from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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Dear all:

Well done all those who turned up the pressure to stop Terminator in its tracks. It's worked - for the time being (TERMINATOR ACTION SUCCESS!).

We have to stay alert as it's almost sure to turn up again, just like the banned GMO StarLink (FOOD SAFETY SPECIAL), which has been found in food aid in Central America and the Caribbean.

Of course, even though the US government did not approve StarLink for human consumption in the US, it approved it for export!!!

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

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CONTENTS
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FOOD SAFETY SPECIAL: STARLINK AGAIN
'REGULATION' FDA STYLE
LOBBYWATCH
MIDDLE EAST
THE AMERICAS
ASIA
AUSTRALASIA
EUROPE
PATENTS ON LIFE - BORLAUG'S AGIN 'EM!
GM VACCINES - TOO LITTLE TOO LATE
QUOTES OF THE WEEK
RALLY AND MASS LOBBY OF PARLIAMENT
TERMINATOR ACTION SUCCESS!

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FOOD SAFETY SPECIAL: STARLINK AGAIN
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+ BANNED GMO TURNS UP IN FOOD AID
Environmental groups say a banned GM variety of corn forbidden for humans in the US is being handed out in UN food aid to Central America and the Caribbean. A study found that samples of World Food Program shipments collected in Guatemala included StarLink along with other GM contaminants.

Starlink corn was pulled from the market in the US because of concerns it could provoke allergic reactions. Its discovery in consumer products prompted supermarket recalls of cornmeal, corn dogs, taco shells, soup and chili mixes in the US in 2000 and 2001.

The study looked at 77 samples of imported corn included in aid shipments or sold on the open market. Eighty percent was reported to include GM material.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4911

+ NGOs DENOUNCE DUMPING OF STARLINK
More than 70 environmental, consumer, farmer, human rights groups and unions from six Central American and Caribbean countries denounced the presence of StarLink in food aid. The organizations requested the World Food Program to immediately recall all food aid containing GMOs. "The WFP by introducing food aid with GMOs is placing at risk our children and pregnant women, the most vulnerable people in our society," said Julio Sanchez from Centro Humboldt in Nicaragua.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4912

+ Robert Vint of GE FOOD ALERT comments:
"This situation has only arisen because the USA, unlike other nations, supplies food aid in the form of dumped surplus grain. Other members of the World Food Programme - eg the EU and Japan -disapprove and instead supply cash to purchase food as near to the recipients as possible. Buying locally supports peasant farmers in developing nations as well as enabling choice; dumping free food puts local farmers out of business... It is reasonable to blame much of the rural unemployment and food dependency of developing nations on the impact of US food aid policies... Oxfam America has estimated that up to 80% of funds channelled through US Food Aid Programme... are spent, not in developing countries, but in the US. US food aid shipments correlate with times of surplus and silo emptying - not with times of food shortages."

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'REGULATION' FDA STYLE
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+ FDA GAGS OWN SCIENTIST OVER KILLER DRUGS
David Graham, a senior drug safety reviewer at America's Food and Drug Administration, the body that is supposed to regulate GM foods, has been banned from presenting new information about a controversial type of painkiller at a three-day summit on their safety.

The latest example of the silencing of an FDA scientist should not come as a surprise. It's yet another clear illustration as to whose side the FDA is on. The FDA's record has led the The Lancet to write of "lethal weaknesses in the US Food and Drug Administration's regulatory oversight".

Dr Graham, who works in the FDA's office of drug safety, has said that he was "threatened with being called insubordinate" by the FDA when he said he wanted to include the findings of an unpublished study he has completed as part of his testimony on Cox-2 inhibitors.

Those scientists within the FDA who raised safety concerns about GMOs never stood a chance. The FDA's own records reveal it declared GM foods to be safe in the face of broad disagreement from its own experts while the FDA claimed scientific consensus. The FDA has even acknowledged it has been operating under a government policy "to foster" the US biotech industry.

The attempted gagging and denigration of Dr David Graham is not an isolated instance even in the drug safety sector. The Graham incident was almost exactly paralleled with the case of GlaxoSmithKline's Paxil and the class of anti-depressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). In that case, the FDA refused to let Dr Andrew Mosholder, of the FDA Office of Drug Safety, present to an advisory panel the findings of increased risk of suicidal tendencies in children taking the drugs. Indeed, according to an investigation by Sen. Charles Grassley, the FDA actually tried to get Mosholder to present data that deceptively underrepresented that risk.

What has emerged about the FDA gives added significance to the notorious comment made by Phil Angell, when Monsanto's director of corporate communications: "Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA's job." - New York Times, October 25, 1998
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4910

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LOBBYWATCH
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+ CORE MAKES PRO-GM VIDEO
African-American civil-rights-turned-corporate-rights group CORE has made a video, "Voices from Africa", said to show the results of its fact-finding trip to Africa. The video was premiered at CORE's "UN World Conference-2005" on "Biotechnology" (New York, January 17-18, 2005). For a preview:
http://www.core-online.org/features/voices_video.htm

Its main presenter is CORE chairman Roy Innis, who says, "Because of my concern [about hunger in Africa], I came to Africa to see for myself... and to see the potential for biotechnology." Roy's philanthropic mission is totally unconnected, of course, with Monsanto becoming CORE's "Corporate Partner".

Veteran black American journalists Glen Ford and Peter Gamble describe CORE as "a tin cup outstretched to every Hard Right political campaign or cause that finds it convenient - or a sick joke - to hire Black cheerleaders".
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4905

+ MONBIOT ON FUREDI: CONSPIRACY THEORY OR ENTRYISM?
Excerpt from a letter from journalist George Monbiot to the Times Higher Education Supplement:

Your article "What's a nice Trot doing in a place like this?" accuses me of peddling conspiracy theories about Frank Furedi and other former members of the Revolutionary Communist Party. But I don't have a theory. I've reported a number of phenomena and then asked what is happening and why. This, if I'm not mistaken, is what journalists are supposed to do.

...Former RCP members control much of the formal infrastructure of public communication used by the science and medical establishment. They hold key positions in Sense About Science, the Science Media Cent