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Genetic Engineering
October 29, 2009How not to feed the world
Where Monsanto is concerned, it isn’t a good idea to assume good intentions – just ask Percy and Louise Schmeiser in Canada, who spent years locked in legal battles.
The Genetic Engeneering Approval Committee (GEAC) in India should probably have thought about this a bit before approving Bt Brinjal last week – a type of eggplant that produces a pesticide (Bacillus thuringiensis) that is normally sprayed on fields. To say the least, the approval process was botched up:
- The data regarding the effects on human health - received directly from Monsanto’s Indian branch - was insufficiently tested. Three scientists in the GEAC voted against the approval for Bt Brinjal precisely for this reason.
- The only other study on Bt Brinjal (the only one not produced by the company trying to get approval) showed concerns for potential negative effects on human health.
- Civil society and farmers have been increasingly vocal against the lack of transparency of the entire process and pointing out the risks.
Organic farmers delivered your signature against GE rice
Myrto, our EU sustainable agriculture campaigner - tells us about the farmers who delivered 180,000 signatures to the EU Commission this month.
“Picture this: nature is like a piano, the music that nature plays with all its piano keys is the biodiversity, imagine now that GMOs [genetically manipulated organisms] coming into the picture, that piano has now only one key, the Monsanto key!”
With this beautiful metaphor Eduardo Campayo a spanish organic farmer from Spain began to describe his personal experience with GE (genetically engineered) crops - to EU Commissioner of Health Vassiliou, Belgian Minister Lutgen, MEPs and EU journalists.
Eduardo was not alone meeting all these people in Brussels earlier this month. He was joined by Fernando Jose Llobel, the president of the Organic Consumer Association from the same region in Spain (Albacete), Peter Nielsson an organic potato and dairy farmer from Sweden and Samnieng Huadlim a very dynamic 65 year old woman and organic rice farmer from Thailand.
All of them joined us in Brussels to deliver the Greenpeace petition signed by 180,000 people - against the introduction of Bayer’s GE rice into the EU.
I wish everyone who had signed the rice petition could have been there - to meet these amazing organic farmers and hear them speaking their truth from the heart. You would not have any doubt that all of them have made a conscious choice to produce healthy food, work with nature, help their communities. And their message was so clear -- GE crops are putting all this at risk.
Agriculture activists arrested in India
Today activists in India were arrested while demonstrating outside the Indian Parliament during the passing of the Finance bill in Loksabha. The demonstration was to remind the Finance Minister that proposed fertiliser subsidies will not ward off an imminent food crisis.
The present crisis - characterised by degraded soils, yield stagnation and decline in agricultural productivity - is the result of years of indiscriminate use of chemical fertilisers, facilitated by government subsidies.
The newly proposed subsidy reform will continue to promote the use of chemical fertilisers and will only intensify the problem in India. The degraded soils need to be rejuvenated and the only way to do this is through ecological farming.
The Finance Minister has expressed concern over declining agricultural productivity as a response to increased fertiliser usage and proposed a shift to a nutrient based subsidy regime instead of the current product pricing regime to ensure balanced usage. But studies show that agricultural yield is unsustainable even with recommended doses and balanced applications of chemical fertilisers. Our recent report, 'Subsidising Food Crisis' refers to a 14-year study in Punjab to highlight the fact that rice yields declined even when the recommended rates of nutrients are applied.
While it is important to give income support to farmers, our office in India is demanding that their government provide support for ecological farming in order to ensure food security.
Monsanto can count on its friends
This is a guest post from Myrto, sustainable agriculture campaigner.
When a giant agri-chemical company with a long track record of environmental crimes and health scandals, such as Monsanto sends a press release praising how wonderful are their products and how the central body of the EU that performs risk assessments (the European Food Safety Authority -EFSA) cleared out their one and only genetically modified maize cultivated in the EU you really need to look behind the smokescreen.
Making the Ministry of Rice
Lucy, one of our video producers at Greenpeace International, made the new video for our campaign against GM rice. Here's the story she's written about how it all came together with photos by Raffa and Tulio, from our video department.
“We need a film..”
“Great, about what?”
“genetically modified rice….”
Why do I never get the orang-utans or the whales?
“..something informative yet engaging…funny, memorable. different..”
“er OK sure …”
Only, I wasn't sure I could pull it off at first - but the sustainable agriculture team here at Greenpeace International knew what they wanted and their passion was infectious. They explained that the EU is considering to allow Bayer’s strain of genetically modified rice, LL62, to be sold in Europe, and ultimately ending up on our dinner plates. If that wasn’t enough, it’s resistant to Glufosinate - a herbicide considered so dangerous to humans that the EU has banned it. But apparently it’s fine to spray this stuff on rice in other countries and then import the genetically engineered rice for EU citizens to eat? I don’t think so! The challenge was set ….now I just needed to figure out what film I was going to make.
Monsanto takes legal action against Germany
Here's another example of how giant agri-chemical corporations are using every means possible to impose their products without respecting the rights of consumers who do not want their risky products.
