Here are entries from our "Behind the headlines" section on the GM WATCH website that explore the PR push for GM foods. Missing here are all the links to further information that go with each item on the site: http://www.gmwatch.org/page.asp?pid=28
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Behind the headlines
THE PLAYERS AND AGENDAS BEHIND THE NEWS
http://www.gmwatch.org/page.asp?pid=28

SEPTEMBER 2004

11th: Vatican GM conference condemned
A Catholic institute in Australia has condemned the conference on "The Moral Imperative of Biotechnology" to be held September 24, 2004 in Rome, and organised by The Pontifical Academy of Sciences in cooperation with the USA Embassy to the Holy See. Among their concerns, "The presence at your Conference as a speaker of Dr C.S. Prakash, an avowed lobbyist for international GM corporations, gives a forum for a powerful Public Relations coup." Fr Sean McDonagh of the Columban Missionaries in Ireland has also criticised the conference, "It will be a tragedy if the Vatican listens to the corporate voice rather than the voice of countless Christian communities and their leaders in Third World countries." A previous Vatican seminar on GM crops came under fire from priests in Africa amongst many others.

Find out more about C.S. Prakash, and another conference speaker Peter Raven who has been described by geneticist Wes Jackson as, "In a certain sense... a paid traveling salesman for Monsanto."

AUGUST 2004

30th: Advocacy Groups And The Money
America's National Cattlemen's Beef Association has been warned by "advocacy group watchdog" Jay Byrne that, "The number of advocacy groups targeting beef, animal agriculture and agriculture in general are growing daily. Many of these groups are portrayed as having grassroots agendas, when in fact they are fronts for a much larger hidden agenda".

This attack by the President of v-Fluence Interactive Public Relations is deeply ironic. Our research suggests Byrne was the chief architect of a covert Monsanto-Bivings PR campaign involving poison-pen attacks on the company's critics via front e-mails, such as those of fake "citizens" such as Andura Smetacek and Mary Murphy, and a fake agricultural institute, the Center For Food and Agricultural Research (CFFAR).

The kind of claims posted via such Monsanto PR fronts recurr in Byrne's advice to the cattlemen to beware of front groups! Byrne also directs the cattlemen to ActivistCash and Consumer Freedom - fronts for the PR firm, Berman & Co., which is known to have received a $200,000 "donation" from Monsanto. Byrne is Monsanto's former Director of Public Affairs and former Internet Outreach Programs Director.

28th: GM Watch "wades into GMO row"
Thailand's English-language newspaper The Nation reports how, "British-based GM Watch has joined local crusaders opposed to genetically modified organisms in urging the government to review its controversial reversal of its GMO policy." In particular, we warned the Thai Prime Minister not to believe the industry's hype and catch what economist Jospeh Cortright has called the "bad-idea virus" which sweeps through political leaders leaving them believing they must succour the money-losing biotech industry. Cortright's research leads him to conclude: "This notion that you lure biotech to your community to save its economy is laughable."

Read our open letter to the Thai PM which made the front page of 4 Thai newspapers.

22nd: The Frankenfood Myth: How Protest and Politics Threaten the Biotech Revolution
GM lobbyists Greg Conko and Henry Miller are bringing out a "provocative" new book, with a Foreword by Norman E. Borlaug. Thankfully, barely anyone will read it because it's in hardback and costs forty bucks. The book claims to explain "how a 'happy conspiracy' of anti-technology activism, bureaucratic over-reach, and business lobbying", and the resulting "public confusion, political manipulation, ill-conceived regulation" has lead to "the obstruction of one of the safest and most promising technologies ever developed -- with profoundly negative consequences for the environment and starving people around the world".

Conko is the Director of Food Safety Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), which is supported by Monsanto amongst others. He's also the Vice President of CS Prakash's AgBioWorld, which is in cahoots with Monsanto amongst others. Miller is a Senior research fellow at the right-wing Hoover Institution.

