WEEKLY WATCH number 235
from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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Dear all:
Pro-GM lobbyist Dick Taverne doesn't seem to be fooling many people any more with his anti-environmentalist pro-GM diatribes (LOBBYWATCH). His latest offering has been totally demolished by well-reasoned arguments from a series of critics ranging from the award-winning science writer Dr. Colin Tudge, to the former head of Sainsbury's supermarkets.
In Australia, Victoria's premier John Brumby is also taking flack. He won't even discuss how he has come to his decision on whether to lift the State's GM moratorium. We wonder why not? Meanwhile, yet another big food firm has come out in opposition to the lifting of the GM bans. (AUSTRALASIA)
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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GM FILMS ON YOUTUBE
GM RICE CONTAMINATION
AUSTRALASIA
EUROPE
FOOD SAFETY
ASIA
THE AMERICAS
CAMPAIGN
LOBBYWATCH
AGROFUELS
GM TREES
GENETIC CROSSROADS
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GM FILMS ON YOUTUBE
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+ GM FILMS ON YOUTUBE
Akiko Frid is collecting together good quality GMO films on YouTube. Akiko particularly recommends 'The Genetic Conspiracy' - a film made for German TV that's available in English. For Akiko's list so far: http://nogmo.spaces.live.com/?_c11_BlogPart_BlogPart=summary&_c=BlogPart
More Youtube films: http://www.youtube.com/groups_videos?name=gmo
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GM RICE CONTAMINATION
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+ U.S. GM RICE FOUND IN CHINA SUPERMARKETS
Unauthorized GM Liberty Link rice from the US has been found in Beijing's supermarkets. China does not allow sales or imports of GM rice.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8513
+ VENTRIA HARVESTS FIRST CROP OF GM RICE
Ventria Bioscience has harvested its first crop of nearly 200 acres of GM pharmaceutical rice at undisclosed locations in Geary County, Kansas. According to Ventria, it's a fraction of what they hope to harvest in years to come.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8513
+ UNAPPROVED CHINESE GM RICE IN SWEDEN
The National Food Administration in Sweden has announced that it found unapproved GM rice Bt63 in rice noodles from China while they conducted spot checks concerning food from Asian countries.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8513
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AUSTRALASIA
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+ SUPERMARKET GIANT SPEAKS OUT AGAINST GM CROPS
Australian supermarket giant Coles has joined the organic industry in speaking out against GM food as some state governments appear closer to lifting of their bans on the commercial growing of GM food crops. Coles representative Chris Mara stated, 'Coles listens to our customers and over 90 per cent do not want GM ingredients in their food and Coles' whole private label range... exclude all GM ingredients in response to customer concerns.' The statement follows similar sentiments from Goodman Fielder, Australia's largest food company, Tatiara Meats, Australia's largest lamb exporter, and 250 other food companies who are calling on Australia's state governments to extend their bans of GM food crops.
COMMENT from Louise Sales: 'It is blatantly clear that the food industry doesn't want GE food in their food supply chain and according to recent polls neither do the majority of consumers, farmers or our key export markets in Japan and Europe. Why is the Victorian government so determined to lift the bans? The only other stakeholder that appears to want GE food crops is the biotechnology industry which stands to make a fortune at everyone else's expense if this dangerous, unwanted technology is introduced.'
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8518
+ HEALTH ISSUES NOT CONSIDERED IN MORATORIUM DECISION
The Victorian government deliberately excluded health issues in the report it commissioned from Sir Gustav Nossal, Victoria's chief scientist and a known opponent of the GM moratorium, to help it decide whether to continue or overturn its moratorium on GM plantings.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8502
+ BRUMBY FACES CAUCUS REVOLT OVER GM CROPS
An article in The Age says Victoria's premier John Brumby is facing a caucus revolt over his push to introduce GM crops, with Labor MPs attacking his arrogance and 'crash-through style' in dealing with the issue. In a rare uprising, up to 40 Labor MPs attended a caucus meeting at Parliament House to voice concerns about the possible lifting of a moratorium in the state of Victoria on GM crops to Mr Brumby and agriculture minister Joe Helper.
At the meeting, MPs asked Brumby to show them a report by Victoria's chief scientist, on the impact that lifting the ban would have on farmers and the state's food exports, but were rebuffed by Brumby.
