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NEWS November 09 2001
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| Genetix RoundUp™ www.gm-info.org has now been updated with the locations of winter-sown GM oilseed rape trials. UK A former teacher and a landscape gardener will face a jury trial in Worcester next week for damaging an Aventis GM maize field trial at Preston Wynn in Herefordshire in August 2000. The two will be using the defence that their action was lawful as they acted to prevent immediate damage to nearby crops, the environment and public health. This is only the second time crop-pullers have faced a jury – the first was a group of Greenpeace activists who were acquitted of criminal damage in September 2000. Meanwhile, a man accused of £17,000 of criminal damage after police found his credit card in a destroyed field of GM oilseed rape has had charges against him dropped, just the day before he was due in court. North of the border, Scottish Genetix Action (SGA) have launched a campaign to stop biotech-industry funded propanganda being fed to schoolchildren in Scotland. They are suggesting people email Scotland's Minister for Education Jack McConnell (Jack.McConnell.msp@scottish.parliament.uk) asking him to stop distribution of the pro-biotech ‘Your World’ magazine, which is being promoted by Scottish Enterprise. The latest issue, dealing with food biotechnology, claims GM is ‘creating better plants’ as well as criticising organic farming and suggesting pupils experiment with growing Monsanto GM soybeans! SGA are also concerned that the scientific advisor on the magazine was CS Prakash, who also runs the rabidly pro-GM AgBioView email list (the same list which, shortly after September 11, carried a comment piece comparing Greenpeace destroying GM crops to terrorists blowing up the WTC). SGA are not alone in their criticism; Les Webster of the Scottish Beekeepers Association has stated ‘it is improper to distribute any material having a bias to school children. We would therefore support action to prevent the distribution.’ Quoted in the Sunday Herald, Ronnie Smith, general secretary of teachers’ union the Education Institute of Scotland, was sceptical about the funders’ motives, ‘Most commercial organisations do not involve themselves in this area out of a charitable concern to help education.’ In the same paper, Scottish Enterprise's biotechnology director, Peter Lennox, made a brave bid for Corporate Watch’s ‘Naïve Corporate Dupe of the Week’ award, with his line, ‘It didn't even cross our minds. I thought it was just knowledge.’ Contacts: Scottish Genetix Action: www.scottishgenetixaction.org/ Genetic Engineering Network: www.geneticsaction.org.uk Other source: Sunday Herald article: www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0415-03.htm India/Mexico Illegal GM crops have been found growing in the India state of Gujarat, while GM maize has been found growing wild in Oaxaca in Mexico. In India ten thousand hectares of unauthorized GM bollworm-resistant cotton have been found by researchers working for partially-owned Monsanto subsidiary MAHYCO, which is carrying out field trials of GM cotton and pushing the government for permission to market it legally. The farmers in Gujarat had purchased the GM seeds from Navbharat, a company based in the state capital, Ahmedabad. Navbharat is thought to have developed the seed as a hybrid from GM seed imported from the United States. The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) (India’s government GM licensing body) has demanded an explanation from the company of how it came to be selling the seed without permission. In Mexico, tests on maize varieties in Oaxaca state, a region considered to be the world's center of diversity for corn, revealed that of maize from 22 communities, 15 showed contamination. Thirteen of these samples show between 3-10% contamination with the remaining two at higher levels; the contamination is believed to result from GM maize imported from the US for food. Scientists said the results also indicated that crop genes might be able to spread across geographic areas and varieties more quickly than researchers had guessed. ‘It shows in today's modern world how rapidly genetic material can move from one place to another," said Dr. Norman C. Ellstrand, evolutionary biologist at University of California at Riverside. He said the real worry was that other foreign genes like pharmaceutical-producing genes being developed in crops could also find their way quickly and unnoticed into distant food sources. And Finally… Biotech giants Syngenta have launched the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture. Having set up the mythical problem of global food shortage (there is no absolute shortage, only a distribution problem), their glossy new website proclaims, ‘The aim of the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture is to help meet this global challenge by channeling resources to promote economically sustainable agriculture throughout the world.’ Presumably the Foundation will soon be donating money to anti-corporate groups seeking to dismantle the domination of food and agriculture by large corporations like Syngenta, and to re-align trade in food to local needs and food security rather than cash-crops. Or perhaps it’s just another window-dressing exercise. Sources: Nature, 11 October 2001 www.nature.com http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=585796367 www.nytimes.com/pages/health/nutrition/ Links: Cororate Watch profile of Monsanto: www.corporatewatch.org.uk/profiles/biotech/monsanto/monsanto1.html |