The buzz on Minnesota bee: A real honey for survival
By David Hawley
Special to the Pioneer Press
Article Last Updated: 08/25/2008 11:31:34 PM CDT


Winnie Johnson talked about the queen bee, center, and the queen's court in the Horticulture building at the State Fair on August 21, 2008. (Jean Pieri, Pioneer Press)Minnesota has a state flower (pink-and-white showy lady's slipper), a state bird (common loon), a state tree (Norway pine) and a lot of other state things — even a state muffin (blueberry).

But does Minnesota have a state honeybee?

Well, not officially — but sort of.

A number of years ago, entomologists at the University of Minnesota developed the Minnesota hygienic bee, a variant of the common domesticated honeybee that somehow is better at sensing sickness in the hive and cleaning diseased broods out of the colony.

"You can identify the Minnesota hygienic bee by the little gold 'M' on its wing — naw, just kidding," said Gary Reuter, a university researcher who is making the rounds of bee activities at the Minnesota State Fair.

These include appearances on the U of M Stage and at the Eco Experience Progress Center, plus appearances with other bee experts at the Fair's premier site for appreciating the busy, buzzing insects: the Bee and Honey Exhibition area in the Agriculture Horticulture Building.

It's here that members of the state's two major organizations for beekeepers — the Minnesota Honey Producers Association and the Minnesota Hobby Beekeepers Association — make some fairgoers cringe by stepping into a big cage housing a honeybee colony. They also demonstrate elements of the bee business, like harvesting techniques, beeswax rendering and candle making. And they sell a wide variety of honey and a rare honey-flavored


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Advertisement

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ice cream that can be found only at the Fair.
Winnie Johnson, a teacher and beekeeping hobbyist from rural Anoka County, has been superintendent of the Fair's bee and honey area for some two decades. She says visitors to the exhibit remain fascinated by honeybees — children often know more about them than their parents, she adds — and many are aware of, and even alarmed by, their decline in numbers.

"Minnesota hasn't seen as much of a decline as beekeepers in other parts of the country," Johnson said. "In Minnesota, we have 200 to 300 commercial beekeepers who make their living primarily from the production of honey, though some of them also move their bees around the country for pollination. They're the ones who have seen the biggest decline in numbers in recent years.

"The rest of us are hobby beekeepers — about 700 to 800 — and the hobby operations aren't as badly affected," she added. "Many have lost a hive or two, but nothing to the extent of what some commercial producers have lost."

Alarming stories about declines in domesticated bee populations have been reported periodically for more than a decade. Five years ago, for example, the National Geographic Society published a report estimating that the world's domesticated honeybee population had declined by about 50 percent in the past 50 years.

Domesticated honeybees help put the bloom on about 100 important crops, including about one-third of the fruit, vegetables and nuts found in the supermarket. Some see the decline in honeybee populations as the agricultural equivalent of the canary in the coal mine — a warning of ecological catastrophe.

The problem, however, is not acute in Minnesota, Reuter said.

"It's a serious problem, all right, and it seems to be a spring phenomenon," Reuter said. "A die-off happens, then bee keepers are able to get populations back up — if not to the same level, then pretty close."

The reason?

"Right now we're still searching," Reuter said. "It could be a combination of things or maybe something out there that we haven't looked at yet or haven't been able to find. Now is a great time to pick your favorite reason."

And there's no shortage of theories. One is the widespread use of monoculture - the planting of single crops that deny bees a sustained food source while also requiring growers to import bees for pollination. The almond crop in California is frequently cited as an example.

Another is the popularity of plantings that provide no food source at all to honeybees. To a bee, for example, your beautifully green, artificially fertilized lawn is a desert. Pesticide use is also cited as a reason for bee decline.

Another factor may be a tiny Asian mite called the "varroa destructor" that sucks the juices out of honeybees and can destroy whole colonies. "In this area, it's our biggest killer of bees," Reuter said.

Johnson said many visitors to the bee exhibition in the horticulture building learn about bee-friendly environments and often leave with yet another reason to reserve space for wildflowers, besides the aesthetic one. "We sometimes forget that a weed is just a plant we don't like," she said. "They can be wildflowers that serve a purpose."

And she also added this parting advice:

"If you want to buy buckwheat honey, show up early," she said. "We always sell out of it first."

http://www.twincities.com/ci_10302171

Green Space: Return of the honeybee is good news
Friday, August 22, 2008
BY Jim Hillibish
REPOSITORY STAFF WRITER
HARD WORKER Honeybees, on decline for many years, seem to be on a comeback this season. The female workers are out pollinating flowers including this one of many in Jim's daisy patch.
REPOSITORY JIM HILLIBISH

http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?ID=4270...;subCategoryID=


After years of decline, the honeybees are back this season to the delight of our gardeners.

These guys still face many challenges including a parasitic disease and insecticide spraying. They've fought them off and now are happily pollinating our plants.

Bees for many years were so common, they were taken for granted. Then about 10 years ago, their numbers began a decline due to natural and man-made problems.

A few years ago, we'd see only a handful of them in our gardens. It got so bad, farmers had to rent bee colonies to pollinate their fields.

Now there are more, perhaps twice as many as last year. They're joining their cousins, the bumblebees, in improving our harvests.

Bumblebees are much larger than honeybees and characterized by yellow and black striped bodies. They are much less sophisticated than honeybees and live in small nests (50 bees or fewer) in ground holes. Their honey is watery and rarely consumed by humans.

Honeybees live in hive colonies averaging 50,000 members. They operate on a strict caste system of the queen, a few hundred male drones that reproduce with her and thousands of female worker bees who maintain the hive and travel daily to find pollen.

All bees collect pollen on their bodies. When they go to the next flower, they leave some, and this pollinates the plant. Many plants will not produce fruit without this simple act.

Without bees, we must rely on less efficient pollination by the wind.

The earliest known bee is 30 million years old, making it one of the oldest surviving insects. It survives mainly due to its organized system and the lifecycle of the queen bees. They can lay 1,500 eggs per day in the hive for five years.

We owe bees a lot. They pollinate more than 130 crops ranging from vegetables to fruits and nuts. The Texas A&M University's Department of Entomology estimates that bees add $14 billion a year to U.S. harvests by improving yields and quality.

Bees get a bad reputation for stinging, their only defense mechanism. Honeybees have barbed stingers. They only sting once and then die. Bumblebees have smooth stingers and can sting many times.

Bees only sting when they feel threatened. If left alone, they co-exist well with humans. The problem comes when a human or a dog suddenly encounters a nest and disturbs it. The bees then send out a chemical that warns the hive and prepares it for battle.

Africanized bees are found as close as Oklahoma but mainly are in southern border states. They require tropical conditions and do not survive hard winters. They are feared for their aggressiveness and have killed a number of humans and livestock. They were bred in South America for their increased honey production.

Help for the honeybee
Saturday, August 23, 2008
A comparatively small grant to coordinate national research on the massive die-off of honeybees could have major beneficial effects for people, as well. The mysterious decline in bee populations threatens a wide range of agricultural products, which could diminish food supplies for the nation and the world.

The $4 million federal grant to the University of Georgia will provide for the coordination of studies under way at numerous colleges nationwide to eliminate redundancies in research.

Among the possible culprits are viruses, parasites and pesticides. Potential solutions include breeding bees that are genetically resistant to the problem and, looking beyond the honeybee, to other methods of pollination.

Honeybees are the primary, and most effective pollinator of a variety of crops. Cornell University estimates their commercial value to American agriculture to be as high as $20 billion a year.

Last year, a quarter of the nation's beekeepers reported massive losses in their colonies. The balance of nature has been upset, and with it the prospects of crop failure and higher food prices, at the least. A coordinated research response recognizes the importance of finding the cause and a remedy, as quickly as possible.

http://www.charleston.net/news/2008/aug/23...bee51796/?print

People may scoff at Prince Charles for the antics he played while married to Diana but he is an avid avocate for the environment. His farm, Highgrove, was fully organic in the mid 1980s far before it became chic.

I blame cotton for the demise of the honeybee in my area. Several years ago the USDA started funding a program to get farmers extra money to eradicate the cotton boll weavil and they are spending it on arial spraying. I hardly ever see a honey bee around my farm, I used to have them everywhere.

That is sad.

Probably no way to stop it either -- unless a direct link could be found and the environmental mafia you decry reverses the trend...

Absolutely.

I saw a PBS special or something on that. He is quite forward thinking.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_14908.cfm

California Passes Strong Anti-GE Law
CALIFORNIA'S FIRST PROTECTIONS FOR FARMERS FROM THREATS OF GENETIC ENGINEERING BECOME LAW
By GE Policy Project
9/29/08
Straight to the Source


Monsanto's intimidation tactics no longer legal Sept. 29, 2008 - A landmark piece of legislation protecting California's farmers from liability was signed by Governor Schwarzenegger on Sept. 27, 2008. The bill, AB 541 (Huffman, D-Marin/Sonoma), was sponsored by a coalition of agriculture organizations and food businesses, and it is the first bill passed by the California legislature that brings much-needed regulation to genetically engineered (GE) crops.

AB 541 indemnifies California farmers who have not been able to prevent the inevitable - the drift of GE pollen or seed onto their land and the subsequent contamination of non-GE crops. Currently, farmers with crops that become contaminated by patented seeds or pollen have been the target of harassing lawsuits brought by biotech patent holders, most notoriously Monsanto. Further, if their contaminated crops cause harm to other farmers, the environment or consumers, they have not been protected from that liability. AB 541 provides protections for farmers from such liability. The bill also establishes a mandatory crop sampling protocol to level the playing field when biotech companies investigate alleged patent or contract violations.

