The Campaign: News Updates

Tokyo -- Grain importers in Japan and South Korea, the two top U.S. corn buyers, have shrugged off a U.S. government report that found no link between bioengineered Starlink corn and human allergy cases, traders said on Thursday.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control said on Wednesday it found no evidence linking the unapproved genetically modified (GM) corn variety to allergic reactions reported by dozens of American consumers last autumn.

StarLink, made by the Franco-German pharmaceutical group Aventis , was barred by U.S. regulators for human use because of concerns it might trigger allergic reactions such as rashes, diarrhea or breathing problems. StarLink's key component, the Cry9c protein, protects young plants from destructive pests.

``The announcement will not help our corn imports resume to normal,'' said a trader with a major trading house. ``This can also not help Japan change its view against the StarLink corn because it is not approved in the United States for human consumption.''

In April, Japan's Health Ministry imposed new stricter rules to guard against imports of unapproved biotech products and the ministry began checks for unapproved GM crops in food imports at unloading ports and in food products on the domestic market.

The new rules established zero tolerance for imports containing unapproved gene-altered products and required mandatory labeling for approved GM products.

The discovery of StarLink in food products last October by a consumer group had prompted Japan, where StarLink is not approved even for animal feed, to cut its U.S. corn buying. It also drove importers to find alternative supply sources.

Japan imports four million tons of corn for food use each year and another 12 million tons for animal feed use.

South Korea's Korea Corn Processing Industry Association has asked foreign suppliers since late last week to replace U.S. corn with South American corn against its previously contracted optional origin cargoes, Seoul traders said.

The association, which imports about two million tons of corn a year for human consumption, has already bought corn for October arrivals, of which some were declared by suppliers as U.S. origin, they said. South Korea imports another six million tons for animal feed per year.

``This was just to avoid the StarLink contamination problems in U.S. corn shipments,'' said a trader with a member firm. ``But it may be hard to change the origin because of higher premiums.''

Concern about StarLink corn has deepened after the South Korean government detected StarLink traces in some corn imports which carried U.S. official non-StarLink certificates early this year under an agreement between the U.S. and Korean governments.

Traders said the U.S. government announcement on Wednesday had not changed anything for domestic food importers in Korea as the government had asked them not to use StarLink corn for food use, but had approved it only for animal feed use.

A U.S. environmental group last September discovered the gene-altered corn in taco shells, chips and other products containing corn flour triggering the eventual recall of more than 300 U.S. food products.

Some 48 people in the United States reported experiencing allergic reactions linked to StarLink-tainted food products between July 1 and November 30, 2000.

PRAGUE - Tesco Czech Republic said yesterday it does not use genetically manipulated organisms (GMO's) in its house brand products after it came under fire from the Czech branch of Greenpeace.

The assurance only extends to products with the Tesco brand name - not to all of the products the chain sells - Zuzana Lorencova, of public relations firm Oglivy PR, which represents Tesco, told Reuters.

The Czech branch of Greenpeace welcomed Tesco's statement as "the first step toward complete elimination of GMO's from sales," after a dozen Greenpeace supporters marched through the Prague department store earlier yesterday.

"This brings them in line with the British Tesco, which has agreed to gradually pull items with GMO's off its shelves," said Greenpeace GMO specialist Zuzana Piknova.

Still, the environmental activist organization intends to continue leaning on Tesco and other retailers in the country to stop selling products containing GMO's.

"We are negotiating with individual producers...and several of them have said they would not sell products with GMO's," she said. "Now of course we will ask the same thing of those retailers who we have found do sell them."

Greenpeace is primarily concerned about the long-term effect GMO's could have on humans, Piknova said.

"What bothers us is that there have not been any long-term tests of the effects of GMO's," she said. "Ten years ago, we were told that the BSE virus does not transfer to humans, and now people are dying of it."

Czech law does not prohibit the sale of products with genetically manipulated organisms. As of January 1, 2002, sellers will have to notify their customers of products containing GMO's.

It is thought to be the first time that magistrates rather than a jury have acquitted GM protesters. Since the Greenpeace trial when Lord Melchett and 18 others were acquitted, there has been official concern that juries are more likely to take the protesters' side.

On hearing the news, several local people visited another GM field near Weymouth and started to pull the crop down. No one was arrested.

The GM maize was 5ft high when the seven defendants and about 90 others invaded a 33 acre field at Tolbridge Farm near Sherborne, Dorset, on July 16 last year.

