NEWS ABOUT GM ISSUES • March 2006
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31 March 2006
WTO, GMO and total spectrum dominance
FreeMarketNews.com, 31 March 2006, by William Engdahl.
On February 7, a private organization with unique powers over world industry, trade and agriculture, issued a Preliminary Draft Ruling on a three-year-old case. The case was brought by the Bush Administration in May 2003 against European Union rules hindering the spread of genetically-engineered plants and foods. The WTO ruling, which is to be final in December, will have more influence over life and death on this planet than most imagine.
The ruling was issued by a special three-man tribunal of the World Trade Organization, in Geneva Switzerland. The WTO decision will open the floodgates to the forced introduction of genetically-manipulated plants and food products -- GMO, or genetically-modified organisms as they are technically known -- into the world's most important agriculture production region, the European Union.
The WTO case arose from a formal complaint filed by the governments of the United States, Canada and Argentina - three of the world's most GMO-polluted areas.
The WTO three-judge panel, chaired by Christian Haberli, a mid-level Swiss Agriculture Office bureaucrat, ruled that the EU had applied a 'de facto' moratorium on approvals of GMO products between June 1999 and August 2003, contradicting Brussels' claim that no such moratorium existed. The WTO judges argued the EU was 'guilty' of not following EU rules, causing 'undue delay' in following WTO obligations.
The secretive WTO tribunal also ruled, according to the leaked document, that in terms of product-specific measures, the completion of formal EU government approval to plant specific GMO plants had also been unduly delayed in the cases of 24 of 27 specific GMO products that the European Commission in Brussels had before it.
The WTO tribunal recommended that the WTO Dispute Settlement Body (DSB), the world trade policeman, call on the EU to bring its practices 'into conformity with its obligations under the (WTO's) SPS Agreement.' Failure to comply with WTO demands can result in hundreds of millions dollars in annual fines.
Trade Über Alles
SPS stands for Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures. On the surface it sounds as if health concerns were part of the WTO considerations. The reality is the opposite. Only minimal health standards are to be allowed to be enforced under WTO free trade rules, and any nation attempting anything more strict, such as the EU ban on import of US hormone-fed beef, can be found guilty by WTO of an 'unfair restraint of trade.'
Today the EU must pay a fine of $150 million yearly to maintain its ban on the US hormone-fed beef. WTO rules in effect put free-trade interests of agribusiness above national health concerns. That means, de facto, that the EU Commission must complete its approval process for the 24 outstanding applications to plant GMO crops in Europe once the final ruling is made later this year.
That will mean a flood of new GMO products in EU agriculture. Monsanto, Syngenta and other GMO multinationals have already taken advantage of lax national rules in new EU member countries such as Poland to get the GMO 'foot-in-the door.' Now it will be far easier for them. Pro-GMO governments such as that of Angela Merkel in Germany can claim they are only following WTO 'orders.'
What is the significance of this WTO ruling, assuming it remains as is in final form by December? It represents a major, dangerous wedge into largely GMO-free EU agriculture, permitting powerful agribusiness multinationals such as Monsanto, Dow Chemicals or DuPont to overrun national or regional efforts to halt the march of GMO. For this reason, it is potentially the most damaging decision in the history of world trade agreements.
A strategic Washington matter
The case first came before the World Trade Organization in a filing made by the Bush Administration in May 2003, just as the military occupation of Iraq was entering a new phase. The US President held a rare press conference to tell the world that the US was formally charging the EU, accusing the EU 'moratorium' on GMO approval of being a cause of starvation in Africa. Their twisted logic argued that so long as a major industrialized region such as the EU resisted planting GMO crops domestically, it caused sceptical African governments to harden their resistance to US food aid in the form of GMO crops. That, Bush charged, was causing unnecessary 'starvation' in Africa because some countries refused USDA food aid in form of GMO crop surpluses.
The issue of breaking resistance barriers in the European Union to the proliferation of GMO crops has been a matter of the highest strategic priority for those controlling policy in Washington since 1992 when then-President George H.W. Bush, the father of the current President, issued an Executive Order proclaiming GMO plants such as soybeans or GMO corn to be 'substantially equivalent' to ordinary corn or soybeans, and, therefore, not needing any special health safety study or testing.
That 'substantial equivalence' ruling by President Bush in 1992 opened the floodgates to the unregulated spread of GMO across the American agriculture landscape. As basis for its 2003 WTO filing against the EU, Washington, on behalf of agribusiness interests including Monsanto, Dow, DuPont and others, charged the EU with violation of the American 'substantial equivalence' doctrine!
So long as the world's second most powerful agriculture trade region, the EU, firmly resisted the introduction of untested GM plants, the global spread of the GMO revolution would remain strategically crippled. For the past decades, breaking up the system of domestic agriculture protection of the EU, centered around its Common Agriculture Program, has been a strategic political and trade goal of the US Government and US-based agribusiness. The creation of the WTO in 1995, a result of the GATT Uruguay Round trade talks during the 1980's, opened the possibility for the first time of forcing the EU to drop its defenses on US threat of sanctions.
The secret process behind WTO
When the final WTO Panel ruling is published and official this coming December, assuming no major changes take place in the 1,050 page preliminary ruling of February 7, a major barrier to the global spread of largely untested and highly unstable genetically modified foods will be gone. This will become unstoppable, as it was in the USA, unless political pressure from a sceptical European population forces the EU Commission to pay a WTO fine or penalty, in lieu of acceding to the demands of the WTO.
It's relevant to ask what is this body, WTO which exercises such enormous power over laws of nations? What is its mandate and who controls its policies?
The negotiations of world trade since the establishment of the Bretton Woods postwar monetary system at the end of World War II, had been made through a General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), a series of trade rounds on specific issues between specific member countries. In September 1986, on US-led pressure, the Uruguay Round of GATT was launched in Punta del Este Uruguay. The result was creation of a new, powerful private international agency, the WTO.
In late 1994 the US Congress voted to join the WTO, the new permanent trade body established by the GATT Uruguay Round. There was almost no debate. It was clear in Washington who would dominate the new body. Unlike GATT which had no enforcement power, and which required unanimous member vote for sanctions, the WTO would be given tough sanction and enforcement powers. More important, how it reached decisions was to remain secret, with no democratic oversight. The most vital issues of economic life on the planet were to be decided behind closed doors in Geneva WTO headquarters or in Washington and Brussels. It could choose its 'experts' as it saw fit and ignore what evidence it saw fit. In the EU GMO dispute, three of four initial scientific experts chosen were from either US or UK institutions, two countries most in favour of GMO. (1)
Two years earlier, in 1992, at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Rio, 175 UN governments signed a convention to on the safe handling and treatment of GMOs, a major vote of the world community to examine the health and economic impacts of GMO agriculture before it could be allowed in a country. The US Government of President George Bush Sr. aggressively opposed the CBD, arguing that a Biosafety Protocol was unnecessary. Under the CBD agreement, a country could prohibit GMO imports.
The GMO industry, led by Monsanto, DuPont and Dow of the US, sabotaged this agreement. A group of six countries controlling the world Biotech or GMO marketòCanada, Argentina, Uruguay, Australia Chile and USA-- forced a clause into the CBD text which would subordinate the Biosafety Protocol to the WTO. They argued that limiting trade based on 'unproven' biosafety concerns should be considered a 'barrier to trade' under WTO rules!
Traditional liability law holds that a new product must first be proven safe before being allowed on market. This WTO rule placing the burden of proof not on the producer of a new GMO product, but on the potential victims, turned prudence and health safety issues on its head. In the end the US destroyed the Biosafety Protocol by refusing to include soybeans and corn, 99% of all GMO products, making the Protocol near worthless regarding GMO health issues.
The WTO serves as the weapon for the powerful coalition of Washington and the powerful private GMO giants, led by Monsanto. Earlier in 1992, Bush, on advice of Monsanto and the emerging US GM giant companies, ruled that GM organisms were "substantially equivalent" to ordinary seeds for soybeans or corn and such. As "substantially equivalent"Ç GM seeds required no special testing or health controls before being put on the market. This was crucial to the future of Monsanto and the GMO lobby.
By Presidential Executive Order, the US had defined GMO seeds as harmless and hence not needing to be regulated for health and safety. It made sure this principle was carried over into the new WTO in the form of the WTOÇs Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement (SPS), which stated, 'Food standards and measures aimed at protecting people from pests or animals can potentially be used as a deliberate barrier to trade.' The US charge against the EU in the present GMO dispute charged the EU with violation of the SPS agreement of WTO.
Other WTO rules in the Agreement to Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) forbid member countries from using domestic standards or testing, food safety laws, product standards, calling them an 'unfair barrier to trade.'
The impact of those two US-mandated WTO rulings meant that Washington could threaten that any government restricting import of GM plants on grounds they might pose threats to health and safety of their population, could be found to be in violation of WTO free trade rules!
This is what the US Government, on behalf of its agribusiness private corporations has done against the EU restrictions on GMO.
Under the WTO's Technical Barriers to Trade, the US has argued that no labelling of GMO plants was required, as the plants have not been 'substantially transformed' from normal or non-GM soya, corn or other plants. This conveniently ignored the fact that Washington simultaneously insisted that GMOs, due to the genetic engineering process, are sufficiently transformed, i.e. NOT equivalent, to be patented as 'original', and protected under WTO TRIPS intellectual property patent rights. (2).
The Agreement on Agriculture
The heart of the WTO machinery is the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), which under the sheep's wool of 'free trade,' hides the wolf of private agri-business GMO monopoly power. Under AoA rules, since 1995 poorer developing countries have been forced to eliminate quotas and slash protective tariffs, at the same time the Bush Administration voted to increase its subsidies to US agribusiness farming by $80 billions.
The net effect has been to allow the powerful monopoly of five grain trading giants - Cargill, ADM, Bunge, Andre (formerly) and Louis Dreyfus - to dramatically increase the dumping of food commodities globally, ruining millions of family farmers worldwide in the process, while maximizing their private corporate profits.
The AoA of WTO ignores the reality of agriculture markets which are qualitatively different from, say, the market for cars or CD's. Agriculture and national food safety and security are at the heart of a nation's sovereignty, and its obligation to its own citizens to support the basics of life. Agriculture is unique in this respect, along with water rights.
The AoA was written by the US-dominated agribusiness giants such as Cargill, ADM, Monsanto and DuPont, to serve the agenda of these global supranational private companies, whose sole aim is to maximize profits and market monopoly, regardless of human consequences. Their focus is the domination of the $1 trillion global agriculture trade. The actual author of the AoA of WTO was Daniel Amstutz, a former Vice President of Cargill Grain, who was at the time in the Washington US Trade RepresentativeÇs Office, before going back to the grain trade.(3).
Who controls WTO?
The essential control of WTO decisions, decisions which have the full power of international law and can force governments to repeal local laws for health, safety and such is held by private interests, by a global US-centered agribusiness cartel. There are no public or democratic checks on the power of WTO.
On paper, WTO rules are made by a consensus of all 134 member countries. In reality, four countries, led by the United States, decide all important agriculture and other trade issues. As in the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, Washington exercises decisive control behind the scenes. And it does so in the interest of the private agribusiness cartel.
The four WTO controlling countries, known as the QUAD countries, are USA, Canada, Japan and the EU. In the QUAD, in turn, the giant agri-business multinationals exercise controlling influence, most clearly in Washington.
The WTO is designed to impose the wishes of giant private companies over the legitimate democratic will of entire nations and duly-elected governments. WTO has one mission: enforce rules of a "free trade"Ç an agenda which is in no way genuinely "free"Ç but rather suits the needs of agribusiness giants.
Under the secretive WTO rules, countries can challenge another's laws for restricting their trade. The case is then heard by a tribunal or court of three trade bureaucrats. They are usually influential corporate lawyers with pro-free trade bias. The lawyers have no conflict of interest rules binding them, such that a Monsanto lawyer can rule on a case of material interest to Monsanto.
Further, there is no rule that the judges of WTO respect any national laws of any country. The three judges meet in secret without revealing the time or location. All court documents are confidential and are not published unless one party releases it. It is a modern version of the Spanish Inquisition, but with far more power.
The EU banned the import of US beef treated with growth and other hormones, and the US lodged a formal WTO complaint. There was a long report from independent scientists showing that the hormones added to US beef were cancer-causing. The WTO three judge panel ruled that the EU did not present a validÇ scientific case to refuse import, and the EU was forced to pay $150 million annually for lost US profits. (4).
The powerful private interests who control WTO agriculture policy prefer to remain in the background as little-publicized NGO's. One of the most influential in creating the WTO is a little-publicized organization called the IPC -- the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council, shortened to International Policy Council.
The IPC was created in 1987 to lobby for the GATT agriculture rules of WTO at the Uruguay GATT talks. The IPC demanded removal of "high tariff" barriers in developing countries, remaining silent on the massive government subsidy to agribusiness in the USA.
A look at the IPC membership explains what interests it represents. The IPC Chairman is Robert Thompson, former Assistant Secretary US Department of Agriculture and former Presidential economic adviser. Also included in the IPC are Bernard Auxenfans, Chief Operating Officer, Monsanto Global Agricultural Company and Past Chairman of Monsanto Europe S.A.; Allen Andreas of ADM/Toepfer; Andrew Burke of Bunge (US); Dale Hathaway former USDA official and head IFPRI (US).
Other IPC members include Heinz Imhof, chairman of Syngenta (CH); Rob Johnson of Cargill and USDA Agriculture Policy Advisory Council; Franz Fischler Former Commissioner for Agriculture, European Commission; Guy Legras (France) former EU Director General Agriculture; Donald Nelson of Kraft Foods (US); Joe O'Mara of USDA, Hiroshi Shiraiwa of Mitsui & Co Japan; Jim Starkey former Assistant US Trade Representative; Hans Joehr, Nestlé's head of agriculture; Jerry Steiner of Monsanto (US). Members Emeritus include Ann Veneman, herself a board member of a Monsanto subsidiary company before she became US Secretary of Agriculture for George W. Bush in 2001.
The IPC is controlled by US-based agribusiness giants which benefit from the rules they drafted for WTO trade. In Washington itself, the USDA no longer represents interests of small family farmers. It is the lobby of giant global agribusiness. The USDA is a revolving door for these private agribusiness giants to shape friendly policies. GMO policy is the most blatant example.
Brussels also dominated by GMO lobby
The power of the giant GMO companies and US-centered agribusiness companies extends to control of key policies in Brussels at the European Commission. Typical is the fact that former EU Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler is a member of the powerful pro-GMO IPC.
For years it has been common knowledge among EU farm experts that grain policy was not set by national governments but by the Big Five private grain traders led by Cargill and ADM. Now the powerful weight of Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta and the GMO lobby has been added. This is clear in the recent announcement of a new EU program, SAFEFOODS, a successor to the controversial pro-GMO ENTRANSFOOD project. ENTRANSFOOD was set up to "facilitate market introduction of GMO's in Europe, and therefore to bring the European (sic) industry into a competitive position."
ENTRANSFOOD, now called the more innocuous SAFEFOODS, claims to combine different views on GMO food. In reality, its key Working Group 1, responsible for "Safety Testing of Transgenic Foods" consists of representatives not from independent consumer organizations, but from Monsanto, Unilever, Bayer Corp., Syngenta and BIBRA International, a consultancy close to agribusiness and the pharmaceutical industry.
As well, Dr. Harry Kuiper, a Dutch scientist member of the food safety GMO group of SAFEFOODS in Brussels, is Coordinator of SAFEFOODS. Kuiper chairs the EU European Food Safety Authority GMO Panel. He has also been leading the vicious slander attack campaign to discredit scientist Dr Arpad Pusztai who dared to go public with alarming evidence of organ damage from rats fed GMO potatoes and was fired on the intervention of Monsanto in 1999.(5).
The WTO today is nothing more than the global policeman for the powerful GMO lobby and the agribusiness firms tied to it.
With the new German coalition government under Chancellor Angela Merkel and Agriculture Minister Horst Seehofer now officially on record supporting the role of Germany as a future leader in biotech crops and GMO, the impact of the latest WTO ruling on food safety in the EU and beyond has put European and hence world food safety in danger.
Footnotes:
1.Abreu, Marcelo de Paiva, "Brazil, the GATT and the WTO: History and Prospects", September 1998, Department of Economics, PUC, Rio de Janeiro, No. 392.
2. 'GMOs and the WTO: Overruling the Right to say No,' By World Development Movement, November 1999, www.wdm.org.uk.
3. Murphy, Sophia, 'WTO Agreement on Agriculture: Suitable Model for a Global Food System?' Foreign Policy in Focus, v.7, no. 8, June 2002.
4. Montague, Peter, UAW Local 1981/AFL-CIO, The WTO and Free Trade, Environmental Research Foundation in www.garynull.com.
5. 'PR Operation on GM Foods again exposes EFSA industry-bias,' Press release, 29.12.2004. www.gmwatch.org.
William Engdahl
F. William Engdahl, an economist and writer, is author of the best-selling book on oil and geopolitics, 'A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order,' which has been translated into Arabic, Korean, German, Croatian and Turkish. He has just completed the soon-to-be released 'Seeds of Destruction: the hidden agenda of GMO'.
He has written on issues of political economy, geopolitics, energy, agriculture, WTO, IMF, politics and economics for more than 30 years, beginning the first oil shock and world grain crisis in the early 1970's. After a degree in politics from Princeton University and graduate study in comparative economics at the University of Stockholm, he worked as an economist and free-lance journalist in New York and in Europe, covering subjects including the collapse of the USSR, the 1997-98 Asia Crisis, GATT Uruguay Round trade talks, EU food policies, the grain cartel, IMF policy, Third World debt issues, hedge funds and the political role of derivatives trade.
Mr. Engdahl contributes regularly to a number of publications including Asia Times Online, Asia, Inc, Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Foresight magazine; Freitag and ZeitFragen newspapers in Germany and Switzerland respectively; Grant'sInvestor.com, European Banker and Business Banker International. He is a frequent Contributor to FinancialSense.com and 321Gold.com among other online sites. He has spoken at numerous international conferences on geopolitical, economic, GMO, economic and energy subjects, including a keynote address to the Montreaux Global Investors' Forum, the Centre for Energy Policy Studies in London, Bank Negara Indonesia in Jakarta, the International Chamber of Commerce in Zagreb and the International Institute of Strategic Studies in Moscow. He currently lives in Germany and in addition to writing regularly on issues of economics, energy and international affairs, is active as a consulting geopolitical risk economist.
Greenpeace calls the Summit for Life on Earth a failure
WTO trade liberalization and lack of funding hijacked biodiversity
Curitiba, Brazil, March 31st 2006: As the two-week long world summit on
biodiversity drew to a close, Greenpeace described the outcome as major
failure - a missed opportunity to stop the global loss of life in the
world's forests and oceans.
"The Convention on Biological Diversity is like a ship drifting without
a captain to steer it," said Martin Kaiser, Greenpeace Political Advisor
on Forests. "The negotiations have failed to chart a course to stop
biopiracy, provide additional financing for protected areas, establish
marine reserves on the high seas and to ban illegal logging and trade."
Although the president of the COP8, Brazil's environment minister Marina
Silva, opened the conference calling for legislation against biopiracy,
Australia, New Zealand and Canada have argued against strict deadlines
for the negotiations. "This simply buys time for pharmaceutical and
biotechnology companies to secure patents on life under the regime of
the World Trade Organisation," said Kaiser.
At their last conference, the CBD member States agreed to establish a
global network of protected areas, in order to safeguard life on earth
and prevent the industrial exploitation of the world's biodiversity at
the expense of future generations. Money was promised by the rich
countries to help make this happen.
"Both rich and developing countries have not delivered on their
promises, and the proposed global network of protected areas has not
become a reality." said Paulo Adario, Greenpeace Amazon Campaign
Coordinator. "Instead, governments have put nature at risk and allowed
it to become a private commodity."
At the beginning of the conference, Greenpeace presented a roadmap to
recovery, a global map of the last intact forests, and a network of
marine reserves on the high seas (1), calling governments to take
action. This challenge has been ignored.
The conference has not been able to address a core business of every
government, eradicating illegal and unsustainable logging and
fisheries." The need for a moratorium on high seas bottom trawling, the
most destructive form of fishing, is now being blocked by a few key
countries, who are prioritising their industry interests over the
protection of marine biodiversity" said Karen Sack, Greenpeace Political
Advisor on Oceans.
Despite the exploitation of the Amazon by illegal and destructive
logging providing timber products to internal and external markets, the
Brazilian government has blocked any meaningful collaboration at a
regional and international level.
"This conference has been overshadowed by the announcement of the United
States, the largest contributor to the funding body for biodiversity,
that it will halve its financial contribution," concluded Kaiser. "Four
years ago, world leaders committed themselves to rescue life on earth by
2010. Many plans and programmes are in place, but the financial support
for developing countries is not provided yet."
Greenpeace is an independent, campaigning organisation that uses
non-violent, creative confrontation to expose global environmental
problems, and to force solutions essential to a green and peaceful future.
Contacts:
Martin Kaiser, Greenpeace International forests political advisor +55 41
96821411
Paulo Adario, Amazon Campaign Coordinator, +55 92 81158928
Karen Sack, Greenpeace International Oceans Political Advisor, +1 202
4155403
Natalia Truchi, Greenpeace International Communications, +55 41 96771859
Notes to editors
(1) For more information on the oceans maps see:
http://oceans.greenpeace.org/highseas-report
http://oceans.greenpeace.org/highseas-map
For more information on the forest maps see
http://www.intactforests.org
http://www.greenpeace.org/forestmaps
Matilda Bradshaw
Greenpeace International
W: +31 (0) 20 718 2068
M: +31 (0) 6535 04701
Press Hot line +31 (0) 6 290 01141
Press Desk Fax +31 (0) 20 5148156
http://www.greenpeace.org/international_en/press/
30 March 2006
Councillors back motion to have Co. Cavan a GM free zone
The Anglo-Celt, 30 March 2006. By Tom Carron.
There was wide support for a motion from Councillor Pauline McCauley at the March monthly meeting of Cavan County Council, calling on County Cavan to be declared a Genetically Modified Free Zone.
Councillor McCauley stated that she put forward the motion because a company had applied to use genetically modified potatoes on a farm outside Summerhill. The health status of GM foods wasn't clear and she urged people to err on the side of caution. Human consumption should be prevented as tests carried out on rats fed with GM foods revealed abnormalities to internal organs and to their blood. Female rats were born smaller and weaker and died at birth.
Stating that Summerhill was not a hundred miles from Cavan, Councillor McCauley said theat the growing of GM foods could have consequences in Cavan. There was a clear risk to cross contamination of other crops from GM crops and she called on the Council to have County Cavan declared a GM free zone.
Supporting the motion, Shane P. O'Reilly said that Summerhill was only 21 miles from where he lived. Ireland had a very high reputation in the world for the quality of its food and what was taking place in Summerhill was sending the wrong message. He urged Irish MEPs to consistently vote against the licensing of any area of this country for the growing of GM crops.
There was widespread support for Councillor McCauley's motion. Cllr. Michael McCarey said that while they were not totally against genetically modified crops it had to be proven beyond doubt that they were not a threat to human health.
Stressing the importance of protecting the reputation of the Irish food industry, Cllr. Andrew Boylan said theat scientists were now tinkering with food in the same manner as they tinkered with with the human person in relation to the modification of genes.
Cllr. Paddy O'Reilly, Virginia, asked if planning permission was required for this type of activity and he was informed by Francis McDermott that the company in question obtained a permit issued by the EPA.
Swedish Consumers do not want to eat meat produced with GM feed
‚ new
opinion poll released today
Greenpeace Press Release, Thursday, March 30, 2006
Swedish Consumers do not want to eat meat produced with GM feed ‚ new
opinion poll released today
The representative opinion poll was conducted by Exquiro Market Research and
commissioned by Greenpeace. It surveyed the person in each household
responsible for food shopping. Questions were asked concerning genetically
modified organisms (GMOs), their use in animal feed, labeling of products
and the policy of Swedish Meats.
93% of those asked said that meat products coming from animals fed with GM
feed should be labeled. Furthermore, 68% answered that they would not buy
meat products if they knew GM feed was used.
"The survey results are clear and should send a strong message to the food
industry and the government: consumers don't want their food to be produced
with GMOs," says Kathleen McCaughey, GMO spokesperson for Greenpeace.
Swedish Meats, owner of Scan brand products, allows GM feed to be used since
January of this year. When asked, 74% of the respondents viewed as negative
Swedish Meats' decision to allow the use of GM feed, while only 3% supported
the decision.
"Swedish Meats cannot afford to ignore such clearly expressed consumer
opinion. Greenpeace and Swedish consumers demand that Swedish Meats
reintroduce its earlier GMO free policy", says Kathleen McCaughey.
"The survey greatly supports our work to get new labeling legislation
adopted in the EU. Consumers have the right to make informed choices. It is
high time for meat and dairy products made from GM feed to be labeled",
concludes Kathleen McCaughey.
Contacts:
Kathleen McCaughey, GMO campaign +46 702 350 886
Alfred Skogberg, press officer +46 703 405 414
Box 151 64, 104 65 Stockholm, Sweden
www.greenpeace.se
29 March 2006
Bt Cotton - No Respite for Andhra Pradesh Farmers
More than $80 million losses for Bt Cotton farmers in Kharif 2005
Centre for Sustainable Agriculture press release, 29 March 2006.
Hyderabad, India - March 29, 2006: Even as companies like Mahyco-Monsanto are lobbying with the state government of Andhra Pradesh to come back into the state with their Bt Cotton hybrids, a study done by Centre for Sustainable Agriculture and partner organizations like CEAD, MARI, Navajyothi, SECURE, Krushi and SYO has shown that even in Kharif 2005, there has been no respite for Bt Cotton farmers in the state and the collective losses incurred by the farmers are estimated to be around 400 crores of rupees.
The study, based on season-long fortnightly monitoring of 120 Bt Cotton fields from five districts of Andhra Pradesh, used a comparative design to compare the results from these fields with those of 123 NPM/Organic cotton farmers from four districts. The findings showed that the cost of cultivation per acre on Bt Cotton was around 67% higher than NPM/Organic Cotton, while the net incomes were lower in Bt Cotton by at least 37% compared to NPM/Organic Cotton.
Reflecting on the findings of this intense monitoring effort, Dr G V Ramanjaneyulu, Executive Director, Centre for Sustainable Agriculture said, "Our fact finding visits throughout the season as well as this scientific study point out that Bt Cotton not only does not deliver the promises made by the companies in their marketing propaganda - it also fares badly compared to non-Bt Cotton, especially NPM/Organic approaches to cotton cultivation. On the other hand, the risks involved in cultivating Bt Cotton are high and often times, unknown and unpredictable. In this context, it is incomprehensible why the government is promoting a technology that asks poor, unsupported cotton farmers to take more and more risks and land themselves in big losses".
The study found that the pest incidence in Bt Cotton was higher than in NPM/Organic Cotton and that the pesticide cost on Bt Cotton was 378% more than on NPM/Organic Cotton. The study was taken up as part of the efforts of the MEC [Monitoring & Evaluation Committee] on Bt Cotton, set up by 20 civil society organizations across the country.
