BIO TECH GROUP

BioTech group gets grant from Monsanto

The Teen Biotech Challenge has an enticing incentive for participants. Due to the Davis Monsanto site, BioTech SYSTEM will now be able to reward winners in its Teen Biotech Challenge, using a $2,800 grant from the Monsanto Fund.

BioTech SYSTEM is a K-14 outreach consortium administered by the University of California Davis Biotechnology Program. It works to bring together diverse members of the biotech community across Northern California, including academic and industry teachers and parents, to better promote science, technology, engineering and mathematic education.

BioTech SYSTEM will use the $2,800 grant to reward its Teen Biotech Challenge winners. The Teen Biotech Challenge is a web design competition for high school students, drawing more than 400 participants last year. The competition awards prizes across seven biotechnology focus areas, including agricultural biotechnology.

"This grant will directly reward the academic excellence of high school students interested in biotechnology education and research," said Denneal McClung, associate director of the UC Davis Biotechnology Program.

"We believe encouraging and training these budding scientists and engineers is vital if we are to create innovative leaders prepared to address the major challenges in health care and agriculture."

Davis Monsanto site employees have in the past served on the judging panel for the Teen BioTech Challenge. The Davis Monsanto site's focus on agriculture technology makes for a fitting partnership.

"We support BioTech SYSTEM because they are working to inspire the next generation of great thinkers," said Tim Conner, Davis Monsanto site lead. "The organization, and specifically the Teen Challenge, is starting a conversation in the community about what's new with STEM education and how it is impacting agriculture, health and everyday life. It is really changing the landscape."

This year, the Monsanto Fund awarded 127 site grants to nonprofit organizations in 26 states. In California alone, 10 site grants were awarded and totaled $135,000. The Monsanto Fund strives to meet the critical needs of rural communities by investing in local projects focused on K-12 education, hunger and nutrition, and first responders.

FARMER SUICIDES IN VIDARBHA

Three more farmer suicides in Vidarbha

Three more cotton farmers in Vidarbha have committed suicide in the region over the last two days.

According to reports, all three victims ended their lives when their newly sown seeds were washed away by heavy rains.

The victims were identified as Santosh Ramkrishna Sidam, 34, of Mangi village, Anil Marape, 38, of Thanegaon while 60-year- old Charan Singh Rathod was from Parsode in Amravati district, the reports said.

Kishore Tiwari, president of Vidarbha Janandolan Samiti said that all three farmers killed themselves by consuming pesticides when they realised that they would not be able to regenerate their funds following the destruction of their crops.

He said the fact that farmers have to buy new seeds every year, the costly use of genetic manufactured (GM) seeds, the use of pesticides and a reduction in crop value have often left farmers bankrupt.

Many farmers are now falling into an endless cycle of debts, depression and despair.

The washing way of their crop was a big blow for them.

Tiwari urged the government to assure farmers that it would provide new loans immediately, to help them in the wake of a flood-like situation in Vidarbha and help the needy farmers.

With these three deaths, the toll has risen to 32 this month. Last month accounted for 69 deaths.

GM Crops

Call for freeze on GM crops

The Technical Expert Committee (TEC) set up by the Supreme Court to review GM safety has recommended a moratorium on field trials for the chemical Bt in food crops

The much awaited report of the Technical Expert Committee (TEC) set up by the Supreme Court to go into the fate of genetically modified (GM) crops has been submitted.

The interim report submitted in October last year had suggested a ban on open field trials of GM crops for ten years.

The final report has recommended "a moratorium on field trials for Bt in food crops intended for commercialisation (not research) until there is more definitive information from sufficient number of studies as to the long term safety of Bt in food crops."

This means the moratorium is now indefinite. The panel is also against release of genetic modification of crops like brinjal for which India is the centre of origin or diversity.

Most importantly, based on a study of health and safety dossiers of GM crops submitted by the various developers, the panel has exposed holes in the regulatory process.

Toxicity studies should be chronic and trans-generational because food is consumed lifelong, and not for a limited period as is being done now, it says. It is now up to the SC to give directives to the government base.

MONSANTO

Monsanto leaves farmers ‘enslaved in a new kind of serfdom’

Monsanto will no longer be pursuing approval for the cultivation of new biotech crops in Europe but will instead focus on the import of existing crops. The easing of pressure is tactical, political analyst and author William Engdahl told RT.

