NOFA/Massachusetts Social Action Center

Genetic Engineering News

June, 2008
compiled by Jack Kittredge
NOFA/Mass Social Action Coordinator

Scientists Create First GM Human Embryo
Scientists have created what is believed to be the first genetically modified (GM) human embryo. A team from Cornell University in New York produced the GM embryo to study how early cells and diseases develop. It was destroyed after five days. The Cornell team, led by Nikica Zaninovic, used a virus to add a gene, a green fluorescent protein, to an embryo left over from in vitro fertilization.

News of the development comes days before British MPs are to debate legislation that would allow scientists to use similar techniques in England. The effects of changing an embryo would be permanent. Genes added to embryos or reproductive cells, such as sperm, will affect all cells in the body and will be passed on to future generations. The technology could potentially be used to correct genes which cause diseases such as cystic fibrosis, haemophilia and even cancer. In theory, any gene that has been identified could be added to embryos. But ethicists warn that genetically modifying embryos could lead to the addition of genes for "desirable" traits such as height, intelligence and hair color. source: http://www.geneticsandsociety.rsvp1.com/s157da5xe1x
http://www.geneticsandsociety.rsvp1.com/article.php?id=4081&mgh=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.geneticsandsociety.org&mgf=1

Firms Seek Patents on 'Climate Ready' Altered Crops
A handful of the world's largest agricultural biotechnology companies are seeking hundreds of patents on gene-altered crops designed to withstand drought and other environmental stresses, part of a race for dominance in the potentially lucrative market for crops that can handle global warming, according to a report being released today. Three companies -- BASF of Germany, Syngenta of Switzerland and Monsanto of St. Louis -- have filed applications to control nearly two-thirds of the climate-related gene families submitted to patent offices worldwide, according to the report by the Ottawa-based ETC Group, an activist organization that advocates for subsistence farmers.

Many of the world's poorest countries, destined to be hit hardest by climate change, have rejected biotech crops, citing environmental and economic concerns. Importantly, gene patents generally preclude the age-old practice of saving seeds from a harvest for replanting, requiring instead that farmers purchase the high-tech seeds each year.

The ETC report concludes that biotech giants are hoping to leverage climate change as a way to get into resistant markets, and it warns that the move could undermine public-sector plant-breeding institutions such as those coordinated by the United Nations and the World Bank, which have long made their improved varieties freely available. "When a market is dominated by a handful of large multinational companies, the research agenda gets biased toward proprietary products," said Hope Shand, ETC's research director. "Monopoly control of plant genes is a bad idea under any circumstance. During a global food crisis, it is unacceptable and has to be challenged."
source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/05/12/AR2008051202919.html

University of Texas Fires Man in Charge of Research Safety
A veteran national security expert hired to make safety improvements in University of Texas research labs has been fired, less than a year after he took the job. Dr. Harold "Woody" Davis said he's being forced out because university scientists, some of them working with infectious agents and toxic chemicals, complained he was overzealous with his safety measures. Though he was brought on to oversee compliance in UT's research program, he said, university officials resented him for what he found: badly monitored experiments, disregard for federal reporting rules, and under-trained students working with dangerous agents.

Campus officials say Dr. Davis, a physician, attorney and civil servant whose career spans several federal security agencies, is being terminated for "performance, communication and personnel issues" - not for being a safety watchdog. Dr. Davis "is disgruntled. He is not happy," said Dr. Juan Sanchez, the university's vice president for research. "He is a person not familiar with the university. When it comes to compliance, it's important to have someone who understands the regulations in the context of research."

Dr, Davis said that in his short time at the university, he repeatedly butted heads with researchers unwilling to abide by new safety measures. He saw experiments being conducted without proper federal approval. And he witnessed barely trained undergraduates and graduate students working in high-security environments. He described researchers more concerned with the perception of safety than with taking real-life precautions. Their ability to bring the university prestigious, high-dollar grants seemed to earn them a free pass, he alleged. "There has been a pushback from day one with certain groups of researchers who were insulted at the idea that they had to disclose what was going on in their labs," said Dr. Davis, who said he was told he was being fired because he didn't "have the confidence of the faculty."