AB 541 was sponsored by a thirteen-member coalition including Community Alliance with Family Farmers, Earthbound Farm, California Certified Organic Farmers, and United Natural Foods Inc. It also had the support of the California Farm Bureau Federation which has traditionally opposed any restrictions or regulations for GE crops.

"AB 541 provides much needed protection for farmers who typically lack the resources to fight lawsuits brought by biotech conglomerates," stated Renata Brillinger, director of the Genetic Engineering Policy Project, the coalition sponsoring AB 541. "This is a good first step towards establishing that Monsanto - not farmers - is legally responsible for the economic, environmental and health harms caused by their patented and uncontrollable products."

We must learn to Organize our selves better if we are to survive and thrive...

Print this page

From The TimesOctober 31, 2008

The plight of the honey bee
All is not sweet in the world of the bee, but will we really be out of English honey by Christmas?


Hattie Ellis
Next Wednesday, on November 5, a swarm of beekeepers is marching on the Houses of Parliament, puffing their apiarist smokers and calling for MPs to save the British honeybee. Their 130,000-name petition is nothing short of a cry for survival in the face of serious bee-deaths and dire native honey shortages. The situation is so bad that there will be no English honey by Christmas, according to the Honey Association, which represents Rowse and Gales.

The harvest has been dreadful. While some beekeepers had a decent crop, the majority suffered badly. Bees die every winter but the losses this year were up 25 per cent or more, rather than a more standard 5-10 per cent. Worst of all, the wet spring and summer meant that the bees stayed in their hives. No flights, no nectar, no honey. “Last year I did two farmers' markets a month, and craft fairs and county shows. I did a Christmas fair at Ripon Cathedral with huge amounts of honey,” says Rusty Wise, who has been keeping bees for 20 years. “This year I've had 26 jars. The greatest problem is the weather, but this goes farther.”

What is happening to the bees? This is the question asked by the march's organisers, the British Beekeepers' Association (BBKA). Its petition will plead with MPs to find £8 million for research. Beekeepers need help. British honey is still a small-scale industry, with just a tenth of it sold in supermarkets. Much is still found in village stores and farmers' markets.

This is more than a question of what we spread on our toast. Bees are worth an estimated £165 million to agriculture through pollinating the plants that provide a third of the food we eat, including such common crops as orchard fruits, carrots, broccoli and onions.

Bee deaths are not just a British problem. Worldwide, apiarists have been distressed by their dying hives, not least in the US, where a syndrome dubbed “colony collapse disorder” has meant bee losses of 30-90 per cent.

Nobody is sure, yet, exactly what is behind the bee deaths, but one factor is common to all beekeepers and widely accepted to be at the heart of the problem: the worldwide plague of the varroa mite. This reddish crab-like parasite, just visible to the naked eye, sucks the bees' blood, damaging the developing pupae so that they emerge deformed from the comb. Most damaging of all, they spread viruses. Alison Benjamin and Brian McCallum in their book on the crisis, A World Without Bees, make an analogy between the varroa and the dirty syringes that spread HIV.

The crucial connection between varroa and viruses was discovered by a British bee scientist called Brenda Ball. Two years ago, the painstaking work done by Ball and three other government-funded colleagues at the Rothamsted Research institute in Hertfordshire was broken up, and Ball is no longer working in the field. Yet the Government has acknowledged that there is a problem. Last year the minister who was then responsible for animal health, Lord Rooker, told Parliament that if nothing is done, the British honeybee population could be wiped out in ten years.

And as research funding is squeezed, the varroa mite is developing resistance to the current treatments, starting in Devon and now moving around the country. As diseases and infestations weaken the colonies, more and more die over winter.

“We need the money now,” says Stuart Bailey, the chairman of Rowse. “I compare this to foot-and-mouth and blue tongue. This is an environmental catastrophe going on around us.” The company is giving £100,000 to fund bee research at Sussex University and has put “Save the Honeybee” on the labels of its dwindling stocks of honey.

Rusty Wise says that answers are urgently needed. “It's vital,” she says. “Because bees are little invisible things that buzz about and occasionally sting, they don't reach the public psyche. We're standing here watching our bees die off.”

Hattie Ellis is the author of Sweetness & Light: The Mysterious History of the Honeybee (Sceptre, £8.99)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_...icle5049508.ece

My wife's store sold $846000. worth of groceries last week. What if the trucks stop runing?
No one in the cities would have food.

Yes, and...

Beekeepers fear sting of imported Australian hives
By GARANCE BURKE (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
January 17, 2009 9:44 PM EST

ATWATER, Calif. - Beekeepers who are battling a mysterious ailment that led to the disappearance of millions of honeybees now fear the sting of imported Australian bees that they worry could outcompete their hives and might carry a deadly parasite unseen in the United States.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has allowed shipments of Australian bees to resume despite concerns by some of its own scientists.

Australia had been airfreighting the insects across the Pacific for four years to replace hives devastated by the perplexing colony collapse disorder. But six weeks ago the Australian government abruptly stopped the shipments, saying it could no longer be certain the country was free of a smaller, aggressive bee that has infested areas near the Great Barrier Reef, U.S. officials said.

Early this month, the USDA decided to permit the bee shipments to resume with some precautions, and the first planeloads arrived in San Francisco last Monday.

Beekeeper Ken Haff of Mandan, N.D., says he fears the foreign hives could kill off his apiary.

"We've got enough problems with our own bee diseases that we don't know how to treat, and they open the border to a whole new species that could carry God knows what," said Haff, a vice president of the American Honey Producers Association. "That's a total slap in the face for us."

Shad Sullivan, a bee wholesaler in California's Central Valley, said that in the four years he has imported bees from Australia, he has found that the hearty imports outlive domestic bees that have been weakened by pesticides, pests and diseases.

"If the bees were truly carrying something that bad, I would have been the first to get it," Sullivan said as a thick cloud of the buzzing insects flew overhead. "I just haven't seen those kinds of devastation."

Domestic honeybees feed on most flowering plants, and are vital pollinators for many food crops.

However, domestic bee stocks have been waning since 2004, when scientists first got reports of the puzzling illness that has claimed up to 90 percent of commercial hives and has been labeled colony collapse disorder.

That's also the year the USDA allowed imports of Australian hives, and scientists have been investigating whether Australia was a source of a virus tied to the bee die-off.

Entomologists also fear that the aggressive bee species found near Australia's Great Barrier Reef could carry a deadly mite, said Jeff Pettis, the USDA's top bee scientist.

"This could be a threat worldwide, because if those bees are moving around the chances are this mite would move with it," Pettis said. "We just don't need another species causing problems."

The Australian government has adopted emergency controls to quarantine and destroy the aggressive bees and has never detected that mite, according to materials provided by Chelsey Martin, counselor for public affairs at the Australian Embassy in Washington.

U.S. agriculture officials say they also are taking precautions.

Agricultural officials started sampling Australian bees last week after they were released in the Central Valley.

"Bees from Australia make great sense," said Wayne Wehling, a senior entomologist in the USDA's permit unit. "But we certainly don't want to bring any economic impacts onto our honeybees that we don't already have or introduce any new pests or disease."

Government officials said they do not know how many Australian bees have been imported, but hive importer Sullivan estimates that he has sold 110,000 hives since 2005.

On Wednesday, a USDA inspector in a protective suit collected samples of bees at Sullivan's operation.

"Hopefully this will ease the minds of people who have their own hives here," said inspector John Iniguez. "We're trusting Australia that they're clean. Now we just want to confirm that."

Here's an essential food shopping guide for parents to review,

http://www.seedsofdeception.com/DocumentFiles/144.pdf
NON-GMO SHOPPING GUIDE
How to avoid foods made with genetically modified organisms (GMOs)




from http://www.responsibletechnology.org/GMFree/Home/index.cfm

What are the biotech food advocates feeding their own children? Organic? Or processed foods which in the US mean GMO (although not in Europe with the same companies)?

Writer Kerry Trueman @ Huffington Post says that when food activist Robyn O'Brien's book, 'The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food is Making us Sick And What We Can Do About It,' is publiished by Random House in May 2009, O'Brien "will soon be to Monsanto what Erin Brockovich was to PG & G.

Have so-called "Food Disparagement Laws' played a role in inhibiting in-depth coverage of GMO issues by establishment media?



Will health questions about America's children trump those legal concerns? Has media reached a tipping point? Or is it up to the public to engage without any media attention, is it up to the public to enact the Precautionary Principle without new policy being adopted - by the simple power of the purse?

http://www.truthout.org/article/dennis-kucinich-wake-america
Dennis Kucinich: "Wake up America"
Tuesday 26 August 2008

http://fanaticcook.blogspot.com/2009/02/de...abeling-of.html

# Drug Made In Genetically Engineered Goats Approved http://tinyurl.com/bht24l Do GE animals goto food supply when their use as factory ends? about 3 hours ago



washingtonpost.com
Links to this article
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 7, 2009; Page A05

Federal officials yesterday approved for the first time the sale of a drug made in animals genetically modified to secrete the compound in their milk.

The drug comes from goats whose DNA was altered to produce a drug needed by patients with a rare blood disorder.

Using animals as factories to produce medications needed by humans has been a long-standing goal, and federal officials emphasized that the technique not only has vast potential for patients, but also that it can be carried out without harm to the animals.

The drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration yesterday, called ATryn, is used to untangle blood clots in patients who lack sufficient quantities of a protein called antithrombin. Patients with hereditary antithrombin deficiency are at high risk during surgeries and childbirth, and the drug would be given in hospital settings. About one in 5,000 Americans has the hereditary disorder.

"This is very exciting, it is novel and has great potential for where we can go with this new technology," said Bernadette Dunham, who directs the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine.

