from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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An important CAMPAIGN OF THE WEEK aims at preventing the European Commission from dismantling national GM bans in Europe under pressure from the World Trade Organisation. Meanwhile, the EU Commission also seems to be planning to lead us all down the biotech path in the name of a 'vision' led by the usual corporate suspects (see EUROPE).

Don't miss a great interview with GM Watch's founder. You can find the interview in full with multiple links to related articles and background material here:
http://www.lobbywatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=49&page=1

I've selected the section dealing with the US-industry assault on the South (see LOBBYWATCH) but the rest of the interview is well worth reading. It ranges over the industry's attacks on GM-critical scientists, Monsanto's PR dirty tricks campaign, the herd mentality that drives the uptake of GM crops, and the early history of GM Watch.

Finally, look out for some telling articles in our ASIA section that more than bear out the points in the interview about the extraordinary US-industry onslaught on the South.

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

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CONTENTS
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LOBBYWATCH
EUROPE
CAMPAIGN OF THE WEEK
FOOD SAFETY: NEW REPORT
ASIA
THE AMERICAS
AUSTRALASIA
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
REST OF THE MONTH'S TOP STORIES
DONATIONS

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LOBBYWATCH
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+ GM WATCH INTERVIEW
http://www.lobbywatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=49&page=1

Here's the last part of a wide ranging interview by Marina Littek of Italy's Green Planet website with GM Watch founder, Jonathan Matthews.

Jonathan: ....even though the reality of GM crops is lacklustre, the industry's PR machine works overtime to maintain the fiction that it's a glittering success. A week before the publication of the most recent [Dr Charles] Benbrook report showing how much GM crops have increased, rather than decreased, pesticide use, up pops a report from an industry funded institute saying the exact opposite. It's beyond belief that that timing was accidental. That institute was funded to do that job of work, precisely to smother what Benbrook - a scientist who for 7 years presided over the National Academy of Science's Board of Agriculture - was disclosing.

And that same kind of hype and concealment's going on right around the world... In India you've got Monsanto pumping out studies and claims that GM cotton is great for Indian farmers... and at the same time you've got carefully conducted research in India showing the diametric opposite. You've also got protests going on and even stories of farmers killing themselves because their crops failed, but Monsanto's PR machine captures far more of the headlines... In Indonesia Monsanto had to pull GM cotton out completely because of all the problems, and yet I regularly see claims that Indonesia is one of the Asian giants embracing GM!

Marina: You've also investigated how the industry manufactures support in the South.

Jonathan: A few years back I wrote an article called The Fake Parade exposing how a widely reported pro-GM march by farmers in South Africa was actually carefully orchestrated by pro-corporate lobbyists and how it fitted into a wider pattern of manufactured support from the South.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?ArcId=288

We've got special sections on the website just tracking the corporate lobbyists active in Asia and Africa because they are such a problem there. In fact, in countries like South Africa they're practically running the show - and that's partly why the biotech industry's headed down South.

You've got "experts" there who are up to their ears in industry interests and yet who are being allowed to play a leading role in developing regulatory protocols and legislation governing GM crops. It's because of this that South Africa's become the industry's open door to Africa. One of these lobbyists was quoted the other day saying, "If the activists don't get their way, we're going to see biotech crops spread right up through Africa".

Then on top of the industry and its tame scientists, you've got the US using diplomatic pressure and bilateral trade agreements, and you've got USAID pouring money into GM crop-related schemes. They're all trying to browbeat African and Asian governments into accepting weak biosafety regulations and GMOs.

Marina: Your last Pants on Fire award celebrated one of those lobbyists.

Jonathan: Yes, we gave the award to the Kenyan scientist, Florence Wambugu, who typifies the kind of thing that's going on. She's a Monsanto protege and, if you read the citation, it almost defies belief that somebody could be so shameless in the way she's promoted this technology.

Wambugu claims GM will literally solve all the problems of Africa. She said somewhere that GM crops would lift the whole "African continent out of decades of economic and social despair".

Her career as a propagandist has been built out of a Monsanto GM sweet potato project that she was recruited for. For year's she's hyped that project around the world's media as the answer to hunger and as the way to massively increase sweet potato yields in Africa. She wears traditional African dress and speaks in such evangelical terms that some journalists have even assumed that the project must already be working out in the fields, that Kenyan farmers are already reaping the benefits and that it's already helping to feed the hungry.

But when the results of the 3-years of field trials were finally published, it emerged the whole thing was a total flop. The GM crop didn't give the virus resistance it was supposed to and the yields were worse than those of the conventional sweet potatoes that it was supposed to replace.

Yet despite this disaster, Wambugu's still going around proclaiming the project a success! And she's had all kinds of awards and honours bestowed on her by the industry and their pals, as if she had achieved something quite remarkable. So we thought she should be given the one award that she really deserved - the Pants on Fire award.

Marina: But, some people would ask, given Africa's problems, what's the alternative?

Jonathan: It's a fair question. Aaron deGrassi from the Institute of Development Studies has carefully researched these kind of GM showcase projects in Africa, and he's found that while in empirical terms they're a failure, they help generate great PR. And that's the problem - that's their real purpose. He contrasts these expensive PR confections with more humble projects, such as one on sweet potatoes in Uganda which - with a fraction of the huge investment that's gone into the Monsanto project - has used conventional means to breed a sweet potato that is virus resistant, that is popular with farmers and that actually doubles yields.

So here's this great success, which could be even bigger if more resources were behind it, and yet all the world hears about is the likes of Wambugu puffing GM. Articles have appeared saying she and Monsanto are 'reshaping the future' and 'serving millions' in Africa, but their projects have actually wasted literally millions of dollars and helped feed precisely nobody. This is what we pointed out in her award citation. These industry PR confections are a massive and shameful distraction from the real task of assisting the poor and hungry in Africa.

There are some important projects out there which are already succeeding in a quiet way d