| | 08/August/24
| | EU finds illegal GM rice in Pakistan's organic basmati rice An organic basmati rice consignment sent from Pakistan to Germany has been found by the EU authorities to contain GM rice. No GM rice is authorised for import into the EU. The EU Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) said the consignment had entered Germany via The Netherlands. The contamination was identified by government labs in Germany and Luxembourg as GM 370 rice. Sources cited in the Indian press said the contamination could have happened because of Chinese scientists growing experimental GM rice in Pakistan. This resulted in the import of seeds from China and other countries. An expert on basmati rice commented that GM crops cannot coexist with geographical indication (GI) products like basmati rice. In June 2021 500 tonnes of GM rice from India were found in a consignment in the EU, though it was not organic basmati. And the contamination of US rice with GM LibertyLink rice in 2006 led to damages valued between $741 million and $1.28 million for the US rice industry. The new RASSF alert is here. GMWatch summary of, and comments on, article from BusinessLine (Chennai) via pressreader.com Seed wars: How UK trade deals threaten Global South farmers Since the 1960s, when development programmes started pushing high-yielding crops into developing countries, seed laws have proliferated, granting property rights over seed varieties, usually to governments and corporations. Over time, this system has deemed only commercially developed seeds as legitimate, replacing indigenous varieties and forcing farmers to purchase the seeds they need for their livelihood instead of relying on their own. Over the past 30 years, the evolution of international trade has made it increasingly challenging for countries to avoid ratifying stringent seed laws, as these regulations have become a standard component of commercial treaties. An investigation by British NGO Transform Trade found that the UK has been leveraging trade agreements to enforce strict seed patenting in at least 68 countries in the Global South. According to the report, the UK has signed or ratified 19 trade deals that require or encourage signatory countries to comply with UPOV91, the Convention working on promoting intellectual property rights on plant varieties. While these are intergovernmental deals, they end up directly benefiting agricultural corporations which are selling commercial seeds. Fair Planet Corporate bioinputs: Agribusiness's new toxic trap Until the end of the 1990s, Monsanto mainly focussed on producing and selling chemical pesticides. These kill bugs quickly and indiscriminately, ideal for large, monoculture farms and routine spraying, albeit devastating for biodiversity and human health. Monsanto didn’t care about non-chemical pesticides like those made with the soil microbe Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). So-called biopesticides, are slower acting and suited to smaller-scale production, with farmers monitoring the crops and spraying only when necessary. Though less harmful, biopesticides make much less money for companies, as they usually fall outside the patent industry’s grasp. Monsanto’s interest in Bt was prompted by the advent of genetic engineering. The company realised it could insert genes from Bt into plants, enabling them to produce the toxin non-stop throughout the plant. This could, in effect, turn the biopesticide into something more akin to a chemical pesticide — well suited to industrial monocropping. And, on top of it, Monsanto could patent this genetically engineered Bt and integrate it into its broader strategy of dominating the seed industry. Monsanto, bought by Bayer in 2018, is now one of several pesticide companies aggressively trying to take over the global market for biopesticides. GRAIN Farm state attorneys general target California cancer labels on glyphosate Nebraska's attorney general is taking aim at California’s cancer labelling laws in a dispute over the weedkiller Roundup. Attorney General Mike Hilgers has announced he’s leading a multistate effort in an attempt to standardise pesticide labels, preventing California’s Proposition 65 to require warning labels on certain agricultural chemicals. [GMW: Is Bayer behind this? See our comments.] Fox Nebraska We hope you’ve found this newsletter interesting. Please support our work with a one-off or regular donation. Thank you! __________________________________________________________ Website: http://www.gmwatch.org
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