Subject: Article in Financial Times...
Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 14:39:01 -0800 (PST)


Financial Times
Copyright Financial Times Limited 1997
Saturday, November 8, 1997

Perspectives

THE NATURE OF THINGS

The huge unstoppable experiment
By Clive Cookson

Genetically engineered plants are spreading rapidly over the fields of North America. This year farmers in the US and Canada planted an estimated 10m hectares with crops -- maize, cotton, soyabeans and oilseed rape -- that have added genes to make them resistant to insect pests or herbicide sprays.

In Europe, the equivalent transgenic crops have not got beyond small-scale trials, as environmentalists and politicians argue whether the risks of plant genetic engineering outweigh the promised benefits of improved agricultural yields and quality. The debate has generated much emotional heat but little scientific light. What, then, are the real risks?

For many consumers, the main concern is a selfish one: that eating genetically engineered foods will damage their health. Hence the campaign for all products containing genetically modified ingredients to be labelled, so people can avoid them if they want to.

Most scientists, on the other hand, are not worried by the direct health risks. They say the products of the newly inserted genes are harmless to humans -- and any unforeseen problems caused by genetic engineering can be picked up by stringent testing.

A recent example was the transfer of a gene from Brazil nuts to soyabeans. This was intended to improve the beans' nutritional quality by adding an essential amino acid, but it had the unexpected effect of triggering an allergic reaction in some people who ate them during research tests. The project was therefore dropped.

The environmental hazards of crop genetic engineering are potentially more worrying. One big risk is that terrible new weeds could be created inadvertently.

It is unlikely that many crop plants could be turned directly into weeds, simply through the addition of one or two new genes, because they are too highly bred for human purposes to thrive in the wild. But scientists are worried by the danger of the added genes spreading from crops into existing weeds and giving these a new selective advantage, through added resistance to pests, chemical sprays or bad weather.

The genes could leap into weeds through the formation of hybrids between crops and related wild plants. Just last week, French scientists reported in the journal Nature the results of experiments to test this hypothesis. They confirmed that herbicide resistance genes, added to oilseed rape, could move into hybrids between rape plants and wild radish -- and persist in the field through several generations.

Although the French experiments do not prove that this would be a problem in agricultural practice, they do give cause for concern.

Another environmental concern is the effect on insects of adding insecticidal genes to crops. Several of the first-generation transgenic crops produce a bacterial toxin, known as Bt, which kills insect pests. Biologists fear that evolutionary pressures may soon make the pests resistant to the toxin, which is also applied as a bio-pesticide. In that case, farmers would have to resume spraying chemical insecticides.

Crop engineering companies believe they can control the resistance problem by requiring farmers to plant "refuges" of conventional crops alongside transgenic Bt crops. For example, as a condition of buying Monsanto's Bt cotton seeds, US farmers must plant one acre of ordinary cotton for every 25 acres of transgenic crop. The idea is that non-resistant pests can thrive in the refuges and constantly replenish the insects' gene pool with vulnerability to Bt. But it remains to be seen whether such refuges will be large enough to work.

Then there is concern about possible knock-on damage to beneficial insects. Although insecticidal genes are aimed specifically at pests, such as the cotton bollworm, they may cause secondary damage to other insects.

A three-year project, sponsored by the EU, is now underway to study the impact of transgenic plants on bees and other pollinating insects. Preliminary results suggest that genetic engineering of rape plants slightly changes the chemical composition of nectar and pollen collected by bees -- changing their foraging pattern and increasing mortality.

Campaigners against crop engineering, such as Greenpeace, point to other specific hazards -- for example, from the "marker genes" for antibiotic resistance that are inserted into some transgenic plants for technical reasons. But their loudest alarm is about unforeseen dangers that may come from the sheer unpredictability of genetic engineering.

On the other side of the argument, the big ag-bio companies such as Monsanto, AgrEvo and Novartis point to the "risks" of abandoning crop engineering. They say it offers the only route to increasing agricultural yields enough to feed the world's growing population in the next century, without ploughing up the remaining wild parts of the planet or using unacceptable levels of chemical fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides.

In fact, it is probably already too late to stop. The agricultural and industrial momentum behind genetically engineered crops is irresistible. Too many American farmers are already convinced of their benefits. And their European counterparts will not stand being left out for long. A huge experiment in environmental genetics is under way.
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Subject: Monsanto Bulletin 12/10/97

Monsanto Completes Successful Season for Agricultural Biotechnology Products and Sets Stage for 1998 Growing Season

ST. LOUIS, Dec. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Monsanto Company (NYSE: MTC) has completed its second successful year of commercializing new agricultural products created from biotechnology and is setting the stage for additional growth from these products in 1998, it told growers and seed companies at the American Seed Trade Association meeting in Chicago this week.

In 1997, Monsanto had YieldGard insect-protected corn, Bollgard insect- protected cotton, NewLeaf and NewLeaf Plus insect-protected potatoes, and Roundup Ready canola, cotton and soybeans on the market. Limited quantities of a cotton product with both Bollgard insect protection and Roundup Ready herbicide tolerance also were available this year, and were sold out.

YieldGard Outperforms Competition Preliminary results of this year's harvests show strong results for all of Monsanto's products. YieldGard, which is in its first year of commercialization, was exceptionally strong based on studies at 200 locations in the U.S. Corn Belt. Comparisons conducted by several leading seed companies showed that corn with the Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) gene produced higher yields than unprotected corn. However, Monsanto's YieldGard corn provided significantly higher yields than other Bt brands.

YieldGard hybrids outperformed corn without the Bt gene by an average of 15.7 bushels per acre (a 9.7 percent increase) and outperformed other Bt brands by 9.8 bushels per acre (a 5.7 percent increase). YieldGard is the only product on the market that expresses the Bt gene throughout the plant with season-long protection against multiple generations of corn borers. In Iowa, where infestation was high, YieldGard hybrids outperformed the same hybrids without the Bt trait by 21.6 bushels per acre. Even in areas with light infestations of corn borers, Bt protection resulted in improved yields of six or more bushels per acre compared with the same hybrid without the Bt gene.

Collaboration Agreement With Stine Seed and Asgrow Announced Monsanto also announced this week a non-exclusive collaboration between it, its Asgrow subsidiary and Stine Seed Company to further improve and develop soybean genetics and technology owned by the companies. Stine is the leading supplier of soybean genetics in early maturing varieties, and Asgrow is a leader in worldwide soybean research and seeds.

"This collaboration builds on our commitment to broadly license our technologies and make sure that farmers have access to the very best technology, in the best germplasm and in the brands of their choice," said Robert T. Fraley, co-president of Monsanto's agricultural sector.

Surveys conducted earlier this year of soybean farmers who planted Roundup Ready soybeans in 1997 indicate that more than 90 percent of those growers intend to reuse the product in 1998. More than 95 percent of those surveyed were satisfied with the product and said it met or exceeded their expectations.

Global Commercialization Monsanto is rapidly commercializing its biotechnology products around the world. To date, its new traits for crops have been commercialized or have received regulatory approvals in the United States, Mexico, Argentina, Canada and Australia. Regulatory clearances are being sought simultaneously in these and other countries, such as China and India. The global potential for these products is large: Roundup Ready soybeans alone could be used on more than 30 million acres outside the United States, almost 10 times the acreage planted in 1997 in Argentina and more than three times that planted in the United States this year.

In addition to the products currently being sold, Monsanto has more than 30 agriculture biotechnology products in its product pipeline, including those that provide agronomic traits, such as insect- and disease-resistance, and those that provide quality traits, such as improved oils or foods enriched with vitamins through biotechnology.

As a life sciences company, Monsanto is committed to finding solutions to the growing global needs for food and health by sharing common forms of science and technology among agriculture, nutrition and health. The company's 20,000 employees worldwide make and market high-value agricultural products, pharmaceuticals and food ingredients.

CO: Monsanto Company

ST: Missouri, Iowa

IN: MTC AGR

SU: ECO

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Date: Wed, 10 Dec 97 17:08:45 -0500
Subject: New concern on GE sugar beets in Ireland

NEW CONCERNS ABOUT GENETICALLY ENGINEERED SUGAR BEETS IN IRELAND
by Beth Burrows

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December 8, 1997 (Ireland). New concerns about industry relations with regulatory agencies and the quality of testing of genetically engineered crops emerge just two days before the Irish High Court is scheduled to review the decision to allow testing of Monsanto Corporation's genetically engineered sugar beet in Ireland.

European Parliament member (MEP) Nuala Ahern, reviewing material from the public files at the Irish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), today pointed to evidence that two representatives of Monsanto, Mr. Sydney Reid and Dr. Cathy Webb, met with EPA November 24th, to discuss further plans for field-testing genetically-engineered crops in Ireland next year. According to documents in the file, Monsanto had requested that the names of all farmers involved be kept secret.

"I am appalled at the typical multi-national arrogance towards the legal system in a sovereign state, " Ahern said. "It's insulting. They don't even have the decency to wait until after the judicial review takes place. I am astonished that the EPA, who professed themselves constrained by the court case to the extent of postponing their own public conference, should have even consented to meet with the company."

Earlier this year, EPA had cancelled its own public debate on genetic engineering "on the advice of counsel" in anticipation of the judicial review.

Adding to Ahern's concern about EPA administrative procedures were revelations about the crop actually being tested in Ireland. Looking at a crop inspection report from July 7, she noted that "35-45% of the beet plants treated with Round-Up Biactive were dying. According to the report, this was due to Line 77 (one of the cultivars of the genetically-engineered sugar beet) being only 47% transgenic and line 203 (another strain of sugar beet) being only 58% transgenic."

The phenomenon of dying plants in a crop publicly touted to be resistant to the herbicide Round-Up evidently came as quite a surprise. Learning that almost half the crop was not transgenic to begin with, Ahern commented, "And they tell us this is a precise science! What's going on here? Did this occur in other European tests?"

Noel and Paula Giles, the research consultants who had unearthed the material from EPA files, noted that the files contained many revealing documents. "Even the omissions were fascinating," said Paula Giles. "We did not see, for example, any scientific references to testing effects on soil or insect life or water, but perhaps that will be in the raw data which we have not had a chance to analyze thoroughly yet." MEP Ahern added, "My concern is more for the effect on farmers. I am quite troubled by what appears to be a complete lack of testing of the sugar content of these new beets to be grown in Irish soil. Sugar content is the most important factor in the price farmers get paid for the crop."

Wednesday, 10th December, the Irish High Court begins review of the Environmental Protection Agency decision to allow Monsanto Corporation to test genetically engineered sugar beet at a research center on government-owned land in Carlow. The judicial review was sought last May by Clare Watson, a founder member of Genetic Concern, the campaign group created to highlight the potential dangers of genetic engineering in food and agriculture.

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Date: Sun, 21 Dec 97 23:16:23 -0500
Subject: GE-tobacco in Brazil

Brazil's Secret: Crazy Tobacco

Copyright 1997 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of the Associated Press.

By TODD LEWAN
AP National Writer

SANTA CRUZ DO SUL, Brazil (AP) -- Freakish tobacco plants that explode from the soil in this remote river valley grow huge leaves on stalks as thick as Louisville Sluggers. The growers here call it fumo louco -Crazy tobacco.

Crazy not just because it grows so big and so fast. Crazy because it has been genetically altered by one of the world's largest tobacco companies to pack twice the nicotine of other commercially grown leaf.

The farmers of Brazil's southernmost state are growing it by the ton for the world market, The Associated Press has found, though it could not be learned for certain which countries are importing the nicotine-rich leaf.

Fumo louco -- the farmers' generic term for several related strains of high- nicotine tobacco -- is the offspring of a genetically altered plant created in U.S. laboratories for Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., the third largest U.S. cigarette maker. The seed was then secretly shipped to Brazil in violation of U.S. export law.

Over the past year, the AP has observed its cultivation and harvest on small farms all over the state of Rio Grande do Sul, from Paulo Berganthal's 10-acre, table-flat plantation, to Neury de Oliveira's 20 mist-shrouded acres in the high country.

Some of these varieties are so high in nicotine that smokers might get sick smoking them in their pure form, but they can be blended with cheaper, weaker tobaccos to make cigarettes with nicotine levels that satisfy smokers.

Fumo louco blends give cigarette makers a new tool for adjusting nicotine levels in their products. They may also provide the U.S. Food and Drug Administration with a new argument for the assertion that the tobacco industry intentionally manipulates nicotine levels to "hook" smokers. At stake is the question of whether the FDA should have the power to regulate nicotine as a drug.

The FDA has been aware that a high-nicotine tobacco had been developed but did not know that it is being cultivated in large commercial quantities, said Mitch Zeller, an FDA deputy associate commissioner.

However, 18 Brazilian farmers openly acknowledged they are growing the high- nicotine leaf by the ton, and many said they have been growing it for more than five years.

"It's weird stuff," Oliveira said in his native Portuguese. The nicotine content is so high that "just the crazy smell of it gets you dizzy. But sir, it comes up like nothing you've ever seen."

Farmers estimated that half of the roughly 40,000 acres under tobacco cultivation in the region are devoted to the high-nicotine leaf. That means an area about one-and-a-half times the size of the island of Manhattan is covered in fumo louco.

The farmers said they sell their high-nicotine tobacco to Souza Cruz, a Brazilian company owned by B.A.T. Industries, the same British conglomerate that controls Brown & Williamson.

Souza Cruz did not respond to questions. Brown & Williamson spokesman Mark Smith said that "it would be inappropriate for us to comment" because of pending government investigations. The U.S. Justice Department has convened grand juries in Washington, D.C., and New York state to investigate whether tobacco companies and their officials lied to the government about manipulating nicotine levels in their products.

After farmers sell their fumo louco to Souza Cruz, it goes to the company's processing plant in Santa Cruz do Sul. Souza Cruz boasts it is the world's biggest. About a third of the tobacco processed at the plant is high-nicotine leaf, according to Louis Radaelli, a company genetics researcher, and several former Souza Cruz technical experts.

Once the leaf enters the plant, it is difficult to learn where it goes. Souza Cruz mixes it with other tobaccos to form some of its blends, and the recipes are trade secrets.

Souza Cruz is among the world's biggest exporters of tobacco, and about a fifth of its production goes to cigarette makers in the United States. Britain, Japan and Germany are also major customers. The company does not use high- nicotine leaf in cigarettes marketed in Brazil, but declined to explain why.

The FDA learned in 1994 that Brown & Williamson had developed a nicotine-rich plant code-named Y-1 and that limited quantities had been grown in Brazil in the early 1990s. Some of it was imported by Brown & Williamson, which used it as an ingredient in five cigarette brands sold in the United States in 1993 and 1994.

Although this was legal, the FDA was concerned enough about the implications to disclose its findings to Congress in July of 1994. Brown & Williamson executives responded by assuring the agency that they had dropped the project and stopped using Y-1 in their Raleigh Lights, Richland Lights King Size, Viceroy King Size, Viceroy Lights King Size and Richland King Size cigarettes.

That appeared to be the end of the story. It wasn't.

The AP has learned:

--Y-1 cultivation began in Brazil in 1983 -- years earlier than the FDA realized.

--Souza Cruz, according to its own figures, shipped nearly 8 million pounds of Y-1 to the United States for Brown & Williamson between 1990 and 1994 -- nearly double the amount the FDA knew had been imported.

--Souza Cruz's own experiments with Y-1 have produced hundreds of new strains of high-nicotine tobacco, some of which are being grown commercially in Brazil.

Months after the FDA's Y-1 disclosure to Congress, growers and Souza Cruz agronomists said, the company ordered farmers to stop cultivating high-nicotine strains.

But the growers have kept planting it and, they say, Souza Cruz keeps buying it, praising its quality and paying top prices.

The commercial production of genetically altered, nicotine-enhanced tobacco may have implications for the pending $368.5 billion tobacco settlement between cigarette makers and attorneys general of 40 states.

The biggest stumbling block to the settlement is whether the FDA should regulate tobacco as a drug. Tobacco companies contend that nicotine isn't addictive and insist that they vary nicotine levels in cigarettes solely for taste. The FDA views nicotine-enhanced tobacco as a tool for deliberately controlling the dosages of an addictive substance.

The story of how fumo louco leaped from a laboratory experiment in the United States to a cash crop in Brazil also raises questions about government efforts to regulate the biotech industry's use of genetically altered material.

------

It began in, of all places, a U.S. government lab. It was 1976, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture was trying to develop a "safer" cigarette.

Specifically, the USDA wanted to create a tobacco that would be low in tar, a sticky residue linked to cancer. Cigarette companies knew how to reduce tar by chemically treating the tobacco, but this also removed much of the nicotine, the substance smokers crave.

Dr. James F. Chaplin, a breeder at the USDA's Tobacco Research Laboratory in Oxford, N.C., thought the answer was to create a strain abnormally high in nicotine. That way, he said in a 1977 paper, the removal of the tar would still leave plenty of nicotine behind.

At a cost of about $2 million in USDA money, Chaplin crossbred several wild and commercial tobacco varieties in an effort to boost nicotine levels. He developed five new varieties, field-testing them at the Wilson, N.C., farm of Hubert Hardison, who worked for an affiliate of Brown & Williamson.

Hardison said his only involvement was to plant the seed. "I was the farm boy, I guess. Somebody to do the work. You send me some tobacco seed and I grow them."

After the field testing, Chaplin discarded all but two varieties, code named Y-1 and Y-2, said Dr. Vernon Sisson, a longtime colleague of Chaplin's at the USDA in Oxford.

"They had the best aroma, and the highest nicotine -- between 4 and 5 percent," he said. "That's what they were looking for."

According to Sisson, Hardison brought Y-1 and Y-2 seed to Brown & Williamson. Chaplin, who resigned from the USDA in 1986 to work for Brown & Williamson, declined to comment.

In the early 1980s, Brown & Williamson took Y-1 to DNA Plant Technology, a biotechnology company founded that year in Cinnaminson, N.J. At DNAP, the company later told the FDA, scientists used state-of-the-art breeding techniques, including processes known as protoplast fusion and hybrid sorting, to genetically alter the Y-1 strain.

David Evans, DNAP's project manager, did not respond to requests for interviews. The company did not respond to a list of questions.

When Y-1 emerged from DNAP's laboratory, it had a nicotine level of 6.2 percent -- double the amount of any tobacco commercially grown in America.

"What they had done was unheard of," said the FDA's Zeller. "All of a sudden, you had tobacco that was twice as powerful as anything out there."

Nothing in U.S. law would have prohibited Brown & Williamson from growing this new tobacco in America. However, a quality-control agreement between growers, cigarette makers and the government stipulates that tobacco with nicotine levels lower than 2 percent or greater than 4 percent is not eligible for federal price support. That means American farmers would have little interest in growing it.

Besides, Brown & Williamson CEO Thomas Sandefur would say in 1994, growing Y- 1 in the United States would make it too easy for competitors to get the seed.

But in a remote region of Brazil, Brown & Williamson had a corporate sister.

------

Y-1 and Y-2 seed first arrived in Brazil in 1983, according to Arcangelo Mondardo, a former Souza Cruz soil expert and tobacco researcher who worked on the project from 1983 to 1992. Mondardo is now a professor of agronomy at Unisul, a university in Santa Rosa do Sul, Brazil.

Seed was shipped to Souza Cruz in boxes marked "samples." More was stuffed in plain envelopes and sent by air mail, said Mondardo and two other Souza Cruz agronomists who worked on the project.

According to Zeller, Janis Bravo, a former DNAP scientist, told FDA investigators that she personally shipped more than 10 pounds of Y-1 seed to Brazil in one calendar year prior to 1991. Bravo declined to comment.

Jefferey S. Wigand, a former Brown & Williamson vice president for research (and the highest-ranking executive to turn against the industry), has testified that Phil Fisher, who was in charge of tobacco blending and testing for Brown & Williamson in Louisville, Ky., flew to Brazil "several times" with Y-1 seed hidden in cigarette packs. Fisher -- now retired, though he continues to work as a part-time consultant for the company -- declined to comment.

At the time, U.S. law prohibited export of tobacco seed, pollen or live plants without a special USDA permit. Permits could be granted only for quantities of a half-gram or less, and only for experimental use.

Neither Brown & Williamson nor DNAP ever sought such permits, said William Coats, an administrator at the USDA's tobacco division. The permit requirement was eliminated by legislation signed on Dec. 13, 1991, after tobacco companies lobbied for the change.

In late 1983, the growing began in Brazil.

That first year, Souza Cruz distributed Y-1 and Y-2 seed to 100 plantations and harvested more than a ton of the leaf, Mondardo said. Over the next several years, Souza Cruz distributed seed to hundreds more farms, most of them in the state of Rio Grande do Sul.

Production increased steadily, Mondardo said. One former company official, who asked not to be identified, said production reached 4.5 million pounds by 1990. Since it takes a pound of tobacco to make 20 cartons of cigarettes, 4.5 million pounds of high nicotine leaf, blended with weaker tobaccos in a 1-to-5 ratio, would be enough to make 450 million cartons.

By 1987, the company dropped Y-2 in favor of Y-1, according to Mondardo. Y- 1, he said, "had a stronger stalk and lost fewer leaves in the wind and rain. It matured better, had a better aroma. Most important, it was higher in nicotine."

In the early years of production, Brown & Williamson employees came to Brazil to observe the progress, Mondardo said.

"I test-smoked Y-1. Phil Fisher smoked it, too," in cigarettes blended with other tobaccos, Mondardo said. "It not only satisfied you, it gave you, well, a sort of pleasant high."

But there were bugs to be worked out.

Y-1 was too susceptible to some plant diseases. Worse, it produced fertile seeds that could be easily stolen and used by competitors. The company couldn't get patent protection for the plant because U.S. law permitted patents only for species altered by recombinant DNA -- a technique that had not been used to develop Y-1.

Souza Cruz and DNAP, the biotechnology company in New Jersey, both went to work on the problems.

In Brazil, Souza Cruz used crossbreeding on plantations to create hardier versions of Y-1, and created hundreds of new lines of tobacco from the breed. "Each one had a secret code number," said the source who worked on the project for about 10 years.

"We weren't just working for Brown & Williamson," said Volnei B. Sens, the agricultural operations manager for Souza Cruz in Rio Negro from 1987 to 1990. "An objective was to improve our own lines."

Mondardo said that by the time he left the company in 1992, "they had created about 1,000 new lines, and selected the best for commercial purposes."

Eloy Roque Sterz, a Souza Cruz field technician from 1991 to 1993, said he saw company reports showing the nicotine level of one hybrid at 8 percent -- nearly three times pre-Y-1 levels.

"The way it looked, grew, smelled," he said, "you couldn't NOT see Y-1's blood in it."

In the early 1990s, world demand for quality tobacco outpaced production. Souza Cruz saw the hybrids as an answer, said Adelar Fochezatto, a supervisor in Souza Cruz's tobacco experimentation department from 1986 to 1990. Cigarette companies could buy cheaper, weaker tobacco and blend it with the hybrids "to keep nicotine levels up where they needed them," he said.

By 1990, both farmers and former Souza Cruz agronomists said, the company was handing out seed from some of these new hybrids for farmers to grow in their fields.

The following year, both Souza Cruz and DNAP had succeeded in producing sterile varieties of Y-1 -- plants that could not reproduce without the artificial addition of special pollen. That September, Brown & Williamson applied for a U.S. patent. A basis for the patent, as stated in the application papers, was that DNAP had used recombinant DNA techniques to map the genes of Y- 1.

Pollen and seed for the sterile Y-1 created at DNAP were soon shipped to Brazil. Seventy grams of pollen were sent in three shipments in 1990, according to export certificates obtained by the AP. Fifty pounds of seed were legally shipped in 1993, another export certificate showed.

"With all of that pollen and seed, you could blanket all of Europe in tobacco," said Dr. Sebastiao Pinheiro, a leading Brazilian agronomist at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul.

A 1981 Brazilian law forbids growing of foreign plants capable of "causing irreversible damage to genetic banks, ecosystems or humans." A 1995 law prohibits the cultivation of imported, genetically altered plants or hybrids made from them without government permission.

Growing large quantities of Y-1 and its hybrid cousins may have violated those laws, said Paulo Afonso Leme Machado, a law professor and President of the Brazilian Society of Environmental Law, and Dr. Eliana Fontes, a member of Brazil's biosafety commission.

Pinheiro and Machado said that large-scale growing of the genetically altered plants "could change the gene pool of our native tobacco species," and might pose unknown health risks to farmers. Fontes said Souza Cruz never applied for permission to grow those varieties. Souza Cruz declined to comment.

Once Y-1 was made sterile, several farmers said, Souza Cruz attempted to destroy all fertile, high-nicotine varieties to protect itself from competitors. But it was too late; the company had lost control of the varieties.

Farmers, who had taken a liking to Y-1 and its offspring because they brought high prices and cut about six weeks off the growing season, already had begun producing their own Y-1 seed and were swapping it among themselves.

They are still doing that today.

"Souza told us to stop planting louco," said Laury de Oliveira, 33, who owns a 10-acre farm. "But I don't listen. Look at it. In just two months it's up over your head. Now why am I going to stop? Nicotine?"

Enoir Mueller, a former Souza Cruz field instructor who grows fumo louco on an 8-acre farm, said: "The company line is that what we're planting today is different tobacco, but anyone who works with the stuff knows that's just a story."

Fumo louco brings the best price from the company's buyers, said David Moraes, another small farmer.

He led a reporter to his sorting barn. Lighting a match, he threw open the door.

Bitter air buffeted the senses. A sting in the back of the throat tightened into a knot. Lips tightened. Eyes tingled, itched, watered. A queasiness spread from the pit of the stomach up through the chest.

"That," said Moraes, turning up a kerosene lamp, "is the bite of fumo louco." ------ EDITOR'S NOTE -- Randy Herschaft, AP investigative researcher, contributed to this report.


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Date: Wed, 07 Jan 98 10:48:47 -0500
Subject: Hightower show on transgenics

Jim Hightower's New Year's Eve show was on transgenic food; the transcript follows:

A SURPRISE IN YOUR DINNER: "TRANSGENICS"

Wednesday, December 31, 1997

"What's for dinner?" is no longer the relevant question. "What's in dinner?" is a much more important question.

In addition to old-fashioned, cyclospora and salmonella, there are virulent, new, mutant bacteria like E.Coli 0157:H7, not to mention the unknown and untreatable prions that cause Mad Cow Disease.

As if this is not plenty to have on our plates, along come the corporate food technologists to add some nasty surprises to our daily rations. These engineers are taking the DNA from one organism and inserting it into another. The result are altered organisms that these Dr. Frankensteins call "Transgenics."

Transgenics are already in the supermarkets. Among the genetically engineered food you might be serving to your family tonight are tomatoes, corn, salmon, potatoes, cheese products and soy products.

I say "might be serving" because there's no way for you to know. Our government "watchdogs" have allowed Monsanto and other corporate manipulators to mess with the DNA of dinner without bothering to tell us. The altered products do not even have to be labeled!

Does it matter? Is a pig's butt pork? If you have a serious food allergy, eating the tampered bag of Fritos could kill you. The FDA says transgenics are safe, but -- get this -- there have been NO HUMAN TESTS! These corporate technologists are making foods never before eaten by humans -- we are their guinea pigs!

Even your baby might be part of their genetic experiments. The New York Times commissioned a test of soy-based baby formulas and found that Alsoy, Similac, Neocare, Isomil and Enfamil all contained genetically-altered soy ingredients -- which are going right into your babies.

This is Jim Hightower saying . . . If you think it's time to require all transgenics to be clearly labeled call Mothers For Natural Law on 515-472-2809.
For more information:

Mothers for Natural Law: 515-472-2809

Source: "Eating Well" by Marian Burros. New York Times: May 21, 1997.

Contact us directly at: hightower@essential.org

Hightower Home Copyright 1997 - Hightower and Associates, Inc.

Hightower's shows are available in audio at:
http://www.webactive.com/webactive/content/hightower.html


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Date: Mon, 08 Dec 97 19:02:36 -0500
Subject: NYTimes on "Bioserfdom" 12/8/97

Editorial: Biotechnology and the Future of Agriculture

by Verlyn Klinkenborg

Not long ago a cotton crop failed in the Mississippi Delta. In some fields planted with a new, genetically altered strain called Roundup Ready cotton, most of the bolls, from which the fiber is harvested, simply dropped away. For the farmers, it was an economic disaster. For Monsanto and the Delta and Pine Land Company, the developers of Roundup Ready cotton, it was a local public relations disaster -- the result, they allege, of bad weather, insects and human error. Roundup Ready cotton incorporates a gene that is supposed to allow a cotton plant to withstand the effects of a widely used weed killer called Roundup -- Monsanto's brand of a glyphosate herbicide. Monsanto has also developed strains of Roundup Ready soybeans and corn.

Nearly 14 million acres of cotton were planted in the United States this year, 3 million with Roundup Ready cotton. The failure of even a fragment of this country's genetically altered cotton is worrying because major agricultural corporations like Monsanto have committed themselves, and America's farmers, to the belief that biotechnology is the future of agriculture. This cotton failure, small as it is in national terms, dramatically demonstrates why that belief needs serious, continued scrutiny.

For thousands of years, farmers have looked for better varieties of the crops they plant, and for all but the last half century or so, farmers have been the principal means of improving crops. My grandfather, who farmed in northwestern Iowa before World War II, is a good example. He set aside some of each autumn's corn harvest, tested the ears of corn he saved and planted seeds from the best ones the following spring. He and many thousands of farmers like him controlled the genetic material on which their livelihoods, as well as America's food supply, depended. It wasn't necessarily the most efficient means of crop improvement, but it had the virtue of being broadly based -- genetically and politically -- and locally controlled. Steady observation and experimentation by farmers, after all, is how we got from the ancestral form of maize -- a thumb- sized nubbin of seeds -- to a modern ear of corn, which is as big as a man's forearm.

The genome of corn or soybeans or cotton is literally the common inheritance of humanity. Biotechnology manipulates that genome only fractionally -- inserting, say, a gene for pesticide resistance. But that is enough to allow a corporation to patent a manipulated version of the genome. Even if a patentable gene manipulation appears fairly benign, its use has an important impact on the diversity and control of agricultural genetics. A farmer who chooses to use Roundup Ready soybeans, for instance, must pay an additional "technology fee" of $5 per 50-pound bag of seed. He must also sign a licensing agreement that requires him to let Monsanto agents inspect his fields, prohibits him from using any glyphosate herbicide but Roundup and prevents him from saving seed for future planting. He also consents, implicitly, to the further centralization of agricultural control.

Certainly, Monsanto has a right to profit on its investment in this technology and to protect it. But the past half century in American agriculture has witnessed not only the flow of people from farms to cities but also the flow of information -- and with it economic and technological power -- from farmers to agricultural corporations. The introduction of gene-altered crops, and the licensing used to protect them, is one of the final steps in the reduction of farmers to what one agricultural foundation calls "bioserfdom" -- becoming mere suppliers of labor.

What is worse, Roundup Ready cotton offers exactly the wrong solution to the needs of farmers, who grasp at any economic advantage. There has been a boom in the production of organic cotton in recent years, driven in part by consumer demand. Roundup Ready cotton leads in exactly the opposite direction. Monsanto has created a Monsanto-brand cotton that tolerates a Monsanto-brand herbicide. In other words, the use of one Monsanto product thus guarantees the use of another. This may make sense in terms of corporate profits, but it makes no sense at all in terms of the resources that really matter -- the health of the land and the people who live upon it.

Monday, December 8, 1997
Copyright 1997 The New York Times


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Subject: Herbicide Buctril ban
Herbicide Ban 01/07

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) Some Mississippi cotton growers say they will be hurt by a federal agency's decision not to allow continued production of a herbicide that has been teamed with genetically engineered cotton. But O.A. Cleveland Jr., an extension marketing specialist at Mississippi State University in Starkville, said it's too early to draw such a conclusion. "I think it's probably much ado about nothing at this stage," Cleveland said of the recent Environmental Protection Agency ruling.

Citing possible cancer risks, EPA announced it will not renew the temporary federal food tolerances granted during last year's growing season for the herbicide Buctril, specifically targeting an ingredient known as bromoxynil and a chemical byproduct called DBHA. The temporary use provisions ended Jan. 1. Rhone-Poulenc Ag Co. of North Carolina, which makes Buctril, has promised a vigorous challenge of the EPA decision.

Genetically altered cotton seed is resistant to Buctril, allowing growers to spray fields for weeds once the cotton begins growing without killing their crop.

The combination of special seeds and the herbicide is promoted as a way to save money. Farmers would not have to spray for weeds before the cotton emerges from the ground but could still spray later, depending on the weed growth.

Allowing the temporary tolerances for Buctril to expire will likely cut into the sale of the more expensive genetically altered seeds, officials said.

Continued cultivation of the new cotton poses "serious concerns about developmental risks to infants and children," said Lynn Goldman, an assistant EPA administrator.

"In particular, we are concerned that the data show significant and irreversible human health effects," Goldman informed U.S. cotton growers in a letter.

In allowing the temporary use provision to expire, EPA applied new pesticide rules that provide more health protection for infants and children. It applied an additional tenfold safety factor for assessing health risks under the federal Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, which emphasized that children are exposed to more pesticides in food or can be more sensitive to them.

Private scientists and state officials said the risk of unspecified birth defects was at issue in the Buctril decision.

