Save our Seeds

Eleven major food companies in India have been slotted in a ’red list’, compiled by Greenpeace India, in the country’s first safe food guide on Genetically Modified ingredients. The companies are: Nestlé, Hindustan Unilever, Kellogg, Cadbury, Agro Tech Foods Ltd., FieldFresh Foods Pvt Ltd. (a unit of Bharti Enterprises), Bambino Agro Industries Ltd., Britannia Industries Ltd., Godrej Hershey Foods, Parle, and Safal. Most of these products are marketed heavily on television, sending messages that they help create healthy individuals. Greenpeace India is saying this may not be so.

An anonymous public statement was signed and submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by 26 leading scientists, entomologists who work with insects that infect corn. It stated that scientists are unable to conduct independent research on GM crops as patents prevent full access to research materials and the ability to grow and study these plants. [...] In other words, the claims of GMO proponents cannot be verified independently or indeed be falsified

Yes, logically speaking, pain-free animals make sense. But only in a world that has already devalued animal lives to the point where factory farming is acceptable. Our visceral reaction to pain-free animals is actually a displaced reaction against the system that makes them necessary. Too many of us are too attached to the pleasures of affordable meat to consider the plight of factory-farmed animals. If the proposal to create pain-free animals achieves anything, it is to force us to confront the pain and suffering that our diets inflict. End factory farming, and the ”problem” of pain-free animals goes away too.

The big supermarkets have held secret talks to pave the way for the introduction of controversial GM crops on to their shelves, industry sources said last night. The stores banned GM ingredients more than ten years ago in response to public anxiety about their impact on human health and the environment. But a source indicated that all the major supermarkets were involved in the discussions except Waitrose.

Greenpeace launched their European campaign against genetically modified rice in Luxembourg last Friday. The aim of the campaign is to reject the European Commission’s proposal to authorise pharmaceutical giant Bayer’s genetically modified rice LL62. The rice is resistant to glufosinate, a pesticide which is produced by the same company. The product is highly toxic and the new European reform on pesticides plans to ban the use of glufosinate once the current authorisation expires.

Farmers across the Midwest have been meeting to protest Monsanto’s control of the seed market. OCM attorney David Balto reminded Weiser that Democrats in the Clinton Administration filed an antitrust action against Microsoft, the software maker. ”Back then, you started off suing Microsoft,” Balto said. ”That’s a nice letter to begin with.”

Greenpeace, a global campaigner for the protection and conservation of the environment, led a rally yesterday afternoon calling on the Negros Occidental Sanggunian to preserve the province as the country’s organic farming capital. About 100 farmers and members of church and civic groups gathered in front of the provincial Capitol in Bacolod to press members of the Sangguniang Panlalawigan to uphold Provincial Ordinance 007, which bans the entry of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and secures the future of Negros as the organic farming capital of the Philippines.

Commenting on a package of documents published by Defra outlining the latest stage of the Government’s vision of a sustainable food system, Friends of the Earth’s Senior Food Campaigner Clare Oxborrow said: ”The Government is finally waking up to the fact that food security is a UK issue, but it has failed to introduce decisive policies to tackle the food industry’s global environmental impacts and to secure sustainable and fair food supplies. Ministers are still fixated on genetic modification but this isn’t a solution - GM crops do not have higher yields and the mythical drought and salt resistant crops still exist only as expensive PR promises rather than commercial reality.”

The maize batch was checked in its own control program for GMOs, and a test showed it contained too high a level of GM material to qualify as a GMO-free product. Interested customers are informed and all further use of maize as GM-free is stopped. 

Lantmännen’s own supervision system discovered a batch of maize with an excessive content of GMO to qualify as a GMO-free product. Up to 0.9% GMOs are permitted in a GMO-free raw material and in our control, we have measured 3.9% contamination.

The European Union and Canada have today signed in Geneva a final settlement of the WTO dispute that Canada brought against the EU in May 2003 regarding the application of its legislation on biotech products. The mutually agreed solution provides for the establishment of a regular dialogue on issues of mutual interest on agriculture biotechnology. The EU and Canada will notify this settlement to the WTO Dispute Settlement Body as a mutually agreed solution.