NEWS ABOUT GM ISSUES • February 2007

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28 February 2007

UK: BASF announces second UK trial site

GM Watch, 22 February 2007.

BASF has announced the second UK trial site for its GM blight resistant potatoes. It has applied for permission to plant in Hedon, East Riding of Yorkshire (grid ref TA1729).

See Defra press release and links
http://www.defra.gov.uk/news/2007/070227b.htm

There will be another public consultation - deadline 20 April.

An invitation to make public representations will be posted on the Defra website at
www.defra.gov.uk/environment/gm/regulation/applications/index.htm

East Riding passed a GM free resolution in 2003 so may not be best pleased!

Useful GM Freeze briefing on this GM potato:
http://www.gmfreeze.org/uploads/GM_Spudsoverview_webbriefing.pdf

UK: GM Spuds - Industry Can't Agree on Blight Costs

GM Freeze press release, 28 February 2007.

BASF, the company wanting to field test GM potatoes in Cambridgeshire and Humberside [1] over the next five years, and the British Potato Council (BPC) cannot agree about the annual costs of blight damage in UK potatoes.

BASF want to test GM potatoes engineered to resist blight. They claim [2] that the annual losses due to blight amount to £50 million per year with GBP20 million needed to pay for fungicides. In contrast, BPC [3] put the cost of damage due to blight at GBP3 million. They agree with BASF on the costs of fungicide spray.

GM Freeze has assessed the claims made about the losses due to blight by BASF. Based on BPC's average price [5] of GBP135 per tonne, a GBP50 million loss would equate to 370,000 tonnes of potatoes or 6.2% of total production of 6m tonnes annually (BPC figures). Using BPCs figures, the losses would be just 22,250 tonnes per year or 0.4% of the total crop.

Blight is a serious fungal disease of potatoes. In recent years considerable progress has been made in predicting the occurrence of blight and in developing varieties which are naturally resistant to the disease. At present 20% of the most popular commercial varieties offer good resistance to the disease and potato breeding lines introduced from Hungary are producing highly resistant strains [4].

The BPC Flight Against Blight (FAB) campaign monitors the blight population regularly to check for new strains of the fungus which in the past few decades has developed the capacity to reproduce sexually as well as asexually. The latest BPC finding "indicates that strains are not successfully mating in Britain and producing oospores which could otherwise lead to difficulties controlling the disease" [5]. However, they call upon growers "to stay alert for signs of blight and control sources of infection such as outgrade piles and volunteers" and to sign up to FAB and BPC's Blight Watch which monitors the disease around the country.

Defra issued a consent to BASF in December 2007 to release the GM potatoes in Derbyshire and Cambridgeshire. In an unusual step, the consent was personally signed by Secretary of State David Miliband instead of senior civil servants. The Derbyshire site was withdrawn two weeks later and this week BASF informed Defra of a replacement site at Hedon in Humberside. The trials will last 5 years.

Commenting of the lack of agreement between BASF and the BPC Pete Riley of GM Freeze said:

"BASF clearly have a vested interested in exaggerating the costs of potato blight losses - they want to sell the idea of GM potatoes to farmers and politicians. BPC don't have to inflate the costs of damage. We'll leave it to readers to decide who is likely to be more accurate. Mr Miliband has firmly nailed his colours to the GM mast by personally endorsing these GM trials. Let's hope he has not been taken in by BASF's hype and that gets he gets better advice if he ever has to make decision on whether these GM potatoes can be grown commercially. GM won't solve the blight problem because the disease can evolve into new strains. What is needed is an integrated approach of conventionally breeding resistant varieties, close monitoring and very strict hygiene to minimise the use of fungicides".

ENDS

Calls to Pete Riley 07903 341065 or 01226 790713

Notes

1. BASF press release 27th February. See also http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/gm/regulation/applications/index.htm

2. As above.

3. British Potato Council Growers Advice Fight Against Blight
http://www.potato.org.uk/media_files/FAB_GAs/01outgradehygiene2005.pdf

4. Sarpo varieties are being developed by the Sartavi Research Trust. For more information see http://www.gmfreeze.org/uploads/GM_Spudsoverview_webbriefing.pdf.

5. BPC press release February 2007 http://www.potato.org.uk/department/knowledge_transfer/press_releases/index.html?did=2085&pg=1

India: Farmer suicides haunt west India despite government relief promises

Xinhua news agency (China), Feb 28 2007.

In the first month of this year 62 farmers committed suicide in Vidharbha, a cotton-growing belt in west India, but the tragic figure was considered a positive sign as the monthly suicide rate finally dropped below 100 for the first time since last July.

According to the state government, 1,452 farmers killed themselves in this region last year. Many did it because of failure of crops and unbearable debts.

There was a popular comment among local farmer activists: "If I were given a choice, I would like to be born as a European cow, but certainly not as an Indian farmer, in my next birth."

In Europe a cow gets two U.S. dollars as subsidy per day while here a farmer could be a debtor all his life. After his death, his son might inherit his debts and has to borrow money for his funeral.

According to a report from the Planning Commission of Indian government, the cost to produce a quintal of cotton stands at 2, 215 rupees (49 U.S. dollars) but the minimum support price offered by the government remains 1,960 rupees (43 U.S. dollars).

Some blamed the failure of their crops to the genetic modified Bt cotton which was promoted by the government.

"The low yield is because of the genuine Bt. Cotton, which is highly uneconomic and known to fail in rain-fed farming," said Ramashankar Tiwari, a farm activist in Vidarbha.

The agriculture authorities blamed the low yield of cotton to spurious Bt cotton seeds but Tiwari said there has been few spurious cotton seed in the market since U.S. bio-agriculture giant Monsanto lowered the price from 1,780 rupees (39.56 U.S. dollars) per bag to 750 rupees (16.67 U.S. dollars).

Drought and lack of irrigation facilities contributed to heavy burdens upon farmers in Vidarbha. In a region that receives over 800 mm of average rainfall annually, the cultivation area totals 17 million hectares but only 3.5 percent of them has access to its 10 major, 49 medium and 650 minor irrigation schemes.

Other factors that worsen the situation are reducing price of cotton in the market and competition from cheaper cotton imported from the United States.

Insiders here said that the subsidies that U.S. government provides to its cotton growers have greatly lowered their cotton products and tiny farmers in Vidarbha have few resources to stand against it.

The cotton price dropped by 60 percent since 1995 but the U.S. subsidies to its 25,000 cotton farmers reached 3.9 billion dollars in 2001-02, doubling over that in 1992.

When a farmer in Vidarbha suffers loss in the fields and needs some cash to restart, he has few choices but private money lenders.

Nearly 73 percent of Vidarbha farmers don't have access to institutional credit. They borrow from relatives, friends, big landlords, or the moneylenders, though Vidarbha has a good banking network consisting of 823 commercial banks, about 200 regional rural banks and close to 60 other banks.

An investigation team of the Planning Commission said in its report that nearly 2.8 million of the 3.2 million cotton farmers in Vidarbha are defaulters and for every 100 rupees (2.22 U.S. dollars) they borrow, about 80 rupees (1.78 U.S. dollars) goes into servicing of old loans.

The high farmer suicide rates have attracted lots of attention from the central government. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited the region in July last year and promised a special relief package of 37.5 billion rupees (833 million U.S. dollars). At least 16 panels from various government departments and committees have visited the region producing quite a few reports but little visible improvement has been seen so far.

According to the Prime Minister's relief package, 20.77 billion rupees (462 million U.S. dollars) will go to irrigation facilities but the projects have not started after six months, said Kishore Tiwari, chairman of Jan Andolan Samiti, a local farmer organization.

27 February 2007

USA: Bill would hold makers of engineered crops liable for contamination

Associated Press, Feb 27 2007.

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Stepping into the middle of a growing debate, a freshman assemblyman has introduced legislation that would make companies developing genetically engineered crops liable for damages if their work results in contamination of other fields.

The bill by Assemblyman Jared Huffman also would ban open-field production of genetically engineered crops used in the development of medications. And it would require growers to give county agriculture commissioners at least 30 days notice before engaging in open-field development of other genetically modified plants.

Huffman, D-San Rafael, said the measure is needed to protect California farmers against significant losses if their conventional or organic crops are contaminated by genetically engineered plants, seeds or pollen.

His bill would cover cases in which a grower claimed annual losses of at least $3,500.

He said an incident last year in which an experimental form of rice being developed by a German company showed up in grain elevators in Arkansas and Missouri should serve as a wake-up call for California.

Hundreds of rice farmers in Arkansas, Missouri and Louisiana have filed lawsuits claiming losses because of that contamination.

"It certainly underscores the urgency of taking action before things like that happen here,'' Huffman said.

The bill would clarify who would be responsible for damages if there was contamination. With some limited exceptions, it would be the seed producer, chemical company or other manufacturer paying for the genetically altered crop rather than the farmer growing it under contract.

"I'm not interested in farmers suing farmers...,'' Huffman said. "The kind of damage that can occur when cross-contamination does happen can be of a scale where you're not going to be able to make farmers whole unless they can hold the manufacturer responsible.''

The measure also would identify who was involved in genetically modified crop production. Right now, no one seems to have a clear idea of how much of that activity is taking place in California.

The bill would prevent the mixing of pharmaceutical plants with other crops by preventing those projects from being conducted in open fields.

"We're seeing food crops being engineered to grow chemicals as an alternative way of producing things like vaccines and antibiotics,'' Huffman said. "That is fascinating stuff, but obviously you don't want those crops getting into the food supply.''

Huffman's bill might go too far for some segments of California's agriculture industry and not far enough for others.

Greg Massa, co-chairman of the Rice Producers of California, said he welcomes Huffman's bill but added, "I don't really know if it's enough.''

His group of 200 farmers wants a moratorium on genetically modified rice experimentation and production. A study it commissioned found that California growers could lose about 40 percent of their rice market if Japan, China and several other nations imposed trade embargoes to keep out genetically modified crops.

"We can't take the risk,'' Massa said. "The report we just put out said pretty clearly that our customers don't want (genetically engineered crops) and that contamination in California would be much more severe than in the South.''

A California law adopted in 2000 might give farmers enough protection already, said Tim Johnson, president and chief executive officer of the California Rice Commission, which represents growers and marketers.

That statute, the California Rice Certification Act, provides for a committee representing growers, handlers, warehouses and researchers to suggest regulations designed to prevent the intermingling of different varieties of rice.

"That really has provided us, at least up to this point, the tools we need to manage customers' response to genetically modified crops,'' Johnson said. "That said, the industry will take as deliberative a review of Mr. Huffman's legislation as we did in developing the California Rice Certification Act of 2000.''

The California Farm Bureau Federation opposes the bill "as it stands now,'' said Cynthia Cory, the bureau's director of environmental affairs.

But she said her group of 91,000 farmers and others in the agriculture industry, including companies engaged in genetic engineering, is willing to work with Huffman.

"Biotechnology across the board is very important to this state,'' she said. "I don't think the bill acknowledges that.''

The bill's ban on open-field production of corn and other crops for use in medications could curtail "a cheap and effective way to produce the drugs,'' Cory said.

Huffman's bill may be unnecessary because legal remedies already exist, said Richard Matteis, executive vice president of the California Seed Association, which also represents some companies involved in genetic engineering.

"In California, I'm not aware of any growers being damaged because of the presence of biological crops in their crops,'' he said. "I think the system is working.''

Huffman's bill is similar to legislation introduced in 2005 by Assemblyman John Laird. That measure passed the Assembly Judiciary Committee but died in the Assembly Agriculture Committee.

Laird, D-Santa Cruz, said his bill ran into ``big fears that (it) would get in the way of certain agriculture production.''

"I think those fears are misplaced,'' he said. "I think it's an issue of markets. There are potentially markets that will close themselves to American crops if they believe there is (a genetically modified crop) involved.''

Huffman's bill might have a better chance of passing because of increased concern about the potential threat posed by the inadvertent spread of genetically modified grasses and crops since his bill failed, Laird said.

Several federal court rulings in the last six months have found that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been lax in enforcing environmental protections on genetically modified crop projects, Laird said.

In one case, a judge ordered the department to conduct more detailed reviews of genetically engineered plant projects after studies found that pollen from weed killer-resistant grass had drifted more than 12 miles from plots in Madras, Ore., and bred with conventional plants.

"Two things are inevitable on this issue,'' Huffman said. "One is genetic engineering is here to stay. We're going to see it more and more.

"But the second is there is going to be some regulation of this, and hopefully we can put a coherent policy in place before California experiences a cross-contamination disaster like the one that happened in Arkansas.''

Canada: Soybean farmers look to Japan

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 27 February 2007.

Farmers on Prince Edward Island are feeding a Japanese market hungry for soybeans that aren't genetically modified for making tofu.

Robert MacDonald would like to see other farmers on P.E.I. growing for the Japanese market. Robert MacDonald would like to see other farmers on P.E.I. growing for the Japanese market.

Robert MacDonald of Belle River, in southeastern P.E.I., has been growing for the Japanese market for three years.

"Right now, the premiums are $45 a ton and $60 a ton over and above what you'd normally get for a feed grade," MacDonald said.

Most of the soybeans currently grown on P.E.I. are used for livestock feed, but with fewer potatoes being grown on the Island, farmers are looking for new cash crops.

MacDonald started growing for Japan after visiting an Ontario farmer and seeing him packing up beans for the far east. He saw an opportunity that was particularly good for P.E.I., given the Japanese affection for a certain Island literary character.

"We were looking at the packages that he had set to go in these containers and I mentioned, you know, I could really see an Anne of Green Gables type of sign on one of these," MacDonald said.

"There is an attraction there and that's what it's all about."

Selling to the Japanese means more than being GMO-free. The soybeans must be carefully graded for colour and size to get the premium price. That's done in Ontario right now, but MacDonald wants to see a grading and cleaning plant built on the Island.

"If we're going to continue to get more advantage out of the markets, we have to be able to process them here," he said.

Currently there aren't enough soy beans grown on P.E.I. to make that economical. Production would have to triple, to 3,000 tons, so MacDonald is trying to get more farmers interested in growing the specialty crop.

MacDonald is also looking into other opportunities on the Japanese market, such as GMO-free canola.

UK Monsanto hid study that showed GM potatoes harmed rats, campaigners claim

Western Mail (Wales), 27 February 2007. By Steve Dube.

ONE of the world's leading biotechnology companies has been accused of suppressing a study of genetically modified potatoes that showed they damaged the internal organs of rats.

Campaign group GM Free Cymru said research into Monsanto GM NewLeaf potatoes by the Institute of Nutrition of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences only emerged after a lengthy legal battle.

It was delivered to the company in 1998, the same year that the variety was deregulated in the United States and at the same time as research by Arpad Pusztai in the Rowett Institute reached a similar conclusion. Dr Pusztai was vilified and his research funding stopped by the UK Government.

Dr Brian John of GM Free Cymru said the study only came to light this month after a protracted legal campaign by Greenpeace and other consumer groups in Russia.

Biologist Dr Irina Ermakova said it showed that the GM potatoes damaged the kidneys, liver, large gut, blood serum, testes and prostate.

"The GM potatoes were the most dangerous of the feeds used in the trials... and on the basis of this evidence they cannot be used in the nourishment of people."

Monsanto insisted that the company always acted transparently and said the research had not been peer-reviewed.

Company spokesman Tony Combes said, "Monsanto acts transparently and will continue to post on its website product safety summaries that support the food, feed and environmental safety of our products.

"The overwhelming preponderance of scientific scrutiny during the past decade of safe use, leaves no stone unturned in showing that these improved crops pose no harm to humans, animals or the environment."

Dr John said Monsanto seems to have left at least one stone unturned by not publishing the study and checking its results.

"The approval process for GM crops is never based on peer review but on advocacy," he said.

"But when independent scientists try to do research, biotech companies refuse to supply the material on the grounds of commercial confidentiality."

Gordon James of Friends of the Earth Cymru said the revelations were "a serious indictment" of Monsanto and said the UK government should halt forthcoming trials of GM potatoes in the UK until the research from the Russian Academy is fully assessed.

"This news should also act as a strong incentive for the Welsh Assembly Government to do all in its power to prevent GM crops from being cultivated in Wales," he said.

FoE Cymru and the Farmers Union of Wales are preparing to host a debate on GM crops, featuring speakers from both sides of the divide, at this year's Royal Welsh Show in July.

USA: GMO rice suits may be combined

High Plains / Midwest Agriculture Journal, 27 February 2007.

ST. LOUIS (AP)--Thirteen lawsuits over the accidental spread of genetically altered rice could soon be combined into one legal action against Bayer CropScience AG, lawyers representing hundreds of rice farmers said Nov. 30.

Attorneys told a panel of federal judges in St. Louis that the lawsuits should be tried collectively in front of one judge. But the lawyers mostly disagreed over which state should host the proceedings.

The farmers from Louisiana, Arkansas and Missouri allege the rice market was hurt after Bayer's strain of genetically engineered Liberty Link rice was accidentally released from test plots in the U.S.

They want Bayer to pay them for lost revenue and to clean up farms and rice bins that might be contaminated with Liberty Link grains.

The incident caused concern in Europe and Japan, two big markets for U.S. rice. Prices dropped after Japan suspended imports of U.S. long-grain rice and the European Union required extensive testing of all U.S. rice shipments.

The Liberty Link rice wasn't approved for human consumption, but tests indicated it somehow found its way into mainstream rice supplies in Missouri and Arkansas. Bayer and federal regulators are investigating how that happened.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture retroactively approved the rice recently. It is unclear how that might affect Japanese and European acceptance of the rice.

St. Louis attorney Don Downing argued Nov. 30 that the 13 lawsuits should be combined and tried in St. Louis federal court.

Downing said judges in the district are familiar with issues in the case because they oversee so many cases filed against Monsanto Co., the St. Louis company that's the world's biggest producer of genetically altered seeds.

Little Rock attorney Scott Poynter said the case should be tried in Arkansas because the state is the biggest rice producer in the U.S.

"Whether this case is won or whether it's lost, one thing is sure: The people most affected by this case are going to be Arkansas farmers," Poynter said.

The panel of seven federal judges will now rule whether to combine the suits and decide where they might be heard. Attorneys for the farmers expected the ruling within the next month.

Note: this article is dated 13 December 2006.

26 February 2007

USA: U.S. courts say transgenic crops need tighter scrutiny

Science magazine, 26 February 2007. By Dan Charles.

Citing a broad range of risks, U.S. federal judges in three separate cases have asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to examine genetically engineered crops more closely. The courts said the department had violated the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) in approving commercial sales of transgenic alfalfa and field trials of turf grass and plants engineered to produce pharmaceuticals.

Critics of genetically engineered crops say the decisions, two issued this month and one last August, will compel tighter regulation of transgenic crops. Will Rostov, an attorney for the Center for Food Safety in Washington, D.C., which filed all three lawsuits, called the alfalfa decision, rendered 12 February by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco, California, "another nail in the coffin for USDA's hands-off approach to regulation." But Stanley Abramson, a lawyer who represents several biotech companies, pointed out that the courts raised questions about USDA's procedures, not its substantive decisions. He predicted that USDA's final judgments would hold up in court.

The alfalfa verdict could have the most significant impact. In 2005, USDA approved the sale of Roundup Ready alfalfa, jointly developed by Monsanto and Forage Genetics International, which can withstand the popular herbicide glyphosate. But last week, Breyer said that the department should have first prepared an environmental impact statement (EIS) as required under NEPA.

Joseph Mendelson of the Center for Food Safety said that his group may demand an end to sales of genetically engineered alfalfa or even a ban on planting transgenic seed already in farmers' hands. USDA officials declined to discuss the government's position or whether it plans to appeal. A spokesperson for Monsanto, which sells genetically engineered alfalfa but was not a party to the lawsuit, said he did not expect sales to be halted. Breyer gave both sides until next week to propose regulatory fixes.

The second verdict, handed down 5 February by a Washington, D.C., district judge, found that USDA should have carried out an EIS or a more modest environmental assessment before it allowed a 162-hectare field trial of transgenic turf grass near Madras, Oregon, in 2003. And last August, a federal court in Hawaii faulted USDA for approving field trials in Hawaii of corn and sugar cane engineered to produce experimental pharmaceuticals without considering the state's numerous endangered species.

In two of the cases, the judges expressed concerns about potential risks that USDA has dismissed as insignificant or outside its mandate. Breyer, for instance, complained that USDA ignored the cumulative impact of glyphosate-tolerant alfalfa, corn, and soybeans. Greater use of glyphosate increases the odds that weeds will develop resistance to it.

Breyer also said USDA erred when it dismissed as not "significant" the concerns of organic farmers who don't want Roundup Ready pollen or seeds spreading to their alfalfa fields. The possible replacement of traditional varieties is itself significant, he noted. "An action which eliminates or greatly reduces the availability of a particular plant--here, nonengineered alfalfa--has a significant effect on the human environment," he wrote.

USDA argued that cross-pollination wasn't a serious problem in alfalfa, because farmers typically harvest their fields before the plants have a chance to flower, much less produce seeds. Producers of commercial alfalfa seed, however, would have to make sure their conventional and transgenic fields were widely separated. Alfalfa is pollinated by bees, which can carry pollen at least 3 kilometers.

In the turf grass case, Judge Henry Kennedy found that transgenic bentgrass from a large field trial in Oregon threatened a nearby area's "aesthetic and recreational" value. Pollen from the bentgrass spread up to 20 kilometers into the nearby Crooked River National Grassland.

Many scientists, including some critics of genetically engineered crops, say the bentgrass poses no real ecological threat in that area because it isn't well adapted to the region's arid climate. But the spread of this "confined" field trial proved embarrassing to the Scotts Co., which hopes eventually to sell bentgrass seed to golf courses.

Dan Charles is a Washington, D.C.-based science writer.

24 February 2007

UK: Law change 'may bring designer babies'

The Telegraph, 24 Feb 2007. By Roger Highfield, Science Editor.

Britain could become the first country to sanction the genetic alteration of human embryos, a step that a pressure group claims could pave the way to designer babies.

A decade after the cloning of Dolly the sheep, the Government is opening the door to GM human embryos for research, according to Human Genetics Alert.

David King, its director, said: "In a world first, the Government has said it will allow scientists to begin developing the technology for genetic modification of human beings, although creation of actual GM babies will be prohibited for the moment. We believe the public will be horrified."

There is a need for a public debate on genetic alteration of embryos said HGA. It said that it could eventually lead to "germ-line" gene therapy, where DNA changes are passed down generations, and to genetic enhancement, where embryos are altered to boost intelligence or for cosmetic purposes.

A draft Bill for legislation to replace the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 is being prepared with the intention of including a full Bill in the Queen's Speech next November. But Mr King called on the Government to "draw the line" at GM embryos.

Although the White Paper says genetic alterations of eggs, sperm and embryos "should not be permitted for reproductive purposes" it adds that this is only "for the foreseeable future, and until such time as safety and efficacy are assured".

The paper says the Government "is not, however, convinced of the need to preclude research activities that would involve altering the genetic structure of the embryo".

Dr Michael Antoniou, a gene therapist at Guy's Hospital, London, was concerned that even though germ-line therapy was too dangerous to attempt, the White Paper signalled the acceptance of safe germ-line modification of embryos.

Dr Richard Nicholson, the editor of the Bulletin of Medical Ethics, said: "Every country that has legislated on this subject has banned it.

"Thus the British Government's decision breaks ranks with the international community, and may lead to the perception that Britain is a haven for irresponsible and profit-driven scientists."

A Department for Health spokesman said: "Any sanction of the genetic alteration of human embryos is in the context of research only.

"The Government proposes that the law will continue to ban genetic modification of embryos for reproductive purposes. Moreover we will extend that prohibition to explicitly cover sperm and eggs."

India: The Bollworm returns
Is Bt-based resistance collapsing?
Studies from China and the US show the limitations of Bt-based resistance.
The bollworm evolves to resist the toxin eventually, and a number of secondary pests remain unaffected.
Suman Sahai argues that this is not really a workable strategy except in the first few years.

India Together, 24 February 2007. Suman Sahai.

24 February 2007 - A recent study from China, reported at the American Agricultural Economics Association's annual meeting in July 2006, indicates that the Bt cotton crop there is failing, and farmers are incurring losses rather than making profits from its cultivation. The study, conducted by Cornell University, found that Bt cotton farmers cut pesticide use significantly for the first three years of cultivation. After that, however, they had to spray just as much as conventional farmers, and ended up with a net average income of 8 percent less than conventional cotton farmers, partly because the cost of Bt seed is triple that of conventional seed. Also, after seven years of Bt cotton, populations of other insects - such as mirids - have increased so much that farmers now have to spray their crops up to 20 times in a growing season. The Cornell researchers anticipate that the emergence of secondary pests is likely to become a major threat in countries where Bt cotton has been widely planted.

Published at almost the same time as the China study, other reports from Arkansas in the United States show that bollworm were found to be feeding in large numbers in Bt cotton fields. These pests should have been killed by the toxin that is engineered into the plant to kill them, and their presence indicates they may have become immune to the genetic treatment. This breakdown is happening roughly ten years after Bt cotton was first planted there. Unlike in Arkansas, the problem in China is not due to the bollworm developing resistance to Bt cotton. Instead, secondary pests - that were previously controlled by the broad-spectrum pesticides that were common earlier - began reappearing with the shift to gene-based control.

In India an ad hoc research agenda, in the absence of any policy on genetically engineered crops, has led to wide use of the Bt gene. Over forty two per cent of the research projects in crop biotechnology in India are based on the Bt gene. Ranging from cotton to potato, rice, brinjal, tomato, cauliflower, cabbage, even tobacco, to maize, the Bt gene is everywhere.

Bt cotton in India has been around for the last seven years - four of them legally and at least three years illegally before that.

Flaky results, forced consensus

Presumably, the crops that are being researched will reach the fields one day. If that happens, a wide range of crops grown in both the Rabi and Kharif seasons will contain the Bt gene; as a result, throughout the year there will be standing crops containing the Bt endotoxin. Not just that, in the same season, there will be various Bt crops juxtaposed with each other in small fields when farmers grow a variety of different crops, particularly vegetables. When the bollworm is exposed to the endotoxin constantly, season in and season out, naturally its resistance to the toxin will build up rapidly. As it is, resistance-delaying strategies - such as maintaining a 20 per cent non-Bt crop belt - are not followed by cotton farmers, and resistant pests are already appearing, as the laws of biology dictate they would.

In India too we are beginning to see the first indications that the the Bt-based insect resistance management strategy is failing. Bt cotton in India has been around for the last seven years - four of them legally and at least three years illegally before that, particularly in Gujarat where the illegal Bt cotton called Navbharat 151 originated and where it has been cultivated steadily since then. Since farmers are not practicing the recommended cultivation practices, we are seeing the emergence of resistance in the bollworm, as well as problems created by other pests like pink bollworm and sucking pests, and disease factors like wilt.

Given the complex management strategy of the Bt approach, and the wide range of pests found in the tropics, is the Bt gene approach workable in a developing country situation for any length of time, and can it provide a viable disease resistance strategy? Bollgard II, with a higher number of Bt genes in it, is ready, but even this second round will eventually face the same problems - the targeted pests will develop resistance, and crops remains vulnerable to unpredictable attacks by pests over which Bt toxin has no effect.

Cotton scientists at the Central Institute of Cotton Research, Nagpur have warned that it is only a matter of time before the widespread emergence of resistance in bollworms will cause the Bt cotton technology to collapse, unless corrective measures are not taken immediately. The only long term feasible and sustainable approach to controlling pests in cotton would appear to be not the Bt gene but an integrated pest management approach including a mix of strategies. This could include introducing natural predators, a combination of chemical and plant based pesticides such as the oil of Karanj seed (Pongamia species) or any of the other natural pesticide combinations including the traditional Panchgavya which is a preparation based on the urine and dung of cow mixed with plant extracts and which has recently been awarded a patent in the US.

Suman Sahai
24 Feb 2007

Dr Suman Sahai is President of Gene Campaign, based in Delhi.

23 February 2007

USA: Deal May Hurt Organic Cotton

Wired News, February 23 2007. By Kristen Philipkoski.

Organic cotton growers could face increased risk of crop contamination if a merger between the world's largest seed company and the nation's largest cottonseed seller is allowed to proceed, an influential agriculture watchdog group warned Thursday.

Biotech giant Monsanto agreed to purchase Delta and Pine Land Company (DPL) last August for $1.5 billion in cash. Now, as the Department of Justice considers the merger, the Center for Food Safety has released a 57-page report (.pdf) protesting the deal.

"Monsanto is the largest seed company in the world.... In the '90s (the company) began acquiring seed firms in the U.S. and abroad and it has a very dominant position in seeds in soybeans and corn," said Bill Freese, the Center for Food Safety's science policy analyst and author of the report. "That kind of concentration is always a concern."

Thurdsay's report is the latest salvo in a decade-long battle to prevent the tie-up, which would put nearly two-thirds of the U.S. cottonseed supply in the hands of one company. Since the late 1990s, critics have had little effect in blocking Monsanto's steady expansion, and the DPL deal stands as a rare exception. Monsanto voluntarily backed out of a 1998 deal, fearing regulatory backlash.

The renewal of the deal signals Monsanto's confidence that regulators will sign off -- something the CSF hopes to head off with its report.

Among other things, the group argues that the merger could dampen the recent trend toward organic cotton.

Companies including Wal-Mart (the largest purchaser of organic cotton in the country) and Nike have ramped up their marketing and sales of organic cotton products in recent years.

But organic cotton could become more difficult to come by post-merger. With more genetically engineered varieties in fields, the risk of contamination to organic and conventional crops will likely increase.

Last year, Liberty Link rice, made by Bayer, contaminated rice in several states including Missouri and Louisiana, resulting in shipments rejected by Europe, which is largely against genetically modified crops.

The report also highlights the risk of crop damage from drifting herbicides. Monsanto's Roundup-ready seeds are genetically altered to be resistant to the company's Roundup herbicide. So when a farmer sprays a field, everything but the crop is killed. The fields are often sprayed by airplane, so organic crops could be damaged if the herbicide drifts into their fields.

The merger could also exacerbate rapidly increasing seed prices, the report found. They increased 240 percent from 1995 to 2005, in part because of extra technology fees charged by biotech companies.

Another concern is that Delta and Pine along with the USDA own patents to a highly controversial Terminator cottonseed, which is genetically altered to die after one season's use, so farmers can't save seed from year to year.

In response to industry concern, company officials have pledged not to introduce Terminator seeds, but say they reserve the right to reconsider.

The Terminator was a concern among critics when the companies first proposed a merger nearly 10 years ago.

Not everyone believes the merger poses major risks to agriculture or consumers. Owen Taylor, editor and publisher at AgFax Media, a financial analysis firm that covers the commodities business, called the Center for Food Safety's report "the same old rhetoric."

"The simple fact is that the vast majority of U.S. cotton farmers favor biotech approaches, and as the market has shaken out, a large part of that is built around DPL varieties and Monsanto's technology," Taylor said. "Farmers can compare performance every year, both in their own fields and in non-biased university trials. They buy what works best."

For the report - Cotton Concentration Report

An Assessment of Monsanto's Proposed Acquisition of Delta and Pine Land:
http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/pubs/CFS-CTA%20Monsanto-DPL%20Merger%20Report%20-%20Final.pdf

UK: GM Freeze Welcomes Judge's List of Mistakes in FSA Handling of GM Rice Contamination

GM Freeze press release, 23 February 2007.