The drug is made by GTC Biotherapeutics of Framingham, Mass. Company scientists combined human DNA for antithrombin with goat DNA in such a way that goat's milk glands would express human antithrombin.

"The mammary gland is designed by nature to make proteins for offspring in a substance that we call milk, so all we have done is provide the extra bit of coding so it makes this particular protein," said Thomas E. Newberry, a vice president at GTC Biotherapeutics.

Researchers are seeking to produce drugs in animals because they can be manufactured faster and more cheaply than by synthetic processes, Newberry said. Antithrombin, for example, can be extracted from plasma in donated blood. But if all the blood donations in the country were used to extract antithrombin, scientists would have about 220 pounds of the protein a year. The same amount can be by made with 150 goats, and the company already has 200 animals producing the protein, Newberry said.
ad_icon

Other animals could have been used, he said, but the company chose goats because it takes only 18 months to raise a goat altered to produce milk laced with antithrombin. Rabbits would breed faster and cows would produce more milk, but Newberry said goats offered the largest supply at the quickest pace. The company has about 1,500 goats, he said, and is exploring the manufacture of other therapeutic products.

FDA officials said that although their primary responsibility was to make sure the antithrombin produced in goats was safe, the agency had also taken care to assure itself that they were not harmed.

"Even though the Animal Welfare Act is under [Department of Agriculture] jurisdiction, we look at target animal safety," Dunham said. "In this case, we had an opportunity to go back seven generations to make sure throughout the review that they were healthy."

Basil Golding, who directs the Division of Hematology at the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said that manufacturing drugs using animals is safer than trying to get antithrombin DNA directly into humans with antithrombin deficiency.

"In the goat, it is expressed in the mammary gland, so it is not affecting the whole goat. So there is very little chance of doing harm," he said. "If you were delivering it to a human, it would be expressed in many cells of the body. If there was a safety issue, there would be more chance of doing harm."

Martin Stephens, vice president for animal research issues at the Humane Society of the United States, acknowledged that the manufacturing technique had not harmed the goats, but said he was still troubled by the development: "It does represent a dark cloud on the horizon in that we would rather not see more uses of animals drummed up," he said.

Bees and Butterflies are being lost and both spread Pollen.

Have you seen this book?



But bees and butterflies aren't all that is being harmed. What are we going to do about it? Please read Martha Herbert's website, including recommended links. "Have we reached a tipping point?", she asks, when the public demands establishment and enforcement of public health standards based on the Precautionary Principle to protect our children.

Link to presentation from http://www.psr.org/site/PageServer?pagename=oregon_safefood

The role of dietary changes in autism recovery, corroborated by many thousands of parents, and described here by one,



http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/02/the-dan...to-parents.html

THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS!



from http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...ess=102x3750780

http://www.counterpunch.org/kenfield03222008.html
March 22/23, 2008
Resisting Agrofuels and Biotech
Monsanto's Raid on Brazil
By ISABELLA KENFIELD


On March 7th-International Women's Day-dozens of Brazilian women occupied a research site of the U.S.-based agricultural biotechnology giant Monsanto in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, destroying the greenhouse and experimental plots of genetically-modified (GM) corn. Participants, members of the international farmers' organization La Vía Campesina, stated in a note that the act was to protest the Brazilian government's decision in February to legalize Monsanto's GM Guardian® corn, which came just weeks after the French government prohibited the corn due to environment and human health risks.

La Vía Campesina also held passive protests in several Brazilian cities against the Swiss corporation Syngenta Seeds for its ongoing impunity for the murder of Valmir Mota de Oliveira. Mota was a member of the Movement of the Landless Rural Workers (MST)-the largest of the seven Brazilian movements in La Vía Campesina-who was assassinated last October in the state of Paraná during these organizations' third occupation of the company's illegal experimental site for GM soybeans. While Brazil already has a high number of land activist murders, Mota's was significant because it was the first to occur during an occupation organized by La Vía Campesina, and the first assassination in Brazil to occur on the property of a multinational agribusiness.

The expansion of agricultural biotechnology into Brazil is increasing agrarian conflicts and exacerbating historic tensions over land. The movements in La Vía Campesina reject seed patenting, claiming the practice traps poor farmers in a cycle of debt to corporations that own the seed patents, and undermines small farmers' autonomy to save and share seeds. They claim that GM technology threatens biodiversity and native seed varieties, and violates the rights of consumers and small farmers by contaminating conventional and organic crops. In the United States, where more than half of the world's GM crop acreage is grown, widespread contamination of conventional and organic crops by GM varieties is threatening the organic foods industry, which is finding it increasingly difficult to certify products. According to Greenpeace International, there were 39 cases of crop contamination in 23 countries in 2007, and more than 200 in 57 countries over the last 10 years.1

Resistance to agricultural biotechnology threatens a multi-billion dollar industry. In the midst of global economic downturn, Monsanto and Syngenta are realizing unprecedented profits-thanks largely to agrofuels. In January, results showed Monsanto's stock appreciated 137% in 2007,2 hitting a record on the New York Stock Exchange.3 In February, Syngenta-the world's largest producer of herbicides and pesticides with control of one-third of the global commercial seed market-announced its 2007 sales amounted to $9.2 billion. Latin America was Syngenta's "star performer" in 2007, where sales of herbicides, pesticides, and seeds increased by 37% respectively, and sales in Brazil increased for all product lines.4

Brazil holds particular strategic importance to the industry's expansion. An agricultural superpower, Brazil is the world's largest exporter of ethanol, the largest producer of sugarcane ethanol, the second largest producer of soybeans (the country produced almost a fourth of the world's soy crop in 2007), and the third largest producer of corn. As global demand-and financial speculation-for Brazil's agricultural commodities ramps up due to agrofuels and increasing food scarcity, Monsanto and Syngenta are determined to expand sales and market control of GM seeds, herbicides, and pesticides in Brazil-at whatever cost.

Monsanto's Illegal Expansion into Brazil

Hours before the decision by the Brazilian government to legalize commercialization of Guardian® corn on February 12th, Brett Begemann, executive vice president of global commercial business for Monsanto, told investors at Goldman Sachs in New York that the company's 40% share of the Brazilian corn seed market "serves as a foundation" for the introduction of the corn , "once approved by Brazilian officials." Begemann also highlighted that Monsanto's GM Roundup Ready® soybean seeds account for 55% of total soybean acres planted in Brazil this season, and that the company expects 90% penetration of the country's soybean seed market by the end of the decade.5

Begemann did not, however, mention that the expansion of Monsanto's GM crops into Brazil has been accomplished illegally. In January, the Brazilian minister of science and technology acknowledged that GM soybeans and cotton were legalized only after they had already been smuggled into and planted in the country by large farmers.6 Various civil society organizations and social movements claim that Monsanto participated in this process illegally through fait accompli.7 Monsanto began legally selling and collecting royalties for Roundup Ready® soybean seeds in the country in the 2003-04 growing season. In May 2003, about 800 people occupied the company's research station in Ponta Grossa, Paraná, destroying several hectares of GM crops and the laboratory. The MST occupied the site for over a year.

Roundup Ready® soybean seeds are genetically engineered to resist glyphosate, the world's most commonly used herbicide and the primary ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup®. Glyphosate has been shown to cause reproductive problems in rats, including spontaneous abortions, and liver damage.8 Begemann boasted that Roundup® could deliver up to $1.4 billion in profits for Monsanto in 2008, due to higher acreage planted to Roundup Ready® soybeans.

Not surprisingly, Begemann did not mention that Brazilian federal deputy Abelardo Lupion is currently under federal investigation as to why Monsanto sold him a farm for two-thirds of its market value. In May 2006, journalist Solano Nascimento published an article in the Correio Braziliense with evidence that in return for subsidized purchase of the farm from Monsanto, Lupion used his political clout to legalize glyphosate in 2003.9

After glyphosate was legalized in Brazil, Monsanto's global sales of Roundup increased by more than 30%. In early 2004, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that despite a loss of $97 million for Monsanto that quarter, Brazil was "blossoming" and "becoming a bright spot" for the corporation, due to "improved overall performance" in the country. A report from the non-governmental organization Assistance and Service for Projects in Alternative Agriculture (AS-PTA), based in Rio de Janeiro , reports that Monsanto presently controls 80% of the Brazilian market for glyphosate, and has elevated the price by 50% since its commercialization five years ago.10

A recent study on the environmental impacts of GM soybeans in Brazil by researchers at the Brazilian Department of Agriculture Research Service, found 13 weed species that have developed resistance to glyphosate, representing what could become a "large problem." Glyphosate is creating weeds that are harder to control, and require increased amounts of chemicals. Instead of reducing the need for agrochemicals-as proponents once claimed-GM technology has increased their use. The secretary for agriculture in Paraná reports that between 2003 and 2006, glyphosate residue in soybeans harvested in the state increased by 97%. The Brazilian Institute for the Environment (IBAMA) reports that in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, for every kilogram of non-glyphosate herbicide reduced during the period of expansion of Roundup Ready®, the use of glyphosate increased by 7.5 kilograms. To accommodate the increase of glyphosate residue in Brazilians' diet, Monsanto has solicited the Brazilian government to revise and increase the acceptable daily amount of the chemical.11

Because Guardian® poses similar risks to human health and the environment, and will increase the use of glyphosate, several Brazilian federal agencies, civil society organizations, and social movements were strongly opposed to its legalization. The National Agency for Sanitary Vigilance claimed that the information presented by Monsanto did not exhibit that the corn is safe for human consumption, citing the inexistence of studies on toxicity and the insufficiency of tests on allergens. IBAMA advised against the commercialization of GM corn due to the absence of environmental studies and risk of contamination of native seed varieties and organic crops. In response to the Brazilian government's decision, La Vía Campesina declared, "The political decision by the Lula government to place agribusiness over the health of the population, the environment, and agro-biodiversity is a huge irresponsibility that will mark his mandate."

