June headlines and summaries

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Farmer faces giant chemical company in court

June 5
CBC

SASKATOON - A landmark legal case that begins today pits a giant chemical company guarding its genetically modified canola against a farmer from Saskatchewan protecting his livelihood.

Food giant Monsanto is suing farmer Percy Schmeiser for growing genetically modified canola without the company's permission.

Monsanto claims Schmeiser used its "Roundup Ready" canola on his farm near Bruno in the late '90s. The canola is genetically engineered so it's immune to a popular herbicide called Roundup.

The company lays down strict rules when it sells Roundup Ready. Farmers who buy it are not allowed to use the Monsanto seeds from one crop to grow another crop, as farmers traditionally do. Instead, they must buy new seeds from Monsanto every year.

Two years ago, Monsanto investigators found Roundup Ready on Schmeiser's farm and accused him of stealing it. Schmeiser insists the wind likely blew the seeds onto his property.

He's fought back in the form of a countersuit against Monsanto, claiming its altered seed contaminated his crops. Mediation failed to settle the dispute.

Monsanto has spent millions developing the special canola and has patented it. If it loses the case, it may not be able to protect its product or maintain its monopoly in the market.

The trial will likely have an impact on the future of genetically modified organisms, which are still being hotly debated around the world.

The trial that begins today is expected to last three weeks.

Protesters to target GM foods conference

June 5
CBC

TORONTO - Both sides of the genetically modified foods debate, arguing for either the safety or the risk of GM foods, will be in Toronto today for an international meeting.

Seven hundred delegates are expected at a conference on agricultural biotechnology. Among topics like new plant development, public relations is at the top of the agenda. The delegates want to assure the public that the plants with altered DNA are safe.

"Since 1994, products have been on the market and we have never seen a single example of a human problem and millions of animals have been fed these products," says conference organizer Gord Surgeoner.

But environmental group Greenpeace points out scientists still don't know enough about the risks. That's why its protesters will be at the conference in the latest Canadian demonstration against GM foods.

Across the world, the debate on GM foods is heating up. Last week, protestors started a riot in Genoa, Italy when they tried to interrupt a meeting of the international biotechnology industry.

"I think we'll be a little more polite than the Italians were last week when 5,000 people had heavy clashes with the police," says Michael Khoo of Greenpeace. "But in a Canadian way, people will make their opinions known and felt."

Both sides say meetings like the one in Toronto are a good chance to argue their points in public. The industry says GM foods represent a safe technology that will improve the world's food supply. The environmentalists say not enough is known about it yet.

GM doubts force farmer to destroy rape crop

June 5
Reuters

TODMORDEN, Lincolnshire - A farmer has said he will destroy a crop of oilseed rape which may contain genetically-modified (GM) plants not approved for sale in Europe.

Charles Szabo is one of nearly 500 British farmers who planted rape using seed sold by Advanta Seeds UK, a joint venture between Anglo-Swedish group AstraZeneca Plc and Dutch co-operative Cosun.

"The problem here is that one percent of Advanta's seeds were contaminated," said Szabo, who manages a branch of the Bishop Burton agricultural college in North Lincolnshire.

"Advanta found out about the contamination after they had supplied the seeds. And they don't know which one percent it is so we have to destroy the whole crop," he added.

Szabo said he would have to wait until the end of June to destroy his 35 tons of rape if he wanted to qualify for a European Union subsidy.

He said he was impressed with Advanta's "open and honest" approach to its error, though he said the company had been slow to let farmers know about the problem.

"They didn't have to say anything," he said. "But they quite openly said this batch was contaminated."

Last week Advanta proposed what it called "a fair and equitable compensation package" for British farmers.

An Advanta spokesman said on Monday: "We are in the process of setting up a panel to decide on how the compensation will be distributed. It is expected to take some weeks."

The British government has advised the farmers to destroy GM- tainted crops but has said it would not pay compensation.

Szabo planted the GM-contaminated crop on more than half of his 60 acres (24 hectares) in March. He did not know how much compensation he would receive but said he would lose close to 6,000 pounds .

The 500 affected farmers say they stand to lose three million pounds as a result of Advanta's glitch.

Advanta's GM-affected seeds, which were imported from Canada, were also sold to farmers in France, Germany, Sweden and Luxembourg.

