Trees, GE Trees & Nature to Save Capitalism from Itself: New Report

The Campaign to STOP GE Trees

July 18, 2019

Raleigh exhibit depicts gasoline from genetically engineered trees. photo: Langelle/GJEP

Trees to Solve the World’s Problems?

From Genetically Engineered Trees for the Bioeconomy – to the Trillion Tree Proposal and Business for Nature

Traducción al Español

Tradução para o Português

By Anne Petermann and Orin Langelle, Global Justice Ecology Project

 

This report examines events and research publicized between 23 June and 4 July 2019 that discuss the mass-use of trees to enable the unsustainable lifestyles of the world’s top 1% in the face of looming ecological catastrophe: from trees genetically engineered to feed the “green” manufacture of energy, plastics and chemicals; the planting of trillions of trees to reduce global atmospheric carbon levels; and “reforms” to the economic system to allow future profit-making under the guise of biodiversity protection.

The three events where these proposals were brought out were the International Union of Forest Research Organization’s 2019 Tree Biotechnology Conference 23-29 June at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, The Global Tree Restoration Potential, a new study published on 4 July in Science, and the launch of Business for Nature initiatives in China and Norway on 2 July.

 

IUFRO Tree Biotechnology Conference

The International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) held its biennial 2019 Tree Biotechnology Conference over 23-29 June at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. This was the first Tree Biotechnology Conference held by IUFRO since June 2017 when their conference in Concepción, Chile was met with days of protests and disruptions by Mapuche activists, students and others. The 2019 Tree Biotech conference was originally announced to take place in Curitiba, Brazil. It appears that the conference was suddenly moved to Raleigh, North Carolina because of the protests at the last Tree Biotech conference in Chile and the fact that Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), has a long history of being militantly anti-GE tree. [1] NC State was likely chosen as it is the hub for many different efforts pursuing and promoting GE trees, including use of gene-editing on trees, and researching new ways to sell GE trees to a resistant public–a major theme of this year’s Tree Biotechnology Conference.

The effects of the 2017 protests could be felt at this year’s Tree Biotechnology Conference, which included constant police presence both inside and outside of the venue, pleas to attendees to consider taking over the top three leadership roles in the event, and confusion as to when or where the next conference might take place, and even whether to continue to use the controversial term “biotechnology.” The lack of public presence by some of the most outspoken leaders in the tree biotechnology field and leading GE tree company ArborGen, further underscored the anxiety of the event.

While the future of the Tree Biotech Conferences is uncertain, what was not at question was the desire by industry to use specially designed GE trees as a feedstock for the future “bioeconomy”, which was addressed in a closing series of presentations. Unlocking the sugars in trees, necessary to transform them into fuels, plastics, chemicals and other products, however, has proven a major challenge. This was reflected in the rising emphasis at the 2019 conference on the genetic engineering technique known as CRISPR. The ecological and social implications of the massive increase in demand for wood to fuel this “bioeconomy” or the risks associated with the GE trees involved, were not addressed.

Rodolphe Barrangou presents on CRISPR Photo:Langelle/GJEP

Rodolphe Barrangou, NC State professor and editor of The CRISPR Journal gave the opening keynote for the IUFRO Tree Biotechnology Conference, highlighting his personal efforts to bring CRISPR and other gene editing techniques into the forestry sector. He referred to human history as “BC” – Before CRISPR” vs “AD – after the death of the other recombinant technologies.” He also pointed out that “the [CRISPR commercialization] bottleneck [is] acceptance by regulators and society.”

To solve this problem, he envisioned a CRISPR gene editing process that would achieve a “non-transgenic…non-GMO [regulatory] approval.” Barrangou feared that if people understood that CRISPR is still genetic engineering, it would be the downfall of CRISPR’s commercial success—and make it harder for his new CRISPR startup focusing on developing CRISPR for forest trees to become profitable.

CRISPR would use artificial intelligence and machine learning in forest trees, he explained, to predict what genomes, sequences and pathways to “knock out, turn on, turn off,” in order to find the relevant traits of interest to industry. He did, however, admit that CRISPR scientists are “nowhere near understanding tree genomics as well as we understand human genomics due to the fact that tree genomes are so much bigger and more complex.”

