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Search   FAQs   Messages   Members   Profile Hitting on sensitive political edges of commerce-powerforces Chemtrail Central > Ecology Author Thread Free World Order Joined: 18 Apr 2006 Posts: 1980 Location: Totalitarian EU Hitting on sensitive political edges of commerce-powerforces Sun Sep 09, 2007 1:10 am     Soil Association condemns Canadian attack on UK and Irish free speech (7/9/2007) NOTE: This GM-free Ireland Network newsflash contains two powerful letters of protest from the Soil Association - one to the High Commissioner for Canada. ISIS - the Institute of Science in Society - are also asking scientists and others to protest to Hon.Gerry Ritz, Minister Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Ritz.G@parl.gc.ca and Hon. Maxime Bernier Bernier.M@parl.gc.ca Minister of Foreign Affairs. For more on the concerns over this research http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8244 --- Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2007 Subject: Canadian attack on UK and Irish free speech re GM food From: "GM-free Ireland Network" mail@gmfreeireland.org LETTER FROM SOIL ASSOCIATION TO UK HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR CANADA Mr James Wright High Commissioner for Canada MacDonald House 1 Grosvenor Square London W1K 4AB 4 September 2007 I am writing on behalf of the Soil Association to ask you to ensure that your Government takes action against one of your employees, Shane Morris, who is trying to defend an extraordinarily misleading scientific paper by threatening free speech in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. In brief, a paper published by Doug Powell, University of Guelph, and others [1], claims to have shown that consumers prefer GM to non-GM corn, given a free choice. What the paper failed to disclose was that the bin of sweetcorn that was non-GM had a sign beside it saying "Would you eat wormy sweetcorn?", while the bin of GM corn had a sign above it saying "Here's what went into producing quality sweetcorn". These signs were witnessed and photographed by a reporter from the Toronto Star, who noted that labelling one lot of sweetcorn "wormy" and the other lot "quality" hardly provided a neutral choice for consumers. The paper by Jeff Wilson, Doug Powell, Katija Blaine and Shane Morris published in the British Food Journal claimed that the researchers took great trouble not to bias consumer choice. No mention was made of the "wormy" and "quality" signs, nor indeed a number of pro-GM fact sheets which were made available to consumers during the experiment. I'm sure you will agree that this is a disgrace, and the fact that one of the scientists works for the Canadian Government must give you great cause for concern. I am sure the Canadian Government has no wish to be associated with deliberately misleading scientific papers, and I look forward to the Canadian Government disassociating itself from this extraordinary paper. Despite calls from leading scientists and others, the British Food Journal has so far failed to withdraw this paper, and I hope the Canadian Government will now encourage them to do so. Finally, presumably in an effort to stop news of this unscientific and unprofessional behaviour gaining wider currency, your Government's employee, Mr Morris, has tried to close down one of the most respected websites dealing with information about GM, farming and food (GM Watch) and also has issued legal threats against a respected organisation in Ireland, GM Free Ireland. You will no doubt be aware that the call to make Ireland GM free has the support of the Irish Government, and I hope the Canadian Government will immediately disassociate from attempts by one of their employees to undermine the wishes of a democratically elected government. I am copying this to His Excellency The Irish Ambassador. Peter Melchett Policy Director The Soil Association South Plaza, Marlborough Street, Bristol BS1 3NX, UK [1. Powell DA, Blaine K, Morris S and Wilson J. Agronomic and consumer considerations for Bt and conventional sweet-corn. British Food Journal 2003, 105 (10), 700-713] --- LETTER FROM SOIL ASSOCIATION TO BRITISH FOOD JOURNAL Professor Chris Griffith Editor of the British Food Journal Head, Food Research and Consultancy Unit University of Wales Institute Llandaff Campus, Western Avenue Cardiff CF5 2YB 4 September 2007 I have always found it incomprehensible that you failed to withdraw the paper by Powell, Blaine, Morris and Wilson [1] about consumers buying GM and non-GM maize in Canada, once you learnt that the research had been misleadingly reported. I know that at the time you published letters criticising and defending the research, and I have read that you published an 'editor's note' which said that "a common misconception is that science and research are about facts". I have to say I find that an extraordinary statement, if by it you mean to imply that it's perfectly acceptable for scientific papers that you publish to report as facts things that are not true. In this case, the inclusion of the signs referring to "wormy" and "quality" above the two samples of sweetcorn is so significant that omitting any reference to them in the paper not only means that the paper is no longer factually accurate, but that it is deliberately misleading. I suppose you may have felt this extraordinarily unsavoury episode could be forgotten, but unfortunately one of the authors of the paper is now trying to suppress accurate reporting of what happened in both the UK and the Republic of Ireland. It seems to me this is an inevitable consequence of your willingness, through your journal, to support this misleading paper. Will you now withdraw it? Peter Melchett Policy Director The Soil Association South Plaza, Marlborough Street, Bristol BS1 3NX, UK [1. Powell DA, Blaine K, Morris S and Wilson J. Agronomic and consumer considerations for Bt and conventional sweet-corn. British Food Journal 2003, 105 (10), 700-713] --- PROPAGANDA, FRAUD AND LIBEL - a response (part 4) GM Watch, 5 September 2007. This is the fourth part of our response to an article attacking GM Watch published on AgBioView by its "guest editor", Andrew Apel. In Propaganda, Fraud and Libel, Andrew Apel charges GM Watch with targeting Shane Morris's "employment with the Canadian government" and of re-casting the dispute with Morris "as a conflict between Canada and Ireland". Apel also brands GM Watch as "Irish activists" out to discredit Morris because of his talent in exposing activist "misinformation" about GMOs in Ireland. http://www.cgfi.org/cgficommentary/Anti-biotech%20wactivists%20082307 As usual with Apel, the misinformation is entirely his own. Although the GM Watch team includes people in Brazil, India, The Netherlands, Germany, and New Zealand - as well as different parts of the UK, there are (as yet!) no "Irish activists" amongst us. And the issue of Morris's employment with the Canadian government was first raised not by GM Watch but by a Canadian citizen - Professor Joe Cummins (Emeritus Professor of Genetics, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada). Shane Morris has always been anxious to present his pro-GM views as purely personal and the gmoireland blog on which he has promoted them, and attacked those who take a different viewpoint, as something that he should not be barred from doing having been born and bred in Ireland. But there is a problem As Prof Cummins has noted, others in the Canadian bureaucracy, such as Shiv Chopra, have got into big trouble for expressing views about biotechnology that were not to the liking of senior Canadian bureaucrats. Canada, Prof Cummins points out, also has a history of secrecy in testing and marketing GM crops that makes one less than confident about the transparency of its activities in promoting the GM agenda. And Prof Cummins is far from alone in seeing Canada as being prepared to promote its biotech agenda in an underhand fashion (see, for instance, the article below). What is undeniable is that public servants usually tend to be very wary of getting involved in public controversy. But Shane Morris, who has worked as a biotech regulator in Canada and is currently employed as a Senior Consumer Analyst at the Consumer Analysis Section of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, has not only used his blog to ridicule Irish and EU decison makers, and those political parties who fail to follow a pro-GM line, but he has also, according to GM-free Ireland: *intimidated a senior executive at Board Bia (the Irish Government Food Board) into withdrawing agreed sponsorship for a Green Ireland conference at which international speakers were to warn Ireland of the economic benefits of keeping Ireland free of GM crops; *published defamatory allegations claiming GM-free Ireland lured funding out of sponsors under false pretenses, by lying about the Bord Bia sponsorship which Morris himself caused to be cancelled; *harassed both the Ireland Fund and the Irish Doctors Environmental Association for their sponsorship of the Briefing on Food Safety and GMOs co-hosted by the European Parliament Independence / Democracy Group and the GM-free Ireland Network at the European Parliament Office in Dublin in June 2007; *carried out a shoot-the-messenger style letter-writing campaign to Irish newspapers, targeting critics of GM. http://www.gmfreeireland.org/morris/index.php Morris and Apel contest GM-free Ireland's account of these events, but if even a part of it is true, it seems hard to imagine that a public servant would have embarked on such a vigorous public campaign without the reassurance that his superiors were at ease with his actions. Or to put it another way, can one imagine that a Canadian government employee would have dared promote scepticism about GMOs as aggressively as Morris has sought to undermine those opposing them? Canada, after all, is one of the world's biggest producers of GM crops and has a reputation for gagging and even sacking public servants who step out of line. http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5374 Prior to working for the Government of Canada, Morris worked as a research assistant at the University of Guelph. His boss, Doug Powell, has been decribed as the "darling of the pro-biotech lobby and its chief attack dog". John Morriss, the editor of a Canadian farming paper, once described Powell as a "tenured Assistant Professor at a Canadian university" who at some point "morphed into a full-blown apologist for biotechnology, while still operating under his 'food safety' umbrella". Guelph agricultural scientist, Ann Clark, went