"It is interesting to note that even the government's assessment of Bt Cotton for Kharif 2005 points out that the pest and disease incidence on Bt Cotton was higher than on non-Bt Cotton, reiterating some of our findings. Information obtained from the agriculture department by CSA also shows that the yields with Bt Cotton ranged from 4-6 quintals per acre, far below the yields and yield increases promised by the Bt Cotton companies. The stress intolerance of Bt Cotton was also acknowledged in the governmental assessment. Further, Bt CottonÇs high susceptibility to sucking pests was also recognized. The government feels that Bt Cotton is suitable only under fertile soils, with good INM and with assured irrigation. If the government knows all of this, why is it allowing hyped-up propaganda on Bt Cotton? Why is it not making the companies liable for the promises that they are not keeping? Why is it not taking appropriate decisions on the technology itself and its desirability, rather than taking a hybrid-by-hybrid approach to decision-making related Bt Cotton?â, asked Ms Kavitha Kuruganti of Centre for Sustainable Agriculture.
In Andhra Pradesh, the government is yet to acknowledge that there has been failure of the Bt Cotton crop in Kharif 2005 and it is busy trying to resolve pending liability and pricing issues from the earlier years. Meanwhile, the Bt Cotton companies, in blatant violation of existing laws, are going ahead and publicizing their products without clearance. Some companies are also taking up åadvance bookingsÇ with farmers.
In this context, CSA demands:
1.that the government present a comprehensive white paper on the performance of Bt Cotton (against intended benefits and promises made as well as the other results observed and recorded) in the past four years and decide whether it is a sound and sustainable pest management option for the cotton farmers in the state
2.that the government put into place accountability mechanisms right at the time of providing marketing licenses and address pending liability issues immediately
3.that the government put strong curbs on aggressive and false marketing being indulged in by the companies and fix liability for violations of the Environment Protection Act
The full study report, including annexures containing reports of various fact finding visits, can be obatined as a pdf file from Kavitha Kuruganti kavitha_kuruganti@yahoo.com
For more information, contact:
1.Dr G V Ramanjaneyulu at +91 939 135 9702 or gvramanjaneyulu@gmail.com
2.Ms Kavitha Kuruganti at +91 939 300 1550 or kavitha_kuruganti@yahoo.com
Investors, others seek support for DuPont on GMOs
Ecological Farming Association (USA), 24 March 2006.
NEW YORK - Concerned that DuPont may be going down the same road that led to its current woes surrounding Teflon, Christian Brothers Investment Services, Inc. (CBIS) is urging DuPont investors to vote next month in favor of a shareholder resolution calling on the company to meet its Sarbanes-Oxley obligations to disclose any potentially material risk or "off-balance sheet liability" that could be posed by its manufacturing and distribution of food-related genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
CBIS is the primary filer of the shareholder resolution to be voted on at the DuPont annual meeting in late April 2006. A wide variety of government, industry and scientific experts have raised concerns about the lack of adequate testing and controls in place in relation to the GMOs unleashed by DuPont and other firms. Recent reports also have raised major health concerns -- including increased incidence of allergies -- that could result from the introduction of GMOs into agriculture and the food supply.
John K. S. Wilson, director of socially responsible investing at Christian Brothers Investment Services, Inc., said: "We are deeply concerned that DuPont unknowingly may be sowing the seeds of risk for its shareholders and the general public. A major issue here is the lack of information regarding the safety of these products. We wish to avoid a repeat of the Teflon controversy, which was brought about when DuPont inaccurately asserted the safety of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) over many decades. It is particularly important that the company conduct independent assessments of GMO products already in the market so that neither DuPont nor its shareholders are surprised if GMOs fail to live up to DuPont's preliminary safety and environmental claims. At a minimum, DuPont has an obligation under Sarbanes- Oxley to start acknowledging to its shareholders that there are valid concerns here about potential risks."
In addition to citing recent health concerns and regulatory problems with GMOs, the CBIS resolution states: "Disclosure of material information is a fundamental principle of our capital markets. Investors, their confidence in corporate bookkeeping shaken, are starting to scrutinize other possible 'off- balance sheet' liabilities, such as risks associated with activities harmful to human health and the environment, that can impact long-term shareholder value. SEC reporting requirements include disclosure of environmental liabilities and of trends and uncertainties that the company reasonably expects will have a material impact on revenues. Public companies are now required to establish a system of controls and procedures designed to ensure that financial information required to be disclosed in SEC filings is recorded and reported in a timely manner."
The CBIS resolution urges that DuPont's "board of directors review and report to shareholders by the 2007 annual meeting on the company's internal controls related to potential adverse impacts associated with genetically modified organisms, including: reviewing the adequacy of current post- marketing monitoring systems; retaining an independent environmental expert to review the effectiveness of established risk management processes; and examining possible impact on seed product integrity."
Margaret Weber, coordinator of corporate responsibility, Adrian Dominican Sisters and co-chair of the Water & Food Working Group of the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), said: "In contrast to some assertions that genetically engineered crops are simply the next generation of crop breeding, this process is actually a severe interruption of the ordinary natural process of breeding. There is no global agreement that these products are 'substantially equivalent.' Precaution would call, at a minimum, for post market monitoring for early detection of negative health effects. Yet that is not possible in the United States, the largest producer of these crops, because they are not labeled as genetically engineered. Consumers who are highly sensitive to allergens and public health officials have no method of monitoring health impacts."
Leslie Lowe, director of ICCR's Environmental Justice and Water & Food Working Groups, said: "The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed by Congress in 2002, requires the CEO and CFO of public companies to certify that the companies' financial statements 'fairly present' their financial condition and results of operations. In order to ensure that these certifications are meaningful, Sarbanes-Oxley also requires that companies have appropriate 'internal controls' over their financial reporting. Moreover, the Accounting Oversight Board has made clear that these controls should include 'monitoring and risk assessment' of areas where, given the nature of the company's operations, actual losses are reasonably possible."
Lowe added: "Proponents of this resolution believe it is reasonably possible that genetically engineered (GE) products could cause significant losses for the company. DuPont (and other biotech firms) should, therefore, establish post-market monitoring systems for their GE products. This would enable the company to act at the earliest moment should problems arise and it would reassure investors that the company actually knows whether its operations result in adverse impacts for which the company may be liable."
In outlining the potential risks surrounding DuPont GMOs, the CBIS resolution notes: "'Gone to Seed' [from the Union of Concerned Scientists] reports that genetically engineered DNA is contaminating U.S. traditional seed stocks of corn, soybeans and canola, and that if left unchecked could disrupt agricultural trade, unfairly burden the organic foods industry, and allow hazardous materials into the food supply ... Insurers in Germany, the UK and elsewhere are refusing liability coverage for genetically engineered (GE) crops, demonstrating heightened concern about the long-term safety of GE crops."
28 March 2006
Supermarkets act after Greenpeace GMO claim
The Budapest Times, 28 March 2006.
Supermarket chains last week promised to act to either remove or investigate suspect products after Greenpeace Hungary claimed that food made with GMO soya was being sold unmarked.
Greenpeace last Tuesday said that it had found inappropriately high levels of GMO soya in canned meat goods made by Globus, Szegedi Paprika and a third unnamed firm.
"The National Food Safety and Nutrition Science Institute inspected the goods and found they contained more than 3% of GMO soya protein," Greenpeace spokeswomen Szabina Mózes told daily newspaper Magyar Hírlap.
According to Hungarian law, products with GMO content over 0.9% must indicate this on the packaging. Greenpeace asked the companies to withdraw their products and activists labelled hundreds of cans of the affected goods in a branch of Tesco.
Globus told MTI news agency that the products had not in fact undergone any testing, but claimed that it would look into instigating such tests immediately. The company said that all of its contracts with its suppliers state that products with GMO content greater than the legal limit would not be accepted.
German discount chain, Lidl, said that it would take the goods off the shelves, adding that they would not go back on sale until the manufacturers could certify that they were GMO free. Tesco promised it would do the same.
27 March 2006
Group says RP is now GMO-contaminated
Sunstar (The Philippines), 27 March 2006.
Potentially unsafe substances from genetically-modified organisms (GMO) have allegedly contaminated some common food products that are being sold in the country, environmental group Greenpeace claimed.
Daniel Ocampo, genetic engineering campaigner of Greenpeace Southeast Asia, said the Philippines is one of the 39 countries in the world that are affected by contamination from GMOs based on the "GM Contamination Report 2005" of Greenpeace and GeneWatch UK.
The report, which focused on the extent to which GMOs have leaked into the environment, showed widespread global contamination, illegal planting and cases of negative agricultural side effects supposedly caused by genetically-engineered products.
Ocampo said the contamination case specifically cited for the Philippines was the presence of GMOs in common food products, including baby food.
"The Philippine's inclusion in the list is not surprising considering the country's failure to ratify the Biosafety Protocol, which establishes the minimum international safety standards for GMO crops and their trade," he said.
Eliezer Billanes, convenor of the Socsksargen Movement against GMOs, expressed alarm over the reported GMO contamination on local food products as it practically places consumers at risk.
He reiterated the need for the government to impose a mandatory labeling of consumer products to make consumers aware of products that contain GMOs.
"The issue here is that the safety of GMOs to human health and the environment remains a big question. So until this issue is not yet properly resolved, it's only proper for our government to control the distribution of these questionable products if it cannot totally ban them," Billanes said.
He showed a pamphlet containing a list of products supposedly containing GMOs and a call for their boycott. The list covers at least 47 processed products that include milk, noodles, and hot dogs containing genetically-engineered corn and soya.
Contamination was even found in countries conducting supposedly carefully controlled high-profile farm-scale evaluations such as the UK," the report noted.
In the case of the Philippines, Ocampo was alarmed over the government's continuing adoption of various biotechnology products, which started with the commercialization of Monsanto's Bacillus Thuringiensis or Bt corn.
But agricultural biotechnology proponents insisted that GMOs are in fact safe and there's no need to label them.
Dr. Benigno Peczon, president of the government-backed Biotechnology Coalition of the Philippines, said conclusive studies made by scientists and medical experts worldwide have substantially affirmed the safety of the GM products. (Allen V. Estabillo)
25 March 2006
Who needs G.M. foods?
Irish Independent, 25 March 2006 (letter to the editor).
Probably nothing demonstrates the end of genuine democracy more than the insidious introduction of genetically modified foods. Absolutely no member of the public ever asked for them and there is no need for them whatever to feed the world.
It is, yet again, a greedy industrial food corporation that is pouring millions into PR of various sorts to influence our craven politicians. Judging by all the other things we never wanted (many prescribed drugs, nuclear power, mercury fillings, plastic, nutritionless food, etc.), the medical establishment is also going to be rubbing its hands with glee in a few years time.
Dick Barton
Tinaheely, Co. Wicklow
24 March 2006
Terminator Seeds Suffer Defeat at Global Conference
IPS News, 24 March 2006.
CURITIBA, Brazil, Mar 24 (IPS) - Small farmers and activists celebrated a triumph against Terminator seeds in Brazil Friday, but said they would not let down their guard, and would continue to fight the seeds.
The working group in charge of addressing the issue at the Eighth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP8) maintained the moratorium on field trials of Terminator technology, which produces seeds whose sterile offspring cannot reproduce.
The decision is still pending a vote in next Friday's plenary session in the Mar. 20-31 conference taking place in the southern Brazilian city of Curitiba. But that will merely be a formality.
Only Australia, Canada and New Zealand tried to leave a door open, pushing for "case-by-case" evaluation of permits for field testing, which critics say would weaken the moratorium put in place in 2000 on Terminators, or GURTS (Genetic Use Restriction Technologies).
For the stance they took in this case, and with regard to transgenic crops in general, Australia, Canada and New Zealand were granted the "evil axis" award by an informal coalition of civil society groups that annually hands out the Captain Hook Awards for Biopiracy.
The coalition awarded 10 "prizes" to "biopirates" as well as 10 "cog awards for resisting biopiracy". (Cogs were ships designed to repel attacks by pirates).
The United States won the award for "most despicable" act of biopiracy, for imposing plant intellectual property laws on occupied, war-torn Iraq in June 2004, making it illegal for Iraqi farmers to re-use seeds harvested from new varieties registered under the law.
Swiss biotech giant Syngenta was voted the worst threat to food sovereignty, for its patent on the Terminator potato.
The global small farmer movement VÌa Campesina has held near daily demonstrations since COP8 began on Monday, to demand a ban on Terminator seeds.
On Friday, it announced that it would continue holding protests in Curitiba to call for a total worldwide ban on Terminator technology.
Other activists also said they would keep up their guard, even while they celebrated the victory. "There are governments and companies that will keep trying to produce ësuicide seeds'," said Maria Rita Reis, with the Brazilian NGO Terra de Direitos.
GURTS, as Terminator technologies are referred to in the Convention on Biological Diversity, produce "suicide seeds" or "homicide seeds" stressed Hope Shand, research director for the ECT Group (Action Group on Erosion, Concentration and Technology), a Canada-based organisation that works to defend cultural and ecological diversity and human rights.
The commercialisation of Terminator seeds, which would make it impossible for farmers to save seeds from their harvests, would provoke enormous losses for farmers, forcing them off the land and exacerbating hunger and poverty, she maintained.
According to ECT Group estimates, soybean production in Argentina would be hit by an additional 276 million dollars in annual costs, while the cost of wheat production in Pakistan would be 191 million dollars higher.
Numerous activists emphasised that potential contamination and sterilisation of other species would have catastrophic results. There is no need for "field testing" to establish that this technology poses a threat to all life on earth, just as there is no need for field testing on the effects of torture, one activist commented.
The protests voiced by small farmers and environmentalists have fallen on more than fertile ground. Restrictions on Terminator seeds have enjoyed majority support from the outset of COP8. In the European Parliament, this position earned 419 votes in favour and a mere 15 against.
Within the Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC) there is a consensus on maintaining the moratorium on field trials and commercial releases of Terminator seeds and rejecting the proposal for a "case by case" assessment, Alicia Torres, director of Uruguay's National Environment Office and head of her country's delegation to COP8, told IPS.
In the meantime, Syngenta is currently facing troubles in Brazil that go beyond acts of protest.
In addition to the occupation of its test field since Mar. 14 by close to 1,000 rural activists from Brazilian groups associated with the Via Campesina network - like the Movement of Landless Rural Workers š the transnational corporation has just been hit with a fine of one million reals (470,000 dollars) from Brazil's environmental authority.
The sanction stems from the fact that Syngenta's transgenic soybean test crops in Santa Teresa, in the southern state of Paran·, violate national laws because they are located too close to Iguacu National Park, a nature preserve.
Syngenta and Monsanto have both been consistently targeted by protesters at the parallel meetings to COP8 and by the Global Civil Society Forum, a gathering of social movements and non-governmental organisations held in tents outside the Expo Trade Centre, the venue of the official conference.
Terminator rejection - a victory for the people
Greenpeace press release, 24 March 2006.
Curitiba, Brazil, March 24, 2006 -- A broad coalition of peasant farmers,
indigenous peoples and civil society today celebrated the firm rejection
of efforts to undermine the global moratorium on Terminator technologies
- genetically engineered sterile seeds - at the UN Convention on
Biological Diversity (CBD) in Curitiba, Brazil.
"This is a momentous day for the 1.4 billion poor people worldwide, who
depend on farmer saved seeds," said Francisca Rodriguez of Via
Campesina, a world wide movement of peasant farmers, "Terminator seeds
are a weapon of mass destruction and an assault on our food sovereignty."
"Terminator directly threatens our life, our culture and our identity as
indigenous peoples", said Viviana Figueroa of the Ocumazo indigenous
community in Argentina, on behalf of the International Indigenous Forum
on Biodiversity.
"Today's decision is a huge step forward for the Brazilian Campaign
against GMOs," said Maria Rita Reis from the Brazilian Forum of Social
movements and NGOs, "This reaffirms Brazil's existing ban on Terminator.
It sends a clear message to the national government and congress that
the world supports a ban on Terminator."
"Common sense has prevailed - lifting the Moratorium on the Terminator
seeds would have been suicidal - literally," said Greenpeace
International's Benedikt Haerlin from the Convention meeting. "This is a
genuine victory for civil society around the world - it will go a long
way to ensuring that biodiversity, food security and the livelihoods of
millions of farmers worldwide are protected."
Terminators, or GURTS (Genetic Use Restriction Technologies), are a
class of genetic engineering technologies which allow companies to
introduce seeds whose sterile offspring cannot reproduce, preventing
farmers from re-planting seeds from their harvest. The seeds could also
be used to introduce specific traits which would only be triggered by
the application of proprietary chemicals by the same companies.
At the CBD Australia, Canada and New Zealand along with the US
government (not a party to the CBD) and a number of biotech companies
were leading attempts to open the door to field testing of Terminator
seeds by insisting on a 'case by case' assessment of such technologies.
This text was unanimously rejected today in the CBD's working group
dealing with the issue and still needs to be formally adopted by the
plenary of the CBD.
"Despite today's victory, there is no doubt that the multinational
biotech industry will continue to push sterile seed technology," said
Pat Mooney of the Ban Terminator Campaign. "Terminator will rear its
ugly head at the next UN CBD meeting in 2008. The only solution is a
total ban on the technology once and for all," he concluded.
Greenpeace is an independent, campaigning organisation which uses
non-violent, creative confrontation to expose global environmental
problems, and to force solutions essential to a green and peaceful future.
Further Information:
Benedikt Haerlin, Greenpeace International +55 41 9677 1859
Francisca Rodriguez, Via Campesina +55 41 8429 2970
Pat Mooney, Ban Terminator Campaign +55 41 8833 0437
Greenpeace International
Web: http://www.greenpeace.org
Ottho Heldringstraat 5
1066 AZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Press Desk Hotline +31 (0) 629001141
General media Inquiries +31 (0) 646162038
E-mail: patrizia.cuonzo@int.greenpeace.org
Tel: +31 (0) 20 5148150
Press Desk Fax +31 (0) 5148156
Michael Kessler
International Communications
Greenpeace International
Ottho Heldingstraat 5, 1066 AZ Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
Tel: +31 20 718 2000
Fax: +31 20 514 8151
Mobile: +34 660 637 053
Email: michael.kessler@int.greenpeace.org
www.greenpeace.org
IBIA calls for debate on GM crops
BizWorld, 24 March 2006.
The Irish BioIndustry Association (IBIA), today called for a real debate on the potential for Irish farmers to grow GM crops and urged government officials to "stop playing mind games" on the issue.
IBIA Director, Marian Byron, said that comments made by the Minister for Agriculture Mary Coughlan regarding the level of interest among Irish farmers in availing of plant biotechnology need a fuller explanation.
"The simple truth is that Irish farmers have been subjected to misinformed, negative and totally misleading information about plant biotechnology. The time has come to stop playing mind games and deal with the substantive issue," she said.
"In an extremely competitive global food market Irish farmers need to be fully aware of the scale of plant biotechnology adoption and its positive impact"
The IBIA claim that in 2005 8.25 million farmers in 17 countries on six continents used plant biotechnology to solve difficult crop production challenges and conserve the environment.
"Right across the developed world plant biotechnology is allowing farmers to grow crops more efficiently and economically. Irish farmers must compete in this market and must be made more aware of the health, environmental and economic benefits of the technology," Marian Byron continued.
The group argue that Irish farmers should have the choice to use whatever technologies are approved in other parts of the world, so that they can compete on a level playing field.
"Currently Irish framers are prohibited from growing biotech corps and have no choice as the decision is made for them. This situation cannot continue indefinitely without an open and frank debate and the Minister has a responsibility to review the benefits to farmers, consumers and Ireland be gained by the use of growing GM corps," Ms. Byron said.
23 March 2006
Movie gives Killarney viewers food for thought
The Kingdom, 23 March 2006, by Eve Kelliher.
HAILED by many as the Fahrenheit 9/11 of the battle against genetically engineered crops, a unique documentary is set to give the people of Kerry food for thought this week.
Anti-GM food campaigners in the county plan to unveil a film on the subject, The Future of Food, in Killarney Great Southern Hotel this Thursday at 8pm.
GM-free Kerry, part of the GM-free Ireland network, will host the screening of this American documentary, together with a discussion.
The Kerry branch of the national organisation was set up by Tralee-based Claire O'Connor and this week's event will be cohosted by Killarney Nature Conservation Society.
The film has previously been shown in Tralee and Listowel and it attracted full houses.
"We just want to get the message out to people about the danger of modified crops," said GM-free Kerry member Tom Donovan.
The Future of Food, which has already inspired the anti-GM movement in the United States, was the brainchild of Deborah Koons Garcia. The documentary uses archival footage and interviews with farmers and agriculture experts to argue that GMO foods are jeopardising food safety.
Italian growers want better grapes, but no gmo
Fresh Plaza, 23 March 2006. By Rosella Gigli.
Rome ‚ After six years long researches, the agrarian institute S. Michele in Trento has decoded the grapes genetic code. This new knowledge makes the realization of new protections against grapes' diseases and parasites possible, but the Italian agricultural organization Coldiretti is worried about possible genetic manipulations.
"The growers are happy about this new mean for fighting against the grapes' diseases, but the idea that genetic manipulations of grapes could be possible in the future, we don't like", says the Coldiretti chairman. However, the agrarian institute agrees with Coldiretti completely: "The new knowledge must be used following natural methods", says the S. Michele chairman.
CBD must maintain moratorium on Terminator technologies
Greenpeace press release, 23 March 2006.
Curitiba, Wednesday, March 22, 2006- Greenpeace today called upon the
188 states at the 8th meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity
(CBD) to maintain the moratorium on the field trials and commercial
releases of Terminator seed technology which was agreed six years ago.
"Some states like New Zealand along with a number of biotech companies
now want to sneak language into the text that would actually allow for a
'case by case' assessment of such technologies to open the door to field
testing, while they officially claim to uphold the moratorium", said
Greenpeace International's Benedikt Haerlin from the Convention.
"This technology threatens biodiversity, farmers rights and the
environment - what is needed is a ban on these technologies and not an
erosion of the moratorium under the pretext of scientific impact and
risk assessment," said Haerlin.
Terminators, or GURTS (Genetic Use Restriction Technologies), are a
class of genetic engineering technologies which allow companies to
introduce seeds whose sterile offspring cannot reproduce, preventing
farmers from re-planting seeds from their own fields. The seeds could
also be used to introduce specific traits which would only be triggered
off by the application of proprietary chemicals provided exclusively by
the same companies.
Terminator technologies would allow companies to prevent the public from
accessing the results of future breeding, which is the present rationale
of plant breeders' rights and even patents. The moratorium adopted by
the Convention on Biodiversity in 2000, discussed the need for more
information on the socio-economic, cultural and environmental impacts of
these technologies.
"Nothing in the past six years has changed the status quo. Rather, all
the additional information we now have on the impact of these
technologies confirms that sterility is not a viable means to protect
agricultural biodiversity, that it poses a potential threat to food
security and that it would have severe impacts on the livelihoods of
farmers around the world," concluded Haerlin.
Greenpeace is part of the global campaign www.banterminator.org
Greenpeace is an independent, campaigning organisation which uses
non-violent, creative confrontation to expose global environmental
problems, and to force solutions essential to a green and peaceful future.
Further information:
Benedikt Haerlin, Greenpeace International GE spokesperson, +55 41 9682 3117
Michael Kessler, Greenpeace International Communications +34 660 637 053
Plans to grow GM spuds 'a bad idea'
Irish Independent, 23 March 2006. By Paul Melia
JUST one group has told the Environmental Protection Agency that growing genetically-modified potatoes in Co Meath is a good idea, it emerged yesterday.
Of 96 submissions received by the environmental watchdog over proposed trials by German biotech firm BASF, just one - from the Irish Bioindustry Association (IBA), an arm of IBEC - was supportive.
The IBA said the technology had the potential to bring 'major benefit to potato farmers', adding that crops produced through plant biotechnology had been grown commercially for a decade with 'no adverse effects to human health or the environment'.
IBA's views were not shared in the 95 other submissions, with most saying that it was 'impossible to guarantee' that GM crops would not contaminate produce grown traditionally.
BASF are seeking a licence from the EPA for a five-year field trial of blight- resistant GM potatoes at a farm in Arudstown, Summerhill, Co Meath.
Green Party leader Trevor Sargent claimed the Irish potato industry would be damaged at news that GM crops were being grown.
Submissions also came from organic farmers' groups, local residents, the Irish Doctors Environmental Association (IDEA) and GM-Free Ireland.
The Irish Wildlife Trust said it was the EPA's responsibility to examine the 'growing body of damning evidence' on GM crops.
The EPA will review the submissions before a decision near the end of April.
Greenpeace Reaction to Syngenta fine
Greenpeace press release, 23 March 2006.
Geneva, Wednesday, March 23, 2006 - Greenpeace today welcomed the
decision of the Brazilian Environment Protection Agency IBAMA to fine
Swiss Agro-Biotech multinational Syngenta one million reais (386 000
euros) for conducting illegal field trials of GE soy in a buffer zone
around the Iguacu Falls World Heritage Site. The organisation is
confident that a judicial order for the destruction of the genetically
engineered plants will also be issued in due time. IBAMA' s decision was
announced today at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
taking place in Curitiba, Brazil.
"This decision sounds a clear warning to agro-biotech firms intent on
putting economic interests ahead of biosafety and enforces respect for
biodiversity and protected areas," said Greenpeace International's
Doreen Stabinsky from the field site. " The announcement is right on
the mark and makes a mockery of Syngenta's denial last week that it had
acted illegally. It confirms the legitimacy and necessity of the
occupation of the field by local peasants."
National law in Brazil expressly prohibits the planting of GMOs in
conservation areas as well as buffer zones around those areas, based on
the precautionary principle. Syngenta's GE soy field trials were found
six kilometres from the park, however national law requires a buffer
zone of at least ten kilometres.
Greenpeace is an independent, campaigning organisation which uses
non-violent, creative confrontation to expose global environmental
problems, and to force solutions essential to a green and peaceful future.
Further information:
Doreen Stabinsky, Greenpeace International, +55 41 9677 1852
Benedikt Haerlin, Greenpeace International GE spokesperson, +55 41 9682 3117
Sandra Sato, IBAMA Press Officer +55 61 9989 9119
Syngenta Appeals Brazil Fine, Farm Still Occupied
Reuters, 23 March 2006. Story by Andrei Khalip.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Syngenta Seeds said on Wednesday it has appealed a fine of 1 million reais (US$462,000) set by Brazil's environmental agency for planting genetically modified crops too close to a national park.
A spokesman for the unit of Switzerland's Syngenta AG also said the company expected hundreds of farmers occupying its farm next to the Iguacu park since last week to leave Wednesday as a court order demands.
On Tuesday, the government's Ibama environmental agency fined Syngenta for having about 30 acres (12 hectares) of transgenic soy plantings in the parks' so-called "amortization zone." The plantings were about 4 miles (6 km) from the park, while the allowed distance is 6 miles (10 km).
Ibama also requested court permission to destroy the plantings in the forbidden area.
"Syngenta is already appealing against Ibama's decision. Consultations with lawyers showed that the definition of contention area around the park is not fixed, while Syngenta followed all the legal process correctly," the spokesman said.
The company has denied any illegal tests, saying it follows all regulations of the National Technical Commission for Biosecurity (CTNBio), which oversees GMO issues.
