1.EUROPE: GM Crops' Days May Be Numbered
2.Belarus: Double GMO labelling 
3.Madagascar: Faustian bargain
4.New Zealand: GMO risk unfair
5.Kenya: Environmentalists Urge Leaders to Reject Bio Bill
6.USA: The GMO industry has been scraping by on bad science
7.USA: Tell Hershey's to kiss GM sugar goodbye!
8.The Philippines: Ban GMO rice, Greenpeace asks Senate
9.The Philippines: Exhibition in the Senate

EXTRACTS: "Now that France, Hungary and Poland, Europe's main cereals producers, have forbidden the use of GM maize in their territories, and Germany is in the process of following suit, the Iberian countries (Spain and Portugal) should take heed and do the same," she said.

A huge, unified movement of people in favour of declaring a moratorium on the cultivation of GM crops has emerged in Spain and Portugal, following a similar decision taken in March by the French government that invoked the "safeguard clause" allowing an EU member state to bypass a community directive. (item 1)

Consumers in Brazil can now eat Hershey's Kisses without fear of GM contamination. Unfortunately, that is not the case for US consumers. (item 7)

NOTE: All items taken from GM-free Ireland's excellent news page: http://www.gmfreeireland.org/news/index.php 
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1.Transgenic Crops' Days May Be Numbered
By Mario de Queiroz
IPS, September 16 2008
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43895

LISBON - Pressure from the president of the European Commission has not succeeded in advancing the cause of transgenic crops. In spite of the power wielded by the executive organ of the European Union, the bloc's member countries are gradually discontinuing the use of genetically modified seeds.

This is due in large measure to the difficulty of convincing European farmers to adopt the transgenic crop production model, which is being promoted by biotech giants, but also to increasingly vociferous protests from civil society, which is demanding that governments take an active role, according to an expert interviewed by IPS.

Genetically modified (GM) organisms, also called transgenics, are made in laboratories by inserting genes from other species of plants or animals into their original DNA, in order to improve their properties or confer resistance to external factors like pests or insecticides. Vectors, often viruses or bacteria, are used to insert the foreign genes.

In Spain and Portugal, which have the largest areas in the EU devoted to GM maize cultivation, people are beginning to question the benefits of sowing and harvesting transgenic varieties of maize, a crop native to the Americas which was the staple food of a number of indigenous cultures.

Maize was slow to be introduced in Europe, because the Central American areas where it was grown were colonised by the Spanish at the time when the Roman Catholic Church was conducting the Inquisition, and they believed that Europeans should not eat the same food as indigenous peoples because, in their view, the latter were not "children of God."

Widely used now as feed for animals, maize has been the subject of fierce controversy within the European Commission.

On the one hand, Commission President José Manuel Durão Barroso is in favour of significantly increasing the production of GM maize within the EU. On the other, European Commissioner for the Environment, Stavros Dimas, is dead set against it.

The European Commission works like a cabinet government and is made up of 27 Commissioners, one from each EU member state, although they must represent the interests of the EU as a whole, not just their home country.

In October 2007, Dimas opposed European Commission approval for cultivation in the EU of two GM varieties of maize, Bt-11 and 1507, because "possible long-term risks to the environment and biodiversity are not completely known, and environmental effects resulting from the cultivation of the GM maize lines are unacceptable."

"However, the majority of the Commissioners are in favour of GM maize, and the final decision has been postponed twice because a consensus could not be reached," Portuguese biologist Margarida Silva, the national coordinator of Plataforma Transgénicos Fora, comprising 12 Portuguese non-governmental organisations working on agriculture and the environment and networking with likeminded NGOs in the EU, told IPS.

Durão Barroso tried to convince Dimas to withdraw his objections in April, while simultaneously requesting an assessment by the European Food Safety Authority, "with the purpose of undermining the legitimacy of Dimas' stance," according to Silva, who is also a university professor.

Silva said that "the movement against transgenics is growing in civil society throughout Europe, and GM crops have already been banned in several countries."