even further in condemning Powell's behaviour, "what some are doing today under the umbrella of academic freedom is actually not far removed from the proclamations of Orwell's Ministry of Truth." http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=257 Powell also stands accused by his critics in Canada of having used his "regular appearances on the op-ed pages of the nation to denigrate anyone who criticizes the science or the regulatory framework around biotechnology". While John Morriss in his editorial condemened Powell's "aggressive if not vicious attacks on other scientists who dare to challenge his views". He gave the example of an "offensive attack on no less than the Royal Society of Canada and the members of the panel it appointed to review food biotechnology" (Rude Science, The Manitoba Cooperator 58(46):4 21 June 2001). That attack was co-authored by none other than Shane Morris, who became very well know during his time at Guelph for promoting the pro-GM agenda with just as much fervour as Doug Powell. Shane Morris was certainly active within Powell's controversial "Food Safety Network", which enjoyed the financial support of Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, Pioneer Hi-Bred, Syngenta Seeds USA, ConAgra, Ag-West Biotech, Bioniche Life Sciences Inc., Southern Crop Protection Association, and the (biotech industry funded) Council for Biotechnology Information. http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=257 Given that track record, some might find it hard to believe that the Canadian government could be so naive as not to recognise who they were offering employment to or the kind of services they might expect in return. It is also understandable that those who see Morris's "food safety" role at Guelph as having more to do with "PR for biotech" than academia, and his sweet corn research as having more to do with "PR for biotech" than science, will be tempted to view his current behaviour as having more to do with campaigning for GMOs than public service. --- Liberal Corruption, beyond the Sponsorship Scandal [excerpts] http://www.thetyee.ca/Views/2005/06/14/BeyondSponsorship/ What is it if not corrupt -- that is, indicative of moral deterioration -- that our federal government would deliberately deny a visa to Africa's Dr. Tewolde Egziabher one of the world's foremost scientists in the field of bio-safety, in order to prevent him attending a UN conference in Montreal? This crude move against Tewolde (eventually reversed) because he opposes Canada's position, on behalf of corporations -- on commercialization of GMO foods, is a violation of the principles Canada agreed to when Montreal was made the centre for the Secretariat for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal. It is also evidence of corruption at the highest levels of the Liberal government. What is it if not corrupt -- as in a perversion of its original state -- that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), which in its original form was mandated to protect Canadians from unsafe food products, now has a mandate that trumps this important goal? The CFIA now must promote the export of Canadian food products, again at the behest of industry. This institutionalized conflict of interest has played out just as you might expect. When Shiv Chopra, Margaret S. Haydon, and Gerard Lambert, scientists in the veterinary drugs directorate, who for years had dedicated themselves to protecting Canadians, tried to do their job they were harassed, threatened and eventually fired for it. ..What is it when Canada sends delegates to a conference examining the safety of so-called terminator seeds with a secret agenda to try to pass a resolution that would allow for the corporate commercialization of this horrible technology? ...Or when Canada's own trade officials, unbeknownst to Canadians, and in concert with giant service corporations, negotiate away our domestic regulatory authority at the WTO? It is the dictionary definition of corruption: a perversion of the original state of democratic governance, the moral deterioration of our democracy. :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Michael O'Callaghan Co-ordinator GM-FREE IRELAND NETWORK Little Alders Knockrath, Rathdrum, Co. Wicklow Ireland tel: + 353 404 43 885 fax: + 353 404 43 887 mobile: + 353 87 799 4761 email: mail@gmfreeireland.org website: www.gmfreeireland.org _________________ http://home.comcast.net/~plutarch/PoliceState.html Disclaimer: all my posts are thought crimes and only IMO in the police state we all live in... http://www.europeantruth.co.uk/index1.html UK is history USA to follow http://www.freedom-force.org Free World Order Joined: 18 Apr 2006 Posts: 1980 Location: Totalitarian EU Sun Sep 09, 2007 1:14 am     Top scientist caught in GM moratoria cross fire (7/9/2007) Comment from Dr Brian John: We shouldn't be surprised by this - the GM industry specializes in the vilification of scientists who discover things or say things that Monsanto et al find uncomfortable. "Shoot the messenger" is a standard technique - expect it to be used more and more frequently as the GM debate hots up in Australia. --- Top scientist caught in GM moratoria cross fire SOURCE: Extract from Farm Weekly, WA's leading rural newspaper. Friday, 17 August 2007 http://nqr.farmonline.com.au/news_daily.asp?ag_id=44665 A leading Australian scientist has been commissioned by the WA Government to conduct a critical animal feeding study that may decide the future of commercial Genetically Modified (GM) crop production in that state. But she has come under fire from the pro-GM lobby, which has questioned her involvement in the research. Dr Judy Carman, a director of the Institute of Health and Environmental Research (IHER) in Adelaide, has been accused by the pro-GM sector of lacking the expertise and independence required to conduct the study. The same critics also claim Dr Carman, with almost 30 years experience, and her scientific group have no track record in conducting animal feeding studies and believe it is a waste of $92,000 of WA taxpayer's money. But Dr Carman has hit back, questioning the motives of those people who were attempting to prevent the research work from going ahead. Dr Carman has extensive, senior experience in conducting investigations into food-borne disease and says she is not a spokesperson for Greenpeace, as some of her critics had claimed. In 1996, when calicivirus escaped from quarantine and started to infect rabbits in Australia, Dr Carman was asked to lead the world’s first epidemiological investigation into whether it could infect people. "Any suggestions that I am some sort of anti-technology Luddite are ridiculous," Dr Carman said. "IHER is an independent, not-for-profit research institute with an interest in GMOs, particularly those destined for food. "The directors have training and expertise in plant science, agriculture, medicine, chemistry, biochemistry, nutrition, epidemiology and biostatistics." http://www.gmwatch.org/archive.asp _________________ http://home.comcast.net/~plutarch/PoliceState.html Disclaimer: all my posts are thought crimes and only IMO in the police state we all live in... http://www.europeantruth.co.uk/index1.html UK is history USA to follow http://www.freedom-force.org Free World Order Joined: 18 Apr 2006 Posts: 1980 Location: Totalitarian EU Sun Sep 09, 2007 1:16 am     Genetic Engineering – Influence of EU Population Growing (5/9/2007) Genetic Engineering – Influence of EU Population Growing Science & Education Press release from: Austrian Science Fund FWF August 20 2007 http://www.openpr.com/news/26140/Genetic-Engineering-Influence-of-EU-Population-Growing.html (openPR) - National movements campaigning against genetic engineering are helping to democratise the EU. That was the result of a recently completed Austrian Science Fund FWF project led by an independent researcher. According to the study's results, the almost simultaneous mobilisation of national populations reinforces public protest at a European level. The project therefore provides an optimistic outlook for the growing influence of the general population on EU decision-making processes. The controversy surrounding genetic engineering has more to offer than simply arguments for and against the science. For example, it provides a model for the general public's influence in the age of globalisation. This topic is particularly important for the EU. Although the EU is involved in all key decision-making areas, debate with the general population does not take place on a European level, but primarily on a national level. Although the results of a project headed by Dr. Franz Seifert on the general public's role in the global conflict on genetic engineering confirm this finding, they also indicate that – under certain circumstances – politically effective, pan-European protest is possible. SIMULTANEOUS PROTEST The project's results show that debates on the introduction of genetic engineering in the EU are held independently and within a national framework. Dr. Seifert explains: "Temporary situations occur such as in Austria, when one population resists the EU's introduction of genetic engineering into agriculture, while populations in other European countries either don't notice the protest or simply have other worries at the time. A protest coming from just one country’s population, however, will have little impact in the EU." Although national protests generally remain within closed units, a trend of "synchronization" has been developing since the latter half of the 1990s. Due to their incorporation into the EU regulatory system, national debates are no longer carried out purely in parallel. It is in fact becoming much more common for national populations to mobilise almost simultaneously. As a result, the governments of these countries lodge protests with the EU that force it to implement fundamental policy reforms. THE OPPONENTS' STRATEGIES Environmental organisations that are determined to oppose genetic engineering also play a key role. It is worth noting that, of the many groups involved, it is international organizations (e.g. Greenpeace) that have the greatest impact. However, they achieve this primarily through their local branches, which organise local campaigns. National governments also respond to this type of protest from their population, transferring it to a transnational level. This clearly indicates that protest which also has an international impact is supported first and foremost by the mobilisation of national populations. These results originate from a project that Dr. Seifert carried out as an independent