GMWatch News Review archive

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THE WEEKLY WATCH NUMBER 105
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from Jonathan Matthews, guest editor
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Dear Weekly Watchers,

If you're just logging back on from your hols -- KEEP THIS - DON'T DELETE! There's lots of good stuff to catch up on.

Why? Well, it may be the holiday season for many but that has only encouraged the biotech industry and its lobbyists to pump out an even greater slew of lies, misinformation, and awkward admissions, in the hope of avoiding critical scrutiny amidst the seasonal distractions -- check out LOBBYWATCH, FOCUS ON ASIA, and EUROPE.

*NUTSHELL OF THE WEEK* goes to an Irish farmers' leader, "GM production methods make farmers dependent on big business, and result in food production that consumers don't want." And an Irish doctors' group pointed out this week that, "These foods have never been tested for adverse health impacts on humans, and animal tests have given rise to concern." They want a complete ban.

By contrast, the European Commission is financing a PR scam to use industry-determined safety approvals to "facilitate market introduction of GMOs in Europe". (see EUROPE)

In the U.S., campaigners are gearing up for important new challenges to the biotech industry in 2005. Over the past two years 79 Vermont towns have voiced support for a GM moratorium, and Sen. Jeanette White says she plans to draft or support legislation in the coming year to halt the cultivation of GM crops on all Vermont farmland. And moves are afoot in other U.S. States to block GM pharma crops. We've got links to some great articles on this. (THE AMERICAS)

One Vermont campaigner commented this week, "The rest of the world is way ahead of us in scrutinizing this technology, and voters are facing a federal government that is actively fostering the technology -- one of the few in the world that's doing so. We are not alone. Vermont is simply leading in the United States, but the United States is not leading in the world."

What the biotech industry and the U.S. administration are actually doing is promoting a radical and uncontrollable alteration in the molecular base of the world's food supply. This ultimately self-destructive assault on our agriculture and environment requires global defiance. (see COMMENTARIES OF THE WEEK)

Finally, let's hope the devastating consequences for much of South and South-East Asia of the recent earthquake off the coast of Indonesia, do not lead to the kind of exploitation that sub-Saharan Africa has suffered during times of crisis (see AFRICA).

Warm wishes for a peaceful New Year
Jonathan
www.gmwatch.org / www.lobbywatch.org

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CONTENTS
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*LOBBYWATCH: lobbyists' falsies!
*RADIO WATCH: WW hits the airwaves
*COMMENTARIES: U.S. at war with itself
*ASIA: bumper crop of GM hype
*THE AMERICAS: growing resistance
*AFRICA: Africa's hungry fed bad policies
*EUROPE: GM foods should be banned say doctors
*AUSTRALASIA: pro-GM propaganda challenged
*CAMPAIGN: support needed for Japan

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LOBBYWATCH
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+ LOBBYIST'S FALSE CLAIMS OVER SCHMEISER CASE
Pro-GM lobbyist and former Syngenta man, Dr Shantu Shantharam, told India's science and environment magazine, 'Down to Earth', that "gene contamination is a bogus issue" and that it is irrelevant to the case of the Canadian farmer, Percy Schmeiser, who was sued by Monsanto. Shantharam told the magazine's readers this was because, "Court records clearly establish that Schmeiser had planted gm canola which he had purchased illegally."

The trial court records, in fact, establish the exact opposite of what Shantharam claims. Aaron Mitchell, the lead investigator for Monsanto in the Schmeiser case, told the trial court under oath that, "We have no proof that anyone sold seed to Mr Schmeiser." (June 8, 2000, p.87)

When the case later came to the Supreme Court, no suggestion of any illegal purchase of GM seed by Percy Schmeiser was even made. In a letter to Down to Earth, Prof Phil Bereano and GM Watch editor, Jonathan Matthews, suggest the reason that Shantharam is so anxious to explain away the GM seed found on Percy Schmeiser's farm as the result of deliberate purchase is because the only credible alternative explanation of its origin is gene contamination - the very thing Shantharam claims is a bogus "concoction of the anti-gm lobby".

