GMWatch News Review archive

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from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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Dear all

Welcome to WW51 bringing you all the latest news in brief on the GM issue.

This week saw the launch of our new database, "THE BIOTECH BRIGADE: who's who in the fight to force-feed us GMOs", on our website
http://www.gmwatch.org, which has also now been made fully searchable.

Here, you can look up the people and organisations who are pushing GM. You can find profiles giving affiliations and sources of funding that help to explain why they speak and act as they do.

It's a directory of biotech lobbyists, PR operators, corporate phantoms, web attackers, corporate science, and campaigning pro-GM scientists. It contains a wealth of links to articles and source material.

A lot of this information has either not been published before or not in this detail, not least the exposure of how extreme political networks are active in promoting genetic engineering.

George Monbiot marked the launch of the directory by drawing on its research for an article in The Guardian showing the murky interconnections of a whole series of pro-genetic engineering 'science' lobby groups, including the Science Media Centre and Sense About Science.

Sense About Science were, of course, behind the recent letter to Blair, signed by 114 pro-GM scientists, plus a series of media items claiming critics of GM have engaged in campaigns of intimidation or that they fixed the UK's Public Debate on GM.

The real fixers of the GM debate are exposed in George Monbiot's article (see ARTICLE OF THE WEEK) and in the wide-ranging GM Watch directory which looks at the issue globally - www.gmwatch.org.

Included below are some excerpts from our BIOTECH BRIGADE profiles, most notably on Fiona Fox, director of the Science Media Centre.

The directory also identifies the principal attackers of independent scientists like Dr Arpad Pusztai and Dr Ignacio Chapela, both of whom could be seen worldwide in conversation this week during a live webcast from UC Berkeley: 'The Pulse of Scientific Freedom in the Age of the Biotech Industry'. The complete event is available in the Berkeley web archive.
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/events/archive.html.

Do watch it. It is very thought provoking, not least on how we are to rescue biology from the current trajectory which is turning it into a mere adjunct of commerce (see also QUOTE OF THE WEEK). What we are seeing, says one of the contributors, is the death of biology.

The webcast ends with a standing ovation for the scientist contributors, not least the indomitable Ignacio Chapela who has just been denied tenure at UC Berkeley (see OTHER HIGHLIGHTS OF THE WEEK) in the most suspect of circumstances.

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
QUOTE OF THE WEEK- Lord Winston
ARTICLE OF THE WEEK - 'Invasion of the entryists'
THE BIOTECH BRIGADE - The new directory
SETBACKS TO THE GM LOBBY
OTHER HIGHLIGHTS OF THE WEEK
HEADLINES OF THE WEEK
SUBSCRIPTIONS
CAMPAIGN OF THE WEEK

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK from Debate in House of Lords 9 December 2003
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Lord Robert Winston, a signatory to the Sense About Science letter to Blair calling for more government support for GM crops, speaking in the House of Lords: "we must recognise that science is not certain. The problem is that the Government and Ministers want black and white, another reason for our being wary of being too much in the government pocket. We must also avoid exaggeration and over-confidence. Ministers want that, and we are too ready to ascribe to it, because funds may chase that exaggeration, but we should be very wary. With all due respect to my friend the noble Lord, Lord Taverne [Chairman of Sense About Science], in some ways I regret signing the letter about genetically modified foods because, as scientists, we showed a degree of arrogance and a failure to recognise that we need to indulge in much greater dialogue. Another reason to be careful of government is that, above all, we must beware of commercial concerns, which increasingly drive science."
from Science and Politics - Debate in House of Lords 9 December 2003
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1869

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ARTICLE OF THE WEEK - Invasion of the Entryists
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In the following shortened version of George Monbiot's Guardian article, Monbiot exposes how a bizarre and cultish political network has become the public face of the scientific establishment, working at the very heart of media attacks against critics of biotechnology.