The chemicals enter diets through various foods cooked in or made with products derived from cottonseed, such as mayonnaise or corn chips fried in cottonseed oil. The EPA said unacceptable health risks also may arise from eating such things as beef and poultry from animals fed cottonseed meal. The agency said it is concerned about unacceptable cancer risks of continued use of the herbicide on cotton. A recent laboratory study showed bromoxynil produces liver tumors in mice.

"We don't think it is a decision based on sound science," said Rhone-Poulenc spokesman Rick Rountree. "We think the dietary risk is absolutely minuscule."

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Date: Tue, 10 Mar 98 20:19:27 -0500
Subject: Food Fascism

The [London] Guardian March 5 1998

US plans would banish genuine organic produce

FOOD FASCISM

George Monbiot

OPRAH WINFREY is an unlikely hero of the battle against big business. Yet the case she won last week, in which she established her right to express an opinion about the merits of eating beefburgers, ranks with the McDonald's libel trial as one of the few serious setbacks suffered by the agro-industrial combines seeking to monopolise world food production.

She had been sued, by a syndicate of monster cattle ranchers, under the surreal "food disparagement" laws introduced in 14 American states to prevent people from questioning such practices as feeding bovine offal to cows.

These laws are a compelling demonstration of the lengths to which US legislators will go to defend the interests of corporations against the interests of the citizen. We can only be thankful that there's an ocean between us and American plutocracy.

Our happy state won't last, however. Winfrey might have won her battle, but the war waged by an industry that can tolerate no dissent has only just begun. Its latest attempt to silence criticism and eliminate good practice is already well- advanced, and this time the consequences for Britain are just as profound as the consequences for America.

ON MARCH 16, the US Department of Agriculture will close its consultations on a new national standard for organic farming. Its proposals have horrified small farmers, consumer groups and animal welfare campaigners. If adopted and implemented as protesters predict, they will outlaw genuine organic production all over the world.

The USDA would allow fruit and vegetables to be labelled "organic" in the United States which have been genetically engineered, irradiated, treated with additives and raised on contaminated sewage sludge. Under the new proposals, "organic" livestock can be housed in batteries, fed with the offal of other animals and injected with biotics. "Organic" produce, in the brave new world of American oligopoly, will be virtually indistinguishable from conventionally- toxic food.

The solution would seem to be obvious: genuine organic producers should call their food something else. But the USDA is nothing if not far-sighted. The new proposals prohibit the setting of standards higher than those established by the department. Farmers will, in other words, be forbidden by law from producing and selling good food.

The next step, if these standards are adopted in the United States, is not hard to anticipate. American manufacturers will complain to their government that the European Union is erecting unfair barriers to trade, by refusing to allow them to label the poisonous produce they sell here as organic food. The US Government will take the case to the World Trade Organization. The WTO will refer it to Codex Alimentarius, the food standards body dominated by corporate scientists. The Codex panel will decide that they cannot see -any difference between American organic produce and European organic produce, and the WTO will threaten Europe with punitive sanctions if it continues to maintain the higher trading standard. This is precisely the means by which European consumers are being forced to eat beef and drink milk contaminated with injectable growth hormones.

There's no mystery about why US agribusiness wants its Washington subsidiary, the USDA, to set these new standards. The consumption of organic food is rising by 20-30 per cent a year and, in some countries, is likely to become the dominant land use. Organic farming is labour intensive. It responds best to small-scale production, matched to the peculiarities of the land.

Big business simply can't operate in an environment like this. There is no potential for hegemony. What it can't control, it must destroy. The United States government claims to be the champion of free trade, but it is, in truth, emphatically opposed to it. It seeks instead to exercise a coercive power of central control and legislative diktat, on a scale which makes the command economies of the old Soviet Union look like a village paper-round.

I've long believed that we should be allowed to vote in US elections, as their outcome affects us almost as much as it affects the Americans. British people now have a brief opportunity to do the next best thing, and demand of the USDA that it drops this attempt to smother the seeds of rehabilitation. There are no second chances. Once the new standards come into force, our own Government will be powerless to protect us from the consequences.

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Date: Sat, 11 Apr 98 09:26:00 -0500
Subject: Monsanto's RRS vs Am. Cyanamid

Tuesday March 24, 4:23 pm Eastern Time
Company Press Release
SOURCE: American Cyanamid Company

2) Field Trial Results Show Economics of Weed Control in Roundup Ready and Elite Soybeans

PARSIPPANY, N.J., March 24 /PRNewswire/ -- America's farmers could experience yield losses up to $43 per acre when choosing to use Monsanto's (NYSE: MTC - news) Roundup Ready(R)* soybean program. The yield differential is shown when growers plant Roundup Ready soybeans and rely on a single application of Monsanto's Roundup Ultra(TM)* herbicide, rather than use a residual control herbicide program or plant ``elite'' soybean varieties. These findings are based on a series of field trials conducted for American Cyanamid Company in 1997 by growers across U.S. soybean-producing regions and assume a soybean market price of $6.50 per bushel.

``These trials demonstrate that many growers are seeing a different economic picture than was anticipated from the Roundup Ready soybean program,'' says Howard Minigh, president, global agricultural products for American Cyanamid, the leader in the U.S. soybean herbicide market. Cyanamid's portfolio of soybean herbicides provides farmers season-long, residual control of weeds, protecting the crop from planting to harvest, and can be used on all soybean varieties.

``The grower trials confirm what we have been saying for years and what university researchers have already found: weed pressure in the first four weeks of the growing season negatively affects yields,'' Minigh adds. ``Roundup on Roundup Ready soybeans is one weed control option, but it is not the only solution for U.S. farmers. We believe growers should choose seed varieties that have the best all-around genetic package and then plan their weed control to optimize yields.''

Early-season residual weed control in Roundup Ready soybeans is not possible when based solely on Roundup Ultra, which may call for leaving weeds untreated for up to four-and-a-half weeks. During those crucial weeks, the field trials show, there can be significant yield loss as the soybeans compete with the vigorously growing weeds for light, water and nutrients. Residual control herbicides such as Cyanamid's IMI(TM) imidazolinone herbicides protect the crop against this early competition.

Large-Scale Field Trials Show Range of Yield Advantage with Residual Control

Results from three different series of field trials totaling nearly 300 across the United States show that farmers will want to consider seed genetics and the best agronomic advice to fit their farming operation, soil conditions and weather.

The most significant difference in yields was seen in the trials that compared Roundup Ready soybeans to elite, i.e., superior, varieties, which are not tolerant to Roundup Ultra. In more than 100 comparisons on growers' fields, elite varieties treated with a Cyanamid imidazolinone product had a 20-percent average yield advantage over Roundup Ready soybean varieties that were treated with only a single application of Roundup Ultra. The fact that the Roundup Ready gene currently is not available in many top-yielding varieties could cost the grower at harvest about $43 per acre in yield loss, based on a soybean price of $6.50 per bushel.

Another 86 field trials showed that residual weed control programs based on a Cyanamid imidazolinone herbicide outyielded a single application of Roundup Ultra in identical Roundup Ready soybean varieties by an average of 18 percent, or 4.7 bushels per acre. These fields were weed-free from the start. That means choosing to plant Roundup Ready soybeans and following a standard Roundup Ready program could potentially cost soybean producers nearly $30 per acre in yield loss.

In the third series, Cyanamid's residual-based herbicide program on Roundup Ready soybeans followed by or tank-mixed with Roundup Ultra as needed outperformed the same soybean varieties grown with only a single application of Roundup Ultra by an average of 11.8 percent. This finding was based on 200 trials that were weed-free from the start.

``The importance of these findings cannot be overstated because of the impact on U.S. growers' profitability,'' says Stephen Briggs, who heads Cyanamid's field force of agronomy specialists. ``Without early-season residual control, the soybean crop does not have the ability to withstand the weed competition and produce to its maximum yield potential.''

Residual Weed Control Protects Crop and Profits

A soybean herbicide program with residual properties, such as Cyanamid's Squadron(R), Pursuit(R) Plus, Steel,(R) or Prowl(R) followed by Pursuit(R) herbicide, will control weeds that compete with the crop for nutrients, moisture and sunlight during the critical first few weeks of a plant's growth, Briggs adds. IMI(TM) herbicides will control weeds that are already growing, as well as those that have yet to emerge through the soil surface.

Conversely, a herbicide such as Roundup Ultra will only control those weeds that are actively growing above the soil surface. Since not all weeds germinate at the same time, weeds that emerge after the first treatment in a Roundup program must be resprayed, meaning multiple applications of Roundup and multiple trips across the field. This further reduces profit because of increased cost of additional herbicide, fuel and time spent treating the crop.

American Cyanamid is an early innovator in developing herbicide-tolerant crops, launching the first of these crops nearly six years ago. In 1992, it introduced IMI-CORN(R) hybrids, a nontransgenic biotechnology discovery that allows farmers to use imidazolinone herbicides on their corn. Through advanced plant breeding techniques and collaboration with seed industry partners, Cyanamid has now brought more than 200 IMI-CORN hybrids to farmers.

In 1997, LIGHTNING(R) herbicide was launched and applied to almost one million acres of IMI-CORN because of its outstanding performance in controlling weeds.

Cyanamid is working with universities and seed company partners to extend its imidazolinone tolerant technology to other crops. In Canada, canola farmers use ODYSSEY(TM) herbicide on SMART(TM) canola. Breeding programs and research and development are underway to expand the IMI herbicide-tolerant trait to other major agronomic crops, including wheat and rice.

Soybeans are naturally tolerant to many imidazolinone herbicides, which were introduced in 1985. This class of chemistry was discovered by Cyanamid scientist Dr. Marinus Los who was awarded the presidential National Medal of Technology in 1993 for his contribution to the protection and production of commercial crops. The IMI herbicides are especially notable for their low use rates and favorable environmental profile.

American Cyanamid Company is a subsidiary of American Home Products Corporation (AHP) (NYSE: AHP - news), which is one of the world's largest research- based pharmaceutical and health care products companies. AHP is a leader in the discovery, development, manufacturing and marketing of prescription drugs and over-the-counter medications. It is also a global leader in vaccines, biotechnology, agricultural products and animal health care.

The statements in this press release that are not historical facts are forward- looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties including those detailed from time to time in AHP's periodic reports, including quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and the annual report on Form 10-K, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Actual results may differ from the forward-looking statements.
Always read and follow label directions.

a.. (R)/(TM) Trademarks, American Cyanamid Company (C)1998.
b.. Roundup Ready(R) and Roundup Ultra(TM) are trademarks of Monsanto
Company
SOURCE: American Cyanamid Company


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Date: Sun, 12 Apr 98 15:47:49 -0500
Subject: Re: Hormonal [rBGH] rage

RIVERFRONT TIMES, APRIL 8, 1998

HORMONAL RAGE: Monsanto spikes a Florida TV story about its bovine growth hormone. Reporters refused to be cowed.

BY JEANNETTE BATZ

Steve Wilson and Jane Akre, a husband-and-wife team of investigative reporters for Tampa Bay's WTVT (Channel 13), were proud of their four-part series on Monsanto's bovine growth hormone (BGH). The station, a new Fox affiliate, was proud, too -- it bought radio ads to promote the series. They'd already begun to air when a Monsanto attorney sent a warning letter to the CEO of Fox News.

Nine months of postponements, bitter arguments and 73 rewrites followed. The "facts" at issue were as slippery as a just-milked cow. Monsanto's BGH is a genetically engineered hormone injected into dairy cows to boost milk production. The reporters' initial script was full of lively criticism, punctuated by briefer clips of Monsanto denying, correcting, explaining. The science in question is fairly subjective; how you weight the various explanations is also a judgment call. Akre and Wilson leaned toward a handful of renegade critics, not the official regulatory agencies that have approved BGH without long-term testing.

But they never expected to lose their jobs over it. Last Thursday, they filed suit against the station, charging that their December firing violated Florida's whistle-blower law.

Akre, who once worked here at KTVI (Channel 2), has nearly 20 years of broadcast experience; Wilson has 25. Both have won awards for their reporting. For their BGH script, the pair had plenty of videotaped interviews and a binder of background material on the genetically engineered hormone's unexplored health risks, its prevalence on Florida dairy farms, the effects on dairy cows and the large grocers who had quietly reneged on a promise not to sell milk from treated cows until BGH won widespread acceptance.

The reporters say the series' script had been approved by the local station's news director and scheduled for Feb. 24, 1997, when a letter arrived at the office of Fox News chief Roger Ailes on Feb. 21 from John J. Walsh of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, a New York law firm retained by Monsanto. Walsh wanted to notify Ailes that Monsanto officials had sensed bias in the WTVT reporters and doubted their ability to be fair. He suggested that Fox senior executives proceed with caution. "There is a lot at stake in what is going on in Florida," he concluded, "not only for Monsanto, but also for Fox News and its owner."

Walsh never suggested censoring the story, of course; he simply urged "a more level playing field" and a more leisurely pace. "While Akre and Wilson spoke of a 'deadline' for submission of these materials," he wrote, "it is inconceivable that treatment of this important subject, which is not a breaking news story, be rushed to fill some pre-designated news programming slot."

The series was postponed one week; Akre and Wilson were notified that very afternoon. WTVT fine-combed the story, but, according to the reporters, could find no inaccuracies. It was decided that Akre would offer Monsanto a second interview. When a Monsanto official requested a list of the questions in advance, however, Akre offered a list of topics instead. (It is not standard practice for journalists to provide specific questions.)

Walsh fired back a letter saying, "It simply defies credulity that an experienced journalist would expect a representative of any company to go on camera and respond to the vague, undetailed -- and for the most part accusatory -- points listed by Ms. Akre. Indeed, some of the points clearly contain the elements of defamatory statements which, if repeated in a broadcast, could lead to serious damage to Monsanto and dire consequences for Fox News." He ended by reminding Ailes that the development of the series "requires close, continuing attention from you and/or other senior news executives of Fox."

Next came a hellish period of rewriting, documentation, argument. According to the reporters' lawsuit, they were told to include information they knew to be false or misleading. In an April 10, 1997, letter, Fox's legal vice president, Carolyn Y. Forrest, informed Akre and Wilson that they were writing "combative, contentious memoranda" about a story that was being handled no differently than any other. "I am sure you can appreciate that the application of neutral principles will yield different results," she wrote, "depending on the subject matter to which the principles are applied." She tacitly conceded that the Monsanto letter had begun the discussion, but said "subsequent scrutiny of the BGH script has been inspired by the unnecessary risk caused by the lack of fairness and the deficiencies we have found in the story."

What deficiencies did the requested rewrite correct? If you compare the scripts posted on the reporters' Web site, the requested version made more deletions than additions, omitting credentials of controversial experts and deleting such quotes as, "We're going to save some lives if we review this now," from a scientist critical of Monsanto's product. The rewrite also deleted the University of Florida's role in the research, promotion and approval of BGH; deleted specific mention of IGF-1, a growth factor that increases in milk from treated cows; and substituted "human health implications" for "cancer." The Florida grocers who had originally pledged not to sell the milk until it won widespread acceptance (they later reneged) were credited with responding to consumer wishes, not protecting their sales.

The reporters say they were told to withhold information about Monsanto's previous behavior so it wouldn't look as if they were "building a case" against Monsanto. Meanwhile, they had to fight to keep a colorful "crack for cows" description of BGH first uttered eight years ago by the Massachusetts agricultural commissioner and since quoted by more than a dozen publications. WTVT made their reporters track down the former commissioner and confirm the quote.

There were a few additions, though: Akre and Wilson say they were required to include the assertion, "This is the most studied molecule certainly in the history of domestic animal science," which they believed to be untrue. At one point they suggested simply killing the story rather than doing something they considered misleading. "We will not 'kill' the story," Forrest assured them, "but we will review and edit it until it meets our standards.... If you are chafing under the editorial and legal scrutiny, you may find it more useful to actively cooperate in producing a fair and balanced report." If they couldn't live with that, she suggested they say so, "without rancor or bombast, and we will release you from your contract with us. Although we want you to remain a part of our team, please be advised that your failure to adhere to and cooperate with our procedures and directions constitute insubordination and are a breach of your employment agreement."

According to the lawsuit, the new WTVT general manager, David Boylan, told Akre and Wilson that he "wasn't interested" in looking at the story himself and pressured them to follow the company lawyer's directions, adding, "Are you sure this is a hill you're willing to die on?" On April 16, they say, he told them, "We paid $3 billion for these television stations. We will decide what the news is. The news is what we tell you it is." He then notified them they would be fired for insubordination within 48 hours and another reporter would make the requested changes. "When we said we'd file a formal complaint with the FCC if that happened," notes Wilson, "we were not fired but were each offered very large cash settlements to go away and keep quiet about the story and how it was handled."

They did not accept. But on May 6, they received a separation agreement that would bind them to silence about "Monsanto's pre-broadcast objections to the News Report, the Station's legal review of the News Report and the Station's response to Monsanto's objections." They refused to sign -- but kept a copy.

On May 29, according to the lawsuit, Forrest told them she didn't think their story was "worth going to court and to trial spending a couple hundred thousand dollars to fight Monsanto." The reporters say she made it clear that "it doesn't matter if the facts are true"; what mattered was whether the station could quickly and easily defend itself from a possible lawsuit by Monsanto.

By June 19, the reporters say they had rewritten the script as directed. They still contended that the changes were misleading or inaccurate. Akre says she was told to be available for other work starting June 23 and was assigned to report on the vandalism of a vacant house, a "news story" not covered by any other station. The BGH series, meanwhile, was rescheduled to air July 28. The reporters met with the new vice president for news, Philip Metlin, and say he agreed that some of the changes didn't work. They modified the changes, but Fox lawyers didn't like their modifications. The broadcast was rescheduled, then rescheduled again.

The couple left on a long-planned vacation -- and returned in September to a letter notifying Wilson of possible termination three months hence. (Akre's letter apparently went astray in the mail.) In October, they say, they were suspended without pay ("as an act to evidence good faith and to evidence willingness to continue to work on the BGH story") and locked out of their offices, where computers contained much of their research. During their suspension, they were told to complete two versions of the script, theirs and the requested one.

On Dec. 2, Akre and Wilson were fired. On April 2 of this year, they filed a civil suit against the station. (If they win, they plan to give whatever's left after legal fees to a journalism organization to fund journalists in similar predicaments.) When we called Boylan, the station manager, for comment, we were furnished with an official statement blaming "journalistic differences": "The reporters were not willing to be objective in the story nor accept editorial oversight and news counsel.... The station stood by its standards of fairness and balance in its reporting despite the reporters' threats of retaliation." The station also says its rejected offer to pay Wilson and Akre to work as "consultants" in exchange for their silence "can in no way be characterized as 'hush' money."

The "science" of BGH milk is a muddle of corporate interests, subjective interpretations, blithe approvals and persistent accusations first addressed by the RFT four years ago ("Udder Madness," Jan. 19, 1994). Critics of BGH cite higher levels of antibiotic residue in milk from treated cows, because superproducers are vulnerable to mastitis (udder infections). Monsanto biotech spokesman Gary Barton points to a two-year study that Monsanto contracted six months after BGH hit the market, which showed no increase in antibiotic sales or residues. But, according to Wilson, the sampling and screening process is inadequate for a wide array of antibiotics. "The lab director for the Tampa Independent Dairy co-op is the only man who routinely tests every single load of raw milk that comes from farms in this area," notes Wilson. "In an on-camera interview, he admits he tests for dangerous and illegal antibiotic drug residue only in the penicillin family."

Another point of contention is IGF-1, a substance that increases in milk from treated cows and has been shown to speed tumor growth in other contexts. Monsanto attorney Walsh wrote that "there is no increase in the level of IGF-1 in the milk," but Barton says the potential exists for a slight increase that still falls within a "normal" range. (Some estimate a 25 percent increase, some say 2-20 times as much, some say roughly 10-fold.) Barton says the levels occurring naturally in the human body are far higher than the negligible increase in the milk, and he groans over a recent flurry of calls about a January report in Science linking high IGF-1 levels to prostate cancer. "That's interesting," he says, "but it had nothing to do with milk."

Dr. Michael Hansen, a research biologist at the Consumer Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., who was one of the reporters' sources, says "what is important is the hormones' local concentration. You don't measure globally throughout the body. Hormones are often active at incredibly low levels, and there is often an exquisite balance." Hansen agrees that normally, "IGF-1 would degrade fairly rapidly," but he says "the presence of casein, the major protein in milk, appears to help it survive digestion."

These issues are still new enough, and complex enough, that what you believe is ultimately a matter of whose research and interpretation you trust. Most regulatory groups have agreed with Monsanto. But economics play a part in the emerging consensus, too. And Akre feels justified in her skepticism about official reassurances of safety: "Monsanto owned the studies they contracted out with universities."

Akre and Wilson are convinced that, despite repeated assurances that the story was important, the station never wanted to air it after that first Monsanto letter. The station claimed that the problem was one of insubordination, yet even after they fired the reporters, "they did nothing to get the story on the air with a reporter they could trust," observes Wilson. "Their local reporter was out trying to find out which pizza parlor put the least cheese on their pizza."

The recipient of the initial letter, Ailes, was unavailable for comment after undergoing hip surgery. Pat Anderson, the attorney representing WTVT, says all Ailes did was "pass the letter down the food chain," because the station is owned by Fox Television Stations Inc., not Fox News. "I don't exactly understand the corporate structure -- it is truly complicated," she adds. "But eventually it filtered its way down to the station."

Fast filtering: The reporters say they were notified of the postponement the afternoon of the day Ailes received the letter. Still, Anderson says the real problem was that the series couldn't pass the company lawyers' libel review. "Prepublication review is a normal thing," she points out. "What was not normal about this was the reporters' refusal to include Monsanto's side of the story. I think what happened is, the reporters became convinced; they became advocates."

And the lines between advocacy, truth, integrity and insubordination thin to pencil width when an expensive lawsuit's in the offing.

Meanwhile, back at corporate headquarters, Barton says it's not Monsanto's fault the story was never broadcast. "I don't know why they couldn't get their story on the air," he remarks lightly. "All we've ever asked from journalists is to be as fair as possible. We never stopped answering their questions. All of a sudden, they just stopped calling. I always wondered what happened."

The reporters' allegations are posted on their Web site: www.foxBGHsuit.com. n

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Date: Mon, 04 May 98 13:20:33 -0500
Subject: Monsanto article, NYTimes, May 2, 1998

2 May 1998 New York Times

Getting Biotechnology Set to Hatch

By BARNABY J. FEDER

T. LOUIS -- As biotechnology pioneers like Monsanto Co. see it, the moment is arriving when science can give business the power to put the clock of evolution on fast forward.

To date, the tinkering has already produced products like Monsanto's New Leaf potatoes, which come armed with a bacterial gene that produces a protein deadly to the pesky Colorado potato beetle. But New Leaf springs from research in the 1980s when the available technology limited Monsanto to moving just 60 foreign genes a year into potatoes. Now, Monsanto can create 10,000 new combinations annually.

The more fundamental "genomics" research, which identifies genes and various combinations that might prove useful, is also accelerating. Monsanto's cost to figure out the sequence of amino acids that make up a gene -- the basic control unit of life -- has been slashed to $150 from $2.5 million in 1974. As a result, Monsanto estimates, its library of genetic information and the libraries of all other major drug and agricultural players in the biotechnology field are doubling every 12 to 24 months.

Sound familiar? In the world of electronics, that same rate of explosive growth is known as Moore's Law, after Gordon Moore, the cofounder of Intel Corp. who projected in 1965 that the number of transistors on a microchip would multiply at that clip, fueling a computer revolution.

"It means we are going to have the tools to address big and historically intractable problems with life as we know it, things like how to make plants grow in dry climates and how to live well with heart disease," said Robert Shapiro, Monsanto's chairman and chief executive.

There remain formidable political, marketing and technical risks to, as critics put it, "playing God." But with biotechnology's knowledge engine now running at Silicon Valley speed, Wall Street and many in the biotechnology business are convinced that their industry will produce "life science" giants as prosperous as Intel and Microsoft and that the next few years are likely to sort out many of the eventual winners -- and losers.

For now, Monsanto, based in St. Louis, is seen as the biotechnology front-runner. Sure, the company, which had $7.5 billion in revenues last year, is more than biotechnology alone. Moreover, the new products have a long way to go before Monsanto recoups the more than $1 billion it has invested in biotechnology research. But Monsanto is already raking in profits from having placed a lot of heavy biotechnology bets early in the agricultural sector and is now moving into other sectors, like pharmaceuticals.

"They have the best strategy in biotech and they are executing it better than anyone else," said Jerry Caulder, who recently retired as chairman of Mycogen Corp., a biotechnology pioneer now controlled by Dow Agrosciences, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical Co.

Shapiro says he owes the "fabulous hand" he is playing to Richard Mahoney, his predecessor at Monsanto, who began pouring money into biotechnology in the 1970s after scientists reported key breakthroughs in cloning and techniques to move genes between species. "He had a sense that the fundamental technology would succeed and the rest would fall into place," Shapiro said.

But Monsanto's coronation is hardly a done deal. For one thing, it has rivals that dwarf it, led by E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. in this country and Novartis of Switzerland. DuPont, which retains huge interests in oil and industrial chemicals, aims to quadruple its sales of agricultural products alone to more than $40 billion within 15 years.

The high-stakes scramble for an advantage made billion-dollar takeover prizes last year out of obscure companies like Holden's Foundation Seeds Inc. (Monsanto) and Protein Technologies International (DuPont). All the major biotechnology players in drugs, food and farm products are constantly seeking alliances and partners. (In its 1997 annual report, Monsanto listed 16 deals over 14 months.) And there have been mega-mergers, such as the 1996 marriage of Sandoz and Ciba Geigy of Switzerland to create Novartis, a farm-to- drugs giant nearly four times the size of Monsanto.

Currently, all eyes are on DeKalb Genetics Corp., a leading seed company that has put itself up for sale. The quickest way to move biotechnology into the food chain is to genetically alter the seeds of the best-selling strains of major crops that companies like DeKalb have developed through traditional breeding. Although it is a distant No. 2 to Pioneer Hi-Bred International in the domestic seed business, analysts predict that DeKalb will be worth more than $2 billion.

Monsanto is thought to have an edge in the bidding, which is expected to be decided as early as next week. It already owns 45 percent of DeKalb's nonvoting shares and 10 percent of the voting shares. DuPont is on the sidelines after having shelled out $1.7 billion last year for 20 percent of Pioneer HiBred. But Novartis, Hoechst of Germany, Dow Chemical and Cargill are seen as potential deep-pocketed bidders who may need DeKalb even more than Monsanto does.

It would be a great final exam question for an MBA: At what price is Monsanto better off losing DeKalb and pocketing a huge cash gain on its shares that could be used for other acquisitions? Whatever the outcome, Shapiro disagrees with analysts who say the showdown comes at a bad time for his company because it has been financially strained by its other investments.

"On the whole, it's in our interest for things to happen as fast as possible," he said.

That was not the attitude of Monsanto a generation ago, when it was known for plastics, synthetic fibers, industrial chemicals and its somewhat defensive slogan, "Without chemicals, life itself would be impossible."

Thanks to years of pruning and grafting, Monsanto now sells itself on Wall Street as the prototype "life sciences" company for the next century. To drive home the point, Monsanto spun off most of its chemical operations last summer into a new company called Solutia.

Although the future belongs to biotechnology, the current ace in the hole in Monsanto's life-sciences strategy is Roundup, the world's best- selling herbicide. It is widely used even by farmers who are not growing soybeans, cotton or corn that has been altered to tolerate spraying with it. And Monsanto's drug subsidiary, G.D. Searle, has a strong portfolio of products developed through conventional methods, including a potential blockbuster in a new arthritis treatment.

Still, Monsanto says all its operations -- from Searle to its food ingredient business (best known for Nutrasweet) to its herbicide and seed divisions -- will increasingly be linked to biotechnology. "Life begins at 97," say the signs posted here, referring to both the Solutia spinoff and the company's founding in 1901.

Wall Street is impressed. Monsanto's stock, adjusted for splits, soared from $13.75 in 1995 to a peak of $56.1875 on April 9, and that is not counting the value of the spunoff Solutia shares.

1/8Monsanto closed at $54.375 Friday, up $1.50, and Solutia at $28.50, up 12.5 cents.)

It helps that Shapiro and other senior managers have compensation packages heavily tied to the stock's performance, including requirements that they invest in options that will be worthless unless the stock increases 60 percent in the next five years. But the most telling endorsement of Monsanto's strategy is that analysts have been pestering broader-based companies with strong life sciences businesses, like DuPont and Hoechst, to divest their other operations.

DuPont, for one, doesn't see the need. It contends that biotechnology will eventually contribute to its industrial business -- plants could be altered to produce nylon and other oil-based products, for example. DuPont also says it is ahead of Monsanto in achieving breakthroughs in the genetics of food and animal feed. Monsanto's high-profile success, it contends, has been largely confined to inserting traits in crops that affect how much insecticide or herbicide farmers use, instead of actually changing what is grown.

Bragging rights are valuable, but each also has a lot to gain from the other's successes. The industry needs hit products to knock down the barriers to faster commercialization of biotechnology.

But the specter that is haunting biotechnology, particularly in Europe, is the specter of what British tabloids like to call "Frankenstein food." Polls show that Europeans are more worried than Americans about genetically modified products.

Agrevo, the joint venture of Hoechst and Schering AG, recently postponed the introduction in the United States of soybeans it has altered to tolerate its Liberty herbicide because of doubts that American farmers would be able to sell their harvests to Europe, a major export market.

Here in the United States, the latest sign of tensions is the fierce opposition of consumer and organic farming groups to a proposal by the Department of Agriculture to label genetically altered crops as organic if grown without synthetic chemicals. The regulatory issues could become even more complicated as Monsanto and others home in on altered crops to promote human health. DuPont this year began contracting with farmers to grow a strain of soybeans that produces less fatty oil. Monsanto is aiming for cornflakes that reduce cholesterol and crops that stimulate the production of hormones to fend off osteoporosis.

"We will need to clarify the difference between drugs and nutrients, decide whether these products have to prove safety and efficacy, and figure out what kind of patent protection they will get," said Ganesh Kishore, co-president of Monsanto's nutrition operations, who is also in charge of integrating biotechnology research across Monsanto's businesses.

The uncertainty and the fast pace of change have led Shapiro to introduce some alien management genes into his company. Monsanto has adopted Silicon Valley's casual dress code, for instance. To mix technical and business skills, most operations are now headed by co-managers. Monsanto was an early adopter of the concept of using temporary teams from several departments to attack problems.

"There's some confusion now over who should make decisions," Shapiro conceded. "But the energy level is good, and people are thinking more broadly."

Shapiro is a New York City native and former law professor who freely admits to interest in management ideas he sees others laughing off as "too New Age." Monsanto, he said, may even one day experiment with having employees choose their own managers and with shaping budgets by how many people want to work on a project.

But Monsanto has to be careful about evolving a culture that is hard for outsiders to fathom. "Building a network of companies we can work with around the world is a key job for us," said Hendrik Verfaillie, Monsanto's president and the heir apparent to the 59-year-old Shapiro.

Shapiro suggests that biotechnology is developing so rapidly that the biggest cultural challenge of all may lie ahead: merging Monsanto with a major rival, even if that means the other company's chief executive emerges on top.

"The economic logic is there for more consolidation, although emotion gets in the way," Shapiro said. "I was very impressed with the creation of Novartis."

Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company


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Date: Mon, 04 May 98 19:07:27 -0500
Subject: Organic ruled out for biotech, irradiated food


'Organic' Label Ruled Out For Biotech, Irradiated Food


By Rick Weiss
The Washington Post
Friday, May 1, 1998; Page A02

Intense pressure and criticism from tens of thousands of citizens have pushed Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman to decide that genetically engineered and irradiated food, and crops fertilized with sewage sludge, should not be allowed to be labeled "organic," according to an administration official.

That decision, still not formalized but described by the official as all but inevitable, would remove three of the more contentious issues threatening to derail an effort to codify for the first time a federal definition of organic food.

But several other elements of the USDA proposal remain controversial, including the rule's relatively liberal allowance for the use of antibiotics, nonorganic feed and long-term confinement of animals in the production of organic meat.

An estimated 150,000 people flooded the Agriculture Department with cards and letters during the four-month comment period on the proposal that ended yesterday -- more comments than the department had ever received on any single rule.

The proposed rule had left open the question of whether gene-modified, irradiated or sludge-fertilized crops could be deemed organic. The vast majority of comments opposed those ideas. Moreover, most were personal and passionate, as opposed to mass-produced form letters from interest groups -- an indication of the American public's increasingly fervent hunger for "natural" foods.

In the end, Glickman didn't have "much choice" but to rule out the three most contentious categories of food, at least for now, said the official, who is close to the decision-making process and spoke on the condition of anonymity. "He's a realist," the source said. "It has to be a rule that everyone is able to embrace. And the other side has been too compelling."

Representatives of the organic industry said yesterday that even those concessions would be insufficient. Indeed, given the large gap between what they had envisioned and what the USDA had proposed, they already have begun to create an alternative, independent national system for certifying organic farms and food. That system, they said, would be more in keeping with the stricter standards now in place in several states and European countries.

