Karnataka joins hands for Global March Against Monsanto; for food safety

Karnataka joins hands for Global March Against Monsanto; for food safety

With the world all set to observe October 16, 2013, as World Food Day, Karnataka has joined the Global March Against Monsanto and for food safety and seed sovereignty.

In this regard, farmers, consumers, scientists, students, activists and others have vociferously pointed out the rejection of genetically-modified (GM) crops and the corporatisation of food systems.

Inaugurating the public action against Monsanto, veteran freedom fighter H.S Doraiswamy exhorted the gathering to continue this struggle for keeping our food and farming systems free from the clutches of multinational corporations like Monsanto. 

“It is alarming that governments are getting into partnerships with this corporation and jeopardising seed sovereignty of Indian farmers. We are here to show corporations like Monsanto that we will not tolerate any jeopardising of our farming, food and environment,” said P Srinivas, co-convenor, GM Free Karnataka Coalition. 

Meanwhile, on October 11, 2013, the Karnataka High Court had dismissed petitions that challenged criminal prosecution of top officials of Monsanto/Mahyco and University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, who have been accused of biopiracy in promotion of Bt Brinjal, India's first food GMO.

Speaking on the occasion, Leo Saldanha of Environment Support Group (ESG), which first exposed the issue said that Monsanto worked to take away control over seeds from local farming communities as an integral part of their business model. “Now they have been caught red-handed illegally appropriating Brinjal varieties endemic to India and which constitute our biodiversity heritage.” 

“We will continue to closely monitor efforts of national and state biopiracy regulatory agencies to ensure the criminal proceedings against the corporation and collaborating institutions reaches its logical end and serves as an example against similar biopirates for all time to come,” he added. 

He demanded the state government to immediately conduct an investigation into the failure of Bt cotton in the state and blacklist companies like Monsanto, which had pushed the poor farmer in Karnataka to severe distress.

“On the one hand, scientific evidence on adverse impact of GM crops on human health, environment and farm livelihoods is increasing, on the other hand, the Central government is pushing for GM crops into our farms and plates. The latest in these efforts is the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) Bill, which proposes to create a single-window clearance system designed for easy approval of GM crops. This is nothing but a Monsanto Protection and Promotion Law,” said Neha Saigal, sustainable agriculture campaigner, Greenpeace India.

Addressing the gathering Kavitha Kuruganti, national convenor, Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture (ASHA), called the attention of the national and state government to the fact that this World Food Day has a theme of 'Sustainable Food Systems for Food Security and Nutrition.' 

“It is high time that we steer away from an agriculture paradigm promoted by multinational corporations like Monsanto which fills our farms and food with toxic chemicals and risky GM crops for the profit of these companies into an ecological farming paradigm which has a triple bottomline of social, ecological and economic sustainability,” she added. FnB news

EU must open up on GM food

Genetically modified (GM) technology is shaping our lives, but European farmers are being told that they are not allowed to have any part of it.

It's being used routinely in our medicine, industry and our food.

There are now 170m hectares of GM crops being grown worldwide, almost all of which is produced outside the EU.

Despite the fact that billions of people and animals have been consuming GM plant varieties without any ill effects for nearly 20 years, the EU remains a no-go zone.

The ultimate irony is that millions of tonnes of GM feeds, principally soya and maize, are imported into the EU every year to help feed the animals that we, in turn, consume.

Our policy makers are gradually realising the lunacy of the current situation.

A relatively low-key conference in Dublin last week revealed a significant sea-change in opinion within the ranks of senior academics and officials from around the world.

Run by the Environmental Protection Agency delegates at the conference, also heard from local experts such as Teagasc's Ewan Mullins.

He estimates that our 9,000ha of potatoes is sprayed annually with up to 360 tonnes of fungicides.

If anything, the amount of chemical potato growers are using is increasing as they battle with ever evolving strains of blight.

All the while, the GM technology to allow blight resistant potatoes to be grown is ready to be rolled out.

It is just one example of the blinkered approach that we in Europe have against GM.

The EU's Food Safety Authority, EFSA, cleared GM as "safe for conventional production" years ago. But regulators have stuck to the precautionary 'better safe than sorry' approach ever since.

That's fine but how many years must pass before we can accept that GM technology is safe?

The GM potato trial in Oakpark might help de-mystify the technology, but Ireland is no great leader on this subject.

Our stance in many decisions on GM at EU level has been to simply abstain from voting.

While European politicians sit on the fence, the rest of the world moves on.

