from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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Dear all

In the week in which the powerful World Conservation Union called for a global moratorium on GMO releases, the industry continues to retreat from hotspots of resistance. Bayer has given up on Britain, withdrawing its last GM seeds from the approval process (see EUROPE), and GM pharm company Ventria has fled California, taking refuge in Missouri (see BAD-IDEA VIRUS LATEST). Even in China, which is somewhat insulated from the battles raging in the rest of the world, there seem to be qualms about forging ahead with genetically modifying its staple crop, rice. (ASIA)

In Germany, meanwhile, the industry is engaging in a masterly exercise in doublethink. Monsanto is using German research (non peer-reviewed, of course!) which claims to show there's no danger of GM farmers contaminating non-GM crops, to support their opposition to a proposed new German law under which GM farmers would be held liable for contaminating non-GM crops (EUROPE). In other words, Monsanto is yet again claiming GM to be perfectly safe while desperately opposing any liability for damages! Let's hope the German government maintains its generally strong capacity for logic and doesn't get bamboozled by this scam.

Please don't miss an important CAMPAIGN OF THE WEEK, and do forward the details to all your contacts. The action only takes a minute.

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

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CONTENTS
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GM MORATORIUM CALL BY WORLD BODY
BAD-IDEA VIRUS LATEST
ASIA
THE AMERICAS
AUSTRALASIA
EUROPE
LOBBYWATCH
CAMPAIGN OF THE WEEK

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NEW MORATORIUM CALLED
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+ WORLD CONSERVATION UNION CALLS FOR MORATORIUM ON FURTHER RELEASE OF GMOs
On 22 November, IUCN (World Conservation Union) members voted by a large margin for a moratorium on the further release of GMOs until they can be demonstrated, beyond reasonable doubt, to be safe for biodiversity, human health, and animal health.

The moratorium resolution was carried with overwhelming majority support from both nations and non-governmental organisations, even after several days of intensive lobbying by agribusiness interests.

The resolution set a one-year deadline for the director-general of IUCN to compile a report on GMOs' impacts on biodiversity and human health. Although the IUCN resolution is not legally binding, the member countries are morally obliged to carry out the adopted items, Schwann Tunhikorn, of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plants, said.

IUCN is a unique Union. Its members from some 140 countries include 77 States, 114 government agencies, and 800-plus NGOs. More than 10,000 internationally-recognised scientists and experts from more than 180 countries volunteer their services to its six global commissions. For more than 50 years it has generated environmental conventions, global standards, scientific knowledge and innovative leadership.

"IUCN builds bridges between governments and NGOs, science and society, local action and global policy. It is truly a world force for environmental governance," says Achim Steiner, IUCN Director General.

In its press release IUCN stated, ""The unregulated rise of GMOs world-wide in recent years has led to
concern among scientists and government officials alike. Scientists are learning that GMOs know no boundaries, degrading genetic diversity of crop seeds and then expanding beyond farmscapes into adjacent areas of biodiversity. In the process, they degrade complex soil ecology and habitat for beneficial insects, thus affecting mammals and birds and killing the very biodiversity that GMO proponents claim to care about."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4652
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4658
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4649

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BAD-IDEA VIRUS LATEST
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"This notion that you lure biotech to your community to save its economy is laughable," said Joseph Cortright, a Portland, Ore. economist who co-wrote a report on the subject. "This is a bad-idea virus that has swept through governors, mayors and economic development officials."
http://www.maryvilledailyforum.com/articles/2004/11/19/news/news1.txt

+ VENTRIA FLEES CALIFORNIA, HEADS TOWARDS "CANCER ALLEY"
Ventria Bioscience of Sacramento, Calif., a company specializing in plant-made pharmaceutical production, has fled California where it has been facing strong opposition to relocate in Maryville, Missouri through a partnership with Northwest Missouri State University.

"This really is a moment in time that will have an enormous impact on our area," university president Dean Hubbard said at a news conference yesterday. "We were competing with several other states right down until 4:30 [pm on 18 November]."

"We're incredibly fortunate to have this caliber of a company coming to the area," said Lee Langerock, executive director of the Nodaway County Economic Development Corporation. "They were incredibly impressed with the Maryville area, and were very excited to call this their home."

Eventually, Hubbard said, Ventria could be contracting over 25,000 acres of farmland for its work.

Ventria has been looking to move for months, partly because of the hostile reception and regulatory hurdles it faced earlier this year in California when it tried to expand field trials of rice that contains human proteins for pharmaceutical use.

Biotech opponents say the risk of contaminating the food supply with plant-made drug compounds is too great to allow open-field production. California has a $500 million rice industry.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4643
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4644

WHY MARYVILLE?

Maryville, Missouri is within the Mississippi basin, a natural 'sink' that has long collected and concentrated pollutants from the industries that line the Mississippi river. The river itself gets more polluted the further downstream you go. Things get especially bad downstream of St Louis, Monsanto's home town, which is 350 miles south-east of Maryville.

The counties either side of the Mississippi river have been dubbed "Cancer Alley" because of the high rates of that disease among people living there. Maryville is not so close to the river that it belongs in Cancer Alley, but a milder but still noticeable Mississippi river basin effect does spread over the entire state of Missouri.

Here's Dr Peter Montague of Rachel's Environment and Health Weekly (Feb 13, 1990):

Is it a fact that cancers cluster near heavy industry? It seems to be so. Greenpeace has published two studies in the past two years revealing that people who live in counties bordering the Mississippi River have a high death rate, compared to the national average, and a high cancer rate. The further south you travel along the ri