"We see at least 66 major deal breakers in this proposed rule," said Michael Sligh, who until last year chaired the National Organic Standards Board, created by Congress in 1990 to oversee the creation and implementation of an organic food rule.

"USDA must rewrite this rule," Sligh said at a news conference. "That's the only way to regain public trust."

Glickman said he could not comment specifically on how the department would respond to what he called the "extraordinary" wave of public opinion generated by the proposed rule, but he did promise "significant modifications" in a final rule that he hoped would be approved by the end of this year after allowing for additional comments.

He said he had never considered the proposal perfect, but given the enormous delays that had plagued the rule-making process since Congress demanded standards in 1990, he was proud to get the process going.

"We knew there were areas that were not complete and there would be controversy," he said. "But rather than work on it for another seven years, we said, 'Let's get the rule out and get started.' "

Pressure on Glickman rose this week when dozens of members of Congress signed letters criticizing the proposal. Even agricultural biotechnology giant Monsanto Co. declared in a letter to Glickman last week that it favored delaying any effort to include genetically engineered foods on a national list of approved organic products -- a move some saw as a defensive effort to preclude a permanent ban.

Philip Angell, a spokesman for the St. Louis-based Monsanto, said the company decided to press for a delay in consideration of genetically engineered foods so the company could examine the issue more closely. "We are in the process of developing extensive data showing the sustainable agriculture benefits and the other benefits of some biotech crops . . . that are in keeping with the concept of organic," he said.

Beyond clarifying the meaning of organic for consumers, a federal definition could have significant economic implications domestically and internationally. The $4 billion U.S. organic industry is growing by more than 20 percent a year, spurring many of the nation's bigger food conglomerates to try to cash in on the word's cachet. But the lack of federal standards for the term organic -- which generally means "free of synthetic chemicals and pesticides" but also encompasses broader concepts of environmentally sound food production -- has threatened to undermine consumer confidence and sales.

Sligh and others representing the organic food industry said they were especially troubled by a provision in the proposed rule that gives the agriculture secretary authority to add products to a national list of approved organic foods. Organic industry advocates argue that Congress granted those powers only to the National Organic Standards Board.

If Glickman insists on retaining that authority in a final rule, advocates said, a lawsuit is likely to follow.



Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company

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Date: Tue, 05 May 98 14:14:04 -0500
Subject: Novartis corn harms lacewings

London Times 4 May 1998 SCIENCE BRIEFING

THE FUTURE of maize (US corn) which has been gene-modified could be put in jeopardy by Swiss research that shows it can kill beneficial insects as well as pests. The new results may reopen the argument over European Union authorisation for the crop, which came despite British objections and which has been challenged by two EU states, Austria and Luxembourg.

The maize is made by Novartis (formerly Ciba Seeds) and incorporates a gene from a bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis, that makes a protein poisonous to the larvae of the corn-borer. The B. thuringiensis protein was used as a spray against the pest, but that required application at the time the larvae emerged and before they bored into plant stems. Novartis put the gene into the plant itself.

A team at the Swiss Federal Research Station for Agroecology and Agriculture in Zurich, led by Dr Angelika Hilbeck, has found evidence that the poisonous effects of the protein can spread further. It raised plant-eating insects on B. thuringiensis maize plants and fed them to the larvae of lacewings - which eat crop pests.

They report in Environmental Entomology that the death rates of the lacewings nearly doubled, and this happened whether or not the plant-eating insects were susceptible to B. thuringiensis.

This means that an insect could nibble the plant, then fly off and be eaten by a lacewing, which would die. Far from the protein killing only corn-borers, as Novartis intended, it would also damage other species. Using B. thuringiensis as a spray would be less likely to have such effects.

The finding is another strike against a crop that has been criticised because it contains, as well as the B. thuringiensis gene, genes conferring antibiotic and pesticide resistance. They were put in to simplify seed production, a process described by a Ministry of Agriculture official as "sloppy genetic modification". Britain's expert committee turned down the maize, worried that the antibiotic-resistant gene would get into bacteria and make those antibiotic- resistant.

After much argument, and despite objections from the European Parliament, the B. thuringiensis maize was approved by the European Commission. Michael Meacher, the Minister for the Environment, has said that he is "totally dissatisfied". The Commission, however, says that approval can be withdrawn only if new scientific evidence raises questions of safety. But Dr Ian Taylor, of Greenpeace, says that is what the Swiss scientists have provided. "The UK should ask the Commission to suspend authorisation immediately." he says. "If it won't, then the UK should follow Austria and Luxembourg and impose a national ban."

** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. **


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Date: Thu, 28 May 98 17:02:11 -0500
Subject: FYI: SPEECH FROM JULIAN EDWARDS AT CODEX

Note: Below is the CI intervention on the labelling of genetically engineered foods issue before the Codex Committee on Food Labelling. These comments are excellent and received strong applause from the audience (and not just from the NGOs!).

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

STATEMENT DELIVERED BY JULIAN EDWARDS, DIRECTOR GENERAL, CONSUMERS INTERNATIONAL BEFORE THE CODEX COMMITTEE ON FOOD LABELLING TWENTY-SIXTH SESSION OTTAWA, CANADA

26 -29 MAY 1998

Consumers International urges the Committee to recommend the mandatory labelling of all Genetically Engineered Foods. There are three principal reasons why it should do so, but before I summarise these, I would observe that this Committee not only has the opportunity to ensure that full and proper information is given to consumers, but a mandate to provide leadership on this important issue. Why should comprehensive, mandatory labelling be required?

1. CONSUMERS HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW what is in their food and how it has been produced. The fundamental rights of consumers to information and choice have been recognised around the world ever since President Kennedy drew attention to them in 1963 and they are enshrined in the UN Guidelines on Consumer Protection, adopted by the General Assembly in 1985. Applying these rights to Genetically Engineered Foods, we draw the Committee's attention to the fact that numerous surveys of public opinion worldwide have shown that consumers want them to be labelled. For some, there are health- related reasons for this. But many consumers have cultural, religious or ethical views on genetic engineering--by no means all hostile to the technology, particularly where it may alter flavour or storage life--and unless comprehensive labelling is adopted, they are prevented from exercising choice in relation to these fundamental values when buying food. We also note that the biggest barrier to the effective operation of competitive markets is lack of transparency; for this reason too, consumers need full information.

2. HEALTH PROTECTIONS. We all know that allergenicity is an important problem. The most effective method of prevention is to ensure that those who are at risk have the information to allow them to avoid foods which may affect them. In addition, unanticipated allergenicity or other health problems could be created by the new technology of genetic engineering and labelling is an important tool in allowing the rapid tracing and correction of such events. We welcome the confirmation by Professor Taylor yesterday morning that the list of allergenic foods is incomplete, covers a wide range of product types and that 'every protein is a potential allergen.' Since genetic modification generally involves the transfer of proteins, the case for compulsory labelling is surely overwhelming. Selective labelling will not do. We note that, in 1996, a Joint FAO/WHO Consultation concluded that reliable animal models do not exist for assessing the allergenicity of genetically engineered foods.

3. THERE IS NOT SOUND BASIS FOR A SELECTIVE LABELLING APPROACH. We are strongly opposed to limited labelling based on the concept of 'SUBSTANTIAL EQUIVALENCE.' This is an ill-defined idea which will inevitably require value judgements to be made; this in turn will lead to endless scientific and legal disputes, principally as a result of efforts to limit the information given to consumers. It is not acceptable that the value judgements of Codex officials or of this meeting, or of a court or dispute resolution procedure should take precedence over the right of ordinary people to be properly informed and make their own choices based on their own values.

One of the ironies of the development of this issue is the contrast between the enthusiasm of food producers to claim that their biologically engineered products are different and unique when they seek to patent them and their similar enthusiasm for claiming that they are just the same as other foods when asked to label them.

The principle that process is a legitimate reason for labelling has already been accepted by this very Committee in relation to irradiation, halal, and organic foods. Where people want to buy genetically modified foods for the benefits claimed--and we believe that many will want to do so--or do not want to buy them for whatever reason, they must be given the information to allow them to make this choice.

SUMMARY

Our views are set out in detail in the paper circulated to this meeting, but I will just repeat the recommendations:

--Allergenicity. In recognising the risks of known allergens, it must also be acknowledged that, as a result of the very process of genetic engineering, unknown and uncommon allergens may occur, thereby increasing the risk of further allergies and deeming labelling a necessity for all genetically engineered foods.

--Substantial equivalence cannot be used as a basis for labelling since it is an arbitrary concept and of no significance to consumers for the labelling of genetically engineered foods.

--Genetic engineering is recognized by consumers as the most fundamental of food processing and, like food irradiation, requires labelling to identify this process has taken place.

--Denial of the labelling of genetically engineered foods on the basis of lack of traceability and process control is not acceptable when this can be achieved and regulated by Codex for organic and halal food production processes.

--CCFL has a responsibility to address the issue of providing consumers with information on genetically engineering as a matter of urgency since these foods are already being traded internationally.

FINALLY, I want to draw the attention of the Committee to the strength of feeling on this issue. Consumers International itself is a worldwide organisation bringing together more than 230 organisations in more then 100 countries and counting their membership in tens of millions. On this issue there is wide agreement to the policies I have outlined among a broad range of other non-government organisations, each with its own constituency. Then there is the evidence of many consumer surveys. This is a fundamental issue of the role of and the importance you attach to civil society and the institutions which represent it. They are near-unanimous in their views. This is confirmed and reinforced by developments in the United States, where today a major lawsuit will be launched against the US government by a broad coalition of public interest groups, including scientists, food professionals, and consumer groups. The purpose of this lawsuit is to force the US government to introduce mandatory labelling of genetically modified foods. The argument that ordinary people are not--or should not be--concerned about this issue is completely wrong.

Last night, Laurie Currie, speaking as our host at the splendid reception, said --and I quote--"Codex's business is making standards which meet consumers' expectations." Today you have an ideal opportunity to show your commitment to this principle. We urge the Committee to progress this item by requiring mandatory labelling for all foods produced through genetic engineering.

Thank you.



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Date: Wed, 03 Jun 98 11:14:36 -0500
Subject: Some bad news for BT

-----------------------------------
https://www.hortnet.co.nz/hn/news/n2061.htm

---------------------------------

<Picture: HomeHortNewsNatural Pesticide Turns Nasty In People - Magazine

----------------------------------------------------------------------

-- LONDON 28/5/98 - A bacterium used as a natural pesticide on food and feed crops could cause serious infections in people, according to a report on Wednesday.

Bacillus thuringiensis helps plants naturally resist agricultural pests, but New Scientist magazine said French doctors had discovered it could harm humans after a soldier wounded in Bosnia developed a serious infection from a sub-type of the bacterium.

Scientists at the World Health Organisation and the Pasteur Institute in Paris identified the harmful sample of the bacterium as H34.

When Eric Hernandez, a microbiologist at a military hospital near Paris, injected the strain into mice with weakened immune systems he found the bacteria became dangerous when exposed to blood.

"We think they destroy the walls of blood cells," Hernandez told the magazine.

Most farmers spray their crops with different strains of the bacteria but French scientists have identified another strain used in commercial farm sprays that is also dangerous.

Ecogen Inc, the US company that markets the sprays, insists they are safe because the bacteria are not exposed to blood and not primed to infect wounds.

"There's such a long history of safe use since the 1960s," Ecogen's research director Jim Baum told the magazine.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
-- NZPA



================================



Date: Wed, 03 Jun 98 11:14:50 -0500
Subject: Swiss To Vote on Genetic Engineering Ban (Please Post)


Financial Times (London) May 23, 1998 LONDON EDITION 1 COMMENT & ANALYSIS; Pg. 094) Genetic code of conduct: Swiss people will vote on June 7 in a referendum asking whether they want to "protect life and the environment against genetic manipulation". It is the first time any country has had a chance to vote directly on this most contentious of modern scientific issues.

The vote could have a big impact. If a majority of voters and more than half of the 26 cantons into which the country is divided vote Yes, research projects using transgenic animals will be made illegal, the patenting of plants and animals forbidden and the deliberate release of genetically modified organisms prevented.

That would be a lot more than just a gesture. Switzerland contains two of the world's most successful pharmaceutical companies, Roche and Novartis. Their new product pipeline depends heavily on genetic research into plants and animals. The vote has set alarm bells ringing in their Basle headquarters.

The debate has also split Switzerland's political establishment, with the socialists, the biggest party, supporting the ban, while Ruth Dreifuss and Moritz Leuenberger, two socialist ministers and most of the trade unions oppose it. It is dividing some of Basle's most powerful families. Florianne Koechlin, 50, who comes from the Geigy pharmaceutical empire, now part of Novartis, is one of the leading campaigners for a ban.

In some ways, Switzerland is a surprising battleground for a debate festering in many European countries. It has always been at the forefront of

scientific progress. The country has produced a long line of world-class boffins, ranging from Albert Einstein to Friedrich Miescher, who discovered the existence of DNA. More than 20 Swiss scientists have won Nobel Prizes for research into natural sciences and in Science magazine's 1997 review of citations the Swiss were top in terms of research in areas such as immunology, neurobiology and microbiology.

According to Interpharma, the pharmaceutical industry's trade association, a ban would prevent 2,100 scientists at Swiss universities from continuing their research and could jeopardise 25,000 to 30,000 jobs.

So why are the Swiss threatening to destroy their most successful growth industry? And what arguments are they using in this first formal national debate on genetic engineering?

For Ms Koechlin, the dangers of the unknown are too great. It is a high- risk technology that is "influencing our lives in an unbelievable way and it

will be even more so in 10 years' time". She says 95 per cent of genetic research will be untouched if the referendum is passed, but she likens genetic engineering to "a jumbo jet with bicycle brakes".

In the past, she helped win a moratorium on nuclear power and believes "the increasingly tight bonds between research and industry should concern us all".

Her arguments have struck a chord, especially among women and the German- speaking Swiss, who make up two-thirds of the population. Nevertheless, there may be other reasons why Switzerland, along with its German-speaking neighbours, is so suspicious about genetic engineering.

Some observers link it to the traditional German romantic belief in unspoiled nature. Others cite darker fears that genetic tampering could eventually lead to a rerun of the racist eugenics experiments conducted by Adolf Hitler's doctors more than 50 years ago.

Switzerland's pharmaceutical industry refuses to say how much it is spending to head off the ban, but it seems set to be the most costly referendum in Swiss history. If the Yes campaign wins, it will strengthen the growing disillusion of many business leaders with Switzerland's cumbersome system of direct democracy.

Fritz Gerber, chairman of Roche, says it could paralyse crucial areas of biomedical research: "The most serious and long-lasting damage would be done to universities. However, the pharmaceutical industry too would be seriously affected, since biotechnology is likely to be involved at some stage or other in research and development of most new medicines.

"Unlike the universities, however, industry would have the option of shifting its research and development activities to other countries that carefully nurture rather than hinder modern research."

Fritz Melchers, director of the Roche-financed Basle institute for immunology, says if the referendum is accepted his institute will have to close.

Switzerland is not alone in its concerns about genetic engineering. In Austria, Greenpeace activists have mounted "Genetic Hazard Patrols" to disrupt imports of genetically engineered soya oil. The French government is waiting until after a public debate next month to decide whether to approve imports of new strains of genetically modified maize.

In the UK, frozen food chain, Iceland, has begun selling products guaranteed not to contain genetically modified ingredients, questioning whether its customers want to be "guinea pigs in the largest food experiment of all time".

However, Switzerland is the only country where the population has the right to vote on a highly complex and emotive issue.

Nature magazine ran a recent editorial, called: "How not to run a scientifically successful country." It noted that a country's science base could be weakened by lack of investment (UK), institutional sclerosis (France), or political upheaval (Russia). But it concluded: "For a country voluntarily to remove itself from a lively scientific arena in which it is highly successful is a unique phenomenon."

Ms Koechlin sees the issues differently. "There is increasing scepticism everywhere in the world. The more arrogant large concerns become, the more resistance there will be."

William Hall



=====================================



Date: Sun, 07 Jun 98 17:12:50 -0500
Subject: Direct action against GE crops in UK

Immediate Press Release.. June 4 1998

Direct Action Stops the Gene-Crops - 7 Fields in One Night Derbyshire, Gloucestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Worcestershire.

Last night, in an escalation of popular action against 'frankenstein food', at least seven separate crops of genetically engineered rapeseed were destroyed across the UK. The Genetic Engineering Network was informed of these peaceful direct actions this morning by a reliable anonymous source. They appear to have been strategically chosen and brings the total number of known genetic field 'decontaminations' in the UK to 19. It may be that these nightime activities could prevent this particular controversial crop coming to market.

The deliberate release sites, part of at least 300 nationwide, were being trialed by the following transnational companies: Agrevo, Monsanto, Pioneer Genetique and Plant Genetics Systems. The crops which together cover approximately 10,000 sq metres were cut down using common gardening tools and bare hands. It is likely that hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of damage will have been sustained. This is a significant blow to companies already feeling the effects of public distrust and crop failures. It may be that the commercialisation process for genetically engineered oilseed rape has been slowed down because necessary data is now destroyed.

The seven sites are listed at the end of this release.

In a telephone statement to GEN, a 'cropper' calling herself 'Miss Jean' explained:

"If ever there was a clear case of agrochemical companies placing their profits before the safety of our food and our environment, genetic engineering is it. Nobody has asked for these Frankenstein foods, most people actively dislike them and yet we are not even being consulted on what goes in our mouths. Four government conservation agencies have called for these fields to be halted yet Jeff Rooker [UK food minister] recently stated that he was not in the driving seat on this issue. Well, if the government can't act to protect our interests then we've got to. This morning, due to responsible and peaceful direct actions, we are seven fields closer to a safer world."

These seven actions have occurred in the context of mounting public unease. On Tuesday a 'citizens jury' organised by Sainsbury, Genetics Forum and the Consumers Association concluded that genetically engineered organisms should be banned in the UK. Thursday a Guardian ICM poll showed only 14% were happy with genetically engineered foods. On Saturday the Swiss people follow the Austrian, Luxembourg and Norwegians into a referendum to ban genetic engineering.

Ends

For further information - call the Genetic Engineering Network on 0181 374 9516 or page 07666 750473. Photos, taken by the activists responsible, may be available soon through national picture agencies.

Notes to editor -

1. Opponents of genetically engineered crops have long argued that they are dangerously unpredictable, uncontrollable and as yet untested when released into our environment and our bodies. They are also unnecessary and unwanted.

2. The sites visited were -

* Thorn Farm, Inkberrow, Worcstershire 95/R24/2. Pioneer Genetique.

* Dryleaze Farm, Siddington, Cirencester, Gloucester 97/R15/22. Plant Genetics Systems

* Hall Farm, Kneeton, Nottinghamshire 97/R19/17. Agrevo.

* Nickerson Farm, Rothwell, Lincolnshire 97/R27/1. Perryhall Holdings.

* East Lodge Farm, Kings Newton, Derby - 3 sites: 98/R22/13, 97/R22/9 plus one 'fast-track site' not listed on GMO public register of deliberate releases. Monsanto.

Note: The codes refer to the GMO public register of deliberate releases available from the Dept of Environment Transport and the Regions Biotechnology Unit.

3. A new report and briefing exposing new dangers of Genetically Engineered Rape and calling for a moratorium on its development is due to be released next week by Genewatch. For more information on this contact Dr Sue Mayer on 01298 871558.

4. This weekend one of the companies hit, Monsanto, is launching a Europewide advertising campaign to falsely persuade consumers that resistance to Genetic Engineering will starve the third world. For more information on this outrageous PR offensive call The Gaia Foundation on 0171 435 5000.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

GENETICS LISTS
*The rts genetics lists now have their own address <genetics@gn.apc.org>. If you would like to be a list (and are not already) reply to <genetics@gn.apc.org> putting 'Subscribe Genetics' in the subject box. There is a very busy list (list 1) & a less 'full-on' (list 2) that only receives Genetix Update newsletter & occasional action alerts - please specify.

OTHER NON GE LISTS
*We also run the very busy 'Allsorts list' from here <allsorts@gn.apc.org> as well as the 'rts info only list' (please specify) when subscribing. *If you have anything to contribute to any of these lists then send it in and it will be forwarded - unedited wherever possible. Please do not send attachments instead just add text to emails main body.

You will see that <allsorts@gn.apc.org> will be the return address for all emails both genetics and otherwise until we can afford new software. Hope this does not cause too much confusion!

Genetic Engineering Network
PO BOX 9656
London
N4 4JY
0181 374 9516 (this no is for Genetics info)

For genetics action info on the web check out:
http://www.dmac.co.uk/gen.html
http://www.envirolink.org/orgs/shag/genetix.html



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Date: Mon, 15 Jun 98 18:55:46 -0500
Subject: Monsanto Ads Target European Market

Headline: Monsanto Ads Target European Market
Wire Service: APO (AP Online)
Date: Sun, Jun 7, 1998

Copyright 1998 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of the Associated Press.

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Biotechnology company Monsanto Co. has launched a multimillion-dollar ad campaign aimed at allaying European concerns about the safety of genetically modified foods.

The St. Louis-based company kicked off the campaign in France and the United Kingdom with a barrage of ads that promote genetic engineering. They present a gentler, more open Monsanto in contrast to the hard-driving company at the center of a controversy across Europe.

Monsanto opened a new Internet site that includes some of the news reports that have been critical of genetic engineering in foods. One story told of Monsanto's apology to Europeans for "heavy-handed" attempts to promote genetic altered products. Another reported a new poll showing that 95 percent of Britons interviewed wanted modified foods labeled.

The efforts speak of the stark difference between attitudes in Europe and the United States, where people exhibit few concerns about modified food products like Monsanto's artificial sweetener NutraSweet.

Monsanto makes agricultural products, pharmaceuticals and food ingredients. Monsanto spun off its chemical business last year, and is being acquired by American Home Products Corp. for $33.5 billion.

European acceptance is critical to Monsanto and its rivals, as a market for genetically modified foods as a gateway to the rest of the world. Europe also is important to U.S. farmers, who are moving steadily to modified soybeans and corn and have no mechanisms to separate them from nonmodified varieties for export.

Part of Europe's cautious, sometimes hostile attitude has to do with European attentiveness to food and its sources. There is also a perception that European governments and scientists failed to protect people from mad cow disease.

Toby Moffett, Monsanto vice president of for international governmental affairs, said Monsanto recognizes that it failed to pay sufficient attention to public opinion.

"We barged in, like someone barging in on someone's private party," Moffett said. "We weren't European enough."
=============================================================-=-=-=-=




Date: Tue, 16 Jun 98 18:55:49 -0500
Subject: Monsanto ad from Sun Observer, 6/7/98

Copy of Monsanto's Double page spread in the Sun Observer 7th June.

=====================-=-=-=-=

FIRST PAGE.

FOOD BIOTECHNOLOGY IS A MATTER OF OPINIONS. MONSANTO BELIEVES ALL OF THEM.

GENETICALLY modified food is the subject of much heated debate.

As a biotechnology company, at Monsanto we firmly believe in it. Of course, we're a business and aim for our shareholders to profit from this technology. However, our excitement and commitment to food biotechnology stems from the real benefits it provides for both consumers and the environment.

There are others with less supportive views. Some are openly hostile. It is only fair that you appreciate the spectrum of opinions before making an informed decision.

We're about to run an advertising campaign presenting the benefits of food biotechnology. As well as our views, we will be publishing the addresses and phone numbers of those with different views, including some of our most vocal critics, encouraging you to contact them.

This may sound unusual, but we believe that food is so fundamentally important everyone should know all they want to about it.

Besides the advertising, there are leaflets in many supermarkets and you can call us free on 0800 092 0401 if you have any questions or would like further literature. Alternatively visit our website at bla bla bla.

Clearly our aim is to encourage a positive understanding of food biotechnology.

And the truth is, we know it will take more than our words to convince you.

SECOND PAGE.

The world grows it's food at great cost to the environment.

Insecticides, fertilisers and herbicides used in Agriculture require scarce resources processed in eco-taxing industrial plants. As an example, the insecticide for just one species of pest affecting Russet Burbank potatoes in the USA generates 2,500,000 pounds of waste by-product from it's manufacture, transport and application.

At Monsanto, we believe plant biotechnology can limit industrial and chemical impact on the earth. For instance, we have developed crops that are insect resistant, in some cases eliminating the need to apply insecticides altogether. (We also want you to know that we produce the world's top selling herbicide, Roundup.)

Our potato, soybean and corn seeds have been thoroughly tested to assess their safety. Far more rigorously in fact, than conventionally produced crops. Our confidence in them is matched by the government regulatory agencies of 20 countries, including Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands, the USA and Great Britain. All have approved seeds.

To find out more about this subject, please ask for a leaflet at your local supermarket, call us free on 0800 092 0401 or visit our website at bla bla bla...
MONSANTO
Food.Health.Hope

And folks get your glasses out to read this (situated at the bottom of the page in a box reminiscent of the smallest tobacco warning.)

There are many views of biotech. For another opinion call Friends of the Earth on 0171 865 8222 or visit their website at www.foe.co.uk, or try contracting Food for our future . Their website is www.foodfuture.org.uk.




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Date: Tue, 16 Jun 98 19:49:11 -0500
Subject: more from Prince Charles

2 items from the (London) Guardian and 1 from London Times from June 9, 1998

"....the biotech companies can no longer treat the British as they have treated the Americans: as a nation of co-opted dupes. Genetically-engineered food has become even less palatable than it was before."

=========================

Prince 'over-reacting' to genetic engineering

Monsanto accuses Charles of pandering to green lobby, while opponents of gene-modified food say his views reflect public concern

By Nick Hopkins
Tuesday June 9, 1998

The Prince of Wales came under attack yesterday for "over-reacting" to the dangers of genetically modified food.

Monsanto, the multi-national company at the forefront of agricultural bio-engineering, accused him of pandering to the green lobby and refusing to acknowledge advances in the field.

But the prince received the full support of consumer and environmental groups, who believe his views reflect widespread public concern.

Buckingham Palace said he stood by everything he had written in an article in yesterday's Daily Telegraph.

Warning that genetic engineering was taking mankind "into realms that belong to God and God alone", the prince wrote: "If something does go badly wrong we will be faced with the problem of clearing up a kind of pollution which is self-perpetuating. I am not convinced that anyone has the first idea of how this could be done, or indeed who would have to pay."

Genetically modified (GM) plant breeding raised crucial ethical and practical considerations, he said, calling for a wide public debate. Choice backed by comprehensive labelling was needed so people knew what they were eating.

The prince was particularly concerned that some companies wanted approval to grow pesticide-tolerant GM crops in Britain. He called for a moratorium on their introduction, claiming that they would devastate local wildlife.

Although he did not mention Monsanto by name, it was clear that his broadside was aimed at the US-based company. Last weekend it launched a media campaign to raise awareness in the UK of the benefits of GM crops.

The article's timing was not lost on the company's senior executives, who defended its work yesterday.

Monsanto was careful not to show disrespect for the prince, but there was barely concealed frustration over his views.

Colin Merritt, its technical director, said: "The prince believes in organic farming, and he is closely associated with people from the organic movement and green pressure groups. His arguments are the ones we are familiar with from the green lobby.

"He does not have much information coming from people on the other side of the debate. I think some of his views are out of touch."

Dr Merritt said a huge amount of research had been done in recent years, and it all pointed to the practical advantages of using GM crops. "The risks that he talks about are not based in science. We now understand the chemistry and the genetics far more than we did."

The prince's questioning of the need for GM farming was "a complete over-reaction". There was no way that organic farming could meet the world's food demands.

The National Consumer Council said the prince was in tune with public concerns. It criticised a recent European Union edict that food which had been genetically tampered with did not have to be kept separate from normal crops and clearly labelled.

GM foods already on the market include maize, tomatoes and soya, which have been changed to make them pest-resistant or stay fresh longer. About 60 per cent of processed foods contain soya.

A spokesman for the Consumers' Association said: "The process needs to be slowed down. It is possible that GM foods might prove to be a 'good thing', but our concern is that customers are not ready to see them on the shelves yet, and they must be given the choice of whether or not to eat them."

Jeff Rooker, Food Safety Minister, said in launching National Food Safety Week that the prince was entitled to his views but insisted there were strict controls in place to ensure that GM foods on the market were safe.

He said breeders of new plant varieties had always "messed about with nature".



London Times June 9 1998

Prince is backed in attack on modified foodstuffs

BY MICHAEL HORNSBY AGRICULTURE CORRESPONDENT

MILLIONS of people in Britain are eating products derived from genetically engineered crops and have little choice about it, consumer and environmental groups said yesterday.

They praised the Prince of Wales for calling for segregation of such crops at source and for clear and comprehensive labelling of products made from them. Farmers and manufacturers of genetically modified (GM) crops, while agreeing on the need to inform consumers, said unwarranted fears must not lead to unreasonable restrictions on a technology with potentially huge benefits.

Ruth Evans, director of the National Consumer Council, said: "Consumers want to know how their food has been produced because many do not wish to eat produce from GM sources." Robin Maynard, food campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said: "We are delighted that Prince Charles has publicly expressed his concerns."

Ben Gill, the president of the National Farmers' Union, said: "Some of the concerns raised by the Prince of Wales are valid but to suggest that the whole technology is wrong is not right. The potential benefits for food production in the Third World alone are immense."

This year American farmers have planted about 20 million acres with soya beans - 30 per cent of the total crop - genetically modified to be resistant to a weedkiller manufactured by Monsanto, the US company that developed the new bean. Soya is present in about three fifths of all processed foods, including products as diverse as chocolate, bread, baby foods and beer.

US suppliers have refused to separate GM soya from the conventional varieties, saying that to do so would be impractical and so costly as to make the growing of modified crops unviable.


==========================================================



Date: Fri, 19 Jun 98 11:52:40 -0500
Subject: Monsanto GEF ads/Prince Charles

(London) Guardian

Gene Prince

As big business tightens its grip on the food-chain, an unlikely opponent steps into the fray

By George Monbiot
Tuesday June 9, 1998

Those of us who have been grumbling about genetically manipulated food for the past four or five years could be forgiven for occasionally succumbing to the sin of despair. While pressure groups have used every imaginable ruse to alert consumers and ministers to the hazards of the biotech companies' control of the food-chain, the Guardian was the only national newspaper consistently to have taken these dangers seriously.

This is a doubly difficult subject to cover, as it demands a degree of understanding of both economics and biology: most journalists were simply not prepared to tackle it. In the absence of concerted media scrutiny, the biotech companies seemed, until yesterday, to be winning almost every battle they fought. Substantial public disquiet had done little to obstruct their feverish progress towards the worldwide ownership of our most indispensable commodities. In just three years, for example, the biotech company Monsanto has secured 30 per cent of the American soya crop and 15 per cent of the maize crop. A series of gigantic acquisitions has culminated in its merger with American Home Products, to create a corporation worth $96 billion, one of the largest firms on earth.

Such financial muscle enables the biotech companies to exert a remarkable degree of control over elected authorities. In the US, there's a regular exchange of personnel between Monsanto, the government's Food and Drug Administration and the Oval Office. The FDA has been described by campaigners as "Monsanto's Washington branch office".

In Europe, the biggest lobby of parliament ever conducted persuaded MEPs to adopt a new directive granting the biotech firms exclusive rights over genetic material: patents, in other words, on life. When four British government conservation agencies, alarmed by the potential ecological hazards of genetically engineered crops, called for a moratorium, Jeff Rooker, the agriculture minister, told them that there was nothing he could do. "I am not sure," he complained, "we are in the driving seat."

As Monsanto prepared to launch its #163#1 million advertising campaign last weekend, campaigners had the sinking feeling that the battle was all over bar the shouting. British people would continue to be fed genetically engineered food, whether we wanted it or not.

The Monsanto campaign is a masterpiece of Machiavellian subterfuge. Instead of simply trumpeting the virtues of its products, its advertisements claim that the company wants to stimulate a public debate on the issue, "to encourage a positive understanding of food biotechnology". What the adverts do not reveal is that this "debate" is purposeless. Monsanto's $96 billion plan to conquer the world will go ahead whatever its respondents think. Having let the horse out, the company is inviting us to discuss whether or not the stable door should now be shut.

But today, its strategy seems spectacularly to have misfired. In the Telegraph, Prince Charles took its call for debate at face value, writing: "We simply do not know the long-term consequences for human health and the wider environment . . . if something does go badly wrong we will be faced with the problem of clearing up a kind of pollution which is self-perpetuating. I am not convinced that anyone has the first idea of how this could be done."

Suddenly, Monsanto has got the public debate it claimed it wanted. And it doesn't seem to like it at all. For the past 24 hours, all leave for its spin doctors has been cancelled. The threats posed by genetic engineering are now being taken seriously by almost every news outlet in Britain. Monsanto's "debate" is no longer a predestined confrontation between the all-powerful and the utterly powerless, but (and it's sad that in 1998 it takes royal intervention to achieve it) a genuine battle of wills.

This, of course, is only the beginning of the story. Monsanto has no shortage of resources for counter-spin. But now the biotech companies can no longer treat the British as they have treated the Americans: as a nation of co-opted dupes. Genetically-engineered food has become even less palatable than it was before.

