Monday 31 December 2012

LIST: GLOBAL WEEK OF ACTIONS - SEPTEMBER 17, 2012 -TO STOP MONSANTO



photo

Join activists around the globe for the

 September 17 2012 Global Week of  
Action against Monsanto!

"Whether you like it or not, chances are Monsanto
contaminated the food you ate today with chemicals
and GMOs. Monsanto controls much of the world's
food supply at the expense of food democracy
worldwide" - Occupy Monsanto,
more information at www.occupy-monsanto.com


Global Week of Action Events in California



Sacramento, CA

Seminis, Inc.

37437 State Highway 16

Woodland, CA

Sunday September 16, 2012

12:00 PM

gcu_sacramento@occupy-monsanto.com

Davis, CA

Monsanto Company

1920 Fifth Street

Davis, CA

Monday September 17, 2012

6:00 AM

gcu_davis@occupy-monsanto.com  

More information on Facebook



Fresno, CA

FDA Fresno CA Regional Staff

1752 East Bullard Ave., Suite 102

Fresno, CA

Monday September 17, 2012

8:30 AM

gcu_fresno@occupy-monsanto.com    



Oxnard, CA

Seminis, Inc.

2700 Camino Del Sol

Oxnard, CA

Monday September 17, 2012

4:00 PM

gcu_oxnard@occupy-monsanto.com    

More information on Facebook



Walnut, CA

Mt. San Antonio College

1100 North Grand Avenue

Walnut, CA

Monday September 17, 2012

12:00 PM

gcu_redlands@occupy-monsanto.com    



San Jose, CA

Syngenta

2280 Hecker Pass Highway

Gilroy, CA

Monday September 17, 2012

9:00 AM

gcu_san_jose@occupy-monsanto.com    

More information on Facebook



San Diego, CA

Intersection of Robinson Ave. & 10th Ave.

Hillcrest Neighborhood

San Diego, CA

Monday September 17, 2012

5:00 PM

gcu_san_diego@occupy-monsanto.com    

Click here for a complete listing of Occupy Monsanto Events!

Organic Consumers Association ronniecummins@organicconsumers.org

Thursday 27 December 2012

A little bit of summer stored in a jar ...

Raspberries from the bushes outside our kitchen window, turned into jam last July.

Monday 24 December 2012

FRANKENSTUDY - STANFORD ON THE TAKE - PAID BY FRANKENCORPS

Stanford's "Spin" on Organics Allegedly Tainted by Biotechnology Funding
Scientists Tied to Tobacco Industry Propaganda, and Funding from Monsanto, Turn Attention to Organic Food

Cornucopia, Wis. - September 12 , 2012 - A recent study by Stanford University researchers made international headlines when it claimed that organic foods are no more safe or nutritious than conventional foods.  Organic researchers, farmers and advocacy groups immediately recognized the study as woefully flawed, and alleged underlying political motivations.

"People don’t buy organic food just because they think it contains slightly higher levels of nutrients, they buy organic for many other reasons, primarily to avoid toxic pesticide residues and toxins that have been genetically engineered into the food," says Charlotte Vallaeys, Food and Farm Policy Director at The Cornucopia Institute, a non-profit organic farm policy organization.

Academics and organic policy experts, including at Cornucopia, immediately recognized that Stanford’s research in fact substantiates dramatic health and safety advantages in consuming organic food, including an 81% reduction in exposure to toxic and carcinogenic agrichemicals.  Unfortunately, readers would never know it by the headlines, since the results of the study were spun by the Stanford researchers and public relations staff, and accepted without the necessary fact-checking by journalists in a rush to file stories over the Labor Day weekend.

Not surprisingly, the study’s glaring errors, both in understanding the important and complex differences between organic and conventional foods and in the researchers’ flawed choice of research methods, prompted organic advocates to look closely at financial ties between Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute, which supports the researchers, and the chemical and agribusiness industry.

"There was just no way that truly independent scientists with the expertise required to adequately answer such an important question would ignore the vast and growing body of scientific literature pointing to serious health risks from eating foods produced with synthetic chemicals," says Vallaeys.

"So we were not one bit surprised to find that the agribusiness giant Cargill, the world’s largest agricultural business enterprise, and foundations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which have deep ties to agricultural chemical and biotechnology corporations like Monsanto, have donated millions to Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute, where some of the scientists who published this study are affiliates and fellows."

Stanford researchers had touted their independence by stating they had not received outside financial support for their study, but failed to delineate the close ties between their internal funding sources and industrialized agriculture and biotechnology interests.

Organic advocates also discovered that one of the study’s authors has a well-documented history of accepting research funding from the tobacco industry when a growing body of scientific literature in the 1970s pointed to serious health risks from smoking.

Dr. Ingram Olkin, a Professor Emeritus in statistics at Stanford and co-author of the organics study, accepted money from the tobacco industry’s Council for Tobacco Research, which has been described as using science for “perpetrating fraud on the public.”

"Make no mistake, the Stanford organics study is a fraud," says Mike Adams ofNaturalnews.com and Anthony Gucciardi of Naturalsociety.org, who discovered the link between the organic study author and Big Tobacco.  "To say that conventional foods are safe is like saying that cigarettes are safe.  Both can be propagandized with fraudulent science funded by corporate donations to universities, and we’re seeing the same scientist who helped Big Tobacco now helping Big Biotech in their attempt to defraud the public."

Researchers with expertise in organics became suspicious about corporate funding and other industry ties after finding no other explanation for the Stanford study’s glaring omissions and flaws.

For example, multiple studies have drawn attention to the negative impacts of pesticide residues on children’s neurological health and development.  Pesticides commonly used in conventional agriculture and often found as residues on conventional foods are known to be toxic not only to the neurological systems of insects but also of mammals, including humans, with developing fetuses, infants and children especially at risk.

"When the Stanford researchers left out any mention of pesticide residue impacts on human health, well-documented in a number of respected peer-reviewed studies, it immediately raised a red flag that Stanford's analysis was likely designed to favor the agribusiness corporations in their desperate attempts to convince an increasingly educated and skeptical public that pesticides are safe," says Vallaeys.

As an example, the Stanford researchers omitted a 2010 study published in the journal Pediatrics by researchers at the University of Montreal and Harvard, which found that children with higher urinary levels of organophosphate metabolites, breakdown products of commonly used insecticides that are prohibited in organic agriculture, were more likely to meet the diagnostic criteria for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

The Stanford study also omitted any acknowledgement of potential cancer risks from exposure to agricultural chemicals on conventional foods.  This seems especially reprehensible to the scientists at Cornucopia in light of the 2009 President’s Cancer Panel report, which states: “Nearly 1,400 pesticides have been registered (i.e., approved) by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for agricultural and non-agricultural use. Exposure to these chemicals has been linked to brain/central nervous system (CNS), breast, colon, lung, ovarian, pancreatic, kidney, testicular, and stomach cancers, as well as Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, multiple myeloma, and soft tissue sarcoma.”

