Save our Seeds

The Bulgarian Parliament has passed amendments to the GMO Act which mean that GM crops will not be allowed to be grown in the country.After a number of days of debate Bulgaria’s MPs finally passed the strongest possible amendments which although they do not include a total ban on GM crops, make it impossible for farmers to grow them commercially or in trials. Bulgaria has thus become the first country in Europe to introduce such stringent laws for all forms of GM crops. GM crops will not be allowed to be grown within 30 km of the protected areas, within 10km of bee hives or within 7 km of organic farmland – leading to an overall ban countrywide in practise.

On the day of the release of annual industry-sponsored figures, a new report from Friends of the Earth International reveals that claims made by the biotech industry that genetically modified crops can combat climate change are both exaggerated and premature. The report, ’Who Benefits from GM Crops’, examines the evidence for these claims, and exposes that GM crops could actually increase carbon emissions while failing to feed the world.

The debate on genetically modified (GM) brinjal variety continues to generate heat. Former managing director of Monsanto India, Tiruvadi Jagadisan, is the latest to join the critics of Bt brinjal, perhaps the first industry insider to do so. Jagadisan, who worked with Monsanto for nearly two decades, including eight years as the managing director of India operations, spoke against the new variety during the public consultation held in Bangalore on Saturday.

On Monday, he elaborated by saying the company "used to fake scientific data" submitted to government regulatory agencies to get commercial approvals for its products in India.

Fang Lifeng, Greenpeace’s food and agriculture campaigner, told China Daily that the long-term risk of genetically modified rice should be taken into consideration. ”Once the engineered rice gets into the food chain on large scale, it will have a very big impact on food safety, environmental safety and biological diversity,” Fang warned. He cited some examples on the long-term risk of genetically modified food since it first appeared on the market in 1994.

Biodiversity, already decaying fast as a result of climate change and intensive farming, is under further threat by genetic modification (GM) of seeds, says a leading German ecological activist. Genetic modification of seeds is dangerous, ”since it is at the beginning of the agricultural chain, and can spread all over,” says Benedikt Haerlin, former campaign manager at the environmental organisation Greenpeace and former member of the European Parliament. Haerlin now leads the global ’Save our Seeds’ campaign in cooperation with some 300 environmental organisations across Europe.

More than twenty Polish ecological farms have extended an invitation to MPs and senators to taste real organic food on the spot, at meetings organized in the second half of this month. This is a part of a nationwide campaign sponsored by the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside, which is fighting for a GMO free Poland. A survey taken in three EU nations by the UK’s National Farm Research Unit found that support for GM crops among farmers was highest in Poland, with over 80 percent support, while 45 percent of British farmers wanted access to the crops.

NEW DELHI (IPS) - As India's central government begins a series of public meetings across the country this month on the commercial release of genetically modified (GM) brinjal – or eggplant - in this country, activists and farmers’ groups are mobilising to oppose such a plan.The meetings are a response by Union Minister for Environment Jairam Ramesh to a storm of protests generated by the approval issued by the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) in October last year for the commercial cultivation of the genetically modified ‘brinjal’ – also called ‘aubergine’ – to resist pests with a gene from the soil bacteria ‘Bacillus thuringiensis’ (Bt brinjal). The environment ministry’s first hearing, held Wednesday in the eastern city of Kolkata, ended up in a shouting match between Ramesh and the scientists, activists and local citizens present, who were opposed to the introduction of Bt brinjal. While Bt brinjal is the first GM food crop to be introduced in India, the South Asian country already grows GM cotton spliced with insect-resistant genes form the same Bt bacterium, which has been blamed for serious crop failures and mass suicides by farmers in the cotton-growing belts of Vidarbha (Maharashtra state) and Andhra Pradesh.

In case of feeding stock with GMO feed, meat consumers will see the impacts of the feed, Durmuş [Nationalist Movement Party] said. ”Genetically modified seed should not be imported. If it is imported, then it should have the necessary signs showing that it includes GMO and is safe. All products with GMO should be examined, and their impacts for five to 10 years should be researched.”

The cost of seed corn with bundled traits was analyzed by a trio of economists from the University of Wisconsin, who looked at the price structure for seed corn around the Cornbelt from 2000 to 2007. Their data did not reach into the current pricing period, but they identified the trend that is determining the price of seed corn. Their report is a lengthy analysis of the practices of the major seed retailers. Their research begins with the statement about the industry, “One major finding is that standard component pricing in biotech traits is soundly rejected in favor of subadditive bundle pricing.” The economists say new seed technology offers prospects for increased productivity, but they add that mergers and acquisitions in the seed industry have resulted in a concentrated seed market dominated by a few large biotech firms, and add, “This has raised some concern that market power and imperfect competition could lead biotech firms to charge high prices for the biotech seeds, with potential adverse effects on farmers’ welfare.”

The winner of the Angry Mermaid Award 2009, announced by award-winning writer and journalist Naomi Klein at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen today is the biotech giant Monsanto with 37 per cent of the total vote. Oil giant Shell took second place (18 per cent) in the Award for lobbying to sabotage effective action on climate change, followed by the American Petroleum Institute (14 per cent). Agriculture giant Monsanto was nominated for promoting its genetically modified (GM) crops as a solution to climate change and pushing for its crops to be used as biofuels. The expansion of GM soy in Latin America

is contributing to major deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions.