobby drive by pro-biotech interests to persuade the Vatican to adopt a pro-GM stance, the issue of GM and its potential impact on the world's poor was explored at the Annual General Meeting on 15 October of the Catholic Institute for International Relations.
Columban missionary Fr Sean McDonagh said that his main concern was that GM was pitched at the conference as a solution to world hunger, a concept he disputes.
He said: "Genetically engineered crops will not feed the world. Many countries where poverty is endemic are actually food exporters. Brazil is the third largest exporter of food in the world and yet one fifth of its population - 32 million - go to bed hungry every night."
He added: "GE crops are patented so the Catholic Church, which presents itself as a Pro-Life institution, should recoil in horror at the arrogance involved in patenting life. Like slavery in past centuries there is no good patenting regime. It is totally at variance with the Biblical teaching that life is a gift of God to be shared by all. Christians believe that God, and not Monsanto, creates life."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4563
+ DAVID SUZUKI ON REGULATORS' CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
Excerpt from good article by Canadian geneticist David Suzuki explaining why he gave up his career in GM research to preserve his integrity as a science commentator:
I was also acutely aware that [GM] was a scientific revolution with enormous social, economic and ethical questions that had to be addressed, and if I and my lab were actively engaged in using the new technology, how could I escape the very real or perceived bias of vested interest?
...I recognized that to examine the technology critically, I could not be directly immersed in it.
That critical examination is what seems to be missing today in regards to regulation. When the Government of Canada is charged with both promoting biotechnology and regulating it, you know there will be a conflict of interest. And I fear that farmers and consumers will be the ultimate losers.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4561
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NEW REPORT
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+ GM INCREASING PESTICIDE USE
As a former Executive Director of the Board on Agriculture of the US National Academy of Science for seven years, Dr Charles Benbrook represents an authoritative voice on agricultural science. His latest technical report, drawing on 9 years of US Dept of Agriculture data, confirms that the claim of GM proponents that the use of GM crops in the US has led to a major reduction in pesticide use is quite simply a lie. The data shows that overall GM crops have led to an increase in pesticide use amounting to millions of pounds in quantity.
EXCERPT:
Pesticide Reduction Claims are Unfounded
The debate over the costs, risks, and benefits of agricultural biotechnology has been underway for about a decade, with no end in sight. Throughout this period, biotech proponents have claimed repeatedly that today's GE crop technologies are reducing pesticide use. A comprehensive accounting of the impacts of herbicide tolerant (HT) and Bt transgenic varieties on total pesticide use demonstrates unequivocally that in the first three years of commercial use, this claim was justified. But since 1999 it has not been.
GE corn, soybeans and cotton have led to a 122 million pound increase in pesticide use since 1996. While Bt crops have reduced insecticide use by about 15.6 million pounds over this period, HT crops have increased herbicide use 138 million pounds.
Bt crops have reduced insecticide use on corn and cotton about 5 percent, while HT technology has increased herbicide use about 5 percent across the three major crops. But since so much more herbicide is used on corn, soybeans, and cotton, compared to the volume of insecticide applied to corn and cotton, overall pesticide use has risen about 4.1 percent on acres planted to GE varieties.
The increase in herbicide use on HT crop acres should come as no surprise. Weed scientists have warned for about a decade that heavy reliance on HT crops would trigger changes in weed communities and resistance, in turn forcing farmers to apply additional herbicides and/or increase herbicide rates of application. The ecological adaptations predicated by scientists have been occurring in the case of Roundup Ready crops for three or four years and appear to be accelerating... Reliance on a single herbicide, glyphosate, as the primary method for managing weeds on millions of acres planted to HT varieties remains the primary factor that has led to the need to apply more herbicides per acre to achieve the same level of weed control.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4572
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ASIA
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+ PROGRESS PRE-DATES GREEN REVOLUTION
An excellent article (reprinted below) has appeared in the Bangkok Post in response to an opinion piece, "Fueling a new 'Green Revolution'?", in which Andrew Roberts argued that Thai farmers had benefited immeasurably from the Green Revolution, which saved them from their mere subsistence organic production, and that GM technologies offered a similar leap forward and were just as worthy of a fair trial. Roberts' article can be found on the BioThai website: http://www.biothai.org
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Progress pre-dates Green Revolution, by Michael Commons
http://www.biothai.org/cgi-bin/content/news/show.pl?0387
I respect and appreciate your forum on GMOs, but wish to address inaccuracies in Mr Andrew Roberts' piece published in the Perspective section of October 17. For one, Thailand and Thai farmers have been producing large surpluses of rice and exporting rice for hundreds of years. The Bowring Treaty, which led to greatly increased exports of rice, was signed in 1856. Before the Green Revolution this was done almost entirely without the use of synthetic fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides, and hybrid species. So to paint agriculture in Thailand before the 1960s as subsistence agriculture is far from accurate.
