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We've recently launched a series of GM Watch quizzes. Here are the answers to the first two, both of which drew a great response so thanks to all who entered.

10 YEARS OF GM WATCH - QUIZTIME: THE QUESTIONS AND THE ANSWERS

QUIZ 1: So who's designing your food?

This first quiz came about as a fun way to celebrate 10 years of GM Watch but there is a more serious side. Most people if asked to nominate the greatest calamities of the 20th Century, would place the holocaust and the development of nuclear weapons right at the top of their lists. As our quiz makes clear, the corporations now designing our food played a significant role in both. They also, of course, helped bring the world a toxic legacy that includes napalm, agent orange, dioxin, and PCBs. As for their standards of business ethics...

1.Which biotech corporation was involved in research on uranium for the Manhattan Project and operated a nuclear facility for the US government until the late 1980s?

ANSWER: Monsanto
http://stlcin.missouri.org/history/peopledetail.cfm?Master_ID=1826
http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/05.11.00/cover/gen-food2-0019.html

2.Name two biotech corporations that were once part of the German chemical firm at the financial core of the Nazi regime and which supplied Zyklon-B during the extermination phase of the Holocaust?

ANSWER: Bayer and BASF
http://www.answers.com/topic/ig-farben
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IG_Farben

3.Which biotech firm other than Monsanto was a major supplier of Agent Orange, as well as manufacturing napalm?

ANSWER: Dow
http://www.studentsforbhopal.org/DirtyDow.htm
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Monsanto%2C_Agent_Orange_and_Dioxins

4.In relation to which Alabama town, where the undertaker who lived across the street from the Monsanto plant said he always thought he was burying too many children, was the company found guilty of conduct "so outrageous in character and extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency so as to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in civilized society"?

ANSWER: Anniston
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Monsanto%27s_Global_Pollution_Legacy

5.What happened on October 21 2007 to Valmir Mota de Oliveira, also known as Keno, during a protest at an experimental GMO farm owned by Syngenta?

ANSWER: He was killed with two shots to the chest at point-blank range by militiamen employed by Syngenta. (The company denies responsibility)
http://stuffedandstarved.org/drupal/node/235

6.In 2005 the Bollywood star, Nana Patekar toured India's main cotton growing area of Maharashtra, promoting Monsanto's Bt cotton to farmers. What made him announce the following year that he would no longer support Monsanto or promote its Bollgard Bt cotton?

ANSWER: Two reasons were given in press reports: the large scale losses caused to cotton farmers across the state and the impact of Bt Cotton cultivation on farmer suicides.
http://www.indiagminfo.org/Independent%20studies%20&%20papers%20on%20GM%20cro
ps%20in%20India/STUDIES%20ON%20PERFORMANCE%20OF%20BT%20COTTON/M
aharashtra-Bt%20Cotton%20Vs.%20Non%20Bt%20Cotton%20-
%20MEC%20study%20report-2005-06.pdf

7.Monsanto says, "Integrity is the foundation for all that we do". How many current and former Indonesian government officials and their family members are known to have received illicit payments on the company's behalf?

ANSWER: At least 140, according to the US Securities & Exchange Commission.
http://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/comp19023.pdf

8.Who was in overall charge of business operations in Indonesia when the bribes scandal got underway?

ANSWER: Hugh Grant, Monsanto's current Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President. He was managing director of Monsanto's Asia Pacific division.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2005/jan/19/environment.environment?commentpage=1

9.Which country has a bilateral agreement with the US for the development of its agriculture, including the promotion of GMOs, overseen by a board that includes Monsanto, ADM and Wal-Mart?

ANSWER: India (Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture)
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/vandana_shiva/2006/07/wto_is_dead_long_live_free_tra
.html

10.Which Health Canada scientist told a Canadian Senate committee of being in a meeting where officials from Monsanto made an offer of between $1-2 million to the scientists from Health Canada -- an offer that she told the senators could only have been interpreted as a bribe. Additionally, she also recounted how notes and files critical of scientific data provided by Monsanto were stolen from a locked filing cabinet in her office.

ANSWER: Dr. Margaret Haydon
http://www.ethicalinvesting.com/monsanto/news/10009.htm

QUIZ 2: Farming in a GM wonderland

We're off to see the biotech equivalent of the Wizard of Oz...

1. Many pro-GM commentators hail the technology as the solution to the current food crisis because of its ability to reduce fertilizer use and help farmers cope with problems like drought, salinity or flooding. After 20 years of GM research, how many GM drought tolerant, or salt tolerant, or flood tolerant, or fertilizer-reducing crops are there on the market worldwide?

ANSWER: None.

NOTES/SOURCES: See, for instance, the commentary by former EPA biotech specialist Dr. Doug Gurian-Sherman, Genetic engineering - a crop of hyperbole, San Diego Union Tribune, 18 June 2008
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080618/news_lz1e18gurian.html

2. There have been tens of thousands of articles in the world's media about 'miracle' crops genetically engineered for enhanced appearance, flavour, nutrition, or to be allergen-free, or to combat problems like obesity or to contain edible vaccines that protect against major diseases like cancer. How many of these GM crops are there on the market worldwide?

ANSWER: None.

NOTES/SOURCES: In his book Genetically Modified Language, Prof. Guy Cook notes how a study he conducted of UK press coverage of GM found that largely uncritical stories about speculative GM solutions to intractable problems (e.g. GM allergy-free peanuts, GM apples to fight tooth decay) were widely published in all types of newspapers, even those with editorial lines skeptical of GM.
http://www.spinwatch.org/content/view/157/8/

3. When published in April 2008, which appraisal of global agriculture, sponsored by the World Bank and the U.N., and undertaken on a scale comparable to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, concluded that GM crops have at best variable impacts on yields and would not play a substantial role in addressing climate change, loss of biodiversity, hunger or poverty?

ANSWER: IAASTD - International Assessment of Agricultural knowledge, Science and Technology for Development
http://www.agassessment.org/

NOTES/SOURCES: For a good short summary see, IAASTD: Overhaul of agriculture systems needed, GM crops not the solution, by Lim Li Ching, Sustainable Food Monitor, 2007.
http://sustainablefoodmonitor.org/content/iaastd-overhaul-agriculture-systems-ne eded-gm-crops-not-solution

4. More than 50% of the GM crops grown worldwide are farmed in the United States, and by far the most widely grown crop is herbicide-tolerant soyabeans. Based on U.S. Department of Agriculture trend data and numerous field studies, by roughly how much has GM soya increased yield for U.S. farmers compared to conventional (non-GM) varieties?

ANSWER: Zero - it may even have decreased yields compared to non-GM varieties.

NOTES/SOURCES: See, for instance, the commentary by Dr. Doug Gurian-Sherman, Genetic engineering - a crop of hyperbole, San Diego Union Tribune, 18 June 2008
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080618/news_lz1e18gurian.html

5. Who said the following about GM crops when promoting them as a solution to the food crisis? "We've been using them for 10 years in the United States and they have a proven effectiveness in increasing yields, in lowering the use of fertilizer, in providing better water and soil management and also increasing taste and appearance. So, you know, those are all good things."

ANSWER: U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer.

