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News :: Globalization |
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Activists Converge In Sacramento Vs WTO And GMO's |
Current rating: 0 |
by charles amsellem
Email: blackreb (nospam) earthlink.net (unverified!) |
20 Jun 2003
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cartoon c 2003 by charles amsellem. all rights reserved. activists may reproduce for non profit use |
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ATTENTION ACTIVISTS! STOP The WTO and the Anti-Life Practices and Polices of Agribusiness
European officials are resisting the insane policies of american agribusiness and the Bush administration is calling their refusal to admit genetically modified foods into their countries illegal. This development in association with protests could spell the end for the WTO! Converge on Sacramento and let your voice be heard. On June 22-25, Sacramento is an important destination for anyone concerned about genetically engineered foods, the rights of small farmers, and the environment and agricultural biotech companies controlling the world's food supply. This meeting will be a stepping stone to the September WTO Ministerial in Cancun and the Summit of the Americas on FTAA scheduled for Miami in November.
Indymedia networks are all over this event. Check out these sites for comprehensive background data, organizing/transportation/housing info, and relevent links:
San Fransisco
Portland has extensive coverage (great job yet again portland imc!)
Santa Cruz
San Diego
Seattle
For up to the minute reports, please consider these sources:
The reporting number for Sacramento is 916-470-6961. To give live, up-to-the-minute updates for IMC volunteers post to the newly created Indymedia Biotech
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BIOTECH INDYMEDIA Site Is LIVE!
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Africans Challenge Bush Claim That GM Food Good For Them |
by Katrin Dauenhauer
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
21 Jun 2003
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WASHINGTON - As the transatlantic dispute over the future of genetically modified (GM) food heats up, African activists say it is time to publicly challenge the image that the Bush administration is presenting on the issue.
Washington, they say, is not entitled to speak on behalf of African states on the matter.
”How can one country decide for another country without taking into account the opinion of the other country's people?” Amadou C. Kanoute, regional director of the African office of Consumers International said at a conference here Tuesday organized by Public Citizen.
”Genetic Engineering (GE) will not solve the problem of hunger,” he added.
In filing a formal complaint last month with the World Trade Organization (WTO) against the European Union (EU) for banning GM products, U.S. officials said they were protecting the interests of Africans suffering from hunger, who could be fed with GM food.
But the real reason for their claim is the oversupply of GM crops and the fact that the United States grows two-thirds of the world's GM crops, and views Africa as a potential market for them, said Kanoute.
Instead of alleviating hunger, he added, GM crops pose potential dangers--a view that is also supported by a number of other African activists and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
GM opponents fear that the technology, which manipulates the genetic code of the seed to give it desired characteristics--such as faster growing times or resistance to pests--will destroy the model of production and consumption that sustains more than 70 percent of the farmers in Africa. GM technology, they say, promotes monoculture and seeks to eliminate all possible competition from non-GM crops.
According to Public Citizen, African countries on their own sought global regulations on GM products, not, as the administration stated, under pressure from European countries.
”The Bush administration is not straightforward. It is not poverty in Africa that is the most important issue for the administration but business considerations on behalf of the U.S. technology and agricultural sector,” Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's global trade watch said Tuesday.
”We do not believe that agro-companies or gene technologies will help our farmers to produce the food that is needed in the 21st century,'' said the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference in a statement. ''On the contrary, we think it will destroy the diversity, the local knowledge and the sustainable agricultural systems that our farmers have developed for millennia and that it will thus undermine our capacity to feed ourselves.”
The issue will make headlines again next week when ministers of trade, agriculture and environment from 180 nations are expected to meet in California, at a summit hosted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department.
Critics predict the Bush administration and multi-national agri-businesses will use the summit to press African governments for rapid adoption of GM technology.
Controversy over GM crops arose in 2000 and spiked in 2002 when several South African countries refused GM food aid during a food crisis. Faced with a situation where many people could starve, several countries--including Mozambique and Zimbabwe--accepted only milled GM corn, to prevent the use of GMOs (GM organisms) as seeds.
Only Zambia, citing health concerns, rejected GM corn in both grain and milled forms. One year later, President Levy Mwanawasa announced last week that this year Zambia will nearly double the 600,000 tons of grain it harvested last season, providing new fuel to the argument that GM technology is not necessary for reducing hunger in Africa.
Some 35 countries, including EU member states, Australia, Japan, China, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, accounting for up to one-half of the world's population, now refuse to use GM technology.
Copyright © 2003 IPS
http://www.ips.org |
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The Killer Tomatoes Head For California Crop Summit |
by Duncan Campbell
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
21 Jun 2003
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Anti-globalization and environmental protesters are planning to converge on the Californian state capital, Sacramento, at the weekend to demonstrate against a conference run and funded by the US government on genetically modified food.
Protesters claim that the conference is a desperate attempt to save the embattled GM food industry.
The conference theme is the broadening of "knowledge and understanding of agricultural science and technology ... to raise agricultural productivity, alleviate hunger and famine and improve nutrition".
More than 120 ministers, some senior, from 75 countries including Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Israel, Mexico, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, Uganda and Venezuela are to attend. It is backed by the US state department, the department of agriculture and the agency for international development (USAid).
Some 130 groups are mobilizing, mainly to protest against what they see as the conference's hidden agenda.
"The largely US-based bio-technology industry is in crisis," said Peter Rosset, co-director of Food First, the Institute for Food and Development Policy, a thinktank based in Oakland, California. "This conference is a desperate attempt, at the taxpayers' expense, to prop up a failing industry. The whole conference is pitched at developing countries."
Mr Rosset said that, with suspicion growing about GM food around the world, the US government had decided to bail out the industry. He said every country, with the exception of those deemed to be in the "axis of evil", had been invited. Fares for two senior ministers from each country were being paid by the US, he said. Significantly, western European countries were not attending.
Accusing the US of "trying to hijack a UN-sponsored multilateral process", Mr Rosset suggested that American taxpayers were effectively sponsoring "some of the richest companies on earth in a trade fair".
Apart from the £1.8m cost of the conference, £600,000 is being allocated for security to combat wide-ranging plans for non-violent protest.
One group planning to demonstrate is The Killer Tomatoes. Member Mary Bull said yesterday: "The United States is trying to coerce poor African nations into taking [GM foods]. It is a really significant conference from that point of view and we have to show that food can be distributed in a just and equitable way and not in the form of corporate-controlled and pesticide-driven agriculture."
She added: "Knowing the Sacramento police, I'm sure there's going to be lots and lots of arrests."
The US department of agriculture did not respond to questions about the claims by Food First and other groups, but it has argued in the past that GM foods can help alleviate hunger at a time when some 600 million people worldwide are malnourished.
David Hegwood, counsel to the agriculture secretary, has criticized western European countries for their current moratorium on GM foods: "The fear of Europe is keeping food out of the mouths of hungry people in Africa."
Proposed GM innovations likely to be discussed at the conference include fruit and vegetables aimed at stimulating the immune system and rice that would contain extra iron and vitamins. Such foods are an estimated five years away from being available commercially.
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/ |
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