"This guy is a regulator. He takes rules seriously," said Edward Hammond, who runs The Sunshine Project, a biodefense and lab safety watchdog organization. "My impression is Dr. Davis proved to be more serious about safety than the university wanted someone in his position to be."
source: The Dallas Morning News, May 31, 2008

UN Convention Fails to Ban GM trees in the Wild
The 150 countries that are members of the Convention on Biological Diversity - the leading international agreement for ecological governance - refused to ban genetically modified trees during their conference in Bonn, Germany. The decision means that trees whose genetic traits have been manipulated to make them more suitable for the paper making and biofuel industries can be grown in field trials with a view to being grown on a commercial scale. Under the decision members are allowed to ban the controversial trees in their own countries. But with no international agreement, they would not be protected by contaminated pollen blown across national borders from neighboring countries.

The conference comes amid growing commercial pressure from the biotechnology industry which wants to grow GM trees in large-scale monocultures. The amount of cellulose in trees can be increased to make them more suitable for paper and ethanol, which can be used as a biofuel. Simultaneously, the level of lignin - the substance that gives trees their rigidity - can be reduced. And an insect-killing gene, taken from the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis, can be added to trees.

Dr Ricarda Steinbrecher, a geneticist and co-founder of science watchdog Econexus, said the decision was a disappointing one for forests and ecosystems around the world. She said: "Trees are highly complex organisms and forests are highly complex ecosystems. Trees live a long time, their pollen can travel long distances - over 1000 kilometers - and their seeds are carried far by wind, water or animals.
source: London Daily Telegraph, May 30, 2008

Cross-Fertilization by Airborne Pollen Found at Surprisingly Large Distances
The results of a "cross-fertilization trial" of rice, soybean, maize, sugar beet and rapeseed carried out in Hokkaido, Japan have been released. Cross-fertilization of rice was confirmed at 600 m, 20 times the presumed safe distance under British guidelines (30m). For maize, it was confirmed at 1200 m, and 990 m for sugarbeet. For soy, it was not found at over 45m.

According to Hokkaido's Ordinance for Prevention of Cross-fertilization Cultivation of GM Crops, commercial planting of GM crops is banned in principle, trial cultivation is allowed upon notification, in which case isolation buffer zones from conventional crops on ordinary farmland are stipulated. The isolation buffer zone distances stipulated under the Ordinance were considered quite severe. Hokkaido has carried out cross-fertilization trials in order to test whether the isolation buffer zone distances stipulated in the Ordinance were meaningful or not. As can be seen from the case of rice, it has been confirmed that airborne diffusion of pollen occurs over surprisingly large distances. The view that the current buffer zone distances are insufficient to prevent the occurrence of cross-fertilization is now becoming widespread.
source: http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~cbic/english/2008/journal0805.html

Most Americans Don't Want to Buy GM Food - But They Have No Choice
According to a CBS News/New York Times poll, 53 percent of Americans say?they won't buy GM food. But it's not labeled, so they have no choice. Nutritionist Marion Nestle, a former FDA advisor, said, 'They [the industry] didn't want it labeled because they were terrified that if it were labeled, nobody would buy it.'
source: http://cbs4.com/national/CBS.News.New.2.721469.html

Bush Administration Bans Late Regulations
The Bush administration on May 9 told federal agencies that they had until June 1 to propose any new regulations, and that it will generally not allow agencies to issue any final regulations after Nov. 1, nearly three months before President Bush relinquishes power. While the White House called the deadlines "simply good government," some legal specialists said the policy would ensure that rules the administration wanted to be part of Mr. Bush's legacy would be less subject to being overturned by his successor (many regulations do not take effect until 60 days after they have been issued, and a new president can try to postpone or revise them). Moreover, they said, the deadlines could allow the administration to avoid thorny proposals that are likely to come up in the next few months, including environmental and safety rules that have been in the regulatory pipeline for years.

"There are good-government reasons to do what they are doing," said Sally Katzen, the top regulatory aide to Mr. Clinton from 1993 to 1998. "But it has the added advantage of providing an excuse for not doing something they don't want attributed to them, and for speeding up the things they want to lock in before the next administration."

Agency officials said it was impossible to speed up many proposals, some of which run for hundreds of pages, with three weeks' notice. One official said his agency was resigned to the fact that some of its work would be delayed until the next administration. Jeffrey Barach, vice president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, said he feared that the deadline could jeopardize some rules that food manufacturers want. For example, the food industry has been pressing for more stringent requirements on farms to lower the risk that the food supply might be contaminated by crops that have been genetically modified to produce pharmaceuticals. The Department of Agriculture was planning to issue such a proposed rule in June, too late for the deadline.
source: New York Times, May 31, 2008