The authors of the President’s Cancer Panel advise Americans to decrease exposure to pesticides by choosing food grown without pesticides or chemical fertilizers.  Extensive research, including studies cited in Stanford’s study, indicates that organic food is demonstrably lower in agrichemical residues.

"Journalists failed to do due diligence to check the credibility of the Stanford study," says Mark Kastel, Codirector at The Cornucopia Institute.  "Wanting to be ahead of the news curve, reporters rushed out their stories on this study, over a holiday weekend, without seeking the expert advice of scientists who have studied the harmful effects of chemicals used in conventional food products and the documented advantages of an organic diet."

###

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 12, 2012
4:32 PM
   

CONTACT: Cornucopia Institute

Charlotte Vallaeys, 978-610-6844
Mark Kastel, 608-625-2042

The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit farm policy research group, is dedicated to the fight for economic justice for the family-scale farming community.  Their Organic Integrity Project acts as a corporate and governmental watchdog assuring that no compromises to the credibility of organic farming methods and the food it produces are made in the pursuit of profit.  Their web page can be viewed at www.cornucopia.org.

Thursday 20 December 2012

Agricultural producer support declining over time

We hear all sorts of generalizations about U.S. farm policy.

Some say U.S. farm programs are too stingy and should provide more help to farmers, especially small farmers. Others say U.S. farm programs are a boondoggle that just makes rich farmers richer. Still others say farm programs make consumers fat by encouraging too much cheap food.

Instead of generalizing, it is important to think quantitatively.

One good data source is the Producer Support Estimates (PSE) from the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (a club for the world's upper-income countries). I use this data source in several chapters of my forthcoming book from Routledge/Earthscan called Food Policy in the United States: An Introduction.

The PSE data measure diverse agricultural programs and policies in a consistent way across countries and over time.  One problem with the PSE is that it can seem a little complex.  To provide an orientation, Rebecca Nemec and I created the following data gadget.  Nemec is a graduate student at the Friedman School at Tufts and the teaching assistant for my class on U.S. Food Policy.  The top panel shows broad categories of support for agricultural producers.  The bottom panel shows more detail about each broad category in turn.   

Just click on each colored broad category in the top panel to see the corresponding detail in the bottom panel.

Working from top to bottom, we learn about trends in several major categories of producer support.
  • Price supports and deficiency payments help farmers in years when prices are low.  OECD worries about these programs because they distort international trade and hurt farmers overseas.  Michael Pollan criticizes deficiency payments for making corn too cheap.  Notice that in recent years -- with greater scarcity and higher prices -- these distorting policies have fallen to almost nothing under current policy.
  • Conservation programs have been growing in recent years, and also do not respond to price fluctuations as wildly as deficiency payments do.
  • The other payments category includes direct payments, which pay farmers regardless of the current price.  These direct payments may end under some current farm bill proposals.  They do not distort agricultural markets very much, but it is unpopular to pay farmers when they are prospering during high-price years.
  • Market Price Support represents the economic impact of the trade barriers that protect some producers, especially for milk and sugar, from imports.  Although they do not have a budget cost, these supports benefit farmers at the expense of consumers.  As with deficiency payments, the impact of these trade barriers has declined to almost nothing in recent high-price years.
An especially clever feature is that PSE data allow sensible comparisons across two seemingly different types of policies:
  • payments to farmers at the taxpayers' expense (the first three broad categories), and
  • trade policies that support farmers at the consumers' expense (the fourth broad category).
To speak coherently about U.S. agricultural policy, one must make important distinctions across several types of programs and be aware of rapid changes in program impacts from one year to the next.

There are a couple limitations that I should mention.  First, the OECD data may have some limitations of their own.  Second, while I did the best I could to classify programs from the OECD data into sensible categories, I did make some judgement calls about these program classifications.

In general, U.S. support for farmers has been declining in recent years, mainly because of high food prices that result from greater scarcity on world markets.  Though some people are more optimistic, I think population and environmental constraints may generally keep prices fairly high in the future.

This means that governmental support for U.S. farmers can be smaller over time, unless legislators replace existing programs with new and poorly designed alternatives.  For example, I worry about new and potentially expensive crop insurance programs that have been proposed in draft farm bills.


Monday 17 December 2012

BOYCOTT LIST: BIG AG FRANKENCORPS FIGHTING CA. PROP 37 NOW!


