Source: Axis Of Logic
EUROPE will increase its genetically modified (GMO) crop area by 50,000-100,000 hectares a year over the next decade, US biotech giant Monsanto has said.

“It will be slow but within ten years GMOs will have reached the point of no return,” said Jean-Michel Duhamel, Monsanto’s director for southern Europe. “The technology will not impose itself on consumers but consumers will better understand the usefulness of GMO technology as farmers increasingly adopt it,” he added.

In France, the world’s largest seed maker, GMO maize - the only biotech crop allowed in the country - was expected to be grown on 600,000 hectares in ten years, against 25,000 in 2007, despite fierce opposition to GMOs in the country. “It is more complicated in France than elsewhere but if we reach a 50 per cent rise (in area) per year it wouldn’t be bad, as at world level we expect it to rise 20 per cent,” Duhamel said. French consumers are well known for their scepticism, if not hostility, to GMO crops. “Within the next few years there will likely be some turbulence,” Duhamel said. “Consumers receive false information on what GMO crops are so they are afraid. But I’m sure that within ten years they will have accepted them.” This year, French farmers have sown 25,000 hectares of special maize, which has been modified to resist insect pests.

Source: Aftermath News
Another genetically-modified (GM) corn variety, approved for food, feed, processing, and propagation in the Philippines has been shown by studies to be potentially toxic to humans. The new research, carried out by a French scientific research institute, CRIIGEN (Comité de Recherche et d’Information Indépendantes sur le génie Genétique), involves biotech firm Monsanto’s NK603 GMO corn (marketed commercially under the name Round-up Ready) which was approved as food and feed in the country in 2003, and for propagation in 2005.

The scientific study released this week highlights 60 significant differences between laboratory rats fed with the GMO corn NK603 and those fed with normal corn for 90 days. The first group showed differences in their kidney, brain, heart and liver measurements, as well as significant weight differences which may be potential warning signs of toxicity. [more]

Source: Reuters
European Union governments have repeatedly clashed over authorizing new GMO products and have not done so since 1998. However, since 2004, there has been a trickle of new approvals under a legal default process — rubber stamps by the European Commission, the EU executive — that kicks in when the bloc’s member states fail to agree after a certain time. That situation has angered major GMO food exporters such as the United States, which together with Argentina and Canada, challenged EU biotech policy at the World Trade Organisation. The WTO found that the EU’s effective moratorium on new GMO imports constituted “undue delay” and violated trade rules. [more]

Source: Toxin Free Tomorrow
Food safety tests are inadequate to protect public health! Scientists have long known that GM crops might cause allergies. But there are no tests to prove in advance that a GM crop is safe. That’s because people aren’t usually allergic to a food until they have eaten it several times. “The only definitive test for allergies,” according to former FDA microbiologist Louis Pribyl, “is human consumption by affected peoples, which can have ethical considerations.” And it is the ethical considerations of feeding unlabeled, high-risk GM crops to unknowing consumers that has many people up in arms. [more]

Source: Today, Yesterday and Tomorrow
Dr. Arpad Pusztai, one of the few genuinely independent scientists specializing in plant genetics and animal feeding studies, was asked by the German authorities in the autumn of 2004 to examine Monsanto’s 1,139-page report on the feeding of MON863 to laboratory rats over a ninety-day period. The study found “statistically significant” differences in kidney weights and certain blood parameters in the rats fed the GM corn as compared with the control groups. A number of scientists across Europe who saw the study (and heavily-censored summaries of it) expressed concerns about the health and safety implications if MON863 should ever enter the food chain. (Note - This HAS entered our food chain!) There was particular concern in France, where Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini of the University of Caen has been trying (without success) for almost eighteen months to obtain full disclosure of all documents relating to the MON863 study. [more]

Source: The Organic and Non-GMO Report
The Organic & Non-GMO Report was recently alerted to a disturbing GMO contamination incident involving a shipment of organic soybeans to an organic processor. The names of both the processor and supplier have been kept confidential. The processor wanted to share his experience to emphasize the GMO challenges facing the organic industry.

It’s an organic processor’s nightmare: a buyer calls to say that your organic product tested positive for genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The processor can’t sell the product as organic and loses money. Such unfortunate contamination incidents are increasing in the organic industry. What makes the following incident even more troubling is the fact that a shipment of organic soybeans contained a high level of GM soy—much more than would have been caused by commingling with a small amount of GM soybeans or by cross-pollination. [more]

Source: Scientific American
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Several influential EU states have dug in their heels on whether their farmers may grow one of Europe’s oldest genetically modified (GMO) crops, raising the stakes in the EU’s long-running stalemate over biotech policy. The crop is a modified maize variety known as MON 810, marketed by leading U.S. biotech seeds company Monsanto. Also known by its commercial name YieldGard, the maize type is designed to resist the European corn borer, a pest that attacks maize stalks and thrives in warmer climates in southern EU countries such as Italy and Spain.

While Monsanto says the protein contained in its maize has selective toxicity but is harmless to humans, fish and wildlife, an increasing number of the EU’s 27 countries are unconvinced. National GMO bans are the only part of Europe’s biotech debate where EU countries can agree, since they see attempts by Brussels to order a government to lift its ban as an attack on national sovereignty. So, unusually, they tend to band together. The European Commission has tried this on three occasions in the past two years and got a stinging rebuff on each occasion.

In the past few weeks, two EU agricultural powerhouse countries — France and Germany — entered the fray. Not only do they wield huge clout under the bloc’s weighted voting system for decision-making, they also grow vast amounts of cereals. First, Germany’s government said maize produced from MON 810 seeds could only be sold if there was an accompanying monitoring plan to research its effects on the environment: a restriction that farmers say is tantamount to a growing ban. The proposed restriction, to apply from 2008, has already been notified to Commission authorities in Brussels.

Soon afterwards, French government number two Alain Juppe, in charge of his country’s environment, transport and energy policy, said in a newspaper interview that he would not exclude being “inspired” by Germany’s proposed GMO ban. Diplomats said it was too early to know if the French and German stances would affect voting for new GMO approvals — EU countries have clashed over this for years — but warned that it might alter the balance between ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ GMO countries. “Even a national ban would get them into hot water with the Commission, but if it’s a blanket change in position (on biotech policy) then it raises the stakes,” one said.

NATIONAL BANS

Austria banned MON 810 maize in June 1999, around 14 months after the EU issued its original authorization. That national ban was cited, along with several others, by Argentina, Canada and the United States in an international challenge against the European Union at the World Trade Organization a few years ago. Hungary, one of the EU-27’s biggest grain producers, became the first eastern European country to ban GMO crops or foods when it outlawed the planting of MON 810 seeds in January 2005. The same year, Greece and Poland used a provision in EU law that allows countries to decide whether to allow GMO seeds on national territory — although a ban must be approved by EU member states to be legal. Both countries have restrictions in place against MON 810 maize. Bulgaria’s parliament has also indicated support for national restrictions for growing MON 810 maize.

EU environment ministers have slapped down several draft orders authored by the European Commission for countries to rescind their national GMO bans. This happened last February in the case of Hungary and also in December 2006, for Austria.

“We have had two councils (EU ministerial meetings) that have rejected Commission proposals (to lift GMO bans) with a large majority, and now there is this additional case in Germany,” a Commission official told Reuters. “We have to look at the whole (GMO) authorization policy at some point.”

Islands at Risk – Genetic Engineering in Hawai’i looks at some of the possible impacts, including allergic and immune system responses from exposure to biopharmaceutical crops — both in humans and in Hawai’i’s endangered species — and contamination of regular food crops such as papaya, taro, coffee and corn with genetically modified versions of those crops. Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) recount their attempts to prevent the patenting of taro, honored as an ancestor, and assert their right to the biodiversity of their lands which is at the heart of their ability to maintain health and survival. The video also addresses the impact of genetic engineering on food security and the world’s future ability to feed itself.

Featuring Earthjustice attorney Paul Achitoff, Walter Ritte, Chris Kobayashi, Dr. Lorrin Pang, Nancy Redfeather, Isaac Moriwake, Melanie Bondera, Mililani Trask, Mark Query, Kalaniua Ritte, Hanohano Naehu, Una Greenaway, Jerry Konanui, Elisha Goodman, Eloise Engman, and Jeri Di Pietro. (Length 28:30) Copies of the video can be ordered from Na Maka o ka Aina for home or institutional use. (Note: Earthjustice does not receive donations from your purchase.)

