The GE Information Bulletin

An independent digest of widely-sourced information relevant to the GE debate ------------------------------------------------------------ No. 51 January/February 2007 ------------------------------------------------------------

IN THIS ISSUE: http://www.geinfo.org.nz/022007/bulletin51.html

> EPA Fines Syngenta $1.5 M For Bt-10

> Inspector Faulted Over GE Tainted Corn

> US Uneasy About Biotech Food

> Mahyco Compensates Bt Cotton Cultivators

> Pest Expansion [Due To] Transgenic Crops?

> US Food Sector Wary Of GMO Wheat

> Persistence Of Bt And Cry1ab Gene

> New Report: GM Crops Still Not Performing

> Someone (Other Than You) May Own Your Genes

> Austria Allowed To Keep Its Ban On GM Corn

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------------------------------------------------------------ Editorial A report on the recent seed contamination in New Zealand shows that the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, charged with overseeing agricultural imports, failed due to "an error of judgement". Lack of peer review meant the error was not picked up in time. Syngenta supplied that seed and will compensate farmers. They have also been fined $1.5 million in the USA, for distributing the Bt10 corn that caused contamination last year. A report on US attitudes to GE foods shows continuing discomfort and notes that people underestimate how much GE food they eat. And the US food industry remains wary of GE wheat. A Friends of The Earth report notes underperformance of existing GE crops and notes that so-called second generation traits are still not available. Finally, a US professor suggests that property law offers a better ownership model for 'life-patents' than the current 'innovation' model.

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EPA FINES SYNGENTA $1.5 M FOR BT-10 Associated Press, December 21, 2006 (USA) Syngenta Seeds, Inc. has agreed to pay a $1.5 million penalty to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for selling and distributing Bt-10 corn. While the federal government has concluded that there are no human health or environmental concerns with Bt-10 corn, it is still illegal to distribute any pesticide not registered under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. Late in 2004, Syngenta disclosed to EPA that it may have distributed the seed corn to the United States, Europe, Japan, and South America. An investigation confirmed the distribution of unregistered seed corn on over 1,000 occasions. Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/022007/01.html

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INSPECTOR FAULTED OVER GE TAINTED CORN The Press, February 2, 2007 (New Zealand) The Government admits "disappointing and unacceptable" failures led to the importation of four tonnes of GE corn into New Zealand last year. Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry director-general Murray Sherwin yesterday released a report into how 4000kg of GE corn was brought into New Zealand in 2006, leading to the destruction of $7.2 million worth of crops. [It] found there was an error of judgement on the part of the inspecting officer. A lack of appropriate peer review meant the error was undetected until after the seed had been released. Horticulture New Zealand chief executive Peter Silcock said the incident had been costly and worrying for the growers. "What is being done to make sure that this doesn't happen again?" Silcock asked. Some growers had agreements on compensation [from Syngenta, who supplied the seed] but others were still negotiating. Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/022007/02.html

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US UNEASY ABOUT BIOTECH FOOD Washington Post, December 7, 2006 (USA) Ten years after GE crops were first planted commercially in the United States, Americans remain ill-informed about and uncomfortable with biotech food, according to the fifth annual survey on the topic. People vastly underestimate how much gene-altered food they are already consuming, lean toward wanting greater regulation of such crops and have less faith than ever that the FDA will provide accurate information, the survey found. The poll also confirmed that most Americans, particularly women, do not like the idea of consuming meat or milk from cloned animals. Michael Fernandez, executive director of the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, which sponsored the survey, said that overall, Americans are "still generally uncertain" about GM and cloned foods. In this year's survey, conducted by the Mellman Group, one-quarter of the 1,000 adults polled thought they had ever eaten gene-altered food, an indication that Americans have "very little in-depth knowledge of the topic." Of those who claim to have at least a rudimentary sense of how engineered foods are regulated, 41 percent say they would like to see more stringent rules, and 16 percent say there is already too much regulation. Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/022007/03.html

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MAHYCO COMPENSATES BT COTTON CULTIVATORS Agencies, January 29, 2007 (India) One of the front running BT cotton dealers in India, Mahyco has compensated farmers affected by cultivation of Bt cotton. Following complaints [from] 125 farmers of huge loss[es], the state agriculture minister instructed Tamil Nadu Agriculture University scientists, several NGOs and environmental groups to conduct studies to find causes for failure of Mahyco-supplied Bt cottonseeds in the region. The[y] revealed that variation in soil condition was the major cause for Bt seeds failure. The state government convinced Mahyco to compensate Rs 5000 per acre. Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/022007/04.html