The caucus meeting put concerns about the health, environmental and political impacts of lifting the moratorium to Brumby, including potential damage to the state's green image and challenged Brumby over how the decision was being made.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8524
+ DEMOCRATS BID TO EXTEND GM BAN IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA
The Australian Democrats will move to extend a ban on GM crops in South Australia until 2013. The current moratorium on GM crops is due to expire at the end of March next year. State Democrat MP Sandra Kanck said there had been no moves from the state Labor government to extend the ban despite growing support from consumers for SA to remain GM free. 'Australian governments have ignored nature's limits with climate change,' Kanck said. 'We can't make the same mistake with our food sources.'
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8499
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EUROPE
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+ EU OFFICIALS PROPOSE BAN ON GM CORN SEEDS
European Union environment officials have determined that two kinds of GM corn could harm butterflies, modify food chains and disturb life in rivers and streams. They have proposed a ban on the sale of the seeds, which are made by Pioneer Hi-Bred, Dow Agrosciences and Syngenta.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8514
+ ANOTHER SCIENTIST UNDER ATTACK - PLEASE SIGN PETITION
Prof Christian Velot, a researcher and professor in molecular biology at the University of Paris-Sud, has recently encountered professional reprisal and discrimination because he organised during his time off work conferences on biotechnology for the public, which pointed to the risks and uncertainties of this technology and provided an open democratic debate. His research funds for 2008 were confiscated and student assistants initially allocated to his research team were redirected to other units. He was told that his research team would no longer be part of the institute as soon as the funds for the current research ran out by the end of 2009, and that he would have to leave the premises even before that time.
TAKE ACTION! A petition supporting Prof Velot is at http://sciencescitoyennes.org/spip.php?article1638#sp1638
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8516
+ MORE ON SILENT GM INVASION VIA ANIMAL FEED
An article by Gundula Azeez in the New Statesman criticises the hidden use of GM crops in livestock feed as well as the supermarkets selling products from animals fed on GM crops, despite having 'non-GM' policies.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8506
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FOOD SAFETY
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+ COMPANY RESEARCH ON GM FOODS IS RIGGED
In a powerful overview, science writer Jeffrey Smith laments the poor quality and rigged status of company research on GM foods - all too often, the only research that is ever done on them.
EXCERPT: Whenever private submissions are made public through lawsuits or Freedom of Information Act Requests, it becomes clear why companies benefit from secrecy. The quality of their research is often miserable, incompetent, and unacceptable for peer-review. In 2000, for example, after the potentially allergenic StarLink corn was discovered in the food supply, Aventis CropScience presented wholly inadequate safety data to the EPA's scientific advisory panel. One frustrated panel member, Dean Metcalfe, MD, - the government's top allergist - said during a hearing, 'Most of us review for a lot of journals. And if this were presented for publication in the journals that I review for, it would be sent back to the authors with all of these questions. It would be rejected.'
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8520
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ASIA
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+ INDIA'S SUPREME COURT ISSUES NOTICE TO GOVT ON IMPORTED GM FOOD
The Supreme Court has issued notice to the central government of India on a petition challenging a notification that allows import of GM processed food without any regulatory checks and exempts them from compulsory labelling.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8509
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8526
+ MORE FARMER SUICIDES
When Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh was claiming a 40 per cent reduction in farm suicides in Vidarbha region on the eve of the winter session of the state assembly in Nagpur, eight more debt-trapped cotton farmers' suicides had been reported in the previous 48 hours. The total toll is now 1051 since January 2007, as against the 1448 last year reported by the Maharashtra government.
The problems with Bt cotton seem to have played a significant part in the farmer suicides and the government has been accused of acting as official agents of Monsanto and of promoting Bt. cotton through its seed cooperation MAHABEEJ.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8509
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THE AMERICAS
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+ THE LAST DAYS OF MEXICAN CORN
This January 1 may prove to be a doomsday date for Mexican maize when at the stroke of midnight, all tariffs on corn (and beans) will be abolished after more than a decade of incremental NAFTA-driven decreases. Although US corn growers are already dumping 10 million tons of the heavily subsidized grain in Mexico each year, zero tariffs are expected to trigger a flood of corn imports, much of it GM, that will drive millions of Mexican farmers off their land - in NAFTA's first 13 years, 6,000,000 have already abandoned their plots - and could well spell the end of the line for 59 distinct 'razas' or races of native corn.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8517
+ UCB-BP PACT WORRIES CRITICS
Perceptive article from the Berkeley Daily Planet (EXCERPT):
Supporters of the $500 million biofuel research pact between UC Berkeley and British oil giant BP have compared it to the Manhattan Project.
And one inevitable parallel stems from the visions of cheap, world-saving energy supplies promised from the technology spawned by that massive World War II effort to build war-ending nuclear weapons.
'Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter' declared Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Chair Lewis L. Strauss ... in 1964, promising as well the end of 'great periodic regional famines in the world'.