Watch “Islands at Risk” online… Part One | Part Two | Part Three

The United States House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture has begun the process of writing the 2007 Farm Bill. Of grave concern is language added and approved by the Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy and Poultry that preempts state restrictions of foods or agricultural products deregulated by the USDA. The added language reads:

“No State or locality shall make any law prohibiting the use in commerce of an article that the Secretary of Agriculture has inspected and passed; or determined to be of non-regulated status.”

The preemption language has been traced to Iowa Representative and Subcommittee Chair, Leonard Boswell. His intention is to prohibit state and local policies banning the sale of products approved by USDA and other regulatory agencies. The broad scope of the language would affect state and local prohibitions on the cultivation of genetically modified crops, bans on the sale of rBGH milk, and the outlawing of foie gras for starters. At a time of pervasive food contamination and consumer displeasure with the social, ethical, and environmental aspects of food processes and production, the addition of a few lines tucked into an immense bill could weaken carefully adopted consumer protections. If the preemption language is adopted into the final Farm Bill, some of the state laws that may be affected include:

Genetically Modified Foods:

California and Arkansas are currently debating prohibitions on the growing GMO rice. The major rice growing states are concerned after the 2006 announcement that several un-approved varieties of engineered rice contaminated rice crops resulting in major financial losses for US farmers. Four California counties and two cities have adopted prohibitions on the growing of genetically modified crops in order to protect their organic and conventional foods.

rBGH Milk:

In 2006, Vermont’s Agricultural Secretary, Steve Kerr, urged dairy farmers to stop using rBGH, or recombinant bovine growth hormone, in dairy cows. New York City is in the process of considering a ban on the sale of rBGH milk.

Foie Gras:

On grounds of inhumane treatment, the City of Chicago banned the sale of foie gras in restaurants. California has banned the force-feeding of birds to produce the product, ending the practice by 2012.

In addition, the preemption language raises concerns that states would be barred from taking action when a food safety threats arise. For example, states could be barred from calling for recalls or prohibiting the sale of tainted meats, peanut butter, or other foods that have passed USDA inspection. Advocates favoring the preemption language include United Egg Producers, National Pork Producers, National Milk Producers Federation, and the National Cattleman’s Beef Association.

The Farm Bill will be voted on by the House Committee on Agriculture before going to the House floor and then on to the Senate. To take action to oppose this disastrous preemption language, send a letter and/or contact:

The House Agricultural Committee: agriculture@mail.house.gov.
Your House Representative: www.house.gov/writerep/
Your Senator: www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Stay updated about the 2007 Farm Bill as it moves through the House of Representatives: agriculture.house.gov/inside/2007FarmBill.html

Britt Bailey is the Founder (in 2004) and Director of Environmental Commons. Prior to forming Environmental Commons she was Co-Director of the
Center for Ethics and Toxics. Her writing has appeared in the Chicago Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle. She is the co-author with Marc Lappé of Against the Grain: Biotechnology and the Corporate Takeover of Your Food

Source: Scientific American
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union authorized Australian biotech company Florigene on Wednesday to import and market carnations whose color has been genetically modified, its Official Journal said in its latest edition.

The carnations will be allowed to enter EU-27 markets as cut flowers for distribution and sale to the general public. They will not be allowed to be grown and must be specially labeled. “The words ‘This product is a genetically modified organism’ or ‘This product is a genetically modified carnation’, and the words ‘not for human or animal consumption nor for cultivation’ shall appear either on a label or in a document accompanying the product,” the Journal said.

The application for EU approval was filed to the European Commission by Florigene, one of Australia’s first biotechnology companies and part of the privately owned Suntory group. Marketed as Florigene Moonlite, the flowers are modified to produce blue pigment and also carry a herbicide-resistant gene. The EU’s import license will be valid for 10 years. According to its Web site, Florigene developed the world’s first mauve-colored carnation in 1996 and devotes much research on developing flowers that lack the blue color, specifically roses, carnations and chrysanthemums.

Ironically, carnations were the EU’s last two authorizations of genetically modified (GMO) plants before it began its unofficial six-year moratorium on new GMO approvals. The flowers were modified to alter color and “improve vase life.” The EU decision is a rubberstamp procedure applied by the European Commission — the EU’s executive arm. It is permitted under a legal default process that kicks in when ministers are unable to agree among themselves after a period of three months.

Since then, even after the moratorium ended in early 2004 because of a default legal rubberstamp from the Commission, the EU’s member countries have consistently clashed on new GMO authorizations and failed to reach consensus. National governments have consistently clashed over biotech policy. They last agreed on a new GMO approval in 1998.

European consumers are well known for their wariness towards GMO foods but the biotech industry insists its products are safe and no different to conventional foods. Europe’s hostility to GMO foods is unfounded, it says.

Source: Javno Economy
For suspicion that it has been genetically modified, Uncle Ben’s rice has undergone analysis in Switzerland and was briefly withdrawn from shelves in Croatia too. The results of the analysis have shown that Uncle Ben’s rice was not genetically modified, but was in contact with genetically modified soy and otherwise fully satisfied Croatian regulations.

At the same time another food scandal broke out in Europe with ingredients of articles known as the “Mars case”. Mars jettisoned rennet from its chocolate bars, a natural enzyme that is found in the stomach of calves. The company said it had used rennet to secure the availability of food, although many industrial experts believe that it was for cutting costs. The statement caused rage among consumers. In only seven days in Great Britain more than six thousand people contacted the local vegetarian society. Realising what they had done, Mars apologised to all vegetarians and removed rennet from its chocolate bars. This case concerned many people who take care of their health (although not so many in Croatia) and many are now asking do we at all know what we are eating, drinking and using.

What are we eating, drinking and using?

Source: Indymedia Ireland
The current Fianna Fáil / PD Government’s litany of lies and broken promises on genetically modified (GM) food and farming have exposed Irish farmers, food producers, food exporters, retailers, restaurants, and consumers to years of contamination by illegal and/or toxic GM ingredients.

Following a six-week investigation by Greenpeace International and the GM-free Ireland Network, the latest scandal was revealed late last Friday when the Department of Agriculture finally admitted that it failed to test a 12,313 tonne shipment of contaminated animal feed from the USA before it was unloaded from the ship MV Pakrac in Dublin on 2 April [1] and placed on the market. As a result of this fiasco, up to 5,313 tonnes of feed contaminated by illegal and toxic GM maize varieties have entered the food chain, causing potential liver and kidney damage to consumers [2].

• Contamination still underway
• Farmers have no way to find out if their livestock’s feed was or is contaminated.
• Restaurants, food retailers and food exporters don’t know if their beef, lamb, pork, poultry, eggs, milk, butter and cheese currently is contaminated by the illegal and toxic GM ingredients.
• Consumers can not choose to avoid the contaminated meat and dairy produce, because our government supports a legal EU loophole which allows these products to be sold without a GM label.
• This lack of labelling makes it impossible for consumers and doctors to trace any resulting medical problems to the contaminated feed.
• Leading retailers across Europe, which prohibit GM ingredients in the animal feed chain, will be increasingly wary of Bord Bia’s Ireland – the food island branding campaign which allows meat and dairy fed on legal GM ingredients to be sold under its Quality Assurance Scheme.

Source: NFU
WASHINGTON (May 21, 2007) – National Farmers Union expressed great concern today over the approval by the Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service (APHIS) to allow Ventria Bioscience to plant genetically modified pharma rice in Kansas. NFU said the decision poses a potential risk to the American food supply.

“America’s farmers have suffered the economic consequences of two major instances when unapproved genetically-modified rice entered the food supply in the past year,” NFU President Tom Buis said. Buis said NFU is concerned Ventria Bioscience’s proposal did not specifically address the necessary safety precautions for transit of the rice. He added that a significant risk may exist to all crops and soils neighboring the transportantion route. Despite Kansas’ recent devastating tornadoes and disastrous flooding, part of APHIS’ response to official comments was that “extreme weather events are unlikely to occur in the area of the field trial.”

“Until USDA and FDA improve oversight and regulation of pharma crops, NFU will remain extremely concerned about pharma commodity production based on economic, environmental, food safety and liability risks to both producers and consumers,” Buis said. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved the rice-grown drugs due to potentially hazardous side effects. This lack of approval means Ventria Bioscience does not have a sufficient market, thus the production of this crop appears to provide no benefit to Kansas farmers or the economy.

Source: Anthony Barnett, Public Affairs Editor - The Observer
A leading zoologist has found evidence that genes used to modify crops can jump the species barrier and cause bacteria to mutate, prompting fears that GM technology could pose serious health risks. A four-year study by Professor Hans-Hinrich Kaatz, a respected German zoologist, found that the alien gene used to modify oilseed rape had transferred to bacteria living inside the guts of honey bees.