GM Freeze has welcomed acknowledgement of a High Court judge that the Food Standards Agency (FSA) had made mistakes in the way they handled the contamination of US long grain rice imports with an unapproved GM traits last summer. The campaigning group is calling upon the FSA to break their close relationship with industry and for Parliament to take far greater interest in the operations of the Agency.

In a Judicial Review brought against the FSA by Friends of the Earth, Justice Calvert-Smith ruled that the food safety watch dog had not acted illegally in failing to require local authorities and companies to take action to verify that all contaminated rice which was already in the retail and catering supply chains had been traced and removed from sale (22nd February). However, in his ruling the judge identified three mistakes in the way the FSA had dealt with the contamination incident. These were their:

•

failure to issue any Food Alerts to local authorities.

•

failure to notify the public of which batches of rice were contaminated.

•

failure to provide legal guidance to local authorities at the start of the incident

The FSA have agreed to hold an internal review on how it handled the GM rice contamination incident.

The contamination of US long grain rice with GM rice, known as LL601, was discovered in January 2006 but the EU authorities were not informed until mid August. The GM rice had been grown in test sites in the USA between 1998 and 2001 but had not received any approval for commercial growing anywhere in the world. It was illegal to sell the rice in the EU. The dossier of safety data required for a commercial approval was not complete and therefore the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) were unable to complete a full safety assessment and to say, with certainty, whether the GM rice was safe to eat.

Initially, the FSA announced there were no public safety issues [1] associated with the LL601 but latter revised their advice following the EFSA's opinion which acknowledged the lack of data. Minutes of private meetings between the food industry and FSA showed that the FSA were advising companies that it did not "expect contaminated products already in the food supply chain to be removed from sale" and "does not expect companies to trace products and remove them from sale" [2].

Over five weeks (21st and 25th September) after the GM contamination was first announced, GM Freeze supporters were able to buy batches of contaminated rice from MorrisonsÇ store in Taunton. GM Freeze reported these purchases to Somerset Trading Standards but no legal action was taken.

In January 2006 GM Freeze published a report of a survey on how well the GMO traceability and labelling regulations were being enforced and warned the FSA that the UK was open to future GM contamination incidents [3].

Commenting on the outcome of yesterday's case Pete Riley Campaign Director of GM Freeze said:

"The FSA were well aware of the risk of further GM contamination and that the UK was ill equipped to deal with such incidents so the judge's critcisms of their handling the GM rice case are fully justified. The next contamination incident could involve crops genetically modified to produce drugs or vaccines. The FSA's review of their handling of this case must include a substantial input from outside and the outcome and evidence must be published in full. In our view, Parliament needs to take a more active role in overseeing the performance of the FSA to ensure that they become a true consumer watchdog and that they break their cosy relationship with industry".

Contact

Pete Riley + 44 (0)3341065 / + 44 (0)1226 790713

Notes

1. FSA press release 1st September 2006.

2. Food and Drink Federation minutes of a meeting with the FSA.

3. See http://www.gmfreeze.org/admin/uploads/report_doc.pdf

22 February 2007

USA: Leading Advocates Against Genetically Modified RBGH Milk File Citizen's Petition With FDA

Medical News Today, 22 February 2006

Petition Seeks Withdrawal of Approval for Posilac - Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH)

Tuesday morning February 20, three major advocacy organizations representing consumers, family farmers, and cancer prevention advocates filed a citizen's petition to the FDA, seeking the Withdrawal of Approval for Posilac -- Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH).

The petition is based on scientific evidence of increased risks of cancer, particularly breast, colon, and prostate, from the consumption of milk from cows injected with Posilac(R), the genetically modified recombinant bovine growth hormone (also known as rBGH, or rbST), with increased levels of IGF-1. Posilac is the trademark for Monsanto's rBGH product, registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and is approved for marketing by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This petition is also based on other abnormalities in the composition of rBGH milk, resulting from the recognized veterinary toxicity of rBGH.

The petition requests the immediate suspension of approval of Posilac(R) based on imminent hazard; and citing a section of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to request the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration to label milk and other dairy products produced with the use of Posilac(R) with a cancer risk warning.

The petition was submitted on behalf of the Cancer Prevention Coalition, Samuel S. Epstein, M.D., Chair; the Organic Consumers Association, Ronnie Cummins, Executive Director; and Family Farm Defenders, John Kinsman, President.

Samuel S. Epstein, M.D., Chair of the Cancer Prevention Coalition Professor emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at the School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago, is an internationally recognized authority on the causes and prevention of cancer, including carcinogenic ingredients and contaminants in food and other consumer products. He is the author of the new book "What's in Your Milk? An expose of Industry and Government Cover-Up on the Dangers of the Genetically Engineered (rBGH) Milk You're Drinking." Epstein's trailblazing scientific publications, editorials, national and international conferences, and legislative interventions, since 1989, have played a major role in influencing 27 nations, including Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan to ban rBGH milk. Dr. Epstein is available for interviews regarding this petition, and to speak to health risks associated with rBGH milk.

Cancer Prevention Coalition: http://www.preventcancer.com

21 February 2007

UK: EU vote reinforces resistance to GMOs

Financial Times, 21 February 2007

Resistance to genetically modified crops in Europe was underlined yesterday when EU governments rejected an attempt to force Hungary to lift a ban on them.

Only the UK, Netherlands, Finland and Sweden among the 27 members voted that Budapest should allow in bio-engineered maize, although it has been approved as safe by food safety authorities.

Last year ministers permitted Austria to maintain a ban on the same product, MON810, which contains a toxin to kill pests and was created by Monsanto, the US group.

The entry of GM-friendly Bulgaria and Romania into the EU was thought to have tipped the balance but countries such as Romania and Spain, although they have planted tens of thousands of hectares of GM crops, voted against on grounds of sovereignty.

"It is a bad day for farmers and a bad day for science," said Simon Barber, of Europabio, which represents the biotech industry. "Ministers are refusing to implement the law they drew up."

Under a 2001 directive, the European Food Safety Agency has the responsibility to assess and approve applications to import or cultivate GM crops. The European Commission then asks national governments to approve them.

The decision will infuriate the US, which with Canada and Argentina won a case against the EU at the World Trade Organisation.

The EU claims that it has ended the moratorium that was deemed illegal by Geneva, but in practice no new crops have been approved for cultivation since. Only a handful can be grown and not many more imported for animal feed and processing, amid continuing suspicion among the public.

Green groups welcomed the vote. "Ministers took a bold decision today in defence of the environment and in line with European public opinion," said Marco Contiero of Greenpeace.

A European Commission spokeswoman said it would now examine its options. It could launch legal action or drop the effort to end Hungary and Austria's bans altogether.

"We have to acknowledge a political dimension," she said. "If people will not buy GMOs because of even the smallest doubt we have to make sure we eliminate that doubt."

USA: Group wants to halt herbicide-resistant alfalfa seed

Billings Gazette (Montana), February 21 2007. By Jim Gransbery.

A coalition of farmers, environmentalists and food safety organizations plans to ask a federal judge in California to halt the sale of Roundup Ready alfalfa seed, the group's lawyer said Tuesday.

The request follows a decision released two weeks ago in which U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer in San Francisco ruled that the U.S. Department of Agriculture failed to follow environmental law before approving the genetically modified forage.

Breyer asked parties to the suit for proposals for remedies after he found that the USDA should have completed an environmental impact statement before giving its go-ahead for the crop in 2005. The proposed remedies are due Monday.

"The USDA approval is vacated" by the judge's decision, said Joseph Mendelson, an attorney for the Center for Food Safety in Washington, D.C. "So any new sales of seed and hay should be halted," he said. As for what to do with stands of the perennial already in the ground, Mendelson said, "It is hard to speculate. It is difficult to halt a harvest."

In Montana and Wyoming, a decision to stop sales could directly affect seed producers and seed businesses.

The Center for Food Safety represented itself and the co-plaintiffs in the suit, including the Western Organization of Resource Councils, which has headquarters in Billings. WORC is a coalition that includes the Northern Plains Resource Council and similar organizations in North Dakota, South Dakota, Idaho, Wyoming, Oregon and Colorado.

Mendelson was asked if Roundup Ready alfalfa posed any threat to animal or human health or whether the suit focused on environmental and economic consequences.

"Both," he said. "At this point on alfalfa we are unable to know (health threats) because USDA has not done an EIS."

Millions of acres of Roundup Ready soybeans, corn and canola are planted each year in the United States and are consumed by animals and humans.

Genetic modification, as compared with hybridization or cross-breeding, involves inserting genes from one kind of an organism into the genes of an unrelated organism. Roundup Ready seeds contain genetic material that makes the plants resistant to the herbicide Roundup, thus reducing the costs of tilling and weed control. Monsanto Co., which produces Roundup and Roundup Ready seeds, discontinued its research plots of spring wheat varieties in Montana in 2004. The company said at the time that there were better business opportunities for its genetically modified strains of corn, cotton and oilseeds.

Monsanto and Forage Genetics of Nampa, Idaho, a partner in the development of the alfalfa strain, were not party to the case in California but are affected by the results of Breyer's decision.

"We are working with seed producers and farmers," said Andrew Burchett, public affairs manager for Monsanto in St. Louis, Mo. "And we will work with USDA in seeing the regulatory requirements are satisfied. There is an extensive dossier already" on Roundup Ready alfalfa.

Approved in Canada, Japan

He noted that Canada and Japan have ruled Roundup Ready alfalfa safe.

Jose Arias, of Forage Genetics, said he had no comment when informed that the Center for Food Safety intended to seek a halt of the sale of the seed.

Burchett said the issue is procedural.

"The coexistence of Roundup Ready plants and organic is well-known. Roundup Ready soybeans, corn and canola all co-exist."

Blaine Schmaltz, of Rugby, N.D., rejects that argument.

An independent seed grower and organic farmer, Schmaltz discontinued his sprouting seed sales because the "expense of testing lies on me."

He said he has to prove that his seed is not contaminated by pollen from Roundup Ready plants. "Alfalfa is a perennial and is open-pollinated," he said. "And there is the liability issue. There is no insurance for it."

Schmaltz was a co-plaintiff in the suit as an affected party. He provided written testimony in the case.

He said the possibility of contamination from Roundup Ready alfalfa is "devastating the organic market, which is growing."

He expressed concern that Roundup Ready plants are leading to "super-resistant" weeds because the herbicide is now used on so many crops.

The suit also affects Laurel seed producer John Wold, who raises seed for Forage Genetics. He said Monday that he has raised Roundup Ready alfalfa seed for two years.

"It is very safe, in my opinion," he said.

He questioned how the court could halt sales.

"It would be pretty hard to do that," he said. "A tremendous amount is sold already."

Wold conceded that the issue is "a touchy subject."

Seed purveyor and user Dan Downs said Roundup Ready "is just another tool in the box."

"The question is, does it work for that field for the money?" Downs said. The seed carries a premium that goes to Monsanto as a royalty because it has a patent on the process.

Downs owns and operates Montana Seed and Grain and Chemicals in Billings.

"This is not a big issue for me," he said of the suit. "But for others it is big."

Downs said he has sold less than three tons of seed in the past two years.

"Roundup Ready can make a real difference in getting an early start," he said. "I planned on planting it this spring. I go seed when the ground is ready, and I get a 15- to 20-day head start."

When the weeds emerge, Downs can use Roundup herbicide to kill them without injuring the alfalfa.

3rd most valuable crop

Alfalfa is grown on more than 21 million acres in the United States and is valued at $8 billion a year, making it the country's third most valuable and fourth most widely grown crop. It is the primary forage for dairy and beef cattle.

Alfalfa seed production was worth $4.8 million in 2006 for Montana farmers, almost double its value in 2005. The 2006 increase was attributable to increased acres. In 2006, 10,700 acres were harvested, compared with 6,100 acres in 2005. The average price per hundredweight was $113 in both years.

USA: Market acceptance of U.S. herbicide-tolerant rice

Rice Producers of California, February 21 2007

The Rice Producers of California (RPC) retained Bryant Christie Inc. (BCI) to evaluate the potential for market acceptance of the genetically modified (GM) rice in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Turkey. These markets account for about 40% of California's annual rice crop and are therefore economically important to the California industry. Findings in this study come from desk research and interviews with the rice trade in each country. This report summarizes these findings.

Japan's rice import policies and its government's reaction to recent reports of certain GM rice in U.S. supplies, coupled with cultural sensitivities to rice, as well as low acceptance of GM foods by the Japanese public and the Japanese rice trade, reduce the likelihood of the market accepting U.S. GM rice. In fact, strong evidence demonstrates that without consumer education and changes in government policies, efforts to commercialize GM rice in the U.S. could result in the loss of the Japanese market to U.S. rice. Considering that Japan accounts for roughly half of all California rice export sales, or the equivalent of between 20% and 25% of CaliforniaÇs annual rice production, loss of the Japanese market could significantly impact the California rice industry.

Korea is also economically important to the California rice industry as approximately 86% of Korea's rice imports from the U.S. is produced in California. As in Japan, rice is a politically sensitive topic in Korea. Although market access for U.S. rice under Korea's minimum market access (MMA) agreement is improving and GM soybeans and corn are currently imported for feed and processing, the majority of Korean rice trade members interviewed for this report opposed the purchase of GM rice. This sentiment is also shared by Korean consumers, though some evidence indicates that consumer education campaigns may be capable of changing this opinion in the future.

Unlike Japan and to a lesser extent Korea, Taiwan offers more commercial opportunities for U.S. rice imports. This is particularly the case forCalifornia rice which accounts for nearly all U.S. rice exports to Taiwan. However, like Japan and Korea, challenges for GM food products are present in Taiwan. While Taiwan imports GM soybeans for human use and animal feed, the Taiwanese rice trade members interviewed for this report were reluctant to accept imports of GM rice. Taiwanese consumers are generally less aware of GM foods than their Japanese and Korean counterparts and it is possible that their perception of GM foods could improve through consumer education efforts.

Turkey's restrictive import policies and ambiguous regulatory framework for GM foods create significant market access barriers for GM rice in the near-term. Further, while the results of the in-country surveys conducted for this report indicated that it may be possible to locate a Turkish buyer for GM rice, the results also indicate that consumers might reject GM rice given the information to which they are currently exposed. However, even with these obstacles, Turkey shows the most promise for U.S. GM rice relative to the three other markets covered in this report.

In conclusion, it would appear that the rice trade in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and to a lesser extent Turkey has little interest in importing GM rice at this time, even in situations involving cost advantages and full regulatory approval of GM rice. Due to the risks involved, this report recommends that the U.S. industry not seek commercialization of GM rice in the near term and any longer term effort be accompanied by targeted and extensive education/communications campaigns in each market. Even then, there should be a full understanding that the pursuit of such commercialization could jeopardize existing U.S. rice exports to Japan.

USA: Planned merger angers black farmers

Clarion Ledger, 21 February 2007. By Julie Goodman.

A national black farmers group says a proposed merger between Monsanto Co. and Delta and Pine Land will create a monolopy and force black farmers out of the business. The association represents 80,000 members, predominantly small planters.

Black farmers in Mississippi and around the country are bracing for a major seed company merger they say threatens to create a monopoly that will price them out of the farming business.

St. Louis-based Monsanto Co. is forging ahead with a plan to purchase Mississippi's Scott-based cottonseed company Delta and Pine Land, and a national black farmers group says its opposition to the deal has gotten lost in the mix

"If this merger goes through, it's going to have a drastic effect on black farmers and small farmers around the country," said John Boyd Jr., president of the National Black Farmers Association.

"If this merger goes through, there is literally no competition for cottonseed, soybean seed and corn seed, genetically engineered."

The association represents 80,000 members around the country, primarily small producers, and has its biggest membership in Mississippi.

Delta and Pine Land operates the largest and longest-running private cottonseed breeding program in the world while Monsanto, one of the world's largest agricultural products companies, makes Roundup, the world's best-selling herbicide.

The deal, still awaiting U.S. Department of Justice approval, would mean a monopoly on the market, and seed prices would shoot up, Boyd said.

"It would be just like going to one supermarket and that supermarket sets the price for everything and we don't have any option but to go to that one supermarket."

Monsanto, which sells seeds and also licenses technology for insect protection and herbicide tolerance - one way farmers can help keep costs low - could not say whether prices would go up.

"It's difficult to speculate on pricing decisions in the future, but I would say that bottom line is, we've always looked to price our technologies based on the value the technology and the seed is delivering to the farmer," said company spokesman Lee Quarles.

Monsanto broadly licenses the technologies to other cottonseed companies so farmers can access the technologies in the seed brands they prefer to plant, he said.

A portion of the money the company makes is reinvested into new technology for farmers, including cotton farmers.

Quarles said a monopoly is not in the works, pointing to other companies farmers will have access to, including Stoneville, which Monsanto currently owns and could become an independent brand if the merger goes through.

"Just as we have announced that we would have a proposed merger with Delta and Pine Land, we've also announced that we would divest of the Stoneville business if that's required by the Department of Justice."

Boyd, who raises corn, soybeans and wheat, said he has asked Congress to hold hearings on the issue, but has not yet heard back on a decision.

One farmer in Mississippi, Rodalton Hart, fears he will go out of business if the merger goes through.

"You ain't got no control over it and with the cost of fertilizer and chemicals and everything that goes in to it, ain't no way anybody can survive," said Hart, 56, a cotton farmer in Lexington with 1,500 acres.

"They can go up as high as they want to go and you ain't got no control over it. It's just like the airlines. You can't control it," he said.

"You have to pay labor; you have to pay rent; you got to pay for seeds and chemicals ... equipment. It just goes on and on and on. I mean, everything comes out of the farmer's pocket."

The stakes are already high in farming, Hart said.

"Farming is risky. You're already on the edge. You're already on the verge ... Ain't no way you can survive," he said.

"Unless the government steps in and regulates the prices, we're just messed up."

Europe: EU states deal blow to Brussels by backing GMO ban

EU Observer, 21 February 2007.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS ‚ EU member states have for the third time snubbed the European Commission by backing a national ban on genetically modified maize products - in this case Hungary - which Brussels says is against international trade rules.

EU environment ministers on Tuesday (20 February) upheld with a qualified majority a Hungarian ban on GM maize although the crop was authorised by the commission in 1998. Key Account Manager

Hungary has placed a temporary ban on the use and sale of the MON 810 maize, saying there has not been enough testing on the effects of the GMO.

One Hungarian ministry official said that new studies had shown the GM maize reduced the fertility of the soil where is was planted.

The commission however is pointing to research by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which has found there is no reason to believe the GMO product poses any risk to human health or the environment.

EU environment ministers in June 2005 and December 2006 rejected similar commission proposals to force Austria to lift its 1999 and 2000 bans on T25 maize (made by German chemicals firm Bayer) and MON 810 maize (produced by US biotech giant Monsanto).

The Austrian government based its stance on the fact that no long term health safety tests have been done and that GMO maize imports would likely lead to the accidental spillage of the seed into the environment.

Since the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled last year that EU nations broke trade rules by stopping imports of GMOs, the commission has been under pressure to remove member states' GMO bans.

One commission official said Brussels is determined to push its line, adding that taking the issue to the European Court of Justice could be one of the options.

'Religious' GMO debate

Meanwhile, Danish environment minister Connie Hedegaard on Tuesday called for a "less religious" and a "more enlightened" European debate on GMOs.

"Whether we like it or not, GMOs are here to stay," she said at a Brussels debate organised by the Danish environment ministry and the Friends of Europe think-tank.

"We should move away from the more religious way of handling this because that is the way forward to try to fill the knowledge gap," she said pleading for a better exchange of information.

Ms Hedegaard said the EU should also look at how it could help improve the situation of food security in the third world, promoting a more ethical GMO industry there than the one run by big US biotech firms.

Europe: EU Council backs Hungarian GM ban

FoodNavigator.com, 21 February 2007. By Anthony Fletcher.

EuropaBio has criticised the EU's Environment Council for 'failing to support the rights of Hungarian farmers wanting to grow GM crops'.

The European Commission had asked the Council to overturn the Hungarian ban on the genetically-modified maize seed that, according to the biotech association, has repeatedly been pronounced safe in EU reviews.

It has chosen not to.

"Once again the Council is not following the advice of the EU's own expert advisory bodies," said Simon Barber, director of EuropaBio.

"The Council has failed in its responsibility to implement its own laws and instead today's failure suggests that the council favours state censorship rather than offering choice to farmers to decide for themselves as to whether or not to grow biotech crops; this is deeply discouraging for the future of Europe's agriculture and growth of the bio-based economy."

But the Hungarian government has been confident that it would be allowed to retain the ban. Speaking at a news conference before of yesterday's talks, Hungary's state secretary Kalman Kovacs announced that there was sufficient anti-GM feeling within the EU to ensure support for the country's stand.

Furthermore, Robert Fridrich of environmental group Friends of the Earth Hungary claimed that upholding the ban was vital to protecting the future of the Hungarian food industry for both processors and producers.

"Hungary is the second biggest corn feed producer in Europe and Hungary's reputation as a GMO free country is very important to this," he said.

"The European public are very much against the use of GMO products, which gives Hungary a massive advantage in the market place."

The refusal of the Council to ignore EFSA advice has precedent. Last December the Council chose to ignore the authority's advice and rejected the Commission's request to have Austria lift its illegal ban on the cultivation of EU-approved GM crops.

"By acting in this way, the Council continues to seriously damage the credibility of the EU's regulatory system which they helped to put in place and on which much of Europe's innovative and industrial capacity relies," claimed EuropaBio.

"Today's decision simply denies the freedom of choice to Hungarian farmers who want to grow insect protected maize crops."

This issue goes back to1998, when the European Commission gave its consent for the marketing of Monsanto's Zea Mays L. line MON 810. A number of EU countries have now authorised the product.

However, Hungary prohibited the use and sale of the product in January 2005, but its justifications for the prohibition were rejected in June 2005 and in March 2006 by the European Food Safety Authority.

On 29 March 2006, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) concluded that there is no reason to believe that the continued placing on the market of these products "is likely to cause any adverse effects for human and animal health or the environment under the conditions of its consent."

This issue again underlines how polarised the issue of GM food has become in Europe. But despite the controversy surrounding the technology, GM food expansion appears inexorable.

The recent publication of new figures from The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) shows that in 2006 the number of hectares globally cultivated with GM crops increased by 12 million hectares.

Most of this growth came from countries such as China and India.

An EFSA colloquium will be held in June 2007 on GMO environmental risk assessment involving environmental experts from across Europe, details of which will be announced during Spring 2007.

20 February 2007

Europe: EU Environment Ministers twice resist GMOs

Friends of the Earth Europe press release, 20 Feb 2007

Brussels - Today, Environment Ministers from EU Member States voted to allow Hungary to uphold its national ban of Monsanto.s genetically modified maize [1].

Helen Holder, GMO campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe said,

"EU countries have defended Hungary's right to protect its environment and its citizens' health by banning a genetically modified crop. Bans such as HungaryÇs are allowed under EU law and according to the World Trade Organisation rules and EU countries were quite right to refuse to be bullied by the European Commission into annulling the ban."

Environment Ministers also failed to give the green light for the marketing of a genetically modified flower. Since the Ministers failed to reach a clear agreement amongst themselves, the final decision, under EU rules, will now revert back to the European Commission.

Notes

[1] Genetically modified maize, MON810, produced by Monsanto. Prohibited by Hungary under the Safeguard Clause of Directive 2001/18

Belgium: EU upholds Hungary's sovereign right to ban GMOs

Reuters, 20 February 2007

BRUSSELS, Feb 20 (Reuters) - EU environment ministers slapped down on Tuesday an attempt to order Hungary to lift its ban on a genetically modified (GMO) maize type, delivering a third stinging rebuff to the European Commission.

There was a "qualified majority" of member states -- the amount needed under the EU's complex weighted voting system -- against the proposal, a Commission spokeswoman said.

Hungary, one of the EU-27's biggest grain producers, became the first country in eastern Europe to ban GMO crops or foods when it outlawed the planting of MON 810 maize seeds, marketed by U.S. biotech giant Monsanto, in January 2005.

The decision follows a similar rejection by the ministers in December of a draft order, authored by the EU's executive Commission, for Austria to drop its bans on two separate GMO maize types. One of them was also MON 810.

Between 1997 and 2000, five EU countries banned specific GMOs on their territory, focusing on three maize and two rapeseed types approved shortly before the start of the EU's six-year moratorium on new biotech authorisations.

In June 2005, the Commission tried to get the bans scrapped. EU environment ministers rejected the proposals then as well.

In September, EU biotech experts failed to agree on the CommissionÇs draft order concerning Hungary. Under EU law, if that happens, the matter is escalated to ministerial level.

Although at the time more EU countries voted in favour of the order to lift the national ban -- 14 countries, with five against and six abstentions -- that was not enough under the EU's weighted voting system for a consensus agreement. The European Union has long been split on GMO policy, and its member states consistently clash over whether to approve new varieties for import but without reaching a conclusion.

In Europe, consumers are well known for their scepticism, if not hostility, to GMO crops, often dubbed "Frankenstein foods". But the international biotech industry says its products are safe and no different to conventional foods.

USA: National Black Farmers Association Resolution

A RESOLUTION opposing Monsanto's acquisition of Delta and Pine Land Company.

WHEREAS, the National Black Farmers Association (NBFA) is a community-based organization with a national presence of more than 80,000 members involved in advocacy for black and other small farmers throughout the country since 1995;

WHEREAS, there is growing concern in the black farming community over the increased consolidation in agriculture;

WHEREAS, the Monsanto Company has announced its intention to buy the largest cotton seed company in the U.S., Delta and Pine Land Company;

WHEREAS, Monsanto's proposed acquisition of Delta and Pine Land has far-reaching anticompetitive consequences for the agricultural economy, and, if permitted, would significantly diminish competition in the seed and biotech seed trait market and result in substantial harm to farmers, and;

WHEREAS, the proposed acquisition would create a monopoly in the American cotton industry, resulting in fewer choices, less innovation, and higher prices for farmers;

Be it Resolved that the National Black Farmers Association --

1. Opposes the acquisition of Delta and Pine Land by Monsanto because the acquisition will significantly limit agricultural competition to the detriment of farmers;

2. Encourages state and federal antitrust authorities to preserve agricultural competition by blocking the acquisition;

3. Encourages the Congressional Black Caucus to support black farmers by asking the Department of Justice to preserve agricultural competition by blocking the acquisition, and;

4. Authorizes the President of the NBFA to take all necessary steps to protect black farmers from the harms that would result from the proposed acquisition, including retaining legal counsel to commence litigation in the name of the organization to block the transaction under state and/or federal antitrust laws.

This resolution passed by the board of directors of the National Black Farmers Association February 8th 2007 during the NBFA Conference in Dallas TX

President NBFA

Dr. John W. Boyd, Jr., Pres.
68 Wind Rd.
Baskerville, VA 23915
Ph: (804) 691-8528
Ph: 1-434 848-1865
www.blackfarmers.org

USA: Eco-Injustice in Paraguay

The Nation, February 20 2007. By Jessica Weisberg & Benjamin Brown.

Petrona Villasboa and her husband, Juan Talavera, live with their nine children at the end of a long dirt road. The view from their front window shows a landscape dominated by soy, sowed into hundreds of tidy rows that extend to the horizon. In the town of Pirapey 35, a community of 1,600 people in the southern state of Itapua, Paraguay, "Petrona's house" is nearly an institution. Her household bears the constant influx of neighbors and relatives; yet Petrona says that the house "feels empty inside."

Petrona's third-youngest son, Silvino Talavera, died four years ago at the age of 11. Silvino was walking home from school one day, taking his normal route through a neighboring soy plantation growing Monsanto RoundUp Ready hybrid seeds, which require regular doses of a potent herbicide to thrive. He was fifteen meters from his home when he was enveloped in a cloud of the Monsanto herbicide cocktail RoundUp sprayed from a cropduster. He arrived home barely able to breathe. Silvino was rushed to the nearest hospital, where he died five days later, on January 7, 2003.

On January 11, 2003, Petrona pressed charges against the plantation owners, Hermann Schlender and Alfred Laustenlager, accusing them of homicide. "It was a strange case from the beginning," said Petrona's lawyer, Juan Martens Molas. "By law, the procedures for Silvino's case could last for a maximum of three years. We were running against the clock." Under the law, if the case were still unsettled after the three-year mark, the defendants would be exempt from any form of punishment. "Without a doubt, this practice is taken advantage of by people with a lot of political or economic power, who can influence judges and prosecutors, and allows them to interfere with the law, which is exactly what they tried to do in Silvino's case," said Martens.

"They tried offering me and my lawyer money at first so that I wouldn't talk to the court. They offered each of us $10,000. I told them that I didn't care about the money, only justice. If I just accepted the money they could just continue spraying their poison," said Petrona.

Nearly four years later, on November 29, 2006, the Paraguayan Supreme Court upheld a lower-court ruling, and the two landholders were sentenced to two years in prison. This decision set a fundamental precedent, as it is the first case of legal action against death caused by agrochemicals. "This is a great step forward in the fight for a clean environment, free of agrotoxins," said Martens.

The trial was not easily won. Nine months after Petrona pressed charges, the Supreme Court of the City of Encarnacion sentenced Schlender and Laustenlager to two years in prison. However, the defendants appealed the decision. According to Paraguayan law, the court had fifteen days to decide on the appeal. For Schlender and Laustenlager, this decision took more than a year.

The appeal sparked a national solidarity movement. "The case of Silvino Talavera helped to form a coalition of various institutions from all over the country and the world," said Tomas Palau, a sociologist at BASE-IS, a center for social investigation in the capital city of Asuncion. The nucleus of this coalition was a group known as CONAMURI, the National Coordinator of Rural and Indigenous Women. "CONAMURI supported Petrona from the beginning," said Julia Franco, secretary of public relations for CONAMURI. "Also, we organized the national and international solidarity movement that paid for the lawyer and the other costs of Silvino's case."

Paraguay is the fourth-largest exporter of soybeans in the world. The number of hectares dedicated to soy cultivation has more than doubled over the past decade. In 1995, 800,000 hectares of soy were cultivated; in 2003 it reached 2 million.

According to Palau, soy production in 2006-07 will occupy 2.46 million hectares. Much of the soy is cultivated by transnational agribusinesses and Brazilian immigrants, so-called "brasiguayos," who moved to Paraguay for its inexpensive land and cheaper operating costs.

According to Palau, "The increase in soy acreage has come about by asking to buy or rent farmers' property. When there are zones particularly resistant to soy, and the farmers refuse to sell or rent their land, the companies use 'gangster' tactics." This impending monoculture represents a double-edged sword for Paraguayan farmers: Those who maintain their plots, despite the incentives and scare tactics, are subject to the health hazards of pesticide exposure, while those to sell their holdings join the inflated numbers of landless farmers currently living in Paraguay. According to Palau, the number of landless farmers is estimated to be between 250,000 to 800,000 people. These numbers, however, depend on one's working definition of "landless," which Palau defines as holding less than five hectares, "the minimum amount of land that can support an average-sized Paraguayan family." "Official" statistics, Palau said, reduce these numbers by ascribing to a more literal definition of "landlessness."