Another false impression given by the piece is that organic agriculture is expen-sive and low yielding. I have interviewed a number of organic farmers in Yasothon and Chiang Mai, certified by ACT, who stated that they have greater yields per rai since making the switch to organic agriculture. If verification were needed one could look at ACT records. They also have much lower investment costs.
They use a combination of manure, green manure, compost, and liquid fermentations to fertilise their fields and only rarely use herbal preparations for pests if at all. Almost all of these materials can be produced from on-site resources, such as the manure of their cows, rice straw, weeds, and organic kitchen waste. This greater yield refers only to the main crop, Thai Jasmine Hom Mali rice, and does not even account for the many other benefits, such as fish from the rice fields, richer soil, better quality grain, improved health, and a healthier environment.
This piece also conveys that farmers were not making important developments or agricultural progress before institutional agriculture research was born. Farmers since the beginning of agriculture until now have selected and bred for desirable properties. Compare the size of a cob of corn with the wild corn ancestor seedpod. This development was done by generations of farmers in the new world before Columbus set foot on soil there and before the Green Revolution was even a dream in anyone's head. Indo-European farmers developed wheat, and Asian farmers, including Thais, developed rice to bring us these valuable grains today.
Considering this long history of crop improvement given to us by our patrimony, it seems totally inappropriate that GMO patent holders claim all rights for newly developed GMO varieties, although they have just done a minor alteration to a long and well-developed crop. Their claim is tantamount to saying that by applying a rust resistant finish to a car, one has re-invented the automobile.
I have not addressed any of the risks that GMOs pose to the Thai economy, human health, the environment, and Thai farmers. I look forward to reading an essay addressing these issues in your forum in the future.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4568
+ PHILIPPINES: STRONG OPPOSITION FROM FARMERS TO BT CORN
The Bohol Provincial Board has recently approved a resolution banning Bt corn and other GMOs in the province. The move came after strong opposition from Central Visayas farmers, particularly in Bohol, the biggest agricultural province in the region. Jose Quitazol, DA 7's assistant regional director for operations said that although tests show that GMO products are safe for the health and environment [oh yeah???], they couldn't force the people to patronize these.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4565
+ JAPAN: FARMER GOES IT ALONE ON GM BEANS
Yoshimasa Miyai, a farmer from Naganumacho, Hokkaido, one of the nation's leading soy producing prefectures, plans to begin cultivating GM soybeans next spring. But he faces fierce opposition from the Hokkaido government and the local agricultural cooperative, which fear rumors that the beans are unsafe could damage the reputation of locally produced crops. A test planting of soybeans in Ibaraki Prefecture met with strong resistance last year, with protesters using a tractor to destroy the crops.
It's interesting that the farmer says he wants to grow GM soybeans because they "will be able to increase his yield by three to four times, with the same amount of effort", while in the US the flattening, and even decline, of US soybean yields, which has cost farmers an estimated $1.28 billion, is being attributed to exactly the same source.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4462
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4564
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AFRICA
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+ NEW REPORT ON GM COTTON IN AFRICA
The executive summary of an incisive and readable new report on the introduction of GM cotton into Africa, commissioned by the African Centre for Biosafety, is at
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4571
The report reveals how the first (chemical) Green Revolution produced a wide variety of negative effects on land, the economy and in terms of farmer dependence. It then expertly takes apart many of the arguments advanced by pro-biotech interests to justify pushing GM crops into Africa.
Excerpt:
Globally, the claimed successes of GM cotton are contested. The apparent benefit of Bt cotton is that farmers save money by spraying less insecticide because the insecticide is built in to the genetic structure of the seed. An additional spin-off is the reduction in environmental damage.