The research - which has yet to be published and has not been reviewed by fellow scientists - is highly significant because it suggests that all types of bacteria could become contaminated by genes used in genetically modified technology, including those that live inside the human digestive system. If this happened, it could have an impact on the bacteria’s vital role in helping the human body fight disease, aid digestion and facilitate blood clotting. Agriculture Minister Nick Brown, who was yesterday advising farmers who have accidentally grown contaminated GM oilseed rape in Britain to rip up their crops, confirmed the potential significance of Kaatz’s research. He said: ‘If this is true, then it would be very serious.’

The 47-year-old Kaatz has been reluctant to talk about his research until it has been published in a scientific journal, because he fears a backlash from the scientific community similar to that faced by Dr Arpad Pustzai, who claimed that genetically modified potatoes damaged the stomach lining of rats. Pustzai was sacked and had his work discredited.

But in his first newspaper interview, Kaatz told The Observer: ‘It is true, I have found the herbicide-resistant genes in the rapeseed transferred across to the bacteria and yeast inside the intestines of young bees. This happened rarely, but it did happen.’ Although Kaatz realised the potential ’significance’ of his findings, he said he ‘was not surprised’ at the results. Asked if this had implications for the bacteria inside the human gut, he said: ‘Maybe, but I am not an expert on this.’ Dr Mae-Wan Ho, geneticist at Open University and a critic of GM technology, has no doubts about the dangers. She said: ‘These findings are very worrying and provide the first real evidence of what many have feared. Everybody is keen to exploit GM technology, but nobody is looking at the risk of horizontal gene transfer. We are playing about with genetic structures that existed for millions of years and the experiment is running out of control.’ One of the biggest concerns is if the anti-biotic resistant gene used in some GM crops crossed over to bacteria. ‘If this happened it would leave us unable to treat major illnesses like meningitis and E coli .’

Kaatz, who works at the respected Institute for Bee Research at the University of Jena in Germany, built nets in a field planted with genetically modified rapeseed produced by AgrEvo. He let the bees fly freely within the net. At the beehives, he installed pollen traps in order to sample the pollen from the bees’ hindlegs when entering the hive. This pollen was fed to young honey bees in the laboratory. Pollen is the natural diet of young bees, which need a high protein diet. Kaatz then extracted the intestine of the young bees and discovered that the gene from the GM rape-seed had been transferred in the bee gut to the microbes.

Professor Robert Pickard, director-general of the Institute of the British Nutrition Foundation, is a bee expert as well as being a biologist and has visited the institute where Kaatz works. He said: ‘There is no doubt that, if Kaatz’s research is substantiated, then it poses very interesting questions and will need to be looked at very closely. ‘But it must be remembered that the human body has been coping perfectly well with strange DNA for millions of years. And we also know many people have been eating GM products for years without showing any signs of ill health.’ Gene transfer to bacteria inside the bees intestine. Maybe that’s a contributing factor in their disappearance.

Source: Molonlabe Email News (molonlabe@usadatanet.net)
LONDON (AFP) - Research by a leading German zoologist has shown that genes used to genetically modify crops can jump the species barrier, newspapers reported here on Sunday. A three-year study by Professor Hans-Heinrich Kaatz at the University of Jena found that the gene used to modify oil-seed rape had transferred to bacteria living inside honey bees. The findings will undermine claims by the biotech industry and supporters of GM foods that genes cannot spread.

They will also increase pressure on farmers across Europe to destroy fields of oil-seed rape contaminated with GM seeds. In an interview for The Observer newspaper, Kaatz said: “I have found the herbicide-resistant genes in the rapeseed transferred across to the bacteria and yeast inside the intestines of young bees. This happened rarely, but it did happen.” Asked if his findings had implications for the bacteria inside the human gut, Kaatz replied: “Maybe, but I am not an expert on this.”

The Observer said Kaatz was reluctant to talk about his work until it is officially published and reviewed by fellow scientists. The reports come a day after Britain’s Agriculture Minister Nick Brown urged farmers to destroy crops contaminated with genetically modified seeds. Up to 600 farmers in Britain are believed to have inadvertently planted more than 30,000 acres of oilseed rape contaminated with GM rape seeds, supplied by Anglo-Dutch seed company Advanta. Similar crops have been planted elsewhere in Europe, including in France, Germany and Sweden. The French and Swedish governments have already announced they are ordering the uprooting of the crops.

Source: Truth About Trade & Technology
Europe must speed up its approval process for new biotech crops and foods to avoid future problems with key suppliers like Argentina, Brazil and the United States, Europe’s farm chief said on Friday. Shipments of maize feed products had fallen in the past few months due to efforts to keep out genetically modified (GMO) materials that were approved elsewhere but not in the 27 countries of the European Union.

EU regulators had to consider what would happen if imports had to be blocked altogether from given origins to avoid unwanted contamination, EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said. “Many of our trade partners have a different perspective on GMO regulation from ours,” she told delegates at an international cereals and oilseeds conference. “One part of the problem seems to be that, when the European Union considers authorising a new GMO, the approval process takes a considerable time. We are examining why this is, and whether we can speed it up without compromising on the risk assessment,” Fischer Boel said. [more]

There has been a lot of talk in the recent months regarding the dying populations of honey bees. Organic consumer groups have blamed GMO while proponents of GMO have blamed the use of cellphones. All in all, a lot of confusion and blame being put forth to many different causes. However, the following article that was originally published by the Times Online and has just been brought to our attention, provides a rather interesting piece of information. Considering that 1) the original article has been removed from their site, and 2) this article dates back to September 2002. For the purpose of archival, we present you the article:

GM crop taints honey two miles away, test reveals
(The Sunday Times, UK, September 15, 2002)

Evidence that genetically modified (GM) crops can contaminate food supplies for miles around has been revealed in independent tests commissioned by The Sunday Times.

The tests found alien GM material in honey from beehives two miles from a site where GM crops were being grown under government supervision. It is believed to have been carried there by bees gathering pollen in the GM test sites.

The disclosure, showing that GM organisms can enter the food chain without consumers - or even farmers - knowing they are present, will undermine assurances by Tony Blair and ministers that such crops can be tested in Britain without contaminating the food chain. The test results come as ministers, under pressure from the American agrochemical lobby, mount a huge consultation exercise to persuade the public of the virtues of GM foods. They have previously given assurances that consumers “are not being used as guinea pigs”.

The GM material was found in honey sold from farmer David Rolfe’s hives at Newport-on-Tay in Fife, almost two miles from one of 18 sites holding trials of GM oil-seed rape. A test carried out by GeneScan, a respected independent laboratory in Bremen, Germany, checked for traces of an NOS terminator, one of four modified genes which make the crop resistant to pesticides. This proved positive.

A second test confirmed that GM material in the honey could have come only from oil- seed rape grown at Wester Friarton, in Newport-on-Tay, by Aventis, one of the world’s biggest biotechnology firms. The fact that the GM material travelled such a distance makes a mockery of the government’s 50m-200m crop-free “buffer” zones that were created around GM sites to protect neighbouring farms. Critics have claimed that the GM crop trial sites are too close to other farms. America has buffer zones of up to 400m, Canada up to 800m, and the European Union recommends a 5km (three-mile) zone for GM oilseed rape.

When Rolfe first raised his concerns, government officials said that although it was not possible to rule out cross-pollination, they did not believe it should be “a source of concern”. “I’m very angry and disappointed,” Rolfe said last week. “I feel I’ve been denied the right and freedom to eat my own GM-free produce. Now we can’t eat the honey or sell it.” This weekend Defra, the ministry responsible for the crop trials, said: “We have not seen the results of the study but will treat any such findings extremely seriously.”

In the case of GM rape, like most GM products, there is no evidence that contamination poses a health risk. Concern centres on maintaining the integrity of traditionally produced products. Tim Lang, professor of food policy at Thames Valley University, said: “The early assurances from the industry and the government that a buffer zone would allow safety and choice for consumers are falling apart. It raises environmental health worries, and what we don’t yet know is whether these warnings will translate into a risk to human health.” Britain has imposed a moratorium on the widespread planting of GM crops until it has analysed the impact of GM crop trials at 18 farm-scale sites around Britain.

However, The Sunday Times’s tests confirm earlier work that was carried by Friends of the Earth, the environmental group, and will increase pressure on the government to scale down its support for the GM industry. It will also come as a personal setback to Blair, who is determined that British companies will win a share of the potentially lucrative bioscience industry. In May the prime minister attacked GM protesters as part of an “anti-science fashion” in Britain. The tests will bring pressure on Aventis, which was accused of a “serious breach” of regulations earlier this year after GM trials in 12 sites were contaminated with antibiotic genes. These are controversial because of the danger of gene transfer to bacteria in animals and humans, who could become immune to common life- saving antibiotics.