Shantharam's account of the Schmeiser case is not just misleading but demonstrably false. This makes it particularly ironic that in his frequent contributions to the Indian media, this US-based lobbyist likes to characterise resistance to GM crops as a product of people being 'fed' bogus, concocted and otherwise inaccurate information by the 'anti biotech lobby'!
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4757

+ EU-FUNDED PR OP ON GM FOODS EXPOSES EFSA BIAS
More news emerged this week about the controversial ENTRANSFOOD project, which has now made way for a successor European Commission-sponsored project, SAFEFOODS.

One of the aims of ENTRANSFOOD has been agreeing safety assessment and communication procedures that will "facilitate market introduction of GMO's in Europe, and therefore bring the European industry in a competitive position."

Disturbingly, a recent report by Friends of the Earth on the work of the GMO Panel of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) revealed that several members of this key advisory panel have also been part of the ENTRANSFOOD project. (see 'Throwing Caution to the Wind' - http://www.foeeurope.org/GMOs/publications/EFSAreport.pdf )

The ENTRANSFOOD project claims it has "brought together representatives from academia, regulatory agencies, food manufacturers, retailers and consumer groups from across Europe." But there has just been one solitary representative of Europe's "consumer groups" involved and there is no consumer representation at all on the key ENTRANSFOOD working group looking at the critical issue of "Safety Testing". There are plenty of experts sympathetic to industry, though - indeed some are actually employed by the biotech industry

Serving alongside employees of Monsanto, Bayer and Syngenta on the food safety Working Party has been Dutch scientist, Dr. Harry Kuiper. Kuiper is both the Chair of the the European Food Safety Authority's GMO panel and the overall co-ordinator of ENTRANSFOOD. He also coordinates the successor project SAFEFOODS with his colleague Hans Marvin.

If it seems disturbing that the head of the key EU food safety panel on GMOs also coordinates a project which has the aim of facilitating their market introduction, equally worrying is Kuiper's involvement in the attacks on Dr Arpad Pusztai and his GM research. Kuiper has been accused of dragging "Pusztai through the dirt" while avoiding public debate with Pusztai.

Although the industry-aligned ENTRANSFOOD project offers little more than a PR gloss on GM foods, the Friends of the Earth report exposes how key statements of the the European Food Safety Authority's GMO panel, regurgitate almost word for word ENTRANSFOOD's position statements - statements arrived at only with the help of employees of the GM corporations.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4761

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RADIO WATCH
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+ WEEKLY WATCH HITS THE AIRWAVES!
Thanks to internet radio station, RampART Radio, an experiment is underway to make a short version of each Weekly Watch available as radio online. The first attempt involves Weekly Watch 103 which is now available via indymedia:
http://radio.indymedia.org/news/2004/12/3140.php
There are a few teething problems and feedback is welcome!

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COMMENTARIES: U.S. AT WAR WITH ITSELF
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+ HOPE AT MIDNIGHT
Rebecca Solnit on why Americans shouldn't despair at Bush's second term.

EXCERPTS: Five years ago, on November 29, 1999, the WTO looked like an unstoppable tank that would crush everything in its path. One day later, the shutdown in Seattle signaled the beginning of its decline, and last year's WTO meeting in Cancun -- when indigenous Yucatan campesinos led Korean farmers and a multitude of activists from a global network of resistance -- tipped the tank into a ditch, where its wheels are still spinning.

On that day when Seattle seemed like the center of the world, there was a sister action in Bangalore, India, focusing on Monsanto, which once brought the world the dioxin-laced herbicide Agent Orange and has lately been bringing it a cornucopia of genetically modified crops whose main features seemed to be resistance to Monsanto pesticides and enhancement of Monsanto profits. The corporation that so embodied the WTO's threats has since 1999 closed its European office, been widely attacked in India, given up on commercializing its GMO wheat, stopped trying to spread GMO canola in Australia, been unable to collect royalties on GMO soybeans grown in South America, and this year reported record losses. Citizens in Italy recently turned 13 of its 20 regions and 1500 towns into "GMO-free zones," as did citizens in a few California counties. The huge corporation Sygenta also cancelled all its research and marketing programs for GMO products in Europe because of popular outcry. Euro!
peans
have achieved significant successes in limiting the reach of GMO foods and agriculture into that continent.