But the excitement around CRISPR as a new tool to genetically engineer trees was evident at the conference, which included several other presentations on CRISPR in trees, including use of CRISPR to modify tree branching in order to grow trees much more densely in plantations. If implemented, this would have serious repercussions for communities and biodiversity near the plantations, as the existing problems with forced displacements, fresh water loss and inundation with agrotoxins like fertilizers and pesticides would be greatly exacerbated.

This lack of concern about the larger implications and risks of GE trees by researchers has led to decades of global opposition, a fact which was discussed during a lengthy panel session on “Societal Acceptance of Forest Biotechnology.” The session was focused on ways to encourage the public to accept GE trees. It opened with a presentation by Jared Westbrook, Director of Science of the American Chestnut Foundation, on using GE to restore the American chestnut—documented as being a “test case” to make GE trees more palatable to the public. The session was focused on ways to encourage the public to accept GE trees. It opened with a presentation by Jared Westbrook, Director of Science of the American Chestnut Foundation, on using GE to restore the American chestnut—documented as being a “test case” to make GE trees more palatable to the public. The second presentation in the session discussed the findings of a survey by Mark Needham conducted to see how to convince the public of the benefits of using GE trees in forest restoration schemes, especially the GE American chestnut. The panel discussion that followed included participation by Westbrook, Needham, GE tree pioneer Ron Sederoff and a representative from GE tree company FuturaGene. The conversation among the panelists and the audience was very candid about the worries around public opinion, the potential for increased regulations on CRISPR, and the ban on GE trees by the Forest Stewardship Council.

The general malaise of the conference continued at its closing dinner, normally a gala celebration, which was without enthusiasm and repeated the pleas for willing volunteers to take over the organizing of future activities.

 

Trillion Tree Planting Proposal

Less than one week after the close of the IUFRO Tree Biotech Conference, a study was published in Science titled The Global Tree Restoration Potential, projecting the ability to mitigate climate change by the mass-planting of trillions of trees across the globe. [2]

The study, developed by Crowther Labs and ETH Zürich, with the help of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, was hailed as a miracle cure for climate change—the surefire solution to allow dominant culture to continue uninterrupted by ecological collapse. The study, however, is fraught with unanswered questions and serious red flags. One major flag is the study’s reliance on the UN FAO’s definition of forests, which is any area 10% covered by trees, and does not exclude monoculture tree plantations–despite repeated calls by forest protection groups to do so. According to the World Rainforest Movement, the FAO definition “discards other life-forms as well as the biological and cultural diversity that define a forest while ignoring the social and environmental impacts of plantations.” [3]

What this means is that the trillion trees being promoted could easily include vast monocultures of non-native trees, or even GE trees, due to the FAO’s intentionally overbroad definition of forests. [4] This fact is confirmed by a decision made at the 2003 UN Climate Conference in Milan that GE trees could be used in forest carbon plantations.

Another serious flag is the involvement in this study of researchers linked to the UN’s program to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). [5] The REDD program has been actively opposed by Indigenous Peoples and forest dependent communities since its inception. REDD schemes take over forested lands to “protect” (and sell) the carbon they store—and have resulted in the forced displacement of communities that live in those forests. [6]

Because the trillion tree proposal repeatedly refers to generating tree cover “in the absence of”, or “with minimal” human activity on 1.7 billion hectares, it could easily result in mass-displacements of rural, poor and Indigenous communities from those lands.

An additional problem with the study comes from its math. The authors admit that the 300 gigatons of carbon projected to be stored by these trillion trees will not be realized until the trees are mature, which could take decades. [7] Meanwhile 10Gt of C02 are being emitted annually. [8] Particularly in boreal forest zones, a major emphasis of the study, trees grow very, very slowly. Add to this the study’s lack of interest in the increasing rate of destruction of existing critical forests that is occurring—such as the 88% rise in deforestation rates in Brazil’s Amazon over the past year [9] –and it reads more like a fairy tale than a serious recommendation for mitigating climate change.