Some 600 activists from La Via Campesina (Peasant Way), an international group allied with Brazil's militant Landless Peasants' Movement, occupied Syngenta's Santa Teresa do Oeste farm in the southern Parana state to "denounce the illegal activity of experimenting with transgenic seeds in the area."
The act, which started eight days ago, coinicides with an international meeting on biodiversity this week in the same state. The meeting is discussing GMO biosecurity among other issues.
Syngenta last week obtained a court order giving the peasants five days to leave the farm.
"Today's the last day. The company expects a peaceful outcome with the justice's order being fulfilled," the spokesman said, adding that Syngenta employees had been barred from working at the farm, abandoning research.
"A lot of the research there is with conventional materials, a fruit of 20 years of work," he said.
MST says the activists will not leave the farm as they want the authorities to confiscate it from Syngenta. Police, who normally have to intervene to fulfill court rulings in such cases, said they had not yet received any orders.
Land invasions are common in Brazil, mainly to demand that the government speed up the distribution of public land for settlement of poor peasants.
Earlier this month, activists in Rio Grande do Sul state ransacked a tree nursery of Brazilian pulp and paper company Aracruz, destroying part of a research lab.
22 March 2006
Coughlan outlines farm industry plans
RTE News, 22 March 2006.
The Minister for Agriculture has published a plan for the development of the farm and food industry over the next decade.
Mary Coughlan said farming remains a bedrock of rural communities despite those who regularly predict its terminal decline.
The minister set out her vision for an industry which is undergoing major change because of reforms of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy and World Trade Organisation policies.
She stressed the importance of competitiveness, innovation and focus on the consumer.
Ms Coughlan outlined greater roles for Teagasc and Bord Bia in achieving these aims, and she said there has to be a new relationship between farmers and the beef processing sector.
She also wants to reform the school milk scheme to make it more attractive for children with more dairy products available.
The minister also highlighted the economic importance of the agri-manufacturing industry.
She said most farmers are not interested in growing genetically modified crops and that the organic route was a preferred option.
However, Ms Coughlan would not predict how many farmers would survive into the future.
Newly appointed Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Mary Wallace, said farmers would get good incentives to grow more trees and bio-fuels.
ICMSA 'disappointed'
One of the main farm organisations, the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association, said it is very disappointed that after all the analysis, there are very few actual proposals for the business of farming.
ICMSA leader Jackie Cahill said that unfortunately, the action plan is not a clear blueprint for action as claimed but will deliver increased bureaucracy, fewer farms and lower income.
Another farm leader, Malcolm Thompson of the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers' Association, said the plan is the last chance for Irish agriculture.
Green Party opposition to GM foods
Meath Chronicle, Letter to the editor, 22 March 2006.
Dear sir - I wish to compliment the excellent letter of Martin Dier which appeared in a recent edition of the Meath Chronicle. Mr Dier referred specifically to research carried out in Scotland where laboratory rats experienced depressed immune systems following the consumption of GM potatoes. He correctly identified the potential of genetically modified potatoes to spread and cross fertilize with other potatoes.
This issue is of particular significance in Co Meath at the present time because of the proposed trials by the German company BASF of GM potatoes in Summerhill. The only beneficiary in these trials is the company BASF itself. Their GM crop is not to be developed for the unique and small Irish market but is part of a global strategy to create a product for a global market.
The trials of GM potato will only be of benefit to a company which wants to advertise worldwide that it grew a crop in a country prone to blight. The Irish consumer will not benefit as he/she is generally fearful of GM foods and is loyal to certain potato potato varieties by name. We are all familiar with names such as Roosters, Kerr's Pinks and Queens which suit the Irish palate.
It is ironic that the Irish government is remaining neutral on BASF GM potato trials. This is even more pertinent in Meath where we now have a Minister of State with responsibility for Agriculture and Food together with the Chairman of an Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture.
The irony is borne out by the stated position of both the Ministers for Agriculture and the Environment respectively speaking in April 1997 when they stated: "current scientific knowledge is inadequate to protect the consumer and the environment from the unpredictable and potentially disastrous effects (of GM) which may appear immediately or at any time in the future. Fianna Fáil will not support what amounts to the largest nutritional experiment in human history with the consumer as guinea pig.
The effects of genetically modified food are well documented. They include: unexpected toxins and allergens in food; increased used of chemicals on crops; contamination of water and food; the creation of 'super weeds', herbicide resistant weeds; damage to the ecology of the soil; loss of biodiversity and consequent damage to the food chain.
The rush to market with genetically modified foods is unscientific, unseemly and premature. Prevention is wise because cure is impossible. Genetically modified organisms once released can never be recalled."
A further irony is government reassurances about non-contamination of non GM crops.
Buffer zones have not prevented contamination in countries where GM crops have been grown. Any contamination would not be possible to detect until after the non-GM potatoes had been harvested and put on the market as the contamination would not show up until the harvested seed had been grown as a new plant.
What effects would the introduction of GM potatoes have on Irish farmers? GM potatoes would not have any benefit for Irish farmers.
The value of the seed potato industry was estimated in 2005 at €5.8 million and the value of sales of certified seed potatoes on the domestic market in 2005 was estimated at e2.8 million, with exports valued at €170,000.
Although GM companies will try to promote the idea that less chemicals are required, the same companies will increase their price to reap any would-be saving for the farmer. Secondly, The Department of Agriculture and Food has not committed itself to compensating Irish farmers for the damage caused by GM trials to such established Irish brands such as Roosters, Kerr's Pinks and Rush Queens.
The antipathy of the Irish consumer to GM foods and their cross contamination of the above established brands will result in Scottish seed potatoes benefiting from Ireland's loss, just as Ireland will benefit from Denmark's loss as a result of the Muslim cartoon controversy.
Finally, there is the matter of insurance. Insurance companies refuse cover to farmers growing GM crops should their crops contaminate a neighbour's conventional or organic crop.
The GM promoting company does not take responsibility for such scenarios so farmers will be further forced to carry this additional burden.
This burden is also in effect a threat to the livelihood of a conventional or organic farmer.
The proposal to grow GM potatoes runs contrary to the policies of The Green Party which seeks to protect the interests of both the consumer and the Irish farmer.
Yours,
Brian Flanagan,
Meath West Green Party Candidate,
Navan.
Disown patent on "terminator" potato,
indigenous farmers tell business leader
Media release, 22 March 2006, from the Quechua-Aymara Association for Nature and Sustainable Development (Peru) and the International Institute for Environment & Development
Indigenous farmers in Peru, the birthplace of the potato, have pleaded with agribusiness Syngenta International to publicly abandon its patent on "terminator" technology to control sprouting potatoes which could put at risk more than 3,000 potato varieties in the region and undermine efforts to reduce poverty.
More than 40 indigenous leaders from potato producing communities in the Andean region of Peru came together this weekend (18 March) in the Sacred Valley in Cusco to sign a strongly-worded letter to the company's Chief Executive demanding immediate action.
Syngenta's patent (US Patent 6,700,039) is of particular concern because it describes a technology that could be used to prevent the sprouting of potatoes, unless they are treated with chemicals supplied by the patent owner.
The call to the Swiss-based company comes as government officials meet in Brazil this week for a United Nations biodiversity conference where terminator technology will be hotly debated.
Genetic Use Restriction Technology, dubbed "terminator", would mean that patented plants are genetically-modified to switch off seed fertility. Local farmers would be prevented from saving and reusing terminator type seeds and storage organs such as potato tubers, thus increasing corporate control over the global food system.
Indigenous people fear that it would destroy the sharing of seeds, a centuries-old tradition, and with it their cultural and social way of life.
As a result of biosafety and other concerns, an international moratorium under the Convention on Biological Diversity has stopped the field testing and commercial use of terminator technology since 2000.
Some governments want to relax the UN's biosafety regulation, but the main biotech companies have accepted that public concern and environmental risk is too great to press ahead.
Alejandro Argumedo, Associate Director of the Quechua-Aymara Association for Nature and Sustainable Development, said: "We want the big companies like Syngenta to show corporate social and environmental responsibility. The irresponsible attempt by some governments to bust the moratorium is motivated by power and greed at the expense of people, the environment and poverty reduction. Syngenta could prove that they are on the right side by abandoning their patent on the terminator potato."
The meeting of indigenous people was hosted by the Association of Communities in the Potato Park in Pisaq near Cusco. The park aims to put indigenous people back in charge of managing biological resources by developing locally controlled food systems and institutions.
Dr Michel Pimbert of the International Institute for Environment & Development, which supported the establishment of the Potato Park and this weekend's meeting on Syngenta's patent, said: "Sterile seed technology is dangerous and will further erode the rights of indigenous people and farmers to save and reuse seeds. Terminator is not a solution and the moratorium must be upheld. It is a great shame that a few governments have been able to hijack this important UN meeting when the debate should be focused on tackling the root causes of dwindling biodiversity and deepening poverty."
Ends.
For further information
Alejandro Argumedo (ANDES) +55 41 8441 5484
Liz Carlile (IIED) +44 207 388 2117
Tony Samphier +44 208 761 8155
Notes to editors
The Eighth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP8) takes place in Curitiba, Brazil, from 20 to 31 March 2006. The issue of terminator technology is expected to be discussed during the second and third days of the meeting (21/22 March).
The Quechua-Aymara Association for Nature Conservation and Sustainable Development (ANDES) is governed by a general assembly which is largely composed of indigenous people from Andean villages. ANDES has three professional staff in their office in Cusco, in southern Peru, while another 15 technicians and university-trained professionals and 25 local villagers work in the field with local communities.
The International Institute for Environment & Development (IIED) is a London-based think tank working for global policy solutions rooted in the reality of local people at the frontline of sustainable development. www.iied.org
A full text of the letter from indigenous leaders to the Chief Executive of Syngenta International is available at www.iied.org
Bill would take food-label rights away from states
The New Mexican, by Kristen Davenport, March 22, 2006.
A bill that would forbid states from labeling food products unless the federal government allows it passed through the House of Representatives last week without a single committee hearing.
"It was really bad," said Tom Udall, Northern New Mexico's Democratic congressman. "In the normal legislative process, a bill goes through committee, and the committee calls witnesses . What the Republicans do now is bring up bills without ever letting the committees work their will."
In other words, the thousands of people who oppose the bill were not heard. Udall said he received at least 500 letters, phone calls or e-mails from New Mexicans opposing the bill ó and not one in favor.
The bill ó named the Food Uniformity Act ó has been slammed by opponents as a bow to big agribusiness and those who don't want states to be allowed to label foods containing genetically altered organisms.
"A lot of people don't know how much genetically engineered material is in their food," said Bobbe Besold, a Santa Fe food activist and former member of the now defunct Food Fight group. Food Fight used to organize anti-GMO ó Genetically Modified Organism ó gatherings and provide literature to people about genetically engineered food.
No research to date has conclusively shown that genetically modified foods are harmful to human health. However, organic farmers say GMOs are a threat to biodiversity and that pollen from such engineered crops threatens to drift into organic gene pools.
"I see (this bill) as infringing on our rights ó withholding information from the public and keeping us from being informed about what's in our food," Besold said.
Opponents say the bill came about because certain large agriculture and food-production companies ó such as Novartis, General Mills and Monsanto ó dislike the increasing efforts by activists and others to pass laws banning GMOs or requiring all GMO foods to be labeled as such. The Food Uniformity Act allows states to appeal to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to have their labeling requirements adopted by the federal agency. But Udall said that measure simply puts the cost and burden on states, which isn't fair. "It will cost the states $100 million," Udall said. "That really places an undue burden on them." Udall said the bill certainly didn't originate with consumers or with state governments; it originated with the food industry. "These big companies want to sweep aside the right to label as the states want," Udall said. Many things could be affected by the act, including small local farmers who label their products "organically grown in New Mexico."
The bill was sponsored in the House by Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Missouri , who said the bill is necessary to eliminate the "patchwork" of safety laws that differ from state to state.
"Creating a uniform system assures Americans that no matter where they live or travel in the nation, they can depend on food labels to reflect the contents of food and the potential for reactions to certain contents ," Rogers said in a press release after the bill was introduced in December 2005.
"In today's worldwide market, it is essential that we have a mechanism for a thorough, orderly foodlabeling system based on safe, scientific guidelines," Rogers said.
But Udall said the measure also indicates that Republicans are abandoning their decades-old belief in states' rights.
"That was a big part of the conservative philosophy," Udall said. "Let the states do these things. When civil rights came up, that was their mantra ó let's let the states do this. Anytime there's a federal program, they say, ëLet the states do it.' Well, food-safety labeling is something the states have traditionally done for themselves . And now they want to take it away at the urging of these big special interests."
However, Udall said, it appears unlikely the bill will pass in the Senate because the Senate's calendar is full and "there's not much space for something like this."
So far, no states require labeling on all GMO crops, although the European Union requires all food containing GMOs to be labeled as such.
Farmers 'betrayed' over technology
Western Mail (Australia), 21 March 2006. By Steve Dube.
THOUSANDS of farmers are expected to demonstrate today against
proposals that will open the way for a form of genetic modification
that makes it impossible for them to save their own seeds.
A global moratorium on testing and marketing so-called terminator
technology, established under the United Nations Convention on
Biodiversity in 2000, could be overturned this week as 188 governments
gather in Curitiba, Brazil, for the eighth conference of the
convention.
The UK has joined Australia, Canada and New Zealand in urging the
convention to abandon its opposition and fall in line with the United
States, where the seeds are currently being tested.
Almost 500 organisations, including farmers groups, international
organisations, trade unions, charities and churches have now called for
a ban in a growing campaign of opposition.
Terminator technology is controversial because it prevents farmers from
saving their own seeds to grow new crops, forcing them to buy new seeds
each season.
Opponents say it is easy to understand why a handful of wealthy
governments want to join the US in developing terminator seeds.
The major seed companies effectively control a world seed market worth
about £14bn a year. If farmers could not save their own seeds, and were
forced to buy every time, the value could double.
The UK Government's decision to abandon its opposition was only
revealed on the Defra web site on February 21 when the House of Commons
was in recess.
It was raised by Opposition MPs on March 8, when Defra Minister Ben
Bradshaw insisted that the policy was unchanged, although a moratorium
on testing would be wrong.
He said the UK's position was to approach every bid to test or market
such seeds on a case-by-case basis, as with all GM seeds.
Former Environment Minister Michael Meacher says UK policy now differs
significantly from the one he approved six years ago.
"I could see the need for a global agreement on how to prevent the
release of terminator," he said.
"It poses a greater threat than any other type of GM seeds because it
would undermine farmers' seed saving, threaten food security and
agricultural biodiversity.
"Using this technology would force more farmers to buy new seeds each
season from corporations whose control over seeds is already
substantial."
Dr Meacher said the Government appeared to back the claim by the big
biotech corporations that the terminator would prevent GM genes
contaminating neighbouring crops or wild plants.
"This is nonsense because terminator cannot provide 100% sterility, nor
prevent normal cross-contamination through pollen drift," he said. "In
any case, that is not its purpose; it is to make the seeds
agronomically unviable in order to ensure seed sales."
Dr Brian John, of the campaign group GM Free Cymru, questioned where
the Welsh Assembly Government stood on the issue.
In an open letter to Wales Environment Minister Carwyn Jones, Dr John
said, "This is an appalling policy shift which betrays the interests of
farmers.
"There is no new evidence which might underpin a shift in the Defra
position.
"The implications for the Third World are truly terrifying."
A Welsh Assembly Government spokeswoman said, "If GM crop varieties
containing terminator technology were ever approved for use in the EU,
it would be up to individual farmers to decide whether or not to use
them."
Tests have benefits, says scientists
A NEW discussion document endorses the need to make sure new crops and
farming practices are not going to damage biodiversity. But the
Government's Advisory Committee on Releases (Acre) into the Environment
says the current regulatory system is flawed because it doesn't weigh
this damage against potential benefits.
Acre chairman Professor Chris Pollock, the director of the Institute of
Grassland and Environmental Research near Aberystwyth, who chaired the
Scientific Steering Committee of the UK Farm Scale Trials on GM crops,
believed the trials were a great model for testing environmental impact
before new technology is widely introduced.
"But many scientists also feel that by only asking about the
dis-benefits of this technology, policy makers cannot make a balanced
decision based on a proper risk-benefit analysis."
21 March 2006
Environmental advisory committee appointed by Minister is unbalanced
The Irish Times, 21 March 2006.
The Minister for the Environment has shown his true colours with his appointments to the EPA's advisory committee, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor
Dick Roche would like people to believe that he cares about the environment, even that he's more sympathetic to the "green agenda" than his predecessor Martin Cullen.
But when it came to choosing nominees to serve on the Environmental Protection Agency's Advisory Committee, he nailed his true colours to the mast.
Not one of the six nominees put forward by 24 groups involved in various aspects of environmental protection was chosen by the Minister.
He passed over all of them - including such prominent figures as Karin Dubsky - in favour of appointing people with little or no discernible track-record in the area.
Section 27 of the 1992 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Act specifies that its advisory committee should be broadly representative of professions and organisations concerned with environmental protection, those concerned with social and economic development and those involved in environmental education or research.
Until Mr Roche took over as Minister for the Environment in September 2004, the prescribed organisations under the environmental protection heading were An Taisce, Voice and Eco-Unesco - all three of them actively involved in this area.
However, that was changed by a little-noticed statutory instrument signed by the Minister in December 2004.
Henceforth, the organisations with rights to nominate candidates for selection as members of the EPA advisory committee were to be Fáilte Ireland and the Heritage Council - both State agencies - and Environmental Ecological NGOs Core Funding Ltd, (EENGOCF) an umbrella body for non-governmental organisations involved in environmental protection.
EENGOCF had been set up to administer the relative pittance disbursed annually by the Department of the Environment in "core funding" for 24 environmental NGOs, to enable them to survive. In 2005, it received §80,000 to share out between them, plus a further §115,000 for administration and conference travelling expenses.
In January 2005, EENGOCF was requested by the Minister to nominate six candidates for appointment to the new EPA advisory committee - three of whom should be male and three female, in the interest of "gender balance". The environmental groups had every reason to believe that at least one of their nominees would be chosen.
The previous advisory committee, incidentally, had been allowed to lapse 10 months earlier even though the 1992 legislation under which the EPA was established laid down that "there shall be a committee" with 12 members to advise the agency on such matters as its work programme, standards, guidelines and codes of practice.
EENGOCF submitted six nominees: Jack O'Sullivan, who served on the previous advisory committee; Elizabeth Cullen, of the Irish Doctors' Environmental Association; Karin Dubsky, of Coastwatch; Michael Ewing, of Friends of the Irish Environment; Pat Finnegan, of Grian, and Caroline Lewis, of the Irish Natural Forestry Foundation. Though these nominations were made within a tight timetable, a full year passed before EENGOCF was informed by the Minister's office that the new advisory committee had been appointed, and none of its nominees was selected. Instead, Mr Roche chose the F·ilte Ireland nominee, environmental consultant Jeanne Meldon, from the panel.
He also made four personal appointments: John Dillon, former president of the IFA; John Buckley, a Killarney auctioneer who was on the previous advisory committee, and two of his own constituents - Irene Sweeney, described as a "community representative" from Arklow, and Seán Byrne, of the Wicklow Uplands Council.
Mr Dillon has said he was approached directly by the Minister within weeks of stepping down from the IFA's leadership and asked if he would like to serve on the EPA's advisory committee; he had agreed to accept the appointment "for the good of Irish farmers". At the time, the IFA was at war with the Government over the EU nitrates directive.
Ms Sweeney is married to a Fianna F·il councillor in Arklow whose family have been active in the party for many years, and was involved in the Special Olympics in 2004, while Mr Buckley is also a board member of Sustainable Energy Ireland, the State agency charged with promoting the adoption of alternatives to fossil fuels.
As reported in today's newspaper, Mr Buckley took an interest in the case of an illegal dump in Co Wicklow and plans by Brownfield Restoration (Ire) Ltd to remediate and develop it; he forwarded a letter from the company's managing director addressed to the Minister to the EPA's deputy director general, Dr Padraic Larkin.
There is no doubt that the committee appointed by the Minister is unbalanced. The farming sector is more than well represented, not just by Mr Dillon, but also by Donal Harte, chairman of the ICMSA in west Cork, who has complained that a "draconian" application of the nitrates directive would put pig and poultry farmers out of business.
Carmel Dawson, of the Irish Countrywomen's Association, is also a member of the new advisory committee, as is Marian Byron of Ibec, which represents companies in the chemical and pharmaceutical sector that must obtain integrated pollution control licences from the EPA - though the committee has no role in relation to individual licences.
According to Frank Corcoran, national chairman of An Taisce, Mr Roche's decision to overlook all six of the nominees put forward by the NGO umbrella group in his appointments to the advisory committee - "sends a clear signal" that the Minister "places no value on the input of civil society" into the whole area of environmental protection.
Ms Dubsky agreed. "There are weaknesses in the way the EPA is being run, such as the requirement that any complaint to its Office of Environmental Enforcement must be in writing.
"A lot of people are afraid to do that because their names would appear on a public file. If we were on the advisory committee, we could change things like that."
19 March 2006
Biotech Foods: International safety laws agreed
Friends of the Earth International media advisory, 18 March 2006.
CURITIBA (BRAZIL), 17 March 2006 - United Nations talks on the global trade
in genetically modified (GM) foods and crops ended here today with an
agreement on the labelling of GM grains traded worldwide. Friends of the
Earth welcomed the agreement as a "small step forward" but attacked the
biotech industry and the trade interests of a few countries for blocking
progress towards better protection for developing countries and the
environment.
The biotech industry consistently opposed clear identification and labelling
requirements for GM crops. Without clear labelling many countries,
especially developing countries with their limited resources, are unable to
protect their food supply and environment from GM contamination.
Nnimmo Bassey, International Coordinator of the Friends of the Earth GMO
Campaign said:
"Protection of the environment and the public from genetically modified
crops has taken a small step forward today. However it is clear that trade
interests and the biotech industry stopped a better agreement from being
made. Countries have the right to know what is being imported into their
country and the right to say no to GM crops."
The UN Biosafety Protocol, which was originally agreed in January 2000,
provides basic international rules that allow mainly developing countries to
regulate the safety of GM foods, crops and seeds. It has been ratified by
132 countries but the three main countries that grow GM crops - the United
States, Argentina and Canada - have refused to support it.
Ten years after the first significant planting of GM crops, no plants with
benefits to consumers or the environment have materialized and GM crops have
failed to deliver the promises of the biotech industry. More than 80% of the
area cultivated with biotech crops is still concentrated in only three
countries: the US, Argentina and Canada.
Friends of the Earth International recently published a report that
concluded:
• GM crops are not green. Monsanto's GM soybeans, the most extensively grown
GM crop today, has led to an increase in herbicide use. The intensive
cultivation of soybeans in South America is fostering deforestation, and has
been associated with a decline in soil fertility and soil erosion.
• GM crops do not tackle hunger or poverty. Most GM crops commercialized so
far are destined for animal feed, not for food, and none have been
introduced to address hunger and poverty issues. In Argentina, the second
biggest producer of GM crops in the world, only 2% of the soya stays in the
country. Other developing countries, such as Indonesia and India, have
experienced substantial problems with Monsanto's GM crops, often leaving
farmers heavily indebted.
• The biotech industry has failed to introduce the promised new generation'
of GM crops with consumer benefits. After 30 years of research, only two
modifications have made it to the marketplace on any scale: insect
resistance and herbicide tolerance.
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT
In Curitiba, Brazil
Nnimmo Bassey, Friends of the Earth International / Friends of the Earth
Nigeria
Tel: +44 7785334200 (UK mobile) or email nnimmo@eraction.org
Adrian Bebb, Friends of the Earth Europe
Tel +49 1609 490 1163 (German mobile) or email adrian.bebb@foeeurope.org
In Europe
Juan Lopez, Friends of the Earth International
Tel +34 6259 805 820 (Spanish mobile)
For more information:
Background on biosafety:
http://www.foei.org/gmo/biosafety.html
17 March 2006
G.M. and the food supply
Irish Independent, Letter to the editor, 19 March 2006.
It seems that human genetic material will soon become part of our daily diet if large biotech companies have their way. In spite of the tragedy of BSE, which was caused by feeding animal protein to cows, it appears that we are next in line to be forced down the dangerous path of cannibalism, courtesy of a new, third generation of GMO's.
Recent reports reveal that Canadian biotech company, SemBioSys has applied for permits to use third generation GM crop technology called biopharming to inject crops like barley and safflower with human genes to produce synthetic drugs for the treatment of diabetes and heart conditions.
Independent scientists have warned of the dangers of this process and say that it will be virtually impossible to keep these biopharms out of the food supply. They have pointed to a case in Nebraska in 2002, where so-called rigorous regulations failed to prevent half a million bushels of Soya, worth about $2.7 being contaminated by a pharmaceutical crop grown there the previous year.
In the meantime our own pro-GM Government carries on its strange love affair with the global biotech industry and in a shameful display of cowardice, continues its refusal to vote against the introduction of GM food into Europe. This stance is totally at variance with the wishes of 80 per cent of Irish consumers, who when interviewed in a recent survey, said that they did not want GM food.
In Ireland we are blessed with a natural eco-system, which is the envy of our European neighbours. Our Irish Government has an enormous moral obligation to its citizens and their environment, to ensure that absolutely nothing threatens the integrity this unique natural asset.
John Heney, Kilfeacle, Co. Tipperary
EU Says Cypriot Law On GMO Labels Is "Nonadmissable"
Wall Street Journal, 17 March 2006.
Brussels - The European Commission Wednesday told Cyprus its draft law requiring genetically modified foods to be displayed separately in supermarkets is "nonadmissable."
Cyprus asked the Commission in September if its law was legal under E.U. rules. Friday, the Commission said no.
The Cypriot example underlines tensions within the E.U. over genetically modified products. Despite ending its unofficial moratorium on approving new GMO products in 2004, the E.U.'s pace of new GMO approvals has been slow - some eight products in nearly two years.
The U.S. has complained about the length of time it takes the E.U. to approve new types of GMOs and what it sees as excessive political involvement in what should be a science-based decision.
Last week, farm ministers failed to agree with the European Commission on the issue. Positions are so entrenched, they said, that there is little hope of them getting a deal later.
"We are in the beginning of an interesting debate," said Austrian Agriculture Minister Josef Proll, who was chairing the meeting. "We will continue with discussions" at other meetings. "There is no straight yes or no to such a sensitive topic."
The issue pits environmentalists and some national governments, which are fighting the products, against the Brussels-based European Commission which promotes them as a key test of the E.U.'s willingness to adopt new technologies.
Silver Pail dips into lucrative [GM-free] ice-cream tub
The Irish Times, 17 March 2006.
At just 31 Thea Murphy is set to take over her father's Cork ice-cream business, which has just landed a €2 million-a-year contract with Baskin-Robbins, writes Claire Shoesmith
.
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Golden Medal Ribbon and Cherries Jubilee - all ice cream flavours for those of you who don't know - are an everyday feature in the life of Thea Murphy. Not only does she have millions of litres of ice cream at her disposal but soon she will have individual deserts and ice-cream-based cakes too.
At 31, Thea is being groomed to take over Silver Pail, the ice-cream business her father established 28 years ago. Thea has been in the company for four years. She runs it with her father, Michael, who has grown the Fermoy, north Cork-based firm from three people to about 60.
