GM WATCH COMMENT: The article below is an Op Ed that has appeared widely in the US press post-Thanksgiving (mostly under the heading - "Famine in a time of solutions") - courtesy of Scripps Howard News Service.

It would be great if any of our American subscribers wanted to write in to any of the papers involved to challenge what is, knowingly or otherwise, nothing other than black propaganda. (Just google on "Famine in a time of solutions" to identify some of the places this was published.)

Its author - Jay Ambrose - was, we are told, "formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver...". It's extremely depressing that such an experienced journalist should have made so little effort to establish the truth.

EXTRACT: Already, alarmist groups have exacted tragedy as the price for their exaggerated fears and peculiar reasoning -- once by persuading the president of Zambia to decline genetically modified corn from the United States during a famine.

"There is something insane about food aid rotting while people starve due to disinformation campaigns," wrote a Tanzanian physician, Michael Mbwille, as quoted in an article on the subject, and, yes, there is, and, yes, it's something worth thinking about in these post-Thanksgiving days.

GM WATCH COMMENT: The only tragedies to do with GM have occurred where it has been hyped - not where it has been opposed. The farmer suicides in India, exacerbated by Bt cotton, are an all too topical example. (New Bt cotton disaster in Maharashtra)
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7323

As we've repeatedly pointed out in the past, there was no tragedy in Zambia. And, ironically, it is the claims to the contrary that constitute the "disinformation campaigns" against which Ambrose rails. (see Fake Blood on the Maize - lobbyists manufacture crimes against humanity)
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5384

FACT: Alternative sources of food aid were successfully substituted for GM grain in Zambia and as Charles Mushitu of the Zambian Red Cross has noted, "We didn't record a single death arising out of hunger." (GM lobbyists lies over Zambia)
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7092

FACT: Far from Zambia's decison to reject GM food aid being guided by misinformation, Zambian President, Levy Mwanawasa, only made his final decision after a team of highly qualified Zambian scientists and economists completed a fact-finding tour of laboratories and regulatory offices in South Africa, Europe and the US. (Fake Blood on the Maize)
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5384

So where does Jay Ambrose get his information?

SOURCE: The original article that the Mbwille quote in Ambrose's article is taken from identifies Michael Mbwille as "a pediatrician from Tanzania and African editor of the Food Safety Network. The network is a nonprofit coalition based in Washington, D.C., that seeks ways to improve global food security."
http://www.agbioworld.org/newsletter_wm/index.php?caseid=archive&newsid=1605

THE REALITY: Here's some more information about Michael Mbwille and the "nonprofit coalition" to which he supposedly connects.

This "Network" doesn't seem to have had any significant existence outside of media work and a website - www.foodsecurity.net. This website is no longer available, since its domain came up for re-registration in October 2006, but when it was it stated that Foodsecurity.net was "an independent, non-profit coalition of people throughout the world". Despite its global reach, however, Foodsecurity.net's only named staff member was its "African Director", Dr. Mbwille, who penned articles defending Monsanto and attacking its critics.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=172

Dr. Mbwille is not, incidentally, always to be found in Africa. Foodsecurity's "African Director" has, for instance, enjoyed a sabbatical observing medical practice in St. Louis, Missouri - the home town, as it happens, of the Monsanto Corporation.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=172

And all the indications are that Foodsecurity's "independent, non-profit coalition of people throughout the world" is actually little more than a Monsanto front.

When it was available, the news and information at Foodsecurity.net was largely pro-GM articles. When you penetrated beyond the news pages, the content was extremely limited. A single message graced the messageboard. It was posted by an [email protected] - the domain name of The Bivings Group, an internet PR company that numbers Monsanto among its clients. There was also an event posting from an "Andura Smetacek", an e-mail front used by Monsanto to run a campaign of character assassination against its scientific and environmental critics. (see Monsanto's Web of Deceit) http://ngin.tripod.com/deceit_index.html

Here is the contact on the original Foodsecurity.net website registration:

Forrer, Graydon (GFU95)
[email protected]
Foodsecurity.net, Inc
750 17th street NW suite 1100
Washington, DC 20006
202 778 2340

A piece of information not usually disclosed in Graydon (Grady) Forrer's self-presentation is that he was previously Monsanto's director of executive communications. And he was with Monsanto in 1999 - the year the domain of this "indepe