The full version of the article with over 30 references to original sources is available on George Monbiot's site:
http://www.monbiot.com/dsp_article.cfm?article_id=627

The timeliness of what's revealed in the article and the GM Watch directory, was shown by 3 programmes broadcast on BBC Radio 4 this week. All included members of this network - two (one as panelist, one as 'expert' witness) were busy dismissing the significance of climate change on 'The Moral Maze', another was the main attacker of the precautionary principle in a programme called 'Risky Business', while yet another appeared on the 'Today' programme in an item showcasing the view of Sense About Science that the GM public debate was fixed by anti-science greens.

All four 'experts' can be found in the directory - www.gmwatch.org - and three are mentioned by name in the following article. In none of the radio broadcasts, however, were their affiliations disclosed, let alone their agenda of total support for big business and for technologies like genetic engineering and reproductive cloning.

Clearly the attention of journalists and programme-makers needs to be drawn to the directory so they can begin to understand the undisclosed agendas and conflicts of interest of those presented to them as "independent experts".
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INVASION OF THE ENTRYISTS
How did a cultish political network become the public face of the scientific establishment?
George Monbiot
The Guardian, Tuesday December 9, 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1102753,00.html

One of strangest aspects of modern politics is the dominance of former left-wingers who have swung to the right. The "neo-cons" pretty well run the White House and the Pentagon, the Labour party and key departments of the British government. But there is a group which has travelled even further, from the most distant fringes of the left to the extremities of the pro-corporate libertarian right. While its politics have swung around 180 degrees, its tactics - entering organisations and taking them over - appear unchanged. Research published for the first time today suggests that the members of this group have colonised a crucial section of the British establishment.

The organisation began in the late 1970s as a Trotskyist splinter called the Revolutionary Communist party.

In 1988, it set up a magazine called Living Marxism, later LM. By this time, the organisation, led by the academic Frank Furedi, the journalist Mick Hume and the teacher Claire Fox, had moved overtly to the far right. LM described its mission as promoting a "confident individualism" without social constraint. It campaigned against gun control, against banning tobacco advertising and child pornography, and in favour of global warming, human cloning and freedom for corporations.

Frank Furedi started writing for the Centre for Policy Studies (founded by Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher) and contacting the supermarket chains, offering, for GBP7,500, to educate their customers "about complex scientific issues".

In the late 1990s, the group began infiltrating the media, with remarkable success. For a while, it seemed to dominate scientific and environmental broadcasting on Channel 4 and the BBC.

In 2000, LM magazine was sued by ITN, after falsely claiming that the news organisation's journalists had fabricated evidence of Serb atrocities against Bosnian Muslims. LM closed, and was resurrected as the web magazine Spiked and the thinktank the Institute of Ideas.

All this is already in the public domain. But now, thanks to the work of the researcher and activist Jonathan Matthews (published today on his database www.gmwatch.org), what seems to be a new front in this group's campaign for individuation has come to light. Its participants have taken on key roles in the formal infrastructure of public communication used by the science and medical establishment.

Let us begin with the Association for Sense About Science (SAS), the lobby group chaired by the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Taverne, and whose board contains such prominent scientists as Professor Sir Brian Heap, Professor Dame Bridget Ogilvie and Sir John Maddox. In October it organised a letter to the Times by 114 scientists, complaining that the government had failed to make the case for genetic engineering. In response, Tony Blair told the Commons that he had not ruled out the commercialisation of GM crops in Britain.

The phone number for Sense About Science is shared by the "publishing house" Global Futures. One of its two trustees is Phil Mullan, a former RCP activist and LM contributor who is listed as the registrant of Spiked magazine's website. The only publication on the Global Futures site is a paper by Frank Furedi, the godfather of the cult. The assistant director of Sense About Science, Ellen Raphael, is the contact person for Global Futures. The director of SAS, Tracey Brown, has written for both LM and Spiked and has published a book with the Institute of Ideas: all of them RCP spin-offs. Both Brown and Raphael studied under Frank Furedi at the University of Kent, before working for the PR firm Regester Larkin, which defends companies such as the biotech giants Aventis CropScience, Bayer and Pfizer against consumer and environmental campaigners. Brown's address is shared by Adam Burgess, also a contributor to LM. LM's health writer, Dr Michael Fitzpatrick, is a trustee of both Global Futures and Sense About Science.