The people v Monsanto

For decades the GM food giant brought much-needed jobs to the people of Anniston, Alabama. Now more than 3,000 residents believe they have been poisoned by the company - and are determined to prove it in court. Nancy Beiles reports from a town where the river ran red

June 5
The Guardian (UK)

Problem: Damage to the ecological system by contamination from polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB). Legal liability: Direct lawsuits are possible. The materials are already present in nature having done their "alleged damage". All customers using the products have not been officially notified about known effects nor [do] our labels carry this information.
Memo from Monsanto committee studying PCBs, 1969

In a small brick house strung year-round with Christmas lights, behind curtains made of flowered sheets, Jeremiah Smith is listening to his favorite preacher on the radio. As tonight's installment of the gospels winds down, he takes a seat at a table draped with a zebra-print cloth and drifts back 30 years, to the brief period when he was a pig farmer. Like others in Anniston, Alabama, Smith used to raise vegetables and livestock in his yard to provide additional food for his family.

"We were poor people," he says, in a thick drawl. "We had to raise food ourselves . . . We were trying to survive and live." Smith also had a cow and rabbits, but most of his time and attention went to his pigs. In 1970 he had about 50 - too many for his small plot of land, so he led them past the labyrinth of pipes and smokestacks that surrounded the Monsanto chemical plant his father helped build, to a grassy hill where they could graze. Each evening, Smith would give them some feed and, when the need arose, he would bring home some bacon.

One night, as he was feeding the pigs, a man from the Monsanto plant drove up the hill and made him an offer: $10 apiece for the pigs and a bottle of whisky. Smith had begun to notice that something was wrong with some of his pigs anyway; their mouths had turned green. And, ever in need of cash, he could hardly afford to pass up $500. He sold. But for more than 20 years, he wondered what on earth a chemical company would want with his pigs.

Many people Jeremiah Smith's age are old enough to remember Monsanto's glory days in Anniston. The company provided well-paid jobs and helped nurture this friendly southern town's sense of community. Most never thought to connect the chemical industry to some of the odder features of life there. Like the creek, known locally as "the ditch", which passed through town carrying water that ran red some days, purple on others and occasionally emitted a foggy white steam.

But over time, the residents of Anniston came to believe that they had been poisoned for decades by Monsanto. The change in attitude was spurred by what at first seemed a straightforward real estate transaction. In December 1995, Donald Stewart, a former state legislator who served briefly in the US Senate, received a phone call from Andrew Bowie. A deacon at the Mars Hill Missionary Baptist church, Bowie explained that a Monsanto manager had approached him about buying the church. "It doesn't seem like we're going to achieve a satisfactory deal," Bowie told Stewart. "I think we need a lawyer."

"I thought it was a simple case," Stewart says. "It just mushroomed."

Stewart soon learned that Monsanto wanted to buy the church because it had discovered high concentrations of PCBs in the area and was planning a clean-up.

Before production was restricted in the US, PCBs were used as insulating material in various types of electrical appliances, including television sets. They are non-flammable and take the form of either oily liquids or solids.

After an open meeting at the church, Stewart began fielding a flood of calls from concerned residents, who had a dizzying array of health problems which they now attribute to the contamination. The neighborhood around the plant is populated by people with cancer, young women with damaged ovaries, children who are learning-impaired and people whose ailments have been diagnosed as acute toxic syndrome. The question is, are these illnesses caused by exposure to PCBs? Medical studies have shown that PCBs may cause liver problems, skin rashes and developmental and reproductive disorders in humans, and the US department of health and human services has determined that PCBs "may reasonably be anticipated to be carcinogens".

In addition to the church, which filed its own suit against Monsanto, more than 3,000 Anniston residents who have high levels of PCBs in their blood and on their property have filed suits against the company since 1996, alleging that the company knew it was introducing PCBs into the environment, knew the hazards of doing so, failed to inform the community and tried to conceal what it had done. Monsanto denies the allegations.

Karen McFarlane lives in plain view of the plant. It's a mild morning in February and she didn't sleep much last night. Clothed only in a T-shirt and underwear, with a sweater draped over her lap, she lights her first cigarette of the morning and promptly drops it on the shaggy blue rug. Dakota, McFarlane's 16-month-old, is playing with the severed head of a Barbie knock-off and there's not much to eat in the house. But Karen has other worries: she has PCBs in her body fat.