No GMOsOur GMO Boycott is Changing

September 11, 2012

Getting genetically engineered foods properly labeled is an uphill battle, and Big Food is spending huge sums to make sure that doesn’t happen. Here’s what you can do about it.
Three weeks ago we told you about how the parent companies of some organic food brands are very quietly donating large sums of money to fight Prop 37 (theCalifornia Right to Know Act, a.k.a. Label GMO). On the one hand, they want to be seen as supporting organic; on the other hand, they don’t want you to know what food is genetically modified. We also pointed out that some of the companies’ “natural” brands even contained genetically modified ingredients.
In addition to spending millions to stop GMO labeling in California, these companies are also supporting disinformation campaigns in which wild charges are made, such as the charge that labeling GMO will greatly increase food prices—it’s complete nonsense, as we reported last month.
With so much money available to the other side, and so much disinformation to rebut, the Label GMO initiative is truly a David-vs.-Goliath battle. But if we mobilize effectively, we can still win.
We launched our boycott together with other natural health groups. Almost at once, we found that it was causing confusion in California—the front lines of the Label GMO battle. We intended to boycott the organic brands of the Big Food companies fighting against us behind the scenes. But some people thought we were boycotting organic foods in general! Definitely not the case!
So this week we are redirecting the boycott. Now we are targeting the food companies that are directly fighting Prop 37 with their donations—in some cases, over a million dollars, in many cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Beware—it’s a looooong list, and could be much longer. That’s because each conglomerate may own dozens and dozens of different, well-known brands.
Here are the biggest financial backers of the front groups opposing Label GMO in California, so far as we can tell:
Monsanto Company$4,208,000.00
E.I. DuPont De Nemours & Co.$4,025,200.00
PepsiCo, Inc.$1,716,300.00
BASF Plant Science$1,642,300.00
Bayer CropScience$1,618,400.00
Dow Agrosciences LLC$1,184,800.00
Nestle USA, Inc.$1,169,400.00
Coca-Cola North America$1,164,400.00
ConAgra Foods$1,076,700.00
Syngenta Corporation$821,300.00
Kellogg Company$632,500.00
General Mills, Inc.$519,400.00
Del Monte$484,125
General Mills$388,798
Bumble Bee Foods$270,426
Sara Lee$246,766
Campbell Soup$179,545
Dole$125,681
Ocean Spray$60,546
Land O’Lakes$59,321
Hero North America$58,028
Kraft Foods$34,404
Godiva$30,666
Smithfield$14,286
Reily Foods Co.$13,214
Heinz$10,444
Idahoan Foods$7,181
Mars$5,773
Bunge North America$5,193
Croplife$5,000
Abbott Nutrition$3,918
We have set up a page on the ANH-USA website listing the various consumer brand names and products of the companies trying to prevent your right to know what’s in your food. We also include links to the company websites so you can see everything they produce—and learn what to avoid. When you see a name like ConAgra you may not realize that they make food to sell to consumers. Please use this link to find out who is who and help us send a powerful message.
Why is this GMO labeling fight so important? Once GMOs are labeled in California, it will bring a cascade effect in other states as well, since most national companies won’t create two labeling schemes, one for California and one for the rest of the country. Moreover, once products containing GMOs are labeled, people will stop buying them—and this economic pressure will be enough to force GMOs off the market.
That’s why all the companies that are actively working to fight the labeling of GMOs deserve a consumer boycott. They are trying to keep you and your family in the dark about what you are eating. They care nothing for your health, despite their propaganda to the contrary.
The only way they will listen is if it affects their bottom line. Hit them where it hurts—in the pocketbook. Refuse to buy their brands or products until they stop donating to the pro-GMO camp.
Please take action now!
Right now, please sign our warning message to the companies trying to stop you from knowing which products contain GMOs:
Take Action!
And also sign our letter of thanks to the companies that are supporting the initiative:
Take Action!

Tuesday 11 December 2012

FDA urged to make public information about antibiotic use

The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future and the Government Accountability Project have spent a couple years asking the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to release information about the amount of antibiotic use in farm animals.  Overuse of antibiotics in farm animals may lead to the evolution of more dangerous drug-resistant strains.

FDA releases some summary data each year, but denied the request for more detailed tabulations,citing an exemption in freedom-of-information law that applies to commercial information and trade secrets.  This seems wrong.  Misuse of antibiotics is an important public health issue, and the aggregated data requested were not firm-specific.

In response, the Center for a Livable Future and the Government Accountability Project brought a lawsuit this month.  The Center's director Robert Lawrence explains this week:
Since 2008, when the Animal Drug User Fee Act (ADUFA) began requiring drug companies to report basic information about antibiotic sales to FDA, the agency has released limited summaries of these data to the public. Sadly, though, the FDA conceals most of what gets reported by the drug companies. This concealment protects the producers and the drug companies, both of which make tidy profits from injudicious dosing of food animals.

In the meantime, the Center's staff has done some clever sleuthing, exploiting a glitch in FDA's annual release of summary data, which was followed by a correction to the agency's numbers.  The Center tracked down the source of the change in order to conjecture about the amount of antibiotics used in one particular category called arsenicals.

Monday 10 December 2012

TWO-FER!! STOP 2 NEW GMO POISON-TOLERANT SOY CROPS -

Stop Monsanto's Dicamba Tolerant Soybeans!

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is currently considering approval of Monsanto’s new genetically engineered (GE), dicamba-tolerant soybeans. If approved, millions more pounds of this hazardous chemical will be sprayed, polluting our food, water, and air. This is just the latest effort in the corporate chemical arms race, and it will cause serious harm to human health and the environment.

Sign the Petition below to the USDA urging the agency to reject this risky crop!

Subject: Docket No. APHIS-2012-0047

I am writing to strongly oppose Monsanto's petition for non-regulated status for its dicamba- and glyphosate-tolerant soybean.

Since the introduction of GE crops, the US has seen herbicide use increase by nearly 400 million pounds. Eighty-four percent of the GE crops planted today are designed to withstand massive applications of herbicides without dying. As more of these “herbicide resistant” (HR) crops have been planted, the massive increase in herbicide use has triggered an epidemic of resistant “superweeds.” Now, in a misguided effort to fix the weed resistance problem created by first generation HR crops, biotechnology companies are racing to genetically engineer new crops resistant to ever more toxic herbicides.

Dicamba is an older, more toxic herbicide, which is similar in structure and mode to 2,4-D, a major component of Agent Orange. It is highly soluble in water and very mobile so carries a large groundwater contamination risk. Dicamba is also very volatile and can drift for miles. Such volatilization has caused millions of dollars in damages to growers who have suffered crop losses due to herbicide drift onto their farms.

Penn State ecologist David Mortensen predicts that herbicide use on soy could increase 70% if the new 2,4-D and dicamba-tolerant soybeans are adopted. Inevitably new "superweeds" will develop in response to the new biotech crops, and the chemical arms race with weeds will continue. This means more pesticidal pollution, environmental damage, higher production costs, and of course, increasing profits for firms like Monsanto that sell both GE seed and pesticides.

At a time when farmers, citizens, and government have worked hard to limit our use of, and exposure to, hazardous pesticides like dicamba, approving this crop would take us backwards, seriously endangering human health and the environment.

I urge you to reject this risky crop.


 Please click here. Thank you!



26427 total signers.

By signing this petition you will be signed up to receive action alerts from the Center for Food Safety. You can unsubscribe at any time at the bottom of any email you receive from us, and we will never sell or rent your information

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Home-made cheese

I have been preparing home-made soft cheeses for the past couple years, working my way through the recipes in Ricki Carroll's book on Home Cheese Making.  Here is a photograph of neufchatel curds draining in my kitchen last week.

In a future post, I will tell about building a makeshift cheese press with my son this month at the holiday Craft Day, an inspiring Boston area tradition organized each year by Carolyn Mugar (who is executive director of Farm Aid).  For more than a year, I had promised myself not to take up more arduous hard cheese making as a new hobby until I submitted a manuscript for my food policy book, but that goal was completed this fall.  So this weekend, armed with the new press, I claimed my reward and began my first attempt at cheddar.

For entertainment during the waiting periods for that project last night, I sat, with a beer in hand, reading the relevant sections of Harold McGee's classic, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen.  You will think I was tipsy if I tell you it felt like grasping a thin and nearly invisible thread connecting my kitchen to 5,000 years of kitchens inhabited by inventive cheese makers (and brewers) responsible for a truly remarkable group of technologies using living microorganisms to convert perishable foods into shelf-stable treasures.  McGee writes:
Cheese is one of the great achievements of humankind.  Not any cheese in particular, but cheese in its astonishing multiplicity....

