GMWatch News Review archive

------------------------------------------------------------
from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
------------------------------------------------------------

Dear all:

Calls are mounting for the resignation of Monsanto president and CEO, Hugh Grant, who was in charge of Monsanto's business operations in SE Asia at the time the company began its $700,000 bribery spree in Indonesia.

The role of Grant, who acts as an advisor to a Scottish government-sponsored advisory committee, has even been raised in the Scottish parliament. It was pointed out, "During 1997-1998, Mr Grant was managing director of Monsanto's Asia Pacific division and was promoted to having global responsibility for agriculture. He was not on holiday with Monsanto; he had overall responsibility during most of that period of corrupt practice." (INDONESIAN BRIBERY SCANDAL).
 
The level of confidence within Monsanto can be assessed by an investment report this week which pointed out that company insiders have dumped a massive 21.9% of their shares in the past few months.

But at least Monsanto still has a couple of friends left. One is the shameless Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which started out as a black civil rights group but which has been co-opted by the hard right, and now Monsanto! Monsanto has become CORE's "corporate partner". You can actually see Monsanto's logo on their website next to pictures of civil rights activists murdered by the KKK. (LOBBYWATCH).

Monsanto's other friend is the ISAAA lobby group which has been claiming once again that there is a big increase in global GM crop cultivation, particularly in the developing world. Much of ISAAA's focus is on China as the future global GM booster, but new analysis suggests China is actually getting cold feet about GMOs and is now reluctant to proceed with their release. (see ASIA)

And ISAAA's global coordinator Randy Hautea has been forced to admit that the industry has had to pull out of countries like Indonesia and Bulgaria. Hautea even admitted "there were some disasters". Asked if a similar situation could arise in India, which ISAAA paints as another GM behemoth, Dr Hautea refused to comment! (ASIA)

Claire This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
www.gmwatch.org / www.lobbywatch.org

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

INDONESIAN BRIBERY SCANDAL
LOBBYWATCH
EUROPE
THE AMERICAS
AFRICA
ASIA
NEW RESEARCH
DONATIONS

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
INDONESIAN BRIBERY SCANDAL
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

***Monsanto gave a minimum of $700,000 in bribes to at least 140 current or former Indonesian government officials and their family members to smooth the entry of GM crops into the country.***

+ BUCK STOPS WITH MONSANTO PRESIDENT HUGH GRANT
A Monsanto profile of its president and chief executive officer Hugh Grant shows that he was in charge of the Asia Pacific region, including all the company's agricultural business operations there, from 1995-98. The five years of corrupt payments in Indonesia began in 1997, i.e. Grant was in charge at the time.

Monsanto can never hope to meet its pledge of "honesty" and "integrity" while run by a man who is proven to have failed to deliver honest business dealings in the area of company operations for which he had specific responsibility.

As Jonathan Matthews of GM WATCH said in a Sunday Herald article, "This man is steeped in a company culture that allowed this to happen."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4811
The Guardian's John Vidal reports on the scandal:
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4809

+ GRANT MUST GO, SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT TOLD
Member of the Scottish Parliament Robin Harper told Scotland's First Minister in the Parliament that Grant must resign from Scottish Enterprise (SE), a body that helps Scottish businesses promote themselves. Harper said, "During 1997-1998, Mr Grant was managing director of Monsanto's Asia Pacific division and was promoted to having global responsibility for agriculture. He was not on holiday with Monsanto; he had overall responsibility during most of that period of corrupt practice."

Harper told the press: "The big issue this week is... the fact that the CEO of a corporation convicted of systematic bribery in its international dealings is on a government sponsored advisory committee... Ministers must intervene now and demand the resignation of Hugh Grant from SE. This is the real 'conflict of interest' political issue of the week. ...Hugh Grant has got to go."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4816

+ SEEDS OF BRIBERY SCANDAL
See an excellent Asia Times article looking at the bribery scandal from the Indonesian angle:
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4814

+ MONSANTO RATS BAILING OUT OF SINKING SHIP?
A new report by Innovest Strategic Value Advisors paints a bleak picture of Monsanto's prospects and says that insiders are dumping their shares.

EXCERPT:
21.9% of the shares held by insiders have been sold in the latter half of 2004... while no significant purchases have taken place. In addition, extraordinary charges have regularly appeared on the balance sheet, averaging $350 million per year over the past four years.

...In summary, the risks to Monsanto's shareholders from the company's genetic engineering business are substantial. In addition, the company already carries historical risk liabilities well in excess of sector peers. As this report illustrates, the company faces business constraints in the form of market rejection by consumers, producers, and farmers; significant legislative hurdles to commercialization; uncertainty in the face of human health and environmental impacts stemming from the company's products; and finally, significant risk exposure from potential contamination of the human food chain by both approved and unapproved genetically engineered traits.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4813

------------------------------------------------------------
LOBBYWATCH
------------------------------------------------------------

+ FAKE PARADE HITS NEW YORK
Two years ago, GM WATCH editor Jonathan Matthews wrote an article called "The Fake Parade" about how Monsanto and associates were trying to hide the company's "soapbox behind a black man's face".

The article noted how in 1999 the New York Times reported that a street protest against genetic engineering outside an FDA public hearing in Washington DC was disrupted by a group of African-Americans carrying placards such as "Biotech saves children's lives" and "Biotech equals jobs." The Times learned that Monsanto's PR company, Burson-Marsteller, had paid a Baptist Church from a poor neighborhood to bus in these "demonstrators" as part of a wider campaign "to get groups of church members, union workers and the elderly to speak in favor of genetically engineered foods."

Now Monsanto has gone one better and has signed up its very own black advocacy group. Visit the home page of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and beside images of freedom riders and civil rights activists murdered by the KKK, you'll see the Monsanto logo under the legend "CORE's corporate partner". http://www.core-online.org

One 17 January, Monsanto's Chairman and CEO, Hugh Grant chaired CORE's celebratory reception in honour of the Martin Luther King National Holiday. On 18 January, at CORE's "UN World Conference on Biotechnology", Monsanto's executive vice president made the closing address.
More: http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4805

+ ROTTEN TO THE CORE
An article, "Skewed Ethics on Biotechnology", the first of two by Paul Driessen, senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), is at
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4803

The article is intended to promote CORE's biotechnology conference, held at the United Nations January 18. A reception at the New York Hilton on the 17th honoured 'the father of the Green Revolution' Norman Borlaug and neo-conservative, Karl Rove. Karl Rove is, of course, Dubya's election strategist and the man who oversaw black voter disenfranchisment in Florida and Ohio.

The Chairman for that event was Hugh Grant, Chairman and CEO of Monsanto - the company at the centre of the Indonesian bribes scandal.

CORE's Chairman, Roy Innis, the opening speaker at the "UN World Conference" and the "host" of the event at the Hilton, is no stranger to controversy. Past CORE invitees to their King Day celebrations have included Austrian politician and Nazi-sympathizer Jorg Haider, and right-wing radio host Bob Grant, who once called Martin Luther King a "scumbag".

Innis himself is a curious champion of racial equality. He once called the struggle against Apartheid "a vicarious, romantic adventure" with "no honest base," and when asked in 1973 why his organization supported Idi Amin despite the Ugandan president's hatred of Jewish people and praise of Hitler, he said, "we have no records to prove if Hitler was a friend or an enemy of black people." Amin's decision to expel 50,000 Asians from Uganda was hailed by Innis as "a bold step".

Paul Driessen, who moderated two panels at the "UN World Conference", is the author of the book "Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death". "Eco-imperialism" lays at the door of the environmental movement "the hunger and suffering of millions of the world's poor who are denied the benefits of genetically engineered food."

The book's reviews include one from CS Prakash who enthuses, "Great book!" According to timber industry and biotech lobbyist, Patrick Moore, "This book is the first one I've seen that tells the truth and lays it on the line".

But both the book and the article studiously ignore the fact that many development experts and NGOs have been just as sceptical about the value of GM crops for the world's poor as environmental organisations.

An indication of what CORE and Driessen and their conference were really about, is the fact that Driessen's book is published by the Free Enterprise Press, the publishing arm of The Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise (CDFE), where Driessen is a Senior Fellow. CDFE was the brainchild of a nuclear engineer and 'Wise Use' pro-corporate lobbyist Ron Arnold. Arnold has been a consultant for Dow Chemical, as well as Head of the Washington State chapter of the American Freedom Coalition, the political arm of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church (1989-91).
More:
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4803
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4804

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
EUROPE
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

+ HUNGARY BANS MONSANTO GM MAIZE SEED
Hungary has banned the import and planting of Monsanto's MON 810 GM maize seeds and will not allow existing stocks to be planted, the Agriculture Ministry said. However, the new European Union member state will continue to allow use of the GMO maize in food production and in the animal feed industry.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4815

+ GERMAN GM PROJECT STALLED
A German research project aimed at producing GM potatoes with higher levels of a carotenoid that helps prevent macular degeneration will likely be cancelled before completion because of what the study's leader calls the German government's negative attitude toward GM crop research. Helmar Schubert, from the University of Karlsruhe's Institute of Food Process Engineering, said the German research ministry has refused to provide additional funding needed to complete the 5-year project.