Increasing Violence and Impunity

The decision to commercialize Guardian® came just four months after Vía Campesina and MST member Valmir Mota de Oliveira was assassinated by an armed militia last October, during the movements' third occupation of Syngenta Seeds' experimental research station in the state of Paraná. The movements first occupied Syngenta's site in March 2006, after they discovered that the company was illegally growing and testing GM soybeans within the federal boundary zone of the Iguaçu National Park (IBAMA fined Syngenta about half a million dollars for the crime, which Syngenta continues to refuse to pay, even though a federal judge upheld the fine in December).

La Vía Campesina's occupation of Syngenta gained international support, and in November 2006, Roberto Requião, governor of Paraná, signed a decree of intent to expropriate the site from the multinational in the public interest, to convert it into a research and educational center for agroecology. Requião's decree-unprecedented in Latin America-was a huge political win for the social movements and a blow to agribusiness.

Yet Syngenta, thanks partly to its alliance with Deputy Lupion12 and a good lawyer (the same lawyer as for Monsanto), was able to overturn Requião's decree in the state and federal courts. In July 2007, after the MST was forced to leave the site for the second time, Syngenta hired the NF Security company to guard the site from further occupations. While Syngenta claims that its contract with NF Security stipulates that the guards could not be armed, months before the killing, lawyers for the social movements had registered complaints with the local authorities that the guards were harassing residents on a nearby MST settlement with gunfire.

The MST reoccupied the site at dawn on October 21st when Mota was assassinated with two shots in the chest at point blank range. There is little doubt that Mota's killing was planned: in the months preceding his murder, he had received several death threats due to his cooperation with federal and state police investigations into NF Security for illegal munitions trafficking and formation of armed militias. Before his death, Mota's lawyers had requested protection from the national witness protection program.

Another client of NF Security was Alessandro Meneghel, president of the Rural Society of Western Paraná (SRO), an organization representing the interests of large landowners in the region. Requião's decree to expropriate Syngenta's site had infuriated Meneghel, who declared, "For every invasion of land that occurs in the region, there will be a similar action by the [SRO]. We are not going to permit the rural producers to be insulted by ideological political movements of any kind."13 At the time of Mota's murder, Meneghel- who admits that some members of the SRO are clients of Syngenta's- was hiring NF Security guards to undertake illegal and violent evictions of land occupations in the region.

While Meneghel and the owner of NF Security have been charged for Mota's murder, Syngenta remains unscathed. Yet by the time Mota was murdered, the occupation of Syngenta's site had cost the corporation tens of millions of dollars, and had all but halted the company's operations in its most strategic market. Mota's murder highlights the increase of violent conflicts as Brazil's organized rural social movements come up against multinational agribusinesses allied with the landowning elite and protected by a state-sanctioned veil of impunity-a deadly combination.

Full Steam Ahead with the Agrofuels Boom

With Brazil's agrofuels boom just revving up, the Brazilian government shows no sign of holding Syngenta or Monsanto accountable, or reigning in agribusiness. With the passing of the 2007 U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act in December-in which the U.S. government mandated a fivefold increase of agrofuels consumption by 2020-the Brazilian government is poised to further industrialize Brazilian agriculture in order to meet U.S. demand for ethanol. The United States is already Brazil's largest market for ethanol exports. In 2005, the United States imported 31 million gallons of ethanol from Brazil; in 2006, this number jumped to 434 million gallons.14 Monsanto's push to legalize GM corn in Brazil was no doubt in anticipation of the agrofuels boom; because the infrastructure for ethanol in the United States is designed for corn, agribusiness is banking on ramping up Brazil's corn exports to the United States. Syngenta and Pioneer are currently awaiting legalization of their GM corn varieties in Brazil.

The occupation of Syngenta continues, despite a ruling in December in favor of Syngenta by a federal judge. La Vía Campesina vows to continue its struggle against the biotech giants: "We will resist! Our struggle is in defense of peoples' life and environment."

Isabella Kenfield is an associate of the Center for the Study of the America (CENSA) who has just returned from living in Brazil. She writes on agribusiness, agrarian conflicts and social movements.

End Notes[/size]

[size="-1"]1. Gillam, Carey, " U.S. Organic Food Industry Fears GMO Contamination," Reuters, March 12, 2008
2. GRAIN, "Corporate Power: Agrofuels and the expansion of agribusiness," Seedling, July 2007
3. De Falco, Neil, "Monsanto: Seed of Profit in a World of Drought," Investopedia, , Jan. 31, 2008
4. Syngenta full year results 2007, Feb 7, 2008
5. Monsanto Increases Full-Year 2008 Ongoing Earnings per Share Guidance Based on Strong Demand for Seeds and Traits, Roundup and Other Glyphosate-Based Herbicides
6. http://noticias.correioweb.com.br/materias...b=Pol%C3%ADtica
7. Kenfield, Isabella, "Monsanto's Seeds of Corruption in Brazil," , October 16, 2006
8. http://www.aspta.org.br/
9. Nascimento, Solano, DNA de um mandato, May 8, 2006
10. http://www.aspta.org.br/
11. http://www.aspta.org.br/
12. Lee, Rennie, "Allied with Brazilian Agribusiness, Syngenta Resists Governor's decree to Expropriate site," May 17, 2007
13. Personal communication, Dec. 9
14. Renewable Fuels Association

Maddow doesn't mention Monsanto, but she provides important context,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xVsYc-y7IY
Rachel Maddow Show - Burson-Marsteller (P.R. firm from Hell)
March 05, 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HtKjvbPYvQ
Rachel Maddow Show - CEO Mark Penn Responds
March 09, 2009



Background:
http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=395#biotech
Corporate Crimes - 4.2 Greenwashing Biotech

QUOTE

http://home.intekom.com/tm_info/ge_bm.htm
...The awesome power of the 'manufactured consent' of the mass media, created in no small part by PR firms like Burson-Marsteller, can be discouraging to many politically aware citizens. However, despair is what the PR business sells: despair from even the smallest possibility of positive social change from below. If we are to believe that organized citizens cannot effectively challenge corporate and government power, then the PR flacks will have truly triumphed. But, as Rampton and Stauber say in their book, "The fact that corporations and governments feel compelled to spend billions of dollars every year manipulating the public is a perverse tribute to human nature and our own moral values."

http://www.nrdc.org/action/

Tell the EPA to protect honey bees from a toxic pesticide

Bees help produce about one-third of the food we eat, and yet as hives across the country are being devestated by colony collapse disorder, the EPA is allowing the use of a pesticide that is highly toxic to honey bees. Tell the EPA to protect honey bees and other pollinators from this toxic threat.

What's up? The NRDC site search doesn't link to any articles on GMO (please correct me if I'm wrong).

No news here,

Simple cut and paste, all links imported effortlessly using 'rich text editor' button (far right-most, top button), too much work to enclose in quotes,

GMWATCH temporary site

BEST OF 2008 - PART TWO
Saturday, March 7. 2009

NOTE: Here's the second instalment of GMWatch's review of 2008. The first instalment can be found at: http://www.gmwatch.eu/archives/56-BEST-OF-2008-PART-ONE.html

BEST OF 2008 - PART TWO
INTRODUCTION: Global resistance to GMOs continued apace in the second half of 2008, although the news agenda was increasingly dominated by the U.S.-led financial crisis. Happily, many people recognised that the crisis had major implications that went way beyond Wall Street, financial speculators and the banking sector.

Marie Robin's film The World According to Monsanto, released earlier in the year, contained chilling footage of George Bush Sr's visit to Monsanto's HQ, when he was U.S. Vice President. Bush told the folk at Monsanto that if they ran into any problems steering their new genetically engineered products past U.S. regulators, "Call me. We're in the 'de-reg' business. Maybe we can help."
http://www.bangmfood.org/films

It is, of course, "the 'de-reg' business" that lies behind the market meltdowns. And because the financial crisis exposed the anti-regulatory agenda as a complete disaster, it's helped many people to recognise that a hands-off approach to huge commercial interests can devastate people's lives and wreak havoc with the global environment.

As Brent Blackwelder of Friends of the Earth USA has put it, "The government must impose oversight and re-regulation... The days of the fox guarding the henhouse, with corporate lobbyists writing the laws that regulate their industries, must end." http://action.foe.org/pressRelease.jsp?press_release_KEY=418

And nowhere has the fox been guarding the henhouse more, of course, than with GMOs. (Revolving Doors: Monsanto and the Regulators)
http://www.albionmonitor.net/9904b/monsantofda.html

Monsanto and its corporate lobbyists still, of course, have undue influence over the new U.S. administration, but fortunately the end of 2008 saw the demise of the corporate supremacist ideologues of the Bush administration for whom Monsanto's interests and U.S. interests were automatically synonymous.

Here's our review of the second half of 2008.