George Monbiot last week received the One World National Press Award



===========================================================




Date: Sun, 21 Jun 98 20:14:35 -0500
Subject: US loses $200mill/yr

Note:
Does this mean that US corn exports to the EU were $200mill. less last year (i.e. '97), when GE corn was first grown for export, than the previous year, when it wasn't? Is so, isn't this just the market speaking (i.e. Europeans would prefer GE free corn for their own internal markets)? I guess when the EU market speaks the US doesn't want to listen. Also, I thought Gus Schumaker was a proponent of sustainable ag.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Farmers Guardian. By Tony Mc Dougal

Fears that GM crop impasse could spark agri-trade war. Friday June 19th. 98

Fears of an agri-trade war were raised at this week's International Grains Council conference as United States farm under-secretary Gus Schumaker criticized the European resistance to genetically modified crops, claiming it was costing American Farmers up to $200m in lost maize exports to the E/U.





Date: Sun, 21 Jun 98 20:55:38 -0500
Subject: US loses $200mill/yr. FULL COPY

Farmers Guardian. By Tony McDougal

Fears that GM crop impasse could spark agri-trade war. Friday June 19th. 98

Fears of an agri-trade war were raised at this week's International Grains Council conference as United States farm under-secretary Gus Schumaker criticized the European resistance to genetically modified crops, claiming it was costing American Farmers up to $200m in lost maize exports to the E/U.

He also said the Agenda 2000 proposals did not go far enough - a view shared by Agriculture Minister Jack Cunningham, and called for the phasing out of export subsidies, reduced tariffs and the decoupling of support from production.

The warning is likely to raise tension between the US and EU following recent trade disputes over malting barley and wheat gluten.

Last month the E/C exported 30,000 tonnes of subsidised barley to California, infuriating the Clinton administration.

It has retaliated by offering export subsidies for a similar amount to traditional E/U markets of Algeria, Cyprus and Norway under it's export enhancement programme.

The United States has also imposed a strict quota on imports of wheat gluten from the E/U after becoming fed up with the size of subsidised trade entering the country.

Dr Cunningham acknowledged that biotechnology would be an issue at next years World Trade Organisation talks. The UK through it's Environment Minister Michael Meacher this week called for a fast track approval system for GM crop varieties, though there is still strong resistance among environmental and consumer groups.

Dr Cunningham told the London conference on Wednesday that he agreed that E/U production support levels were too high, and were continuing to encourage surpluses, resulting in the ongoing need for export subsidies to clear the market.

He criticized the levels of arable aid payments, which currently total 16.5 billion ecus/year, making up an alarming 40% of the CAP budget.

Calling for the abolition of export subsidies and the ending of protectionism, Dr Cunningham said, the US Fair Act had substantially decoupled support to US farmers, cut subsidies and given them the freedom to grow what the market dictated. It was time now for the EU to follow suit or face looming problems at the WTO talks next year.

Other speakers also warned of the dangers of an escalating EU/US trade dispute. Ken Matchet, chief executive of Canada's largest grain exporting company, XCAN, said the E/U should reduce it's massive support payments, which resulted in over production and depressed prices.

The many tariff and non-tariff barriers should also be abolished because it kept competitive agricultural commodities out of the E/U and kept consumer prices high.

"Failure to achieve significant progress will send the world into deeper recession and/or depression than we are already in - with serious social and security implications throughout the world", he added.


==========================================================




Date: Tue, 11 Aug 98 13:01:24 -0500
Subject: GE potatoes stunt rat growth and hurt immune system


Brit. Minister rejects calls for genetic food ban
Immune system damage in tests

By Tim Radford, Science Editor
Guardian (London) Tuesday August 11, 1998

The row over genetically engineered foods took a new twist yesterday as the Government refused to ban them after tests showed they could damage the immune systems of rats and stunt their growth.

The Tory health spokesman, Alan Duncan, yesterday talked of "massive consumer suspicion" after a television programme last night reported that rats at the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen had eaten genetically modified potatoes for 100 days, and suffered stunted growth and damage to their immune systems - and questioned the safety of other products.

The Liberal Democrat environment spokesman, Norman Baker, said the results "show that we have become the guinea pigs in a gigantic experiment".

The food minister, Jeff Rooker, turned down calls for an immediate ban but insisted that the Government would have an "ultra-cautionary" approach.

However, Labour MP Ian Gibson, a member of the Commons Science and Technology Committee, said he was worried by the findings of the Rowett Institute and called on the Government to act. Dr Gibson said ministers should consider calling a moratorium on the sale of genetically modified (GM) products while more tests were carried out.

Derek Burke, a former government adviser on food technology, said calls for a moratorium on GM foods were "an over-reaction."

Philip James, director of the Rowett Institute, said the experiment was only one of many specifically concerned with the safety of potential new foods, none of which were available commercially.

There are only four genetically modified foods on sale in Britain - tomato paste, vegetarian cheese, maize and soya.

Although environmentalists are worried about the threat of "superweeds", triggered by the arrival of herbicide-resistant crops, the latest row is over research into the genes that naturally protect crops from attack by insects and worms. Arpad Pusztai of the Rowett Institute took a genetically engineered potato containing a protein from a South American bean, and fed it to rats in the laboratory. Later, he told the World In Action TV programme: "We are assured this is absolutely safe, and that no conceivable harm could come to us from eating it. But if you gave me the choice now, I wouldn't eat it."

** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. **


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Date: Wed, 12 Aug 98 16:01:48 -0500
Subject: GENETICS SCIENTIST SUSPENDED

Headline: GENETICS SCIENTIST SUSPENDED
Wire Service: PA (PA News)
Date: Wed, Aug 12, 1998

Copyright 1998 PA News. Copying, storing, redistribution, retransmission,
publication, transfer or commercial exploitation of this information is
expressly forbidden.


By Paul Hunter, PA News
A scientist who warned that his research raised questions about the safety of genetically-modified food for consumption by humans has been suspended, it emerged today.

The Rowett Research Institute said that Professor Arpad Pusztai would not have responsibility for institute, UK or European studies into genetically-modified food.

The Aberdeen-based centre added that the professor will also now retire from the institute.

Prof Puztai carried out research which involved feeding rats genetically- modified potatoes.

Granada TV's World in Action - screened earlier this week - claimed that the rats, who were fed potatoes with modifications similar to those developed by commercial food producers to make crops resistant to pesticides, had suffered damage to their immune systems which fight off disease. ADVISORY: corrects spelling of Pusztai and amends title to Dr not Prof

(reopens)

The institute said in a statement that it took the action against Dr Pusztai after concluding that "misleading information" had been released, a fact which it "regrets".

It said that before agreeing to Dr Pusztai's appearance on World In Action, it was decided that only "previously published concepts should be discussed" and that it would be "improper to present data which had not been publicly scrutinised by a variety of international experts and published".

The statement said: "It is therefore regrettable that discussions with the media at other times led to the presentation of information which misled everybody concerned".

The statement adds: "The institute regrets the release of misleading information about issues of such importance to the public and the scientific community." The data published by Dr Pusztai was of tests that were carried out on normal potatoes which had been treated with a "poison" and not genetically-modified vegetables, biotechnology company Monsanto claimed.

The company, currently carrying out trials of genetically-modified crops in the UK, said that the revelation was "absolute dynamite".

Colin Merritt, technical manager of biotechnology at Monsanto, said he believed that Dr Pusztai had been referring to data and results of experiments which had been led by another scientist.

He said: "It seems that the researcher actually leading this programme was out of the country at the time travelling and only came back yesterday morning.

"Meanwhile, he (Dr Pusztai) had gone to the media.

"Basically he has picked up non-genetically modified potato data in which the naturally occurring poison Con A has been added and read that as the effect of transgenic modified potatoes.

"It is an awful mistake and these revelations are absolute dynamite." Mr. Merritt's claim about the wrong data being used was confirmed in the institute's statement.

It said: "The directors and the senior manager involved were presented yesterday with a preliminary view of the primary laboratory data by Dr Eva Gelencser, the member of the team who carried out the studies on immune responsiveness under the supervision of Dr Pusztai.

"She had returned to the institute from abroad yesterday morning. By late yesterday it emerged that the relevant data provided by Dr Pusztai referred not to experimental studies on potatoes with transgenic Con A but to GNA transgenic potatoes.

"Detailed analyses of the transgenic GNA studies are due to be completed by Friday this week and were not data, as originally suggested, which had been discussed extensively at scientific meetings involving UK collaborators and the Scottish Office in April of this year.

"All the preparations for the transgenic Con A feeding trials are complete but the only data available on Con A are, in practice, the long-term studies with Con A added to the potato based diets."

The original decision by the institute to allow Dr Pusztai to respond to a request from World in Action for information was based on the institute's recognition of its responsibility not to suppress scientific views in this, or any other field, the statement added.

The institute said that the intense global publicity given to Dr Pusztai's work and its implications had led to the centre's decision to carry out a fully audited analysis of the data. The institute pledged to review the lengthy and complex studies of lectins in transgenic plants, including published as well as unpublished work, to ensure the validity of the findings.

The GNA transgenic studies and comparable experiments on diets where both GNA and Con A have been added to the potato mix will be sent to the Ministry of Agriculture and the European Union as a matter of urgency.

"It would be premature to conclude whether or not there are data of concern to those assessing the safety of foods with transgenic lectins," the statement said.

The analysis of these new findings will not be released by the institute but will be scrutinised by collaborating scientists and official expert committees.

The institute also promised to carry out additional studies on the safety issues once the significance of the existing findings is known.

The institute announced that Dr Andrew Chesson, a member of an EU working party on the safety of genetically modified foods, will be in charge of all data analysis and presentations to MAFF and the EU.

Dr Chesson will work with Dr Harry Flint, a molecular biologist, who has not previously been involved in this work. Collaborating institutions will be asked to nominate an expert to audit the work. The biotechnology industry gleefully seized upon today's revelations.

The information group Foodfuture, which aims to tell consumers about the benefits of biotechnology industry, said that opponents of their work had based their arguments on "spurious evidence".

Director Karen Barber said: "Sloppy science and overblown reporting is no substitute for providing balanced, factual information about genetically modified food.

"It is disappointing to see opponents of genetic modification jumping aboard any bandwagon which offers an opportunity to attack this technology, no matter how spurious.

"It is understandable that such scare stories are reported in the media and during the course of the two days on which this story has hogged the headlines many consumers will have been seriously misled."

Monsanto spokesman Dan Verakis claimed that the retraction proved that consumers had nothing to worry about from GM foods.

He said: "This demonstrates why people should not over-react such announcements about biotechnology.

"In just 48 hours we have gone from statements that GM foods can harm immune systems to `Sorry, but it was bad information'.

"Friends of the Earth and those types of groups went out and tried to promote an emotional and typical scaremongering attitude. It just goes to show that people should not over-react so quickly."

Monsanto currently have a GM potato product under development in the US.

Friends of the Earth, which called for a five-year moratorium on licensing GM products because of the fears raised on Monday, claimed the suspension of Dr Pusztai had not weakened their argument against such foods.

A spokesman said: "There can be no justification for allowing the commercial development of these crops until that research has been conducted, properly published and subjected to full peer-group review."

The makers of World In Action said tonight that they were not responsible for presenting any misleading information on the effects of genetically-modified potatoes.

A statement read: "As far as we are aware there was no misrepresentation of Dr Pusztai's research in Monday's World In Action programme."

The statement added that the makers had contacted the director of the Rowett Research Institute who told them that separate interviews to other media outlets led to today's action against Dr Pusztai."


=============================================================-=-=-=-=




Subject: FW: Chicago Tribune on GE Superweeds
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 16:01:20 -0400

RESEARCHER WARNS OF HERBICIDE-RESISTANT WEEDS SUPER-CROPS PRODUCING A
BOUNTY OF QUESTIONS

By Peter Kendall and Jeremy Manier, Chicago Tribune Staff Writers
Sept. 15, 1998.

Faster than most biotech gurus predicted, American farm fields have been won over by new, genetically engineered crops that thwart grubs, repel beetles and shrug off the chemicals used to kill the weeds around them.

But just as the new agricultural revolution is blossoming, a handful of mustard plants on a small plot of ground in DuPage County has raised a significant question.

Can transplanted genes that make a plant immune to an herbicide "jump" into other plants through pollination, perhaps creating "super-weeds" that no spraying could control?

Tending an experimental garden growing so-called transgenic plants engineered to resist herbicides, University of Chicago researcher Joy Bergelson found that the plants did, indeed, pass their resistance to weedy relatives growing nearby.

She is the first to caution that her study, published in a recent issue of the British science journal Nature, does not prove biotech crops will spawn offspring that will swallow farm fields, overrun prairies and choke forests.

More research needs to be done to see genes jump in other species and, if they do, how those plants fare, she said. If such jumps occurred, it could take years for the new plants to begin appearing.

But her study already has rekindled the debate over whether the biotechnologies that hold so much promise for increasing farmer's yields, making food more nutritious and reducing the need for pesticides might also be carrying a bad seed.

The study comes as farm fields are almost overnight converting en masse to genetically modified plants. Genetically engineered corn and soybeans weren't approved by the federal government until 1996, but already more than a quarter of the U.S. corn and soybean crop is genetically engineered.

Many believe that by 2000, more than half of all corn, soy and cotton will be genetically modified.

Genetically engineered corn drives off corn borers; cotton shoos away boll weevils; potatoes repel potato beetles. The more repulsive the plants become to pests, the more attractive they are to farmers.

Monsanto, one of the leading manufacturers of genetically engineered plants, estimates that by using genetically engineered cotton, farmers were able to avoid using 300,000 gallons of cotton insecticides, one of the most ferocious pesticides still in use.

Agricultural America is fast becoming a transgenic landscape. And it would be moving in that direction even more rapidly if more seed were available.

Genetic engineering transplants genes from one plant into another, sometimes by using plant parasites that figured out how to insert DNA into plants millions of years ago.

Scientists can simply swap the DNA the parasite usually inserts--its own--with genetic material from some other plant.

The resulting plant will then pass along the new genes just like any other.

One trait scientists have been inserting into crops is a resistance to herbicides. That way, a farmer can spray a field and kill off unwanted weeds, but the crop will not be hurt.

For years, environmentalists have raised cautions about fiddling around with genes that make plants resistant to pesticides, arguing the resistant plants could hybridize with other plants to create weeds that chemicals could not kill.

Many agriculture experts say that will not matter if there are no plants nearby that are a close enough genetic match to breed naturally with the crops.

"Soybeans don't cross with green beans," said Jack Widholm, a professor of plant physiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "In the same way, most wild relatives don't cross well enough with crops to be a problem."

Some weed/crop hybrids are possible, however, including corn mixing with timothy grass, a pasture plant that can be a nuisance in crop lands.

Another argument that transgenic plants will not mix with weeds is based on the fact that most crop plants are self-pollinating, meaning they rarely mix their genes with another individual and, therefore, would not be likely to create hybrids.

That was the issue the U. of C.'s Bergelson went after in her little field in DuPage County.

Bergelson grew three kinds of Arabidopsis, a mustard plant that usually self-pollinates.

One group of plants was genetically engineered to be resistant to a type of herbicide, a second group had become resistant to the herbicide through other methods, and the third group was not resistant to the herbicide at all.

When those plants produced seeds, and the seeds were grown into plants, Bergelson found, the genetically engineered plants were 20 times more likely to have passed on the resistance to their hybrid offspring produced by the cross-pollination.

In other words, the genetically engineered plants were not limited to self-pollination at all. In the language of the botanist, the genetically engineered plants had become "promiscuous."

The study is important because it was the first to show that the plants could pass the genetically engineered resistance to an herbicide to another variety.

But the researcher warns against reading too much into the study or applying it to other species of plants.

"It is very premature to use these sorts of results to draw conclusion about any other system," Bergelson said. "We need more research to find out if this is an isolated example.

"Then to understand the real ecological risks, we need to understand the effect of these genes once they are introduced."

The study caught the attention of a number of environmental groups, including Greenpeace, which opposes the "release" of genetically engineered organisms (the planting of such a corn seed constitutes a release).

"This confirms what we have been saying about herbicide-tolerant crops," said Charles Margulis of Greenpeace. "There is a risk this tolerance will transfer to weedy relatives.

"You will end up with plants that require more use of herbicides, which is exactly the opposite of how they are marketing the crops, saying they are environmentally friendly."

After reading Bergelson's study, Jeremy Rifkin, a longtime critic of genetic engineering in plants, renewed his call for the United States to impose a moratorium on transgenic plants.

"We are not talking about killer tomatoes. We are talking about a long-term problem for American farmers," Rifkin said. "How do you get rid of weeds that have herbicide resistance?"

Val Giddings of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a trade group, said the risk is being overblown.

"Where is the hazard as this herbicide-tolerant gene moves out into the population?" he said. "You simply switch to a different herbicide. Or better yet, get a hoe. This is not going to create a plant that is going to eat Cleveland."

The debate is going on outside the U.S., too.

European environmental groups have succeeded in requiring that all genetically modified products be labeled as such, a rule that goes into effect this month. Prince Charles of Britain weighed in on the subject this summer when he revealed that he will not eat or serve genetically engineered foods.

Despite opposition, signs are that the atmosphere for such products is more friendly elsewhere in Europe. A referendum proposal that would have banned genetic research on plants and animals failed by an overwhelming margin in Switzerland in June.

Copyright Chicago Tribune


=============================================================-=-=-=-=



Subject: England discusses GEF moratorium
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 1998 20:51:13 -0400

Channel Four News - 23 September 98.

Exclusive.

Channel Four News announced this evening that "under pressure from consumers Biotech food producers and seed companies along with Government Nature advisors and Farmers have been having preparatory meetings with a view to a 'five year moratorium' on the commercial growing of genetically modified foods.

Monsanto, who have recently been granted one of the most far reaching 'injunctions' ever granted in British Law (making the injunctees responsible for damage caused by all other people) are also involved in these talks.

English Nature who are themselves calling for a five moratorium, have been involved in talks with SCIMAC (a group that was started six months ago with government backing) which represents the Biotech Industry, for the past week.

Speaking for English Nature, Dr Brian Johnston said "the Industry (biotech) is clearly alarmed by the depth of protest". He found them prepared to talk about a moratorium. He said "the issue is not how long we have a moratorium for, but clearly what we do with it" Reasonable time may now be found to assess the long-term consequences both environmentally and otherwise.

The Government are also supporting the talks aimed at averting the long summer of protests by many environmental groups, and consumers.

Andrew Rowell, author of Green Backlash, talking about Monsanto SLAPP orders stated that Slaps are Strategic Law Suits against Public Participation, designed to intimidate people into silence. He said that "Monsanto have a long history of intimidation and that this was just another instance of that".

Monsanto would not take part in the programme but released a statement saying "We have a legal right to engage in our business. We are trying to protect what we are legally entitled to do. That is why the court has enforced the injunctions."

Environmental campaigner George Monbiot appearing when asked if he thought that a five year moratorium was a possibility said "Yes I think it is a possibility", but said "I am just very sorry that our government have not taken the lead and done this long before now. Our Government have stated that they are not in the driving seat over this issue. It has now been left to a voluntary code where these companies can pull out of it at a later date."

Mr Monbiot, just because we are not growing this stuff doesn't mean that we aren't eating eat does it? --No, as it is they are being grown outside of this country and exported here. Already Monsanto are moving into East European countries that don't have the informed consumers, or regulatory bodies, or campaigners that we have here.

He also sated "what is particularly worrying is the nightmare scenario where the biotech companies continue to develop these crops whilst working within the WTO to force the consumer of this country and indeed the rest of the E/U to except these foods whether we like it or not".



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Subject: Wash Post on GE Superweeds & Pests 9/21/98
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 1998 14:36:59 -0400

Strategy Worries Crop Up in Biotechnology's War on Pests

Some Scientists Fear Genetically Modified Plants Could Pass Traits to Enemy Weeds or Kill Helpful Insects

By Rick Weiss

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 21, 1998; Page A03

Lush fields of corn, soybeans and cotton look peaceful from a distance, but peek between the leaves and there's a war going on. Ravenous insects and aggressively encroaching weeds are constantly on the attack, and the crops are responding with invisible salvos of naturally occurring insect- and weed-repelling compounds.

American farmers tilted the balance of power this year with large-scale plantings of new, genetically engineered crops armed with secret weapons. Some of these plants have been endowed with a gene that suffuses them with a potent insecticide called Bt. Others have special genes that make them resistant to commercial herbicides, allowing farmers to spray withering doses of weedkillers that previously would have wiped out the crops as well.

But recent research suggests that the war is far from won. In one new experiment, engineered plants spread their new herbicide tolerance genes much more quickly than expected to surrounding weeds -- the molecular equivalent of passing secrets to the enemy. Other work suggests that Bt-producing plants may be killing not only targeted insects but also beneficial insects that kill plant pests.

Findings such as these have escalated a long-standing war of words between opponents and advocates of agricultural biotechnology.

"This says we need stronger oversight and we need more testing before some of these crops are released," said Jane Rissler, senior staff scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. U.S. regulatory agencies do not require companies to document the rate at which engineered plants pass their new genes to weeds, she notes -- a lapse she predicts will spur the growth of "superweeds" and other ecological problems.

Not so, countered Thomas Nickson, an ecological technology coordinator for Monsanto Co., the St. Louis-based plant biotechnology giant. "The risk of creating a superweed," Nickson said, "is truly an insignificant one."

Behind these opposing opinions is a unified recognition that agricultural pests represent a major threat to the global food supply. Insects consume an estimated 13 percent of the world's food production. To fight them, and to keep weeds at bay, costs billions of dollars every year.

Farmers have traditionally relied upon old-fashioned plant breeding to make new varieties of plants with natural resistance to pests. But in recent years, scientists have speeded up that process by placing specific, useful genes directly into crops. Companies commercializing this technology have promised environmental and economic savings, especially through reduced dependence on chemical pesticides.

The total acreage of engineered crops has skyrocketed since the first varieties went on sale three years ago. Fully 45 percent of this year's U.S. cotton crop was engineered by Monsanto, either to protect it against the company's popular Roundup herbicide or to make Bt to protect its bolls against insects. Tens of millions of acres of engineered soybeans, corn, canola and potatoes have also been planted, and scientists are working on gene-altered sunflowers, squash and other crops.

In some respects the effort has been a success. In the Southeast, for example, insecticide doses on cotton have been reduced by as much as 45 percent and weed control has been made easier. But the latest studies have cast a shadow on this promising landscape.

In the Sept. 3 issue of Nature, Joy Bergelson and colleagues at the University of Chicago described their shocking discovery that mustard plants engineered to be tolerant of a DuPont Co. weedkiller passed their fancy genes to nearby wild mustard plants at a rate 20 times higher than seen in ordinary mustard plants or plants that had naturally occurring resistance to the herbicide.

It's not clear why the engineered plants became, as the journal put it, so promiscuous. "No one ever expected the process of making a plant transgenic to affect its outcrossing rate," said Allison Snow, an Ohio State University ecologist.

Perhaps, Bergelson and others said, new genes can disrupt existing genes -- including some controlling pollination and fertility -- when they are blasted into plants, creating what Rissler calls a botanical "Viagra gene." If true, that would undercut biotech companies' claims that engineered plants pose no greater ecological risk than naturally occurring mutant plants.

Making matters worse, Snow recently discovered that, contrary to what experts had hoped, weeds that are pollinated by engineered plants can pass those new genes to their offspring for generations. With additional pollinations from other engineered varieties, that could lead to the creation of weeds resistant to multiple herbicides.

Some engineered crops, such as cotton and corn, present little risk because they have few weedy relatives to pass their herbicide resistance to. But others -- including squash, rapeseed (canola), sunflowers and sorghum -- have close wild relatives. If these weeds were to catch their cousins' high-tech genes, they could quickly become bigger pests than ever.

Scientists said they are especially concerned about sorghum, whose weedy relative, Johnson grass, has become an enormous ecological pest since its U.S. introduction from Africa in the mid-1800s. Monsanto has decided not to pursue development of a Roundup-resistant sorghum because of that risk, a spokesman said. But at least one other company has conducted laboratory studies with engineered sorghum, and there is economic incentive to improve that crop in Africa, where it is an important staple.

In another potential problem, beneficial insects such as ladybug beetles and lacewings may be inadvertently harmed by Bt when they feed on insects that have fed on Bt plants, according to several studies published in the past two years. In some cases, mortality rates for these insect predators were about double those seen in predators raised on Bt-free diets.

Scientists stressed that most of these worrisome results are not definitive. In contrast to the work with ladybugs and lacewings, for example, it appears that parasitic wasps -- which also kill insect pests -- are not harmed by Bt-laden prey. And even if some insect predators are killed, some argue, hardier beneficial species may move into those niches.

Moreover, even Bergelson notes that transfer of a herbicide resistance gene to a weed is just the first of many steps needed to make a superweed. "It has to jump, it has to [function], it has to place those individual weeds at a competitive advantage or free them from attack, and the effect also has to be big enough to change the ecological interaction," she said. "Our study looks at the first step only, and that's it.

In April, scientists reported that they had engineered crops in a clever way that keeps new genes in the plants' photosynthetic organs and away from the pollen, perhaps eliminating the risk of cross-pollination. Other scientists quickly questioned, though, whether these plants will prove less vigorous because of the added genetic burden in the chlorophyll centers.

The agricultural arms race, it appears, has a long way to go. How will it end?

"We're really flying by the seat of our pants right now," said John Ruberson, an entomologist at the University of Georgia in Tifton. "Ask the question in four or five years and we'll all be experts." Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company



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Subject: FW: Monsanto's PR Flacks Admit Public Rejects GE Food (please post)
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 17:33:33 -0500

Public rejects genetically modified food

(Independent - London; 11/18/98)

MOST BRITONS reject genetically modified food, according to private research for **Monsanto**, the company promoting it worldwide.

The research, conducted by Stan Greenberg, opinion pollster to Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, indicates that the US biotechnology giant faces a crisis over its image and with public acceptance of its products in the UK.

**Monsanto**'s pounds 1m summer advertising campaign, aimed at converting what Mr Greenberg calls Britain's "elite networks", was "overwhelmed" by the collapse of public support, he writes in a devastatingly frank analysis, which as been leaked to Greenpeace. **Monsanto** confirmed last night that the document was genuine.

Mr Greenberg, one of the world's leading pollsters who helped President Clinton to victory in 1992 and has now formed a company with Tony Blair's media adviser, Philip Gould, pulls no punches in his private account of the company's PR predicament.

There is substantial opposition from the public, from the media, and not least, from retailers, he says. He quotes senior executives from leading supermarkets such as Waitrose, Tesco and Safeway expressing anger at the high-handed way in which, they say, **Monsanto** brought genetically modified (GM) food into Europe by mixing bioengineered soya products with normal ones, allowing consumers no choice.

"The latest survey shows an ongoing collapse of public support for biotechnology and GM foods," he writes. "At each point in this project, we keep thinking that we have reached the low point and that public opinion will stabilise, but we apparently have not reached that point. The latest survey shows a steady decline over the year, which may have accelerated in the most recent period."

He reveals that his research now shows an absolute majority of people in Britain rejecting foods with genetically modified ingredients. "The number saying that these products are 'unacceptable' has sky-rocketed: 35 per cent last year, rising to 44 per cent before the summer and to 51 per cent now," he writes.

The one hope Mr Greenberg holds out for **Monsanto** is with politicians and government scientists. "Fully half of the MPs {he surveyed} see benefits outweighing risks: 70 per cent of the MPs reacted positively to GM foods."

Last night the executive director of Greenpeace UK, Peter Melchett, said the document showed **Monsanto** was in crisis over its activities in Britain. "It shows us they're in a completely hopeless position in terms of acceptance by the general public, and on a knife edge as to whether the people in power are going to listen to them or listen to the public," Mr Melchett said. "It also shows that their advertising campaign was not designed to start a public debate, as they claimed, but designed to sway a small group of elite opinion formers."

Mr Greenberg was not available at his Washington office last night.

A spokesman for **Monsanto** said the document had been prepared for a company meeting. "There is nothing new or different from what we have been talking about all summer in it," he said. "No one would argue that there is a lot of concern and questions about biotechnology right now."

This year opposition to GM food has been more fiercely expressed than ever before in Britain, with the Prince of Wales, an organic farmer, making two outspoken attacks and declaring he would not serve it to his family or guests. English Nature, the Government's wildlife agency, called for a three-year moratorium on the commercial planting of genetically modified crops, saying that the deadlier weedkillers some can support are extremely harmful to wildlife.

The Government has indicated that it may prolong commercial trials by an extra year.

(Copyright 1998 Newspaper Publishing PLC)

_____via IntellX_____

{A5:IndependentLondon-1118.00339} 11/18/98



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Subject: FW: Novartis & University Gene Pirates Hit By Pie-Throwers
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 10:05:03 -0500

For Immediate Release: November 23, 1998
CONTACT: Biotic Baking Brigade at (415) 267-5976, or via e-mail at
bbb_apple@hotmail.com

Biotic Baking Brigade Pies Biotech CEO, UC Chancellor, and Dean

The Biotic Baking Brigade (BBB) teamed up with the anti-genetic engineering group Hexterminators today to offer their input on two "strategic alliances" between public universities and multinational biotechnology corporations. Operation "Double Fudge" consisted of two phases:

Phase I, code-named "Privatize This!": Berkeley--Shortly after an 11 A.M. press conference discussing a "strategic alliance" at University of California--Berkeley began, BBB Agent "Tart Classique" and Hexterminator activist "Super Seed Woman" delivered two delicious airborne vegan pumpkin pies to Douglas G. Watson, President and CEO of biotech giant Novartis, and Gordon Rausser, Dean of the College of Natural Resources at UC-Berkeley. Watson's pie hit its mark, while Rausser's pie nicked him and then found its resting place splattered across a university banner in the background. Both pie-slingers were detained, and will apparently be cited and released. The pumpkin pies symbolize the estimated 60% of food on American tables for Thanksgiving which will contain genetically-engineered products. Phase II, code-named "Cow Pie Special": Davis--At a campus "brown bag lunch," BBB Agent Cow dished up a lovely banana creame pie to UC-Davis Chancellor Larry Vanderhoof, also achieving pleasant and harmless facial deliverance. This special treat was served as a response to the UC-Davis "strategic alliance" with genetic-engineering pirate Monsanto, which will result in a new biotech research facility on campus. Agent Cow disappeared without a trace. "We hold the University of California in flagrant contempt of its mission as a public interest institution by selling its facilities, services, and students to the world's largest biotechnology and agrochemical corporations, Novartis and Monsanto. This is completely unacceptable, especially at a time when both corporations face heated international criticism for their business practices. Novartis and Monsanto are playing with the basic building blocks of life, as well as the food security of millions across the globe. These corporations continue to give us lies, so we have no choice but to respond with pies. Clearly, November 23, 1998 will be remembered as a good day to pie," said Agent Apple of the BBB.

"We targetted Chancellor Vanderhoof, UC-Davis' head bovine, so that our message would be herd" commented Agent Cow. "He has consistently compromised on issues such as affirmative action, graduate student unionization, burrowing owl habitat, and now he's welcomed the corporate pirates at Monsanto onto campus. We speak pie to power, and send this epicurean treat to His Honour the Chancellor with love from the BBB."

Novartis was created in 1996 in a merger between agrochemical giants Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz, effecting the largest corporate merger ever. The company has touched off a firestorm of debate and action in Europe regarding its genetically-engineered (GE) corn, which has been altered to produce its own pesticide. Over the objections of farmers, scientists, concerned citizens, and the European Parliament, Novartis has proceeded to sow the GE corn, claiming it is perfectly safe. However, on October 12, 1998, Greenpeace published evidence that the Novartis corn cross-fertilized with adjoining fields of non-GE crops, as was widely feared. Farmers' unions and organic associations from several countries have condemned Novartis, and the Confederation Paysanne of France even went so far as to break into a warehouse and contaminate the seeds.

"Operation Double Fudge" concludes the seventh successful BBB mission, totaling 10 powerful and unaccountable public figures who have received the BBB's just desserts. Other recipients include Charles Hurwitz (CEO, MAXXAM Co., parent company of Pacific Lumber), Milton Friedman (Nobel Laureate, neoliberal economist), Robert Shapiro (CEO, Monsanto Co.), Renato Ruggiero (Director General, World Trade Organization), Gavin Newsom (Supervisor, San Francisco), Willie Brown (Mayor, San Francisco), and Carl Pope (Executive Director, Sierra Club).

The BBB would like to dedicate today's field work to some of our favorite creative/ subversive types: Eric Drooker, who's artwork continues to move us deeply; Danny Dollinger and Dan Fortsen, brilliant musicians, troubadours, and supreme pie aficionados; and Dennis Fritzinger of the Warrior Poets Society, a BBB supporter since day one.



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Subject: WSJ article on Monsanto
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 1998 16:50:44 -0500

The Wall Street Journal Europe (WSJE)

Succumbing to Green Scare Tactics
By Frank Furedi 11/23/98 (Copyright (c) 1998, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

Monsanto, one of the world's leading food companies, has become the major casualty of a bitter environmentalist campaign against genetically modified food in Europe. Last week, in a coup for anti-technology lobby groups everywhere, Greenpeace circulated two Monsanto internal memos revealing a collapse of public support for the U.S.-based company's genetic technology in Britain and Germany. The memos, written by Stan Greenberg, chairman of Greenberg Research for Monsanto, paint a sad picture of a beleaguered industry. "Over the past year, the situation has deteriorated steadily and perhaps at an accelerating pace," writes Mr. Greenberg. He goes on to warn that the situation is likely to get worse.