These stories of liberation have been running concurrently with the rise of the Bush administration and its leap into war.

The election was deeply depressing, and I'm not arguing against being depressed. I'm just arguing against giving up. And for broadening the arena of evidence under consideration, since the world is larger than the United States and mostly in defiance of it, not to mention utterly unpredictable.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1224-05.htm

+ AMERICA'S WAR WITH ITSELF
George Monbiot on the self-destructive character of U.S. policies

EXCERPTS: I have a persistant mental image of US foreign policy, which haunts me even in my sleep. The vanguard of a vast army is marching around the globe, looking for its enemy. It sees a mass of troops in the distance, retreating from it. It opens fire, unaware that it is shooting its own rear.

Is this too fanciful a picture? Both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were groomed and armed by the United States. Until the invasion of Iraq, there were no links between the Baathists and Al Qaeda: now Bush's government has created the monster it claimed to be slaying. The US army developed high-grade weaponised anthrax in order, it said, to work out what would happen if someone else did the same. No one else was capable of producing it: the terrorist who posted envelopes of anthrax in 2001 took it from one of the army's laboratories. Now US researchers are preparing genetically modified strains of smallpox on the same pretext, and with the same likely consequences. The Pentagon's space-based weapons programme is being developed in response to a threat which doesn't yet exist, but which it is likely to conjure up. The US government is engaged in a global war with itself.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/12/21/americas-war-with-itself-/

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FOCUS ON ASIA
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+ BUMPER CROP OF GM HYPE IN INDIA
While the Xmas season and the devastating consequences of the Asian tsunami, have much of the world seriously distracted, the industry's lobbyists have been busy sprinkling their fairy bio-hype over the GM situation in India.

A whole AgBioView bulletin was given over this week to a paper by T.M. Manjunath - "Bt Cotton In India: The Technology Wins as the Controversy Wanes". Unsurprisingly, the former Director of the Monsanto Research Centre in Bangalore painted Monsanto's GM cotton as an unqualified success!

Two other pro-GM lobbyists, Kameswara Rao and Shanthu Shantharam (see LOBBYWATCH), have meanwhile been trying to gloss over Bayer's embarrasing GM withdrawal from India. They admitted to AgBioView readers, "GM Watch commented that 'Bayer's withdrawal from GE research in India and around the world is part of a larger pattern of retreat in the global biotechnology industry'. Certainly it is so," But they went on to claim that the multinational would be back! Bayer "will bide their time which is not going to be that long, to come back at an opportune time."

But the best puff piece has come from the Council for Biotechnology Information. The article comes from an organisation funded by the biotech industry, and it has been prominently circulated on lists supported by the industry. To complete the process it draws heavily on research commissioned by the industry!

The article is headlined, "Biotech Cotton Produces Bumper Crop in India". It takes as its starting point recent claims coming out of India's pro-GM ministry of agriculture. According to the Indo-Asian News Service, "agriculture ministry sources" in India have been claiming that "the large-scale plantation of genetically modified cotton this year has played a big role in helping India achieve a bumper crop"

However, earlier this year, India's Financial Express reported that the actual area planted with Bt cotton was miniscule in terms of the total area devoted to cotton in India. The newspaper then went on to quote an internal agriculture ministry report, "In 2002-03, the first year of its approval for commercial cultivation, Bt cotton covered an area of only 38,038 hectares, representing only 0.51 per cent of the area under cotton in the period. In 2003-04, with good monsoon rains, the area under Bt cotton increased to 92,000 hectares. This area coverage under Bt cotton is almost negligible as compared to over 9 million hectares under cotton crop in the country. This points to the low acceptability of Bt cotton by farmers."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3639

In short, with Bt cotton being grown only on a relatively miniscule area (the last official figures placed it under 1%), there is no conceivable way it could be having the big national impact that is being claimed for it.