18th: Biotech's "radical rural campaigners"
The Independent reports "the surprise emergence in France of a group of radical rural campaigners claiming to be in favour of open-field [GM] experiments". These "radical rural campaigners", according to the article, are led by Pierre Pagesse. Pagesse is the president of Limagrain, one of the biggest seed companies in the world and a heavy investor in GM crop R&D. Limagrain's GM research has in the past been undertaken in cooperation with French agrochemical giant Rhone-Poulenc. Limagrain Canada is owned by Monsanto.
Find out more about Pagesse and Limagrain.

10th: GM crop promoters in Asia - new resource
GM WATCH launches its new resource FOCUS ON ASIA. It provides links to the latest news and relevant reports, country profiles, and a directory of GM promoters in Asia.

10th: India's GM Godfather
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 how credible Swaminathan and his promotion of a locally aware biotechnology really are remains open to question. His track record remains controversial. There are accusations of scientific fraud as well as scandals involving the suicide of scientists at the institute from which he launched the Green Revolution. But these have been buried beneath a plethora of awards and honours.

4th: Taverne's conflict of interest
GM proponent Lord Dick Taverne recently contributed a pro-MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine article to the British Medical Journal in which he argues against legal aid being granted for a claim against its manufacturers. In the article he is billed as the Chairman of Sense about Science. The BMJ requires disclosure of interests. Glaxo SmithKline is a major vaccine manufacturer and, specifically, an MMR manufacturer. Taverne fails to mention any link between Sense about Science and Glaxo even though the company is listed as one of the lobby group's donors.

JULY 2004

30th: Peer Reviewers Give Thumbs Down to Berkeley-Novartis Deal
A team of scholars says universities should avoid the kind of research agreement the University of California at Berkeley had with the biiotech corporation Novartis (now part of Syngenta). The report also suggests that Berkeley's relationship with Novartis created a potential conflict of interest among administrators that affected the tenure review of a faculty member, Ignacio Chapela.

23rd: Conflict of interest in South Africa's GMO advisory panel
Owing to its lax biosafety controls South Africa's intake of GM crops has been more rapid than that of any country besides the United States. This is no accident. It is the result of South Africa's biosafety system having been shaped from an early stage by influential proponents of GM, points out Jonathan Matthews of GM WATCH in this article from the South African press.

4th: AfricaBio's industry backing exposed
Find out who's really behind Africa's most influential pro-GM lobby group which presents itself as a civil society organisation - 'The NGO taking biotechnology to the people of Africa'.
For more on Africabio.

1st: Lord Taverne and his techno-jackboots win award
Find out why Lord Dick Taverne and Sense About Science are the latest winners of our prestigious PANTS ON FIRE award.

JUNE 2004

29th: Lobby assault on UK parliament
British Members of Parliament have been invited to a GM Question Time: Parliamentary Q&A Session but the experts assembled all have close and undeclared links to either the biotech industry itself or supportive lobby groups. Take, for instance, Kimball Nill. Nill is billed simply as part of the "Agriculture Commodity Coalition". ACC is, in fact, supported by the biotech-industry funded Council for Biotech Information to run a pro-GM public information campaign. Nill is also employed by the American Soybean Association (ASA) to proactively deal with technology "issues that could impact U.S. soybean exports". Monsanto is notable among ASA's backers. Prior to joining the ASA in 1996, Nill served "in several positions supporting Monsanto Company's venture capital and biotechnology R&D efforts". The event is being organised by the Scientific Alliance.

29th: Caught in the Matrix
David Miller of Stirling University's Media Research Institute draws on GM Watch research in a wide ranging article on political and corporate manipulation: "Under neo-liberalism the main (political) parties are indistinguishable and their policies have no popular basis. They must be imposed by manipulation... We live in an age of fakery; spin in government and PR manipulation in business are used to force through unpopular policies or undermine democratic decision making. All over the world our rulers are attempting to hold the matrix together with ever extending propaganda programmes. The GM food lobby leads the way."

25th: Focus on Africa
Find out more about how African countries are being targeted by the biotech industry and its lobbyists with unprecedented backing from the US government.

