from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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Dear all:
The big story this week is of the eminent Chinese scientist allegedly behind the contamination of China's rice crop with an illegal GM strain, which he developed and from which he stands to gain. (CHINESE GM RICE CONTAMINATION)
His cavalier attitude seems to be mirrored in the majority of British life scientists, who, according to a new study, dismiss the potential threats posed by their research, saying even if their work is used for terrorism that is "not their problem". (THE OTHER TERRORISTS).
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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CHINESE GM RICE CONTAMINATION
THE OTHER TERRORISTS
AFRICA
EUROPE
ASIA
MIDDLE EAST
AUSTRALASIA
CHURCHES
CORPORATE TAKEOVER OF SCIENCE
ORGANICS
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CHINESE GM RICE CONTAMINATION
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+ EMINENT SCIENTIST BEHIND ILLEGAL GM RICE?
According to an article in the South China Morning Post, "Mainland farmers are continuing to grow GM rice against both Chinese law and the advice of concerned critics, due in part to the efforts of an eminent scientist."
The article indicates clear collusion between GM scientists and a commercial company to sell farmers GM seeds without informing them either that the seeds were genetically engineered or that it was illegal to plant them. This apparently started some five years ago and the man at the centre of the scandal is Zhang Qifa, who is described as "China's leading biotechnology scientist". According to the article, "Most investigations identified Professor Zhang - who works at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Huazhong (Central China) Agricultural University - as the source of the illegal grain."
Testing has shown that the GM traits in the illegally grown rice are identical to those researched by Professor Zhang. And Zhang cannot claim to have been unaware of what was going on - the investigations and testing only started after he himself referred in Newsweek to how GM rice was being grown commercially in China. He told the magazine, "A local company got some of the GM rice seed and began selling it to local farmers". Zhang has used this cultivation and consumption of the GM rice as the basis of a claim for its safety!
If Zhang has been behind this illegal proliferation of GM rice over the last five years, what could be his motivation?
According to the article, Professor Zhang's national plant gene centre has received major funding from the Ministry of Science and Technology. This scale of investment, according to James Keeley, a British researcher studying China's biotechnology policy, "puts pressure on scientists" to make sure their products are used - otherwise, spending on biotech research could dry up.
Scientists quoted in the article also suggest that what is occuring is part of a wider international strategy in which GM scientists have been implicit. As one scientist puts it, "In some countries, popularisation happened before there were standardised regulations."
What this means is that scientists are deliberately colluding in the illegal proliferation of unapproved GM seeds in order to force governments to approve them. This strategy has proven effective as a means of forcing GM legalisation in a series of countries, including most noticeably India and Brazil.
The example of India is quoted in the article. "Indian authorities had long refused to commercialise anti-pest GM cotton, but scientists deliberately gave the cotton seeds to farmers and it was soon widely grown across one province." From there the seeds "quickly spread out of control". For the government, as one expert puts it, "it looks embarrassing, given that you can't enforce regulations, or you're persuaded that since farmers want it, you should just let them have it."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5499
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THE OTHER TERRORISTS
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+ SCIENTISTS BLASE ON TERROR
Scientists in the UK are failing to consider potential terror threats resulting from their work and dismissing warnings about bio-weapons, new research reveals. Group interviews with more than 600 life scientists from 26 universities, presented at a closed meeting of international chemical weapons experts at Oxford University, indicated that the majority of academics believe that terrorism is not their problem and research should not be restricted because of potential misuse.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5499
+ VENTER BLASE ON TERROR
Craig Venter, leader of the Human Genome Project, says he is well on the way to creating an artificial single cell organism. It seems he is not bothered by the fact that, as he himself once pointed out, "We don't know sh*t about biology."