NOTES/SOURCES: See: At UN summit, US offers three-prong approach to food crisis, Voice of America, 3 June 2008
http://www.voanews.com/english/Africa/2008-06-03-voa22.cfm

6. What word did Prof. Dennis Murphy - the head of biotechnology at the University of Glamorgan, recently use to describe claims about GM crops solving the problem of drought or feeding the world?

ANSWER: "Bullshit".

NOTES/SOURCES: Prof. Murphy is quoted in this strongly pro-GM article, GM: it's safe, but it's not a saviour, Spiked, 7 July 2008
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5438/

7. Monsanto and its supporters claim that GM crops have been widely adopted in countries like the United States because of their economic benefits for farmers. Which organization in its review of GM crop cultivation in the U.S. commented, "Perhaps the biggest issue raised by these results is how to explain the rapid adoption of [GM] crops when farm financial impacts appear to be mixed or even negative"?

ANSWER: USDA - United States department for Agriculture (USDA/ERS)

NOTES/SOURCES: Jorge Fernandez-Cornejo and William D. McBride, Adoption of Bioengineered Crops, Agricultural Economic Report No. AER810, May 2002
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aer810/

8. The Director of Corporate Affairs for Monsanto India says the increase in GM cotton acres there "bear testimony to the success of this technology and the benefit that farmers derive from it." According to Washington University researcher Glenn Stone's multi-year study of the behaviour of cotton farmers in a key cotton growing area of India, what underlay the rapid spread of GM cotton there?

ANSWER: Seed fads.

NOTES/SOURCES: Stone argues that far from farmers carefully assessing the technology before adopting it more widely, the process is more like a "craze". He argues that GM cotton has contributed to a disruption of farmers' process of learning, as they rely less on experimentation and observation and more on advertising and a kind of herd mentality where everybody copies everyone else, leading to blind adoption. See: Glenn Davis Stone, Agricultural Deskilling and the Spread of Genetically Modified Cotton in Warangal, Current Anthropology, Volume 48, Number 1, February 2007
http://artsci.wustl.edu/~anthro/research/stone/stone480102.web.pdf
Articles about this research here
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7644

9. The wife of which South African farmer who has been flown around the world by Monsanto to preach the benefits of GM cotton and detail how it has transformed his family's life, admitted on camera that they made no profit from the crop?

ANSWER: TJ Buthelezi

NOTES/SOURCES: See the film, A Disaster in Search of Success: Bt Cotton in Global South
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7994
For a profile of TJ Buthelezi
http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=184

10. What was surprising about the posters that appeared in many places in Madhya Pradesh, India, featuring a man who said he'd gained great benefits from growing GM cotton and urging others to do the same?

ANSWER: He was not a farmer.

NOTES/SOURCES: He was found on investigation to be a paan shop owner - a roadside vendor of betel leaves and cigarettes. See: New report - Farmers lied to and lured into Bt cotton
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5741

11. Why was Gary Rinehart surprised to be publicly harassed over violating Monsanto's patent on GM soybeans, and subsequently to have the company file a federal lawsuit against him?

ANSWER: He was not a farmer.

NOTES/SOURCES: "Rinehart wasn't a farmer. He wasn't a seed dealer. He hadn't planted any seeds or sold any seeds. He owned a small - a really small - country store…", Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, Investigation: Monsanto's Harvest of Fear, Vanity Fair, May 2008
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto200805

12. What is the annual budget that Monsanto devotes to harassing, intimidating, suing - and in some cases bankrupting - American farmers over alleged improper use of its patented seeds?

ANSWER: 10 million dollars.

NOTES/SOURCES: See p.6 of the report, Monsanto vs US farmers, The Center for Food Safety, 2005
http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/pubs/CFSMOnsantovsFarmerReport1.13.05.pdf

First, a big thank you to all of you who sent WWF letters criticizing their participation in a GM Soy Debate about sustainability criteria for GM soy.

Your intervention has been VERY effective with WWF issuing a statement in which they apologise for appearing to endorse GM soy.
http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/forests/our_solutions/responsible_forestry/forest_conversion_agriculture/news/index.cfm?uNewsID=152801

So well done! This is a step forward BUT the response on their website is otherwise very weak.

The statement is filled with justification of an existing WWF project, the RTRS - the Round Table on Responsible Soy, but this project is also deeply flawed and dangerous - see below.

WWF also needs to go further than the precautionary approach on GM that it asserts in its statement. Promoters of GMOs in Europe could, and do, say exactly the same about supporting case by case assessments and a strong regulatory framework. A leading environmental organization should be asking for far more than this which will only lead to the release of GMOs in the open environment.

WWF needs to take account of the growing evidence of health effects and environmental damage, and the lack of long term testing on both.* WWF needs to work for "presumed rejection" of GMOs, rather than "case by case assessment".

With regard to the RTRS, WWF's logic is that the Round Table on Responsible Soy is about assuring the sustainable production of soy whether it is GM or non-GM. This is total sophistry. GM soy is overwhelmingly what is being grown in those South American countries where soy is proving destructive both socially and environmentally. GM soy is fundamentally NOT sustainable.

The history is that the WWF started the RTRS with what were doubtless good intentions but in order to get the big guns - ADM, Bunge, Cargill, etc. - to participate, they had to greatly weaken the exercise. That included dodging the whole issue of GMOs, and also weakening the requirements around deforestation. As it stands now, the RTRS "criteria" totally ignore the critical issue of GMOs - and they allow deforestation of the Amazon as long as it is in an area that is "zoned" for agricultural use.

What that means is that big farmers will continue to bribe local government to "zone" areas of the Amazon as open for clearing for agriculture. And so clearing of the rainforest will simply continue, but now painted green with a big "RTRS Approved" seal.

In their response to your letters re the GM Soy Debate, WWF talk about the "successful completion of the RTRS process." The fact is that unless it gets strengthened to (1) reject GM soy completely and (2) have real teeth in its protection of the rainforest, it will be a success only for the big soy processors, the big exploitative farmers, and Monsanto!

Spraying glyphosate from the air should also be a basic reason to say no to "sustainable" soy! The impact on biodiversity and people is obvious. The problem of resistant weeds and volunteers requiring stronger chemicals is also a major problem. And people should have the right to GM-free zones and not to be contaminated. WWF should be asserting that right not legitimating contamination.

Don't forget that WWF has never succeeded in engaging the local communities most directly affected by the soy invasion in the RTRS.

If you've already been in contact with WWF, please reply by telling it that it needs to take a far stronger line on GM soy and that it is an accomplice to greenwashing through the RTRS.

If they haven't written to you, you can let them known your concerns here:
http://www.panda.org/faq/visitor_emailadmin.cfm
or via their offices around the world http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/who_we_are/offices/index.cfm

For more on the problems of RTRS, see:
*THE ROUND TABLE ON IR-RESPONSIBLE SOY
Certifying Soy Expansion, GM Soy and Agrofuels
http://www.lasojamata.org/files/RTbriefing%202008_6.pdf

This report shows how the Round Table is legitimising the existing environmentally and socially destructive practices of soy monocultures which have drawn widespread concern from around the world.