Monsanto is particularly worried about flagging enthusiasm for its products among major retailers and opinion makers. Its strategy for introducing genetically modified food into Europe was strongly criticized at a series of meetings held in September with corporate leaders, scientific advisors and senior buyers and managers at large retailers such as Marks & Spencer, Waitrose, Tesco, CWS, Asda and Safeway. Many retailers supported a moratorium on the introduction of genetically modified food because they feared attracting negative publicity.

Although Monsanto can be criticized for failing to reckon earlier with the intense regulatory and anti-innovation culture that prevails in Europe, the company is not to blame for the public hostility to biotechnology that a sophisticated campaign has produced. In recent years, a veritable culture of fear of new technology has stimulated a cycle of panics about a variety of drugs and food products. Sadly for Monsanto, its entry into the European market coincided with the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy panic of 1996-1997. The apparent connection of BSE, also known as "mad cow disease," with intensive industrial farming appeared to confirm the impression that scientific intervention in the food chain must have destructive outcomes.

In this post-BSE climate of anxiety, biotechnology (and genetically modified food in particular) became an ideal target for an unusual alliance of interests. Throughout this year, the British farmyard has been depicted as a kind of rural concentration camp, where animals kept against their wills are systematically subjected to the most barbaric practices. Back in April, a special issue of the Sunday Times Magazine titled "Who is Killing the Countryside?" spoke of the "killing fields" of Cambridgeshire. A similar note of near-hysteria was struck by the National Consumer Council, a leading consumer advocacy group, which warned that intensive farming methods could lead to "life-threatening illnesses" with "incalculable" risks. Despite the fact that food is more nourishing and cheaper than ever before, the conviction that eating has become a uniquely dangerous practice is rarely questioned. Even relatively intelligent observers believe that genetically modified food technology represents a major danger to people and to nature.

Malcolm Walker, the chief executive of the food chain Iceland declared back in March "that genetically modified ingredients {are} probably the most significant and potentially dangerous development this century." The chain has decided not to put its own label on food made with genetically modified soya from the United States.

The campaign has been endowed with a degree of moral authority by Prince Charles, who declared this summer that the "genetic modification of crops is taking mankind into realms that belong to God, and to God alone." A moral crusade was born as a variety of different interests --the Consumers' Association, English Nature, the Soil Association, the Vegetarian Society and others -- issued reports distancing themselves from modified food.

The media joined the campaign, depicting environmentalists who wrecked test sites as peoples' heroes tackling giant American Goliaths. Opinion polls suggested that the characterization of genetically modified food as "Frankenstein Food" stuck, and since the end of the summer the Labour government has become sensitive to the charge that it has been "too soft" on the industry.

After facing a barrage of criticism, the British food industry sought to demonstrate its green credentials by jumping on the anti-biotechnology bandwagon. Even farming interests have attempted to curry favor with the environmental lobby by distancing themselves from this technology.

As far as Monsanto is concerned, yes, it has made mistakes. Instead of initiating a public debate, Monsanto has tried to build bridges with consumer and green advocacy groups. Its public-relations campaign was narrowly focused on convincing the socio-economic elite of biotechnology's benefits. It hoped that these opinion makers could in turn influence the public about the virtues of this technology. Monsanto clearly underestimated the moral fervor of its opponents. Its attempt to win friends has been interpreted as a sign of weakness and has only encouraged green lobbyists to put the boot in further. This strategy of attempting to engage the political elite of Britain and Germany expresses a surprising degree of naivete about European political culture. If there is one section of society that heavily subscribes to anti-enterprise and anti-technology superstition, it is precisely those elites. Politicians, journalists and other public figures have always been more cynical about biotechnology than the general public. That is why Monsanto's publicity campaign was an exercise in wasting money.

But that's not all. While Monsanto was trying to make friends of its enemies, the anti-technology crusaders were bombarding the buying public with their propaganda. The media quickly rallied behind the moral crusade against biotechnology and, sadly, the battle for the heart of the public became a one-sided affair. The genetic-food industry kept quiet, never took on its opponents and hoped the problem would go away. As a result, the public has only heard one side of the story. The crisis facing Monsanto has implications that go way beyond the biotechnology industry. It shows that European societies have become so scared of taking risks, that they regard innovation and experimentation with deep suspicion. If something as relatively safe as modified foods can be recast as a major risk to society then virtually any new technology can expect a similar treatment. And as long as the opponents of progress are able to monopolize the debate, they will be able to occupy the moral high ground and force "irresponsible' technologies on the defensive. Greenpeace is entitled to gloat about its publicity coup. And it will go on gloating until supporters of biotechnology directly confront the challenge presented by today's Luddites. --- Mr. Furedi is professor at the Department of Sociology of Darwin College, University of Kent, Canterbury.



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Subject: Monsanto in UK--Guardian (London)
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 1998 18:56:43 -0500

Genetic engineering: When Monsanto asked Stanley Greenberg to analyse its situation in Britain, he found public acceptance of its genetically modified foods falling dramatically, but support amongst MPs increasing. We print edited extracts of the leaked document with commentary by Peter Melchett of Greenpeace and Ann Foster from Monsanto

By Stanley Greenberg Guardian (london) Wednesday November 25, 1998

Biotechnology and Monsanto face their toughest European test in Britain where the broad climate is extremely inhospitable to biotechnology acceptance. Over the past year, the situation has deteriorated steadily and is perhaps even accelerating, with the latest survey showing an ongoing collapse of public support for biotechnology and genetically modified (GM) foods.

At each point in this project, we keep thinking that we have reached the low point and that public thinking will stabilise, but, apparently, that has not happened yet.

The public feels increasingly negative about nearly all the terms associated with genetic modification, and a similar pattern is evident for genetic engineering and biotechnology.

Overall feeling towards foods with genetically modified ingredients have grown dramatically more negative, which is probably the best measure of our declining fortunes in Britain. Only about 12 per cent have reacted positively over the last year, but negative feelings have risen from 38 per cent a year ago, to 51 per cent today. A third of the public is now extremely negative, up from 20 per cent.

The number of people who think such ingredients are 'acceptable' has declined somewhat (from 33 to 25 per cent over the year); and more than ever are saying such products are 'unacceptable': 35 per cent last year, rising to 44 per cent before the summer and to 51 per cent now.

A growing number now say GM has no place in plants: the percentage saying it is 'unacceptable' has risen from 22 to 26 to 38 per cent - up 12 points over the summer when the press has paid increasing attention to issues related to field trials.

From the survey it is evident that there has been a collapse of public support in Britain, which has worsened over the summer. There are clearly large forces at work that are making public acceptance in Britain problematic.

The public collapse is paralleled and probably exaggerated by the hostility of the press to biotechnology and GM foods and seeds. We conducted interviews with members of the media (though not the correspondents directly writing on the issue) to ascertain their position.

What emerged was that the media elites are strongly hostile to biotechnology and Monsanto. They think the Government is being too lax and believe they must expose the dangers - which they increasingly see as environmental. While individual reporters may have improved their knowledge, there is no evidence of that among the media elites - who do not seem informed on the issue.

The press in Britain thinks these products are being introduced without serious regulation and labelling for the consumer. They see no commission being set up, no code of standards, no initiatives for further testing - even as the public has become more and more alarmed. Neither do they see the food manufacturers doing very much. Zeneca has been low key; Monsanto has communicated in a limited manner; and retailers are watching to see the public reaction.

In that context the media elites think they have an obligation to highlight the dangers. They think these products are being introduced in the midst of an information vacuum. We face a media elite that is very supportive of strong regulatory measures.

Retailers are critical arbiters since they have very high credibility in Britain and because they believe Monsanto has handed off to them the task of winning public acceptance. They carry with them their resentment of Monsanto for badly mismanaging the introduction of biotechnology in Europe and for allowing the issue to be decided in the supermarkets. As a result they are anxious for someone else to move on to the front line, preferably the Government.

Monsanto has made some progress among the retailers. Those we spoke with are quite well briefed, in some cases citing Monsanto briefing statistics word for word. They are largely comfortable with the use of biotechnology in foods. In contrast to a year ago, when we conducted similar interviews, they no longer seem focused on safety concerns, but are beginning to talk about the environmental impact from crop introductions. At the end of the day however, they believe in the technology and think the long-term benefits outweigh the risks.

The networks that most directly influence the decision makers in Britain - the super socio-economic AB segment - are hardly leading the way for biotechnology acceptance. They are at least as negative on the subject as the general public. This is the opposite of the pattern in the United States where college and post-graduates and elites have helped forge the way for biotechnology.

Feelings about food with GM ingredients among the AB classes began negatively (15 per cent positive and 47 per cent negative) and grew astonishingly negative by June of this year (14 per cent positive and an astonishing 57 per cent negative.

Fortunately there is some evidence of stabilisation among the group. Negative sentiments about GM food have risen only marginally since June. At the same time these elite segments have pulled back somewhat from environmental groups and, perhaps most interesting, seem less uniformly hostile to Monsanto.

Over the course of the summer we have seen only slight increases in negativity within the ABs, and nothing comparable to the general public's lack of acceptance.

The one issue where there is genuine progress among the ABs (and maybe with the public as a whole) is in attitudes toward Monsanto. The intense 5-1 negativity about Monsanto a year ago has dissipated considerably. Reactions to Monsanto among the ABs is now 2-1 negative.

Amidst the overall collapse with the general public, Monsanto's position has stabilised over the year and in the most recent period. The 2-1 negative image at the outset of the year remains unchanged. Monsanto began as an issue, but despite all the news coverage and general collapse, it has been able to stabilise its position.

During September we conducted face-to-face interviews with 14 MPs (mostly Labour) and upper-level civil servants, including chief scientists. A year ago the same research found a political establishment open to biotechnology, but critical of Monsanto and uncertain of the benefits. At the same time just a third of the elite respondents saw the benefits as predominant.

But among the political elite today, there is clear evidence of progress. Fully half of the MPs see benefits outweighing risks, 70 per cent of the MPs reacted positively to GM foods. These members of the elite saw the advertising and clearly understood the messages.

When asked whether the introduction of GM foods should be allowed or stopped in Britain, they became quite articulate about the future of biotechnology. Frankly, a moratorium gets little support among the MPs and civil servants.

On the other hand, political leaders remember the introduction of soya and GM foods and have not forgotten many of their feelings about Monsanto. The company's main work in Britain is in still trying to overcome the strong negative reaction to the way it introduced this issue.

When asked about the introduction, the MPs and civil servants had little trouble recalling the detail and have little doubt that over the long term things will work out, with a typical comment being: 'I'm sure in five years time, everybody will be happily eating genetically modified apples, plums, peaches and peas.' Stanley B Greenberg is chairman and chief executive of Greenberg Research; he has also served as an advisor to Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela and Tony Blair. These are edited extracts of a Monsanto document leaked without his knowledge to Greenpeace last week.

** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. **

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GM food: against

By Peter Melchett, Greenpeace
Wednesday November 25, 1998

The public is right. Stanley Greenberg's reports for Monsanto confirm that there is an 'ongoing collapse of public support' for genetically engineered food in the UK. The number of people 'saying that these products are 'unacceptable' has skyrocketed' and public feelings 'have grown dramatically more negative'.

The reports, which were leaked to Greenpeace last week, make clear that to get all of us eating genetically engineered (GE) food, Monsanto believes that all they have to do is to persuade what they call 'the upper socio-economic' and political and media elites of British society to accept the stuff.

Sadly, they could be right. There is a strong assumption in the debate about GE foods that public concern and opposition is simply something to be 'managed' through more information, more education, or (what is more sinister), through the infiltration of GE products on to the supermarket shelves and into our diets. What is not considered, by most of the press or politicians, still less by scientists or multinational chemical companies, is the possibility that the public are right.

Politicians, scientists and corporations want the public to believe GE food is safe, reliable and, above all, predictable. It is not. Unpredictability is inherent in the technology. Genetic engineering involves a disruption in the functioning of DNA in the heart of a cell, and potential disruption in the chemistry of what's going on within the cell - with unknown effects.

Genetic engineering crosses a fundamental threshold in the human manipulation of the planet - changing the nature of life itself. Because it deals with living organisms which can reproduce, these 'mistakes' cannot be recalled. Agricultural and allied applications of genetic engineering are designed to be put into the environment.

Government ministers, supermarkets and some other elements of Monsanto's 'upper socio-economic' elite respond to public concern by calling for more research, tighter regulations, better monitoring and clearer labelling. All are irrelevant in the face of the uncertainty inherent in the technology. The more information people are given, the more concerned they become.

The message Tony Blair is being given by the 'upper socio-economic' elite of British science and British business is that GE is the future. Are we still this powerless in the face of technology? Do we really have no choice? This report from Monsanto tells us that we are not as powerless as those in power assume. There is a message of hope buried in the hype, cynicism and self-interest. Monsanto talked to supermarkets. We learn that more than one of these major supermarket chains think there is a '50-50' chance of losing the argument for GE food. At least one said that genetic engineering of food could turn out like irradiation of food: 'which is, you don't do it!'

** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. **

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GM food: for

By Ann Foster, Monsanto
Wednesday November 25, 1998

A recent report commissioned by Monsanto paints a bleak view of public reaction to genetically modified (GM) food. It shows that there has been an ongoing collapse of support for biotechnology and GM foods. And it also reveals that, post the BSE crisis, consumers lack confidence in scientists and regulatory bodies. Indeed, the report found the British public to be the most sceptical in Europe about scientific progress.

But, while this report makes sobering reading, does it really tell us anything new? And is it as damning as some of our critics would have us think? I don't believe so.

Opposition to GM food in Britain has been widely reported for over two years. Much of this discussion has focused on one outcome. You're either for it or against it. And many have decided they are against.

But on what grounds? Sadly, much of the discussion about biotechnology has been dominated by scaremongering and wildly inaccurate, but highly emotional language. And claims that animal and fish genes have been put into plants have been used to convince consumers that their food is unsafe and unnatural.

GM foods are some of the most highly regulated products on the market. GM soya was reviewed by over 20 independent scientific bodies, all of which approved it as safe to eat. And none of Monsanto's GM crops contain fish or animal genes. In fact, before any GM foods can go on sale in the UK, they are carefully scrutinised by four government departments and up to seven different independent scientific committees.

Unfortunately, until there is a proper, scientific-based discussion about biotechnology, the current polarisation of views will persist. This is why we decided to advertise in the press over the summer. Not because we thought it would change public opinion overnight.

Environmental benefits such as the 850,000 gallons of insecticide that American cotton growers have not had to spray over the past three years as a result of using GM cotton seeds. And health benefits, like helping tackle night blindness in developing countries by growing a new GM oil seed rape that produces beta-carotene, a precursor for vitamin A. At present it is estimated that 10 million children a year die of vitamin A deficiency.

A science-based discussion is crucial if we are to properly explain these benefits. Of course calm, rational discussion of the technology doesn't make good headlines. But it is the only way to sort out fact from fiction. In the meantime, we will continue to support moves to provide the consumer with more information on GM foods. And we welcome the Government's recent decision to set up a new ministerial group on biotechnology and genetic modification and an environmental stakeholders forum to discuss GM issues.

I believe this is the right direction for a proper discussion about biotechnoloy. And we will continue to be part of that discussion.

** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. **



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Subject: California Croppers hit the "Gill Tract"
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 16:24:22 -0500

For Immediate Release
November 26, 1998

Gardeners Decontaminate Genetic Corn Crop

A group of conservative gardeners calling themselves the California Croppers held a tackle football match early Thanksgiving morning at the "Gill Tract" gardens, and in the process destroyed a crop of genetically-engineered corn. The land is located at the corner of San Pablo and Buchanan in the North Berkeley/Albany district, and is owned and operated by the University of California.

The Croppers took the opportunity to welcome biotech giant Novartis, who just signed a multimillion dollar research deal with UC-Berkeley.

"As an informal welcome-wagon gesture, the Croppers would like to make it clear to Novartis that we will take similar actions against any future biotech experiments. Don't let our unseriousness make you think this isn't serious: the security of the world's food supply is at stake. Giant corporations have set mad scientists loose upon the world, and as responsible citizens and farmers, we have no choice but to stop them," said Captain Swing of the California Croppers.

The match was also meant as a Thanksgiving gift to Americans, who will be eating hearty meals today, 60-70% of which is estimated to contain genetically-engineered food products.

The rather pleasant and sporting activity of decontaminating fields of mutant crops is widespread in Europe and India. This is believed to be the first such action in the United States since a crop of Frostban strawberries were pulled up in 1987 by Earth First!, an event which also took place in the Bay Area. No messages will be received at this address.


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Subject: Cremate Monsanto!!
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 19:11:09 -0500
From: "PROF. NANJUNDA SWAMY" <swamy.krrs@aworld.net>

Dear friends,

Monsanto's field trials in Karnataka will be reduced to ashes, starting on Saturday. Two days ago the Minister of Agriculture of Karnataka gave a press conference where he was forced by the journalists to disclose the three sites where field trials with Bt cotton are being conducted. KRRS activists have already contacted the owners of these fields, to explain them which action will be taken, and for what reasons, and to let them know that the KRRS will cover any loses they will suffer. On Saturday the 28th of November, at midday, thousands of farmers will occupy and burn down the three fields in front of the cameras, in an open, announced action of civil disobedience.

These actions will start a campaign of direct action by farmers against biotechnology, called Operation 'Cremation Monsanto', which will not stop until all the corporate killers like Monsanto, Novartis, Pioneer etc leave the country. Farmers' leaders from the states of Maharastra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh (states where Monsanto is also conducting field trials) were yesterday in Bangalore to prepare the campaign.

The campaign will run under the following slogans:

STOP GENETIC ENGINEERING
NO PATENTS ON LIFE
CREMATE MONSANTO
BURY THE WTO

along with a more specific message for all those who have invested on Monsanto: You should rather take your money out before we reduce it to ashes.

We know that stopping biotechnology in India will not be of much help to us if it continues in other countries, since the threats that it poses do not stop at the borders. We also think that the kind of actions that will be going on in India have the potential not only to kick those corporate killers out of our country: if we play our cards right at global level and coordinate our work, these actions can also pose a major challenge to the survival of these corporations in the stock markets. Who wants to invest in a mountain of ashes, in offices that are constantly being squatted (and if necessary even destroyed) by activists?

For these reasons, we are making an international call for direct action against Monsanto and the rest of the biotech gang. This call for action will hopefully inspire all the people who are already doing a brilliant work against biotech, and many others who so far have not been very active on the issue, to join hands in a quick, effective worldwide effort.

This is a very good moment to target Monsanto, since it has run out of cash in its megalomaniac attempt to monopolise the life industry in record time. It is going now through a hard time of layoffs and restructuration in a desperate effort to survive, since it cannot pay its bills. It is also a good time because several recent scandals (like the pulping of the Monsanto edition of The Ecologist, the whole 'Terminator Technology' affaire, the illegal introduction of Bt Cotton in Zimbabwe, etc) have contributed to its profile as corporate killer, which, being the creators of Vietnam War's Agent Organe and rBHG, was already good enough, anyhow.

We are hence making a call to:

* Take direct actions against biotech TNCs, particularly Monsanto (be it squatting or burning their fields, squatting or destroying their offices, etc) * Maintain the local or/and national press informed about all the actions going on around the world * Take direct actions at stock exchanges targeting Monsanto, to draw attention on its state of bankruptcy

We are making this call for action on the line of Peoples' Global Action (PGA), a worldwide network of peoples' movements, in order to emphasize the political analysis beyond our opposition to biotechnology. This analysis does not only take environmental concerns into account, and is not limited to the defense of food security - it attacks neoliberal globalisation as a whole, the WTO regime as its most important tool, and the global power structures (G8, NATO, etc) as the root of all these problems. You will find the complete political analysis on the manifesto of the PGA, which you will find in the web page <http://www.agp.org/>

The fact that this call for action takes place on line with PGA also has other implications:

* We are calling ONLY for non-violent direct actions. Non-violence in this context means that we should respect all (non-genetically modified) living beings, including policemen and the people who work for these TNCs * The campaign will take place in a decentralised manner, and nobody should speak on behalf of other people involved in the campaign without their consent (also not on behalf of PGA, of course); however, people are welcome to report about the actions of others without pretending to represent them.

If you want to be informed of what is going on around the world on this matter, please send a message to listproc@gn.apc.org with the message "subscribe pga-ge" on the text body. This way you will be informed about what is going on in India and in other countries. (The list will be active a few hours after we send this message).

Please, try not write back to this address, since we will be madly busy in the next days with the mobilisations. However, if you have good contacts with international media (CNN, BBC, TV5, etc) and want to help us to get them here to cover the bonfire at Monsanto's field please let us know as soon as possible.

Friendly greetings,

Prof. Nanjundaswamy
President, Karnataka State Farmers Association

********************

Appendix 1: "Police Protection to all American Companies in Bangalore City", article appeared in "Samykta Karnataka", November 25th

Police Protection to all American Companies in Bangalore City

Bangalore Nov. 25th

It has come to light that the American Ambassador in Dehli has written to the Government of the State of Karnataka asking to provide a strong police protection to all American companies in the city.

Pointing out the previuos repeated attacks on American companies by "miscreants", the Ambassador has requested the State Government to create an atmosphere without fear and anxiety for them to work.

He has stressed the need for a special security for companies related to science and technology and also the their hundreds of foreign companies in the city.

Tight Security for Monsanto

Anticipating attack on the offices of Monsanto in Bangalore, tight security has been provided from today, top police sources confirmed.

Police have said in their note that they are providing security for the company owning the Terminator Technology and having the right to sell seeds which do not germinate for the second time. In a city where most of the TNCs are based, the present developments have made them to work with fear and anxiety.

(Translated from Kannada)




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Subject: Pies fly over university's deals on GEFs
Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 09:05:13 -0500

Pies fly over university's deals on genetically altered foods
The Washington Times

BERKELEY, Calif. - Protesters inspired by the Green Party twice in the past two weeks threw pies at the faces of top University of California officials for making big-money deals with companies that market genetically engineered food products.

Two pie tossers were arrested when they tried to pelt Gordon Rausser, dean of UC Berkeley's College of Natural Resources, with pumpkin pies as he signed a deal for $25 million a year giving Swiss food and pharmaceutical giant [ Novartis AG ] first negotiating rights to any discoveries stemming from research funded by the agreement.

While commercial firms often sponsor university research, the Berkeley-Novartis pact is believed to be the first ever committing the full intellectual output of an entire college to one company.

Berkeley's natural resources college has pioneered development of genetically altered strawberries and tomatoes, producing fruits and vegetables that last weeks longer on store shelves and in consumers' refrigerators than natural products.

The university can now use all Novartis proprietary technology for its advanced research, while the company essentially gets the right of first refusal on acquiring the rights to any new products. Berkeley keeps both the patents for any inventions and the right to collect royalties on them.

The pie tossers deny formal affiliation with the Green political party, but the party makes no secret of its opposition to both the Berkeley deal and a similar agreement in the works between the university's Davis campus and [ Monsanto Corp. ] , which also makes genetically engineered crops.

Davis chancellor Larry Vanderhoef was hit in the face with a banana cream pie at a lunch briefing on that campus during his negotiations just a day before the Berkeley contract was announced. The pie thrower there has not been caught or identified, although the groups claiming responsibility for the Berkeley attack also say they hit Mr. Vanderhoef.

Those groups include the so-called Hexterminators and the Biotic Baking Brigade. The latter group last month arranged for pies to be thrown in the faces of San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope.

One representative of the Green Party of California, Hank Chapot, said his group has long opposed genetically engineered agriculture. "It can have vast unintended consequences," he said.

Mr. Chapot said genetically altered corn produced by Novartis in Europe has cross-pollinated nearby natural corn. So far, there have been no reports of negative consequences of such accidental interbreeding.

Many of the same individuals who are active Greens conducted protests in the 1980s, when Berkeley began testing its altered strawberries near the town of Brentwood, about 20 miles east of San Francisco Bay. The Greens argued then that the changed plants could create poisonous fruits or other hazards. No such problems have been documented.

Meanwhile, Berkeley officials say their agreement with Novartis contains safeguards to protect academic freedom while providing money for research.

"This does not mean less research into natural food production methods," Mr. Rausser said after dodging the pie slung his way. "These fields are not mutually exclusive."

Research at both Berkeley and the agriculturally oriented Davis campus has long been a key factor in making California the world's leading food production region.

Even though the Berkeley-Novartis deal will provide support for graduate students, dozens of grad students pronounced themselves "outraged" at the pact during their own press conference just after the pact was announced.

"This deal promotes a narrow focus on profit-oriented and controversial biotechnological research," they said in a written statement. "That contrasts with the College of Natural Resources' stated goals of sustainability, protection of the environment and food safety."

(Copyright 1998)




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Subject: U.S. Bt Corn Acres Exploded In '98
Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 23:34:24 -0500

Bt Corn Acres Exploded In '98

Syl Marking
Soybean Digest 11/30/98

Farmer interest in Bt corn for 1998 mushroomed beyond expectations. In fact, it went a little crazy.

That was in the cards. The technology had proved its borer-killing power the year before - a near-record year for corn borers. On top of that, devastation was wreaked in non-protected corn in some areas, particularly in the western Corn Belt.

Consider west-central Minnesota. For the third year in a row, unprotected cornfields there were ripped with heavy losses - 20 to 40+ bu/acre in 1997. It was a double-whammy, where two biotypes and great growing conditions combined to produce record losses.

Yield results using Bt corn hybrids under these heavy infestation levels were spectacular by anybody's standards. Farmers and scientists found, however, that even at much lower borer levels, there were yield increases that more than paid for the technology.

University and industry scientists fear the acreage growth rate for Bt corn could slow for '99. The reasons: the extremely low corn prices and the fact that borer levels were low throughout the Corn Belt this year.

As Kevin Steffey, University of Illinois extension entomologist, put it after traveling five states, "Corn borers have been conspicuous by their virtual absence this summer." John Foster, University of Nebraska entomologist, agrees.

"I found one field that was 97% infested, but across the state, after looking at hundreds of fields, it runs from 0 to 3% damage."

Ken Ostlie, University of Minnesota extension entomologist, also reports spotty infestations in western Minnesota, but generally low levels elsewhere.

Nevertheless, these scientists caution growers to not let this year's low corn borer levels prompt them to automatically forego the technology next year.

"Recognizing that Bt populations fluctuate, we simply have to look at Bt corn as insurance, as a risk management tool," notes Ostlie. "In the long run, the technology is definitely projected to pay off - unless we see a reduction of crop prices because production goes up because of Bt, or corn borer populations are squelched because of a large market penetration of Bt corn."

Nebraska's Foster adds: "I remind growers that, in our area, perhaps seven to eight years out of 10, we need some kind of intervention for control of corn borers, especially second- generation borers. We've examined this situation and given all the constraints and the actual cost of the technology, even in a year when the corn price is as lousy as it is now, this technology still pays.

"Sharp growers in our areas who traditionally have more of a corn borer problem have figured out quickly that this technology pays," Foster points out. "One reason this technology has come on so strong is the sound economic basis it has for our growers."

Generally, corn borers are a bigger and more frequent problem in the western Corn Belt than in the eastern Corn Belt. Even so, Illinois' Steffey agrees - mostly.

"In areas where economic infestations of corn borers are relatively frequent, say seven or eight years out of 10, Bt corn is a wise investment," Steffey says. "But in areas where economic infestations are relatively infrequent, say two or three years out of 10, growers should really question whether Bt corn is a wise investment."

The problem is, no one knows for sure whether there will be an economic hit the following year based on incidence the current year.

"Using Bt corn for management of corn borers should be a long-term investment, not a short-sighted tactic used or not used one year based on what happened or didn't happen the year before," Steffey emphasizes. "The correlation between densities one year and the next year usually is not good."

Bruce Burger, a Novartis scientist, seconds Ostlie's comments.

"This technology is essentially a form of risk management," he notes. "Historically, we know we have only about one year out of 10 when we have little or no corn borer damage. So we need to focus on making sure we use that trait to manage corn borers in the future, even though we may not see the benefits this year in every field."

University and industry scientists concur that the Bt gene for protection against corn borer yield loss is "great technology." But Bt won't increase yield potential of a hybrid by even a bushel. It'll only protect the yield potential that the plant offers.

Eric Sachs, team business leader for Monsanto's YieldGard Bt corn, thinks the combination of low corn prices and low borer populations in '98 may slow the adoption rate for '99.

"I think farmers now are mostly reacting to the low corn price, and they have justifiable reasons to be concerned," he asserts. "But, hopefully, that will turn around. It always has, but it's hard when you're going through it."

Most observers feel that the Bt technology will find its way onto millions more acres in the next several years. As best he can estimate, Sachs figures the acreage of Bt hybrids offered by all companies totaled between 15 million and 16 million in 1998 - an awesome accomplishment for essentially their third year on the market.

Paul Bystrak, a Mycogen entomologist, notes: "Bt technology is a whole new deal, and it's an exciting time. The difference with Bt corn, even where growers didn't think they had much of a problem, is quite amazing. I wouldn't be surprised to see this technology get a little cheaper in the future, too, which would make it pencil out a little easier under lower borer densities."

"I still believe this Bt technology will become a megatrend," asserts Dale Sorensen, head of Dekalb Genetics' agronomic services. "There are so many positives to these products. There is the benefit of return on investment per acre, but also it makes management easier for the grower. These benefits can't be measured in dollars and cents. There are environmental aspects as well."

University and industry scientists universally concur that gene stacking of more than one trait in a hybrid or variety is the wave of the future -and is already well under way.

"We have done substantial market research," Sachs says, "and growers are saying they want the corn hybrids they buy to contain several transgenic traits to meet the problems they have on their farms. And that is the goal of all technology providers."

A recent example is AgrEvo's StarLink Bt corn hybrids, which boast a Bt protein with a different site of action from other Bt hybrids. Company officials say it should help prevent possible development of resistance to the technology. It's stacked on top of resistance to Liberty herbicide.

"StarLink technology represents a very important breakthrough in combating the possibility of corn borer resistance to Bt because it contains the Cry9C protein," explains Keith Newhouse, Bt corn marketing manager. "It's also the only Bt that is active against black cutworm in addition to corn borer."

Another stack example: Dekalb Genetics will offer a Roundup Ready-Bt hybrid for '99.




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Subject: FW: Food Bytes #15 "Special Issue on Monsanto"
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 23:42:20 -0500

FOOD BYTES #15 December 7, 1998
News and Analysis on Genetic Engineering & Factory Farming
by: Ronnie Cummins, Campaign for Food Safety/Organic Consumers Action
alliance@mr.net http://www.purefood.org
http://www.icta.org
___________________________________________________________
Special Issue on Monsanto

*** "Cremate Monsanto"-- Global Opposition Intensifies
___________________________________________________________
Coming up in the next issue of Food Bytes:
Organic Standards: USDA Strikes Again--Organic Community Regroups
____________________________________________________________

"Monsanto's [Bt Cotton] field trials in Karnataka [India] will be reduced to ashes in a few days. These actions will start a movement of direct action by farmers against biotechnology, which will not stop until all the corporate killers like Monsanto, Novartis, Pioneer etc. leave the country. We know that stopping biotechnology in India will not be of much help to us if it continues in other countries, [but] if we play our cards right at the global level and coordinate our work, these actions can also pose a major challenge to the survival of these corporations in the stock markets. Who wants to invest in a mountain of ashes, in offices that are constantly being squatted (and if necessary even destroyed) by activists?"

Prof. Nanjundaswamy <swamy.krrs@a world.net>
President, Karnataka State Farmers Association, November, 1998

=============================-=-=-=-=

As reported in Food Bytes #13 ("Monsanto Under Attack") things have not been going so well for the gene engineers at Monsanto. In fact lately their situation seems to have degenerated from bad to worse. Besides slipping stock prices and persistence rumors of an unfriendly takeover by Dupont or another corporate giant, the Biomasters of Biotech have suffered from a rash of recent reversals including:

* Destruction of several heretofore secret test plots of Monsanto's Bt "Bollguard" Cotton in India. On Nov. 28 and again on Dec. 2 contingents of Indian farmers in the Karnataka region, chanting "Cremate Monsanto" and "Stop Genetic Engineering," uprooted and burned Bt cotton fields in front of a bank of TV cameras and news reporters. Once again Indian national and provincial governments came under fire for secretly collaborating with Monsanto and other agri-chemical transnationals. In the wake of the controversy, government officials in New Delhi were forced to reiterate that "Terminator Technology" seeds--patented by the USDA and Monsanto--will not be allowed into the country. NGOs (non-government organizations) including the Karnataka State Farmers Association have called on Monsanto to get out of India, and for the government to ban field tests and imports of genetically engineered seeds and crops. On Dec. 3 the Andhra Pradesh provincial government was forced to ask Monsanto to halt all field trials of Bt "Bollgard" cotton going on in seven districts in the state.