According to tests done by a local doctor, her husband Ryan's blood has nearly triple the level considered "typical" in the US; for Tiffany, their six-year-old, it's double. Nathan, eight, has severe developmental problems, and everyone in the family suffers from respiratory problems and the skin rashes associated with PCB exposure. Chris, McFarlane's 11-year-old son, lifts his T-shirt to reveal brownish-red blotches climbing up the sides of his chest. "It smells like decaying flesh," Ryan warns. "Like it's rotten."

Most of their friends and family have already left, but the McFarlanes can't afford to. Karen was recently hospitalized for respiratory-stress disorder and had two strokes at the age of 30. Ryan, who has small pink growths dotting his neck, wistfully talks of going to an oncologist for a full cancer screening, something he's unlikely to get soon because he does not have health insurance. The McFarlanes are stuck in a place where, according to the Alabama department of public health, cancer rates are 25% higher than in the rest of the state. Whether these health problems are linked to Monsanto's PCBs is at the heart of the case.

While it concedes that much of Anniston is contaminated by PCBs, Monsanto says its chemical discharges were negligible - and maintains that it did not fully understand how PCBs affected the environment at the time they were released, in the 60s and 70s. The US government didn't restrict the manufacture of PCBs until 1979.

"As soon as we discovered there were PCB discharges from the plant, we began our operations to limit and hopefully eliminate those discharges," says Bob Kaley, director of environmental affairs for Monsanto's chemical division. "At the time, there were no federal regulations with regard to PCBs . . . Everything was done voluntarily, and there was really almost no understanding of the effect of PCBs on the environment and human health. I think as we've moved forward in the past 30 years, there are potentially some effects at high levels in the environment. But we do not believe even today that there are concerns for human health at those environmental levels."

The Anniston case stands out in the annals of PCB litigation in the extent of damage to property and people it alleges. It is also among the first brought by ordinary citizens rather than corporations. The black binders the plaintiffs' lawyers have filled with internal memorandums and reports are branded "Hot Documents" and "Hottest Documents" with yellow Post-it notes. Many have never been seen by the public but they will become public record when the trial begins and could make or break Monsanto's defense.

The chemical producers arrived in Anniston during the first world war, and in 1929, the Theodore Swann Company became the nation's first maker of PCBs. By 1935 Monsanto recognized PCBs as big business and bought Swann's Anniston facility.

In the 60s, a team of Swedish researchers discovered that PCBs were present in the environment. Each time the chemical prevented an electrical wire from overheating, some of it had been escaping.

At the time, the government had not yet declared PCBs to be hazardous to human health, but suspicions had been growing for quite a while. In 1956 Monsanto considered the chemicals toxic enough to give workers protective gear and clothing. Along with other chemical manufacturers, the company publicly expressed skepticism about PCBs' association with disease, but over the next decade the evidence became harder to ignore. Studies published in leading medical journals showed that PCBs may damage the immune system, the reproductive system and the nervous and endocrine systems.

Monsanto had hundreds of millions of dollars in PCB sales to lose if regulators placed restrictions on use. By 1969 the company established a committee to keep abreast of the state of knowledge on PCBs. The issue was beginning to look like "a monster", in the words of one former executive.

"The Dept of Interior and/or state authorities could monitor plant outfall and find [discharges] of chlorinated biphenyls at . . . Anniston anytime they choose. This would shut us down depending on what plants or animals they choose to find harmed."
Monsanto researcher, 1969

At issue in the Anniston lawsuit is whether the company was aware of the extent and harmful effects of the PCB contamination and whether it could have protected or warned the community. Many of the answers may be found in the documents. According to a 1970 report, Monsanto was dumping about 7.2kg (16lb) a day of PCB waste into the town's waterways. The year before, the company had been dumping about 113kg (250lbs) a day.

Monsanto began commissioning animal toxicity studies in the early 70s; the results did not look good. "Our interpretation is that the PCBs are exhibiting a greater degree of toxicity in this study than we had anticipated," an executive wrote.

