| | 27/January/20
| | Environmentalists alarmed as Bayer builds Latin America's largest seed factory in Chile In Chile, the largest seed exporter in the southern hemisphere, Bayer is expanding the GM seed production factories of its subsidiary Monsanto. Camila Olavarría, spokesman for the Paine Defence Committee, which opposes the development of a Bayer seed factory in the rural community of Paine, says, "The largest seed processing plant in Latin America is being built here. There are no studies on its environmental impact. Politicians approved the project without consulting people's opinions." The inhabitants of Paine fear the contamination of local seeds by cross-pollination when pollen from GM plant fields is transported by wind to neighboring fields. This is particularly easy with rapeseed, because its pollen flies up to three kilometers. GMWatch Stakes are high with two Roundup cancer trials starting amid settlement talks Two new Roundup cancer trials – one in California and one in Missouri – are now in the process of selecting juries. The Missouri trial is taking place in St Louis, Monsanto’s former home town. The judge in that case is allowing testimony to be televised and broadcast by Courtroom View Network. At the same time, talks to secure a settlement of the US lawsuits are reportedly nearing completion. US Right to Know GM in India: Faking it on the Astroturf India’s intelligence agencies are investigating the role of a global investment company and international seed companies in supporting farmers organisation Shetkari Sanghatana (SS) in the distribution of illegally procured GM herbicide tolerant cotton seeds. The term ‘astroturfing’ is the process by which orchestrated public relations campaigns are presented as emanating from grassroots participants rather than powerful corporate interests. Mark Lynas, an industry lobbyist, has portrayed the illegal planting of GM seeds as “Gandhi-style civil disobedience”. This attention-grabbing campaign was being led by SS, which Lynas described as “very grass roots”. But Jonathan Matthews of GMWatch has written that SS is not a mass movement of grassroots farmers but an allegedly well-funded fringe group created by the late Sharad Joshi, a right-wing economist and member of the Advisory Board of the Monsanto-backed World Agricultural Forum, an organisation whose founder and first chairman was for many years Monsanto’s director of public policy. Counterpunch The flawed spin to India’s cotton story Contrary to the claims of GMO proponents, India's cotton productivity using GM Bt seed is low compared with other countries and resource-poor farmers have been hurt, writes Imran Siddiqi, an emeritus scientist at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad. He writes, "In the case of Bt cotton hybrids, the benefits were limited and costs may well have been too high, particularly for resource-poor farmers." The Hindu DONATE TO GMWATCH __________________________________________________________ Website: http://www.gmwatch.org
Profiles: http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/GM_Watch:_Portal
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GMWatch
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/GMWatch/276951472985?ref=nf |
|