While nuclear reactors do supply a significant portion of Europe's electricity, the atomic legacy has also created massive contamination and hazards. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island weren't factored into the original equations, nor the legacies of radiation-contaminated water and farmlands and the threats of cancer and long-term debilities.
So too the promised energy bonanzas flowing from the Berkeley and Illinois labs of the Energy Biosciences Institute may have other legacies, perhaps those raised by critics such as UC Berkeley scientists Miguel Altieri and Ignacio Chapela.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8519
+ BUSH'S AG SECRETARY NOMINEE IS GM SHILL
On Halloween, President Bush nominated Edward Schafer for the post of Agriculture Secretary. Schafer is former co-chairman of the Governors Biotechnology Partnership. A piece on Newsvine warns voters and the Senate to consider his role in shielding the biotech industry from consumer product labeling laws.
According to an online search, Ed Schafer was the former co-chairman of the Governors Biotechnology Partnership. He was instrumental in getting former President Clinton to back off of requirements that GM modified foods be labeled as such.
His 1999 address included a commercial for Monsanto's pesticide: 'Every day I read about a new innovation...Roundup-ready crops...'
This year, Schafer announced: 'Genetic engineering will make farms smaller, more specialized and more profitable.'
Schafer is the chief executive of an agricultural state, North Dakota, which produces enormous surpluses. Farmers in his state are paid subsidies not to grow corn and soybeans, yet Schafer believes that GM foods are the keys to easing world hunger.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8511
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CAMPAIGN
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+ NEXT YEAR COULD BE 'BAN GMOs YEAR'
Dominique Beroule writes, 'After the global day of information on GMOs in 2006, the global month of events in 2007, 2008 could be declared 'Ban-GMOs Year'. Currently people from 26 countries have responded positively, and we hope to reach many more with this call for participation.' You can reach Dominique to register your interest at <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.> Current Global Agenda at:
http://www.altercampagne.net/
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8504
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LOBBYWATCH
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+ LETTER ATTACKING PNAS STUDY 'MISLEADING'
Dr Doug Gurian-Sherman, Senior Scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists and former biotech specialist at the US government's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has commented on a recent letter attacking a study published by the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The Rosi-Marshall et al study - funded by the National Science Foundation - found consumption of Bt corn byproducts produced increased mortality and reduced growth in caddisflies, an important food resource for higher organisms like fish and amphibians. The letter attacking the study is from GM supporters who with one exception do not seem to have any especial expertise in the area they're commenting on, and nearly all can be found in the GM Watch profiles (or by searching at www.gmwatch.org) of ardent GM promoters. Dr Gurian-Sherman calls the letter 'misleading'. His telling comments are at http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8501
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8507
+ GM's TROJAN HORSE THREATENS HUMANITY'S FOOD SUPPLY
We've published some interesting comments from nlpwessex - www.nlpwessex.org - prompted by the recent claims that GM crops will be the only sustainable way of solving our dietary shortcomings. The claims centred around crops engineered to contain essential omega3 fatty acids.
EXTRACT: Remember the days when you were told margarine was good for you? Then it was discovered ('oops'), that trans-fats (common in margarines) were actually bad for you. For some the result was premature death.
Nutritional advice from scientists comes with it own risk of being based on partial knowledge. Until now, however, at least those risks have been contained to a great degree by the properties of most basic foods remaining largely unchanged over time. ...
It's one thing to try and get trans-fats out of margarine once you've discovered your nutritional advice to consumers was flawed. But try removing retrospectively unwanted material once it has been embedded at the molecular level throughout the food chain and into its most basic resource - crop seeds.
The combination of hubristic scientists armed with the 'nuclear option' of nutritional warfare (genetic engineering), together with the short-term commercial greed of the agribusiness sector, may prove to be the ultimate recipe for food-chain breakdown from which there is no recovery.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8500
+ COMMENTS IN THE UK GUARDIAN ON CROPS ENGINEERED FOR FATTY ACIDS
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8503
+ TAVERNE REFUTED
In October Lord Dick Taverne wrote an article for Prospect, a magazine aimed at politicians, in which he claimed, 'GM foods are safe, healthy and essential if we ever want to achieve decent living standards for the world's growing population. Misplaced moralising about them in the west is costing millions of lives in poor countries'.
Now Prospect has published in its online version several incisive articles refuting Taverne. In the first, Helen Wallace of GeneWatch points out, 'The unfulfilled promises around genetic modification remain identical to those made when the first GM crop was produced 21 years ago.'