The world’s largest seed company has been on a losing streak, especially in India and the Philippines. At the end of last week, Monsanto said that it was due to widespread opposition that it dropped its bid to get more genetically modified crops onto the European market – despite using tricks attempting to secure necessary political backing for their success. 

RT:  Does the decision mean a victory for the anti-GMO movement in Europe?
WE: In a word, no. If you look at the fine print of the interview that the European managing director (MD) for Monsanto, Jose Manuel Madero, gave to Reuters, what he said is that they’re withdrawing a request for new approvals in the EU Commission here in Europe, but at the same time they’re going to increase their pressure to import GMO products from the US and other countries into Europe. So this is a tactical move – it’s not a strategic defeat or rollback by Monsanto in any way shape or…beans.
RT: What are the human and environmental risks?
WE: Well, the Mon810 is primarily being planted in Spain right now and the agri-multinationals have dominated the agriculture in Spain for the last 25 years, so they’ve managed to get a foothold in that country. In most other countries there’s a broad-based grassroots opposition to any and every sort of GMO crop – so they just haven’t been able to do it. In France, you have independent scientists in the universities who have come out with studies of Mon810, showing the indications of severe side effects that weren’t reported by Monsanto. So the popular outcry against that in France, Germany, and other countries is such that Monsanto’s unable to get it pushed through. So what they’re doing is resorting to a back doorway of proliferating their GMO in Europe by increasing the emphasis on imports of GMOs - because there they have a loophole in the European laws of labeling. The power feed – the animal feed that’s GMO corn and soy from Monsanto and other companies - is not required to be labeled as containing GMO.
WE: Well, it’s a pragmatic and tactical move by Monsanto. After Monsanto had a closed-door meeting with the president of the Rockefeller Foundation in 1999, it announced that it was not going to commercialize terminator technology that would have seeds that commit suicide after one harvest, to make sure that farmers would have to come back to Monsanto every year. Seven years later, they acquired the company that had the patent - together with the US government - on terminator or GROTS technology. But by then, the opposition had been disarmed. They thought they’d won a victory. All the anti-GMO NGOs were either sleeping at the switch or looking elsewhere, and there wasn’t a peep of protest. So I suspect they’re trying to do something similar here.

First of all, let’s take the songbook that Monsanto and other GMO companies are using. That GMO crops are the solution to world hunger. Fact is, there is absolutely no patent on GMO crop that increases harvest yield. Long term studies in the US and other countries show that after one or two slight gains in harvest yield – if any at all - the actual yield per hectare or per acre begins to drop. Number two [of the songbook] is that they use less pesticides or herbicides. Well, in fact there’s weed resistance that develops after three or four harvest years of Monsanto roundup spraying, meaning that superweeds grow up and need more – not less - chemicals. So you’re losing on both counts. The thing is a marketing fraud. It’s designed to lock farmers into long-term contracts for their seeds. Once they get that, [farmers] can’t plant normal seeds for at least seven years after they’ve planted GMO and sprayed heavily with roundup. The soils become toxic. So you’re more or less enslaved in this new kind of ‘serfdom,’ as I call it in my book.

RT:  MON-810 maize is the only gene crop currently being commercially cultivated in the EU. However, France, Germany, and Poland have imposed national bans on it. Why are only a few governments siding with the people's push against GM food?

WE: I don’t think it’s supplying cheaper food at all. I don’t think the profit motive is really the key thing in GMO. It’s the idea of a monopoly. The model is developed by the Rockefeller Foundation. Interesting bit of background history: Back in the 1970s they decided to try – even going back to World War II – with Nelson Rockefeller and Norman Borlaug, who was a scientist at the Rockefeller University then - to develop a model for agri-business that they had developed for oil. Namely a globalization cartel control - a quasi-monopoly of the market for food, and that’s the history of the last 30 years worldwide in the food chain. I was just recently in Moscow. The Russian supermarkets are overflowing with imported foods, whereas Russia has some of the best unspoiled topsoil on the planet today. Russia should be growing natural food for its own citizens and avoiding the import bill - but the power of these agri-business multinationals after the collapse of the Soviet Union 20 years ago was such that they managed to get a foothold. You go in, you see Nestle on the shelf, you see Kellogg’s cornflakes – all using GMO corn from the US and so forth. So it’s this  of food that’s really the agenda behind GMO, the patenting of seeds.
WE: Well, it’s a pragmatic and tactical move by Monsanto. After Monsanto had a closed-door meeting with the president of the Rockefeller Foundation in 1999, it announced that it was not going to commercialize terminator technology that would have seeds that commit suicide after one harvest, to make sure that farmers would have to come back to Monsanto every year. Seven years later, they acquired the company that had the patent - together with the US government - on terminator or GROTS technology. But by then, the opposition had been disarmed. They thought they’d won a victory. All the anti-GMO NGOs were either sleeping at the switch or looking elsewhere, and there wasn’t a peep of protest. So I suspect they’re trying to do something similar here.
First of all, let’s take the songbook that Monsanto and other GMO companies are using. That GMO crops are the solution to world hunger. Fact is, there is absolutely no patent on GMO crop that increases harvest yield. Long term studies in the US and other countries show that after one or two slight gains in harvest yield – if any at all - the actual yield per hectare or per acre begins to drop. Number two [of the songbook] is that they use less pesticides or herbicides. Well, in fact there’s weed resistance that develops after three or four harvest years of Monsanto roundup spraying, meaning that superweeds grow up and need more – not less - chemicals. So you’re losing on both counts. The thing is a marketing fraud. It’s designed to lock farmers into long-term contracts for their seeds. Once they get that, [farmers] can’t plant normal seeds for at least seven years after they’ve planted GMO and sprayed heavily with roundup. The soils become toxic. So you’re more or less enslaved in this new kind of ‘serfdom,’ as I call it in my book.