However, the pests targeted by Bt cotton are only a few amongst many pests that damage cotton plants. In Africa, broad-spectrum insecticides are used that target all pests including those targeted by the Bt toxin. This means these pesticides will not be used any less as a result of the use of Bt cotton. Pests also develop resistance to insecticides, including Bt and therefore additional pest management techniques will still be required. There is also growing evidence to suggest that Bt cotton is more susceptible to secondary pests, necessitating additional pesticide use to control these pests. In the US, although insecticide use for pests targeted by Bt has declined since the introduction of Bt cotton, overall insecticide use has not declined because of the growth of secondary pests.
The introduction of transgenic crops cannot be separated from the perceived role of agriculture as a driver of market and private sector-led development in Africa. USAID defines its agenda in African agriculture as being to improve productivity and incomes for African farmers. Yet rising cotton productivity in current conditions will merely result in even lower prices. ...
The US, EU and Chinese governments pay producers massive subsidies to continue production, even though these cost the state more than the total value of production. In the US and the EU, large-scale agribusinesses are the primary beneficiaries of state subsidies. These subsidies permit producers to adopt more expensive technology such as GM cotton and its associated chemicals and still sell their cotton on the world market cheaper than unsubsidised producers in other parts of the world including in Africa.
Executive summary:
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4571
Full report available upon request from Shenaz Moola This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. in pdf format. Alternatively, it should be available in the near future on the African Centre for Biosafety's website, http://www.biosafetyafrica.net
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EUROPE
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+ EUROPE MUST DITCH GM CROPS NOW - SCIENTISTS
Europe must ditch GM crops and invest in sustainable agriculture now if it wants to provide enough food for future generations, scientists have warned. Scientific evidence has turned decisively against GM crops and in favour of non-GM sustainable agriculture, according to a new publication, The Independent Science Panel Report, The Case for a GM Free Sustainable World.
The report's findings were released at a conference on GM crops hosted by Plaid Cymru Deputy Leader, Jill Evans MEP, at the European Parliament in Brussels. Ms Evans said, "This conference and the report steps up the pressure on the European Commission to halt its move towards promoting plant biotechnology in Europe.
"We have known for some time about the massive public opposition to GM crops, now we see more and more that the science is with us too. The tide of public opinion turned long ago, now the tide of science has turned - how much longer can governments ignore the obvious?"
The event was organised in partnership with the Institute of Science in Society and GM Free Cymru. Speakers included French farmer and anti-GM protester Jose Bove, representing Confederation Paysanne, Michael Meacher MP, former UK Environment Minister, and Edward Goldsmith, founding editor of The Ecologist.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4569
+ POLAND TO SEEK EU GM MAIZE RESTRICTIONS
Poland's environment and agriculture ministries are to push for continued national restrictions on cultivation of GM maize MON 810 despite the European Commission's decision in September to clear 17 MON 810 varieties for cultivation in the EU (ED 08/09/04
http://www.environmentdaily.com/articles/index.cfm?action=article&ref=17212
[requires subscription]
In a joint statement the two ministries complained that the Commission had taken its decision too quickly and without consulting any of the EU's ten new member states. Poland is currently working on a national law on production of GMOs.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4570
+ RUSSIAN ENVIRO GROUPS AND SCIENTISTS WANT RESTRICTIONS AND RESEARCH ON GM FOOD
More than 35 people, most of them leaders of scientific or environmental activist groups, released a letter recently urging Russian President Vladimir Putin to set limits on the development and use of GM foods.
The letter said that it was a response to growing efforts, originating largely in the US, to "inculcate" Russia with agricultural production based on GMOs. It said those who carry out "the interests of transnational, mostly American biotech companies are silent about the risks and dangers to human health and the environment from GM technologies, which have not been fully studied."
The letter calls for a ban on the use of GM products in baby food, a moratorium on commercial production of GM brands until they are proved harmless by independent experts, a law on "biosecurity," and the harmonization of Russian laws on GM foods with the legislation of other countries. It also calls for state support of independent research on the effects of GMOs and products on people and the environment.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4570
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MIDDLE EAST
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+ MORE ON US OUTLAWS SEED SAVING IN IRAQ
We recently put out a story (http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4538) about the US outlawing seed saving in occupied Iraq, effectively handing over the seed market to multinationals. One of our subscribers has pointed out that Iraq is a breadbasket of the Middle East and the genetic origin of wheat.
Is the US putting legislation in place in Iraq in preparation for commercialising GM wheat there in order to gain for it a foothold in Asia?