Christoph Then of Greenpeace said that his organization is opposed to enriching foods with vitamins, minerals, or other nutrients, some of which can be harmful if ingested in excess.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4798

+ REVIEW OF THE YEAR: ITALY (with thanks to Roberto Pinton)
Surveys have repeatedly shown that Italians strongly distrust GM foods and some of the most powerful resistance to GMOs in 2004 came from the people of Italy. Farmers have protested against the corporate takeover of agriculture and GM crops, and Italian ports were blockaded in protest against GM soya imports for animal feed.

The most remarkable achievement, though, has come in the form of GM-free zones. By the end of the year nearly 2,000 towns and cities in Italy had chosen to declare their municipalities GM-free. Also opposing GM crops were 14 of Italy's 20 regions and 27 provinces.
More: http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4801

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE AMERICAS
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

+ ENEMY OF THE STATE: IGNACIO CHAPELA
EXCERPT from an excellent must-read article by The Guardian's John Vidal on the case of Dr Ignacio Chapela, the critic of the biotech industry denied tenure by UC Berkeley:

[Chapela said,] "... I was asked to be part of a National Academy of Science [equivalent of a Royal Society] committee supposedly looking at the scientific foundation for the regulatory status of GM. We were being asked, I realised, to give a scientific excuse for deregulation.

"'I have two questions,' I said. The first was about substantial equivalence [when a new food or food component is found to be substantially equivalent to an existing food or food component]; the second was whether we could review what happens if we lost control of the GM through, say, cross-pollination. For both, we had a big thumb's down from the top. We were told 'thou shalt not ask that'. A reasonable scientist should always react with suspicion to suppression."

... Chapela reckons that the industry has received more than $200bn (£107bn) of US public money over the years and should be bankrupt by now. "It should have died three years ago," he insists. "Why is the industry still alive? It's bleeding like crazy. The answer is that the industry is in the national interests of the US. The state department handles it. It's not about economic value but government [strategy]. It is built into the rightwing agenda of the US at executive branch level."

But Chapela is baffled by the British government's support for agricultural biotech. "I can tell what is in it for the US. I can understand Bush [senior] and Dan Quayle thinking [in the 1990s] that it looked promising and taking the risk, but I have absolutely no idea what you guys [the British] are in it for."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4810

+ MONSANTO ASSAULT ON US FARMERS DETAILED IN NEW REPORT
The Center for Food Safety (CFS) has released a review of Monsanto's use and abuse of US patent law to control the usage of staple crop seeds by US farmers. "Monsanto vs. US Farmers" details the results of this CFS's research, discusses the ramifications for the future of farming in the US and outlines policy options for ending the persecution of farmers.

CFS has established a toll-free hotline for farmers facing lawsuits or threats from Monsanto to get guidance and referrals: 1-888-FARMHLP.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4797

+ AT WHAT COST MONSANTO'S TECHNOLOGY FEES?
An article in the Corvallis Gazette Times reveals growing impatience with Monsanto's technology fees. The article says, "Monsanto does deserve to be compensated for its technology, but the question in a number of global contexts is 'At what cost?'":

"Since 1997, Monsanto has sued 147 farmers in 25 states... In Brazil they're having none of it, at least for now. Last Thursday, a Brazilian court temporarily halted royalty payments to Monsanto...

"On Jan. 6, the company agreed to pay $1.5 million in fines after a US Department of Justice investigation revealed that between 1997 and 2002, Monsanto paid more than $700,000 to bribe Indonesian government officials...

"With Monsanto's quarterly seed sales at $40 million - $57 million below the same quarter last year - perhaps the company should change its motto, 'Setting the Standard in the Field' to 'Rethinking the Cost of Our Ethics.'"
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4807

+ JOURNALISTS CHALLENGE FOX BROADCAST LICENCE
For what is believed to be the first time, two television journalists have challenged the broadcast licence of a station on grounds it deliberately broadcast false and distorted news reports. Reporters Jane Akre and Steve Wilson filed the petition against Rupert Murdoch's WTVT Fox-13 in Tampa, Florida.

The Petition to Deny the station's pending license renewal presents the Federal Communications Commission with what the journalists say is "clear and convincing support for the claim that the licensee is not operating in the public interest and lacks the good character to do so."

