GMO GOSSIP
UK SUPERMARKET CHAIN GOES ORGANIC
In mid-June, British supermarket chain
Iceland announced its plan to dramatically
increase the amount of organic food that it
offers. The organic fruits and vegetables
will be sold at the same price as its
non-organic products. Iceland was also the
first supermarket chain in the UK to refuse
to sell GM food.
As the UK government has under-invested
in organic farming, 80 percent of the
supermarket's organic vegetables will come
from abroad. Currently, only 2 percent of
UK farmland has full organic status.
Although many more farmers want to go
organic, government money to support their
conversion has run out. Friends of the
Earth and 50 other organizations are
supporting a bill calling for the
government to set a target for increasing
organic production in the UK.
Source: FoE England, Wales and Northern
Ireland.
LOBSTER FOR TWO
The US-based Meta Morphix company has
reportedly discovered how to block the
genes that limit the natural growth of
animals. Experiments have already yielded
giant chicken and sheep, and mega-lobsters
are apparently being bred as well. The
animals, which can grow to double the size
of their non genetically-manipulated
relatives, are likely to incur pain and
suffering according to animal rights
activists. The commercial attractiveness of
such high-yielding livestock and shellfish,
however, are obvious.
Source: Association for the Propagation of
Indigenous Genetic Resources.
BIOTECH IS GREAT?
Nervous about the spread of the global
backlash against genetically-engineered
foods to the United States, Monsanto,
Aventis, Novartis, Dow, BASF, Zeneca,
DuPont, and the Biotechnology Industry
Organization have launched a US$50 million
per year public relations campaign to
confuse and mislead the American public.
This 'Council for Biotechnology
Information' has paid for cheery "biotech
is great" national television ads, launched
a website (www.whybiotech.com), opened a
consumer information hotline, carried out
focus groups and polls, and enlisted
prominent scientists and public figures to
serve as messengers for pro-biotech
propaganda.
Source: BioDemocracy News #27, May
2000.
STINKY COTTON
Recent field reports indicate that
genetically engineered Bt cotton fields in
the US states of North Carolina and Georgia
are becoming infested with stink bugs that
are eating up the crops. Not only does the
Bt toxin not kill the bugs, but apparently
they love the mutant plants. Monsanto's
recommendation, posted on their web site,
is to spray the stink bugs with toxic
pesticides including methyl parathion, one
of the deadliest chemicals used in US
agriculture. So much for the notion that Bt
cotton will get US farmers off the toxic
treadmill.
The pests that the Bt cotton is designed
to kill -- cotton bollworms, pink
bollworms, and budworms -- were previously
considered harmless "secondary pests".
However, the overuse of toxic pesticides
(sold by the same companies now peddling
so-called "environmentally friendly" Bt
crops -- Monsanto, Novartis, and Aventis)
has killed off their natural predators and
parasites and turned them into major
pests.
Source: BioDemocracy News #27, May
2000.
FRANKENFISH SCANDAL
In February, the New Zealand King Salmon
company agreed to kill all of its
genetically engineered fish and suspend its
research after being accused of breeding
mutant chinook salmon in the so-called
"Frankenfish" experiment. The cancellation
of the experiment was announced while the
New Zealand government was preparing to
investigate the project's safety measures
to prevent live salmon or fertile eggs from
escaping into the wild.
The company had succeeded in introducing
an additional growth hormone gene into the
salmon and passing the trait down three
generations. The GM salmon grew three times
faster than ordinary salmon, and could grow
to weigh 500 pounds. Opponents of the
project had fought for its cancellation for
more than a year after leaked secret
documents showed that deformed heads and
other abnormalities had occurred during the
breeding programme. King Salmon admitted
that some of the first-generation fish had
developed lumps on their heads due to
apparent genetic deformities.
The company has retained frozen sperm
from the salmon so that the programme can
eventually be continued. Furthermore,
supersalmon projects continue to flourish
in other parts of the world, including
Canada, the United States and Chile, and US
gene scientists are experimenting with a
variety of marine creatures including
trout, carp, catfish and shrimp. As
domesticated fish regularly escape from
their pens and breed with wild stock, the
potential impacts on the gene pool are a
real cause for concern.
