Today in AgBioView - Money and Blood!

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GMW: Today in AgBioView - Money and Blood!

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Tue, 22 Mar 2005 16:34:58 GMT

 

 

Today in AgBioView - Money and Blood!

 

GM WATCH daily

http://www.gmwatch.org

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1.Apel's 'Money and Blood'

2.The Scotsman's idea of 'SCIENCE'

3.Today in AgBioView - Money and Blood!

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1.Apel's 'Money and Blood'

 

First of all an apology to rs and even an apology of sorts to

New Scientist. Why? Well, that will become clearer in a minute but

first a little detour via yesterday's AgBioView bulletin. On the day

of the

UK's final farmscale trial results with headlines breaking like

'Transgenic crops take another knock' (Nature), 'GM Crops Harm Wildlife'

(Press Association), AgBioView was silent on the day's big story,

preferring

to run the headline 'Andrew Apel is back!'

 

Who Apel? He's the editor of the biotech industry newsletter,

'AgBiotech Reporter'. He was also at one time a regular attack dog on C S

Prakash's email list, using, for example, the Sept 11 attacks to put

forward

the view that scientific critics of GM like Dr Mae-Wan Ho and Dr

Vandana Shiva had 'blood on their hands' as a result of the terrorist

attacks.

http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=12

 

On another memorable occasion Apel commented on police behaviour at the

WTO meeting in Genoa, during which Berlusconi's police made a notorious

night-time raid on the HQ of the Genoa Social Forum and the Independent

Media Centre. The police suffered no injuries in the raid but over 61

of the occupants, many of whom were in their sleeping bags, were

injured. But Apel told agBioView's rs, 'From everything I

have seen,

the police in Genoa never did anything other than defend themselves..

Police are dangerous people, that is why they are hired for the job they

have. Only a fool goes against them, and in Genoa many fools have

received their due.' More than a dozen of the 93 people arrested in the

night-time raid were carried out on stretchers. Film footage showed walls

awash with blood. 35 of the injured required hospital treatment with

several requiring surgery. One of those whose arm was broken in the

raid was a reporter.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,526484,00.html

 

Apel was also at the forefront of attempts by GM lobbyists to use the

resistance of countries in southern Africa to accepting GM-contaminated

food aid, as a way of attacking biotech industry

critics. While even ardent pro-GMers like Prof Derek Burke have

admitted the right of developing countries to determine their own

biosafety

policies on such issues and the need for their choices to be respected,

Apel called on the U.S. to bomb Zambia with GM grain if it had the

audacity to continue to reject it. On a discussion list Apel wrote of the

crisis, 'I can almost picture the darkies laying down their lives for the

vacuous ideals... their death throes, how picturesque, among the baobab

trees and the lions!'

http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=12

 

In Apel's latest offering, 'Money and blood' - the second item below -

Apel talks about the 'infamous Oxfam' and the 'execrable Zambian

Jesuits' who pretend, he says, to be the voice of the poor. Apel goes on,

'The Council On Racial Equality (CORE) has repeatedly pointed out the

depravity of so casually counting the poor in developing countries as

acceptable losses in the activist war against progress.' Actually it's

not

the 'Council On Racial Equality' but the 'Congress of Racial Equality',

but what do such niceties matter - one set of 'darkies' is presumably

as good as another when one's engaging in blackwashing and tokenism.

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4987

 

According to Apel, activists opposing GM crops enjoy 'plush lifestyles'

courtesy apparently of payments from 'Europe' and 'Britain'. Apel also

seems to say the British government fixed the UK public debate on GM

and the reporting of the farmscale trials in order to block GMOs.

Clearly, Prime Minister Blair and his Science Minister Lord Sainsbury are

playing a much deeper game than any of us ever realised. As Apel says,

'Such a vast chess game...'

 

The springboard for this drivel, topping a listserv that according to

Prakash reaches literally thousands of scientists, journalists and

bureaucrats, is, believe it or not, the New Scientist piece 'On the

Uptake

of Healthier GM Foods'. These healthier GM foods, says Apel, could

become a success in Europe dealing 'a blow to credibility that

activists can

ill afford'.