RT:  MON-810 maize is the only gene crop currently being commercially cultivated in the EU. However, France, Germany, and Poland have imposed national bans on it. Why are only a few governments siding with the people's push against GM food?
WE: I don’t think it’s supplying cheaper food at all. I don’t think the profit motive is really the key thing in GMO. It’s the idea of a monopoly. The model is developed by the Rockefeller Foundation. Interesting bit of background history: Back in the 1970s they decided to try – even going back to World War II – with Nelson Rockefeller and Norman Borlaug, who was a scientist at the Rockefeller University then - to develop a model for agri-business that they had developed for oil. Namely a globalization cartel control - a quasi-monopoly of the market for food, and that’s the history of the last 30 years worldwide in the food chain. I was just recently in Moscow. The Russian supermarkets are overflowing with imported foods, whereas Russia has some of the best unspoiled topsoil on the planet today. Russia should be growing natural food for its own citizens and avoiding the import bill - but the power of these agri-business multinationals after the collapse of the Soviet Union 20 years ago was such that they managed to get a foothold. You go in, you see Nestle on the shelf, you see Kellogg’s cornflakes – all using GMO corn from the US and so forth. So it’s this  of food that’s really the agenda behind GMO, the patenting of seeds.
First of all, let’s take the songbook that Monsanto and other GMO companies are using. That GMO crops are the solution to world hunger. Fact is, there is absolutely no patent on GMO crop that increases harvest yield. Long term studies in the US and other countries show that after one or two slight gains in harvest yield – if any at all - the actual yield per hectare or per acre begins to drop. Number two [of the songbook] is that they use less pesticides or herbicides. Well, in fact there’s weed resistance that develops after three or four harvest years of Monsanto roundup spraying, meaning that superweeds grow up and need more – not less - chemicals. So you’re losing on both counts. The thing is a marketing fraud. It’s designed to lock farmers into long-term contracts for their seeds. Once they get that, [farmers] can’t plant normal seeds for at least seven years after they’ve planted GMO and sprayed heavily with roundup. The soils become toxic. So you’re more or less enslaved in this new kind of ‘serfdom,’ as I call it in my book.
RT:  MON-810 maize is the only gene crop currently being commercially cultivated in the EU. However, France, Germany, and Poland have imposed national bans on it. Why are only a few governments siding with the people's push against GM food?
WE: I don’t think it’s supplying cheaper food at all. I don’t think the profit motive is really the key thing in GMO. It’s the idea of a monopoly. The model is developed by the Rockefeller Foundation. Interesting bit of background history: Back in the 1970s they decided to try – even going back to World War II – with Nelson Rockefeller and Norman Borlaug, who was a scientist at the Rockefeller University then - to develop a model for agri-business that they had developed for oil. Namely a globalization cartel control - a quasi-monopoly of the market for food, and that’s the history of the last 30 years worldwide in the food chain. I was just recently in Moscow. The Russian supermarkets are overflowing with imported foods, whereas Russia has some of the best unspoiled topsoil on the planet today. Russia should be growing natural food for its own citizens and avoiding the import bill - but the power of these agri-business multinationals after the collapse of the Soviet Union 20 years ago was such that they managed to get a foothold. You go in, you see Nestle on the shelf, you see Kellogg’s cornflakes – all using GMO corn from the US and so forth. So it’s this  of food that’s really the agenda behind GMO, the patenting of seeds.
RT:  MON-810 maize is the only gene crop currently being commercially cultivated in the EU. However, France, Germany, and Poland have imposed national bans on it. Why are only a few governments siding with the people's push against GM food?
WE: I don’t think it’s supplying cheaper food at all. I don’t think the profit motive is really the key thing in GMO. It’s the idea of a monopoly. The model is developed by the Rockefeller Foundation. Interesting bit of background history: Back in the 1970s they decided to try – even going back to World War II – with Nelson Rockefeller and Norman Borlaug, who was a scientist at the Rockefeller University then - to develop a model for agri-business that they had developed for oil. Namely a globalization cartel control - a quasi-monopoly of the market for food, and that’s the history of the last 30 years worldwide in the food chain. I was just recently in Moscow. The Russian supermarkets are overflowing with imported foods, whereas Russia has some of the best unspoiled topsoil on the planet today. Russia should be growing natural food for its own citizens and avoiding the import bill - but the power of these agri-business multinationals after the collapse of the Soviet Union 20 years ago was such that they managed to get a foothold. You go in, you see Nestle on the shelf, you see Kellogg’s cornflakes – all using GMO corn from the US and so forth. So it’s this  of food that’s really the agenda behind GMO, the patenting of seeds.
WE: I don’t think it’s supplying cheaper food at all. I don’t think the profit motive is really the key thing in GMO. It’s the idea of a monopoly. The model is developed by the Rockefeller Foundation. Interesting bit of background history: Back in the 1970s they decided to try – even going back to World War II – with Nelson Rockefeller and Norman Borlaug, who was a scientist at the Rockefeller University then - to develop a model for agri-business that they had developed for oil. Namely a globalization cartel control - a quasi-monopoly of the market for food, and that’s the history of the last 30 years worldwide in the food chain. I was just recently in Moscow. The Russian supermarkets are overflowing with imported foods, whereas Russia has some of the best unspoiled topsoil on the planet today. Russia should be growing natural food for its own citizens and avoiding the import bill - but the power of these agri-business multinationals after the collapse of the Soviet Union 20 years ago was such that they managed to get a foothold. You go in, you see Nestle on the shelf, you see Kellogg’s cornflakes – all using GMO corn from the US and so forth. So it’s this  of food that’s really the agenda behind GMO, the patenting of seeds. 