US Says Biotech Key to Easing Food Crisis
The United States is proposing biotechnology as a strategy to boost agricultural production at a UN global food crisis summit in Rome this week. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer, who leads the US delegation to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) world food security conference that opened June 3 in Rome, said that, with the United States contributing more than one-half of all the world's food aid, "the world's other developed nations have an obligation to provide food efficiently without obstructing access to it or limiting safe technologies to produce it." To emphasize this policy the US is proposing "that all countries consider strategies that expand research, promote science-based regulations, and encourage innovative technology -- including biotechnology." Schafer is hosting an exhibit on new technologies on the sidelines of the three-day Rome summit "to showcase developing countries that have moved forward with public investment in adoption of bioengineered products."
source: http://www.france24.com/en/20080529-us-says-biotech-key-easing-food-crisis

OECD Chief: GM Crops Yes, Must Rethink on Biofuels
The chief of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Angel Gurria, threw his weight behind genetically modified crops as an antidote to high food prices. The food price report by OECD and UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), published before the world food summit in Rome this week, suggested GM crops could help boost output to feed more people and livestock. It also questioned the merits of government-sponsored plans to promote the grain-guzzling production of ethanol fuels as an alternative transport fuel, but without calling outright for a repeal of big ethanol targets, such as exist in the United States and the European Union. An OECD official who penned much of the report said another report on biofuel policies in particular would be completed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in a month or so, and that current biofuel promotion policies were based perhaps on hasty and oversimplistic assumptions.
source: http://in.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idINL2983536720080529

GM Foods Not The Solution
The food crisis has prompted some looks towards genetically modified food production as a solution. That in turn has led to stronger warnings over the consequences of such food for health and the environment, and doubts about it's ability to meet hunger needs. These concerns have been raised in Bonn again as more than 3,000 delegates from 147 countries met for the UN conference on biosafety.

In France, organic farmers are complaining that genetically modified (GM) plants are poisoning their plantations. Julien and Christian Veillat, two farmers who grow organic maize in the Breton locality of Villiers-en-Plaine some 400 kilometres west of Paris, say their fields have been contaminated with GM maize, even though the nearest GM crops field is 35 kilometres away. Jean-Pierre Margan, producer of organic wine in the Provence in the south told IPS that contamination of organic farms is a constant problem. "Particles of GMOs are transported by wind and water, and can be carried very far away, and contaminate your plantation even if you have worked hard to protect it from every risk," he said. Serge Morin, deputy president of the local government in the province of Poitou Charentes said it is necessary that "the French state revises all procedures concerning GMOs, including the immediate stop of all open air GM plantations. In addition, all organic farmers whose plantations are contaminated should be paid indemnities."

Several scientists and environmental activists say that apart from the health concerns, GMOs are not a solution for food scarcity either. "Most of the genetic modifications introduced in crops aim at making them resistant to pests or weed killing, but not to increase yields," says Hans-Joerg Jacobsen, biologist at the University of Hanover in Germany. Jacobsen said that "modern cultures, free of any genetic modification, have higher yields than genetically modified seeds."

"The idea that GM agriculture could help feed the world is part of the propaganda that the biochemical industry has used for years, but it is false," Arnaud Apoteker, who heads the campaign against GMOs for the French branch of the environmental organization Greenpeace, said in an interview. Some representatives of the biochemical industry acknowledge this. "Genetically modified agriculture will not solve the world's hunger problem," Hans Kast, managing director of the plant science branch of the chemical giant BASF told the German newspaper Die Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

Take Africa, the only continent that does not produce enough food to feed its own population, even though some 70 percent of African people work in agriculture. "By applying conventional agricultural methods, free of any genetic modification, you can substantially increase agricultural productivity in Africa," Hans Joachim Preuss, managing director of the German non-governmental food organisation Welthungerhilfe told IPS. "What African agriculture mostly needs is better, more efficient irrigation systems, and not genetically modified seeds."
source: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42480

Big Yield Penalty from Monsanto's New GM Cotton
Because of concerns over the effectiveness of Monsanto's single Bt gene (Bollgard) cotton, Monsanto is phasing it out in the US. But the stacked gene GM cotton that is replacing it carries a very significant yield penalty. A study conducted by the University of Georgia Center for Agribusiness and Economic Development predicts that the introduction of Monsanto's new GM cotton will lead to substantial losses to both the state's cotton industry and its wider rural economy. The total economic output loss to the Georgia economy due to changing seed technology could be $128.32 million, say the economists who conducted the study, with changes in the Georgia cotton industry having economic impacts throughout the state's economy.
source: http://southeastfarmpress.com/cotton/cottonseed-technology-0520/

Food Profiteering?
Hungry people from Bangladesh to Haiti, from Egypt to Somalia to Senegal have been taking to the streets to protest rapidly rising food prices. Meanwhile, here are the profit figures for just the first three months of this year for a couple of the key monopoly or near-monopoly buyers and sellers of agricultural products around the world: o Archer Daniels Midland (ADM): Gross profit $1.15 billion, up 55% from last year o Monsanto: Gross profit $2.23 billion, up 54%.