Minor Update 12/13/2012: According to an NPR story by Adam Cole and Helen Thompson today, based on an article from Nature, the thread is even longer, connecting 7,000 years of kitchens!

FDA is missing deadlines for implementation of complex food safety rules

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been missing the implementation deadlines that Congress set in 2009 as part of the landmark FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). 

Food safety advocates have sued the agency because of the delays.  In a legal motion to dismiss (.pdf) filed today, FDA argues that the courts should not hold the agency liable for this failure to implement the law:
The sole remedy available for an unreasonable agency delay claim is for the court to compel agency action, such as by issuing an order requiring the agency to act, without directing the substantive content of the decision....  Although FDA has been unable to meet the aggressive statutory timelines for the seven new rules, there is no indication that Congress believed that strict adherence to those timetables is more important than careful consideration and development of these complex regulations to create an effective and modernized food safety system, provide clear guidance to the industry, and minimize later challenges or revisions to hastily adopted regulations. Accordingly, judicial intervention is not warranted at this time.

There is a certain sad logic to this argument! The courts should mind their own business, because the only possible punishment is to order the very same achievements that FDA already is failing to achieve.

I considered disputing FDA's claim about there being "no indication" of Congressional intentions for adherence to timetables.  After all, Congress did write these timetables into law.  On the other hand, Congress has not given FDA sufficient funding to meet all of its food safety objectives in the past year, and of course the next year looks even more bleak.  Although food safety advocates are unimpressed with the agency's excuses, FDA really does seem justified in implying that Congress has sent mixed signals about prioritizing food safety implementation.

I think we'll just have to be patient ... and go easy on the peanut butter.

STANFORD RESEARCHERS PIMP BIG CHEM -BIG AG- BIG PHARMA: BIG RESEARCH GRANTS. HO HO HO

Busted: Co-Author of Flawed Stanford Organic Study Has Deep Ties to Big Tobacco’s Anti-Science Propaganda
Mike Adams & Anthony Gucciardi
Infowars.com
Sept 7, 2012

Over the last several days, the mainstream media has fallen for an elaborate scientific hoax that sought to destroy the credibility of organic foods by claiming they are “no healthier” than conventional foods (grown with pesticides and GMOs). NaturalNews and NaturalSociety have learned one of the key co-authors of the study, Dr. Ingram Olkin, has a deep history as an “anti-science” propagandist working for Big Tobacco. Stanford University has also been found to have deep financial ties to Cargill, a powerful proponent of genetically engineered foods and an enemy of GMO labeling Proposition 37.

The New York Times, BBC and all the other publications that printed stories based on this Stanford study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine have been victims of an elaborate scientific hoax carried out by corporate propagandists posing as “scientists.”
The evidence we show here (see below) demonstrates how this study was crafted under the influence of known anti-science fraudsters pushing a corporate agenda. Just as Big Tobacco sought to silence the emerging scientific evidence of the dangers of cigarette smoke, the biotech industry today is desperately seeking to silence calls for GMO labeling and honest, chemical-free food. The era is different, but the anti-science tactics are the same (and many of the quack science players are the same!).

Flawed organic food study author Ingram Olkin chief statistical ‘liar’ for Big Tobacco

Here’s a document from 1976 which shows financial ties between Philip Morris and Ingram Olkin, co-author of the recent organic foods study.
The so-called “research project” was proposed by Olkin, who was also at one time the chairman of Stanford’s Department of Statistics.
Olkin worked with Stanford University to develop a “multivariate” statistical algorithm, which is essentially a way to lie with statistics (or to confuse people with junk science). As this page describes on the use of these statistical models: “Obviously, if one chooses convenient mathematical functions, the result may not conform to reality.”
This research ultimately became known as the “Dr. Ingram Olkin multivariate Logistic Risk Function” and it was a key component in Big Tobacco’s use of anti-science to attack whistleblowers and attempt to claim cigarettes are perfectly safe.
This research originated at Stanford, where Ingram headed the Department of Statistics, and ultimately supported the quack science front to reject any notion that cigarettes might harm human health. Thanks to efforts of people like Ingram, articles like this one were published: “The Case against Tobacco Is Not Closed: Why Smoking May Not Be Dangerous to Your Health!” (http://andrewgelman.com/2012/09/cigarettes/)
By the way, if today’s “skeptics” and “science bloggers” were around in the 1950′s and 60′s, they would all be promoters of cigarette smoking because that was the corporate-funded scientific mythology being pushed at the time. Back then it was tobacco, today it’s vaccines and pesticides. New century, new poisons, same old quack science.

The evil Council of Tobacco Research

As the evidence clearly shows, Ingram Olkin has a history of collaboration with tobacco industry giants who sought to silence the physicians speaking out regarding the dangers of cigarettes. One such entity known as the Council of Tobacco Research (CTR) has been openly exposed as paying off publication companies and journalists with more than $500,000 (about $3,000,000 today after adjusting for inflation) as far back as 1968 in order to generate pro-smoking propaganda. The kind of “dark propaganda” serves only to deceive and confuse consumers with phony, fabricated “scientific evidence.”
It all seems eerily similar to the organics-bashing story that just recently appeared in the New York Times, written by proven liar Roger Cohen .
CTR was part of the massive Tobacco Institute, which was essentially a colossal group of cigarette corporations using quack science to attempt to hide the true effects of cigarettes from the public. CTR was a key player in attempting to defeat the monumental case known as the Framingham Heart Study (http://www.framinghamheartstudy.org/) — a historical research project that linked cigarette smoking to heart disease. It was during this time that Olkin applied to the CTR in order to oversee and conduct a project smearing and ‘disproving’ the Framingham study.
This can be proven simply by examining the words of the cigarette manufacturer lawyers who were desperate to defeat the potentially devastating heart study. In their own documents, they state:
“I met with Dr. Olkin and Dr. Marvin Kastenbaum [Tobacco Institute Statistics Director] on December 17, 1975, at which time we discussed Dr. Olkin’s interest in multivariate analysis statistical models. Dr. Olkin is well qualified and is very articulate. I learned, in visiting with Dr. Olkin, that he would like to examine the theoretical structure of the “multivariate logistic risk function.”
In an even more telling statement, Olvin’s “sidekick” Dr. Kastenbaum, was revealed to be highly knowledgeable “tobacco industry’s participation in the public disinformation regarding the health hazards of tobacco use, the manipulation of nicotine in tobacco products and the marketing of tobacco products to children.” In other words, these scientists were part of a massive deception campaign intended to smear any real information over the serious dangers of cigarette smoking using ‘black ops’ disinformation techniques.
This deception campaign is being paralleled once again, in 2012, with the quack science assault on organics (and a simultaneous defense of GMOs). Biotech = Big Tobacco. “GMOs are safe” is the same as “cigarettes are safe.” Both can be propagandized with fraudulent science funded by corporate donations to universities.
Dr. Kastenbaum, by the way, went on to become the Director of Statistics for the Tobacco Institute intermittently from 1973 to 1987. Another name for his job role is “corporate science whore.”

