H. Paul & et al. Report for Bonn Climate Talks, June 2009.

Industrial agriculture clearly causes climate change. But can changes in agriculture also help to mitigate the problems of climate change? Would carbon credits for agriculture promote such changes?

tweets

24 June 2009

ifrik: detailed maps on GM cultivation in Germany and the EU: http://www.risikoregister.de

11 June 2009

ifrik: Once again EFSA considers antibiotica resistance and GM potato Amflora as safe. Anybody surprised? http://tiny.cc/yDiWD

11 June 2009

ifrik: Dutch school makes GM bacteria from a lab-kit from BIO-RAD and doesn't even bother with a permit for GMOs. http://tiny.cc/AjprS

blog

13 May 2009

For the third time the EU Commission handed the Amflora dossier back to the EFSA in 2008. This time not only the GMO panel but also the Biohazard panel are asked about their opinion. And after months EFSA announced that they would need more time to come to a conclusion because two of their experts have a different opinion then the rest.
Somehow that shouldn't really surprise anybody. "Risk assessment" is not a hard science but - as the term says - an assessment without strict tick boxes to decide what's safe or not. And over the years scientists came to different assessment of using the antibiotic marker gene nptII in GM crops in general and in the GM potato Amflora.
BASF considered it safe, so did the EFSA GMO panel, while experts in some EU member states did not. In 2007, EMEA concluded that assumptions of the GMO panel on how the antibiotics in question were used were wrong.
What should surprise however, is that after years of giving scientific opinions, the EFSA has apparently no mechanism to allow for different opinions in its panels.

22 April 2009

Germany's brief ban on the sale of MON810 seed in 2007 over an unsufficient monitoring plan, and the current ban on sale and cultivation has lead to some quite interesting official papers.
The notification from 2007 details a number of issues that should be considered in a monitoring plan, and the new notification from 2009 gives several pages of what the German authorities consider as new scientific evidence that makes it necessary to act according to the Precautionary Principle and evoke the German and EU saufguard clauses.
The paper refers to Bt expostion, ecotoxicological effects on moths and butterflies (lepidoptera), beetles (coleoptera), soil and water organisms, the specific issues of endangered species or species in nature protection areas. The BVL, the competent authority also had to conclude that the cultivation of MON810 was so "marginal" in Germany (on an expected acreage of 2700 ha), that the ban would not be financial problem for Monsanto.
A stark contrast to this paper however is Monsanto's monitoring report for the growing season 2008. It's not only a far cry from the detailed list of issues that the BVL was forced to consider relevant in May 2007, it doesn't even give information of whether any of the data taken from other environmental monitoring projects had any geographical relation to the MON810 fields.

14 April 2009

Today the German minister for Agriculture Aigner announced that she would use the safety clauses in Article 20(3) of the German law on genetic engineering as well as Article 23 of the EU Directive 2001/18 on Deliberate Release to stop the cultivation of Monsanto's GM maize MON810.
In a press conference she stated: "The cultivation of MON810 is thereby forbidden." The assessment of the different authorities gave no consistent opinion on environmental effects of MON810.
In the last weeks NGOs like Campact in Germany have been working hard to provide the information and facts needed to support a MON810 ban. One of the studies playing a role was a report about the (financial) damage caused by agro-biotechnolgy that Christoph Then and me wrote for the Federation of the Organic Food Producers (BÖWL).

5 April 2009
ABS, CBD

A number of Civil Society Organizations are currently in Paris at the 7th Meeting of the Working Group on Access and Benefit Sharing, to "witness the negotiations and to name - and if necessary to shame - governments who continue to obstruct the negotiations and violate their responsibilities under the CBD. "
As they state in their Call: "Half a generation of postponing the implementation of one of the three objectives of the CBD has served the spread of organized biopiracy. There is no excuse for further delays. The negotiations now are neither about gap analysis, nor about studies, but about political will and countries’ positions."
They have also written up some very useful background papers on Scope and definitions as a key issue for the fate of fair and equitable benefit-sharing and on Suggestions to ensure the enforcement of provider rights.

3 April 2009

Middle of April is the deadline: that's when the maize will be sown in Germany, and according to the public register about 3700 hectare will be sown with the GM maize MON810. And the call to agricultural minister Aigner to stop the cultivation is getting louder and louder, especially after the EU environmental ministers - and among them the German minister Gabriel - confirmed the Austrian and Hungarian ban of MON810 in 2 March 2009.
Campact, an environmental NGO, has been following Aigner around for days now to raise the issue. They also got a petition online, but unfortunately that only works for Germany addresses. After Aigner replied at some stage, asking for help in bringing the scientific evidence about MON810, Campact, BUND and BÖWL published another report why it is possible and necessary to stop its cultivation.
Meanwhile Monsanto has finally submitted its MON810 monitoring report for 2008: 31 pages in English that apparently only summarize already existing reports, but doesn't give any information that has anything to do with the actual fields on which MON810 was grown in 2008.

reports & articles

Ch. Then& A. Lorch, study for the BÖLW, March 2009.

Using agro-biotechnology causes high costs for the whole food production chain: through higher seed prices, methods to avoid resistance development, separation production chains and analyses. In additions there are damages of several billion US dollars in maize and rice production caused by contamination with non-approved gene constructs. Small as they are, financial gains of GM crops can only achieved over short periods.
This study provides information from a survey among German food producers and retailers as well as details of costs and damages caused by a number of contamination cases.

Christoph Then & Antje Lorch. Study for Hiltrud Breyer (MEP) Bündnis 90/Die Grnen. December 2008.

An assessment of statements and decisions by the EU Commission shows that the EU Commission repeatedly points to the independence of the EFSA instead of taking up the responsibility to assess and control the work of the EFSA. So far the Commission usually hides behind the EFSA opinions and in practice even leaves the power to take decisions to the EFSA even though this is in contradiction to the EU regulation. In other cases however, like the cultivation of Bt11, 1507 maize and Amflora, at least some parts of the EU Commission disagree with the EFSA opinion.

A. Lorch, Conference proceedings from Implications of GM-Crop Cultivation at Large Spatial Scales (GMLS), April 2008.

A growing demand for fuel is likely to lead to the development of genetically modified (GM) crops that can be used as commodities for agrofuels. Market pressure could lead to an acceptance of lower regulatory standards for their risk assessment and conditions for cultivation. Contamination of food and feed crops with non-edible GM agrofuel crops can threaten food safety and food security. Simulations therefore must not only focus on percentages of GM contamination, but have to take other aspect of cultivating non-food/feed GM crops into account.

R.A. Steinbrecher with A. Lorch; Federation of German Scientists, May 2008

This report by Ricarda Steinbrecher (German Federation of Scientists, VDW and Econexus) with Antje Lorch provides an overview of risk assessment and risk management issues of genetically engineered trees. It was prepared for the Ninth Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biodiversity (COP9) in Bonn, May 2008.

A study about who has contacts with whom in the development, risk assessment and approval of GM crops in Germany shows that many of the persons involved have far reaching contacts, including numerous contacts to lobby organisations and industry.

A. Lorch, GID 182, June 2007.

Since it became common knowledge that fossil oil supplies won't stretch endlessly, a hectic search started for other sources of oil. Especially the debate about so-called 'biofuels' or 'agrofuels' was high on the agenda in the last months, even though problems become obvious. GM agrofuels will also bring their own problems.

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