Information from Associated Press article
in the Las Vegas Sun, 26 February 2000.
JUMPING GENES
The UK's Guardian newspaper reported in
May that new research has shown that GM
genes are able to jump species barriers and
cause bacteria to mutate. A four-year study
by respected German zoologist Hans-Hinrich
Kaatz showed that the gene used to modify
oilseed rape had moved to bacteria living
inside the stomachs of honeybees.
This raises serious concern about
potential health risks to humans: bacteria
living inside the human digestive system,
for example, could hypothetically become
contaminated by genes used in GM
technology. This could impact the
bacteria's essential role in helping the
human body fight disease, aid digestion and
facilitate blood clotting.
Kaatz is keeping a low profile until his
research has been reviewed and published,
fearing a backlash from the scientific
community similar to the one faced by
scientist Dr Arpad Pustzai who claimed that
GM potatoes damaged the stomach lining of
rats last year. Pustzai lost his job as
biochemist at a Scottish research institute
and his work was heavily attacked.
Source: The Guardian.
NEEM PATENT REVOKED
In May, the International Federation of
Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM)
announced that the European Patent Office
(EPO) had revoked a controversial patent
granted to the United States and the WR
Grace company for a fungicide derived from
the seeds of the Neem tree. The legal
opposition to the patent was lodged five
years ago by the Research Foundation for
Science, Technology and Natural Resource
Policy directed by renowned Indian
scientist Vandana Shiva, IFOAM and Magda
Aelvoet, former Green Member of the
European Parliament and current Environment
Minister of Belgium.
According to IFOAM, the fungicidal
effect of the Neem seeds has been known and
used for centuries on a broad scale in
India. It would thus seem that the patent
application in question lacked two basic
requirements for the granting of a European
patent, namely novelty and inventive step.
Vandana Shiva commented, "We were certain
from the beginning that the US/Grace patent
did not satisfy the basic requirements for
a patent. How could the United States or WR
Grace say they invented something which has
been in public use for centuries?" The
victorious coalition further urged the
patent office to reject the many other Neem
patent applications still under
examination.
At the time that the Neem patent
challenge was filed, four patents on Neem
products had been granted by the EPO. Today
there are 40 Neem patent applications at
various stages in the EPO, and 90 have been
granted worldwide. These include claims for
insecticides, fungicides, contraceptives
and medical uses. The majority of Neem
"proprietors" are transnational
corporations.
Source: IFOAM Press Release, 10 May
2000.
NOVARTIS ON THE DEFENSIVE
Agro-biotech companies have launched
unprecedented multi-million dollar public
relations campaigns to counteract the
growing power of the anti-genetic
engineering movement across the globe. As
Edward Shonsey, CEO of Novartis told the
New York Times last year, anti-GE
campaigners have "crossed the boundaries of
reasonableness, and now it's up to us to
protect and defend biotechnology". To
protect and defend Frankenfoods, Novartis
has launched a new website
(www.webackbiotech.com) where, among other
things, you can send off for a bumper
sticker and auto license plate holder
inscribed with the slogan "We Back
Biotech".
Information from BioDemocracy News #27,
May 2000.
G-M SOYBEANS NEED MORE POISON
More bad news for Monsanto. Recent
studies carried out at the University of
Nebraska indicate that gene-altered Roundup
Ready soybeans produce 6-11 percent less
yield than conventional soybeans. The two
year study, reported by the Associated
Press on May 18, showed Roundup Ready
soybeans yield 6 percent less than their
closest relatives and 11 percent less than
high-yielding soybean varieties. In another
damaging revelation, Dr. Charles Benbrook,
a consultant for the Consumers Union,
published a summary of an upcoming report
revealing that GE Roundup Ready soybeans,
contrary to frequent claims by Monsanto,
actually use 2-5 times more pounds of
herbicide per acre than conventional
soybeans sprayed with other "modern
low-dose pesticides".
Source: BioDemocracy News #27, May
2000.