And even the yield gains claimed for Monsanto's cotton where it is being grown are highly suspect. There is convincing evidence from carefully conducted research that the Monsanto-commissioned AC Nielsen study, which is heavily featured in the Council for Biotechnology Information article, created a picture which inflated the the actual yield from Monsanto's GM cotton by a factor of 12 and the actual profit by a factor of 100!! The actual agronomics of GM cotton show it being economically outperformed by non-GM cotton.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3405

This is why, despite India's bumper cotton harvest this year, we've seen farmers who've grown Monsanto's Bt cotton going on the rampage in Andhra Pradesh because of the losses they've faced. One hapless District Manager of Monsanto was even taken hostage by around 200 Indian farmers in support of their demands for compensation for the poor performance ofthe company's Bt Cotton.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4557
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4622

And just to underline how little regard the Council for Biotechnology Information has for the truth, it even gives Indonesia - a country where Monsanto had to abandon GM cotton it did so badly - as an example of the GM cotton success story!!!
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4755

+ INDIAN GOVERNMENT TRUMPETS BIOTECH
India's Ministry of Science in its year end review has claimed among the achievements of its "momentous year", the
"Indo-US agreement for biotechnology" a Letter of Intent signed in June, 2004 "between the Governments of India and the United States of America for expansion of Indo-US collaboration in Agricultural Biotechnology Research and Development."
http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=6087

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THE AMERICAS
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+ GM RESEARCH SLOWS IN CANADA
"When Monsanto parked Roundup Ready wheat it put the brakes on biotech research in Canada, says a spokesperson for the biotech industry. Research is still happening here but the pace has slowed..."
http://www.truthabouttrade.org/article.asp?id=3172

+ ARMING FOR A NEW BATTLE IN VERMONT
By Kathryn Casa / Vermont Guardian
In 2004 Vermont became the first state in the US to pass a law requiring the labeling of all genetically modified seeds. But now campaigners are rearming for a salvo of new bills in the upcoming legislative session to halt the cultivation of genetically modified crops on Vermont farmland, and to curb farmers' liability for GM contamination of crops. Sen. Jeanette White said she plans to draft or support legislation - in a Statehouse where her party enjoys a new, wide majority - in part to protect Vermont's brand. Over the past two years, 79 Vermont towns have voiced support for a GMO moratorium.

One campaigner commented, "The rest of the world is way ahead of us in scrutinizing this technology, and voters are facing a federal government that is actively fostering the technology - one of the few in the world that's doing so. We are not alone. Vermont is simply leading in the United States, but the United States is not leading in the world."
http://www.vermontguardian.com/local/0904/GMOLegPlan.shtml

+ WE OUGHT TO BAN THE SPLICING OF DRUGS INTO FOOD
By Les AuCoin (Former U.S. Rep.)
The Register-Guard, December 26, 2004

How's this for an idea? Let the commercial businesses inject drugs into you without your knowledge or approval.

That's the effect of a new form of genetic agriculture called biopharming. It is the process of splicing pharmaceuticals into the genes of commercial crops.

Industry expects to begin marketing transgenic seeds of this kind in two or three years. But it won't be allowed to in this state if the Oregon chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility has its way.The organization, which includes physicians and nondoctors, plans to introduce a bill next year in the Oregon Legislature to ban such agriculture for four years. This would buy time to learn more about possible adverse effects of such genetically altered crops."I want to take a drug when I have a need for it - and not before,'' says Rick North, director of Physicians for Social Responsibility's Campaign for Safe Food.Oregon currently permits no biopharmaceutical crops for cultivation. North and his group want to keep it that way. Anyone who has suffered an allergic reaction to a drug or medicine would likely agree.
A group called Oregonians for Food and Shelter will likely fight the bill. The organization is essentially a front for such industries who might profit handsomely from biopharming.

Rather than naming itself, "Chemical Companies and Agribusiness Executives Who Know What's Best for You and Your Body,'' it seems to prefer, "Oregonians for Food and Shelter.''