*see http://www.bangmfood.org/publications

NOTE: Here's the transcript for the BBC Radio 4 programme, Street Science, first broadcast last week, in which the UK Government's former Chief Scientist, David King, explained to members of the public why they should embrace GM crops.

You can listen to the programme here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/streetscience.shtml

Peter Melchett's critique of King's claims is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/09/david-king-gm-crops

Street Science follows on from the entirely bogus claim of a GM breakthrough in Africa made by King on Radio 4's Today programme last year, and the highly misleading recent BBC Horizon programme, Jimmy's GM Food Fight.

Details of how to make a complaint to the BBC about their standards of accuracy are available here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/
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BBC Radio 4, Street Science, Programme 3 - GM Foods (first broadcast 3 Dec 2008)

Will an eminent scientist be able to persuade sceptical cafe customers that genetically modified crops could save thousands of lives? We're off to Oxford to find out, in Street Science, next... Today the subject's GM food and the scientist is the former chief scientific advisor to the government, Sir David King.

David believes passionately that GM crops could save the lives of millions of malnourished people around the world. He's worried that anti-GM sentiment in the UK is ruining Africa's chances of benefiting from this technology. But will he be able to convince breakfasters at the Magic Cafe in East Oxford, bearing in mind that the cafe was a hotbed of anti-GM activism back in the 90s, when campaigners took direct action against GM crops...

King: I'm expecting a rather hostile audience. Possibly an anti-science and technology element likely to be there, a belief that what is nature-given is what we live by. And of course that to me is like taking us back into the eighteenth century. I haven't walked blind into a cafe like this before and met people out of the blue. It's the kind of challenge I think I enjoy. But I'll tell you afterwards.

[To member of the public]
I am sorry to disturb your breakfast but we'd love to hear your views and have a discussion with you about your approach towards crop development and GM technology in particular. Do you have a view on that?

Member of public: I do. Having done reading like everybody else you pick up all your information from the newspaper or radio, and isn't the main underlying thing that you get twice as much out of them?

King: But also you reduce the use of pesticides...

Member of public: Yes, sorry. You reduce the use of pesticides and get twice as much out of the crop. So you can eat better in Africa or there's a bigger supply of maize.

Yes. It's something we've got to try. But everybody was worried that it was going to flow into normal crops. Am I talking nonsense here?

King: No. As a matter of fact in the United States and in South America there's no requirement to even label GM products. The product is all just mixed together anyway and Americans are perfectly happy to eat it like that. And I don't know of anyone--do you?--who has ever suffered from eating a GM product.

Member of public: No but I thought that was one of the themes, that we don't know what's down the line.

King: Americans have been eating substantially GM crop products for about 15 years and there's no certifiable example of anyone suffering.

Member of public: I'm with you but I wouldn't say America has the best image on food.

Another member of public (woman): I definitely buy out of choice non-GM foods, including soya milk, and I don't believe it's a great way to be cultivating our relationship with nature. And I think it's quite dangerous because we don't know the impact it's going to have. I have an opinion on it.

King: You certainly do. And if I just say to you, there are now six million farmers around the world who farm virtually nothing but GM crops, there's almost half a billion people who eat it every day, and for example in the United States, there is no labelling of crops so what that means is that for 15, coming 20 years there's a very large number of people who've been eating these crops and there's no certifiable case of anyone suffering from eating these crops. Does that change your view at all?

Member of public (woman): I think really my decision making comes from my relationship with nature as opposed to the effect it might have on the human body. It's more like, how does that affect the natural balance within the natural world if we're playing about with...

Unknown woman: We're already doing that, of course. We've been doing it for a long long time.

King: You're talking about plant breeding techniques, there are no natural crops in production at the moment.

Member of public (woman): The thing that worries me is the things I've heard about the third world and farmers being put in a situation where they can only purchase seeds from companies doing GM, and that puts them in quite a position financially because they are not able to gather their own seeds from the crops, they have to buy fresh seeds every year.

King: Very good point, let's move to the third world. If I said to you, the company that is responsible for stating that they could produce crops with a terminator gene, which means that the farmer would have to keep buying every year, has never taken that to the marketplace. So there is a belief that Monsanto are marketing that but they've never marketed it, actually they've never produced it. It's still theoretical.

Using GM technology there are now varieties of major crops, rice, wheat and maize being produced that are drought resistant, flood resistant, saline resistant and disease resistant, which could transform Africa's ability to feed its people.

Member of the public (woman): Yes I understand this is the other side of trying to produce enough crops to feed the world and that's the other side of the picture isn't it. I don't know enough about it yet.

Member of the public (man): But you're trying to carry this argument in an environment in which people by and large have major distrust of big corporations and governments. So a lot of people, including me, are not necessarily going to believe what I'm being told right now because suddenly it will be different next year or the year after.

King: So if I told you that the products I am talking about have not been produced in the private sector, they've all been produced by government and international research laboratories. So for example, the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines is responsible now for producing a rice crop based on the discovery of a wild rice plant that is flood resistant but it's not very tasty and then by genetic techniques discovering what makes it flood resistant you can then develop marketable rice that has that flood resistance. So you can actually save millions of people from starvation by these techniques – nothing to do with the private sector. Would you then...

Member of the public (man): Well, that sounds fantastic. And we sit here at this table and I'll believe you, David King, that's what you're telling me, that's what you believe, it all sounds fantastic, but it doesn't really remove this nagging doubt of, "Well hang on a minute, maybe we've heard this kind of stuff before. What's going to happen in five or ten years down the road? That's not to do with you, it's not necessarily to do with GM or non-GM, it's about not having a great faith in the powers-that-be, whether they're big corporations or governments.

Member of the public (woman): From what I've heard, these GM crops haven't even been developed yet, that are supposed to do all those things. They haven't actually done it yet.

King: Some products have emerged, for example from South Africa. They are now planting drought resistant crops that have increased the yield by 30% and these are GM products.

From my perspective the problem was the opposition, the notion of Frankenfoods, the desire not to give Monsanto such a strong lead. The outcome for the United Kingdom was actually that the two British companies that started producing products that gave an advantage to the consumer, such as tomatoes that would assist you to avoid getting cancer - those companies actually shut down their GM laboratories totally because of the adverse reaction of the British public so we have left it to Monsanto and Syngenta to effectively dominate the market.

Member of the public (woman): Yes I think there's been a bit more public awareness in this country than in other countries.

King: More opposition.

Member of the public (woman): Yes, well, awareness first and then in response to the growing awareness, people's response was opposition.

King: What is the opposition to? Why are you opposed?

Member of the public (woman): I think people are suspicious of -- my impression of science is that it's increasingly corporate-driven. A lot of even academic scientists are being controlled by their funding which is often coming from companies. And therefore science isn't independent any more. And that goes through to the GM food issue. People are suspicious of food that is coming from corporate-driven science. Whereas research into, say, soil, which is absolutely the most fundamental thing that we could be working on, is not being done. If we haven't done the research on our most basic resource, then we haven't done the most important research.

King: Every society that has moved its population from abject poverty, from malnutrition--1.4 billion people suffering today from malnutrition--every society that has moved away from that has done it through modern agricultural technologies. And I do not see why we should turn that away.

