WEEKLY WATCH number 78 (24/6/2004)

from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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Dear all,
 
Africa is still the biotech hotspot, with the US Dept of Ag pumping out propaganda at the GM conference it sponsored in Burkina Faso (FOCUS ON AFRICA). Look out for the excerpt from an interview Voice of America in the Ivory Coast did with GM WATCH's Jonathan Matthews.

Also please visit, and tell all your contacts about, our new FOCUS ON AFRICA web page. It will help keep you abreast of all the latest developments in the unprecedented US/biotech industry assault on Africa, as well as linking you into Africa's resistance and the inspiring alternatives that make another Africa possible. http://www.lobbywatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=37&page=1

Meanwhile, away from the roar of US-industry propaganda, a little GM truth has emerged blinking into the daylight this week. A New Zealand genetic engineer has deplored the sloppiness and rude, crude nature of genetic engineering in food crops (HONEST SCIENTIST OF THE WEEK). And a report in Medical News Today highlights the true state of GM food safety research (FOOD SAFETY), via a research paper that though not new deserves far greater attention.

And last but not least, someone has leaked a secret study to Greenpeace revealing the presence of GM material in milk from GM-fed cows. The Food Standards Agency and the supermarket chains have maintained for years that milk from GM-fed animals is the same as that from non-GM fed animals and that labelling of dairy products is therefore unnecessary. We wonder if they will change their line and policy now? (Don't hold your breath, but do take every opportunity of embarrassing them on the subject.)

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

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CONTENTS
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FOCUS ON AFRICA
HONEST SCIENTIST OF THE WEEK
RESEARCH NEWS
FOOD SAFETY
ACTIONS
BIO CONFERENCE NEWS
GM MELTDOWN CONTINUES
BAD-IDEA VIRUS LATEST
LOBBYWATCH
DONATIONS
ARCHIVE

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FOCUS ON AFRICA
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+ US BIOTECH BASH IN BURKINA FASO
Delegates from 15 West African nations gathered in Burkina Faso on 21 June for a three-day US-backed conference on GM crops. The US Department of Agriculture says, "It is a response to the needs of hundreds of millions of people who don't have enough food."

What hypocrisy! The following quotes give a truer picture of the motives of the conference organisers:

***"This is being promoted by the United States. Now the United States has just been in trouble themselves with the World Trade Organization over their massive subsidies to cotton, which of course are hitting West Africa. So if they really wanted to do something to help Africa, there are very simple things that they could do which do not involve an introduction of very sophisticated and expensive technology with a number of risks associated with it." - Jonathan Matthews of GM Watch, in an interview with Voice of America

***"The W.T.O. report, which was not made public, upheld a preliminary ruling in April... that the more than $3 billion in subsidies the United States pays its cotton farmers distorts global prices and violates international trade rules. If Washington scrapped the subsidies... [it] would lead to a 12.6 percent increase in world cotton prices, helping struggling  cotton farmers from Brazil to West Africa." - New York Times

***"We will defend U.S. agricultural interests in every form we need to" - Richard Mills, a spokesman for the United States trade representative, Robert B. Zoellick

***"GM involves large scale farming accompanied with highly modernized technology, hence it is likely to kill the livelihood of peasantry farming in Tanzania." - Said Hassan, a farmer from the suburbs of Dar es Salaam.

***"Zambia has re-affirmed that it will not allow modified foods to enter the country without further research, with deputy Agriculture Minister Chance Kabaghe saying in Lusaka that there is a lack of evidence that it is harmless to human health and the environment." - BBC news report

All the above quotes can be followed up, and you can read press coverage of the Burkina Faso biotech bash, at
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3857

+ FIRST WE IMPOVERISH YOU, THEN WE ENSLAVE YOU (GM WATCH COMMENT)
Pamela Bridgewater, US deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs, who helped to run the GM crop promotional in Burkina Faso, claims West African presidents support "biotechnology" because it has the potential to increase agricultural production and improve the standard of living in their countries. According to the US Dept of State, "The presidents realize that agriculture - the largest part of Africa's economy - is essential to economic and human development throughout the continent." And the US of course is doing everything it can to assist that development.

On 21 June in an interview with Voice of America, GM WATCH coordinator Jonathan Matthews drew attention to the irony of the US' pushing GM crops like Bt cotton as a way of improving the lot of West African farmers, noting the US's record of impoverishing those same farmers through the massive subsidies it gives to its own farmers.

See an ActionAid breakdown of US subsidy figures and how they impoverish farmers in Africa: http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3857

If the US really wanted to help people in West Africa, it would do what groups like Action Aid are asking:

- announce the immediate elimination of all forms of trade distorting subsidies to the cotton sector

- provide compensation and support to those involved in the cotton production sectors of poor countries who have suffered as a result of its policies. http://allafrica.com/stories/200406170658.html

But far from offering poor countries even a modicum of hope or redress in this area, a spokesman for the United States trade representative, Robert B. Zoellick, was quoted this week as responding to the WTO's ruling by defending the US's $18+ billion farm subsidies, saying, "We will defend US agricultural interests in every form we need to." http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3857

The truth is that the US government is not concerned about the farmers of West Africa. It is in the business of defending and promoting US agricultural interests.

For all its grandstanding in Burkina Faso, the US spends less than one-half of 1 percent of the federal budget on aid, making it the smallest contributor of foreign aid among major donor governments in terms of national wealth (GNP). The real motives behind the current conference in West Africa can, in fact, best be understood in the terms in which the US itself frames its aid programmes: "Foreign aid is a tool of US foreign policy" wh


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