Christopher Black, 45, David Cooper, 37, Simon Fairlie, 50, Jacob Hooker, 25, Julie Horn, 37, Rowan Tilly, 43, and Michael Zair, 58, were among those who started to destroy the crops, belonging to Aventis, in front of police, the court was told.

About a third of the crop was damaged in the non-violent protest. The court was told that the seven defendants had told police during interviews that they were in the field, and said they were protesting about the use of genetically modified maize, which they considered dangerous.

Aventis product development manager Judith Jordan had told the court that the GM crop was part of a trial to test its herbicide resistance.

The case collapsed after arguments that the charge of aggravated trespass did not stand up.

HALIFAX and MONTREAL -- Loblaws, Canada's largest grocery retailer, has ordered its suppliers to remove or cover by Sept. 1 any labels that identify food as being free of genetically modified ingredients.

The move has angered many of the organic food processors that market their breakfast cereals, pastas and other products in the store's health food department as being free of chemical additives and genetically modified material.

Nature's Path Foods Inc., a British-Columbia-based company that produces organic breakfast cereals, said some Canadian grocery chains pressed the company to alter the labels on its products.

The section of the label that says the products are made without genetically modified organisms has been blacked out with a felt pen.

Spokesman Arran Stephens said some large grocery chains warned the company that its products would be yanked from shelves if it didn't remove the reference to genetically modified organisms.

"We've sort of been bullied into this. We feel it's very important that consumers know if their food has been genetically tampered," Mr. Stephens said, but the company didn't want to risk cutting production and laying off employees.

Mr. Stephens noted that independent food stores and grocery chains in the United States welcome the GMO-free labels.

Many suppliers are afraid to criticize the grocery chain publicly because they fear losing shelf space.

But they say privately that they are facing major expense to change labels and could lose sales because consumers won't be able to tell if they are getting non-GMO foods.

In a memo sent to suppliers in late January, Jamie Cooney, director of procurement of health food for Loblaws, said the products of distributors who didn't remove the non-GMO labels could be removed from the grocery chain's shelves.

"It is our position that until such time as a government and-or industry-supported definition of genetic modification exists in Canada we will not support product packaging containing non-GMO claims," the letter, dated Jan. 29, said. No one was available to comment for Loblaws yesterday.

In some Loblaws stores across the country the non-GMO stickers have been blacked out or covered.

The federal government has yet to establish a standard or a labeling policy for genetically modified foods, those that come from plants altered to resist pests or herbicides or to produce greater yields.

Ottawa suffered a setback yesterday in one of its attempts to control labeling of GMO foods when a Quebec judge quashed its bid for an injunction that would stop a beer maker from labeling and advertising its product as "certified GMO-free" by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. The agency doesn't label or test consumer products for GMOs.

Unibroue Inc. has said that a manufacturer's certificate signed by a government food inspector proved that the CFIA says its product is GMO-free.

The Royal Society's report on genetically modified foods has drawn harsh criticism from the scientific community. Why does the Society remain silent?

Surprise!" So Conrad Brunk, co-chairman of the now disbanded Royal Society's expert panel on genetically modified food, described the intense backlash to its report, Elements of Precaution: Recommendations for the Regulation of Food Biotechnology in Canada, released last February. The Royal Society report -- a document that more resembled a Greenpeace hatchet job than a reasoned analysis of the science surrounding GM issues -- aroused understandable outrage from this country's scientists.

That Mr. Brunk should be surprised was in itself surprising, considering that the members of the Royal Society are intelligent people, and that its president, Bill Leiss, is an expert in risk communication. According to Professor Leiss's own writings, which identify five cardinal rules in good risk communication, Rule No. 2 is "risk issue forecasting." The Society's failure to forecast properly was the first in the Royal Society's catalogue of communication blunders.

After the release of the report, the expert panel proceeded to break three more rules of risk communication: The panel failed to "become fully engaged," to "be proactive," and to "stay in for the long haul" when dealing with the public. Instead, the Royal Society has apparently made a conscious decision to not respond publicly to the questions concerning the significant gaps and shortcomings in their report, to not explain its decisions, and to actually dissolve the panel. On those few occasions when panel members spoke publicly, usually as part of controlled presentations, it was often to say they were "misquoted" in the media fury that immediately followed the report's release (in one of those "misquotes," Canadians who ate GM foods were called guinea pigs). Yet never once did the Royal Society offer a clarification -- at least, not publicly. Was the panel oblivious, or was it deliberately trying to avoid attempting to defend the undefendable?