Member of the public (woman): No I think agricultural technology is a great thing but I think that GM, which is highly technological, is not sufficiently developed yet to answer those problems.

King: It's massively developed, it's been planted for 15-20 years around the world. Millions of us are eating it every day.

Member of the public (woman): If you are, as I understand it, scientific advisor to the government--

King: Until the end of December I was government chief scientific advisor.

Member of the public (woman): And now you're a politician. Where's your standpoint, is it meant to be neutral or is it...

King: It's a very very important point. I do not believe any science advisor can work within government without taking an ethical position. Certainly one part of the ethics is to see that any product that is brought to the marketplace in Britain is not going to threaten human health, is not going to cause damage to the environment. That is very obvious. But the second part of the ethical argument is: Are we taking account of other people's views and discussing it with other people? That's why I'm here now.

Member of the public (woman): But you are also here to give us your viewpoint and it's quite clear it's not from a completely neutral perspective. And some of this conversation has been education in terms of you describing some of your knowledge base to us.

King: Aren't we having an exchange of--

Member of the public (woman): Oh we are, absolutely, and I'm glad to be part of that.

King: I am talking about an exchange of knowledge. I think that scientists need to understand that they are only one part of the knowledge system, so I'm very keen to see that we engage with the public, not telling the public about it but listening as well.

Member of the public (woman): Yes. I feel listened to.

King: Good.

Member of the public (woman): Thank you.

Member of the public (man): Naturally a personal chat with somebody is very reassuring - somebody who knows the facts, which of course I don't. Yes, I'm relying on you. ...

Member of the public (man): The thing that I learned is that this stuff's been knocking around in America for 15 or 20 years and that it isn't labelled over there as a separate item from the non-GMO. That has surprised me.

Member of the public (woman): Well it certainly wouldn't change my opinion overnight. I'm still very cynical about GM crops. But it has made me think more about the position of the third world. But it hasn't changed my mind right now.

King: I know from my own reaction to a discussion that it takes me a while to think things through. So I'd rather get back to them tomorrow. I expected the views on Monsanto and I also expected the ethical principles driving towards religious principles in favour of just natural products. But what was unexpected for me was the general openness of the discussion. There was a much better to-and-fro than I could have anticipated. I'm up for it.

Horizon fails to say GM banana not working – BBC warned in advance of broadcast
Horizon fails to deliver balanced view
GM Freeze, Immediate Release, 27 November 2008

Claims made by BBC 2's Horizon programme [1] that genetic modification of Ugandan cooking bananas would prevent crop losses from a fungal disease are not correct, say GM Freeze, because Ugandan researchers have told the media that they are failing.

GM Freeze sent a letter, based on a preview DVD of the programme, to the Chair of the BBC Trust and the Editor of Horizon last week [2]. GM Freeze pointed out that an Ugandan biotechnologist behind the GM bananas had announced to journalists that genetic modification to protect against the Black Sigatoka fungus was not working in all plants and that the team would have to adopt a new approach:

"Depending on where the gene was inserted, it expressed itself inside the crop in a different manner. Our next target will be to see which crop exhibits stronger resistance when the gene is inserted and then we can conduct more experiments." (GM banana fails to defeat diseases) [3]

The letter to the BBC Trust also pointed out that the programme lacked balance and was misleading in many places:

"Based on this analysis we feel very strongly the Horizon editorial team have produced a programme which is heavily biased to one point of view. Is it intending to produce a second programme looking at alternative solutions? Food security is a complex scientific, socio-economic, political and cultural issue which we feel the current programme has failed to do justice to because of the editorial decision to focus on GM crops. We believe that the interests of the viewer would be best served if the programme is not broadcast".

In the letter GM Freeze sets out a number of factual errors, misleading remarks and omissions, including:

*Claims that GM herbicide tolerant crops had reduced pesticide usage ignores research [4] to the contrary due to the development of weed resistance.

*Claims that gene transfer between crops and wild plants were hypothetical when they have already been shown in the field in the UK, Mexico and Canada.

*Failure to fully examine the environmental, social and economic impacts of GM soya production in Argentina.

*Omission of any mention of the use of patents to control global seed markets by the biotech corporations and the impact on farmers’ rights to save seed and on agricultural biodiversity.

*Failure to examine the health and sustainability aspects of Ugandan diet based largely on cooking bananas.

*Failure to look at alternative solutions to tackling food security and environmental problems in clearly set out in the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) [5] and UN/UNCTAD report [6] published in 2008.

Commenting for GM Freeze, Pete Riley said:

"We are very disappointed with the quality of the programme the Horizon team has produced on GM. This is a very complex area of policy and Horizon had the opportunity to look at all the issues in a balanced and impartial way. They have failed. The claims made about GM bananas in Uganda were grossly exaggerated as there is a long way to go before this research produces trees that have a durable resistance to the fungus – indeed the fungus may overcome resistance as it mutates. Why were these facts not made clear in the Horizon programme? The GM industry are past masters at hyping up their research and now it seems the BBC is happy to go along with it. The film makers also chose to ignore many important issues and glossed over major uncertainties. Members of the public directly taking part in the programme in Norwich were not given a balanced set of facts about GM crops."

ENDS

Calls to Pete Riley 0845 217 8992 or 07903 341065

Notes

1. Horizon BBC2 Tuesday 25th November 2008 - http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00fsxq6/Horizon_Jimmys_GM_Food_Fight/
2. Letter from GM Freeze, Friends of the Earth and The Ecologist to the Chair of the BBC Trust – copy available on request.
3. See http://africasciencenews.org/asns/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=487&Itemid=1
4. GE [genetically engineered] corn, soybeans and cotton have led to a 122 million pound increase in pesticide use since 1996. While Bt crops have reduced insecticide use by about 15.6 million pounds over this period, HT [herbicide tolerant] crops have increased herbicide use 138 million pounds. Bt crops have reduced insecticide use on corn and cotton about 5 percent, while HT technology has increased herbicide use about 5 percent across the three major crops. But since so much more herbicide is used on corn, soybeans and cotton, compared to the volume of insecticide applied to corn and cotton, overall pesticide use has risen about 4.1 percent on acres planted to GE varieties. – Charles M. Benbrook, "Genetically Engineered Crops and Pesticide Use in the United States: The First Nine Years." Biotech InfoNet, Technical Paper Number 7, October 2004.
5. http://www.agassessment.org/
6. http://www.unep-unctad.org/cbtf/publications/UNCTAD_DITC_TED_2007_15.pdf

Jimmy's GM Food Fix
by Jonathan Matthews
The Ecologist, 27 November 2008
http://www.theecologist.org:80/pages/archive_detail.asp?content_id=2003

Reprinted with kind permission of The Ecologist. The November 2008 issue of The Ecologist is a special issue on GM, with contributions by leading experts, academics, and scientists. To find out more and to subscribe, go to
http://www.theecologist.org/pages/archive_detail.asp?content_id=1987


Last year celebrity pig farmer Jimmy Doherty kept 1000 organically reared pigs, while this year apparently he's raised barely 200. But if Jimmy's farm is on the skids, the same cannot be said of his career as a media celeb.