JULY
+ AMERICAN NURSES ASSOCIATION OPPOSES rBGH, CALLS FOR GM LABELLING
The House of Delegates of the American Nurses Association passed a resolution at their 2008 conference making it ANA's official position to oppose Monsanto's GM hormone rBGH. The ANA also supported the labelling of all GMOs.
http://current.com/items/89086977/american...wth_hormone.htm

+ AUSTRIA BANS MONSANTO'S GM MAIZE
Austria banned the import of Monsanto's GM maize MON 863. The announcement was made on health safety grounds. Tests carried out on rats fed with MON 863 maize revealed they suffered liver and kidney damage. http://www.greenpeace.org/international/ne...nto-maize250708

+ GM WHISTLEBLOWER VINDICATED
The biologist and GM whistleblower Christian Velot won support from the Presidency of his university -- Paris-South (Orsay), after suffering repeated persecution because of raising concerns over GMOs. The attacks included the removal of funding, the requisitioning of his lab, and a false allegation of supposed aggression against a colleague -- aggression denied even by the supposed victim! The Presidency of the University made commitments to Velot on protection of his freedom of speech and his research work. The Presidency also agreed to write an open letter to clear Velot and his team of the false accusations levelled against them.
http://www.gmwatch.eu/archives/31-GM-whist...vindicated.html

AUGUST
+ PRINCE CHARLES WARNS GM CROPS ARE MAJOR ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER
In a story that triggered a storm of media interest, Prince Charles warned that GM crops were the "biggest disaster environmentally of all time" and that firms were conducting a "gigantic experiment" with "nature and the whole of humanity which has gone seriously wrong". Relying on "gigantic corporations" for food, he said, would result in "absolute disaster". "That would be the absolute destruction of everything... and the classic way of ensuring there is no food in the future," he said. "
http://www.gmwatch.eu/archives/15-Prince-o...blic-and-indepe ndent-scientific-opinion.html

+ PRINCE SHOULD CONTINUE TO SPEAK OUT
A Daily Telegraph poll revealed strong backing from the public for Prince Charles to continue to speak out on issues such as global warming, GM food, and organic farming. Asked if he was right to speak out publicly on such controversial issues, 68 per cent were in favour with only 24 per cent against. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics.../Public-support -falls-for-Queen-Camilla.html

+ MORE SUPPORT FOR THE PRINCE
Numerous letters and opinion pieces were written in support of the Prince's comments:
http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/letters-to-...ess-principled- stand-on.4425856.jp
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics.../Prince-Charles -wrong-on-GM-says-minister.html
http://www.gmwatch.eu/archives/15-Prince-o...ic-opinion.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...13/gmcrops.food
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...4/gmcrops.food1
http://www.people.co.uk/news/tm_headline=c...thod=full&o bjectid=20700397&siteid=93463-name_page.html

+ MONSANTO SELLS GM DAIRY HORMONE BUSINESS
Monsanto sold off its GM growth hormone for dairy cows, rBGH or rBST, to pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly. The decision came as more and more retailers, responding to consumer demand, opted to sell dairy products from cows NOT treated with the GM hormone.
GM Watch comment: rBGH, marketed as Posilac, was launched in 1994. It was Monsanto's first GM product to hit the market, and it's taken 14 years of hard campaigning to get to this point... but what a success!
http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2008/au...ac-lilly--aug21
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/07/business...Qp8VMfrsHfW5n0w
http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive...8/08/c2833.html
http://www.commondreams.org/news2008/0807-13.htm

+ COMMENTS ON MONSANTO'S SALE OF rBGH
"No one wants the growth hormone rBGH used in milk production, not even the company that makes it. In the last year we've seen retailers including Walmart, Kroger, and Starbucks fall like dominoes in the race to meet consumer demand for artificial growth hormone-free milk."
-- Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter

"If genetically engineered products like this were safe, Monsanto would put 'made with GE' in big block letters on all its products."
-- Josh Brandon, agriculture campaigner with Greenpeace

"[rBGH is] a very attractive product."
-- Monsanto spokeswoman Christie Chavis

+ SMALL FARMS (NOT GMOs) MEAN FOOD SECURITY
Christian Aid once again criticised GM technology as against the interests of "the larger part of the African population" and as being "far from guaranteed to deliver the needed productivity gains."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/aug/23/food

+ NEW ACTION AGAINST GM CROPS IN FRANCE
A hundred "volunteer reapers", including veteran activist Jose Bove, destroyed two fields of Monsanto MON810 maize, which is currently forbidden from being grown in France. "These were commercial trials by Monsanto based on MON810 maize, with added herbicide-resistant genes. MON810 has been banned since February 2008 and Monsanto continues to want to force it through," said Bove.
http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20080813090939740

+ CATALONIA SAYS NO TO GMOs
On 20 August over 105,000 signatures against GMOs were delivered to the Catalan Parliament.
http://www.somloquesembrem.org/img_editor/...020_08_2008.doc

SEPTEMBER
+ EU STATES SHOULD BE ABLE TO STOP GM CROPS - GERMANY
Germany wants EU member states to have the power to block GM crops in their countries, agriculture minister Horst Seehofer said.
http://www.gmwatch.eu/archives/39-Two-gove...-free-zone.html

+ BASF MAY CUT AND RUN FROM EUROPE
The chemical giant BASF said it may abandon research into GM crops for the European market should it fail to get approval for its GM Amflora potato.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...p;refer=germany

+ DROP IN GM CROPS GROWN IN EU
The area of European farmland sown with GM crops declined by just over 2% in 2008, due to a ban in France. France was previously the second-largest producer of GM maize, the only GM crop allowed to be grown in the EU.
GMWatch comment: Interestingly, the press release announcing this news, from the GM industry PR body Europabio, is written as if the downturn is a mere blip in an otherwise relentless story of GM success in Europe! Spurred on by Europabio's press release, some pro-GM sources actually headlined news of Europe's shrinking GM crop acreage as, "More GM crops being grown across Europe"! Over the past 5 years the GM crop acreage has actually shrunk by 35%.
http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/2008/...n-eu/62491.aspx

+ THE DAYS OF GM CROPS MAY BE NUMBERED IN EUROPE
Pressure from the president of the European Commission had not succeeded in advancing the cause of GM crops, said a report for the Inter Press Service. In spite of the power wielded by the executive organ of the European Union, the bloc's member countries are gradually discontinuing the use of GM seeds. This is due in large measure to the difficulty of convincing European farmers to adopt the transgenic crop production model, but also to increasingly vociferous protests in different parts of Europe.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43895

+ UK: CELTIC REVOLT AGAINST WESTMINSTER OVER GM CROPS
The Independent on Sunday reported how UK government ministers are facing an unprecedented Celtic revolt from their Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish counterparts. All three devolved governments have declared themselves implacably opposed to any GM crops in their territory. And their opposition is likely to have an impact throughout Europe, sapping the UK's hitherto obdurate support for the introduction of the technology throughout the Continent.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/g...lt-against-west minster-over-gm-crops-944768.html
http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnew...on_gm_crops.php

+ MEPs VOTE OVERWHELMINGLY FOR BAN ON CLONING FOR FOOD
European parliamentarians voted with an overwhelming majority in favour of a proposal to ban cloning of animals for food. Protagonists on both sides of the debate acknowledge that cloned animals are faced with a wide range of health problems, with a high death rate and a high incidence of disease.
http://euobserver.com/19/26681
http://www.farminguk.com/Commission-urged-...-food-after-MEP s-vote-to-support-ban8460.asp
http://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=4247

+ U.S.: COURT SAYS NO -- AGAIN -- TO GM ALFALFA
An appeals court ruled that the US government must review the potential environmental effects of GM seeds before farmers can plant them. The decision of the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals forces the US Dept of Agriculture to issue an environmental impact statement on Monsanto's Roundup Ready alfalfa seeds.
http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-scienc...t-says-no--agai n----to-gen-2008-09-02

+ PERU TO BE GM-FREE?
Antonio Brack, Peru's minister of environment, was reported to be ready to back a declaration of Peru as a GM-free nation.
http://goodluckchuck.wordpress.com/2008/09...cally-modified- free-country/

+ FOOD FIRMS LAUNCH GM-FREE GRAIN GROUP
Brazilian soy producers and processors have launched an association, Abrange, that will guarantee grains and feeds free of GMOs to meet demand in Europe.
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssHealthc...927664920080909

+ MONSANTO'S INTIMIDATION TACTICS NO LONGER LEGAL IN CALIFORNIA
A landmark piece of legislation protecting California's farmers was signed by Governor Schwarzenegger on 27 September 2008. The bill, AB 541, indemnifies California farmers who have not been able to prevent the drift of GM pollen or seed onto their land and the subsequent contamination of non-GM crops. Currently, farmers with crops that become contaminated by patented seeds or pollen have been the target of harassing lawsuits brought by Monsanto.
http://www.nwrage.org/index.php?name=News&...le&sid=2352
http://www.gmwatch.eu/categories/2-News

+ MONSANTO PROFITEERING CONDEMNED BY PRESIDENT OF THE UN GENERAL ASSEMPLY
The President of the General Assembly of the United Nations condemned the profiteering by Monsanto in the food crisis. H. E. M. Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann made his comments at the opening of the High-level Event on the Millennium Development Goals at the UN in New York. Brockmann said, "The essential purpose of food, which is to nourish people, has been subordinated to the economic aims of a handful of multinational corporations that monopolize all aspects of food production, from seeds to major distribution chains, and they have been the prime beneficiaries of the world crisis. A look at the figures for 2007, when the world food crisis began, shows that corporations such as Monsanto and Cargill, which control the cereals market, saw their profits increase by 45 and 60 per cent, respectively..."
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_14843.cfm

+ GM LABELLING TO BE MANDATORY IN SOUTH AFRICA
Labelling of the GM contents of food should become mandatory once the Consumer Protection Bill is implemented, and producers, importers, distributors and retailers will be held liable for any damage these products might cause.
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/tops...x?ID=BD4A845077

+ CHINA'S LEADERS EAT GM-FREE
The Associated Press reported that suppliers of food for China's ruling elite have to make sure it is organic and not genetically modified. This news follows on from other recent revelations about the pro-GM elite: one, that contrary to Tony Blair's claims that he fed his children GM foods, his wife Cherie admitted this summer that "I always tried to feed my children organic food", and the other, that Monsanto's CEO buys organic.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26874854/
http://www.non-gm-farmers.com/news_details.asp?ID=2914
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display...script/?refid=0