Canadian and international scientists have raised many questions over the report, involving issues of serious scientific inaccuracies, incorrect citation of so-called facts, and a serious failure to understand systems and procedures used to regulate genetically modified foods in Canada. One letter to the Royal Society by six eminent scientists stated "The authors also clearly fail to understand the origins of the principles and procedures that are used to assess the safety of genetically modified foods. Pivotal scientific literature pertaining to this matter is either rejected out of hand or not quoted at all." The letter also outlined many of the scientific papers that were missing from the panel's report.

This lack of understanding and the feeble communications efforts were on display in an article in the University of British Columbia's official publication, UBC News, in which Royal Society expert panel co-chairman Brian Ellis, a professor of plant sciences at UBC, was interviewed. The story states that "Canada, the third largest producer of GM crops, has no law requiring labeling of GM foods." Canadian law, in fact, clearly states that any GM crop or novel food deemed to be harmful or less nutritious than its conventional counterpart, or created using a gene from a known allergen, such as a nut, must be clearly labeled.

The scientific inaccuracies contained within the report concerned many prominent scientists. For example, R.K. Downey's letter, reproduced nearby, was co-signed by 10 other leading plant scientists. It remains unanswered to date. This correspondence was released by Mr. Downey, not by the Royal Society, which has still failed to release any such correspondence, despite spending in excess of $300,000 in public funds, and despite repeated calls within its own report for openness, transparency and democratic decision-making.

The report was published in February, and is available at http://www.rsc.ca. But reports are not issued in a vacuum or without subsequent discussion. Because of the Royal Society's lack of engagement, we collected responses -- positive, negative or otherwise -- and published them on our Food Safety Network Web site at http://www.plant.uoguelph.ca/safefood/gmo/royalsoc.htm.

The Royal Society report makes some excellent recommendations to help Canadian society garner the benefits of genetically engineered crops while actively minimizing the risks. But the failure to properly explore many of the issues leaves the expert panel vulnerable to appropriation by a variety of groups, most with an interest in politics rather than in the production of safe, high quality food. As such, the Royal Society expert panel report has been making the global media rounds and is repeatedly invoked by activist groups around the world -- and in Canada -- as a reason to ban genetically engineered foods. Those stories can also be found on our Web site.

The Royal Society, meanwhile, does nothing to correct those groups' politicized views, or its own tattered reputation.

Amsterdam -- Farmers in the United States planting Monsanto's genetically modified (GM) soy reduced their use of herbicides by an average of about 10 percent, Dutch researchers said on Wednesday.

This was less than the 30 percent reduction originally hoped for by planting Monsanto's Roundup Ready soy, said a statement by the Center for Agriculture and Environment.

The Roundup glyphosate herbicide used in conjunction with Roundup Ready soy also had a lower environmental burden than conventional herbicides, consultant Piet Schenkelaars, co-author of the study, told Reuters.

Glyphosate is not an ideal herbicide, however, since run-off might contaminate surface water and could have negative effects on water organisms, the report added.

The study -- carried out on behalf of three government-linked product boards for vegetable oils, grains and animal feed -- analyzed field data on the effects of GM soy cultivation in the United States.

It found changes in herbicide use ranging from a fall of 40 percent to a rise of seven percent depending on region, year and farm size.

Harvests of Roundup Ready soy were comparable to conventional soy, but limited data meant no conclusions could be made about the impact of GM soy on use of energy, any changes in biodiversity and degree of resistance to the herbicide.

Schenkelaars said the data reviewed included a study cited by environmental group Greenpeace showing that farmers planting GM soy used more herbicide, but that study was rejected because the statistical methods were not sound.

He said data did not show significant economic benefits to farmers planting GM soy, who probably did so because it made weed control much easier.

Roundup Ready soy is resistant to the Roundup herbicide so farmers can spray it to eliminate weeds without harming crops.

The U.S. Agriculture Department has estimated that 63 percent of soybeans planted this year will be genetically modified, versus 54 percent last year.

Shanghai -- China's new rules on genetically modified crops are likely to delay the commercialization of Monsanto�s Bt corn by about a year to at least 2003, a senior company executive said on Monday.

The rules, effective from May 23, span research and production to food processing and trade.

They require GM crop growers to conduct production field tests and require state approval of applications for bio-engineered crops, which could take up to 270 days.

But the industry hopes Beijing will give more details on some of the new rules, such as the type of products that now require GM labeling, Mr David Shi, Monsanto�s government and public affairs director in China, said in an interview.

�Before the rules, our plan was to commercialize our Bt corn in 2002 or 2003. Now, the earliest may be 2003,� Mr Shi said.