Seventy-five to 80 percent of Paraguayan-grown soy is cultivated from transgenic seeds that rely on herbicide sprays to maximize their yield per acreage. Environmentally related health problems are common among Paraguayan farmers exposed to herbicide fumigations. Silvino's two sisters, Patricia and Sofia, also have been hospitalized for herbicide-related illnesses; and Sofia's son Vidal, Petrona's grandchild, was born with hydrocephalus, a brain malformation that may be attributed to agrotoxic exposure (he died when he was 5 months old).

Upon pressing charges, Petrona found herself the subject of neglect, harassment and even death threats from her neighbors in Pirapey 35. According to Petrona, a large percentage of the residents in Pirapey 35 work for Schlender and Laustenlager and received financial bonuses for threatening and intimidating Petrona and her family. "I've lived in Pirapey 35 for the last twenty-six years. They've only been living here for six years, but everyone has turned against me. I have no money or anything to offer them."

The 2006 Supreme Court ruling was a vindication of sorts for the Petrona family and others damaged by agrochemicals. "Two years in jail feels like very little to me, given what they've done," said Franco, yet the case still sets a very important legal precedent.

But months after the verdict, nothing much has changed in Pirapey 35. Schlender and Laustenlager are still living at home, less than a mile away from Petrona's house. No one seems to be able to explain why. "They're still in their house, they're still spraying herbicides," said Petrona, who's pessimistic that the final verdict will amount to much. "They have the law in their pockets," Petrona said. She remains resilient, and as she stares out her window at the panorama of soy enveloping her house, she recites vehemently, "I'll fight till the day I die."

19 February 2007

Australia: Auckland Regional Council adopts anti-GMO policy position

CheckBiotech.org, Monday, February 19, 2007

The Auckland Regional Council (ARC) today voted to oppose the release of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in field and food in the Auckland region. The Council does not, however, oppose creating GMOs in laboratories for medical purposes.

ARC Regional Strategy and Planning Chair Paul Walbran says the Council adopted the policy in principle as a precautionary approach because there are significant uncertainties about GMOs, and issues that are yet to be understood and resolved.

The ARC's policy acknowledges the overwhelming opposition to GMOs that was demonstrated in public submissions to the ARC's annual plan.

"Our policy reflects Aucklanders' widespread opposition to genetic modification.

"This is a symbolic decision that acknowledges that Central Government, not regional and local government, has responsibility for developing and enforcing decisions about genetically modified organisms," says Mr Walbran.

UK: Biofuels - facts and fiction

The Ecologist, 19 February 2007. By Mark Anslow.

The claims for biofuels make it seem truly a wonder crop. Mark Anslow separates the wheat from the chaff

Claim 1: You get more out than you put in

For more than 15 years, David Pimentel, Professor of Ecology and Agriculture at Cornell University in New York, and his colleague, Professor Tad Patzek at Berkeley, have published peer-reviewed research showing that biofuels give out less energy when burnt than was used in their manufacture.

By using a cradle-to-graveÇ approach - measuring all the energy inputs to the production of ethanol from the production of nitrogen fertiliser, through to the energy required to clean up the waste from bio-refineries - they have shown that while it takes 6,597 kilocalories of nonrenewable energy to produce a litre of ethanol from corn, that same litre contains only 5,130 kilocalories of energy - a 22 per cent loss.(1)

Their work has been fiercely attacked by the biofuel lobby, who argue that Pimentel and Patzek include too many energy inputÇ costs, and fail to give credit to the other, useful co-productsÇ created in the process of refining biofuel.(2)

Neither objection stands up under closer scrutiny. In fact, corn uses more herbicides, insecticides and fertiliser than any other crop(3); and 99 per cent of all cornfields used for producing bioethanol are heavily fertilised with nitrogen.(4) Pimentel and Patzek have shown that although the energy costs involved with fertiliser production have fallen, most of the factories producing nitrate fertiliser in the USA today were built in the 1960s and are highly inefficient.(5) As such, they estimate that the energy costs of nitrogen fertiliser manufacture account for over 30 per cent of the total energy needed to grow corn. When the energy costs of labour, machinery, petrol and diesel, other fertilisers, herbicides, insecticides and corn seed production are figured into the equation, merely growing corn using intensive agriculture accounts for 38 per cent of the energy needed to produce a litre of ethanol.

To make their energy costs appear more favourable, proponents of biofuels frequently off-setÇ the energy value of other substances produced during the refining process against the total energy used to produce the fuel. For bioethanol, these co-products include animal feed and carbon dioxide gas. For biodiesel, they include animal feed and glycerine, a component of soap. They argue that, by calculating the energy that would have been required to produce these substances by themselves, the amount of energy accounted for in the biofuel production process can be reduced. In some studies, the energy value of co-products has been calculated at 150 per cent more than the energy required to produce the fuel.(6)

But the energy and monetary value of these co-products is highly subjective. In the UK, the production of glycerine, which biodiesel producers had hoped to sell to cosmetics companies to offset the costs of production, has reached such levels that supply is exceeding demand. Some refiners have been forced to simply burn it. In the US, the value of the grains left over after ethanol distillation has been much touted as an animal feed. But research has shown that this grain contains less energy than normal animal feed (usually made from much less fertiliser-intensive soya),(7) and that production of soya has not fallen as ethanol production has risen, indicating that livestock farmers have been reluctant to change the their animalsÇ diet and use the new feed.(8) David Morris, a biofuel lobbyist, has even admitted that it may benefit refiners more to burn the animal feed as fuel than to sell it.(9)

Some ethanol distilleries have bottled the carbon dioxide that is given off during the fermentation process and sold it to carbonated drinks manufacturers, counting the value of the by-product against their overall energy costs. Most, however, have not.(10)

Energy offset benefits can only be counted if the co-products are genuinely used in substitute for another product. Refining ethanol produces roughly equal parts ethanol, carbon dioxide and animal feed.(11) Given that US corn-based ethanol production in 2005 peaked at 16.2 billion litres, this means that an almost equivalent amount of co-products (by volume) must have been produced. If these products are, as market figures suggest, unwanted, then instead of providing a useful offsetÇ, they are set to become a serious waste problem.

Claim 2: It makes economic sense

In 2006, the American government handed out between $5.1 and $6.8 billion in ethanol subsidies. These include payments made to farmers, tax breaks given to refiners and payments made under carbon reduction programmes.(12) But instead of these subsidies finding their way into farmersÇ pockets, they are instead swelling the accounts of several large biofuel manufacturers.(13)

One company, Archer Daniel Midlands (ADM, one of the worldÇs largest agribusiness companies), accounted for nearly 28 per cent of the US ethanol industry in 2006.(14) According to attorney Arnold Reitze, Professor of Environmental Law and Director of the Environmental Life Programme at George Washington University Law School, every dollar of ADMÇs profit has cost US taxpayers $30. To ensure the continuation of ethanol subsidies, the Renewable Fuels Association (of which ADM is a member) had reportedly contributed $772,000 to Republican coffers between 1991 and 1992.

Biofuels have already been taken out of the hands of farmers and turned into big business. Where the demand for ethanol has benefited corn farmers, it has done so only at the expense of cattle farmers, for whom the cost of animal feed has vastly increased.(15) Ethanol production from corn has been estimated to add $1 billion to the cost of beef production.(16)

In the USA, a litre of petrol costs roughly 33 cents to produce; a litre of ethanol can cost up to $1.88.(17) At present, these differentials are disguised behind subsidies, tax breaks, levies and laws. Germany subsidises biofuels to the value of 47 cents per litre, and France to the value of 33 cents per litre.

In his recent pre-Budget report, Gordon Brown reduced the tax on UK blended biofuels from 53 pence per litre to 8 pence per litre. In Brazil, although subsidies of ethanol officially ended in the mid-1990s, a number of incentivesÇ still exist. Personal diesel-engined vehicles have been banned, to encourage the uptake of ethanol burning models, despite the greater fuel economies of many diesel cars. In addition, new flex-fuelÇ cars - models that can run on both ethanol and petrol - have been made available at a reduced rate of VAT.

Behind this raft of measures, it is difficult to see whether biofuels could ever compete with fossil fuels without continued subsidies, covert or otherwise. It is important to remember exactly what is being subsidised as well - excessive motor transport. As Michael OÇHare, Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, pointed out in a recent article:

Driving your car with a gallon of ethanol doesn't do 50 cents worth of good for society, it just does less damage than driving it just does less damage than driving it with gasoline.'(18)

Claim 3: It is the solution to our energy problems

Recent figures show that if high-yield bio-energy crops were grown on all the farmland on earth, the resulting fuel would account for only 20 per cent of our current demand.(19) The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) published research which shows that more than 70 per cent of EuropeÇs farmland would be required for biofuel crops to account for even 10 per cent of road transport fuel.

But there are more basic reasons why biofuels cannot be the answer to our energy problems. A normal petrol engine cannot run on more than a 15 per cent ethanol blend, and it is considered too expensive to modify a car after manufacture.(20,21) Given that the average life expectancy of a vehicle is 14 years,(22) it would take approximately this long to replace the current petrol fleet. By 2021, however, it could already be too late to make a difference to serious global warming.(23)

The European Union Biofuels Directive requires that all EU member states have a blend of 5.75 per cent biofuel in their road transport fuels by 2010. However, a litre of biodiesel contains 12 per cent less chemical energy than an equivalent litre of mineral diesel, and is five per cent less fuel efficient when burnt in an engine.(24) A litre of ethanol contains 33 per cent less energy than a litre of petrol, and a blend of 85 per cent ethanol to 15 per cent petrol (known as E85) can see vehicle fuel consumption rise by 31 per cent.(25) The UK uses approximately 26 billion litres of petrol each year.(26) If this were to be blended with 5.75 per cent bioethanol, the net energy contained in a litre of pump fuel would drop by approximately 2 per cent.(27) In addition, ethanol blended fuels cannot be transported by pipeline, as the ethanol attracts water, which would render it ineffective as a fuel. It must, therefore, be transported by road. This means that an extra 521.5 million litres of fuel would need to be transported annually to make up for the energy deficit - equivalent to an extra 16,478 tanker journeys in the UK each year,(28) which could increase the carbon emissions involved in distribution from refinery to tanker terminals by 38 per cent.(29)

Claim 4: It's clean and safe

The biofuels ethanol and biodiesel are often referred to as clean-burningÇ fuels, and much has been made of their lower emissions of carbon monoxide. However, analyses of exhaust emissions from cars burning ethanol show an increase in nitrogen oxides, acetaldehyde and peroxy-acetyl-nitrate.(30)

Likewise, cars burning biodiesel have been shown to emit higher levels of nitrogen oxides than those burning mineral diesel. Nitrous oxides are powerful greenhouse gases and can lead to the depletion of atmospheric ozone. At low levels they can react with VOCs and create low-level ozone, which can give rise to urban smog and respiratory problems.

When ethanol is blended with gasoline it makes the entire fuel more volatile. This means that it is more likely to evaporate, especially in the summer, through rubber and plastic parts of the fuel system. A study by the California Air Quality Board in 2004 found that blending ethanol with petrol increased fuel evaporation by 14 to 18 per cent.(31) This means a higher quantity of hydrocarbon and nitrogen oxide emissions, as the fuel dissipates from vehicle tanks.

Ethanol is a solvent, and corrodes soft metals including aluminium, zinc, brass and lead. This means that existing underground storage tanks designed for fossil fuels and made from metal or even fibreglass could leak if filled with ethanolblended fuel, leaching pollutants into groundwater.(32) If this happens, there is evidence that pollution would be even more widespread with a petrol-ethanol blend than with petrol alone. The presence of ethanol in the mix increases the persistence of the toxic substances benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene, and can cause them to travel 2.5 times farther in groundwater than would have been the case with a non-ethanol blended fuel.(33)

Biodiesel is also a natural solvent, whereas mineral diesel is not. This means that parts of the fuel system, particularly in older cars, may start to corrode when biodiesel blends are used. This can lead to a build-up of deposits in the fuel system and engine, which in turn could reduce vehicle performance and increase fuel consumption.

Biodiesel also solidifies at around 4-5°C. This means that it must be pre-heated on cold winter mornings before it will flow from the tank. One biodiesel information website recommends the use of highly toxic anti-gellingÇ compounds mixed in with the fuel - or a heated garageÇ. It is this kind of solution that typifies the utter dependence of biofuels upon the continuing extravagant use of fossil energy.(34)

Claim 5: It's good for the environment

A bio-refinery is an extraordinarily wasteful facility. For every litre of bioethanol produced in a modern refinery, 13 litres of waste water are generated. This waste water contains dead yeast and small amounts of ethanol, and has what is known as a Biological Oxgen Demand (BOD) - which means that the effluent competes with various other organisms in the water for available oxygen.

If effluent with a BOD is discharged into a watercourse, microorganisms in the water use oxygen in the water to break down, or oxidise, the pollutants, thus making the oxygen less available for other species. In extreme cases, fish and other aquatic organisms can suffocate from lack of oxygen.

The BOD of raw sewage is around 600mg per litre; that of bio-refinery waste water can be between 18,000 and 37,000mg per litre.(35) This must be treated before it can leave the refinery, which requires an energy input of around 69,000 kilocalories, roughly equivalent to 306.7 cu ft of natural gas per 1,000 litres of ethanol produced.

In sugarcane ethanol plants, which are particularly common in Brazil, 12 cu ft of a thick, dark red, acid substance called vinasseÇ is left behind for every cubic foot of ethanol that has been produced.(36) It is piped from the refinery to settlement ponds, where it is allowed to cool. If vinasse is left in the pools, anaerobic breakdown will lead to the production of methane, a greenhouse gas.

Some refinery operators have chosen to dilute vinasse at a ratio of up to 1:400 with water for use as a fertiliser on the sugarcane plantations. But it is so potent that the soil has to be carefully monitored to make sure that plants are not scorched or waterways polluted. Some farmers have used vinasse as a binding agentÇ on gravel drives, only to find that it corrodes the underside of vehicles that frequently drive over it.(37)

Ethanol refineries also produce significant amounts of nitrous oxides (a greenhouse gas more than 300 times more potent that COî), carbon monoxide and VOCs (also linked to the destruction of the ozone layer and damage to human health). Their emissions are so high that in March 2006, the Environmental Protection Agency in the USA was forced under political pressure from the biofuels lobby(38) to propose raising the threshold for facilities considered to be minor source of emissionsÇ from 100 tons per year to 250 tons per year.(39)

Mark Anslow is a reporter for The Ecologist.link

Notes

(1) Pimentel, D & Patzek, T, 2005, Ethanol Production Using Corn, Switchgrass, and Wood; Biodiesel Production Using Soybean and SunflowerÇ, Natural Resources Research, 14:1.

(2) Morris, D, 2005, The Carbohydrate Economy, Biofuels and the Net Energy DebateÇ, The Insitute for Local Self-Reliance.

(3) Pimentel & Patzek, 2005.

(4) http://pangea.stanford.edu/ESYS/Energy per cent20seminars/patzek_ethanol.pdf

(5) Patzek, T, 2004, Thermodynamics of the Corn-Ethanol Biofuel CycleÇ, Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences, 23(6):519-567, p. 8.

(6) Lorenz & Morris, 1995, How Much Energy does it take to Produce a Gallon of Ethanol?Ç, The Institute for Local Self-Reliance, estimate for cellulosic crop-based ethanol.

(7) Brown, L., Grain DrainÇ, The Guardian: Society, 29/11/2006, p. 9.

(8) Armstrong, A et al., 2002, Energy and Greenhouse Gas Balance of Biofuels for Europe - An UpdateÇ, CONCAWE Ad Hoc Group on Alternative Fuels, Brussels.

(9) Morris, 2005:16.

(10) Motola, C, 2005, Ethanol. Does It Make Sense to Produce It?Ç, Oswego County Business Magazine, http://oswegocountybusiness.com/index.php?a=1964.

(11) Morris, 2005:14.

(12) Koplow, D., 2006, Government support for ethanol and biodiesel in the United StatesÇ, The Global Subsidies Initiative (GSI) of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) Geneva, Switzerland.

(13) Pimentel & Patzek, 2005:67.

(14) Reitze, A., 2006, Should the Clean Air Act Be Used to Turn Petroleum Addicts Into Alcoholics?Ç, ELR, October, 2006.

(15) Reitze, 2006.

(16) National Center for Policy Analysis, 2002, cited by Pimentel & Patzek, 2005.

(17) Pimentel & Patzek, 2005.

(18) http://lists.iisd.ca:81/read/messages?id=31222#com_one.

(19) http://www.ecoworld.com/home/articles2.cfm?tid=380.

(20) It is too impractical and costly to do after-factory conversions of gasoline fueled vehicles to E-85 vehicles. Since the combustion of ethanol and gasoline is different, different engine electronic systems are required, and need to be installed at the time of manufacture.Ç source: Iogen.ca - a world leading biotechnology firm specializing in cellulose ethanol.

(21) Specific engine parts that need adjustments to run smoothly with E85 include the car fuel tank, lines, injectors, the computer system, and the anti-siphon device. Both the car fuel tank and fuel lines must be made in stainless steel while the injectors should have wider ranges for the pulse widths to put up with at least 30 percent more fuel.Ç source: http://www.cleanairtrust.org/Differences-Between-E85-and-E95.html.

(22) Asia Times Online, Beware the Ethanol Hype, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/HH01Dj01.html.

(23) Monbiot, 'Heat'.

(24) Tickell, 2000:162.

(25) deOliviera et al., 2005.

(26) UK Greenhouse Gas Inventory: 1990-2004Ç, Defra, 2006, p. 359 - In 2004 the UK used 19.48 Megatonnes of petrol - 1 litre of petrol weighs 0.747 kg - this gives 26,077,643,908 litres of petrol.

(27) deOliviera et al, 2005 give a 33 per cent lower net energy yield from ethanol - a litre of petrol contains 33,000 kjoules of energy - a litre of ethanol contains 21,780 kjoules of energy - a 5.75 per cent blend gives 32,353 kjoules of energy, roughly a 2 per cent loss.

(28) Lewis, 1997, Fuel and Energy Production Emission FactorsÇ, MEET Project: Methodologies for Estimating Air Pollutant Emissions from Transport, - gives an articulated tankerÇs capacity at 31,650 litres.

(29) Lewis, 1997, gives the CO2 emitted through pumping a gigajoule of fuel along a pipeline as 0.048 kg/Gj. The CO2 emitted by transporting a gigajoule of fuel by road is 0.070 kg/Gj. An increase of 38 per cent in emissions.

(30) Patzek, 2004:63.

(31) Hancock, 2005, cited by Patzek, 2004:63.

(32) http://www.deq.state.or.us/lq/pubs/factsheets/tanks/ust/FuelEthanolUSTSystems.pdf.

(33) http://www.deh.gov.au/atmosphere/fuelquality/publications/ethanol-limit/issues.html.

(34) http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_mike.html.

(35) Pimentel & Patzek, 2005:69.

(36) http://www.spriinc.org/abstracts0906.html.

(37) http://www.sei.se/climate/EED_series/rm_2001_luena.pdf.

(38) Reitze, 2006:10754.

(39) Reitze, 2006.

18 February 2007

Canada: Farmer continues to fight Terminator

Kamloops This Week, (Canada), 18 February 2007. By Mark Macdonald.

Genetically modified food is destroying human health, the environment and the social fabric of rural Canada, said an international spokesperson for farmers' rights.

Saskatchewan's foxes and deer are dying, and its people are succumbing to alarming rates of prostate and breast cancer from chemicals used in the province's canola production.

Those chemicals are administered by agrichemical giant Monsanto, said Percy Schmeiser, who spoke Thursday night to a standing-room only audience in the Alumni Theatre at Thompson Rivers University.

"There's a whole new culture of fear these companies have been able to exercise over farmers," he said.

Schmeiser, who specializes in breeding and growing canola, became an international symbol for the anti-genetically engineered movement when Monsanto sued him for patent infringement after discovering their genetically modified canola growing in his fields.

The Supreme Court ruled in favour of Monsanto, determining Schmeiser had recognized his fields were contaminated and replanted his crop the next year anyway, which included some Monsanto seeds.

Schmeiser spoke about the control Monsanto wields over Saskatchewan farmers, who, he said, are coerced into signing contracts saying they can't use their own seeds; they must buy their seeds from Monsanto and they must allow "Monsanto police" onto their land.

Monsanto's "gene police" visit Saskatchewan farmers suspected of growing genetically modified seeds ó on tips from neighbours forced by the contract to squeal ó and threaten them with court action.

The farmers are left wondering which neighbour betrayed them, leading to a "breakdown of the rural social fabric," he said.

"I think that is one of the worst things that can happen. That's one of the things that can happen with the introduction of GMOs," he said.

"I'm not talking about a Third World country. I'm talking about what happens on the Northern Plain and on the Prairies of Western Canada," he said.

Genetically modified organisms (GMO) were introduced in Canada in 1996. There are two types: one that alters plant genes making it resistant to pesticides and another making it resistant to certain diseases and insects.

Schmeiser said once GMOs are introduced, they take over and become the dominant gene, leading to a situation where there is "no longer any pure canola seed in Western Canada," he said.

"Every time you introduce a GMO, you have an increased use of chemicals," he said, adding GMOs have spread in Canada, by wind or wildlife, to contaminate organic crops.

But the full destructive power of GMOs is on the horizon, he said, referring to two new genes now being developed by Monsanto to monopolize seed supply: the "terminator gene" and the "cheater gene."

A cheater gene is used to grow a plant and the terminator gene then destroys a crop's fertility ó a process Schmeiser called "the greatest assault on life as we know it on the planet today."

He said Canadians must fight to save the integrity of our air, water and land for future generations, and ensure farmers don't become "serfs of the land, in a feudal system" controlled by trans-national corporations like Monsanto.

"As long as we have life in us," said Schmeiser, referring to his wife, Louise, "we're going to go down fighting for the rights of all farmers all over the world."

17 February 2007

UK: Suppressed report shows cancer link to GM potatoes

The Independent, 17 February 2007. By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor.

Campaigners against genetically modified crops in Britain last are calling for trials of GM potatoes this spring to be halted after releasing more evidence of links with cancers in laboratory rats.

UK Greenpeace activists said the findings, obtained from Russian trials after an eight-year court battle with the biotech industry, vindicated research by Dr Arpad Pusztai, whose work was criticised by the Royal Society and the Netherlands State Institute for Quality Control.

The disclosure last night of the Russian study on the GM Watch website led to calls for David Miliband, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to withdraw permission for new trials on GM potatoes to go ahead at secret sites in the UK this spring. Alan Simpson, a Labour MP and green campaigner, said: "These trials should be stopped. The research backs up the work of Arpad Pusztai and it shows that he was the victim of a smear campaign by the biotech industry. There has been a cover-up over these findings and the Government should not be a party to that."

Mr Simpson said the findings, which showed that lab rats developed tumours, were released by anti-GM campaigners in Wales. Dr Pusztai and a colleague used potatoes that had been genetically modified to produce a protein, lectin. They found cell damage in the rats' stomachs, and in parts of their intestines.

The research is likely to spark a fresh row about GM crops in Britain. Graham Thompson, a Greenpeace campaigner, said: "It is important because it backs up the research by Pusztai, which was smeared at the time by the industry."

Brian John of GM Free Cymru, who released the findings, said the research was conducted in 1998 by the Institute of Nutrition of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences and has been suppressed for eight years.

It showed that the potatoes did considerable damage to the rats' organs. Those in the "control groups" that were fed non-GM potatoes suffered ill-effects, but those fed GM potatoes suffered more serious organ and tissue damage.

The potatoes contained an antibiotic resistance marker gene. The institute that carried out the studies refused to release all the information. However, Greenpeace and other consumer groups mounted a protracted legal battle campaign to obtain the report. In May 2004 the Nikulinski District Court in Russia ruled that information relating to the safety of GM food should be open to the public.

The institute, however, refused to release the report. Greenpeace and Russian activist groups again took the institute to court, and won a ruling that the report must be released.

Irina Ermakova, a consultant for Greenpeace, said she had conducted her own animal feeding experiments with GM materials. "The GM potatoes were the most dangerous of the feeds used in the trials ... and on the basis of this evidence they cannot be used in the nourishment of people."

Greenpeace said the Russian trials were also badly flawed. Half of the rats in the trial died, and results were taken from those that survived, in breach of normal scientific practice.

16 February 2007

Russia: Secret Monsanto GM potato study suppressed for 8 years
GM potatoes are "unfit for human consumption"

GM Free Cymru press release, 15 February 2007.

[For Monsanto overview see http://www.voteyeson27.com/monsanto.htm]

A secret feeding study of Monsanto GM potatoes, conducted in 1998 by the Institute of Nutrition of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences and suppressed for 8 years, showed that the potatoes did considerable damage to the organs of the rats in the study (1) (2). In comparison the rats in the "control groups" which were fed on normal potatoes or on a non-potato diet were healthier, and had much less organ and tissue damage. This research, fully supported by Monsanto through the provision of the GM potatoes, was conducted at approximately the same time as Arpad Pusztai's research in the Rowett Institute.

The potatoes used in the study were Monsanto GM NewLeaf potatoes bred in 1995 from the Russet Burbank variety to be resistant to the Colorado Beetle. The GM event was registered as 082, and the potatoes are included in the Bt group of GM crops. They also contain an antibiotic resistance marker gene (3). The potatoes were deregulated in the USA in 1998, without any feeding studies being required. Another line was deregulated in 1999. Even earlier, in 1996, Monsanto started to introduce the potatoes into Russia and Georgia, and probably into many other countries with lax approval regimes as well (4). For some reason (probably to assist in the consent process) Monsanto co-operated in some feeding studies involving rats from the Institute of Nutrition of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. Something "inconvenient" showed up in these feeding studies, but the Institute refused to release all the information into the public domain and in 1999 the researchers presented a "doctored" version of their Report in support of Monsanto's application for Russian commercialization. The consent was duly given in 2000 by the Russian regulators on the basis of this corrupt piece of science.

However, Greenpeace and other consumer groups mounted a protracted and immensely frustrating campaign to obtain a sight of the feeding study Report. In May 2004 the Nikulinski District Court in Russia ruled that information relating to the safety of GM food should be open to the public. On the basis of this ruling Greenpeace tried to obtain the GM potato report; but the Institute and Monsanto refused to release it. So Greenpeace and local activist groups again took the Institute to court, and in October 2005 won a ruling that the Report must be released. At last it was handed over, and examined by Dr Irina Ermakova at the request of Greenpeace. She produced a brief Russian paper on her findings, and we have now produced an English- language version with the kind agreement of Greenpeace (5).

Ironically, the NewLeaf GM potato was a failure, and it proved to give poor yields and to be susceptible to disease in European environments. While Monsanto was enthusiastically promoting its GM potatoes in Eastern Europe, it was having second thoughts in the United States and Western Europe, and pulled out of GM potato development in 2002 (6). The results of the 1998 GM potato rat feeding study may well have had a bearing on that decision.

Dr Irina Ermakova, the Greenpeace consultant, has herself conducted animal feeding experiments with GM materials. In her very restrained commentary on the Russian study (1) she criticized the small scale of the experiment and its design, and was especially critical of the complacent conclusions drawn by the authors from evidence which was actually profoundly worrying. The GM potato was nutritionally inferior to its conventional counterpart and to other Russian potato varieties. The research results showed that both "normal" Russet Burbank potatoes and the GM variety caused "serious morphological changes in the internal organs" of the animals in the trials. They also showed that the group of animals fed on the GM potatoes suffered greater weight loss than the other animals, and statistically significantly greater damage to kidneys, liver and large gut. There was also greater damage to blood serum, testes and prostate. Dr Ermakova concluded: "The GM potatoes were the most dangerous of the feeds used in the trials........ and on the basis of this evidence they CANNOT be used in the nourishment of people."

Given the small scale of the feeding trials (only ten animals in each feeding group) and doubts about the statistical significance of some of the Report's findings, Dr Ermakova stressed the importance of follow-up studies on a larger scale and with more careful experimental design. But no matter what the shortcomings of the work may be, the Institute of Nutrition research did nothing to show that the Monsanto GM potatoes are safe. That should not be a surprise to anybody, since Bt potatoes are classified as pesticides in the US and have never been tested for toxicity or allergenicity (7).

According to Dr Brian John of GM Free Cymru, it is incredible that Monsanto and the Institute of Nutrition have kept the research secret until now. "That obsessive secrecy has clearly been against the public interest," he says, "and it tells us a great deal about Monsanto's priorities. If the company had any regard at all for the health of consumers, it would have published these results world-wide in 1999, and at the very least it would have commissioned follow-up research which might have confirmed or discredited the study's findings. Instead of that, it connived with the Russian researchers to keep the information away from public scrutiny, just as it did with the feeding study results for MON863 maize in 2005. On that occasion too, it took a court case and massive media coverage to obtain sight of the research team's raw data and to reveal evidence of damage to health." (8)

While Monsanto attempted to suppress the information from the 1998 Russian study, it connived in the vilification of Dr Arpad Pusztai, a respectable and careful scientist whose findings were very similar (9) (10). The company must have known that the release of its own feeding study information would have supported his findings and would have contributed to a general understanding on health concerns specific to GM potatoes. "The actions of Monsanto in this case have been utterly reprehensible," says Dr John. "The company has continued to promote its GM potatoes as perfectly harmless, while for eight years it has managed to keep out of the public domain clear evidence that they are harmful to animals and hence to human beings also. And it has got away with it because the science establishment and the GM regulators within the EU -- as in Russia -- cannot see scientific corruption when it is staring them in the face." (11)

ENDS

Contact:

Brian John or Ian Panton GM Free Cymru Tel + 44 (0)1239 820470 or + 44 (0)1437 720075

Notes

(1) Medical-biological investigations of transgenic potatoes, resistant to the Colorado beetle (under agreement with Monsanto Co.) Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Institute of Nutrition Moscow, 1998. Signed off by VA Tutelian, Deputy Director. Physiological, biochemical and morphological investigations in rats. Full Report 275 pp, including raw data.

(2) The commentary on the rat feeding study by Dr Irina Ermakova is here: http://www.gmfreecymru.org/

(3) http://www.agbios.com/dbase.php?action=ShowProd&data=RBMT21-129% 2C+RBMT21-350%2C+RBMT22-082&frmat=LONG
Full petition (240 pp) for the deregulation of New Leaf GM potatoes (event 082) in the US:
http://www.agbios.com/docroot/decdocs/05-242-028.pdf

(4) GM potatoes in Georgia: http://www.foei.org/publications/link/gmo/16.html

(5) http://www.greenpeace.org/russia/en/news/evidence-of-food- products-safe#

(6) http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Monsanto-Dumps-Potatoe.htm
http://www.gmo-compass.org/eng/grocery_shopping/crops/ 23.genetically_modified_potato.html

(7) http://www.plant.uoguelph.ca/research/homepages/eclark/safety.htm
http://www.cathnews.com/news/409/doc/15colgm2.doc
http://www.natural-law.ca/genetic/geindex.html
http://www.epa.gov/oscpmont/sap/meetings/2000/october/ brad3_enviroassessment.pdf
http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/biopesticides/pips/bt_brad.htm

(8) http://www.organicconsumers.org/monsanto/rats060205.cfm
http://www.spinwatch.org/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=1239

(9) http://www.monsanto.co.uk/news/98/august98/81798world_in_action.html
http://www.voteyeson27.com/monsanto.htm
http://www.theecologist.co.uk/archive_detail.asp?content_id=753

(10) Ewen SWB, Pusztai A (1999) Effect of diets containing genetically modified potatoes expressing Galanthus nivalis lectin on rat small intestine. Lancet 354:1353-1354

(11) See, for example: http://www.rowett.ac.uk/gmo/ajp.htm
http://www.agbioworld.org/biotech-info/articles/biotech-art/pusztai- picnic.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/291105.stm
http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=113

UK: Illegal GM rice in the UK - Friends of the Earth takes FSA to court

Friends of the Earth Press Release, 16 February 2007.
Judicial Review: 20/21 February
Press Office: tel + 44 (0)20 7566 1649

Friends of the Earth's judicial review of the Food Standards Agency (FSA) for its failure to act over illegal genetically modified (GM) rice that entered the UK food chain last year will be heard in the High Court on Tuesday/ Wednesday 20th and 21st February. The case centres on the contamination of US long grain rice with an experimental GM strain grown in the US - the most significant illegal GM food contamination incident to affect the UK to date. It is now known to have contaminated rice on sale in supermarkets in the UK and around the world.