While the government tends to support the GM lobby, food retailers have been more cautious. The big supermarkets insist that such products are properly labelled and refuse to take honey from within six miles of UK test sites. In Canada, a leading cultivator of GM crops, sales of honey have plummeted by 50% amid concern that the integrity of the product has been compromised. A spokesmen for Aventis said: “We would be very interested in looking at both the origin of the honey sample and how the tests were carried out. We would like to look at this further.”

Source: News Target
A must read for everyone has been posted on News Target about the documentary “The Future of Food”. We are going to repeat their recommendations here because we fully support these recommendations:

1. View the documentary. Make sure you watch The Future of Food.

2. Shop for NON-GMO foods. Buy organic, and look for non-GMO labels on the foods you purchase. If you’re not sure what’s genetically modified and what isn’t, rest assured that most of the brand-name products made by the largest food corporations contain one or more genetically modified ingredients. The most common are corn and soybeans. So buy food and food products from small, local companies or “natural” food manufacturers. Visit your local food coop. Eat local!

3. Support legislative efforts to require the labeling of genetically modified food ingredients. I’m not aware of any such pending legislation that’s anywhere close to a vote, but if such legislation appears on the horizon, you can count on NewsTarget to rally readers to the cause.

4. Read the Center for Food Safety report on pharmaceutical rice. Click here to download the report now (PDF). This is an important report to read if you want to understand how drug companies are now trying to turn nature’s crops into pharmaceutical factories, placing the safety of the entire national food supply at great risk.

5. Share information with others. Spread the word on our CounterThink cartoons. Just click on any cartoon you see on this page, then you can send it to a friend or post it on your website (please include a link back to us). Take part in consumer activism by posting your own blog or articles on this topic. Help spread the word about the dangers of genetically engineered crops!

Source: EU Business
Environmental group Greenpeace said Monday that an illegal genetically modified maize had been found in a US shipment to Europe, the fourth such case in two years. Greenpeace said it had analysed cargo that arrived in the port at Rotterdam, the Netherlands on April 10 and found that it contained 2.4 percent of the GMO Herculex, a maize manufactured by the firm Pioneer and not yet legal in the EU.

It said in a statement that the ship carrying the maize had offloaded some cargo in Ireland but the group could not determine whether the GMO had landed there. The European Commission said it had not been told about the find, but that if it were the case it would be “up to the Dutch authorities to send the maize back to the United States.” Since new authorisation rules were introduced in 2004, about 10 GM strains have been cleared for the EU market, mainly for maize destined for human or animal consumption.

The EU has seen three “major incidences” of unauthorised GM products — all originating from the United States — reaching the EU market since the new rules went into force. Those episodes concerned the discovery of shipments of long-grain GM rice, maize gluten last year, and Hawaiian papaya in 2004 and 2005. Herculex has received a “positive scientific evaluation” from EU food safety experts and the bloc is expected to decide on June 8 whether it should be allowed in.

The following illustrates that dangerous things are happening at the Monsanto headquarters. Visit the following map and check for yourself.

Are the GM crops, seeds, and plants that they are testing there safe? Extremely safe? What effects can be found downwind from there? What happens if you do enter that area? Something dangerous from the warning it has all over it, no doubt. This is by all means a funny situation for a company that claims their tests and products are safe.

Source: The Gazette
Quebec must act quickly to get a handle on genetically modified organisms or risk paying a high price for its inaction in the future, a coalition of anti-GMO consumer, environmental and farmers’ groups told a commission studying the future of farming in Quebec yesterday. The groups urged Quebec to implement mandatory labelling, encourage alternatives to GMOs and make it easier to hold GMO makers legally accountable when their products contaminate non-GMO crops.

“We know from our experiences with chemicals and tobacco that if we don’t take early precautionary measures, we might collectively pay the cost later on,” Eric Darier, of Greenpeace and part of the coalition, said after the presentation. “Before we go ahead with new products, there should be a fairly solid consensus that those products are safe”. He said the jury is still out on the impact of GMOs - organisms with genetic material that is altered using gene technology - on health and the environment.

An estimated 70 per cent of processed foods on grocery store shelves contain or might contain genetically modified ingredients. During the 2003 provincial election, Jean Charest’s Liberals pledged to bring in a labelling system, a plan that was later abandoned. About 40 countries, including the European Union countries, already require mandatory labelling of modified foods, said Charles Tanguay, a spokesperson for the Union des consommateurs, which is part of the coalition.

It should not be up to the food industry or governments to decide whether consumers should be told whether GMOs are included in products, Tanguay said, noting surveys show most Canadians in favour of mandatory labelling. “One of the most fundamental rights of consumers is the right to be informed,” Tanguay said. The provincial Commission sur l’avenir de l’agriculture et de l’agroalimentaire quebecois held hearings in Montreal yesterday. It is to present recommendations to the government in January.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald
The federal government will be able to release untested genetically modified organisms into the environment under proposed new emergency response laws, activists say. Greenpeace and Gene Ethics told a parliamentary inquiry in separate submissions they were concerned that the broad terms of proposed legislation could allow governments to release potentially dangerous biological agents for almost any reason. The inquiry is considering legislation that amends gene technology regulation. A clause in the proposed amendment would allow the minister to speed up the release of a genetically modified organism (GMO) in response to an emergency.

“Gene technology holds great potential for Australia and there may be circumstances where a genetically modified organism is uniquely capable of dealing with a health or environmental emergency,” Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation Minister senator Eric Abetz said when he introduced the legislation to the Senate last month. Under the proposed changes, the minister could give the go-ahead for the release of a GMO if he considered it necessary to deal with an imminent threat. But Louise Sales from Greenpeace said the clause bestowed a broad and sweeping power on the minister as it did not explicitly define what would be considered a threat.

The drought could be considered a sufficient threat to justify the release of plants genetically modified to resist dry conditions with no investigation, Greenpeace said. “It’s basically left to the minister’s discretion with no need to prove a threat exists,” Ms Sales said. “The current wording… is so broad it could include current pests and disease you see in agricultural property systems all over the country. The risks associated with GMOs are not properly known and do need to be assessed.”

Cane toads were an example of biological controls gone wrong, Ms Sales said. The toads - introduced to eradicate another pest but now a plague in their own right - were an example of why a full safety assessment should be done before any biological agents were released into the environment, she said. Bob Phelps from Gene Ethics, a lobby group critical of genetically modified crops, said the clause was an invitation for an experimental organism to be released without any assessment process. “We find that totally unacceptable,” he said. But Health Department deputy secretary Mary Murnane said guidelines had been written to control the administration of the emergency power. Safeguards in the guidelines included consultation, she said.

Ms Murnane said the powers could only be used if the country faced an imminent and serious threat that put the population or economy at risk. “It can’t be something to leverage a preferred policy position on the part of somebody,” she said. The courts could impose “severe consequences” if the power was used for something that was not an imminent and serious threat, she said. The health department also disputed Greenpeace’s claim that the change could lead to genetically modified plants being released to cope with drought.

Source: Reuters
EU biotech experts will discuss three applications this week to approve new genetically modified (GMO) plants but are unlikely to break the bloc’s long-standing deadlock on GMO foods, officials said on Wednesday. The applications, to authorize two modified maize hybrids and one GMO sugar beet, do not relate to cultivation in Europe.

Experts representing the EU’s 25 national governments will discuss and possibly vote on the applications. But they were not expected to reach the required consensus under the EU’s weighted voting system either to approve or reject them, officials said. If this happens at Thursday’s meeting, the paperwork will be escalated to EU agriculture ministers for debate at a future meeting. Normally, this has to happen within three months.

“At the moment, I can see nothing that would not lead to a non-opinion,” one EU official said. If the ministers cannot agree, again a likely scenario, then the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, usually issues its own authorization under a legal default process. Since the EU’s six-year unofficial moratorium on approving new GMO products was lifted in 2004, the Commission has authorized a string of GMOs in this way, outraging green groups. For many years, EU countries have not been able to secure the majority needed to vote through a new GMO approval. They last agreed to authorize a new GMO product in 1998. European consumers are well known for their wariness towards GMO foods but the biotech industry insists its products are safe and no different from conventional foods.

