from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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This week we are launching a special section on our website - *FOCUS ON ASIA* - dedicated to keeping you up to date with GM news, research and resistance on that continent.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=42&page=1
You'll also find a useful directory of GM pushers and shovers active in Asia, as well as links to the organisations leading the resistance. Please tell all your friends and contacts about it.

We've a fascinating 'compare and contrast' pair of stories. America's farmland, following the adoption of GM crops, is being strangled by herbicide resistant weeds (THE AMERICAS). Kenya, on the other hand, a country awash with GM lobbyists trying to take it down the GM route, has found a sustainable way of working with nature to simultaneously control the stemborer maize pest, keep down a noxious weed, and boost milk production - all without GM (FOCUS ON AFRICA). We can't help but be reminded that whereas fragmentary knowledge (such as GM) produces side-effects, holistic knowledge (sustainable ag) produces side-benefits.

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

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CONTENTS
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FOCUS ON ASIA
FOCUS ON AFRICA
THE AMERICAS
AUSTRALIA
WTO
LOBBYWATCH
COMPANY NEWS
DONATIONS

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FOCUS ON ASIA
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+ INDIA'S GM GODFATHER KEY SPEAKER AT CONFERENCE
A profile of the Godfather of India's Green Revolution, M.S. Swaminathan, is at
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4179

Swaminathan is a key speaker at the 3-day International Conference which opened 6 August in New Delhi, India, called, "Agricultural Biotechnology: Ushering in the Second Green Revolution".

Swaminathan, India's premier Green Revolution scientist, has a talent for dressing up the industry lobby's agenda in the rhetoric of village India, women's empowerment, eco-tech etc., creating a facade of an unthreatening, ecologically and socially sensitive biotechnology 'domesticated' to local conditions.

But Swaminathan's promotion of a locally aware biotechnology remains open to question. His track record is hugely controversial. There are allegations of scientific fraud as well as scandals involving the suicide of scientists at the institute from which he launched the Green Revolution.

One eminent scientist wrote to us after reading our profile to say thay had concluded from personal experience that Swaminathan exemplified what is 'worst and most corrupt in science'. But, remarkably, all of this has been buried beneath a plethora of awards and honours that portray as a hero the man who presided over, and indiscriminately furthered, one of the ecologically most devastating technologies of modern times.

The real importance of Swaminathan's record is that it points to the errors India will repeat if it embarks on a Swaminathan-led "Second Green Revolution".
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4215

+ FAST-TRACK GM APPROVAL ARRIVES IN INDIA
India will put in place a single window regulatory body by January to consider permission for cultivation of GM crops in the country, according to the Minister of State for Science and Technology, Mr Kapil Sibal.

"We are evolving a simpler regulatory system to rapidly speed up the approval or rejection of technologies in order to bring in additional choices for farmers as soon as possible," he said, addressing the International Conference on "Agricultural biotechnology ushering in the second green revolution" in New Delhi.
(see item above).

He even suggested India might simply follow other countries' assessments of GM crops where they had already granted approvals.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4217
For more of the background to the conference see: India's GM godfather
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4215

+ NEW!! GM PROMOTERS IN ASIA
GM WATCH is launching its new resource, FOCUS ON ASIA: http://www.lobbywatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=42&page=1

FOCUS ON ASIA not only provides links to the latest news and to relevant reports, to country profiles and the groups resisting the promotion of GM. It also provides an A-Z directory to leading GM promoters in Asia.

Below is a selection from the directory. Links to detailed profiles can be found here:
http://www.lobbywatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=42&page=1
...
GM CROP PROMOTERS - AN A-Z [brief selection]

GM crop promoters in Asia, or claiming to speak for the people of Asia:

Asian Food Information Centre - AFIC
Singapore-registered body funded by 'food, beverage and agricultural industries' (includes biotechnology companies). Collaborates with ISAAA and CropLife Asia.

Asian Rice Biotechnology Network (ARBN)
Founded 1993 by International Rice Research Institute in Philippines to help develop and release GM rice across Asia.

Gerard Barry
Coordinator of GoldenRice Network at International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). Formerly with Monsanto where he helped exploit PR potential of Golden Rice and Monsanto's Rice Genome project.

CGIAR - Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research
Has 16 international agricultural research centers, including IRRI in the Philippines. Original remit was as a publicly funded research body but increasingly closely involved with private sector. In 2002 CGIAR appointed Syngenta Foundation to its board.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4213

Shetkari Sanghatana
Sharad Joshi's Shetkari Sanghtana is the remnant of a farmers' union from which the dominant group broke away to oppose GMOs and the WTO. Largely confined to the Indian state of Maharashtra. Like the Federation of Farmers Association in Andhra Pradesh, now represents large local landowners growing cash crops rather than India's many subsistence farmers.

+ FOCUS ON ASIA'S RESISTANCE: THE PHILIPPINES
(From GM WATCH's new *FOCUS on ASIA* resource:
http://www.lobbywatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=42&page=1 )

Excerpt:
Commercial approval for the cultivation of Monsanto's Bt corn was granted in December 2002 despite fierce opposition, including a protracted hunger strike, from farmers' organisations, environmentalists and sections of the Catholic Church. Subsequent concerns about a possible link of Bt-corn farming to outbreaks of illness in the Philippines have been the subject of scientific research.

Pressure to accept GM crop production has come not just from the biotech industry and its lobbyists, backed by the US, but also from the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) which is located in Los Banos, Laguna, about 60 kilometers south of the Philippine capital, Manila. Here Golden Rice is among the GM crops under development.

Find out more, including about those in the Philippines resisting GM.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4216

+ FOCUS ON ASIA'S RESISTANCE: JAPAN
(From GM WATCH's new *FOCUS on ASIA* resource:
http://www.lobbywatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=42&page=1)

Excerpts:
Since 1996 consumer resistance to GM has been growing in Japan, where millions of signatures have been gathered for petitions opposing GM food and crops. Following successful citizens' actions to halt GM rice trials, Japanese corporations have abandoned domestic GM rice research. Japanese resistance was also a critical element in Monsanto's decision to abandon plans to commercialise GM wheat worldwide. At the moment there is a focus on volunteer GM oilseed rape which is springing up around