We've put out the second item before but it's such an interesting piece we're reposting it.

With regard to item 1, SciDev's advisory panel on GM crops includes:
Belinda Clarke (nicknamed 'Belinda Spin' by NGIN!)
Luis Herrera-Estrella (leading Chapela critic)
Roger Hull (John Innes Centre)
Gurdev Khush (signed recent Prakash letter to Blair)
M S Swaminathan (green revolution scientist and well known GM supporter)

1.GM uptake figures are not accurate
2.Biotech Boom Linked to Development Dollars
3.Belinda Spin!
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1.GM uptake figures are not accurate
Author: Teresa Anderson
Affiliation: The Gaia Foundation
Date: 23 January 2004
http://www.scidev.net/EditorLetters/index.cfm?fuseaction=readeditorletter&itemid=25&language=1

A recent SciDev.Net article appears to accept unquestioningly figures released by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) that suggest that genetically modified (GM) crops are being taken up twice as fast in developing as in developed countries (see Poor nations take the lead in GM).

However, there is research that contradicts ISAAA's statistics. GMWatch, for example, has compared ISAAA data with other data from a biotech industry source and scientific sources, and finds that ISAAA’s data gives figures up to 20 times larger than other sources (see http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=2285).

Remember also that much of the GM crops planted in Argentina and Brazil have not involved the paying of royalties to Monsanto, thus artificially facilitating their spread.

In addition to not charging technology fees in Argentina, the company discounted the cost of the accompanying herbicide Roundup to encourage uptake (although they are regretting that decision now – a recent Reuters report revealed that Monsanto is leaving Argentina after being unable to recoup their technology fees when farmers saved their GM seed and planted it).

In Brazil, most of the GM soya planted so far has been illegally smuggled across the border. In both of these cases, if farmers had had to pay high fees for GM seeds, the uptake would probably have been much less.

In such instances, it is important for organisations such as SciDev.Net to consider the source of the information. False data presented as fact can be very damaging, especially from bodies that present themselves as objective and scientific.
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2.Biotech Boom Linked to Development Dollars - Critics
Katherine Stapp
http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=21395

NEW YORK, Dec 3 (IPS) - Even as an international debate rages over the safety and wisdom of planting genetically modified (GM) crops, they continue to spread like wildfire, particularly in developing countries.

Farmland devoted to GM crops -- which are implanted with foreign genes to boost production or other desirable traits like pesticide resistance -- grew by 12 percent last year, to 58.7 million hectares, according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA), an untiring biotechnology advocate.

In fact, more than one-fifth of the global crop of soybeans, corn, cotton and canola is now biotech. By 2005, ISAAA predicts the market value of GM crops will reach five billion dollars.

Much of this boom is in South Asia, Latin America and Africa, where some proponents of sustainable agriculture -- as in the North -- fear their concerns have been overridden by links between the biotech industry and powerful development institutions like the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and World Bank.

For example, Eija Pehu, a senior scientist in the Bank's department of agriculture and rural development (ARD), is listed on the website of the ISAAA -- whose main funders include biotech industry giants Monsanto, Syngenta and Bayer Crop Science -- as a member of its board of directors.

According to the website, the board "oversees programmatic, organisational and policy strategies".

The Bank says Pehu, a former president of Finnish biotech company Unicrop Ltd., has not attended any board meetings, and a decision by an internal Bank committee to approve her position on the board is still pending.

Gabrielle Persley, an advisor to the Bank on biotechnology issues, is also listed as director of ISAAA programmes.

With research centres in Africa, Asia and North America, ISAAA describes its objective as "the transfer and delivery of appropriate biotechnology applications to developing countries".

Its current projects include introducing GM sweet potatoes and bananas in Kenya and Vietnam; it has pursued similar initiatives in at least 10 other developing countries.

Robert Thompson, who headed the World Bank's ARD from 2000-2001, is now chairman of the Washington-based International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council (IPC), a promoter of biotechnology and trade liberalisation whose "sustaining sponsors" are Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill Inc., Kraft Foods International and Syngenta Ag Company -- a veritable who's who of the top agri-business concerns in the world.

Together, these firms -- and others like Dow AgroSciences -- dominate the 31-billion-dollar pesticide market and the 30-billion-dollar agricultural seed market.

Another link between the World Bank and industry is the Bank's staff exchange programme. In the past it has brought in representatives from Dow, Aventis and Syngenta to work in the ARD, and dispatched employees for stints at Rhone-Poulenc (since merged into Aventis) and Novartis Agribusiness.  The programme has also included exchanges with academic institutions, governments and United Nat