The second is an interesting perspective from a food industry insider, Malcolm Kane, head of food safety at Sainsbury's supermarket chain between 1980 and 2000. Kane writes, 'Only two GM applications have achieved any significant market penetration: herbicide resistance and insect resistance ... a GM crop that is resistant to glyphosate will require a separate herbicide as a desiccant, such as glufosinate. So some GM crops can get a double dose of pesticide residues. Exactly what benefit to the consumer is provided by this?'
In a third article, award-winning science writer Colin Tudge states accuses Taverne of getting carried away by hype and of not understanding the agricultuiral context of GM crops, nor their biological reality.
In a fourth article, entitled 'Genetic escapism: Dick Taverne's GM fantasies...', environmentalist Jonathon Porritt demolishes Taverne's case. What's particularly gratifying is that Porritt is widely thought of as a 'moderate' environmentalist who advised former prime minister Tony Blair:
EXCERPT: I ... despise Taverne's contempt for the general public. He adheres rigorously to the 'empty vessel' school of science education: most people are stupid and ill-informed on most issues, and it is the task of scientists to fill them up with objective 'facts'. But Taverne's own abuse of science makes him a dodgy vessel-filler. He states, for instance, that: 'there is not a shred of any evidence of risk to human health from GM crops'. Yet he must know that this is a seriously misleading statement. When GM crops were introduced into livestock feed in the mid-1990s, trials into the potential health effects were not required, and even now are still not routinely required. Taverne must also know that there is a body of emerging evidence that demonstrates a range of unexplained - and potentially health-threatening - effects from the consumption of genetically modified organisms.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8414
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8521
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AGROFUELS
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+ CORPORATIONS, AGROFUELS AND GM SEEDS
A good article for ZNet looks behind the hype over agrofuels (EXCERPT): The wave of bio-fuels continues to advance, not because it is good for the environment or offers some solution to global climate change - de facto it will worsen it - but rather because the most powerful industries on the planet see it as a source of juicy profits and so make sure that many governments help them with laws and subsidies. The main interests are the motor vehicle companies (who hope that with the new fuel people will have to change their cars), the oil companies (who control fuel distribution), the companies controlling world grain production (who will win both from increased demand for bio-fuels and from higher prices for foods trying to compete with them) and the multinationals producing genetically modified agricultural products. ...
... Monsanto and Dow have just signed an agreement to create GM seeds that will combine in the same plant both resistance to 8 herbicides as well as making them insecticides. This in part reflects the recognition that GM seeds create resistance to herbicides and therefore require more and more. And if the seeds are not for human use it will be possible to use more toxic herbicides in greater quantities.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8523
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GM TREES
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+ GM FORESTS COULD SERIOUSLY IMPACT NATURAL LAND
A good article on the dangers of GM trees has been published in the Oregon Daily Emerald. According to the article there are vast numbers of GM Douglas Fir trees growing in about 790 test plots in Washington state and Oregon.
EXCERPT: In their publication, 'Genetically Modified Trees: The ultimate threat to forests', Friends of the Earth argue that the reason we should not genetically modify our trees, and thus our forests, is because we are not the only creatures who value trees. Insects, birds, and animals do not acknowledge property and national forest boundaries. They will eat or use whatever tree they happen to encounter and, for example, a tree with insecticide properties could pollinate across boundary lines, impact insect populations and disrupt an entire food chain.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8510
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GENETIC CROSSROADS
Center for Genetics and Society
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+ SEA CHANGE IN CLONING-BASED STEM CELL RESEARCH SHIFTS SCIENTIFIC AND POLITICAL DEBATE
CGS press statements and commentary
Successes in 'direct reprogramming,' which produces human pluripotent stem cells from ordinary skin cells, significantly undermines the case for using cloning techniques and women's eggs in stem cell research.
http://geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=3777
http://geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=3775
http://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=3778
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-hayes22nov22,1,4832716.story?ctrack=2&cset=true
+ PATENTS FOR STEM CELL TECHNIQUES WILL BE AN ONGOING ISSUE
Jesse Reynolds, Biopolitical Times The technology transfer organization of the University of Wisconsin, home of one of the research teams that has turned skin cells into stem cells using direct reprogramming, will attempt to obtain patents for the new method.
http://biopoliticaltimes.org/article.php?id=3776
+ GOODBYE DOLLY?
Marcy Darnovsky, Biopolitical Times
Scottish cloning researcher Ian Wilmut has announced that he will no longer 'pursue nuclear transfer' - in other words, the man who is sitting on one of two licenses to clone human embryos that the British government has issued - is giving up on cloning techniques in stem cell research.
http://biopoliticaltimes.org/article.php?id=3773