 

Trees as the Engine for a Green Future of Consumption

While seemingly at odds, both the Crowther Lab study on vastly expanding global tree cover to store carbon, and the proposal by GE tree researchers to vastly increase demand for trees by genetically engineering them to replace fossil fuels for the industrial production of everything from electricity to plastics, fall in the same false worldview where the mass-use of trees becomes the path to a “clean, green future”. Both are, at their essence, cynical and opportunistic schemes to avoid real, fundamental social, economic and political change in order to enable overconsumption as usual in the face of overwhelming evidence that rapid and fundamental changes at all levels of society must be undertaken—a call that has been taken up by the National Academies of Sciences [10] and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. [11]

 

Business for Nature?

Along with these false solutions to climate change emerged another subterfuge to use forests and the natural world to accelerate profit-making under a “clean, green” veneer. On 2 July, a Business for Nature scheme was announced simultaneously at a World Economic Forum meeting in China and Norway’s Trondheim Conference on Biodiversity.

The idea is not new. In 2008 in Bonn, Germany, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) launched its own Business and Biodiversity Initiative that included models for marketing environmental services, the Business and Biodiversity Offsets Programme (BBOP), The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), and a new Green Development Mechanism. [12]

The Business for Nature initiative, however, is renewing the scheme using the urgency of ecological crises, as evidenced by its website headline Nature Loss is Threatening Our Economies–Urgent Actions and Collaborations are Needed. [13]

The opening of the site lists statistics on the “massive loss of nature” while studiously avoiding any indication as to the causes, which have been driven by the very belief underpinning the initiative, that humans are somehow separate from “nature.” The site highlights the Global Risk Report which “identified environmental risks as among the greatest systemic risks to our global economy,” adding that “only nuclear war would be more destructive.”

In the twisted logic of the Business for Nature scheme, “nature protection” is unironically promoted as “essential for prosperous business,” including the activities that have led us to this ecological crisis–i.e. ongoing natural resource extraction.

The grand finale of their proposal highlights the “significant opportunities” (massive profits) to be made from protecting the “ecosystem services” of nature:

“$2 trillion in opportunities in food and land system transformation alone

$22.6 trillion opportunity for water infrastructure by 2050

THE OCEAN ECONOMY ESTIMATED TO BE WORTH $2.5 TRILLION PER ANNUM”

In its pledge to forests, it touts a massive ‘reforestation’ campaign, along with a commitment to REDD, and the “elimination of deforestation by 2030” which would magically be achieved with no plan to reduce demand for wood products.

In fact, the future of “green business,” fueled by a bioeconomy, requires a huge increase in wood consumption.

 

CRISPR to Manufacture the Perfect (Unregulated) GE Tree?

And this is where the Tree Biotechnology Conference, The Global Tree Restoration Potential and Business for Nature may overlap is through the genetic engineering technology known as CRISPR. [14]

The overall impression from the IUFRO Tree Biotechnology Conference was that scientists and industry are banking on emerging technologies like CRISPR and a rising demand for wood products and designer GE trees to meet the future market for forest health, climate mitigation and the bioeconomy.

Would CRISPR be used as part of the trillion tree effort? Will it be used to genetically engineer trees to be specially adapted to particular biomes? Or to withstand climate change, insect attacks, or other stresses?

There are uncomfortable connections between the work to create genetically engineered CRISPR trees and the Trillion Tree study. ETH Zürich in Switzerland, home of the Crowther Lab that led the study, for example, is considered one of the best biotechnology schools in Europe. In March it awarded the Richard R. Ernst Gold Medal to Emmanuelle Charpentier, one of the scientists who discovered the CRISPR gene editing tool, and sits on the Editorial Board of The CRISPR Journal with Barrangou. And Crowther likes to boast that his lab includes experts in geospacial mapping, remote sensing and genetic techniques. It is easy to see where genetically engineered CRISPR trees could fit into the scheme to cover the planet in carbon sucking GE trees that could be then cut down and pulped, chipped or digested into sugars to feed the insatiable and unsustainable demand for building materials, energies, plastics, etc. The demand which has fed the global economy and has helped lead us to the brink of disaster.