Organics study co-author was hired to perform scientific “hatchet jobs”

Further documents (http://tobaccodocuments.org/bliley_bw/521028845-8850.html) go on to state that Olkin then received a grant from the CTR for his work alongside disinformation specialist Dr. Katenbaum in an effort to perform “deliberate hatchet jobs” on the heart study as described by author Robert N. Proctor Golden in his book entitled Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition. Golden explains how Olkin was paid off along with others to falsely testify in Congress that cigarette smoking did not harm the heart:
George L. Saiger from Columbia University received CTR Special Project funds ‘to seek to reduce the correlation of smoking and disease by introduction of additional variables’; he also was paid $10,873 in 1966 to testify before Congress, denying the cigarette-cancer link…”
This was the same organization that paid what amounts after inflation to over one million dollars to journalists and major publications to disseminate phony information supporting their claims. It’s also important to note that during this time Olkin was still prominently placed within Stanford, remaining so even after openly concealing the truth about the cigarette heart disease link from the public.
Now, Olkin’s newest research fails to address any real factors in the difference between conventional GMO-loaded food and organic. At the same time, it absolutely reeks of the similar ‘black ops’ disinformation campaigns from the 1960′s and 70′s in which he was heavily involved.

Make no mistake: The Stanford organics study is a fraud. Its authors are front-men for the biotech industry which has donated millions of dollars to Stanford. The New York Times and other publications that published articles based on this research got hoaxed by Big Tobacco scientists who are documented, known liars and science fudgers.

Stanford secrecy, plus ties to Monsanto and Cargill

Stanford receives more secret donations than any other university in the U.S. In 2009 alone, these donations totaled well over half a billion dollars.
There’s little doubt that many of these donations come from wealthy corporations who seek to influence Stanford’s research, bending the will of the science departments to come into alignment with corporate interests (GMOs, pesticides, etc.).
Who is George H Poste?
• Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
• Member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
• Served on the
Monsanto board since February 2003.
• Former member of the Defense Science Board of the U.S. Department of Defense.

Stanford University has also accepted $5 million in donations from food giant Cargill (a big supporter of the biotech industry) in order to expand Stanford’s Center on Food Security and the Environment (FSE). “Food security” is a euphemism for genetically engineered crops. Much of the research conducted there is done to try to advocate GMOs.
Cargill has also donated big dollars to try to defeat Proposition 37 in California.

The “scientific” Hall of Shame – a list of scientists funded by the Tobacco industry to fake scientific results

The CRT is the Council of Tobacco Research — essentially a scientific front group that was set up to attempt to invoke “science” to “prove” that cigarettes were not bad for your health.
This list just proves how easily scientists sell out to corporate interests when given grant money. Remember: What Big Tobacco pulled off with fake science in the 20th century, Big Biotech is pulling off yet again today.
Source: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCOURTS-dcd-1_99-cv-02496/pdf/USCOURTS-dcd-1_99-cv-02496-4.pdf
Documents reflect that, at a minimum, the following individuals and organizations received funding through Special Account No. 4 beginning in the 1960s and ending in the 1990s:
Able-Lands, Inc.; Lauren Ackerman; ACVA Atlantic Inc.; George Albee; Aleph Foundation; Arthur D. Little, Inc.; Aspen Conference; Atmospheric Health Sciences; Domingo Aviado; James Ballenger; Alvan L. Barach; Walter Barker; Broda 0. Barnes; Battelle Columbus Laboratories; Battelle Memorial Institute; Walter Becker; Peter Berger; Rodger L. Bick; Billings & Gussman, Inc.; Richard Bing; BioResearch Laboratories; Theodore Blau; Irvin Blose; Walter Booker; Evelyn J. Bowers; Thomas H. Brem; Lyman A. Brewer, III; Brigham Young University; Oliver Brooke; Richard Brotman; Barbara B. Brown; K. Alexander Brownlee; Katherine Bryant; Victor B. Buhler; Thomas Burford; J. Harold Burn; Marie Burnett; Maurice Campbell; Carney Enterprises, Inc.; Duane Carr; Rune Cederlof; Domenic V. Cicchetti; Martin Cline; Code Consultants Inc.; Cohen, Coleghety Foundation, Inc.; Colucci, & Associates, Inc.; Computerland; W. Clark Cooper; A. Cosentino; Daniel Cox; Gertrude Cox; CTR; Geza De Takato; Bertram D. Dimmens; Charles Dunlap; Henry W. Elliott; Engineered Energy Mgt. Inc.; Environmental Policy Institute; J. Earle Estes; Frederick J. Evans; William Evans; Expenses related to Congressional Hearings in Washington D.C.; Hans J. Eysenck; Eysenck Institute of Psychiatry; Jack M. Farris; Sherwin J. Feinhandler; Alvan R. Feinstein; Herman Feldman; Edward Fickes; T. Finley; Melvin First; Edwin Fisher; R. Fisher; Merritt W. Foster; Richard Freedman; Herbert Freudenberger; Fudenberg; Arthur Furst; Nicholas Gerber; Menard M. Gertler; Jean Gibbons; Carl Glasser; Donald Goodwin; B. Greenberg; Alan Griffen; F. Gyntelberg; Harvard Medical School; Hearings-Kennedy-Hart Bill; William Heavlin; Norman Heimstra; Joseph Herkson; Richard J. Hickey; Carlos Hilado; Charles H. Hine; Hine, Inc.; Harold C. Hodge; Gary Huber; Wilhelm C. Hueper; Darrell Huff; Duncan Hutcheon; Industry Research Liaison Committee; Information Intersciences, Inc.; International Consultancy; International Technology Corporation; International Information Institute, Inc.; J.B. Spalding Statistical Service; J.F. Smith Research Account; Jacob, Medinger & Finnegan; Joseph Janis; Roger Jenkins; Marvin Kastenbaum; Leo Katz; Marti Kirschbaum; Kravetz Levine & Spotnitz; Lawrence L. Kuper; Mariano La Via; H. Langston; William G. Leaman; Michael Lebowitz; Samuel B. Lehrer; William Lerner; Edward Raynar Levine; G.J. Lieberman; S.C. Littlechild; Eleanor Macdonald; Thomas Mancuso; Nathan Mantel; R. McFarland; Meckler Engineering Group; Milton Meckler; Nancy Mello; Jack Mendelson; Michigan State University; Marc Micozzi; Irvin Miller; K. Moser; Albert Niden; Judith O’Fallon; John O’Lane; William Ober; J.H. Ogura; Ronald Okun; Ingram Olkin; Thomas Osdene (Philip Morris); Peat, Marwick Main & Co.; Thomas L. Petty; Pitney, Hardin & Kipp; Leslie Preger; Walter J. Priest; R. Proctor; Terrence P. Pshler; Public Smoking Research Group; R.W. Andersohn & Assoc.; L.G.S. Rao; Herbert L. Ratcliffe; Attilio Renzetti; Response Analysis Project; Response Analysis Consultation; R.H. Rigdon; Jay Roberts; Milton B. Rosenblatt; John Rosencrans; Walter Rosenkrantz; Ray H. Rosenman; Linda Russek; Henry Russek; Ragnar Rylander; George L. Saiger; D.E. Sailagyi; I. Richard Savage; Richard S. Schilling; Schirmer Engineering Corp.; S. Schor; G.N. Schrauzer; Charles Schultz; John Schwab; Carl L. Seltzer; Murray Senkus (Reynolds); Paul Shalmy; R. Shilling; Shook, Hardy & Bacon; Henry Shotwell; Allen Silberberg; N. Skolnik; JF Smith; Louis A. Soloff; Sheldon C. Sommers (CTR); JB Spalding; Charles Spielberg; Charles Spielberger; Lawrence Spielvogel; St. George Hospital & Medical School; Stanford Research Institution Project; Russell Stedman; Arthur Stein; Elia Sterling; Theodor Sterling; Thomas Szasz; The Foundation for Research in Bronchial Asthma and Related Diseases; The Futures Group; Paul Toannidis; Trenton, New Jersey Hearings; Chris P. Tsokos; University of South Florida; Helmut Valentin; Richard Wagner; Norman Wall; Wayne State University; Weinberg Consulting Group; Roger Wilson; Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation; Jack Wiseman; George Wright; John P. Wyatt; J. Yerushalmy; and Irving Zeidman.
This post originally appeared at Natural Society

