from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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The clear light of public scrutiny could be shed on the biotech industry's shady dealings in the case of victimised scientist Ignacio Chapela, who was denied tenure after criticizing his university's pact with Novartis and publishing a paper exposing GM contamination of native Mexican maize. Chapela has rejected a deal put forward by the university that would require him to drop charges against it in return for another, possibly cosmetic, review of the tenure refusal. Chapela believes his case must now be fought openly in the courts - a prospect which must horrify some elements within the university and their friends in the industry. (See LOBBYWATCH.)

Don't miss Dr Charles Benbrook's latest paper (NEW REPORT), which, using US government data, confirms that GM crops have led to an increase in pesticide use in the country. Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of US grain elevators are demanding segregation of GM crops, a large coalition of Canada's civil society groups are seeking a GM moratorium, and ballots on a GM ban are due in California. (THE AMERICAS) The industry's running scared and is there a hint of the fake persuaders?(LOBBYWATCH SPECIAL).

Finally, please support the people of Mauritius and farmers in France in their struggles against biotech interests (see CAMPAIGNS OF THE WEEK).

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

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CONTENTS
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LOBBYWATCH
NEW REPORT
ASIA
AFRICA
EUROPE
MIDDLE EAST
THE AMERICAS
LOBBYWATCH SPECIAL: more fake persuaders?
CAMPAIGNS OF THE WEEK
DONATIONS

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LOBBYWATCH
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+ IGNACIO CHAPELA WILL TAKE HIS TENURE CASE TO COURT
There has been a new development in UC Berkeley scientist Ignacio Chapela's legal fight to gain tenure, which was refused amid a furore about conflicts of interest within the university. The university's Academic Senate tenure committee is now recommending a formal senate hearing, which could drag on for months.

Chapela, a microbial ecologist, was an outspoken critic of a $25 million agreement between the school's College of Natural Resources and biotech giant Novartis. He was also the first to report the contamination of backyard maize plots in the Mexican state of Oaxaca with DNA from GM corn - part of a paper that was published and later more or less disowned by the journal Nature after it was attacked by pro-biotech interests.

Administrators offered Chapela a deal last month: If he would drop two claims he has filed with government agencies - that the university is discriminating against him because he is Hispanic, and that it is punishing him for speaking out against the Novartis deal - then a new budget committee would reconsider his tenure bid.

Chapela, however, refuses to waive the claims. He is eager for a public airing of the process, which he hopes will clear his name. Barring that, he's determined to take it to the courts. "It's obvious to me that negotiations in the university are not going to lead to a resolution of my case," he says. "I wish I was in court right now."

Chapela came up for review in September 2001. His colleagues in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management backed him 32-1. Their decision was approved by the college's acting dean, and then by a campus-wide tenure-review committee which voted unanimously in Chapela's favor - although its chair resigned shortly thereafter and mysteriously disavowed himself of the decision. The next step, which tends to be a formality, requires approval of the candidate by a campus budget committee. In this case, the committee, which makes final recommendations to the chancellor, voted to deny tenure.

Campus administrators were unwilling to comment on how this happened. But the Academic Senate's own tenure committee, to which Chapela has submitted fourteen grievances related to the process, concluded this summer that Chapela's "rights and privileges were violated, citing both a conflict of interest and an "unjustifiable delay" in the process.

The former involved Jasper Rine, a professor of genetics and developmental biology who sat on the budget committee when it authored the initial decision to nix Chapela's bid. His former company, Acacia Biosciences, had business dealings with Novartis, and Rine also served on a committee that oversaw the controversial Novartis pact. The chair of the campus tenure-review committee and the dean of the College of Natural Resources both had asked him to remove himself from the Chapela decision, but to no avail.

Rine declined to comment, but Chapela's attorney was more than willing. "People who have a clear interest in the corporate development of genetic engineering should not be involved in academic decisions of this nature," says the lawyer, Daniel Siegel. "This is so obvious. It's like asking Dick Cheney to choose the Democratic vice presidential candidate."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4559

+ AFRICA: TOGOLESE YOUTH CONDEMN GMOS
Togo's Young Volunteers for the Environment on World Food Day issued a press release condemning "the false promises of biotech industries". Curiously, this is the very same group that was recently listed among those supporting the FAO's promotion of GMOs!

Sena Alouka, the group's Executive Director and Cultural Biodiversity Campaign Coordinator, says that their name should never have been included.

This is not the only questionable example of such support. The Sindh Rural Women's Up-lift Group in Pakistan was the one apparently genuine Third World civil society group which signed on to another - "NGO" - letter in support of the FAO's recent pro-GM stance, although there were a number of far right groups like Barun Mitra's Liberty Institute which also signed on to the letter. The letter was organised by pro-GM lobbyist CS Prakash.

We asked the Group's President, Farzana Panhwar, about this. She had previously sent us a paper about biotechnology which expressed caution on the subject, not least about the issue of corporate control. CS Prakash had harshly criticised the paper when he posted it on his list, saying it sang along to "the acopalyptic tunes of socialism" and suggesting Mrs Panhwar should undergo "a compulsory reading" of the free market economist FA Hayek's The Road To Serfdom "as a beginning therapy".

From her subsequent support for Prakash's FAO letter, and from a new paper she had written - "The use of biotechnology in Sindh, Pakistan to improve Agriculture, its growth and bring Sustainable Development in the country" - it seemed that Mrs Panhwar might have indeed undergone Prakash's prescribed course of re-education.

In reply to our enquiry, however, Farzana Panhwar told us, "I am completely against GM techology" but added that her group got no support for organic agriculture, which they also practised, and that they needed means to improve agricultural production.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4567

For more on CS Prakash
http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=106

+ CIIR - GOD, NOT MONSANTO, CREATES LIFE
Following a massive lobby drive by pro-biotech interests to persuade the Vatican to adopt a pro-GM stance, the issue of GM and its potential impact on the world's poor was explored at the Annual General Meeting on 15 October of the Catholic Institute for International Relations.

Columban missionary Fr Sean McDonagh said that his main concern was that GM was pitched at the confere