At the end of last month, a glittering star-studded ceremony in London saw Jimmy crowned "National Farmers' Union (NFU) Farming Champion", thanks to his recent TV series: Jimmy Doherty's Farming Heroes. The same series also got cited a couple of weeks later when the star of Jimmy's Farm, picked up an Honorary Doctorate from Anglia Ruskin University.

Farming Heroes took many people by surprise, not least in the mainstream farming community. Farmers Weekly noted, "Half pin-up boy, half boffin, Jimmy Doherty is an unlikely ally of farming... Think agricultural college student meets Essex boy. Son of the soil meets surf dude... A lot of farmers, frankly, hated [Jimmy's Farm] because they reckoned, with its emphasis firmly on drama (basically, he lurched from one crisis to another, many seemingly of his own making), it did nothing to improve the perception of an industry already with a PR problem."

But the first episode of Farming Heroes marked a sea change. Suddenly, the poster boy for rare breeds and sustainable ag was enthusing over mega arable farms and ultra-modern farm machinery, while telling viewers how vital Big Ag was to feed the world. "Big doesn't necessarily mean bad," declared Jimmy. "Acre for acre, we're world beaters and that's something to be proud of." There was no mention of the hidden costs that can accompany this type of intensive farming.

If, at times, the series seemed to resemble a paid advertisement for the National Farmers Union, there was good reason. Farmers Weekly quoted an NFU spokesperson as saying "mainstream TV ads cost millions of pounds and there is no way we are going to do that," but, "One approach the union has been taking is to work with TV and radio researchers and producers to feed into the production process. An example where this worked well is Jimmy Doherty's Farming Heroes."

Exactly when Michael Lachmann had the inspired idea of getting Jimmy to front this week's Horizon programme on GM (BBC2, November 25) is less clear, but it was a stroke of genius by the director. Once again, someone seen by the public as exemplifying an "organic", "back-to-nature", "free-range" approach to farming was to be found gee-whizzing over a radically different style of agriculture. "Wow!", "Unbelievable!", enthused Jimmy in a GM lab, where among other things he got hands on with genetically modifying barley. We were told how "simple" and "natural" GM was and by the end of the programme, Jamie Oliver's mate was telling us that it would be "madness to turn away from this technology." "The science is absolutely amazing," Jimmy told us. "It offers hope."

Other up-beat messages the programme pumped out, as it tracked the GM debate from Argentina to Bavaria, from Norwich to Pennsylvania, before rounding up at a research station in Uganda, were: "modifying" plants is "nothing new", GM is both good for the environment and good for farmers, and there are absolutely no health or ecological problems despite a decade of GM crops. Its most cynically telling message was that the public are prejudiced against GM but can easily be reeducated via a few (misleading!) sound bites delivered by the much-loved Jimmy.

As this indicates, much of the programme's content was straightforward disinformation. It was even claimed that GM crops reduce pesticide use, despite official US data showing the exact opposite. And while, in the climax to the programme, Jimmy claimed genetic modification of Ugandan bananas would prevent serious crop losses for poor farmers, Ugandan researchers recently admitted to the press that these GM bananas are failing. That's no great surprise. There's not a single GM showcase project in Africa that's ever succeeded. But while they last, these supposed silver bullets make for a PR bonanza.

If this all sounds like Jimmy's GM Food Fight was just a one-sided hype fest, then it's important to understand that the production was far more carefully crafted than that. Throughout, Jimmy was used to voice concerns over GM, creating an impression that his approach was not only even-handed but ultra-cautious, while the segments of the programme that followed invariably undercut the very concerns Jimmy had just raised. The concerns expressed by Jimmy were in reality linking devices for each successive sales pitch.

The programme's use of experts was equally sly. On the critical side we got two white males. On the pro-GM side we got diversity: two women GM scientists, a Ugandan scientist, and an American entomologist. The critics were not only outnumbered but got just a fraction of the over-all talking time. Peter Melchett of the Soil Association didn't even get the opportunity to justify his arguments.

The framing of the critics was equally cynical. Doug Gurian-Sherman was not introduced as a molecular biologist and former Environmental Protection Agency biotech specialist, but as "from the Union of Concerned Scientists which campaigns on GM foods". And while the pro-GM scientists were filmed in research settings, Dr Gurian-Sherman's interview took place in an American diner where most of his time was taken up by Jimmy in analysing how many food items in a giant fry-up might contain GM. With his specialist EPA background, he would have been perfect to deal with the environmental issues, but he was never given the chance. Instead we, once again, had vague environmental concerns voiced by Jimmy, then dismissed by a pro-GM scientist.

Finally, there were the many dogs that didn't bark:

*No mention at all was made of the alternative solutions for tackling food security and intensive agriculture's environmental problems – solutions found to be far more credible than GM in the recent major UN-backed study: the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD).

*No mention either was made of the fact that these innovative low-cost approaches are already proving particularly effective in assisting resource poor farmers in the developing world, sometimes helping them to double or even triple their yields.

*There was absolutely nothing to indicate that many of those most opposed to GM crops are to be found in the developing world, beyond some cynically misleading information about the Zambian government's refusal of GM food aid that falsely implied that Africans may have starved and it was all thanks to European hysteria.

*No mention at all was made of the patents and Intellectual Property Rights that encircle GM crops, giving their developers a stranglehold on the food chain.

*No mention was made of the much less controversial biotechnological approaches to plant breeding, like Marker Assisted Selection, that are already making GM look outdated.

And then there was Monsanto - the invisible ghost at Horizon's GM feast. The M word never once sullied Jimmy's lips. The PR problem created by the toxic legacy and ultra-aggressive behaviour of a giant corporation that controls over 90% of the world's GM crops was simply airbrushed away. Instead, GM was represented by scientists from Uganda and the John Innes Centre (JIC) - an institute described by Jimmy as "independent" even though it's had tens of millions of pounds in funding out of the GM giants it's jumped into bed with.

Jimmy's GM Food Fight played so much to the JIC's agenda that, like the NFU, I’d guess the JIC fully understands how to "feed into the production process" to create a prime time soft-sell advertisement. Perhaps they too will now be lining Jimmy up for an award. "JIC GM Champion" might make an appropriate accolade for such a compliant PR asset.

Jonathan Matthews is an editor at GMWatch.