scientist, unaffiliated to any specific institute. Dr. Seifert comments on his approach: "This way of doing research is unusual and not without its drawbacks. For example, having to carry out every individual stage yourself creates a huge amount of work. On the plus side though, you have a great deal of flexibility." Flexibility was certainly a key requirement of this project, which saw this biologist and social scientist visit countries throughout Europe, North America and Asia and included a year spent at a prestigious United Nations research facility in Japan. However, looking at the results, it is clear that this personal commitment has paid off. His work provides positive indications that the general population's influence on EU decision-making processes is growing, even if it is only limited at present – and will probably remain as such for the time being – due to the absence of a united European general public. As the FWF project shows, although there are no indications that any such united public is currently taking shape, simultaneous national debates can form a functional equivalent. Press release from Austrian Science Fund FWF: www.fwf.ac.at/en/public_relations/press/pv200708-en.html Scientific Contact: Dr. Franz Seifert Maxingstraße 22-24/2/7 1130 Wien, Austria T +43 / 650 / 561 42 06 E fseifert@gmx.at Austrian Science Fund FWF: Mag. Stefan Bernhardt Haus der Forschung Sensengasse 1 1090 Wien, Austria T +43 / 1 / 505 67 40 - 8111 E stefan.bernhardt@fwf.ac.at Copy Editing and Distribution: PR&D - Public Relations for Research & Development Campus Vienna Biocenter 2 1030 Wien, Austria T +43 / 1 / 505 70 44 E contact@prd.at The Austrian Science Fund (FWF) is Austria's central body for the promotion of basic research. It is equally committed to all branches of science and in all its activities is guided solely by the standards of the international scientific community. © openPR 2007 _________________ http://home.comcast.net/~plutarch/PoliceState.html Disclaimer: all my posts are thought crimes and only IMO in the police state we all live in... http://www.europeantruth.co.uk/index1.html UK is history USA to follow http://www.freedom-force.org Free World Order Joined: 18 Apr 2006 Posts: 1980 Location: Totalitarian EU Sun Sep 09, 2007 1:20 am     Romania: a playground for the genetic engineering industry? (6/9/2007) Briefing - ROMANIA: a playground for the genetic engineering industry? (WebWire) 5 September 2007 http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=46758 International - Over the past three years Greenpeace has investigated the failure of the Romanian Government to ensure the control and traceability of genetically modified (GMO) Soya plants produced by Monsanto (1). The cultivation of illegal crops (experiments with GMO potatoes and plum-trees, the massive cultures of GMO Soya in the entire country) (2), the black market of GMO seeds, the contamination within processing plants and the illegal GMO food products on the market (3) show that GMO Soya is completely out of control, even though its cultivation has been banned since 1st January 2007, when Romania joined the EU (4). The 2006 plans of the Ministry of Agriculture were meant to phase-out GMO Soya cultivation. In actual fact GMO Soya production reached a massive 130.000 hectares (5), almost doubling the amount planted in 2005 (85.000hectares). The Romanian government’s failure to take control has allowed Monsanto to run riot over the country, contaminating their environment, their food and their people. The Romanian Government banned GMO Soya in January 2007, when Romania entered the EU. Greenpeace, however, discovered large-scale illegal commercial cultivation of the crop this year. The Romanian authorities do not seem to be taking any control over illegal GMO production. Once GMOs are released into the environment they cannot be contained, and contamination of conventional and organic fields occurs. Greenpeace demands the, Romanian Government, and the European Commission take urgent action to contain and decontaminate the country from rogue GMOs and outlaw production of any GMOs in the future. GM maize cultivation a major risk for Romania The 1st January 2007, the date Romania joined the EU, was also significant because it meant that Romanian farmers could start cultivating Monsanto’s GMO maize (MON810), the only GMO authorised for commercial cultivation within the EU. It was unclear at the time of their accession to the EU, whether the Romanian Government was going to allow MON810 cultivation, or not. Prior to the growing season, Greenpeace urged the Romanian government to ban MON810, based on the latest scientific, economic and legal advice. Many EU member states have banned MON810, in their countries to protect their agriculture, environment and consumers and Greenpeace called on Romania to follow their lead (6). The Ministry of Agriculture recently informed Greenpeace that there are 332 hectares of Monsanto GE maize (MON810) being grown across six counties in Romania (7) GMO legislation in Romania is extremely unclear, and there is confusion as to the legal status of the GMO crops. The Community law on GMOs, which would allow Romania to grow MON810, was only introduced on the 28th June, after the growing season had started. The Ministry of Environment stated that, according to Romanian law 214/2002, which applied at the time, they needed to be officially informed by Monsanto, prior to planting of the MON810 seeds. Given that they received no notification this year, any GMO cultivation is illegal (. However, the Ministry of Agriculture argues that it is legal. They refused to provide Greenpeace with details of the locations of the MON810 crops, on the grounds that it was confidential (9). The vastly different opinions of the Environment and Agriculture Ministries of the same government, expose just how chaotic and out of control the situation is. The proliferation of unauthorised GMOs, and lack of transparency about where they are will only exacerbate the dangers posed to the environment, farmers, and consumers. Why GMOs are a threat to Romania: GM Soya Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Soya In the mid-1990s, Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Soya was one of the first GMOs to be commercialised. Rounup Ready Soya has been genetically engineered to be tolerant to the herbicide, glyphosate which is manufactured by Monsanto and sold under the name Roundup. Since its commercialisation, a series of irregularities and unexpected effects with the Soya, have cast severe doubt on its safety for the environment and for food and animal feed. These include: The build-up of weed tolerance to the herbicide used with GMO Roundup Ready Soya requires increasing amounts of herbicide and more powerful herbicides to be applied. Roundup Ready Soya contains additional fragments of the genetic insert; the crude genetic engineering method has caused rearrangements of plant DNA, possibly producing unintended proteins. There is also increasing evidence that Roundup Ready crops are harming the environment where they are grown: the supposed environmental benefits of the Soya such as reduced herbicide application, and of the benign nature of the associated herbicide, Roundup, have proved unfounded. Instead, a series of negative effects on biodiversity are emerging, such as; herbicide-tolerant weeds, toxicity and persistence of glyphosate (Roundup), possible decline in plant diversity. (11) GM Maize Threats to the environment and our health Recent scientific literature clearly demonstrates the environmental and health risks posed by the growth and consumption of GMO Bt maize plants (10). Bt maize, like MON810, contains a gene which produces a bacterial toxin to protect the plant from insects such as the European corn borer. The Austrian Ministry of Health recently published evidence of possible unintended effects of the Bt toxin on organisms other than the European corn-borer, such as butterflies. They also explain the possibility that the corn-borer could develop resistance to the toxin, which would reduce the crop’s efficacy. Further concerns include a lack of data on how Bt crop cultivation affects other pests, that could also grow resistant to Bt plants, and that this could lead to increased use of pesticides in future. There is also considerable concern that Bt-toxins could accumulate to concentrations that adversely affect soil organisms. In addition, there is crucial scientific controversy over the safety of GMO crops for animals and humans. Unexpected and unpredictable effects of GMO crops on animal and human health cannot be excluded. (11) A recent independent scientific study shows negative impacts suffered by rats fed with GMO maize. The authors of the study warned that it would pose a danger to human and animal health to disregard the signs of toxicity in the liver and kidney of the test animals. (12) Contamination of GMO free maize and the end of organic agriculture The risk of contamination from GMO maize to conventional and organic maize is of major concern. Once released, GMO crops can not be contained. Cross-Pollination, wind flow, harvesting and storage pose very serious threats to Romania’s current GMO free maize crops. Romania cultivates around three million hectares of maize every year and is one of Europe’s biggest producers of the crop. Monsanto’s GMO maize poses a serious threat to the genetic heritage of the special varieties of maize adapted to cultivation conditions in Romania. Moreover, the release of these new varieties of GMO organisms into the environment will make it practically impossible to produce certified organic maize, because the flow of genes cannot be controlled. The Romanian authorities must refuse to authorise cultivation of Monsanto MON810 GMO maize. Economic problems for food industry The absence of control measures, including testing, labelling, monitoring and traceability, mean Romania is unable to respect EU laws and requirements. Its agricultural exports and food products could be banned from EU markets altogether, either because products do not meet the EU standards regarding labelling and traceability, or because they don’t meet the demands of consumers, who reject GMO food in most European countries. According to the latest EU surveys, 62 per cent of Europeans are worried about GMO food. The majority of Europeans thinks that GM food should not be encouraged. GMO food is seen as morally unacceptable and as risky for society. (13) As a consequence, the majority of food and drink industries in the EU reject the use of GMOs in their products. (14) This consumer and market