RT: A recent poll showed that 95 per cent of EU citizens are against GMO crops - so do they have a future in Europe? 

WE: I would sincerely hope not. I think fortunately there’s a very strong grassroots movement in Europe. Monsanto and co. – the four companies – have done everything imaginable, including backing appointees to the European Food Safety Administration in Brussels - the so-called neutral scientists that are supposed to rule on citizens’ food safety. The majority of the members of that board are affiliated with Monsanto-financed NGOs. They get their research grants from Monsanto-related cut-outs and so forth. So the tricks and manipulations that Monsanto & co. have used to get GMO into Europe have been enormous, and they haven’t succeeded. I think they’re tactically trying to ease up on the opposition because it’s really growing like a groundswell. Also in the US - for the first time in the last six months, since the worldwide march on Monsanto in May - at least according to the reports I get. But it’s interesting. Monsanto is really not this European thing so much – but worldwide on a losing streak, as I see it. They’ve lost a major court decision in India from the patent office appeals court that denies them the right to pursue patents on certain weather modification traits in all of their seeds for India. They lost a similar appeal when they tried to do it through the back door in the Philippines. In other countries now in the EU, there’s this growing opposition – it’s locked in. The name ‘Monsanto’ means something very bad. Most people don’t have time to research these things as you and I do, but they’ve locked into that message - that soundbite - and with that in mind, anything GMO is verboten.

INDIA REPORT: EXPERT PANEL ON GM CROPS

Expert panel report on GM crops is anti-science, says industry

Bouquets as well as brickbats greeted the Supreme Court-appointed Technical Expert Committee’s (TEC) report, which recommended withholding of field trials of genetically-modified (GM) crops till the gaps in the regulatory system were addressed.

Incidentally, one of the six members of the TEC — R.S. Paroda — is supposed to have made a direct submission to the Supreme Court, which has not been made public.

