Crop Life, funded by pesticide firms, lobbies against life-threatening government deregulation plans

Richard Bruce has written to Farming Today (30 Sept 2022) after hearing its report about the Government plans to revoke current pesticide legislation when it removes EU laws from the statute books. This will make our agricultural pesticide regulations even weaker that they are at present.

Former farm manager Richard, who was exposed to and poisoned by pesticides during the course of his work, writes that anyone who believes these regulations protect us is deluded; he has no confidence in the system at all – “Quite the opposite in fact”.

In March this year Corporate Europe and many other media outlets reported on a leaked document from Brussels-based pesticides lobby group CropLife Europe. Though it talks about backing the EU’s Green Deal, it is employing a wide variety of lobbying tactics to undermine ambitious, binding targets.

Corporate Europe uncovers the lobby strategies in a comprehensive report ‘A loud lobby for a silent spring: the pesticide industry’s toxic lobbying tactics against Farm to Fork’. This points out that leading members Bayer, BASF, Corteva and Syngenta are the world’s largest pesticide firms. Although competitors, they collaborate to intensify their efforts, driving and financing the lobbying activity of Crop Life.

Richard Bruce asks: “How can we trust our regulatory system?”

It is influenced by an organisation which approves the chemicals, investigates incidents causing illnesses as a result of exposure to those chemicals and is responsible for enforcing the regulations and prosecuting those who act in breach of those regulations. It has a built-in incentive to protect itself.

Public Medicine (NIH) reports that the World Health Organisation’s Mortality Database estimates about 385 million cases of pesticide poisoning occur annually world-wide including around 11,000 fatalities – and, Richard comments, that does not include cases of long-term illnesses induced by the chemicals.

He warns against believing the claims that using pesticides according to the labels renders the poisons safe – it doesn’t. For many chemicals the available PPE is not as effective as it should be, which is why the HSE recently introduced tighter regulations over the fitting of masks.

 

 

 

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Monsanto set to halt GMO push in Europe

In line with Prem Sikka’s experience that in the digital era it may well be possible to mobilise alternative citizen centres of power . . .

As thousands in Mexico protested against Monsanto by throwing a carnival of corn, and an estimated two million people across 50 countries participated last week in the global March Against Monsanto , Reuters reports that European officials for the St. Louis, Missouri-based Monsanto told the German daily “Taz” that they were no longer doing any lobby work for cultivation in Europe and not seeking any new approvals for genetically modified plants.

“We’ve come to the conclusion that this has no broad acceptance at the moment,” Monsanto Germany spokeswoman, Ursula Lüttmer-Ouazane, told Taz. Monsanto corporate spokesman Thomas Helscher said on Friday that the company is making it clear that it will only pursue market penetration of biotech crops in areas that provide broad support.

“We’re going to sell the GM seeds only where they enjoy broad farmer support, broad political support and a functioning regulatory system,” Helscher told Reuters. “As far as we’re convinced this only applies to a few countries in Europe today, primarily Spain and Portugal.” German protest actions have been well attended- see below:

Russia Today adds:

“A spokeswoman for Monsanto Germany, Ursula Luttmer-Ouazane, admitted that Monsanto recognizes that GMO crops were currently not embraced on the European market. “We’ve understood that such plants don’t have any broad acceptance in European societies,“ Luttmer-Ouazane said. “It is counterproductive to fight against windmills,” she added.

”A spokesperson for the German Ministry of Economy and Technologies described the move as an “entrepreneurial decision” which needed no further comment. The ministry added, however, it has long made its opposition to gene modification technologies known.

“The promises of the GM industry have not come true for European agriculture, nor have they for the agriculture in developing and emerging economies,” the ministry said in a statement.

Austria, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Hungary, Luxembourg and most recently Poland & Italy are among other EU member states enforcing the ban on Monsanto’s MON810 maize and other forms of GMO cultivation in their countries under an environmental protection provision known as the ‘Safeguard Clause’.

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Monsanto’s rivals, such as Bayer CropScience, BASF and Syngenta, had already largely pulled out of the German market because of large-scale public opposition, the German daily reported.

