meanwhile: America's masterplan is to force GM food on the world

[donsu]

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1708781,00.html

The reason the US took Europe to the WTO court was to prise open lucrative markets elsewhere


Just a few years ago, World Trade Organisation officials used to act hurt when described by social activists as irresponsible, secretive bureaucrats who trampled over national sovereignty and placed free trade over the environment or human rights. But that was when the global-trade policeman ruled on disputes that had little bearing on Europeans.

The WTO court's latest ruling will greatly increase the number of people who believe the organisation needs radical reform, if not burial. This week three judges emerged after years of secret deliberation to rule that Europe had imposed a de facto ban on GM food imports between 1999 and 2003, violating WTO rules. The court also ruled that Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and Luxembourg had no legal grounds to impose their own unilateral import bans. "Europe guilty!" shouted the US press. "This is glorious news for the Bush administration," said one blogger.

Actually, the judges said much more, but in true WTO style no one has been allowed to know what. A few bureaucrats in the US, EU, Argentina and Canada have reportedly seen the full 1,045-page report, and an edited summary of some of its conclusions has been leaked. But no one, it seems, will take responsibility for the ruling, which may force the EU to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to compensate some of the world's most heavily subsidised farmers, and could change the laws of at least six countries that have imposed GM bans.

-snip-

Within hours of the WTO decision, José Bové, the French farmer who has led European protests, arrived in New York to give an invited talk to Cornell students about GM food - and was immediately sent back to France by the US government.
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and

http://www.banterminator.org/news_updates/news_updates/un_meeting_undermines_moratorium_on_terminator_goal_to_approve_terminator_is_now_clear


UN Meeting Undermines Moratorium on Terminator: Goal to Approve Terminator is Now Clear



Granada's Grim Sowers Plow up Moratorium on Terminator,Clear the Path for its Approval at UNTerminator Opponents Prepare for Battle at COP8 in Curitiba, Brazil March 20-31, 2006


Indigenous peoples were betrayed and Farmers' Rights trampled at a UN meeting this week when the Australian, New Zealand and Canadian governments - guided by the US government and a brazen cabal of corporate Gene Giants - took a major step to undermine the existing moratorium on Terminator technology (i.e., plants that are genetically modified to produce sterile seeds at harvest). The damaging recommendations from the meeting in Granada, Spain, now go to the upcoming 8th biennial meeting of the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Curitiba, Brazil, March 20-31.

The CBD's "Working Group on Article 8(j)" that met in Granada this week was established to protect the traditional knowledge, innovation and practices of Indigenous peoples and peasant farmers. Civil society groups and Indigenous peoples watched in disbelief however as governments ignored the profoundly negative social, economic and environmental impacts of "suicide seeds" highlighted in numerous CBD studies as well as in official submissions from Indigenous peoples and farmers' organizations. The outcome now threatens biodiversity and the future of seed-saving and locally adapted agriculture worldwide.

"Terminator poses a threat to our welfare and food sovereignty and constitutes a violation of our human right of self-determination," said Mariano Marcos Terena of Brazil on behalf of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity.

Although the meeting "reaffirmed" the fragile UN moratorium on Terminator, new recommendations adopted in Granada now may be used to block the CBD's precautionary approach when governments meet in March in Brazil. Not only did the meeting fail to condemn Terminator as immoral and anti-farmer, Australia and the United States falsely claimed that Terminator, which creates sterility, would "increase productivity."
-snip-
-----------------------------------


I hope to hell people all over the earth are hiding real seeds, etc.


can you imagine an earth where the people have to hide gardens made with real seeds and go to prison if caught?

bushmilhousegang is working to control the earth's resources

tick, tick, tick

[SpiralHawk]

1. To ensure clean food for your family

you may want to look into Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). There are perhaps as many as 2,500 CSA farms in the USA now, and there could be one in every city, suburb, and village of the nation. They not only provide clean food and dignified work, they save member families food money, and they establish environmental oases of tremendous vitality.

More: http://www.chiron-communications.com/farms.html

[Wilms]

2. K&R n/t

[SpiralHawk]

3. "You are what you eat." - Tiny Tim

eom

[Dr. Jones]

4. Fascinating, and scary..

thanks for posting.

Wow, can you imagine a wold where an elite few control the entire world food supply...THEY determine who gets food and who doesn't, and not a damn thing anyone can do about it, because nobody can grow their own food anymore...

Food as a weapon? You bet. God help us.

[JohnyCanuck]

5. And anyone who doesn't agree with this decision

is likely a potential freedom-hating eco-terrorist who should be wiretapped and put on the no fly list for the safety of the more rational members of society (who understand Monsanto and Cargill et al hold in their soul-less, profit-making, corporate hearts only a sincere, altruistic desire to benefit mankind with their terminator seeds and GMO crops).