Friends of the Earth believes that the FSA has failed in its legal obligations to check for contaminated rice on the market in the UK, and should have done more to work with local authorities and the food industry to make sure illegal GM rice was detected and removed from shelves and other parts of the market [1].

What does Friends of the Earth want?

Friends of the Earth is seeking a legal declaration that the FSA failed in its legal obligations over this incident. Concerns include:

•

Failing to take action to implement emergency EU legislation to make sure that illegal GM rice was not sold to UK consumers

•

Ignoring potentially contaminated rice that reached the market since January 2006. Instead it focused on "preventing any further GM-containing stocks entering the UK markets".

•

Ignoring the precautionary principle enshrined in EU GM law. Instead it stated early on in the incident that the presence of GM rice in the food chain "is not a health concern" despite the lack of scientific evidence to back this up

•

Meeting privately with the food industry and telling them that there was no need to withdraw any contaminated rice that they found, despite the fact that any presence of unapproved GM ingredients is illegal

•

Failing to require enforcement action by local food authorities such as testing for contaminated rice in their areas.

A declaration stating that the FSA failed in its legal obligations would set an important precedent and ensure that if such a GM contamination incident happens in the future, the FSA would take much more effective action to ensure that UK consumers are not exposed to illegal GM ingredients. Friends of the Earth is also calling for the FSA to carry out a thorough review of its approach to GM foods (which has been described as giving "the impression that it supported the concept of GM foods" in an independent review in 2005) and to ensure that it puts in place a more pro-active policy on testing food imports for illegal contamination.

Background

Illegal GM rice found in the food chain

On 18 August last year, the US Department of Agriculture announced that an illegal GM rice strain, unapproved for human consumption, had contaminated long grain rice supplies destined for export. The rice, LLRICE601, owned by biotechnology company Bayer CropScience, has been genetically modified to be resistant to the company's weedkiller, Liberty (glufosinate). The contamination was initially discovered in January 2006, but it wasn't until July that its identity was confirmed as LLRICE601. Contaminated long grain rice had been exported from the US for at least seven months.

LLRICE601 was grown experimentally in the US from 1999 to 2001 and following the field trials, Bayer were not intending to pursue commercialisation. At the time the contamination was revealed, the rice had not been approved as safe for cultivation or food use anywhere in the world. Bayer has developed two other GM rice strains also resistant to the Liberty herbicide - LL62 (for which it has applied for import approval in the EU), and LL06.

The European Commission takes action

Five days after the contamination was revealed, the European Commission put in place emergency legal measures to deal with the incident. All long grain rice imported from the US had to have a certificate stating that it was free of LLRICE601 before it could be marketed in the EU. Furthermore, member states were also required to take action in relation to products already on the market, such as rice imported into the EU before the contamination came to light, in order to "verify the absence of genetically modified rice 'LL RICE 601' ". This is where Friends of the Earth believes the FSA failed to act, and it forms the central issue for the judicial review.

Following an incident in Rotterdam, where a shipment of long grain rice was tested positive for LLRICE601 by Dutch authorities after holding a certificate saying it was GM-free, the EC tightened up the emergency legislation to require counter testing of all US long grain rice by EU member states at the port of entry. The discrepancy over testing resulted from a more sensitive test being used in Europe than in the US. These emergency measures are still in place [2].

Extent of contamination

Illegal contamination of long grain rice has been found across Europe and worldwide. Friends of the Earth commissioned testing of rice on supermarket shelves and found positive products in Morrisons and Somerfield. Further testing by supermarkets has confirmed positive samples in Sainsbury's, Tesco and Asda and Marks & Spencer in Ireland.

According to the rice industry, around 50% of long grain rice imported into the EU is likely to have been contaminated at low levels. In Europe, 17 countries have reported contamination. And testing by Friends of the Earth in West Africa found contaminated rice in food aid and commercial rice supplies in Sierra Leone and Ghana.

Why is Friends of the Earth legally challenging the FSA?

The FSA is responsible for dealing with this contamination incident in the UK, but it has failed to make sure consumers in the UK are not exposed to illegal GM rice. The FSA has focused on preventing further contaminated rice entering the UK - for example by commissioning testing of long grain rice held at rice mills, but has ignored contaminated rice already on the market. This includes rice on sale in shops, and used by commercial and public sector caterers (eg the NHS and school meals). An internal meeting note reveals that this decision was taken shortly after a meeting with the rice industry "It was decided not to sample from supermarket shelves because of the massive resource implications in tracing all contaminated end products". The European Commission confirmed that "intensive and targeted controls on products, which are already on the market, are absolutely necessary".

The FSA has attempted to wash its hands of any responsibility for enforcement by stating that local food authorities are responsible for enforcement of GM legislation. Local authorities clearly look to the FSA for guidance and many of them have stated that they have not carried out any testing in their areas specifically because the FSA had not instructed them to do so. One of the key ways the FSA communicates with local authorities is by issuing food alerts. The FSA has not issued any food alerts in this case - an action which is likely to have prompted local authorities to take enforcement action, such as testing local rice samples.

During discussions with the food industry, the FSA told the Food and Drink Federation and the British Retail Consortium that it did not expect them to test products or withdraw them from sale. The FSA later amended its advice, but only after Friends of the Earth threatened legal proceedings.

Not given all clear on safety

The FSA also put out very bold statements about the safety of LLRICE601 early on in the incident - claiming in a press release that the presence of low levels of GM rice was "not a health concern" [3] and advising consumers to carry on eating US long grain rice. It later transpired that this was based on conversations with two members of the Advisory Committee (ACNFP) who had seen only a limited amount of safety data. Two weeks later, the European Food Safety Authority put out a much more cautious statement that there is "insufficient data to provide a full risk assessment in accordance with EFSA's GM guidance", but on the basis of available data, it is "not likely to pose an imminent safety concern to humans or animals" [4].

Impact on rice industry

This incident has had a devastating impact on the rice industry. Rice 'futures' prices plummeted $150 million - the sharpest one-day decline in years. Experts have predicted that US rice exports may decline by as much as 16% in 2006/2007. Several multi-million dollar lawsuits and several individual lawsuits have been filed against Bayer by US farmers who have suffered severe financial losses. Rice millers, traders and retailers around the globe are facing significant costs, including testing and recall costs, cancelled orders, import bans, brand damage and consumer distrust. However, 41 of the world's biggest rice exporters, processors and retailers have issued written commitments to stay GM free [5].

Who is liable?

Neither the US Government, nor Bayer CropScience, can explain how this illegal GM rice got into the food chain and an investigation by US authorities is still underway. Meanwhile, Bayer's immediate response to the incident was to apply for the GM rice to be legalised in the US (or 'deregulated'), in an attempt to limit liability. Although the USDA approved the deregulation on 24 November, the rice is still illegal in Europe.

This incident highlights the urgent need for legislation to make biotech companies liable for damage caused by their products. It is unacceptable that farmers have to resort to the courts to seek compensation from Bayer, and that food companies, farmers and taxpayers end up paying for the biotech industry's mistakes. If companies wish to experiment with, and seek commercialisation for, GM crops and food, they must accept full liability for any damage their products cause, both economic damage, and any harm caused to the environment or health.

Notes:

[1] For Friends of the Earth's witness statements and skeleton legal arguments, contact the press office on + 44 (0)20 7566 1649.

[2] Amended Emergency Decision 2006/754/EC on emergency measures regarding the non-authorised genetically modified organism LL RICE 601Ç in rice products: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/oj/2006/l_306/l_30620061107en00170020.pdf

[3] http://www.food.gov.uk/news/newsarchive/2006/sep/gmricetest

[4] http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/press_room/press_release/llrice601.html

[5] http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/reports/rice-industry-in-crisis/

USA: Seed companies want to ban farm-saved seeds

GRAIN press release, 16 February 2007.

A new report from GRAIN reveals the new lobbying offensive from the global seed industry to make it a crime for farmers to save seeds for the next year's planting. This briefing traces the recent discussions within the seed industry and explores what will happen if a plant variety right becomes virtually indistinguishable from a patent.

Background

Seed companies already have strong legal support from governments. In many countries, seed laws require farmers to use only certified seed of government-approved varieties. That seed is often available only from commercial seed companies.

A rapidly increasing number of governments also grant legal monopoly rights for commercial seed, by means of industrial patents and so-called plant variety protection (PVP). Until recently, both seed patents and PVP existed only in developed countries. But since the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was created in 1994, all member governments must provide some form of monopoly rights on seeds. There is now enormous pressure on developing countries to adopt the developed country models. Many have been persuaded to join the international PVP system, managed by UPOV (International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants). In the past ten years, UPOV has more than doubled its membership. Most new members are developing countries.

The UPOV system was originally set up in 1961, in response to many years of lobbying by the seed industry. What the companies really wanted was to have industrial patents on seeds. Patents give absolute rights to control all uses of the seed, both for planting and for further breeding. But at the time many governments felt that patents would give industry too much power over farmers. The UPOV PVP was created as a compromise. From the beginning, it gave seed companies a monopoly on only the commercial multiplication and the marketing of seeds. Farmers remained free to save seed from their own harvest to plant in the following year, and other breeders could freely use any variety, protected or not, to develop a new one.

During the 1980s, the development of genetic engineering attracted large transnational companies from the pharmaceuticals and chemical sectors into plant breeding. With their much greater lobbying power, they began a new offensive to strengthen monopoly rights on plant breeding in developed countries. First, they got industrial patents on plants bred with genetic engineering (GE) and related techniques. This meant, in practice, that they got the absolute monopoly that conventional breeders had been refused two decades earlier.

Second, the UPOV PVP rights were radically expanded for all plant varieties, GE or conventional. Since 1991, the PVP monopoly has applied not only to seed multiplication but also to the harvest and sometimes the final product as well. The previously unlimited right for farmers to save seed for the following year's planting has been changed into an optional exception. Only if the national government allows it can farm-saved seed still be used, and a royalty has to be paid to the seed company even for seeds grown on-farm.

Third, these much stronger monopoly rights are required for membership in the WTO, as already described. This is the starting point for the new lobby offensive now being prepared by the global seed industry. The goal this time is to remove the few remaining differences between the PVP system and patents, so that companies will have an absolute monopoly over seeds all over the world, regardless of which legal system is used, for all crops and all countries.

The real target - farm-saved seed

Farm-saved seed will be a primary target of this offensive. At least two-thirds of the global crop area is currently planted with farm-saved seed every year. In many developing countries, it represents 80--90 per cent of all seed used, but even in developed countries it commonly accounts for a large share (30--60 per cent). If farmers were legally forced to plant all of this area with commercial seed, it could easily mean a doubling of seed industry turnover, that is, an extra US$20 billion annually -- all taken out of farmers' pockets and delivered to transnational giants such as DuPont, Bayer, Syngenta, and Monsanto.

Another key industry demand will be to restrict or eliminate the freedom to use PVP-protected varieties for breeding -- the other major difference between the UPOV system and patents. The purpose is simply to block competition. If nobody else is allowed to improve on a variety until after the term of protection -- 20 years or so -- a seed company will be able to sell the unimproved variety for a much longer period, and postpone the cost of new research. The net effect: increased profits for the PVP owner, higher seed prices and fewer new varieties for farmers.

The seed industry has every reason to fear competition from farm-saved seed and more innovative independent breeders. Even individual farmers can often match or beat the performance of commercial varieties by simple on-farm selection. With constantly stronger monopoly rights and increasing consolidation into a few giant conglomerates, seed companies have produced fewer and fewer products of value to farmers. The big strides in yield and resistance improvement were made early in the 20th century, before any monopoly rights were available on seeds. And those improvements came mainly from selecting and crossing the very best of the thousands of farmer varieties which had been developed over centuries, not from any industry-sponsored research.

The failure of commercial plant breeding has left global agriculture badly prepared for the challenges of the near future, such as climate change and the need to wean ourselves off dependence on fossil fuels. It is now time to start rolling back the monopoly privileges of the seed industry, not to strengthen them further.
_____________

GRAIN, The end of farm-saved seed? Industry's wish-list for the next revision of UPOV, GRAIN Briefing, February 2007, http://www.grain.org/briefings/?id=202, available in PDF and HTML. The summary in PDF is also available on this page. Also currently available in French, and soon in Spanish.

15 February 2007

USA: When It Comes to GM Food, Some Say Ignorance is Bliss
A Report on the February 2007 Oslo Codex Working Group on GM Labelling

National Health Federation press release, 15 February 2007.

At a recent two-day meeting in Oslo, Norway, a sizeable group of delegates met to discuss establishing international Codex Guidelines for disclosing on food-product labels whether or not a food was genetically modified (GM). Amazingly enough, a number of important countries' delegates argued that consumers were not smart enough to understand and handle such information. Ignorance is bliss, they essentially claimed.

The National Health Federation (NHF), the only health-freedom organization with the right to attend and have its voice heard at these meetings, sent its own delegation ‚ Tamara ThËrÈsa Mosegaard and Ingrid Franzon ‚ to argue for the right of all persons to know what they are consuming, especially if it is GM food. In doing so, the NHF verbally sparred with such countries as the United States, Argentina, Canada, and Mexico (the largest grain-exporting countries), all of whom took the carefully coordinated position that consumers should not be informed as to whether they are eating GM foods or not.

Other countries, such as the 27 European nation-states (the EU, including Austria, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Sweden), Brazil, Ghana, India, Japan, Morocco, Norway and Switzerland, strongly opposed hiding such information from the consumer. The result was at times melodramas employing plans obviously orchestrated by the Grain Exporters, who variously used "polite" anger, "polite" aggression, and manipulative language and tactics (with everyone else understanding that they might end the meetings through "nonparticipation") in an attempt to stop progress towards any Codex Guidelines that would require GM disclosure.

The Meeting Begins

It all began amicably enough with the Norwegian "FDA," called "Mattilsynet," hosting a two-day Codex Alimentarius Working Group meeting on the subject of the "Labelling of Foods and Food Ingredients Obtained through Certain Techniques of Genetic Modification/Genetic Engineering." The meeting took place at the Bristol Hotel in Oslo, Norway on two very cold days in the first week of February 2007. Besides the NHF, there were 24 national delegations and four other international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) present, plus a scattering of individual observers, staff members, and interpreters, some 77 individuals in all.

Norway, Argentina, and Ghana acted jointly as chairmen of the meeting, which opened with a proposal that a table of the various labelling approaches be discussed and developed. Soon enough, a large rift between the Grain Exporters and the Grain Importers became evident, as the Grain Exporters expounded their views that because consumers were different from each other, they did not all need much information about the production methods of GM foods, and if it were given to them, then it could be deemed a "warning" and therefore misleading and damaging to them ‚ and the industry.

The Grain Importers Think GM Foods Are Safe But Want Them Labelled

The Grain Importers strongly believed that their scientific risk-assessment procedures were enough to ensure that GM foods were safe when they reached consumers' tables, but it was a positive experience to hear that they recognized the importance of consumer information through proper labelling of GM food products.

Tamara ThËrÈsa Mosegaard, who was the NHF delegation spokesperson at the Oslo meeting and is on the NHF Advisory Board, notes, "However, it was very strange to hear the European Community (EC) talk about scientific risk assessment proving the safety of the GM foods, and the need for consumers to be well informed, when I remember the many years of discussions at the Codex Alimentarius (CCNFSDU) Committee meetings about establishing ëupper safe (maximum) levels of vitamins and minerals through scientific risk (safety) assessment based upon scientific data.' Strange, when in the EC many health products are now registered as pharmaceuticals and are either waiting to be tested by very costly procedures because of ërisk assessment,' or have already been banned. So, in essence, we ‚ the consumers ‚ have been told that vitamins and minerals can be dangerous to our sensitive health but that we will only stay healthy by eating a balanced, GM functional-food diet. Maybe some people believe this, but most consumers are not that ignorant."

Ms. Mosegaard adds, "Because of this, natural health, health freedom, and freedom of information and choice have become huge issues, especially in Europe, with more than 70% of the consumers in several countries saying no to GM food, and a majority wanting mandatory labelling so that at least they will know what they are buying and eating."

The Grain Exporting Empire Strikes Back

In well-coordinated maneuvering, the U.S., Canadian, and Argentinean delegates talked about how they doubted the value of consumer information, how they wanted to prevent "fraud and deception," and how it was important first to see how the consumers were using the GM labelling information as the labels might be seen as a warning, which would be misleading. Compare these viewpoints with the many years of disproportionate misinformation disseminated through media warnings and these countries' own regulatory agencies about the "dangers" of vitamins and minerals, which are leading to unnecessary national and global Codex restrictions upon natural and healthy substances.

The U.S. representative, Dr. Barbara Schneeman of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, was especially pointed and heated in her discussions. Amazingly enough, in an unconstitutional flight of fancy, she claimed that they [the FDA and government] should only give consumers the information that the government thought they would understand.

And later, outside the meeting, Dr. Schneeman, quite upset that there was sustained opposition to the Grain Exporters' position that consumers would be "confused" if they saw products labelled as "GM" on store shelves, claimed incredibly enough that the First Amendment prevents the government from informing consumers about the GM content or origin of their food products!

Yet, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution states quite clearly:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

The United States Supreme Court, as well as a number of lesser American courts, has long held in numerous rulings that the First Amendment is not, and never was, intended to suppress free speech but rather to encourage its free exercise. Regardless, the FDA itself has never been reluctant to assert control over food-product label content in the United States, so why is it now curiously taking the position that American law prevents it from doing so in the case of GM foods? Perhaps the GM food producers that were also represented at this meeting and that were practically sitting on Dr. Schneeman's lap might have had something to do with this aberrant change.

Risk Prevention Not an Issue Here

Also strangely enough, for the Grain Exporters in this Working Group, risk prevention did not seem to be an issue at all. The Argentinean delegation implied that it would be unethical to refuse GM foods to consumers. And all of the Grain Exporters strongly argued the cost effectiveness ‚ to the GM industry of course ‚ of GM food products, not a huge surprise considering how much money is at stake with this technology, based upon highly-persistent and toxic pesticides as well as patents on ëterminator' technology (which genetically can switch off a plant's ability to further germinate and would require chemicals to switch it back on).

Most delegates did not see GM technology as threatening irreversible harm to consumers because, as a Grain Exporter delegation stated, "the technology has had 10-15 years of use without any problems." Yet, as with the deleterious effects of many pharmaceutical drugs, which do not appear for some decades after their initial use, the heated debate on safety issues concerning GM foods is far from over.

NHF Argues Back

In remembering the famous quote by the American Chief Judge at the Nuremberg War-Crimes Tribunal, Robert H. Jackson (who said "It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error"), the NHF told the Working Group's attendees that NHF was present because consumers are concerned about their freedom of choice through lack of information.

And as a response to Argentina, Canada, and Mexico ‚ who had stated that there are many types of consumers and not all were concerned about GM foods ‚ the NHF stated that "We are all consumers, but that we are here to represent concerned consumers-citizens. There are different views and concerns. Argentina brought up ethical and religious reasons, there are also health, safety, information, and freedom-of-choice concerns," and the NHF reiterated that it was there to voice the views of concerned consumers.

At the end, the NHF supported the views on consumer information expressed by Morocco, Japan, the EC, and Consumers International, adding further that: "The National Health Federation supports full disclosure of GM ingredients on food labels so that consumers may make fully-informed health choices, and therefore is in favor of mandatory labelling. We are in favor of information and transparency, which is extraordinarily needed in this area because of its highly technological nature and its possible and probable effect on the future of mankind. Studies have shown that there are reasons to be concerned."

The meeting ended with a mandate to continue its work on GM labelling, much to the dislike of the Grain Exporter delegations which would rather see this issue discarded so that GM food products could be sold in anonymity along with non-GMO products, with consumers blissfully ignorant of the difference.

France: France fines Monsanto for fraudulent advertising

Pesticide Action Network Updates Service (PANUPS), 15 February 2007.

Agence Presse news service reported that a French court levied US $19,000 fines on both Monsanto and Scotts France for misleading the public about Roundup, Monsanto's flagship herbicide. One of the groups to which damages also must be paid stated that the court decision, "puts an end to Monsanto's lies." A former chairman of Monsanto Agriculture France had claimed that Roundup is biodegradable and "left the soil clean." Roundup's active ingredient is glyphosate.

According to a June 2005 report in Environmental Health Perspectives, Roundup was found to be "...toxic to human placental...cells within 18 hours [of exposure], with concentratons lower than those found in agricultural use," and, "Roundup is always more toxic than its active ingredient." The researchers also found glyphosate and Roundup effects on sexual hormones at very low levels. This suggests that "dilution with other ingredients in Roundup may, in fact, facilitate glyphosate's hormonal impacts."

Read more about Roundup: http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5652

India: Bt leaves bad for animals: Experts

Deccan Chronicle, 15 February 2007.

Hyderabad, Feb. 14: Hundred of sheep and buffaloes have died after eating Bt cotton crop waste in Warangal district. Deccan Development Society (DDS), which is advocating biodiversity for sustainable agriculture, on Wednesday discussed the issue with scientists, ecologists and farmers from China, Thailand, Cambodia and the Philippines.

DDS director P. Stash said that more than 2,500 animals had died in recent months eating Bt cotton leaves. Shepherds of Gummadavelli village V. Yadaiah and M.Malliah said they had incurred huge losses due to the death of the animals, he said. Chinese scientist Dr Yang Song and Thailand's Alternative Agriculture Network president Day Cha also expressed the same views. They said due to Bt cotton cultivation, animals were dying and environment was getting polluted. They also felt that genetic engineering would not be an alternative to sustainable agriculture.

14 February 2007

USA: Court Rules Agency Ignored Impacts of Genetically Engineered Alfalfa
May Block Spread of Monsanto's Alfalfa

WORK press release, 14 February 2007.

Billings, Mont. ‚ In a decision released yesterday, a Federal Court has ruled, for the first time ever, that the U.S. Department of Agriculture failed to abide by federal environmental laws when it approved a genetically modified crop without conducting a full Environment Impact Statement (EIS).

In what will likely be a precedent-setting ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Charles R. Breyer of the Northern District of California decided in favor of farmers, consumers, and environmentalists who filed a suit calling the USDA's approval of genetically engineered (GE) alfalfa a threat to farmers' livelihoods and a risk to the environment.

"This ruling will help protect my rights as a consumer to choose, and I choose organic foods whenever and wherever I can," said Dean Hulse, Fargo, N.D. spokesperson for Dakota Resource Council (DRC) and the Western Organization of Resource Councils (WORC). "The decision rejects Monsanto's claims that transgenic crops are safe for the environment. Many people have been skeptical of those claims, and now we have a judge who's skeptical as well ‚ a judge who has actually studied the facts."

Judge Breyer ordered that a full Environmental Impact Statement must be carried out on "Roundup Ready" alfalfa, the GE variety developed by Monsanto and Forage Genetics. The decision may prevent this season's sales and planting of Monsanto's GE alfalfa and future submissions of other GE crops for commercial deregulation.

Judge Breyer concluded that the lawsuit, brought last year by a coalition of groups led by the Center for Food Safety, raised valid concerns about environmental impacts that the USDA failed to address before approving the commercialization and release of Roundup Ready alfalfa.

"This year, for the first time, we have not been able to guarantee our customers GE free alfalfa seed, because of the release of GE alfalfa," said Blaine Schmaltz, a Rugby, N.D., farmer and DRC member. "We cannot afford the expensive testing needed to prove our seed hasn't been contaminated by Monsanto's. The release of GE alfalfa has disrupted our overseas sprouting markets, domestic seed sales, and domestic feed supply for organic dairies and livestock. This decision gives me hope that one day soon I can resume providing a pure product for my customers and a living for my family, free from genetic contamination."

"This is a major victory for farmers and the environment," said Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety. "Not only has a Federal Court recognized that USDA failed to consider the environmental and economic threats posed by GE alfalfa, but it has also questioned whether any agency in the federal government is looking at the cumulative impacts of GE crop approvals."

In his ruling, the judge consistently found USDA's arguments unconvincing, without scientific basis, and/or contrary to the law. For example:

•

The judge found that plaintiffs' concerns that Roundup Ready alfalfa will contaminate natural and organic alfalfa are valid, stating that USDA's opposing arguments were "not convincing" and do not demonstrate the "hard look" required by federal environmental laws. The ruling went on to note that "ÖFor those farmers who choose to grow non-genetically engineered alfalfa, the possibility that their crops will be infected with the engineered gene is tantamount to the elimination of all alfalfa; they cannot grow their chosen crop."

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USDA argued that, based on a legal technicality, the agency did not have to address the economic risks to organic and conventional growers whose alfalfa crop could be contaminated by Monsanto's GE variety. But the judge found that USDA "overstates the lawÖEconomic effects are relevant "when they are ëinterrelated' with ënatural or physical environmental effects.'ÖHere, the economic effects on the organic and conventional farmers of the government's deregulation decision are interrelated with, and, indeed, a direct result of, the effect on the physical environment."

•

Judge Breyer found that USDA failed to address the problem of Roundup-resistant "superweeds" that could follow commercial planting of GE alfalfa. Commenting on the agency's refusal to assess this risk, the judge noted that "Nothing in NEPA, the relevant regulations, or the caselaw support such a cavalier response."

"This is another nail in the coffin for USDA's hands-off approach to regulations on these risky engineered crops," said Will Rostov, Senior Attorney of The Center for Food Safety, which just last week won another judgment calling for USDA to provide more environmental documentation for any new GE field trials.

The suit also cited the urgent concerns of farmers who sell to export markets. Japan and South Korea, America's most important alfalfa customers, have warned that they will discontinue imports of U.S. alfalfa if a GE variety is grown in this country. U.S. alfalfa exports total nearly $480 million per year, with about 75% headed to Japan. The Court disagreed with USDA's assertion that exports to Japan would not be harmed by deregulation of GE alfalfa.

"Today's ruling reinforces what Sierra Club has been saying all along: the government should look before it leaps and examine how genetically engineered alfalfa could harm the environment before approving its widespread use," said Neil Carman of the Sierra Club's genetic engineering committee. "That's just plain common sense."

"We applaud the decision of the Court," said Bill Wenzel of the National Family Farm Coalition. "It's unfortunate that we have to turn to judges to do what's right for farmers while the USDA carries water for the biotech companies."

Alfalfa is grown on over 21 million acres, and is worth $8 billion per year (not including the value of final products, such as dairy), making it the country's third most valuable and fourth most widely grown crop. Alfalfa is primarily used in feed for dairy cows and beef cattle, and it also greatly contributes to pork, lamb, sheep, and honey production. Consumers also eat alfalfa as sprouts in salads and other foods.

Pat Trask of Trask Family Seeds, a South Dakota conventional alfalfa grower and plaintiff in the case stated: "It's a great day for God's own alfalfa."

The Center for Food Safety represented itself, WORC, Dakota Resource Council and the following co-plaintiffs: National Family Farm Coalition, Sierra Club, Beyond Pesticides, Cornucopia Institute, Trask Family Seeds, and Geertson Seed Farms.

For more information, visit www.worc.org and www.centerforfoodsafety.org.

WORC is a network representing farmers, ranchers, and consumers in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, and Wyoming. The Dakota Resource Council is a member of WORC.

Contact: Dean Hulse, 701-232-7997; Blaine Schmaltz, 701-208-0061; or Kevin Dowling, WORC staff, 406-252-9672

Germany: GM Field trial: Pharma peas with mouse genes

Munich Environmental Institute, 14 February 2007. By Andreas Bauer.

In Germany, the first field trial with crops producing pharmaceutical compounds took place in 2006. The pharma potatoes contained genes of the cholera bacterium and a rabbit virus. See http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6863.

Now, a second field trial with a gm pharma crop is planned for 2007. The company Novoplant handed in an application for a field trial with gm pharma peas. The peas contain mouse genes and, according to Novoplant, produce antibodies against gastro-intestinal infections of pigs caused by E. coli bacteria. The peas are to be mixed in animal feed as a pharmaceutical additive and a replacement for antibiotics.

The trial is meant to take place in Gatersleben (Saxonia-Anhalt), next door to the gene bank Gatersleben. The gene bank houses the most complex ex situ collection of plant genetic resources worldwide. The inventory of currently 148,000 crop samples of 2,500 different species is used extensively for research and plant breeding.

The gene bank also accommodates the world's largest collection of pea land races (more than 5500 samples). Several hundred are cultivated every year in open field for the preservation of their germination capability. The distance of the pharma peas to the fields of the gene bank's peas would amount to only 500 meters. A contamination of these irreplaceable and valuable plants with veterinary pharmaceuticals would have severe consequences for the gene bank, plant breeding and thus the food security of future generations.

Further information and a draft objection against the trial (in German): www.umweltinstitut.org/pharmaerbse

Contact: Andreas Bauer Munich Environmental Institute (Umweltinstitut Munchen) ab@umweltinstitut.org

The Philippines: Cardinal Rosales joins calls vs GMO rice

GMA News.tv, 14 February 2007.

Manila: Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales has added his voice to the growing criticism of the government for allowing the sale of a genetically engineered US rice product in major supermarkets.

In a letter dated February 9 that was released Wednesday, Rosales asked President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to recall from the market Uncle Sam Texas Long Grain Rice, which is being distributed by Purefeeds Inc.

"We believe that we should strongly oppose any experiment or attempt to use genetically engineered food that is not safe or good to the environment," Rosales said.

"We should feed our people with food that are produced through natural means."

The cardinal also endorsed the petition initiated by the Ecology Desk of the Archdiocese of Manila and signed by 2,000 people raising several issues on the entry and sale of genetically engineered products in the Philippines.

In that petition, the Manila archdiocese asked the government to impose a moratorium on the importation of GM rice from the US, require the agriculture department to do mandatory testing of imported rice and urgently stop the propagation of genetically enhanced food products. It said the government should certify as an urgent bill the mandatory labeling of all imported, processed food products.

"As a Church institution we have a moral obligation to protect the interest of God's people and their inherent right to safe food and healthy environment.

"Independent and environmentally concerned local and international scientists already warned that genetically modified crops and food products could be very harmful to the environment and to human beings," said the cardinal who was recently named as one of Pope Benedict XVI's economic advisers.