 

Which brings us back to the apology. In a recent bulletin we asked, 'Is

Monsanto's pulling a GM confidence trick with its supposedly healthier

low linolenic acid soya beans? It certainly looks like it!' We went on

to comment on two excerpts from the current edition of New Scientist

which state that 'the first GM products claiming to have direct benefits

for consumers have arrived'. We pointed out that this was misleading as

the healthier trait in the plants had been created by non-GM means and

Monsanto had deliberately turned it into a GM crop.

 

This is indeed the case. Monsanto has merely added a GM trait - Roundup

Ready resistance - that has absolutely nothing to do with consumer

benefits. But what we didn't say, because we weren't aware of it from the

online versions of the articles available to non-rs, was that

further on in the New Scientist pieces, it is made clear that non-GM

breeding gave rise to the plant's supposedly healthier property. This we

discovered when we got hold of the print edition of the magazine and got

down to paragraph 6 of 'Will low-fat foods sway biotech sceptics?'

 

The content of para 6, of course hardly explains - indeed, it totally

undermines - the industry hype that precedes it - 'Monsanto... says

Vistive soya is leading a second generation of GM crops that benefit

consumers not farmers,' etc. Monsanto could, after all, breed GM

herbicide

resistance into any food crop or herb that naturally had supposed health

benefits and then say they were part of the new wave of healthy GM

foods!

 

And it is not only people who fail to get as far as para 6 who are

being misled. Both Apel's article and the Scotsman piece below make

reference to 'healthier' plants courtesy of GM without any para 6 style

clarification. Doubtless many more such pieces will follow even if

AgBioView

put Apel back on his chain.

 

Finally, we repeat our previous point aboutt Iowa State University

conventionally breeding an even lower linolenic acid variety that

would be

better than the Monsanto one and which hasn't had any GM traits added

to it

http://www.notrans.iastate.edu/

http://www.zfsinc.com/refining.asp

 

As it is better than the Monsanto product, it would be interesting to

know what has happened to it and whether it is going to be made

available (given that Monsanto like-minded corporations now own so

many seed

companies).

------

2.The Scotsman, 19 May 2005

SCIENCE

http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=296272005

 

GENETICALLY modified crops that have targeted benefits for consumers

are to go on sale. The controversy in Europe over the first generation of

these misnamed " Frankenstein " foods is likely to mean they will not be

welcome. In the United States, however, they will sell well. Among the

crops produced by Monsanto is a Vistive range of soybeans, which the

company says will make processed foods healthier as oil from the beans

doesn't turn into trans-fatty acids.

------

3.Today in AgBioView on March 21, 2005 (http://www.agbioworld.org):

 

Money and Blood

- Andrew Apel, AgBioView, March 21, 2005 (aapel07)

 

From time to time, the news in one single edition of AgBioView happens

to juxtapose nearly all the major current issues surrounding

agricultural biotechnology in a way that brings them sharply into

focus. That is

the case with the March 19, 2005 edition.

 

In " On the Uptake of Healthier GM Foods " from New Scientist, we are

told that " [o]ne of the biggest hurdles in selling genetically modified

crops to sceptical consumers, especially in Europe, has been that there

was nothing in it for them. All the traits commercialised so far, such

as herbicide resistance, benefit farmers. So it is a major - and

pleasant - surprise to find that the agribiotech company Monsanto has

created

a crop specifically to appeal to health-conscious westerners. "

 

That claim, while true, conceals as much as it reveals. It is

well-known that the currently available ag biotech products are those

developed

with the farmer in mind-as farmers around the globe have

enthusiastically demonstrated, even to the point of risking crop

destruction, fines

and imprisonment. It is less obvious that Western consumers, much less

those in Europe, will embrace agricultural biotechnology developed with

specific health benefits in mind.

 

Such products have been in the production pipeline for years. The most

obvious of these is Golden Rice, a favorite whipping-boy of Greenpeace.

(See " Greenpeace Says that Golden Rice is a Technical Failure! " ) The

Amsterdam-based multinational organization can easily oppose Golden Rice,

because those who would most benefit from it are voiceless people of

color whose political power is nil. Voiceless and powerless in actual

fact, though Greenpeace allies such as the infamous Oxfam and the

execrable Zambian Jesuits pretend to be their voice and to act on

their behalf.

The Council On Racial Equality (CORE) has repeatedly pointed out the

depravity of so casually counting the poor in developing countries as

acceptable losses in the activist war against progress.

