| |
 |
|
|
Science Forum Index » Agriculture Forum » GM NOT IN THE INTERESTS OF THE WORLD'S POOR
Page 1 of 1
|
| Author |
Message |
| Klaus Wiegand |
 Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2003 1:23 pm |
|
|
|
Guest
|
NEW REPORT SAYS GM NOT IN THE INTERESTS OF THE WORLD'S POOR
The publication of an interesting new report, "Engineering nutrition:
GM
crops for global justice?" was rather overshadowed by news of the
findings of the UK's GM public debate.
The Food Ethics Council (FEC) report shows why GM crops are bad news
for the world's poor and hungry, demolishing arguments that GM foods
are a moral crusade to feed the poor. It argues that contrary to US
claims, the EU's caution on GM crops is unlikely to harm the world's
poor and it is not 'immoral'. The new report argues that the E.U.
should maintain a moratorium on GM crops until regulation is reformed
to take public concerns more seriously.
Significantly, the report also rejects claims that it is in the
interests of the world's poor to spend more public money on GM
research. Future food security research should be driven by the needs
of farmers and consumers, rather than those of international business
and the scientific establishment.
This point is of critical relevance. Plant biotech institutes are
increasingly running short of corporate cash and are seeking to
underwrite their research direction by using
developing-country-related project proposals to try and lever
additional support from the public purse and charitable foundations.
The full report can be downloaded from
http://www.foodethicscouncil.org/gmnutrition.htm
Excerpts:
"We question whether a science that depends on privatising public
goods to sell at premium prices can make a realistic promise to
generate food security, which depends on public goods."
"... reforms to EU and US agricultural and trade policies could have a
far greater effect on international food security than any foreseeable
technology. The argument that GM crops will contribute to food
security does not only distract from these urgently needed changes. In
some instances, it has been deployed to further precisely the kinds of
unfair international trading relationships that contribute to food
insecurity in the first place. International food security is being
used as lever to promote the business interests of rich countries,
rather than being valued as an end in itself."
INDIA: ANDHRA PRADESH GOVERNMENT REPORTS ON FAILURE OF BT COTTON
The official report of the Govt. of the State of Andhra Pradesh,
India, on the performance of GM Bt cotton in the season 2002, "shows
that in North Telengana, net income from Bt varieties was five times
less than the yield from local non-Bt varieties. In Southern
Telengana, the income from Monsanto's Bt crop was nearly 7 times less
than what was obtained from the indigenous non-Bt cotton varieties,
demonstrating the resounding failure of the Monsanto variety."
The results of the AP report are similar to those reported by Gene
Campaign, said Dr Suman Sahai, Director of Gene Campaign.
*Both studies report that Monsanto's Bt cotton has consistently done
worse compared to local non-Bt hybrids.
*Both studies have reported that the Monsanto cotton plant type is
weaker and less vigorous compared to indigenous cotton varieties.
*The cost of cultivation reported in both studies, is higher for Bt
cotton compared to indigenous non-Bt hybrids and
*The net incomes are lower in the Monsanto variety, compared to the
indigenous varieties.
DANISH WATER CONTAMINATED BY ROUNDUP, BAN IMPOSED
Denmark has imposed a temporary ban on the autumn spraying of
glyphosate (the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller,
used on many GM crops) as of 15 September 2003, on sites where
leaching is extensive following heavy rain. The ban follows research
findings that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup
herbicide, has been contaminating drinking water. The chemical has
been sieving down through the soil and polluting ground water at a
rate of five times more than the allowed level for drinking water,
according to the Denmark and Greenland Geological Research Institution
(DGGRI).
"When we spray glyphosate on the fields by the rules it has been shown
that it is washed down into the upper ground water with a
concentration of 0.54 micrograms per litre. This is very surprising,
because we had previously believed that bacteria in the soil broke
down the glyphosate before it reached the ground water," says DGGRI.
http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1424
FDA WARNS MILK MANUFACTURERS NOT TO LABEL
The US Food and Drug Administration has told four companies which
produce milk and ice cream to stop labeling products as not from cows
injected with Monsanto's GE hormone rBST, used to boost milk
production.
The FDA said there was no need for a label as GE BST "is virtually
identical" to a natural hormone. "FDA will continue to take strong
action to protect American consumers from products with labeling that
is false or misleading," FDA Commissioner Dr. Mark McClellan said. The
GE cattle drug is banned in Canada and Europe.
More than 700 researchers from the French public sector and
universities have signed a petition calling for a public debate on
biotechnology research programmes.
This initiative follows the collection of over 1,500 signatures
defending research into genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which
itself was a response to the destruction of 25 GMO field trials over
the summer.