"There isn't much that Europeans can do, but the power of numbers is still on our side, and we can use them to back Stavros Dimas," she said.

EU policies on transgenics are based upon Regulation 1829 on GM food and fodder, adopted in 2003, and 2001 Directive 18 on the deliberate release of transgenics into the environment. According to these rules, cultivation and consumption of GM crops can only be authorised after rigorous assessment of their risks.

Research on risks to human and animal health is the responsibility of the European Food Safety Authority, but authorisation of GM plants and animals is ultimately up to lawmakers in each of the bloc's member countries.

Maize, the crop at the centre of the transgenics debate, has an annual production of 677 million tonnes, mostly for animal feed. It is one of the four staple foods of humankind along with rice, wheat and potatoes, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Fifty-eight percent of total world maize production is grown in countries in the Americas, mainly in the United States, which is also the cradle of genetic engineering technology and transgenic organisms.

The United States is the world's largest producer of maize and accounts for nearly half of global production. Large quantities of fertilisers and herbicides are used on its crops, which include hybrid and GM varieties.

Critics like Silva point out that it has been proven that the large amounts of weedkillers used on transgenic crops pollute the soil and endanger biodiversity.

Detractors of transgenics also say that pests affecting GM grains develop resistance to agrochemicals, so that ever higher doses must be applied, with all their negative effects on the environment.

The production of GM seeds for cultivation itself leads to extreme genetic uniformity between seeds, with a corresponding loss of the natural diversity of crop strains.

Environmentalists who oppose transgenics are unmoved by the argument that the higher productivity of these crops could increase food production and end world hunger.

"Feeding the world is not the goal, but rather boosting the export incomes of the big agribusiness companies that are currently involved in the GM industry," Silva said.

Defenders of GM crops say that there is no other solution. If, as expected, the world's population doubles over the next 40 years, food production will have to be increased by about 250 percent.

A huge, unified movement of people in favour of declaring a moratorium on the cultivation of GM crops has emerged in Spain and Portugal, following a similar decision taken in March by the French government that invoked the "safeguard clause" allowing an EU member state to bypass a community directive.

Silva said France based its decision "on a set of 25 scientific studies indicating risks to the environment, farming and human health derived from the cultivation of GM maize."

In the southern Portuguese region of Alentejo, which covers one-third of the country's 92,000 square kilometres of territory, "half of the farm units have given up growing transgenic crops," Silva said.

Farmers prefer "more effective technology and practices, that pose fewer risks for the environment, human health, and their own pocketbooks," she said. Although "in breach of the law, the Agriculture Ministry refuses to release statistics, the scenario in Portugal shows that a significant number of farmers first experiment with GM crops and then stop using them," she said.

This phenomenon "is consistent with a recently published EU study of three regions in Spain, which found that growing transgenic maize offered no economic advantage over conventional maize to farmers in two of the areas," Silva said.

The biologist said that GM maize has been experimented with in the Iberian Peninsula since 2005 by Pioneer Hi-Bred International, a seed company belonging to the U.S. DuPont group, and the Swiss corporation Syngenta, both "companies with a long history of agricultural pollution in Europe."

In addition to Portugal, the products of these corporations "have already affected farmers in Germany, Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, Spain and Italy," she said.

"Now that France, Hungary and Poland, Europe's main cereals producers, have forbidden the use of GM maize in their territories, and Germany is in the process of following suit, the Iberian countries (Spain and Portugal) should take heed and do the same," she said.

Silva was harshly critical of the Portuguese government for allowing the two corporations, in partnership, to experiment for three years in the municipalities of Monforte and Rio Maior, in the centre of the country, and in Ponte da Barca, in the north.