 

Except for the European Regulation on Gene Editing

During the IUFRO Tree Biotechnology Conference panel on societal acceptance of GE trees, researcher Wout Boerjan, of the Ghent Institute in Belgium, a long-time campaigner for the deregulation of GE trees, discussed his fears about the EU decision to treat gene edited trees and other organisms the same as other GMOs. “If gene editing falls under the GM regulation, many new companies will not start. There are many new ideas based on CRISPR/CAS and they can only develop into a company if it’s not going to be so expensive to bring these products on the market. So, if you have a new edited plant and you need to go through the regulatory system, which is extremely expensive, these small companies cannot afford it and the product will not come to the market, so the whole innovation in Europe will just fall flat.” [15].

Miron Abramson, of GE tree company FuturaGene, responded that he was less concerned about gene editing perceived as GMO, “So we will treat it as GE and I don’t see any disadvantage or advantage in this case, but just another tool.”

 

A Voice of Experience Offers a Word of Caution

But the Tree Biotechnology conference was not without its cautionary voices. On the societal acceptance panel, Professor Ron Sederoff, considered the father of tree biotechnology, remarked that, “There are people who are kept up at night worrying about this technology and I might be one of them. One opponent of GE technology, David Suzuki, makes an argument that is widely considered that science shouldn’t be trusted with new technology. That science does things that are inherently dangerous and we don’t know what to expect, and I think that’s the core of his argument. But I agree that that’s right. There are people who simply have a fear of new technology, and I think they have a good reason. Looking back on human history, there has been misuse of every major technology that has been invented…We haven’t even thought about the potential for the misuse of the technology that we’re talking about. But I think it’s there…I think that there are worries, and I think that CRISPR, for example, poses a threat because it makes things [that exist outside of the law] and if you could do anything you want to and you were malevolently inclined, you might be able to take pathogens that affect people or ecology or forests and [use CRISPR to combine their traits] and make new things. I think there are things to worry about.” [16]

 

Transformation not Reformation: Join the Resurgence!

Global Justice Ecology Project (globaljusticeecology.org), coordinating body of the international Campaign to STOP Genetically Engineered Trees, (stopgetrees.org) is issuing this report and critique of the 2019 IUFRO Tree Biotechnology Conference, the Trillion Tree Campaign and Business for Natureinitiative because of our commitment to expose ecologically and socially destructive false solutions that enable business as usual. This is a step in our work to help create a movement that can fundamentally transform political, social and economic systems in order to address the multiple ecological crises threatening the future survival of humans and millions of other species.

For this reason, we are also co-organizing The Resurgence: 2019 North American Forest & Climate Movement Convergence, 11-14 October in the Shawnee National Forest of Southern Illinois. This strategic action session, open to forest and climate activists, organizers and others is aimed at uncovering root causes of the ecological crises we face and developing new strategies to address them. (For info: forestclimateconvergence.org)

To protect forests and communities from the impacts of climate catastrophe, we must actively opposeunjust market-based and profit-oriented false solutions to climate change, such as those described above. If what is proposed as a solution to catastrophic climate change jeopardizes other people or ecosystems it cannot claim to be just or sustainable.

To keep forests intact, we must fundamentally transform the dominant political and economic systems and transition to small-scale, local and traditional systems.

We can clearly see the result of the dominant political and economic system in the form of climate and other crises, including loss of fresh water and arable land, ocean collapse, mass-extinction and extreme weather, as well as escalating human rights abuses including forced displacements, migrations and genocide.