Check out the real facts on GM at: http://www.banGMfood.org

A report on the science communication activities of the John Innes Centre is available at: http://ngin.tripod.com/biospin.htm

On the failure of the GM bananas: http://africasciencenews.org/asns/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=487&Itemid=1

Immoral maize
from Don't Worry, It's Safe to Eat by Andrew Rowell
As of November 2008 this book is only available in hardback: Earthscan Ltd, 2003, ISBN-13: 978-1853839320

Chapela admits that Nature was ‘under incredible pressure from the powers that be’, and that the journal had asked him to respond to four letters that were critical of his paper, of which only the Kaplinsky and Metz letters were published. Both of these critics work or used to work at the department that received the Novartis funding. Metz’s co-author, Johannes Fütterer, is a post doctorate student at ETH-Zurich, under Wilhelm Gruissem. According to Chapela ‘Gruissem was head of department in Berkeley and the person who brought Novartis to us’. Chapela believes that it is this issue that lies at the heart of the whole saga. ‘I and a few other people stood up against it and we made a big scandal that went around the world. It became a very big scandal’, he says. ‘And they just cannot forgive that.’ Metz had even written to Nature defending the Novartis deal. [78] Chapela points to an article in the German press that says that Fütterer only ‘decided’ to write the letter with Metz after consultation with his boss, Gruissem, and ‘his American research associates’. [79] So everyone who had letters published in Nature was in some way connected to the Novartis-Berkeley relationship. [80]

This point was also taken up by others, pointing out the controversy was taking place ‘within webs of political and financial influence that compromise the objectivity of their critics’. Correspondence to Nature also pointed out that the ‘Nature Publishing Group actively integrates its interests with those of companies invested in agricultural and other biotechnology, such as Novartis, AstraZeneca and other “sponsorship clients”, soliciting them to “promote their corporate image by aligning their brand with the highly respected Nature brand”’. [81] As if to prove their point, just over six weeks later, Nature ran a special ‘Insight’ into food and the future, sponsored by Syngenta that contained several pro- GM and anti-organic-farming opinion pieces.82 But Metz and Kaplinsky replied that their criticisms of Quist and Chapela, were ‘exclusively over the quality of the scientific data and conclusions’ and that their funding has ‘absolutely nothing to do’ with their criticisms. [83]

However, the journal also published a further letter by Quist and Chapela where they acknowledged that in relation to iPCR they had misidentified certain sequences. But they added ‘the consistent performance of our controls, as reported, discounts beyond reasonable doubt the possibility of false positives in our results’. The authors, noted that ‘to address’ the challenges laid down by their critics they had used a ‘non-PCR-based method’ called DNA–DNA hybridization. ‘The results of these experiments’ they argued, ‘continue to support our primary statement… The DNA-hybridization study confirms our original detection of transgenic DNA integrated into the genomes of local landraces in Oaxaca.’ [84]

Ironically the fact that GM contamination has occurred is now not disputed by the GM opponents. ‘Quist and Chapela have subsequently presented data that further supports the presence of transgenes in maize landraces – a point that has not been disputed’, argued Prakash on AgBioWorld. [85]

In April, Jorge Soberon, the executive secretary of Mexico’s National Commission on Biodiversity, announced the findings of the Mexican government’s research at the International Conference on Biodiveristy at The Hague. Soberon confirmed that the tests had now shown the level of contamination was far worse than initially reported in both Oaxaca and Puebla. A total of 1876 seedlings had been taken by government researchers and evidence of contamination had been found at 95 per cent of the sites. One field had 35 per cent contamination of plants alone. The Mexican government also re-confirmed the presence of the Cauliflower Mosaic Virus. [86]

Jorge Soberon said soberly that: ‘This is the world’s worst case of contamination by genetically modified material because it happened in the place of origin of a major crop. It is confirmed. There is no doubt about it’. In response, Philip Campbell, the editor of Nature, said: ‘The Chapela results remain to be confirmed. If the Mexican government has confirmed them, so be it’. [87]

In August the President of Mexico’s National Institute of Ecology, confirmed that his team had found 7 per cent of the native maize plants they sampled contained genetic material that appeared to come from bioengineered corn. ‘This is basically the same result that Chapela reported in his study, and both results suggested the presence of transgenic constructs in native maize varieties’, he said, confirming that the paper had been submitted for publication. [88]

But two months later, the controversy took a new twist when the Mexican press announced that Nature had rejected their independent studies into the GM contamination for publication. The reviewers had rejected the papers for opposing reasons. One said that the results were so ‘obvious’ that they did not merit publication in a scientific journal, whereas the other said the results were ‘so unexpected as to not be believable’. The Nature editor said the papers had been rejected on ‘technical grounds’. [89]

So over a year after the revelation of GM contamination in Mexico, the controversy continues and nothing has been done to stop the source of the contamination, but then perhaps that is what the industry wants.

Is GM contamination beneficial?

In the Joint Statement signed by Kaplinsky, Metz and Prakash there is one paragraph that stands out as warranting further analysis: ‘It is important to recognize that the kind of gene flow alleged in the Nature paper is both inevitable and welcome.’ [90]

So GM contamination is not only inevitable but also beneficial, and it fuses together two important pro-biotech messages: that biotechnology is no more than an extension of traditional plant breeding and that because contamination is inevitable, any kind of resistance is futile. Contamination could be inevitable unless regulators act. As Nature Biotechnology candidly pointed out, ‘gene containment is next to impossible with the current generation of GM crops … gene flow from GM crops to related plants thus remain a primary concern for regulators and one that companies need to address’. [91]

Ironically it is in the biotech companies interests not to address this problem, although that is not in the interests of consumers who want choice. ‘The hope of the industry is that over time the market is so flooded [with GMOs] that there’s nothing you can do about it, you just sort of surrender’, say Don Westfall, vice-president of Promar International, a consultant to the biotech and food industries in Washington. [92]

Critics of the biotech industry cannot believe what they read in the Prakash statement. ‘It is not beneficial for the Mexican campesinos or peasants or indigenous peoples’, says Hector Magallon Larson, from Greenpeace Mexico. ‘It is not beneficial for the Mexican environment and it not beneficial for world food security.’

‘You would never say that BSE was inevitable or welcome,’ adds Alan Simpson MP, a leading critic of the industry. ‘The arrogance of it is outstanding. One of the things that Pusztai has been trying to get us to understand is what we are talking about is a completely new frontier and it’s not about plant breeding. This is being run past society and past political institutions on the basis that it is both a radical scientific advance and yet no different at all. It is unbelievably dishonest and anti-scientific.’ There are numerous reasons why the process cannot be beneficial, and one of these is the potential inherent instability of GM crops, something that was outlined in the discussion of the Pusztai saga in Chapter 5 and which Quist and Chapela still stand by. ‘It suggests that transgenic DNA can move around the genome with a range of unpredictable effects, from disruption of normal functions to modification of expressed products that become toxic agents to the generation of new strains of bacteria and viruses,’ Quist says. [93] ‘There are a lot of theoretical reasons to believe that most of the transformation events are going to be ultimately unstable, particularly as they have been put in another environment’, adds GM specialist Dr Michael Hansen from the US Consumers Union.

The fact that many biotech scientists have signed on to a statement that says that GM contamination is inevitable, underpins the theory that many of the industry’s critics and analysts have felt for some time. They believe that the industry has deliberately set out to contaminate both non- GM and organic crops with the implicit or explicit intention of making contamination inevitable. All hope of another alternative agriculture system simply vanishes and once that vanishes, the anti-GM fight becomes hopeless.

‘I think the industry now recognise that hopelessness is their best hope’, adds Alan Simpson. ‘They have manifestly failed to convince the public of either the desirability or safety of GM products. Having failed to convince, having failed to co-opt or to buy the public support, they are left with coercion. Coercion comes in two forms. One is putting an arm lock over the farmers and the other is putting a choice lock on consumers.’