All of France's public research institutions are represented in this
latest petition, most notably INRA, CNRS, CIRAD and CEMAGREF.
'Researchers and universities say to society that they should be party
to decisions concerning the objectives and use of the results of their
work. They declare that quality research should strive to be socially
relevant, particularly when it concerns food safety and the management
of biodiversity resources,' states the petition.
The researchers claim that the recent destruction of GMO field trials
was a useful warning, and should lead to the implementation of the
precautionary principle. They also contest the potential of this form
of
biotechnology for developing countries, saying that it 'traps farmers
into dependence on certain seed companies and pharmaceutical products.
The preceding petition, defending the rights of French researchers to
carry out GMO field trials, which are described as 'indispensable to
research into plant biology and the improvement of plants', called on
the French government to 'take responsibility' for the continuation of
such research.
For further information on the petition calling for a public debate,
please visit: http://ouvronslarecherche.free.fr
For further information on the petition defending GMO research, please
visit: http://defendonslarecherche.free.fr
Quote: From a related story:
In June, 700 French researchers opposed to GM crop trials signed a
petition in support of Mr Bové, saying that the acts of sabotage 'can
be regarded as the implementation of the principle of precaution'.
One of the researchers who initiated the June petition, Michel Meuret,
questioned the links between industry and the signatories of the
pro-GM petition, and added: 'We must not restrict ourselves to a
technical debate, but also raise the question of the ethics of
research.'
http://dbs.cordis.lu/cgi-bin/srchidadb?CALLER=NEWSLINK_EN_C&QOP_EQ_EN_RCN_A=20926&LINK_CALLER=NHP_EN_NEWS&UPL=EN&LINK_SESSION=36762003-10-5
Although conventional varieties produce high yields and good quality,
farmers worry that they might face a large loss in a bad year for
cotton bollworm [and so often use Bt cotton].
Chinese imports of GM soybeans from the USA and Argentina have
resulted in a great loss of income for local soy farmers. Small
farmers in China cannot compete with large farmers with modern
machinery and high subsidies. While imports of (mainly transgenic RR)
soybeans rose from 1.11 million tonnes (MT) in 1996 to 13.94 MT in
2001, the price of soybeans fell from 1.5 yuan per kg to 0.75 yuan per
kg.
Modern agri-biotechnology has produced significant benefits for
commercial companies but not for small farmers in China. Farmers have
benefited from savings in pesticide spraying, but this is mainly
limited to northern areas. On the other hand, the large import of GM
soybean has damaged small-farmer soybean production and livelihoods.
Prof. Dayuan XUE,
Nanjing Institute of Environmental Science,
State Environmental Protection Authority (SEPA), China
---
message to david kendra:
david: you want it, you got it. as i did not rely on directly
accessable informations, i did my own investigations on india and the
GMO discussion. the web does not allow any smear campaign, which
cannot be traced back - live with it.
one of the posters on agbioworld (and questioned in the widely
publicized article "the fake persuaders by monbiot) was a certain
"andura smetacec" who claimed Chapela was in league with environmental
groups and added, wrongly, that his paper was "not a peer-reviewed
research article subject to independent scientific analysis". Smetacek
and Murphy have between them posted around 60 articles on the Prakash
list. So who are they?
Mary Murphy's email is mmrph@hotmail.com, which hides her
employer. On one occasion on an internet message board she used
this address but also left a trail of other identifying details
that showed she worked for the Bivings Group, a PR company with
offices in Washington, Brussels, Chicago and Tokyo.
Bivings, which has more than a dozen Monsanto companies as
clients, has been assisting Monsanto's use of the internet since
realising that it played a significant part in the company's poor
PR image. Bivings says it uses the internet's "powerful message
delivery tools" for "viral dissemination".
When asked about what they do for Monsanto, a spokesperson for
Bivings said "We run their web sites for various European
countries and their main corporate site and we help them with
campaigns as a consultant. We are not allowed to discuss strategy
issues and personal opinions". They declined to give any further
information on their work for the company.
However, further insight can be gleaned from a recent report by
Bivings which said: "Message boards, chat rooms and listservs are
a great way to anonymously monitor what is being said. Once you
are plugged into this world, it is possible to make postings to
these outlets that present your position as an uninvolved third
party."
As a "third party" Bivings has covertly smeared biotech industry
critics on a fake website called CFFAR as well as via articles
and attacks on listservs under aliases. The attack on the Nature
piece is a continuation of this covert campaign.