"We therefore strongly endorse the petition and in addition request you to order the recall and stop the sale of all US rice contaminated with LL601 GE rice together with Uncle Sam Texas Long Grain Rice from all markets and grocery stores," added Rosales.

USA: Dow Chemical to pay $325,000 to SEC

The Associated Press, February 14 2007.

Washington DC -- Dow Chemical Co. will pay a $325,000 civil penalty to settle charges that a subsidiary made improper payments to Indian government officials who held sway over regulatory approvals for the company's pesticides, the Securities and Exchange Commission said.

Dow Chemical, which is based in Midland, Mich., also agreed to cease and desist from future violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. It settled without admitting or denying wrongdoing, the SEC said late Tuesday.

The SEC found that, from 1996 through 2001, Dow Chemical's DE-Nocil Crop Protection Ltd. unit improperly paid an estimated $200,000 to Indian state and federal officials as it sought to register several products slated for marketing in time for India's growing season. The SEC said these payments weren't adequately reflected in Dow Chemical's books and records, and that the company's system of internal controls failed to prevent the payments.

The SEC said Dow Chemical conducted an internal investigation and voluntarily presented the results to the SEC, and also disciplined employees. The company also hired an independent auditor to review its books, and expanded training in how to comply with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the SEC said.

A Dow Chemical spokesman wasn't immediately available to comment.

U.S. Agency Violated Law in Seed Case, Judge Rules

New York Times, February 14 2007. By Andrew Pollack.

A federal judge ruled yesterday that the Agriculture Department violated the law by failing to adequately assess possible environmental impacts before approving Monsanto's genetically engineered alfalfa.

Judge Charles R. Breyer of Federal District Court in San Francisco said the agency had been "cavalier" in deciding that a full environmental impact statement was not needed because the potential environmental and economic effects of the crop were not significant.

Plaintiffs in the case - some alfalfa seed companies and environmental and farm advocacy groups - said they would push to stop the sales and planting of the alfalfa, which is resistant to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide.

Joseph Mendelson, legal director of the Center for Food Safety, a Washington advocacy group that organized the lawsuit, said the decision by itself could block commercial sales of genetically engineered alfalfa seeds but that the plaintiffs would ask for an injunction to make sure. Judge Breyer asked the parties to meet and propose remedies to him by Feb. 26.

Christopher R. Horner, a spokesman for Monsanto, said the company had not seen the decision but thought it would not affect its business. Monsanto was not named in the suit, which was filed against the Agriculture Department.

Calls to several spokesmen for the Agriculture Department were not returned. A recording in the department's communications office said the government closed early yesterday because of expected bad weather in Washington.

A federal judge in Washington said last week that the Agriculture Department had not done adequate assessments before approving field trials of genetically engineered grass. And last August a federal judge in Hawaii, in a case involving field trials of crops engineered to produce pharmaceuticals, ruled that the Agriculture Department had not adequately assessed the possible impact on endangered species.

Mr. Mendelson of the Center for Food Safety said yesterday's decision could set a precedent that would require the Agriculture Department to do full impact statements for other biotech crops before they are approved.

The Roundup Ready alfalfa was deregulated by the Agriculture Department in June 2005, meaning it could be grown outside of field trials. It was the first approval in years of a new genetically engineered crop. Because alfalfa is the fourth most widely planted crop in the United States, the action presented a big opportunity for Monsanto.

The Agriculture Department had first done an environmental assessment, which concluded that a longer and more detailed environmental impact statement was not needed. This was in part, the agency said, because the implanted gene conferring herbicide resistance was harmless to people and livestock.

But Judge Breyer, in his 20-page opinion, said that the agency had not adequately considered the possibility that the gene could be transferred by pollen to organic or conventional alfalfa, hurting sales of organic farmers or exports to countries like Japan that did not want the genetically engineered variety.

"An action which potentially eliminates or at least greatly reduces the availability of a particular plant - here, nonengineered alfalfa - has a significant effect on the human environment," he wrote.

The judge also said that the Agriculture Department had too easily dismissed the possibility that planting Roundup-resistant alfalfa would lead to wider use of Roundup, which in turn would contribute to the development of weeds resistant to the popular herbicide. That is particularly a risk, he said, because many other crops like soybeans and corn are also resistant to Roundup, which is known generically as glyphosate.

"One would expect that some federal agency is considering whether there is some risk to engineering all of America's crops to include the gene that confers resistance to glyphosate," he wrote.

UK: Dolly's long goodbye

The Ecologist Newsletter, 14 February 2007. By Jonathan Matthews.

Ten years ago this month the world first heard of Dolly the Sheep - the first mammal cloned from an adult cell. And St. Valentine's Day marks the fourth anniversary of Dolly's "euthanasia" at the age of six after a veterinary examination showed she had a progressive lung disease, a condition more common in older sheep.

But this double anniversary doesn't round off the story. Dolly's birth at the Roslin Institute in Scotland marked just the beginning of a long production line of animal clones that has included mice, rats, rabbits, horses, mules, cats and a dog. More ominous perhaps are the cloned cattle, pigs, sheep and goats. While Dolly's stuffed remains are to be found exhibited in Edinburgh's Royal Museum, the push is on to serve up the remains of today's cloned livestock on our dinner plates.

Just two months ago the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s draft risk assessment concluded that meat and milk from adult clones and their offspring are as safe to consume as those from standard animals. There has, of course, been no public debate about whether US citizens, let alone the recipients of US exports, wish to consume such fare, and surveys of US public opinion show a decided lack of appetite for cloned food. But we may not have the choice. The FDA has already concluded labelling should not be required, while semen brokers have been busy selling thousands of units of semen from cloned bulls. Their offspring are almost certainly going to end up in the food chain. The daughter of a US cloned cow has already been born on a British farm.

The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) sees no need to worry. A clone, claims BIO, is just "a genetic twin of that animal... no genes have been changed or moved or deleted." But clones are far from perfect copies. All clones are defective, in one way or another, with multiple flaws embedded in their genomes. Rudolf Jaenisch, a geneticist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, estimates that something like 4-5% of the genes in a clone's genome are expressed incorrectly.

These often subtle genetic defects can have tangible consequences. Cloning produces an extraordinarily high number of deaths and deformed animals. Some clones have been born with incomplete body walls or with abnormalities in their hearts, kidneys or brain function, or have suffered problems like "adult clone sudden death syndrome" and premature ageing. This brings us back to Dolly, who developed a potentially debilitating form of arthritis at an unusually early age.

By that point, the company behind Dolly, PPL Therapeutics, had received big public funding guarantees, as Dolly became the biotech icon at the centre of what was supposed to provide Scotland with an emerging "biotech tartan triangle" and a major economic driver. However, in the same year that Dolly died, PPL Therapeutics decided to sell its assets and shut its doors, having sustained multimillion pound losses. It left behind a large herd of unwanted GM sheep in New Zealand that, like Dolly, had to be "euthanased".

But still Dolly lives on, not only in the industry of the abnormal that she gave birth to but as a "cuddly" incarnation of the dream of a world remade without natural boundaries - limited only by our imagination and desires.

That dream may be inherently defective but it has powerful economic drivers. Cloning expert, Peter Shanks, points out that the FDA's favourable draft assessment of cloned food leaned heavily on the work of animal-cloning companies like Cyagra and ViaGen. Over a quarter of the 700-page draft, says Shanks, is a data dump from the two companies - a fact that the New York Times failed to mention when quoting the president of ViaGen saying, "I think that this draft is going to provide the industry the comfort it needs."

For Dolly and her "descendants", it's set to be a long goodbye.

Jonathan Matthews is the founder of GM Watch - www.gmwatch.org - and LobbyWatch - www.lobbywatch.org.

USA: US judge challenges Monsanto seed approval

Reuters, February 14 2006

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Agriculture Department violated the law by failing to adequately assess possible environmental impacts before approving genetically-engineered alfalfa from Monsanto, the New York Times said on Wednesday.

The ruling, given on Tuesday by Judge Charles Breyer of the District Court in San Francisco, said the agency had been "cavalier" in deciding that a full environmental impact statement was not needed because the potential environmental and economic effects of the crop were not significant, the paper said.

The judge asked the plaintiffs, some alfalfa seed companies and environmental and farm advocacy groups, and the defendant, the Agriculture Dept., to meet and propose remedies to him by February 26, the paper said.

Monsanto was not named in the suit, the paper said. No one at the company could immediately be reached for comment.

Big Biotech is Forcing Farmers to Buy GMO Seeds
The Plot Against Mexican Corn

CounterPunch, February 14 2007. By John Ross.

The "diableros" (hand truck hostlers) from Lagunilla market clustered around La Lupita's Ricos Tacos in the rough and tumble barrio of Tepito were not smiling. "Yesterday these cost me six pesos. Today, it's eight. Tomorrow, who knows, ten?" complained Rodrigo Aldama, 28, pointing at the three greasy tacos on his paper plate, "Vitamin T is rich man's food now." Vitamin T, a staple of urban diet here, includes tacos, tostadas, tamales, tortillas, and most any kind of street food concocted from corn.

The steep jump of tortilla prices here this January to as high as 18 pesos a kilo (they were six in November) have unleashed a storm of protest and suspicion. "Someone's getting rich on my 'ricos tacos' but it isn't me" lamented Lupita Perez. Many point fingers at the corn distribution system, which is run by transnationals.

Rodrigo had another theory: "the tortilla is Mexico but now they want us to eat white bread like the gringos." Others see even more sinister motives behind the sudden spike in tortilla prices which the government of freshman president Felipe Calderon blames on short supply and high prices for white and yellow corn - the opening of the Mexican milpa or corn patch to genetically modified corn.

World corn prices are currently at an all-time high due to burgeoning interest in ethanol production as a petroleum substitute. In Mexico the price of corn has been pushed upwards by the cost of diesel and petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides despite the fact that Mexico is a major oil producer. Crop failures due to drought, flooding, and even ice storms have contributed to the price surge. But whatever the immediate causes, the dismantlement of government agricultural programs and the brutal impacts of the North American Free Trade Agreement have deepened the crisis in Mexican corn production.

Competing with highly subsidized U.S. farmers is driving their Mexican counterparts into bankruptcy. Whereas south of the border, guaranteed prices for farmers' crops is a thing of the past, corporate corn growers north of the Rio Bravo can receive up to $21,000 an acre in subsidies from their government, enabling them to dump their corn over the border at 80% of cost. The impact of this inundation has been to force 6,000,000 farmers and their families here to abandon their plots and leap into the migration stream, according to a 2004 Carnegie Endowment study.

This assault on poor farmers down at the bottom of the food chain will be exacerbated at the end of 2007 when all tariffs on U.S. corn are abolished. Meanwhile President Calderon seeks to tamp down tortilla prices by importing up to 2,000,000 duty-free tons to augment what Mexican farmers can or cannot produce. Such a solution is guaranteed to drive more farmers off the land. Even worse is that much of the new influx of NAFTA corn will be transgenic.

A great deal of the 36,000,000 tons of corn Mexico has imported from the U.S. in the past six years is genetically modified - 40% to 60% estimates the environmental group Greenpeace, reasoning that U.S. producers, barred from dealing GMO corn in Europe and Japan are using Mexico as a dumping ground for the grain.

GMO corn began pouring into Mexico in 1998 and by 2001 was being detected in the remote sierras of Oaxaca and Puebla, a region in which maize was first domesticated seven millenniums ago - both BT and Starlink strains (Monsanto and Novartis brands) were found in Oaxaca's Sierra de Juarez in 2001 and 2002. 11 out of 22 corn-growing regions in the two states registered readings of contamination as high as 60% in a 2002 government study that was suppressed by the Secretary of Agriculture.

Although Mexico imports millions of tons of transgenic corn, it remains a crime here to plant genetically modified seed. In 1998, the National Biosecurity Commission, an interdisciplinary body that involves the health and agricultural secretariats, declared a moratorium on planting genetically modified corn until its impacts could be determined, and the ban remains in place although under heavy attack from big biotech and agribiz and transnational grain purveyors like the Cargill Corporation which now controls much of Mexican corn distribution.

To keep the industry at bay, the Biosecurity commission now grants permits for "experimental" stations where the grain can be grown under government supervision - the Monsanto corporation is now testing its "YieldGuard" brand corn on hundreds of hectares in Sinaloa state, the most prolific corn-producing state in Mexico. A spillover of YieldGuard in Sinaloa could contaminate a big chunk of the existing corn supply.

Despite the prohibitions on planting, there is plenty of transgenic corn tassling up in the Mexican milpas these days. Some of it is accidental. Massive imports of NAFTA corn distributed in rural regions through state-owned Diconsa warehouses threaten vast swatches of the Mexican "campo." Diconsa trucks are old and the roads rough and the GMO corn blows off into the wind contaminating cornfields for miles around.

Although more and more licenses are issued every year for experimental planting, producers groups are now threatening to plant GMO corn without government permission - "If the moratorium is not relaxed, we will start planting the transgenic corn in the spring cycle" warns Perfecto Solis, director of the U.S.-Mexican agribusiness giant Corn Products Systems.

Despite the prohibitions, big corn growers have been sewing transgenic maize without government permission for years. Roberto Gonzalez Barrera, "El Rey de la Tortilla", whose Maseca-Gruma, now a third owned by the Archer Daniels Midlands conglomerate, rules the corn flour and tortilla market (between 60 and 80%), once boasted that he had thousands of hectares under transgenic corn.

Maseca-Gruma is indeed a major player in the "transgenization" of the tortilla industry. During the administration of the now-reviled Carlos Salinas (1988-94), Gonzalez Barrera began marketing an instant corn flour mix milled from both genetically modified and natural corn. Taco shells milled and confected by Gruma and marketed by Kraft were found to contain Starlink corn, then not yet authorized for human consumption, resulting in the largest call-back of any transgenically contaminated product in U.S. history.

The Maseca mix has largely supplanted the traditional Indian way of preparing corn for tortillas - the "nixtamal" in which the "granos" or kernels are put to soak overnight in a brew whose main ingredient is quicklime. As payback for market domination, the King of the Tortillas flew Salinas into self-exile in his private jet in 1995 after the ex-president's brother was arrested for murder.

Barrera and his ADM partners and their transnational associates at Cargill-Consolidated Mexico and Mimsa-Corn Products now control the Mexican maize market. It is that monopoly, which has caused the current panic, considers Luis Hernandez Navarro, op-ed editor at La Jornada, the national left daily, and a writer intimately familiar with agricultural issues. When ex-president Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000) closed down CONASUPO, the state grain distribution system in 1997, the transnationals moved in and have taken control, says Hernandez. "When Mexican corn is in danger so is Mexico" he cautions, echoing the old refrain "no hay pais sin maiz" - there is no country without corn.

Hernandez and other veteran observers of the Mexican "campo" strongly suspect that the current corn crisis is being manipulated to end the moratorium on planting transgenic corn in Mexico. "The transnationals want to end the moratorium and are using this made-up crisis to pressure the SAGARPA (Agricultural Secretariat) to do away with it" figures investigator Antonio Serratos at the prestigious College of Mexico think tank. "It is part of their strategy for taking control of the entire agricultural sector."

As if to confirm Serratos' hunch, Big Agro is already petitioning the Biosecurity Commission to permit widespread planting in 2007. "Bio-tech is the only solution to growing more corn and keeping the tortilla affordable" advises Jaime Yesaki, director of the National Agriculture and Livestock Council or C.N.A, the principal agri-business federation in the country.

The C.N.A. was joined in its petition to the Secretary of Agriculture to vacate the ban on growing GMO corn by the National Association of Supermarkets and Retail Stores which is controlled by the U.S. transnational Wal-Mart - Wal-Mart is now Mexico's number one retailer of tortillas and other foodstuffs and, with 700 mega-stores, the nation's largest employer.

The subtext of the corn conflict is control of the seed market. "We have been patiently waiting to end the moratorium for ten years now" complained Eduardo Perez Pico, director of Monsanto-Mexico, the St. Louis-based conglomerate that dominates world seed markets. "Meanwhile Mexico is falling behind the rest of the world in applying new seed technologies that can better feed its people" the magnate recently told La Jornada.

The Mexican geography produces hundreds of varieties of corn that have adapted to the country's myriad bioregions over millenniums. The introduction of transgenic seed will work to homogenize these strains, reasons Dr. Ignacio Chapela, the University of California-Berkeley biologist who was the first to locate GMO contamination here while doing fieldwork in the tiny Oaxaca sierra town of Calpulapan in 2001. "Millions of years of biological history will be lost if transgenic seeds are allowed to be planted in the Mexican milpa" Chapela affirms.

Big Biotech with Monsanto leading the pack wants to replace those millions of years with seeds like the Terminator (named for the action hero governor of California) which goes sterile after one growing cycle and obligates farmers (they sign binding contracts with Monsanto) to buy more, a process Mexican investigator Silvia Ribiero tags "bio-slavery".

Corn is not just nutrition and livelihood in Mexico but also culture and religion. Maiz came from the gods and the Aztecs and Mayas nourished those gods with sacrificial victims to keep it coming. The transnational attack on corn stirs passions and paranoias amongst the descendants of Mexico's first peoples. At a meeting of NAFTA scientists a few years back, some with deep ties to Big Biotech, and charged with investigating allegations brought by 17 Mexican NGOs that GMO corn was a threat to the nation's 57 distinct indigenous peoples, an Indian farmer from Oaxaca seized the mic and accused the scientists of practicing genocide by pushing transgenics. "First you killed your own Indians and now you want to kill us!" the farmer shouted angrily.

The Zapatistas are Mayans and the Mayans are the People of the Corn. According to their sacred books, the Popul Vuh and the Chilam Balaam, they are actually made from maiz. Manuel, a member of the ecology-agricultural commission at Oventik, the most accessible Zapatista "caracol" or public center in the mountains above San Cristobal de las Casas, venerates these roots. "We are the corn - if it is poisoned so are we" he insisted during this New Year's "Encounter Between the Peoples of the World and the Peoples of the Zapatista Communities" up at the Caracol "Resistance and Rebellion for Humanity." Now the Zapatistas are freezing their seed corn to preserve pure Mayan germ plasma so that there will never be a world without it. You can even purchase the seeds on the World Wide Web. Check out www.schoolsforchiapas.com.

John Ross is currently on the road with his latest opus ZAPATISTAS! Making Another World Possible--Chronicles of Resistance 2000-2006. He will be traversing the southwest (February), the south and mid-west (March) and the Atlantic Coast (April) - contact johnross@igc.org for venues and itineraries. These dispatches will continue at ten-day intervals while the Blindman is on the road.

13 February 2007

Germany: Tax payers' money for ineffective pharma peas: genetic engineering scandal in Eastern Germany

Munich Environmental Institute press release, 13 February 2007.

The Munich Environmental Institute (Umweltinstitut Muenchen) demands an end to risky experiments

Munich, 13 February - The German Federal Ministry of Research and the State of Saxonia-Anhalt promote the development of ineffective pharma peas by the Eastern German biotech company Novoplant with a more than 1 million euro [of] tax payers' money. This is the outcome of the investigations of the Munich Environmental Institute. The genetically manipulated plants are to be cultivated this year in Gatersleben (Saxonia-Anhalt).

The manipulated peas contain mouse genes and are designed to produce a medicine against bacterially caused diarrhea in pigs. Mixed in the feed, they are meant as a replacement for the meanwhile forbidden preventive feeding of antibiotics. However, a feeding study of the German University of Hannover states that "not a single positive effect on the infection process was seen" when feeding artificially infected animals with the GE peas. The study is available at the Munich Environmental Institute. But this result was suppressed by Novoplant, when the company filed the application for deliberate release at the Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (Bundesamt f¸r Verbraucherschutz und Lebensmittelsicherheit, BVL) in last September.

Andreas Bauer, agrarian scientist and genetic engineering expert with the Munich Environmental Institute, criticizes: "80 percent of the citizens do not want GE plants on the fields, especially not those which produce risky pharmaceuticals. It is a scandal that now pharma peas of a company, which supresses negative test results, are subsidized with tax payers' money to grow them in the open air. The BVL should not approve this field trial." According to Bauer, pharma peas could contaminate traditional pea fields through insect-born pollination und thus enter the food chain. Beside that, there is a big risk of genetic contamination of the gene bank in Gatersleben.

The trial for which Novoplant has applied is to take place on the area of the gene bank Gatersleben. Amongst others, it keeps about 5500 traditional pea sorts, hundreds of them must be planted annually on fields to maintain their germination capacity. The distance of the pharma peas to the fields of the gene bank is said to be only 500 meters. The genetic pollution of these irreplaceable resources would have catastrophic consequences for future breeding efforts and the food security of coming generations.

Harald Nestler, board member Munich Environmental Institute, demands "No tax payers' money for pharma crops". "We urge the Federal Government and the State of Saxonia-Anhalt not to promote any longer dangerous nonsense like the development of pharma plants with tax payers' money. Instead of becoming obsessed with the risky technology of genetic engineering, the Federal Government and the States should put this money in the promotion of organic agriculture. Contrary to agrobiotechnology as an instrument for rationalization, organic agriculture creates thousands of useful employments in the rural areas. Nestler also appeals to all citizens to launched objections against the planned trial. The web side www.umweltinstitut.org/pharmaerbse provides background information and a sample objection against the planned trial. Signed objections must be sent back by 7 March to the Munich Environmental Institute. They will be handed over to the responsible competent authority.

Background information:

Peas fight pig infections
PigProgress.net, USA
http://www.pigprogress.net...

read more at: http://www.novoplant.com/index.php?id=home

German web page objecting the trials: http://www.umweltinstitut.org/frames/all/m441.htm

A field trial with genetically modified peas is planned in Gatersleben, Germany. The peas were developed by Novoplant, a small enterprise involved in plant biotechnology. If the concept works, the GM-peas are to be added to pig feed to prevent intestinal infections. The strategy to use plants as production systems for vaccines or medicaments is widely researched. Since the ban on antibiotics in feed in the EU, the feed industry is searching for new products to protect animals from infections. NovoplantÇs goal is to create feed plants by introducing suitable genes in the plant to produce antibodies against certain infections. If these GM-plants are added to the pig feed, the animal will take in the antibodies. According to Novoplant, the antibodies in the peas cause a "passive vaccination" and support the natural immune system of the pig.

Already on the market in 2010?

According to managing director, Dieter Falkenburg, the first of these new feed additives should be marketable by 2010. The peas have been modified with a complex gene structure to produce specific antigens. These bind on the surface of Escherichia coli bacteria, which can cause intestine infections in pigs. The anti-bodies are formed only in the seeds of the peas, not in the remaining parts of the plant.

India: Prime Minister's package for farmers was a hoax

Business Standard, February 13 2007

Kishor Tiwari of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti discusses the government's apathy towards farmer suicides in an interview with Sreelatha Menon.

You were in Delhi to meet the finance minister?

I did not get an appointment. I am told no one is serious in the government. There is also nothing in this Union Budget to stop farmers from dying. It is just rural infrastructure and not agriculture that the Budget is looking at.

What brought you into this work?

I am a professional. I did engineering in 1981 followed by an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad and then MTech. We are now working in a remote part of Vidarbha in Pandher Kowda in Yavatmal. Journalists have come there from all parts of the world. Time magazine had a cover story.

Has that helped reduce the number of suicides there?

No. The suicides happen every sixth hour. My phone number is flashed in the local cable channel and every death is reported to me. Even the government goes by my figures.

Has government relief reached the villagers?

The prime minister's package was a hoax. Some money was to be given to widows. Collectors were given Rs 50 lakh (Rs 5 million) each. But there is a 75 per cent rejection rate of applications of widows.

What was the package?

They were to get Rs 30,000 each in cash and Rs 70,000 each as a fixed deposit amount. But I tell the government that I will save the 3,000 widows provided it saves the 30,000 farmers.

What do you blame for the continuing deaths?

Monsanto and other Bt cotton companies have played a major role in killing farmers. According to the survey of the Maharashtra government in June 2006, 7 lakh of 17 lakh farmers want organic farming. It means cost of inputs has been unbearable. Again, yield of cotton crop has come down from 500 quintal an acre in 1995 to 2 quintal an acre. The price of inputs has gone up from Rs 1,600 per acre to Rs 8,000 per acre since 2002.

Why do you blame Bt?

Sharad Pawar [India's agriculture minister who has his political power base in Maharashtra] forced the Maharashtra government to tie up with Monsanto to market cotton. ICAR was involved in promoting it. In Andhra Pradesh, the government banned Monsanto but after five days, the Maharashtra government tied up with Monsanto.

The crop has been affected by disease every year. While Andhra fought to get compensation from Mahyco, our agriculture minister is an agent of the company and is paying compensation out of tax payers' money.The irony is that both are Congress governments.

Has the government changed its stance on cotton?

Yes. Now government is saying the Bt crop has failed.

What has been the number of deaths?

The media says only 3 million died, only 400 villages affected. I am saying that cotton farming has been unprofitable. And the Indian government is promoting Bt cotton.

Do you see a solution in the given circumstances?

Karnataka has shown the solution. It lies in zero budget farming. I am taking farmers to Karnataka to teach them how farmers there got out of debts and distress. There, suicides have decreased.

USA: Ethanol demand threatens food prices

Technology Review, 13 February 2007. By Brittany Sauser.

The recent rise in corn prices--almost 70 percent in the past six months--caused by the increased demand for ethanol biofuel has come much sooner than many agriculture economists had expected.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, this year the country is going to use 18 to 20 percent of its total corn crop for the production of ethanol, and by next year that will jump to 25 percent. And that increase, says Marshall Martin, an agriculture economist at Purdue University, "is the main driver behind the price increase for corn."

The jump in corn prices is already affecting the cost of food. The most notable example: in Mexico, which gets much of its corn from the United States, the price of corn tortillas has doubled in the past year, according to press reports, setting off large protest marches in Mexico City. It's almost certain that most of the rise in corn prices is due to the U.S. ethanol policy, says David Victor, director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford University.

The rising food costs fueled by ethanol demand are also affecting U.S. consumers. "All things that use corn are going to have higher prices and higher cost, to some extent, that will be passed on to consumers," says Wally Tyner, professor of agriculture economics at Purdue University. The impact of this is being felt first in animal feed, particularly poultry and pork. Poultry feed is about two-thirds corn; as a result, the cost to produce poultry--both meat and eggs--has already risen about 15 percent due to corn prices, says Tyner. Also expect corn syrup--used in soft drinks--to get more expensive, he says.

The situation will only get worse, says David Pimentel, a professor in the department of entomology at Cornell University. "We have over a hundred different ethanol plants under construction now, so the situation is going to get desperate," he says. Adding to the worries about corn-related food prices is President Bush's ambitious goal, announced in his last State of the Union address, that the United States will produce 35 billion gallons of ethanol by 2017.

Still, some suggest that the overheated ethanol market could soon cool down. "Politicians will see that, first of all, it is not helping our oil independence," says Pimentel. "It is increasing the price of food for people in the U.S., it is costing an enormous sum of money for everyone, and it is contributing to environmental problems. But I can imagine it is going to take another year or more before politicians realize they have a major disaster on their hands."

Belgium: Brussels to stamp out national rules hindering EU trade

EU Observer, 13 February 2007. By Lucie Kubosova.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission is set to introduce a set of proposals aimed at forcing member states to drop their extra national requirements on goods imported from other EU countries, which Brussels says is hindering trade within the union.

In a document - seen by EUobserver - to be unveiled by industry commissioner Guenter Verheugen on Wednesday (13 February), the EU executive argues that both national and common European rules constitute barriers to the bloc's internal market for goods and should be changed.

The national technical requirements on goods which are not harmonised at EU level result in extra administrative controls and tests that some companies, especially small firms, cannot afford so they prefer not to operate beyond their home markets.

The commission's figures suggest the EU is losing about §150 billion in trade due to these obstacles.

The new draft directive proposes a bolstering of the so-called mutual recognition principle stating that a product made in line with rules in one member state can be marketed in another one without extra conditions.

If a country still decides to refuse market access or require modifications of a product from another EU state, it "has to set out in detail the precise reasons for its refusal. It has the burden of proof that the non-authorisation of a product in the country concerned is necessary."

The move is likely to spark concerns in some European quarters as it raises similar questions to a recent bitter debate about the services bill which was also based on the idea that a service provided according to rules in one country should be good enough for other EU states.

In a bid to make it simpler for companies to find out about national technical requirements for products they want to sell in a country other than their own, the commission proposes that all member states set up one or several special contact points to provide such information.

The bill applies to "any industrially manufactured product or agricultural product, including fish products," and to any member state decision that would lead to a ban or withdrawal of a product because of extra national measures.

Burdensome EU rules

Apart from national rules, EU legislation also comes under fire in the paper for being inconsistent and containing unclear wording.

"Different definitions apply to the same product while other fundamental notions are not defined at all," states the commission's paper, adding that the new draft will streamline the various conformity assessment procedures of products applied across the EU so as to avoid overlaps and cut down red tape.

The other proposed measure from the same package aims to clarify and better protect the European Community marking which was established to ensure that consumers can purchase safe products - made in line with all EU rules.

Brussels argues that a number of products bearing the mark do not in fact comply with the European legislation which means they could harm citizens or create competitive advantage for non-compliant goods produced at lower cost.

The EU executive suggests the CE mark should be registered as a collective mark which would "allow public authorities to take rapid and efficient action against abuses."

12 February 2007

UK: Environmental liability: make GMOs a special case

Friends of the Earth / GM Freeze / GeneWatch UK press release, 12 February 2007.

Genetically Modified Organisms should be made a special case when new rules on liability for environmental damage are put in place in the UK say a group of environmental organisations [1].

The UK is due to implement the European Environmental Liability Directive in the UK this year and public consultations are currently underway. The group are calling upon UK politicians to support their proposals to strengthen the UK's environmental liability laws for GMOs to go well beyond the baseline laid down in the Directive. If the Government's current proposals are implemented, biotech companies are unlikely to be held responsible for any damage to wildlife caused by their GM crops.

Under the EU Directive any company or organisation responsible for causing harm can be held liable for cleaning up the environment or taking compensatory action if the damage cannot easily be reversed. The release of GMOs into the environment is one of many activities covered by the Directive. The four nations of the UK will each introduce their own regulations.

In a briefing [2] sent to Members of Parliament this week, the organisations set out their case for making GMOs a special case compared with other activities covered by the Directive because:

•

The nature of the risks from GMOs is very different from other activities: GMOs are living and able to multiply in the environment.

•

The range of species and habitats covered excludes most areas where GMOs are likely to be grown such as farmland.

•

Scientific knowledge about GMOs and their impacts is limited and unexpected results have occurred already.

•

The permit system for GMOs is not location specific and they could be released anywhere across the countryside.

•

The impact of GMOs may take longer than the 30 year liability time limit specified in the Directive.

•

Liability does not extend to laboratory GM animals, plants and microbes which could escape and cause harm to the environment.

The organisations are calling for the Regulations in England to:

•

drop the defence that allows exemption from liability if a company hold a consent to release a GMO (the "permit defence").[3]

•

drop the defence that allows exemption from liability if the scientific opinion at the time of the release of the GMO was that it was safe for the environment (the "state of knowledge defence").

•

make GMO consent holders not farmers strictly liable.

