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from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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In an attempt to head off public hostility to GM in Europe, the industry has shifted its focus from food to pharming. The European Union has handed over 12 million in taxpayer Euros to research the production of drugs in plants - and the UK's John Innes Centre is among the first in line to trouser its share of the cash. Of course, the European public won't tolerate pharmacrops growing amongst its food crops, so the dirty side of the business will be done in Africa! (see PHARMING)

Don't miss a brilliant ARTICLE OF THE WEEK at the end of this bulletin by biologist David Schubert on how the US now has the worst ever censorship of scientists through Bush's espousal of industry-dictated 'sound science'.

Talking of which, the news has just broken that Sir John Krebs is quitting as head of the UK's Food Standards Agency and Tony Blair is quoted as saying, "[Krebs] has been robust in ensuring that the Agency bases its advice on sound science and in ensuring that it promotes the interests of consumers".
http://www.foodstandards.gov.uk/news/newsarchive/2004/jul/krebsdown

Which is a classic piece of Blairite spin about a scientist who put the CON into consumer protection. GM WATCH gave Sir John a PANTS ON FIRE award, for not just emasculating the Food Standards Agency but turning it into a public platform for his extreme support for GM and his antipathy to organic food.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/p2temp2.asp?aid=6&page=1&op=1

Apart from Krebs quitting, some more good news this week came from chemical giant BASF which is making noises about moving its GM work out of Europe (see GM MELTDOWN CONTINUES). The bad news for our friends in America is that the firm may follow Syngenta there. But on the plus side for the US, Monsanto's GM cattle drug Posilac, which failed to win approval in any major industrial country other than the States, seems to have bit the dust (see US) after just 10 years on the market.

Claire [email protected]
www.lobbywatch.org / www.gmwatch.org

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CONTENTS
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PHARMING
LOBBYWATCH
GM MELTDOWN CONTINUES
EURO-NEWS
UK-NEWS
US-NEWS
OTHER GLOBAL NEWS
ARTICLE OF THE WEEK - BUSH'S 'SOUND SCIENCE': TURNING A DEAF EAR TO REALITY
DONATIONS

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PHARMING
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+ GM 'PHARMING' PROJECT FOR EUROPE
Scientists across Europe, including Britain, are to explore the possibilities of producing pharmaceuticals grown in genetically modified plants. The European Union has awarded 12 million euros (GBP8 million) to a network of experts in 11 European countries and South Africa and they aim to begin human trials of the drugs within the next five years.

The aim of the "pharming" project is advertised as being to use plants to produce vaccines and treatments against major diseases including Aids, rabies, diabetes and TB. Which sounds very noble, but GM WATCH has already discovered that one of the two projects planned for the UK involves developing cheap pig vacccines, presumably to assist industrial agriculture.

The consortium, called Pharma-Planta, will develop the concept from plant modification through to clinical trials. The scientists involved will be all too familiar to GM WATCH readers: Phil Dale who worked so hard to bring us GM food plants, Paul Christou who was at the forefront of the attacks on Ignacio Chapela over his maize contamination research, and Julian Ma who has been at Peter Lachmann's shoulder in his attacks on the BMA and others.

The John Innes Centre will also be involved in "exploring biosafety issues" associated with pharma plants.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4118

+ FROM NATURE BIOTECHNOLOGY EDITORIAL ON PHARMING:
The Pharma-Planta publicity makes it clear that they are going to be making use of food crops like maize in their erffort to grow cheap drugs, but as even the normally vigorously pro-GM science journal Nature Biotechnology has warned:

"The problem is - as anti-GM lobbyists have argued already - that the production of drugs or drug intermediates in food or feed crop species bears the potential danger that pharmaceutical substances could find their way into the food chain... This position is not anti-GM (something industry should appreciate) - we should be concerned about the presence of a potentially toxic substance in food plants. After all, is this really so different from a conventional pharmaceutical or biopharmaceutical manufacturer packaging its pills in candy wrappers or flour bags or storing its compounds or production batches untended outside the perimeter fence?"
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4132

+ US SOY DESTROYED AFTER PHARMA CONTAMINATION
In 2002, crops worth millions of dollars were destroyed in the US after soya contaminated by GM maize plants used to produce a pharmaceutical or industrial chemical was discovered in a US grain elevator.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=13&page=A

+ SOUTH AFRICA TO BECOME PHARMA TESTING GROUND
Recently we've noted the weak biosafety system in South Africa and how, starting back in the apartheid era, South Africa's regulatory system has been shaped by industry-backed lobbyists.

A recent court case has also highlighted the extraordinary secrecy surrounding GM crops releases in South Africa, with officials accused of repeatedly failing to release information to which the public has a statutory right.

'Pharma-Planta' is an EU-funded project which is entirely European except for one partner - the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria, South Africa.

It is becoming clear that the Europeans plan to use South Africa as the testing ground for their GM pharma crops.

Excerpts from an article from the Cape Times:

"... concerns about direct action by environmentalists opposed to GM crops has led to the scientists behind the project collaborating with a South African research institute that has offered to grow the first crop."

"Philip Dale, a plant technologist at the John Innes Centre in Norwich and the project's biosafety co-ordinator, said the cost of 24-hour surveillance of GM fields in the UK has made it expensive to conduct similar trials in Britain."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4131

Check out GeneWatch UK's report on pharma crops: http://www.genewatch.org/CropsAndFood/Reports/Producing_Drugs_in_GM_Crops.pdf

A revealing profile of pharma godfather, Charles Arntzen, is at
http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=13&page=A

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LOBBYWATCH
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+ SUBVERTING THE CARTAGENA PROTOCOL - WILLY DE GREEF
An article in Nature Biotechnology by one Willy De Greef blames the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (which demands labeling of GM imports and gives countries the right to refuse them on safety grounds) for stalling "significant ... contributions of biotech to public health improvement in the developing world" like Golden Rice. He demands more public sector input - a trend we've increasingly noted as private investment for biotech dries up.

Nature Biotech bills De Greef only as "at the Plant Biotechnology Institute for Developing Countries (IPBO), Department of Molecular Genetics, Ghent University". However "public sector" that may sound, until the end of 2002 Willy De Greef was the Global Head of