Thea is relaxed about the prospect of running a business that in January signed a €2 million-a-year contract to supply ice cream to Baskin-Robbins's shops in the UK and Europe. This is also in addition to producing its own brand of ice cream, making frozen products for Irish retailers and producing Carolan's Irish Cream liqueur under contract for C&C.
Her father is also relaxed about the idea. "If Thea wasn't coming up behind, I couldn't keep going," he says, dismissing the idea that he will struggle to hand over the reigns when the time comes for him to step aside.
"I have more experience now, but within three or four years there won't be much more I can teach her," he says, declining to divulge his age.
While full ownership of the company will one day pass into his daughter's hands, the decisions concerning the future of the company don't lie on her shoulders yet. According to Michael, Silver Pail has a very good management team, which includes a product manager who's been there from the start.
Thea's main duties, as well as part-running the company, lie in product development and looking after suppliers. She divides her time between travel and the Fermoy factory.
Since the start of the year, most of her time has been taken up with the Baskin-Robbins contract. The world's leading chain of ice-cream stores, based in California, used to source its ice cream from a plant in Canada. However, changes to labelling regulations in Europe mean that any products containing genetically modified ingredients must say so on the label. Because some of the Canadian ingredients were modified, Baskin-Robbins decided to switch to a European GM-free supplier.
This is where Silver Pail came into its own. The company, whose philosophy is to use only natural local ingredients, fitted the bill perfectly. As a result, Ireland's largest privately owned ice-cream manufacturer will by June be producing 36 flavours of ice cream for the American chain.
This year more than 1.5 million litres of Baskin-Robbins ice cream will be produced in Fermoy, using cream from seven million litres of milk sourced from local farms. According to Michael, the contract has the potential to be worth three times the initial €2-million-a-year estimate.
"This is a very significant contract for us," says Thea, adding that what makes it better than other business is that it's static throughout the year. "This is a quieter time of year for our own business, so it's good to have new business."
It has, however, taken up a lot of the company's time - so much that its plans to start manufacturing individual-sized desert portions are now 18 months behind schedule. The company hopes to launch the new range at the beginning of April to satisfy the demands of much of the catering industry.
Silver Pail is also introducing an ice-cream-based cake business, but this is a little further down the line, according to Thea.
Once the bulk of the Baskin-Robbins development work is out of the way - Silver Pail has had to replicate all of the flavours exactly - it can focus again on the company's own brand of ice cream.
Corrin Hill ice cream, named after a landmark overlooking the town of Fermoy where Thea was born, was launched in 2004. Last year it had sales of €1.3 million, according to market research group AC Nielson. However, it isn't making any money for Silver Pail and won't do for at least another two years. Corrin Hill is aimed at what Silver Pail believes was a gap in the market.
"There were no good quality dairy products on offer in the mid range," says Thea. "That's where we saw a gap - between the economy pack sizes and the premium end, which was proper dairy, but that cost a lot.
"So that became our brief: to make a dairy product using only natural ingredients, colours and flavours but to keep its price down."
Then came the fun bit. To test the suitability of the product, Silver Pail took it into local schools for testing. The results of the school tasting sessions were then put to the test again at DIT in Dublin. Ultimately, five flavours were chosen, which can be found in most Irish supermarkets, including Supervalu, Dunnes, Tesco and Centra. Silver Pail has just taken on an agent in the North and may expand the brand further.
"Any expansion into the UK will be very targeted," says Thea, while her father acknowledges that by focusing on just one UK town, the group can reach more people than in the whole of Ireland.
Things haven't always gone swimmingly. During 2000 and 2001 Silver Pail was forced to downsize its business after being squeezed by the British supermarkets. "The margins they were asking for were just impossible," says Michael, who initially learned his trade as part of Express Dairies in Cheshire and London.
He then went to South Africa where he set up a yoghurt factory outside Johannesburg. When that was sold he moved on to ice cream and eventually back to Ireland. "We were forced to end the contracts with the UK supermarkets and as a result had to lay people off," he says of Silver Pail around the turn of the century. The group's headcount fell back to about 40 and a decision was made to focus on more niche markets.
It still supplies to some Irish supermarkets.
However, in the UK it focuses simply on speciality chocolate maker Thorntons and one larger group, Nestlé.
Michael declined to comment on the company's financial performance, saying he didn't want to divulge any information to the group's competitors. However, according to the latest filings with Companies House, Foxway, the ice-cream manufacturing part of the business, made a profit of €125,579 in 2004. Gross profit before distribution and administrative costs and interest was €1.166 million.
Whatever the outcome of the accounts, Silver Pail appears to be in the right market. At more than 10 litres per person each year, the Irish eat more ice cream than most other Europeans. And with an increase in household spending and a desire for natural products, the company is certainly making its way down the right path.
Whether it will succeed in its unspoken aim of displacing the multinationals in the Irish market remains to be seen, but in the meantime I certainly would be content with sampling as many new flavours as Silver Pail wants to try out.
Factfile
Name: Thea Murphy
Position: Co-director of Silver Pail
Family: Single with no children, lives in Fermoy, Co Cork
Background: She studied food nutrition at UCC in Cork and then worked at Kerry Foods before joining the family company four years ago
Why she is in the news: Thea is being groomed by her father to take over as head of the family company when he retires. She already co-runs the company, which in January won a 2 million-a-year contract to manufacture ice cream for Baskin-Robbins, the world's leading chain of ice cream stores.
16 March 2006
Safety expert sounds biotech alarm
The Guardian, Thursday March 16, 2006. By Sarah Boseley and Ian Sample.
A leading drug safety expert warned yesterday that scientists should not take lightly the potential hazards of modern biotech drugs, such as the one that has endangered the lives of six volunteers.
Conventional drugs are simple chemicals, said Saad Shakir, head of the Drug Safety Research Unit at Southampton University. But modern biotech drugs, produced through genetic engineering, are effectively large proteins. Contamination during the manufacturing process, for instance by a virus, would be far easier - and the drugs also have more potential to cause a harmful reaction in the body.
"The message is that biological products are more complex products. They are a protein, so they can induce reactions in the body which could be of an allergic or hypersensitive nature," said Dr Shakir.
Phase-one studies carried out on healthy people to check the safety of new drugs had been very safe in the past, he said. "You could count the number of fatalities on the fingers of one or two hands." But now that a new generation of biological products had arrived, we could be into "a new paradigm".
At TeGenero, the 15-strong German biotech company that brought what it hoped was an exciting, innovative drug into its first human trials, scientists were still trying to absorb the shock yesterday and begin to help investigators at the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority in the UK. TeGenero insisted that nothing in the laboratory work and animal testing performed prior to the human trials would have warned it of the extreme reaction in the volunteers. "These events were completely unexpected and do not reflect the results we obtained from initial laboratory studies which enabled us to progress investigations into human volunteers," said Benedikte Hatz, its chief executive.
The new drug, known as TGN1412, was being developed "for the treatment of immunological diseases with a high unmet medical need, such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and certain cancers", the company said.
The company that TeGenero contracted to run its clinical trials, US-based Parexel, expressed itself just as stunned as TeGenero and emphasised the speed with which its staff got medical help for the volunteers. "We worked in cooperation with the [Northwick Park] hospital intensive care doctors and the sponsor to have the volunteers given the best possible care, and to explore all possible treatment options," said Herman Scholtz, head of Parexel International Clinical Pharmacology.
Parexel recruits volunteers on the internet, where a site clearly aimed at students offers free meals, time to study, pool and internet access as well as more than £1,000 per trial, depending on its length.
How it should work
• TGN1412 uses artificial antibodies designed to target a subset of immune system cells called T cells.
• Rheumatoid arthritis is believed to be caused by some T cells attacking the body.
• The antibodies in the drug get into the bloodstream, seek out the immune cells and latch on to them.
• Most antibody treatments work by shutting down biological reactions, but this drug is designed to do the opposite. The antibodies should bind to the rogue immune cells so well that they over-stimulate them, making them burn out and die.
Greenpeace condemns latest attempt to undermine organic and GM-free agriculture
EUbusiness.com, 16 March 2006.
Greenpeace has objected to threats of legal action by the European Commission against EU member states and regions that seek - within the law - to prevent unnecessary and unwanted contamination of conventional and organic agriculture by genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
In an official Communication published 10 March, the Commission attacks some member states and regions that have adopted or drafted legislation that, it claims, is "overly restrictive" for GMO-growers. The Commission says it will take "necessary steps to ensure that Community legislation is respected".
Eric Gall of Greenpeace European Unit said: "The Commission has approved every GMO that the industry has passed its way, and is now trying to bully with threats of legal action against any country or region that wants to defend the right of farmers and consumers not to plant GMOs or eat genetically modified food."
According to the Commission, by the end of 2005, 20 draft national and regional laws against GMO contamination had been notified to Brussels. The Commission reveals that it has objected to half the draft laws to date, denouncing provisions such as:
• the proposal to prohibit or restrict GM crop cultivation in protected or ecologically sensitive regions;
• the requirement that GM crop growers obtain insurance so as to compensate organic and conventional farmers for losses caused by GM contamination;
• bans on the growing of GM crops due to concerns about contamination of GMO-free agriculture, public health risks and damage to the environment.
In the last two years, the European Commission has repeatedly authorised new GMOs against the will of most EU member states, thanks to the EU's technical procedure for decision-making: 'comitology'. At the same time, it has denied the claims of over 170 European regions which have declared their opposition to the cultivation of GM crops on their territory.
Eric Gall continued: "People have a right to GM-free food; farmers have a right to grow GM-free crops; and regions or countries have the right to protect their land, citizens and farmers from potentially dangerous and irreversible GMO contamination. The EU Commission has been using an undemocratic procedure to force GMOs onto a public that rejects them and onto governments that have regularly voted against them. The Commission is getting further from the people day by day."
A conference on coexistence will take place on 4-6 April in Vienna, organised by the European Commission. Farmers, GMO-free regions and NGOs including Greenpeace will join a "March of the GMO-free regions" outside the venue.
Syngenta Brazil Denies Illegal Genetic Seed Tests
Reuters, 16 March 2006. Story by Andrei Khalip.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Syngenta Seeds on Wednesday denied claims by a peasant group occupying its farm in southern Brazil that the biotechnology company's experiments with genetically modified organisms were illegal.
The unit of Swiss Syngenta AG said in a statement it was talking to authorities and taking all legal measures to end the invasion. The act started on Tuesday in Parana state where an international meeting on biodiversity this week is discussing GMO biosecurity and other issues.
"All Syngenta's product development follows rigid security and quality norms, government policies and all the applicable regulations," the company said, citing its licenses from the government commission that authorizes GMO research in Brazil.
La Via Campesina (Peasant Way), an international group allied with Brazil's militant Landless Peasants' Movement, said 1,000 activists invaded Syngenta's Santa Teresa do Oeste farm to "denounce the illegal activity of experimenting with transgenic seeds in the area."
Peasant Way's Web site said an inspection this month by Brazil's environmental agency Ibama found GMO seeds planted closer to the Iguacu National Park than permitted by law.
An Ibama spokesman confirmed that 30 acres (12 hectares) of Syngenta's transgenic soy plantings were about 4 miles (6 km) from the park, while the allowed distance is 6 miles (10 km).
"The area was embargoed, which means they cannot harvest there until further notice. There are fines involved as well," said the spokesman, saying the biosecurity council license did not exempt Syngenta from abiding environmental regulations.
Syngenta did not comment on Ibama's claims, but repeated that it followed all regulations of the National Technical Commission for Biosecurity (CTNBio).
It said the invasion was peaceful, although the activists broke the main gate on Tuesday. It said all employees had left the farm, except for the manager and his assistants.
In 2001, protesters taking part in the World Social Forum in Brazil yanked up more than 5 acres (2 hectares) of genetically modified soybean crops at an experimental farm owned by US biotech giant Monsanto.
Roberto Baggio, a coordinator for the Landless Peasants' Movement, said small farmers and peasants wanted the government to intensify biosecurity checks around the Iguacu park.
"They believe that the only way out is to cut short the experiments definitively and bar Syngenta from occupying the property (near the park)," he said.
Anti-GMO activists blame Syngenta for what they call the largest case of genetic contamination in the world. Syngenta's Bt-10 biotech corn, which was approved for only animal feeds, was accidentally mixed with US grain meant for human consumption between 2001 and 2004.
US authorities subsequently concluded that Bt-10 corn is not a danger to people, animals or plants.
Land invasions are common in Brazil, mainly to demand that the government speed up the distribution of public land for settlement of poor peasants.
Separately in Brazil, the Landless Peasant Movement has been occupying a farm belonging to Suzano pulp and paper company in Sao Paulo state and a few private farms elsewhere.
Last week, activists in southern Rio Grande do Sul state ransacked a tree nursery of Brazilian pulp and paper company Aracruz, destroying part of a research lab. Aracruz estimated losses at $400,000 including 1 million saplings and genetic material that took 15 years to produce.
Another contamination case in organic agriculture in Catalonia
GM-free Catalunia press release, 3 March 2006.
On Sunday 26 February 2006, over 50 people cut down a contaminated organic maize field, and burned nearly 4 tonnes of maize in protest at the plight of organic farmers in Catalonia who are contaminated by the expansion of GM maize fields.
All this happened in Albons, a small village near the coast 40 km from Girona, in Northern Catalonia, where the number of hectares of GM maize is growing year by year. Enric Navarro, the organic farmer, has developed an agroecological park near the village, where people go to learn about our local varieties, medicinal plants, and agroecology in general. Enric also produces certified organic products to sell in the organic market.
This farmer planted certified organic maize seeds two years ago, and when he harvested the crop he requested the local organic certification body CCPAE (Consell Catala de la Produccio Agraria Ecologica), to analyse the yield. The analysis showed his crop was GMO-free.
The next year he planted 3,300m2 of the same seed, but problems began on the 18th of January when CCPAE informed him that his field had been contaminated by GM maize at 12.6%. This appears to be the highest level of GM contamination so far detected in Catalonia. CCPAE was forced to remove the crop's organic status, and suggested it be sold as conventional maize. But Enric refused to do so on principle, because he didn't want to introduce contaminated maize into the food chain.
Alone in a difficult situation, he decided to contact Assemblea Pagesa (a farmers' NGO) and Plataforma Transgenics Fora! (an NGO working to keep Catalonia GM-free) to inform us of his decision to destroy his contaminated maize and make his case public. We were glad to give him support and participate in the organisation of the event.
Before the field was destroyed, some samples were taken in order to make more analysis (the percentage is extremely high) and start a legal procedure against the government. We don't know the source of the contamination, because the area is covered by maize fields, 40% of which are genetically modified, with strong wind exposure. The nearest fields, whose GM status is uncertain, are at 75 and 100m distance. This shows once again that the pending Catalan Coexistence Law, which establishes 50m as a minimum buffer zone between conventional/organic and GM crops, is insufficient.
The farmer estimated a loss of at least € 2,000, which no-one will pay for. He said he blames the Catalan Government - not his farming neighbours - for this situation. Furthermore he is having problems with the other farmers in the village who don't understand why he made all this fuss.
This is just the latest of many contamination cases that have been detected in Spain since 2001. Last summer Plataforma Transgenics Fora! and Assemblea Pagesa collaborated with Greenpeace to investigate possible other GMO contamination incidents in the areas of Lleida (in West Catalonia) and Arago. Of the 10 fields analysed for GM cross-pollination (5 conventional and 5 organic), 6 came out to be contaminated. This study will be presented internationally on the 4th of April in Barcelona and Vienna.
This proves once gain that coexistence is impossible. We will accept no separation distances and no coexistence laws. At the moment the Spanish national Coexistence Law has been blocked in Madrid; the Catalan co-existence Law, pending approval since March 2005, has also been blocked by social mobilisation. We are now starting a local community-based GMO-free campaign in Catalonia, despite the difficulties of already having 17,000 hectares of GMO maize in our fields.
Working towards a GMO-free Catalonia!
No GMOs on our plates or on our fields
Annais Sastre Morato
Plataforma Transgenics Fora! (PTF!)
3rd March 2006, Barcelona
Via Campesina invades irregular transgenic plantation
Reporter - Agencia Brasil, 15 March 2006. By Roberta Lopes.
Brasilia - Members of the world network of rural workers "Via Campesina" invaded this Tuesday (14) an experimental field of "Syngenta", a transnational company of genetically modified seeds (transgenic), in Santa Tereza do Oeste, in the southern state of Parana.
Via Campesina says that the company's experimental field is incorrectly established in a protection area in the outskirts of the Iguacu National Park, which works as a type of protective barrier for the park.
The Superintendent of the National Environment Protection Agency (IBAMA), Marino Goncalves, confirmed that the experimental field is located six kilometers from the park, while the law determines a minimum distance of 10 km.
The Biosafety Law forbids planting genetically modified organisms or soy in these protective areas, as well as in indigenous lands and preservation areas.
IBAMA learned about the illegal planting through the non-governmental organization (NGO) "Terra de Direitos". The NGO denounced 18 properties located within the park's protective area. 13 of them are in prohibited areas and had their plantations embargoed. Consequently, owners will not be able to plant genetically modified organisms there.
In addition, IBAMA will impose a fine on farmers that can amount to US$705.250 (R$1.5 million). Property owners may be sued for biosafety crime.
Mounting concern about NZ stance at biosafety conference
Radio New Zealand, 15 March 2006.
There is growing concern about the stance New Zealand is taking at a global conference on biosafety in Brazil this week.
The Soil and Health Association and the Sustainability Council have criticised New Zealand's opposition in Cartagena Protocol negotiations to the mandatory labelling of anything that may contain living genetically modified organisms.
The protocol seeks to protect biological diversity from the potential risks posed by living GMOs resulting from modern biotechnology.
New Zealand and Brazil were the only objectors at the protocol's last meeting to oppose the mandatory labelling of anything possibly containing living GMOs.
The Soil and Health Association's Steffan Browning says the Government's stance is at odds with the clean and green image New Zealand is so keen to portray overseas.
And he says it is also a clear indication of a ministerial intention to grow the economy through GMO exports.
But Environment Minister, David Benson-Pope, says the Government's opposition to the labelling rules stems from the need to protect New Zealand's trade interests.
Mr Benson-Pope says it is not an indication of a move towards becoming a GMO exporter.
The Cartagena Protocol's third meeting finishes on Friday.
Relatives' fury over calamitous drug trial
The Guardian, March 16, 2006. By Sarah Boseley, health editor.
Investigators began an urgent inquiry yesterday into the clinical trial that has left six healthy volunteers in intensive care, as scientists voiced fears the disaster could prove a major setback to developing cures for life-threatening diseases.
Nothing had been ruled out, said the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), leading the investigation. But although the police were still nominally involved, it was clear that a criminal act, such as deliberate tampering with the experimental medication, was unlikely. Scientists were left contemplating the possibility that the dangerous side effects of this drug in humans had not been, and perhaps could not be, detected in the normal animal trials.
Human error - the possibility that somebody on the trial staff gave the volunteers too high a dose of the experimental drug - is still being looked into, even though Parexel, the US-based contract company running the trial unit at Northwick Park hospital in Harrow, north London, denied it and insisted that everything had gone according to protocol.
The health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, described what happened as "shocking", but said she was confident everything was being done to look after the men and to discover what went wrong.
Last night, two of the men remained in a critical condition at Northwick Park hospital while four others were serious but showing some signs of improvement, according to a hospital spokeswoman.
The girlfriend of one of the men, Myfanwy Marshall, said her 28-year-old boyfriend had swollen beyond recognition. She said his doctors had told her: "He needs a miracle; those were their words, he needs a miracle."
Ann Alexander, a solicitor representing a 29-year-old man who is on a life support machine, said his family had complained of receiving "mixed messages" during their two meetings with the drug firm.
In the first meeting, they were told the drug had been tested on monkeys and dogs, and that one of the dogs had died. In the second, they were told it had been tested on monkeys and rabbits. Ms Alexander said she believed the drugs firm had pledged to give her client's family all the financial support they required, and added it was unclear what legal action might be taken."It has been a devastating tragedy, and these mixed messages cause great concern," she said.
The company said in a statement: "Parexel administered the appropriate dosage to the volunteers based on the protocols designed by the sponsor, TeGenero, and which were approved by the ethics committee and UK regulatory authority." TeGenero's chief scientific officer, Thomas Hanke, said last night that the company had apologised to the men's families, adding that the firm was "devastated" at the "shocking developments".
It is increasingly likely that the drug itself, given at the right dose, was to blame - an explanation that could have very serious consequences for research into the biological drugs called monoclonal antibodies which are the bright hope for better treatments in the future.
The trial drug is not a chemical but a biological product, a genetically engineered "humanised" protein. Unlike the old chemical entities, these monoclonal antibodies are designed to be accepted by the human body, which experts say makes it difficult to work out by animal testing what dose would be toxic to humans.
The volunteers took the drug on Monday - the first time that humans had been exposed to it. Within hours they were critically ill. Yet the MHRA and the regulatory authorities in Germany, where the biotech company TeGenero is based, had both examined the data from the animal tests and allowed the human trial to proceed.
When drugs are first tested on humans, doctors do not expect any response at all. But the six men who had taken the drug suffered a massive inflammatory reaction. Scientists are concerned that the incident may deter people from volunteering to take part in clinical trials.
Richard Gray, director of the University of Birmingham clinical trials unit, said: "It must have been a huge surprise to the people running the trial that something like this should happen. It is very, very rare indeed for something as catastrophic as this to happen."
15 March 2006
Defra is sowing the seeds of poor farmers' destruction
The Guardian, 15 March 2006. By Michael Meacher.
The claim by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) that it has not altered its policy on genetically modified terminator technology - used to sterilise farm-saved seeds, thereby protecting corporate seed sales - does not stand up to serious scrutiny.
The Defra policy, published on February 21 in advance of the meeting later this month of the eighth conference of the parties to the UN convention on biodiversity (CBD), calls for a case-by-case assessment of terminator crops. It differs significantly from what I approved in 2000.
I could see the need for a global agreement on how to prevent the release of terminator. The parties to the CBD agreed with me and decided that terminator technology, a varietal-genetic use restriction technology (v-GURT), posed a greater threat than any other type of GM seeds because it would undermine farmers' seed saving - as practised by 1.4 billion people worldwide - and would threaten food security and agricultural biodiversity. Using this technology would force more farmers to buy new seed each season from corporations whose control over seeds is already substantial - just 10 corporations control more than 50% of global seed sales.
The result was the global de facto moratorium agreed by the CBD.
This decision, in 2000, stated that no terminator licences should be approved until the potential socio-economic impact of the technology on farming communities around the world had been assessed. To date, no such assessments have been published.
So what is the basis of the change in UK policy? Could it be Defra has swallowed the corporate hype that terminator will prevent GM genes contaminating neighbouring crops or wild plants. This is nonsense because terminator cannot provide 100% sterility, nor prevent normal cross-contamination through pollen drift. In any case, that is not its purpose; it is to make the seeds agronomically unviable in order to ensure seed sales.
Defra's published policy has retroactively reinterpreted the CBD decision in favour of a national case-by-case approach, which is EU policy for any GMO approval. Terminator crops would thus be subject only to a scientific risk assessment, as required by EU directive 2001/18. Socio-economic factors, such as the impact on poor farmers' livelihoods, would be ignored. Without internationally accepted assessments of impacts, and globally-binding rules, poor southern countries would struggle to withstand pressure from biotechnology companies to license terminator seeds. Is this Defra's ulterior motive?
The policy as now stated by Defra undermines the international agreement signed in 2000, by opening up the possibility of terminator creeping on to the market by stealth. Ministers and officials must review their document, making it clear that the UK is not in favour of terminator at all.
There can be no doubt that public opinion in Britain remains overwhelmingly against GM, and would be even more strongly against allowing use of the terminator technology if it was understood that this would endanger food security across all developing countries and would worsen world poverty.
Defra has a duty to do whatever is necessary at the CBD meeting to ensure this potentially devastating technology never sees the light of day.
Michael Meacher MP is a former environment minister.
Note: as of the morning of 15 March, 197 British Members of Parliament have signed the Early Day Motion expressing concern over Terminator Technology.
Ministers suggesting more change for GM crop rules
The Meath Chronicle, 15 March 2006.
EU ENVIRONMENT ministers have urged a shake-up of risk assessment and decision-making procedures used to approve new genetically-modified crops.
The development marks the latest stage in the EU's struggle to achieve a regulatory regime for GM crops that enjoys backing from all 25 member states.
In a public debate held during their council meeting in Brussels recently, ministers called almost unanimously for the European food safety authority (EFSA) to improve transparency in its scientific assessments of GM crops. Some appealed for extra assessment steps.
Several ministers urged the scrapping of comitology procedures that have allowed the European commission to end the EU's de facto moratorium on new GM crops despite opposition from many governments. In most cases the commission's approval of new crops has been based on positive scientific opinions from EFSA.
The debate was tabled by Austria, which holds the EU presidency but is also vehemently opposed to GMOs. Vienna has defied the commission and EFSA by imposing a national ban on several EU-approved crops, citing scientific uncertainty.
"There are considerable shortcomings in our ability to assess GMOs," Spanish minister Cristina Narbona Ruiz said in opening the debate. Most of her colleagues followed in a similar vein.
UK minister Elliot Morley offered dissent. Assessment procedures were basically sound, he argued, though EFSA did need to be "more direct and open" and make its opinions "more clearly presented and more robustly argued".
Some ministers went further, urging better long-term monitoring of the effects of new crops and more assessment of the indirect effects of GM products. Belgium refloated the idea of an EU-wide liability and insurance regime for damage done by GM crops.
Several member states wanted more independent verification of scientific studies carried out by industry and a clear framework for resolving differences of opinion between EFSA and member state assessment bodies.
Many ministers called for greater use of the precautionary principle in GM decisions, and for coexistence rules that would unambiguously allow GM-free zones.
Austria is to hold conferences on both issues next month and ministers will revisit the issue at their next meeting in June.
Potentially equally significant was the level of opposition from several ministers to the use of EU comitology rules to approve GM applications. The procedures, which are also used in many other areas of EU policy, are currently under review by the EU's general affairs council.
"We should think hard about changing the rules," Italian minister Altero Matteoli said. "There hasn't been a simple majority of member states in favour [of certain applications], let alone a qualified majority, but even so the commission decides to give an approval."
Responding to the debate, EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas said EFSA was "still finding its feet" and hinted support for changes to risk assessment procedures.
"Certain changes may be beneficial" to make the system "as comprehensive and transparent as possible," he said. Increasing confidence in the scientific process first might make the comitology procedure less contentious, he said.
Meanwhile, there will be a talk on GM at the Greville Arms Hotel in Mullingar on Monday, 20th March at 8pm. After the talk, an award-winning film entitled ëThe Future of Food' will be screened. The night is free and all are welcome.
GMO Panel's future in doubt after barrage of criticism
http://www.gmfreecymru.org/open_letters/Open_letter27Feb2006.htm
GM Free Cymru Press Release, 15 March 2006.
The European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) has come under sustained and unprecedented attack from a variety of different quarters during recent months, largely because of the actions of its widely-despised GMO Panel. The future of that expert panel must now be in doubt, even if there are wholesale changes in its personnel and in its working methods.