The biggest part of Monsanto's seed profit is coming from corn seeds, and corn is the key to why food prices have spiked. In 2005 the Bush administration, under pressure from agribiz interests, suddenly made their corn-ethanol subsidies a lot more generous, which meant a lot more American corn started going to ethanol -- something like a third of the total crop. And that proved the catalyst for the price of corn to start rocketing, and then later the price of other crops like soya and wheat took off as farmers had cultivated less thanks to the switch to corn. An article for Grist gives a clear account of how ethanol has always been about the interests of big agribiz and has never had anything to do with the mythical environmental benefits of 'biofuels'.

Along with the businesses that control more than 80% of the world cereals market - Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, ConAgra, Bunge, Dreyfus - all these corporations have profited quite shamelessly. For all of 2007, Cargill's profits increased 36%; Archer Daniels Midland's by 67%; ConAgra by 30%; Bunge's by 49%; and Dreyfus's profits in the last quarter of 2007 grew by 77%. Monsanto's profits increase was 44% over 2006 and Dupont-Pioneer's 19%.
source:http://grist.org/news/maindish/2006/12/06/ADM/
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/17675

German Universities Bow to Public Pressure over GM Crops
Two German universities have pulled the plug on field trials of GM crops. The science journal Nature quotes CropGen's Vivian Moses as saying that the decision is a 'disgraceful' interference with scientists' freedom to research. Stefan Hormuth, president of the Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Hesse, said, 'Unfortunately, we were no longer able to deal with the massive opposition from politicians and the general public. The university has a reputation in the region that we cannot risk losing.' Andreas Schier of Nürtigen-Geislingen University had to stop his field trials of GM maize. Last month, the university announced that it would stop its planned cultivation of GM maize in Gross-Gerau after activists occupied the field. Another local field trial of GM maize was also stopped because of massive protests from the public and local politicians. Nature cites Heinz Saedler, a director at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, as saying, 'The incidents reveal a new level of public hostility to plant genetic engineering in Germany.' The Max Planck Institute is also not cultivating GM crops this year.
source: http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080514/full/453263a.html

Swiss Cabinet Calls for GM-Free Agriculture
The Swiss government has come out in favor of extending a ban on GMO in agriculture until 2013. The federal environment office said the current moratorium had had no adverse impact on farming or research in Switzerland, and Swiss agriculture could benefit from its GM-free status.
source: http://tinyurl.com/63kqd4

France: Organic Maize Contaminated from 35 Km Away
Organic maize grown near Deux-Sevres, France has been contaminated with genes from GM maize, although the closest plots of GM maize are over 35 km distant from the fields. source: (in French):
http://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/2008/05/12/dans-les-deux-sevres-du-ma

Groups Urge USDA to Reinstate Pesticide Reporting Program
The day before the US Dept of Agriculture (USDA) released its scaled-back annual report on 2007 pesticide use, a coalition of 44 environmental, sustainable farming, and health advocacy organizations called on the agency to reverse its plan to eliminate its pesticide reporting program in 2008. USDA claims it lacks funding to continue the program. 'Without USDA's data, we will no longer be able to reliably track trends in pesticide use, such as the substantial spike in the use of herbicides over the past six years,' said Bill Freese, science policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety. Freese notes that herbicides comprise nearly two-thirds of pesticides applied in the US, and that the use of weed killers has been on the rise -- since 2002 on soybeans and cotton, and since 2003 on corn. Charles Benbrook, a senior scientist with the Organic Center, is quoted in a newspaper report as saying he finds the USDA's actions curious at a time when herbicide use on Roundup Ready crops has increased: 'The 2007 data would have shown an enormous increase in the pounds of herbicides applied on Roundup Ready crops, especially soybeans. The farm media has been full of stories over the past few years of the problems farmers are facing as weeds become resistant to glyphosate and other herbicides. I find it curious that at the time of peak interest and need for solid information on pesticide use in soybeans that the Department of Agriculture has decided to stop collecting the data. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some quiet lobbying done by Monsanto to let the program lapse.' A USDA official said consumers can find similar data from private sources -- but prominent among these would be the enormously deceptive reports from biotech-pesticide industry front groups like National Center for Food and Agriculture Policy (NCFAP).
source: http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/USDA_NASS_PR5_20_08.cfm
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/pesticide-data-program-cut-44052108

Progress After Tough Talks on Liability Regime For GMOs
Four years of negotiations on an international liability and redress regime for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) under the Convention on Biological Diversity have failed to conclude as planned. Instead, another two meetings have been scheduled to conclude the negotiations, in order that the agreement can be adopted at the next Meeting of the Parties (MOP) to the CBD's UN Biosafety Protocol in Japan in 2010.