* Informed sources in Thailand and South Korea report that government advisors and officials have begun discussions and deliberations to require mandatory labeling and safety-testing of genetically engineered foods and crops, despite anticipated objections from the US Embassy. On November 6 the influential Thailand Biotech Centre admitted that "genetically engineered foods and agricultural products may pose a health hazard." Dr. Suthat Sriwathanapong, of the National Centre for Genetic Engineering and Technology, said that to "protect consumers against this possible health risk," the Thai Food and Drug Administration should issue a more comprehensive rule to regulate genetically engineered drugs and products.

* The Consumers Union of Japan and other NGOs continue to call for mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods and crops. With several million petition signatures already in their hands, Japanese government officials are finding it increasingly difficult to ignore the demands of consumers. In a national survey in 1997, 91% of Japanese consumers stated their desire for "safety information" on GE foods. Despite Japanese consumers concerns, US trade officials have repeatedly warned Tokyo that mandatory labeling of GMOs is unacceptable, and could lead to a US/Japan trade war.

* The Southeast Asia Regional Institute for Community Education <searice.c@philoline.com.phand 12 other environmental NGOs organized a militant mass demonstration outside of Monsanto's corporate offices, near Manila, on Dec. 8 under the slogans of "Stop the Terminator Seeds" and "Put a Face on the Enemy." The genetic engineering controversy has recently been covered prominently in a number of major Phillipines newspapers, and two senators have introduced government resolutions to hold hearings and investigations on field trials and imports of GE foods and crops into the country.

* In New Zealand, a major controversy has developed over revelations that a US government official threatened serious economic reprisals if the country went forward with a law on mandatory labeling. Former associate Health Minister Neil Kirton revealed in an interview in the national press that the United States Ambassador, Josiah Beeman, visited him twice in February and March and "bullied" him over the testing and labeling of genetically modified food. Kirton was later fired and replaced by another government official who was willing to go along with the US "no labeling" position. Polls in New Zealand and Australia show that consumers overwhelming support mandatory labeling. In one 1993 poll in Australia, a full 89% of citizens said they wanted labeling and would reject foods that were unlabeled. A recent nation-wide survey conducted by Central Queensland University researchers found strong resistance to genetically altered food among Australian consumers, particularly women.

* In mid-November the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) of Asia and the Pacific launched a Safe Food Campaign at the Asia Pacific People's Assembly in Kuala Lumpur. PAN is collaborating with its network partners in the region to carry out this campaign. "Growing concern over these 'miracle' foods and the lack of information has prompted coordinated action over this issue", said Jennifer Mourin, the Campaign coordinator. Indian activist Dr. Vandana Shiva, speaking in Kuala Lumpur, described Monsanto, the biggest player in the ag biotech industry, as a "global terrorist," forcing "hazardous food" on countries, using "tremendous pressure and misleading promotional campaigns" to prevent people from choosing "the food they want," and refusing to segregate and label genetically engineered foods and crops.

* In Mexico City, national parliamentary representatives of the Green Party have begun work on federal legislation that would require mandatory labeling and safety-testing of GE foods and crops. The Greens expect to receive support from other opposition political parties as well.

* In Brazil, one of the nation's largest supermarket chains, Carrefour, has come out against the commercialization of Monsanto's herbicide-resistant "Roundup Ready" soybeans. Brazil is the second largest producer of soy in the world, second only to the United States. At this time, Brazilian soybean growers are benefiting from the higher prices that many buyers in the U.S. and Europe are willing to pay for non-genetically engineered crops. A lawsuit filed earlier this year by the Brazilian Institute for Consumer Defense (IDEC) <idec@uol.com.brhas temporarily halted the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture's approval of Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" soybeans. Brazilian NGOs including Greenpeace are gearing up to make their presence felt at the final session of the Convention on Biodiversity's Biosafety Protocol negotiations in mid-February in Cartagena, Colombia--where citizen groups and developing nations will try to push through a legally binding international treaty to regulate genetically engineered organisms.

* At a November international conference of IFOAM (International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements) <ifoam@t-online.de>, at Mar del Plata, Argentina, delegates from more than 60 countries, representing the world's leading organic farming organizations, called for governments and regulatory agencies throughout the world to immediately ban the use of genetic engineering in agriculture and food production because of threats to human health, the environment, and farmers rights.

* In Europe the controversy over gene foods continues unabated. Consumer studies by Monsanto's American polling firm recently leaked to Greenpeace International showed that public opinion in Great Britain and Germany has turned even more strongly against GE foods in recent months. According to the poll, conducted by Stanley Greenberg, "the broad climate is extremely inhospitable to biotechnology acceptance. Over the past year, the situation has deteriorated steadily and is perhaps even accelerating, with the latest survey showing an ongoing collapse of public support for biotechnology and genetically modified (GM) foods." The report goes on to state that even the "media elites are strongly hostile to biotechnology and Monsanto. They think the Government is being too lax and believe they must expose the dangers..."

* In Ireland a major row has developed after a national television network, RTE, ran a program entitled "Safe Harvest," critical of genetic engineering. Monsanto and the Irish biotechnology industry immediately complained that the program was "unfair and inaccurate," and demanded a retraction. Although threats by Monsanto will undoubtedly force Irish TV to grant "equal time" to biotech proponents on a later program, the incident has once more served to discredit Monsanto, already notorious in Europe for their strong-arm tactics in trying to suppress dissent.

* In October SPAR and all of Austria's major supermarket chains declared that they will not sell GE-derived products and intend to take them off their shelves. Meanwhile Greece has decided to ban the import of GE rapeseed (canola). In addition the Scientific Committee on Plants of the European Commission ruled against the release of a GE potato containing antibiotic-resistance marker genes.

* On Oct. 12 the European Parliament's Environment Committee called on the EU Commission to impose a moratorium on new GMO releases across the continent. Shortly thereafter the UK government announced a de-facto three-year moratorium on insect-resistant plants (e.g. Bt crops) and a de-facto one year moratorium on herbicide-resistant plants. The British government has apparently come to an agreement with the biotech industry in the UK that they will not apply for authorisation of Bt or herbicide-resistant plants during this time period.

* In late-October Greenpeace Germany released an internal memo issued by the Raiffeisen Co-operative in Baden Wurttenberg. Raiffeisen, one of the EU's biggest grain merchants, announced that they will refuse to accept deliveries of genetically modified maize from farmers. Grain handlers, animal feed dealers, and cooking oil suppliers all over Europe are coming under increasing pressure from supermarkets, consumer groups, and food producers to supply them with guaranteed "GMO-free" ingredients.

* In a speech delivered at a sugar industry trade meeting in the U.K. experts warned that the forthcoming export of non-segregated (GE mixed with non-GE) sugar from the US by Cargill and other commodity traders will likely set off a major controversy. "Current regulations in the sugar trade Associations make no mention of genetically modified quality," said Jonathan Drake, of Cargill's Geneva-based sugar trading office. In a speech prepared for an International Sugar Organization seminar, Drake warned that "Whether it [American sugar] will be freely accepted at destination is still unknown and perhaps dependent on labelling restrictions. EU officials may be quick to impose some restrictions in the wake of all the food scares in Europe."

* Hungarian protesters took to the streets on November 18, in front of the Ministry of Agriculture to pressure government authorities drafting final implementation legislation for Hungary's genetic engineering law (coming into force January 1, 1999). Chanting "Ne Kukoricazz a Kukicoret!" ("Don't Cream the Corn!), Environmental activists from five NGOs (including ELTE Nature Conservation Club and Energy Club) inflated a 6-meter high helium balloon of a corncob with bar-code, in front of the Ministry of Agriculture. Protesters are demanding a complete moratorium on the growth, use, and importation of genetically-modified plants, animals, and foodstuffs in Hungary.

* In the United States there are recent reports among agronomists of problems with Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" Cotton in Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, and Arizona. In addition informed sources in Arizona report that Bt cotton is failing to repel pink bollworms, a major cotton pest. Lagging sales of Monsanto's Bt corn seeds in the Midwest have already forced the company to slash prices by 30%.

* In the US, according to the April 1998 journal, Cotton Grower, Bt-cotton growers in Arkansas had less than a banner year last season. A University of Arkansas study of several Bt and non-Bt cotton fields showed that on average Bt cotton yielded fewer pounds and lower income per acre. One farm showed a remarkable difference in yield--Bt cotton produced 168 fewer pounds per acre than the non-Bt variety. Bt cotton, on the farms studied, yielded an average of 24 fewer pounds per acre. Also, the new varieties required more growth regulator to synchronize plant development and had to be picked twice. Non-Bt cotton is typically picked only once.

Also in Arkansas, on Nov. 24, seven farmers filed legal complaints against Monsanto, claiming that they were sold soybean seed with low germination rates. The complaints, filed with the Arkansas State Plant Board, involve several seed varieties that utilize Monsanto's Roundup Ready gene technology.

* In Maine on Nov. 20, pressure from the Green Party and other citizens groups caused Monsanto to withdraw its application to register and grow its genetically engineered corn in the state.

* Beginning October 31, more than 140 restaurants nationwide joined Greenpeace USA in calling on the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to require labels on genetically engineered foods. These restaurants will distribute information on the dangers of transgenic foods, including a postcard that customers can send to the FDA to support a lawsuit calling for labeling.

"As a chef who is concerned about food quality, I want to be able to serve my customers the purest foods I can find," said Peter Hoffman, chef of the New York restaurant Savoy and board member of the national organization Chefs Collaborative 2000. "This means locally grown food from farmers I trust, not untested foods which may harm my customers." Chefs Collaborative is a non-profit membership organization of 1500 chefs across America who are dedicated to the ethic of sustainable cuisine.

* On Nov. 26 activists calling themselves the "California Croppers" destroyed a test plot of Novartis Bt corn on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley. In a communique the Croppers warned Novartis and other biotech companies that further GE test plots were likely to come under attack. The Biotic Baking Brigade also struck again on November 23, throwing pies at a University of California official and an executive from Novartis.

* On November 18, the industry journal Chemical Week reported that cash-strapped Monsanto is trying to sell its controversial chemical sweetener, NutraSweet. Although the artificial sweetener has generated enormous profits for Searle, Monsanto's drug subsidiary, over the years, it has also generated thousands of complaints from consumers who claim that NutraSweet has damaged their health. Chemical Week also cited Wall Street analysts who report that Monsanto is also trying to sell its even more controversial genetically engineered animal drug, the recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone. So far there are no companies willing to buy rBGH.

* In yet another public relations setback for Monsanto (and Rupert Murdock's Fox Television network), fired Florida investigative reporters Jane Akre and Steve Wilson were presented a prestigious Ethics Award from the US Society of Professional Journalists for their investigative reporting on Monsanto's Bovine Growth Hormone. Akre and Wilson were fired by the Fox network last year after Monsanto claimed the two had produced a bias report on the controversial animal drug. On December 16, Wilson and Akre will be receiving the Joe Callaway Award from the Shafeek Nader Trust for "civic courage" in Washington, D.C.

* In addition to receiving continuing adverse publicity in the US from harassing and prosecuting 480 farmers for the "crime" of saving seeds (see Food Bytes #13) Monsanto now faces an a potentially even more explosive situation in the province of Saskatchewan, Canada. According to a Saskatchewan newspaper, the Western Producer, Monsanto has filed legal charges against a Saskatchewan farmer, Percy Schmeiser, for growing Roundup Ready canola without a license. But Schmeiser claims he's innocent and that Monsanto is the guilty party. He says that his farm has been contaminated by genetic material which has drifted from the fields of adjoining farmers who are growing genetically engineered canola. "It's in the ditches and the roadsides; it's in the shelter belts; it's in the gardens; it's all over," said Schmeiser. If Schmeiser ends up facing Monsanto in court, he says he going to be putting the company's genetically altered crops and patents on trial.

* And finally in Canada, the government announced on December 4 that it will not be giving approval to Monsanto's rBGH--at least for the foreseeable future. In an enormous controversy that will simply not go away, federal Health Canada officials have been exposed in the national media for conspiring with Monsanto to get the drug approved, despite objections by the government's own scientists--who warn that the drug has not been proven safe--and strenuous objections by farmers and consumer groups. Previous reports in the media have pointed out that Monsanto offered two million dollars to government health officials in exchange for speedy approval of rBGH, while shortly thereafter dissident scientists files' were burglarized and documents damaging to Monsanto were stolen. Several years ago Monsanto threatened to pull all investments out of Canada if rBGH were not approved, and has threatened the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for airing stories critical of the company's strong-arm tactics.

Pressure continues to build across the globe for an internationally coordinated anti-Monsanto Campaign. Stay tuned to Food Bytes for further details.

### End of Food Bytes #15###





Ronnie Cummins
Campaign for Food Safety/Organic Consumers Action
860 Hwy 61
Little Marais, Mn. 55614
Tel. 218-226-4164
Fax 218-226-4157
email alliance@mr.net
http://www.purefood.org
To subscribe to the free electronic newsletter, Food Bytes, send an email
to:
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with the simple message:
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Subject: Smart farmers burn Monsanto's e-cotton (Philippine Journal)
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 09:51:43 -0500

Smart farmers burn Monsanto's e-cotton
by Roberto Verzola
Philippine Journal
December 8, 1999


"Indian farmers are smart chaps," said Dr. Sivramiah Shantharam when he talked before the DOST [the Philippines' Department of Science and Technology] last November 25 on the controversial topic of genetic engineering. Shantharam related that in his younger days, he worked in India for a firm selling agricultural chemicals, and that he learned from experience to appreciate the wisdom of Indian farmers. "Indian farmers know exactly what they need. You may fool them once, but if you do it again, they will chase you out of the village," said Shantharam, who is today a branch chief of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

On the same week as Shantharam's DOST talk, the farmers of Karnataka, India were showing exactly how smart they were.

Minister was unaware

On November 16: The Indian public was informed by local newspapers that Monsanto "has been conducting 40 field trials with genetically manipulated cotton across five Indian states for the last three months." Monsanto was testing an engineered mutant corn that automatically produced its own insect-killing poison (the Bt toxin). Monsanto had earlier bought into a local company to carry out the mutant e-cotton field trials. Karnataka Agriculture Minister C. Byre Gowda admitted that he had been informed of the on-going trials but was unaware of where they were being undertaken.

On November 20: Indian newspapers reported that the Karnataka State Farmers Association (KRRS) had issued a deadline to the State Government and Monsanto to disclose the places where the trials were being conducted and the exact description of the e-cotton seeds that were being tested. '"Monsanto should reveal immediately where the trials are being conducted" failing which "direct action would follow on the company's office in Malleswaram," their president Prof. Nanjundaswamy said. "Monsanto will have to leave the country within a week. Otherwise we will be forced to throw them out," Prof. Nanjundaswamy angrily said.

On November 24: The Minister of Agriculture of Karnataka held a press conference, where he was forced by journalists to reveal the three sites where field trials with Monsanto's e-cotton were being conducted.

Civil disobedience

On November 26, Prof. Nanjundaswamy circulated the following letter: "Monsanto's field trials in Karnataka will be reduced to ashes, starting on Saturday. ...KRRS activists have already contacted the owners of these fields, to explain them which action will be taken, and for what reasons, and to let them know that the KRRS will cover any losses they will suffer. On Saturday the 28th of November, at midday, thousands of farmers will occupy and burn down the three fields in front of the cameras, in an open, announced action of civil disobedience."

On November 28, the Karnataka farmers released a statement: " Today the farmers of Karnataka will reduce to ashes one of the illegal field trials that the criminal organisation Monsanto is carrying out in the country. This action will mark the beginning of a campaign of civil disobedience called Operation 'Cremation Monsanto', which will soon be continued in Karnataka and other Indian states.

"The field that will be burned today belongs to Basanna, who came to know what kind of plants were growing in his field only last Wednesday, when Byre Gowda (Minister of Agriculture of Karnataka) mentioned his name as he disclosed the three sites where Monsanto's trials are being conducted in Karnataka.

Experiment without farmer's knowledge

"According to Basanna's testimony, officials of Mahyco Monsanto went to his farm in July and proposed him to grow, free of cost, a new variety of cotton seeds, which they claimed would give very good results. He could not suspect that their intention was to carry out an experiment on genetic engineering without his knowledge and consent, risking the future viability not only of his farm, but of his complete community.

"The officials of Mahyco Monsanto, who have signed a written declaration admitting their illegal behaviour, went regularly to apply manure and pesticides to the Bt cotton, including heavy doses of insecticides. However, the plants are infested with bollworm (the pest that Bt cotton is supposed to control) and other pests like white fly and red-rot. Despite the heavy use of chemical fertiliser, traces of which still can be observed in the field, the Bt plants grew miserably, less than half the size of the traditional cotton plants in the adjecent fields.

"No single biosafety measure (e.g. buffer zone around the genetically engineered cotton to reduce biopollution, construction of a fence around the field, etc) was undertaken by the Mahyco Monsanto. They did not even demarcate the field as biohazard area."

Uprooted, then burned

Later in the afternoon of November 28, they released another statement: "The direct action campaign of Indian farmers Operation 'Cremate Monsanto' started today at 13:30 in the village of Maladagudda, about 400 North of Bangalore. Mr. Basanna, owner of the field where an illegal genetic experiment was being conducted without his knowledge, and Prof. Nanjundaswamy, president of KRRS (a Gandhian movement of 10 million farmers in the Southern Indian state of Karnataka), uprooted together the first plant of genetically modified cotton, inviting the rest of the local peasants to do the same. Within a few minutes, all the plants in the field were piled up and ready to be set on fire."

Taking their fight to the global arena, the Karnataka farmers also announced: "...we are making an international call for direct action against Monsanto and the rest of the biotech gang. This call for action will hopefully inspire all the people who are already doing a brilliant work against biotech, and many others who so far have not been very active on the issue, to join hands in a quick, effective worldwide effort." The farmers emphasized, "we are calling ONLY for non-violent direct actions".

Philippine picket against Monsanto

On December 8, Tuesday, Filipino groups opposed to genetically-engineered crops will be holding their own protest in front of Monsanto's Makati office. They are protesting Monsanto's intention to field-test a variety of mutant e-corn in Bai, Laguna and in General Santos in Mindanao. They will be raising four demands:

* ban the field-testing of genetically-altered crops * ban the importation of genetically-altered food and food ingredients * kick out biotech seed firms for trying to control our food supplies * stop the patenting of biological materials and processes.

The picketeers include the Citizens' Alliance for Consumer Protection, the environmental group Haribon Foundation, Pesticide Action Network, Greenpeace, the Philippine Greens, SEARICE, and a number of religious organizations.

If it is serious about its food security program, the government should heed their demands.

(Roberto Verzola is the secretary-general of the Philippine Greens.)



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Subject: Monsanto prosecuted in UK for GE oilseed rape releases
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1998 10:34:45 -0500

December 18

News in brief: Monsanto on crop charges
The Guardian

[ MONSANTO ] , the giant multi-national company that specialises in marketing genetically modified crops, is to be prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive following the deliberate releases of modified oilseed rape into the countryside.

The case, the first of its kind in Britain, is being brought under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 against Monsanto and Perryfield Holdings of Worcestershire.

An inspection in June at Rothwell in Lincolnshire showed control measures to prevent pollen from herbicide-tolerant oil seed rape reaching neighbouring crops of un-modified rape had been partly removed.

Both companies must appear before Caister magistrates in Lincolnshire in February accused of breaking the conditions for releasing genetically modified oil seed rape. Monsanto said it would not contest the prosecution.

Both companies face unlimited fines if convicted.

(Copyright 1998)



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Subject: Australia: All transgenic food to be labelled
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1998 17:28:01 -0500

http://www.afr.com.au/content/981218/news/news4.html

Australian Financial Review
Dec 18, 1998

All transgenic food to be labelled

By Cathy Bolt

The food industry has suffered a defeat in its bid for a smooth introduction of transgenic foods in Australia after a ruling by health ministers yesterday that will require all food containing genetically modified material to be labelled.

The 6:4 majority decision by the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Council was immediately branded a politically cheap option by the Australian Food Council, which claimed it would deliver the most restrictive labelling regime in the world for such products and could see Australia challenged under World Trade Organisation rules.

"Even the Europeans haven't gone this far for the very reasons we implored the ministers to consider," said the council's executive director, Mr Mitch Hooke.

"It will be meaningless to consumers, unenforceable, impractical -- and impose unnecessary costs."

But the food policy officer at the Australian Consumers' Association, Mr Matt O'Neill, said the decision reflected consumers' basic right to know how the food they ate was produced. Surveys showed more than 80 per cent of consumers wanted full labelling.

"It's a clear message for food producers that consumers won't be force-fed new food technology without being able to make a choice," he said.

The Food Standards Council moved last August to fill a vacuum in Australian food laws governing transgenic products by requiring compulsory labelling where such foods were substantially different in taste, nutrition or use. The law is to take effect next year.

But a decision has been deferred on the more controversial issue of labelling where they are substantially equivalent, for example, products which have ingredients derived from soy bean or cotton plants genetically engineered for pest or herbicide resistance but which are otherwise identical.

Under the majority decision yesterday -- the opponents of which included the Federal Government, New Zealand and Victoria -- compulsory labelling will be required where the manufacturer knows the food contains genetically modified material.

The Australia New Zealand Food Authority -- which also argued against labelling of substantially equivalent foods -- has been asked to draft an amendment to the Food Standards Code to put the decision into effect.

But in another decision which continues to blur the issue, the ministers also asked ANZFA to develop a definition of genetically modified food.

Controversy over the transgenic foods now starting to reach consumers after decades of development has been building in Australia since late 1996, when imported soy beans were the first food to arrive which might have contained transgenic material.

Mr Hooke said there was little benefit to consumers in having the vast majority of products within the next few years on supermarket shelves labelled "may contain".









Subject: GUESS WHAT YOU'VE BEEN EATING
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1998 10:07:49 -0500

Permission granted to transmit electronically, in this form only, for
educational purposes.
_________________________________________________________________

Published in the Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
December 12 1998 under the headline

GUESS WHAT YOU'VE BEEN EATING

Author : Ben Hills Copyright Sydney Morning Herald and Ben Hills

Not to be altered in any way or reproduced for any other purpose, or for commercial gain.

____________________________________________________________________

WHEN they asked Peter Corish to be a guinea pig for Australia's first genetically engineered crop, he jumped at the chance. "In the glasshouse it worked brilliantly," says the cotton farmer from Goondiwindi on the NSW-Queensland border. "We thought it would be the answer to a lot of our problems."

The cotton farmer's biggest bugbear is a caterpillar called helicoverpa, the larva of a moth which, left to its own devices, can munch its way through an entire crop. The traditional solution has been a highly toxic pesticide, sprayed from the air up to a dozen times during the growing season, with serious consequences for the environment, and claims of "cancer clusters" among nearby farming communities.

But six years ago a new species of cotton that was claimed to be immune to the helicoverpa caterpillar, and any other pest, came out of the laboratory and into Australia's paddocks. It had been developed jointly by the CSIRO and Monsanto, the giant US corporation.

Using what scientists call biolistics, a "gene gun" that fires microscopic gold or tungsten cannonballs coated with genetic material into living cells, they had managed to create a cotton plant that manufactures bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a micro-organism deadly to insects which occurs naturally in the soil and is one of the very few pesticides even organic farmers are allowed to use.

It is harmless to humans. But, in theory at least, if a helicoverpa caterpillar bites a chunk out of a leaf of this new cotton variety, it will curl up and drop dead. No more spraying, a cleaner environment, bigger profits for the farmers, a more competitive export industry for Australia, it sounded too good to be true.

And it was. In 1996 the Federal Government approved the commercial release of the patented Ingard cotton, as it is called, the first and so far the only genetically modified (GM) crop grown in Australia. Corish, the chairman of Cotton Australia, the organisation that represents the 1,500 growers, watched eagerly for the results.

Like the curate's egg, they were good in parts. Growers were able to reduce their use of pesticides by up to 65per cent. But yields were also down that first season, and Monsanto exploited its monopoly position, charging farmers $245 a hectare for a licence to grow Ingard, almost double what it charged US farmers. By the time the growers did their accounts, many complained that they had lost money with the new miracle pest-proof cotton.

This year, the third season, only about 16per cent of the 500,000 hectares under cotton in Queensland and NSW have been sown to Ingard. This is partly because of the innate conservatism of farmers, and partly the caution of the Federal Government, which has imposed a ceiling of 20per cent until it better understands the consequences of letting loose a transgenic organism into the fragile Australian environment, which most would feel has already suffered enough havoc from exotic species, introduced, admittedly, with the best of intentions.

But this huge experiment is not just a debate about a new crop, farmers' incomes or even biological pollution, important as they may be. It is a debate that touches all of us in the most intimate and fundamental way, it's about who decides what we eat, about the safety and the security of our food supply.

For two years now, oil crushed from the seeds of that transgenic cotton has been sold for human consumption, and the residue fed to livestock. The oil is used in fish-and-chip shops, and is blended to make products ranging from margarine to mayonnaise and cake-mix. And this is just the beginning.

That oil is just one of a number of transgenic foods, from beer to cheese to baby food, which, with no announcement, no approval from any government organisation, no mandatory health or safety checks, and no labelling, have been quietly infiltrating Australia's supermarkets. One food industry guru estimates that up to 60per cent of the bottles, tins and packages on the shelves may already contain genetically engineered food, and that most of us will already have unknowingly eaten some.

On one side of the debate are the vested interests of the global agri/food industry, which stands to make billions of dollars from its investment in the new technology. They argue powerfully that the new crops represent a second "green revolution", essential if we are to feed the billions of extra mouths arriving on the planet in coming decades; that the products are safe; and that by increasing yields and eliminating the need for weed- and insect-killing poisons they promise a cleaner, greener planet.

Ranged against them is a noisy coalition of environmental, consumer, health and religious groups who mistrust the speed and secrecy with which the new foods have been foisted on us, who are concerned about their possible dangers to consumers, and who fear they may spawn "Frankenstein" plants and insects, with catastrophic consequences for the environment.

Prince Charles, heir to the British throne and a committed "greenie" who converses with his vegetables, spoke for them with religious fervour earlier this year when he said: "Do we have the right to experiment with and commercialise the building blocks of life? I personally have no wish to eat anything produced by genetic manipulation, nor do I knowingly offer this sort of produce to my family or guests."

The extraordinary thing is that, unlike in Europe, where consumer activists have blockaded ports, stormed the headquarters of food companies and attacked genetically engineered crops in the field, Australians have barely begun to discuss the most fundamental change to our diet since European settlement.

A GLANCE at the Internet Web page of the Australian Genetic Manipulation Advisory Committee, 20 scientists appointed by the Government to decide which of these GM crops is safe to grow, and under what conditions, gives an idea of the range of new plants scientists are working on that may eventually finish up on our dinner plates.

Among 110 ongoing experiments are potatoes that don't go brown when you knock them about, and which have an increased starch content so they don't absorb as much oil when they are fried. Canola and sugar cane are being developed with a built-in resistance to bugs and herbicides, and super-nutritious lupins have been "injected" with a sunflower gene that is supposed to make sheep grow more wool when they eat them.

In Queensland Dr Jose Botella, in conjunction with Golden Circle Ltd, is working on a gene he hopes will make whole fields of pineapples all ripen at once so they can be harvested more cheaply. Other Australian scientists, supported by tens of millions of dollars' worth of government grants and tax subsidies, are trying to engineer wheat that makes better noodles, citrus with no seeds, peas that kill weevils.

Dr Thomas "TJ" Higgins, the scientist who heads the CSIRO's "gene team", says there is a potential for the new plants to save Australian agriculture hundreds of millions of dollars a year. But he acknowledges he is disappointed that only one of the new plants (the Ingard cotton) that has come out of his laboratory at the foot of Canberra's Black Mountain in the past 10 years has yet been commercially grown, and says Australia "has been fairly slow to take up the new technology".

The reason? Political opposition (Labor went to the last Federal election promising strict labelling for all GM food) and growing concerns about the safety of the new technology among health, environment and consumer groups, which take their cue from Europe.

There, in a series of highly publicised incidents, Greenpeace activists blocked the entry into port of three cargo ships carrying American GM soya beans, destroyed crops and unrolled a large banner from the roof of Nestle's headquarters in Vevey, Switzerland, proclaiming, "Gene Food Force-Fed by Nestle". The British, in particular, have had their faith in official reassurances shaken by the lies they were told about the scientific "impossibility" of "mad cow disease" being transmitted from beef to humans, more than a dozen people are now confirmed dead from it.

The crusade has resulted in the European Union promulgating labelling laws for genetically engineered foodstuffs, which the industry says are unworkably tough, and has led to a number of bans by high-profile companies. Unilever, Nestle and the chocolate company Kraft Jacobs Suchard have all said they will not use GM products.

Some supermarkets in Denmark, Austria, Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany have also banned genetically engineered food. In Britain, Malcolm Walker, boss of the Iceland chain, which has 750 stores, declared: "I'm not frightened to say this isn't right and we won't do it. There is no practical reason why we should be genetically modifying anything. Genetics is incredibly inexact. We are playing with fire [and] I think it's horrendous."

Not so in the United States, which pioneered genetic engineering, and where 48 different food products have already been approved and hundreds more are on the drawing boards. Almost all, however, like the Ingard cotton, offer advantages to the seed corporation, the farmer, the distributor and the retailer, but nothing to the consumer.

Americans are already able to eat sterile radicchio, borer-resistant popcorn, virus-resistant pawpaw, potatoes deadly to their main pest, the Colorado beetle, and six new varieties of tomato genetically altered to "enhance fresh market value", whatever that might mean.

But Mitchell Hooke, executive director of the Australian Food Council, which represents the country's main food manufacturers, proselytises about the next generation of designer fruit and vegetables: strawberries containing increased levels of ellagic acid, a "natural cancer- fighting agent"; garlic with more allicin, said to reduce cholesterol levels; fruit with extra vitamins C and E; and canola and soya bean oil with more stearate, to produce healthier margarine.

Growing in laboratories are even more weird and wonderful creations. The Swedes have spliced a gene from a mustard plant into an aspen tree to make it grow faster; the Americans are trying to engineer vaccines into bananas which would immunise the consumer against tropical diseases; the Chinese have "crossed" a flounder with a sugar beet to make it more resistant to cold; mouse genes have been spliced into tobacco, and a chicken gene into potatoes. Human genes have been added to salmon, trout and rice, playing on our darkest dreads.

The first transgenic animals, 21 varieties of fish from abalone to shrimp and rainbow trout, are already being bred in the US, including a supersalmon which has a growth hormone from a Chinook salmon spliced into it. So concerned is British Columbia about the unguessable consequences of these fish escaping into the wild that it has banned their farming in sea pens.

In Adelaide, the small research company BresaGen provided a glimpse two years ago of what may be the future when it spliced human genetic material into a pig to try to produce an animal with less fat and more meat. Amid huge controversy about overtones of cannibalism, the company was forced to abandon the experiment, write off $12million in Commonwealth subsidies and tax-deducted investment, and destroy the pigs.

"It was a huge frustration, and in the end we opted out," says the company's managing director, Dr John Smeaton. "We could never get a definitive answer out of the various regulatory authorities [on whether the "new pork' could be sold for human consumption] and a few noisy people stirred it up as an emotional issue."

HARD evidence about the effects on human health of eating these revolutionary new foods is hard to come by, particularly since, unlike a drug, there is no obligation anywhere to test their safety on humans, and in some cases there are not even any animal trials. "Obviously, if a whole load of bunnies die, it's not OK for humans," said an Australian food industry spokeswoman.

One concern is that antibiotic-resistant "marker genes" used in the genetic engineering process may somehow transfer into the human body. Hooke dismisses this as "about as likely as a supernova hitting the earth".

Another fear, for which there is already some scientific support, is the risk of transferring an alien allergen into a previously safe foodstuff. The US Union of Concerned Scientists, a prestigious group that includes a number of Nobel laureates, cites a study in which seven out of nine volunteers showed allergic reactions to a soya bean that had been "crossed" with a brazil nut.

The most serious case of genetic engineering gone wrong reliably documented in medical literature involves, paradoxically, a health-food supplement called L-tryptophan, a "naturally occurring" amino acid, which was promoted in the 1980s as a treatment for insomnia and depression. In 1989 health authorities in Australia and around the world warned people to stop taking it after it was linked to the deaths of 36 people and the crippling of another 1,500 by a completely new blood disease called EMS.

Investigators discovered that the cases were caused by contaminants in one particular batch of L-tryptophan which had been manufactured in Japan by the Showa Denko corporation using a newly modified strain of genetically engineered bacteria. The epidemic stopped when the product was taken off the market, and the inevitable lawsuits ensued.

Evidence of the potential for the new genetically engineered plants to damage the delicately balanced biosphere on which we depend is even more convincing. Attempts to "improve" the soil with GM bacteria have backfired on several occasions, most catastrophically when a bacterium designed with the highly desirable quality of "eating" residues of the toxic weedicide 2,4-D produced a by-product that killed all the essential natural bacteria in the soil.

Most of the genetic modifications approved so far involve "inoculating" food plants with alien genes to make them either immune to insect attack, or impervious to herbicides which would normally kill them. The danger here is that new breeds of poison-resistant insects will emerge, and that the plants will cross-pollinate with native species to produce unkillable "superweeds".

In Australia this would be particularly serious because we are among the world's heaviest users of agricultural chemicals. The use of glyphosate (a product developed by Monsanto that it sells here as Roundup) has been widely promoted as an "environmentally friendly" alternative to ploughing because it kills weeds without the loss of topsoil to erosion.