The green light given to Syngenta and Pioneer "makes no economic sense, is immoral, and jeopardises the green and natural image of those municipalities and their tourism potential. Approval has been granted to apply more herbicide, in a country that already suffers from excessive agrochemical use," said Silva. (END/2008)
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2.Belarus: information about GMO content in food products to be identified at price labels
Fruit Inform, 16 September 2008 [EDITED]

Information about content of genetically modified components in food products will be identified at the price labels in the stores in Belarus since September 12. 

Earlier this information was only stipulated on the consumer packaging.

Information about GMO content should be identified on the price labels with red color and larger print than the product name, the Ministry of Trade informed.
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3.Madagascar: Faustian bargain
By Nicholas Rainer
L'Express (Madagascar), 16 September 2008

Lucidity sometimes springs from the most unexpected sources. Imagine my surprise when a friend forwarded me John Hodges'opening address at the World Poultry Congress, of all fora, and the urgency of his words hit home with unerring precision. Rather than presenting a stodgy speech about the intricacies of poultry farming, the animal geneticist made an emphatic plea for a sustainable world system rather than one created by and for what he calls "the elite capitalist minority".

The scientific community has the credibility and expertise needed to denounce the excesses of big business. And it's about time they sounded the wake-up call needed to get the world population out of its consumerist-induced stupor.

"Individually, we are ethical. You and I do not break the law. We use good science, intelligent and rational business methods ; and by reductionism we minimize our use of resources and produce cheap food. What has gone wrong? Like the rest of society, we are pushing the market economy system that has yielded huge financial success and cheap food. But it is a Faustian bargain. Now we pay because we have stretched a good system too far and have broken boundaries of sustainability and morality through distorted and excessive uses."

Amongst many other things, John Hodges warns against the long-term implications of genetically-modified (GM) food products. He establishes a timely parallel between the impact of GM organisms on the human digestive system and the effects of beef proteins on cows. If the former is still unknown, we know what happens when we feed ruminants meat : mad cow disease. Many governments have shown criminal neglect by accepting the widespread cultivation of GM crops without deeming it necessary to carry out the scientific tests to determine their effect on the health of their citizens. More often than not, they accept the results of "tests" conducted by the GM companies themselves, companies that have shown jaw-dropping disdain for the rule of law.

"Thinking people know we are pushing the natural resource community beyond its ability to recover. But many leaders in business, politics and science believe we have found the winning formula that has no limits. Their proven formula is the market economy that has yielded immense prosperity over several centuries especially in the last 60 years. Western leaders are desperately keen to sweep the whole world into free trade market economics by globalization. But here is a tragic paradox. Even though the free market is being widely advocated it shows warning signs of unsustainability. Promoting it globally both spread and compounds the crisis", he explains. As yet, there might not be an alternative to the market economy. And don't expect politicians or businessmen to be overzealous in looking for one. By simply waking up to the exploitative nature of the current system and by recognizing that, as human beings, you deserve better, you'll be sowing the seeds of a more sustainable future.
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4.New Zealand: GMO risk is unfair
By Denise Piper
Whangarei Leader, 16 September 2008 [SHORTENED]

Northland ratepayers could shoulder the risk if a field trial of genetically modified organisms goes wrong in the region.

The risks and management options of GMO trials is being considered by a Northland and Auckland working party, which includes both the Whangarei District and Northland Regional Councils.

It found local councils would have to pay for any environmental damage if a GMO release, approved by the Environmental Risk Management Agency, was to go wrong.

Northern Regional Council policy and planning manager Glen Mortimer says while there are no field trials in Northland at the moment, there is a possibility of some in the future.

Proposals which could affect Northland include genetically modified livestock, vegetables, ryegrass, pine trees and horse flu vaccine.

The working party is now considering banning GMO field trials in Northland and Auckland until outstanding issues like liability, costs, environmental risk and community concerns are resolved.

The Whangarei District Council has decided to get involved with a community consultation programme to gauge the level of support for local regulation of GMO land use.

Whangarei mayor Stan Semenoff says he is disappointed central government did not put a stop to GMO release until the issues were sorted.