FARMERS LEFT IN THE DUST AS BIG AG HARVESTS FRANKENPROFIT ON SOARING FOOD PRICES

Since the introduction of GMOs into South Africa fourteen years ago, food prices have actually increased. (photo: unknown)
Since the introduction of GMOs into South Africa fourteen years ago, food prices have actually increased. (photo: unknown) 

Monsanto, Syngenta Cash In on Disaster, No Relief to Farmers

By GMWatch
10 September 12

frica's Frankenfoods
Toward Freedom, 05 September 2012
Nairobi, Kenya-In the sprawling hills of the Kangundo district in Kenya's Eastern Province, just a few hours outside of capital city Nairobi, Fred Kiambaa has been farming the same small, steep plot of land for more than 20 years.
Born and raised just outside Kathiini Village in Kangundo, Kiambaa knows the ups and downs of agriculture in this semi-arid region. He walks up a set of switchbacks to Kangundo's plateaus to tend his fields each morning and seldom travels further than a few miles from his plot.
Right now, all that remains of his maize crop are rows of dry husks. Harvest season finished just two weeks ago, and the haul was meager this time around.
"Water is the big problem, it's always water. We have many boreholes, but when there is no rain, it's still difficult," he said.
Kiambaa and his wife, Mary, only harvested 440 pounds of maize this season, compared to their usual 2,200. They have six children, meaning there will be many lean months before the next harvest, and worse: though March is Kenya's rainiest month, it's been mostly dry so far.
"The rain surely is not coming well this year. Rain is the key. We can only pray," he said.
WONDER CROPS?
Farmers like Kiambaa are central to a push to deploy genetically modified (GM) technology within Kenya. In recent years, donors such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have invested millions of dollars into researching, developing and promoting GM technology, including drought-resistant maize, within the country - and have found a great deal of success in doing so through partnerships with local NGOs and government bodies.
The Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), a semi-autonomous government research institution, recently announced that after years of trials, genetically modified drought-resistant maize seeds will be available to Kenyan farmers within the next five years. Trial GM drought-resistant cotton crops are already growing in Kidoko, 240 miles southeast of Nairobi.
Researchers and lobbyists argue that in a country so frequently stricken by food shortages, scientific advancements can put food into hungry bellies. Drought-resistant seeds and vitamin-enriched crops could be agricultural game changers, they say.
But serious concerns about viability, corporate dependency and health effects linger - even while leading research firms and NGOs do their best to smooth them over.
Agriculture dominates Kenya's economy, although more than 80 percent of its land is too dry and infertile for efficient cultivation. Kenya is the second largest seed consumer in sub-Saharan Africa, and Nairobi is a well-known hub for agricultural research. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, farming is the largest contributor to Kenya's gross domestic product, and 75 percent of Kenyans made their living by farming in 2006.
Half of the country's total agricultural output is non-marketed subsistence production - meaning farms like Kiambaa's, where nothing is sold and everything is consumed.
On top of that, the country is still reeling from the worst drought in half a century, which affected an estimated 13 million people across the Horn of Africa in 2011. Kenya is home to the world's largest refugee camp, housing 450,000 Somalis fleeing violence and famine, increasing the pressure to deal with food security challenges.
Prime Minister Raila Odinga recently called on parliament to assist the estimated 4.8 million Kenyans, in a country of about 40 million, who still rely on government food supports, as analysts predict that this year's rainy season will be insufficient to guarantee food security.
"The situation is not good... Arid and semi-arid regions have not recovered from the drought," Odinga said.
At the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), a massive NGO working on GM research and development in partnership with KARI, Regulatory Affairs Manager Dr. Francis Nang'ayo says GM crops are "substantially equivalent" to non-genetically modified foods and should be embraced as a solution to persistent drought and hunger.
In 2008, the AATF received a $47 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This partnership involved the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and American seed giant Monsanto.
In 2005, the Water-Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) program became one of the first main partners in a program aimed at developing drought-resistant maize for small-scale African farmers. Monsanto promised to provide seeds for free. The Gates Foundation claimed at the time that biotechnology and GM crops would help end poverty and food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2010, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Gates Foundation had invested $27.6 million in Monsanto shares.
Donors had been investing millions in KARI for decades in an effort to develop seeds that would produce pest- and disease-resistant plants and produce higher yields. Monsanto promised results, with the goal of distributing its seeds to small-scale farmers across Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda.
Since then WEMA's African partners have made major strides in bringing GM crops to Kenya, most notably when KARI announced in March that it is set to introduce genetically modified maize to farmers' fields by 2017. Until 2008, South Africa had been the only country using GM technology. Now Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Mali, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and Ghana are researching GM seeds and growing trial crops of cotton, maize and sorghum.
"Five years ago it was only South Africa that had a clear policy. Since then a number of countries have put their acts together by publishing policies on GM technology laws. In Kenya we're moving on to create institutional mechanisms," said Dr. Nang'ayo.
Deeply Divided
But Nang'ayo and his team face several challenges. Popular opinion on the technology is deeply divided in Kenya, in large part due to suspicions about the giant foreign corporations that control it.
Monsanto-patented seeds are usually costly, which has led to numerous accusations of exploitation and contemporary colonialism. But how long will these particular strains of seeds last? What are the guarantees? Critics fear dependence on corporate fertilizers and pesticides, the emergence of super-weeds and pests that can no longer repel GM varieties, and terminator seeds that only last for one planting season.
At Seattle's AGRA Watch, a project of the Community Alliance for Global Justice, director Heather Day said there aren't enough questions being asked about introducing GM technology to developing countries.
"Our campaign started because of our concern about the Gates Foundation's influence on agriculture and the lack of transparency and accountability. We also have ecological concerns, in terms of food sovereignty and farmers' ability to control their food system. We need to be concerned about the industrialization of the agricultural system," she said.
AGRA Watch's objective is to monitor and question the Gates Foundation's push for a "green revolution" in Africa.
Monsanto has promised an indefinite supply of royalty-free seeds for this project, but Day said the pitfalls have the potential to devastate the continent's agriculture.
"Genetically modified crops actually haven't been that successful," Day said. "We've seen massive crop failure in South Africa, and farmers there couldn't get financial remedies or compensation for their losses. There's genetic resistance and super-pests, these things are happening now, and it's not surprising. It's what you would expect from an ecological standpoint."