rejection could lead Romanian farmers and major food industries to be shut out of the EU market. Consumers don’t have freedom of choice The weak labelling laws mean the public is not aware that the food they consume could contain GMOs. EU regulations on labelling and traceability (1829/2003 & 1830/2003), already applicable in Romania, are not properly enforced. Greenpeace analysis of Soya food products bought from Romanian supermarkets, showed is the food to be contaminated on a range of 61.2 to 97.3 per cent, with product labels failing to indicate that they contain GMOs (15). The analysis shows that Romanians are effectively being treated as guinea pigs for GMO food. Though the Romanian authorities are clearly testing Soya food products themselves, they are keeping the results secret (16). A professional opinion poll (17) commissioned by Greenpeace this August confirms that an overwhelming 67% of Romanians reject GMO foods. Greenpeace demands the Romanian Government apply the Precautionary Principle, to ensure that proper measures are taken to avoid contamination scandals in the future, and: 1. Immediately bans the import and cultivation of Monsanto’s GMO maize MON810 and its hybrids; 2. Takes immediate measures to decontaminate the environment and the food chain from GMOs that have been illegally released into the environment (such as Roundup-Ready Soya); 3. Stop GMOs entering the Romanian national seed catalogue; 4. Revoke all permits for the import and sale of GMO seed, for field trials and commercial cultivation of GMO crops and destroy any GMO seed already in Romania; 5. Put in place an efficient labelling system for food. This requires traceability of all seeds or commodities that are GMOs or contain GMO derivatives, from field to fork and, for imports, from port of entry to plate. 6. Recognises the rights of Romanians to declare their region or country a GMO free zone. 7. Provide support to organic farming, through education, public procurement policies and by providing economic incentives. Related Links Source: www.greenpeace.org/international/press/releases/briefing-romania-a-playgrou _________________ http://home.comcast.net/~plutarch/PoliceState.html Disclaimer: all my posts are thought crimes and only IMO in the police state we all live in... http://www.europeantruth.co.uk/index1.html UK is history USA to follow http://www.freedom-force.org Free World Order Joined: 18 Apr 2006 Posts: 1980 Location: Totalitarian EU Sun Sep 09, 2007 1:20 am     Ireland: Resistance to GM cereals slammed by Teagasc (6/9/2007) NOTE: The references to "Teagasc" here are to the Irish Government's Agriculture and Food Authority. Comment from GM-free Ireland: At the annual National Future of Food Forum on "Re-connecting Farming, Food and Rural Communities" hosted by the leading chefs organisation, Euro-Toques Ireland, last Sunday, GM-free Ireland spokesperson Michael O'Callaghan said Teagasc's abuse of public funds to misinform farmers about GM crops was a disgrace, and called on the Minister for Food and Horticulture Trevor Sargent to hold those responsible to account. Teagasc can not be trusted on GMO issues because it has abused millions of euro of Irish taxpayer's funding to misinform farmers about GM crops. Its http://www.gmoinfo.ie website – proclaimed as the government's official "Information Centre for GM crops in Ireland" appeared to have been designed by Monsanto's spin doctors. The web site touted GM crops with no mention whatsoever of the growing scientific evidence of cross-contamination, crop failures, patent infringement lawsuits, GM superweeds, health and environmental risks, and loss of market share. The contents of the web site were recently cleaned out after GM-free Ireland exposed the misinformation. The main Teagasc website at http://www.teagasc.ie still features numerous pages containing highly biased information in favour of GM crops. The patented GM maize variety Herculex, mentioned in the above article, was discovered by GM-free Ireland and Greenpeace in a 12,000 tonne shipment of US animal feed aboard a ship in Dublin port in April. Despite the fact that Herculex is illegal in the EU, up to 5,313 tonnes of this contamined feed was subsequently sold to Irish farmers and allowed to enter the Irish food chain. See http://www.gmfreeireland.org/pakrac/index.php That shipment was imported by R&H Hall. Although their spokesman Matt Brazill claimed the cargo contained no GM ingredients while it was being unloaded, he also said his company could supply any amount of certified non-GMO animal feed if Irish farmers want it. There is no doubt that certified non-GMO soya is widely available for a minimal extra cost of around € 0.1 per kg, which can easily be recouped via higher premia on offer from leading supermarkets. For details, see Michael O'Callaghan's cover story on GM feed in the 26 July edition of the Irish Examiner farm supplement: http://www.gmfreeireland.org/news/2007/july.php#moc. The timing of Teagasc's attack on the Government's GM-free policy follows yesterday's conference jointly organised by the Animal and Plant Health Association (APHA) and the Irish Farmers Association at Dublin airport, where vociferous objections were made against EC proposals to restrict the use of "plant protection products" (i.e. toxic weedkillers, insecticides and fungicides) and "new plant protection products" (including GM plants that produce their own pesticides). GM seeds are patented by the same transnational agribusiness-biotech corporations (Monsanto, Bayer CropsScience, Pioneer/Dow, Syngenta, etc) that manufacture the unwanted chemicals, and that use GM crop patents to prevent farmers from saving and planting their own seeds. (See next two articles below.) These powerful GM and chemical farming giants would like to sabotage the consumer-driven global trend towards more environmentally safe, sustainable and organic farming. Ireland has a competitive advantage over its EU counterparts in relation to phasing our the use of GM animal feed. Because our cattle and sheep farming is mostly grass-based, animal feed compounds constitute only around 7% of their total diet. Less than half of this 7% consists of soya and maize products, where the GM ingredients come in. The shift towards GM-free animal feed would thus require far less change in Ireland than elsewhere in the EU. Coupled with our clean food island branding, world famous green image, and geographical isolation from potential contamination by wind-borne GM pollen, phasing out GM animal feed would give Irish meat, poultry and dairy produce the most credible safe GM-free food branding in the EU. Irish farming organisations and policy makers interested in exploring this strategy should participate in the forthcoming Conference on "Non GM Feedstuff, Quality Production, and European Agriculture's Strategy", co-hosted by EU Committee of the Regions and the European GMO-Free Regions Network on 5-6 December in Brussels: http://www.gmofree-euregions.net The GMO-free Regions Network includes 39 Regional Governments in Austria, France, Greece, Italy, Spain and the UK. Over ten regions in Austria, France, Italy, and Spain have already committed themselves to this approach. Preliminary meetings have been held with the EC, the European Parliament, the Committee of the Regions, AER, CRPM, AREPO, COPA-COGECA and with Brazilian players of the entire sector, and the project is going full steam ahead. The European Commission's Directorates-General for Agriculture, Health and Consumer Protection, Development and Trade have also agreed to participate. The Regions are phasing out GM animal feed to provide value-added production, to preserve competitive and high-quality agriculture in the context of the globalisation of food markets, and thus boost the sustainability of local rural communities. These regional governments are demanding a special status for quality agriculture which recognises its role in space management, environmental protection, and the strengthening of local communities, and wants all the European Regions to support this strategy in the mid-term review of the CAP in 2008 and its revision in 2013. --- Ireland: Resistance to GM cereals slammed Teagasc accuses the Government of undermining agriculture By Declan O'Brien Irish Independent (farming supplement) cover story, 4 September 2007 http://www.gmfreeireland.org/news/index.php A leading Teagasc scientist has slammed the Government's failure to support the use of genetically modified (GM) cereals in animal feeds. Professor Jimmy Burke, who is head of the Crops Research Centre at Oak Park, claimed that the Government's stance on GM crop varieties was undermining the viability of whole sectors within Irish agriculture. "This policy is anti-competitive and doomed to failure. Only sourcing non-GM material is an unrealistic approach and we need to sit up and take notice of this," Professor Burke insisted. He maintained that Ireland's decision to abstain earlier this year in a key vote at EU level on the maize variety, Herculex, had serious implications. As Herculex had failed to secure EU approval, European feed importers had been forced to pay inflated prices for scarce supplies of non-GM material. The Teagasc specialist said the implications for the pig and poultry sectors were particularly serious, since half the protein requirement for both industries was sourced in the US. "If we are saying we don't want GM material, then this is a serious issue because, in the not too distant future, people won't be able to get non-GM feed stocks," he said. He also questioned the assertion that consumers were willing to pay a premium for the meat from animals which have been fed non-GM feed. He pointed out that studies carried out in a number of countries had found that supermarkets were not willing to pass on to consumers the additional feed costs associated with using non-GM material. Meanwhile, feed importers now fear that shipments of corn gluten and corn distillers will be disrupted again this autumn, because the US maize crop, which is due to be harvested in a month's time, includes another GM variety which has not been approved in Europe. The variety, which is called Agrisure, makes up just 1-2pc of total plantings. However, importers are unwilling to bring in shipments of the new crop in case traces of this particular variety are found in the shipments. Since Agrisure is not approved in the EU, any consignments in which it is identified would have to be destroyed or shipped back to the port of origin or to a third country. Matt Brazil of feed importers, Halls, said that, as a consequence, most importers would not be willing