OCTOBER
+ ORGANIC FARMING "COULD FEED AFRICA" - STUDY
Organic farming offers Africa the best chance of breaking the cycle of poverty and malnutrition it has been locked in for decades, according to a major study from the United Nations. The study found that traditional practices increased yield by 128 per cent in east Africa. The head of the UN's Environment Programme, Achim Steiner, said the report "indicates that the potential contribution of organic farming to feeding the world maybe far higher than many had supposed".
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/af...ica-968641.html

+ SYNGENTA HANDS BACK FARM IN BRAZIL WHERE TWO WERE KILLED
Marking an end to a violent conflict, Syngenta handed over its experimental farm in Parana state, in the South of Brazil, to the state government. The 127-hectare farm in Santa Tereza do Oeste, where two protesters were killed, was used by Syngenta to field-test its GM crops.
http://www.brazzilmag.com/content/view/10091/

+ EU KEEPS ZERO TOLERANCE ON IMPORTS
The European Union decided to keep its "zero tolerance" policy on allowing the presence of unapproved varieties of GM plants in imported food and animal feed. Biotech interests and feed importers sought a change to the policy because of concerns that imports with trace amounts of unapproved GM plants would be blocked from the EU.
http://www.cattlenetwork.com/International...ontentid=261654
GMWatch comment: All the industry scaremongering about the European livestock industry being ruined through a shortage of non-GM animal feed failed. The reality is that if they had to label meat, eggs and dairy products from animals reared on GM feed, the market for GM animal feed would be dead overnight. Only consumer deception allows it to continue - see: http://www.bangmfood.org/stealth-gmos

+ GM SETBACK FOR SOUTH AFRICA'S MAIZE EXPORTERS
The World Food Programme, one of the biggest buyers of South African maize, said it was having to consider shopping elsewhere due to a growing shortage of non-GM maize. The move would be another huge blow to grain exporters, with some saying they have already suffered economic losses due to the country's heavy reliance on GM maize. "It is becoming more difficult every year to find sufficient quantities of non-GM maize in South Africa," WFP southern Africa spokesman Richard Lee said. "The situation is that the majority of countries that we send maize to from South Africa as food assistance do not want GM maize," Lee said. South Africa is the only African country growing a GM food crop commercially.
http://www.thetimes.co.za/Business/Busines....aspx?id=851643

+ AMERICANS STARTING TO TURN AGAINST GM FOOD?
Major new developments suggest that the tide may finally be turning against GM technology in the US, according to a Soil Association briefing which noted:
*the staggering collapse in the market for Monsanto's GM milk hormone;
*the launch of a major new non-GM labelling initiative in the US, involving 400 American processors and retailers;
*the rejection of new GM crops by US farmers.
*the support of US president elect Barack Obama for labelling.
The Soil Association's policy director, Peter Melchett, commented: "Labelling stopped consumers buying milk from cattle treated with the growth hormone rBGH, leading Costco, Kroger, Publix, Safeway and Wal-Mart to turn to non-GM own-brand milk. It is the beginning of the end for GM worldwide."
For details of the report: http://www.soilassociation.org/gm
Download the report:
Land of the GM-Free? How the American public are starting to turn against GM food
http://www.soilassociation.org/Web/SA/sawe...e_GM_Report.pdf
Daily Mail article about the report:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/art...-turn-GM-crops- report-claims.html?ITO=1490
Farmers Weekly article about the report:
http://www.fwi.co.uk/Articles/2008/10/13/1...cting-gms-says- soil-association.html

+ DROUGHT RESISTANCE PROVES ELUSIVE
An article in the New York Times looks at scientists' attempts to genetically engineer drought resistance into crops. One problem is unexpected effects of genetic engineering: "with so many downstream genes activated, there could be other effects on the plants besides less need for water. At a recent biotechnology conference, a university researcher showed a photograph of a cotton plant with an inserted gene for a transcription factor. The plant was missing most of its leaves." The article concludes, "No single approach is likely to suffice for all types of dry conditions." Jian-Kang Zhu, a professor of plant biology at the University of California, Riverside, comments, "Probably no one has found the magic gene yet. Probably there is no magic gene."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/business/23drought.html?hp

+ AG BUBBLE BURSTS -- STOCKS DIVE
Shares of chemical companies had begun to falter in July 2008 with Monsanto stocks losing nearly all their second-quarter gains in a matter of days. Investment specialists blamed "bubblelike conditions" and "pent-up speculation" in some of the stocks. Monsanto lost a further sixth of its market value in October and by the end of the year Monsanto's stock had fallen 51% in value.
http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2008/07/08...tilizer-stocks- suffer/trackback/
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/...2D?OpenDocument

NOVEMBER
+ CHAPELA VINDICATED - MEXICAN MAIZE CONTAMINATION CONFIRMED
The journal Nature reported on research confirming that Mexico's ban on GM corn (maize) had not stopped transgenes getting into traditional 'landrace' maize crops in the Mexican heartland. The original research exposing this GM contamination scandal was published by Nature back in 2001, but on publication the researchers David Quist and Ignacio Chapela from the University of Califonia, Berkeley, became the focus of a ferocious campaign of vilification aimed at discrediting them. The campaign originated with Monsanto itself, as part of a much wider smear campaign against the company's critics.
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081112/full/456149a.html
http://ngin.tripod.com/deceit_index.html

+ EXTRA-NUTRITOUS GM FOODS STILL YEARS AWAY
After media reports of a "cancer-fighting" GM tomato, engineered to contain the same nutrients already found in a host of natural foods like berries, aubergines, red cabbage, red onions, etc., there was news of "a GM soyabean that can help to prevent heart attacks". The soyabean is engineered to contain Omega 3 fatty acids, the same nutrients that are already found in natural foods like oily fish, flaxseed oil and walnuts. The GM soyabean will be available in four years' time ... maybe.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...8110201939.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/s...icle5068437.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/s...icle5068449.ece

+ MUCH-HYPED GM LANDMINE-DETECTION FAILS
There's been a huge amount of publicity over the past few years about how GM plants are going to solve the problem of landmine detection. News items around the globe -- from the New York Times to the BBC -- have trumpeted the life saving potential of plants genetically modified to 'Red Detect': change from green to red when grown near to landmines or unexploded ordinance.
http://www.time.com/time/globalbusiness/ar...1565533,00.html
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cf...23600/story.htm
But it emerged in late 2008 that the technology had failed. The biotech company behind Red Detect, Aresa, reported, "As was expected the tests in Serbia did not produce a positive result (none of the plants changed colours to red)". The scientific staff had been fired, reported Aresa, which is seeking to transform itself from a biotech firm into a property company - something Aresa describes as a "far less risky" investment strategy.
http://www.aresa.dk/uploads/File/aresa-PR-311008-UK.pdf
http://www.aresa.dk/uploads/File/aresa-upd...08-18-09-uk.pdf

+ VICTORY IN HAWAII: GM COFFEE AND TARO BANNED ON BIG ISLAND
The Hawaii County Council voted unanimously to uphold a ban on GM taro and coffee.
http://kgmb9.com/main/content/view/11447/40/

DECEMBER
+ MASSIVE EU GM CAMPAIGN SUCCESS
Campaigners managed to prevent pro-GM countries like the UK from wrecking an important EU environment ministers' meeting on GMOs and food safety. Over 70,000 messages were sent to EU politicians. Subsequently, EU environment ministers agreed that:
*The long-term effects of GMOs on the environment and health need to be assessed.
*There should be independent scientific research on GMOs, and access to information that is currently kept secret by biotech companies.
*The European Food Safety Authority should consider the environmental impact of herbicides spread over GM crops.
*Pesticide-producing GM crops should be treated in the same way as chemical pesticides.
*Regions and local communities have a right to establish GM-free zones.
Details of the new legal framework for the authorisation of GMOs can be found at:
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/ueDocs/cms_...nvir/104510.pdf

+ BRITAIN TRIED TO BLOCK VITAL GM SAFEGUARD
Britain single-handedly set out to sabotage a vital safeguard against farmers unwittingly growing GM crops, a leaked document reveals. The document shows that the UK government is alone among European member states in opposing a provision that would keep GM contamination of seed to the "lowest possible" levels.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/g...rd-1041641.html

+ GM FOODS ARE HEALTH RISK - INDIA'S HEALTH MINISTER
India's health minister Dr Anbumani Ramadoss has made a strong statement warning of the health risks of GM food. Speaking at a farmers' meeting, he said, "GM food is a health hazard. No independent health impact tests have been conducted on the safety of Bt brinjal. But people are pushing for its introduction in the market. The health ministry will take all necessary steps to see that GM food is not commercialized unless all the safety criteria are met. As a minister of PMK [Indian political party] and as the health minister, I will always oppose this technology."
http://www.gmfreeireland.org/news/2008/dec.php
http://www.hindu.com/2008/12/10/stories/2008121054150400.htm
Government should not allow GM food in Gujarat:
http://www.newkerala.com/topstory-fullnews-58360.html

+ FORMER FOOD SAFETY CHAIR QUESTIONS GM RISK ASSESSMENTS!
In an astonishing interview released on YouTube, the former chairman of the European Food Safety Authority, Prof Patrick Wall, said people had lost confidence in the European Food Safety Authority's ability to assess the risks of GM food. Prof Wall said: "Do we want corporate giants to own the food chain? GM food has no benefits for consumers... EFSA is a consumer protection agency; it is not meant to rubberstamp biotech dossiers... We cannot force-feed European citizens products that they don't want. We live in a democracy. People have a right to have objections... If people don't want (GM) technology they have a right not to have it." For the full interview + link to transcript: http://www.gmfreeireland.org/efsa
Press release at http://www.gmfreeireland.org/press/GMFI44.pdf

+ QUOTE OF THE YEAR: THE EXPERIMENT THAT FAILED
"As far as genetic engineering for food, that is the great experiment that has failed. They literally have the entire world market against them. All those dreams... the blind will see, the lame will walk... has turned out to be science fiction. They are basically chemical companies selling more chemicals. They've been able to spread these herbicide-promoting plants around because it is more convenient for farmers who can just mass-spray their crops. But they've given absolutely nothing to the consumer while causing more chemical pollution and contamination."
-- Andrew Kimbrell, lawyer and executive director of the Center for Food Safety (USA)
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8854

http://www.gmwatch.eu/archives/2009/03.html

BEST OF 2008 - PART ONE
Saturday, March 7. 2009

INTRODUCTION
2008 was another great year in the global resistance to the imposition of GM crops. But you might not have known it thanks to the atmosphere of crisis as food prices sky-rocketed and so did Monsanto's profits. The two were directly connected.