These systems cannot be simply reformed. We must organize to fundamentally confront and transform them. Even the generally conservative National Academy of Sciences agrees. A paper they published on 6 August 2018 concludes, “[A] Stabilized Earth trajectory requires deliberate management of humanity’s relationship with the rest of the Earth System if the world is to avoid crossing a planetary threshold. We suggest that a deep transformation based on a fundamental reorientation of human values, equity, behavior, institutions, economies, and technologies is required.” [10]

For information on how to join this effort for systemic transformation, visit The Resurgence: 2019 North American Forest & Climate Movement Convergence http://forestclimateconvergence.org

 

NOTES

[1] CTNBio Meeting to Approve GE Trees Cancelled – FuturaGene Taken Over (2015) https://stopgetrees.org/victory-ctnbio-occupied-meeting-cancelled-no-approval-ge-trees/ and see Interview with a Militant of the MST (2017) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GeqRRM7A5s&list=PLJIqsEBkCVM2edxllRUp2a0zTwPI0CMjq&index=4&t=561s

[2] The Global Tree Restoration Potential (2019) https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6448/76

[3] For decades, World Rainforest Movement and others have demanded that the FAO change its forest definition, which “reduces a forest to any area covered by trees. In doing so, the FAO definition discards other life-forms as well as the biological, cyclical and cultural diversity that define a forest in its continuous interconnection with forest-dependent communities. FAO’s reductionist definition also allows the companies behind tens of millions of industrial fast-growing plantations to claim their monocultures are ‘planted forests’. Countries’ forest statistics thus count these fast-growing industrial monocultures as ‘forests’, in spite of the well-documented social and environmental impacts such plantations have caused around the world.” In 2009, WRM explained, “the definition of forests is not an academic or linguistic discussion: it is a political issue having serious social and environmental consequences at the ground level. Defining plantations as forests empowers the corporate sector – particularly plantation companies – and disempowers local communities opposing them to protect their livelihoods. The FAO continues playing this role by refusing to change its definition.” https://wrm.org.uy/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Compilaci%C3%B3n-21-de-Marzo-2018-EN.pdf

[4] Use of the FAO definition means that “reforestation” efforts could easily become tree monocultures, or even GE tree plantations, since there is no official difference between them. While the Crowther Lab distances itself from the question of monocultures in its online follow up [https://www.crowtherlab.com/tree-restoration-potential-qa/] use of the FAO definition of forests means monocultures cannot be avoided. And at the FAO’s World Forestry Conference in 2009 in Buenos Aires, sessions addressing reforestation, afforestation, forest restoration, sustainable forest management, and net zero deforestation all advocated the planting of tree monocultures.[http://climate-connections.org/2009/10/23/world-forestry-congress-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-plantations/] [5] National Forest Monitoring and Information Systems for a transparent and truthful REDD+ process (FAO) https://www.researchgate.net/project/National-Forest-Monitoring-and-Information-Systems-for-a-transparent-and-truthful-REDD-process-FAO

[6] Sky Protector Briefing Paper https://skyprotector.org/2018/08/19/sky-protector-briefing-paper-8-2/ also see the film A Darker Shade of Green, REDD Alert and the Future of Forests https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPFPUhsWMaQ and

REDD-Monitor’s Offsetting fossil fuel emissions with tree planting and ‘natural climate solutions’: science, magical thinking, or pure PR? https://redd-monitor.org/2019/07/04/offsetting-fossil-fuel-emissions-with-tree-planting-and-natural-climate-solutions-science-magical-thinking-or-pure-pr/

[7] “Of course, the carbon capture associated with global restoration could not be instantaneous because it would take several decades for forests to reach maturity. Nevertheless, under the assumption that most of this additional carbon was sourced from the atmosphere, reaching this maximum restoration potential would reduce a considerable proportion of the global anthropogenic carbon burden (~300 GtC) to date.” (1). The global tree restoration potential https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6448/76

[8] According to the Global Carbon Project: https://www.co2.earth/global-co2-emissions

[9] Brazil: huge rise in Amazon destruction under Bolsonaro, figures show, The Guardian, 3 July 2019 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/03/brazil-amazon-rainforest-deforestation-environment

[10] Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, August 2018: Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocenehttps://www.pnas.org/content/115/33/8252