Billions are being spent on R&D by the global agri sector to increase production to meet a 70pc hike in food demand by 2050. But more and more of the R&D is being diverted away from the traditional tools of agro-chemicals in favour of the biosciences that foster developments in GM.Independent

'Make safe food and water fundamental right'

On the eve of World Food Day, a group working for safe food promotion has written an open letter to Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar seeking his support to make safe food and drinking water a fundamental right of every citizen of India.

World Food Day is celebrated every year Oct 16 and this year the theme is sustainable food systems for security and nutrition.

"The 2011 global hunger index report ranked India 15th among leading countries with hunger situation. About 25 percent of the world's hungry population resides in India and 42 percent children in our country are undernourished while 18 percent do not have access to safe drinking water," said Rachna Arora of Public Awareness on Genetically Modified Foods.

"Although the World Food Summit and the Millennium Development Goals observe the importance of food, they have failed to recognise access to safe food as a legal right. The Indian government could set a precedence for other developing countries to follow," added Arora.

The group Oct 12 organised a protest march against Monsanto India Limited, its associates and subsidiaries asking these to wind up their business and operations in India for unethical promotion of dangerous foods.

"Consumer interests are not being protected. Genetically modified (GM) organisms are being sold openly without our knowledge. None of the imported processed food products containing GM corn are labelled. What makes it worse is these products like Kelloggs Corn Flakes are made very attractive to children through unethical advertisements," said Shalini Venugopal, an organiser of the march. BS

GM golden rice opponents branded 'wicked' by UK environment secretary

Owen Paterson accused of swallowing industry hype on GM crops over claim that vitamin-enriched rice could prevent blindness and death among children in poor countries

GM golden rice has been modified to contain beta carotene, a source of vitamin A. Above: Cambodian farmers grow rice in Kampong Speu. Photograph: AFP/Getty

People who oppose golden rice, a new variety of GM crop, are "wicked" and could be condemning children in developing countries to blindness and death, according to the British environment secretary.

In an emotive intervention into the polarised debate about genetically modified crops in poor countries, Owen Paterson, a known advocate of GM foods, came out strongly in favour of golden rice, which has been developed to contain beta carotene, a source of vitamin A.

Supporters of the rice, including GM company Syngenta, claim a single plateful can provide 60% of a child's daily vitamin A requirement, potentially reducing blindness and other illnesses that afflict millions of children in developing countries. According to the World Health Organisation, dietary vitamin A deficiency compromises the immune systems of about 40% of children under the age of five in the developing world.

Paterson has expressed dismay that opponents of golden rice have, as he sees it, delayed its introduction for many years.

"I feel really strongly about it," Paterson told the Independent. "I think what they [opponents] do is absolutely wicked. There is no other word for it. It's just disgusting that little children are allowed to go blind and die because of a hang-up by a small number of people about this technology."

His statement, described as personal by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, coincided with the launch of what appeared to be a co-ordinated campaign by some scientists and a handful of GM advocates in the US and UK to back golden rice.

In the past two weeks, Scientific American has accused Greenpeace and other anti-GM organisations of using "misinformation and hysteria" to delay its introduction, while a group of experts writing in Science – including Martin Rees, former president of the Royal Society – have argued strongly that it should be commercialised.

Paterson's outburst also coincided with the launch of a pro-golden rice group by the US environmentalist Patrick Moore, who accused Greenpeace of a "crime against humanity" for having tried to delay its introduction.

"Their crime is 8 million children dead," said Moore. "Golden rice is the cure for a crisis that kills more people each year than malaria, HIV/Aids or tuberculosis. The zero-tolerance policy towards GM by Greenpeace and its allies has blocked this cure, resulting in 8 million deaths, mostly among poor children. We believe this is a crime against humanity as defined by the international criminal court."

Greenpeace and development groups have fought back, however, accusing Paterson of following the GM industry line.

Dr Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace said: "Owen Paterson believes problems caused by vitamin A deficiency have one and only one solution: GM 'golden' rice. And if you don't agree with him, you are 'wicked'. There are more than half a dozen vitamin A strategies in use today. Golden rice is not one of them because it doesn't yet exist. I think he's falling into a trap over GM and I don't think he understands the issue. He's swallowed the industry spin hook, line and sinker without talking to anyone with a different view. It's the politics, not the technology, that has failed to deliver access to a healthy diet for everyone."