23rd: Small-scale farmers get technology boost in Africa?
The African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) has been centre stage this week at the US-sponsored Burkina Faso conference where the US signed a memorandum of understanding with AATF to 'share and disseminate agricultural technologies' for sub-Saharan Africa. Funding for AATF is said to come from the Rockefeller Foundation, the United States Agency for International Development and the UK Department for International Development. But this is only part of the story that includes undisclosed backers.

21st: US-sponsored GM Ministerial Conference in West Africa
"The U.S. relationship with Africa has never been stronger", according to the U.S.at the opening session of this GM promotional in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on "Harnessing Science and Technology to Increase Agricultural Productivity in Africa: West African Perspectives". But the irony of the US pushing GM crops like Bt cotton as a way of improving the lot of West African farmers, is given by the US's history of impoverishing those same farmers - a history it refuses to amend.

12th: Biotech Holds The Solution to Africa's Food Woes, says Avery
Find out more about Dennis Avery, fervent supporter of biotechnology, pesticides, irradiation, factory farming and free trade.

12th: Patrick Moore at BIO 2004
Environmentalist turned industry lobbyist, Patrick Moore, argues it out with BIO 2004 protesters.

8th: Pusztai on Dr Ian Gibson
In a speech in the British House of Commons, Dr Ian Gibson who Chairs the all party Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee, authoritatively dismissed concerns over GM and said that as a scientist he could wipe the floor with his opponents. Unfortunately for Dr Gibson, Dr Arpad Pusztai has responded to his comments, exposing once again the extraordinary confection of spin, bravado and sheer nonsense with which this technology is promoted.

3rd: Revealed: the media manipulators and fake persuaders
Find out more about our new website which tracks lobby groups and deceptive public relations

2nd: India's new biotech matrix
The final report of the MS Swaminathan Committee, which has been looking at GM crop regulation, says that the "evaluation procedure of GM crops should invite farmers' participation and not that of the NGOs". In the run-up to the commercialisation of Bt cotton in India, "farmers' groups" were invited to attend a "public dialogue" on GM cotton approval held by the Indian regulator - the GEAC. But these farmers groups had no significant constituency and a history of coordinating their lobbying activities with industry.

Check out those who attended: Chengal Reddy and the Federation of Farmers' Associations (FFA) and Kisan Coordination Committee
For more on the Swaminathan Committee and its deliberations.

2nd: How Big Biotech silences the scientists
"They've been going after scientists in a systematic, organized way that I haven't seen in my memory," says Chuck Benbrook, a food policy expert and former executive director of the Board on Agriculture of the National Academy of Sciences. "Let's face it, [big biotech has] silenced the vast majority of scientists who are interested in doing research on risks."
Find out more about what happened to Dr Ignacio Chapela and Dr Arpad Pusztai

1st: ISAAA's GM Bubble
How a lobby group with biotech industry support and direction sells the media inflated figures on GM crop uptake and planting.

MAY 2004

31st: What Uganda's Musevini agreed with George Bush
Uganda's President Museveni suddenly announced that he is convinced of the logic of GM crops following private discussions with George Bush. Did Bush make him an offer he couln't refuse?

31st: Biotech's take-over in Kenya
How showcase projects which offer little to farmers have been used to build a regional bridgehead for the biotech industry.

30th: USAID targets Africa
US Agency for International Development (USAID) has said it plans to invest US$2.1 million in biotechnology for Nigeria over the next three years. USAID is targeting African countries and trying to lock them into following South Africa's weak biosafety regime.

For more about regulatory capture in South Africa, see below.

28th: South Africa's regulatory capture
South Africa provides one of the worst examples anywhere in the world of regulatory capture. As one South African critic recently put it, "In the UK you have the likes of [lobbyists] Lord Dick Taverne and Sense about Science and they are a bit of a nuisance, but in South Africa we have their equivalent actually running the show!"