Following the decision by German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner to ban the cultivation and sale of Monanto's MON 810 genetically modified (GM) maize - Monsanto is now taking legal action to end this German ban in time for the seeds to be sown for this year's harvest.
A Monsanto spokesman said Germany's action to restrict Mon 810 was an "arbitrary ban" that violated EU rules.
This goes to show that Monsanto does not respect scientific warnings for possible impacts on the environment and uncertainties regarding the effects on human health. And it demonstrates that they do not respect governmental decisions aiming to protect citizens and the environment from GM crops under EU law.
Minister Aigner decided to issue the ban as information showed there was a justifiable reason to believe GM maize presented a danger to the environment.
>> Read more about the GMO maize ban in Germany and the science behind it.
UPDATE!
From Bloomberg on May 5th 2009:
Germany’s prohibition on a strain of genetically modified corn made by Monsanto was justified because “a preliminary assessment” showed the plant raises a potential danger, the Braunschweig Administrative Court said in an e-mailed statement today.
Monsanto's unscrupulous attempt to still get this hazardous GE maize on fields has for the moment failed. We're welcoming the court's decision. Here environmental and consumer concerns have been put before the interests of industrial corporations. The decision is also a success for the majority of consumers, who reject GE plants being cultivated.
We are now calling on German Minister, Ilse Aigner, to vote against authorisations of similar GE maize varieties for agricultural cultivation at EU level too. Genetic engineering is not a technology for the future, it is obsolescent. Research findings are showing increasingly often that ecological dangers stem from GE maize.
EU backs Austrian and Hungarian bans on GM crops
"This is what democracy looks like!" is one of the slogans I remember the protesters at the Washington DC coal action chanting yesterday.
The same day Austria's Environment Minister put it just as well, I think, when he told reporters how it felt to beat the European Commission over banning GMO crops: "We have completely prevailed. This is for me as if Austria won the European football championship."
GMO vote tomorrow in Brussels
Europe's food safety checks will be debated tomorrow in an important EU GMO meeting in Brussels.
Citizens, environmentalists, activists and food-lovers have sent thousands of messages to every Environment Minister in Europe -- almost 70,000 in just under a month.
Yesterday we discovered that the UK and Germany are planning to wreck the meeting -- objecting to positive new measures that would strengthen the assessment process. Germany has been among the more food-friendly (and consumer-friendly) countries up to now, so this is a really shameful turn for the worse!
Related: GM-Free Ireland has an interview today on their website with Prof. Patrick Wall, the former head of the European Food Safety Authority.
Action: Write directly to the Ministers for UK and Germany before the GMO meeting on Thursday.
GMO Alert!
Thanks to all of you that have already responded to our call to stop Gentically Modified Organisms in European Union!
You've generated more than 35,000 letters so far, but only 13 days remain before the vote!
EU ministers on the 4th of December will decide whether they will strengthen the EU authorization system to protect our health, our food and our fields from GMOs.
Our latest information from the negotiation table is that a group of a few pro-GMO member-states and the European Commission are blocking the process and there is a risk that nothing meaningful will be agreed on the 4 December.
If you have not sent your message to the EU ministers please do so now! If you HAVE sent a message already, get the word out to your friends.
We need your support to send a strong message to politicians to listen the concerns of European citizens and keep the EU GMO free!
3 weeks to make EU ministers vote against GMOs
European Environment Ministers meet on December 4 to debate what safety checks are needed to assess genetically modified food before it can be cultivated or sold in the EU. Clearly stronger checks are needed, if you read (PDF in English) an explosive new report about fertility rate decline in mice fed with Monsanto GE maize from the Austrian government!
The European Food Safety Authority is like America's Food and Drug Administration. Under the current regime EFSA, like the FDA, runs inadequate checks and often just rubber stamps what agro-chemical industry experts say.
December 4 could be the day we turn it around -- If we can convince Ministers meeting that day to vote for strict controls. You can take action too.
Vatican declares polluting and genetic engineering deadly sins
The Roman Catholic Church has updated and modernized their list of deadly sins (aka "mortal sins"). These are the really really bad ones. If you die with deadly sins unabsolved you're running a high risk of eternal damnation. And believe you me, that is not so good.
The Telegraph's headline, "Recycle or go to Hell, warns Vatican":
Failing to recycle plastic bags could find you spending eternity in Hell, the Vatican said after drawing up a list of seven deadly sins for our times.The seven, which include polluting the environment, were announced by Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti, a close ally of the Pope and the head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, one of the Roman Curia's main court.
The "sins of yesteryear" - sloth, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, wrath and pride - have a "rather individualistic dimension", he told the Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper.The new seven deadly, or mortal, sins are designed to make worshippers realise that their vices have an effect on others as well.
What about swearing? But as sins go I guess that's only venial.
Potatoes, politics and antibiotics
Good article today in the International Herald Tribune about a genetically engineered potato designed to, "yield large quantities of starch suitable for making glossy paper products and for feeding animals". That is important stuff, of course. We don't want animals going hungry, and I'm sure we all know the importance of glossy paper products.