NGOs and consumer groups all over Europe have long been dissatisfied with the work of the GMO Panel, accusing it of obsessive secrecy, a strong bias towards the GM industry, and a reluctance to take seriously the "precautionary" instincts of European consumers and many European governments. Since its formation, it has always given "positive opinions" of the GM varieties in the applications process, and it has always dismissed out of hand the attempts of various Governments (for example Italy, Austria, Hungary and Greece) to invoke the "safeguard clause" and to ban various GM crops from their territories. It has been seen -- rightly or wrongly -- as working hand in glove with the Commission to force through GM approvals for political reasons, against the wishes of European consumers.
In 2004 FoE Europe produced a damning report called "Throwing Caution to the Wind" on the workings of EFSA (1), and accused the Agency of repeated bias in favor of the biotech industry. It also claimed that EFSA's GMO panel had ignored views of scientists working for EU governments and had issued a string of hasty and ill-considered positive assessments on GMO safety. In May of last year the Italian Government was openly critical of the workings of EFSA (2), and further criticism came from voluntary groups who discovered that the EC case being presented to the WTO during the "GM moratorium" dispute with the US highlighted many concerns and uncertainties about GM crops which were directly contradicted by statements coming from EFSA (3). That caused considerable behind-the-scenes anger within the EU.
Also in 2005, EFSA attracted widespread condemnation for the manner in which it connived with Monsanto to keep the results of its MON863 "secret" 90-day rat feeding study away from public scrutiny or peer review, and then issued a positive opinion of the variety in the face of serious doubts about its safety being raised within the scientific community (4). With its reputation already dangerously damaged, EFSA arranged a "Stakeholder Platform" as part of a charm offensive, but found itself confronted by ten challenges from a determined and united front of NGOs and consumer groups (5). At the same time, Greenpeace attacked EFSA with a new report (6) which claimed that in its assessment of Bt11 maize it had failed to fulfill its legal responsibilities and had in effect been negligent.
With criticism directed at EFSA from an increasingly disenchanted European Parliament and from various European governments, pressure increased with the accession of the Austrians to the presidency of the EU. The Austrians immediately flagged up their intention to subject the GM approvals process to close scrutiny, and Agriculture and Environment Minister Josef Proell openly attacked EFSA in print in February (7). There were signs that the Commission's DG-SANCO was also becoming critical of the quality of some of EFSA's scientific opinions, and in spite of assurances on the record of its full confidence in the "excellent science" conducted by the GMO Panel, it instituted a full independent evaluation of the work of EFSA which contained many damning indictments of its working methods (8).
In another attempt to mount a charm offensive, EFSA met with eight representatives of NGOs in Parma on 22nd February, ostensibly to talk over "GM science." But at the meeting the EFSA Acting Chairman Herman Koeter and his GMO Panel members were left in no doubt that the NGOs had little confidence in their impartiality or in their ability to conduct objective science, and they were bombarded with many very specific criticisms (9). They made no commitments either to revisit unsound "GM opinions" or to alter their working methods, and things finally came to a head with the Environment Council Meeting on 9th March at which the NGO concerns were echoed over and again by European Ministers (10). Press reports referred to the "intense criticism" directed at EFSA by one speaker after another, and also reported that Commissioner Stavros Dimas (previously a staunch supporter of the Agency) now accepted that fundamental changes would have to be made to the GMO Panel's working methods.
Ironically, one of the very few voices heard in support of EFSA at the Environment Council meeting was that of the UK Environment Minister Eliott Morley, who argued that GM assessment procedures were basically sound. This was no great surprise, since the UK (with Ireland and Holland) has always voted for GM approvals and has consistently dismissed public concerns about GM. The Westminster government has also shown itself to be incapable of recognizing the abundant evidence of harm appearing in the GM scientific literature (11).
Commenting on the EU's dramatic loss of confidence in EFSA, GM Free Cymru spokesman Dr Brian John said: "I cannot see how the GMO Panel can continue to operate under present circumstances. It is now so heavily compromised, and so heavily criticised for its industry bias and connivance in fraudulent science, that it cannot possibly regain the confidence of either the EU or European consumers. We believe that all of the discredited GMO Panel members and its Acting Executive Director must now resign. A new Panel must be put in its place with a much more balanced representation, and its terms of reference must be rewritten. And while this goes on, the GMO approvals process must be frozen; it would be grossly irresponsible in the present circumstances for either EFSA or the Commission to do any further work regarding GM crops or foods."
ENDS
Contact:
Dr Brian John
GM Free Cymru
Tel 01239-820470
NOTES
(1) In November 2004 Friends of the Earth published "Throwing caution to the wind, a detailed critique of the EFSA and its work on GM foods". The report and recommendations can be downloaded here: http://www.foeeurope.org/GMOs/publications/EFSAreport.pdf
(2) Italy calls for independent EU research on GMOs
REUTERS, Mon May 30, 2005
By Jeremy Smith http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&storyID=8643298
(3) See this: http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4986
(4) http://www.gmfreecymru.org/news/Press_Notice22February2006.htm
(5) Re the Stakeholder Platform (6th October 2005) and the "Ten Demands" see:
http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5804
The demands were supported by the European Public Health Alliance, Eurocoop, the European Environmental Bureau, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. The demands can be downloaded from here: http://www.foeeurope.org/publications/2005/EFSA_stakeholders_challenge.pdf
(6) In October 2005 Greenpeace published a new scientific report on the wholly inadequate risk assessment by the GMO panel of a GM crop made by Swiss-based Syngenta, called Bt11. It showed that that no serious investigation was conducted on the toxicity of this GM maize or its impact on the environment, such as detrimental effects on useful or protected insect species. Furthermore, already published scientific results on possible negative environmental consequences of this GM maize were widely ignored by EFSA. The report can be downloaded at: http://eu.greenpeace.org/downloads/gmo/Bt11reportOct05.pdf
(7) http://www.eupolitix.com/EN/News/200602/28fdfc3c-58b6-46e5-9307-bfcdfe4b21a0.htm
(8) http://www.efsa.eu.int/mboard/mb_meetings/1276_en.html
PUBLIC CONSULTATION ON THE INDEPENDENT EFSA EVALUATION REPORT
There is a long section (Annex 5, pp 36-45) in the Annexes document, looking at the work of the GMO Panel. It is not exactly a ringing endorsement of its working practices.
(9) For example, GM Free Cymru has accused the GMO Panel of involvement in scientific fraud, and it has taken its concerns to the President of the EC and to MEPs. See this: Letter to Herman Koeter, Chairman of GMO Panel, 27th February 2006
http://www.gmfreecymru.org/open_letters/Open_letter27Feb2006.htm
(10) http://www.eupolitix.com/EN/News/200603/9d01e11f-073d-45f1-bcd0-c20117c99b96.htm
EUÝdebates changes to GM approval rules
EFSA came under intense criticism from Environment Council ministers on 9th March 2006:
http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6324
(11) Ref to GM Free Cymru items -- evidence of harm
http://www.mediastatements.wa.gov.au/media/media.nsf/news/45d1988205b503a4482570c7000e0793?opendocument
http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/jafcau/2005/53/i23/abs/jf050594v.html
http://www.gmfreecymru.org/news/Press_Notice21February2006.htm
14 March 2006
Greenpeace says illegal GMO rice in Heinz baby food
Reuters, 14 March 2006.
HONG KONG, March 14 (Reuters) - Environmental activist Greenpeace said on Tuesday illegal Chinese GMO rice had been found in baby food made in China by U.S. food giant Heinz Co.
In statements released in Beijing and Hong Kong, Greenpeace urged Heinz to recall the baby cereal containing insect-resistant genetically modified rice, which is still under field study in China for its food and environmental safety.
"We were completely shocked," said Steven Ma from Greenpeace in China. "Babies should be the last if we ever wanted to test unapproved GMO crops on human."
No official at Heinz in China or Hong Kong was immediately available to comment.
The rice, known as Bt rice, contains a bacterial gene toxic to a particular group of pests.
Angus Lam from Greenpeace in China told Reuters it was the same variety of Bt rice found last year in markets in the southern city of Guangzhou and Wuan in the central province of Hubei.
Heinz-UFE Ltd., a joint venture between Heinz and a Chinese company, manufactures the baby food in Guangzhou. It is sold in China and in Hong Kong.
In a letter to Greenpeace, Donald Gadsden, president of Heinz, said the company was now conducting a thorough inspection.
"The safety of production is always the most important for Heinz worldwide," he wrote. In April last year, Greenpeace said it had found that the unapproved transgenic rice was illegally grown on a large scale in Hubei, one of China's top rice growing provinces, and that the rice was also on sale in the two major cities.
The announcement prompted worries in China and abroad, which has led Beijing -- one of the world's major rice exporters --- to put a brake on its plan for the world's first large-scale production of the transgenic grain for direct human consumption.
While welcoming controls on GMO rice introduced by the Hubei government since, Greenpeace called for further tightening in GMO rice management. It said GMO rice seeds were still leaking to farmers in the suburban area of Wuhan city.
Greenpeace finds Heinz Baby Rice Cereal contaminated by illegal GE rice
Xinha News, 14 March 2006.
Greenpeace announced in Beijing today that non-approved genetically-engineered (GE) rice has been detected in Heinz's Baby Rice Cereal and the environmental group called for an immediate recall of all the contaminated products.
It also asked on the government to control the spread of GE rice in the food chain.
The test results were provided by GeneScan, a Germany-based independent laboratory, which tested 19 food samples that Greenpeace had collected in the supermarkets in Beijing.
Heinz Baby Rice Cereal with a best before date of March 12, 2007 is the only product where GE ingredients, namely Bt rice, were detected.
The GE rice variety is developed to be resistant to pest but has not been approved by the government.
"We were completely shocked by the result," said Steven Ma, GE campaigner for Greenpeace China.
"It is the first time we found illegal GE rice in baby food, which should have been subject to the
most rigorous surveillance."
In 2000 Mexican scientists found that the Bt protein (Cry1Ac) which comes from GE rice has been
found to induce allergic responses in mice, Ma said.
On March 1, Greenpeace notified Heinz China of its finding, asking for an immediate recall of the product and for the company to change its suppliers.
Donald Gadsden, CEO of Heinz China, replied on March 8 that "Heinz will take any alerts seriously
and we are now conducting a thorough inspection."
As of March 14, Heinz had not responded with further information about its inspection.
Commission gives go-ahead for GM maize
The Irish Times, 14 March 2006.
Despite advances in the application of genetically modified organisms the issue remains a divisive one within Europe, writes Judith Crosbie in Brussels
This month the European Commission approved a genetically modified maize for use in the EU.
It was the ninth authorisation for a genetically modified organism (GMO) to be passed by the EU in two years since a moratorium was lifted on GMOs entering the union.
Despite the lifting of the moratorium, Europe remains a highly restrictive place for GMOs. Legislation requires strict approval methods, and rules on labelling and traceability often result in reluctance among retailers and food processors to deal in the organisms.
Now the way the organisms are approved is under fire from some EU states and environmental activists, who fear the Commission is ignoring the health risks to prevent a trade war with GMO producers, particularly the US.
The decision to approve the latest type of maize was taken by the Commission after members states failed to reach agreement on it last December. Some EU countries consistently vote against GMOs, like Austria, Greece or Luxembourg. Some tend to vote for them or abstain from voting, like Ireland, the Netherlands or Britain.
But because national votes are weighted according to the size of a member state, half the EU countries can vote against a product without being able to block it, in a voting process known as Qualified Majority Voting. When this happens the ultimate decision then passes on to the Commission. Various issues apart from GMOs are dealt with in this way if approval is not reached.
Opponents of GMOs feel this is not the best way to handle this sensitive topic. They point to the fact that the Commission is advised by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) which has never given a negative opinion on a GMO and which, they say, relies on information supplied to it by the companies who make the organism. That information, together with tests carried out on animals to assess the potential health risks, is generally not made public to protect commercial sensitivity, though each member state is given a copy of the report.
"Decisions are being taken behind closed doors. We are discussing food which we eat, there shouldn't be any doubt at all," says Hiltrud Breyer, a German Green MEP.
Proponents of GMOs say the authority is made up of independent scientists who are just looking at the facts.
"It is absolutely important that this issue of approval is not politicised . . . the EFSA must stick to science when making their decisions," says Simon Barber of EuropaBio, a Brussels-based group which represents European bio-industries.
A public debate among EU environmental ministers last Thursday showed that there were concerns about the GMO approval mechanism.
"It doesn't do much for democratic legitimacy if the European Commission approves specific GMOs even in the face of objections from a majority of member states," said Danish Environment Minister Connie Hedegaard.
"This procedure does not seem to be able to make the wishes of a majority of member states possible. There is a big majority against GMOs in public opinion," added Stavros Kaloyannis, Greece's state environment secretary.
Ireland's Minister for the Environment Dick Roche did not oppose the mechanism saying it was the ministers themselves who approved the system.
The authority also came in for criticism: "We need credibility, trust from the public for our authorisation procedure," said Humberto Rosa, state environment secretary for Portugal.
Mr Roche said while concerns were raised by member states, "no one questions the expertise of the EFSRA."
The matter will be raised again at the ministers' next meeting in May, but in the meantime fears have been raised that the EU will come under further pressure to approve GMOs. The US and other countries which grow genetically modified crops are putting pressure on the EU to accept their produce.
Their case has been buoyed up by a leaked judgment from the World Trade Organisation last month said that the 1998-2004 GMO ban by the EU was illegal.
At the back of the debate lies the issue of public health and whether the organisms pose a risk. "There's not a single long-term study which proves there are no risks," says Breyer.
Greenpeace addressed environment ministers last week in Brussels citing the halting of studies in Australia on peas producing an insecticide protein after allergic reactions and lung inflammation were noticed in mice fed the product.
On the other side, industry proponents say millions of people around the world have been eating GM products for years with no adverse reaction.
"Last year there were 80 million hectares of GM crops grown and not one reported incident of health side effects anywhere to animals or human," says Barber.
Even in the area of medical research the debate is not clear-cut. Research is being co-ordinated by Trinity College Dublin into ways of tackling obesity by taking genes from marine algae to produce a seed oil which would help reduce the level of saturated fat in the blood.
Other research by Lipgene includes changing the bacterial productions in cows' stomachs to alter the fat types produced in dairy products.
Prof Michael Gibney who works on the project believes people will change their minds and see the benefits of GM technology: "When trains came out first, people were afraid to travel in the opposite direction to the earth." But others disagree. "It is completely unnecessary. We should not be fooled by pie-in-the-sky ideas," says Eric Gall of Greenpeace's European unit. "We do not need GMOs or the reality of what they deliver."
Austria criticises EFSA on GMO bias
EurActiv.com, 14 March 2006
In Short:
Some of the EU-25 environment ministers have voiced concern over the EU food safety agency's GMO authorisation procedure saying not enough independent and national studies are taken into account.
Brief News:
The EU's Environment Council discussed, on 9 March 2006, the perspectives for the future use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The discussion focused in particular on risk management and authorisation procedures for GM crops, member states agreeing on greater transparency for these procedures and on the need to provide better information to the consumers.
The Austrian Presidency, backed by other member states, wants to re-open the current safety assessments done by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which, according to some member states, has approved GM products without proper research. According to EuropaBio, the member states are "undermining an institution which they themselves established, risking undermining public confidence in a science- based safety assessment and in science itself in their bid to deny access to this technology across all of Europe".
As to the co-existence of GM crops and conventional and organic farming, the Commission published a report on the implementation of national measures on 10 March 2006 http://eu.greenpeace.org/downloads/gmo/CoexCommunication0603.pdf. The report concludes that there is no justification at this time for EU-wide legislation on the issue, but recommends legal action against national and regional governments which ban GM crops or apply overly-restrictive laws limiting the use of GMO products accepted by the EU. Environmental groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have strongly criticised the report.
The Commission's Joint Research Centre recently published a report on the issue of co-existence to provide a science-based reference to support any future design and implementation of co-existence measures within the EU. Two conferences on co-existence between organic, traditional and genetically modified cultures and on the applicability of the precautionary principle in this field will take place in April 2006. Following the conferences and a consultative process with stakeholders, the Commission will decide if any further action needs to be taken at EU level.
New report will be launched at UN Biodiversity Summit:
Human and environmental rights violations related to GM soy expansion in Paraguay
Curitiba, Brazil, 13-21 March 2006
Grupo de Reflexion Rural Press Release, 14 March 2006.
Grupo de Reflexion Rural (Argentina) will present a new report providing detailed accounts of the current violent campaign against rural and indigenous communities in Paraguay, which is strongly related to the expansion of GM soy production. Witnesses of the cases exposed in the report will be present at the coming United Nations conferences on Biosafety (MOP3) and Biodiversity (COP8).
They will denounce the agroexport model that not only destroys (agro)biodiversity, but also leads to violent land evictions and intoxications of the rural population through agrochemical fumigations.
The new report called ®Paraguay Sojero® (Soy producer Paraguay), compiled by Grupo de Reflexion Rural, exposes the widespread human rights violations, including biodiversity destruction, related to soy expansion in Paraguay. Javiera Rulli, one of the authors, says: "Ongoing human rights violations in Paraguay go hand in hand with the advancement of soy monocultures. Agribusiness corporations knowingly take advantage of the fact that in Paraguay corruption florishes, while environmental regulations or human rights are not respected®.
The report will be launched at the Alternative Forum to the MOP3-COP8 conferences, on Monday 20 March, from 9-13.30 hrs. The launch is part of the Morning Panel titled: "The real agenda of Monsanto and its consequences in Latin America - Testimonies of the Victims of Agribusiness from Paraguay, Argentina and Mexico", organised by the Agribusiness Observatory Network for a Human Agriculture.
GRUPO de REFLEXION RURAL (Argentina), GRAIN and ACCION ECOLOGICA (Ecuador), part of this network, have invited a delegation of ®Victims of Agribusiness® to a range of activities during MOP3-COP8. From Paraguay, Petrona Villasboa, member of CONAMURI (Coordination of Rural and Indigenous Women), will present her fight for justice after her son was killed by agrochemicals fumigations of GM soy fields. Jorge Galeano, leader of the Movimiento Agrario y Popular, will account of the repression of peasant organisations and violent land evictions taking place in Paraguay, orchestrated by soy producers. Both their cases are described in the report.
At the same time, two other publications dealing with GM soy expansion, in Paraguay and Brazil, will be presented.
Javiera Rulli, one of the authors of the report, as well as Petrona Villasboa and Jorge Galeano, will be available for interviews after the Morning Panel, and further throughout the period March 13-21. Photos, articles and press releases and the report "Paraguay Sojero" are available from the website of Grupo de ReflexiÛn Rural: www.grr.org.ar
Contact:
Javiera Rulli: contacto@grr.org.ar, javierarulli@yahoo.com
Or Nina Holland: buen-aventura@gmx.net
Background:
The exansion of soy monocultures is causing a wave of environmental and social destruction throughout the MERCOSUR. The Biodiversity Convention does not succeed to counteract the free trade policies headed by the WTO, that are at the basis of the expansion of industrial agriculture. Equally, the Convention fails to provide any protection for local and indigenous communities, that according to the Convention are main actors in saving biodiversity.
The situation in Paraguay presents the most pronounced case of this violence against the rural and indigenous population. Soy monocultures cover 2 million hectares, causing a great loss of (agro)biodiversity and food security. Communities are frequently threatened by violent evictions, carried out with help of corrupt police forces and paramilitaries. Intensive fumigations with agrochemicals intoxicate people, animals, destroy harvests, contaminate water sources and ruin rural livelihoods. Companies like Cargill and Monsanto are amongst those most benefiting from the expansion of soy production.
Jorge Galeano witnessed the infamous eviction of June 24 2005 in the community of Tekojoja, where a group of soy producers and hired policemen expelled 270 people from their lands, burnt 54 houses and adjacent fields, arrested 130 people and killed two.
In 2003, Petrona Villasboa and her entire family were poisoned after fumigations with glyphosate by a GM soy producer next to their farm. Her 11 years old son Silvino Talavera died. Petrona and CONAMURI is fighting a legal battle for justice against the two soy producers envolved.
These cases are just examples of the consequences of soy expansion, suffered by small producers and indigenous communities in the countryside of MERCOSUR countries.
13 March 2006
Greens Slam EU Commission's Views on GMO Crop Law
Reuters, March 13, 2006. By Jeremy Smith.
BRUSSELS - Pro-biotech bullying by the European Commission - the EU executive - will lead to irreversible contamination from genetically modified organisms (GMO's), green groups warned on Friday.
In a report published by its agriculture department, the Commission says there is no immediate need for EU-wide rules to separate traditional, organic and GMO crops, since countries need much more time to develop their own national crop laws.
Its conclusion is a turnaround from repeated Commission comments over the last year that some kind of legal framework could be envisaged in 2006 setting parameters for governments to set up crop-growing laws to minimise cross-contamination.
Green groups said it showed an approach that could cause the irreversible contamination of EU food, seeds and environment.
"The EU Commission approach is clearly a failure," said Helen Holder at Friends of the Earth Europe, attacking the EU executive for a "wait-and-contaminate" approach on GMO crops.
"It must stop dodging its responsibility and introduce an EU law that prevents contamination of our food, farming and environment," she said in a statement.
Only a handful of EU countries have specific crop separation laws in place - four, as of the end of 2005 - based on a set of broad non-binding guidelines issued by the Commission in July 2003, although many others are now debating draft laws.
Some of the laws favoured non-GMO farmers over those who wanted to experiment with biotech crops. Most of them placed the burden of separating crops on the GMO farmer, the report said.
And some countries appeared keen to restrict GMO farming as much as possible, it said. In these cases, the Commission has usually sent a draft law back to the country concerned, with a veiled threat of legal action if changes are not implemented.
BIOTECH BULLYING?
By the end of 2005, 20 draft crop laws had been notified to Brussels. Half of these drew objections from the Commission, which attacked some of them for being overly restrictive and violating EU laws on the internal market and movement of goods.
Green groups said EU countries were entitled to restrict GMO crop growing on their territory if they wanted to, especially given the strong opposition to GMO foods among EU consumers.
"The Commission ... is now trying to bully with threats of legal action against any country or region that wants to defend the right of farmers and consumers not to plant GMO's or eat genetically modified food," said Eric Gall of Greenpeace. The European biotech industry takes a very different view, saying GMO crops can easily exist alongside non-GMO varieties.
"EuropaBio considers that existing national laws on civil liability already provide the necessary mechanisms to determine fault and assess liability and the need for compensation," said European biotech industry lobby group EuropaBio.
"Additional Community (EU) or member state liability legislation or funds that single out GMO's are not necessary, and would thus be disproportionate and discriminatory," it said.
11 March 2006
Stop GM foods
Irish Examiner, 11 March 2006. By Darina Allen.
THE CONTROVERSY over Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) was re-ignited recently in Ireland.
BASF, the world's largest chemical and biotechnology company, have submitted an application to the EPA for permission to conduct open-air experimental field trials of genetically modified potatoes in Co Meath.
BASF says the potatoes may provide greater resistance to late potato blight.
The memory of the Great Famine of the 1840s still resonates in the nation's consciousness and potato blight is an emotive issue, so it is no surprise that the biotech industry chose a potentially blight-resistant potato as a strategic spearhead to introduce GMO crops into Ireland.
Most GMO crops are intended to be immune to weedkillers or to produce their own pesticides. But many do not perform as expected, end up requiring more chemicals and produce 'superweeds'. Farmers in the USA and Canada have filed lawsuits against GM companies in relation to GM crop failures.
Unless the EPA denies permission, the BASF experiment will commence this April on a farm at Arodstown, Summerhill, Co Meath for the next five years.
But the GMO potatoes would have to carry a GM label, and there is no market for GM foods in Europe. The 30 largest food brands and 30 largest retailers have a GM-free policy. Moreover, the majority of EU governments, and many local authorities prohibit the cultivation of GM crops.
The most extraordinary thing about GMO crops is that they are patented. Under the WTO's trade-related intellectual property rights agreement, farmers whose crops have been contaminated - often by wind-borne pollen or seed dispersal from a neighbour's farm - no longer own their crops. Monsanto is currently pursuing 9,000 farmers for patent infringement in the USA and Canada.
Most settle out of court, but Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser, who I met last year at Slow Food's wonderful Terra Madre conference in Turin, fought his case all the way to the Supreme Court in Canada. Monsanto demanded patent royalties for every acre of his contaminated crops, plus a million dollars in court costs. The court admitted that Schmeiser had no intention of stealing the patented genes, but ruled that his crops now belong to Monsanto.
In this context, why has the Irish Government never voted against GM food and crops in a dozen votes in the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers? Why do the Irish Farmers Association, Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association and Macra na Feirme, appear to have no policy on GM?
The Irish Cattle and Sheepfarmers Association is one of 80 farm and food organisations that are opposed to the proposed trials on the basis they would destroy this country's economically valuable clean green marketing image as Ireland - The Food Island.
Thousands of contamination incidents around the world show that GMO crops cannot possibly 'co-exist' with conventional and organic farming. We've come to a fork in the road, and the time has come to choose what kind of farming future is best for Ireland.
More blight-resistant potatoes are a desirable trait. But natural blight-resistant varieties are already available to Irish farmers, and non-GMO breeding techniques provide the only safe way to increase resistance.
With so many independent scientists invoking the precautionary principle, and the insurance industry's refusal to provide cover for GMO crops, the EPA should not allow this experiment to go ahead.
Michael Antoniou, clinical geneticist and senior lecturer in pathology at Guys Teaching Hospital in London, says: "Once released into the environment, unlike a BSE epidemic or chemical spill, genetic mistakes cannot be contained, recalled or cleaned up, but will be passed on to all future generations."
Once the genie is out of the bottle there is no putting it back in again.
Most Irish meat, poultry and dairy produce already comes from animals whose diet includes GM ingredients, but is not labelled as such because of a loophole in EU law.
Whatever one's opinion on GMOs, the reality is that if we get an allergy or an inflammation or an impaired immune system, our doctors have no way of knowing if such genetically modified food was the cause, because food containing GMO's was released onto our shelves completely unlabelled.
We are all guinea pigs in this corporate experiment. This is the single most important food and health threat in our lifetime.
10 March 2006
European Commission attempts to force GM contamination blueprint
Co-existence
5. Ministers urge more change for GM crop rules Environment Daily 2055, 09/03/06
on reluctant member states
GM Freeze press release, 10 March 2006.
Today's EC Communication [1] on the "coexistence" of GM and non-GM crops indicates that the Commission is prepared to plough-on with its deeply unpopular proposals to force EU Member States to adopt measures that would make GM contamination of crops routine across the whole of the EU.
The EC has rejected half the "coexistence" proposals submitted by EU Member States to date because they do not fully comply with the Commissions Recommendation of 2003 [2] which set a 0.9% GM contamination threshold (identical to the labelling threshold) for growing crops including organic ones and stated that "measures should not go beyond what is necessary in order to ensure that adventitious traces of GMOs stay below the labelling threshold laid down in Regulation (EC) No 1829/2003 and Directive 2001/18/EC in order to avoid any unnecessary burden for the operators concerned".