But it is not just the critics who argue that contamination is a deliberate policy. Dan McGuire, Program Director to the 2002 Annual Convention of the American Corn Growers Association: ‘I believe that the biotech companies that market GMO seed would like to see the grain marketing system totally taken over and “contaminated” by GMOs. I expect they would see that as ending their problem’. [94]

With widespread GM commercialization, GM contamination is inevitable. There have now been episodes of GM contamination in Argentina, Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, India, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Sweden, Thailand, the UK and the USA, amongst others. [95] The health and environmental impact of these contamination episodes is unknown. But waiting in the wings are the second-generation crops, those with health and nutritional benefits, and third generation crops – with industrial, or pharmaceutical properties, known as pharm crops. These include vaccines, growth hormones, clotting agents, industrial enzymes, human antibodies, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs. [96]

Scientists believe that work needs to be done to stop pharm crops – which are already being grown – from contaminating other crops. If these are not contained, the US National Academy of Scientists warn that ‘it is possible that crops transformed to produce pharmaceutical or other industrial compounds might mate with plantations grown for human consumption, with the unanticipated result of novel chemicals in the human food supply’. [97]

Dr Norman Ellstrand, a professor of genetics at the University of California, Riverside, and a leading expert on corn genetics, says that ‘if just 1 percent of [American] experimental pollen escaped into Mexico, that means those landraces could potentially be making medicines or industrial chemicals or things that are not so good for people to eat. Right now, we just don’t know what’s in there’. [98]

Others are worried too. ‘Most people are assuming that plants being used for these purposes [bio-pharming] will not enter the food supply, but if you assume that you need to have controls in place to make sure that does not happen,’ says Michael Taylor, who used to work for the FDA and Monsanto. Some are more blunt: ‘Just one mistake by a biotech company and we’ll be eating other people’s prescription drugs in our corn flakes’, argues Larry Bohlen, from Friends of the Earth in the USA. [99]

It is not clear yet who will bear the ultimate responsibility for GM contamination, but it is likely to be the consumer. As we wait to find out, it is worth looking at another part of the fall-out from the Mexican maize fiasco. Ignacio Chapela believes that one of the reasons he was attacked is because he had opposed the corporate of alliance between Berkeley and Novartis; that he had opposed the corporatization of science. But it is not only in the USA that it is happening.