For more about regulatory capture in South Africa see: Muffy Koch and AfricaBio

20th: UN hunger message spun off course
A new report from the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations, AGRICULTURAL BIOTECHNOLOGY: MEETING THE NEEDS OF THE POOR?, has led to media claims of UN support for GMOs. This cannot be put down simply to carefully spun industry press releases. Among the background researchers for the report is Joel Cohen who while at USAID helped Monsanto get its notorious GM sweet potato project off the ground, using USAID money to have Florence Wambugu trained by Monsanto for the purpose. Norman Borlaug and Tom Hoban are among a number of avidly pro-GM 'background researchers' acknowledged in the FAO report.

The FAO report's author previously worked as an agricultural economic researcher for the US on NAFTA - the North American Free Trade Agreement. The agreement was touted as an economic boon for Mexico. The reality, however, for Mexico's rural poor has been very different. Heavily subsidised US farm products have helped drive millions of Mexicans off the land. Now, as Devinder Sharma has noted in response to the report, the FAO seems willing to let the GM industry "drive out the majority of farmers in the developing countries from their meager land holdings".
For more of the rebuttals of the FAO report - click here

6th: Pro-GM lobby closing down?
New Zealand's aggressive pro-GM lobby group the Life Sciences Network is being wound down - or is it? See also Pro-GM lobby institute closes

3rd: Lord Sainsbury expected to quit
His GM investments are in meltdown, his family business is underperforming, and he has done his best to push UK science in a disastrous direction while corrupting the political process. Find out more about the UK's Science Minister and his powerful reach.

See also: Biotech firms linked to Sainsbury trust hit cash trouble

1st: Industry's regulatory coup in India?
PV Satheesh of the Deccan Development Society has issued an important warning that "the powerful industrial lobby in India" is working to "completely dismantle the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee of the Ministry of Environment and Forests and hand over the control to an industry dominated committee in the name of a fast track approval."

Find out more about what's going on in India at the moment and who is behind it. Find out also about an important and detailed new study by agricultural scientists showing how unsuccessful GM cotton is proving in Andhra Pradesh.

APRIL 2004

30th: Susan Greenfield rejected by Royal Society
Baroness Susan Greenfield has not been included on the shortlist for membership of the Royal Society. Some Fellows had threatened to resign if she was successful, arguing that her work did not merit the honour.

Find out what the Royal Society were considering rewarding Prof Greenfield for.

5th: Genocide? What genocide?
This week marks the tenth anniversary of the start of the Rwandan genocide and GM WATCH has produced a series of pieces looking at the LM network which, as with Bosnia, rewrote the historical evidence in favour of the murderers. Now their central preoccupation is biotechnology.

Read on: "From genocide deniers to biotech apologists"
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

MARCH 2004

28th: Safety Quacks - Lord Taverne quacks LM's tune
Safety Quacks by Lord Dick Taverne, Chairman of the pro-GM lobby group Sense About Science, is not the first article he has penned for the political magazine Prospect. His last was co-authored with Sense about Science's director, Tracey Brown, a leading member of the far-right (formerly far left!) Living Marxism - or LM - network. In Safety Quacks , an article apparently authored without Brown's assistance, Taverne draws repeatedly on "an important book by Adam Burgess, Cellular Phones, Public Fears and a Culture of Precaution ". Burgess is Brown's husband. He is also part of the LM network as is Ellen Raphael - the only other staff member of Sense About Science.

For more about Sense About Science and how they have manipulated the GM debate see: Rotten to the corp, Science in Society 21, Spring 2004

16th: Downing Street forced to reveal secret meetings
Downing Street has been compelled to admit that Dr Paul Drayson, head of the BioIndustry Association whose motto is Promoting UK Biotechnology, met Tony Blair at a sensitive time when he was seeking to win a lucrative £32m contract from the government, which was eventaully awarded to his company without any competition. Dr Drayson had donated £100,000 to Blair's Labour Party. His company PowederJect is also a financial donor to the Science Media Centre.