The World Development Movement in London said Paterson was not interested in the plight of malnourished people. "There's more than enough food to feed the world's population – the problem is access," said the group's policy officer, Christine Haigh. "Malnutrition in the global south is almost exclusively a result of people's inability to access enough food, or a sufficiently varied diet. The way to solve it is to improve incomes – not to hand power to the multinationals that already control our food system, further squeezing producers and forcing them into an industrial monoculture production that posits golden rice as a solution rather than a problem."

Scientists have pointed out that the rice is not a commercial venture and is not owned by western multinationals such as Monsanto or Bayer. "There is much public support for golden rice in Asia but, unfortunately, some western NGOs have recently influenced local activists to destroy some of the field trials in the Philippines, which is very regrettable," said Denis Murphy, a biotechnology adviser to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome.

However, Chito Medina, environmental scientist and national co-ordinator of Masipag, a network of Filipino farmers, scientists and development workers, countered: "Vitamin A deficiency and malnutrition are complex issues that are inextricably linked to poverty and access to resources. Golden rice is a simplistic, techno-fix solution to the problem."

Others backed the introduction of vitamins into crops and foods, but said it was not necessary to do it using GM. "Golden rice is a Trojan horse for the GM industry," said Jonathan Matthews, director of GM Watch. "It's not even available yet. We do not know if it's effective. This is a feelgood product that appears to give the moral high ground to the industry. In fact, it may be diverting resources and distracting attention from farming methods that are proving themselves to be effective at both reducing poverty and improving health."

Many countries have reduced vitamin A deficiency using traditional methods. A programme by the Philippine government's Food and Nutrition Research Institute, reduced its prevalence among children from 40.1% in 2003 to 15.2% in 2008, according to the latest available figures(pdf).

Golden rice was developed in Switzerland by Igor Potrykus, a biologist at the Institute for Plant Sciences, and Peter Beyer, of the University of Freiburg, Germany. But their idea of a humanitarian GM crop whose seeds would be made freely available to poor farmers ran into problems when it was tested on Chinese children without the necessary approvals.

Since then, golden rice has gone through a multitude of regulatory processes and field trials in the Philippines. It awaits approval from the country's regulators. The Guardian

GM 'golden rice' opponents wicked, says minister Owen Paterson

Opponents of the development of a type of genetically modified (GM) rice enriched with vitamin A are "wicked", the environment secretary has said.

Owen Paterson is known as a strong supporter of GM food technology

In an interview with the Independent, Owen Paterson said they could be condemning millions of people in the developing world to a premature death.

Mr Paterson backed a letter from international scientists calling for the rapid development of "golden rice".

But campaigners say the benefits claimed for the rice are misleading.

'Dark shadow'

Mr Paterson told the newspaper: "It's just disgusting that little children are allowed to go blind and die because of a hang-up by a small number of people about this technology.

"I feel really strongly about it. I think what they do is absolutely wicked. There is no other word for it."

Mr Paterson did not specify any particular groups in his interview but also said opponents of GM technology were "casting a dark shadow over attempts to feed the world".

BBC political correspondent Carole Walker said Mr Paterson was known as a strong supporter of GM crops but his language seemed certain to raise hackles with those who took a different view.

A Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spokeswoman said it was Mr Paterson's strong personal view.

'Cause for outrage'

People in the developed usually world get enough vitamin A from their diet by eating foods like cheese, yoghurts and eggs.

But deficiency is a common problem in developing countries, and is estimated to affect between 140 million and 250 million children under the age of five.

Vitamin A is needed for healthy skin and eyes and to help strengthen the immune system so that the body can fight infections. Deficiency can lead to blindness, illness and death.

Supplements are available and the World Health Organisation advocates routine administration of vitamin A in countries where deficiency is a problem.

High doses of vitamin A can be harmful, however, particularly in pregnancy

Meanwhile, in a letter to US journal Science, a group of leading academics has accused Western non-governmental organisations of fuelling opposition to the development of GM technologies.

They wrote: "If ever there was a clear-cut cause for outrage, it is the concerted campaign by Greenpeace and other non-governmental organisations, as well as by individuals, against golden rice."

Environmental campaigners such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have said there are more effective solutions to vitamin A deficiency.

Mr Paterson also used the interview to defend the government's handling of the badger cull - aimed at preventing the spread of bovine TB - against criticism from animal welfare groups.

He said: "I cannot understand anyone wanting to tolerate this disgusting disease.

"I find it incomprehensible that these badger groups don't see that this is a horrendous disease for the badgers themselves."

BBC News