A columnist backed by Monsanto
Business Week, January 13, 2006 (USA)

Scripps Howard News Service [has] announced that it's severing its business relationship with columnist Michael Fumento, who's also a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute. In his career at Hudson, Fumento has carved out a specialty debunking critics of the agribusiness and biotechnology industries.
Scripps Howard Editor and General Manager Peter Copeland said Fumento "did not tell SHNS editors, and therefore we did not tell our readers, that in 1999 Hudson received a $60,000 grant from Monsanto." Copeland added: "Our policy is that he should have disclosed that information. We apologize to our readers."
Asked about the payments, Fumento says, "I'm just extremely pro-biotech."
Fumento didn't disclose the payment from Monsanto - a frequent subject of praise in Fumento's opinion columns and a book - BioEvolution - either in the book or in at least eight columns he has written mentioning Monsanto since 1999. He explained that he focused exclusively on Monsanto due to a "lack of space and because their annual report was plopped onto my lap while I was hunting for a column idea." The author says he sees no conflict of interest in his recent columns because the grant came several years ago.
Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/022006/01.html

Lax oversight in tests of [GE] crops
The New York Times, January 3, 2006 (USA)

The Department of Agriculture has failed to regulate field trials of GE crops adequately, raising the risk of unintended environmental consequences, according to a stinging report issued by the department's own Office of Inspector General.
The report found that biotechnology regulators did not always notice violations of their own rules, did not inspect planting sites when they should have and did not assure that the genetically engineered crops were destroyed when the field trial was done. In many cases regulators did not even know the locations of field trials for which they granted permits. The regulatory branch "lacks basic information about the field test sites it approves and is responsible for monitoring, including where and how the crops are being grown, and what becomes of them at the end of the field test." [It] said that weaknesses in regulations and in internal management controls at the Department of Agriculture "increase the risk that GE organisms will inadvertently persist in the environment before they are deemed safe to grow without regulation."
Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/022006/02.html

Farmers benefit little from 'bio-pharming'
The NewStandard, December 12, 2005 (USA)

Small farmers and small Midwestern towns looking to prime the economic pump are unlikely to do so by growing GE crops for use in drug production, despite pharmaceutical marketing claims stating otherwise, an academic study said.
Commissioned by the Union of Concerned Scientists, [it] found that small farmers raising GE crops to be used in drug production, are unlikely to have enough collective or market strength to negotiate effectively with drug-making giants like Merck.
Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/022006/03.html

Farmers want to keep patented seeds
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 7, 2005 (USA)

Farmers, struggling with higher fuel and fertilizer costs, want to save money by keeping Roundup Ready soybeans for their own use and planting them in later years. Monsanto has fought this practice in the courts.
The Illinois Farm Bureau's resolution, approved Monday, reflects the financial pressures on many farmers, who chafe at paying a premium for patented seeds.
Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/022006/04.html

Mali farmers reject GM as attack on way of life
The Independent, January 31, 2006 (Mali)

Farmers in Mali, the fourth poorest country in the world, have told their government they do not want to see genetically modified crops being grown on their land.
During the five-day meeting Africa's first "farmers' jury" heard arguments for and against the introduction of GM technology. [They] said they needed help to continue their existing farming practices, and worried that GM technology would damage their way of life. Birama Kone, a smallholder on the jury, said: "GM crops are associated with the kind of farming that marginalises the mutual help and co-operation among farmers and our social and cultural life."
The development of GM technology in west Africa is backed by USAid, the American development agency, but activists point out that Mali's cotton industry would thrive if the United States stopped subsidising its own 25,000 cotton farmers by $3bn a year.
Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/022006/05.html

Biotech company closes; run[s] out of cash
New York Times, December 24, 2005 (USA)

In a setback for a controversial area of biotechnology, the company that led the way in trying to produce pharmaceuticals in GM crops ran out of money and shut its doors yesterday. Large Scale Biology Corporation said in a statement that all of its approximately 70 employees had been let go. Large Scale was founded in 1987 as Biosource Genetics and was apparently the first company to try to produce protein-based drugs and industrial chemicals in GE plants.
Such production, it argued, would be faster and far less expensive than using GE bacteria or animal cells - the usual method of producing pharmaceutical proteins like insulin.
Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/022006/06.html

Bt cotton fails, AP govt takes on biotech co.
Financial Express, January 9, 2006 (India)

The Andhra Pradesh government has threatened that it would take steps to get licence given to Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech cancelled if the company did not compensate the loss incurred by farmers on account of failure of Bt cotton in the 2004 kharif (summer) season.
The company is obliged to compensate the growers on account of crop failure. As the company did not, the government filed a suit against them in the High Court.
Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/022006/07.html

Swedish farmers reject GMOs
ATL (Translated), January 19, 2006 (Sweden)

Swedish farmers remain solidly opposed to GMOs despite recent moves by major farm cooperatives to introduce GMO feed and GMO crops. In an opinion poll published in the farm journal ATL, 74 % of farmers say they will not consider growing GMOs, while 68 % say they will not use GMO feed. Asked whether they would eat GMO products themselves, 64 % say no. The poll has been repeated a number of times over the past ten years, and acceptance of GMOs has only changed marginally over time.
Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/022006/08.html

Greece extends ban on biotech corn
The Associated Press, January 30, 2006 (EU)

Greece on Monday extended its ban on a variety of GM corn seed developed by the US biotech giant Monsanto, despite an EU order earlier this month for Athens to lift the initial ban.
Deputy Agriculture Minister Alexandros Kondos signed a decision prohibiting the sale in Greece, over the next 18 months, of 31 strains of the MON810 seed type. "This decision has much stronger legal foundations than the earlier one, as it contains new scientific data and findings," the announcement said. The Agriculture Ministry said cultivation of the biotech seeds "poses an immediate threat to the environment," by disturbing biodiversity and spreading genetically modified pollen to traditional corn crops.
Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/022006/09.html

Rein in patents, panel urges
Science, Vol. 310, No. 5752, November 25, 2005 (USA)

It's relatively easy to claim ownership of biological information in the United States - perhaps too easy, says a National Academy of Sciences panel. "[F]uture discoveries in genomics and proteomics that would benefit the public health and wellbeing could be thwarted by an increasingly complex intellectual property regime," the panel warned in a report.
The panel suggests that scientists limit their patent applications to "useful" proteins or nucleic acids. Basic scientists using patented material in their research - known as "experimental use" - should not be liable for patent infringement, said the panel.
Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/022006/10.html

Law for labelling of GM foods in India soon
Sify.com, December 8, 2005 (India)

Consumers will soon be able to know if they are being offered GM food or ingredients and be able to make a choice, whether or not to buy/eat such food.
An expert committee on GM food and ingredients constituted under the chairmanship of the Director-General of Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had made recommendations for mandatory labelling of GM foods.
After considering ICMR's recommendations, the statutory Central Committee for Food Standards has recommended that labelling of all GM foods be made mandatory.
Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/022006/11.html