Andura Smetacek is no stranger to such dirty tricks. The Big
Issue South West can also reveal that she was the original source
of a letter that was published under the name of Tony Trevawas, a
pro-GM scientist from the University of Edinburgh, in the Herald
newspaper in Scotland. The letter became a source of legal action
between Greenpeace, its former director, Peter Melchett, and the
newspaper. The case went to the high court and ended with
Melchett receiving undisclosed damages and an apology from the
Herald. Trevawas has always denied he wrote the letter.
In a letter written earlier this year, Smetacek said: "I am the
author of the message which was sent to AgBioWorld. I'm surprised
at the stir it has caused, since the basis for the content of the
letter comes from publicly available news articles and research
easily found on-line".
Smetacek is also a "front email". In an early posting to the
AgBioView list she gave her address as London, while in a recent
correspondence with The Ecologist magazine Smetacek left a New
York phone number. However after extensive searching of public
records in the US, the Big Issue South West found no one in
America with that name. Despite numerous requests by The
Ecologist for Smetacek to give an employer or land address she
has refused to do so.
(comment: no wonder, she evidently sits in INDIA !!)
A clue to her identity is that Smetacek's earliest messages to
AgBioView consistently promoted the CFFAR.org website. CFFAR
stands for the Centre For Food and Agricultural Research and
describes itself as "a public policy and research coalition
dedicated to exploring and understanding health, safety, and
sustainability issues associated with food and fiber production".
-----
[..]
So the campaign against the researchers was extraordinarily
successful; but who precisely started it? Who are "Mary Murphy"
and "Andura Smetacek"?
Both claim to be ordinary citizens, without any corporate links.
The Bivings Group says it has "no knowledge of them". "Mary
Murphy" uses a hotmail account for posting messages to
AgBioWorld. But a message satirising the opponents of biotech,
sent by a "Mary Murphy" to another server two years ago contains
the identification bw6.bivwood.com. Bivwood.com is the property
of Bivings Woodell, which is part of the Bivings Group.
[..]
Smetacek has, on different occasions, given her address as
"London" and "New York". But the electoral rolls, telephone
directories and credit card records in both London and the entire
US reveal no "Andura Smetacek". Her name appears only on
AgBioWorld and a few other listservers, on which she has posted
scores of messages falsely accusing groups such as Greenpeace of
terrorism. My letters to her have elicited no response. But a
clue to her possible identity is suggested by her constant
promotion of "the Centre For Food and Agricultural Research". The
centre appears not to exist, except as a website, which
repeatedly accuses greens of plotting violence. Cffar.org is
registered to someone called Manuel Theodorov. Manuel Theodorov
[aka Emmanuel Theodorou] is the "director of associations" at
Bivings Woodell.
Even the website on which the campaign against the paper in
Nature was launched has attracted suspicion. Its moderator, the
biotech enthusiast Professor CS Prakash, claims to have no
connection to the Bivings Group. But when Jonathan Matthews was
searching the site's archives he received the following error
message: "can't connect to MySQL server on apollo.bivings.com".
Apollo.bivings.com is the main server of the Bivings Group.
[..]
Smetacek's identity is a bit more nebulous. After unsuccessfully
trying to track her down, Big Issue writer Andy Rowell concluded
that Smetacek's e-mail address was a front. But who was behind
it? Neither publication could say, but both noted that Smetacek's
postings made frequent reference to the Center for Food and
Agricultural Research, an entity that appears to exist only
online and whose domain, they claim, is registered to a Bivings
employee.
A spokesman for the Bivings Group emphatically denies that the
company has ever employed -- or heard of -- either Murphy or
Smetacek, and in a terse press release the PR group dismisses the
magazines' allegations as "baseless." Likewise, AgBioWorld
founder Prakash says he has no knowledge of either woman, but
that as a discussion-group moderator it can be tricky to draw the
line between people who are just opinionated and those who are
passing off unsubstantiated information as fact. "The Internet is
not a newspaper; you really have to take things with a grain of
salt," he says. He also maintains that his site has no connection
with Bivings or any other industry organizations. "It's a very
independent nonprofit organization," says Prakash.
---------
from another article:
The scientific journal Nature published the study on Nov. 29,
2001. The research was greeted with a storm of criticism from the
biotech industry, particularly on the AgBioWorld message board.
The day Chapela's report was published, a poster named Mary
Murphy accused the researcher of being biased against GMOs, and
another named Andura Smetacek said he was "first and foremost an
activist."
Their posts led to hundreds more criticizing the study, and
AgBioWorld launched a petition stating the paper's "fundamental
flaws."
---
(so smetacek is "first and foremost an activists... but ... aren't we
all some kind of activists? and the reply from bivings himself:)
The Maize Feud
Letters, The New Scientist, 6 July 2002
from Gary Bivings, Bivings Group PR company, Washington DC
Fred Pearce's article repeats unfounded allegations about the
Bivings Group currently being spread by anti-biotechnology
activists (15 June, p 14).