to take a chance on a shipment of new crop maize from the US. He said this would create further upward pressure on feed prices. Meanwhile, Mr. Brazil said farmers will face massive increases in feed costs this winter. He pointed out that the main constituents in compound feed had doubled in price since this time last year. _________________ http://home.comcast.net/~plutarch/PoliceState.html Disclaimer: all my posts are thought crimes and only IMO in the police state we all live in... http://www.europeantruth.co.uk/index1.html UK is history USA to follow http://www.freedom-force.org Free World Order Joined: 18 Apr 2006 Posts: 1980 Location: Totalitarian EU Sun Sep 09, 2007 1:21 am     Excellent article on the Bt cotton meltdown in the Punjab (6/9/2007) EXTRACT: "Dho ditta ji Bt nu safed chichra ne," ("mealy bugs have devastated the Bt cotton") he bellows at the caller. Standing in his field in the mid-July sun, Hartej is busy fielding numerous calls of a similar nature... These days, travelling across the Malwa belt of rural Punjab is a revelation. Mile after mile of unending Bt cotton fields, which appear healthy from a distance, are facing unprecedented attack... --- Making a meal of Bt cotton By Bhaskar Goswami InfoChange News & Features http://www.infochangeindia.org/features441.jsp In the Malwa belt of rural Punjab, mile after mile of Bt cotton fields are under attack by the mealy bug pest. Bathinda, Muktsar, Faridkot and Ferozepur, Punjab’s four major cotton-growing districts, have been badly affected. The so-called 'magic bullet', Bt cotton has turned into a bitter pill for farmers who were promised profits but who are now faced with huge losses Anyone overhearing Hartej Singh on his cell phone would find the conversation strange. "Dho ditta ji Bt nu safed chichra ne," ("mealy bugs have devastated the Bt cotton") he bellows at the caller. Standing in his field in the mid-July sun, Hartej is busy fielding numerous calls of a similar nature. He is an exception -- the sole cotton farmer in Mehtawali village in Bathinda whose crop has not been affected by the dreaded mealy bug. These days, travelling across the Malwa belt of rural Punjab is a revelation. Mile after mile of unending Bt cotton fields, which appear healthy from a distance, are facing unprecedented attack by the mealy bug. Bathinda, Muktsar, Faridkot and Ferozepur, Punjab’s four major cotton-growing districts, have all been badly affected. The crisis While Bt cotton made an official entry into Punjab in 2005, enterprising farmers here began cultivating bootlegged varieties from Gujarat a year earlier. According to official statistics, around 60% of farmers in the state are growing Bt cotton this year. In the four cotton-producing districts, Bt cotton coverage is almost 100%. Unlike in Andhra Pradesh, Bt cotton in Punjab lived up to its promise of protecting against the dreaded American bollworm, and the number of sprays needed dropped from a high 30 to less than five. This is the main reason why farmers switched to these varieties. However, Bt cotton protects the crop only against one pest; cotton is attacked by no less than 165 pests. This raises the chances of a resurgence of secondary pests and farmers end up spraying the same quantity of pesticide (if not more) on their crop as they did earlier. In Andhra Pradesh, the number of attacks by aphids, thrips, jassids, etc, has risen since the introduction of Bt cotton in 2002. Tobacco leaf streak virus, tobacco caterpillars, etc, have emerged as new diseases and pests of Bt cotton in the state. This year, reports of fungal root rot in Bt cotton are beginning to pour in from Warangal district in Andhra Pradesh. The emergence of the mealy bug as a Bt cotton pest in Punjab also appears to be a case of secondary pest resurgence, and no amount or type of pesticide has been able to control it. Scientists at Punjab Agriculture University (PAU) are yet to figure out an effective way of tackling the pest, or, for that matter, what is causing it to assume such epidemic proportions. On July 9, Dr N S Butter, head of the department of entomology told the press that the attack was mainly due to a reduction in pesticide sprays on Bt cotton, and also the proliferation of weeds like Congress grass (Parthenium hysterophorus), which is a major host of the pest. This is bizarre, considering the fact that Congress grass has been growing in the state for decades. What’s more, the reduced number of sprays was against American bollworm, not the mealy bug, and the type of pesticide used against the two is quite different. Also, American bollworm attacks during the monsoon while the mealy bug is mostly active during summer. The mealy bug feeds on around 300 crops on the subcontinent. Attacks are generally intense during summer; they subside when the temperature drops. Bt cotton crop in Punjab was attacked by the mealy bug last year as well, but the damage was not substantial as the crop was close to maturity. This year, however, the attack was intense during the second month of sowing. The devastation Unlike the Doaba and Majha regions of Punjab, the four cotton-growing districts in the Malwa belt have poorer soil and fewer irrigation canals. Cotton is the major cash crop, while wheat is the staple crop that meets the food requirements of relatively less well-off farmers in this belt. Bathinda district alone accounts for a quarter of the cotton produced in Punjab. Destruction of the cotton crop in this district therefore affects thousands of farmers. According to the state agriculture department, over 2,000 acres of cotton crop were destroyed by the mealy bug by July 10. This appears to be a conservative estimate. During my trip to the region in mid-July, every village reported having uprooted at least five acres of Bt cotton crop every day. In the village of Raike-Kalan, in Bathinda, over 100 acres of mealy bug-infested Bt cotton had already been uprooted when I visited the area. It’s the same story across hundreds of neighbouring villages. That pesticides are not working against this pest is evident from the farmers’ accounts. Balwant Singh, a farmer in Mehtawali village in Bathinda, consulted scientists at both the PAU and the state agriculture department. He was advised to rotate sprays of the carbamate and organophosphate pesticide groups. Balwant understands how this is done, for he is the insecticide retailer in the village. Four rounds of sprays later, he has given up. The same story is being repeated in Badal village in Muktsar district, the birthplace of Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal. During my visit, pesticides were being feverishly sprayed on Bt cotton fields in the village, but to no avail. The bug subsides and re-emerges within a week of spraying. "We used to cuff our children if they touched even one sapling of cotton. Now we use our own hands to uproot what we planted," says Nachhatar Singh of Raike-Kalan. Nachhatar owns two acres of land and has leased-in five more to grow Bt cotton. Each leased acre of land costs him Rs 16,000, while the cost of cultivating Bt cotton on the land is around Rs 5,000. All this is now lost. Since his land is irrigated and he could also source some paddy seedlings, Nachhatar uprooted the damaged Bt cotton crop and replaced it with paddy, thereby incurring an additional expenditure of Rs 5,000 per acre. As a result his total expenditure has now shot up to Rs 26,000 per acre -- for paddy! This is a far cry from the Rs 4,000 per acre profits promised by Mahyco-Monsanto while marketing Bt cotton seed! Sharecropping is practised quite routinely all over the Malwa belt. Since the introduction of Bt cotton in Punjab, the practice of leasing-in land to cultivate cotton has increased among marginal and small farmers. Due to the mealy bug attack, these sharecroppers are now uprooting Bt cotton and replacing it with paddy. This is being done to somehow reduce the huge losses arising out of Bt cotton cultivation. But unless farmers sell their paddy at a minimum of Rs 1,600 per quintal, they will not recover even their cultivation costs this year. The minimum support price was a mere Rs 650 per quintal last year. The writing on the wall is therefore quite clear for small farmers. Like neighbouring Sangrur, the four cotton-growing districts of Punjab may soon begin reporting increasing numbers of farmer suicides. The response While the state agriculture department and PAU are groping in the dark for a solution, the response from the Centre is a not-so-surprising dead silence. According to the International Seed Federation, this year the estimated size of India’s seed market is around $ 1.3 billion (approximately Rs 5,200 crore) -- the sixth highest in the world. By opening up the seed sector to biotech seed manufacturers, the Centre had signalled, a long time ago, that profits to these corporations weigh higher than the concerns of farmers. When asked by local journalists about the steps being taken to stem the mealy bug epidemic in Punjab, the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) passed the buck back saying that agriculture was a state subject. This is ironical. After all, it wasn’t the Punjab government that approved 135 varieties of Bt cotton in the last five years but the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) of the Union government, of which the MoA is a member. The fact remains that the GEAC has permitted cultivation of Bt cotton varieties without carrying out adequate testing for the resurgence of secondary pests and diseases. As has now become the established norm with respect to genetically modified crops, farmers are being made to pay a steep price for the incompetence of the regulatory body and the greed of biotech companies. Not only has the introduction of Bt cotton brought disaster in the form of the mealy bug, it is also affecting yields of the subsequent crop -- wheat. Farmers reported an up to 30% drop in wheat productivity on land that had previously been cultivated with Bt cotton. This is similar to reports from Andhra Pradesh where the Kisan Call Centre in Hyderabad received a number of complaints from farmers about declining yields of subsequent crops. According to Vyavsaya Panchangam -- a farmers’ almanac -- published by the Acharya N G Ranga Agriculture University, Hyderabad, Bt cotton uses more fertiliser than its non-Bt counterparts. If adequate amounts of fertiliser are not applied, the subsequent crop receives fewer nutrients. Further, the Bt toxin also expresses itself in the root zone of the plant and can affect soil biodiversity and ecosystem function, as reported in a research study by the Australian