Also, if the multinationals contaminate the genetic source of wheat with their patented genes, then they may effectively own the contaminated strains and restrict farmer choice worldwide to GM wheat. In Mexico, with regard to maize, the contamination of native strains - including some supposedly non-GM varieties held in gene banks - is already well under way.
Note that our subscriber's point about Iraq and its neighbours being the genetic origin of wheat is confirmed by the following -
http://www.ipgri.cgiar.org/publications/HTMLPublications/47/ch10.htm
- "Wild emmer, a tetraploid, is the ancestor of most wheat cultivated today. It is distributed in the Fertile Crescent, from Palestine and Jordan to southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq and western Iran."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4560
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THE AMERICAS
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+ CALIFORNIA COUNTIES TO VOTE SOON ON GM BAN
When California speaks, the rest of America usually listens, and voters here are poised once again to approve measures likely to reverberate in other states and Congress.
Long seen as the 800-pound gorilla of direct democracy, California was the first state or among the first to use citizen initiatives to cap property-tax increases, limit state legislators' terms, legalize medical marijuana and ban smoking in bars. Those pioneering votes inspired many imitators.
Marin, Butte, Humboldt and San Luis Obispo counties vote November 2 on whether to ban the planting of GM crops. If the initiatives pass, those counties will join Mendocino, which became the first in the nation to ban such crops last spring, followed by Trinity County in August.
Both sides agree that California could be a bellwether. "These are preliminary skirmishes for legislative and state ballot initiatives that are to come," says Ronnie Cummins of the Organic Consumers Association. "A ballot initiative in California that enacted mandatory labelling or enacted very strict liability would really cripple this industry."
Of the existing biotech crops - corn, soybeans, cotton, canola, summer squash and papaya - only small amounts of corn and cotton are actually grown in California. But in the Midwest and South, where biotech corn, soy, canola and cotton are widespread, bans would have major repercussions.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4577
FOR MORE ON THE CALIFORNIA BALLOTS SEE OUR 'LOBBYWATCH SPECIAL' BELOW
+ CANADA HAS "UNDEMOCRATIC AND UNSAFE REGULATORY SYSTEM" - MORATORIUM DEMANDED
A large coalition of Canada's civil society groups including environmentalists, consumers and farmers are demanding that the House of Commons put rapidly in place a precautionary GM policy. A recent study from the Polaris Institute confirmed that the federal government failed to take appropriate measures following the recommendations of the 2001 report of the Royal Society of Canada. The groups filed a petition signed by about 20,000 people demanding a moratorium on GE crop and food.
The Polaris Institute study says, "Canadian Government regulation of genetically engineered foods and crops is designed to support the biotechnology industry and approve products quickly so that corporations can sell their products. The result is an undemocratic and unsafe regulatory system."
More at: http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4566
+ VENEZUELA UNDER THREAT OF GM
Brazilian journalist Claudia Jardim writes that the Venezuelan countryside is still under threat from the interests of the GM seed firms. Last April, after being warned by one of the leaders of Via Campesina (The Peasants' Path, a peasant movement), President Hugo Chavez banned the use of transgenics in agricultural production.
The President's announcement was praised by social and peasant movements. Nevertheless, nothing was done beyond the President's declaration. No law forbidding or regulating the use of transgenics in the country was passed.
This is similar to what happened in Brazil during Cardozo's government, when illegal sowing started in Rio Grande Sul. Venezuela's Ministry of Lands & Agriculture (MAT) regulates neither the production nor the entry of seeds from the US and Argentina (the leading transgenics producers).
The president of the National Institute of Agricultural Investigation (INIA), Prudencio Chacon, affirms that 70% of Venezuelan seeds are imported, and admits that there is no customs regulation control for the importation of seeds. "It is very likely that, as well as in other nations, the seeds are smuggled into the country, but we have no control over it," he says.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4575
+ US: GM CORN LOWERS PRICES IN US; GRAIN ELEVATORS DEMANDING SEGREGATION
A new survey of 1,194 grain elevators across the US, conducted by the American Corn Growers Foundation (ACGF) Farmer Choice - Customer First program found that nearly one-quarter (23.7%) reported that they are requiring segregation of biotech corn from conventional corn varieties.
Over twelve percent (12.6%) reported offering premiums for non-GMO, conventional corn varieties over GMO biotech varieties. The premiums reported range from five to thirty cents per bushel. Nine elevators reported that they are discounting GMO corn.