The reporters allege that Fox managers ordered them to distort news reports about the secret use of Monsanto's GM bovine growth hormone, injected into dairy cattle in Florida and beyond.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4800

+ CANADA: PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND MAY GO GM-FREE
Prince Edward Island Legislative Assembly is to hold committee hearings into GM products to inform a decision that would establish PEI as Canada's first GE-free province. Canadian communities have pioneered such measures as banning smoking in public places and the cosmetic use of pesticides.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4818

+ ANOTHER CALIFORNIAN COUNTRY MAY BAN GMOs
Riding on the coattails of similar bans in Mendocino and other counties, a proposal to outlaw the growth of GMOs in Sonoma County is gaining momentum.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4818

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
AFRICA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

+ NIGERIA: FEEDING GMOs TO SCHOOLKIDS?
Excerpt from excellent article: "The UN Secretary General called in July 2004 for a new 'Africa 21st Century Green Revolution' as a key element needed for Africa to cope with hunger and poverty. A reading of the blueprint shows that the plan includes the promotion of GMOs as the solution to the challenge of hunger in the developing world. What is amazing to opponents of this posture is that proponents of GMOs keep on recycling discredited arguments and many governments accept them as sacrosanct."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4808

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
ASIA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

+ CHINA DRAGS IT HEELS ON GM ROLLOUT
China is stalling the adoption of GM plant cultivation as a cautious government ponders their safety. The government is unlikely to take a decision "any time soon" on the introduction of more GM crops and "it has less interest on the issue than a year ago," said Paul French, an analyst with market intelligence provider Access Asia based in Shanghai.

The Chinese government had been expected by many to grant permission for GM crops but Beijing has thus far only allowed the cultivation of transgenic cotton, with all other GM crops banned. The import and export of GM produce is also not permitted.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4817

+ INDIA MAY IMPORT GM OILSEEDS
India, the world's largest importer of edible oils, may allow imports of GM oilseeds to meet a domestic shortfall. India currently does not allow imports of GM seeds. It also imposes a 30-percent duty on non-GMO seeds [why?!], which traders say is too high and not viable.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4806

+ ISAAA ADMITS GM "DISASTERS"
In the wake of ISAAA's annual report claiming increased uptake of GM in the developing world, ISAAA global coordinator Randy Hautea has admitted that Indonesia and Bulgaria have pulled out from the global race for transgenic crops. The governments in these countries did not extend the approval for transgenic crops as "there was some disasters" [sic]. Asked if a similar situation would result in India relating to Bt cotton, Dr Hautea refused to comment.

Commenting on the ISAAA report, PV Satheesh of the Hyderabad-based Deccan Development Society said: "Bt cotton failed to live up to the expectations in the third consecutive year in different parts of south India".

Note also that the highest percentage growth in Bt cotton cultivation is claimed for Andhra Pradesh - the Indian state in which the highest level of discontent with the crop has been expressed.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4802

+ MORE ON GM-LINKED AILMENTS IN PHILIPPINES
An article published in the Philippines rebuts the argument of pro-GM scientists that Prof Terje Traavik's findings on illnesses in people exposed to Bt corn are "inconclusive":

"You say his findings are inconclusive. So are your findings on safety. You argue that since Traavik may be wrong, there is no reason to be alarmed and it is okay to go ahead, when safety has not been established beyond doubt. The burden of proof is on safety, not in theorizing Traavik is wrong. I hope your institutions have done something on this. Have you touched base with Traavik? What have you done? If you have new data, please update us."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4799

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW RESEARCH
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

+ GM SUGAR BEET LEAVES WILDLIFE SHORT OF FOOD
New research on GM sugar beet shows that different crop management will leave the UK's farmland wildlife short of food at some stage in the year. The research, carried out by Prof Mike May at Brooms Barn Research Centre, and funded by the biotech industry, shows that all three GM sugar beet management approaches so far proposed fail to provide sufficient weeds and weed seeds for farmland wildlife in every season.

Five Year Freeze Director Pete Riley said, " This is bad news for resident birds which need food all year round. We doubt that this last ditch attempt to save GM sugar beet will have much credibility with regulators or farmers."

Earlier research by May claimed to show major savings for farmers taking up GM sugar beet but farmers from the independent farmers' group, FARM, quickly spotted from their experience of beet-growing that the paper had exaggerated by as much as 75% the costs of a conventional herbicide regime. This had the effect of making the GM herbicide regime appear financially attractive. When compared to the real cost, there was little financial benefit from the GM crop and for many farmers with lower weed burdens a financial penalty.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4812