To date, the UK has not put forward any "coexistence" proposals but recent correspondence from Margaret Beckett indicates that they will largely follow the EC recommendations to the letter. [3]
The EC's recommendations to set a crop threshold based on the same level of contamination agreed for labelling has been described by a leading QC as "legally irrelevant". The legal opinion [4] describes the Recommendations as "fundamentally flawed" and to have "no basis in Community legislation and are wrong in law". The opinion makes it clear that coexistence schemes must aim to protect the environment and human health as well as dealing with economic aspects of contamination of non GM crops.
The EC approach allows member states to develop their own scheme to introduce "appropriate measures to avoid the unintended presence of GMOs in other products". However, some Member States have indicated that the 0.9% is unacceptable and want much lower thresholds and to avoid GM contamination by setting tough conditions for growing GM crops including liability.
At yesterday's Council of Ministers meeting the EC's approach and role in approving GM applications came under attack by several Member States including the use of their power to force through approvals despite the lack of a qualified majority in the Council for any GMO application in the last two years [5].
The demand for GMO free status is also growing fast with 172 regions and 4500 municipalities and local councils calling for the right to prevent GMO cultivation in their area [6].
Commenting Pete Riley of GM Freeze said
"Today's EC communication shows that we are dealing with closed minds in Brussels. Faced with a legal opinion that condemns its approach, massive political support for zero contamination and the right to set up GM-free areas, the Commission just ploughs on with its blueprint for contamination which benefits biotech companies ahead of the European citizens. To make matters worse it appears to be trying to force through an EU wide set of rules without giving the European Parliament the chance to vote on it.
The Commission's approach is designed to allow GM crops to be grown not to protect the rights of people to grow and buy food free from contamination.
In most of Europe "coexistence" is an impossible concept and the real choice lies between GM contamination or not growing GM crops. Politicians across Europe need to join with consumers and farmers to make sure the right to GM-free food and crops is not taken away by the GM dogma which permeates Brussels".
ENDS
Calls Pete Riley 07903 341 065.
NOTES
1. Communication from the European Commission to the Council and the European Parliament: Report on the implementation of national measures on the coexistence of genetically modified crops with conventional and organic farming [SEC (2006) 313].
2. 2003/556/EC dated 23 July 2003, Commission Recommendation on guidelines for the development of national strategies and best practices to ensure the coexistence of genetically modified crops with conventional and organic farming.
3. Letter dated 14th February 2006 to GM Freeze, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, National Federation of Women's Institutes, GeneWatch UK and the Soil Association. Available on request.
4. Summary of Advice of Paul Lasok in relation to Coexistence, Traceability and Labelling
March 2005 for Friends of the Earth (EWNI), The Soil Association, Greenpeace, Which?, GeneWatch UK and GM Freeze:
European legislation gives Member States the power to introduce co-existence measures1. The power is very broadly described, allowing member states to take 'appropriate measures to avoid the unintended presence of GMOs in other products".
In July 2003 the European Commission issued a 'Recommendation'2 which gave the Commission's views on how member states should use that power. Although not having force of law the Recommendation is important because it sets out the Commission's thinking and because it is being relied on by Member States throughout Europe, including the UK, in drawing up their co-existence strategies. The Recommendation tried significantly to narrow the power given to Member States. In particular, the Commission stated that:
1. Member States are not allowed to take into account environmental and human health matters in preparing their co-existence measures. The only issues allowed to be dealt with in coexistence measures are 'economic issues'. This is because the Commission believes that environmental and health matters are already fully addressed during the consent process for each crop;
2. Member States are not allowed to make their co-existence measures stricter than is necessary to keep contamination below 0.9%. This is because 0.9% is the level of contamination at which products must be labelled as containing GMOs.
Paul Lasok QC looked at the arguments and concluded that:
The Recommendation is 'fundamentally flawed' (para. 55) and that the approaches of the Commission (and the UK Government in following the Recommendation) have 'no basis in Community legislation and are wrong in law' (para. 20). In particular:
a. The labelling thresholds (0.9%) are 'legally irrelevant' to deciding how to implement co-existence measures (para. 25, 26).
b. The objectives of coexistence must not be restricted to 'economic issues' only. Member States must have regard to the aims of protecting human health and the environment in adopting any coexistence measures. (para. 38)
c. Any co-existence measures that were based on the labelling threshold of 0.9% would make it extremely difficult for operators to avoid labelling their products as containing GMOs even where their products contained GMOs at less than 0.9%. (para. 42-45)
d. The Organic Regulation provides that, in order to be labelled or referred to as organic, a product must not contain GMOs in any quantity. If co-existence measures were to operate to a "baseline norm" (such as the 0.9% labelling thresholds) there is a very real risk that the 'organic" label could become defunct" (para 52).
Full opinion at http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/legal_opinion_in_the_matte.pdf
(1) Art. 26a of Directive 2001/18
(2) 2003/556/EC dated 23 July 2003, Commission Recommendation on guidelines for the development of national strategies and best practices to ensure the coexistence of genetically modified crops with conventional and organic farming
6. http://www.gmofree-europe.org/
Biotech foods: David versus Goliath
developing countries fight with big business over safety laws
Friends of the Earth International media advisory, Friday 10 march 2006
CURITIBA (BRAZIL), 10 March 2006 - The battle between the majority of developing countries and some of the world's biggest corporations will peak on March 13-17, 2006 in Brazil.
United Nations talks on the global trade in genetically modified (GM), or biotech foods and crops will highlight the gap between countries demanding the right to regulate imports of GM products and the huge business interests that seek to benefit from weak rules.
The identification and labeling of imports of GM products will be the key debate in Curitiba. (1) The biotech industries consistently opposed clear identification and labelling requirements for any of the GM crops on the market today. Without clear labelling many countries, especially developing countries with their limited resources, are unable to protect their food supply and environment from GM contamination.(2)
Nnimmo Bassey, International Coordinator of the Friends of the Earth GM Campaign said: "These talks are key to protecting the environment and the world's food supply from contamination from the biotech industry. Every country should have the right to know what is being imported and to decide if they want to eat genetically modified foods or not. African countries and other developing countries will not be the dumping ground for genetically modified crops that no one else wants."
The UN Biosafety Protocol, which was originally agreed in January 2000, provides basic international rules that allow mainly developing countries to regulate the safety of GM foods, crops and seeds. It has been ratified by 132 countries but the three main countries that grow GM crops – the United States, Argentina and Canada - have refused to support it. Talks broke down in Montreal in June 2005 after Brazil and New Zealand blocked proposals that would have allowed the majority of developing countries to know if GM grains were being imported.
Ten years after the first significant planting of GM crops, no plants with benefits to consumers or the environment have materialized and GM crops have failed to deliver the promises of the biotech industry. More than 80% of the area cultivated with biotech crops is still concentrated in only three countries: the US, Argentina and Canada. Friends of the Earth International recently published a report (3) that concluded:
GM crops are not "green". Monsanto's GM soybeans, the most extensively grown GM crop today, has led to an increase in herbicide use. The intensive cultivation of soybeans in South America is fostering deforestation, and has been associated with a decline in soil fertility and soil erosion.
GM crops do not tackle hunger or poverty. Most GM crops commercialized so far are destined for animal feed, not for food, and none have been introduced to address hunger and poverty issues. In Argentina, the second biggest producer of GM crops in the world, only 2% of the soya stays in the country. Other developing countries, such as Indonesia and India, have experienced substantial problems with Monsanto’s GM crops, often leaving farmers heavily indebted.
The biotech industry has failed to introduce the promised "new generation" of GM crops with consumer benefits. After 30 years of research, only two modifications have made it to the marketplace on any scale: insect resistance and herbicide tolerance.
For more information contact
In Curitiba, Brazil:
Nnimmo Bassey, Friends of the Earth International / Friends of the Earth Nigeria
Tel: +234 8037274395 (Nigerian mobile) or email: nnimmo@eraction.org
Adrian Bebb, Friends of the Earth Europe
Tel +49 1609 490 1163 (German mobile) or email
adrian.bebb@foeeurope.org
In Europe
Juan Lopez, Friends of the Earth International
Tel +34 6259 805 820 (Spanish mobile)
Notes to editors
(1) For a full briefing on the Biosafety Protocol see:
http://www.foei.org/gmo/Briefing_Curitiba.pdf.
(2) See FoEI Briefing: Tackling GM contamination: making segregation and identification a reality
http://www.foei.org/publications/pdfs/contamination3.pdf.
(3) See
http://www.foei.org/media/2006/0110.html.
for more information:
Background on biosafety:
http://www.foei.org/gmo/biosafety.html.
European Commission: contaminate, then legislate
New report on GMOs reveals EU Commission going for
"wait-and-contaminate" policy
Friends of the Earth press release, 10 March 2006.
Brussels, 10 March 2006 - The Commission of the European Union is
avoiding EU-wide legislation on the coexistence of genetically modified
(GM) and non-GM crops, a move that could lead to the irreversible
contamination of Europe's food, seeds and environment.
The "wait-and-contaminate" policy on genetically modified organisms
(GMOs) is in a report by the European Commission, which is due to be
published today (March 10). The report has been obtained in advance by
Friends of the Earth Europe (1).
Whilst the Commission recommends in the report that coexistence measures
be decided at country level, it has in fact objected to half of all
legal proposals from EU Member States. The report lacks any clear
proposals or conclusions and effectively delays any concrete decision
until 2008.
Helen Holder, GMO campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe, said:
"The European Commission has decided to first contaminate and then
legislate, a move in line with the interests of the biotechnology
industry. By adopting a 'wait-and-contaminate' policy, the Commission
ignores the rights of European consumers and farmers who do not want to
experiment with genetically modified foods."
The EU report on the coexistence between GM, conventional and organic
crops looks at current measures by EU member states to protect farming
from contamination:
• The Commission threatens countries or regions with legal action if
they try to prohibit the growing of GM crops. Currently 172 European
regions have expressed their desire to be GM free. (2)
• The Commission considers that a half of all the legislative
coexistence proposals by EU member states "create obstacles to the free
movement of goods".
• Coexistence measures that ban the growing of GM crops in "protected or
ecologically sensitive regions" are not permitted, despite existing
legislation which allows this for individual GMOs.
• Schemes that require GM growers to obtain insurance against
contamination should not be mandatory as this type of insurance cover is
not available in the EU and this would "make the cultivation of GM crops
impossible."
• The Commission is not however threatening to take countries to court
if they set a threshold for contamination lower than the Commission's
recommended 0.9%. This confirms independent legal advice that the
Commission's use of the labeling threshold for coexistence is "legally
flawed" (3).
"The EU Commission approach is clearly a failure", Helen Holder
said. "It must stop dodging its responsibility and introduce an EU
law that prevents contamination of our food, farming and environment."
A Friends of the Earth briefing on the Commission report is available at:
http://www.foeeurope.org/publications/2006/Media_Briefing_coexistence_10_Mar
ch_2006.pdf.
Contact:
Helen Holder, GMO campaign coordinator, +32 (0)474 857 638
Notes:
(1) A final draft of the Commission report obtained by Friends of the
Earth can be downloaded at: http://www.foeeurope.org/GMOs/download/commission_report.pdf
(2) http://www.gmofree-europe.org/.
(3) Advice - In the matter of Co-existence, traceability and labelling
of GMOs. K.P.E. Lasok QC and Rebecca Haynes, 21 January 2005: http://www.gmofree-europe.org/Summary_Lasok_Advice.pdf.
9 March 2006
Big majority of EU governments demand changes to biotech crop approval system
The Associated Press, 9 March 2006. By Constant Brand.
A large majority of EU nations demanded changes Thursday in the way decisions are made on the approval of new biotech crops in the bloc, arguing that previous decisions to approve eight such products since the EU lifted its moratorium were done without proper research.
Only three countries -- Britain, the Netherlands and Ireland -- said the current system was rigorous enough to meet high public safety concerns over the use of genetically altered crops for use.
EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas acknowledged the EU rules could be changed, only three years after the current ones came into force, in wake of the widespread disapproval. He said the way experts review product applications at the European Food Safety Agency could be changed.
"I am aware of the criticism," Dimas said after the debate by EU environment ministers. "Certain changes may be beneficial."
Dimas said while eight products have been approved since 2003, no decisions would be taken on the use of new biotech crops for cultivation until EU nations agree to new so-called coexistence guidelines, to prevent genetically altered crops from spreading to non-biotech crops nearby.
A clash over the approval procedures has been simmering since last June, when Austria, Germany, Luxembourg, France and Greece invoked national safety clauses to keep bans in place on a range of biotech crops already approved by the 25-nation EU.
The call by many for even tougher testing and review of new biotech crops could further strain divisions with the United States and others that argue that the EU is violating world trade rules in restricting imports of biotech crops.
A February World Trade Organization preliminary ruling on a U.S. complaint filed against the EU's biotech moratorium was unclear whether the EU violated world trade rules. Both Brussels and Washington claimed victory, ensuring the issue would remain a key trade irritant in the years ahead.
At Thursday's debate, German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said the current system put EU governments in an "unacceptable position," arguing that products can still be approved under EU rules despite stalemate or opposition from a majority of EU nations.
Under the biotech approval system, the European Commission has last-say to decide on clearing new biotech crops if member states reach a stalemate.
The product must also be approved by the European Food Safety Agency, which is supposed to ensure it is safe to use. "There is a big majority against genetically modified organisms in public opinion, that is clear," said Stravros Kayloyannis, Greek deputy environment minister.
Many EU ministers complained, however, that EFSA's scientific reviews were not open enough to scrutiny nor were they independent.
Several EU nations argued that evaluations by the EU agency were too quick, ignoring national concerns and were only based on information supplied by the company applying for an EU license to sell their product in Europe.
Ministers urge more change for GM crop rules
Environment Daily, 9 March 2006.
EU environment ministers have urged a shake-up of risk assessment and decision-making procedures used to approve new genetically-modified crops.Ý The development marks the latest stage in the EU's struggle to achieve a regulatory regime for GM crops that enjoys backing from all 25 member states.
In a public debate held during their council meeting in Brussels on Thursday ministers called almost unanimously for the European food safety authority (Efsa) to improve transparency in its scientific assessments of GM crops.Ý Some appealed for extra assessment steps.
Several ministers urged the scrapping of comitology procedures that have allowed the European commission to end the EU's de facto moratorium on new GM crops despite opposition from many governments.Ý In most cases the commission's approval of new crops has been based on positive scientific opinions from Efsa.
The debate was tabled by Austria, which holds the EU presidency but is also vehemently opposed to GMOs.Ý Vienna has defied the commission and Efsa by imposing a national ban on several EU-approved crops, citing scientific uncertainty.
"There are considerable shortcomings in our ability to assess GMOs," Spanish minister Cristina Narbona Ruiz said in opening the debate.Ý Most of her colleagues followed in a similar vein.Ý UK minister Elliot Morley offered dissent:Ý assessment procedures were basically sound, he argued, though Efsa did need to be "more direct and open" and make its opinions "more clearly presented and more robustly argued".
Some ministers went further, urging better long-term monitoring of the effects of new crops and more assessment of the indirect effects of GM products.Ý Belgium refloated the idea of an EU-wide liability and insurance regime for damage done by GM crops.
Several member states wanted more independent verification of scientific studies carried out by industry and a clear framework for resolving differences of opinion between Efsa and member state assessment bodies.
Many ministers called for greater use of the precautionary principle in GM decisions, and for coexistence rules that would unambiguously allow GM-free zones.Ý Austria is to hold conferences on both issues next month and ministers will revisit the issue at their next meeting in June.
Potentially equally significant was the level of opposition from several ministers to the use of EU comitology rules to approve GM applications.Ý The procedures, which are also used in many other areas of EU policy, are currently under review by the EU's general affairs council.
Ý
"We should think hard about changing the rules," Italian minister Altero Matteoli said. "There hasn't been a simple majority of member states in favour [of certain applications], let alone a qualified majority, but even so the commission decides to give an approval."
Ý
Responding to the debate, EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas said Efsa was "still finding its feet" and hinted support for changes to risk assessment procedures.Ý "Certain changes may be beneficial" to make the system "as comprehensive and transparent as possible," he said.Ý Increasing confidence in the scientific process first might make the comitology procedure less contentious, he said.
Follow-up: EU council of ministers http://www.consilium.eu.int, /, tel: +32 2 285 6211.
Czechs want unified GMO tests, ban on waste import
Prague Daily Monitor, 9 March 2006.
Prague, March 7 (CTK) - Czech Environment Minister Libor Ambrozek believes that tests of generically modified organisms (GMO) in the European Union should be unified and their results should be simple and comparable, Environment Ministry spokeswoman Karolina Sulova said today.
Ambrozek will therefore demand at the meeting of the EU Council of Ministers in Brussels on Thursday that the unified method of the GMO research be introduced, Sulova said after Ambrozek¥s meeting with members of Greenpeace at which the problem was discussed.
The Czech Republic¥s position on the second topic of the EU ministers¥ meeting ensues from the situation that arose in the Czech Republic due to mass imports of communal waste from Germany. Ambrozek will demand that the new EU waste directive do not allow imports of waste for incineration, she said.
Greenpeace activists demanded that Environment Ministry ban the cultivation of genetically modified Bt-maize. They gave Ambrozek a scientific study on the problem and called on other EU countries to adopt a similar approach.
"We want Mr Ambrozek to accept a temporary moratorium on the cultivation of Bt-maize on the national level. The study we gave him proves its bad influence on the environment," Czech Greenpeace spokeswoman Vladka Tejnska told CTK.
Bt-maize that contains the gene of a bacteria that kills parasitoid of pyralid moth larvae was first tested by Czech farmers on about 270 hectares last year. The Czech state ranks the fifth in the EU as regards the acreage of land under GM maize.
The waste directive will be a topic at a special seminar that will take place on Thursday afternoon. The Czech Republic wants that the provision allowing import of waste used as fuel be deleted from the EU directive since it allows incinerators to formally declare themselves as facilities using waste as fuel in the same way as electric and thermal power plants. If the directive takes effect the Environment Ministry will not be able to prevent import of waste for incineration.
It has so far rejected requests by German companies for the incineration of tens of thousands of tonnes of waste in the Czech Republic arguing that it is not a material used as fuel.
Ambrozek intends to meet with his German colleague at the meeting to discuss the disposal of German waste that was illegally brought to the Czech Republic.
The Environment Ministry does not want to allow the waste to end up in Czech incinerators for preventive reasons, demanding that about 15,000 tonnes of waste be taken back to Germany.
How to attract right industry is discussed
Carlow People, 9 March 2006.
Industry and the type most suitable for County Carlow came up for discussion at a Carlow County Council meeting, yesterday (Monday).
Director of Services, Bernie O'Brien, presented a report into the possibility of attracting agri-biotech companies to Carlow while also responding to a notice in motion about the IDA Business and Technology Park.
In her report about the agri-biotech industry, Bernie said that Carlow has several advantages over other counties because of the Oak Park Research Centre and Carlow IT.
She said that there was a clear need for a bio-processing training centre in the town, in conjuction with Oak Park and Carlow IT.
While Cllr. Michael Abbey thanked Bernie for her work, he said that there was a political dimension to the situation.
'We've been very poorly served in political terms,' he claimed.
'The Minister brought back 400 jobs from America and where did those jobs go to? Cork.'
Cllr. Abbey also said that if bio-tech doesn't work out for the county, it would be better to look at other industries too.
Green Councillor, Mary White said that she thought that the figures in the report weren't accurate and that three companies involved in the bio-tech sector were interested in setting up in Carlow.
The countries that used genetically modified bio-fuels are the most successful, according to Cllr. Enda Nolan, while Cllr. Arthur McDonald asked why should the taxpayer subsidise the cost of bio-fuels. Cathaoirleach Michael Deering pointed out to Cllr. McDonald that there was nothing to stop him from buying bio-fuels either.
The discussion then moved onto how best to use the IDA Business and Technology Park on the Dublin Road.
This arose from a Notice in Motion brought by Cllr. White in which she asked that 'Carlow County Council reinvigorate its efforts to secure companies for the Park.'
The notice was seconded by Cllr. William Paton before Bernie O'Brien told the chamber that Carlow was the fastest growing county in Ireland.
In presenting her report on how Carlow County Council is promoting the Business and Technology Park, she said that it was 'important to be positive' and that several companies had viewed the sites.
Her report included details of how Carlow County Council intends to 'package' the county, and of how a study into commuters and the labour force was carried out for her department.
The report also says that, apart from foreign investment being targeted in the campaign, Dublin-based businesses have been looked at too.
8 March 2006
First contamination report reveals worldwide illegal spread of genetically engineered crops
Greenpeace / GreenWatch ress release, 8 March 2006.
Greenpeace and GeneWatch UK call for urgent adoption of international biosafety standards
The first report into the extent to which genetically engineered (GE) organisms have 'leaked' into the environment - released today - reveals a disturbing picture of widespread contamination, illegal planting and negative agricultural side effects.
The report is a summary of incidents uncovered by the on-line Contamination Register (1) set up by Greenpeace and GeneWatch UK. It reveals a catalogue of highly disturbing incidents right across the world, including
• Pork meat from genetically engineered pigs being sold to consumers
• Ordinary crops being contaminated with GE crops containing pharmaceuticals
• Growing and international distribution of illegal antibiotic resistant Maize seeds
• Planting of outlawed GE crops which have been smuggled into countries
• Mixing of unapproved GE crops in food, including shipments of food aid
• Inadvertent mixing of different GE strains even in high profile scientific field trials
The report reveals 113 such cases worldwide, involving 39 countries - twice as many countries as are officially allowed to grow GE crops since they were first commercialised in 1996. Worryingly, the frequency of these cases is increasing, with 11 countries affected in 2005 alone. Contamination has even been found in countries conducting supposedly "carefully controlled" high-profile farm-scale evaluations, such as the UK.
"This may well only be the tip of the iceberg, as there is no official global or national contamination register so far," said Dr. Sue Mayer of GeneWatch UK, who leads the team of investigators. "Most incidents of contamination are actually kept as confidential business information by companies as well as public authorities."
Greenpeace is calling for a mandatory international register of /all/ such events to be set up, along with the adoption of minimum standards of identification and labelling of all international shipments of GE crops. "Without such biosafety standards ,the global community will have no chance of tracing and recalling dangerous GMOs, should this become necessary." said Benedikt Haerlin of Greenpeace International's Biosafety Protocol delegation.
The publication of the report comes only days before the latest meeting of the 132 countries who have signed the Biosafety Protocol (2), which is to establish standards of safety and information on GE crops in global food and feed trade. At their last meeting an imminent agreement was blocked by only two member states, Brazil and New Zealand. They were backed by the major GE exporting countries USA, Argentina and Canada, who are not members of the Protocol and want to restrict required identification to a meaningless note that a shipment "may contain" GE.
"All of these countries have national legislation to protect themselves from illegal GE imports. Still they want to deny the same rights and level of information to less developed countries, with no national Biosafety-laws and means to enforce them," concluded Haerlin. "Do they really want such unethical double standards and create dumping grounds for unidentified and illegal GE imports? We hope that Brazil, who will be hosting this meeting, will not betray the developing countries and cater to large agro-businesses at the expense of the environment."
For further details contact:
Benedikt Haerlin, tel +49 30 27590309, fax +49 30 27590312 mobile +49 173 9997555.
Greenpeace USA: Prof. Doreen Stabinsky , tel. +1-202-285-7398.
Greenpeace China: Isabelle Meister +86 10 655 46931 ext 135.
GeneWatch UK, Dr Sue Mayer, tel +44 1298 871898.
Notes to editors
1. The GM Contamination Register is online at www.gmcontaminationregister.org.
The full report is also available at www.greenpeace.org/bsp2006
and http://www.genewatch.org/publications/reports/contamination report final.doc.
2. The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety under the Convention on Biological Diversity is an international treaty to establish minimum international safety standards for genetically engineered organisms ratified by 132 states. http://www.biodiv.org/biosafety.
3. An overview of national legislation on imports and labelling of GE organisms world wide including a map of potential GE dumping grounds as well as import and export figures is available online at
http://www.greenpeace.org/bsp2006.
Offspring of GM attack dog unleashed in Ireland
GM Watch Daily, 8 March 2006.
Amidst the escalating row over the prospect of GM potato trials in Ireland, a "gmoireland" blog has been launched to provide "a blow by blow commentary on the GM food debate in Ireland." http://www.gmoireland.blogspot.com.
The new blog aims to provide a "commentary based on facts and not the spin of either the Pro-GMOers or Anti-GMOers..." This careful even-handedness receives repeated emphasis: "As the players come out swinging in the next coming weeks and months on the issue of GM crops/food in Ireland I will be providing commentary on the statements and spin issued on both sides of the debate!!!" And again, "Be warned the Anti-GMOesr [sic] and the PRO-GMOers.......... you are being watched!!!!"
Also emphasised is the blogger's expertise: "I will try to add some analysis and commentary in a little more depth than the media can..... I have a science degree, graduate research carried out on the public perceptions of GM food, published scientific papers on the topic of GM food, previously [sic] worked as regulator of biotechnology derived products in Canada , etc. etc. (yawn)".
The exact location of the blogger - Shane Morris, who also styles himself on his blog, "CelticLad" - is a little unclear. In a letter to the Irish paper, The Meath Chronicle ("GM crops have already lost their Irish virginity" )
http://www.gmfreeireland.org/news/index.php), Morris gives his address as:
Shane Morris,
6 Coolkill,
Sandyford
Dublin 18
But on his blog he talks about, "Sitting here in -15C cold in Ottawa" and waxes lyrical about Canada, "I love it here!!!...Canada is the best country in the world".
Unfortunately, Shane Morris's even-handedness has so far been limited to attacking critics of GM, particularly Canadian ones like Professor Joe Cummins. And the character of those attacks seems somewhat less than even-handed. In the case of Prof Cummins, for instance, Shane Morris starts off by referring to "Prof. Joe Cummins (retired)" and his "so called 'risk assessment'", and then downgrading the professor emeritus thereafter in his blog to plain "Mr. Cummins".
And while Morris blithely claims that on an earlier occasion, "Chris Leaver from the University of Oxford" rejected "Cummins so called 'scientific' suggestions" as "pure fiction, and lies", he fails to make any mention of the fact that Leaver is a highly controversial figure within the GM debate with a long history of paid consultancy for the biotech industry.
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=75.
Something Chris Leaver has in common with Shane Morris is a pretence to neutrality. Leaver told one journalist, for instance, that he was "not particularly pro or anti-GM". Leaver has also claimed to be paid out of public monies and "not by the GM companies" despite his nine years of paid consultancy by the industry. http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=75
The CelticLad's background could also do with a mite more detail. The graduate research carried out on the public perceptions of GM food that Shane Morris refers to in his blog, was overseen by Douglas Powell at the University of Guelph with whom Morris has also published papers on GM.
Powell has been called the "darling of the pro-biotech lobby and its chief attack dog" and has been accused of using his "regular appearances on the op-ed pages of the nation to denigrate anyone who criticizes the science or the regulatory framework around biotechnology". http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=257
In an article entitled Rude Science in the Manitoba Cooperator (58(46):4 21 June 2001), editor John Morriss reviewed Powell's performance as a science communicator, describing him as a "tenured Assistant Professor at a Canadian university" who at some point "morphed into a full-blown apologist for biotechnology, while still operating under his 'food safety' umbrella".