He dismisses fears that if one can create artificial life, then this will open a Pandora's Box for those who want to play God or take us to an era of bioterror.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5503
+ FORMER FRENCH PRESIDENT ORDERED BOMBING OF RAINBOW WARRIOR
Francois Mitterand ordered the sinking of the Greenpeace boat Rainbow Warrior, despite the late President's denials at the time. Exactly 20 years after the bomb attack on the ship in Auckland harbour, a report by Admiral Pierre Lacoste, who at the time was head of the DGSE, the French foreign intelligence service, was published by Le Monde.
In Operation Satanic, as the DGSE called the plan, three teams of secret agents used explosives to sink the vessel as it was preparing to sail to observe French nuclear testing at Mururoa atoll in the Pacific. Fernando Pereira, a Portuguese photographer, died in the 1985 attack. A French inquiry held the same year found no involvement by DGSE chiefs or Government and Pereira's widow has never received so much as an apology, let alone any form of compensation, for his murder.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5509
+ "WISE-USE" IN THE WHITE HOUSE
Veterans of once-discredited militant anti-environmental "wise-use" groups are now setting natural-resource policy for the Bush administration. Among prominent appointees in the administration with wise-use backgrounds is Interior Department secretary Gale Norton, who began her career at the Mountain States Legal Foundation back when it billed itself as the "litigation arm of Wise Use
Mountain States was the brainchild of Reagan's notoriously anti-environmental Interior secretary James Watt. (After being forced to resign, Watt told a group of ranchers that "if the troubles from environmentalists cannot be solved in the jury box or at the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used.")
During the 1980s and 90s, wise-use activists confronted the Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club, and local environmental activists, sometimes with vigilante-style tactics ranging from telephone death-threats to arson and shootings. In Washington, Idaho, Montana, and New Mexico, a number of wise-users even united with the militia movement.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5509
+ ONLY A MATTER OF TIME: WUERTHELE ON GM CONTAMINATION
Dr Suzanne Wuerthele is a toxicologist with the US Environmental Protection Agency. Writing in a personal capacity about a New Zealand lab's recent failure to follow containment rules with GM plants, she says:
"... The US Department of Agriculture has mandated procedures which it believes will prevent contamination of the food supply, and it is so confident in them that it does not monitor to see if those procedures are working. That certainly looks like a mistake. But even if their procedures really work, humans being what we are, it is only a matter of time before such crops are contaminated with biologically active chemicals never intended to be in the food supply."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5508
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AFRICA
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+ MAKING HUNGER HISTORY
Devinder Sharma argues that the only way to lift Africa out of poverty and hunger is food self-sufficiency. The G8, however, are pursuing a contrary agenda, dumping unwanted GM grains on Africa and pushing GM technologies, thus creating dependency on foreign corporations.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5504
+ PUBLIC LEFT OUT OF DEBATE TO INTRODUCE GM MAIZE IN KENYA
Environmental lawyer Mr Mark Odhyambo Oloo says researchers have rushed to develop a new GM maize variety for Kenya in complete disregard of the law. "The whole affair has been rush[ed] and is dangerous, he said.
"It has not been been subjected to adequate public debate by Kenyans who are expected to be the final consumers of the end product. They (researchers) have also grossly ignored the law by their failure to conduct an Environmental Impact Assessment.
Mr Oloo said it was unclear as to why KARI [Kenya Agricultural Research Institute] and the international agencies were rushing their project while there was a Biotechnology Bill Draft at the Attorney General's Chambers waiting for publication.
We can help Mr Oloo out there. The people ultimately behind this project are the Syngenta Foundation, which is a creature of GM giant Syngenta. The reason it's being rushed in is that KARI desperately needs a replacement showcase project for Monsanto/USAID's failed GM sweet potato project. The new project is just as flawed.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5510
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EUROPE
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+ MAJORITY OF EUROPEANS THINK GM FOOD DANGEROUS
New Eurobarometer surveys say a majority of Europeans (54%) agree that "food made from genetically modified organisms is dangerous". Still more worryingly for pro-GM lobbyists, across the 32 European countries surveyed just 14% on average disagree that GM food is dangerous.