The group has muscle. In 2002, it helped raise $5.5 million to defeat a ballot measure that would have required labeling of genetically modified foods.

It will lobby furiously against the biopharming moratorium. And why not? The biotechnology, pharmaceutical and agribusiness industries see a whole new world of profits in biopharming.
http://www.registerguard.com/news/2004/12/26/ed.col.aucoin.pharms.1226.html

+ AREA GROWERS TO PROTEST PHARM CROPS
Ag Department calls meeting on bioengineered corn
By Dave Ranney
Journal-World, December 28, 2004

"I do not believe that in corn country we can keep a genetically engineered crop segregated from a commercially grown crop. There will be cross-pollination," said Paul Johnson, an organic farmer who lives and farms near Perry.

"I think we're going to hear a lot people talk about what can be done to reduce the risk of cross-pollination," Dan Nagengast, who farms organically south of Clinton Lake said. "But at the same time, I don't think anybody will get up and say there won't be mistakes."

Those mistakes, he said, could result in growers harvesting thousands of bushels of contaminated corn.
http://www.ljworld.com/section/citynews/story/191623

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AFRICA
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+ AFRICA'S HUNGRY ARE FED BAD POLICIES
Incorrect IMF advice and the US push for genetically modified food only worsen existing food crises
Paul Kwengwere
YaleGlobal, 30 December 2004

Amidst plagues of war and disease, hunger remains one of Sub-Saharan Africa's most devastating afflictions. Developed countries have responded with aid, relief efforts, and policy interventions to help the region's struggling farmers. But, as Paul Kwengwere writes, behind the gratitude for this assistance looms a debate regarding the long-term value of the terms involved. IMF loan conditionalities coupled with poor agricultural advice are responsible in part for the worsening food situation in Malawi, Kwengwere notes. And now, the introduction and promotion of genetically modified (GM) foods by the United States is proving particularly controversial, as developing countries question the true motives and implications of the gesture.
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=5080
For more on the GM food aid issue: http://ngin.tripod.com/forcefeed.htm

+ BIOWATCH LOSES FAITH IN LEGAL PROCESS IN SOUTH AFRICA
CAPE TIMES, December 27, 2004

Biowatch-South Africa has lost its appeal against international seed giant Syngenta over the company's growing and selling of genetically modified (GM) maize in South Africa (a country with an extraordinarily lax biosafety system that the industry and the US are trying to promote as a model for other African countries).

Biowatch criticised the appeal process which had been so drawn-out that by the time Biowatch's case was heard, the field trials of GM maize had been completed and the first crop of maize had already been harvested.

Biowatch said Syngenta's notices informing the public of its intention to grow and import GM maize had not complied with legal requirements.

The appeal board confirmed that Syngenta's public notices had not complied with the law, but found that "little purpose would be served" in setting aside the permit because the trials had already been completed.

The board also conceded that Biowatch could not properly prepare for the appeal because the authorities had failed to make available crucial documents concerning Syngenta's permit application.

Biowatch spokesperson Elfrieda Pschorn said yesterday: "We've run up huge legal costs taking on the government over this issue and trying to protect the South African public and environment. I've lost faith in the legal process."

Biowatch has now written to Agriculture Minister Thoko Didiza calling on her to intervene as a matter of urgency.
http://www.capetimes.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=271&fArticleId=2355702

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EUROPE
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+ IRISH FARMERS' LEADER LASHES MINISTER OVER GM ABSTENTION
Farming Life, 24th December 2004

Irish Cattle and Sheep Association rural development chairman, John Heney, has criticised the decision of the country's Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche, to abstain on a vote on the authorisation of genetically modified oilseed rape GT73 for feed and industrial purposes, at the Council of Environment Ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday.

The Council of Environment Ministers voted against the authorisation of a genetically modified form of oilseed rape (GT73), by a vote of 135 against to 78 for, with 108 abstentions, including Ireland (based on the Qualified Majority Voting system, which requires 232 votes for QMV). However, because there was not a QMV [Qualified Majority Vote] either for or against, the decision will now be taken by the EU Commission, which is likely to authorise the product.