•

extend the liability time limit for GMOs to 75 years.

•

extend the scope of the areas covered by the Regulations to cover all countryside and all water bodies

•

make environmental liability insurance compulsory.

Commenting, Pete Riley from GM Freeze said:

"As things stand Defra has indicated that they intend to only implement the Directive to the lowest possible standards. This would mean millions of acres of countryside and hundreds of species would not be covered for harm caused by GMOs and other environmental damage. GMOs have to be made a special case because they can reproduce themselves and damage may take years to become apparent. We believe that Parliament would be widely applauded if they extended the scope of GMO liability as we have proposed as this would ensure that biotech companies would bear the full cost if their GMOs went wrong once released".

Becky Price (GeneWatch UK) said "we are very concerned that neither the Government nor the biotech industry has convinced the public that GM crops are desirable and yet tax payers will have to foot the bill if damage is caused to 'protected' species such as the brown hare or the red squirrel".

ENDS

Calls to Pete Riley GM Freeze + 44 (0)7903 341065.
Clare Oxborrow Friends of the Earth + 44 (0)7712 843211.
Becky Price GeneWatch UK + 44 (0)7949 396328.

Notes

1. Genewatch UK, GM Freeze and Friends of the Earth.

2. Download word document: www.gmfreeze.org/uploads/ELD_Case_for_GMO_final.doc

3. The EU Liability Directive allows exemption from liability if the activity causing their environmental harm has been authorized by the authorities. Thus a GMO Experimental or Commercial Release Consent for a particular GMO would mean that harm caused would not caught by the Directive. This is known as the "permit" defence. In the consultation for England Wales and Northern Ireland, The Welsh Assembly Government has indicated that they wish to drop the permit defence for GMOs.

UK: Monsanto dumped toxic waste in UK
Inquiry after chemicals found at site 30 years after their disposal

The Guardian, 12 February 2007. By John Vidal.

Evidence has emerged that the Monsanto chemical company paid contractors to dump thousands of tonnes of highly toxic waste in British landfill sites, knowing that their chemicals were liable to contaminate wildlife and people. Yesterday the Environment Agency said it had launched an inquiry after the chemicals were found to be polluting underground water supplies and the atmosphere 30 years after they were dumped.

According to the agency it could cost up to £100m to clean up a site in south Wales that has been called "one of the most contaminated" in the country.

A previously unseen government report read by the Guardian shows that 67 chemicals, including Agent Orange derivatives, dioxins and PCBs which could have been made only by Monsanto, are leaking from one unlined porous quarry that was not authorised to take chemical wastes.

The Brofiscin quarry on the edge of the village of Groesfaen, near Cardiff, erupted in 2003, spilling fumes over the surrounding area, but the community has been told little about the real condition of what is in the pit. Yesterday the government was criticised for failing to publish information about the scale and exact nature of this contamination.

Douglas Gowan, a pollution consultant who produced the first official report into the Brofiscin quarry in 1972 after nine cows on a local farm died of poisoning, said: "The authorities have known about the situation for years, but have done nothing. There is evidence of not only negligence and utter incompetence, but cover-up, and the problem has grown unchecked."

Much of the new information about Monsanto's activities in Britain in the 1960s and early 1970s has emerged from court papers filed in the US and previously unseen internal company documents. They show how the company knew from 1965 onwards that the PCBs - polychlorinated biphenyls used mainly as flame retardants and insulaters - manufactured in the US and at its plant in Newport, south Wales, under the trade name Aroclor, were accumulating in human milk, rivers, fish and seafood, wildlife and plants.

The documents show that in 1953, company chemists tested the PCB chemicals on rats and found that they killed more than 50% with medium-level doses. However, it continued to manufacture PCBs and dispose of the wastes in south Wales until 1977, more than a decade after evidence of widespread contamination of humans and the environment was beyond doubt.

A high-level committee within the company was given the task in 1968 of assessing Monsanto's options and reported contamination in human milk, fish, birds and wildlife from around the world, including Britain. "In the case of PCBs the company is faced with a barrage of adverse publicity ... it will be impossible to deny the presence and persistence of Aroclors. The public and legal pressures to eliminate or prevent global contamination are inevitable and probably cannot be contained successfully," the committee reported.

The report, which was shown to only 12 people, said: "The alternatives are [to] say and do nothing; create a smokescreen; immediately discontinue the manufacture of Aroclors; respond responsibly, admitting growing evidence of environmental contamination ..." A scrawled note at the end of the document says: "The Big Question! What do we tell our customers ... try to stay in business or help customer's clean up their use?"

Monsanto stopped producing PCBs in the US in 1971, but the UK government, which knew of the dangers of PCBs in the environment in the 1960s, allowed their production in Wales until 1977.

Yesterday Monsanto, which has split into several corporate entities since 1997, said in a statement: "On behalf of [former parent company] Pharmacia Corp, Monsanto is handling issues related to the historical manufacture of PCBs in Wales. We continue to work with the Wales Department of Environment and other regulatory bodies to resolve these issues. A thorough review ... will show that Pharmacia did inform its contractors of the nature of wastes prior to disposal, and that Pharmacia did not dump wastes from its own vehicles."

Solutia, the spin-off from Monsanto which now owns the Newport site, said it was giving Monsanto and the regulatory agencies "information as requested".

The Environment Agency Wales said it was investigating the contents of the site: "This is one of the most contaminated sites in Wales and it is a priority to remediate because it is so close to habitations," said John Harrison, the agency's manager of the Taff/Ely region. "There is ground water pollution, but we do not think at present there is any danger to human health. We have spent about GBP800,000 so far investigating the tip. Our legal team is gathering all the evidence and we are trying to apportion costs."

UK: Monsanto's toxic legacy
The wasteland: how years of secret chemical dumping left a toxic legacy
Monsanto helped to create one of the most contaminated sites in Britain

The Guardian, 12 February 2007. By John Vidal.

The old toxic waste dump at Brofiscin quarry smells of sick when it rains and the small brook that flows from it gushes a vivid orange.

Barton Williams, its owner, says he had no idea exactly what lies below his land, or how dangerous it is. "It's leaking, isn't it? It's the wrong colour. They haven't told me what's in there. The Environment Agency hasn't been open about what's in it at all and the council didn't even tell me it was toxic waste when I bought the land. They only told the public three years ago."

He remembers tankers dumping drums, slurry and sludge from the Monsanto chemical works in Newport and elsewhere in the 36-metre deep quarry on the edge of Groesfaen village near Cardiff. "They just tipped it in, anything really. They were lax in those days."

Groesfaen, now a Cardiff commuter village, is full of recently built GBP250,000 executive homes - some right on the edge of the quarry. Today, the many newcomers know little of the scale or nature of the dumping of carcinogenic and other chemical waste between 1965 and 1972. The tip, which was unlined, never had a licence for chemical dumping and water pollution was forbidden.

The first most people knew that something was wrong was in 2003 when vile smells escaped from the quarry and drifted over the village. The local Rhondda Cynon Taff council warned people to stay away but said there was no immediate health danger.

"People are worried about the value of their properties, they hope it will just go away," said one woman, who asked not to be identified, this week.

Previously unseen Environment Agency documents from 2005 show that almost 30 years after being filled, Brofiscin is one of the most contaminated places in Britain. According to engineering company WS Atkins, in a report prepared for the agency and the local authority in 2005 but never made public, the site contains at least 67 toxic chemicals. Seven PCBs have been identified, along with vinyl chlorides and naphthalene.

The unlined quarry is still leaking, the report says. "Pollution of water has been occurring since the 1970s, the waste and groundwater has been shown to contain significant quantities of poisonous, noxious and polluting material, pollution of ... waters will continue to occur ... the council is of the opinion that the metal drums will continue to deteriorate over time releasing poisonous, noxious and polluting materials," it says.

Anger

Villagers are angry that they were not told the exact condition or contents of the tip. "We do not know about this report. If there is still leakage and there is any danger, then it must be cleared up as soon as possible," said a local councillor, Jonathan Huish.

Douglas Gowan, the pollution consultant who first investigated the site between 1967 and 1973 for the National Farmers' Union, after reports of dead cattle and deformed calves in the vicinity, is one of the few people to have witnessed the landfilling of chemicals at Brofiscin. In 1967 he convened a team of toxicologists and engineers and took soil and water samples for analysis. His reports were sent to the Welsh Office but not acted upon. In a report requested by the Environment Agency of Wales last year, he states: "From 1969 to 1973 [we] actively monitored the site and witnessed not just landfill tipping in regular hours, but also dumping at night. Most of the waste came from Monsanto and I believe that almost all contained some amounts of PCBs. I saw ... vehicles dumping slurry, liquids and tars as well as ... open drums."

Even as Monsanto and other companies were sending chemicals to Brofiscin and a nearby dump, Maendy, from 1965 to 1972, in St Louis, Missouri, company executives were alarmed. From 1965 onwards evidence had been accumulating from around the world of widespread contamination from PCBs and related chemicals. PCBs were being reported in wildlife, human milk, and water, and had been found in British fish in 1967.

Internal company papers show that Monsanto knew about the PCB dangers earlier. Toxicity tests on the effects of two PCBs in 1953 showed that more than 50% of the rats subjected to them died, and all of them showed damage. With experts at the company in no doubt that Monsanto's PCBs were responsible for contamination, the company set up, in 1968, a committee to assess its options. In a paper distributed to only 12 people but which surfaced at a trial of the company in 2002, it admitted "that the evidence proving the persistence of these compounds and their universal presence as residues in the environment is beyond question ... the public and legal pressures to eliminate them to prevent global contamination are inevitable".

It expected legislation, but papers seen by the Guardian reveal near panic. "The subject is snowballing. Where do we go from here? The alternatives: go out of business; sell the hell out of them as long as we can and do nothing else; try to stay in business; have alternative products", wrote the recipient of one paper.

In 1969 the company wrote a confidential Pollution Abatement Plan which admitted that "the problem involves the entire United States, Canada and sections of Europe, especially the UK and Sweden".

Leaky

Monsanto's main production centre of PCBs was at Anniston in Alabama, but in 1971 it shifted production largely to Newport. According to the government, the company made 61,500 tonnes of PCBs at Newport. Internal Monsanto documents seen by the Guardian show the Newport factory was leaky and at one point was "losing" 1.7kg (3.7lb) a day of some of the most dangerous PCBs.

Herbert Vodden, a Monsanto physicist who tested how long the PCBs took to break down, told the Guardian that companies employed by Monsanto to take the waste were responsible for its disposal. "The sites were supposed to be impervious and watertight, It was the [waste] contractors' responsibility to find the sites ... usually they were reasonably cooperative. There were no regulations then. We were in their hands."

Mr Vodden said the company initially lobbied the government to carry on making PCBs in the 1960s. "They were very supportive", he said. And when it decided to pull out of PCB manufacture, "the department of industry argued against us withdrawing them. They came and told us that we should continue".

Explainer: What are PCBs? http://www.guardian.co.uk/Environment/waste/story/0,,2011143,00.html

10 February 2007

India: Minister gives compensation to farmers

The Hindu, 10 Feb 2007.

Dharmapuri: Minister for Agriculture Veerapandi S. Arumugam on Thursday distributed compensation to 996 farmers whose crop was damaged after using transgenic seeds of a multinational company [i.e. Monsanto subsidiary, Mahyco].

Participating in a function at Bommidi near here the Minister said 996 farmers who took up cotton cultivation on 1271.60 acres of land in Bommidi and Pappireddipatti areas suffered crop loss. Thanks to the initiative of the State Government the seed firm offered compensation of Rs. 5,000 per acre, Mr Arumugam said. The Minister asked agriculture officials to educate farmers on modern cultivation methods, proper utilisation of fertilizers and pest management while using transgenic seeds.

He asked farmers to make use of various government schemes. Collector Pankaj Kumar Bansal said the Government had allotted Rs. 19 crore to be provided as subsidy for drip irrigation to farmers.

He asked the farmers to adopt effective water management practices to increase their crop yield in tune with nature.

9 February 2007

Mexico: Mexican Govt Ignores Corn Culture

Latin American News Agency, February 9 2007

Mexico, Feb 9 (Prensa Latina) Because the Mexican government ignored the corn culture and food sovereignty, this basic food is subject to market laws and transnational enterprises' interest, asserted experts.

Scientists and specialists gathered at the Corn and Popular Consumption Conference: transgenic crops and speculation, tackle the current situation of the grain and agreed that imports are not the solution to the grain deficit.

The investigator of the National Agricultural and Forest Research Institute, Antonio Turrent explained the country has enough potential to produce 33 million tons more of corn, over the usual crop, if irrigation is done adequately.

The Institute's technology using non transgenic hybrids could produce eight tons per hectares representing a proven reserve of the product, added the researcher.

Armando Batra specialized on farm matters assured that despite the corn is the Mexican population's basic food so important in the history of the country it was pushed back due to racist questions.

Italy: EFSA pushes EU-wide GM risk approach

FoodNavigator.com, 9 February 2007. By Anthony Fletcher.

EFSA [the European Food Safety Authority] has met with the four member states currently involved in GM environmental risk assessments in order to discuss the development of an EU-wide approach.

Experts from France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands met with environmental expert members of the GMO Environmental Risk Assessment Working Group of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)'s GM panel to share their experiences on the environmental risk assessments of specific GM applications for cultivation.

"We shared some very useful experiences in environmental risk assessment for the applications for cultivation of GM crops in Europe," said Dr Jeremy Sweet, vice-chair of the EFSA GMO panel and chair of the GMO environmental working group.

"Participants welcomed the initiative and agreed that common environmental risk assessment and data interpretation methodologies will assist all parties involved and further add to the consistency of environmental risk assessment."

In particular, they discussed the evaluation of data presented in the applications and the risk assessment of herbicide tolerant and insect resistant GM crops.

"EU GMO legislation provides a framework for co-operation between EFSA and member states in GMO environmental risk assessment," said EFSA in a statement.

"Within this framework, these four countries have volunteered to carry out the initial environmental risk assessments of GM plants, which will form the basis of the final environmental risk assessment of EFSA's GM panel."

During the meeting, participants discussed the evaluation of data presented in the applications and the risk assessment of herbicide tolerant and insect resistant GM crops. Member States also shared individual risk assessment experiences from specific GM applications.

"This will ultimately help the GMO panel in carrying out the final EU risk assessment and provide clear and transparent information for the public," said EFSA.

There has been growing pressure from the biotech sector to improve access to agricultural biotechnology.

Marc Van Montagu, president of the European Federation of Biotechnology, told journalists in Brussels last month that the technology has considerable benefits for Europe, despite what he described as "systematic attempts to deny European farmers the right to use a technology widely used in the rest of the world".

Montagu's comments follow the publication of new figures from The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA).

The new statistics show that in 2006 the number of hectares globally cultivated with GM crops increased by 12 million hectares. Most of this growth came from countries such as China and India, while most EU farmers "continue to be held back by a dysfunctional regulatory system and by disproportionate co-existence rules," according to Montagu.

An EFSA colloquium will be held in June 2007 on GMO environmental risk assessment involving environmental experts from across Europe, details of which will be announced during Spring 2007.

8 February 2007

Kuwait: Greenpeace warns of GMO food in Kuwait

Kuwait Times, 8 February 2007.

KUWAIT: Two Greenpeace activists visiting Kuwait yesterday warned the public about the presence of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) in products available in retail outlets in Kuwait. The activists, however, failed to provide specific information on the direct impact GMOs have on human health. Greenpeace is an international environmental advocacy group. In a press conference held in the headquarters of the Kuwait Journalist Association yesterday, Andi Freimueller and Arnaud Apoteker, both activists involved with Greenpeace's Genetic Engineering campaign claimed that traces of GMOs could be found in various corn-based food products imported to Kuwait.

Freimueller appealed to Kuwait's consumers to choose GMO-free food and respectfully appealed to the government of Kuwait to label imported food thus providing consumers a choice through a labelling requirement. "Consumers in the Middle East are likely to be eating GMO food, not tested for long term health impacts, without knowing it. Greenpeace calls for a ban on GMOs, or at least for consumers to be given the right to choose by having GMO products labelled," the advocacy group said in a statement.

Apoteker clarified that customers should be given a choice with the types of food they are sold. "Since labelling has been enforced in the EU [European Union], food companies have banned GMO ingredients from their products because European consumers refuse to buy GMO food. Unfortunately, GMO products opposed in Europe find their way to markets where consumers are either not aware or not told about the GMO content, in this case, the Middle East."

In regards to what Genetic engineering (GE) is, GE is a technology that allows scientists to insert genes from one species into another in a way that could not occur naturally. For instance, fish genes in tomatoes and human genes in rice. According to Greenpeace, GE organisms can spread through nature and interbreed with natural organisms, thereby contaminating non-GE crops and future generations in an unforeseeable and uncontrollable way.

The two activists however could not provide specifics on what type of harm, if any, is caused by genetically modified food. "No one knows what the long term effects of GE organisms on the environment will be," a press release said.

Greenpeace advocates a 'better safe than sorry' strategy, although it admits it has no real proof of long-term harmful effects of genetically modified food. Apoteker claimed, "The unknown consequences of GE is irreversible," but could not explain how something unknown would be irreversible. In December last year, Greenpeace commissioned the testing of 35 products currently sold in supermarkets in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Freimueller explained, that 40 per cent (14 products out of 35) revealed positive results for contamination with GMOs.

In Kuwait, Freimueller pointed out that there were 14 products tested of which three revealed GE contamination. On the other hand, in Qatar and in the UAE, respectively four out of 10 samples and seven out of 11, tested GE contaminated. None of the products that contained GMOs were labelled, as these countries do not require labelling of such products, Greenpeace said referring to Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE. On the contrary, Saudi Arabia has been applying labelling laws for the last five years.

Testing results and more information can be found on the following websites:
www.greenpeace.org in English and www.greenpeace.org.lb in Arabic.

Mexico: Mexico's tortilla crisis: harvest of NAFTA

People's Weekly World Newspaper, 8 February 2007. By Emile Schepers.

More than 120,000 people protested in Mexico City, Jan. 31, against massive hikes in the price of white maize (called "corn" in the U.S.) and other basic foodstuffs - up nearly 100 percent since Christmas on top of a 700 percent increase since 1994.

Marchers, organized by major labor, farmer and political organizations, chanted "Queremos tortillas, no queremos PAN" ("We want tortillas, we don't want bread/PAN.") The right-wing ruling party of President Felipe Calderon is the PAN (National Action Party), and "pan" in Spanish also means bread.

In Mexico, white maize tortillas are traditionally the food of the laboring millions, some of whom can afford little else, as opposed to the white bread of the elite. The protesters were demanding renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, restoration of grain self-sufficiency, and wage increases.

Calderon announced the duty-free import of 650,000 metric tons of white maize from the United States, plus a "gentlemen's agreement" with some tortilla distributors to cap prices at 76 cents (U.S.) a kilogram.

The plan to import maize enraged Mexico's farmers. Since the inception of NAFTA in 1994, they have felt their government has allowed cheap U.S. grain imports, heavily subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, and the elimination of government price supports to destroy their livelihoods, driving millions of them off the land.

Some distributors announced they would refuse to honor the price caps. But Wal-Mart, by far the largest retailer in Mexico, began selling tortillas at three-fourths to one-half the price of others, sparking fears that its actions will wipe out even more small distributors than it already has.

Environmental groups pointed out the danger of genetically modified imported grain.

From the early 1980s, the Mexican government of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) turned sharply away from long-standing policies of protectionism toward neoliberalism - free trade, privatization and public austerity. Such policies were followed by PRI presidents until 2000, and intensified by PANista Presidents Fox (2000-2006) and Calderon.

Under NAFTA, the Mexican government hoped to attract foreign industrial investment and to expand its exports of fruits and vegetables to the U.S. and Canada, while moving farmers away from grain farming, which, in line with the classical economic theories of David Ricardo, Mexico "should not" be doing because the geography and climate of the U.S. and south-central Canada are better suited to this than Mexico's.

This all went awry the first day that NAFTA came into force: Jan. 1, 1994, when Native American peasants in Chiapas rose in armed rebellion, claiming that NAFTA would destroy their communities. The PRI's presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, was assassinated in February (an event unconnected with the Chiapas rebellion). This set off a chain of events involving devaluation, disinvestment and capital flight, which nearly collapsed the Mexican fiscal house of cards.

To rescue U.S. investors, the Clinton administration organized a $50 billion loan with conditions that led then-President Zedillo to greatly speed up the pace of implementing neoliberal policies.

The results have been devastating. The government agency that used to buy 20 percent of the Mexican maize crop at a subsidized price to sell cheaply to the poor was dismantled. Neither the export-oriented crop farming nor foreign-owned factories were able to absorb the displaced grain farmers. Mexican real wages dropped drastically to less than half their 1994 value, and many businesses went broke.

As a result, economically displaced Mexicans have poured into the 'informal' economy and over the border to the U.S.

Free-trade ideologues blame the rise in maize prices on the diversion of large amounts of the U.S. harvest into ethanol. But the left, unions and farmers claim that there is also massive hoarding and speculation by big Mexican and international monopolies such as Cargill and the giant Mexican conglomerate Gruma, which is 27 percent owned by Archer-Daniels-Midland. In 2006, Cargill bought 600,000 metric tons of white maize at 1,650 pesos per metric ton at midyear and sold it in the Mexico City area for 3,500 pesos per metric ton at the end of the year.

This situation has fueled hikes in other food prices, too. And in 2008, all protective tariffs on maize and other foods, such as chickens, are supposed to disappear. Protests will only grow if massive inflation of food prices is going to make the poor majority in Mexico even poorer.

Mexico's farmers and working-class consumers have often been played off against each other in the past, but the common enemy of U.S.-inspired neoliberalism is now bringing them together.

USA: Ben & Jerry's Herds 'Cows' in March on Capitol.

Checkbiotech.org, 8 February 2007.

BURLINGTON, Vt. - After a march through the streets of Washington, D.C. today, a herd of more than 100 cow-costumed marchers rallied on Capitol Hill to raise awareness of issues related to cloning.

In the wake of the FDA's December announcement claiming that cloned animals and products from cloned animals are safe to eat, Ben & Jerry's has joined forces with the Consumer Federation of America, the National Farmers Union and other organizations to raise awareness of the issues and urge Americans to make their voices heard during the FDA's comment period, which ends April 2.

"Ben & Jerry's strongly believes that supporting all-natural products produced from suppliers who are stewards of the land and use responsible animal-care practices benefits everyone. Cloning will be yet another tool in the technically-engineered, chemically-intensive, factory-farm approach to food production that we believe is negatively affecting society," said Jerry Greenfield. "We are calling for the FDA to expand its review of cloning and urge all Americans to learn more about the issues and share their concerns with the FDA and their Congress members."

A November 2006 poll by the International Food Information Council found that 58 percent of Americans surveyed would be unlikely to buy meat or dairy products from cloned animals. A December 2006 poll by the Pew Initiative on Food & Biotechnology found that 64 percent of consumers are uncomfortable with animal cloning.

"The economic implications of introducing cloned products into the marketplace could be potentially devastating for family farmers and ranchers when no consumer demand exists for such products. Entering into the world of the unknown is not the direction Farmers Union wants FDA to take producers and consumers," Bart Chilton, Vice President Government Relations and Chief of Staff, National Farmer's Union. "NFU has been a long-time advocate for consumers having the right to know where their food comes from-- not only the country or origin, but certainly whether the food they feed their families comes from a cloned animal.

"Consumers have a right to know how their food is produced and where it comes from. The majority of Americans have said they will not knowingly consume products from cloned animals, and yet the FDA is imposing cloned milk and meat on the public and denying them the right to choose whether or not to purchase such products," said Chris Waldrop, Director of the Food Policy Institute at Consumer Federation of America. "Furthermore, neither the FDA nor animal scientists are qualified to tell us whether and when it is ethically acceptable for humans to alter the essential nature of animals. We need a national discussion, including ethicists and religious leaders, to consider the wisdom of creating cloned and transgenic animals."

In addition to the National Farmers' Union and the Consumer Federation of America, other partners joining Ben & Jerry's include Center for Food Safety, Food and Water Watch, Humane Society of the United States and Union of Concerned Scientists. All Americans are encouraged to learn more about cloning and share their thoughts on cloning with the FDA and Congress members during the public comment period, which ends April 2, 2007. To learn more and find out how to comment, visit www.benjerry.com.

Consumer Federation of America

Consumer Federation of America, founded in 1968, is an organization representing over 320 consumer interest organizations including local state and national consumer advocacy groups, consumer cooperatives and trade unions. The combined membership of CFA's organizations is over 50 million Americans.

National Farmers Union

Established in 1902, NFU is a general farm organization representing 250,000 family farmers, ranchers and fishermen nationwide. NFU continues its original mission to protect and enhance the economic well-being and quality of life for family farmers and ranchers and their rural communities through the organization's advocacy, education and cooperation efforts. NFU believes that consumers and producers can work together to promote a quality domestic supply of safe food.

Ben & Jerry's

Ben & Jerry's produces a wide variety of super-premium ice cream and ice cream novelties, using dairy products from a Vermont dairy cooperative and high-quality ingredients. The company is committed to using milk and cream from cows that have not been treated with the synthetic hormone rBGH, and states its position on rBGH on its labels. Ben and Jerry's products are distributed nationwide and in selected foreign countries in supermarkets, grocery stores, convenience stores, franchise Ben & Jerry's Scoop Shops, restaurants and other venues.

7 February 2007

Kuwait: GMO Contamination from USA in Kuwait

Common Dreams press release, 7 February 2007.

KUWAIT - February 7 - In a Press conference today, Greenpeace released test results which revealed traces of genetically engineered organisms (GMOs) (1) in various maize based food products imported from the USA to the Middle East, including Kuwait. Consumers in the Middle East are likely to be eating GMO food, not tested for long term health impacts, without knowing it. The International organization calls for a ban on GMOs, or at least, for consumers to be given the right to choose by having GMO products labelled.

"Since labelling has been enforced in the EU, food companies have banned GMO ingredients from their products because European consumers refuse to buy GMO food. Unfortunately, GMO products opposed in Europe find their way to markets where consumers are either not aware or not told about the GMO content, in this case, the Middle East" said Arnaud Apoteker, Greenpeace's Genetic Engineering campaigner.

In December 2006 Greenpeace commissioned the testing of 35 products containing corn currently sold in supermarkets in Kuwait, UAE, and Qatar. 40% (14 of 35) of the tested samples revealed positive results for contamination with GMOs. All product testing was carried out by an accredited laboratory in Berne, Switzerland.

In Kuwait specifically, 3 out of 14 products tested (2) contained GMOs. As is the case in other GCC countries, none of the products that contained GMOs were labelled, as these countries do not require labelling of such products.

Earlier in 2006, Greenpeace had found US imported rice products contaminated with an unauthorized GMO rice variety in Gulf countries (3), as well as in more than 24 countries all over the world. Yesterday, Greenpeace launched a global report on the tremendous economic impacts that contamination of the world's rice supplies with illegal and unapproved varieties of GMO rice had on all stakeholders in the rice industry worldwide.

Greenpeace calls upon food retailers and relevant authorities in Kuwait to put measures in place to ban GMOs from the shelves or at a minimum give consumers the right to choose by labelling GMO products, as is required in more and more countries around the world. Notes to Editor

Testing results, the Rice report, and more info can be found on the following websites www.greenpeace.org (English), www.greenpeace.org.lb (Arabic)

Notes to Editors:

(1) Genetic Engineering is a technique allowing the insertion of foreign genes into random positions in the DNA of a host, e.g. a plant or crop. These hosts are then subsequently screened for the desirable trait inserted, e.g. resistance to a chemical weed-killer. Genetic engineering breaks the natural boundaries that exist between species. Genetic engineering can manipulate genes from animals, plants, and even humans. No one knows what the long-term effects of GE organisms on the environment will be.

(2) Corn Meal (Aunt Jemima), Instant Corn Masamix (Maseca), Brand Tortilla Chips (Tostitos)

(3) Greenpeace tested five packages of US long grain rice June 2006. Testing showed that 4/5 packages (80%) showed contamination with LL601, a variety of rice that had not been approved for consumption anywhere in the world at that time.

United Nations, New York: GMO labelling petition

UN Observer & International Report, 7 February 2007. By Israel Rafalovich.

A one million-name petition was presented to the European Union Commissioner for Health Marko Kyprianou by Greenpeace, calling on the European Commission for GMO labeling on milk, meat and eggs.

The petition was collected in twenty-one states of the European Union between May 2005 and December 2006.

The stalled European constitution grants civil society the right to call for legislation. Greenpeace claims that there are "vast" loopholes in the European Union law that exempts products from labeling requirements.

Products like cooking oil and cake mix have to be labeled if the ingredients include 0.9 percent GMO's but meat, eggs and milk - do not have to be labeled.

The petition demands "mandatory labeling on animal products based on GMO's because of citizens' rights for information which is a fundamental right in the European Union."

The NGO group says that the petition is a call for the European Union to stop letting GMO's through the back door in Europe and onto the plates of European citizens because of loopholes in the law.

At a press conference in Brussels, Mr. Kyprianou said that "Clearly, the number of signatures on this petition shows the strength of public feelings on the issue of GMO's in animal feed.

Please also see:

1 million Europeans call for GMO labelling on milk, meat and eggs (photo source):
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/releases/1-million-europeans-call-for-g

Say no to genetic engineering:
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/genetic-engineering

USA: GM is now a global battlefield

A World to Win, 7 February 2007. By Paul Feldman.

The struggle between the biotechnology companies who try to ram genetically-modified (GM) crops and food down the throats of farmers and consumers is now being fought out on a global scale. And biotech corporations like Monsanto are not having it all their way own way. A summary of global reaction against GM in 2006, released by Greenpeace International, provides evidence of growing resistance in many countries. "There is irrefutable evidence that governments, farmers and consumers throughout the world recognise that genetic engineering is unreliable, unviable or downright dangerous," said Jeremy Tager of Greenpeace International. Some countries are banning GM altogether. Rumania, for instance, which had 85,000 hectares planted with GM soy in 2005, will drop to zero this year, in keeping with a new government policy banning its cultivation. Farmers in India, France and the Philippines have led the way with protests, uprooting crops and holding demonstrations. There is even a backlash in the United States, where most GM crops are concentrated, following the Bayer LL601 rice contamination scandal. Californian rice producers and a major rice mill in the state, Sunwest Foods, have called for a ban on any cultivation of GM rice, including field trials. Producers and traders lost out massively when the contamination was exposed. Meanwhile, in 2006, the number of regions in the EU declaring themselves GM-free zones went up to 172 and 4,500 local authorities say they want to avoid using GM products.