Few were surprised when, on a farm near Echuca in Victoria two years ago, Professor Jim Pratley, an agronomist at Charles Sturt University, identified the world's first glyphosate- resistant weed, a type of rye-grass that is a serious pest to farmers.

Though Pratley denies that this was a "superweed", the precautions to eradicate it were like a scene from Outbreak. Monsanto and the NSW Agriculture Department flew experts in, the paddock was cordoned off for three or four hectares around the patch of mutant grass, the barley that was harvested nearby was not allowed off the property for fear it might be contaminated with seeds of the rye-grass, the paddock was ploughed and the weed eliminated, for now.

To guard against the emergence of Bt-tolerant "superbugs", cotton farmers must set aside an area of "normal" crops to provide a refuge for insects, and constantly collect eggs and larvae for laboratory study.

Although none has been detected yet, there is worrying evidence of another, unexpected, environmental hazard: genetically engineered crops may be killing off the beneficial insects that are nature's way of controlling pests. A study in Scotland found that the lifespan of ladybirds, nature's best natural control of aphids, was cut in half, and they laid fewer eggs, when they ate aphids which fed on genetically engineered potatoes.

It is bizarre in the extreme, say its critics, that something we are told is safe to eat, oil from the seeds of Ingard cotton, is not approved by any government agency as a foodstuff, but the plant is registered by the National Registration Authority for Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals as a pesticide. Bon appetit.

THERE is one final concern about the new technology that has united farmers and green groups, and that is the fear that powerful multinational corporations, most of them based in the US, may come to control the food supply by patenting the fruits, vegetables and even animals that mankind has freely used for thousands of years.

Since 1985, when US courts ruled that genetic material could be patented, these corporations have been prospecting the world for plants and animals they can "improve". This has been described by critics such as Greenpeace as a modern-day colonial land grab, with the target not the soil but the seeds that are the common heritage of mankind.

The agri/food industry has mounted a multimillion-dollar campaign to promote what it sees as the benefits of this new technology, particularly to the developing world. Monsanto's publicity kit features grateful African farmers with bigger bunches of bananas, and growers in Thailand beaming over virus-free pawpaws.

Suman Sahai, the New Delhi convener of Gene Campaign, an industry-supported lobby, dismisses ethical concerns over genetic engineering as a luxury only industrialised countries can afford, and asks which would be more unethical, interfering with "God's work" or allowing the hungry to die.

Mitchell Hooke declares that the world will need to increase its food supply 75per cent by 2025 if it is to feed an expected increase in population from 6billion to more than 8billion. He says that encouraging higher-yielding, pest- and disease-resistant crops is the most important thing governments can do to protect the environment.

Carol Renouf, a policy officer at the 160,000-member Australian Consumers' Association who has spent two years studying the issue, believes, however, that what is at stake is really control of the global food supply: "Five or six multi nationals have invested billions in this technology over the past 15 or 20 years and are pushing it for all it's worth ... governments everywhere have been caught on the back foot."

Monsanto, now the world-dominating Microsoft of genetic engineering, is a good case in point. Last year it completed its transition from chemical company to "life sciences corporation", having invested more than $US2billion ($3.2billion) in genetic engineering, and having taken over six other bio-tech companies in a breathless expansion that took its market capitalisation from $US6billion to $US35billion in five years.

With US patent rights to its blockbuster weedkiller glyphosate, one of the biggest sellers in the world's $US8billion-a-year market for agricultural chemicals, running out in 2000, it faced financial disaster. Its new business is seeds, altering and patenting the genetic code to the foodstuffs that have sustained mankind since agriculture began on the plains of the Fertile Crescent 10,000 years ago.

This worries horticulturalists such as Clive Blazey, who runs the Diggers' Club seed business from a property on the Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne. The club has 35,000 members, all committed to preserving biodiversity, conserving heritage varieties, and propagating "open pollinated" plants whose seed can be saved and grown.

Blazey is particularly concerned by Monsanto's recent acquisition of technology that will enable it to insert a "terminator gene" into plants, rendering their seeds sterile.

"This new technology gives Monsanto, with support from the US Government, its best chance of dominance of world agriculture," he thundered in a recent newsletter. "For Third World farmers it could be a new form of slavery ... for biodiversity it could be like the Holocaust. Instead of thousands of varieties of locally adapted rice or wheat being planted worldwide, mass marketing would reduce the strains to a few only."

ALTHOUGH GM food products have been on supermarket shelves in Australia for two years, the first six to be formally vetted for sale are not expected to be approved until later this month, 15 years after a country such as Canada introduced regulations. An organisation called the Australia and New Zealand Food Authority, a body of scientists and bureaucrats with three food industry figures on its board, will decide what is safe for us to eat.

All six crops are owned by Monsanto, varieties of cotton and corn which carry the Bt gene, and soya beans, corn, canola and cotton which are immune to glyphosate. They will (retrospectively) be allowed to be imported and sold, but none, under rules expected to be endorsed by State and national health ministers meeting in Canberra next week, will be required to carry a label identifying them as genetically altered.

The ANZFA's program manager for food products, Dr Simon Brooke-Taylor, concedes: "We sat on the fence or crossed our legs for a while." Critics such as Carol Renouf believe that the food industry, which opposes labelling, has been able to "capture" the regulator and dictate its own terms.

Mitchell Hooke dismisses moves for labelling as "a clever campaign that is trying to scare the shit out of people". He insists that there is no need to label products such as Monsanto's soya or corn because they are almost identical to the "natural" products, the esoteric doctrine of "substantial equivalence" that will be the basis of the Australian legislation that comes into force in May.

The real reason, however, seems to stem from a fear that consumers would distrust the new and unknown. The food industry is still smarting from its failure to persuade people that irradiation was a safe method of prolonging the shelf life of fresh food, consumer groups overseas forced governments to label such food, then refused to buy it.

Unless frantic last-minute lobbying efforts are successful, Renouf says, only 1 or 2per cent of the genetically engineered foodstuffs sold in Australia would have to be labelled. Soya beans, corn, oils and so on would be out, and the only foods required to be labelled would be "substantially different" products such as Monsanto's renowned flop, the Flavr Savr tomato, now back on the drawing board because consumers didn't like the price, or the taste.

And that is even though a Federal Government-commissioned poll in 1995 found that although 61per cent of Australians would be willing to try genetically modified food, 89per cent thought they had the right to know what they were eating, they wanted all such food to be labelled.

IN the absence of any regulations, other than the blanket provisions of the various State health acts requiring food offered for sale to be wholesome, no-one, including the manufacturer, knows for sure the genetic status of any grocery item. Even Hooke admits that "we wouldn't have a bloody clue" which products on sale now already contain GM food, and he says that there is no scientific test that can distinguish between many products, such as vegetable oils.

GM soya beans, for instance, which this year accounted for about 30per cent of the North American crop, appear to have first entered Australia unannounced two years ago as raw ingredients for processing, and in manufactured products. Soya derivatives are used in an extraordinary range of edibles, from bread to biscuits, cake-mix to cheese, cooking oil to chocolate topping.

Even baby food. Earlier this year, Bob Phelps, convener of the Australian GeneEthics Network =E1 an alliance of anti-genetic engineering groups under the wing of the Australian Conservation Foundation, tested infant formulas bought at random from a suburban supermarket in Melbourne. Of the eight analysed, two were found to contain Monsanto's genetically modified soya beans.

The reaction from Heinz, one of the two manufacturers, was mildly schizophrenic. On the one hand, insists the company's spokesman, Glenda Orland: "We stand by the product. It is absolutely safe, otherwise we would not be feeding it to babies."

But on the other hand, the company has announced that, in Australia and in Europe, but not in the US, where consumers appear to be less concerned, it will no longer use GM food in any of its products. Heinz did not want to offer consumers a choice through labelling, Orland said, because "the fear is that if Mrs Jones from Blackburn reads that it is genetically modified, she will just freak out and won't buy the product any more."

Other GM foods already on sale here, unannounced, include cottonseed-oil products, beer and bread (which may be made with engineered enzymes) and cheese. Choice magazine analysed 20 supermarket brands of "cheddar" cheese two years ago and found that five had been made with genetically engineered rennet, a coagulating agent traditionally extracted from calves' stomachs.

Unlike Heinz, Sanitarium, which is proud of its reputation as a "health food company", says it is impossible to sort out the "gene beans" it imports from the US from the old-fashioned kind, so its products may or may not contain any.

And to add to the confusion, some manufacturers say that they won't touch genetically engineered food with a barge pole. Gil Hassin, managing director of the Australian Natural Foods company, which has a $16million-a-year turnover, is one. Hassin believed his customers were so concerned that he became the first manufacturer to use a "GM-free" label on a product =E1 his top-of-the-line So Natural brand of soya milk, which has become the fastest-growing in the country.

"There is absolutely no benefit nutritionally [in GM beans] and we are not satisfied it has been properly tested on humans. We are being used as guinea pigs," he says. "Look at Thalidomide, they didn't know about its dangers until they saw the second and third generation [of birth deformities]."

CONSUMERS who don't swallow the industry's assurances that GM food is safe have two options. They can shop in "health food" stores, or buy produce that has been certified as "organic" or "biodynamic" under the rules of the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS).

So far, Australia's supermarkets are lining up behind the food manufacturers and insisting there is no need for labelling. This is unlike in Europe, where some chains have banned GM food and others insist on labelling, the famously consumer-conscious British chain Sainsburys, for instance, labelled its "own brand" tomato paste and found to its surprise that its customers actually preferred the genetically engineered paste to the real thing.

The arguments of the Australian food industry against giving consumers this sort of choice will be familiar to those who remember its opposition to the introduction of date-stamping, listing ingredients on labels, or any other consumer safeguard: you can trust us to make sure your food is safe, labelling would just mislead the consumer, it would be impossible to police, some packages would not have enough room for the extra wording. Seriously.

None of this persuades Australia's booming health-food retailers, some of them large chains, which are estimated to control 5per cent of the national food market. All said they had banned genetically modified food from their shelves. Paul Bryden, technical manager of the Nutritional Foods Association of Australia, went one further, his members, he said, would not even stock shampoo and conditioner made with lecithin extracted from "gene beans".

As far as fresh food is concerned, if it's labelled "organic" it can't be grown from genetically modified seed, and that's the law. While one government agency (the ANZFA) is insisting that there is really no difference between GM and non-GM food, another (the AQIS) is telling growers and retailers there really is.

Judith Moore is executive officer of Biological Farmers of Australia, the country's largest certification agency, which guarantees the produce of many of the 2,000 growers in the organic food industry. She said: "The view worldwide is that food should be organic and natural, and genetically manipulated product can never be considered that."

She said that if growers did not abide by the six-year-old AQIS ban, it would endanger a small but rapidly growing export industry in organic produce such as fresh fruit and vegetables for Singapore, orange juice, and bulk grains grown without the use of agricultural chemicals.

Nor are Sydney's grands chefs planning to experiment with gene cuisine. Christine Manfield, of the highly regarded Paramount restaurant in Potts Point, reflected the views of many when she said: "We try to use organic produce wherever we can. We pay a premium to get away from all those nasty elements which have insidiously snuck into the food chain, whether it's genetic engineering or those horrible battery chickens full of hormones and antibiotics."

So where does this leave growers such as Peter Corish? He says Monsanto has dropped its price a bit and he will persevere with his pioneering cotton, though with a bit less enthusiasm.

"Our expectations were too high," he grumbles. "We thought we were getting a Rolls-Royce, but it turned out to be a Holden."

Ben Hills can be contacted at bhills@smh.fairfax.com.au

ends








Subject: Monsanto faces prosecution in U.K.
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1998 18:44:26 -0500

GENETIC ENGINEERING GIANT FACES PROSECUTION

PA 17.12.98 19:42


By John von Radowitz, science Correspondent, PA News Genetic engineering giants Monsanto are to be prosecuted over an accident which allegedly broke safety rules meant to stop the release of a genetically-modified herbicide-tolerant crop into the environment.

The action taken by the Health and Safety Executive is the first prosecution of its kind brought under the 1990 Environmental Protection Act.

Monsanto today admitted the breach and regretted what happened during a trial of genetically modified (GM) oilseed rape in Linconshire. The company said part of a six-metre pollen border designed to stop the escape of GM pollen had been "mown in error by one of the contractors".

Health and Safety inspectors who visited the site in June found the border to measure only two metres in some places. Both Monsanto and another company, Perryfields Holdings Ltd, were accused of contravening the Environmental Protection Act for failing to comply with safety conditions governing the test site.

The case against the companies will be heard by Caistor magistrates in Linconshire on February 17 next year. The trial was taking place at Joseph Nickersons Farms in Rothwell. Monsanto said it had destroyed all the GM oilseed rape as well as other plants within 50 metres of the trial. No more oilseed rape would be grown on the site for at least two years.

A statement from Monsanto said: "We regret the breach of consent that took place at the trial in Lincolnshire." The company added that it had no direct control over the running of such trials. "This is done by third party growers appointed by MAFF" (Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food) the statement said.

"In this case the growers confirmed to us in writing that the trial complied with all the relevant requirements." Monsanto said it supported "rigorous enforcement of the regulations on GM field trials" and recognised the need to prevent such incidents occurring again.

Those opposed to GM crop experiments fear they could lead to "superweeds" which cannot be controlled.

In this case the experimental oilseed rape contained genes that helped it withstand the effects of herbicides. This is just the sort of crop the environmental lobby worry about being crossed with wild plants and weeds.

Friends of the Earth said the prosecution would embarrass the Government, which was now discussing a voluntary agreement to allow biotechnology companies like Monsanto to grow GM crops commercially in the UK.






Subject: World recoils at Monsanto's brave new crops
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1998 23:43:40 -0500

Editor's Note:

Reporter Bill Lambrecht traveled to four continents throughout 1998 to investigate the sudden spread of genetically engineered crops and food. Monsanto Co., of St. Louis, is the leader in the drive to sow these modified seeds globally. In many countries, Lambrecht found a starkly different view of the new technology than that of accepting Americans. He also found an embattled Monsanto making some progress thanks to friends in high places. A digital summation of those travels -- through words and photographs -- follows.

Monsanto's political clout helps gain footholds in other countries. .

World recoils at Monsanto's brave new crops

The St. Louis company's political clout has turned the president and Cabinet secretaries into pitchmen. .

1998 -- a watershed year in biotechnology's global march





World recoils at Monsanto's brave new crops
Sunday, Dec. 27, 1998
By Bill Lambrecht \

Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau WASHINGTON --

- - Farmers from the 10 million-member Karnataka Farmers Association in India burn Monsanto's experimental cotton field in November. "We want Monsanto out of our country," said N. Nanjundaswamy, the leader of the uprising. (Sergui Gerbabdez)

Editor's note: Reporter Bill Lambrecht traveled to four continents this year to investigate the sudden spread of genetically engineered crops and food. Monsanto Co., of St. Louis, is the leader in the drive to sow these modified seeds globally. In many countries, Lambrecht found a starkly different view of the new technology than that of accepting Americans. He also found an embattled Monsanto making some progress thanks to friends in high places. A summation of those travels follows.

In the land of the Great Potato Famine of the 1840s, the Irish protesters of 1998 sabotaged fields of the American company genetically re-creating the potato.

In the red soils of India, farmers worried about that same company gaining control over their lives. And despite a plague of pests, they distrusted its promises to deliver magical seeds that give relief. Last month, in a spectacle of fury called "Operation Cremation Monsanto," they torched Monsanto Co. test plots of genetically engineered cotton.

These events half a world apart were acts in a global drama this year that has featured St. Louis-based Monsanto, the leader in the drive to bring genetic engineering to crops and food around the world.

The year began with hopes by Monsanto of breakthroughs in global acceptance of gene-splicing technologies. These revolutionary techniques transfer genes from one plant to another to give "transgenic" plants new characteristics, such as resistance to insects. The year ends with the realization that a chasm remains between the attitudes of Americans and people elsewhere.

Led by Monsanto and with almost no one outside of agriculture paying attention, American farmers this year planted more than 50 million acres of gene-altered soybeans, corn, cotton and potatoes. Four years ago, that acreage was zero.

Years from now, people may recall the genetic revolution in food and farming as an epochal change as far-reaching as the computer revolution. Yet a historic moment may be passing with few Americans noticing.

The same can't be said of the rest of the world. In some nations, Monsanto is a household name. Newspapers spill over and broadcasts crackle with news of communities' struggles to come to grips with a technology banging at the door. People assemble in noisy forums to debate the morality of altering the building blocks of life.

Across the Atlantic, what a Monsanto executive calls the "European Wars" threatens not only Monsanto's plans but also the exports by Midwestern farmers of DNA-modified grains. In Britain, Monsanto's own pollster wrote this bleak assessment in October: "The latest survey shows an ongoing collapse of public support for biotechnology and genetically modified foods." The author was Stan Greenberg, who was the White House's pollster in this administration.

Foreign opposition to Monsanto baffles many Americans.

* Why do people elsewhere feel so differently about an issue of elemental importance - the food supply?

* Why are farmers and protesters sabotaging croplands?

* What is Monsanto doing about it?

* How are people making up their minds about this powerful technology emanating from St. Louis?

These questions and the likelihood of 1998 being a pivotal year for Monsanto took a Post-Dispatch reporter on a journey to 10 countries. Some of the findings were surprising - among them the involvement of the National Security Council in the international debate. Some findings - like the sabotage - were disturbing.

The search also yielded provocative glimpses of how people in other lands view Americans. That was the case in Skibbereen, Ireland, near a mass grave of 8,000 people buried during Ireland's farm disaster of the last century.

At her cottage, Mairie Cregan, 37, a farmer and the mother of six, observed that Ireland's long-ago famine lives on in people's minds. She worried aloud that genetic tinkering might threaten a food supply that has grown bountiful. And she asked if Americans talk about Monsanto at their post offices and in their church groups the way they do in her part of southern Ireland.

"This is about our food and what people eat. Americans know that, don't they?" she wondered. "Maybe," she mused, "America has just gotten too big for people to talk to each other."

Discoveries

Irish protesters spared the Monsanto test plot on the County Cork farm of Richard Fitzgerald, pictured here with his sugar beets. He says environmentalists growing a few potatoes organically "won't feed the world." (Bill Lambrecht/Post-Dispatch)

In conversations elsewhere, the fears of an unproved technology are pitted against the hopes that genetic engineering can be a powerful tool for good.

A potent and even violent opposition to genetic engineering has sprouted in many places. Often, Monsanto stands alone in these firestorms. Others have invested heavily in genetic engineering and farming: Novartis, the Swiss company, and the German company AgrEvo, to name two.

But around the world, Monsanto is the acknowledged ringmaster of the genetic change in food:

* In Europe, many people fear experimentation that crosses genes between species. In the literary birthplace of Frankenstein, a segment of the population does not look fondly on scientists and their discoveries. Europeans use a loaded term seldom heard in the United States: GMOs, for genetically modified organisms.

* In Latin American nations, many indigenous people resent "bioprospectors" mining and patenting their genetic resources as raw materials for drugs and new farm products.

* In India, farmers fear the power of multinational corporations and the loss of self-sufficiency.

* Skeptics in many nations worry about the loss in diversity of crops that they see resulting from fewer companies offering fewer varieties of genetically altered seeds. Monsanto counters that there always will be plenty of choices.

Everywhere, people see an American company stepping in to promote - indeed force - changes in how their food is grown. It's as though the Cardinals or Yankees had swaggered across the world's soccer fields and declared: "We'll be playing baseball now."

There is acceptance, too.

* In Europe, amid fierce debate and thanks to U.S. government intervention, Monsanto gained ground for its crops. Many European politicians are eager to fix their biotechnology regulatory system, a 15-country maze of kinks and hoops. You can find European farmers - a minority - who don't share the qualms of consumers and environmental advocates.

* In China, 600,000 cotton farmers sowed Monsanto's gene-altered seeds this year, the first time they could do so.

* In Brazil, Monsanto planted genetically modified soybeans for the first time after winning a partial court victory in that farming and economic powerhouse.

* Deep in Amazon outposts, some tribes are willing to cooperate with scientists' search for genetic materials, both as a way to help humankind and to make money.

Amid the global turmoil, genetically engineered plants are taking root. This year, the acreage outside the United States more than doubled to nearly 23 million - still less than half what is grown in the United States.

This year, Monsanto raced between tense showdowns that commanded news nearly everywhere but in the United States. Fighting country-by-country for approvals has enmeshed Monsanto in public policy around the world. Often, the company frames its campaign in the rhetoric of a crusade, trumpeting the potential to protect the environment and feed the hungry. "Doing well by doing good," is a company catch phrase. Yet laudable motives in themselves don't inspire trust.

Regulatory roots

Europeans ask why there is so little debate in the United States on genetic change. There are two main answers:

* The public doesn't demand it.

* Even if people did, there are almost no points of entry for Americans into a regulatory system that took shape long ago.

In 1986, Monsanto and allies persuaded President Ronald Reagan's administration to adopt a framework that would operate with no new legislation. This strategy assured that genetic engineering would, for the most part, remain out of the domain of the Congress and therefore away from the forum where people sound their concerns.

Americans debated human cloning. And this year, organic growers led a revolt against the Agriculture Department's allowing modified foods to be labeled organic. Until then, the only issue of genetics and food to percolate to the surface in the United States was the Food and Drug Administration's approval four years ago of a Monsanto-engineered hormone that induces dairy cattle to produce more milk.

The Environmental Protection Agency has been America's most aggressive regulator, using existing powers to govern pesticide traits engineered into plants. That is why Monsanto and farm groups are pressuring the EPA to reject proposals for larger protective "refuges" around fields of varieties of modified crops.

The FDA exercises limited authority because genetic traits are not considered food additives. Unlike Europe, which has passed a continent wide labeling regulation, the FDA has made no move to require labeling in the United States. (In Europe, Monsanto supports this labeling; in the United States, the company says it doesn't support labeling because it is not an issue.)

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Agriculture operates in the dual role as regulator and ardent booster of biotechnology. For most field trials in the United States - like those bringing fears in Europe - companies simply notify the department.

But the Agriculture Department couldn't have foreseen that one of its laboratory successes would create such problems for Monsanto. That success is a genetic technology known as the "Terminator" because it renders the seeds of crops sterile so that they can't be collected and saved. It was patented in March by the Agriculture Department and a Mississippi seed company, Delta and Pine Land - which Monsanto is acquiring - as a means to help companies protect their investments in genetically modified crops.

Since then, from Ireland to India, Monsanto has been skewered by critics and mainstream scientists alike who see Terminator as a blunt weapon to hasten genetic change.

Irish cooking

Master chef Darina Allen is an author and television personality known as the "Irish Julia Child." She advises her followers to avoid food produced by genetic engineering. (Bill Lambrecht/Post-Dispatch)

Genetic engineering is about more than farming. In Europe, the debate touches the environment, economics, religion and the relationship between science and society. Jean-Marie Pelt, director of the European Institute of Ecology, said in Brussels that, "Scientifically, we are able to do things. But from an ethical point of view, we don't have to do them."

The European backlash against Monsanto has a lot to do with a deteriorating faith in science. In Europe, an outbreak of a mysterious brain malady called bovine spongiform encephalopthy - better known as "Mad Cow Disease" - brought human deaths, the slaughter of 11 million cattle and a scar on the European psyche. In hearings this month in Britain, people continue to ask what went wrong in science and government regulation.

Europe's skepticism also is connected to attitudes toward food - even though no dangers from eating modified foods have been proved.

Europeans typically worry more than Americans about food: where it comes from, how it is presented on the table, how it tastes. Those sensibilities were on display at Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland's County Cork, where Darina Allen was testing the flakiness of a student's salmon-filled pastry.

Allen made headlines this year when she denounced Monsanto's plan to conduct tests in Ireland on genetically engineered sugar beets. One plot was adjacent to her 100-acre farm with its gardens, boxwoods and organically grown produce.

Irish people listen to Allen. She is their foremost chef, a public personality with her own television program; she is the author of best-selling cookbooks; and she sits on Ireland's Food Safety Authority. She's the Irish Julia Child, with more spice.

Students who pay upward of $3,000 for courses can get gardening and "lifestyle" tutoring from Allen, as well as lessons in sumptuous cooking. She takes them to the slaughterhouse to teach them about meat. They get to know the farmers who bring around the vegetables, and they meet the salmon fishermen from nearby Ballycotton Harbor. On her cooking show she tells viewers that the most important thing they do each week is grocery shop for their families.

In the cooking school dining room, Allen, dressed in her white apron, said she can't fathom why scientists would want to be "fiddling around with the genes" of foods. Nor, Allen said, can she understand why Americans would abide a system in which genetically engineered foods are not so labeled. "It's a basic human right to be told what's in your food," she said.

Her views resemble those of another prominent United Kingdom citizen standing in the way of the transgenic march. Britain's Prince Charles drew a line in the sands of European public opinion in June by writing: "I personally have no wish to eat anything produced by genetic manipulation, nor do I knowingly offer this sort of produce to my family or guests."

Back in County Cork, Ireland, farmer Richard Fitzgerald was more concerned about his fields than about the famous. Fitzgerald consented this year to turning over a swath of land to Monsanto to test genetically modified sugar beets, a softball-size vegetable that provides one-third of the world's sugar. Gliding along the Irish seacoast in his black BMW, Fitzgerald seemed nervous about his decision. He had reason to fret.

Late on a foggy night, an Irish group called the Gaelic Earth Liberation Front descended on a Monsanto test plot of genetically engineered sugar beets in County Carnow where, in the words of one saboteur, we "ripped out, slashed and beheaded" plants.

Fitzgerald, a stocky, florid-faced man who had given up his beloved Guinness for Lent, gazed toward the Irish Sea and said: "Who is going to feed the burgeoning population? It's not going to be the environmentalists growing a few potatoes organically."

Fitzgerald's farm was spared in 1998 - though a second Monsanto test plot was destroyed.

You lose some, you win others: After a fight, Ireland's High Court last summer upheld Monsanto's planting permits. That means the Irish might expect modified cotton and other transgenic crops in their soils - perhaps even the potatoes that loom large in Ireland's history and that Monsanto is stacking in the United States with new genetic traits.

The outcome of the Irish case was a cautionary lesson for genetic engineering's critics. Clare Watson, the Dubliner who forced the court test, was socked with court costs of more than $400,000.

Watson, 36, described what the episode means for her in real-life terms. For the foreseeable future, she will be allowed only a living wage for food and housing. She can't own property or accumulate wealth because it would be taken from her. "I have my moments when I scream and feel like hitting my head against the wall," she said.

National security

Monsanto prepares for uprisings. Last fall, when the Irish debate was brewing, the company flew a group of Irish journalists to the United States for a tour of its labs. In Washington, the journalists received a surprise: They were taken to the White House for a visit to the Oval Office.

"Our little heads peeked around that historic room," said Vivion Kilferther, a reporter from the Examiner in Cork, describing what few White House visitors see.

How did Monsanto orchestrate that? It helps if you've hired the president's director of intergovernmental affairs, which Monsanto did in putting Marcia Hale on the company payroll.

Monsanto has often displayed its connections while fighting this year for approval for its products. When Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern arrived in the United States for a St. Patrick's Day visit, he was greeted by Sandy Berger, director of the National Security Council.

The primary topic of their discussion at a lunch in the Capitol wasn't the Irish peace talks or any of the world flare-ups that send the rumpled Berger scrambling in front of CNN's cameras. The issue was Ireland's pivotal vote on a pending European decision on Monsanto's corn engineered for insect-resistance - common in the United States but banned, like most engineered crops, in Europe.

The 15-member European Community is vital to Monsanto for reasons beyond its thriving market of 350 million people. Europe is the gateway for modified foods; life-science companies want a European imprimatur on products they hope to sell to former European colonies around the world.

But Europe also is the center of opposition to a barely understood technology studded with red-hot buttons getting pushed. Germany, with its robust Green Party and its lingering memories of Nazi-era experiments, is strongly opposed. Austria and Luxembourg want nothing to do with modified crops. Britain and France, among others, have doubts.

This is divergent not just from American public opinion but also from American policy, which explains scurrying at the top of the U.S. government.

"In this post-Cold War era, America's national interests have changed, and crises aren't always military crises," a National Security Council official said.

Berger's wasn't the only voice Ahern heard. Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo., and several members of Congress collared Ireland's prime minister, as did others in President Bill Clinton's administration. Toby Moffett, Monsanto's Washington-based international business head and a former Democratic congressman from Connecticut, later marveled at the smothering of Ireland's prime minister.

"Everywhere he went, before people said `Happy St. Patrick's Day,' they asked him, `What about that corn vote?' " Moffett said. "I'm 54 years old and I've been in a lot of coalitions in my life, but this is one of the most breathtaking I've seen."

Successful, too. The next day, the European governing body said yes to plantings of gene-crossed corn by Monsanto and two crops of rivals. The decision also meant that American farmers staking their futures on exporting modified crops could rest easier.

Now all eyes turned to the French, who would have the last word for Monsanto's hopes and for the future of U.S. farm exports. But American farmers also have something to fear.

In Switzerland, authorities in March seized grain barges from the United States laden with a corn product containing what authorities called "suspicious DNA." The term "suspicious DNA" is not something you would hear in the United States, because Americans don't often view science with suspicion. Especially farmers.

If there's a gene that promotes trust in technology, American farmers have it. The drive to do what it takes for better yield - more fertilizers, more pesticides, more machinery - sets American farmers apart from counterparts in Europe, where farmers depends more heavily on subsidies and quotas.

And many U.S. farmers are reporting savings from genetically modified seeds - as much as 50 cents for each bushel of soybeans, said the Agriculture Department's Arnold Foudin.

One technology American farmers lack is the mechanism to separate genetically altered grain before exporting. Those bins on the edges of Midwestern towns hold the harvests from farmers nearby. In Illinois, about 40 percent of soybeans and 25 percent of corn in those repositories - modified and unmodified mixed together - will head by truck or rail to the Mississippi River to begin their voyage to foreign lands.

The U.S. farm establishment doesn't want the complications of a separate system. Nor do farmers want to acknowledge that what they're growing is any different from what always has sprouted - even though sensors can detect wisps of "suspicious DNA." But until other nations sort out their concerns, growing modified crops for international markets could be risky.

In Auburn, Ill., Tim Seifert planted 1,300 acres of black, central Illinois soil with genetically modified soybeans and corn. He had been hearing plenty about people in other countries concerned about the modified grains that Americans send them, and it troubled him. When a Japanese group visited him this year, Seifert demanded that they explain their country's qualms.

"We weren't afraid to try your technology," Seifert said, lecturing his visitors.

Meanwhile, in Mississippi, several dozen cotton farmers had their own worries about genetic engineering: They demanded damages from Monsanto this year after their 1997 crop of genetically altered cotton faltered.

Some of them farm near the intersection of Routes 61 and 49 where, blues aficionados will tell you, guitar legend Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in return for success. Farmers making their case against Monsanto sounded as though they were repenting a Faustian bargain with Monsanto.

The Mississippi Seed Arbitration Council sided with these farmers, and many took home handsome settlements from Monsanto. (The company insists that weather was the culprit.) One farmer, Randy Talley, of Bobo, Miss., offered a lesson in the allure of technology. After swearing that engineered crops had failed him in 1997, he planted 750 acres of a gene-spliced cotton seed this year.

But back in Europe, more sabotage had destroyed hopes for a breakthrough year in genetic farming.

French connection

Farmer Rene Riesel led a raid on a French storehouse, destroying seeds owned by a Monsanto rival. The raid assured that France's first commercial planting of genetically altered crops would fail. (Bill Lambrecht/Post-Dispatch)

By June, the critical approval that Monsanto thought it had won in Europe for its corn looked shaky. What's more, a plan for an American shipment of $200 million of genetically altered grain to Spain and Portugal was in jeopardy. In each case, the problem was the French, who were refusing to sign what the European Community had agreed to in March.

Farmer Rene Riesel was part of the reason. Riesel, a grain and sheep farmer from the south of France, led the raid earlier this year that destroyed a cache of modified seeds and all but wrecked France's first commercial planting of modified corn. This time, the victim was Novartis.

The diminutive and tightly wound Riesel, 48, smoked non-filters from a pack he carried in his rust-colored flannel shirt. Speaking English at the Concorde Cafe near the French National Assembly, he recalled the procession of trucks and autos, carrying 120 farmers, that snaked its way to the center of a small town near Toulouse. Asked to describe what they had done, Riesel pulled out his knife and slashed at the air. Then they sprayed the seed with fire extinguishers, he recounted. Others said that the farmers had urinated on the mess.

While eating French fries and spiced, raw ground beef, Riesel spoke defiantly of French farmers' commitment to block genetic engineering and to "take out" the fields of those who abet the technology. Riesel was fined $80,000 for the raid but avoided jail. "It will be quite possible for we French to farm without transgenics," he said confidently.

Later, in the town of Le Genest Saint Isle in western France, farmers said they worried that the consolidation of seed companies by Monsanto and rivals around the world ultimately will diminish farmer choices and even force them to use modified seeds against their will. But one farmer shook his head and admonished fellow growers that they need to keep an open mind. "First, there must be a debate, and then we will see," said this farmer, Denis Boulanger.

Leave it to France to stage a debate like the country had never seen before.