SAS has set up a working party on peer review, which is chaired and hosted by the Royal Society. One of its members is Tony Gilland, who is science and society director at the Institute of Ideas, a contributor to both LM and Spiked and the joint author of the proposal Frank Furedi made to the supermarkets. Another is Fiona Fox, the sister of Claire Fox, who runs the Institute of Ideas. Fiona Fox was a frequent contributor to LM. One of her articles generated outrage among human rights campaigners by denying that there had been a genocide in Rwanda.

Fiona Fox is also the director of the Science Media Centre, the public relations body set up by Baroness Susan Greenfield of the Royal Institution. It is funded, among others, by the pharmaceutical companies Astra Zeneca, Dupont and Pfizer. Fox has used the Science Media Centre to promote the views of industry and to launch fierce attacks against those who question them. She ran the campaign, for example, to rubbish last year's BBC drama Fields of Gold.

The list goes on and on. The policy officer of the Genetic Interest Group, which represents the interests of people with genetic disorders, is now John Gillott, formerly science editor of LM and a regular contributor to Spiked. The director of the Progress Educational Trust, which campaigns for research on human embryos, is Juliet Tizzard, a contributor to LM, Spiked and the Institute of Ideas. Gillott and Tizzard also help to run Genepool, the online clinical genetics library. The chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service is Ann Furedi, the wife of Frank Furedi and a regular contributor to LM and Spiked. Until last year she was communications director for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.

Is all this a coincidence? I don't think so. .the scientific establishment, always politically naive, appears unwittingly to have permitted its interests to be represented to the public by the members of a bizarre and cultish political network. Far from rebuilding public trust in science and medicine, this group's repugnant philosophy could finally destroy it.
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RESPONSES TO THE ARTICLE

There were several letters published in reply to George Monbiot's article.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1880

These included the following from Prof Joe Perry.

Letters, The Guardian
Wednesday December 10, 2003

George Monbiot's article recalled another in which Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, pointed to the Trotskyists and anti-capitalists who ditched socialism for the environmentalist bandwagon when the iron curtain fell, and became influential within Greenpeace and similar pressure groups. Many of us do things when we are young that we regret later. But then we grow up and become professors - like you, George.

Prof Joe Perry
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1880

The next day's Guardian included a response from Dr Doug Parr of Greenpeace expressing the hope that Prof Perry's prejudices Perry didn't affect his work as he is the chief statistician for the government's GM farm-scale evaluations. There was also this from GM Watch.

Letters, The Guardian
Thursday December 11, 2003

Professor Perry smears the environmental movement as a counterweight to the detailed evidence on how contributors to LM and its off-shoots denied the events in Rwanda and Bosnia in which huge numbers of people were massacred and tortured. No wonder George Monbiot characterises some of our leading scientists as idiots savant.

Jonathan Matthews
GM Watch
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1881

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THE BIOTECH BRIGADE
A new directory of who's who in the fight to force-feed us GMOs
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Below is a profile of the UK's Science Media Centre director, Fiona Fox, from our new directory on GM-related lobbying - see www.gmwatch.org. The profile concludes, "It is perhaps revealing that someone whose journalism has been called 'shoddy' and 'an affront to the truth'... has been selected as the director of an organisation which claims the role of making sure that controversial scientific issues like GM crops are reported accurately in the media."

But first.