government. These may partly explain why yields of subsequent crops are declining, although nobody is paying much attention to this aspect. The alternative This brings the story back to Hartej Singh, an organic farmer associated with the Kheti Virasat Mission. Singh grows cotton intercropped with rows of pigeon pea, sorghum, maize, soybean, cluster bean, etc. Some of these are leguminous crops that are uprooted and used as green manure. He grows F-1378, an early-maturing American cotton variety and LD 327, a high-yielding desi variety that is also tolerant to Fusarium wilt. His yields are slightly lower than those of the Bt cotton in neighbouring fields. But while the neighbouring fields are heavily infested by the mealy bug, Singh’s cotton crop is completely unaffected. Likewise for the 100-odd farmers of the Malwa belt who, as part of the Kheti Virasat Mission, are growing non-Bt cotton following the principles of organic farming. Intercropping with several different crops stops pests from migrating to the next row of cotton, and since these crops have never been sprayed with pesticide, predators like beetle larvae can be seen feeding on the mealy bugs. Whenever the pest concentration goes up, a combination of neemleaves and pods, along with Datura, etc, mixed with cow urine, is sprayed on the crop. The attack subsides and damage to the cotton crop is negligible. Umendra Dutt, Executive Director of the Kheti Virasat Mission, sums it up thus: "Farmers were promised a magic bullet in the form of Bt cotton which has turned into a bitter pill." Meanwhile, the PAU and state agriculture department are now consulting Dutt to work out a way to tackle the mealy bug. Speaking to the media on August 9, the head of the department of entomology recommended using traditional methods to destroy the mealy bug -- remove the weed hosts and use neem-based insecticides… (Bhaskar Goswami is with the New Delhi-based Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security) _________________ http://home.comcast.net/~plutarch/PoliceState.html Disclaimer: all my posts are thought crimes and only IMO in the police state we all live in... http://www.europeantruth.co.uk/index1.html UK is history USA to follow http://www.freedom-force.org Free World Order Joined: 18 Apr 2006 Posts: 1980 Location: Totalitarian EU Sun Sep 09, 2007 1:21 am     Propaganda, fraud, and libel - Part 4 of our response (5/9/2007) This is the fourth part of our response to an article attacking GM Watch published on AgBioView by its "guest editor", Andrew Apel. --- Propaganda, Fraud and Libel - a response (part 4) In Propaganda, Fraud and Libel, Andrew Apel charges GM Watch with targeting Shane Morris's "employment with the Canadian government" and of re-casting the dispute with Morris "as a conflict between Canada and Ireland". Apel also brands GM Watch as "Irish activists" out to discredit Morris because of his talent in exposing activist "misinformation" about GMOs in Ireland. http://www.cgfi.org/cgficommentary/Anti-biotech%20wactivists%20082307 As usual with Apel, the misinformation is entirely his own. Although the GM Watch team includes people in Brazil, India, The Netherlands, Germany, and New Zealand - as well as different parts of the UK, there are (as yet!) no "Irish activists" amongst us. And the issue of Morris's employment with the Canadian government was first raised not by GM Watch but by a Canadian citizen - Professor Joe Cummins (Emeritus Professor of Genetics, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada). Shane Morris has always been anxious to present his pro-GM views as purely personal and the gmoireland blog on which he has promoted them, and attacked those who take a different viewpoint, as something that he should not be barred from doing having been born and bred in Ireland. But there is a problem. As Prof Cummins has noted, others in the Canadian bureaucracy, such as Shiv Chopra, have got into big trouble for expressing views about biotechnology that were not to the liking of senior Canadian bureaucrats. Canada, Prof Cummins points out, also has a history of secrecy in testing and marketing GM crops that makes one less than confident about the transparency of its activities in promoting the GM agenda. And Prof Cummins is far from alone in seeing Canada as being prepared to promote its biotech agenda in an underhand fashion (see, for instance, the article below). What is undeniable is that public servants usually tend to be very wary of getting involved in public controversy. But Shane Morris, who has worked as a biotech regulator in Canada and is currently employed as a Senior Consumer Analyst at the Consumer Analysis Section of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, has not only used his blog to ridicule Irish and EU decison makers, and those political parties who fail to follow a pro-GM line, but he has also, according to GM-free Ireland: * intimidated a senior executive at Board Bia (the Irish Government Food Board) into withdrawing agreed sponsorship for a Green Ireland conference at which international speakers were to warn Ireland of the economic benefits of keeping Ireland free of GM crops; * published defamatory allegations claiming GM-free Ireland lured funding out of sponsors under false pretenses, by lying about the Bord Bia sponsorship which Morris himself caused to be cancelled; * harassed both the Ireland Fund and the Irish Doctors Environmental Association for their sponsorship of the Briefing on Food Safety and GMOs co-hosted by the European Parliament Independence / Democracy Group and the GM-free Ireland Network at the European Parliament Office in Dublin in June 2007; * carried out a shoot-the-messenger style letter-writing campaign to Irish newspapers, targeting critics of GM. http://www.gmfreeireland.org/morris/index.php Morris and Apel contest GM-free Ireland's account of these events, but if even a part of it is true, it seems hard to imagine that a public servant would have embarked on such a vigorous public campaign without the reassurance that his superiors were at ease with his actions. Or to put it another way, can one imagine that a Canadian government employee would have dared promote scepticism about GMOs as aggressively as Morris has sought to undermine those opposing them? Canada, after all, is one of the world's biggest producers of GM crops and has a reputation for gagging and even sacking public servants who step out of line. http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5374 Prior to working for the Government of Canada, Morris worked as a research assistant at the University of Guelph. His boss, Doug Powell, has been decribed as the "darling of the pro-biotech lobby and its chief attack dog". John Morriss, the editor of a Canadian farming paper, once described Powell as a "tenured Assistant Professor at a Canadian university" who at some point "morphed into a full-blown apologist for biotechnology, while still operating under his 'food safety' umbrella". Guelph agricultural scientist, Ann Clark, went even further in condemning Powell's behaviour, "what some are doing today under the umbrella of academic freedom is actually not far removed from the proclamations of Orwell's Ministry of Truth." http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=257 Powell also stands accused by his critics in Canada of having used his "regular appearances on the op-ed pages of the nation to denigrate anyone who criticizes the science or the regulatory framework around biotechnology". While John Morriss in his editorial condemened Powell's "aggressive if not vicious attacks on other scientists who dare to challenge his views". He gave the example of an "offensive attack on no less than the Royal Society of Canada and the members of the panel it appointed to review food biotechnology" (Rude Science, The Manitoba Cooperator 58(46):4 21 June 2001). That attack was co-authored by none other than Shane Morris, who became very well know during his time at Guelph for promoting the pro-GM agenda with just as much fervour as Doug Powell. Shane Morris was certainly active within Powell's controversial "Food Safety Network", which enjoyed the financial support of Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, Pioneer Hi-Bred, Syngenta Seeds USA, ConAgra, Ag-West Biotech, Bioniche Life Sciences Inc., Southern Crop Protection Association, and the (biotech industry funded) Council for Biotechnology Information. http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=257 Given that track record, some might find it hard to believe that the Canadian government could be so naive as not to recognise who they were offering employment to or the kind of services they might expect in return. It is also understandable that those who see Morris's "food safety" role at Guelph as having more to do with "PR for biotech" than academia, and his sweet corn research as having more to do with "PR for biotech" than science, will be tempted to view his current behaviour as having more to do with campaigning for GMOs than public service. --- Liberal Corruption, beyond the Sponsorship Scandal [excerpts] http://www.thetyee.ca/Views/2005/06/14/BeyondSponsorship/ What is it if not corrupt -- that is, indicative of moral deterioration -- that our federal government would deliberately deny a visa to Africa's Dr. Tewolde Egziabher one of the world's foremost scientists in the field of bio-safety, in order to prevent him attending a UN conference in Montreal? This crude move against Tewolde (eventually reversed) because he opposes Canada's position, on behalf of corporations -- on commercialization of GMO foods, is a violation of the principles Canada agreed to when Montreal was made the centre for the Secretariat for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal. It is also evidence of corruption at the highest levels of the Liberal government. What is it if not corrupt -- as in a perversion of its original state -- that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), which in its original form was mandated to protect Canadians from unsafe food products, now has a mandate that trumps this important goal? The CFIA now must promote the export of Canadian food products, again at the behest of industry. This institutionalized conflict of interest has played out just as you might expect. When Shiv Chopra, Margaret S. Haydon, and Gerard Lambert, scientists in the veterinary drugs directorate, who for years had dedicated themselves to protecting Canadians, tried to do their job they were harassed, threatened and eventually fired for it. ...What is it when Canada sends delegates to a conference examining