[11] “Limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society. With clear benefits to people and natural ecosystems, limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared to 2°C could go hand in hand with ensuring a more sustainable and equitable society,” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Summary for Policymakers https://www.ipcc.ch/2018/10/08/summary-for-policymakers-of-ipcc-special-report-on-global-warming-of-1-5c-approved-by-governments/

[12] The Green Shock Doctrine, p. 4 https://globaljusticeecology.org/green-shock-doctrine/

[13] Business for Nature website: https://businessfornature.org/

[14] CRISPR is a gene editing technique in which CRISPR and the RNA segments and enzymes it produces are used to identify and modify specific DNA sequences in the genome of other organisms https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/CRISPR

[15] 2019 IUFRO Tree Biotechnology Conference session on “Societal Acceptance of Tree Biotechnology” (Quote found at 49:47)https://mediasite.wolfware.ncsu.edu/online/Play/f9f72a14f48f4b4bb5a58222979e4afd1d?catalog=b9038d70a4ff49dbaab35ddc1a25705821

[16] 2019 IUFRO Tree Biotechnology Conference session on “Societal Acceptance of Tree Biotechnology” (Quote found at 1:28:04)https://mediasite.wolfware.ncsu.edu/online/Play/f9f72a14f48f4b4bb5a58222979e4afd1d?catalog=b9038d70a4ff49dbaab35ddc1a25705821

[The Campaign to STOP GE Treesis a national and international alliance of organizations that have united toward the goal of prohibiting the ecologically and socially devastating release of genetically engineered trees into the environment. Global Justice Ecology Project coordinates, administrates and fundraises for the campaign. World Rainforest Movement, based in Uruguay, is the Southern Contact for the Campaign and has materials in English, Spanish and Portuguese.]

India: Destroying Biodiversity, The Devastating Social Impacts of GMO “Killer Seeds”

Arun Shrivastava: 3 Dec 1951 – 19 Dec 2015
HIS WORK WILL GO ON & WILL BE SHARED
SOON TO BE PUBLISHED; 2016. EXPOSE ON NGO’s

“Arun’s greatest work that exposes the NGO’s and their criminality. He was doing the most important expose and research about world wide role of NGO’s. It would have changed completely the way we talk about NGO’s. It was of MONUMENTAL global significance and he was not far from completion of this work.”

Andrew Korybko: “What Arun was doing right before his passing was remarkable – he was assembling a team of investigative researchers to document all physical proof (he was very adamant that it had to be verifiable and not connective analysis) of NGO illegal activity all across the world. Russia, India, China, you name it, that’s what he was doing. He was also a exposing the Vatican’s role in all of this. It’s such a tragedy that he left us, but it is imperative that his family and those physically close to him that were involved in the project save his work, continue it, and publish it. It is truly his legacy and must absolutely see the light of day, God willing.” (Andrew Korybko, 20 December, 2015)

+++

Global Research

March 11, 2014

by Arun Shrivastava

Manmohan Singh said,

‘use of biotechnology has great potential to improve yields.’ [2]

Actually this unscientific, prejudiced and utterly spineless PM backed a failed technology. Behind his rise to infamy and many treasonous acts since 1991 is conspiring with the US Government and the European Globalists who want to cull the global population to about 1 billion, not even sparing their own people. His desperate effort to release GMO food crops will turn India into a dead land with sterile population within a few decades.

While Manmohan Singh will go down in history as the most treacherous man that ever occupied the position of Prime Minister, his Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar and the Environment Minister Veerappa Moily will disgrace historiography provided historians survive. 

There is nothing ‘unscientific’ or ‘prejudiced’ when people oppose genetically engineered [GE or GMO] seeds and foods. The opposition is grounded in solid verifiable science. As early as 2003, when the first ever Bt cotton crop was harvested in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, Gene Campaign evaluated the performance of Bt Cotton. [3] These studies proved that GE seeds don’t increase yield. Either Singh does not understand science or can’t read; he only follows US and NATO orders like their puppets in 30 other countries.