+ SAMPLER OF OTHER GM PROMOTERS from the BIOTECH BRIGADE directory:

* THE SCIENTIFIC ALLIANCE was founded by quarryman and anti-environmentalist Robert Durward, who describes himself as 'a businessman who is totally fed up with all this environmental stuff' and who has written, 'Perhaps it is now time for Tony Blair to try the "fourth way": declare martial law and let the army sort out our schools, hospitals, and roads as well. Who knows, they might even manage to put the 'great' back into Britain.'
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=136

+ SENSE ABOUT SCIENCE
This is the lobby group behind the Blair letter and behind the campaign to paint critics of GM as "violent" and as fixers of the Public Debate. It also has projects aimed at attacking Pusztai yet again and sucking in yet more public money into GM research to fill the void left by the retreating corporations. Its principal collaborators include the Royal Society and the John Innes Centre.
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=151

+ THOMAS DIECHMANN, concentration camp defender turned GM apologist
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=161

+ FIONA FOX - GM WATCH PROFILE (Excerpts)
For the full Fox profile with links see:
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=45

Fiona Fox is the director of the Science Media Centre (SMC).

Despite having no previous background in either science or science communication, Fox has been afforded, since her appointment in December 2001, the status of expert. She has, for example, been included in a working party on peer review set up by Sense about Science, and in a steering group on improving communication over science policy and risk set up by the Office of Science and Technology. In 2003 Fox delivered a lecture at Green College, Oxford, on the challenge of adapting science to the mass media.

Within a matter of months of Fox becoming director, the SMC was embroiled in controversy over its activities. It was accused of operating as 'a sort of Mandelsonian rapid rebuttal unit' and of employing 'some of the clumsiest spin techniques of New Labour'. There have also been controversies about both the SMC's funding and Fox's background.

According to the profile provided by the SMC, Fox previously ran 'the media operation at the National Council for One Parent Families' and was 'Head of Media at CAFOD, the Catholic aid agency'. In addition, the SMC says, Fox 'has written extensively for newspapers and publications, authored several policy papers and contributed to books on humanitarian aid.'

What they do not say is that throughout much of that time Fox led a double life. It's one which seriously undermines the SMC's claims to be open, rational, balanced and independent, not to mention its being in the business of ensuring the 'that the public gets access to all sides of the debate about controversial issues.'

It's a double life that connects the SMC's director to the inner circles of a political network that compares environmentalists to Nazis and eulogises GM crops and cloning. More disturbingly it is a network whose members have a long history of infiltrating media organisations and science-related lobby groups in order to promote their own agenda. It is also a network that has targeted certain media organisations and sought to discredit them or their journalists.

Fox's double life was first exposed after an article entitled 'Massacring the truth in Rwanda' appeared in the December 1995 issue of Living Marxism. The magazine subsequently reported receiving 'a stream of outraged letters from the Nazi-hunters of the prestigious Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, the Rwandan embassy, the London-based African Rights group and others.'

Rakiya Omaar and Alex de Waal of African Rights wrote to the magazine to express their outrage at the article: 'Investigating crimes against humanity gives one a high threshold of shock. But the article by Fiona Foster on Rwanda ('Massacring the truth in Rwanda', December 1995) was the sort of writing that we never expected to appear in print. We each read it with a growing sense of outrage, leaving us at the end simply numb. Had your paper been entitled Living Fascism we might have been less surprised, but even then we would have expected something a little more circumspect. Not only do you make an apologia for the genocide - the first to appear in print in a widely sold English language publication - but go so far as to question its very reality. This is not only an affront to the truth, in defiance of the fundamentals of humanity, but deeply offensive to the survivors of the third indisputable genocide of this century'.

Omaar and de Waal, who now works for the UN, describe the article as 'shoddy journalism' and the ideas advanced in it as 'absurd'. All of which 'would matter less if you were not dealing with one of the greatest crimes of the century, and playing into the hands of genocidal killers'. Omaar and de Waal subsequently established that 'Fiona Foster', the author of the article, was Fiona Fox, then a press officer for CAFOD.

Those trying to understand Fox's bid, in the words of a Guardian article, 'to rewrite history in favour of the murderers', have focussed on her media role at a Catholic aid agency, linking this to the embarrassment of the Church over the role of some priests and bishops in the mass murder. What has received less attention is the nature of Fox's relationship with Living Marxism.