The World Bank's attributed as much as 70% of food price inflation to the disastrous policy of growing food for fuel. Some go further and see 'biofuels' as the critical catalyst for the entire crisis.

Monsanto had been at the heart of the lobby for 'biofuels', and with food riots breaking out as the poor were pushed increasingly to the wall, Monsanto got together with the likes of Dupont and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) to form the Alliance for Abundant Food and Energy. The aim: to keep Bush's ethanol mandates firmly in place, regardless of the consequences.

The reason was that food price inflation not only enabled Monsanto to profit by massively hiking up its prices for seeds and Roundup, it also provided the launch pad for an aggressive new PR campaign. Its purpose was to use the atmosphere of crisis to try and over-rule grassroots resistance to GM by enlisting the support of pro-GM politicians, technocrats, industrialists and commentators in promoting GM crops as vital to solving the food crisis.

As Daniel Howden, Africa correspondent of The Independent succinctly put it, 'The climate crisis was used to boost biofuels, helping to create the food crisis; and now the food crisis is being used to revive the fortunes of the GM industry.'

Even some GM supporters showed signs of disquiet at this panic-mongering. Prof Denis Murphy, head of biotechnology at the University of Glamorgan in Wales admitted, 'The cynic in me thinks that they're just using the current food crisis and the fuel crisis as a springboard to push GM crops back on to the public agenda. I understand why they're doing it, but the danger is that if they're making these claims about GM crops solving the problem of drought or feeding the world, that's bullsh*t.'

But the waves of BS were also being driven by industry desperation. Despite repeated claims to the contrary, resistance to GM was far from crumbling amidst the panic, and to make matters worse a major report produced by 400 scientific experts and signed up to by nearly 60 governments
was published in 2008, which made it clear that after more than 10 years of commercialisation, GM crops had done nothing to help with the eradication of hunger or poverty, nor reversal of environmental degradation caused by agriculture.

Just as damaging for the biotech industry, was the report's conclusion that the evidence showed that it was the agroecological alternatives, with their proven track record in boosting production for small farmers in developing countries, that needed special promotion at the cost of investments in industrial and GM-based agriculture.

After reading the 2500-page report of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development, it was easy to see that the diversion of political attention, scientific endeavour and funding away from these innovative low-cost approaches will have a long-term negative impact on both future food supplies and equity for the poor.

This is a message that the biotech industry and its supporters are desperate to keep out of the media and away from the political elite, but 2008 was the year the cat got out of the bag.

Nobody should any longer be in doubt - when it comes to resolving global problems and building a better world, GM crops are a dangerous irrelevance that will only push us further down the path to destruction.

Here are the first 6 months of GM resistance from 2008.

JANUARY
+ MEXICO: 'MEGA MARCHA' AGAINST DUMPING GM CORN IN MEXICO
Upto 200,000 protesters opposing the dumping of US GM corn, took part in a 'Mega Marcha' in Mexico City. They were also overwhelmingly opposed to GM corn being cultivated in Mexico itself.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8734

+ SPAIN: OVER 300 SCIENTISTS AND NGOs CALL FOR GM BAN
'This is a technology that is destroying biodiversity... It is lamentable that Spain is acting as a vector for introducing these cultures into Europe when it is a country rich in biodiversity,' said Eugenio Reyes, a researcher at the Botanical Garden of Las Palmas in Gran Canaria, at the presentation of a petition calling on the government to ban the cultivation of GMOs throughout Spain.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8696

+ AUSTRALIA: SUPERMARKET CHAIN GOES GM-FREE
Independent South Australian supermarket chain Foodland joined the Coles chain in ensuring that their own brand products were GM-free. Both supermarkets said they were responding to strong customer preferences.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8705

+ U.S.: PENNSYLVANIA BACKS OFF LABEL BAN
Pennsylvania agriculture officials had to back down from a planned ban on milk labels that identified milk that came from cows not treated with Monsanto's GM growth hormone. Governor Rendell ordered a review of the proposed ban after a consumer outcry.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8688

FEBRUARY
+ FRENCH BAN ON GM CORN OFFICIAL
France officially imposed a ban on the growing of Monsanto's GM maize MON810, following a report by the country's Provisional High Authority on GM Organisms that said it had 'serious doubts' as to its safety. As MON810 is the only GM crop that has been grown commercially in France, the ban effectively brought to a halt all GM commercial planting.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8740

+ OPPOSITION TO GMOs HARDENING AMONG EU GOVERNMENTS
Despite massive pressure to introduce more GM products into the EU in order to normalize trade relations with the United States, experts said that if anything some EU countries were hardening their longstanding opposition to GM. Jacqueline Mailly, senior European regulatory affairs adviser at the law firm Hogan & Hartson in Brussels, commented, 'If you take the Austrians, for example, they now appear to be standing firmer than ever against biotechnology.'
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8777

+ BASF GM POTATO BLOCKED
Yet again in 2008, BASF failed to get final approval for cultivation of its GM 'Amflora' potato, which produces extra starch for making glossy paper products and for feeding animals. Patrice Courvalin, the head of the Antibacterial Agents Unit at the Institut Pasteur in Paris was among those who spoke out about the dangers of ever approving Amflora, 'The biotechnology industry threatens to set an extremely worrying example if it wins approval for this potato. We should keep trying to prevent dissemination of antibiotic resistance rather than to allow products into the food chain that could potentially make a bad situation even worse.' So far, Amflora has not been planted commercially anywhere in the world.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8781

+ U.S. GROCERIES START TAKING GMOs OFF THE SHELVES
In Oregon, some grocers started taking items containing GMOs off their shelves. The Ashland Food Co-op launched a program to get all such products off its shelves by the end of 2008 - and other area markets, including Shop N Kart and Food For Less, said they were steadily increasing offerings of GM-free food.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8815

MARCH
+ FRANCE: 25,000 PROTESTERS DEMONSTRATE AGAINST GMOs
Demonstrations against GMOs were held across France prior to the opening of the debate in the French parliament on draft GM legislation.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8947

+ BRAZILIAN DEMONSTRATORSRS DESTROY GM CROPS, PROTEST CORPORATE MURDER
Hundreds of Brazilian women raided a Monsanto research unit and destroyed GM corn. Meanwhile in Brasilia, a protest in front of the Swiss embassy by another 400 women from Via Campesina, protested the October 2007 incident in which guards working for the Swiss-based GM multinational Syngenta killed an anti-GM protester.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8853

+ MONSANTO MOVIE TRIUMPHS
The new must-see film 'The World According to Monsanto' was watched by several million viewers when first broadcast on the Franco-German TV channel ARTE, making it the biggest audience ever for an ARTE production. One sign of the massive interest in the film was the response on discussion panels, blogs etc., with more than 10,000 responses in the immediate aftermath of the broadcast.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8892
For a brilliant review of the film see:
http://www.bangmfood.org/films/22-films/4-...ing-to-monsanto
Watch a trailer for the film and find out how to purchase the DVD (available in English, French and German):
http://www.bangmfood.org/films/22-films/10...ing-to-monsanto

+ WALES SET TO BAN GM CROPS
Proposals by the Welsh Assembly government came as close as possible to banning GM crops from Wales. The new regulations set Wales apart from England by applying a strict 'polluter pays' principle that should put an end even to GM trial plantings.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8896
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8836

+ U.S.: WAL-MART GOES GM HORMONE-FREE
Canada's Globe and Mail reported that March 20 was 'the day the ground shifted'. Giant food retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced that its store brand milk in the US will now come exclusively from cows not treated with Monsanto's GM bovine growth hormone (rBGH). The move, said the Globe and Mail, sends a powerful signal to food manufacturers about what consumers want. Ronnie Cummins, director of the Organic Consumers Association in the US said, 'It's reached the tipping point. Even Wal-Mart's customers are demanding milk free from genetically engineered hormones.' http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8915
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8915

+ U.S. CAMPAIGN MOBILIZES HEALTH-CONSCIOUS SHOPPERS
Non-GMO Education Centers began appearing in natural food stores nationwide. These six-foot high blue towers featured books, DVDs, CDs, and handouts about the dangers of GMOs. View the Non-GMO Shopping Guide
http://www.seedsofdeception.com/documentFiles/144.pdf
View the GMO Health Risks Brochure
http://www.seedsofdeception.com/DocumentFiles/140.pdf
Purchase 50 of the Guides and/or Brochures at cost price
http://www.fsicart.com/seeds/

+ IS AFRICA REJECTING GM?
A publication by the African Centre for Biosafety pointed out the major setbacks and failures for GM showcase projects in Africa, and how African countries such as Sudan, Angola and Zambia have fiercely resisted receiving GM food aid, precipitating reforms in food aid policies internationally. The ACB also noted how, despite the GM lobby's heavily resourced battle for GMO-acceptance, the reaction of people in Africa has in many instances been extremely hostile with the media proving critical of GMOs in countries such as Kenya, Zambia and South Africa.
http://agricbiotech.blogspot.com/2008/03/i...ngineering.html

