GMWatch News Review archive

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from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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Dear all

Welcome to WW47 bringing you all the latest news in brief on the GM issue.

The web of hypocrisy over GM is unravelling, with leaked Canadian government papers revealing that while the government remains publicly gung-ho for biotech, it is secretly aware that continuing with the crops will lose yet more export markets (see our lead story).

For light relief, don't miss the story of biotech bully-boy Prof Trewavas complaining to the media about abuse and intimidation he's received from NGIN/GMWATCH and other anti-GM activists (see HYPOCRITE OF THE WEEK). This is interesting, because we have, over many years, drawn attention to the abuse, intimidation and misleading statements that Trewavas himself has directed at scientists sceptical of GM.

Claire  <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
www.ngin.org.uk

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CONTENTS
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SETBACKS TO THE GM LOBBY
OTHER HIGHLIGHTS OF THE WEEK
HYPOCRITE OF THE WEEK
HEADLINES OF THE WEEK
MONTHLY REVIEW
SUBSCRIPTIONS

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SETBACKS TO THE GM LOBBY
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+ Cabinet papers warn Canada off GM crops A secret briefing to the Canadian government has warned that the country's massive food exports are at risk from its continued use of GM crops. The paper, which has been obtained under the Access of Information Act, warns the cabinet of the "pressing need to immediately address these concerns". Such fears contrast with the government's repeated endorsement of GM crops and technology as a great opportunity for Canada.

The paper, drafted by a senior civil servant, says that "producers are becoming worried about losing markets and losing choice over what they produce", while consumers are becoming more worried that they cannot distinguish between GM and non-GM products.

"These concerns could precipitate a loss of confidence in the integrity of the Canadian food system, which could be very disruptive to the domestic system as well as Canada's ability to export to demanding markets."

Some pages of the secret document, which have been blanked out, concern advice on how to deal with the growing public fears and the potential loss of further export markets for Canadian goods.

Canada is the third-largest producer of GM crops after the US and Argentina. But the paper says that the production of GM canola (oilseed rape) is affecting the value of non- GM canola in some markets. It says: "The EU was effectively closed to all Canadian commodity canola."

Canadian farmers' greatest fear, however, is the introduction of GM wheat, of which trials are imminent. The Canadian Wheat Board has just surveyed its overseas customers in Europe, Japan and the US, with 82% saying that they would not take GM wheat. The export market for milling wheat into bread is worth £2bn a year to Canada. More at
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1700

+ Europe blocks GM sweetcorn.
A European Union (EU) regulatory committee has failed to support a proposal by the EU's Executive Commission to approve a controversial GM sweet corn, meaning that Europe's de facto ban on GM crops continues.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1694

+ .BUT BLAIR AND FOOD STANDARDS AGENCY TRIED TO GET GM SWEETCORN PASSED
Contrary to the wishes of the vast majority of Brits, only 8% of whom wish to eat GM foods, the British government pushed for the EU to approve Syngenta's GM sweetcorn. The approval of the sweetcorn - codenamed Bt11 - was seen as a "symbolic gesture" to appease the US. The Food Standards Agency, which represented Britain on the EU deciding committee, said it saw no reason why it should not be approved - against the wishes of environment and agriculture ministers.

The FSA's position, however, was exploded by a well-timed new report from the Austrian government, which concludes that safety testing of GM foods - including the sweetcorn - has been sporadic, non-existent, or based on assumptions that cannot be verified. The report - Toxikologie und Allergologie von GVO-Produkten - focused on 11 applications for approval of GM maize, beet, potato, oilseed rape, cotton and carnations, as well as the Bt11 sweetcorn.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1695

+ EVEN THE AMERICANS WON'T EAT THE STUFF
Mark Griffiths of NLP Wessex points out that GM crops which are produced for direct human consumption (e.g sweet corn, potatoes, sugar beet) instead of animal feed (like soya and maize) are generally not being grown even in the US even when they get approval because food processors will not touch them.
http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/usdagmeconomics.htm

+ Devinder Sharma in US to talk about GM, globalization and food security
Food will be a weapon in future political, economic and strategic conflicts, an international activist warned. Indian journalist, author and critic Devinder Sharma, while on a lecture tour of the US, said control of the world's staple crops by a handful of multinational corporations already poses significant threats to world stability and the fight against hunger. He said wars of the future could be fought without weapons by using food as leverage instead.