10th: Spin, lies and flawed science
"Tony Blair's Government has embarked on an orchestrated PR strategy designed to break down public opposition to GM... Yesterday, on the day [Government minister] Mrs Beckett backed GM, the British Medical Association announced a remarkable U-turn on the issue and effectively abandoned its opposition. The BMA's decision was driven by Professor Sir David Carter, who it emerged is a supporter of a pro-GM lobbying group." - Daily Mail, 10th March 2004
Find out more about how the BMA report was fixed and about the lobby group Sense About Science

8th: GM nation? You bet!
The Chairman of the Environmental Audit Committee of the House of Commons has dismissed a highly speculative paper claiming a marginal environmental benefit from Bayer's GM maize as "neither robust nor particularly credible science". The paper was timed to upstage the Committee's report saying GM crop commercialisation cannot be justified. Two of the scientists who provided this political fig leaf have research contracts with Bayer. The other authors claim to have "no competing financial interests". In reality, almost all work for institutes with financial ties to the industry.

Find out more about where power and influence resides in the UK

5th: Monsanto wins award as "Best Multinational Company"
Monsanto has been named "Best Multinational Company" in the International Business Awards competition. The company will receive a 2004 "Stevie" Award at a ceremony on March 22 in New York City. Specific reference is made to the company's Pledge to integrity, transparency and respect. Yet during the period of the Monsanto Pledge, the company has repeatedly been involved in covert dirty tricks operations against its critics.
Find out more about its vicious PR attacks, involving Andura Smetacek, The Bivings Group, Jay Byrne and the Center For Food and Agricultural Research.

2nd: UK Government hiding behind Nuffield's dodgy dossier
UK Government Ministers, Elliott Morley and Hilary Benn have both recently referred to the case studies in the recently published report by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics in defence of "the actual and potential benefits of GM crops for developing countries." But the report is not only deeply flawed but authored by a working party dominated by extreme supporters of the technology.

Find out more about the flaws in the report and its authors.

FEBRUARY 2004

29th: GM giant culls top jobs in Europe
German GM giant Bayer is getting rid of the bosses of its GM programmes throughout Europe. Bayer's UK head of bioscience is Dr Paul Rylott, who is also Chairman of the ABC lobby group, founded by Dupont, Monsanto, Syngenta, BASF, Dow and Bayer CropScience. Rylott was involved in lobbying for the dismissal of Tony Blair's former Environment Minister, Michael Meacher.

Find out more about Paul Rylott, the ABC and its public relations company Lexington Communications and its close connections to Blair's New Labour.

24th: The sleaze behind our science
MMR researcher Dr Andrew Wakefield is being vilified for an undeclared conflict of interest. But George Monbiot points out in The Guardian, "the crime for which the new Dr Evil is being punished is everywhere. The scientific establishment is rotten from top to bottom, riddled with conflicts far graver than Dr Wakefield's."
Find out more about the corporate take over of public science in the UK - see BBSRC and John Innes Centre - and in Australia - see CSIRO . In New Zealand public science funding has even been invested in aggressive spin operations intended to influence the outcome of a general election - see The Life Sciences Network.

22nd: Minister 'broke Cabinet rule' over business
One of Tony Blair's closest allies, Lord Sainsbury, was said by The Observer newspaper to be "fighting for his political life last night after he was accused of breaching strict government guidelines over his business interests." Leaked minutes show that the Science Minister, who has extensive business interests in the biotechnology sector, helped draw up a top-level strategy to promote the industry, a policy shift from which Sainsbury could reap large dividends.
Find out more about Lord Sainsbury, his biotech business interests and his hold over Tony Blair and New Labour

19th: Leaked papers reveal decision for GM go ahead
The British government wants to go ahead with GM crops despite what it acknowledges is considerable public resistance, cabinet committee papers reveal. The documents also reveal anxiety about how the decision will be received and plans to try and spin it in a more favourable light.
Find out more about: David Hill - Blair's spin doctor in chief and Monsanto's PR man; and Mike Craven - Labour's former spin doctor in chief who now helps direct the industry's lobbying.