In 1975 the lab submitted its findings from a study using rats. An early draft said that in some cases, PCBs had caused tumors. George Levinskas, a Monsanto manager, wrote to the lab's director: "May we request that the report be amended to say 'does not appear to be carcinogenic'." The final report dropped all references to tumors.

Anniston residents got their first glimpse of Monsanto's troubles with PCBs in late 1993. A contractor dredging on the nearby Choccolocco creek noticed largemouth bass with blistered scales. Tests showed the fish contained extremely high levels of PCBs. Around the same time, the Alabama Power company broke ground on land it had acquired from Monsanto in the 60s, opening up a PCB landfill that bled black tar. Alabama Power insisted that Monsanto take back the land and reported its discovery to the Alabama department of environmental management. Soon after, the company made its quiet buyout offer to the church.

But Adam Peck, one of Monsanto's lawyers, isn't sweating. The company, which spun off its chemical division as a stand-alone firm, Solutia, in 1997, assigned an environmental manager to lead a $30m clean-up operation. They bulldozed buildings, laid thick plastic tarpaulins over the contaminated land and covered them with clean soil. The company plans to convert some of the contaminated land into a wildlife refuge. It has built perching posts near the landfill to attract purple martins. In Peck's mind, these activities demonstrate convincingly that the corporation has behaved responsibly. "We have offered to acquire property. We've offered to clean property. What does that mean? Does that mean we acted responsibly or that we should have done more?" After a pause, he adds: "I'm not sure what more we could have done."

Residents are anxiously awaiting the EPA's decision on whether to order a federal clean-up. The lawsuit is also taking longer than residents anticipated. Two weeks before the case was to go to trial, in March 1999, Monsanto appealed to the state supreme court to establish procedural rules for the circuit court. The court still hasn't returned its rulings.

In the meantime, Stewart prepares for trial and works on other cases. He's hoping the jury will award compensatory damages for the property contamination and punitive damages for the fear the exposure has engendered. He also wants Monsanto to pay for regular health screenings.

Early settlement talks went nowhere, both sides say. Monsanto did settle the original suit on behalf of the Mars Hill congregation. It made no admission of guilt but paid $2.5m (£1.5m) to rebuild the church at another location. "In the Mars Hill case they protested all the time that they didn't do a thing," Stewart says. "Then they paid $2.5m for a church they said was worth $400,000. I wonder how they arrived at that decision."

After he sold them, Jeremiah Smith's pigs were shot and buried. Why? Because, Monsanto says, it was concerned about them trespassing on company property.

India using biotech to improve food security

June 4
Times of India

WASHINGTON: India is among several major economies making major investments in human and financial resources in the field of biotechnology with twin aims of improving food security and reducing poverty.

Among the other emerging market countries making similar efforts included China, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Thailand, Kenya and South Africa, said World Bank vice-president Ismail Serageldin and research associate G J Persley in a report.

Modern biotechnology offers promise to increase the productivity of the agriculturally important species in developing countries. However, this is unlikely to happen in time if present trends continues, they pointed out.

The present economic concentration of investment, science and infrastructure in industrial countries and the lack of access to the resulting technologies, they said, are major impediments to the successful application of modern biotechnology namely the need to guarantee food security to all people and to create wealth for the poor.

About 73 million people will be added to the world's population every year from now until 2020. Much of this population growth will occur in the developing countries, the authors added.

Princess royal under fire for backing GM foods

June 4
PA News

They said the Princess was "absolutely wrong" in some of the views she expressed in an interview with food industry magazine The Grocer.

But food safety experts back her view, saying that GM produce was just as safe as food produced by traditional farming methods.

The Princess - whose brother, the Prince of Wales, is a keen supporter of organic farming, and has voiced concerns about GM foods - said: "It is a huge over-simplification to say all farming ought to be organic or there should be no GM foods. I'm sorry but life isn't that simple.

"Man has been tinkering with food production and plant development for such a long time that it's a bit cheeky to suddenly get nervous about it when, fundamentally, you are doing much the same thing."

Friends of the Earth food campaigner Adrian Bebb said the Princess had over-simplified the argument.

"There is a huge, fundamental difference between traditional crop breeding and genetic engineering, where you are crossing the species barrier," he said.

