EU requests Monsanto's GM corn data

[Tinoire]

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

ROME - Agribusiness giant Monsanto has been asked to provide all its research results into a genetically modified (GM) corn that may be a health risk, a leader of the EU's food safety authority (EFSA) said on Monday.



"Monsanto must immediately transmit to EFSA its entire research into (the corn strain) MON 863," said Italy's professor Giorgio Calabrese, an EFSA member, in an interview with the Italian daily La Stampa. Guinea pigs fed on the corn developed serious abnormalities, an internal scientific report at the US-based company found, according to Sunday's edition of the UK newspaper the Independent.

Kidney malformations and changes to blood indicating damage to the immune system were the most worrying aspects of the report.

The company is said to have given only partial results of its tests on MON 863 when first seeking backing for the strain from the EU, Calabrese said.

"It seems the multinational gave its own conclusions to the scientists working on GMOs (genetically modified organisms) for the European Agency," he said.

"European researchers made their own tests and have found results that differ with those put forward by Monsanto," he said.

(snip)

http://www.checkbiotech.org/root/index.cfm?fuseaction=news&doc_id=10402&start=1&control=218&page_start=1&page_nr=101&pg=1

But fear not!!! Monsanto has discounted the EU's concerns as "insignificant". Monsanto assures us that "This is not a health and safety issue," and that the EU's "study reflects only inconsequential differences in kidney size and blood composition in the animals used.

Oh, I see. It's the animals' fault; just like it will be our fault for not having organs made of steel!

[Tinoire]

1. Oh and on a Monsanto sidenote, of special concern to Americans

A growing stake in the biotech crops debate

By HOPE SHAND

CARRBORO -- Goodness grows in North Carolina? Not if the General Assembly approves bills that would pre-empt local regulations on genetically modified crops and trees.

House Bill 671 and Senate Bill 631 aim to prevent towns, counties or cities from passing any ordinance, regulation or resolution to control any kind of plant or plant pest (including invasive plant species). The bills would usurp local control by making the state Department of Agriculture the only body in North Carolina with the authority to regulate plants.


These bills are not a homegrown initiative, but part of a nationwide biotech industry campaign. Similar bills, containing identical language, have cropped up in at least nine other states as part of a campaign by industry to prevent citizen initiatives like those passed in three California counties last year that prohibited cultivation of genetically modified crops.

(snip)

The issue has immediate relevance in Eastern North Carolina, where Ventria Bioscience has a permit to grow an open-air, experimental plot of rice engineered with synthetic human genes (to produce artificial human milk proteins) near the state Agriculture Department's Tidewater Research Station in Plymouth, in Washington County. Two earlier attempts by Ventria to grow its genetically modified "pharma rice" -- a crop that yields drugs for use in human and veterinary medicines -- were opposed by farmers, food companies and environmentalists in California and Missouri because of concerns that the genetically altered pharma rice could cross-pollinate with conventional rice, thus contaminating the food supply.

Last month, California-based Ventria Bioscience requested a permit from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to grow up to 70 acres of pharma rice on two additional plots in Eastern North Carolina. If the pre-emption bills pass, communities would have no authority to regulate genetically modified crops.


(snip)

http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/columns/story/2420322p-8797890c.html


I've been following these criminals for 10 years. Shudder. Shudder because our government, all branches and for the last 16 years, has been pumped up, crawling with Monsanto people.

[kaygore]

2. These are the same guys who poisoned us with Nutrasweet

They are a lying bunch and evil to boot!

[Tinoire]

3. Nutrasweet effects on your health?

Inconsequential


What Monsanto really means to say is that our lives are inconsequential to them.

I am fuming. This is utter madness for corporate greed and domination of the world's food supply to better inslave and keep the world subservient.

[Cha]

4. Thanks, Tinoire..and I think this link

should be spread around that I got from OhioBlues yesterday..


Scroll 1/2 way down to see who is on the mansanto boards and who has received campaign contributions from them..
http://www.organicconsumers.org/monlink.html

Europe is being intelligent about gmo and the US is being their usual Greedy selves.

[gandalf]

5. These corporations seem to be well organised...

Some weeks ago in Germany, the conservative majority in the "Bundesrat", perhaps comparable to the House, blocked a legislative effort that should reduce the danger that GM corn could contaminate nearby fields with non-GM corn. The bill would have required a certain minimum distance between GM and non-GM corn fields.
So, the consequence will be, in some years, the consumer has no choice but to accept GM corn, as it will all be contaminated.

Luckily, the conservatives are bound to win the coming federal elections in fall... Mosanto will be happy.

[Karenina]

6. Kick!

:kick:

[Frederik]

7. You luddite!

Don't you know GM is good for you and all the science says so. lalalalalalalal can't hear you lalalalalalala

:-)

I'm really glad the EU is taking this so seriously. It's a result of popular resistance in Europe to this ghastly technology. I'm still waiting for the result of the WTO dispute over the EU's GMO rules, but I'm sure the panel will find that the Europeans' strict rules are not a breach of WTO trade rules.