WEEKLY WATCH number 239
from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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Dear all:
The big news this week is that the FDA has lifted its ban on meat and dairy products from cloned animals, but according to a Washington Post article, consumers are probably already eating the stuff anyway. Needless to say, no one told them. (CLONING)
And GM Watch's Jonathan Matthews got put in the same category as Pol Pot on BBC Radio - you can listen or read the transcript. (FEEDING THE WORLD?)
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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FEEDING THE WORLD?
CLONING
AUSTRALASIA
EUROPE
RESEARCH
THE AMERICAS
NANOTECHNOLOGY
GENETIC CROSSROADS
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FEEDING THE WORLD?
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+ THE GREAT GM MIRACLE?
GM Watch's Jonathan Matthews is interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Costing the Earth, which set out to answer the question of whether GM crops are the answer to feeding the world's starving. Jonathan is pitted against pro-GM lobbyist Dick Taverne, and economist Jeffrey Sachs.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8687
A transcript of the interview is at
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8690
Or you can listen online before 2100 hrs (GMT) Thursday 24 January at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/costingtheearth.shtml
or via http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml (look for Costing the Earth)
+ DESERTING THE HUNGRY?
Two CropLife member corporations, Monsanto and Syngenta, have pulled out of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology. This is an ambitious, 4-year, US$10-million project that aims to do for hunger and poverty what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has done for another global challenge.
Interesting comment from the science journal, Nature: The idea that biotechnology cannot by itself reduce hunger and poverty is mainstream opinion among agricultural scientists and policy-makers. For example, biotechnology expansion was not among the seven main recommendations in 'Halving Hunger: It Can Be Done', a report commissioned by former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan. The writing team for this report included Kenya's Florence Wambugu, perhaps the strongest proponent for biotechnology in Africa.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8684
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CLONING
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+ CLONED MEAT ALLOWED ON SHELVES - TAKE ACTION!
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has lifted a ban on selling meat and dairy products coming from cloned animals. Tell grocers you aren't buying it! Tell them you'll stop shopping at stores that can't promise not to sell such products:
http://www.FoE.org/No_Food_From_Cloned_Animals
Don't Buy It: Keep Cloned Meat Off Grocery Shelves
http://action.foe.org/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=22275
The FDA has buckled to big biotech and agro-business despite more than 150,000 public comments opposing the lifting of the ban, and amendments to the federal Farm Bill and Omnibus Appropriations Bill calling for more research before lifting the ban.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8680
+ CLONES ALREADY BEING EATEN - WASHINGTON POST
The US Dept of Agriculture has asked US farmers to keep their cloned animals off the market indefinitely even as Food and Drug Administration officials announced that food from cloned livestock is safe to eat. Yet even as the two agencies sought a unified message - that food from clones is safe for people but perhaps dangerous to US markets and trade relations - evidence surfaced suggesting that Americans and others are probably already eating meat from the offspring of clones. Executives from the nation's major cattle cloning companies conceded that they have not been able to keep track of how many offspring of clones have entered the food supply, despite a years-old request by the FDA to keep them off the market pending completion of the agency's safety report.
'This is a fairy tale that this technology is not being used and is not already in the food chain,' said Donald Coover, a Galesburg cattleman and veterinarian who has a specialty cattle semen business. 'Anyone who tells you otherwise either doesn't know what they're talking about, or they're not being honest.'
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8682
+ FOOD FROM CLONES SAFE, EU DRAFT SAYS
The European Food Safety Authority has declared that meat and milk from healthy cloned cattle and pigs is 'very unlikely' to pose risks to consumers, opening the door to possible European sales of those foods in the future. Clones are far from perfect copies. All clones are defective, in one way or another, with multiple flaws embedded in their genomes. Rudolf Jaenisch, a geneticist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, estimates that something like 4-5% of the genes in a cloned animal's genome are expressed incorrectly.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8670
+ EU PANEL DOES NOT SUPPORT ANIMAL CLONING
A European Union panel yesterday said it had 'doubts' about the ethics of using cloning to improve farm livestock, because cloned animals and their surrogate mothers suffered more health problems than conventional animals. The European Group on Ethics of science and new technologies (EGE) 'does not see convincing arguments to justify the production of food from clones and their offspring', it concluded after an investigation.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8689
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AUSTRALASIA
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+ NEW ZEALAND: GM FIELD TRIAL SECURITY BREACH
Rotorua police are investigating after a perimeter fence around a field trial of GM trees was breached. Some 19 trees were damaged during the incident. Lobby group, the Soil and Health Association, has been calling for the trees to be cut down. Spokesperson Steffan Browning says it hopes the breach will prompt Scion to improve security around the fence, in order to avoid GM material being spread inadvertently.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8685
+ AUSTRALIA: FARMERS CALL FOR RESEARCH LEVIES TO BE VOLUNTARY
In reaction to an announcement that Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) has doubled its compulsory levy due to the increase of grain prices, the Network of Concerned Farmers is calling for levies to be voluntary. NCF claims that no other farmers in the world pay as much as Australian farmers towards research and development and Australian farmers should not be forced to take over government R&D funding.