• The first maize hybrid, submitted for EU approval by U.S. biotech giant Monsanto, is known as MON810/NK603 and designed to resist certain insects and also glyphosate — the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. Monsanto’s application relates to food and animal feed produced from the modified plants or containing ingredients derived from those plants.
• The second GMO maize, a hybrid known as 1507/NK603, has been developed to resist certain field pests like the European corn borer, and also the herbicides glufosinate and glyphosate.
• The maize is jointly made by Pioneer Hi-Bred International, a subsidiary of DuPont Co., and Dow AgroSciences unit Mycogen Seeds. Their application is for import and processing, for all food and feed uses, and all food, feed and processed products derived from the GMO maize plants.
• The GMO sugar beet, called H7-1, was developed jointly by Monsanto and German plant breeding company KWS SAAT AG to resist glyphosate-containing herbicides. The application relates to food and animal feed produced from the beet, for example sugar, syrup, dried pulp and molasses.

Source: REGNUM
“Results of our research of GMO influence upon living organisms make doubtful their harmlessness for living organisms,” President of the National Association for Genetic Safety Alexander Baranov said at a news conference held at the REGNUM press center in Moscow today. “This must become the ground for serious refection at official governmental institutions,” Baranov said. Members of the association presented results of research conducted at Vavilov Agriculture University (Saratov). The research registered pathological deviation by guinea-pigs that ate GMO.

As author of the test, Russian biotechnologist Maria Konovalova, who was personally conducting the survey, said the GM-soy used during the tests on rats caused serious mutilations of their internal organs (liver, kidneys, testicles) and in histological and cellular construction. Besides, it influences the number of babies in a litter, differentiated death rate of the descendants, results in increased aggressiveness and loss of maternal instinct. Maria Konovalova provided photos of the mice under tests:

Left: a mouse from the sample group that ate isolate of GM soy within five months

Right: a mouse from the control set bred on a common vivarium ration

President of the association Alexander Baranov also said at the conference that they sent an open letter to Russia’s Chief Sanitary Inspector Gennady Onishchenko stressing necessity of a temporary ban on using GMO that have been already given permission for use in the Russian territory and announcing a temporary moratorium on registration of new GMO until their influence upon human organism is fully examined.

“By present moment an awful situation has established: we feed our children with food, safety of which nobody can guarantee,” Baranov believes. “We are not searching for whom is to blame for it. In our letter to Gennady Onishchenko we propose certain measures for soonest settlement of the problem.”

As REGNUM reported earlier, in October 2005, Russian reseracher Dr. Irina Ermakova made public results of her experiment that showed that genetically modified soy affects posterity.

Source: Organic Market Info
On the 23 of March 2007 in Uzès, hunger strikers set up in the open house of Montreuil, striking for an Uzès spring without OGM. This was the start of their 10th day of strike. Like them, 86 % of the French wished for a moratorium on the cultivation of OGM. While Jacques Chirac calls the whole world to the ecological revolution, his government is publishing a decree to transpose the order of 2001/18, in the hurry to legalize the voluntary dispearsal of transgenetic plants on French territory.

Thus, the GMO-farmers are told to inform their neighbors and to respect a distance of 50 meters of separation between the plots. Some rapeseed pollen had been found more than 4.5 kilometers from its initial field, and seeds transported by the wind at more than 20 kilometers. With GMO, an infernal spiral is engaged between civilian society and the seed and biotechnology industries. Are the French farmers really going to end up like the 950 organic farmers of Quebec, who were victims of both pollution and laws suits initiated by the multinational Monsanto?

Today certain French cooperatives, under pressure from the seeders, are imposing two chemical knife treatments on conventional corn, with which GMO would cultivate this spring. The Pioneer Society freely distributes the GMO seeds. Their objective is to command well the GMO by whatever means, even genetic pollution if necessary. Despite serious scientific alerts with this, again recently, the president Gilles Eric Seralini, member of Critigen and of the Commission of Biomolecular engineering, called out to the responsible politicians on the serious consequences.

In regards to health: MON 863, authorized for consumption, shows signs of hepatic and renal toxicity, revealed through rats fed for only three months with this famous corn. What’s more MON 810, only to be cultivated today in France, is very close to this toxic corn and has never been correctly evaluated. Even the review of European rules of Organic agriculture is subject to the tough test. They predict accepting a contamination thresh hold of 0.9 %, at nine grams per kilogram, in the organic products. Such a rule will lift one of the last ramparts against pollution spread by genetically modified organisms.

Nature and Progress, the Federation of producers and of organic consumers, is rising up against this diktat of GMO and supports the action of the hunger strikers for a spring without GMO. They are calling the president of the Republic to beautifully withdraw by putting his acts in agreement with his speech of a moratorium by the institution of OGM, 100 % legally receivable by Europe before the seeds of the month of April 2007 are sown.

Source: BBC News
Insulin produced by genetically modified plants - with a human gene added - could be on the market in three years, a Canadian company has claimed. Sembiosys said it has made scientific breakthroughs and found a short cut through current drug regulations.

The firm’s CEO Andrew Baum said his company could become one of the first to sell a plant-based pharmaceutical. However, critics believe that these products pose greater environmental and health risks than GM food crops. Most insulin is now produced by genetically modified bacteria, inside sealed tanks. The new technique uses GM plants grown out in the open. The company is growing insulin in the seeds of safflower, a relatively little-used seed oil plant. The safflower is being grown on a trial basis in fields in Chile, the US and Canada. Their crop is grown counter-seasonally to reduce the risks of the insulin-producing genes crossing to other plants. Mr Baum said: “Sembiosys believes it will be one of the first - or the first - company to get a plant-based pharmaceutical on the market.”

Sembiosys has predicted an “explosion” in demand for insulin because of a growing number of diabetics. Moreover, new methods of delivering the drug, like inhalation, require more insulin per dose than injections. Mr Baum said that one large North American farm growing his safflower could meet the global demand for insulin - and that the price of the drug could be cut significantly. If the firm can demonstrate that the plant-based insulin is identical with human insulin, it won’t have to go through all the long and costly stages of full clinical trials.

Mr Baum said he saw his product as part of a new wave of GM plants which could help change public opinion - particularly in Europe - in favour of the technology. He said: “While the first wave of products were really focussed on the farmer and improving agricultural economics, there’s an increasing emphasis now in the industry on products that address more direct consumer benefits and consumer needs.”

There are also more projects under way to develop many other pharmaceutical crops. Professor Ed Rybicki of the University of Cape Town has modified tobacco so it produces a vaccine for cervical cancer. He said the aim was to help women in the developing world. Furthermore, there are plans to produce spider silk from potatoes and to make non-polluting engine lubricants in seed oil plants. A Danish company is even trying to create plants that will help clear minefields. The flowers of the modified thale cress would change from white to red if their roots absorb traces of explosives - showing where the landmines had been laid.

However Clare Oxborrow, of Friends of the Earth, said the risks of contamination from pharmaceutical plants was actually greater than from food crops. She said there had already been contamination incidents with experimental pharmaceutical plants. One American company, Prodigene, was heavily fined for its mistakes in 2002. Similar problems have occurred recently with GM food crops.

She said: “It’s worrying enough when it’s a crop intended for human consumption. But when it might be a pharmaceutical crop in the future that contaminates the food chain, that raises serious worries and questions about the risks involved for human health.”

Ms Oxborrow said the promised benefits would not be great enough to shift public opinion. She pointed to many other factors influencing public views - like the impact on the environment, potential health concerns and corporate control of the food chain. However Mr Baum insisted: “The goodness of what we’re doing is so clear - people who are dying of diabetes in the developing world will eventually get insulin - that I think people can understand it.”

Source: Hankyoreh
South Korea has reportedly exempted U.S. foods containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) from safety tests in the Korea-U.S free trade agreement struck on April 2, a move that Korean environmentalists criticised as the government “selling off” the health of the nation.

Seoul reportedly made the decision to exempt U.S. GMOs from safety tests in order to draw concessions from Washington on opening its textile market to Korean imports, sources said. The exemption of U.S. GMOs from safety testing was called contradictory in light of recent efforts by the Korean Government to place more strict regulation on such products.

Many experts have raised safety concerns over GMOs, hybrid crops produced through cross breeding, with international efforts underway to control the cross-border movement of such items. The GMO controversy stems from some studies saying they may be hazardous to the health of consumers, especially over the long term. The European Union in particular has been cautious about the growth and sale of genetically modified crops, with several strict regulatory measures still in place after a six-year ban on GMOs was lifted in 2004.

Related to GMOs, the South Korean government announced a plan on March 29 to require all agricultural products to bear labels as to whether they have been genetically modified, so that consumers can make an informed choice about what they are eating. Currently, only four vegetables - potatoes, corn, beans, and bean sprouts - are subject to the regulation. The government is also planning to conduct safety tests on GMO-based animal feed, as Japan and the European Union have done. In addition, the government is moving to ratify the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and is currently preparing related regulations to implement the global pact, which is designed to monitor cross-border movement of such crops.