But some scientists are worried that the gene-altered potatoes pose a risk to humans...
It also has aroused concerns that sick people and the elderly could become more vulnerable to disease because there are fears that the potato could trigger resistance to certain antibiotics in humans."The biotechnology industry threatens to set an extremely worrying example if it wins approval for this potato," said Patrice Courvalin, the head of the Antibacterial Agents Unit at the medical research center Institut Pasteur in Paris. "We should keep trying to prevent dissemination of antibiotic resistance rather than to allow products into the food chain that could potentially make a bad situation even worse."
Why should we be concerned about antibiotic resistant genes in potatoes? Troublemakers at the Union of Concerned Scientists explain.
All go for European GM campaigns
It's all go for our European anti Genetically Modified (GM) crops campaigns. Activists in France hung a very clear message from the iconic Arc de Triomphe in Paris today, urging the French government to make the right move and ban GM. A decision expected to take place in the next few days. Meanwhile our team in Romania had a great victory over French supermarket giant Carrefour.
A Greenpeace team removed Snack Attack bread from Carrefour’s flagship store in Bucharest yesterday, because our tests showed it contains GM Soya. Today, the supermarket removed ALL Snack Attack products from their shelves in Romania.
Budweiser "wassup" parody
Put this video on your own site using YouTube:
Sadly, as has already been pointed out, acting is not my strong suit. Making this spoof was both fun and grueling. I actually gained some new respect for professional actors. And as usual, the underlying issue is a serious one. So, join our 'Save the Beer!' campaign by sending an open letter to the head of Budweiser asking, "Wassup with genetically engineered rice in your beer?"
Three times a loser
For the third time, European Environment Ministers have blocked a European Commission (EC) proposal to force member countries to accept the cultivation of genetically engineered (GE) crops on their soil. This time it was Hungary who was in the firing line of the EC and its love affair with GE crops.
The EU Environment Ministers today voted to extent the EC loosing streak on this issue to three straight when they supported Hungary´s right to protect its nature and population from GE crops, in this case a Monsanto maize known as MON810, engineered to contain a toxin and kill pests.
The big question is why after going into the latest round 2-0 down, the EC didn't decide to change their game? If they actually listened to the citzens of Europe, they might have changed their strategy to one of protecting the EU and its member states from GE and actually be on the winning side for a change.
European conventional and organic farmers are already increasingly exposed to contamination by genetically engineered crops, revealed a report published yesterday by Greenpeace and GeneWatch UK, which catalogues a list of contamination incidences around the world.
Lets just hope that after loosing for the third time that they don't embarass themselves by trying to a fourth straight loss.
More Crop Circles in Mexico, Spain and Philippines
© Greenpeace / Gustavo Graf
As you may know, we've been recently been busy creating seasonal crop circles all over the world, to highlight the appearance of GE crops in fields in several countries. Three more appeared in the last few days - in Mexico, Spain and the Philippines.
02 October 2006: Above is a gigantic 60 metre "NO" sign crop circle in a maize field in the state of Estado de Mexico, Central Mexico. We're demanding that the Mexican Government rejects proposals to break a long standing moratorium against the cultivation of genetically Modified Maize in the region.
Interview with the GE Crop Circle Makers
© Greenpeace / Gustavo Graf
Mexico — Some pals of mine from the fortean world have been making crop circles for our GE campaign. In this interview, John Lundberg - who is a professional cropcircle maker - (who knew there was such a thing?) talks about making giant question mark in a maize field in Mexico and working with us.
"For years I'd thought that crop circles would be an ideal medium for promoting Greenpeace's genetic engineering (GE) campaign. The crop circles generate an alien mystique, encouraging people to consider the unknown."
Mexican crop circle asks the question »
Earlier work, in France: GE Maps: Censored by French Court, Republished by Greenpeace International, Featured by BoingBoing »
Circlemakers.org »
GE Maps: Censored by French Court, Republished by Greenpeace International, Featured by BoingBoing
It was always going to be the *perfect* BoingBoing story: Greenpeace France publishes a Google Map showing locations of GE Crop fields. Farmers take Greenpeace to court. French Government orders map and webpage removed, despite the fact that the French Government is in fact obliged under EU law to make the locations of commercial GE sites public.
So the court order tells Greenpeace France to remove the map "from all websites it publishes." Well now, Greenpeace France doesn't publish the Greenpeace International website, does it?
GE cotton killed sheep in India?
This report just in via Indymedia:
There is yet another controversy linked to the genetically modified Bt cotton plant and this time it is the alarming reports of sheep and goat taking ill, even dying after grazing on leftover Bt cotton fields. This is what farmers and shepherds in Warangal district of Andhra Pradesh are saying. The central government has reportedly ordered independent toxicology tests on Bt cotton leaves to ascertain the facts.
GE Cotton Kills Sheep and Goats in India
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