Herbicide-tolerant crops are engineered to survive the application of a powerful herbicide that would kill a non-engineered crop, making it easier for farmers to use more herbicide to control nearby weeds. Or so the claim goes. The reality is different. Studies by independent scientists demonstrate that GM crop yields are lower than, or at best equivalent to, yields from non-GM varieties. Reduced yields have in particular been found with Roundup Ready (RR) soy. An independent study of US government statistics shows that the three major GM crops have led to a 122 million pound increase in pesticide use since 1996. Until the widespread adoption of RR crops, there were just two confirmed cases of glyphosate-resistant weeds. But by 2005, many different weeds had become resistant in the United States. The International Service for the Acquisition of Agribiotech Applications (ISAAA), an industry-funded body, ignores all this and paints a rosy picture of inevitable success. In its January 2006 report, ISAAA claimed that "the continuing rapid adoption of biotech crops reflects the substantial and consistent improvements in productivity, the environment, economics, and social benefits realised by both large and small farmers, consumers and society". This kind of nonsense is par for the course and is constantly exposed by organisations like GM Watch. This organisation reveals how the biotech industry funds spurious "scientific" research and underhand lobbying to promote GM as absolutely safe and the answer to world hunger (GM Watch also includes a revealing dossier on the dubious ex-Living Marxism group, whose members have with amazing ease penetrated top levels in the media to promote right-wing, libertarian views that often coincide with those of the biotech corporations). Curiously enough, the GM Watch site has been down recently and its staff think it might have been the victim of a malicious attack. Working out a list of suspects shouldn't take too long. Send your suggestions to info@gmwatch.org.

India: 64 villages of Uttar Pradesh pledge to remain free of genetically modified crops

Forum for Biotechnology & Food Security press release, 7 February 2007.

At a time when genetically modified crops/foods are shrouded in controversy, 64 villages of Chitrakoot and Banda districts in Uttar Pradesh today declared themselves to be GM-free. About 2,000 farmers and farm workers gathered at village Ganivan, Chitrakoot and pledged to never cultivate genetically modified crops. Instead, they will undertake organic farming, and also prepare their own seeds and fertilizers to promote sustainable farming. This is for the first time when such a pledge has been made by farmers anywhere in the country.

Organised by the Deen Dayal Research Institute (DRI), the event marks a turning point when farmers, realizing the follies of Ñmodernâ agriculture, have decided to go the natural way in order to reverse the devastation caused by it. The gathering was addressed by the nonagenarian Sh. Nanaji Deshmukh, chairman of DRI, food and trade policy analyst, Mr. Devinder Sharma, and the noted organic farmer from Haryana, Mr. Ramesh Dagar. Senior officers from district administration, agriculture departments and Krishi Vigyan Kendras also attended the meeting.

For further details, please contact Devinder Sharma (9811301857, dsharma@ndf.vsnl.net.in) or Bhaskar Goswami (9811191335 bhaskargoswami@hotmail.com)

Forum for Biotechnology & Food Security
G-3F, DDA Flats, Munirka, New Delhi-110 067

6 February 2007

USA: Federal Court Orders for the First Time a Halt to New Field Trials of GM Crops
Far-Reaching Decision Requires More Rigorous Environmental Review For Future Trials
Past Trials on Genetically Engineered Creeping Bentgrass Ruled Illegal

Center for Food Safety press release, 6 February 2007.
Contact: Joseph Mendelson (202) 547-9359

Washington, DC - In a decision broadly affecting field trials of genetically engineered crops a federal district judge ruled yesterday that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) must halt approval of all new field trials until more rigorous environmental reviews are conducted. Citing potential threats to the environment, Judge Harold Kennedy found in favor of the Center for Food Safety that USDA's past approvals of field trials of herbicide tolerant, genetically engineered bentgrass were illegal.

"This is a significant victory. The decision requires far more thorough oversight of the environmental impact of these crops, " stated Joseph Mendelson, legal director of the Center for Food Safety.

"The Court was clearly concerned that the agency has put our nation's environment at risk by exempting many of these field trials from environmental review. That's why the judge made the decision broadly apply to all future field trials of genetically engineered crops." Mendelson continued.

The federal lawsuit was filed by the Center for Food Safety, Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center and other individuals and organizations in 2003. At issue in the lawsuit are novel varieties of creeping bentgrass and Kentucky bluegrass manufactured by Scotts and Monsanto that have been genetically engineered to resist Roundup, Monsanto's popular herbicide.

Currently, use of the Roundup weedkiller is limited to spot spraying of weeds in that the herbicide kills any grass with which it comes in contact. The new engineered grass has been altered to be resistant to the weedkiller so that users will be able to spray entire lawns, fields and golf courses with large amounts of the chemical without fear of hurting the grass. Large scale planting of the biotech grass would therefore significantly increase the amounts of herbicide used in home lawns, sports fields, schools and golf courses around the country.

In seminal studies concerning environmental contamination from genetically engineered creeping bentgrass, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found multiple instances of the pollen from engineered bentgrass traveling several miles and transferring its traits to native grasses. Last year, EPA researchers found that the engineered grasses had escaped from field trials to contaminate a national grassland.

"These field trials threaten our public land, our communities and our health," said Lesley Adams, Outreach Coordinator for plaintiff Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center.

"We will monitor the USDA very closely to make sure they don't allow any more of these tests until they've rigorously assessed their environmental impact," Adams concluded.

View the court's decision:

http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/pubs/GTBC_Doc_94_Opinion%202-5-07.pdf

USA: UC's Biotech Benefactors

The Berkeley Daily Planet, 6 February 2007. By Miguel A. Altieri and Eric Holt-Gimenez.

With royal fanfare, British Petroleum just donated $500 million in research funds for UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois to develop new sources of energyóprimarily biotechnology to produce biofuel crops. This comes on the anniversary of Berkeley's hapless research deal with seed giant Novartis ten years ago. However, at half a billion dollars, the BP grant dwarfs Novartis' investment by a factor of 10. The graphics of the announcement were unmistakable: BP's corporate logo is perfectly aligned with the flags of the Nation, the State, and the University.

CEO/Chairman Robert A. Malone proclaimed BP was "joining some of the world's best science and engineering talent to meet the demand for low carbon energy Ö we will be working to improve and expand the production of clean, renewable energy through the development of better cropsÖ" This partnership reflects the rapid, unchecked and unprecedented global corporate alignment of the world's largest agribusiness (ADM, Cargill and Bunge), biotech (Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, Dupont), petroleum (BP, TOTAL, Shell), and automotive industries (Volkswagen, Peugeot, Citroen, Renault, SAAB). With what for them is a relatively small investment, these industries will appropriate academic expertise built over decades of public support, translating into billions in revenues for these global partners.

Could this be a "win-win" agenda for the university, the public, the environment and industry? Hardly. In addition to overwhelming the university's research agenda, what scientists behind this blatantly private business venture fail to mention is that the apparent free lunch of crop-based fuel can't satisfy our energy appetite, and it will not be free or environmentally sound.

Dedicating all present U.S. corn and soybean production to biofuels would meet only 12 percent of our gasoline demand and 6 percent of diesel demand. Total U.S. cropland reaches 625,000 square miles. To replace U.S. oil consumption with biofuels, we would need 1.4 million sq.mi. of corn for ethanol and 8.8 million square miles of soybean for biodiesel. Biofuels are expected to turn Iowa and South Dakota into corn-importers by 2008.

The biofuel energy balanceóthe amount of fossil energy put into producing crop biomass compared to that coming outóis anything but promising. Researchers Patzek and Pimentel see serious negative energy balances with biofuels. Other researchers see only 1.2 to 1.8 returns, for ethanol at best, with the jury still lukewarm on cellulosic biofuels.

Industrial methods of corn and soybean production depend on large-scale monocultures. Industrial corn requires high levels of chemical nitrogen fertilizer (largely responsible for the dead zone in Gulf of Mexico) and the herbicide atrazine an endocrine disruptor. Soybeans require massive amounts of non-selective, Roundup herbicide that upsets soil ecology and produce "superweeds." Both monocultures produce massive topsoil erosion and surface and groundwater pollution from pesticides and fertilizer runoff. Each gallon of ethanol sucks up three to four gallons of water in the production of biomass. The expansion of irrigated "fuel on the cob" into drier areas in the Midwest will draw down the already suffering Ogallala aquifer.

One of the more surreptitious industrial motives of the biofuels agendaóand the reason Monsanto and company are key playersóis the opportunity to irreversibly convert agriculture to genetically engineered crops (GMOs). Presently, 52 percent of corn, 89 percent of soy, and 50 percent of canola in the United States is GMO. The expansion of biofuels with "designer corn" genetically tailored for special ethanol processing plants will remove all practical barriers to the permanent contamination of all non-GMO crops.

Obviously the United States can't satisfy its energy appetite with biofuels. Instead, fuel crops will be grown in the developing world on large-scale plantations of sugarcane, oil palm

and soybean already replacing primary and secondary tropical forests and grasslands in Argentina, Brasil, Colombia, Ecuador and Malaysia. Soybeans have already caused the destruction of over 91 million acres of forests and grasslands in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia. To satisfy world market demands, Brasil alone will need to clear 148 million additional acres of forest. Reduction of greenhouse gases is lost when carbon-capturing forests are felled to make way for biofuel crops.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of small-scale peasant farmers are being displaced by soybeans expansion. Many more stand to lose their land under the biofuels stampede. Already, the expanding cropland planted to yellow corn for ethanol has reduced the supply of white corn for tortillas in Mexico, sending prices up 400 percent. This led peasant leaders at the recent World Social Forum in Nairobi to demand, "No full tanks when there are still empty bellies!"

By promoting large-scale mechanized monocultures which require agrochemical inputs and machinery, and as carbon-capturing forests are felled to make way for biofuel crops, CO2 emissions will increase not decrease. The only way to stop global warming is to promote small-scale organic agriculture and decrease the use of all fuels, which requires major reductions in consumption patterns and development of massive public transportation systems, areas that the University of California should be actively researching and that BP and the other biofuel partners will never invest one penny towards.

The potential consequences for the environment and society of BP's funding are deeply disturbing. In the wake of the report of the external review of the UCB-Novartis agreement that recommended that the university not enter into such agreements in the future, how could such a major deal be announced without wide consultation of the UC faculty? The university has been recruited into a corporate partnership that may irreversibly transform the plant's food and fuel systems and concentrating tremendous power in the hands of a few corporate partners.

It is up to the citizens of California to hold the university accountable to research that supports truly sustainable alternatives to the energy crisis. A serious public debate on this new program is long overdue.

Miguel A. Altieri is a professor at UC Berkeley and Eric Holt-Gimenez is executive director of Oakland's Food First.

_______________________

USA: I'll Take Two GMO-Eggs, and a Side of GMO-Bacon

Plenty magazine, 6 February 2007. By Alisa Opar.

If cows and chickens gobble up genetically modified feed, does that mean the meat and eggs derived from these creatures should be stamped with a 'GMO' label? According to a Reuters article today, Europe's food safety chief is looking into this quandary.

Here's how the issue currently stands in the EU:

The European Union has thresholds for how much GMO material may be present in foods and animal feed before being labeled as biotech. But those rules, which came into force in 2004, do not apply to meat and dairy products coming from a GMO-fed animal.

For green groups opposed to biotechnology, this exemption is a glaring hole in the EU's labyrinthine laws on GMO foods. For the biotech and animal feed industry, on the other hand, it would be unthinkable and unacceptable to change the status quo.

We'll keep you posted. In the meantime, for those of you wondering where all of that GMO feed comes fromóthe bulk of it is imported from the U.S. "where GMO crops are common through the crop supply chain," according to the article.

The Brits gave us The Office; we give them GMO animal feed. Seems like a fair trade.

USA: Studying how modified genes escape into nature

Newswise, 6 February 2007.

A University of Arkansas researcher and her colleagues are developing a way to examine how the genomes rearrange themselves during hybridization to better pinpoint how genetically modified organisms may behave when they cross with naturally occurring plants.

Cindy Sagers, associate professor of biological sciences in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences; Chris Pires, assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of Missouri, Columbia; and C. Neal Stewart Jr., professor of plant sciences at the University of Tennessee are examining chromosomes using specific dyes to look at how a particular trait ‚ say herbicide resistance ‚ passes from one type of plant to another.

"Transgenic plants that escape into nature could become a very serious problem," Sagers said. Some types of plants, such as canola, creeping bentgrass and rice, have mobile pollen that can cross-pollinate with relatives and related weeds, which in turn can take on the genetically modified trait. This could translate into herbicide-resistant weeds that can wipe out crop fields, or non-modified crops contaminated with modified genes ‚ both scenarios that have happened.

Sagers and Pires have applied for a Biotechnology Risk Assessment Grant from the United States Department of Agriculture to examine how the genome rearranges itself when genetically modified organisms and wild plants hybridize. They will use fluorescent dyes to "paint" specific chromosomes and track their migration within particular hybrids. This will allow the researchers to determine what specific pairings of populations create viable hybrids with genetically modified components.

The scientists will use a relative of Arabidopsis for their research. Known as "the lab rat of the plant world," the genetic sequence of Arabidopsis is well documented, allowing the researchers to develop detailed examinations of changes to the chromosomes in the canola crop genome.

By examining the issue of gene transfer at the chromosomal level, the researchers will be able to determine how novel genes transfer from a genetically modified crop into a weed or natural crop. This knowledge will help scientists working with genetically modified crops to better control and regulate the reproduction of desirable genes in the appropriate plants.

Sagers spent a year on a fellowship at an Environmental Protection Agency laboratory in Corvallis, Ore., studying the potential cross-pollination of herbicide resistant genes in canola. Canola makes a good experimental model because of its short life cycle, its reproduction from seeds and its ability to hybridize with close relatives.

They measured and weighed the parent and hybrid plants to see which ones fared better in highly competitive environments under selection by insect pests. The hybrids grew to be almost 15-fold larger than the parent plants.

"We know that there is hybrid vigor in the system," Sagers said. "We also know that these hybrids can persist in the wild."

The Netherlands: GE rice industry facing meltdown as global tide of rejection grows
Bayer, global pusher of GE rice must admit defeat, says Greenpeace

Greenpeace press release, 6 February 2007.

Amsterdam 6 February 2007 - - The global rejection of genetically engineered rice is revealed today as 41 of the worldÇs biggest exporters, processors and retailers issued written commitments to stay GE free. The worldwide tide of opposition is reflected in the new Greenpeace report, "Rice Industry in Crisis".

The report carries extracts of company statements covering Asia, Europe, Australia, and North and South America (1) and includes a commitment from the world's largest rice processor, Ebro Puleva, to stop buying US rice. This follows a major contamination incident in 2006, when the worldÇs rice supply was contaminated with an experimental and illegal variety of GE rice produced by biotech company Bayer.

"Bayer is aggressively pursuing commercial approvals for its GE rice globally, including in Europe and Brazil, yet refuses to accept responsibility for the major financial damage its unauthorised GE rice has caused in the US and elsewhere. Indeed, Bayer is blaming hardworking farmers or 'acts of God' for these problems when all signs point to Bayer being at fault," (4) said Adam Levitt, a partner in the Chicago office of the law firm of Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz - one of the law firm's leading the prosecution of these cases against Bayer.

"This global contamination and global market rejection of GE rice clearly shows the need for Bayer to withdraw from any further GE rice development," said Jeremy Tager, Greenpeace International rice campaigner. "Bayer proves that GE rice is too risky. Through field trials alone Bayer caused massive financial damage to the global rice industry. The commercial growing of GE rice must never become a reality; the impact on the world's most important food crop world be disastrous."

The report also examines the significant economic implications of the Bayer contamination, including when rice futures prices plummeted $150 million -- the sharpest one-day decline in years. Experts have predicted that US rice exports may decline by as much as 16% in 2006/2007. (2) Several multi-million dollar class action lawsuits have been filed by US farmers who refuse to bear the financial burden of Bayer's irresponsible and negligent conduct. The farmers claim that Bayer is responsible for the contamination of rice supplies and the economic losses the U.S. rice farmers have suffered as a result and must compensate farmers for the monetary and other losses that they have sustained as a result of Bayer's improper conduct. (3)

In addition to the class action lawsuits, several individual lawsuits have also been filed and there are also anecdotal reports that European traders contemplating legal action. As a result of the contamination of the rice supply with Bayer's GE rice farmers, millers, traders and retailers around the globe are facing massive financial costs, including testing and recall costs, cancelled orders, import bans, brand damage and consumer distrust - distrust that could last for years.

"Governments from around the world must respond to the economic, market and environmental damage caused by the 2006 GE rice contamination and reject outright any GE rice food and cultivation applications currently on the table," said Tager. "GE rice should not be developed as genetic engineering is an unnecessary, unwanted and outdated technology that threatens the world's most important staple food."

Greenpeace campaigns for GE-free crop and food production grounded on the principles of sustainability, protection of biodiversity and providing all people access to safe and nutritious food. Genetic engineering is an unnecessary and unwanted technology that contaminates the environment, threatens biodiversity and poses unacceptable risks to health.

For more information and interviews

Jeremy Tager, Greenpeace International GE campaigner, +31 6 4622 1185
Adam Levitt, partner, Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLC, +1 312-984-0000, U.S. lawyer representing rice farmers in U.S.-based class action litigation against Bayer
Mhairi Dunlop, Greenpeace International Communications: (M) +44 (0)7801 212 960

Notes to editors

(1) Company statements received from the following countries: Japan, Switzerland, France, Hong Kong, Germany, Australia, Pakistan, Thailand, India, Brazil, Spain, Canada and the UK. For statements see pages 7 - 12 of the Rice markets report: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/reports/rice-industry-in-crisis.

(2) Elias P. 2006. California growers fear biotech rice threat. Washington Post. 15 October, 2006:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/15/AR2006101500465.html.

(3) Weiss, R. 2006. Firm Blames Farmers, Act of GodÇ for Rice Contamination. Washington Post. 22 November, 2006:
www.washingtonpost.com/ActofGod
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/21/AR2006112101265.html

Leonard, C. 2006. 13 Lawsuits Over Accidental Spread of Genetically Altered Rice Could Be Combined Into 1. Associated Press. 30, November, 2006:
www.boston.com/LawsuitGErice
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2006/11/30/13_biotech_rice_lawsuits_could_merge/

(4) Countries in which Bayer CropScience has applied for authorization for cultivation or food/feed consumption. All approvals are for LL62 unless otherwise noted.

1. Australia - food and feed. Applied 2006
2. Brazil - cultivation, food and feed, seed import, additional field trials. Applied 2006
3. Canada - approval granted for food and feed 2006
4. European Union (25 states) - food and feed. Applied 2004
5. New Zealand - food and feed. Applied 2006
6. Philippines - food and feed. Applied 2006
7. South Africa - food and feed. Applied 2006
8. United States - approvals granted for cultivation, food and feed. Approvals - LL601, 62, 06 (2006, 2002)

5 February 2007

Belgium: Greenpeace presents petition signed by 1 million Europeans
demanding action over GMO products

The Associated Press, 5 February 2007.

BRUSSELS, Belgium: Greenpeace handed over a petition to EU officials Monday – signed by one million Europeans – demanding the European Union impose mandatory labeling of all milk, meat and egg products derived from animals fed with genetically modified crops.

The environmental group said the European Commission had to act to close a loophole in EU food safety rules which exempts certain animal products from labeling requirements, notably food products derived from animals fed with biotech food.

"This petition is a call for the EU to stop letting genetically modified organisms in through the back door of Europe and onto our plates," said Marco Contiero of Greenpeace.

The petition, with signatures from 21 of 27 EU member states, was handed to EU Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou, who is in charge of food safety issues at the EU executive.

Kyprianou said EU governments had decided in the past to exempt labeling rules for such food products.

USA: Delta & Pine CEO: Merger with Monsanto on track

Dow Jones, 5 February 2007. By Angie Pointer. AUSTIN, Texas - Delta & Pine Land Co. (DLP) Chief Executive and President Tom Jagodinski said Saturday the company's planned union with Monsanto Co. (MON) is "on track" and he expects the deal to be approved by regulators.

The proposed $1 .5 billion deal was announced in August, and was approved by shareholders of Delta & Pine, a cotton and soybean seed breeder, producer and marketer, on Dec. 21. The Department of Justice is reviewing the merger, and regulatory approval is still pending.

Jagodinski told Dow Jones Newswires the merger could be completed as early as six to 12 months after the August announcement.

"We hope it closes soon," he said in a telephone interview.

Delta & Pine already seils cotton seed varieties that contain Monsanto's Bollgard and Roundup Ready technologies. Bollgard protects cotton plants from insect pests such as tobacco budworm, cotton boliworm and pink bollworm, while Roundup Ready cotton is resistant to the herbicide, Roundup, which is also known by its chemical name, glyphosate.

The company also seils conventional, or non-genetically modified, seed, but that typeof seed only represents a small fraction of sales.

Jagodinski said 95% of the company's seed sales last year contained one or more Monsanto traits. The company's net sales in fiscal 2006 totaled $417.6 million, the highest in the company's 91-year history.

One key benefit seen from the proposed combination is increased speed in developing and commercializing new genetically modified cotton varieties.

"Farmers will see better traits" from the combined company, Jagodinski said, noting that Monsanto has identified cotton as a strategic crop and is already developing new traits.

Despite the potential advantages, not everyone is happy with the proposed merger. In particular, competing companies such as DuPont Co. (DD) and Syngenta AG (SYT) have campaigned against the combination and have received some support in the U.S. farm belt.

On Friday, shares of Scott, Miss.-based Delta & Pine closed at $40.61.

Belgium: EU urged to act on GMO labelling

The Parliament - European Politics and Policy (EUpolitix.com), 5 February 2007.

Greenpeace today delivered a one million-name petition to the European commission calling for GMO labelling on milk, meat and eggs.

The environmental group claims a "vast" loophole in EU law exempts products from labelling requirements.

Foods like cooking oil and cake mix have to be labelled if the ingredients include 0.9 per cent GMOs or more and animal feed packets must be similarly labelled.

But food products derived from animals fed with GMOs ‚ meat, eggs and milk ‚ do not need to be labelled at all.

The petition, presented to Markos Kyprianou, commissioner for health, was collected in 21 member states between May 2005 and December 2006.

It states: "We demand mandatory labelling on animal products based on GMOs because of citizens' right to information, a fundamental right in the EU."

The stalled EU constitution grants civil society the right to call for EU legislation.

"This petition is a call for the EU to stop letting GMOs in through the back door of Europe and onto our plates through a loophole in the law," said Marco Contiero, of Greenpeace European Unit.

At a news conference, Kyprianou said, "Clearly, the number of signatures on this petition shows the strength of public feeling on the issue of GMOs in animal feed."

"The commission always tries to listen to citizens and I want to reassure people that we shall look again at this issue."

Writing in the latest issue of parliament magazine, Simon Barber, director of biotech lobby Europabio argues that the slow adoption rate to cultivate biotech crops is hurting EU farmers and consumers.

Bulgaria: You are what you eat

Sofia Echo, 5 February 2007.

At the end of 2006, frightening information was transmitted by a national television station in Bulgaria. Maize and soy products produced in the country were found to be genetically modified. All of them. In an attempt to find out if this is true, The Sofia Echo's Elitsa Grancharova takes a deeper look at the issue.

The genetically modified organisms (GMO) issue in Bulgaria became more evident at the end of 2005, when discussions around a new law on GMOs arose in the social sphere. The draft bill for the GMO law was prepared and passed with several amendments, while in the Law for Foods were included orders regulating the issues concerning GMOs.

Simultaneously, NGOs and specialists in the field organised numerous discussions and informational campaigns. The coalition Bulgaria ‚ GMO-Free Zone (BGMOFZ) was created.

Under the pressure and by intervention of the coalition in the MPs' work, and due to public opinion against GMOs, some of the clauses in the new law were changed. President Georgi Purvanov ratified the texts asked for by Bulgarian anti-GMO NGOs, but there was no moratorium on GMOs, as BGMOFZ wished.

Currently, the only protection for Bulgaria's population and nature from the threats of GM foods is administered by several state organisations. The Ministry of Environment and Water Affairs (MOEW) is in charge of issuing permission for growing of GMOs, experimenting with them, and registering of premises for cultivating GMOs. The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry manages control over fields and fodder. Food control is done by the Regional Inspectorate for Public Health Protection and Control within the Ministry of Health.

In the field of foods, in November 2006, MOEW formed the Committee on New and Genetically Modified Foods, which is in charge of the preliminary assessments of permission requests for selling foods containing GMOs and of sending the documentation for approval to the European Commission.

In spite of the Law on Foods, which bans GMOs for which there is no special permission issued, such exist and are sold to uninformed consumers, Za Zemyata GMO campaign co-ordinator Ivailo Popov said to The Sofia Echo.

In August 2006, two BGMOFZ NGOs ‚ Za Zemyata ecological association (zazemyata.org) and Mayday Foundation Varna (maydayfoundation.hit.bg) ‚ together with the Varna Social Environmental Centre ordered laboratory tests on 10 groups of products that can be bought at Bulgarian markets: five groups of products containing soy, and five groups containing maize.

The tests were conducted in the laboratory SGS using the Real Time PCR method, which is the most reliable at present.

The results of the tests showed that the products that do not contain GMOs were all the maize products tested ‚ cornmeal and flour, canned corn and corn on the cob, popcorn, deep-fried corn kernels and baked cornmeal snacks. The products containing soy in different forms, such as soy lecithin or others, that do not contain GMOs according to the tests conducted are chocolates and meat products (frankfurters) produced in Bulgaria. The products containing GMOs were shown to be soy sauces, soy beans and kernels, products of the brand Vitabel (artificial meat products and artificial minced meat), and chocolate waffles, according to Popov. He could not name certain brands of waffles because during the tests the different brands of waffles were mixed; this was the actual mixture tested.

What are GMOs?

According to the encyclopaedia, a GMO is an organism whose genetic material has been altered using techniques in genetics generally known as recombinant DNA technology. In other words, genetic modification of plant and animal organisms is mixing of genes from different kinds that could not mix in a natural environment. This act aims at improving certain product qualities. For instance, fish genes were found in tomatoes (to aid against freezing). After the manipulation, the genetically modified tomato is genetically forced to produce the fish chemicals because of the universal gene language. In this way, it produces a chemical called antifreeze naturally used by the fish to survive in ice-cold waters. This sounds fine at first, but problems can arise: on one hand, people who are allergic to fish consume GM tomatoes without suspecting their composition, and on the other, consumers remark that GM tomatoes lose their taste.

Another example can be given with toxin-producing bacteria genes found in the tested maize to kill pests.

Human health hazards coming from GMOs are determined by the fact that the new gene information interferes with the normal functions of the other genes.

The biggest connected problems are still the physical incapability to examine the complete short-term evidence and the impact of GMOs over generations. Some effects of the modified gene structure will not appear for more than 30 years, according to Popov.

In his opinion, "including GMOs in farming means an end to traditional agriculture and clean food". The genes changed can corrupt other species by pollination and can jump over species barriers. Gene pollution is irreversible, Popov said. He further explained that GMO use causes mutations and the appearance of new so-called supergenes, which threaten crops with death of the original.

The issue was further discussed in a public debate at Sofia's The Red House Centre for Culture and Debate on January 30. Opponents of GMO technology, including the former Environment and Water Affairs minister Evdokia Maneva, clarified some aspects of the existing GMO law in Bulgaria, such as the ban on growing GM plants in any area within 30 metres of protected territories. Unfortunately, natural forces can not be predicted, so this barrier is not efficient against wind, for instance.

Many experts believe that gene engineering will dramatically reduce biodiversity because it concentrates on agriculture mono-cultures.

It is still not firmly known whether gene engineering impacts human health, or how. GM products contain proteins, ones humans have never eaten before ‚ for instance, we never ate either bacterial proteins in corn or fish proteins in tomatoes.

The human organism doesn't have any experience with those types of proteins and there is no way to predict whether they will cause allergies or other chronic disease down the road.

What is happening in other EU countries

Austria. In May 2006, the parliament of the Austrian province Styria passed law-prevention clauses for the co-existance of plants containing and not containing GMOs. The law requires preventing any GMO pollution above 0.1 per cent in neighbouring fields. This is a slap in the face for the European Commission (EC), which requires pollution prevention above 0.9 per cent. According to the new Styria law, GM cultures production also requires governmental bodies' approval.

This makes the process of full approval more complicated. Styria insisted that the 0.9 per cent limit is supposed to be for the end food product and not for agricultural production.

Poland. On April 27 2006, Polish parliament banned the trade of GM seeds in the country after a warning of the International Coalition for Protection of Polish Nature. The GM seeds will also not be entered in the National Seeds Register. In this way, Poland has undertaken a conclusive step to sustainable agriculture.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) alleges that a GM plants ban in some countries would create barriers towards free-trade agreements. In response, GMO Greenpeace expert and activist Maisey Muscat said that the Polish parliament resolution showed that the Polish MPs were aware of the possible risks of agricultural cultivation of GM seeds, despite threats from the WTO and the EC. Politicians kept their promises from the last election campaign.

Greenpeace called on all other countries to follow the Polish example in protecting nature and agriculture.

Romania. GM products made in Romania could be banned for export to the EU and even for use in Romania because of non-observance of EU regulations for labelling and tracking of food origin.

Experts say that the increasing use of genetically modified crops also hinders organic agriculture ‚ an area in which Romania has the potential to be competitive on the EU market.

In Romania, there are 130 000 hectares of GM soybeans (70 per cent of all soybeans in the country) and it stands at first place in producing GM soybeans in Europe. A large part of the sowing has been done with uncertified seed, so their origin can not be tracked down.

In the country, GMOs were introduced without any legal framework and there is weak political will for regulation. Also, Romanian society is not well informed on the topic.

Agricultural consultant Dragos Dimas said that Romania will have to pay a high price for not setting up an effective system of testing and controlling the production of soy products. The possible ban of Romanian soy products could be a big blow to Romanian markets because almost all products contain traces of soy. The access to EU structural funds for agricultural projects can also be restricted for Romania in the case where the country does not take measures for food labelling and tracking.

In Dima's opinion, the country needs many years to successfully deal with the chaos in its agricultural sector. "The country will have to destroy the crops with unaccepted GM varieties," he said to the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network's publication Balkan Insight.

Hungary. Meat with GM soybean content was found in the country. Tests, led by the National Committee of Food Safety and the Greenpeace Food Scientific Institute, found canned meat with a sauce composed of more than three per cent GM products without such being indicated on the package.

By national law, food composed of more than 0.9 per cent GM products should clearly indicate it on the package. The supermarkets Lidl and Tesco said they will remove these products from their shelves.

Imports from the US

In October 2006, EU member state experts met as part of the Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health.

They approved the European Union decision for obligatory tests for GMO presence on rice imported from the US. To the media, the committee emphasised this decision was made because of lack of agreements between US and EU authorities, such as a common report on trials and constant tests in regard to the rice imported.

According to scientists, GMO presence in foods carries a risk to human health.

Hungary: Hungary hopeful it can keep its GMO ban

Science News, 5 February 2007.

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary's government sees a good chance that an upcoming meeting of European Union environment ministers will allow it to maintain its ban on genetically modified crops, the Environment Ministry said on Monday.

Hungary, one of the bloc's biggest grain producers, became the first country in eastern Europe to ban GMO crops or foods when it outlawed the planting of MON 810 maize seeds, marketed by U.S. biotech giant Monsanto, in January 2005.

A meeting of EU ministers in December slapped down an attempt by the European Commission to order Austria to drop a similar ban. Hungary expects the same to happen when its case will be on the agenda on Feb 20.

"We hope that after the lobbying of recent weeks and knowing the development of EU countries' opinion it will be possible to preserve the ban," State Secretary Kalman Kovacs told a news conference.

Only four countries -- the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom -- supported the Commission's proposal to order Austria to lift its ban, and Hungary said it also saw enough support for its stance in the 27-nation bloc.