The horror stories are real - in India, for example, farmers who purchased Bollgard I cotton seeds from 2007 to 2009 wound up spending four times the price of regular seeds, and paying dearly for it. It was believed that Monsanto's patented GM seeds would be resistant to pink bollworms, which were destroying cotton crops across swaths of India, but by 2010 Monsanto officials were forced to admit that the seed had failed and a newer breed of far more aggressive pests had emerged. The solution? Bollgard II, an even stronger GM cotton seed.
As of December 2011, Monsanto was actively promoting the latest Bollgard III cotton seed, stronger than ever before. Pesticide spending in India skyrocketed between 2007 and 2009, forcing thousands of farmers into crushing debt, and hundreds more into giving up their land. Some media outlets later drew a connection between the Bollgard debacle and a rash of suicides across farms that had purchased the seeds.
Land Grabs
Kenya is a country where land-grabbing is all too common, be it on the coast to make way for new tourist resorts, or in Nairobi, where slum demolitions left hundreds homeless when the government bulldozed several apartment buildings to reclaim an area near the Moi Air Base.
Farmers here are skeptical of risking everything for a few seasons of higher yields. In Kangundo, Kiambaa said he would try GM technology if it was a matter of life or death - but he is wary.
Kiambaa uses the Katumani breed of maize, a widely available seed that is reasonably drought-tolerant and affordable. Higher yields are tempting, of course, but Kiambaa said he doesn't want to chance his livelihood on a foreign corporation. While his family has been on the land for decades now, Kiambaa said they didn't get to farm it until British colonialists returned it to local farmers. He pointed out trees that line the steep hillside, planted by the British.
"It's because of Mzungus that we have charcoal," he said, smiling wryly.
After the last harvest, Kiambaa can't even afford to use Kenya's standard DAP fertilizer, which costs 59 cents per pound. Instead, he has a lone cow tied to a post in his fields.
"This provides the fertilizer we need. We can't afford anything else. The maize yield could have been much better, but we know our plants will grow each year. It is better we keep it the way it is. My family has been on this land for 100 years. We have always survived," he said.
At the National Biosafety Authority (NBA), CEO Willy Tonui claims media hysteria and inaccurate reporting are to blame for resistance to GM technology, arguing the NBA maintains stringent guidelines about GM seeds in Kenya. Referring to the plans to allow GM maize seeds in by 2017, Tonui said, "The National Biosafety Authority does not have the mandate to introduce GM maize or any other crop into Kenya. We only review applications that are submitted to the authority. To date, the authority has not received any application on commercial release of GM maize or any other crop."
Anne Maina, advocacy coordinator for the African Biodiversity Network (ABN), a coalition of 65 Kenyan farming organizations, said that's not a good enough answer.
"Who's controlling the industry?" she asked. "If you are going to talk to the National Biosafety Authority, they'll tell you the information is available, but there is a confidential business information clause where whoever is controlling the industry is not held accountable. The level of secrecy and lack of transparency is unacceptable."
Farmers' Needs
The ABN has actively lobbied the government since 2004 to crack down on GM technology slowly filtering into Kenya, with some measure of success. A 2009 Biosafety Act required all GM imports to pass stringent government standards before entering the country.
Maina recognizes the uphill battle she's facing.
"Our public research institutions must shift their focus back to farmers' needs," she told The Indypendent, "rather than support the agenda of agribusiness, which is to colonize our food and seed chain. We believe that the patenting of seed is deeply unethical and dangerous."
Joan Baxter is a journalist who has spent years reporting on climate change and agriculture in Africa. Reporting now from Sierra Leone, Baxter was quick to point out that even if a farmer chooses not to use GM technology, it won't guarantee crop safety.
"Farmers are always at risk of contamination from GM seeds. That has been shown in North America. The farmers [in Africa] may lose their own seeds, perhaps be given GM seeds for a year or two, then have to purchase them and be stuck in the trap and in debt," she said.
Like Maina, Baxter sees a problem in how GM technology is being marketed, and slowly introduced, into African countries, under the guise of ending famine. With climate change becoming an increasingly influential factor in the GM debate, Baxter said companies claiming to help are only looking for profit.
"Basically this is disaster capitalism. The disaster of hunger and drought, climate change and policy-related, is now a profit opportunity for Monsanto and Syngenta. The Gates Foundation buying shares in Monsanto tells you what the real agenda is: To get GMOs in Africa," she said.
In 2010, NBA's CEO resigned after it was revealed that 280,000 tonnes of GM maize had found its way into Kenya from South Africa through the Port of Mombasa.
Farmers mobilized en masse after the Dreyfus scandal (named for the South African company responsible for shipping the seeds) was revealed, marching on Parliament to demand an end to secret imports. After the most recent GM announcement, however, there were no protests. The long rains that would ensure a good yield haven't come. The drought may continue.
Added to the potential problems with GM technology are health risks-the strains of maize that were illegally imported in 2010 had been deemed unsafe for children and the elderly. Maina also worries about animal feeding trials that showed damage to liver, kidney and pancreas, effects on fertility, and stomach bleeding in livestock that has consumed GM feed. A more recent study carried out on pregnant women in Canada found genetically modified insecticidal proteins in their blood streams and in that of their unborn children, despite assurances from scientists that it wasn't possible.
The political scandal that erupted after 2010's illegal imports brought GM technology into the forefront of Kenyan public debate, but last year's massive drought has shifted public and political discourse. The ABN doesn't have a $47 million grant to keep it going, and the pressures it faces from politicians and corporations, now waging their own propaganda war, are overwhelming.
GM Treadmill
At the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health in Toronto, researchers recently released a report titled "Factors in the adoption and development of agro-biotechnology in sub-Saharan Africa." The report, which was financed by a grant by the Gates Foundation, came to the conclusion that "poor communication is affecting agbiotech adoption," and that "widespread dissemination of information at the grassroots level and can spread misinformation and create extensive public concern and distrust for agbiotech initiatives."
Lead researcher Obidimma Ezezika declined to comment on Monsanto's involvement with GM technology, and denied that his team was creating corporate propaganda.
"I think it is important to actively and soberly engage in the debate by offering facts to the policy makers, media and public on ag-biotech which will dispel fears and anxieties," he told The Indypendent.
The mounting evidence, health questions and political scandals all mean Kenya would be wisest to take a step back before jumping on board the GM train, says Maina.
"Our key concern is that the development of insecticides and pesticides is primarily the emergence of companies getting farmers to buy highly toxic chemicals, which they will become totally dependent on. We don't yet know the extent of the health risks posed, nor how we are expected to trust companies that have a record of putting small farmers out of business. It is time for sober second thought," she said.