Mr Heney said that the decision was symptomatic of a wider failure to have a proper debate on GM policy in Ireland.

"Ireland has failed to grasp the fact that there is widespread consumer concern across Europe about GM production methods. As a food-exporting nation that can benefit from a natural green image, this simply isn't good enough. GM production methods make farmers dependent on big business, and results in food production that consumers don't want" he said.
http://www.farminglife.com/story/4510

+ GM FOODS SHOULD BE BANNED, SAY DOCTORS
The Irish Examiner

THE Irish Doctors' Environmental Association has warned that, "People are starving because of unjust economic policies, not because they lack genetically engineered foods. These foods have never been tested for adverse health impact on humans and animal tests have given rise to concern. Our association wants a complete ban on the growing of these plants and the sale of foods containing such products."
http://www.examiner.ie/pport/web/opinion/Full_Story/did-sg-OUpnvPMJ16sg7OWirIStPSk.asp  

+ MINISTER TO ABOLISH GM SCRUTINY BODY IN UK
Paul Brown, environment correspondent
The Guardian , Wednesday December 29, 2004

The environment secretary, Margaret Beckett, is to scrap an advisory committee after it repeatedly placed obstacles in the way of government plans to introduce genetically modified crops.

The commission established by the government to monitor ethical and social issues linked to GM crops is to be disbanded after its members insisted that conventional and organic farmers should be protected from contamination by GM crops - and be compensated if safeguards fail.

With the results of the latest GM trials due in February, Mrs Beckett, already known to be hostile to the Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission, is expected to announce its demise early next month, before it can cause further difficulties.

When public hostility to GM crops was at its height four years ago, the government defused the row by creating a commission to discuss the social, ethical and economic issues surrounding their introduction in the British countryside.

They put in charge Professor Malcolm Grant, the provost of University College London, and appointed a wide range of members, from opponents of GM crops to staff of biotech companies.

With the government, urged on by the scientific community, apparently sold on the idea of making Britain a world leader in biotech, the efforts of the Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission were largely ignored in Whitehall. This was partly because it seemed impossible, given the diverse membership, that the commission would agree on anything.

But the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and other pro-GM forces in the government, particularly Tony Blair, had not factored in the persuasive powers of Prof Grant, who managed to produce three influential consensus reports.

For the government, the most difficult of those emerged a year ago when the commission insisted the consumer should have the freedom to buy non-GM British food.

The commission has made life difficult for Mrs Beckett because it wants strict rules to protect farmers who do not want to grow GM crops, and restitution if unforeseen environmental damage occurs as a result of GM crops.

Sue Mayer, director of Genewatch UK and a commission member, said: "If the commission is abolished as planned with no other body picking up the social, ethical and economic dimensions of the GM debate, then the government will be failing the public again."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4759

+ "THIS DICTATORSHIP OF GM APPEASERS"
Daily Mail, 30th December 2004

In a powerful editorial one of the UK's most widely read daily papers had this to say about the Blair government's scrapping of the AEBC:

"From a New Labour dictatorship that doesn't listen, hates dissent and is hellbent on getting its own way, comes another attempt to bludgeon its critics into submission.

Ministers have never forgiven the Agricultural and Environmental Biotechnology Commission for refusing to toe the line on Government plans to foist unwanted GM crops on Britain.

Again and again, the Commission has sought to protect the public, organic farmers and the environment by demanding stringent safeguards over the growing of modified 'Frankenstein' foods.

It wants neighbouring farms to be free of contamination and insists on compensation if and when fields are polluted by GM pollen.

..instead of uttering platitudes as Ministers expected, the Commission produced robust reports which, among other things, insisted that the public should be free to buy non-GM British food.

In doing so, sadly, it signed its own death warrant. For this Government expects unquestioning obedience. It makes a habit of trampling over anyone who dares to stand up to it, be they in the Commons, the Lords, the BBC, the judiciary or the civil service. And it is almost fanatical in its GM ambitions.

It has ignored reports opposing "Frankenstein" crops. It pays no attention to the Economic and Social Research Council, which says there is no scientific evidence to support their commercial growth.