If Budapest is forced to lift its ban it may consider going to court, Kovacs said.

Farmers are unlikely to plant GMO crops in Hungary in any case as it has passed what it called Europe's strictest GMO law, imposing administrative barriers to GMO cultivation in case Budapest is forced to lift its complete ban.

"In practice such cultivation will not start in Hungary," Kovacs said.

The Hungarian law prescribed a 400-meter buffer zone between GMO and conventional crops.

Farmers also need the approval of neighboring landowners and users to plant GMOs -- which is complicated in a country where many plots are small, rented or farmed in cooperatives with many members.

Belgium: One million EU citizens call for labelling of GM foods

EU Observer, 5 February 2007. By Helena Spongenberg.

BRUSSELS - A Greenpeace petition - signed by 1 million EU citizens - is calling on the European Commission to legislate that food products such as eggs, meat and milk where the animal has been fed with genetically modified crops should be labelled as such.

The petition was handed over to EU health commissioner Markos Kyprianou on Monday (5 February) after the 1,000,000 signatures had been displayed outside the EU executive building in Brussels.

"This petition reflects the broad concern of the public for food safety, for the quality of food and in particular for the use of GMOs in the food chain," said Marco Contiero from Greenpeace at a press conference together with the commissioner.

Under EU law, foods like cooking oil, ketchup and cake mix have to be labelled if the ingredients include 0.9 percent GMOs or more, and animal feed packets must be similarly labelled. But food products derived from animals fed with GMOs do not need to be labelled.

"Currently there is a loophole in the legislation and we hope that the commission will actually act in order to cover this loophole, because millions of tonnes of genetically modified crops are entering the European market every year, used in animal feed," Mr Contiero said, adding that consumers in the EU are not informed about this.

Greenpeace said that up to 30 percent of the regular diet of farm animals contains GMOs, adding that over 90 percent of GM crops imported into the 27-nation bloc are soy and maize destined for animal feed.

The group argues that studies have shown that animals react badly to genetically modified crops.

Industry argues, however, that European concerns are unfairly restricting their access to the lucrative EU market, and that decisions on the approval of new products are based on political motives rather than scientific proof.

"A petition supported by 1 million signatures of course shows a strong interest on the part of European citizens for a specific issue and therefore we will take this into serious consideration," Mr Kyprianou said.

He explained that even though an attempt for similar measures was taken out of a compromise law on labelling by the European Parliament and the member states in 2004, the commission would look at the case again.

"Being presented now with a strong view on the part of the European citizens, of course we will look into the matter again," he said, adding that he would consult with his advisers.

Mr Contiero told EUobserver that things look differently now than they did four years ago with more studies and a petition from one million citizens in 21 EU countries.

The right of citizens to form an initiative and become more involved in EU issues is part of the European Constitution, rejected by France and the Netherlands in 2005 but seeing a revival by the current German EU presidency.

According to the treaty, if a petition collects one million signatures, the commission can then be asked to look into the issue.

"Even if the EU constitution is not ratified it is still a principle for the EU - it has a political weight that cannot simply be disregarded," Mr Contiero explained.

2 February 2007

Hungary: Hungary confident on retaining GMO ban

CEE-FoodIndustry.com, 2 February 2007. By Neil Merrett

The Hungarian government is confident it will be allowed to retain a ban on a genetically modified maize crop approved for feed use in the European Union, when the issue - which could have signifcant affects for the wider food industry - is debated later this month.

Speaking at a news conference ahead of the talks, Hungary's state secretary Kalman Kovacs announced that there was sufficient anti-GM feeling within the EU to ensure support for the country's stand.

"We hope that after the lobbying of recent weeks and knowing the development of EU countries' opinion it will be possible to preserve the ban," he said.

The latest EU GMO debate, to be held on 20 February, will aim to discuss a number of issues regarding the use of scientifically altered crops within both food, and non-consumables production.

Of particular concern is the possibility that the EU may impose a draft order for Hungary to lift its objection to US producer Monsanto's MON 810 maize seeds- already in use elsewhere in the bloc.

Robert Fridrich of environmental group Friends of the Earth Hungary, told CEE-Fooindustry.com that the ban will be vital to protecting the future of the Hungarian food industry for both processors and producers.

"Hungary is the second biggest corn feed producer in Europe and Hungary's reputation as a GMO free country is very important to this," he said.

"The European public are very much against the use of GMO products, which gives Hungary a massive advantage in the market place."

As well as the possible costs to the reputation of the country's products, Fridrich added that the economic upheavals of adopting GMO's would also have a negative impact on the industry.

"To incorporate GMO production would not just require a wealth of costly legislative measures, but additional laboratory taxes for any company or producing wishing to use the products."

With these factors considered, Fridrich also remains confident that the ban will remain in place.

"When looking back at earlier debates over GMO issue in September 51 per cent were in favour of the ban," he said.

"By December during a similar discussion over an Austrian GMO ban, two thirds were in support and as such come 20 February, we are quite sure that Hungary will receive necessary support."

Despite this confidence, not all are happy with the country's anti-GM stance. Critics of the ban suggest that possible EU reluctance to the use of GMO's could hold back food industries in developing markets in Eastern Europe.

Speaking to CEE-Foodindustry.com last month, Prof. Dr Marc Van Montagu of the Institute of Plant Biotechnology for Developing Countries, suggested that anti-GM sentiment was too often based on fear, than scientific fact.

"I am convinced that most people's attitudes are changing towards the use of GMO's in the food industry," he said. Adding: "the industry is seeing past the 'Frankenstein foods' image and is now beginning to realize there are no rational arguments for not using GMO's in food production."

UK: Unilever solicits government approval for GM ice cream

Acres USA magazine, Feburary 2007 issue.

Unilever, the British-Dutch global marketing giant, is the largest producer of ice cream and frozen novelties available in the United States: Bryer's ice cream, Ben & Jerry's, Klondike, Popsicle.

Unfortunately, some of their ice cream products contain genetically modified "antifreeze" proteins produced from the blood of pout (an ocean fish) and processed via GMO yeast in huge vats.

While consumer advocates in Great Britain are in an uproar over Unilever's attempt to solicit government approval for their untested antifreeze fish-proteins in that country, silent approval in the United States has raised nary a whisper.

Brazil: Syngenta Under Fire In Brazil GMO Dispute

Dow Jones, 2 February 2006.

SAO PAULO (Dow Jones)--The Swiss multinational seed and crop science corporation, Syngenta AG (SYT), is in the crosshairs of an anti-transgenic seed dispute it might not win in Brazil.

On Nov. 9, for the first time ever in a Latin America nation, Syngenta had one of its genetically modified crop research facilities shut down and expropriated by the Parana state government in southern Brazil. No financial figure has been given, but some estimate losses in the millions of dollars for Syngenta.

The 123-hectare property was located roughly six kilometers from the Iguacu National Park in western Parana state. The park is also home to the immense Iguacu Falls on the Brazil-Argentine border, and is considered a world historic landmark by the United Nations.

Parana governor Roberto Requiao, a transgenic-foe since he was elected five years ago, signed a decree to confiscate the property in November on the grounds that it broke federal environmental laws. Those laws said genetically modified crops could not be planted within 10-kilometers of a nature reserve.

Syngenta argues it was given permission by the biosafety agency of the federal government, CTNBio, to test transgenic corn and soy on the site. Syngenta has owned the property since 1986 and in November managed to get a federal court to agree that the company had been operating legally in the area. Moreover, in early 2006, Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva changed the 10-kilometer law. The distance between genetically-modified crops and nature reserves has been shrunk down to just 500 meters.

The Parana government, the Brazilian Environmental Protection Agency, known as Ibama, agrarian reform activists and their lawyers say the 500 meter ruling doesn't count for Syngenta because they were experimenting with the seeds before the presidential decree was signed. So far, theirs is the dominant view.

"Syngenta has been notified time and time again that they cannot plant, test, or do anything with GMO on that site and they have arrogantly ignored the state," said Roberto Requiao's spokesman Benedito Pires.

"They cannot plant there. CTNBio does not interpret the law. We are following the law. Syngenta has been fined for breaking that law and to this day they have not paid it," he said.

According to Andrea Vulcanes, the manager of Ibama Parana, the agency fined Syngenta 1 million Brazilian reals ($476,000) in March 2006. The company has contested the fined.

"We fined them because they cannot be testing GMOs near that park," Vulcanes said.

"We know what CTNBio and others have said and we are considering it. But whether we retract our fine our not, that doesn't mean Syngenta can get its property back from the state. That's a whole other matter," she said.

Syngenta sells over $8 billion in seeds and agrochemicals each year under the Callisto, Garst and Dual Gold brands to name a few. Only Monsanto and DuPont sell more.

This week, the company asked a Parana court to review the governor's decision to expropriate the land, located in Santa Tereza do Oeste. It marks the second time Syngenta has asked a court to get involved in the dispute with the state. Parana is one of Brazil's top two agricultural producers.

Syngenta's problems began in March when over 600 rural workers and unemployed peasants, that make up part of the Via Campesina agrarian reform movement, invaded the site. The occupation argued that the company had no rights to plant genetically modified crops in the area.

They remained on the property for months before police finally kicked them out. Once Requiao said he was interested in turning the site into a center for the study of environmentally friendly agriculture, Via Campesina invaded again, arguing they had to harvest the corn they planted to eat during their time there. Parana is already the home to an agro-ecology center. It is run by some members of the Landless Rural Workers Movement, or the MST, long considered an arch rival of middle class and elite farmers and land owners.

Requiao's anti-transgenic policies have been the result of pressure groups like the MST and others.

"The anti-GMO movement is very different here than it is in Argentina or the U.S. There are social movements of small farmers who are very much against transgenics and they will continue pressuring the governments here," said Darci Frigo, a lawyer for the group Terra de Direitos in Parana.

The group specializes in labor rights. Frigo was the lawyer who alerted Ibama to the Syngenta property being inside the transgenic-seeds buffer zone set by the government.

Small producers argue that genetically modified seeds cross-pollinate with other local varieties, harming biodiversity. It also makes it harder for farmers to sell once their crops have been contaminated, because if it is discovered that their plants have genetically modified traits from Monsanto, currently the only transgenic brand allowed for sale here, those farmers will have to pay royalty payments for the seeds.

Monsanto has genetically modified soy and cotton in the Brazil market and partners with a handful of companies to make varieties of those seeds.

Requiao has fought Parana transgenics and won small victories in the past. He banned transgenic crop exports from the massive Paranagua port for some four years. But in 2006, by the order of a federal judge, the port was required to permit genetically modified soybean exports once again. Syngenta is hoping a similar ruling will fall in favor of the company in the near future and they can move back in to Santa Tereza do Oeste.

Brazil is the world's No. 2 soy producer behind the U.S.

Source: Kenneth Rapoza; Dow Jones Newswires; 55-11-3145-1488

USA: Voting Beyond Our Forks
Attention shoppers: it's going to take more than consciousness at the checkout line to fix our broken food system

Common Ground magazine, February 2007. By Christopher D. Cook.

Bacterial scares aside, these are propitious days for good food. Burgeoning interest in organic, nontransfatty, local, slow, GMO-free foods suggests a ripening of consciousness that could transform today's corporate industrial food system into something truly healthful and sustainable. A new Farm Bill on the near horizon combined with a Democratic Congress presents us with a unique opportunity to sway national discourse and policy in a healthier direction.

Yet, today's most audible food rallying cry ó echoed widely at sustainability conferences and in progressive media ó exhorts us to "vote with our forks"; that is, put our money where our mouth is by consuming sustainable products. It's a compellingly simple appeal, and (with $700 billion spent on food annually) not without its merits. But in the marketplace of ideas, this consumerist incantation of "people power" represents an intellectual currency whose value is precariously inflated. A far bolder, more ambitious prescription is needed to repair the multiple food crises plaguing us today.

That consumers carry some sway over the food they are sold is undeniable. Food corporations' newfound passion for organics is nothing if not a scramble after consumers' greenbacks. At least partly due to consumer (and activist groups') pressure, Nabisco reduced transfats in their Oreo cookies, and Kentucky Fried Chicken will soon be deep-frying its millions of chicken parts in non-hydrogenated cooking oils. Progress, to be sure, but it's just nibbling at the fringes. Meanwhile, the companies get free PR, a fat-gorging nation's health concerns are quieted ó and the underlying corporate-run food system that creates so many serious health and environmental problems goes unchallenged. Witness the Wal-Mart-led corporate takeover of organics, which is already leading to less-than-sustainable industrial organic farms and a steady diluting of federal standards.

Voting with our forks, while a useful first step, falls distressingly short of the needs and possibilities of this historical moment. From contaminated industrial food, to intensely polluting factory farms, to the millions of pounds of toxic pesticides still showered on our produce and ever-proliferating genetically manipulated crops, our food system is in desperate need of fundamental change. We can't simply shop our way out of this mess. We need a compelling, coherent alternative that channels today's excitement about good food far beyond the grocery checkout line, to cast votes for public policies and investments that restructure how food is made, marketed and consumed.

Consider what we are up against: today just four or five corporations control nearly every aspect of food, from seeds to commodity crops like grains, food processing, meat production and supermarkets. These firms' intrinsic need to leverage massive volumes of seemingly cheap food propels a chain of exploitation: farmers pressured into unsustainable monocropping using pesticides; farm workers and meatpackers abused and underpaid to keep food "cheap"; and consumers (and taxpayers) footing the bill ó in excess of $100 billion a year ó for health ailments stemming from this food, which is not so cheap after all.

More than new and better products on our market shelves, and better ingredients in our fast food, America needs a new New Deal for food and agriculture. This starts with the 2007 Farm Bill, that legislative behemoth covering all things food-related, from food stamps to farm subsidies. Groups such as the Community Food Security Coalition, America Farmland Trust, The National Family Farm Coalition and many others are already pushing a promising array of health and sustainability measures (visit www.foodsecurity.org/ffpp_overview.html to learn more).

Broadly, we need to begin redirecting the $25 billion our government spends subsidizing primarily large-scale industrial farming of commodities like corn (used primarily for meat production and fattening food sweeteners, and increasingly for fuel) toward sustainable organic farming. This means shifting our tax dollars to support small to midsized organic farms (and transitional agriculture). It means targeting incentives for local and regional food marketing to improve food security for poor people while expanding markets for area farmers. It means encouraging cities and counties to develop food planning policies that link local farmers with institutions such as schools, hospitals and jails that expand access to healthy food in poor neighborhoods and that educate city residents about the need for sustainable food and farming. It means public investment in a new food and farming infrastructure that makes sustainable, healthful food an everyday reality.

Beyond "voting" at the checkout line, we need to cast critical votes in the arenas of public discourse, policymaking and politics to affect fundamental change. Our votes can come through writing letters to newspapers and politicians, educating peers and neighbors, speaking in community and city meetings, and protesting and agitating for policies that invest in systemic reform, coaxing food and farming from the grasp of corporate shareholders. Until we create such deep fixes, our shopping is just the beginning of our efforts to fix food, instead of the final act it should be.

Christopher D. Cook is the author of Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis (New Press). He has written for Harper's, The Economist, Mother Jones, The Christian Science Monitor and elsewhere. His website is . www.dietforadeadplanet.com

Portugal: The mouth revolution - for your health and the environment

Gaia.org.pt, 2 February 2007.

See animation and take action: www.mouthrevolution.com

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO's) are foods that have been invented in a laboratory using genetic engineering. They have never proven safe which is why they are banned in Europe and Japan.

Tell Congress that GMO's must be labeled if they are going to be in our food supply. Join The Campaign in asking your Member of Congress to Co-Sponsor the GE Food Right to Know Act.

5 billion pounds of pesticides are dumped on the earth each year. Scientific studies have shown that children who eat mostly organic foods have fewer pesticides in their bodies than children who eat non-organic foods.

1) Switch to organic products to protect your family's health.

2) Sign Pesticide Action Network's (PANNA) petition to ban chlorpyrifos.

Sodium nitrate, used by hot dog, bacon and sausage companies to make the meat appear red, causes cancer. MSG (aka, yeast extract, torula yeast) gives over-processed foods the illusion of flavor--and kills nerve cells.

Sign the U.S. Food Agenda 2010 petition at Organic Consumers Association's Food Safety and Health Resource Centers.

Heart-clogging, lethal trans fats are artificial ingredients also known as partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. Trans fats have no nutritional value.

Sign the petition to eliminate partially hydrogenated vegetable oil from America's food supply. Let's save thousands of lives a year!

1 February 2007

India: Farmers discard Bt GM Variety

Central Chronicle, Thursday February 1 2007. By Radhakrishna Rao, INFA.

The sustained and no-holds-barred campaign by Indian farmers against the "backdoor and sly" move to introduce the genetically modified GM rice variety into the country, has resulted in the farmers in parts of Haryana and Tamil Nadu destroying the trial plots of GM rice. These experimental rice fields were being monitored by the Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company (Mahyco) on behalf of the American agro-business outfit Monsanto.

The increasing tempo of the countrywide opposition to GM rice has derived strength from the decision of the EU countries to ban the import of American rice, fearing contamination by the GM rice strain Liberty Line (LL-601). In fact, it was the detection of few grains of GM rice in the American rice consignments that proded the EU countries to suspend the trading in American rice. Following this episode, the world's largest rice importer Ebro Puleva stopped trading in the US grown rice. In fact, there is a vehement public distrust of GM variety of food in Europe even as the USA is trying to hardsell the theory that GM food varieties are safe for human consumption.

According to a well-known agricultural scientist, "Bt (GM) rice proponent might argue that since rice is a self-pollinated crop, genetic contamination is excluded. But genes travel to related plots on their own which is called gene flow. In 1966, gene flow was discovered to be much more common than it was previously thought. The process of putting alien genes into plants and animals to favour certain traits or confer resistance is, at best, an inexact science, with unpredictable consequences. Genes don't necessarily control a single trait".

Clearly and apparently, the European countries' decision to stop importing American grown rice could be utilized by the Indian rice exporters to fill this "vital gap". The EU countries used to import about 300,000 tonnes of rice from the USA to meet a part of its annual requirement running upto 12,000,00 tonnes. And the rice of Indian and Pakistani origin imported by the EU countries used to account for around 3,00,000 tonnes. "Since Indian rice is free from the GM contamination, this gap in supply certainly open up vistas for additional market access for Indian exporters", says K.S. Money, Chairman of the New Delhi-based Agricultural Products and Processed Food Export Development Authority (APEDA).

Indian exporters of Basmati rice who have already established a presence in the EU countries hope to boost their export by expanding their portfolios to include non-basmati rice varieties. Pakistan and Thailand are the other major exporters of rice to the EU countries. And in terms of quality and price, Indian rice has certain advantages over its Asian competitors.

Meanwhile, with a view to step up rice production to meet the needs of a fast-growing population, India is laying special emphasis on increasing the area under hybrid rice cultivation. Currently, over a million hectares of land under hybrid rice in India. And this is a far cry from just 10,000 hectares in 1995. But in the neighbouring China around 15-million hectares are under hybrid rice cultivation and this constitutes 50% of the total area under rice cultivation in this most populous country in the world.

"Hybrid rice is an option that could come handy at a time when India will have to increase rice production by at least 2 million tonnes by 2011-12", says B.C. Viraktamath, Project Director of the Directorate of Rice Research in Hyderabad. Incidentally, India is the second country in the world to develop and commercialize hybrid rice. Researchers, on their part, point out that the potential in the country for raising hybrid rice varieties, is anywhere between 8 million and 15 million hectares.

In the meantime, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has signed an agreement with the Las Banos-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) for collaboration in research which includes genetic enhancement of rice in terms of yield and quality. The main objective of collaboration is to apply genomics and bioinformatics to discover new and novel genes capable of pushing up the rice yield.

As it is, in India the productivity of rice has now touched 2,000 kg per hectare and the country continues to occupy second position in rice export, next only to Thailand. But then in India there is a growing realization of the need to boost rice production without bringing in ore land under cultivation.

As such, the focus is on surmounting the technological challenges in breaking the genetic yield barriers, improving input yield efficiency and developing environmentally acceptable strategies for decreasing the losses due to pest attacks and diseases. There is also a growing concern in the country over the steady control exerted by the big and powerful multinational corporations (MNCs) over the genetic resources of rice.

Navadanaya, a New Delhi-based NGO (Non-Government Organisation) has together with farmers from nine Indian States developed a register documenting over 2,000 indigenous rice varieties. According to Navadanya, the genetically modified rice strains are not only costly to cultivate but also are a poor match to the native strains in fighting pests, diseases and environmental fluctuations. Several indigenous rice strains adopted by the Indian farmers can withstand extremes of climatic conditions, survive submergence for a fortnight and even withstand salinity with a high degree of success.

According to Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) all through the last decade, global production increased at rates marginally higher than those of the population growth. Right now, China and India account for more than half of the world rice yield. As it offers food security, rice is one of the commodities that remains widely subject to Government intervention.

As rice continues to be one of the most traded commodities, under protection, it presents considerable scope for further liberalization. However, due to its importance in income generation and political stability, Governments are often reluctant to lower their control over the rice sector. There is also a concern in rice growing countries including India that the global warming could adversely affect the yield of the rice crop in the years ahead. As such, the need for devising an appropriate strategy to blunt the threat of global warming to the rice crop, is being felt acutely.

Zambia: Maize production (almost) a success story

Inter Press Service, February 1 2007. By Isabel Chimangeni.

LUSAKA, Feb 1 (IPS) - Zambia is poised to have a maize surplus this season but it is still unlikely that the food will reach many of the 58 percent of Zambians that are classified as extremely poor.

The ministry of agriculture recently released a national food balance sheet showing that the country will have a surplus of 160,000 metric tonnes of maize during the 2006/07. In the 2005/06 season the output was 63 percent above the previous season and 54 percent above the five-year average.

Only a few years ago, such a surplus of Zambians' main staple crop would have seemed an unreachable dream. Successive droughts had caused a food crisis in the eastern and southern parts of the country, the main maize producing areas.

People were forced to pick stunted maize cobs for immediate consumption. Daily meals dwindled to one, and the amount of food in each meal had to be reduced.

But production changed dramatically after President Levy Mwanawasa took over from Frederick Chiluba in 2001. Mwanawasa, a commercial farmer himself, prioritized agriculture. He re-introduced the agricultural subsidies which Chiluba had abolished in the 1990s.

He also promoted innovations like mixed farming and conservation farming. Mwanawasa rejected genetically modified (GM) maize and encouraged the growing of non-GM maize, resulting in bumper harvests for the past three consecutive years.

Of late, the country has been exporting maize to neighbouring countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Angola, Malawi and Zimbabwe. This is a role reversal as Zimbabwe used to be the food basket for the region.

But while putting food in the mouths of neighbours, food supply in Zambia has remained tight. The prospect of food shortages and hunger has even been raised.

The yield has been good but there has been an alarming lack of marketing strategy and storage capacity which has choked the maize sector in Zambia.

The government in 1996 created the Food Reserve Agency (FRA), a statutory body with the mandate to purchase maize and other cereals for the national reserve. Its performance has been in question since then.

It seems that the 80,000 metric tonnes strategic stocks being held by the FRA currently will not be released on the market but carried over to the next marketing season.

Last year it was reported that farmers were waiting around at the FRA depot in Nakonde district in the northern part of the country. Frustrated farmers were unable to sell their harvests as the FRA had put the buying of maize on hold. No reason was given to them.

At the time, Nakonde district commissioner Henry Mukungule hinted that the problem was that the people who had been given the responsibility for purchasing maize from small-scale farmers flouted the guidelines.

"Maize marketing is a major problem here. We were given money to buy maize from small-scale farmers. The purchasing was supposed to be done through co-operatives but the guidelines have not been followed," he said.

Former agriculture minister Mundia Sikatana is on record as having accused unscrupulous FRA officials of frustrating maize marketing by buying the produce cheaply and re-selling it at the recommended floor price.

However, the FRA is not entirely to blame. Funding to the body from central government has been erratic which has meant that the FRA has not been able to buy all the maize being produced.

For instance, in 2004 the government announced that the FRA will only buy about six percent of the maize. "We would have loved to buy from each and every farmer, but this is not possible because the resources do not allow us," then agriculture deputy minister Chance Kabaghe said.

This year, FRA public relations officer Mwamba Siame has promised that no maize will be allowed to go to waste as the agency will ensure that it buys and stores all the maize that has been produced.

However, on several occasions huge amounts of maize have gone to waste due to FRA storage facilities being attacked by weevils.

In Chadiza district in the east of the country the Zambia National Farmers Union reported last year that 43,000 kilograms of maize had gone to waste because the FRA could not fumigate the maize properly. This has been a problem in especially far-flung rural areas.

Despite these challenges, the price of maize has since March last year continued to fall as supply on the market increases. Not everybody has benefited equally, though, as urban consumers are yet to enjoy lower prices. Indeed, in the past few weeks the price of maize has continued to increase in towns and cities.

According to Mkushi FarmersÇ Association chairperson Sally Greyvensteyn, the good agricultural policies of the government have benefited both the small-scale and commercial farmers. Mkushi is one of largest farming blocks in the country.

Even the house of chiefs last year congratulated the Zambian government on its agricultural strategies.

Ireland: Monsanto slam RTE's TV show on GMO

Irish Farmers Journal, 3 February 2007.

The Dealer notes that Monsanto did not spare the rod this week when beating up independent film maker, Deborah Koons Garcia, whose documentary "The Future of Food" was screened by RTE2 on Monday evening.

The documentary, it appears, was in the style of a "Dr. Who" take on GM food debate, full of scary claims about three headed potatoes and celeries that can dance a salsa.

The film was immediately panned, by Monsanto's Dr. Patrick O'Reilly, as plodding, overlong, a pain in the backside and a cinematic cliché

The barrel of vitriol about Ms. Koons Garcia was emailed Tuesday morning to all the main scientific heads in the Irish agricultural research world, in case their objectivity in the GM debate might have wavered had they watched Monday night's polemic from Ms. Koons Garcia.

GM-free Ireland comment: for information about this film see www.thefutureoffood.com

Ireland: Letter the Irish Farmers Journal refused to publish

Matt Dempsey, Editor
Irish Farmers Journal
29 January 2007

Dear Matt,

Mairead McGuinness"s call for an open debate on GM issues is welcome, as major decisions on GM farm and food policy continue to be made on our behalf by unelected bureaucrats in the WTO and the EC. But the pre-requisite for a successful democracy (and a useful debate) is an informed electorate. Irish farmers, food processors, food retailers and consumers need to start by informing themselves and make up their own minds, before we debate this controversial issue. And let"s be clear: the subject is GM food and farming, not the biotech industry"s use of GM bacteria in sealed vats in secure laboratories for the production of pharmaceutical products.

The decision to allow or prohibit the release of genetically modified seeds, crops and livestock in Ireland must be taken now or never. WTO and EC pressure to force them upon us is growing rapidly. GM crops can never be recalled after their release and would contaminate our nation in perpetuity.

Despite claims by giant agribusiness-biotech corporations that GM crops can "co-exist" with conventional and organic crops without infecting them via seed dispersal and wind-blown pollen, contamination incidents in 40 countries prove the opposite is true. Numerous studies have found that GM farmers eventually use more herbicides, and suffer lower yields, crop failures, and multiple-herbicide-resistant GM superweeds. Despite no long-term health studies to prove that GM food is safe, there is growing scientific evidence of deaths and disease attributable to GM food and feed in laboratory animals, livestock and the human population. The release of GM pharma crops (which produce industrial chemicals and medicines such as blood thinners, blood clotters and contraceptive drugs) would exacerbate the health risks.

There is no market for GM food in Europe, where the 60 largest food brands and retailers refuse to sell any produce containing GM ingredients. Irish farmers and food exporters who avoid GM food and animal feed (e.g. Glenisk, Silver Pail and Kepak) are already obtaining price premia in the global beef and dairy export markets, and securing multi-million Euro foreign direct investments for GM-free food.

GM seeds and crops are patented by giant transnational agribusiness biotech corporations like Monsanto, Dupont, Syngenta and BASF. The WTO"s Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPS) enables these patent owners to claim royalties from farmers using GMOs, including farmers who are contaminated without their knowledge or consent. The Irish Patent Office says that current EU and Irish laws provide no protection for contaminated farmers who may be sued for patent infringement here. This patenting of life is the transnational corporations" strategic weapon to control the world"s agricultural seeds, 50% of which are now owned by just 10 companies. Whoever controls the seeds controls the food.

What people think about GM issues depends on their information sources. Having researched this subject internationally for the past four years, I am convinced that any introduction of GMO seeds and crops in Ireland would rapidly cause all farmers to be contaminated, lose their right to save and plant their own seeds, and burden them with licensing fees, higher costs, bureaucracy, labelling, traceability, liability issues, patent infringement & contamination lawsuits, and loss of market share. The official EC report on "co-existence" says GMO crops would provide no benefits and may cause 40% higher production costs for most European farmers

GM seeds and crops are banned or restricted by nine European governments, and by 175 Regional Governments and 4,500 smaller in 22 EU member states. These include Poland (Europe"s largest agricultural producer), Austria, Switzerland, Greece - and most of France, Italy and the UK. The penalty for growing GM crops in some Italian regions including Tuscany is two years in gaol or a §50,000 Euro fine.

In Ireland, GMO crops are already banned in Co. Cavan, Clare, Fermanagh, Kerry, Kildare, Meath, Roscommon, Monaghan, Westmeath, and the district of Newry & Mourne; they are also prohibited by the local authorities in Bantry, Bray, Derry, Galway, Letterkenny, Navan, and Clonakilty, and in over 1,000 smaller areas.

Dick Roche claims he is unaware of any legal basis for such bans, but the Convention on Biodiversity"s Biosafety Protocol (to which Ireland is a signatory), clearly recognizes our right to prohibit GM crops when there is concern over their safety, before damage starts to occur. This Precautionary Principle is also enshrined in EU law and the National Sustainable Development Plan. The Aarhus Convention (also signed by Ireland) empowers local stakeholders to participate in environmental pollcy making. And the Irish Constitution established the Goverment"s duty to protect its citizens" right to earn a livelihood.

EU member states and the Assembly of European Regions are now lobbying for EU legislation to recognise the democratic right of national and local governments to have the final say on whether to allow GM crops in their areas.

The debate should not be with the transnational corporations who own the GM patents and their lobby groups, but with the stakeholders who will be directly affected by Ireland"s GM policy: farmers, food producers, food exporters, retailers and consumers, the medical community, environmental experts, government policy makers, local authorities and consumers. This debate should be followed by a national referendum.

We the people of Ireland and our elected representatives need to debate this issue now, before the contamination begins. If we fail to decide, others will decide on our behalf, and deprive future generations of their freedom to practice GM free farming and their human right to choose safe GM-free food.

If "it"s all about profit" as Jim McCarthy claimed on Ear to the Ground, consider this: because of our geographical isolation and westerly winds, a policy decision to conserve Ireland"s current GM-free status would provide our farm and food sectors with the most credible GM-free food brand in Europe. Coupled with our famous clean green food island image, and the lowest levels of topsoil dioxins in the EU, this would secure a competitive advantage of immense economic value for the future of Irish food and farming.

[Hoping you will, for once, print a letter of mine in the interest of a fair debate]

Yours sincerely

Michael O'Callaghan Co-ordinator GM-free Ireland Network

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