We consume a fair amount of tea here in the office and this newsbit from Greenpeace East Asia had us a bit worried. “A Greenpeace investigation has found pesticides banned for use on tea in the products marketed by some of China’s top tea companies. Some of the firms, which include China Tea, Tenfu Tea and China Tea King, export tea products to Japan, the US and Europe.”

The link to the full report can be found on the Greenpeace website link below.

Read the full article at Greenpeace…

FrankenThursday is back with this bit from Wired.  The cause of the recent bee colony collapse disorder continues to generate heated debates. And this new study will further ratchet up the discussions as everyone tries to figure out the cause and identify solutions to save our friendly pollinators .

A controversial new study of honeybee deaths has deepened a bitter dispute over whether the developed world’s most popular pesticides are causing an ecological catastrophe.

Researchers led by biologist Chensheng Lu of Harvard University report a direct link between hive health and dietary exposure to imidacloprid, a so-called neonicotinoid pesticide linked to colony collapse disorder, the mysterious and massive die-off of bees across North America and Europe.

Continue reading the Wired article here…

A clearer summary here….

Interesting news about China pushing out new legislations “restricting research, field trials, production, sale, import and export of genetically engineered grain seeds. The draft stipulates that no organization or person can employ unauthorized GE technology in any major food product in China.”

“This is actually a world-first initiative that deals with GE food legislation at state law level,” according to my colleague, Fang Lifeng, a food and agriculture campaigner with Greenpeace.

“There are currently too many loopholes and weak control over GE food and technology in China. This law needs to clarify what ‘relevant laws and regulations’ can be applied to regulate GE crops. We urge legislators to accelerate the legislation of Genetically Engineered Organisms Bio-safety Law, and also to enhance the supervision of GE food and other products. Otherwise, this law will only be paying lip service,” Fang warned.

 The grain law will likely have significant ramifications for China’s rice, the country’s most important staple food. The origins of rice cultivation can be traced to the valleys of the Yangtze River, with some estimates suggesting cultivation began over 7,000 years ago. It dictates the lives of millions of farmers in the Chinese countryside and feeds over a billion Chinese citizens each year. And using experimental GE technology to meddle with such a widely eaten crop could spell disaster – ecologically, financially and for human health.

continue reading here….

Both seminars were received support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China and the provincial government units of Hubei and Sichuan Provinces.

In both seminars, Florante “Nonoy” Villas, AsiaDHRRA’s LSFM regional program manager shared AsiaDHRRA’s experience in anchoring ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community’s participatory process in drafting the 2011-2015 Framework  Action Plan for Rural Development and Poverty Eradication and AsiaDHRRA’s strategies, models and experiences in implementing the Linking Small Farmers to Markets.

IPRCC is an international anti-poverty organization established jointly by the Chinese Government and the United Nations Development Program and other international organizations in June 2005. IPRCC has committed to make contributions to poverty reduction in the world through the promotion of policy research, experience-sharing, knowledge exchange and South-South Cooperation in the field of poverty reduction and development.

IPRCC was established by the Chinese Government to provide a platform for various professionals and development practitioners from different developing countries to share theoretic studies and policy analysis and explore effective approaches for agricultural growth and rural development. It is one of the 5 new measures to assume China’s international responsibilities announced by China’s president Hu Jintao at the High-Level Meeting on Financing for Development, on the occasion of the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations. On June 22, 2004, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao delivered a keynote speech titled Promote Asian Cooperation in New Century at the Third Foreign Ministers’ Meeting of the Asian Cooperation Dialogue held in Qingdao in which he pointed out that strengthening regional cooperation is not only an important part of China’s new-era foreign policy but also the need of its own development.

Download the PDF here….

Articles included:

• Diversity in international biosafety regulation: MacKenzie, R.
• From risks to rights in southern Africa:  Mohamed Katerere, J.
• Bt cotton: benefits for poor farmers?: Glover, D.
• IPRs, biotechnology and development: Yamin, F.
• Regulating biotechnology: Newell, P.
• Corporate dominance and agricultural biotechnology: Glover, D.
• The Chinese biotechnology experience: Keeley, J.
• Biotechnology for Kenya: Odame, H., Kameri-Mbote, P. and Wafula, D.

NEW York: On behalf of 60 family farmers, seed businesses and organic agricultural organizations, the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) filed suit today against Monsanto Company challenging the chemical giant’s patents on genetically modified seed. The organic plaintiffs were forced to sue preemptively to protect themselves from being accused of patent infringement should their crops ever become contaminated by Monsanto’s genetically modified seed.

Monsanto has sued farmers in the United States and Canada, in the past, when their patented genetic material has inadvertently contaminated their crops.

Continue reading about why farmers and seed producers launched preemptive strike against Monsanto…

FrankenThursday’s

Quick facts: The GMMosquitoes were genetically engineered to kill off  Aedes aegypti mosquitoes which spread dengue fever. The Bill & Melissa Gates Foundation is funding this project and Malaysia is set to undergo field trials of these frankencritters this year.

read more about the GMO mosquitos at the ScienceMag….

more info here about the GMMosquito project

The results, presented at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Pittsburgh, show that the vast majority of feral canola plants in the state contain artificial genes that make them resistant to herbicides. Researchers also found two plants that contained traits from multiple genetically modified varieties, suggesting that genetically modified plants are breeding in the wild.

continue reading about “escape” of  Genetically Modified Canola from Farm Fields….

“GMWatch is an independent non-profit making organisation founded in 1998. We seek to counter the enormous corporate political power and propaganda of the biotech industry and its supporters through our website, our lists, our Spinprofiles portal, LobbyWatch, the BanGMFood campaign and our many other outreach and campaigning activities. GMWatch is co-edited by Jonathan Matthews and Claire Robinson. You can find out more about the history of GMWatch here.”

One of the least-reported tragedies that resulted from globalization and corporatization of agriculture is the farmer suicide story of India – a tragedy comprising several hundred thousand individual tragedies, and possibly the ‘largest wave of suicides in history’. Last month UK Independent carried a report titled “1,500 farmers commit mass suicide in India  “, and cited falling water table, crop failure and debt as the reasons. The figure and the reasons are – at best – cruelly watered down versions of hard and sad reality. The actual piece of data is nearer 200,000 and the reasons both global and local.

Magsaysay award winning journalist and author of Everybody Loves a Good Drought, P. Sainath keeps the collective Indian nation’s (and hopefully global) conscience alive by reporting very regularly on the plight of the farmers. As the rural affairs editor of a national newspaper, he bases each of his intricate analysis on hard statistics and highlights the different causes and contrasts that have resulted in the sorry state of affairs (variously called agrarian crisis, rural distress, even Neo-Liberal Terrorism) of these care-takers of the land.

continue reading about How GM Seeds Killed More Indians than World War II….