12th: MPs give public funding body with big biotech connections a clean bill of health
Until just over a year ago the UK's public funding body for the bio-sciences - the BBSRC - was presided over by a director of biotech giant Syngenta. His replacement as Chief Executive is the wife of the head of discovery research at biotech/pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. GlaxoSmithKline also has several representatives sitting on BBSRC boards. They are far from the only representatives of large corporations on the boards that help determine the strategy and direction of the BBSRC. Yet none of this seems to have raised any concerns among a commitee of Members of Parliament who appear only to want the BBSRC to do a better job of winning public acceptance for GM crops.
Find out more about the BBSRC.

12th: Krebs reappointed as Chair of Food Standards Agency
The reappointment of Sir John Krebs as the head of the UK's Food Standards Agency (FSA) is nothing if not controversial given the strong consensus amongst consumer and environment organisations that the published views and statements of Sir John are indistinguishable from those of the pro-GM lobby and do not properly represent public health and consumer interests.
Find out more about Sir John Krebs

9th: Government tries to push GM crops from behind closed doors
According to a report in The Guardian, Jack Straw, the UK's foreign secretary, is chairing a Government committee trying to find a way of commercialising GM in the UK despite the opposition of leaders of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. In June 2003 a leaked memo from Jack Straw showed that he and other ministers in the Government like the environment secretary, Margaret Beckett, were desperate not to antagonise America, the world's largest producer of GM crops. According to The Guardian the committee is dominated by pro-GM ministers, including Margaret Beckett and Lord Sainsbury, the science minister, biotech entrepreneur and Labour's largest donor. Two pro-GM advisers, David King, the government chief scientist, and John Krebs, chairman of the Food Standards Agency, will also attend.
Find out more about: Sir John Krebs and Lord Sainsbury

JANUARY 2004

28th Monsanto's GM technology fails in Kenya - the hype falls apart
Monsanto's virus-resistant GM sweet potato, which has been featured as a huge success in hundreds of newspaper articles all around the world, has failed. The research assessment was launched in Kenya by US special envoy, Dr Andrew Young, who had flown into the country for the occasion. But the research shows non-GM sweet potatoes yield much more than the GM. The GM sweet potato was found to be susceptible to viral attacks.

The project has been used a showcase to promote GM as the saviour of Africa, not least by the scientist who has been called Monsanto's apostle in Africa - Dr Florence Wambugu. On the strength of the supposed success of the GM sweet potato Wambugu has written for The New York Times, appeared on CNN and on various American TV shows. In an issue of Forbes magazine in December 2001, she was named one of fifteen people from around the globe who will 'reinvent the future.' But Wambugu's figures on average non-GM yields massively understated the reality in order to make the GM crop look good.
Find out more about Wambugu and the hype behind the GM sweet potato.

21st: Africa - the new GM frontier & GM giants pin hopes on Africa
"Biotech and agricultural meetings for government and private sector stakeholders held in Nigeria and Zimbabwe late last year enjoyed sponsorship from international pro-GM agencies and it was clear that Africa was being urged to plough more money into developing biotechnology capacity and to garner public support for GM projects."
See also Africa: Dumping ground for rejected GM wheat
Find out more about those pushing GM in Africa:
USAID, AfricaBio, ISAAA, TJ Buthelezi
and Monsanto's apostle in Africa - Dr Florence Wambugu

21st: Scientists urge Blair on GM crops
Four life scientists from St. Louis, Missouri were among 150 life scientists worldwide who have signed a letter to British Prime Minister Tony Blair urging him to commercialise GM crops. But many of the scientists on the list, like Peter Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden and Roger Beachy, president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, have multiple and massive conflicts of interest on the GM issue.
Find out more about Peter Raven
Find out more about Roger Beachy

20th: 'Eco-imperialism' in New York - exploiting the poor for corporate purposes
A conference that its organisers say will make 'eco-imperialism' a household word is taking place at the Sheraton Hotel, New York, today. Opposition to GM crops, its organisers claim is part of a 'war' against the poor in the developing world. But those organisers have been called 'a tin cup outstretched to every Hard Right political campaign or cause that finds it convenient - or a sick joke - to hire Black cheerleaders'.
Find out more about those behind the event.