Paradoxically, the FTA safety test exemption on U.S. GMOs comes amid all of these efforts by the Korean government to regulate and monitor the sale of genetically modified crops. Experts worry that such favored treatment of U.S. GMOs would inevitably cause the government to revise its efforts to step up regulation of genetically modified foods.

“If we make an exception for GMOs from the U.S., one of the world’s largest GMO exporters, it would be merely a perfunctory act to sign and implement the Cartagena Protocol,” said Lim Ji-ae, an environmentalist. “This means that we will have to eat GMOs whether we want to or not, with no guarantee for our safety.”

The U.S. is not a member of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, both of which are intended to monitor GMOs. A total of 189 nations have joined the convention, and 132 countries have ratified the protocol, which went into effect in September 2003. Just as it has never ratified the Kyoto Protocol to fight climate change, the U.S. government tends to avoid such regulatory agreements due to mounting pressure from local agriculture, which sees such pacts as obstacles to business operations. According to Korean statistics, the U.S. is the world’s largest GMO producer, with 55 percent of its arable land being used for their production.

The exemption of U.S. GMOs from safety tests will also open the floodgates for U.S. genetically modified corn, critics say, which has been banned from being imported since July 2002. U.S. corn was approved for animal feed in 2000 but created a stir in the Korean market when it was found to have been sold by Korean distributors for human consumption instead. Korea grows its own genetically modified products, including corn, as a small percentage of its total crops.

“With growing concerns over GMO safety and a series of scientific evidence toward its danger, importing genetically modified goods from the U.S. without safety tests and due approval procedures is tantamount to putting our health in jeopardy,” Lim said.

Source: Ukiah Daily Journal
According to a report from biotechnology advocacy group, a record number of genetically modified organisms, or biotech crops, were planted last year. But, in Mendocino County, the numbers are virtually nonexistent, thanks to both a lack of interest and a 2004 county ordinance banning their use in unincorporated areas. According to the study, published by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, 10.3 million farmers in 22 countries planted 252 million acres of GMO crops in 2006, an increase of 13 percent from 2005.

“Here we have virtually no one growing GMO crops,” said Mendocino County Agriculture Commissioner Dave Bengston. In March of 2004, Mendocino County voters approved Measure H, an ordinance banning the growing of GMO crops within the county. Mendocino County is one of only four counties in California to ban GMO crops, the others are Marin, Santa Cruz and Trinity counties. Bengston said even before the ordinance was approved, it is unlikely there were many people growing GMO crops in Mendocino County because the primary GMO crops - corn, alfalfa, rice and canola - cannot be profitably grown in the county. “We probably had some people growing GMO corn before the ordinance,” Bengston said.

There are a number of potential GMO crops in research, including winegrapes, but none of them are on the market yet, Bengston said. Bengston compared the passage of Measure H
to counties that declare themselves “no nuke zones” when there is little chance of a nuclear power plant being located near them. “It’s a political statement,” he said. Despite that, Bengston said agriculture commission inspectors added GMO seeds to the list of things they look for following the passage of Measure H.

Inspectors visit the offices of major shipping companies, including, UPS, FedEx and DHL, every morning to make sure no banned pesticides, quarantined plants, insects or GMO crops are shipped into the county. Bengston said inspectors also check for certain pesticides that are commonly used on GMO crops that have been made resistant to them. Bengston said inspectors spend a very small amount of time actually looking for GMO seeds because of the low likelihood of any coming into the county.

However, just bringing GMO seeds into the county does not constitute a violation of the ordinance. Measure H applies only to land in the county and excludes federal land, tribal land and the county’s four cities. There is nothing in the ordinance to stop the federal government from planting GMO white pine, which is resistant to disease, on federal land, Bengston said. “It’s kind of a patchwork quilt when you look at how much federal land and tribal land and city land we’ve got,” he said.

While GMO seeds coming into the county through the mail or in delivery trucks could be caught by inspectors, Bengston said things would be more complicated if individual farmers went out and bought the seeds in another county, brought them into Mendocino County and planted them. “You wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at them,” Bengston said. “It’s hard for me to imagine someone sneaking around and doing it,” he said. Assuming someone did grow GMO crops in the county, Bengston said prosecution could be difficult because Measure H does not address court hearings or jury trials for violators. “I’d have to be talking with county counsel to work out some kind of due process,” Bengston said.Inspectors would have to determine if the crops were GMO, which would likely require getting an inspection warrant and then submitting the evidence to a laboratory for analysis. “That would be quite expensive,” Bengston said.

Source: Truth about Trade and Technology
The Environment Ministry in Bucharest is due to push for public debate two new initiatives on genetically modified food - one for the introduction of GM soy testing and one for tests of GM plum trees. The Ministry recently authorized tests on GM corn. The moves come as agricultural experts are pushing hard to make Romanian citizens understand that GM crops are not harmful. But environmental militants are redirecting the debate towards studies they say may help stop the expansion of non-conventional crops, while modified corn is the only GM plant allowed in the EU agriculture. Romania is facing backbreaking decisions on aligning its agricultural legislation to the EU’s and applying it wherever possible. But major companies are also pushing hard to have GM crops allowed at large-scale level.

“We’re doing what the EU laws says and it says very clearly what can be cropped and what not”, Environment Ministry official Catalin Cheran told HotNews.ro. A short look over all notifications submitted on GMOs on EU territory shows most come from US corporations such as Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta. Several other local players - state universities and companies covering national territories alone - are also profiled, but in a much lesser measure.

Pioneer, Monsanto and Syngenta have submitted documents asking to test GM crops in Romania. If applied, the groups may start putting up crops for testing GM soy, corn and plum trees. They’re also claiming that food is already insufficient and that “a solution to these crisis is the use of biotechnology in agriculture”, as Clive James, a GMO supporter, put it during a Bucharest conference on March 2. But anti-GM campaigners are also doing their best in preventing such pressure. Shortly after Hungary obtained an exemption from regulations on GM corn crops, a study was published claiming that GM corn damages human health. And for the first time since GM corn was authorized for food production, a study recently published by Professor Gilles Eric Seralini of the University of Caen claims the only EU-approved GMO used on testing animals provides signs of toxicity in at liver and kidney level.

Source: Javno
France said on Tuesday it had brought its national legislation into line with European Union laws on growing genetically modified (GMO) crops, hoping to end a legal battle with Europe’s top court. The French farm ministry said in a statement it was publishing in the official journal the two main decrees converting into French law the European directive on GMO commercial and experimental crops. The directive, agreed by EU governments in 2001, regulates how GMO crops may be grown and approved across the bloc.

It covers the cultivation of GMO seeds for crop or seed production and also includes imports of GMOs from other countries and their processing for industrial purposes. In December last year the European Commission asked the Court of Justice (ECJ) to fine France for its failure to integrate the directive on the environmental release of GMOs. The amount was based on a daily calculation for non-compliance since an initial ECJ ruling in July 2004, and has now grown to over 42 million euros, ministry officials said. “We’re still at risk from this fine but hope it will now stop growing. We’ll have to see what the court will decide,” a French farm ministry official said, adding that a separate daily fine of 366,744 euros was likely to be dropped.

French consumers are well known for their scepticism, if not hostility, to GMO crops, often dubbed “Frankenstein foods.” The biotech industry insists its products are perfectly safe.

France has only approved one type of GMO crop, the “MON 810″ maize produced by U.S. biotech giant Monsanto , to be cultivated for commercial purposes. In 2006, around 5,200 hectares were grown with the maize, which has been modified to resist certain insect pests, the French maize growers association AGPM said. That is only a minor part of the total grain sowings in France which account for more than nine million hectares, including 1.8 million hectares of maize.

Under the new rules, farmers will be obliged to give precise details on their GMO sowings, which should enable France to create a national register of all GMO crops in the country, including their number, surface and location, it added. The register will be available on the Internet. Maize producers stressed the register would not give a precise location for the GMO locations in a bid to stop farmers having their fields destroyed by protesters in what has become a common practice in France.

“For us it was important that the name of (GMO-growing) farmers and villages should remain confidential to avoid new ransacking,” Luc Esprit, director general of France’s maize producers group AGPM, told Reuters. But a spokeswoman for France’s anti-GMO lobby said her fellow activists would continue destroying GMO fields to oppose the growing of the crops for commercial and experimental use. “France has listened to the EU, we now ask it to listen to French citizens who massively reject GMOs,” she said. “In the meantime we’ll continue symbolic actions. We’ll be even more determined.”