�Previously, our modified crops had to pass lab tests, Pilot field runs and then go on to environmental release before we can go commercial. Now there is an additional step of a �production trial� before we can mass produce,� he said.

The US Biotechnology firm grows only a little more than a hectare of Bt corn, currently at the environmental release stage � in which crops are grown in the open, rather than in a closed area like a greenhouse.

Bt crops contain the bacterium Bacillus thuringienesis proteins and are resistant to corn borers, bollworms and other pests that ravage cotton plants.

Monsanto is hoping its Bt corn will ride on the success of its Bt cotton crop in China, which is expected to have its acreage increase significantly in the next few years.

The company has gained approval from Beijing to grow Bt cotton in the eastern provinces of Hebei, Anhui and Shandong and is awaiting permission to plant in Hubei and Henan, Shi said.

China�s cotton acreage is expected to rise 14.9 per cent to 4.63 million hectares in 2001. Monsanto officials said last year they expected about 20 per cent of China�s cotton acreage to be genetically modified.

Monsanto�s Bt cotton covers about 240,000 hectares and the New York-listed firm hopes the new GM rules will stem widespread sales of bogus seeds.

�Illegal and fake seeds are sold quite commonly throughout China. So the rules are welcomed by the industry,� Mr Shi said.

�In China, people openly market their products, giving out samples of their fake seeds. They are not discreet about it,� he said.

Importers, such as domestic trading firms and flour mills, would need state approval before shipping in GM seeds and grains, according to a State Council document published in the official People�s Daily newspaper on Thursday.

This would mean that Monsanto�s Round Up Ready soybeans would need to be approved, although the company has not filed an application yet, Mr Shi said.

The new rules also require GM products to be labeled as such before going on sale, but Mr Shi said the details were fuzzy.

�What products, when and at what threshold do we label these products? For example, do we need to spell out what is the GM content of products like beer and noodles?� Mr Shi queried. �We are not clear about that,� he said.

An argument has erupted over how Polish authorities hope to punish people suspected of smuggling genetically modified food into the country. The Sejm had warned that such people could expect up to eight years in prison, however experts from the agriculture ministry argue that Polish laboratories are unable to provide sufficient evidence of guilt because they cannot identify which products have been genetically modified.

A source from a US food producer told Zycie newspaper that the system, as it stands at the moment, "depends on our good will" because the inspectors have no option but to believe what is written in import documents.

UNITY � The Maine bill on genetic cross-contamination proposed by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association and introduced by Rep. Linda Rogers McKee, D-Wayne, has been signed into law.

L.D. 1266 requires manufacturers or seed dealers of genetically engineered plants, plant parts or seeds to provide written instructions to all growers on how to plant, grow, and harvest the crops to minimize potential cross-contamination of non-genetically engineered crops or wild plant populations. Copies of the instructions must be filed with the Maine Commissioner of Agriculture at least 20 days in advance of any sale of the GE plants in Maine.

The bill also requires the manufacturer or the seed dealer to identify and maintain a list of the names and addresses of all Maine growers of its GE plants (except for seeds sold at retail level in packets weighing less than 1 pound), and to permit the commissioner of agriculture to inspect the list when requested to facilitate an investigation into a claim of cross-contamination.

Failure to comply with the requirements of the act may result in a civil fine of up to $1,500, or loss or suspension of the violator's license to do business in Maine.

The text available on the Maine Legislature's Web site is the original MOFGA proposal, not the final amended version. Requests for the final text may be directed to Sharon Tisher at her e-mail address: sharon_tisher@umenfa.maine.edu. You may also call 581-3158.

MOFGA's original proposal would have made manufacturers strictly liable for any damages due to cross-contamination. That provision dropped out of the amended version after extensive negotiation in order to secure a unanimous Ought to Pass vote from the Joint Standing Committee on Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry.

Sharon Tisher, chair of MOFGA's Public Policy Committee, said, "We are delighted that this legislation passed. It's not all that we asked for, but it takes an important and necessary first step toward ensuring that manufacturers address the problem of cross contamination, and that growers are aware of the problem and are instructed in how to prevent it."

For more information on legislative developments, consult MOFGA's Web page: www.mofga.org.

The new law - one of the most stringent anti-GM measures in the world - bans all imports of genetically modified raw and processed food, including food additives.

A senior US official agricultural counselor Weyland Beegly said that even though the ban only affected four per cent of US agricultural exports to Sri Lanka, it was totally unwarranted.