| WEEKLY WATCH number 135 (4/8/2005) | |
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from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor Dear all: We have two extraordinary pieces of news this week. First, Monsanto is attempting to patent pigs - and these are not even GM pigs! (CORPORATE CRIMES). Second, revelations of bribery and corruption in Brazil's government may well explain the country's embrace of GM crops after president Lula claimed it would be "insanity" to release transgenics (THE AMERICAS). In China, meanwhile, illegal GM rice is showing up in supermarkets, and in India more and more is emerging about the extraordinary tactics used by Monsanto to promote Bt cotton seeds to India's poor farmers at the very time that scientific studies are documenting the failure of Bt cotton. And studies in China and the U.S. show the Bt problem is not confined to India. Claire [email protected] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ + CHINA: CARREFOUR SELLS ILLEGAL GM RICE + MONSANTO BRINGS ON THE DANCING GIRLS In fact, the reverse is the case. And nowhere can that be seen more clearly than in India, where Monsanto has been using every trick in the book to promote its GM cotton seeds while a series of scientific studies have documented the failure of its Bt cotton. In the most recently published study (see next item), government scientists at India's premier cotton research institute have shown that Bt cotton doesn't have the necessary toxicity to kill the bollworms it targets. But Monsanto's Indian subsidiary Monsanto-Mahyco, unabashed, has been hyping GM seeds to India's poor farmers as magical, as celebrity-endorsed and now, as sexy! For its promotional work this spring in the Punjab, where GM cotton varieties have recently been approved for the first time, the company hired Bollywood star Nana Patekar to give glamour to its products. It also made use of Guru Nanak in its sales pitch to the state's Sikh farmers in order to try and give its seeds a miraculous aura. And now it has emerged that the company even resorted to using dancing girls in its promotional tours of Punjabi villages. There's a striking contrast between the lavish nature of Monsanto's promotional campaigns in India and its flat refusal to pay compensation to the farmers who suffered terrible losses as a result of cultivating its seeds. That refusal to pay compensation for the harm it has done has led the government in Andhra Pradesh to ban Monsanto from the state. + BT COTTON FAILURE MEANS HIGHER PESTICIDE COSTS FOR FARMERS One of the researchers at the Nagpur-based Central Institute of Cotton Research (CICR), which carried out the study, commented, "The decline in resistant power means that the farmer has to apply more chemical pesticides to save his crop. Already, the cost of Bt cotton seeds are high and added to this, he incurs additional costs on pesticides. Eventually, he lands up in heavy debts." + BT PROBLEM FOUND IN CHINA AND U.S. TOO But in fact, the Indian research on Bt cotton isn't the only one to show these Bt expression problems - it is confirmed by a recent Chinese study and a recent US study. The US study even suggests a mechanism (poor expression of the Bt toxin in tissue with low levels of chlorophyll) which indicates a systemic problem with Bt cotton. All of which suggests this problem is not just something limited to Indian varieties or to growing conditions in India. See abstracts of the Chinese and US studies at http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5566 + SOLUTION TO FAILING GM CROPS - MORE GM! Looming and ineffectual Bt resistance is the result of gene monoculture, scientists now claim, pointing to a need for stacked genes and a diverse use of genes in GM crops. And, guess what? Here come Monsanto and Syngenta, amongst others, with exactly those kinds of products. + SCIENTIST THREATENED FOR REPORTING SCIENCE |
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