Democracy gets tested

At the same time France was host to - and winning - the World Cup soccer championship, its Parliament decided to convene a citizens conference to guide the nation's policies on genetically modified foods. Soccer won the battle for attention, but the conference held as many surprises.

For the French gathering, 14 people were chosen randomly from a population of 60 million and brought secretly to the National Assembly in Paris for the proceedings. What happened in Paris during a public, three-day gathering was stunning for its tone and its conclusions.

The initial reaction to Monsanto from people from all walks of life - housewives, an insurance inspector, a bank clerk and a librarian - was uniformly negative.

"They're sorcerer's apprentices," declared Francine Maeght, 50, a mild-mannered bank employee.

Three days later, after an all-night argument, the French citizens presented recommendations with champagne and caviar. They offered no glowing endorsement. But they declined to endorse a freeze on genetic testing, the blunt instrument European critics seek.

The French offered another lesson in the persuasiveness of this technology. The citizens' thinking softened as they heard scientists tell them how, in its next generation, genetic engineering might put more nutritious vegetables - even disease-fighting foods - on dinner plates.

Claire Falhon, 28, an administrator in a suburban Paris medical clinic, had begun the gathering by lecturing Monsanto for barging into her country. Her response was reminiscent of the coca-colonization chants in Paris streets in the 1950s protesting the introduction of Coca-Cola. The French, like many skeptics of genetic engineering, see Monsanto influencing their culture, not just their farming.

Falhon confided afterward that she had fought against the freeze. She also warned that her country must have a "great debate" and a new regimen of rules before saying yes to Monsanto.

But Monsanto wanted that "yes" right now. And once more, the company turned to its most powerful ally - the U.S. government.

Tapping connections

In late spring, U.S. trade officials complained to the French government about the refusal to sign the piece of paper approving Monsanto's genetically engineered corn. Only then could $200 million worth of corn head down the Mississippi River toward European ports.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright approached the French, as did U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky. Both leveraged their appeals with ultimatums: If the French didn't relent, President Clinton would have something to say about it when France's new prime minister, Lionel Jospin, visited the United States in June. The French didn't budge, and Jospin got an earful, administration sources said.

Monsanto had rallied the president of the United States, the secretary of state, the national security adviser, America's trade representative and U.S. senators. That left only Vice President Al Gore, who didn't stay on the sidelines for long.

In July, Gore telephoned the French prime minister. On July 30, on the eve of the announcement of plans for the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Monsanto received the good news: the French had said yes. That meant that Monsanto's modified corn can be planted in France next spring and that there will be no prohibition against 15 European countries importing similar corn.

A $7.5 billion company with 25,000 employees needs to be well-connected, and Monsanto works to keep it that way. The company plies political parties equally and recruits people with deep ties in Washington. By virtue of a friendly relationship between Monsanto chief operating officer Robert B. Shapiro and Clinton, Monsanto is identified in Washington as "a Democratic company."

Monsanto and its employees spread the political contributions. In the last two years, donations to Democrats totaled about $100,000; Republicans received $140,000. The company invests much more in bringing aboard influential people.

Among them:

* Monsanto board member Mickey Kantor is a former U.S. trade representative and chairman of Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign.

* Marcia Hale, Monsanto's international regulatory director, was a top Clinton assistant.

* Linda Fisher, Monsanto's vice president for federal government affairs, mapped pesticide policy in the Bush administration EPA.

* Michael R. Taylor, former deputy FDA commissioner, was hired recently to look at long-range matters.

* Jack Watson, who was chief of staff in Jimmy Carter's presidency, is a Monsanto staff lawyer in Washington.

In wielding its clout abroad, Monsanto has been adroit, lucky - or both. At this juncture, the interests of Monsanto, the U.S. government and American farmers are much the same: seeing to it that the world drops its barriers to an American-hatched technology.

Government officials feel the heat sizzling around Monsanto. At a World Food Summit in Rome, Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman was pelted by seeds thrown by naked protesters. "My mother worried when she saw me on CNN," Glickman joked recently.

Pressing foreign leaders on these matters "is at the top of my agenda," Glickman said. "I am not a shill for any company. Though we're all generally going in the same direction, we're not riding in the same car."

U.S. Special Ambassador Peter Scher, the specialist for agriculture and biotechnology, visited France several times this year on biotechnology's behalf and leads a brand-new U.S.-European council trying to head off more trouble.

"I would define this not only as a trade issue, but as a domestic economic issue, an environmental issue and, frankly, a food security issue," he said.

Fires in India

In India, Monsanto is moving aggressively - and meeting aggressive resistance.

Three decades ago, India was the testing ground of a farm revolution that promised more food - and delivered. There, in the 1960s, science and modern farming introduced the "Green Revolution," which fought starvation with high-yield grains and chemical fertilizer. Now, India is debating whether to play host to the Gene Revolution. In many places, the fear rivals the need.

In the central Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, an extraordinary drama is unfolding: 500 Indian farmers have killed themselves in a year's time. All told, 700 farmers in the country committed suicide since last year. Nothing like this has happened before in India.

The farmers' preferred way of death is swallowing insecticides and then dying in fields that failed them. The real reason, victims' relatives said, was the volatile combination of debt and farm chemicals that no longer worked to kill pests.

"He could not bear the burden," said Ileakomru Shanker, whose son, Damera, 28, had swallowed a fatal concoction in February.

Monsanto's insect-resistant seeds - engineered to produce their own insecticide - might help. The company's first field trials in India with engineered cotton also showed a 20 percent increase in yield. But even amid such despair, Monsanto is viewed with hostility.

In India, opposition to those seeds is fueled not by concerns about the environment, as in Europe, but by a strain of dedicated nationalism. Farmers and intellectuals preaching the mantra of self-sufficiency inveigh that foreign companies must not gain a foothold on India's farming and food.

The Terminator - the genetic technique to forestall seed-saving - is not yet owned by Monsanto and may not be in fields for years. Yet Monsanto's detractors hold it up as the symbol of the drive by multinationals to take control.

A few months ago, Monsanto's strategists saw India as their next battleground after Europe. What loomed recently in the smoke wafting from torched fields in southern India was the likelihood of fighting on two fronts at once.

In what they described ominously as Operation Cremation Monsanto, 200 farmers of the 10-million member Karnataka Farmers Association in southern India uprooted and burned cotton plants in two Monsanto test plots. "We want Monsanto out of our country," said N. Nanjundaswamy, the leader of the uprising.

Conclusions

Wherever Monsanto seeks to sow, the U.S. government clears the ground. In Japan last month, Agriculture Secretary Glickman and Trade Representative Barshefsky each told their government hosts that labeling modified foods wouldn't suit Uncle Sam.

This month, U.S. Commerce Secretary William Daley trumpeted biotechnology at his four-nation trade mission to Africa to promote U.S. industries. A Monsanto executive was on the plane.

"We made the case that they (Africans) ought to take a serious look" at gene-altered crops, said Daley, speaking by phone from Ivory Coast. "We strongly encouraged them to make sure that any decision they make is based on science and not on this hysterical political reaction."

From the White House and the National Security Council on down, the apparatus of the U.S. government worked this year on behalf of biotechnology. For Monsanto, at this moment, it is like having an Olympic basketball team with several Michael Jordans. But Monsanto's clout notwithstanding, U.S. leaders are unlikely to be rushing to the court once corn and soybean issues get resolved.

At year's end, saboteurs in India vow more attacks on Monsanto's fields. In Britain, authorities are preparing to prosecute Monsanto for a safety violation that happened when a border around a test plot was accidentally destroyed. The company's hard-won French approval for corn is in jeopardy. France's highest judicial authority has suspended planting permission for rival Novartis at least until 2000, and now Monsanto is being challenged on the same grounds by Greenpeace.

Meanwhile, Europeans and Japanese are pushing for a segregated, genetically pure crop, which neither the U.S. government nor American farmers want.

Still, amid the turmoil, Monsanto gained ground in 1998, observed Philip Angell, Monsanto's Washington-based corporate communications chief. He is a former political consultant and waste industry strategist.

"What you have is slow and steady, ongoing development and product introduction," Angell said. "Approval by regulatory agencies. People listening to people better and trying to understand these concerns."

Monsanto's Moffett, the former congressman who operates internationally for the company, said that 1998 will be recalled as the watershed year.

"We discovered how big our learning curve is about the world and, to some extent, we discovered it because of crises that maybe we should have seen coming," he said.

It may also be true that even Monsanto's best persuasive tactics and many friends in high places can't change attitudes abroad until consumers see benefits in this technology for themselves, not just for big companies and farmers. For now, rightly or wrongly, Monsanto remains bedeviled worldwide by the Terminator, a public relations problem that was on the agenda of a meeting in St. Louis this month between Shapiro and company executives.

In Illinois, genetic farming stalwart Tim Seifert said things are tight this year because of low prices for corn and soybeans. He wondered if farmers are, as he put it, backing themselves into a corner by producing so much. But, said Seifert, his faith in modified crops hadn't been shaken one iota. "I'm not looking back," he said.

Seifert's words reaffirmed basic differences between Americans and people elsewhere. These differences have a lot to do with attitudes toward science and government, but they also speak to outlook on life.

In many nations, a prime issue in this debate is choice: the right of consumers to know the nature of their food and the right of farmers to have plenty of choices in what they grow. In the United States, people are willing to trust others to make those choices for us.

Few Americans draw a distinction between genetic changes in food and the biomedical research that is yielding insulin and products for our health. With soybeans in 75 percent of processed foods, most Americans have eaten altered food recently whether they know it or not.

In the United States, consumers' groups are pressing the call for labeling these foods. They're working for the first time with environmental groups, organic food growers and farmers' advocates to generate an American debate. So far, Americans have been willing to trust science to direct the course of evolution. That is the difference between us and many of our neighbors abroad.

M.S. Swaminathan, one of India's most prominent scientists, observed recently: "Any technology, you can use it for good or bad. If I have a knife, I can cut you or I can cut your food."

As the world sees it, biotechnology at this moment is a knife unsheathed, able to cut either way.

1998 -- a watershed year in biotechnology's global march Sunday, Dec. 27, 1998

March 3 - The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awards patent No. 5,723,765 for a genetic technology that will become known as "The Terminator," which renders seeds in plants sterile. The patent, which Monsanto is in line to own, will cause a public relations tempest around the world.

March 18 - A European Community comittee votes approval for Monsanto and two European-based companies to plant several genetically modified crops in Europe.

May 8 - U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman announces that genetically engineered foods can't be labeled organic.

June 7 - In Switzerland, voters overwhelmingly reject a referendum to ban modified foods and genetic experimentation.

June 8 - In Britain, Prince Charles unleashes a salvo against genetically changed foods, accusing companies of taking "mankind into realms that belong to God and to God alone."

June 13 - Monsanto begins a multimillion-dollar ad campaign in Britain and France to persuade people about the value of genetic engineering in farming and food.

June 20 - The French government convenes a citizen conference of randomly selected people to advise the government on policies for genetically modified organisms.

June 21 - Farmers and protesters in Ireland attack a Monsanto test plot of genetically modified sugarbeets.

July 4 - In Britain, a group called Genetic Snowball takes credit for attacking a Monsanto test plot near the village of Oxfordshire.

July 18 - In St. Louis, 150 protesters, some from Europe, Japan and India, march at Monsanto's headquarters while an anti-genetic engineering conference goes on at Fontbonne College.

July 27 - In Britain, the Ethical Consumers Organization slashes hundreds of plants believed to be Monsanto's but learns later that the wrong plot was destroyed.

July 30 - The French government, after prodding from U.S. officials, signs off on the planting and import of Monsanto corn engineered for insect-resistance.

Aug. 28 - Monsanto announces that its genetically engineered NewLeaf potato has been successful in helping farmers in the Republic of Georgia in the former Soviet Union.

Sept. 18 - A British judge issues an injunction warning that protesters who damage any of 60 Monsanto test plots in England could be sent to prison.

Oct. 27 - Robert B. Shapiro, Monsanto's chief operating officer, is hit in the face with a pie while in San Francisco to make a speech. The Biotic Baking Brigade takes credit.

Oct. 28 - The European Commission's Emma Bonino, who is in charge of consumer policy and health protection in the governing body of 15 countries, asks that a line of foods free of any genetic engineering be established.

Oct. 30 - At the World Bank in Washington, the influential Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research condemns the "Terminator" technology.

Nov. 27 - A Brazilian judge lifts an injunction, allowing Monsanto to grow modified soybeans for seed, a step toward full-scale, commercial planting.

Nov. 28 - Farmers in India uproot and burn a Monsanto test plot of genetically modified cotton and vow more attacks.

Dec. 3 - Monsanto wins approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to add the trait of virus resistance to its genetically engineered NewLeaf potato.








Subject: BIODIVE#20 - Part Two of Two
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1998 01:13:19 -0500

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BIODIVE #20: December 29, 1998 -- Part Two of Two

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From Vandana Shiva (vshiva@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in):

* * *

UPDATE ON MONSANTO CAMPAIGN

Dr.
Vandana Shiva
Hyderabad,
23.12.1998

For the last 3 days I have been travelling in Andhra Pradesh (A.P.) to support the grassroots movement against Monsanto and work with farmers organisations, scientists, NGOs and the Agriculture Minister Mr. Vidyadhar Rao who has banned the trials in his state. The Andhra Pradesh Ryot Sangha (Andhra Pradesh Farmers' Organisation) a Federation of seven left oriented farmers associations who were responsible for the uprooting of Monsanto's Bt. cotton took me to the village Vururgonda where the first uprooting took place.

Meetings were also organised by NGOs and farmers organisations in Hyderabad to plan an intensification of the Monsanto Campaign.

Warangal is the district where last year nearly 500 cotton farmers committed suicide due to debts linked with high costs of hybrid seed and pesticides. 13 more suicides have already taken place in the present season and many more are expected because the cotton seed sold by private corporations has failed in 36,000 acres over 200 villages and farmers have debts of more than Rs. 60,000 - 100,000. Among the companies whose seed has failed are E.I.D. Parry which was bought up by Monsanto a few days ago.

The farmers and farmers organisations of A.P. understand the social costs of non-sustainable pest control strategies because farmers have been paying through their lives. To find lasting solutions to the problem of Suicides, the A.P. Ryot Sangha had organised a rally in Delhi in July 98. In August they had organised a major meeting and training programme in Warangal in which we had discussed the uselessness of pesticides and genetically engineered Bt.crops in controlling pests, and also demonstrated the ecological pest control methods such as use of neem and pongania extracts and the practise of mixed and rotational cropping. The high level of awareness of genetic engineering Bt. cotton and Monsanto in Andhra Pradesh is based on months of background work in Warangal and is being followed up with months of follow up work. Movements do not emerge instantaneously. They have to be built, their foundation has to be laid and they have to be nurtured.

In A.P., scientists and NGOs are all involved collectively in resisting the introduction of genetically engineered seeds by Monsanto. The farmers have had unanimous resolution passed in the regional parliament against genetic engineering and forced the government of A.P. to ban all trials. After the first uprooting by farmers in village Vururgonda, the Bt. crop in villages Rentachintala, Manganur, Dendukur, Nagarur, Kothagodh, Ponnari was uprooted by the government itself.

The next step is to consolidate these gains. In A.P., during the meetings organised for my solidarity visit, more than 20 farmers groups, 30 NGOs and eminent scientists have formed a coordination committee. Over the next three months the Monsanto campaign will intensify and will be based on a combination of legal action, public hearings and scientific research. The Deccan Development Society will work with farmers organisations including A.P. Ryot Sangha, Bharatiya Kisan Sangh and 200 non-government organisations to co-ordinate public hearings on genetic engineering

Both the collective action across sectors and between different farmers groups and the follow up are missing in the case of Karnataka.

While the first questioning of the trials in Karnataka came from agricultural scientists and government, Prof. Nanjundaswamy of KRRS failed to build on these actions. The coercive style of the actions undertaken by KRRS has alienated both farmers and government and has been a set back for the broad based, long term sustainable movement against Monsanto. In Karnataka local farmers have reacted to the undemocratic methods used to destroy their fields without their consent and one farmer, Sankarhoppa of Adur village in Haveri district refused to allow the KRRS to touch his crop. The KRRS has failed to carry local farmers along. They have reacted and demanded police protection. The trials are therefore not banned in Karnataka. The "Operation Cremation Monsanto" in Karnataka has so far failed to "Cremate Monsanto" even in its own state. The broader movement of farmers organisations, scientists and civil society is planning to take actions to strengthen the movement in Karnataka.

The national movement against Monsanto and genetic engineering will carry out public hearings in all 9 states where trials have been carried out. A sustainable movement can only be built democratically through dialogue and awareness and creative and constructive actions including initiatives on sustainable alternatives for farmers.

We do not believe that coercion can be the basis of building non-violent sustainable movements. We plan to make a special effort to convince Mr. Shankarahoppa of Adur village about the risks of genetic engineering in agriculture so that he too stops participating in the trials.

In January, we will hold a national meeting of activists and scientists to create coordinating groups of farmers, scientists and NGOs in each state.

In March, we hope to organise an international solidarity meeting to support the movements in India.

-------------------------------

UPDATE ON THE "NO PATENTS ON LIFE" CAMPAIGN
Another Victory for Democracy: Patent (A) Bill fails to Pass Again


Once again we have succeeded in blocking changes in India's Patent Act which would have given total monopolies through Exclusive Marketing Rights (EMRs) to Multinational Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Corporations.

In 1995, the Patent (Amendment) Bill proposed by the Congress Government passed the Lok Sabha but was defeated in the Rajya Sabha.

The BJP government joined with the Congress to pass the same Bill in the winter session. It passed the Rajya Sabha, but even in Rajya Sabha we managed to influence key parliamentarians to introduce a Biopiracy amendment before it was passed.

The work of the RFSTE* and other public interest groups working on Patent laws managed to create enough debate to prevent the bill being passed through the Lok Sabha.

The push by MNCs* to establish their monopolies is violating all democratic norms of our Constitution. Even the President was not shown the Patent (Amendment) Bill which was rushed to Parliament.

The Bill will now come up in the budget session of Parliament. Our strategy now is to call for a full review of India's Patent Laws to prevent Biopiracy and ensure Biosafety instead of granting EMRs. This review needs to go hand in hand with the 1999 review of TRIPs and the two reviews should be harmonised.

The END

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Notes:
*RFSTE is an acronymn for the Research Foundation for Science, Technology,
and Ecology (Vandana Shiva's group).
*MNC is an acronym for Multi-National Corporation.

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And lastly, from the ever-amazing Don Fitz(Fitzdon@aol.com):

* * *

The following appeared in the today's (December 29, 1998) St. Louis Post-Dispatch as part of a debate. Both this editorial and the one supporting genetic engineering can be found at www.postnet.com

MONSANTO SHOULD HALT GENETIC ENGINEERING

by Don Fitz

If Monsanto is in trouble, the St. Louis community takes note. No one likes she thought of a relative or friend losing a job.

When Monsanto announced in November that it would lay off 2,500 of 28,000 employees, many attributed it to merger problems with American Home Products. But the company's problems run deeper. The planned downsizing could symptomize a poor business strategy of focusing on genetic engineering. It may be time for Monsanto to explore a new direction.

The 1990s have seen an increasing demand for "organic" food grown without genetic engineering, irradiation, animal cannibalism or the use of sewage sludge. Greens would like to see Monsanto abandon its current practices and research organic agriculture.

Natural-farming research would develop the best techniques to grow a variety of crops in varied ecosystems. Organic farming principles assume food is grown as close to the consumer as possible. Growing food on mega-farms assumes large use of fuel and highways for cross-continental shipping-a process that is not organic. There is enormous potential for ongoing research on how locally diverse agricultural production can have the smallest effect on natural species.

This would be a 180-degree turn for Monsanto, which has gained the ire of environmentalists for creating virtually all PCBs in the U.S. (widely used in electronic products until their ban in 1976), for producing the infamous Agent Orange (linked to cancer and reproductive problems in Vietnam Vets), and for manufacturing pesticides (responsible for groundwater contamination). Monsanto is a "potentially responsible party" at 93 Superfund sites identified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Monsanto recently sold off most of its chemical divisions, though it retains production of the herbicide Roundup. The St. Louis-based corporation now focuses its research on genetic engineering, which it claims will produce crops with higher yield, tolerance to drought, and protection against damage by pests.

But European farmers and environmentalists have joined forces against genetically altered crops. They claim that, in addition to exposing consumers to unknown food allergies, biotechnology practices could cause the evolution of "superweeds" or "superbugs" that would be resistant to chemical control and crowd out crops and native species. Farmers who do use its patented products find themselves labeled "seed pirates" if they replant them.

Monsanto's press reports claim that the company hired Pinkerton detectives to scrutinize 1,800 U.S. farmers. Farmers across the globe have protested loudly against the "terminator" technology-a seed that kills its own offspring while providing no increase in food production. Terminator technology was developed by Delta and Pine Land, which Monsanto is acquiring. Critics charge that terminator seeds were developed to bloat corporate profits at the expense of 1.4 billion farmers in Asia, Africa and Latin America who depend on saved seed. In October the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR-the world's largest farm research network) announced that it would ban terminator technology from its crop breeding programs. The terminator rebuke comes at a time when governments are listening more attentively to criticisms from environmentalists.

Canada has not allowed introduction of the first genetically engineered product-recombinant bovine growth hormone. Currently, Canada is examining reports from Consumers Union which suggest that, in order to receive the 1993 approval for bovine growth hormone from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Monsanto may have withheld data showing damaged thyroid and prostate tissue in rats given high doses of the hormone.

Proponents of genetic engineering downplay the likelihood of "genetic pollution." But according to British press accounts, the British government expects to charge Monsanto saying that pollen from its Roundup-resistant canola test site in Lincolnshire spread to an adjoining non-genetically engineered canola plot. Many European consumers rejected genetically engineered products throughout 1997.

In response, Monsanto mounted a =A31 million advertising campaign this past summer. But on Nov. 18, the London Guardian reported that an internal Monsanto memo leaked to Greenpeace documented that, for the first time, an absolute majority of British people reject genetically engineered foods. The proportion of consumers rating genetically engineered foods as "unacceptable" went from 35 percent in 1997 to 44 percent before the summer of 1998 to 51 percent after the Monsanto campaign.

Additionally, executives for major supermarkets were angered by what they perceived as Monsanto's high-handed tactics of mixing genetically engineered soya products with normal ones so consumers would have no choice.

The leaked British documents came on the heels of a Brazilian judge's blocking approval for planting Monsanto's genetically altered soybeans. Brazil has the world's second largest soybean crop and the opportunity to use genetically engineered varieties during its fall 1998 planting season was missed.

Thus, the failure of the merger with American Home Products was only one chapter in difficulties of a corporation which has spent billions in acquisition of seed and research companies.

Some may laugh "Absurd!" at the proposal that Monsanto turn to organic agriculture. But such a dramatic about-face may be exactly what Monsanto needs.

Don Fitz is director of the Gateway Green Foundation, one of the groups which hosted the July 1998 "First Grassroots Gathering on Biodevastation: Genetic Engineering." He is a member of the Missouri Green Party and The Greens/Green Party USA.

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And that's all for now.

The BIODIVE Listserver
bebe@igc.apc.org

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Subject: FW: Molly Ivins Speaks Out on Monsanto & GE Foods (Please Post)
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1999 21:06:22 -0500

From the Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram:

http://www.startext.net/today/news/columnist/ivins2.htm

Updated: Monday, Jan. 4, 1999 at 16:05 CST

Let's go back to maroon bluebonnets

AUSTIN -- Monsanto Co., a naive and innocent little chemical corporation, was engaged in a benevolent scheme to make a better world through genetically engineered crops -- practically without thinking of profit. Last year the company offered its humanitarian products to what should have been a grateful peasantry around the world, but, alas, unpleasant things began to happen.

In India, unhappy farmers torched Monsanto's test plots of genetically engineered cotton in an outburst of fury they called "Operation Cremation Monsanto." In Ireland, ungrateful protesters sabotaged fields of genetically engineered potatoes. French farmers staged a raid on a cache of modified seeds, sprayed it with fire extinguishers and then urinated on it.

Gee. `Quel' Luddites. How can it be, you ask, that all over the world people are raising Cain about GMOs (genetically modified organisms) while in this country we hear not one discouraging word? (Well, perhaps one or two -- the `St. Louis Post- Dispatch,' in Monsanto's hometown, ran an excellent investigative article last month on the company's misadventures around the globe.)

Well, the rest of the world thinks we're making perfect fools of ourselves over the Monica Lewinsky scandal, too, so that just shows you how much the rest of the world knows.

In fact, you might have heard more about worldwide protests over GMOs if it weren't for Monica; the Center for Media and Public Affairs just announced that the Lewinsky scandal got more network news air time than the combined total for the Asian and Russian economic crises, Iraq, embassy bombings in Africa, Middle Eastern peace, nuclear testing in India and Pakistan, and John Glenn in space. What self-respecting medium had time to worry about the food supply?

Another reason we hear so little about GMOs in this country was explained by Bill Lambrecht in his `Post-Dispatch' article: Americans have no entry into a regulatory system that was fixed during the Reagan administration.

"In 1986, Monsanto and allies persuaded President Reagan's administration to adopt a framework that would operate with no new legislation. This strategy assured that genetic engineering would, for the most part, remain out of the domain of the Congress and therefore away from the forum where people sound their concern."

The Food and Drug Administration has been our most aggressive regulator on food safety issues, but the FDA has limited authority because genetic traits are not considered food additives.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is stuck with a dual role as both regulator of biotechnology and its ardent booster. As we learned with the old Atomic Energy Commission, which had the same conflicting roles over nuclear power, the result is complete bureaucratic impotence.

But what exactly is the problem? If Monsanto can make vegetable seeds that are resistant to bugs, what's not to like?

Some of Monsanto's problems are traceable to greater European skepticism about science in general. And the Continent just went through the experience of mad cow disease in which 11 million cattle had to be slaughtered; that certainly increased people's suspicions about food safety and their doubts about the adequacy of government regulation.

The British paper `The Guardian' reported in November: "Monsanto, the world's leading genetic food company, is facing public meltdown in Britain and Germany with a `society-wide' collapse of support for its radical technologies, according to leaked internal documents. Amid deepening media problems, and resentment by supermarkets, only senior civil servants have shown support for Monsanto's controversial technologies in the past year."

One nightmarish Monsanto patent is for "The Terminator," a new genetic technology designed to render the seeds of crops sterile. It was invented to block farmers from saving seeds, ensuring that they buy the jazzed-up, genetically improved varieties. The official name is Technology Protection System, but it's called The Terminator all over the globe, and farmers, who have been saving seeds and resowing for millennia, are terrified of it.

Just imagine if that little genetic fix should somehow get loose and start jumping species. In October at the World Bank in Washington, scientists and farm economists voted to condemn the technology and prohibit in the projects of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, the world's largest ag research network.

Critics of biotechnology are afraid that seeding farmland with transgenic crops could spread genetic pollution, upset the balance of nature and release uncontrollable food allergies. Jane Rissler with the Union of Concerned Scientists told Agence France-Pressue, "The purpose of biotechnology is to increase the profits of the manufacturers by persuading farmers to use more herbicides."

But aren't these fears just that -- fears without evidence? The problem is that Monsanto has a record.

The company manufactured virtually all the PCBs in the United States until they were finally banned in 1976, and taxpayers are still shelling out to clean up PCB-riddled waste sites. Monsanto also manufactured Agent Orange, which is linked to cancer and reproductive problems in Vietnam War vets. And the company makes pesticides, which contaminate ground water. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Monsanto is a "potentially responsible party" at 93 Superfund sites.

In other words, this is a company that has put its faith in technology before without bothering to properly research the consequences.

Molly Ivins is a columnist for the `Star-Telegram.' You may write to her at 1005 Congress Ave., Suite 920, Austin, TX 78701; call her at (512) 476-8908; or email her at mollyivins@star-telegram.com

** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. **



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Subject: Wash Post. 1/9/99 Biotech Companies Worried About Bt Resistance:
Institute "Voluntary" Refuge Requirements for Farmers (Please Post)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 18:24:22 -0500

Corn Seed Producers Move to Avert Pesticide Resistance
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 9, 1999; Page A04

Responding to pressure from federal regulators, environmentalists and others, a coalition of the nation's major producers of genetically engineered corn seed said yesterday that they would require farmers to grow sizable plots of non-engineered, old-fashioned corn along with their new biotechnology varieties.

The companies hope to allay increasing fears among scientists that some newly marketed varieties of gene-altered corn, which exude potent insecticides day in and day out, may be speeding the evolution of pesticide-resistant "super" insects.

The announcement, which caught many farmers and others by surprise, was announced by an official of St. Louis-based Monsanto Co., the country's largest producer of gene-altered corn, at an Environmental Protection Agency meeting.

EPA officials welcomed the coalition's plan with cautious optimism. "We have not had an opportunity to review the details of this agreement. However, we hope the final version will contain the elements EPA feels are required for the effective management of these products," Loretta Ucelli, EPA's associate administrator of public affairs, said in a statement.

But the plan was immediately criticized as inadequate by some scientists and environmental activists, who noted that it calls for plots of non-engineered crops to be about half the size that several research studies have recently determined will be needed to prevent ecological disaster.

"It's like having your doctor prescribe five pills a day to prevent a heart attack: It might help a little bit to take only one, but probably you're going to die," said Jane Rissler, senior staff scientist at the Union for Concerned Scientists in Washington. "These companies are responding to an overwhelming scientific consensus that they have to do something, but what they are proposing is far, far from what is needed."

The more that insects are exposed to an insecticide, the more rapidly they develop resistance to that pesticide. That principle has become an issue as several companies have added a gene to corn that allows the plants to produce a steady supply of an insecticide known as bt, a bacterial toxin that kills European corn borers and related caterpillars that drill through stalks and damage ears.

Growers who use the new varieties can avoid spraying bt during the season. But periodic spraying, though expensive and troublesome for growers, is in some respects more environmentally friendly. That's because bt breaks down quickly in sunlight, keeping exposures so brief that insects hardly have the opportunity to evolve strategies for becoming resistant to the chemical.

Under constant chemical pressure from bt-exuding plants, insects have greater opportunity to evolve ways of being unfazed by bt.

Field studies and computer modeling experiments have confirmed that there is a solution to the problem: Grow plots of normal corn near the bt plots, and don't spray those "refuges" with any bt. Without the pressure to develop bt resistance, insects on refuge plots tend to remain susceptible to the pesticide. And when those insects mate with their neighbors in nearby biotech plots, their susceptibility genes will dilute any emerging resistance in their mates.

But how big do these refuges have to be? Several recent studies, which have been compiled into a document that EPA now relies heavily upon, have concluded that a refuge kept completely free of pesticides must be 20 percent to 30 percent the size of the engineered plot. They note that a refuge should be about 40 percent the size of the biotech plot if pesticides are to be used, since spraying can increase the odds of bt resistance developing.

The new plan, however, calls for only 20 percent refuges, even when sprays are to be used, said Monsanto spokesman Dan Holman. Moreover, the plan offers no details about whether the refuges must be planted alongside the biotech plots, or can be some distance away, where studies suggest they would be less effective.

"I think it's important that they've come up with something, even a compromise," said Fred Gould, an entomologist and bt expert at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. "But the bottom line is, 20 percent without spraying is as low as you'd want to go."

Indeed, the EPA has recently been requiring refuges about twice as big as what yesterday's plan proposes for newly registered varieties of bt corn. But previously approved varieties, including those made by the companies that came up with the plan, were registered by the EPA before the agency started insisting on refuges. That means any such system is voluntary for them until those registrations start to expire in 2002, even though they account for most of the 15 million acres of engineered corn now planted in this country.

Holman said the coalition would release more details later, including how it intends to enforce the use of the refuge system among farmers.

Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company


Ronnie Cummins
Campaign for Food Safety/Organic Consumers Action
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Subject: Guardian wins complaint ruling [against Monsanto]
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 09:15:07 -0500

January 10, 1999

Guardian wins complaint ruling
The Guardian

THE Press Complaints Commission yesterday rejected complaints from the US biotech company, [ Monsanto ] , against the Guardian.

Monsanto had complained about "inaccuracies and misleading statements" in an analysis piece which examined the growing opposition to the introduction of genetically modified foods in Britain.

Yesterday the commission said: "After review, the commission has decided that no matters have been raised which show a breach of the code."

Monsanto had objected to five points in an analysis article published in July 1998, which was accompanied by a map that depicted some of the sites where the company had been testing modified crops.

The Guardian's managing editor, Brian Whitaker, said yesterday: "We are delighted by the ruling. The complaint was typical of the response whenever we write about Monsanto in the context of genetically-modified foods.

"We are well accustomed to vigorous lobbying from public relations companies, but Monsanto seems to put enormous resources into complaining every time we write about its activities."

The commission ruled that consumer and pressure groups had expressed anger over a lack of consultation by Monsanto; that Monsanto had been unsuccessful in its attempts to restrain protesters; and that the Guardian could not be criticised for inaccuracies in a map drawn up from government information.

The commission declined to rule on the Guardian's request that it consider Monsanto's reasons for making the complaint.

It said: "It was not for the commission to comment on the complainant's motivation."

(Copyright 1999)

_____via IntellX_____

Publication Date: January 10, 1999