The surveys also show that Europeans are not techno-utopians. A clear majority of Europeans (57%) agree that science and technology are responsible for most of the environmental problems the world is facing today.
When asked about the statement, "Science and Technology can sort out any problem", the researchers report: "Few Europeans put hope into science and technology for sorting out any kind of problem. Only 21% at the EU average indicate that they agree with this statement, while a clear majority (58%) shows disagreement to this statement."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5511
+ CAMPAIGN FOR REAL MILK HITS PUBLIC BAR
A fake pub has been serving up pints of milk in protest about GM food and drink. The Cow Major, which was open for just one day in the centre of Cardiff [Wales], was designed by Greenpeace to raise awareness of the fact that most milk sold in Wales comes from cows fed on GM feed.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5515
+ ISLAMIC GROUPS ORGANISE ORGANIC PICNIC IN REGENTS PARK, LONDON
Date: Sunday 24 July 2005
Time: 1.45pm to 5pm
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5515
QUOTE: Eat and drink of that which Allah has provided and do not act corruptly, making mischief on the earth. - The Quran (2:60)
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ASIA
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+ MORE GM PAPAYA FOUND IN NORTHEAST THAILAND
GM papaya has been found growing in three more provinces in Northeast Thailand even though the Dept of Agriculture has been insisting since last year that all GM papaya has been eradicated.
Greenpeace said that farmers in the three provinces where contamination was found had last year received papaya saplings from the department's Khon Kaen agricultural research station.
Following the evidence of the collusion of GM scientists elsewhere in Asia (see CHINESE GM RICE CONTAMINATION) in the selling to farmers of unapproved GM seeds as a means of forcing legalisation via contamination, there has to be suspicion about the motivation behind the widespread and illegal dispersal of GM papaya from the Thai research station.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5513
+ THAILAND FEARS FOR FUTURE OF JASMINE RICE
A key issue in the 4th round of Thailand-US free-trade negotiations (11-15 July, Montana) was the shape of any future intellectual property regime. The survival of Thai jasmine rice, and the people who grow it, may depend on whatever system is finally agreed upon. Thai farmers may wake up one day to find that some American researcher or company has obtained a patent over a jasmine-rice variety.
The US side wants an overhaul of Thailand's existing laws on protection of indigenous plants and farmers' rights. In their place would emerge a plethora of patents, copyrights, trademarks and, of course, huge penalties for anyone who violates the new rules.
More: http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5513
+ BUMPER RICE HARVESTS IN NEPAL - WITHOUT GM
Rice farmers in eastern Nepal are reaping bumper paddy harvests from fewer seeds - without GM. A normal mansuli variety of local seed is used. Only the method of cultivation is different: instead of waiting six weeks, the seedlings are transplanted when they are only two weeks old. The field doesn't have to be flooded, in fact it needs to be drained of excess water. The seeds are planted farther apart so that while a normal paddy field needs 50 kg of seed per hectare, the new method uses less than 10 kg. And the harvest? It is more than double.
The System of Rice Intensification (SRI), as it is now called, has been tried in Tamil Nadu where it has been shown to increase rice production by 28 percent for 53 percent less water. In arid Hyderabad, farmers have reported 85 percent less seed use for double the harvests. In Sri Lanka, farmers earned 44 percent more and in China and Laos there were harvest increases of 35-50 percent. The German aid group, GTZ is pushing SRI in Cambodia where harvest have increased by 41 percent.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5506
+ INDIA, U.S. TO COLLABORATE IN AGRICULTURE
Declaring that economic reforms are "durable and irreversible," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said India will collaborate with the US to bring about second green revolution to change the face of rural India.
