from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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Dear all:

The biotech lobby has launched a new attempt to pull the wool over our eyes: it's trying to categorize largely bought-and-paid-for scientists as being from the "public research sector". They're lobbying for this group to have a say alongside overt industry types, on the one hand, and civil society, on the other. If this scam succeeds, it'll give industry two voices and the rest of us just one! See our LOBBYWATCH SPECIAL REPORT.

As Monsanto's Bt cotton comes up for review today (March 4th) in India, don't miss news of the two new reports from the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture on the appalling failures of this GM crop. Their findings are backed up by a just released report by an expert team led by Andhra Pradesh's commissioner and director of agriculture which has confirmed that Bt cotton is giving poor yields and has caused losses to farmers.

Most exciting, though, is the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture's new research showing the efficiency of non-pesticidal alternatives which render entirely unnecessary the considerable expense of GM cotton. As Devinder Sharma notes, this gives the Indian government a clear choice: helping to end rural poverty, hunger and farm suicides or continuing to hype GM crops. (ASIA).

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

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CONTENTS
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LOBBYWATCH
AFRICA
THE AMERICAS
ASIA
AUSTRALASIA
EUROPE
COMPANY NEWS
NEW RESEARCH

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LOBBYWATCH
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+ PUBLIC RESEARCH FRAUD - GM WATCH SPECIAL REPORT
A bunch of scientists claiming to represent the public research sector are perpetrating a new fraud. They've launched an initiative - The Public Research Sector Initiative - executed by a foundation called "Public Research and Regulation". The initiative is based on deceit.

The biotech scientists involved are saying that they represent a third non-aligned group between civil society and industry who should "weigh in" at meetings of the Cartagena Protocol that help determine biosafety rules. They claim, "the public research sector has been not able to provide scientific input for the benefit of the negotiations nor to express its views about the effectiveness and workability of the provisions of the Protocol."

Their call for increased leverage for "nonprofit", "public sector" players belies the heavy industrial-alignment of most public sector agricultural biotechnology, where there is a long history of involvement with intensive agricultural R&D and of collaboration with agribusiness multinationals, not to mention dependence on industry funding. The effect of this is to generate convergence between private sector and public sector operators.

This convergence means that this "third" group would not be non-aligned but would have interests and an agenda that would all too often be indistinguishable from that of the industry. In other words, GM proponents would get two bites of the cherry to the rest of society's one.

The problem is apparent as soon as one looks at the detail of this initiative and those that are driving it forward. Although the biotech scientists claim it is a "misconception that modern biotechnology, and in particular its agricultural application, is the exclusive domain of a handful of big, western multinationals", they are actually holding their meeting yesterday and today (3-4 March) at the Donald Danforth Plant Sciences Center in St Louis, Missouri - the home town of Monsanto.

This is no coincidence. The Danforth Center was established by Monsanto Corporation "and academic partners" with a $70-million pledge from Monsanto. The company also donated the 40-acre tract of land, valued at $11.4 million, on which the Center is built.

More on the scientists involved in the initiative: http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4943

+ WHICH SCIENCE OR SCIENTISTS CAN WE TRUST?
Former UK environment minister Michael Meacher's excellent speech to the Green Network Conference on Science, Medicine and the Law (London, 31 Jan-2 Feb 2005) is the perfect antidote to the deceit of the biotech lobbying "independent" scientists of the Public Research and Regulation Foundation (see above item). As Meacher says, "We should never forget the words of Winston Churchill, who said 'Science should be on tap, not on top'."

EXCERPT:
Mark Purdey, a Somerset farmer turned epidemiologist, has produced detailed evidence to show that BSE was caused by farmers spreading Phosmetz, an organohosphate (OP), over the backs of cattle as a prophylaxis, but the Government's MRC [Medicines Research Council] Toxicology Unit - funded by the pharmaceutical company Zeneca - apparently refuted this theory. Which company held all rights over the production of Phosmetz? Zeneca. Whom do you believe?

...science can only be fully trusted if it is pursued with the most rigorous procedures that guarantee total independence and freedom from commercial and political bias. That is far too often not the case today. The implications for policy are clear.

One, if the Government truly wants independent research, it has to be prepared to pay for it, not lay down, as it has, that 25% of finance for publicly funded research should come from private sources, thus forcing the universities into the hands of corporate sponsors.

Two, the Government should also require that no member of its advisory committee or regulatory bodies should have any current or recently past financial or commercial link with the industry concerned.

Three, contributors to scientific journals should be required to make full disclosure of current and prior funding sources, so that any conflicts of interest can be exposed and taken into account.

Four, we need above all a Government with the political gumption to stand up to the United States and those demanding calls from the White House, to stand up to the biotech companies, and to stand up to big business, and make clear that there will be no succumbing to dominant political /economic interests, e.g. no growing of GM crops in this country until proper, systematic, independent, peer-reviewed research, which is totally absent at present, has been carried through and made public which demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt whether GM foods are safe or not.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4944

+ REUTERS SPEWS INDUSTRY PROPAGANDA
Monitoring the newsfeeds here at GM Watch, it's not been hard to spot that someone at Reuters has been suckered big time! A series of heavily spun GM stories came tumbling out this week in the space of just a few hours.

We've had: "China Seen Opening Door Soon to Biotech Rice", "Red tape, media stop Russia growing GMO crops", "S. Africa leads on GMO, other African states wary", and "Spanish farmers want more GM crops".

We're talking journalism that is embarrassingly one-sided. An article that admits a great deal of wariness of GM in Africa, focuses on apparent enthusiasm in South Africa and even misleads as to the type of crops being grown (see AFRICA). An article on Europe doesn't focus on the almost continent-wide market exclusion and massive movement for GMO Free zones but on the one EU country with any significant cultivation of a GM crop. An article on Russia puts down the strong opposition to GMOs to red tape and stories in the media.

There's a clear pattern: South Africa leads in Africa, China leads in Asia, Spain leads in Europe and poor old unregenerate Russia