"Those who control the staple foods don't need any weapons," he said. Sharma said using food as a weapon is not new, citing the 19th century potato famine in Ireland, which he said was more about deliberately poor distribution than a food shortage.

Sharma urged Vermont farmers to continue to oppose the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that pose a significant economic threat to organic producers. He said there is growing evidence GMOs are harmful to the environment and contribute to hunger in Third World countries.

Sharma said an extreme example of the impact of global food trade on hunger in India was the export of the 65 million tons of grain in 2001 as cattle feed to the United States. At the same time, he said, India had to import cattle fodder to feed millions of starving Indians.

"What a remarkable development program we're in," said Sharma. "We owned food being exported to feed cattle (in America) and converted cattle feed (from America) to feed humans."

In Africa, he said attempts by American companies to deal with famine are actually making the problem worse. He said GMO grain does not reproduce, forcing poor farmers to buy new seed each year, with millions facing starvation as a result.
http://www.cropchoice.com/leadstry.asp?recid=2155

GMWATCH comment: Devinder Sharma has accurately pinpointed the endgame of the biotech industry: world domination via control of the food supply. This is something that appears to have escaped those biotech liberals who claim that GM would be OK with sufficient public ownership of gene technology - if gene technology was publicly owned it would be useless to the industry! Note that some years ago, Monsanto and other multinationals formed plans to move into the water business, privatising water supplies first in countries which faced shortages and where bigger profits could be made.
http://www.portaec.net/library/food/waterwatch.html

The World Bank has adopted a policy of water privatization and full-cost
water pricing. Governments are signing away their control over domestic water supplies by participating in trade treaties such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and in institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO). These agreements give transnational corporations the unprecedented right to the water of signatory countries. Such schemes are carried out under the pretence of safeguarding limited water resources for the future.
http://www.purewatergazette.net/privatizationofwater.htm
http://www.txgreens.org/news/oped_water.htm

+ Green groups sue USDA to stop bio-pharm planting
A coalition of environmental groups and consumer advocates sued the US Agriculture Department in federal court on November 12 to try to halt the experimental planting of biotech crops engineered to make medicine. The coalition, which includes Friends of the Earth and the Center for Food Safety, accused the USDA of allowing the experimental crops to be planted in open fields without assessing the risk to other crops, wildlife, and humans. The lawsuit was filed in a federal district court in Hawaii, one of the top producing states of pharmaceutical crops.

"The existing regulatory system merely assumes that growing these crops is harmless, even in places where they can contaminate the environment and get into the food supply," said Joseph Mendelson, legal director for Center for Food Safety.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1704

+ Bayer under pressure - posts 3rd-quarter net loss of 8M
Drug and chemicals maker Bayer AG swung to a loss in the third quarter as sales fell at divisions the company will soon spin off and analysts warned the remaining drug and farm chemicals businesses face pressure too. Bayer said Tuesday it lost 123 million ($138 million) in the July-September period in contrast to profits of 656 million a year ago and 128 million in the second quarter.

Sales fell 8.4 percent to 6.83 billion ($7.85 billion) from 7.46 billion a year ago. The company in part blamed the euro's rise against the dollar, which shrinks US earnings when they're reported in euros. Bayer said sales fell 24 percent at industrial chemicals and 5 percent at polymers.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1703

+ BAYER BIG NOISE DEMO
There was a Big Noise Demo outside Bayer's UK headquarters at Newbury on
Thurs 13 November. Protestors were invited to bring anything that made a noise. The demo aimed at pressuring the company to pull out of GM crops. Bayer is the major GM company in Europe.
http://www.stopbayergm.org/

+ AFRICAN FARMERS NEED WATER, NOT GM CROPS - FAO HEAD
Irrigation and road-building are higher priorities in improving Africa's weak agriculture sector than fostering the growth of biotechnology on the continent, the head of the Food and Agriculture Organization said.

FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf's remarks came on the day EU states postponed a vote that would have ended a five-year-old ban on new biotech products. "The number one problem of agricultural development in Africa is water," Diouf told reporters following a speech to the Inter-American Development Bank. "The second problem of Africa is rural infrastructure, the rural roads," he added.