the safety of so-called terminator seeds with a secret agenda to try to pass a resolution that would allow for the corporate commercialization of this horrible technology? ...Or when Canada's own trade officials, unbeknownst to Canadians, and in concert with giant service corporations, negotiate away our domestic regulatory authority at the WTO? It is the dictionary definition of corruption: a perversion of the original state of democratic governance, the moral deterioration of our democracy. _________________ http://home.comcast.net/~plutarch/PoliceState.html Disclaimer: all my posts are thought crimes and only IMO in the police state we all live in... http://www.europeantruth.co.uk/index1.html UK is history USA to follow http://www.freedom-force.org Free World Order Joined: 18 Apr 2006 Posts: 1980 Location: Totalitarian EU Rather die or go hungry than eat GM food! Sun Sep 09, 2007 1:22 am     Rejection of U.S. Food Aid by NGO Signals Change in Global Hunger Policy (5/9/2007) RELATED QUOTES: "The US food aid system appears to disregard the rights and concerns of recipient citizens in order to assure profits for US agribusiness giants. It is a system that allows for the misspending of public funds in ways that benefit the private sector; a system that takes advantage of the lack of regulation concerning the genetic engineering of food; and a system that undermines democratic decision making about food consumption " -- Food First "Zambia is a sovereign country and makes its own decisions. Zambians do not need to be heroic to assert their sovereignty. GM-free supplies are available in surplus in southern Africa. Europe's policy is to provide food aid procured in the region, rather than as a means of disposing of domestic stocks... The simple solution is for the US to behave as a real aid donor." -- Pascal Lamy, when EU Trade Commissioner (commenting on the Bush Administration's "Eat GM, or die" policy) "I have heard . . . that people may become dependent on us for food. I know that was not supposed to be good news. To me that was good news, because before people can do anything they have got to eat. And if you are looking for a way to get people to lean on you and to be dependent on you, in terms of their cooperation with you, it seems to me that food dependence would be terrific." -- Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, in naming US Public Law 480 which ensures that food aid never interferes with "domestic production or marketing" (Wall Street Journal, May 7 1982) See also: Force feeding the world http://ngin.tripod.com/forcefeed.htm Fake Blood on the Maize http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5384 --- Rejection of U.S. Food Aid by NGO Signals Change in Global Hunger Policy Lauren Gelfand World Politics Review, 29 August 2007 http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=1074 World Politics Review Exclusive LONDON -- Advocates of a global overhaul of efforts to meet the needs of the world's 850 million chronically hungry people have received a boost with the decision by CARE, a top U.S. aid organization, to walk away from tens of millions of dollars in annual U.S. federal financing. In opting out of the mechanism by which donated U.S. food aid is transported overseas and sold in local markets to fund anti-poverty programs -- a decades-old process known as monetization -- CARE joins a growing number of international non-governmental and governmental groups demanding an end to a policy they say can be harmful to the countries being helped. "It's not the best way to use food, to generate cash, and it's quite clear that it's not cost-effective," said David Kauck, a senior technical advisor with CARE USA about the organization's decision to completely phase out monetization by 2009, which made headlines earlier this month with CARE's announcement it would forego $45 million in federal funding this year. "There is a host of economic literature that says monetization has unintended and harmful consequences overseas," Kauck told World Politics Review in an exclusive interview. "And after much due dilligence, CARE reached the conclusion that the practice is inconsistent with what we wanted to achieve." Despite being the world’s largest supplier of food aid -- some $2 billion annually or the equivalent of four million metric tons of food commodities -- the United States has attached a sheaf of conditions and caveats to its donations through its development arm USAID and the U.S. Department of Agriculture that critics contend help to do more for the domestic agriculture markets than for the depressed and impoverished countries that are the main targets for U.S. food aid. Because of the way the current U.S. food aid program is structured, U.S. commodity suppliers earn an 11 percent premium above commercial prices for food aid purchases, according to the development agency Oxfam. And those commodity suppliers are far from being family farms: a U.S. Government Accountability Office study noted that just 18 U.S. companies were deemed eligible to bid for the food-aid contracts, with four of the country’s largest agribusinesses -- Cargill, Archers Daniel Midland/Farmland, Louis Dreyfus and Kalama Export Company -- earning some $28 million in food aid contracts in March/April 2003 alone. Shipping and transport from the United States is also a costly process that drains needed funds from the actual provision of food aid. U.S. legislation requires that 75 percent of all food aid shipments be sent aboard U.S.-flagged carriers, which tend to be more expensive than other vessels plying the world’s seas and skies. A GAO report (pdf file) commissioned by U.S. Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Saxby Chambliss (D-Ga.) in April this year found that the cost of transportation -- not food -- now represents 65 percent of the total expenditure for the largest U.S. emergency food aid program. "At current U.S. food aid budget levels, every $10 per metric ton reduction in freight rates could feed almost 850,000 more people during an average hungry season," the report concluded. Noted Margie Morard, the food security advisor for Oxfam in West Africa, where a chronic malnutrition problem in the landlocked country of Niger deteriorated into a full-scale food crisis in 2005: "By the time all the costs are figured in, it’s like every dollar worth of food ends up costing three dollars to get to the people who need it. That’s an unreasonable level of inefficiency, not to mention the fact that it just takes so long to arrive that it can sometimes cause real problems for local markets." The impact of the imported food aid on local markets was a major factor behind CARE USA’s decision to step back from monetization, as was the sheer complexity of food trading in countries with damaged or insufficient infrastructure. "Fundamentally, it put us in the business of being traders and we are not traders," said Kauck. "That’s a difficult and demanding business, and we [international NGOs] are not the best people to be involved in that business." Importing food into vulnerable markets can breed a number of problems, not the least of which is commercial displacement of local agricultural products. Local producers are unable to compete with the imported products and small traders find themselves priced out of their own markets. Price spikes and their potential to have a devastating impact on already struggling local markets is one of the reasons why organizations like the U.N.’s World Food Programme, the world’s leading distributor of food assistance, are carefully researching local and regional sources for the agricultural products needed during emergencies. "WFP increasingly purchases food locally whenever possible; 70 percent of all our purchased food is bought in the developing world, because it allows us to move food more quickly and cost-effectively to the people who need it most," said Marcus Prior, a spokesman for WFP in Africa. "WFP’s intention is always to stimulate local agricultural markets and avoid any negative impact." Cash donations, rather than food aid, will help strengthen those local markets, said Oxfam’s Morard, and help traders and consumers deal with the normal ebbs and flows of market fluctuations in typically agrarian countries such as Niger. "It all really depends on the economics of what a country’s capacity is to absorb imported food without seeing a drop in the retail price for local producers," she said from Dakar, Senegal. "For example, in 2005 in West Africa, if international governments [like the United States] made cash donations rather than food aid, it would have helped to strengthen normal market linkages and allowed [international NGOs] to work with local traders to build their capacity and ensure they had that access to markets." CARE’s Kauck was careful not to consider local food purchases as some sort of magic bullet, however, particularly in countries vulnerable to drought or other natural fluctuations in market availability of agricultural products. "The key is to have the flexibility to tailor aid to specific circumstances, and right now, that will require a fundamental rethink of the way the U.S. government approaches the problem of hunger," he said. But while the U.S. government is the largest player in the delivery of food aid, it is far from being the only body involved that requires a fundamental rethink in its approach to hunger. The current approach focuses on emergencies -- the famines and food crises that make headlines and inspire star-studded concerts and celebrity pleas to Feed the World. But without attention to the root causes of chronic hunger and poverty, long-term economic analysis of markets and climate and sustained commitments to development that are done in concert with local governments, there will be very little change in the food aid game. Some governments are taking matters into their own hands -- and moving to dictate how aid can come into their countries. Zambia, for example, faced bilateral pressure from the United States as well as from WFP in 2004 to accept genetically modified food aid and refused. Niger, too, has stood defiant in the wake of the 2005 food crisis in how food aid is to be administered to its citizens, the world’s poorest according to the U.N. Human Development Index. The government has made its disapproval of Food-for-Work programs operated by international NGOs known, believing that they undermine the country’s ability to ensure its own food sovereignty in making people dependent on handouts. Rather than food aid, the government wants to ensure that it can subsidize food purchases by consumers and replenish