"Liability and redress" has been a very contentious issue. Towards the end of negotiations to establish the Biosafety Protocol in 2000, countries could not agree to include liability and redress provisions. Instead, an enabling clause was put in place, which specified that the first MOP to the Biosafety Protocol should start a process to elaborate liability and redress rules and procedures, and complete this process within four years. The first MOP was held in 2004, and thus the final liability and redress regime should have been adopted in Bonn last week. Instead, it saw the emergence of a group of "Like Minded Friends" (LMF), comprising around 80 Parties. This group put forward a proposal to break the impasse in the negotiations, and the proposal will now be the basis for the further work.

The LMF proposal wants a legally binding instrument that will include three main elements: (1) preserving the right of Parties to put in place domestic laws and policies on civil liability and redress which should include elements as stipulated in guidelines to be negotiated; (2) provisions for the reciprocal recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments; and (3) a clause to review the guidelines no later than three years after entry into force of the liability and redress instrument, with a view to consider making them binding. source: South-North Development Monitor (SUNS) #6481 Monday 26 May 2008

GM Crop Foes March in Germany as Summit Starts
About 5,000 activists marched through the German city of Bonn last week to protest against GM food at the start of MOP4. Campaigners, many waving colorful flags and banners with slogans such as 'Biofuel Creates Hunger' and 'Good Food Instead Of GM Food', walked and danced through the western German city.
source: http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKL1210604320080512

La Via Campesina Mobilizes In Bonn
An international farmers delegation of La Via Campesina mobilized in Bonn during the MOP4. Farmers demanded that governments radically reassess the policies that are wiping out biodiversity and rural communities across the planet. They also denounced the false solutions, such as GMOs, agrofuels and forest monocultures. For millennia, small-scale farmers have conserved and renewed plant and animal biodiversity. Peasants and small farmers are now asking for their role to be recognised. They are convinced that sustainable family farming and local food production can solve the current food and environmental crisis.
source: http://biotech.indymedia.org/or/2008/05/7010.shtml

Mayor Of Millau Bans GMOs
The new mayor of Millau, France, Guy Durand, who has a doctorate in public law, intends to ban GMOs in his town. Already there are no pesticides used in the municipal greenhouses and the school canteens serve organic meals. The city is the headquarters of Roquefort cheese, which prohibits GMOs in sheep's milk.
source: http://www.liberation.fr/actualite/economie_terre/325611.FR.php

French Parliament Throws Out GM Bill in Setback for Sarkozy The French Parliament has thrown out a controversial bill on GM crops. One-third of President Nicolas Sarkozy's ruling UMP party rebelled and joined left-wing lawmakers to vote out the text by just 136 votes to 135. Cheers broke out outside the parliament building where anti-GM campaigners had gathered in protest as the bill, which aimed to bring France into line with a 2001 European Union law, was rejected. Jose Bove, who has been jailed several times for ripping up GM crops, called it a 'historic victory'. Left-wing critics attacked the legislation as lacking strong enough safeguards to protect conventional crops from GM contamination. Before the Parliamentary vote, hundreds of activists marched in Paris in protest against the law.
source: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i5dIJWPgTCpDhOmApk4GtcXn3vow
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/7514736

Georgia: Patriarch Speaks out Against GM Crops
In his Easter sermon, Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia Ilia II spoke out against GM crops, which he said would have harmful effects for both the environment and people. source: http://www.messenger.com.ge/issues/1599_may_2_2008/1599_econ_one.html

Canada Politician Wants Labels on GM and Toxic Food
Member of the legislative assembly Gregor Robertson (who is bidding to become Vancouver's next mayor) plans to introduce a private member's bill in the legislature making it mandatory to label GM food. The Right to Know Act would require producers and suppliers to warn consumers if products contain toxic chemicals or GM ingredients. Greenpeace members protested outside the British Columbia legislature on 8 May and handed in a petition with 20,000 signatures asking for mandatory labeling of all GM foods.
source: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html

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