"I'm sure going to kick the governments of the day for not having the backbone to stop it when it should've been stopped, or at least have a safety valve."

The working party has asked each political party questions about changing the rules to address liability, to allow comparison between parties before the election.

Mr Semenoff says if there is a change in government, he will be "sitting on their doorstep" wanting action.
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5.Kenya: Environmentalists Urge Leaders to Reject Bio Bill
The Nation/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX News Network, 15 September 2008

Nairobi -- The Participatory Ecological Land Use Management, an international environmental organisation, has asked President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga to reject the Bio-safety Bill.

Speaking in Nakuru, the organisation's chairman, Mr Eliud Ngunjiri, said the government had come up with a weak and flawed bill that did not fully consider the effects of genetically modified organisms.

He said the views of small-scale farmers should be considered to put the interests of Kenyans before scientific innovations that could be harmful.
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6.USA: The GMO industry has been scraping by on bad science
(Tom Philpot interviews Andrew Kimbrell)
Gristmill, 15 September 2008

In 2002, a most unlikely book came out: an oversized, lushly produced, coffee-table tome on the ills of mass-scale, chemical-intensive agriculture.

Grandly titled Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture, the book contained stark photos of highly mechanized, monocrop farming, along with pungent, probing essays by Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, and other seminal thinkers of the agrarian school.

I got my hands on Fatal Harvest when I first started farming in 2004. It helped crystallize and shape my ideas around agriculture, providing me with a vocabulary and a tradition from which to begin writing.

Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, was the force and vision behind Fatal Harvest. A lawyer by training, he has been investigating the doings of agribusiness for 30 years. His main focus has been the stunning rise of the genetically modified seed industry. As Kimbrell has shown, the GMO seed giants (mainly Monsanto) have managed to foist their wares into our farm fields and onto our plates with at best minimal public oversight.

And guess what? The mapping of the human genome revealed that the GMO giants got the science wrong: the relationship between organisms and individual genes is much more complex and mysterious than researchers originally thought. And that, Kimbrell says in this interview, helps explain why after 25 years of R&D, the GMO industry has only managed to create a couple of viable traits. The main one, of course, is "herbicide tolerance," e.g., Monsanto's Round Up Ready corn and soy, engineered to withstand copious lashings of its flagship herbicide, Round Up.

See the video interview at http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/9/12/63959/6573
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7.USA: Tell Hershey's to kiss GM sugar goodbye!
Stop the double standard and reject GM beet sugar as it did in Brazil

Ecological Farming Association Action Alert

Consumers in Brazil can now eat Hershey's Kisses without fear of GM contamination. Unfortunately, that is not the case for US consumers.

Several weeks ago, Hershey's in Brazil announced that it will not use GM ingredients, including GM beet sugar, in the products it makes in Brazil, but it remains silent about its plans in the US.

US farmers planted GM sugar beet crops for the first time this year. These Roundup Ready GM sugar beets are genetically altered to resist Monsanto's toxic weed killer, Roundup, and its active ingredient, glyphosate. But here's the scary part:

When the USDA first approved the planting of GM sugar beets, the EPA also increased the maximum allowable residues of glyphosate on the beet roots (from which sugar is extracted) by a staggering 5,000%!Ý This EPA policy change was made at the request of Monsanto, producer of GM sugar beet seeds.

What this means for consumers is that the more GM ingredients permitted in our foods, the greater the likelihood that we are ingesting more toxic chemicals. What's worse is that there will be no way to know if we're eating GM beet sugar once it hits the market, which could happen as early as next year, because GM ingredients are NOT labeled.

In 2001, Hershey's announced that it would not use GM beet sugar, but the company has been noticeably silent on the issue ever since.Ý A double standard is not likely to prevail in the US, where members like you have sent more than a hundred thousand letters to food companies asking them to publicly refuse to use GM sugar in their products.