Diouf said that sub-Saharan Africa, which suffers from persistent food shortages and measly foreign agriculture aid, uses only 1.6 percent of its available water supply. "I therefore think that it would make sense to try to get that water and to be able to develop" Africa's agriculture sector, Diouf said when asked about the impact of the EU's biotech policies.

Diouf noted that many African countries are not even able to capitalize on 40-year-old plant technology, largely because of their inability to harness water resources.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1693

+ AFRICAN PRIESTS CRITICISE VATICAN GM CONFERENCE.
Organisers of an international Vatican seminar on GM foods came under fire from their own when African priests said it should have included more Church members critical of the crops.

The seminar, attended by experts from the US, Europe, Asia and Africa, is intended to help the Vatican decide whether GMOs get its backing, which could affect the views of millions of Catholics.

The gathering came under fire on its opening day from two speakers who said it was biased with scientists who favour GMOs. "We are concerned that several voices of Church leaders around the world are not represented on these panels," two Jesuit priests said in a joint written presentation.

The priests were Roland Lesseps, senior scientist at the Kasisi Agricultural Training Centre in Lusaka, Zambia, and Peter Henriot, director of Lusaka's Jesuit Centre of Theological Reflection. They pointed to recent statements by Church leaders in the Philippines, Brazil and South Africa, which they said had expressed "deep concerns based on practical experiences" and were not reflected at the seminar.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1699

A leading light in the planning of the Vatican's biotech-fest was Archbishop Renato Martino. Dr Doreen Stabinsky, a Greenpeace science adviser, was damning about the meeting's composition. "It's clearly a biased seminar. Cardinal Martino has clearly arranged the seminar to be very pro-GMO, with two or three experts in favour and only one or none at all who are against on each panel. He has made clear his support for the biblical position that man was put on Earth to dominate nature."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1692

+ . AND HOW THE CONFERENCE WAS STACKED
Among the speakers from southern Africa at the event were Thandiwe Myeni who reported positive experiences experience with GM cotton. Myeni falls exactly into the mold of South African GM cotton farmers presented as "representative" that is described by Aaron deGrassi of the Institute of Development Studies.

According to deGrassi, while small farmers in the area are typically illiterate and work tiny plots of land, those groomed by Monsanto for this role own dozens of acres of land and some "spend most of their time working at their day jobs as school administrators". Myeni is a school principal who farms 24 acres. See 'GM crops irrelevant for Africa',
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1431

+ "CYNICAL & DISHONEST SCIENCE" IN GM MAIZE TRIALS
The maize trials in the UK's farm scale evaluations (FSEs) have come under fire for being "misleading", "worthless" and "a complete waste of time". In the FSEs, GM herbicide-tolerant maize was said to have positive effects, a claim widely highlighted in the media.

But the maize trials have been called into question. A report by Robert Vint and Lim Li Ching for the Institute of Science in Society www.i-sis.org.uk says that analysis of the methodology reveals systemic bias - underestimating the environmental impact of the GM crops whilst overestimating the likely environmental impact of future non-GM cultivation. The failure to measure the yield of the GM crop makes it impossible to confirm that the cultivation method was viable. In addition, published yield figures for the GM crop are derived from cultivation using a different herbicide, adding to the deception.

An example of the dishonest science: The GM maize herbicide management regime in the FSEs used Liberty, a herbicide less powerful than that used in the non-GM halves of the fields. However, research and farmers' experience have shown that the GM maize cannot be grown viably unless Liberty is mixed with other more aggressive herbicides.
www.i-sis.org.uk
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1696

+ Ministers retreat from plan to scrap countryside watchdogs
As GMWATCH predicted, the government has been planning to scrap the independent wildlife watchdog English Nature in revenge for its opposition to GM crops. With the support of Downing Street, civil servants had planned to subsume English Nature and the landscape watchdog, the Countryside Agency, into a new Land Management Agency subordinate to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), a body best known for illegally killing millions of healthy animals during the foot and mouth crisis. But a fierce public outcry has made the government back off. The internal battle within Whitehall is reportedly still raging.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1695

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OTHER HIGHLIGHTS OF THE WEEK
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+ SENSE ABOUT SCIENCE ORGANISED THAT LETTER TO BLAIR
As we suspected, the letter from 114 UK pro-corporate scientists on the issue of increasing hostility to, and lack of government support for, work on GM, was co-ordinated by Sense About Science.