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PEST EXPANSION [DUE TO] TRANSGENIC CROPS? FarmWeek, January 17, 2007 (USA) A corn pest that can devastate yields may be increasing in prevalence across Illinois and other states because Bt crops are reducing predators that once kept the pest at bay. Western bean cutworms, a major pest in Nebraska and Colorado, was first detected in Illinois in 2004 and has spread to 49 counties, according to Marlin Rice, an Extension entomologist at Iowa State. Rice and his colleagues attempted to learn why a pest that was rare in Iowa six years ago has spread as far east as central Ohio. "Our theory is that increased (use) of Bt cotton and YieldGard corn has suppressed corn earworms, which are predators of western bean cutworms. This allows (more) bean cutworms to survive," Rice said. Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/022007/05.html

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US FOOD SECTOR WARY OF GMO WHEAT Reuters, December 4, 2006 (USA) The US food industry is still not ready to embrace biotech wheat because of consumer wariness of genetic tinkering - even though wheat acres are declining, Ron Olson, a General Mills Inc. executive said on Monday. Olson said years of work by biotech companies like St. Louis-based Monsanto Co. and the Swiss agrochemicals group Syngenta to make wheat production more attractive to farmers was facing too much consumer wariness for food companies to embrace the efforts. "The food market is not ready for that," he said. "Our stock would get killed." Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/022007/06.html

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PERSISTENCE OF BT AND CRY1AB GENE Ecotoxicol Environ Saf, (Abstract), February 24, 2007 This study examine[s] the occurrence and persistence of the cry1Ab gene from Btk and Bt corn in aquatic environments near fields where Bt corn was cultivated. In sediments, the cry1Ab gene from Bt corn was still detected after 40 days in clay and sand-rich sediments. The cry1Ab transgene was detected as far away as 82 km downstream from the corn cultivation plot. The data indicate that DNA from Bt corn and Bt were persistent in aquatic environments and were detected in rivers draining farming areas. Research News: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/022007/07.html

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NEW REPORT: GM CROPS STILL NOT PERFORMING EU Business, January 10, 2007 (EU) A new report shows that GM crops have failed to address the main challenges facing farmers in most countries of the world, and more than 70 percent of large scale GM planting is still limited to two countries (US and Argentina). The new report, 'Who Benefits from GM crops? An analysis of the global performance of genetically modified (GM) crops 1996-2006' also notes that the 'second generation' GM farm crops with attractive 'traits' long promised by the industry has failed to appear. "No GM crop on the market today offers benefits to the consumer in terms of quality or price, and these crops have done nothing to alleviate hunger or poverty in Africa or elsewhere," said Nnimmo Bassey of Friends of the Earth Africa, Nigeria. The Friends of the Earth International report launch coincides with the annual release of the 'Global Status of Commercialized Biotech' report of the industry-sponsored International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) - which promotes GM crops as a key solution to hunger and poverty. Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/022007/08.html

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SOMEONE (OTHER THAN YOU) MAY OWN YOUR GENES New York Times, January 28, 2007 (USA) Stephen Hilgartner of Cornell University said he believed that the economic and political challenges surrounding so-called life patents would come to rival those of biotech risk, and he has come up with a sensible framework for starting a new conversation about them. Professor Hilgartner said patents don't just determine who will own new technologies and who has access to them. They also influence what technologies cost, whose cultural and ethical values they represent, and what aspects of the research and development process will be transparent - and to whom. With this question in mind, [he] began to investigate whether legal theories of real property, rather than innovation, might be a more useful way to think about who owns biotech inventions and what can be done with them. Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/022007/09.html

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AUSTRIA ALLOWED TO KEEP ITS BAN ON GM CORN The Financial Times, December 19, 2006 (EU) Environment ministers yesterday threw out a European Commission proposal to force Austria to lift [its] bans on two authorised GM maize varieties. They had rejected the move in 2004 but Brussels hoped a World Trade Organisation ruling that the ban was illegal would tip the argument in its favour and re-tabled the proposal. However, in a sign of how sensitive the issue remains for European consumers, only the UK, Netherlands, Czech Republic and Sweden backed it. Austria pointed to the United Nation's Biosafety Protocol, which allows countries to ban GM crops if there is a lack of scientific certainty over their safety. The WTO disregarded the treaty because the complainants - the US, Canada and Argentina - had not ratified it. Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/022007/10.html

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