"The Green Revolution lifted countless millions above poverty.... I am very happy to say that US President George Bush and I have decided to launch second generation of India-US collaboration in agriculture," Singh said in his address to a joint session of the US Congress.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5512
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MIDDLE EAST
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+ ECOLOGICAL IMPACT OF THE WAR AGAINST IRAQ
Excerpt from a presentation by by Joel Kovel (Professor of Social Studies at the New York Bard College) at the World Tribunal on Iraq, held in Istanbul last month to assess the impact of the US/British invasion and occupation of Iraq:
For generations, small farmers in Iraq operated in an essentially unregulated, informal seed supply system. Farm-saved seed and the free innovation with and exchange of planting materials among farming communities has long been the basis of agricultural practice. This is now history. The CPA [Coalition Provisional Authority] has made it illegal for Iraqi farmers to re-use seeds harvested from new varieties registered under the law. Iraqis may continue to use and save from their traditional seed stocks or what's left of them after the years of war and drought, but that is the not the agenda for reconstruction embedded in the ruling. The purpose of the law is to facilitate the establishment of a new seed market in Iraq, where transnational corporations can sell their seeds, genetically modified or not, which farmers would have to purchase afresh every single cropping season. While historically the Iraqi constitution prohibited private ownership of biological resources, the new US-imposed patent law introduces a system of monopoly rights over seeds.
... The Occupation undermines an 8000 year-old collective practice that has sustained the ecologically rational form of society known as the Commons, in the process opening Iraqi society to ravaging by the global Market.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5514
+ MEDIA BLACKOUT
Virtually the entire British media ignored the deliberations of the World Tribunal on Iraq in Istanbul from June 24-27. A jury of conscience from ten different countries listened to the testimony of 54 advocates. This jury declared the war one of the most unjust in history. It concluded, "The Anglo-American occupation of Iraq of the last 27 months has led to the destruction and devastation of the Iraqi state and society."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5514
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AUSTRALASIA
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+ DON'T COME, MEDIA BANNED AND SHUT UP JULIE!
Julie Newman of The Network of Concerned Farmers writes: At last, Biotechnology Australia is getting both sides of the GM debate together to discuss practical farming issues to be resolved. Craig Cormick has structured an excellent forum that will be invaluable in looking at the way forward. Unfortunately this forum is running under a different format...
The audience is by invitation only (around 100 invitations were sent) but some pro-GM supporters (eg. Mr Ginns, the CEO of Grains Council of Australia) are encouraging people not to attend. At the last Annual Grains Conference in Brisbane, the audience of thousands were asked for questions to pro-GM speakers. When I stood to respond, Mr Ginns stated "Not you Julie, anybody in this room except Julie Newman can ask a question." Why is Mr Ginns so afraid to allow farm leaders to listen to the real farming issues associated with GM crops?
The media have been banned despite protests and requests to attend. Why is this critical debate hidden behind closed doors?
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5507
+ GM WHEAT TRIAL FUNDING CLAIMS DENIED
Grower-funded plant breeding advocate the Council of Grain Grower Organisations (COGGO) has denied it is funding Western Australia's first GM salt-tolerant wheat trial at Corrigin. The claim was made by Network of Concerned Farmers (NCF) spokesperson Julie Newman in a presentation she is circulating to attract support for a strict liability regime should GM contamination occur.
It has been reported that highly controversial GM wheat trials are being funded by the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC), which gets money from compulsory levies on Australian farmers. If the trials are being funded from these compulsory levies, this will be a red rag to a bull for Australia's farmers, given the problems already being experienced with contamination of canola and the massive potential for export losses from contamination of wheat.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5507
+ AUSTRALIAN GM CANOLA CONTAMINATION FOUND IN JAPAN
Authorities have confirmed the first known contamination of a food crop with GM material in Australia. The GM material was found during routine testing by the Australian Barley Board (ABB) of an export consignment of Victorian canola seeds that was bound for Japan.
The GM variety was Bayer's Topas 19/2. A small plot of Topas 19/2 was planted in Victoria in 1998, but conventional seed imported for a breeding program may be the source of contamination.
Bayer commented that some level of GM contamination is now "a reality in agricultural production systems around the world".
Why does Bayer seem happy to admit this? As Don Westfall of Promar International said in 2001, "The hope of the industry is that over time the market is so flooded that there's nothing you can do about it."