ACGF Chairman Gale Lush of Wilcox, Neb. said, "I have seen some reports that biotech corn varieties are responsible for the record yield this year. I disagree! I plant both conventional and biotech corn varieties. The growing season and management, not biotech genetics, are primarily responsible for 2004 yields. Let us not forget that corn is piled on the ground across the Midwest. Even with the higher average corn yield, gross income per acre is $35.32 less than 2003 because of the lower average price of $1.95/bu. forecast this month by USDA. GMO corn helped cause lower prices by sending lucrative European and Asian corn customers to U.S. export competitors."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4574
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LOBBYWATCH SPECIAL: say hello to the fake persuaders?
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+ RUNNING SCARED IN CALIFORNIA - SAY HELLO TO THE FAKE PERSUADERS?
The biotech industry's mouthpiece - AgBioView - has just brought out a "Special" campaigning bulletin dedicated entirely to the "Reckless Ballot Measures in California".
The content reflects not just the industry's anxiety over the county ballot measures calling for a GM ban. It also makes plain its strategy - a strategy developed after it wasted more than half a million dollars (via Croplife America) unsuccessfully opposing the Mendocino ballot iniative.
The new tactic is to do everything in the name of the locals - most especially, the farming community, so that the ballots are not seen as a fight between giant multinationals and local folk, but as a fight between local farmers standing up for their independence and overbearing activists.
To this end the industry's friends in California have been busy organising appropriate locals to sing the industry's tunes. You can catch a flavour of what's going on in today's Agbioview Special where an almost line by line rebuttal is presented of a "GE-Free Butte" Ad. AgBioView's rebuttal is described as, "A California Farmer Speaks Up and Takes on 'GE-Free' Myths'".
The particular "California Farmer" in question is not identified and, while he or she may just be bashful, there are very good grounds for scepticism about such contributions to AgBioView. This is the list that previously ran a whole series of campaigning pieces by what have been termed the "fake persuaders" - Monsanto PR flaks posing as ordinary citizens. These misleading, soemtimes libellous and otherwise poisonous postings were eventually tracked down to Monsanto's IP address and that of its online PR company Bivings, which actually boasted about its insidious "viral marketing".
Why Monsanto & Co. might want to resort to such good old "third party" tactics is all too obvious when you read the "California Farmer" rebuttal. In commenting on the statement in the ad, "GE canola has so thoroughly contaminated non-GE varieties, Saskatchewan's organic growers abandoned the crop altogether and are suing Monsanto and Bayer CropScience", the "California Farmer" retorts, "And who were these organic growers? Their production accounted for a fraction of a percent of all canola growers. Did they have the right to hinder the economic viability of all other growers?"
To say the production of these farmers should just be eliminated without any concern sounds harsh even coming from a "California Farmer". Now imagine those words in the mouth of a multinational!
At the end of AgBioView's "Special" is a call to arms to California's scientists from AgBioView's editor, CS Prakash, who wants them to write to the media, to Governor Arnie, amongst others, and even provides a model letter for the purpose.
This is highly reminiscent of the campaign against Dr Ignacio Chapela, where the fake persuaders were used on AgBioView to whip up sentiment against the Berkeley scientist and then Prakash and others called on the scientific community to make their views known to the journal Nature, or Prakash's UK side-kick Tony Trewavas called on subscribers to write to Berkeley to demand Chapela's dismissal if he failed to hand over his Mexican maize samples.
For the AgBioView Special
http://www.agbioworld.org/newsletter_wm/index.php?caseid=archive&newsid=2260
For more on Monsanto's dirty tricks campaign, and its use of fake citizens, fake organisations, and even fake public protest, see 'Biotech's Hall of Mirrors' by Jonathan Matthews
http://www.gene-watch.org/genewatch/articles/16-2matthews.html
+ Excerpt from "The Covert Biotech War" by
George Monbiot (published in The Guardian, Tuesday 19 Nov, 2002)
http://www.gmwatch.org/p2temp2.asp?aid=2&page=1&op=1
The battle to put a corporate GM padlock on our foodchain is being fought on the net
Six months ago, this column revealed that a fake citizen called Mary Murphy had been bombarding internet listservers with messages denouncing the scientists and environmentalists who were critical of GM crops. The computer from which some of these messages were sent belongs to a public relations company called Bivings, which works for Monsanto. The boss of Bivings wrote to the Guardian, fiercely denying that his company had been running covert campaigns. His head of online PR, however, admitted to the BBC's Newsnight that one of the messages came from someone "working for Bivings" or "clients using our services". But Bivings denies any knowledge of the use of its computer for such a campaign.