By the time of the Rwandan article Fox had, in fact, been regularly writing for the monthly review of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) for at least two and a half years. Living Marxism was first published in 1987 and although the LM archive only goes back to 1992 and not all issues are accessible, it is clear that Fox's articles in Living Marxism stretch from at least 1992 to 1999, ie to not long before it was forced into closure. Indeed, prior to her Rwanda article, Fox was one of Living Marxism's most prolific contributors, on one occasion even contributing two articles to a single issue (LM 75).

Her use of the Fiona Foster alias may have reflected a need to keep her Living Marxism connections hidden, although the use of aliases was also a standard practice among leading RCP supporters.

The main focus of most of Fiona Fox's articles was the troubles in Northern Ireland.  In her pieces Fox makes reference to both the Irish Freedom Movement and the Campaign Against Militarism, both of which were front groups for the RCP. The line Fox advances in the articles is precisely that of the RCP which unequivocally supported the IRA in its armed struggle against 'British imperialism'.

According to a former RCP supporter, Fiona Fox became the head of the Irish Freedom Movement which had a position of never condemning the IRA even when its terrorist atrocities were aimed at civilian targets. In the end, her support for the 'armed struggle' was to outflank even that of the IRA.

... Fiona Fox's presence in the SMC needs to be seen in the context of LM contributors holding senior positions in a series of organisations which lobby on issues related to biotechnology, eg Sense About Science (director: Tracey Brown; assistant director: Ellen Raphael), Genetic Interest Group (policy director: John Gillott), Progress Educational Trust (director: Juliet Tizzard), and the Scientific Alliance (advisor: Bill Durodié).

This background has to be an immense cause for concern in relation to Fox's role as director of the SMC. Fox's Green College Lecture was titled, 'The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth: so where does that leave journalism?' But neither Fox nor the Science Media Centre have been willing to disclose any of the truth about her long years of involvement with a network of extremists who engage in infiltration of media organisations and science-related lobby groups in order to promote their own agenda. It is also a network which eulogises GM crops and cloning and is extremely hostile towards their critics.

Fox's own journalism might also suggest that she is none too fussy about either truth or openness when it comes to pushing her agenda. It is perhaps revealing that someone whose journalism has been called 'shoddy' and 'an affront to the truth', and has proved enormously controversial, has been selected as the director of an organisation which claims the role of making sure that controversial scientific issues like GM crops are reported accurately in the media.

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SETBACKS TO THE GM LOBBY
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+ EU MORATORIUM STANDS
Britain tried and failed on December 8 to lift a five-year EU moratorium on new GM food products, in a move that attracted criticism from green groups. Anxious for the EU to avert a trade war with the US, British representatives voted in Brussels to back the Europe-wide sale of a variety of GM sweetcorn produced by the Anglo-Swiss firm Syngenta. Had the UK carried the day, the product - known as Bt11 maize - would have been the first GM food to have been approved since 1998, when an EU-wide moratorium was imposed because of public unease about the technology.

But Britain did not muster enough support. Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland voted in favour but France, Denmark, Greece, Luxembourg, Austria and Portugal objected, while Germany, Italy and Belgium abstained. Another vote on the issue - at ministerial as opposed to expert level - will be held in the first part of next year. A government spokesman said the UK would vote in the same way. "We go for a science-based approach and we agree with the European commission that this food is as safe as normal food."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1871

+ FOOD STANDARDS AGENCY MUST DO MORE TO PROTECT PUBLIC HEALTH
The Food Standards Agency should be more active in initiatives to protect public health and consumers' interests in relation to food, a parliamentary audit of its work said. The audit by the House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts - a group of members of parliament that scrutinises use of public funds - recommended that the agency should take a stronger stance as "the champion of the consumer."