From GMWATCH's profile of Sense About Science: Sense About Science's phone number is the same as that for the charity Global Futures. According to the Charity Commission, the contact person for Global Futures is Ellen Raphael.

When Sense About Science was established Raphael was a consultant for the London-based PR company Regester Larkin . Regester Larkin's client list includes Aventis CropScience, Aventis Pharma, Bayer Inc, BioIndustry Association, and Pfizer.
http://www.regesterlarkin.com/rl/clients.shtml

Prior to working for Sense about Science, SAS director Tracey Brown also worked for Regester Larkin. Now Raphael has joined Brown at Sense About Science.

Brown, Raphael and Global Futures all connect to the Living Marxism (LM) network which argues for no restraints at all on science and technology (including human reproductive cloning) and regards environmentalists as comparable to the Nazis. Dr Michael Fitzpatrick who is [art of the same network is a trustee both to Global Futures and Sense About Science.
More at
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1689

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HYPOCRITE OF THE WEEK
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+ TREWAVAS CLAIMS INTIMIDATION BY NGIN!
According to an article in the Times Higher Education Supplement, NGIN/GM WATCH is part of a vicious "hardcore" campaign of intimidation by "the increasingly violent anti-GM lobby". An excerpt from the article, which quotes Prof Anthony (Tony) Trewavas FRS, follows:

"Plant scientists are questioning whether to continue to engage in the genetic modification debate in the face of growing levels of physical and mental intimidation.

"...many scientists believe that the increasingly violent anti-GM lobby did nothing to persuade Monsanto to stay and that the hardcore tactics of protesters are affecting the UK's ability to sustain biotechnology research in areas such as GM.

"Tony Trewavas, professor of applied biochemistry at the University of Edinburgh, told The THES: 'There has been so much agitation that anyone with any sense has simply left the country.'

"Professor Trewavas is one of a number of scientists in this field who are regularly singled out on anti-GM websites, such as the Norfolk Genetic Information Network."

GMWATCH believes that the smears in this Times Higher Education Supplement piece about the "abuse" coming from an "increasingly violent anti-GM lobby" fit into a pattern of attacks on those raising concerns over GM, which have been propagated by GM proponents and PR operatives working for the biotech industry. The attacks have sought to categorise such critics as "terrorists", Nazis, murderers of the hungry, etc.

We also believe that the entirely unsupported claims made in the article, and elsewhere, of mental and physical abuse, are an attempt at a deliberate distraction, a reframing of the media focus, away from the recorded harassment of scientists and others who raise questions about this technology.

For more about this harassment and Trewavas's own lamentable part in it, including his circulation of material libelling Greenpeace originating with a Monsanto PR operative, read on at
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1691

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK
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"Nature is not just useful to us humans, but is valued and loved in itself, for itself, by God in Christ." - Jesuit priests Rev. Roland Lesseps (a scientist) and Rev. Peter Henriot, who are based in Zambia, in a speech protesting at the pro-GM bias of the Vatican's conference on whether the Catholic Church should endorse GM food
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1698

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HEADLINES OF THE WEEK: from the GMWATCH archive
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7/11/2003 Sense About Science organised the 114 letter to Blair
7/11/2003 THE WEEKLY WATCH number 46
8/11/2003 Trewavas claims intimidation by NGIN and others
11/11/2003 "Cynical & Dishonest Science" in GM Maize Trials
11/11/2003 African Farmers Need Water, Not GM Crops - FAO Head
11/11/2003 African priests criticise Vatican GMO conference
11/11/2003 Europe blocks genetically modified sweetcorn
11/11/2003 New research and publications on biotech policy and developing countries
11/11/2003 UK to fight European embargo on GM corn/GM Crops Harm Wildlife - summary/English Nature threatened in revenge for GM crops stance
11/11/2003 Vatican Ends Biotech Foods Fest
11/11/2003 Vatican looks to GM food as panacea for hungry and burgeoning global population
13/11/2003 Bayer target of noisy protest / Groups sue USDA
13/11/2003 Bayer under pressure - posts 3rd-quarter net loss of 8M
13/11/2003 Cabinet papers warn Canada off GM crops
13/11/2003 Devinder Sharma in US, warns about GM and food security
13/11/2003 Vatican accused of skewing conference on food production
FOR THE COMPLETE GMWATCH ARCHIVE: http://www.gmwatch.org/archive.asp

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