Save our Seeds

Working with nature and “many little hammers”

PAN Europe today has published an updated edition of its report on alternative to glyphosate as a contribution to the ongoing discussions among some Member States, led by France, on phasing out glyphosate and promoting alternatives.

In the margin of next week’s gathering of the EU agricultural ministers (Tuesday 16th July), France will be organising a meeting with like-minded delegations to exchange on how to phase out glyphosate and promote alternatives. PAN Europe welcomes this forerunner initiative by the French and takes this opportunity to release the second edition of its report on ‘alternative methods in weed management to the use of glyphosate and other herbicides’.

Last December, following glyphosate’s reauthorisation, six ministers from France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Malta and Greece wrote a letter to the European Commission asking them to ”prepare the exit plan for glyphosate by supporting farmers to do so” (1). As France speeds up its efforts toward a phase-out, other like-minded Member States seem also eager to discuss next steps and share approaches in the exit plan for glyphosate.

The Canadian practice of spraying herbicides on grain days before harvest is being blamed for chemical residue on pasta products

Canada should know better than to get between Italians and their pasta.

Since Italy only grows 60 per cent of the wheat it needs, it also swallows up almost 25 per cent of Canada’s $1.3-billion annual durum crop – or it did up until earlier this year.

Late in 2017, chemical residues were found in Italian pasta. When news hit the airwaves that Canadian wheat blended with Italian was the source, Italians were incensed.

Media hyped the Canadian practice of spraying glyphosate on grain crops to kill the plants days before harvest, a practice Italy banned in 2016, as a probable cause.

The amounts found measured well below both the European Union’s maximum residue limit (MRL) of 10,000 parts per billion and Canada’s at 5,000 ppb.

But a few months later, the world’s biggest pasta maker, Barilla, announced it would not use wheat containing more than 10 ppb glyphosate, 1,000 times below the EU limit, in its pasta. The company cited consumer demand for its decision.

But even before Italy announced this month that it will not ratify the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between the EU and Canada, the country’s attitude was hardening toward wheat imports.

Citing Italians’ concern about food-safety standards, Italy has since February required country-of-origin labelling on all wheat and rice products sold there. Canada’s wheat exports to Italy have since slowed to a trickle.

Sowing the seeds of tomorrow

What do a pharmacist, a nursery school teacher and an architect all have in common? They all became unlikely activists in the historic case of the first pesticide-free town.

In 2014, Mals, a German-speaking town of 5,300 inhabitants in the north of Italy, became the first community in the world to hold a referendum on pesticide use. The result was a landslide: 75% voted for a ban. But how did this small town triumph over the powerful pesticide industry?

It might come as a surprise that a train company is Germany's biggest glyphosate user. Every year, the national railway Deutsche Bahn sprays over 65 thousand kilograms of toxic pesticide on its tracks -- endangering ecosystems throughout the whole country.

Austria’s national railway company has pledged to completely end its use of glyphosate within five years -- there's no reason why Deutsche Bahn can't do the same.

The German government is currently looking for ways to reduce glyphosate use. This is the perfect time to put public pressure on the 100 percent state-owned railway corporation to phase out the dangerous pesticide.

Deutsche Bahn's railway network spans 33,500 kilometers -- that's 33,500 kilometers soaked with glyphosate, spreading its poisonous traces through all of Germany.

WASHINGTON, D.C., U.S. — Farmers in Slovakia have changed direction on their approach to planting genetically engineered (GE) crops over the past decade, according to a Global Agricultural Information Network (GAIN) report from the Foreign Agricultural Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

In 2006, Slovak farmers planted 30 hectares of GE crops, a figure that grew to a record high 1,930 hectares in 2008. Now, there are no GE crops under development in the country.

“Demand for GE products, specifically including meat and dairy produced from animals fed GE-feed, has dwindled under the influence of antibiotech non-governmental organizations (NGOs), retailers, and neighboring countries (Austria, Hungary, and Germany),” the USDA said. “Where the Slovak government was previously supportive of biotechnology, they have since changed their stance, again likely in response to local messages originating from antibiotech NGOs and activist groups.”