 

Consumer-oriented products other than Golden Rice have been in the

production pipeline far longer, and there is reason to believe that these

will be treated far differently. The hungry cannot afford, literally, to

worry about trans fats or linolenic acid in their diets. The wealthy

can-and they are neither voiceless nor powerless. What is more, they can

vote with their pocketbooks.

 

Now biotechnology is currently under fire from activists who claim that

biotechnology is not living up to its promises to deliver products with

human health benefits for the wealthy, in the same manner as they are

criticizing Golden Rice. The trouble is, the casualties in this

" theater " in the war on progress will not be the people Oxfam and the

Jesuits

claim to speak for. They will be wealthy people with money and political

power. And there is the rub.

 

Europe has been quite successful in protecting its farmers from

competing products by using activist groups to press its agenda. This is

obvious from the funds the Netherlands diverts to Greenpeace and other

groups, the Euros that the European Union bestows openly on the BEUC, and

Britain's brazen manipulation of the statistics generated ( " How to Make A

Minority Look Like A Majority, " Australian Science) by the farm-scale

field trials and the 'GM Nation' public debate (which was no more

" public " than it was a " debate. " )

 

The question is whether Britain and Europe will be able successfully to

use their paid-for activists to block products that wealthy consumer

may well want to pay for. Activists are unruly servants, and their plush

lifestyles are contingent on the dubious credibility they enjoy with

taxpayers and the politicians who for now so gleefully abet them (See,

e.g., " Genetically Modified Crops: Safety Research Falls Foul of German

Politics, " Science). The success of GM consumer products in Europe would

be a blow to credibility that activists can ill afford.

 

In Europe, the activists have a distinct advantage they do not enjoy in

the United States. In addition to European funding, activists also have

European culture on their side. It is inviting to consider the European

Union to be a 'melting pot' somehow similar to the United States, in

that the EU combines so many different countries within a single

political body. That would be a mistake.

 

The individual states that make up the EU and, indeed, the regions

within those individual states-each have their unique histories, which

citizens remember and retell in painstaking detail across generations.

These histories entail everything from wars to perceived injustices, and

stamp each parochial culture with a privately-owned brand of xenophobia.

Far from glossing over European xenophobias, the EU collectivizes them

and vastly magnifies the political penchant and economic ability to

keep " outsiders " at bay. The European tendency to politicize everything,

along with a blatantly superstitious approach to food and health, may

make it quite easy to block GM products with demonstrated health

benefits. (Bear in mind that as much as Europeans profess to love the

environment, they are willing to sacrifice the environmental benefits of

modified crops to keep " the others " out. " Blut und Boden is still

alive and

well, it merely has a face-lift.)

 

Money is interwoven with political and cultural concerns to the point

where it's nearly impossible to understand them separately. Nowhere is

this more true than in patent policy and law (To Patent or Not to

Patent?). India will have to wrestle with the issues of intellectual

property

and in the course of that its lawmakers, and indeed everyone, should

envision the possibilities of a system which grants intellectual property

rights to an invention (a) in perpetuity (b) without public disclosure.

 

Obviously, this would be the ultimate dream for an inventor; a monopoly

both permanent and secret. On the other hand, it violates our

expectation that patent monopolies have short lives and that the

nature and

scope of each be easily

discoverable.

 

However, the US has the " ultimate dream " patent system for agricultural

products. How can this be? Well, don't go looking for such a patent at

the Patent Office. Go, instead, to the Department of Agriculture and

the Environmental Protection Agency. These " stealth patents " are made up

of registration data -- the voluminous data generated by field trials

of agricultural products, which the law demands for new products. The

corporations, which must by necessity be huge in order to afford the cost

of these field trials, make the resulting data secret as a matter of

routine. Public officials protect these secrets, and corporations may

license these secrets to other corporations wanting to make use of the

same technology. The cost for licensing these secrets is, of course,

quite

high. There is no expiration date on these secrets. The irony is that

the corporations who widely tout the value of conventional patents, the

extensive testing of biotech products and the conclusive demonstrations

of their safety will do nearly anything, including launching suits

against government officials, to prevent public disclosure of the results

of these tests.

 

It is of course in the best interests of India to have a strong

conventional patent system. A far better question is whether a parallel

" stealth patent " system does anyone any good. It may appease the

xenophobia

of the biotech corporations, but it is inherently destructive to the

industry.

 

Such a vast chess game... But it is a game with real money, and real

blood.

 

 

 

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