'Why should farmers be forced to pay a R&D levy if we do not own the intellectual property we pay for?' asked Julie Newman of the Network of Concerned Farmers. 'Australian farmers pay for pre-breeding, plus the seed, plus a cut when we deliver any grain produced from the seed. With GM crops, farmers will also pay a user fee for using a patented product or growing its progeny. The farmer/research alliance should be symbiotic, not parasitic.'
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8678
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EUROPE
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+ FRENCH FARMER CALLS OFF HUNGER STRIKE
French farmer Jose Bove and about 15 supporters called off their hunger strike in its eighth day after the government ordered the suspension of the use of GM corn MON810. Europe's Ban-GMOs Year could hardly have started better.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8669
+ U.S. HOLDS FIRE ON SANCTIONS AGAINST EU IN GM FOOD DISPUTE
The US said it would temporarily hold fire on sanctions on European Union goods in a last-ditch attempt to resolve a bitter trade dispute over GM crops. The EU has missed a World Trade Organization deadline to comply with a decision against EU restrictions on some GMOs.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8677
+ EU RETHINKS BIOFUELS GUIDELINES
Europe's environment chief has admitted that the EU did not foresee the problems raised by its policy to get 10% of Europe's road fuels from plants. Recent reports have warned of rising food prices and rainforest destruction from increased biofuel production. The EU has promised new guidelines to ensure that its target is not damaging. EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said it would be better to miss the target than achieve it by harming the poor or damaging the environment.
GM Watch comment: This is what happens when the EU allows its policies and research agenda to be shaped by the likes of its European Biofuels Technology Platform (EBFTP) and BIOFRAC (its influential predecessor), groups dominated by oil, car and biotech companies.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8674
+ ARPAD PUSZTAI: BIOLOGICAL DIVIDE
An article in the UK's Guardian revisits the row that blew up in 1998 over Arpad Pusztai's GM research. Dr Pusztai found that GM potatoes damaged the health of rats, and was hounded out of his job when he went public with his results.
EXCERPT:
Does he regret speaking publicly about his research prior to publication - generally regarded as a cardinal sin by scientists? [GM Watch comment: Except, presumably, by the many pro-GM scientists who hype results before they are published and results that are never published at all] 'No,' he says. 'I was publicly funded and I thought the public had a right to know.' He also rejects the notion that he would have achieved more by waiting until the science was in print. Since he went public, he estimates he has given between 150 and 200 lectures around the world. And in 2005 he was honoured with a whistleblower award from the Federation of German Scientists. 'Even our best scientific publications - I don't think they are read by more than 50 people,' he says. 'This had impact ... to my damage, but it had impact.'
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8676
+ EU BIOTECH LOBBY PROMOTING ITS AGENDA IN GREECE
The EU biotech lobby, especially EuropaBio, is promoting its agenda, including GM and agrofuels, via the International Biotech Conference in Athens.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8683
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RESEARCH
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GM DOES NOT MAKE COTTON MORE PROFITABLE
Profitability is most closely associated with yields and not with transgenic technologies, says research published by the American Society of Agronomy. GM cotton has been hyped as the big GM success story, leading to big increases in yields and profits for farmers, reductions in the use of agrochemicals, and benefits for biodiversity. But a series of recent studies - in China, South Africa and the USA - have helped demolish these claims.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8673
+ UNWANTED IMMUNE RESPONSES TRIGGERED BY GM PHARMA CORN
Minute quantities of a bacterial protein inserted in corn to increase the effectiveness of plant-based GM vaccines have been found to cause unwanted immune responses in mice. The authors of the paper, in Environmental Health Perspectives, comment, 'The results indicate that special care will be needed with transgenic corn to reduce exposure to workers and the public if this protein is used commercially in corn or other food crops, to avoid unwanted immune responses in people and decreased effectiveness of oral vaccines that use the protein.'
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8675
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THE AMERICAS
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+ CANADIAN FARMER FORCES MONSANTO BACK TO COURT
Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser, who was sued by Monsanto for growing its GM crops which he claimed blew on to his land, is back to launch another slingshot at Monsanto. This time he is suing the billion dollar business for GBP300 in his local small claims court. At stake, he says, is millions of pounds of compensation for those who have seen their land contaminated with GM material, and the rights of organic farmers and others to produce GM-free crops. Monsanto calls the case 'specific and local'.