A year later in 2002, Dale Adolphe, former head of the Canola Council of Canada and executive director of the Canadian Seed Growers Association, told Canadian canola growers at their annual meeting that despite growing public opposition to GM crops, there was hope: "It's a hell of a thing to say that the way we win is don't give the consumer a choice, but that might be it."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5502
+ GM CANOLA CREATES "MOUNTAIN" OF CONCERN
Australian canola crushers are fielding a large number of inquiries from concerned overseas customers since the identification of GM canola in an export shipment. Grain exporter ABB Grain Limited detected low levels of GM seed in a small consignment of canola sourced from Victoria.
Pete Macsmith from Macsmith Milling in New South Wales says the Japanese in particular have been sending a lot of emails. "A mountain of it would maybe be the best way to describe it," he said. "...it's about giving them [consumers] what they want, otherwise none of us have a market."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5505
+ MP CALLS FOR RESTRAINT IN GM CROP TESTING
The Member for Tamworth, Peter Draper, is warning the New South Wales Government against any further testing of GM food crops across the state. He said, "...when we are at risk of losing our very valuable export market I think the NSW Government needs to be extremely cautious in any future trial of GM technology in this state."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5505
+ GREENPEACE "CONTAMINATES" BAYER OFFICE
Eight Greenpeace activists staged a protest in the office of Bayer CropScience in Melbourne "to show what it's like to have an unwanted presence of contamination". Greenpeace is demanding the biotech giant take responsibility for the GM contamination that was revealed in Victoria last week.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5516
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CHURCHES
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+ AGENDA ON GM FOR WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES
EXCERPT from "Caring for Life: An Agenda for the World Council of Churches", the result of a consultation that took place in May 2005 in Basel:
The WCC working group on genetic engineering started to build a database of the many documents, brochures and books produced by churches and church related organisations. Although by far not complete, the list shows that the issues are widely discussed and are no longer seen as predominantly "Northern" concerns. Churches in the "South" have studied the impact on people and are fully aware of the leading role of transnational corporations in pushing for the introduction of genetically modified seeds and genetically engineered pharmaceuticals that, in general, do not address the most pressing needs of people.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5517
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CORRPORATE TAKEOVER OF SCIENCE
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+ U.S. GOVERNMENT SCIENTISTS WITH TIES TO COMPANIES
Forty-four government scientists have violated ethics rules on collaborating with pharmaceutical companies, a preliminary review by the National Institutes of Health shows. Nine of the scientists may have violated criminal laws, the report said.
The institutes' review found that the 44 scientists had either failed to disclose income from outside work, had failed to get permission to consult or had done the work on government time rather than their own.
Allegations of fake research reached record highs in the US last year, at 50 percent higher than 2003. And in a survey published June 9 in the science journal Nature, 1 in 3 of respondents admitted to some type of professional misbehavior.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5500
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ORGANICS
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+ GMOs NOT NEEDED SO WHY TAKE THE RISK?
Recently we reported research showing organic farming can produce the same yields as intensive agriculture for corn and soybeans, but without the pesticides and with lower energy consumption.
We've published excerpts from 2 relevant articles, neither of them new, at
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5501
The first is from a book review of Mendel in the Kitchen by the GM evangelist Nina Fedoroff. The reviewer, David Pimentel, a professor of ecology and agriculture in the Department of Entomology at Cornell University, is the researcher whose newly published work on the Rodale study has sent pro-GM and anti-organic campaigners into overdrive.
The second article by Jules Pretty, Director of the Centre for Environment and Society at the University of Essex, contains a still more unpalatable truth for GM proponents like Fedoroff - that maximising the use of locally-available and renewable resources through sustainable agriculture is especially effective for resource-poor farmers.
The reason GM proponents are so desperate to deny such alternative ways of 'feeding the world', of course, is that they raise the inevitable question: Why accept the deep uncertainties surrounding GMOs if they are not necessary?
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5501