So arrogant is it that a Commons committee this year raged against its "wilful or careless misinterpretation" of the arguments against GM.

Public opinion? That doesn't matter a hoot. When Mr Blair was pushed into a national consultation, more than 90 per cent delivered a resounding No to GM. The Government just ignored the result."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/newscomment.html?in_article_id=332375&in_page_id=1787

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AUSTRALASIA
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+ 2004 - THE FARMER'S VIEW FROM OZ
Julie Newman of the Network of Concerned Farmers looks at 2004 from the perspective of an Australian farmer.

EXCERPTS: "The misleading propaganda involved with promoting GM is nothing short of appalling. Australian farmers are told GM has far superior yields when there is no evidence and no reason to presume this. We are told that there will be a reduction in costs when the little information available reveals a significant increase in costs to all farmers. We are told there is no market risk when there is evidence that there is significant market risk for a range of our products. Again, the GM industry has been launching a concerted effort to discredit any alternative voice and quashing any adverse reports while refusing to submit the data required to support their claims."

"Trust must be earned, not demanded and this PR disaster is of the GM industry's own making as consumers will not be forced to consume food they do not trust. Consumers wishing to avoid being guinea pigs in a massive unmonitored, unrecallable experiment has caused increasing demand for foods that are guaranteed not to be GM."

READ ON AT
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4758
And check out the Network of Concerned Farmers website, www.non-gm-farmers.com

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CAMPAIGN OF THE WEEK
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Please support an URGENT petition encouraging Hokkaido, Japan's principal agricultural region, to avoid GM crop cultivation. If you need further information, there's an article in the Bio Journal - December 2004 issue:
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~cbic/english/2004/journal0412.html.

URGENT PETITION

The Hokkaido government is currently moving towards regulation of GM crop cultivation by law, after receiving over 400,000 signatures against GM rice field trials last year from citizens all over Japan. However, the government
has also been under strong pressure from economic circles and scientists, who are trying to water down the regulation.

Please show your support by signing the petition below, and sending it in by January 31, 2005, at the latest. Signatures can be sent by post, fax and e-mail to the 'NO! GMO Campaign' - contact details at end.

PETITION

Attention: Harumi Takahashi, Governor of Hokkaido,

We demand the protection of Hokkaido's agricultural products from genetic pollution.

We, concerned consumers, are all watching the situation concerning GM crop cultivation in Hokkaido. Not only consumers in Hokkaido, but also consumers outside have been expressing their concerns over outdoor trials of GM rice in 2003 as well as the recent situation regarding GM soybean cultivation.

The safety of GM technology is not confirmed, and a great number of consumers feel insecure about eating GM crops. If Hokkaido ever cultivates GM crops, there is a possibility of genetic pollution occurring, e.g. the cross-pollution and contamination of farm products at nearby farms, whether it concerns experimental trials or commercial cultivation. If genetic pollution occurs, consumer confidence with respect to Hokkaido's agricultural products will immediately plummet.

We expected that the "Food Safety and Security Bylaw" would prevent such a situation from occurring, but the content of the draft bylaw has met with repeated dilution. Under such circumstances, securing farm products from genetic pollution will be extremely difficult.

We therefore demand that the Hokkaido government take the following steps to continue providing us with safe and secure foods from Hokkaido.

1. Step up surveillance so that GM crops are not cultivated on general agricultural land in order to secure Hokkaido's agriculture and food safety.

2. Insert a penalty clause in the "Food Safety and Security Bylaw" in order to prohibit GM crop cultivation on general agricultural land.

3. Require approval by the Governor for experimental field trials under the "Food Safety and Security Bylaw" and include a penalty clause in the relevant paragraph of the bylaw.

Signature:

Name

Address

Post Code

Country

/////

PLEASE SEND TO:

NO! GMO Campaign

Nikken Bldg 2F, 75 Waseda-machi, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo

162-0042,JAPAN

Tel: +81-3-5155-4756

Fax: +81-3-5155-4767

E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

[WEBSITE: http://www.no-gmo.org/  ]