cereal stocks all over the country, not just in the breadbasket south. Senior members of the administration of President Mamadou Tandja are also currently in talks with U.S. government officials about some three thousand metric tons of U.S. cereals already in Niger that have yet to be distributed -- amid optimistic reports that the country’s own harvests are on track for good yields. Should the U.S. food aid enter the market, it could hinder the recovery of the country’s own agricultural production. "It is totally legitimate that the government be the first line in dealing with a country’s food needs and we, as international NGOs should be there, building the government’s capacity to do so, coming in only when it is critical," said a Niger-based aid specialist. "We should be there to technically inform governments and get out, not to make people dependent on food aid. Because that’s where the real troubles start." Lauren Gelfand is a freelance journalist and commentator with a special interest in African issues. _________________ http://home.comcast.net/~plutarch/PoliceState.html Disclaimer: all my posts are thought crimes and only IMO in the police state we all live in... http://www.europeantruth.co.uk/index1.html UK is history USA to follow http://www.freedom-force.org Free World Order Joined: 18 Apr 2006 Posts: 1980 Location: Totalitarian EU Nature is superior in all ways! Sun Sep 09, 2007 1:24 am     GM companies refuse to supply seed for trials (1/9/2007) NOTE: Farm Weekly is Western Australia's leading rural newspaper. --- --- GM companies refuse to supply seed for trials Farm Weekly, 31 August 2007 http://nqr.farmonline.com.au/news_daily.asp?ag_id=45017 WA's first broad-scale field trial of genetically modified canola has been placed on hold after becoming entangled in a political battle between the State Government and the seed companies which own the technology. State Agriculture Minister Kim Chance advised his Ministerial GM Reference Group meeting last Friday that the GM trials, scheduled for Esperance next year, were now in grave danger of not going ahead. Mr Chance confirmed that the South East Premium Wheat Growers Association (SEPWA), which he approved to conduct the trials, has hit a brick wall in its attempts to source GM seed from Monsanto and Bayer, the companies who own the plant breeding rights to the controversial technology. Network of Concerned Farmers WA spokesperson, Julie Newman, claimed the lack of seed availability was an admission from GM crop supporters that the Esperance trials would reveal GM canola offered nothing better than the varieties already used by WA growers. "At last those pushing GM crops have admitted that GM canola cannot out-perform the canola we already grow," Ms Newman said. "And the GM companies are obviously afraid that the truth would be revealed with independence performance trials. "It is obvious that those pushing GM crops would prefer that farmers rely on misleading hype because farmers would not be supporting GM crops if they knew the facts." Ms Newman said the GM companies' reluctance to provide seed for the trials would now raise serious doubts from those farmers and farming groups who were hoping that the SEPWA trials would provide clear and independent evidence that GM performed better than conventional varieties. SEPWA vice president, Andrew Fowler, said the indications from Monsanto and Bayer were that they did not see the up-side to releasing the GM seed for the trial. Mr Fowler said the companies saw little value in investing in WA, and envisioned that they would soon see commercial action in NSW, Victoria and maybe NSW, if the moratoria on GM commercial crop production were lifted, as soon as next year. _________________ http://home.comcast.net/~plutarch/PoliceState.html Disclaimer: all my posts are thought crimes and only IMO in the police state we all live in... http://www.europeantruth.co.uk/index1.html UK is history USA to follow http://www.freedom-force.org Free World Order Joined: 18 Apr 2006 Posts: 1980 Location: Totalitarian EU Sun Sep 09, 2007 1:25 am     GM WATCH MONTHLY REVIEW No. 48 (2/9/2007) ============================================================ GM WATCH MONTHLY REVIEW No. 48 ============================================================ ----------------------------------------------------------- FROM REVIEW EDITOR, CLAIRE ROBINSON ------------------------------------------------------------ Please tell all your non-English speaking friends about our past Monthly Reviews in Portuguese, Dutch and German. http://www.gmwatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=93&page=1 Claire www.gmwatch.org / www.lobbywatch.org WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT *If you like what we do at GM Watch, please help us continue by making a donation online* http://www.gmwatch.org/donate.asp ----------------------------------------------------------- MONTHLY REVIEW CONTENTS ------------------------------------------------------------ PROPAGANDA, FRAUD AND LIBEL RESISTANCE/BANS/RESTRICTIONS ON GM GM APPLICATIONS/EXPANSION GM REGULATORY FIASCO IN INDIA RICE CONTAMINATION GM FAILURES GENE THERAPY TECHNO-UTOPIANISM BIOFUELS COMPANY NEWS CORPORATE CRIMES DUBIOUS PHILANTHROPY NON-GM SUCCESSES GM BIOHAZARDS REVIEWS ------------------------------------------------------------ PROPAGANDA, FRAUD AND LIBEL ------------------------------------------------------------ + PROPAGANDA, FRAUD AND LIBEL The GM Watch website was recently forced offline for nearly a week as a result of legal threats over this article calling for an award winning scientific paper to be retracted http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8216 Read our response to AgBioView's attack on GM Watch over the issue PROPAGANDA, FRAUD AND LIBEL - PART ONE http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8228 PROPAGANDA, FRAUD AND LIBEL - PART TWO http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8240 MORE ABOUT THE CONTROVERSY Biotech Canada SLAPP Scandal http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BiotechCanadaSLAPPScandal.php Canada attacks Ireland's policy on GM crops http://www.gmfreeireland.org/morris/index.php ------------------------------------------------------------ RESISTANCE/BANS/RESTRICTIONS ON GM ------------------------------------------------------------ + ISLAMIC SCHOLAR SAYS TRADE IN GM FOODS IS 'CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY' In Qatar, the prominent Islamic scholar Ali Mohyeedin al-Qurradaghi has called upon dealers and consumers to boycott companies trading in tainted commodities and GM foods, saying that cheating in these goods is a 'crime against humanity' that should be strictly dealt with. He blamed the rise in cancer cases around the world on what he called 'commercial cheating'. 'According to the Holy Qur'an, cheats who aim to ruin the health of others by their harmful practices should be put to death in public,' he said in a sermon. http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8237 QUOTE FROM THE QU'RAN: 'Eat and drink of that which Allah has provided and do not act corruptly, making mischief on the earth.' (2:60) + U.S. TURNS AGAINST GM GROWTH HORMONE MILK The recent announcement by Kroger stores to prohibit the GM growth hormone rbST/rBGH from its private label milk brand is part of a nationwide trend among dairy processors, retailers and farmers, says a report for MinutemanMedia.org. Starbucks, Tillamook, Safeway and Chipotle Restaurants have already begun to discontinue the hormone and California Dairies, Inc., which produces nearly 10 percent of the nation's milk, announced it went rbST-free August 1. The companies affirm that the chief impetus for its actions comes from rising consumer demand for hormone-free dairy products. http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8219 + U.S. FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION REJECTS MONSANTO'S CLAIM ON MILK ADS The Federal Trade Commission has rejected Monsanto's claim that milk ads using the terms 'free of artificial growth hormones' or 'rBGH-free' are misleading. The decision was announced in the same week that Starbucks agreed to stop using Monsanto's GM supplement. The ruling means ads like this one from Borden did not make misleading claims about the safety of the growth hormone. 'We work exclusively with farmers that supply 100 percent of our milk from cows that haven't been treated with artificial hormones,' the Borden ad says. 'So, who do you trust when it comes to your family's milk?' Under FDA policy, food companies are allowed to claim on labels that they do not use rBST, as long they do not 'mislead consumers' to believe milk from cows without rBST is safer or of higher quality. http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8232 + CANADA: ORGANIC FARMERS SEEK SUPREME COURT HEARING Papers have been filed with the Supreme Court of Canada by the Saskatchewan organic farmers seeking leave to appeal the May 2007 Saskatchewan Appeal Court decision which denied them class action status in their GM liability suit against Monsanto Canada and Bayer CropScience. Applicants Larry Hoffman and Dale Beaudoin are seeking compensation for the loss of canola as a certified organic crop due to the contamination of canola seed by GM varieties belonging to Monsanto and Bayer. If the Supreme Court agrees to hear the appeal, and it is successful, the case will be certified as a Class Action under Saskatchewan's Class Actions Act, allowing the farmers to go to trial on these issues. http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8236 + AUSTRALIA: BAN ON GM CANOLA MUST STAY The Biological Farmers Australia group has lodged a submission requesting the continuation of the moratoria on GM crops. Their submission has gone to the SA, NSW & Victorian governments which are reviewing the moratoria prohibiting the planting of GM canola. A summary of the submission is at: http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8214 Greenpeace Australia Pacific's submission to the NSW government over the review of the moratorium draws on statistics from countries that have introduced GM crops, with disastrous consequences to their economies. The submission is at: http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8226 + GM SEEDS TO BE PROHIBITED IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA GM seed will be prohibited for cultivation, sale or import in Western Australia under new laws introduced this week by agriculture minister Kim Chance. 'WA's GM-free status is providing benefits to WA farmers in terms of price premiums for food grade non-GM canola and continued mark