+ SCHMEISER PLEASED WITH VICTORY OVER MONSANTO
Monsanto agreed to pay all the clean-up costs of the Roundup Ready canola that contaminated Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser's fields and not to bind him with their usual gagging-clause.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8906

+ U.S. COURT THROWS OUT GM GRASS APPEAL
A Federal Court of Appeals tossed out the appeal of Monsanto's partner Scotts Grass Company, ending a long-running dispute over the US Dept of Agriculture's (USDA) approval of the open-air field testing of GM Roundup Ready grasses without assessing any potential environmental impacts. http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/bentgrassPR3_19_08.cfm
For more on this and other court victories:
http://www.biosafety-info.net/article.php?aid=548

+ MASS PROTESTS IN INDIA AGAINST GM CROPS
In India, farmers' unions, consumer organizations, environmental groups, development organizations and concerned scientists stepped up their protests against Bt brinjal (eggplant/aubergine), which is in its last year of trials before possible commercial approval. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=9000
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/gmProtestsIndia.php

+ INDIA: FARMERS CONCLUDE 4000 KM MARCH AGAINST GM SEEDS
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=9000

APRIL
+ MAJOR INTERNATIONAL REPORT SAYS GM NO ANSWER FOR HUNGER
The biotech industry suffered a devastating blow when the biggest study of its kind ever conducted concluded that GM is not the answer to world hunger. The 2500-page report of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) was produced by 400 scientific experts and took four years to complete. It was initiated by the World Bank with the co-sponsorship of the United Nations. The lack of specific support for GM crops was based on a rigorous and peer-reviewed analysis of the empirical evidence. The report concluded: "Assessment of the technology lags behind its development, information is anecdotal and contradictory, and uncertainty about possible benefits and damage is unavoidable." It also noted that the yield gains in GM crops "were highly variable" and in some cases, "yields declined". Asked at a press conference whether GM crops were the simple answer to hunger and poverty, IAASTD Director Professor Bob Watson (former director of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and as of 2008, chief scientist at Defra) replied, "I would argue, no ". The UK Government approved the IAASTD report as did nearly 60 other governments.

Large sections of the IAASTD report favoured approaches to cultivation and pest control that recognise the value, particularly to the poor and hungry, of low-cost practices using locally available materials and technologies in an environmentally sensitive manner. The IAASTD report notes that these non-GM approaches can deliver effective crop protection and pesticide reduction and yield advantages, particularly in the developing world, thus increasing productivity for poor farmers while enhancing sustainability. This, the report notes, has significant policy implications for food security. The IAASTD report also notes that the community-wide economic, social, health and environmental benefits of these approaches have been widely documented.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8998
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8999
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=9001
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=9003
Key points in the report
http://sustainablefoodmonitor.org/content/...ture-systems-ne eded-gm-crops-not-solution
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008...d.unitednations
The biotech industry pulled out of IAASTD in a fit of pique, when it became clear that the report would not endorse GM crops.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8684

+ GM LIVESTOCK FEED CON
Claims that livestock farmers in the EU were suffering high prices for livestock feed because of the EU's slow rate of GM approvals were blown out of the water when it emerged that U.S. livestock farmers, including those in Monsanto's home state of Missouri, were suffering exactly the same problems. Missouri farmers complained that a 10% ethanol target was triggering a 'livestock industry meltdown'. And they were not just having problems in Missouri, Tyson's Foods - the huge US broiler conglomerate - announced a loss blamed in part on high feed prices, while the USDA estimated that corn feed price increases added nearly 9 percent to the price of US beef last year. All of which showed, as British Green member of the European Parliament Caroline Lucas noted, that the attempt to establish a link between the rise in feed and EU rules on GMOs is 'completely false and disingenuous'.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/28/business/28tysons.php
http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/042708...042700877.shtml
http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/...04/27/analysis/

MAY
+ GM CROPS BANNED IN SWITZERLAND UNTIL 2012
The Swiss government voted to extend the country's moratorium on GM plants for a further three years beyond the current expiry date of November 2010. According to the Swiss government, the moratorium has not caused any obvious problems, either for the farming industry, researchers, or international relations. In fact, it claimed, Swiss farmers had benefited from being able to market their produce on international markets as GM-free.
http://www.allaboutfeed.net/news/id102-509...until_2012.html

+ GREECE EXTENDS GM BAN
Greece renewed its ban on GM maize produced by Monsanto, expanding it to include 70 types of seed.
http://www.cattlenetwork.com/International...ontentid=140529

+ SCOTLAND STANDS FIRM AGAINST GM
Scotland's first minister, Alex Salmond, said he was strongly opposed to introducing GM crops.
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/displ...t_think_again_o n_growing_GM_crops_says_cabinet_minister.php

+ GERMAN UNIVERSITIES BOW TO PUBLIC PRESSURE OVER GM CROPS
Two German universities pulled the plug on field trials of GM crops. Stefan Hormuth, president of the Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Hesse, said, they were no longer able to deal with 'the massive opposition from politicians and the general public. The university has a reputation in the region that we cannot risk losing.' Nuertigen-Geislingen University also had to stop GM field trials of GM maize because of massive protests from the public and local politicians. The journal Nature cited Heinz Saedler, a director at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, as saying, 'The incidents reveal a new level of public hostility to plant genetic engineering in Germany.' The Max Planck Institute is also not cultivating GM crops this year. Numerous other GM maize plots were destroyed in Germany during 2008.
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080514/full/453263a.html
http://www.gmo-safety.eu:80/en/news/643.docu.html

+ MAJORITY OF AMERICANS DON'T WANT TO BUY GM FOOD
According to a CBS News/New York Times poll, 53 percent of Americans say they won't buy GM food. But it's not labeled, so they have no choice. Nutritionist Marion Nestle, a former FDA advisor, said, "They [the industry] didn't want it labeled because they were terrified that if it were labeled, nobody would buy it."
http://cbs4.com/national/CBS.News.New.2.721469.html

+ HERSHEY'S IN BRAZIL GOES GM-FREE
Chocolate bar manufacturer Hershey's in Brazil announced that it would not source ingredients from Cargill, one of the world's largest food providers, because the company cannot guarantee that soy, lecithin, and oils are not GM. They also said they would avoid genetically modified sugar. But US consumers have had no such assurances from Hershey's.
http://action.foodandwaterwatch.org/campai...paign_KEY=26014
And their contaminated products have even started turning up in the UK:
http://www.gmfreeze.org/page.asp?id=357&iType=1083

+ NEWSNIGHT DEBUNKS GM ANIMAL FEED CLAIMS
In a special report on GM and the food crisis for Newsnight (BBC2, 19 June), Susan Watts, the Science Editor of the BBC's flagship current affairs programme, dismissed the claim that the EU speeding up GM approvals could reduce the cost of importing animal feed. Watts noted that in the 12 months from May 07 to May 08 prices rose as follows on the world market:
Feed barley (100% non-GM) - 43%
Maize gluten (about 25% GM) - 72%
Argentinian soya meal (100% GM) - 110%
Argentinian soya meal has full approval for import to the EU!
See also the analysis in the important new briefing from GM Freeze.
http://www.gmfreeze.org/uploads/89D_yields...fing%5B1%5D.pdf
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/eu...-allow-more-mod ified-animal-feeds-851020.html
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/06/22/Eur..._on_crops/UPI-5 2111214111442/

JUNE
+ SYNGENTA ADMITS GM WILL NOT SOLVE FOOD CRISIS
Martin Taylor, chairman of GM giant Syngenta, admitted GM will not solve the current food crisis.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008...27/gmcrops.food

+ OFFICIAL REVIEW ADMITS AGROFUELS' ROLE IN FOOD CRISIS
A UK government report found that the rush to develop 'biofuels' had played a 'significant' role in the dramatic rise in global food prices which left 100 million more people without enough to eat, and do little to combat climate change (Monsanto has been in the forefront of those lobbying for 'biofuels'.)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008...change.biofuels

+ QUOTE OF THE MONTH
'While consumers struggle to pay their bills and put food on the table, Monsanto, Cargill, and Archer Daniels Midland rake in billions from taxpayer-subsidized biofuels. Monopolizing markets, polluting the environment with genetically modified organisms, and hoarding future reserves of crop seeds, wheat, rice, soy, corn, and other grains, the food and gene giants profit from global crisis and misery. Adding fuel to the fire, Wall Street speculators have shifted their greed from sub-prime mortgages to food and non-renewable resources... we have a Fast Food Nation, living in denial (at least until recently), gorging ourselves on the industrialized world's cheapest and most contaminated fare, allowing out-of-control politicians, corporations and technocrats to waste our tax money on corporate welfare, destroy the environment, starve the poor, wage a multi-trillion dollar war for oil, and destabilize the climate.' - Ronnie Cummins, 'The Food, Climate, and Energy Crisis: From Panic to Organic'
http://www.just-international.org/article....newsid=20002742

Wow - good work believe it...

Wish marine were here to see it all --

Thanks, taz,
(but you do realize the work is by http://www.gmwatch.eu/ which I posted because I actually didn't learn about any of this myself until this thread got started, and it is unacceptable that these changes to food were introduced without the knowledge or consent of the public, IMO). PS. I am not a foodie either, in fact, all my life, I've been the complete opposite.

The food security angle is hype as the sustainable food experts (including American scientists) on this thread have proven.

Here's a longer alternate letter from OCA stressing different points (also may be edited).

QUOTE

Link from http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...ess=102x3830863