GM Ban Long Overdue
Dozens Ill & Five Deaths in the Philippines
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho

A fully referenced version of this article is posted on ISIS members' website. Details here

Unexplained sicknesses and deaths

In July 2003, a farmer living in a small village in the south of Mindanao Island of The Philippines, found himself and his entire family suddenly falling ill with fever and respiratory, intestinal and skin ailments. They were not alone; at least fifty-one residents of Sitio Kalyong (Barangay Landan, Polomolok, South Cotabato Province) had similar complaints at around the same time. They all lived within 100 m of a field planted with GM maize, and their illnesses coincided with the GM maize flowering time.

Another resident of Sitio Kalyong, said <1> that the GM-maize pollen made him dizzy, gave him severe headaches, chest pains and caused him to vomit.

The field in Sitio Kalyong belonged to a local official who bought five bags of Monsanto's Bt maize seed (Dekalb818YG with Cry1Ab from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis ), enough to plant 5 hectares. He paid 4 500 pesos per bag, which was more than twice as much as the non-GM variety at 2 200 pesos per bag. The premium price included the promise of a small vehicle if the harvest turned out to be good, as it was supposed to. In the event, the promise was broken on both counts: the harvest of 93 sacks compared poorly with the usual 150 sacks per ha, and the small vehicle was never delivered. The local official stopped planting the Bt maize after 2003.

As part of an investigation to determine what made the villagers ill, one of the farmers was “volunteered” to venture inside the Bt maize field in the presence of more than 10 witnesses, as he explained to me via an interpreter. “Within 5 minutes, I could not breathe and felt something extraordinary on my face,” he recalled. The others could see that his face had swollen up and remarked that it was “very dangerous”.

SNIP

Commenting on some of the evidence presented here, Dr. Michael Antoniou, Reader in Medical and Molecular Genetics at King's College London, had this to say <18>: “ If the kind of detrimental effects seen in animals fed GM food were observed in a clinical setting, the use of the product would have been halted and further research instigated to determine the cause and find possible solutions. However, what we find repeatedly in the case of GM food is that both governments and industry plough on ahead with the development, endorsement and marketing GM foods despite the warnings of potential ill health from animal feeding studies, as if nothing has happened. This is to the point where governments and industry even seem to ignore the results of their own research! There is clearly a need more than ever before for independent research into the potential ill effects of GM food including most importantly extensive animal and human feeding trials.”

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GMBanLongOverdue.php

GM crops are not the answer to pest control

G. V. Ramanjaneyulu
8 February 2006
Source: SciDev.Net

G. V. Ramanjaneyulu argues that insect-resistant crops will eventually require an increased use of pesticides, and that farmers around the developing world will suffer as a result.

Thousands of farmers in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh have committed suicide since the 1990s, and many of these deaths have been blamed on so-called pest disasters. This refers to the way farmers' heavy use of pesticides has led to increased resistance in pests, which in turn has caused substantial crop losses and a slide into crushing debt.

Given this situation, what should be the response to those suggesting that we apply high doses of toxins over extended periods, irrespective of whether the pests are present? After all, this is what supporters of genetically modified (GM) insect-resistant crops are encouraging farmers to do.

We do not have to look far to find well-established and credible alternatives, namely the use of integrated pest management (IPM), or even non-pesticidal management and organic farming.

These strategies are based on the farmers' own knowledge, management skills and labour, rather than external farm inputs. Their demonstrated effectiveness shows that farmers can manage insect pests successfully and affordably without resorting to chemical pesticides — or to insect-resistant GM crops. <1>

The experience of these farmers suggests that widespread use of such GM crops violates the principles of sound pest management.

http://www.scidev.net/content/opinions/eng/gm-crops-are-inoti-the-answer-to-pest-control.cfm

[MadHound]

6. For all of the home gardeners out there

Please, please, start buying, using and saving heirloom seeds. You can find them at the Seed Savers Exchnage, Seed Savers Network, Heirloom Acres Seeds, and many many other places on the Net. Save and cherish these plants, both for your own health, well being and good taste, and for the sake of our entire ecosystem.

And if you're worried about GM crops contaminating your garden, you can indeed pollinate your plants yourself, it is little more that collecting pollen from one plant and shaking/applying it to another. Once a plant is pollinated, it cannot be pollinated by another plant. Thus you will insure a GM free strain.

And if you don't want to garden, please support your local farmers who do practice organic/heirloom farming. We are out there, and we have quality food to offer. Sure, it might be a bit more expensive, but it is food that not only tastes better than what is in the store, but it is also better for you, health and nutrition wise.

[JohnyCanuck]

7. Good advice. n/t

[donsu]

8. kicking cause this is important

and more people should know

[Earth_First]

10. We just started purchasing from SSEX

We are looking very much forward to producing our own produce this year. I am a landscape design install laborer (owner/operator) by trade, and it's almost the next sensible progression. We cannot wait!

[ourbluenation]

9. Not in my county...first in nation to ban them...others should follow

http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/mendocino031104.cfm