"If we are going to produce food in this way we have got to be absolutely sure of what we are doing, and at the moment we just do not know enough.

"I think the Princess is absolutely wrong in saying this is what we have always done. It is a critical debate because it is about how we produce food.

Plant biotechnology expert Professor Jim Dunwell, of the University of Reading, who is a member of the CropGen panel of scientists which puts the case for research into GM farming, said: "In general terms I would support the Princess, who has always been a strong supporter of science and is president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

Charles, Anne fall out over GM foods

June 4
Reuters

Prince Charles, an outspoken opponent of genetically modified foods, has encountered opposition from a surprise quarter -- Princess Anne, who has poured scorn on his views.

"Man has been tinkering with food production and plant development for such a long time that it's a bit cheeky to suddenly get nervous about it when fundamentally you are doing much the same thing," Anne told The Grocer trade magazine.

Her comments, widely reported in Sunday newspapers, clash with those of Charles, a long- time champion of organic food who warned last month that the world faced environmental disaster if it tampered with nature and played God.

"If literally nothing is held sacred anymore, what is there to prevent us treating our entire world as some 'great laboratory of life' with potentially disastrous long-term consequences," Charles said in a BBC lecture.

His comments sparked angry responses from scientists who accused him of "woolly thinking" and of mixing theology and science.

Now Princess Anne has publicly entered the biotechnology debate for the first time and emerged as a supporter of GM foods -- in direct opposition to her brother.

"Of course shoppers feel the speed of change is too fast to understand what the dangers are and where the weak points might be. And that seems to me to be a perfectly valid argument," she said.

"But it is a huge over-simplification to say all farming ought to be organic or there should be no GM foods. I'm sorry -- but life isn't that simple," she said.

Experts tally GM losses

June 3
BBC

Agricultural and insurance experts are to begin assessing the financial losses suffered by farmers who unknowingly sowed genetically modified seeds.

The UK arm of the Canadian seed company Advanta, which sold the oil seed rape to the farmers, finally bowed to external pressure by offering compensation on Friday.

The size of the payout will depend on whether farmers can still claim European Union subsidies if they destroy their contaminated crops.

Advanta UK has not accepted legal liability for the contaminated crops, which are believed to cover thousands of hectares of land in Scotland.

The Lincolnshire-based company has told the 600 British farmers who cultivated the crops that they should destroy them.

'Fair and equitable'

Independent farming experts and loss adjustors from the National Farmers' Union will now be employed to work out what it calls "a fair and equitable settlement".

The assessors are to meet over the next few weeks to work out how much farmers have lost.

The European Commission is also due to meet next week to decide whether farmers who destroy the crops before they're harvested can still receive the payments.

In a statement issued on Friday, the seed company said: "Advanta is making this gesture, not because of any liability, but because it has always, and continues, to put the interests of its merchants and the farmer customers first.

"The event emphasizes the need for urgent government action on seed purity thresholds for GM impurities, coordinated at national level."

Advanta UK's agreement to pay compensation is expected to increase pressure on all seed suppliers to do what they can to ensure that their seeds are GM-free.

California seed company experiences acts of crop vandalism

June 2
The California Aggie

Seminis Vegetable Seeds, Inc., was the victim of crop vandalism last week when their Woodland, Calif. facility was attacked. The action was an apparent protest against the company's work with genetically modified vegetables.

Jodi Smith, a representative from Seminis, said the site was broken into Tuesday and Wednesday night of last week. She said the vandals caused minor damage Tuesday and moderate damage Wednesday to two field crops as well as vegetables in a greenhouse.

"The acts appear to have been indiscriminate," Smith said. "Eighty-five percent of the crops damaged were crops that were traditionally bred."

Smith said that among the crops destroyed were those belonging to a graduate student from University of California-Davis. The student's three-year project was completely destroyed, she said.

"The vandalism was particularly unfortunate because we have been members of the Woodland community for decades," she added.

Smith said that the company works to reduce the need for agricultural chemicals and the damage done to the crops will ultimately hurt farmers and consumers.

The radical environmental group that is reportedly taking credit for the vandalism is known as the Future Farmers of America - not to be confused with the high school youth group.

Carter Vaughn, a detective for the Yolo County Sheriff Department, said that the department is currently investigating the case and is talking with other agencies in order to locate the offenders.