The report cited the labelling of food as a major issue of importance to consumers on which the agency should show measurable progress. Labelling should clarify the nutritional content of food and should also make it clear whether or not the food contains genetically modified ingredients. The FSA under Sir John Krebs has done its best to limit and even undermine GM food labelling.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1844

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OTHER HIGHLIGHTS OF THE WEEK
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+ BERKELEY ACCUSED OF BIOTECH BIAS AS ECOLOGIST IS DENIED TENURE - NATURE
Following the University of California, Berkeley's decision to deny ecologist Ignacio Chapela tenure, some of his colleagues are now questioning the integrity of the decision-making process.

The Berkeley campus has been wracked by dissent ever since it signed a lucrative deal in 1998 with the Swiss-based firm Novartis, giving the company privileged access to the university's plant scientists. Ignacio Chapela was prominent among a group of vocal protesters against the deal. Subsequently, he was attacked by the pro-GM lobby after publishing research showing GM contamination of natural maize in his native Mexico.

Chapela's supporters charge that his denial of tenure calls into question the university's willingness to back academics who challenge powerful agricultural industrial interests. But university administrators argue that Chapela's publishing record in the seven years since he arrived at Berkeley is too weak to justify tenure.

One Berkeley scientist involved in the tenure review was so upset at the handling of the case that he has broken the strict confidentiality of the process to complain. Population biologist Wayne Getz, who sat on an ad hoc faculty committee that recommended giving Chapela tenure, says that the ecologist received overwhelming faculty support, but alleges that the normal review process was then "hijacked" by Chapela's opponents in the university.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1877

+ LORD ROBERT WINSTON REGRETS SIGNING BLAIR LETTER
from Science and Politics - Debate in House of Lords 9 December 2003
Lord Robert Winston, a signatory to the Sense About Science letter to Blair calling for more government support for GM crops, said:

"We must also avoid exaggeration and over-confidence. Ministers want that, and we are too ready to ascribe to it, because funds may chase that exaggeration, but we should be very wary. With all due respect to my friend the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, in some ways I regret signing the letter about genetically modified foods because, as scientists, we showed a degree of arrogance and a failure to recognise that we need to indulge in much greater dialogue."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1869

+ SENSE ABOUT SCIENCE'S TAVERNE ATTACKS AEBC
from Science and Politics - Debate in House of Lords 9 December 2003

Lord Dick Taverne, chair, Sense About Science, said (Note he appears to believe that GM = science and that therefore to be neutral about GM is to be neutral about science, an extremely illogical stance. If true, it would mean that those who are opposed to agrochemicals are against farming and that people who dislike sauerkraut are anti-German):

"What is wrong is the Government's concern to appease the anti-science lobby groups. I shall give two examples. First, recently, the government chief scientist... wrote to the press, obviously reflecting official policy, saying that the Government were neither for nor against genetic modification. Why is that so?

"Not a single leading plant biologist has any doubts that it is a technology that offers great potential benefits. GM cotton, for example, already benefits 5 million small third-world farmers. If he had said that the Government were neither for nor against particular applications, that would have been understandable. Whether an application is beneficial or harmful depends entirely on the circumstances, as, indeed, the trials have shown. However, to be neutral about the technology is like being neither for nor against science. Science, too, can be misapplied.

"I turn to the second example. The Government set up the AEBC-the Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission. Whom did they appoint as the lay members of the council? The answer is: the chair of Greenpeace; the chair of the Soil Association; another representative from Genewatch, a clone of Greenpeace; and another dedicated opponent of GM crops. They are supposed to represent the public when, in fact, they represent highly political lobby groups, ideologically opposed to GM, which do not give a hoot about evidence. No wonder the consultation exercise was such a fiasco. It is no help to scientists to bring dedicated opponents of science into the heart of policy-making. Appeasement simply strengthens the opposition."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1869

