GMO News From Around the Globe

Victory! Precedent Setting Ruling - GMO Alfalfa Banned

A temporary ban on Monsanto’s GMO alfalfa issued by U.S. District Judge Charles Boyer this past March was just made permanent on a nationwide scale, until “the government can adequately study the crop’s potential impact on organic and conventional varieties.” Organic Valley (and their 975 cooperative farmers) joined the Center for Food Safety in the fight against the sale of Monsanto’s GMO alfalfa seed, stating that alfalfa drift (with a three mile or more pollination radius) threatens the integrity of certified organic alfalfa crops and will in turn severely impact the market. The ruling includes the order to make public the locations of Roundup Ready alfalfa fields. Alfalfa is the country’s third most valuable, and fourth most widely grown crop, with an annual value of $8 billion. Here marks the beginning to a major tipping of the scales. As the food fight rages on, evidence, support, and knowledge mounts on the side of environmental stewardship, economic vigor, and conscious consumerism.

http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/AlfalfaFinalInjPR5_3_07.cfm


Washington State Passes HB 1888, Creates GMO-Free Zones

Biodiesel hype sweeping the nation does not often include information about the serious agricultural issues and implications surrounding the widespread mono-cultivation of GMO biofuel crops. In Washington State however, a new law just passed that addresses these concerns, giving the state’s agriculture industry the power to keep GMO crops away from their fields through a petitioning process with the Washington State Department of Agriculture. The new law, HB 1888, makes it mandatory for GMO growers to enter into highly regulated production agreements in order to keep cross pollination away from the state’s lucrative brassica fields, and is a needed step in the ongoing struggle to protect farmers from GMO contamination.

http://www.gepolicyalliance.org/news.htm#zones


AB 541 Update

Assembly Bill 541, known as the Food and Farm Protection Act, was created by the GE Policy Project, and aims to protect California’s farmers from GE contamination, liability, and financial losses that result from GE contamination. CCOF Executive Director Peggy Miars was one of two to testify at the AB 541 hearing on April 10 in Sacramento, where the bill quickly passed out of the Assembly Judiciary Committee and moved to the Assembly Agriculture Committee on April 25 where Miars again testified. It was then tabled in absence of enough votes to continue moving. AB 541 is still alive and will be heard again in January, 2008. Our deepest thanks to those who worked tirelessly on this bill in addition to CCOF: the Center for Food Safety, Occidental Arts & Ecology Center, Assemblymember Huffman and staff, and many, many more. Learn more at http://www.gepolicyalliance.org.


Venezuela Prohibits GMO Crops, Dumps Monsanto

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias announced that GMO cultivation on Venezuelan soil is now prohibited, terminating a project with Monsanto in the name of food sovereignty and security, which is a requirement outlined in the Venezuelan Constitution. Chaves states that GMO crops are contrary to the interests and needs of their nation’s farmworkers and land, siding with the international peasants’ organization Via Campensina, representing more than 60 million farmers and farmworkers. Chavez plans to strengthen local food production, and thus respect heritage and diversity, while creating a seed bank to maintain indigenous seeds for peasant’s movements around the world.

http://www.grain.org/h/?id=107


UN Pushes GMO Biofuel Crops to “Save the Environment”

The United Nations’ draft report entitled “Mitigation of Climate Change” outlines two highly controversial, environmentally degrading options for saving the planet, which will continue to be strongly opposed by environmental groups around the globe. The first option for saving the world being an increase in nuclear energy, and the other: backing monoculture production of GMO crops to create unsustainable biofuel. Clearing land for biofuel production and increasing pesticide and fertilizer applications causes severe environmental damages that lead to global warming, not combat it, including desertification, topsoil loss, toxic pollution of our air, land, and water, loss of biodiversity, and much, much more.

http://environment.about.com/b/a/256890.htm


Illegal GMO Corn Found in U.S. Shipment to the EU

Samples taken onboard a U.S. shipment found that two different strains of illegal, unauthorized GMO corn, one created by Pioneer and Dow Agrosciences, the other by Monsanto, had contaminated a large shipment en route to the European Union (EU). Marking the fourth time in the past two years that illegal GMO food products have entered the European Market, creating major disruptions in import and export markets, Greenpeace is urging the EU to temporarily suspend all imports of U.S. agricultural produce that could contain traces of unauthorized GMOs. In the EU, concerns for public health and the environment come first, as the EU only allows evaluated and authorized GMO products to enter their markets.

http://www.greenpeace.org/eu-unit/press-centre/press-releases2/new-illegal-gmo-found-in-us-sh


India’s Supreme Court Slammed With Largest GMO Lawsuit on Record

A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) lawsuit is mounting in India, as more than 6.5 million farmers from every state are begging the Supreme Court to let them join the case already filed by the Association of the Rice Millers and Exporters in India against Monsanto and the biotech industry. The farming associations feel that, due to GMO contamination, GMO crops preclude or negate farmer rights to grow non-GMO crops, as well as indigenous people’s community rights. They are demanding that no GMO crops be grown in India, that field trial locations be published, and that deterrent and precautionary measures be put in place to protect farmers from contamination, and the devastating economic losses that result.

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7681


Buying GMO Corn in Iowa Comes With Warning From State

Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey encouraged Iowa farmers planting corn from Syngenta with the “AgriSure RW” trait to fully understand export marketing restrictions before they buy the seed, since the strain has yet to be approved abroad. Northey warns that major market disruptions can and will occur if the AgriSure RW trait contaminates export channels prior to its approval, leading export markets to close. Severe economic losses to growers and lawsuits are the end result of this equation.

http://www.agriculture.state.ia.us/press/press2707.htm


Join the GE Pharmarice Opposition

Groups join The Center for Food Safety in the fight to keep Ventria’s GE pharmaceutical rice, engineered with modified human genes, off of Kansas soil and out of our food supply. After Ventria Biosciences has continually failed to gain FDA approval of its rice-grown drugs since 2003, they are now seeking approval to grow 3,200 acres of the pharmarice near Junction City, Kansas. The USA Rice Federation as well as The Grocery Manufacturers of America and other groups representing the $500 billion food industry joined in by asking the USDA to deny Ventria’s requested permits.

http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/VentriaPR4_24_07.cfm


New England Towns Go GMO Free!

Since 2000, 111 towns and cities in New England have passes resolutions questioning GE food and crops, 22 in Massachusetts (including Boston), 85 in Vermont, 2 in Maine, and 2 in New Hampshire. Community members felt strongly about the need to step up and take action at the local level due to the absence of state and federal regulations addressing their many concerns with this unregulated, unsafe, and unpredictable technology. These types of resolutions are known to influence state policy, and will continue to strengthen the growing opposition to GMOs worldwide.

http://pressroom.nofamass.org/9MassTownsVoteonGE2006


Mexico Starts First GE Maize Trials to “Remain Competitive”

Mexico’s former president was adamant about keeping GMO maize out of their country and thus protecting the cultural heritage of native maize varieties and growers. Unfortunately, the new president of Mexico is not, as Mexico’s maize growers have just signed an agreement with agri-business giant Monsanto to buy and plant GE maize seeds for the first time. Apparently, it was felt that Mexico’s growers were previously being “frozen out,” unable to compete with other nations growing GMO corn.

http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/miami/24289.html