CANADIAN CANOLA CONTAMINATION
In June, a Canadian farmer defended
himself in Canada's Federal Court against
Monsanto. The global agribusiness company
accused Percy Schmeiser of using Monsanto's
patented genetically modified "Roundup
Ready" canola seeds illegally. Schmeiser
claims that he has never purchased the
herbicide-resistant canola seeds, and that
his own crops were contaminated by modified
canola crops in the area. He is taking the
case one step further as well by
questioning whether Monsanto Canada had the
right to patent the canola seeds in the
first place. "I'd rather be fishing with my
grandkids," Schmeiser told a Canadian
newspaper. "But all of a sudden we have a
multinational trying to exercise more
control over farmers than governments would
even dare to think of." According to
Monsanto, the company is trying to protect
the investments of the 20,000 Canadian
farmers who pay US$10 per acre to grow the
GM canola. The farmers have an agreement
with Monsanto that the seeds cannot be
saved to use for a second generation of
crops.
Source: 'Feisty Canada farmer battles
Monsanto over GM seeds', Reuters, 2 June
2000.
ORGANIC MORE DANGEROUS THAN GM?
There's a new twist in the worldwide
debate on the safety of GM foods. Cargill,
a manufacturer of GM seeds, is claiming
that organically grown foods could in some
cases be more dangerous than GM foods. At a
speech given at a recent conference on
globalization, Cargill Chairman Ernest
Micek said that since organic crops can
suffer higher levels of rodent and pest
damage than GM crops, they were more
vulnerable to carcinogen-producing fungi.
Micek added that he was pleased with the
recent decision on the part of the US Food
and Drug Administration to refrain from
requiring safety testing or labelling of GM
foods. "Labels already carry more
information than consumers can digest," he
said.
Source: Tomorrow Essentials,
TERMINATOR TEMPORARILY TERMINATED
In October last year, following
widespread controversy and intense popular
opposition, Monsanto CEO Robert B. Shapiro
announced that his company was abandoning
plans to commercialize its so-called
"Terminator Technology", which renders crop
seed sterile at harvest time. However, in
an open letter posted on Monsanto's
website, Shapiro affirmed his company's
intention to pursue closely-related
research targets that could enable Monsanto
to switch on or off other genetic traits
vital to a crop's productivity.
Terminator has been widely condemned as
a threat to biodiversity as well as food
security because over 1.4 billion people,
primarily poor farmers in the South, depend
on farm-saved seeds. One of Monsanto's
biggest critics - and the organization that
came up with the name "Terminator
Technology"- is the Canadian group Rural
Advancement Foundation International
(RAFI). RAFI commented: "Congratulations
should go to the civil society
organizations, farmers, scientists and
governments all over the world who have
waged highly effective anti-Terminator
campaigns during the last 18 months. The
company finally realized that Terminator
will never win public acceptance. It has
become synonymous with corporate
greed."
Yet, as RAFI warns, all of the Gene
Giants are pursing research and development
on Terminator and "Traitor" technology.
Companies, including Monsanto, are working
to control important genetic traits of
plants with external chemical catalysts.
Once perfected, a seed's genetic traits
could be turned on or off with the
application of a chemical, such as a
herbicide or fertilizer.
Source: Natural Life Magazine #70,
RAFI.
WE FEEL HURT
"There are two things that most of us
feel. We feel hurt and we feel angry ... We
had real leadership ... We had ... faith in
this science when others were dubious, and
it all seemed to be working. So we painted
a big bull's-eye on our chest, and we went
over the top of the hill."
CEO of Monsanto, Robert Shapiro, quoted in
The New Yorker magazine, 10 April 2000.
GENETIC SCIENCE BACKFIRES
The Human Genome Project and other
"advances" in genetic science mean that
chemical companies face a bleak future of
lawsuits over allergies and toxicity, warns
FoE England, Wales and Northern Ireland. A
new FoE report shows that the improved
understanding in how the body works
provided by genetic science makes it easier
to measure the effects of chemicals upon
individuals. It appears that individuals
vary in their ability to break down
chemicals and in how much they respond to
the toxicity of certain chemicals.
Eventually it will be possible to screen
people easily and cheaply to discover if
they are in a susceptible group to
particular chemicals.
This new knowledge will result in
industries being hit by legal actions from
people who have been exposed to particular
chemicals in their workplace, in the
products they use, from factory pollution
and from pesticides in their food.
The full report is available from FoE
EWNI