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=257
For Morriss, even more serious than Powell's role as a biotech apologist, is his "aggressive if not vicious attacks on other scientists who dare to challenge his views". Morriss gives the example of an "offensive attack on no less than the Royal Society of Canada and the members of the panel it appointed to review food biotechnology". That attack was co-authored by none other than our blogger, Shane Morris.
http://www.foodsafetynetwork.ca/en/article-details.php?a=3&c=9&sc=62&id=190
Powell has also been criticised for the character of the graduate education programme that Shane Morris was part of. A colleague of Powell's at the University of Guelph, Ann Clark, in a presentation sponsored by the Canadian Association of University Teachers, strongly criticised those like Powell who abused their role as educators for propaganda purposes. Clark showed through an analysis of a misleading article about Percy Schmeiser by one of Powell's students "that students are already mastering the art of doublespeak". Clark also said, "Those entrusted with graduate education frame the research questions and methods which solidify the values of the students they supervise. And what some are doing today under the umbrella of academic freedom is actually not far removed from the proclamations of Orwell's Ministry of Truth."
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=257
While studying under Powell at Guelph, Shane Morris was also very active within Powell's controversial "Food Safety Network". FSN's activities enjoyed the financial support of Monsanto, DuPont, Eli Lilly, Syngenta, Pioneer Hi-Bred, Syngenta Seeds USA, ConAgra, McCain, McDonald's, Nestle, Ag-West Biotech, Bioniche Life Sciences Inc., Southern Crop Protection Association, Pharmacia, AgCare and the (biotech industry funded) Council for Biotechnology Information.
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=257
Worryingly, Shane Morris went on from this background to work, as he says, "as regulator of biotechnology derived products in Canada". In fact, Health Canada and its Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) have a troubling reputation for pro-industry bias and for gagging and even sacking scientists who step out of line.
http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5374
Who better, then, than Shane Morris - with his training first under a "full-blown apologist for biotechnology" and then as a Canadian bureaucrat - to provide a commentary on the GM debate in Ireland "based on facts" and totally free of spin.
Note: GM-free Ireland received the following email from Shane Morris on the evening we posted the above:
"In reference to your posting in your headline section I feel you should know somethings: (sic)
Your information is incorrect based on the following facts:
1. I never studied at the University of Guelph
2. I own homes both in Ireland and Canada
3. CFIA is not part of Health Canada
4. I am only interested in the facts.
It is clear you are doing a dis-service to the Irish public if you fail to correct the information on your website I have suggested.
Thank you
Shane"
Why Would the Irish Protest Famine-Proof Potatoes?
AgBioView, March 6, 2006. By Dennis T. Avery
[Note: Mr. Avery is a US corporate lobbyist funded by Monsanto, and author of "Saving the World with Pesticides and Plastic"!]
In Ireland where the 1840's potato famine killed a million people and made
millions more homeless why are hundreds of Irish men and women protesting
against the new genetically engineered blight-proof potato?
Can the modern Irish have forgotten the biggest disaster in their history? A
million Irish men, women and children starved because the late blight disease
suddenly destroyed the vital potato crop. Millions more Irish lost their
homes and farms and wandered the roads, subsisting on tree bark, weeds and
whatever else they could find. One million Irish emigrants boarded what
became known as "coffin ship," sailing ships too often infested with typhus
and cholera, fleeing Ireland for the hope of better lives in the U.S. and
Canada.
Even today, Ireland is dotted with "famine cottages"-- little two-room stone
houses, whose thatched roofs have long since rotted away. Their walls still
stand, however, as grim reminders of one of history's biggest crop disease
disasters.
Ever since 1845, plant breeders have been urgently seeking blight-resistant
potatoes. Potatoes produce more food value per acre than any other crop, and
they are rich sources of vitamin C and other micronutrients. Countries such
as China, Bangladesh and Rwanda in the Central African highlands have become
more and more dependent on potatoes to feed their increasingly dense
populations.
But the late blight has continued to worsen. Chemical sprays have been less
and less successful as the blight acquired resistance, and a virulent new
strain of the blight appeared in 1994. American potato growers have recently
had to spray their potato crops as many as 12 times per season. In warmer
climates like Mexico, up to 25 sprays have been needed. Organic farmers have
had to use heavy applications of toxic copper sulfate, preventively.
For the past 50 years, a genetic solution has been in hand-but unusable. A
gene for late blight resistance had been found by plant explorers in a wild
Mexican potato relative, Solanum bulbocastanum, which apparently evolved
along with the late blight microorganism. Unfortunately, plant breeders could
never cross-breed the wild potato relative's blight resistance into a
domestic potato.
In the past decade, researchers finally seized the problem by the scruff of
its DNA and inserted the resistance gene directly into domestic potato using
biotechnology. The University of Wisconsin, the University of
California/Davis and Wageningen University in the Netherlands have all
released blight-resistant varieties. "So far, the plants have been resistant
to everything we have thrown at them, says Dr. John Hellgeson who led the
Wisconsin research team.
The Irish protestors say biotech potatoes would ruin their export market for
potatoes--but Ireland is not a major potato exporter. The protestors say the
blight-proof potatoes would put Irish farmers at the mercy of big
corporations. However, blight-resistance patents are held by public
universities. Chemical corporations make the pesticides, such as metalaxyl
and copper sulfate, on which potato growers currently depend. With resistance
built-into the potato, they'd be less dependent on chemical solutions.
Totally missing from the Irish potato protests is any empathy for the millions
of their ancestors who died or fled because of the late blight; Or compassion
for the farmers currently trying to grow potatoes in the face of virulent new
late blight spores; Or sympathy for the million Rwandans who hacked each
other to death in 1994 primarily for fear the country's limited farmland and
dependence on blight-susceptible potatoes would lead to famine.
For a hundred years the Irish condemned the English overseers for exporting
Irish grain while the Irish starved--now, in a grim irony, the Irish are
trying to prevent a famine solution for themselves and billions of poor
people around the world.
At the next Irish potato protest, however, somebody should park a sound truck
playing the haunting Irish folk songs recalling the desperate wanderings and
continuing torments of the Irish potato famine's millions of victims.
6 March 2006
EU to re-open GMO approval debate
Euractiv.com, 7 March 2006
The Austrian Presidency will re-open the debate over the safety assessment of GMOs at the environment Council on 9 March in a bid to simplify rules to accept or reject the controversial crops.
Austria, one of Europe's most vocal opponents to biotech crops and current holder of the EU's rotating Presidency, wants to re-open the debate over the safety assessments performed by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).
Austria is seeking to improve EFSA's GM approval procedure so that it takes better account of more skeptical opinions from national food safety authorities.
At stake is the EU's complex system for approval of GM crops, which requires any decision to be taken by a qualified majority. In the absence of such a majority, the matter is referred back to the Commission which is bound to follow EFSA's safety assessment. Up till now, EFSA has never given a negative advice on GMOs.
Austria, with the support of Greece, Italy and Luxembourg, would like to see decisions on GMOs taken by a simple majority instead, arguing this could help solve the deadlock. Larger member states, including France and the UK, are opposed to the idea because they fear they could be forced to accept decisions imposed by smaller states.
The ministers' discussions will take place at the same time as the WTO is appearing to support the US, Argentina and Canada in a dispute with the EU over the approval of biotech food
EU Approves New Type of Genetically Modified Maize
Reuters, 6 March 2006.
BRUSSELS - The European Commission on Friday authorised the marketing of a new type of genetically modified (GMO) maize, known as pioneer line 1507, despite a deadlock among EU member states.
"The authorisation means that this maize type will now be allowed to be marketed in the EU as food, food ingredients or derived products, such as oil and starch," Commission spokesman for health and consumer protection Philip Tod told a briefing.
"In line with EU labelling and traceability rules, any product containing it will have to clearly indicate its genetically modified nature," he said.
The executive Commission was forced to make the decision after European Union member states failed to reach agreement on the issue in December.
The maize is jointly made by Pioneer Hi-Bred International, a subsidiary of DuPont Co, and Dow AgroSciences unit Mycogen Seeds.
The 1507 maize is modified to resist certain insects and herbicides and would not be for cultivation, although Pioneer/Mycogen have also requested this use under a separate application still pending in the EU authorisation process.
In March 2005, the European Food Safety Authority said it was safe to grow the maize, while in November it was given the green light to be used in animal feed.
GMOs have become a thorny issue for the EU with the World Trade Organization ruling last month that the 25-member bloc and specifically six member states had broken trade rules by barring entry to genetically modified crops and foods.
The countries named in the report were France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Luxembourg and Greece.
Countries bristled at the ruling that touches on national sovereignty with some saying they would do their level best to keep farming GMO-free.
European environment ministers will hold a public hearing on the subject when they meet in Brussels on Thursday next week. Top of the agenda will be the way in which the EU's 25 countries make decisions on GMOs.
Ministers currently must decide by qualified majority. However, next week's hearing will discuss the possibility of reaching a decision by simple majority.
Bush announces 130 million dollar boost for Indian farms, biotech
Agence France Presse, March 3, 2006.
NEW DELHI -- Promising a second "green revolution," US President George W. Bush was cited as announcing Friday an investment of 130 million dollars to boost Indian agriculture and biotechnology as he wrapped up a visit here, stating, "By working together, the United States and India will develop better ways to grow crops and get them to market and lead a second green revolution. This initiative will invest 100 million dollars to encourage
exchanges between American and Indian scientists and to promote joint research to improve farming technology."
The United States and India have a "knowledge initiative on agriculture" linking universities, technical institutions and businesses to support joint agriculture, education and research projects, he said.
"We are establishing a new 30-million-dollar science and technology commission that will fund joint research in promising areas like biotechnology," Bush added.
Another covert deal, sans brouhaha
The Hindustan Times, Hyderabad, March 4, 2006, by Rukhmini Punoose
When President Bush announced on Friday that Americans would soon be eating India's famed mangoes, he failed to explain why.
Alongside the more flaunted nuclear deal, the US and India have also fleshed out another, more covert deal. That of a 1000-crore project called the Indo-US Knowledge Initiative in Agricultural Research and Education.
The project, touted by Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the "second green revolution", was informally launched this morning when the President visited Hyderabad's Acharya N. G. Ranga Agricultural University, where he time in the various research labs including the pesticide and biochemical labs.
While both administrations have been extremely tight lipped about this deal, the seeds of the project were sown in July last when the PM visited the US. It was decided then to create a body that would identify collaborative scientific research, development and commercialisation, promote emerging technologies and energise trade links between the two nations over a three-year period. The board will comprise eight members from each country, representing academia, government and the private sector.
The university Bush visited, is famed for growing 302 different varieties of seeds and is recognised as pioneers in new rice growing and sustaining technologies. They have single-handedly pushed Andhra Pradesh to the forefront of seed growth and research in India.
"We showed him the cutting edge research we are doing on increasing productivity of various crops," said Dr. M. Ganesh, principal scientist and head of the Agriculture School. "The President also spent time understanding the various types technological and natural methods we incorporate here."
One of the chief drivers for the project in the government's eyes is that the Indian agricultural sector desperately needs a shot in the arm. There has been a sizeable imbalance in the growth of this sector, with the growth rate ranging from 5 per cent per annum in Punjab to 1 per cent in Assam.
However, some agricultural scientists believe that the Indo-US Knowledge Initiative could spell disaster for indegenous research and that the Center is taking a myopic view of things.
"There is a complete blackout at the top about what's going wrong. This is the worst agrarian crises since Independence," says Devinder Sharma an agricultural scientist, who is also a food policy analyst on the forum for biotechnology and food security.
Sharma says the Initiative's board is dominated by large multinationals like Walmart and Monsanto, who are all set to determine the Indian agricultural research agenda.
"The American IPR regime offers patent holders rights to life form, plants and seeds, so there is also the threat of losing rights to indigenous genetic resources. There is also the additional fear that India could become the dumping ground for all the genetically modified crops that there are no takers for in Europe and many other parts of the world," Sharma says.
MS Swaminathan, the father of the green revolution and an honorary member of the Indo-US Knowledge Initiative, feels that no one can affect our farmers unless we are willing.
He adds that he hasn't seen the documents of the agreement yet but says that the country is facing a real crisis.
The Pseudo-Science of Biotech Lobbyists:
The baseless Barfoot ‚ Brookes claim that farmers and the environment have benefited from GMO's
Ecological Farming Association, February 27, 2006, by Dr. Vandana Shiva.
While biotech crops fail farmers, and destroy biodiversity the "global" studies of biotech lobbyists continue to cook up benefits to farmers and the environment. A recent example of such pseudo-science is a report by Graham Brookes and Peter Barfoot of PG Economies Limited, U.K entitled "GM Crops : The Global Economic and Environmental Impact ‚ The First Nine Years 1996-2004". The report falsely claims environmental benefits of reduced chemical use and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. It also falsely claims benefits to farmers amounting to $27 billion.
Bt Cotton is killing Indian farmers, not increasing their incomes
Brookes was in India recently and claimed $ 124 million increased in farm incomes and 54% increase in yields from Bt. Cotton. However, every study in India carried out by citizens groups and government shows that Indian farmers are loosing not just incomes but lives.
Bt. cotton was sold with the claim that it would give 15 quintals of yield per acre. However yields have been as low as 20 kgs in one acre. On average yields of Bt. cotton are 1.2 quintals per acre in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh; nowhere did Bt. cotton yield cross 4 quintals per acre at the end of the harvest. In Madhya Pradesh, in Badwani, Khargaon, Dhar and Khandwa districts, almost half the 42 farmers visited reported that their crop had failed. Khargaon farmers faced total crops failure. In the other districts only one expected a yield of 12.5 quintals, the average yield expected by the others was 4.01 quintals, as compared to the 15 quintals promised by Monsanto-Mahyco. In Karnataka, 15 of the 40 farmers visited in Bellary, Sirippupa and Haveri/Dharwad districts, expected a total failure of their crops. The average yield expected by remaining farmers was 3.82 quintals per ha.
In most of the fields visited, the Bt. cotton plants were in a stage of maturity with leaves turning red before dropping off. The non-Bt on fringes looked far healthier, taller and were greener than Bt. plants. According to Dr. Jalapathi Rao, this was probably due to the toxin gene. This means that unlike other hybrid cotton, which yields up to March, Bt. cotton farmers will not get any yield after November-December.
False Claim of higher income
The failure/drastically reduced yield of Bt cotton has devastated Bt cotton farmers, who are faced with penury. Mr. Mala Rao Krishna Rao Thakre of the
Both village in Maharashtra suffered a major heart attack when he found his 27 acres of Bt cotton completely devastated by diseases and pests.
The income of Bt cotton farmers is being reduced not just because of low yields, but also because of staple size. The Monsanto-Mahyco claim a staple
size ranging from 26-29 mm, in actuality, it is hardly 15-20 mm, and would fetch the rate of a short staple cotton (around Rs. 1500 per quintal) while the normal rate offered for best quality cotton is Rs. 2000 to 2200 per quintal. One of the buyers in the Warangal cotton market, Mr. Sarangapani of the K.N.R. Enterprises said that Bt. cotton staples are only 6-7 mm long while the staples of good quality cotton is 32 mm.
Warangal has seen suicides by thousands of cotton farmers since 1997. The region has become famous for distress sales not just of land, but of body
parts such as kidneys. The introduction of Bt cotton heralds the death of thousands more farmers, not just in Warangal, but in other parts of the
country, as they are pushed into deepening debt and penury by Monsanto-Mahyco and other genetic engineering MNCs.
For many farmers Bt. Cotton has totally failed in the 2005 season. Nander Singh, farmers lilke Sukhlal, Chamar, Shiv Charan, Prem Singh, Manohar Singh, Madan Lal, Manohar, Dhanna Lal, Shree Ram, Jhajju Bhar, Ramdhan Bhar, Laxmi Narayan in Neemad and Tulsiram, Narender Rathor, A.M. Subedar, Sudhakar Govind Rao, Sahidrao Piraji, Manhar Bhadhar, Mama Sahib Nirmal, Ashok Rao Nirmal, Sekh Navi, Sekh Biram, Dilip Kaunda, Sukhdev Thoor, Gajanand Dhage, Gyan Bhaji Supare, Namdev Rao Jhade in Vidharba lost their entire crop. Others got average yields of 3 quintals per acre at average costs of Rs. 6000 per acre.
Our surveys of earlier planting seasons showed average yields of 1.2 quintals per acre in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.
A study by the Center for Sustainable Agriculture showed that Bt. Cotton farmers uses seed that cost Rs. 1600 per acre, while organic farmers used seed of Rs. 450 per acre, a 355% difference. Bt. was sprayed with pesticides like Monocrotuphos, Confidor, Trace, Avarint, Eudosulfab, Acephate, Demethoate, Imidacloprid, Quinalphos, Chlorpyriphos, Cypermethrin, etc. Average sprays were 3.5 times costing Rs. 2632 per acre. Organic farmers used ecological pest control agents like Neem, Trichoderma, Panchakavya etc. at Rs. 382 per acre. This is a difference of Rs. 2250/- or Rs. 7625/- per acre. Pest control in Bt. Cotton is thus 690% more costly than in ecological farming.
High costs of cultivation, and low returns have trapped Indian peasants in a debt trap, from which they are escaping by taking their lives. More than 40,000 farmers suicides have taken place over the past decade in India. However, these are not suicides ‚ this is homicide, it is genocide. More than 90% of farmers who died in Andhra Pradesh and Vidharbha in the 2005 cotton season had planted Bt. Cotton. Genetic Engineering is killing Indian farmers.
Yet biotech lobbyists like Graham Brookes and Peter Barfoot manipulate data to cover up this genocide. In a recent visit to India Brookes claimed Indian farmers had gained by Rs. 5 billion by having cost saving of Rs. 2000 per hectare. In reality, farmers had an additional burden of Rs. 2250 per acre or Rs. 7625 per acre.
The Brookes and Barfoot study is not based on primary empirical data but extrapolations from false assumptions and manipulated studies. For the U.S, the lobbyists claim $66.59 per ha of additional benefits for Herbicide Resistant Cotton. Yet 90 Texas Cotton farmers have sued Monsanto claiming they suffered widespread crop losses because Monsanto failed to warn of a defect in its genetically engineered cotton. The lawsuit seeks an injunction against what it calls a "longstanding campaign of deception" (The Hindu Business Line, February 26, 2006, p.4 "Cotton Farmers Sue Monsanto").
GM crops have increased use of chemicals
The environmental benefits are also a false claim. Friends of the Earth recently released a report showing that GM crops had increased use of chemicals. The Indian experience also shows increase of pesticide use as new pests attach Bt Cotton and the bollworm evolves resistance to the Bt. Gene.
GM crops reduce Carbon Sequestration
The claim of reduced greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to removing five million cars from the roads is also totally false and fraudulent. Brookes and Barfoot refer to herbicide resistant crops as "no till" systems. This is not true. Herbicide resistant crops avoid one tillage for weeding. Further, since they are part of industrial agriculture systems based on fossil fuels not ecological agriculture based on renewable animal and human energy, they inevitably use more fossil fuels than small-scale biodiverse ecological farms. Finally, since herbicides destroy all plants except the genetically engineered herbicide resistant plant. Genetically engineered crops like Herbicide Resistant soya beans reduce carbon sequestration by reducing biodiversity and hence reducing carbon uptake by plants and soils.
The following is the description of Round-up Ready Soyabean by Monsanto,
Figure showing How Herbicide Resistant Crops destroy Biodiversity, Increase Soil erosion and Increase herbicide Use
Broad spectrum herbicides like Round-up are directly aimed at Biodiversity destruction. The total destruction of biodiversity is however promoted as ecologically friendly by Monsanto.
It is also argued that Round-up Ready crops contribute to soil conservation. This false claim is based on comparing a large monoculture Iowa farm using other herbicides and a similar farm using Round Up.
However, the expansion of Round up Ready crops will also be introduced in biodiversity rich agroecosystems of the Third World. The direct destruction of biodiversity will in fact lead to more rapid soil and water erosion since without cover crops, there will be no protection against the tropical sun and rain.
The benefits are fictitious and illusionary when Round-up Ready technology is applied to polyculture systems. Round up Ready crops will lead to increased use of round up and hence destruction of both cultivated and wild biodiversity.
In Indian agriculture women can use up to 150 different species of plants (which are called weeds) as medicine, food, or fodder.
In West Bengal, 124 'weed' species collected from rich fields have economic importance for local farmers. In a Tanzanian village, over 80% of vegetable dishes are prepared from uncultivated plant.
Round up therefore destroys the economies of the poorest especially women. What is a weed for Monsnato is a medicinal plant or food for the rural people. Round-up Ready crops will therefore destroy biodiversity in biodiversity rich areas and with it, the economy of the poorest.
Rodney Garrison was among the U.S farmers who believed in Monsanto's miracle Round-up Ready cotton a cotton variety meant to be resistant to Monsanto herbicide "Round-up". However, in the Mississipi delta where Rodney farms, the revolution has produced such casualties that officials are warning farmers to hold off until further testing. Dozens of farmers are seeking millions of dollars in damages from Monsanto and its partner Delta-Pine. The genetically engineered cotton plants have started to shed their bolls. Farmers have lost upto 40% of their crop failing in almost 30,000 acres.
Case Studies of Impact of Round-Up on Biodiversity
Case Study A
For the study of destruction that can be caused due to the use of Round Up even in degraded ecosystems three plots measuring 10 metres x 10 metres were selected in different areas. One plot was on farmland which had not been cultivated season. The other was by the roadside in a rural area and the third was on the roadside in an urban area. The rural area is Panchgaon which is about 70 kms from Delhi on the Delhi-Jaipur highway. The urban area is near Dilshad Garden, New Delhi.
First a survey was done of three plots to determine the types of plants, herbs, grasses and weeds growing in them. Application of Round-up destroyed all plants in each sample. Extrapolated to the fields and farms of Third World countries the introduction of Round up Ready crops becomes a major source of biodiversity destruction, especially when Roundup will be applied to the fields and commons fear where the poorest people derive their livelihoods.
The result of the survey is :
Plot 1, Farmland in Panchgaon
The list of plants growing in the first plot and their properties are:
Plant No. Properties
Parthaneum 24 A Weed
Sharpunkha 13 Used for treating liver disorders
Bhuiamla (Patented) 60 Treatment of jaundice and liver disorders
Punarnawa 44 Treatment of urinary tract infections, blood pressure, anti-inflammation
Sadahari 18 Cuts, burns and dysentery
Aak 5 Innumerable uses including appetizer and treatment of piles
Sarkanda 6 Root is used for medicine and the plant is used for making modas
Cokharu (patented) 15 Diuretic and anti-inflammatory drug
Apamarg 21 Used for treating children's diseases and spleen and liver disorders
Various grasses Good source of nutritious fodder for the animals
Plot 2, by the Roadside (Panchgaon)
The list of plants growing in the second plot and their properties are:
Plant No. Properties
Parthaneum 35 A Weed
Sharpunkha 6 Used for treating liver disorders
Ban Tulsi 20 Treatment of cough and cold
Punarnawa 22 Treatment of urinary tract infections, blood pressure, anti-inflammation
Chakramand 5 Treatment of gastro intestinal disorders and liver disorders
Aak 6 Innumerable uses including appetizer and treatment of piles
Apamarg 100 Used for treating children's diseases and spleen and liver disorders
Various grasses Good source of nutritious fodder for the animals
Wild Berries Source of food for a variety of birds
Arhar Highly priced lentil which when it grows in the wild is a very good source of nutrition for birds and animals
Plot 3, by the Road Side (East Delhi)
The list of plants growing in the third plot and their properties are:
Plant No. Properties
Parthaneum 50 A Weed
Sadahari 35 Cuts, burns and dysentery
Ban Tulsi 5 Treatment of cough and cold
Aak 4 Innumerable uses including appetizer and treatment of piles
Apamarg 15 Used for treating children's diseases and spleen and liver disorders
Kaner 8 Has a number of medicinal properties
Ashwagandha (Patented) 4 Rejuvenator
Dudhi (Patented) 12 Treatment of diarrhoea and dysentery
Castor (Patented) 3 Laxative
Gokhru (Patented) 11 Diuretic and anti-inflammatory drug
Bathua Food and good source of iron
Various grasses Good source of nutritious fodder for the animals
Wild Berries Source of food for a variety of birds
Case Study B
Genetic engineering focuses on single gene, single function manipulation of complex traits of single crops. When compared to polycultures, this is both non-sustainable and unproductive. If herbicide tolerant crop monocultures are compared to the complex mixed farming systems still prevalent in large parts of the world, genetic engineering strategies are less productive and more wasteful of resources.
In the mountain farming systems of the Garhwal Himalaya, a particular cropping pattern takes place called Baranaja ‚ which means, literally twelve seeds. The seeds of twelve different crops (so often more than twelve, never less than 12) are mixed an then randomly sown in a field which is fertilized by cow dung and farm year manure. The twelve crops are :
1 Phaphra Fagophrum tataricum/esculentum
2 Mandua Eleusine coracana
3 Marsha Amaranthus frumentaceous
4 Bhat Glycine soja
5 Lobia Vigna catiang
6 Moong Phaseolus mungo
7 Gahath Dolichios bilorus
8 Rajma Phaseolus vulgaris
9 Jakhia
10 Navrangi
11 Jowar Sorghum vulgare
12 Urad Phaseolus mungo
Mandua and Marsha are the primary crops int his 12 crop selection. Care is taken to balance the distribution of the 12 crops in each area of the field. Thus, after sowing the farmer is required to transplant crops from one area of the field to another area in order to maintain an even distribution of the crops. As in other cultivation practices, constant weeding is necessary. The crops are all sown in May, but are harvested at different times, from late August (Jakhia) to early November and beyond. The 12 different crops have been selected by the farmers over the ages by observing certain relationships between plant and plant, and between plant and soil. For example, the rajma creeper will climb only on the marsha plant and on no other plant in the field.
Relationship between different plants leads to symbiosis, which contributes to increased productivity of the crops. Assessments made show that if farmers cultivate baranaja, they get higher yields, diverse outputs, and better market price for their produce than the soya bean monoculture which is being propagated by agricultural agencies. Soyabean sells for only Rs. 5/- kg, whereas jakhia, one of the baranaja crops that matures earliest, is selling for Rs. 60/- kg. Phapra is another high value crop in the baranaja family, which has always been cultivated as a cash crop by Garhwal farmers, which used to be traditionally exchanged for salt.
Cultivating diversity can therefore be part of a farming strategy for high yields and high comes. Since these yields and incomes are of diverse crops, centralized commercial interests are not interested in them. For them uniformity and monocultures are an imperative. However, from the point of view of small farmers, diversity is both highly productive and sustainable.
Monsanto Round Up Ready Soya bean introduced in these regions would destroy the 'baranaja' biodiversity, undermine food production and the income of small farming households.
More importantly, destruction of biodiversity translates into reducing the capacity of agro ecosystems to sequester carbon. GMO's are in fact adding the equivalent of millions of cars by reducing the capacity of farm crop diversity and farm soils to absorb carbon.
It should come as no surprise that Brookes and Barfoot are manufacuturing false data to make GMOs appear beneficial to farmers and the environment. They have come from the biotech industry. Barfoot worked for 12 years with the Agricultural genetics company, which eventually led onto Axis genetics which aimed to produce pharmaceuticals from plants. Axis's GM potatoes were found to have damaging effects on rats in research carried out by Arpad Putzai. Axis failed, Barfoot continued to sell biotech failures as miracles. Brookes speaks on Monsanto's website to promote GMO crops. Peter Barfoot and Graham Brookes are now Directors of PG Economics who claim to be "independent and objective consultants". The studies of PG Economies are funded by big biotech firms. Their pseudo science and close links to industry show that they are neither independent nor objective. Their "study" should be viewed as part of the PR arsenal of the biotech industry.