Terming the report as regressive and biased, The Association of Biotech Led Enterprises (ABLE) said the TEC recommendation was a troubled treatise that promised to push the country’s agriculture into an archaic age. “The industry believes the TEC report, besides being incomplete, is also anti-science and anti-research and will severely dent the future of country’s farmers besides destroying the domestic private and public sector research…This recommendation, if accepted by the Supreme Court, will put our agricultural research back by decades and will severely hamper progress,” Ram Kaundinya, Chairman, ABLE AG, said in a statement. “This report by four members of TEC can’t be considered complete as R.S Paroda’s submission directly to the Supreme Court is yet to be made public,” N. Seetharama, Executive Director, ABLE AG, said

Reiterating its recommendation made in its interim report, the TEC said there should be a moratorium on field trials for Bt in food crops (those that are directly used for food) intended for commercialisation (not research) until there is more definitive information from sufficient number of studies as to the long term safety of Bt in food crops”.

On the herbicide tolerant (HT) crops, TEC said “HT crops would most likely exert a highly adverse impact over time on sustainable agriculture, rural livelihoods, and environment. The TEC finds them completely unsuitable in the Indian context.”

Also, on the genetic-modification of crops for which India is a centre of origin such as rice, brinjal, mustard etc, the TEC recommended “that release of GM crops for which India is a centre of origin or diversity should not be allowed”.

Welcoming the report, the Coalition for GM Free India has written to the Prime Minister urging that the Government act upon on the recommendations of TEC. These recommendations are science-based and well-reasoned. Therefore, we urge the Government of India to accept the well-reasoned, reasonable and sound recommendations of the TEC and to start overhauling the process of modern biotechnology regulation in India.

“Vested interests should not be allowed to prevail and prevent the acceptance of this report which is based on sound science, justice and the principle of sustainability.

“We look forward to the Union of India accepting these recommendations in the Supreme Court and ensuring the delivery of justice,” the Coalition said.

Monsanto

Another win for Monsanto: US raises allowable levels of company’s pesticide in crops

Biotech giant Monsanto has been awarded yet another victory by the federal government thanks to a recent Environmental Protection Agency decision to allow larger traces of the herbicide glyphosate in farm-grown foods.

Despite a number of studies linking exposure to the chemical with diseases including types of cancer, the EPA is increasing the amount of glyphosate allowed in oilseed and food crops.

The EPA announced their plans on May 1 and allowed critics two months to weigh in and object to the ruling. Following little opposition, though, the EPA is on path to soon approve of levels of glyphosate being found in crops several times over the current concentration.

Glyphosate, a weed-killing chemical developed by Monsanto in 1970, is the key ingredient in the company’s “Roundup” label of herbicides. In the decades since, Monsanto has created and patented a number of genetically-modified organisms and genetically-engineered crops resisted to glyphosate that are sold worldwide under the company’s “Roundup Ready” brand. Those GMO products are then planted in fields where glyphosate, namely Roundup, is used en masse to eliminate weeds from taking over harvest. With scientists linking that chemical to cancerous diseases, though, critics decry the EPA decision and caution it could do more harm than good.

Through the EPA’s new standards, the amount of allowable glyphosate in oilseed crops such as flax, soybeans and canola will be increased from 20 parts per million (ppm) to 40 ppm, which GM Watch acknowledged is  over 100,000 times the amount needed to induce breast cancer cells. Additionally, the EPA is increasing limits on allowable glyphosate in food crops from 200 ppm to 6,000 ppm.

Just last month, The Cornucopia Institute concluded a study by finding glyphosate “exerted proliferative effects in human hormone-dependent breast cancer.” A similar study released in April concluded that “glyphosate enhances the damaging effects of other food borne chemical residues and environmental toxins.”

“Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body,” independent scientist Anthony Samsel and MIT’s Stephanie Seneff concluded in the April study. “Consequences are most of the diseases and conditions associated with a Western diet, which include gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.”

Dr. Don M. Huber, emeritus professor of plant pathology at Purdue University, found in yet another examination that “Glyphosate draws out the vital nutrients of living things,” in turn removing most nutritional value from GMO foods.

A press release issued by the group Beyond Pesticides criticized the decision as well. “Given that alternative methods of growing food and managing weeds are available, like those that exist in organic agriculture, it is unreasonable for EPA to increase human exposures to Roundup,” they wrote.

In the past, Monsanto has long-defended their use of the chemical. “We are very confident in the long track record that glyphosate has,” Jerry Stainer, Monsanto’s executive vice president of sustainability, stated previously. “It has been very, very extensively studied.”