THE WEEKLY WATCH NUMBER 66 - and monthly review (1/4/2004) | |
from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor Dear all, Great cause for celebration this week. In what has been described as a "massive blow to the GM lobby", gene giant Bayer has withdrawn its GM maize from commercialisation just weeks after the Blair government said it intended to give it the first go-ahead for a GM crop in the UK. (HIGHLIGHTS OF THE WEEK - UK). And Australia has also chucked a whopping spanner in the works of the biotech industry: four key states have all ruled out any large-scale growing of GM food crops (HIGHLIGHTS OF THE WEEK - GLOBAL). Another heartening event is that the mainstream British press has caught on to the dismal truth about GM zealot Sir John Krebs and the UK's Food Standards Agency, which Krebs chairs. A brilliant article by Richard Girling in the Sunday Times skewers Krebs and the FSA to the dissecting table and shows no mercy (ARTICLE OF THE WEEK). Please look out for an important Action Alert to stop the Americans contaminating their rice crop (which they export to all of us) with pharma rice (see US: PANEL OKS BID TO RAISE MODIFIED RICE, IN HIGHLIGHTS OF THE WEEK - GLOBAL). The time scale for responses is tight. Claire [email protected] ------------------------------------------------------------ HIGHLIGHTS OF THE WEEK - UK ------------------------------------------------------------ + BAYER BINS GM PLAN Bayer warned that the UK's tough GM regulatory regime could jeopardise the adoption of the technology. It said: "New regulations should enable GM crops to be grown in the UK - not disable future attempts to grow them". The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said: "We do not apologise for the fact there is a tough EU-wide regulatory regime on GMs." Bayer's decision to withdraw the crop from the UK and other European markets means GM crops are unlikely to be grown in the UK until at least 2008. BAYER CAN'T BLAME GOVERNMENT FOR GM MAIZE WITHDRAWAL "GM companies have always claimed that GM crops need less chemical sprays. In the three-year farm scale trials Bayer's GM maize was grown with the use of one weed-killing spray. But Soil Association research in the USA and Canada had already shown that GM maize grown commercially needed at least two weedkillers. Indeed, GM companies in America are even selling branded mixtures of weed killing sprays to farmers growing their GM crops, so they can hardly deny that several sprays are often needed. "Unfortunately for Bayer, the British Government took them at their word, and said that their GM maize could only be grown using one weedkiller. Based on experience in North America, Bayer know that won't work in practice. In these circumstances, its really not surprising that Bayer have withdrawn the GM maize, effectively ending the prospect of any GM crops being grown in the UK for the foreseeable future." http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3133 COMMENT ON BAYER DECISION BY DR BRIAN JOHN OF GM FREE CYMRU "Make no mistake about it, this is a victory for democracy over an arrogant and insensitive biotechnology corporation and over a Government obsessed with a redundant and unwanted technology." http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3127 + BAYER SHARES DOWN + COMMENT FROM JIM THOMAS OF THE ETC. GROUP, formerly a leading GM campaigner for Greenpeace: At the end of 1996... we were reckoned to be barely a year away from widespread cultivation of GM crops (GM rape) all across the UK countryside. Monsanto was considering a merger with AHP to become the world's largest corporation. Some of the world's most powerful companies and one of the world's most powerful governments had remained steadfastly determined to get GM crops grown commercially in the UK throughout the intervening 8 years and it is raw, direct popular opposition that has nonetheless: |