As international debate on gene drive technology heats up, Canadian immigration officials deny a key voice

MONTREAL, July 4, 2018 - United Nations biodiversity negotiations are underway in Montreal, but a key African expert is missing from the fray. Ali Tapsoba, President of the organization Terre à Vie in Burkina Faso, was planning to speak at two events on behalf of Burkinabé civil society who oppose the release of gene drive mosquitoes, a controversial new biotechnology, in their communities.

His visa application was denied without explanation by the Canadian embassy in Dakar on Friday.

“Tapsoba is probably the preeminent voice in Burkina Faso against the Target Malaria Consortium, which is leading the project towards release of Gene Drive mosquitoes in the wild,” said Mariann Bassey of Friends of the Earth Nigeria and Chair of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA).

“I am very disappointed that I have been prevented from attending these important negotiations addressing issues of biotechnology at a time when Africa is plagued by multinationals that want to impose GMOs and destroy the beautiful biodiversity of the continent,” said Tapsoba in a written statement. “Don’t Africans have the right to meet other nationalities from around the world in Canada to discuss the future of humanity?”

Canada’s denial of Tapsoba’s visa comes at a moment when biotech industry backers are spending millions of dollars to promote gene drives, a powerful technology that could be used to render species extinct, or create new kinds of corporate control of agriculture and the environment.

Documents released to Corporate Europe Observatory following a Freedom of Information request reveal how pro-biotech lobby platform Public Research Regulation Initiative (PRRI) unites industry, researchers and regulators in ‘like-minded’ groups to manipulate crucial international biosafety talks under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

This discovery is all the more important because two crucial moments which may have a huge global impact on biosafety are to take place shortly. From 2 – 13 July 2018, experts from the 196 countries that have signed this international agreement will gather in Montreal to continue discussions on controversial technologies such as Synthetic Biology and so-called gene drives made through gene editing. And on 25 July 2018 the European Court of Justice (ECJ) will publish a ruling about the legal status of new genetic engineering techniques including gene editing.

Biotech developers are trying hard to avoid the food and environmental safety rules that govern GMOs being applied to their products from new genetic engineering techniques, like gene editing. But environmental groups, scientists and farmers are calling for strict regulation of these new techniques, and for careful consideration of the socio-economic impacts of these technologies.

By Bart Staes, José Bové, Maria Heubuch, Martin Häusling and Thomas Waitz

The EU Court of Justice will soon publish its ruling concerning the legal statute of a group of biotechnologies, which have been called “new plant breeding techniques” by the industry.

This opinion article is co-signed by Members of the European Parliament from the Greens/EFA political group: José Bové, Martin Häusling, Maria Heubuch, Bart Staes and Thomas Waitz.

The ECJ will decide if these techniques produce GMOs – as the Greens/EFA and many environmental NGOs have been arguing for years – and if some of these will be exempt from proper assessment, traceability and labelling as if they weren’t GMOs.

After the ruling, tense negotiations will set the future of the current European GMO regulation. As always, citizens and lawmakers will face the full force of the industry lobbies.

LAHORE Justice Sayyed Mazhar Ali Akbar Naqvi of Lahore High Court on Friday expressed serious concerns over the failure of the authorities concerned to submit a reply on a petition challenging the Pakistan (Amended) Seed Act 2015.

The judge remarked, “It is shocking that local farmers’ future has been put in jeopardy,” adding that the amended law could endanger national food security by making the country dependant on multinationals for genetically-modified seeds.

The judge warned that the plant breeder’s rights registry would be restrained from operating if a response was not submitted in the matter by June 22.

At an earlier hearing, the court had directed the Punjab government to produce the resolution passed by the provincial assembly calling upon the Centre to pass a plant breeders’ rights bill. Notices were issued to the federal government in which it was asked to file para-wise comments to the petition filed by Human Voice, an non-government organisation, challenging the Pakistan Amended Seed Act, 2015 for being in violation of farmers’ fundamental rights and passed at the behest of US-based multinational seed manufacturing companies.

It seems demand in Germany for Non-GMO milk and dairy products, eggs and poultry remains unabated.