Tell Hershey's to Kiss GM Sugar Goodbye! Write a letter to Hershey's urging the company to publicly reject the use of GM sugar in its chocolates and other sweets. Ý

Sample Letter to Send to Hershey's

Subject: GM beet Sugar

As someone who actively avoids buying genetically engineered foods, due to the threats they pose to human health, family farmers and the environment, I know sugar has beenÝ one of the few, pure ingredients I could count on to not be GM. Without labels on GM products, I have to rely upon public company statements that they will avoid GM ingredients in their products to inform the purchasing decisions I make for myself and my family.

As you know, Hershey's in Brazil recently announced that it will not use GM ingredients, including GE beet sugar, in the products it makes in Brazil, but the company remains silent about its plans in the US.Ý For US consumers this is a disappointing double standard, particularly in light of the widespread consumer opposition to GM foods that exists in this country as well.

Several years ago, Hershey's told U.S. consumers it would not use genetically engineered sugar. But now that sugar beets are being planted commercially in the US, you have made no such public assurances.

Please afford US customers the same protections afforded to those in Brazil, and pledge to avoid the use of GM beet sugar in your products.

Hershey's Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Hershey's Address:

100 Crystal A Drive
Hershey, Pennsylvania 17033-0810
Telephone: (717) 534-6799
Toll Free: 800-539-0261
Fax: (717) 534-6760
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8.The Philippines: Ban GMO rice, Greenpeace asks Senate
GMA News TV, 16 September 2008

MANILA, Philippines - Environmental group Greenpeace asked the Senate to ban the sale of genetically modified organism (GMO) rice, as it opened a photo exhibit highlighting the importance of rice.

The group cited the importance of rice to Filipino culture, saying this is why it must be protected from risky genetic modification.

"Greenpeace is here at the Senate to lobby our senators to enact a legislation to protect our most important staple food from the inherent risks of genetic engineering. Genetic engineering is an unproven, unpredictable and unnecessary technology. The resulting genetically-modified food crops threaten human health, the environment, and farmers' livelihoods," said Greenpeace Southeast Asia Genetic Engineering Campaigner Daniel Ocampo, in a statement on the group's Web site (www.greenpeace.org.ph).

He said that while a genetically modified organism would never occur in the natural world, the new organism created becomes a living experiment.

"It is unpredictable and its long term effects on the environment and human health are unknown," he said.

Greenpeace has been actively campaigning against the commercialization of GMOs in the country.

It is currently questioning the Department of Agriculture's (DA) regulation process for GMO crops, which, aside from being unconstitutional, lacks transparency and appears to be heavily influenced by corporate interests rather than the protection of consumers and farmers.

During the past few years, Greenpeace voiced growing alarm how the regulatory bodies for GMO crops, the DA as well as the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI), have never rejected an application of a GMO despite documented cases on questions of their safety and rejection by other countries, even by countries where they were developed.

Last year, Greenpeace also released a report, which details how almost all key personalities involved in regulating the entry of GMOs in the Philippines are members of pro-GMO lobby groups funded by multinational GMO corporations.

"In the six years since GMOs have been approved in the country, the DA has been approving GMOs at a rate of almost one every month, without adequate public consultation or information," it said.

"Greenpeace believes that rice is now under threat. Currently no GMO rice is authorized for commercialization in the Philippines but the environment group has documented that such experimental rice from the United States has entered the country's food chain at least twice in the past three years," it added.

It said the DA has denied both instances but has refused to conduct stringent testing on the said US rice. The GMO rice strain in the US rice was the result of an abandoned experiment, and its contamination of rice stocks created a major scandal that prompted countries to reject US rice imports in 2006 and 2007.

"The Philippines is a center for rice biodiversity and rice is our most important food. The clear message then is that the government must reject GMOs and instead look toward a future of farming and food production grounded on the principles of sustainability, protection of biodiversity, and providing all people access to safe and nutritious food," said Ocampo.
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9.The Philippines: Greenpeace's Rice Campaign gets an exhibition in the Senate
PR Inside.com, 15 September 2008

Manila -- Greenpeace calls on Senate to ban genetically-modified (GMO) rice.