This admission prompted the researcher Jonathan Matthews, who first uncovered the story, to take another look at some of the emails which had attracted his attention. He had become particularly interested in a series of vituperative messages sent to the most prominent biotech listservers on the net, by someone called Andura Smetacek. Smetacek first began writing in 2000. She or he repeatedly accused the critics of GM of terrorism. When one of her letters, asserting that Greenpeace was deliberately spreading unfounded fears about GM foods in order to further its own financial interests, was reprinted in the Glasgow Herald, Greenpeace successfully sued the paper for libel.
Smetacek claimed, in different messages, first to live in London, then in New York. Jonathan Matthews checked every available public record and found that no person of that name appeared to exist in either city. But last month his techie friends discovered something interesting. Three of these messages, including the first one Smetacek sent, arrived with the internet protocol address 199.89.234.124. This is the address assigned to the server gatekeeper2.monsanto.com. It belongs to the Monsanto corporation.
In 1999, after the company nearly collapsed as a result of its disastrous attempt to thrust GM food into the European market, Monsanto's communications director, Philip Angell, explained to the Wall Street Journal: "Maybe we weren't aggressive enough... When you fight a forest fire, sometimes you have to light another fire." The company identified the internet as the medium which had helped protest to "mushroom".
At the end of last year, Jay Byrne, formerly the company's director of internet outreach, explained to a number of other firms the tactics he had used at Monsanto. He showed how, before he got to work, the top GM sites listed by an internet search engine were all critical of the technology. Following his intervention, the top sites were all supportive ones (four of them established by Monsanto's PR firm Bivings). He told them to "think of the internet as a weapon on the table. Either you pick it up or your competitor does, but somebody is going to get killed".
While he was working for Monsanto, Byrne told the internet newsletter Wow that he "spends his time and effort participating" in web discussions about biotech. He singled out the site AgBioWorld [CS Prakash's campaigning website and the home of AgBioView], where he "ensures his company gets proper play". AgBioWorld is the site on which Smetacek launched her campaign.
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CAMPAIGNS OF THE WEEK
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+ HELP PREVENT BAD LAW IN MAURITIUS
Please help prevent the proposed Plant Breeders' Rights Law being adopted in Mauritius. This law would effectively hand over Mauritius' biological resources and indigenous farmer-produced crop varieties to corporate pirates. There is an alternative, say campaigners - the African Union model law, adopted by some African countries, which better protects indigenous knowledge and farmer rights.
Please go to the link at
http://www.gmwatch.org/proemail1.asp?id=6
and give your support to this letter of protest to the Prime Minister of Mauritius. It will only take a minute.
More on what's wrong with the proposed law:
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4573
+ SUPPORT FRENCH FARMERS IN ANTI-GM FIGHT
PLEASE SIGN ON AND CIRCULATE WIDELY...
Reply to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
On July 25 2004, 1,500 activists led by Jose Bove and members of Confederation Paysanne Europe (CPE), removed a trial crop of GM maize at Levignac, near Toulouse, France. On 14 August, CPE and 160 farmers and activists removed another GM maize crop. On 5 September, 600 farmers and activists, including women and children, were tear-gassed by gendarmes and helicopters as they attempted to decontaminate another field in the village of Solomiac in the Gers region. See:
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=58&story_id=114
34 Images: http://mdh.limoges.free.fr/support/valdiv/index.htm
Nine campaigners, including Jose Bove, are due to appear in court on November 8 and yet more people at a later date. CPE are calling on farmers, campaigners and food organisations worldwide to send statements of support by
6 November.
.......
PETITION
"We unite behind the actions of French farmers, including Confederation Paysanne Europe, in support of the destruction of GM crops this summer to safeguard our environmental and farming futures "
NAME:
Food/Farming Org (if relevant):
Address / email:
Telephone (optional):
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To sign on to this statement of support
either return this text as an email, with your details added, to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
or print it out and post or fax it to:
Fax: 01348 831244
Gerald Miles,
Caerhys Organic Farm,
Berea, St. David's,
Pembrokeshire, Wales SA62 6DX, UK
THANK YOU
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DONATIONS
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