Schmeiser and his wife, Louise, are suing for the C$600 (GBP300) it cost to hire contractors to dig up several of Monsanto's GM oilseed rape plants he found growing in a field he was preparing for a mustard crop in 2005. Schmeiser argues the stray plants are pollution, and the polluter should pay. The company refused unless he agreed not to talk about it. Schmeiser said: 'No corporation should have the right to introduce GM seeds or plants into the environment and not be responsible for it. It doesn't matter if it was $600, or $600,000. It has now become a very important case, even though it is small, because if we win then it could cost Monsanto millions and millions of dollars across the world.'
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8691
+ THE COLONIZATION OF THE CANADIAN FARMER
Listen to broadcasts on the GM takeover of Canadian farming:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/deconstructingdinner/DD010308.mp3
http://cjly.net/deconstructingdinner/audio/DD010308.m3u
Summary at http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8691
+ PENNSYLVANIA BACKS OFF GM HORMONE LABEL BAN
Pennsylvania agriculture officials have backed down from a controversial ban on milk labels that identify the milk as coming from cows not treated with GM growth hormone. The ban was to take effect February 1, to the dismay of consumer activists and many smaller dairies who choose not to inject their cows with hormones. But the move has been superseded by new standards issued after a review by the office of Gov. Rendell. Rendell ordered the agency to review the policy after consumer outcry, his spokesman said.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8688
+ FOOD GIANT OFFERS CHEESE FREE FROM GM HORMONE
Kraft Foods Inc. says it will start selling a line of cheese made with milk from cows free of rBST by June. Some consumer groups, citing scientific studies, say the production-boosting hormone can cause cancer.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8679
+ HAWAII: DEMO AGAINST GM TARO
In Hawaii, Speaker of the House Calvin Say has said that he cannot promise that the legislature will hear a bill that would ban the genetic engineering of the sacred indigenous plant, taro. Speaking for himself and Representative Clift Tsuji, Say said 'Your presence is a reflection of your love of [taro]. It's an [attribute] of Hawaiian culture that I share with you. I cannot commit but I've never said that I would not have a hearing. If the House wants a hearing, the chairman and I are open to it. [It will be] sometime this session if there is a consensus.' Say's comment was made after a march from the Hawaii SEED campsite to the foyer of the state legislature.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8686
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NANOTECHNOLOGY
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+ SOIL ASSOCIATION FIRST BODY TO BAN NANOPARTICLES
The UK's organic body, the Soil Association, has become the first organization in the world to ban nanoparticles from its certified organic products. Prof Vyvyan Howard, nanotechnology researcher at University of Ulster, said: 'The term nanotechnology covers a vast range of applications. Many are not threatening at all, such as nano-structured surfaces for self cleaning glass. But in the areas of health and beauty and food more research must be done. There is considerable evidence that nanoparticles are toxic and potentially hazardous.'
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8680
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GENETIC CROSSROADS
- Center for Genetics and Society
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+ LOOKING A GIFT HORSE IN THE MOUTH
Jesse Reynolds, Biopolitical Times
New problems emerge as the California stem cell agency prepares to give its first grants to for-profit entities.
http://biopoliticaltimes.org/article.php?id=3856
+ A SCIENCE DEBATE?
Jesse Reynolds, Biopolitical Times
A call for the US presidential candidates to debate their positions on science and technology.
http://biopoliticaltimes.org/article.php?id=3855
+ DEAF DEMAND RIGHT TO DESIGNER DEAF CHILDREN
Controversy about whether deaf parents should be allowed to screen their embryos to select a deaf child.
http://geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=3860
+ FBI PREPARES VAST DATABASE OF BIOMETRICS: $1 BILLION PROJECT TO INCLUDE IMAGES OF IRISES AND FACES
The world's largest database of peoples' physical characteristics would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the U.S. and abroad.
http://geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=3858
+ BOY GETS LEUKAEMIA AFTER GENE TREATMENT TO CURE 'BUBBLE BABY SYNDROME'
One of the first children in Britain to receive gene therapy for an immune system disorder has developed leukaemia as a result of his treatment.
http://geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=3840
+ YAMANAKA: NON-SCIENTISTS SHOULD OVERSEE STEM CELL RESEARCH
Jesse Reynolds, Biopolitical Times
Shinya Yamanaka, recently famous for his work on cell reprogramming, asserted that non-scientists should take the lead in decisions about the ethics of scientific research.
http://biopoliticaltimes.org/article.php?id=3838