South African GM label confusion
Nature Biotechnology, 6 March 2006.
Most maize and soy products sold in South African food stores contain detectable amounts of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), including products that are labeled 'non-GMO,' 'GMO-free,' or 'organic,' reveals a study by the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein in South Africa. Of 20 products carrying one of these labels, randomly selected in major supermarkets and health-food stores, 14 tested positive for genetically modified (GM) organisms. "It appears that the vacuum in [South African] regulations ... in terms of non-GM food has also left a vacuum in the use of such labels," lead researcher Chris Viljoen and coauthors write in the African Journal of Biotechnology ( 5, 73‚82, 2006). South Africa currently has no laws defining negative GM labels. Viljoen, who heads a GMO-testing facility affiliated with international company Genescan of Freiburg, Germany, did no quantitative tests, so some or all cases may concern trace amounts. Nonetheless, Julian Kinderlerer, a bioethicist and a professor at the department of law and ethics at the University of Sheffield, UK, says he finds it of concern "that the [research] finds little truth in [the] assertions [on labels]." He adds: "we need to ask what the purpose of labeling is, and then assure that the label meets that purpose." South Africa is currently the only country in Africa that allows the growing of GM crops, including corn, soybeans and cotton
'Leaked' WTO report stirs GM food controversy
FoodNavigator.com, 3 March 2006.
A pressure group has alleged that a leaked confidential WTO ruling
on the recent GM food trade dispute shows that many pro-GM arguments were
lost.
UK-based environmental group Friends of the Earth (FoE) claims that the
1,000-page report, distributed earlier this month only to the countries
involved in the dispute, reveals that despite claims to the latter, the US,
Canada and Argentina in fact failed to win most of their arguments.
But biotech industry body EuropaBio has slammed the pressure group for
spreading "mischievous nonsense" and trying to frighten people.
"What I sense is that Friends of the Earth and others are making statements
about the WTO suggesting that it is forcing people to have things they don't
want, when this is not the case at all," Simon Barber, director of the plant
biotech unit (PBU) of EuropaBio, told FoodNavigator.
"Argentina, Canada and the US were concerned that the full democratic
process was not being used properly. People are not being forced to have
things they do not want."
FoE however insists that the alleged leaked report, which Barber says he has
not read, is the report that the biotech industry didnt want the public to
see.
"It reveals that the big corporations that stand behind the WTO failed to
get the big win they were hoping for," said FoE Europe GMO campaigner Adrian
Bebb.
"Free trade proponents needed a clear victory in this dispute to be able to
push governments in the EU and the developing world to accept genetically
modified food."
The WTO ruled last month that any European ban on GM imports contravened the
rules of free trade. But according to FoE, the WTO did not rule on two of
the most important questions before it, namely whether GM foods are
effectively the same as non-GM foods, and if they are safe.
The FoE also claims that the WTO dismissed eight other complaints in
relation to the moratorium, and did not recommend any further action, since
the moratorium ended in 2004.
But Barber claims that FoE is purposefully mixing up the argument.
"It was the industry's view that the regulatory process was not being
properly implemented, and that some Member States were following illegal
bans.
"Environmental protection has never come into this discussion. The only
thing being challenged was the trade rules."
In any case, FoE argues that the WTO is not and should not be the
appropriate body to deal with conflicts between trade rules and
environmental protection.
The pressure group has now launched an online action today calling on the
governments to reject the WTO as a forum to decide on what it calls
"environmental trade disputes".
EU authorises first GM food under new rules
Environment Daily, 5 March 2006.
The European commission authorised EU sales of more genetically modified (GM) foods on Friday - the first such decision under strict rules passed in 2003.Ý It took the decision unilaterally after governments failed to agree on a position. The authorisation covers foods and ingredients made from GM maize 1507, a line engineered by biotech firm Pioneer to resist herbicides and insects.Ý The maize joins several other GM foods licensed for sale before the
2003 regulation.
See statement
http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEX/06/0303
and list of pending GM food authorisations
http://www.efsa.eu.int/science/gmo/gm_ff_applications/catindex_en.html .
Biotech crops can help eradicate hunger
Irish TImes Opinion piece, 6 March 2006. By Marian Byron, director of the Irish BioIndustry Association.
Biotechnology enables farmers to grow crops in arid climates or salty soils, and cultivate foods that are more nutritious and contain healthier oils, writes Marian Byron
Having read Fr Seán McDonagh's article in The Irish Times last week, I am puzzled by his arguments against plant biotechnology.
Despite many claims to the contrary, no health threats linked to biotech crops have emerged, and last year the one billionth acre of biotech crops was planted. We have been eating these foods now for over a decade and no adverse effects have been identified.
The technology has proved to be of enormous benefit and undoubtedly, as science moves on, more advantages will come to light. Referring to plant biotechnology as an imprecise science is not accurate. Genetic modification in nature is far less precise and the outcomes far less predictable. New technology must therefore be embraced if we are to reap the rewards.
Most commentators agree that inactive lifestyles combined with poor diets have contributed to an increase in cardiac disease and diabetes in the developed world. It is ironic to note that now and in the future the best way of preventing and managing these diseases will come from biotechnological advances. Far from presenting a threat, biotechnology will provide the solutions for many of our most pressing problems.
Those who live and work in the developed world can choose to consume foods grown using organic agriculture if they so wish and they are perfectly entitled to do so. The choice faced by many who live in the developing world is much starker - they either eat and survive, or starve. Biotechnology has provided a range of innovations which tip this delicate balance in favour of survival, including drought tolerant and insect resistant crops, for example.
Biotechnology enables farmers to grow crops in arid climates or salty soils, and cultivate foods that are more nutritious and contain healthier oils. Enriched with beta carotene, "golden rice" has the potential to help combat vitamin A deficiency - a major cause of blindness in the developing world.
Plants that resist viral pests, such as a new variety of African sweet potato, can improve yields of important staple crops. Similarly, plants that resist toxic or salty soils may increase the land available for farming throughout the world. It is vital that these opportunities are exploited by those who most need them.
Fr McDonagh highlights issues he believes are contributing to world food shortage, such as global warming, destruction of biodiversity and the lack of social and economic equality. However, the article ignores the primary cause of food shortage now and in the future - unprecedented population growth.
The UN estimates that the world's population will, in time, grow to more than nine billion people. With an estimated global population of eight billion people by 2030, the need for a nutritious and safe food supply will only continue to grow.
We have an ever increasing number of people on a finite planet, where the few wealthy nations have access to a plentiful supply of food, whereas those who are disadvantaged do not. Over 800 million people do not have sufficient food supplies today. This contributes to poor health, disease, conflict and dramatically reduced productivity, trapping individuals and entire communities in poverty, war and despair. The problems are easy to identify, but what are the solutions?
In an ideal world all of us would work together to improve matters, by using less energy and resources and by living more frugally on a modest scale. But the contribution that science and new technology can make towards the solution must be championed.
We have a means to help grow nutritious food, in many cases where the nutritional value has been enhanced. Biotechnology will increase crop yields by shrinking the amount of land needed. In addition, crops that contain greater nutritional value can be grown where water is scarce. Some new crops will even grow medicines, while others will provide stronger, more rapidly renewable building material.
It is worth noting that 90 per cent of the 8.25 million farmers who chose to plant biotech crops last year came from developing countries, where the benefits of these crops can make a substantial contribution to the alleviation of poverty.
Commenting on the improvement in his crops, Seferino Cosme, a farmer from the Philippines said the type of corn he was growing had made a big difference to his life:
"I want my co-farmers and all the other farmers in the country to experience the good life - just as we do." This is indicative of the real and tangible benefits plant biotechnology can bring.
It is of course vital that public concern about plant biotechnology is taken on board and consumers are completely confident in the technology. It is therefore important that independent assessment and regulation of the technology, the products, and the uses are stringently maintained and enforced. In doing so, we can embrace the opportunities and contribute towards a healthier and more sustainable planet.
5 March 2006
Britain gives the green light to GM terminator technology
Sunday Herald (Scotland), 5 March 2006. By Charles Sweeney.
THE government has abandoned its opposition to so-called "terminator technology", a form of genetic modification that makes harvested seeds sterile, and has opened the door to testing such products.
Terminator technology was developed by the biotech industry and is highly controversial because it prevents farmers from saving their own seeds to grow new crops, forcing them to buy seed each season.
A global moratorium on the testing and commercialisation of terminator technology was established under the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) in 2000.
However, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) recently stated that it will examine applications for terminator trials on a "case by case" basis.
Campaigners have accused ministers of putting the interest of biotech industries ahead of the millions of farmers who depend upon saving seeds.
Terminator technology ‚ also known as genetic use restriction technologies, or Gurts ‚ was developed in the US in the 1990s. In 2000, a global moratorium was established, with an agreement that restrictions should remain until research into the possible socio-economic impact of the technology was carried out.
There have been major fears that it could impoverish small-scale farmers in third world countries who traditionally save their seeds. Seed saving is also practised in countries such as Scotland to preserve seed-line and reduce farm costs.
However, some countries are pushing to be allowed to carry out "case-by-case" assessment. Among the countries known to back such a move are Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Last month the UK signalled that it is also in favour of carrying out trials when Defra posted a revised policy on its website, stating that it would consider applications for terminator field trials.
"Decisions on applications to market genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are made on a case-by-case basis taking full account of a scientific assessment of the particular GMO and the risks associated with its use against the criteria in the EU legislation. An application for a GMO incorporating Gurt would be dealt with in the same way as any other GMO," it says.
The turnaround comes only weeks ahead of a meeting in Brazil of the CBD on March 20-31, to consider a new report on the technology and discuss the current moratorium.
A letter sent from the office of First Minister Jack McConnell to a member of the UK Working Group on Terminator Technology which was passed to the Sunday Herald shows that the Scottish Executive also supports the new policy.
Like the Westminster document, it undermines the moratorium, stating: "Recognising that there are both potential benefits and risks associated with GM crops, all countries should be able to make their own informed choices."
Last night, campaigners reacted with disbelief. Pete Reilly of GM Freeze said: "There is no logic behind the shift. The government doesn't appear to have any new information available to justify it ‚ they are working in the dark."
He added: "Whitehall has clearly decided that the interests of the biotech companies comes ahead of the millions of people who rely on farm-saved seeds for their livelihoods and food supply."
Mark Ruskell MSP, the Green spokesman on biotechnology, also expressed concern at the turnaround.
"I'm shocked but not surprised that the Executive is toeing the Westminster line in allowing big biotech firms to potentially develop an obscene level of control on the world's food supply," he said.
"Terminator seeds steal the ability of farmers to support themselves and their communities, it's hard to think of a technology which could so completely undermine the Executive's attempts to help countries like Malawi claw their way out of poverty and hunger."
The National Farmers' Union in Scotland said trials were the only way to ascertain any benefits of GM crops. A spokesman said: "Whether the UK gives the go-ahead must be based on trials."
4 March 2006
EU clears way for sale of GM maize
Irish Independent, 4 March 2006. By Conor Sweeney in Brussels
GM maize has been cleared for sale in Europe, despite the absence any agreement between the member states.
The European Commission lifted the restrictions because of deadlock among the 25 environment ministers who could not reach a decision to ban or sanction.
"The authorisation means that this maize type will now be allowed to be marketed in the EU as food, food ingredients or derived products, such as oil and starch," said a commission spokesman. Products containing GM must be clearly labelled.
"In line with EU labelling and traceability rules, any product containing it will have to clearly indicate its genetically modified nature," he said.
Next week Environment Ministers will debate on whether to change the decision
Priest in angry clash with cardinal over Vatican's GM foods stance
Irish Independent, 4 March 2006. By John Cooney, Religious Affairs Correspondent.
AN Irish priest has revealed that he was involved in a private row with a senior cardinal of the Roman Curia during a major conference on social justice at Croke Park this week.
Fr Sean McDonagh, an internationally-renowned expert on the environment, confirmed yesterday that he had a heated argument off-stage with Cardinal Renato Martino, the head of the Vatican's Council for Justice and Peace.
The angry exchanges occurred on Thursday, after the two had clashed openly at the conference over whether or not the Vatican had given its moral blessing to the production of genetically-modified foodstuffs.
Speaking from the floor, Fr McDonagh had argued that GM foodstuffs were morally irresponsible, and he accused Cardinal Martino of being one of the main proponents of GM food production.
In reply, the cardinal claimed that Fr McDonagh had misrepresented him, and he insisted that the question of its morality was still open because the Pontifical Council had not yet made up its mind.
Afterwards, the Cardinal and the priest re-engaged with one another in private.
"The Cardinal became really angry and accused me of running a world protest campaign against him," the Columban priest, who is based in Navan, Co Meath, told the Irish Independent. "He asked me why I was running a campaign against him on the issue, and that he was receiving letters from all over the world in opposition to GM food."
"I told him that I was not campaigning against His Eminence personally, but was arguing publicly against the immorality of producing genetically modified food, an issue which has a major impact on one billion Catholics throughout the world."
Meanwhile, Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin flew to Rome yesterday to attend a major conference which will honour his predecessor, Cardinal Desmond Connell, who will be 80 on March 24.
The cardinal, who will lose his right to vote in a papal conclave, is being feted by the Vatican for his long service to the Irish Catholic Church, as a philosophy professor at UCD and as Archbishop of Dublin from 1988-2004.
The conference will take place at the Irish College, with several heavyweights in the Curia, the Vatican's government, taking part.
These will be led by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Pope's prime minister in his official capacity as Secretary of State.Honour
Other speakers will be Archbishop William Levada, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Bishop Brian Farrell, secretary to the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
The conference is being organised by the Rector of the Irish College, Monsignor Liam Bergin, and the papers delivered in Cardinal Connell's honour are to be published in book form.
Cardinal Connell will also be stepping down from his membership of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in which he worked closely with its former Prefect, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
Church sources ruled out attendance at today's conference by Pope Benedict XVI, but suggested that Cardinal Connell may meet him at a private audience later on in the day.
3 March 2006
Monsanto and trade talks team
Irish Times, 3 March 2006 (letters to the editor):
Madam, - Your edition of February the 23rd contained a report of a press conference held by those opposed to genetically modified crops, especially the new breed of potatoes, being grown experimentally in this country.
The headline was "Monsanto link to trade talks delegation denied". In the body of the report Sean MacConnell states that "the Department of Agriculture yesterday denied a claim by Independent Senator David Norris that a representative of the chemical company Monsanto was on the official Irish delegation to the World Trade Organisation talks in Hong Kong last December".
I stand by my statement. I cannot understand how the Department of Agriculture can deny such a claim. I have been provided with a list of the Irish delegation, a photograph and eye-witness accounts. The person in question is a full-time employee of Monsanto, being a senior political adviser to its operation in Brussels.
In recent years Monsanto has managed to insert representatives into Irish delegations. They are provided with full accreditation, badges, access to all areas, etc.
Another newspaper carried a similar denial but in this the Department of Agriculture indicated that the Monsanto representative was not part of a Department of Agriculture delegation. I never said she was. She was part of the Irish delegation as a whole. - Yours, etc,
Senator David Norris, Seanad Éireann, Dublin 2.
2 March 2006
Cypriot Authorities Rapped for GMO Non-Disclosure
Reuters, 1 March 2006. NICOSIA - Cyprus's public administration watchdog has rapped health authorities for keeping the public in the dark over foodstuffs on the market containing GMO's, a red flag for environmentalists.
The Commissioner for Public Administration has upheld a complaint from the Greens Party that it had been wrongly refused access to the brand names of items ranging from baby food to soya sauces and corn snacks tested by the island's state lab for GMO content in 2003.
Some of the foods which tested positive for genetically modified organisms carried "GMO-free" labels on their packaging.
"We've been asking for the list for two years," George Perdikis, a Green Party member of Cyprus's parliament, said on Tuesday.
"The excuse we have been hearing was that it was a violation of the data of the companies concerned."
Last year a plan pursued by Cypriot legislators to put GMO food on separate supermarket shelves angered the United States, which warned the move could harm bilateral ties.
Perdikis, who had supported the legislative bill, said he hoped parliament could take a vote on the subject before elections scheduled on May 21.
The US had sent a letter to the Cypriot parliament warning the move risked stigmatising biotech foods and could contravene Cyprus's obligations as a World Trade Organisation member.
The European Union, of which Cyprus is a member, has tough rules on labelling. If conventional food contains more than 0.9 percent of authorised GMO's, it must be labelled as such throughout the 25-nation bloc.
The contentious list of foods was tested by a special unit of the Cyprus state lab in 2003. Perdikis said the health ministry failed to respond to his request for the brand-names.
"I consider the health ministry refusal inexcusable," the Commissioner, a government appointee, said in a report obtained by Reuters.
Of 63 items tested, 76 percent were GMO-free, while 19 percent carried GMO content. Of that percentage, some had gene-altered content while the labelling clearly stated they were GMO clear, the Commissioner's report stated. Tests on three items were inconclusive.
European public opinion is suspicious of genetically modified products, fearing health and environmental impacts. Advocates of biotechnology insist it is safe and will help eradicate world hunger by improving food supply.
EU Farm Chief Lukewarm on Plan for GMO Crop Law
Reuters, 1 March 2006. By Jeremy Smith.
BRUSSELS - Europe's farm chief may have frozen her project for EU-wide rules to separate traditional, organic and genetically modified (GMO) crops, calling for more time for countries to develop their own national crop laws.
So far, the European Commission has said the EU's 25 member states must take responsibility for how their farmers segregate the three farming types and minimise cross-contamination: an issue known in EU jargon as coexistence.
EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel has often said she will address the matter, floating the idea of a vague legal framework sometime in 2006 setting parameters around which governments can enact their own national crop-growing laws.
Now, that idea seems to have been placed in the deep freeze.
In a document drafted by the Commission's agriculture department, and obtained by Reuters, the thinking has changed.
It mentions the need to gather "further experience" on national coexistence laws, and on the EU's wide array of civil liability laws. The document should be published on March 10.
"The limited experience and the need to conclude the process of implementing national coexistence measures do not seem to justify the development of a dedicated harmonised legislative approach at the present time," the document says.
"It remains imperative to maintain a maximum degree of flexibility for the member states to develop specific solutions to achieve coexistence," it says. "The challenge for (them) is to develop economically sustainable coexistence measures."
Even so, it stresses that no decision had yet been taken - and certainly not before a conference on coexistence to be held in Vienna in early April where the Commission plans to hold a "talking shop" with environment groups and the biotech industry.
So far, only two varieties of GMO maize are commercially cultivated in the 25-nation bloc.
BURDEN ON BIOTECH FARMERS
Only a handful of EU countries have specific coexistence laws in place - four, as of the end of 2005 - based on a set of broad non-binding guidelines issued by the Commission in July 2003, although many others are now debating draft laws.
No country had any plan yet to deal with GMO crop growing in regions bordering other EU states, the document said.
Some of the national laws appeared particularly strict and favoured non-GMO farmers over those who wanted to experiment with biotech crops. Most of them placed the burden of carrying out crop segregation on the GMO farmer.
While some states had opted for a general compensation scheme, others encouraged or even required GMO farmers to obtain third-party insurance - not currently available in the EU for economic damage from accidental GMO presence in a non-GMO crop.
And some countries appeared keen to restrict GMO farming as much as possible, it said. In these cases, the Commission has usually sent a draft coexistence law back to the country concerned, warning that its proposed measures might violate EU laws on distorting the single market.
"While differences in the stringency of the approaches cannot be denied, member states have generally made an effort to allow the different production types ... to coexist within a region," the document said.
"(But) in some cases, proposed measures such as isolation distances between GM and non-GM fields appear to entail greater efforts for GM crop growers than necessary," it added.
Proper coexistence laws, whether EU-wide or national, are seen as essential if the Commission wants to ask member states to allow imports of more GMO crops for growing in Europe's fields: the most controversial area in the EU's biotech debate.
Biotechnology continues to split EU governments, even after the EU lifted its unofficial ban in 2004 on authorising new GMO's by approving a modified sweet maize type to be sold in cans.
Irish Doctors Environmental Association opposes application for genetically-engineered crops
Irish Medical Weekly, 1 March 2006. By Lloyd Mudiwa.
The Irish Doctors Environmental Association (IDEA) beat last Wednesday's deadline to oppose an application by BASF Plant Science GmbH to deliberately 'release' genetically-engineered potatoes into the environment.
The IDEA said ignoring the application was akin to complicity in betraying future generations by leaving them an irreversible legacy.
Medicine Weekly established that the IDEA urged the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to deny the German company's application to conduct a five-year field trial to come up with a blight resistant plant and an environmental risk assessment, in the interest of the health of present and future generations.
"IDEA has an ethical and moral duty to highlight our concerns in relation to this proposal," past committee member of the Association, Dr Liz Cullen, said on behalf of IDEA.
"We believe there are good scientific grounds for the opinion that genetic engineering may be harmful to health."
Besides, Irish farmers already had two varieties of blight resistant potatoes available to them, she submitted.
BASF Plant Science GmbH, an affiliate of the giant transnational chemicals and drugs company BASF, has notified the EPA of its intention to 'release' the potatoes into the environment 9km south of the Hill of Tara, on a two hectare plot at Arodstown in Summerhill, Co Meath.
If given the go-ahead, this would be the first Irish release of GMO crops since protestors ended Monsanto's GMO beet trials in 1998.
The IDEA did not think it acceptable that statutory agencies should use EU guidelines that do not reflect current health concerns.
Dr Cullen requested that the precautionary principle be invoked in the light of the serious concerns the IDEA outlined in relation to the impact of genetically-engineered food on health. Containment of genetically-engineered seed was not possible as seeds would spread by wind, and by people and animals, she also said.
To accurately assess any adverse health impacts, Dr Cullen explained, it was necessary to have baseline data collected prior to the introduction of the food under surveillance.
She commented: "We do not have such information in Ireland. Health surveillance systems at present in Ireland are not adequate to detect adverse health effects should they arise from this planting."
She found disturbing the lack of safety testing of genetically-engineered plants, which was not required if the new plant was deemed to be 'substantially equivalent' to an existing plant.
"This term has no scientific meaning", Dr Cullen argued, while calling for research to determine the safety of genetically-modified food crops."
"The concept itself does not make sense, for if a genetically-engineered plant is the same as its original counterpart, there would be no need to develop it in the first place."
Results of previous research had demonstrated immune system damage, proliferation of the gastric mucosa and reductions in cellular metabolism in rats fed genetically engineered potato. The rats also sustained changes in the liver and pancreas, low-birth weight and fatalities.
Freedom of choice should exist
Meath Chronicle, 1 March 2006 (letter to the Editor)
Dear sir - I would like to respond to Mr Dier on the subject of GM crops as outlined by him in last week's paper. He made a number of very misleading and inaccurate claims, which require clarification.
Firstly, Mr Dier stated that some 25,000 farmers are thought to have committed suicide in India forced by financial pressures from GM food companies. This is a seriously misguided allegation. Suicide is indeed a problem amongst the farming community in India, but driven by severe poverty and not because of anything to do with biotech crops. On the contrary, biotech crops are helping in the alleviation of poverty by increasing farmer incomes. Look at the facts. Last year in India 3.25 million acres of biotech cotton were grown, which represents a 240 per cent increase from 2004.
On average, farmers using biotech cotton increased both their yields and income by over 50 per cent, and pesticide sprays were reduced by 70 per cent.
Mr Dier stated that GM seed is subsidised by American taxpayers to sell it below cost to poor farmers to force them to grow a particular brand of GM crops.
This is totally untrue. Farming is a business. No farmer is forced to buy GM seeds, whether it be in developed or in developing countries.
Freedom of choice exists to buy conventional seeds or GM seeds. Increasing numbers of farmers each year are buying GM seeds because they improve crop yield and farmer profitability.
There have been thousands of studies carried out by reputable independent institutes on the safety of biotech crops, which have undergone the proper validation procedures of peer review and scientific scrutiny.
Yet Mr Dier chooses to refer to two studies - on GM potatoes and on monarch butterflies - both of which have subsequently been discredited as invalid or improperly conducted experiments.
We need to guard against exaggerated claims leading to a rejection of modern science and technology.
Many of Mr Dier's claims show no regard to the most elementary rule about respect for evidence. Fear of biotech crops is a scare without foundation.
Patrick O'Reilly,
Monsanto Ireland Ltd,
Dunshaughlin.
GM crops have already lost their Irish virginity
Meath Chronicle, 1 March 2006 (letter to the Editor).
Dear sir - Mr. Dier's comments on February 22nd regarding GMOs are nothing short of spin. Surely the people of Meath deserve more than half truths.
In regards to Mr. Diers claims that the numbers regarding the supportive opinion of experts are 'sexed up'. I would point out a recent study by UCC and the Food Safety Promotion Board that surveyed 400 independent food safety experts in Ireland. The study found that Irish food experts believe there is a significant over assessment by the public of risks associated with GMOs (which they ranked as ninth in a list of ten risks) and an underassessment of bacterial risks. 76 per cent also believed that newspaper coverage of food risks are often very misleading. Some 92 per cent believed that both print and TV media put a 'slant' on the food risk to maximise impact. In fact, organic food has caused more food poisonings and food recalls than approved GM food.
As an Irish citizen who has studied, published scientific papers and even regulated GM crops, I can say for sure what happens with GM food. However don't believe me - ask one of Ireland's highest ever ranking EU officials, Mr David Byrne, former EU Commissioner on Health and Consumer Affairs, who said of GM food in the Irish Times, May 20th, 2004: "The science is right, the law is right, the procedures are right, the information to the public is right and public health is protected and not under threat in any way."
If an non-Meath source is not good enough for Mr Dier, lets ask a Meath man - former Taoiseach John Bruton who stated on May 11th 2000 that:
"The Food Safety Authority of Ireland has made a very favourable recommendation on the safety of genetically modified foods. The Irish Government, if it had the interests of Irish farming at heart, would have had the courage to positively promote that message and to seek to find ways of using biotechnology to enhance the earning capacity of Irish farmers. Instead it is taking a passive approach and allowing public opinion to be led by others."
I published a paper in the medical journal The Lancet where I questioned the same media forces that propelled Pusztai's rats to mainstream conversation have been largely silent when it comes to the rotenone, an organic pesticide that is used to cause Parkinson disease in rats. Since the organic movement uses rotenone itself, maybe they are choosing to remain quiet on this issue.
Surely this action (or lack thereof) brings to light a severe case of double standards.
It should be remembered that Ireland has already lost its GMO virginity. The Irish experimental trials in 1997, 1998, and 1999 of GM sugar beet occurred without the doomsday impact on export markets, consumer choice or the environment. The Irish public deserve more than the spin they are forced to swallow from both the PRO and ANTI side of the GMO debate. As a result I have blogged the GM spin and untruths on www.gmoireland.blogspot.com. I suggest Mr. Dier log on and show the people of Meath the respect they deserve by sticking to the facts.
Yours,
Shane Morris,
6 Coolkill,
Sandyford
Dublin 18.
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