Source: Epoch Times
For a long time now, Americans have been told by the scientists who developed genetically modified (GM) crops and organisms that GM is safe and wonderful. This was done with the blessing of government regulators, such as the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). It was alleged that GM crops, such as Bt and Roundup Ready, to use the best known biotech products, are good for biodiversity, increase yields, are resistant to pests, reduce the need for pesticides, are more profitable for the farmers, and less labor intensive.

But a close examination of the benefits of transgenic crops will reveal that the benefits, if they occur, are way overstated, and the costs are often ignored. Denise Caruso devotes a chapter in her new book, Intervention: Confronting the Real Risks of Genetic Engineering and Life on a Biotech Planet (2006), to assessing the evidence. She cites a thorough study of Bt cotton in a state of India, funded by the government, where the results were less than stellar: farmers spent more than twice the money for Bt seeds than non-Bt seeds, and the reduction in pesticide use was only 12%.Meanwhile, the farmers’ net profits for Bt were less than non-Bt hybrids and yields were about the same. This transgenic cotton had been hyped up and so the results would be disappointing to the Indian farmers.

Potentially more disturbing than the economic side of the technology, the transgenic cotton had some peculiar “side effects.” After two years, the primary cotton pests were developing resistance to the Bt toxin, which could have a devastating effect on other crops in the area. Also, the Bt was somehow mysteriously infecting the soil so that no other crops would grow in the same soil. Apparently too, the advocates for Bt didn’t consider that Indian farmers would make their own illegal hybrids of Bt, using their own seeds. This means that a substantial amount of Bt is being grown all over India with unknown consequences. [more]

Source: Master New Media
Chemically contaminated, genetically modified foods find their way onto our tables with alarming ease, despite their unknown effects upon our bodies and on the natural ecosystems that have supported us until now. As an increasingly smaller number of corporations comes to control the production of world agriculture, the matter at stake is not only the potential health poisoning we may inflict on ourselves, but the dramatic and often irreversible crisis in which we place the welfare of thousands of farmers around the world.

Unfortunately the testing required before such genetically modified foods are released into the food-chain is totally insufficient, with no conception of the long term effects that might be suffered by both individuals and entire ecosystems. Nevertheless, the agrochemical corporations persist in mixing the genes of fireflies and moths with our potatoes and corn, and those of ocean fish with our strawberries and tomatoes. But often these unnatural hybrids are not designed to create more and plentiful supplies of food, but rather to tighten the control that a shrinking number of agrochemical companies have over its production process. The creators of pesticides, for instance, create pesticide-resistant GM crops, patent the seeds, and then exert tight control over the use of both by farmers. Where for centuries farmers could save and develop seeds, they are now faced with proprietary crops that they must license on a yearly basis, becoming effectively slaves to the seed sources for their survival.

In the following short film ‘Contaminated’, the issues surrounding the chemical contamination, genetic modification and monopolistic control of our food are discussed in alarming detail.

Full text transcript accompanies the video.

Source: Infoshop
A genetically-modified (GM) corn strain approved for food, feed and processing in the Philippines shows signs of toxicity to mammals, a new study released today reveals. The study, and written by a panel of three independent scientists in France, showed that laboratory rats fed with the GMO corn Monsanto (MON) 863 YieldGard Rootworm displayed kidney and liver toxicity. MON 863 is corn genetically manipulated to produce its own insecticide called ‘modified Cry3Bb1′ to kill rootworm insects in the soil, and contains gene coding for antibiotic resistance.

“No GMO has ever been proven safe for human consumption. The risks these manipulated organisms pose to the environment and human health are
simply unacceptable. Clearly, GMOs are not a sound basis for the futureof agriculture. It is time that our government realized that the future of farming must be grounded on the principles of sustainability and biodiversity, and which provides all people access to safe and nutritious food. The MON 863 case is a clear demonstration that GMOs can never be a viable option,” added Ocampo. [more]

Source: UK Daily Mail
The first GM food crop containing human genes is set to be approved for commercial production. The laboratory-created rice produces some of the human proteins found in breast milk and saliva. Its U.S. developers say they could be used to treat children with diarrhoea, a major killer in the Third World. The rice is a major step in so-called Frankenstein Foods, the first mingling of human-origin genes and those from plants. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture has already signalled it plans to allow commercial cultivation.

The rice’s producers, California-based Ventria Bioscience, have been given preliminary approval to grow it on more than 3,000 acres in Kansas. The company plans to harvest the proteins and use them in drinks, desserts, yoghurts and muesli bars. The news provoked horror among GM critics and consumer groups on both sides of the Atlantic . GeneWatch UK, which monitors new GM foods, described it as “very disturbing”. Researcher Becky Price warned: “There are huge, huge health risks and people should rightly be concerned about this.”

Friends of the Earth campaigner Clare Oxborrow said: “Using food crops and fields as glorified drug factories is a very worrying development. If these pharmaceutical crops end up on consumers’ plates, the consequences for our health could be devastating. The biotech industry has already failed to prevent experimental GM rice contaminating the food chain. The Government must urge the U.S. to ban the production of drugs in food crops. It must also introduce tough measures to prevent illegal GM crops contaminating our food and ensure that biotech companies are liable for any damage their products cause.”

In the U.S., the Union of Concerned Scientists, a policy advocacy group, warned: “It is unwise to produce drugs in plants outdoors. There would be little control over the doses people might get exposed to, and some might be allergic to the proteins.” The American Consumers Union and the Washingtonbased Centre for Food Safety also oppose Ventria’s plans. As well as the contamination fears there are serious ethical concerns about such a fundamental interference with the building blocks of life. Yet there is no legal means for Britain and Europe to ban such products on ethical grounds. Imports would have to be accepted once they had gone through a scientific safety assessment.

The development is what may people feared when, ten years ago, food scientists showed what was possible by inserting copies of fish genes from the flounder into tomatoes, to help them withstand frost. Ventria has produced three varieties of the rice, each with a different human-origin gene that makes the plants produce one of three human proteins. Two - lactoferrin and lysozyme - are bacteria-fighting compounds found in breast milk and saliva. The genes, cultivated and copied in a laboratory to produce a synthetic version, are carried into embryonic rice plants inside bacteria. Until now, plants with human-origin genes have been restricted to small test plots.

Ventria originally planned to grow the rice in southern Missouri but the brewer Anheuser-Busch, a huge buyer of rice, threatened to boycott the state amid concern over contamination and consumer reaction. Now the USDA, saying the rice poses “virtually no risk”. has given preliminary approval for it to be grown in Kansas, which has no commercial rice farms. Ventria will also use dedicated equipment, storage and processing facilities supposed to prevent seeds from mixing with other crops.

The company says food products using the rice proteins could help save many of the two million children a year who die from diarrhoea and the resulting dehydration and complications. A recent study in Peru, sponsored by Ventria, showed that children with severe diarrhoea recovered a day and a half faster if the salty fluids they were prescribed included the proteins.

The rice could also be a huge money-spinner in the Western world, with parents being told it will help their children get over unpleasant stomach bugs more quickly. Ventria chief executive Scott Deeter said last night: “We have a product here that can help children get better faster.” He said any concerns about safety and contamination were “based on perception, not reality” given all the precautions the company was taking. Mr Deeter said production in plants was far cheaper than other methods, which should help make the therapy affordable in the developing world. He said: “Plants are phenomenal factories. Our raw materials are the sun, soil and water.”

Source: The Independent
Competition with highly subsidized U.S. farmers is driving their Mexican counterparts into bankruptcy. Whereas south of the border, guaranteed prices for farmers’ crops are a thing of the past, corporate corn growers north of the Rio Bravo can receive up to $21,000 an acre in subsidies from the U.S. government, enabling them to dump their corn over the border at 80 percent of cost. The impact of this inundation has been to force six million farmers and their families here to abandon their plots and leap into the migration stream, according to a 2004 Carnegie Endowment study. This assault on poor farmers will be exacerbated at the end of 2007 when all tariffs on U.S. corn are abolished. Meanwhile, President Calderón seeks to tamp down tortilla prices by importing up to two million duty-free tons to augment what Mexican farmers can or cannot produce. Such a solution is guaranteed to drive more farmers off the land. Even worse is that much of the new influx of NAFTA corn will be transgenic (GENETICALLY-MODIFIED CORN).

A great deal of the 36 million tons of corn Mexico has imported from the United States in the past six years is genetically modified – 40 to 60 percent – estimates the environmental group Greenpeace. For U.S. producers, barred from selling GM corn in Europe and Japan, Mexico is a dumping ground for the grain.