The article repeats the charge that Mary Murphy and Andura
Smetacek are online personas used by The Bivings Group to combat
a study on Mexican maize that originally appeared in Nature.
This is completely false. Mary Murphy and Andura Smetacek are not
employees or contractors or aliases of employees or contractors
of The Bivings Group. In fact, The Bivings Group has no knowledge
of either Mary Murphy or Andura Smetacek.
The article claims The Bivings Group admitted that "one of the
emails" written by one of the aforementioned online personas
"came from a Bivings' employee or client".
The Bivings Group has never made any statements to this effect.
In making this claim, your article relies on other media sources
that got this wrong.
---
Smetacek claimed, in different messages, first to live in London,
then in New York. Jonathan Matthews checked every available public
record and found that no person of that name appeared to exist in
either city. But last month his techie friends discovered something
interesting. Three of these messages, including the first one
Smetacek sent, arrived with the internet protocol address
199.89.234.124. This is the address assigned to the server
gatekeeper2.monsanto.com. It belongs to the Monsanto
corporation.
------
now, what a coincidence......
just watch out for the author's name of the following article!!!
BT COTTON: THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE STORY
August 4, 2001
Ranjana Smetacek, Mumbai, (India) 4
http://www.tehelka.com/currentaffairs/august2001/ca080401response1.htm
According to PetitionOnline.com, however, the content of this
"grassroots effort" were "written by Andura Smetacek". [bottom of the
page: http://www.PetitionOnline.com/cinagro4/petition.html]
----
and now, ladies and gentlemen, the real interesting part. WHO IS
SMETACEK ?? what is his middlename ?? could it even be RANJANA
ANDURA? could it be that it calls his smearing a "grassroot effort",
because some of monsantos' subdivisions are also active in grass
breeding ? YES, it is !! (though her name below has a typo,
see the title of the article above).
MONSANTO UNFAZED OVER REJECTION OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED COTTON
April 26, 2003
Associated Press
S. Srinivasan
BANGALORE, India -Ranjana Smatecek, a spokeswoman for St.
Louis-based Monsanto and its main Indian partner, Maharashtra
Hybrid Seeds Company, was cited as saying Saturday the company
would try to get the Indian government's permission to sell
genetically modified cotton seeds in the country's north in a
year or two even though it has already been denied permission to
sell one seed variety in that region.
The story says that the government's Genetic Engineering Approval
Committee on Friday rejected an application by Maharashtra Hybrid
Seeds Co. to sell Mech915 variety in the north, saying it was
prone to attacks by the leaf curl virus widely prevalent in the
region.
-----
so: the problem with your company is, that some of your employees
would even lie on judgement day. NO argument for trust !!! fool me
once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. any argument, why i
should trust monsanto's employees any more ???
even worse: i once was invested in monsanto shares in a high 5
$digit-number for a certain reason (i'm doing PRACTICAL FIELD TRIALS
and expect consumers to pay, for what food quality is worth for!!! as
long as they do not accept that fact- THEIR problem)
shareholders (even if it would be a minority, noone knows) WILL jugde
you on your creditibility !! i for my part want ANDURA/RANJANA
SMETACEK FIRED before rethinking any reinvestment.
live with it!
your draw !
regards
klaus wiegand |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
| marika |
| Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2003 11:29 am |
|
|
|
Guest
|
klaus.wiegand@t-online.de (Klaus Wiegand) wrote in message news:<blv3om$95p$07$1@news.t-online.com>...
Quote: NEW REPORT SAYS GM NOT IN THE INTERESTS OF THE WORLD'S POOR
The publication of an interesting new report, "Engineering nutrition:
GM
crops for global justice?" was rather overshadowed by news of the
findings of the UK's GM public debate.
The Food Ethics Council (FEC) report shows why GM crops are bad news
for the world's poor and hungry, demolishing arguments that GM foods
are a moral crusade to feed the poor. It argues that contrary to US
claims, the EU's caution on GM crops is unlikely to harm the world's
poor and it is not 'immoral'. The new report argues that the E.U.
should maintain a moratorium on GM crops until regulation is reformed
to take public concerns more seriously.
HAHAHAHAHHAHAH1/!!!!!
mk5000
"I am quite certain that we can
work out ways in which the Turkish government — in which Turkish
forces —
can participate,"--Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national
security adviser |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
| |
|
Page 1 of 1
All times are GMT - 5 Hours
The time now is Fri Sep 05, 2008 8:01 pm
|
|