Greenpeace today called on the Philippine Senate to enact a legislation to ban the commercialization of genetically-modified rice (GMO) rice. The call was made at the opening of a photo exhibit in the Senate halls, featuring the importance of rice in Filipino life and culture and why it must be protected from risky genetic modification.

"Greenpeace is here at the Senate to lobby our senators to enact a legislation to protect our most important staple food from the inherent risks of genetic engineering. Genetic engineering is an unproven, unpredictable and unnecessary technology. The resulting genetically-modified food crops threaten human health, the environment, and farmers' livelihoods," said Greenpeace Southeast Asia Genetic Engineering Campaigner Daniel Ocampo.

Genetically Modified Organisms or GMOs are products of genetic engineering in which the genes of one species are inserted randomly into the DNA of an entirely different organism in a way that can never happen naturally. An example is a tomato inserted with genes from a fish to create a vegetable with a longer shelf life, or corn inserted with bacteria genes to create a crop that has its own built-in insecticide. Aside from the fact that the resulting living GMO would never occur in the natural world, the new organism created becomes a living experiment-it is unpredictable and its long term effects on the environment and human health are unknown.

Greenpeace has been actively campaigning against the commercialization of GMOs in the country and is currently questioning the Department of Agriculture's (DA) regulation process for GMO crops, which, aside from being unconstitutional, lacks transparency and appears to be heavily influenced by corporate interests rather than the protection of consumers and farmers. During the past few years, the environment group has noted with growing alarm how the regulatory bodies for GMO crops, the DA as well as the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI), have never rejected an application of a GMO despite documented cases on questions of their safety and rejection by other countries, even by countries where they were developed.

Last year, Greenpeace also released a report which details how almost all key personalities involved in regulating the entry of GMOs in the Philippines are members of pro-GMO lobby groups funded directly or indirectly by multinational GMO corporations, or have been involved in research projects and GMO-promotion activities sponsored by GMO lobby groups, or directly by GMO manufacturers. In the six years since GMOs have been approved in the country, the DA has been approving GMOs at a rate of almost one every month, without adequate public consultation or information.

Greenpeace believes that rice is now under threat. Currently no GMO rice is authorized for commercialization in the Philippines but the environment group has documented that such experimental rice from the United States has entered the country's food chain at least twice in the past three years. The DA has denied both instances but has refused to conduct stringent testing on the said US rice. The GMO rice strain in the US rice was the result of an abandoned experiment, and its contamination of rice stocks created a major scandal that prompted countries to reject US rice imports in 2006 and 2007.

At present, an application for GMO rice is pending at the DA, but in 2007, petitioners, supported by Greenpeace and SEARICE filed a court case questioning the constitutionality of the existing regulatory process for GMOs, as well as the lack of public participation in the said approval process. This led, in September 2007, to the granting of a preliminary writ of injunction on the application of the GMO rice. The court case is currently on-going.

"The Philippines is a center for rice biodiversity and rice is our most important food. The clear message then is that the government must reject GMOs and instead look toward a future of farming and food production grounded on the principles of sustainability, protection of biodiversity, and providing all people access to safe and nutritious food," said Ocampo.

Note:

The exhibition, which features 18 photographs depicting rice rituals of Indigenous Peoples in Ifugao and Sarangani Provinces, rice festivals, and rice farming, aims to promote awareness about our Filipino rice heritage.

The exhibition will be displayed at the Senate building's second floor hallway until Thursday, September 18. Senator Ma. Consuelo Madrigal was the guest of honor at the opening and ribbon-cutting held today.

For more information:

Daniel Ocampo, Genetic Engineering Campaigner, +63 917 897 6416
Lea Guerrero, Media Campaigner, +63 2 434 7034 loc 121+63 920 250 6877

Author:
Adelaida Bulaon
e-mail
Web: www.balitapinoy.net Phone: +4420 7207 6145