Notes

1 Nature Biotechnology (2002) ‘Going With the Flow’, Vol 20, No 6, June, p527.
2 Platoni, K (2002) ‘Kernels of Truth’, East Bay Express, San Francisco, 29 May.
3 BioDemocracy News (2002) ‘Frankencorn Fight: Cautionary Tales’, No 37, January, p1.
4 National Research Council (2002) Environmental Effects of Transgenic Plants: The Scope and Adequacy of Regulation, Committee on Environmental Impacts Associated with the Commercialization of Transgenic Plants, Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources, Division on Earth and Life Studies, National Academy Press, Washington.
5 Quist, D and Chapela, I (2001) ‘Transgenic DNA Introgressed into Traditional Maize Landraces in Oaxaco, Mexico’, Nature, London, Vol 414, 29 November, p541.
6 University of California – Berkeley (2001) Transgenic DNA Discovered in Native Mexican Corn, According to a New Study by UC Berkeley Researchers, Press Release, 28 November; Quist and Chapela (2001) op cit, pp541–542.
7 Quist, and Chapela (2001) op cit, p542.
8 ETC Group (2002) GM Fall-out from Mexico to Zambia: The Great Containment – The Year of Playing Dangerously, Winnipeg, 25 October.
9 University of California – Berkeley (2001) op cit.
10 Chapela, I (2002) Interview with Author, 1 March.
11 BBC Radio 4 (2002) ‘Seeds of Trouble’, 7 January
12 Dalton, R (2001) ‘Transgenic Corn Found Growing in Mexico’, Nature, London, Vol 413, 27 September, p337.
13 Ferris, S (2002) ‘Battle Lines Drawn in Mexico; Native Corn too Sacred to “Infect”?’ The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 28 February.
14 Quist and Chapela (2001) op cit, p541.
15 Dalton (2001) op cit.
16 Quist and Chapela (2001) op cit, p543.
17 Yang,S (2001) Transgenic DNA Discovered in Native Mexican Corn, According to a New Study by UC Berkeley Researchers, University of California Press Release, 29 November.
18 Press, E and Washburn, J (2000), ‘The Kept University’, The Atlantic Monthly, Vol 285, No 3, pp39–54.
19 See Rowell, A (1996) Green Backlash – Global Subversion of the Environment Movement, Routledge, London, New York.
20 Murphy, M (2001) Subject: Mexican Corn – the new Starlink-Monarch-Mutant Scare Story, Posted on the AgBioView site on the 29 November.
21 Smetacek, A (2001) Subject: Ignatio Chapela – Activist FIRST, Scientist Second, posted on the AgBioView site on 29 November.
22 MacGregor, B (2001) Re: Genetically Modified Material Found in Mexican Corn, posted on AgBioView list on 30 November.
23 Mann, C (2002) ‘Has GM Corn “Invaded” Mexico?’, Science, Vol 295, p1617, 1 March.
24 Kinderlerer, J (2001) Regarding AGBIOVIEW: Chapela and Mexican corn, China, New Zealand support up, Lomborg, Peanut map, Posted on the AgBioView list on 1 December.
25 http://www.foxbghsuit.com/wwwboard/messages/1168.html
26 See www.bivings.com
27 http://www.bivingsreport.com/search_view_full_article.php?article_id=73
28 Rowell, A (2002) ‘Seeds of Dissent’, The Big Issue South West, 15–21 April, pp16–17.
29 Ibid.
30 Copies of the emails provided to the author by the The Ecologist.
31 Rowell (2002) op cit.
32 Platoni (2002) op cit; Monbiot, G (2002) ‘The Fake Persuaders’, The Guardian, London, 14 May, p15.
33 Rowell (2002) op cit; Matthews, J (2002) ‘Amaizing Disgrace’, The Ecologist, London, Vol 32 No 4, May.
34 Bivings Group (2002) Statement on the Ecologist story entitled ‘Amaizing Disgrace’, May.
35 Bivings, G (2002a) ‘Bivings: We Condemn Online Vandalism’, Letter to The Guardian, 12 June.
36 BBC Newsnight (2002) ‘Row Over GM Crops – Mexican Scientist Tells Newsnight he was Threatened Because He Wanted to Tell the Truth’, London, 7 June.
37 Bivings, G (2002b) ‘The Maize Feud’, New Scientist, 6 July.
38 Rowell (2002) op cit; Monbiot (2002) op cit; Matthews (2002) op cit; Bivings (2002a) op cit.
39 The original article was posted as the The Bivings Report (2002) Viral Marketing: How to Infect the World, 1 April.
40 Platoni (2002) op cit.
41 Bivings Report (2002) Viral Marketing: The New Word of Mouth, 1 November.
42 The Monsanto sites listed before the changes were Monsanto Corporate, Monsanto Africa; Monsanto France; Monsanto Fund; Monsanto India; Cornfacts; Monsanto Pakistan; Monsanto Spain; Monsanto UK; BioTech Basics; BioTech terms; Biotech Knowledge Centre; Monarch Info; Report on Sustainable Development and Teaching Science.
43 See cffar.org
44 Philipkoski, K (2002) ‘A Dust-Up Over GMO Crops’, Wired News, 12 June.
45 The New York Times (1999) ‘Biotech Companies Take on Critics of Gene- Altered Food’, 12 November; The Wall Street Journal (1999) ‘Monsanto Fails Trying to Sell Europe on Bioengineered Food’, 11 May.
46 Prakash,C (2002) Interview with Author, April.
47 Smetacek,A (2000) A Plea to Stop Eco-Terror, 21 July.
48 Rowell (2002) op cit.
49 Del Porto, D (2002) Interview with Author, Bivings, April.
50 http://www.v-fluence.com/about/team.html.
51 Bivings Group (2001) A Look Into the Future of Online PR, January.
52 Byrne, J (2001) Protecting Your Assets: An Inside Look at the Perils and Power of the Internet, a Presentation to the Ragan Communications Strategic Public Relations Conference, V-Influence, 11 December.
53 ETC Group (2002) GM Pollution in the Bank? Time for “Plan B”, News Release, Winnipeg, 4 February; Magallon Larson, H (2002) Interview with Author, 5 March.
54 Mann, C (2002) ‘Has GM Corn Invaded Mexico?’ Science, Vol 295, 1 March, p1617; Magallon Larson, H (2002) op cit.
55 Transgenic Research (2002) ‘No Credible Evidence is Presented to Support Claims that Transgenic DNA was Introgressed into Traditional Maize Landraces in Oaxaca, Mexico’, Editorial, 11, ppiii–v.
56 Hansen,M (2002) Communication with Author, June.
57 EPA (2001) Bt Plant-Pesticides Biopesticides Registration Action Document, Washington, 15 October, pIIA3.
58 Posted on the NGIN website on 27 February, 2002; http://www. ngin.org.uk
59 Rowell (2002) op cit.
60 Lepkowski W (2002) ‘Biotech’s OK Corral’, Science and Policy Perspectives, No 13, 9 July.
61 Ibid.
62 ETC Group (2002) UnNatural Rejection? The Academic Squabble Over Nature Magazine’s Peer-Reviewed Article is Anything but Academic, News Release, Winnipeg, 19 February.
63 Avery,A (2002) Joint Statement from Scientists? 21 February.
64 Prakash, C (2002) Joint Statement of Scientific Discourse in Mexican GM Maize Scandal, 24 February.
65 Nature (2002) ‘Editorial Note’, 4 April.
66 Webber, J (2002) Interview with Author, 4 April.
67 Campbell, P (2002) Letter to The Guardian, 15 May.
68 Clarke, M (2002) ‘Suggestion on Mexican Maize Article,’ Email to Kate O’Connell, 10 June.
69 Platoni (2002) op cit.
70 Chapela, I (2002) And Yet it Moves, Letter to The Guardian, 24 May.
71 Suarez, A et al (2002) ‘Correspondence’, Nature, Vol 417, 27 June, p897.
72 BBC NewsNight (2002) ‘Row Over GM Crops – Mexican Scientist Tells Newsnight he Was Threatened Because He Wanted to Tell the Truth’, London, 7 June; Meek, J (2002) ‘Science Journal Accused Over GM Article’, The Guardian, London, 8 June.
73 Metz, M and Fütterer, J (2002) ‘Suspect Evidence of Transgenic Contamination’, Nature, 4 April; Kaplinsky, N et al (2002) ‘Maize Transgene Results in Mexico Are Artefacts’, Nature, 4 April.
74 Prakash, C (2002) Joint Statement of Scientific Discourse in Mexican GM Maize Scandal, 24 February.
75 http://www.public.iastate.edu/~iazelaya/Newsletter_Vol_1_No_3- Addendum.pdf
76 Apel, A (2001) The Face of Terrorism, Posting to AgBioView, 18 September.
77 Metz and Fütterer (2002) op cit.; Kaplinsky et al (2002) op cit.
78 Metz, M (2001) Correspondence, Nature, Vol 410, No 513, 29 March.
79 Chapela, I (2002) Communication with the Author, 15 April; quoting the ETH magazine “ETH-Life”, 25 March
80 Chapela, I (2002) Interview with Author, 1 March.
81 Worthy, K, Strohman, R and Billings, P (2002) Correspondence, Nature, Vol 417, 27 June, p897.
82 Gee, H (2002) ‘Food & the Future’, Nature, Vol 418, 8 August, p667.
83 Metz, M and Fütterer, J (2002) Correspondence, Nature, Vol 417, 27 June, pp897–898; Kaplinsky, N (2002) Correspondence, Nature, Vol 417, 27 June, p898.
84 Quist, D and Chapela, I (2002) Brief Communications, Nature, 4 April.
85 AgBioWorld.org (2002) Mexican Maize Resource Library.
86 Brown, P (2002) ‘Mexico’s Vital Gene Reservoir Polluted by Modified Maize’, The Guardian, London, 19 April.
87 Clover, C (2002) ‘“Worst Ever” GM Crop Invasion’, The Daily Telegraph, 19 April.
88 Abate, T (2002) ‘Hot Seat May Cool for Berkeley Prof: Mexican Scientists Reportedly Confirm his Findings of Engineered Corn in Maize’, The San Francisco Chronicle, 26 August.
89 Rosset, P (2002) Open Letter to Nature, October; Food First (2002) Nature Refuses to Publish Mexican Government Report Confirming Contamination of the Mexican Maize Genome by GMOs, Press Release, Oakland, 24 October; ETC Group (2002) GM Fall-out from Mexico to Zambia: The Great Containment The Year of Playing Dangerously, Winnipeg, 25 October.
90 Prakash, C (2002) Joint Statement of Scientific Discourse in Mexican GM Maize Scandal, 24 February.
91 Nature Biotechnology (2002) op cit, p527.
92 Laidlaw, S (2001) ‘Starlink Fallout Could Cost Billions’, The Toronto Star, Toronto, 9 January.
93 Pearce, F (2002) ‘The Great Mexican Maize Scandal’, New Scientist, London, 15 June.
94 McGuire, D (2002) Farmer Choice – Customer First When it Comes to GM Crops, Presentation to 2002 Annual Convention of the American Corn Growers Association on 9 March; Washington, 13 March.
95 Villar, J (2001) GMO Contamination – Around The World, Friends of the Earth International, Amsterdam; Hager, N (2002) Seeds of Distrust, Craig Potton, Nelson, pp12–20.
96 Friends of the Earth (2002) Manufacturing Drugs and Chemicals in Crops Biopharming Poses New Risks to Consumers, Farmers, Food Companies and the Environment, Washington DC, July, Executive Summary; IPS (2002) ‘Host for “Pharm Crop” Experiments,’ Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero, Puerto Rico, 29 October.
97 Committee on Environmental Impacts Associated with Commercialization of Transgenic Plants of the National Academy of Sciences (2002) Environmental Effects of Transgenic Plants: The Scope and Adequacy of Regulation, National Academy Press, p68.
98 Schapiro, M (2002) ‘Sowing Disaster?’, The Nation, 10 October.
99 Friends of the Earth (2002) Drugs And Chemicals Will Contaminate Food Supply Concludes New Report, Press Release, Washington, 11 July.