Source: AP
Milk from cloned cows is not welcome at the nation’s biggest milk company.

Although the government has approved meat and milk from cloned animals while it conducts further studies, Dean Foods Co. of Dallas said Thursday that its customers and consumers don’t want milk from cloned animals. The $10 billion company owns Land O’Lakes and Horizon Organic, among dozens of other brands.

“Numerous surveys have shown that Americans are not interested in buying dairy products that contain milk from cloned cows and Dean Foods is responding to the needs of our consumers,” the company said in a statement. Federal scientists say there is virtually no difference between clones and conventional cows, pigs or goats. The Food and Drug Administration in December gave preliminary approval to meat and milk from cloned animals and could grant final approval by year’s end.

The government has asked producers to voluntarily keep clones away from the food supply until final approval is granted. Smaller companies such as Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream and Organic Valley previously have said they oppose milk from clones. Milk companies worry that concern over cloning could turn people away from dairy products. So far, public opinion appears mixed.

A September poll by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology found that 64 percent of respondents were uncomfortable with animal cloning. A December poll by the University of Maryland found that the same percentage would buy, or consider buying, such food if the government said it was safe. Dean Foods spokeswoman Marguerite Copel said the company respects the FDA, “but we’ve got a customer and consumer base.” Dean Foods’ cloning policy was first reported by the blog www.chewswise.com. The company did not say whether it would use milk from the offspring of cloned animals. Cloning companies say the purpose of cloning is not to put many cloned livestock into the food supply. Instead, the goal is to make a genetic copy of a superior animal and then put its offspring into the food supply.

Source: Bellaciao
Independent Scientists Demand A Ban on GM Food & Feed while All GM Crops Are Tested. The following memo and report were sent to international and national regulators on behalf of the Independent Science Panel. Please circulate widely, forward to your regulators and policy makers, and the press.

From: Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, member of Independent Science Panel (www.indsp.org), Director, Institute of Science in Society (www.i-sis.org.uk)

To: (see list at the end)

I am writing on behalf of the Independent Science Panel (ISP)* to draw your attention to new research findings on the safety of transgenic proteins that need to be urgently addressed.

Specifically, immunological assessments carried out for the first time on a transgenic protein revealed that post-translational processing subsequent to gene transfer into an alien species introduced new antigenicities that turned a previously harmless protein into a strong immunogen. In addition, the transgenic protein promoted immune reactions against multiple other proteins in the diet. The detailed findings are reviewed in the report below.

As practically all the transgenic proteins involve cross-species gene transfer, they will be subjected to different post-translational processing, and hence they too, will have the potential to become immunogenic. And yet, none of the transgenic proteins that have been commercially approved has been tested. This omission is a most serious public health issue.

We call on you to impose an immediate ban on all GM food and feed until proper assessment on the immunogenicity of all the transgenic proteins has been carried out.

*The ISP, launched 10 May 2003 at a public conference in London, UK, consists of dozens of prominent scientists from 11 countries spanning the disciplines of agroecology, agronomy, biomathematics, botany, chemical medicine, ecology, epidemiology, histopathology, microbial ecology, molecular genetics, nutritional biochemistry, physiology, toxicology and virology (http://www.indsp. org/ISPMembers.php)

Transgenic Pea that Made Mice Ill

Raises serious safety concerns on transgenic proteins in general that must be addressed while a ban on all GM food and feed is imposed. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho

Ten-year project down the drain but are the right lessons learned?

A ten- year project at CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) in Canberra Australia bit the dust when peas modified to resist insects caused inflammation in the lungs of mice [1]. The GM peas will be destroyed, said Gene Technology Regulator Sue Meeks.

The gene coding for the protein, a-amylase inhibitor-1 (aA1) in the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L. cv. Tendergreen), was inserted into pea (Pisum sativum L.) to make the pea-plants resistant to attack from weevils.

Dr. T.J. Higgins, deputy chief of CSIRO Plant Industry and co-author of the scientific paper reporting the results remarked it is only the second time in the world that a GM project has been abandoned after a gene transfer from one crop to another, and that it demonstrated the effectiveness of strict regulations on research into GM crops.

Greenpeace campaigner Jeremy Tager said: “It just shows the failure of the science in relation to this gene product.” Director of GeneEthics Network Bob Phelps referred to the project as a “waste of public money” and highlights the growing concern worldwide about the health impacts of all GM foods.

There are indeed important lessons to be learned from the scientific findings [2], which raise serious safety concerns over transgenic proteins in general.

Different processing of transgenic protein

The researchers found that the transgenic protein was processed differently and provoked immune reactions not exhibited by the native protein (see later).

Transgenic aA1 protein was compared with the non-transgenic protein on Western blot, a technique that separates different forms of the protein arising from post-translational processing. Previous studies showed that the native polypeptide in bean is cleaved into two chains, a and b, both of which are glycosylated (carbohydrate chains added), and with one or more amino acids removed from the tail end. This results in major forms of the a- and b-chains with molecular masses 11 646 Da and 17 319 Da respectively, together with minor forms containing alternative carbohydrate chains. The transgene in pea yielded a- and b-chains with molecular masses in the11 000 - 18 000 Da region, but with a banding pattern different from the native protein. More detailed comparisons on mass spectroscopy showed that the transgenic a-chain was less heavily glycosylated; and a form with two fewer mannose residues (11 322 Da) was the dominant in transgenic pea, but the least abundant in bean. The b-chain in the transgenic protein also showed a number of other bands besides the major and minor forms present in the native protein.

Immune reactions to transgenic protein

Mice were given about 25mg of seed meal in suspension, containing transgenic pea, nontransgenic pea, or bean, twice a week for 4 weeks. Seven days after the final feeding, the mice were subcutaneously injected in the footpad with the purified protein antigens: native or transgenic aA1, and the swelling induced in the footpad assessed 24 h later.

In a second experiment, the mice were fed seed meal suspensions as before, and seven and nine days after the final meal, purified transgenic aA1 or buffered saline was introduced into the trachea, and inflammation response was measured in the lungs 24 h later.

The results showed that mice fed on non-transgenic pea or bean showed no inflammation response in the footpad or in the lungs, indicating normal immune tolerance to common food.

Mice fed with transgenic pea, however, showed aA1-specific IgG antibodies at two weeks, rising to significant levels after 4 weeks. There was significant swelling of the footpad, or delayed type hypersensitive (DTH) response, when purified aA1 was injected. Similarly, introducing the antigens into the trachea gave an inflammation response in the lungs.

As a control for the general effect of genetic modification, the footpad challenge experiment was repeated with material from two other GM plants, lupin expressing sunflower seed albumin (SSA) and chickpeas expressing aA1. In contrast to transgenic pea, mice fed transgenic lupin or transgenic chickpea did not give DTH response. This shows that the response to transgenic pea was specific.

The peribronchial lymph nodes of the mice were tested for their response to transgenic aA1. Only the lymph nodes of mice fed transgenic peas responded by producing the inflammation cytokines (cell signalling factors) when challenged with transgenic aA1.

Transgenic protein promotes reactions to other proteins

In order to test if the transgenic protein promotes immune reactions to other proteins in the diet, mice were fed purified transgenic or native aA1, or transgenic aA1 with or without ovalbumin three times a week for 2 weeks. One week following feeding, purified ovalbumin or buffered saline were introduced into the trachea of the mice, and inflammation response in the lungs was assessed as before.

Neither ovalbumin alone, nor ovalbumin in combination with native aA1 caused any inflammation response in the footpad or lungs when the mice were challenged with ovalbumin. However, consumption of transgenic aA1 and ovalbumin together promoted a strong ovalbumin-specific antibody response and predisposed the mice to inflammation when challenged with ovalbumin in both the footpad and the trachea. This suggests that transgenic aA1 did promote reactions to other proteins. In confirmation of that, levels of antigen-specific IgG against other proteins such as pea globulins, lectin, and vicilin-4 were also significantly higher in the serum of mice fed transgenic pea than mice fed non-transgenic pea.

Wider implications on the safety of transgenic proteins that must be addressed

The transgenic pea involved gene transfer between plant species, and is generally thought to be much safer compared with the cross-kingdom gene transfer - bacteria to plant - involved in the GM food crops that now cover tens of millions of hectares worldwide.

A harmless bean protein expressed in transgenic pea caused inflammation in mice, and research showed that the most likely reason is because the protein is processed differently in peas. Such post- translational processing of proteins is well known to be species-specific, and as genetic modification almost invariably involves cross-species transfer of proteins, one must expect transgenic proteins to diff