Though GM potato found no buyers, BASF chooses to blame lack of political support for this failure

Dr N. sends the good news that though BASF’s genetically modified potato project gained approval at EU level in 2010, it has been a commercial failure. German chemical firm BASF has announced it is now halting the development of all its GM potato varieties in Europe. The company is also dropping research into GM “nutritionally enhanced corn” in the US.

The Amflora potato did not appeal to European consumers and farmers, according to BASF’s Jennifer Moore-Braun, and were only being grown on a two-hectare site in Germany.

BASF, which had been seeking EU approval for three other GM varieties, is to move its biotech headquarters to America, and has now decided to ‘walk away from Europe’ altogether, according to the BBC’s environment correspondent, Matt McGrath.

Lack of political support – really?

BASF seems unwilling to acknowledge that there is no market for the products. “No-one from the political side supported (Amflora). There were no signals from the European Commission that any change was likely,” Ms Moore-Braun told BBC News.

McGrath adds that the BASF move comes at a time when several recent reports indicate that the new EU health commissioner, Tonio Borg, might seek a freeze on the approval of new GM crops until at least 2014.

At present, any crop approved at EU level can be grown anywhere in the Union unless countries have specific scientific reasons for blocking it. Austria, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Luxembourg and Poland – have used this provision to stop the technology.

However, as Pete Riley from GM Freeze reminds us, the EU Commission continues to be under pressure from the US and the World Trade Organisation to lift the ban on the technology.

 

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 More cheeringly, in an informative press release, he adds: “Conventional plant breeders can now get on with developing conventional potatoes for industrial uses or with blight resistance, for which there is a clear market, as they have for many years”.

 

Environment Minister Owen Paterson said to have believed the “bedtime GM fairytale” told to him by biotechnology corporations – and by MP George Freeman?

Dr Brian John, spokesman for GM-Free Cymru, has reacted to the government’s latest drive for GM crops following a meeting – largely unnoticed by the media – of Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer and BASF with their industry body, the Agricultural Biotechnology Council (ABC), Science Minister David Willetts, Lord Taylor, academics from UK universities, research institutes and representatives of the National Farmers Union (NFU).

The summary of the meeting which was written by the ABC and obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, shows plans to:

• spend more taxpayers’ money on R&D for GM crops and on “education”
• promote GM crops in developing countries
• remove regulatory and political barriers

Earlier this month it was widely reported that Owen Paterson, the Cabinet minister in charge of food and farming, said that genetically modified food should be grown and sold widely in Britain and consumer opposition to the technology is a “complete nonsense”.

GM-Free Cymru catalogues Paterson’s errors and – speaking for the group – Dr John says:

“What we have here is a classic example of a Government minister taking an aggressive stance on something which he knows absolutely nothing about.

“We challenge him, on the basis of hard evidence, on every single point which he makes. GM crops and foods are not wanted and not needed, and they harm both the environment and human health. Mr Paterson should seek better advice in future, or choose his friends more carefully.”

GM Education reports that discussions covered:

• how a pro-GM agenda could be promoted in the UK ;
• the encouragement of UK scientists to call for weaker regulation of GM crops in Europe;
• and developing a more pro-GM approach to science in school curriculum.

MP George Freeman, chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Science and Technology in Agriculture is a supporter of GM technology and caused an outcry when he wrongly described M&S broccoli as having been genetically modified. GeneWatch has found details of GM industry funding for Freeman’s group in the Register of All-Party Groups:

National Farmers Union

Crop Protection Association

National Institute of Agricultural Botany

British Society of Plant Breeders

Agricultural Biotechnology Council,

Agricultural Industries Confederation

Maltsters Association of Great Britain

National Association of British and Irish Millers

Agricultural and Horticultural Development Board

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It is provided via Front Foot Communications Ltd who act as the group’s secretariat. Funders include the Agricultural Biotechnology Council (representing the biggest GM crop companies BASF, Bayer CropScience, Dow AgroSciences, Pioneer (DuPont), Monsanto and Syngenta); the National Farmers Union (NFU), the Crop Protection Association, and the Agricultural Industries Confederation – see page 508.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Science and Technology in Agriculture should  be free of vested interest – honest and impartial.