18th: GM crop acreage hyped in India
Last week there were reports of massive increases in GM crop production around the world. The Times of India reported 'INDIA A KEY GM CROP CULTIVATOR', saying India has made it to the list of top ten transgenic crop-growing nations, doubling its (GM) Bt cotton. But now a leaked internal government report has shown just how misleading this is. The area involved in Bt cotton is 'almost neligible,' says the official government report which concludes, 'This points to the low acceptability of Bt cotton by farmers'.
Find out more about the industry-connected group behind the hype: ISAAA

16th: Ministers to approve commercial growth of GM crops next month
As Britain's Labour government prepares to approve, at least temporarily, the first commercial GM crop in the UK to save Tony Blair's face, find out more about the big GM connections of:
Lord Sainsbury - Blair's science minister and Labour's principal donor

13th: 'Report: Frankenfoods flourishing' - or are they?
Every year the ISAAA grabs headlines around the world with its estimates of the extent to which GM crops are being grown worldwide and the benefits they are bringing to farmers. The numbers are eye-catching but where comparisons can be made against other evidence, including controlled scientific trials, a very different picture emerges - sometimes the opposite of that claimed by ISAAA.
Find out more about ISAAA.

13th: UK government advisors criticised over GM crop decision
The UK government’s scientific advisers on GM crop releases - ACRE, have recommended that a GM maize crop can be grown in the UK, if its cultivation replicates crop trial conditions.
Find out more about how ACRE's competence on GM safety has been called into question in the past by expert independent scientists.
Read a profile of an ACRE member.

9th: Extraordinary background of pro-GM lobbyist
A letter in the British satirical magazine Private Eye draws attention to the disturbing background of Dr Michael Fitzpatrick, a trustee of the pro-GM lobby group Sense About Science and a leading member of the LM network of far-right (once far-left!) technophiles.
Find out more about the LM network.
Find out more about Sense About Science.

9th: GM Watch attacked by Prof Philip Stott
"One of the more unpleasant groups involved in the GM debate in the UK is GM Watch (formerly NGIN)," says Prof Philip Stott.
Find out more about Prof Stott and why he has been called, "An alarming academic who knows how to argue George Bush's case and should be taken with a strong pinch of salt."

8th: GM Watch attacked by Profs Burke and Lachmann
Prof Derek Burke CBE accuses GM Watch of mud-slinging, while Professor Sir Peter Lachmann FRS says GM Watch is a "rude and aggressive" organisation that bends the truth to suit its agenda. GM Watch, Lachmann claims, typifies a backward-looking anti-scientific movement that undermines progress and results in "dead people and starving populations" in the developing world.
Find out more about Burke and Lachmann.
Find out how unsuccessful GM crops are in the developing world.

8th: GM crops linked to rise in pesticide use
The Guardian reports how GM crops in the US have significantly increased the amount of herbicides and pesticides used. The article is based on a report by one of the US's leading independent agronomists, Dr Charles Benbrook, which draws on US government data. But the biotechnology industry generates its own numbers in reports that say the exact opposite of Dr Benbrook's - find out more about NCFAP.
See also GM increasing pesticide use - non-GM doing the opposite

7th: University denies tenure to GM critical scientist
Dr Ignacio Chapela was unanimously recommended for tenure by his department's tenure committee. Normally this would mean he would get tenure but not in the case of Dr Chapela.
Find out more about the campaign of attack on Dr Chapela.

6th: British foreign aid helping big business not the poor
George Monbiot argues Britain's Department for International Development (DfID) is starting to do more harm than good.
Find out more about DfID's support for projects involving genetic engineering.
Find out how USAID is also promoting GM.

For all these items and more + links:
http://www.gmwatch.org/page.asp?pid=28

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