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HEADLINES OF THE WEEK:  from the GMWATCH archive
http://www.gmwatch.org/archive.asp
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5/12/2003 Chapela's tenure denied - "Pulse of Scientific Freedom"
5/12/2003 Food Standards Agency must do more to protect public health
5/12/2003 THE WEEKLY WATCH number 50
9/12/2003 'An affront to the truth' - the director of the Science Media Centre
9/12/2003 Drug-producing GM plants need more research
9/12/2003 Invasion of the entryists - GM lobbyists exposed
9/12/2003 UK defeat on move to widen GM food sales
10/12/2003 A lady in London and Ignacio Chapela
10/12/2003 Blair should declare martial law - Scientific Alliance founder
10/12/2003 Replies to Monbiot from Usual Suspects
11/12/2003 Advisor to the Government/Concentration camp defender now GM expert
11/12/2003 Berkeley accused of biotech bias as ecologist is denied tenure
11/12/2003 Chapela and tenure/Pulse of Scientific Freedom
11/12/2003 GM farm trial scientist's prejudices
11/12/2003 Sense About Science - The Full Monty
11/12/2003 Taverne attacks AEBC / Robert Winston regrets signing Blair letter
12/12/2003 Philip Stott - the fake persona
12/12/2003 Sense About Science showcased on BBC
12/12/03 Useful summary of Benbrook report on GM and pesticide use
11/12/2003 Western Australia may adopt blanket GM crops ban

FOR THE COMPLETE GM WATCH ARCHIVE: http://www.gmwatch.org/archive.asp

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CAMPAIN OF THE WEEK:  via etc group and food first
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Join Massive International Protest on GM Contamination of Mexican Maize

Go here to send message of protest:
http://www.etcgroup.org/action3.asp

An open letter to Mexican government authorities and intergovernmental bodies was sent November 20, 2003, signed by 302 organizations from 56 countries, demanding actions to stop contamination of farmers' maize with DNA from genetically modified (GM) maize, and to prevent any further contamination in the world's centers of crop diversity and origin.

See the letter and signatories here:
http://www.etcgroup.org/article.asp?newsid=417

"People all over the world are showing solidarity with the campesinos and indigenous people of Mexico," said Ana de Ita from CECCAM, "GM contamination is a potential threat to their land and livelihoods, but also to the heart of the Mexican culture and food systems. It must be stopped."

The open letter asks the Mexican government to maintain the moratorium against the planting of transgenic maize in Mexico, stop the importation of transgenic or non-segregated maize - likely the main source of contamination in Mexico- and conduct urgent studies to determine the extent of the contamination. They also call upon the Mexican Congress to reject the biosafety bill now under consideration because it is "deeply flawed."

"The issue goes far beyond Mexico because all centers of crop diversity could be endangered," said Silvia Ribeiro of ETC Group. "The international community's lack of action is apalling. The only beneficiaries are the multinational Gene Giants, who are hoping that governments will surrender to GM contamination. But surrender is not on our agenda."

Organizations from five continents around the world are also asking the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO),the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), and the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to adopt these issues on their agendas and take actions to ensure the application of the precautionary principle to prevent further GM contamination of farmers' varieties. They also urge intergovernmental bodies to call for a global moratorium on the release of GMOs in crop centers of origin and diversity, and to insure that the biotechnology industry will not be allowed to make patent infrigement claims against farmers who are victims of GM contamination.

Take Action!

Readers are invited to join the international protest by demanding action. Go here to send messages directly to the Mexican government and to international bodies:

http://www.etcgroup.org/action3.asp

Related Publications:

Genetic Pollution in Mexico's Center of Maize Diversity
http://www.foodfirst.org/pubs/backgrdrs/2002/sp02v8n2.html
ETC GROUP

Joint Statement on the Mexican GM Maize Scandal
http://www.foodfirst.org/progs/global/ge/jointstatement2002.html

Food First Media Quik Stop: Articles on GM Contamination of Mexican Maize
http://www.foodfirst.org/media/mediasearch.php?words=mexico+maize

For more information:

Hope Shand, ETC Group, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., +1-919-960 5223
Silvia Ribeiro, ETC Group, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Ana de Ita, CECCAM, Centro de Estudios para el Cambio en el Campo
Mexicano, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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