MOs have made no impact on food security in South Africa in fourteen years. ACB responds to DA position on GMOs
African Centre for Biosafety, 7 September 2012
On the 5th of September 2012 James Wilmot, Democratic Alliance MP and Shadow Minister of Trade and Industry, issued a press release claiming that poor consumers cannot benefit from the "cost savings offered by GMOs" because genetically modified (GM) foods cannot be labelled. He claimed that labelling could not be implemented without a testing facility and "without an active testing facility, the SABS cannot ensure the safety of GMOs for consumption by the general public. As a result, the Department's interim solution has been to ban a number of GMOs until the testing facility is operational."
The African Centre for Biosafety (ACB), an organisation that has campaigned rigorously on GMO labelling and related issues over the past decade, claims that James is confused. "It is clear that Mr. James does not understand how GMOs are regulated in this country, and has mixed up the functions of the Departments of Trade and Industry and Agriculture. He also does not realise the extent of GMOs in our food system. There is no import ban due to labelling issues; South Africa stopped importing bulk GM shipments from Argentina and Brazil in 2010 when these countries approved GMOs that have not passed through South Africa's biosafety system. Shipments originating from these countries will contain a mix of approved and unapproved GMOs. Under the rules of the United Nations Biosafety Protocol, South Africa may not allow unapproved GMOs into the country".
In addition, Swanby pointed out that the University of the Free State runs a state-of-the-art GMO testing facility and highlighted the fact that "testing facilities do not ensure the safety of GMOs, they test for GM content. There is no independent safety testing done for GMO permit applications anywhere in the world, this is left up to the producers of the technology".
South Africa is the 9th largest producer of GMOs globally and has cultivated, imported and exported GMOs since 1998. About 72% of our maize production is genetically modified and over 90% of soya production is modified. The South African government granted approximately 1200 permits for GMO maize, just in the last three years. Up until 2010 South Africa was a major importer of GM maize, importing over 2 million tons from Argentina in 2007 alone. However, in that year South Africa produced an enormous 4 million ton surplus and has subsequently exported nearly 6 million tons of GM maize.
Since the introduction of GM crops in South Africa, some fourteen years ago, labelling has been a contentious issue. While the food industry has fought labelling tooth and nail, consumers have been campaigning for the "right to know and the right to choose". In October 2011, consumers believed that their wish had been granted - the Consumer Protection Act required that all foods containing 5% or more GM content must be labelled. However, the food industry stalled the implementation of the labelling laws by convincing the Department of Trade and Industry that the law is not clear or implementable. Said Swanby, "They would like GM labels to apply only to living modified organisms, for example GM seeds, but not to products made from GMOs or containing GM ingredients. This robs consumers of their rightful choice, but apparently industry has successfully lobbied the Department of Trade and Industry to protect their interests over that of the public."
The introduction of GMOs into South Africa has profoundly transformed the country's seed sector - South Africa's domestic maize seed market is now dominated by three companies. A proposed merger between DuPont's Pioneer Hi-Bred and South African seed company, Pannar, could very soon reduce the ownership to just two - Monsanto and DuPont. Both of these companies are currently in the National Competition Commission's spot lights. ACB researcher, Mr. Gareth Jones, claims that, "it is these multinational seed companies, together with big agri-business, who are the real beneficiaries of GM seeds. For farmers, the cost of seed as a proportion of production costs has doubled in the last 5 years, while a 5kg bag of maize meal is today 84% more expensive than it was in 2008. Fourteen years of GMOs have not brought down food prices or brought relief to some 20% of the population still without adequate access to food".


udan introduces GM cotton in partnership with Brazil
Fibre2fashion News Desk (India), September 6 2012
Sudan has successfully introduced genetically modified (GM) cotton technology in the country, in partnership with Brazil, the Ministry of Agriculture has announced.
According to the Ministry, cotton is planted this year on 300,000 acres of land in rain-fed areas, and on another 200,000 acres of field under irrigation.
The cultivation of GM cotton has met with success in several areas, especially Rahad and Suki, the Ministry said.
It added that initially the cultivation failed in Gezira Scheme and Halfa regions due to not preparing the land for GM cultivation, which caused the crop to sink during rains. However, the cotton crop has grown again in these regions.
Sudan received good rains and is expecting rich cotton harvest this year.