The Seminis facility is stepping up security in light of the recent attack, according to Smith.

The act of vandalism is an all too familiar sight for members of the UC-Davis community. Last September, a group known as Reclaim the Seeds attacked several acres of vegetable crops at UC-Davis.

Members of Reclaim the Seeds had reportedly justified their actions by claiming them to be an act of self-defense against Monsanto, UC-Davis and the entire University system.

Genetically modified crops quickly penetrated the marketplace after their introduction. In 1995, the entire United States corn and soybean crops were conventional. In 1999, 54 percent of soybeans and 33 percent of corn were genetically altered.

In 1999, cotton was the top genetically engineered crop in the state, with a total of 50,000 acres, or 5.5 percent of the total amount of cotton produced.

UC-Davis has recently increased patrols in research crop areas in an effort to prevent future attacks.

Suspend GM crops for at least 5 years - scientists

June 2
The East African

Nairobi - Several countries, among them Kenya, Uganda, Brazil, South Africa, and India, are making major human and financial investments in biotechnology to improve food security and reduce poverty.

But the question remains whether genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or living modified organisms (LMOs) - the products of biotechnology - are indispensable for feeding the world, protecting the environment and reducing poverty in developing countries, as biotechnology engineering companies claim.

A growing body of scientists, farmers, NGOs, institutions, and governments opposed to the technology are convinced that it is designed to have the opposite effect. They argue that the introduction of GMOs in developing countries will exacerbate inequality and prevent the essential shift to sustainable agriculture that can provide food security and health.

In a letter to delegates at the fifth Conference of Parties (COP5) on the Convention on Biological Diversity at Gigiri, Nairobi, some 310 scientists from both the developed and developing countries demanded a moratorium on the use of GMOs and LMOs. They said they were concerned about the dangers these products posed for biodiversity, food safety, human and animal health.

"We call for the immediate suspension of the release of genetically modified crops and products, both commercially and in open field trials, for at least five years, for patents on living processes, organisms, seeds, cell lines and genes to be revoked and banned, and for a comprehensive public enquiry into the future of agriculture and food security for all."

They argued that genetically modified crops intensify corporate monopoly on food. In order to protect their patents, corporations continue to develop genetic use restriction technologies (GURTs) like terminator and trait-specific technologies.

Terminator technology makes seeds sterile in the second generation, preventing farmers from saving and replanting seed, as is common in developing countries. Under the genetic technologies, farmers are dependent on the genetically modified seed, which is protected under the intellectual property rights.

Trait-specific GURTs make it possible to switch on and off specific characteristics of a plant, such as resistance to diseases. The result is that farmers are obliged to apply particular chemicals to ensure that their crops thrive.

The scientists said this not only increased farmer dependency on chemicals and genetic engineering companies, it was likely to drive many to destitution.

The consortium of more than 25 NGOs at the COP5 has expressed concern that almost all the major companies that controlled agricultural engineering technology markets - such as AstraZeneca and Novartis Monsanto of the US and Advanta Seeds of the UK - have patents on the terminator technology. Despite promises last year that they would abandon the technology, 50 new GURTs patents have been issued.

The scientists want the patents banned on grounds that they threaten food security, sanction biopiracy of indigenous knowledge and genetic resources, violate basic human rights and dignity, compromise health care, impede medical and scientific research and work against the welfare of animals.

Products resulting from GMOs could be hazardous. The genetically modified bovine growth hormone, injected into cows to increase milk yields, not only causes excessive suffering and illness for the animals, but also increases IGF- 1 in milk, a substance linked to breast and prostate cancer in humans.

Secret memoranda of the US Food and Drug Administration revealed that it ignored the warnings of its own scientists that genetic engineering is a new departure and introduces new risks. According to the documents, the first GM crop to be commercialized - the Flar Savr tomato - did not pass the required toxicological tests.

In response to concerns on the potential risk of biotechnology and the absence of control systems in developing countries, the legally binding Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety is now in place to protect the environment from the potential risk caused by LMOs. Some 63 governments, including Kenya, have signed it.

Under the protocol, strict informed agreement procedures will apply to seeds, live fish, and other LMOs introduced into the environment.