The Impleadment to ban GMOs was backed by 6.5 million farmers through their respective associations. It was admitted by the Supreme Court in April 2007 and contains a long list of hard scientific evidences. [4]

Members of the Technical Experts’ Committee [TEC] appointed by the Supreme Court to assess the biosafety of GMOs concluded that GE seeds should not be allowed in India. The sole dissenting voice in TEC was of Government imposed scientist CD Mayee. Dr CD Mayee is an industry lobbyist and has the dubious distinction of actually knowing well in advance that Bt Cotton crop would never match the yields of non-Bt organic or non-Bt inorganic cotton. This industry lobbyist became a key member of the approvals’ committee and squirmed his way into the TEC. His was the only dissenting note! This man is a disgrace to science.    

Cutting across party lines the Standing Committee on Agriculture in Parliament unanimously and unequivocally concluded that GE seeds and foods are dangerous to human, animal and environmental health and directed the Government of Manmohan Singh to ban GMOs. The 400-page report was submitted to Parliament in October 2012. [5]

Perhaps Manmohan Singh reads only unscientific and prejudiced reports of agriculture biotechnology lobbyists headed by Sharad Pawar on behalf of Monsanto and other multinational corporations like Dow, Syngenta, Bayer, etc al. Even Satan would be ashamed of Pawar, India’s ‘perpetual’ Minister for Agriculture. Time is ripe that his kin and he be consigned to the dust bin of history for ushering a dreadful historical period in Indian agriculture.

Four UPA rogues – PM Manmohan Singh, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Sharad Pawar and now Moily – have destroyed India’s farmers and agriculture system, paving the way for Western multinational corporations to take over India’s farmlands. To these rogues’ list one more name should be added – Raghuram Rajan – the present Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, chosen for his proximity to global banksters. He is the first Governor who ever said that ‘farmers drag the economic growth rate down.’ What does Raghuram eat for breakfast? Genetically engineered Kellogg’s cornflakes in pus laced American milk? Or, reconstituted foods from the advanced labs of global food companies that often contain sanitized and reconstituted human and animal shit? Does he even know that he is presiding over a central bank that can suck the life of 8,000 years of agriculture and food history?

 A short history of what happened

GMO foods already here: India never approved the sale of GMO food crop seeds but as early as 2001 an independent food testing laboratory confirmed that 21 out of 30 samples sent from Delhi’s grocery stores had tested positive for GMO contamination. The desultory tentative moves by the Supreme Court, from 2005 to now, have already ensured poisoning of India’s food. In fact, the Standing Committee on Agriculture in Parliament under the Chairmanship of Basudev Bhattacharya, MP, did a far better job than any expert in the Ministry of Agriculture and Department of Biotechnology. Foods exported by the American and European companies are on Indian grocery shelves, and, given the evidences, contaminated and poisonous. Oil from cotton seeds is used as food and feed; Bt cotton seeds have already entered our food/feed chain.     

Food and Nutrition Security [FNS]: It is also important to note that years ago the Supreme Court appointed NC Saxena and Harsh Mander as Commissioners to report on the progress of various state governments’ performance on Food and Nutrition Security [FNS] issue following a Public Interest Litigation filed in 2001. Not once have Saxena or Mander mentioned in their reports to the Supreme Court that food and nutrition security of India will be utterly compromised by GMOs of criminal multinational corporations.   

International concerns

The potential for misuse of recombinant DNA technology was anticipated as far back as the early 1970s. In 1975 a group of about 140 leading scientists, lawyers, doctors, primarily biologists, and microbiologists [microbiology was an emerging field then] met to discuss the biosafety hazards and draw up a voluntary guideline to ensure the ethical use of recombinant DNA technology. The Asilomar Conference was organised by Paul Berg who had worked with Dr Sanger and Dr Gilbert, early pioneers in recombinant technology; all three Nobel laureates. However, it was Berg who anticipated the dangers. Around the same time microbiologist Dr Pushp M Bhargava had expressed his fears and concerns on the potential for misuse of agriculture biotechnology. Dr Bhargava was one of the experts in the TEC.

Until 1979, the US Patent office had consistently refused to grant patent on life form. An Indian, Dr. Ananda Chakrabarty, found a method for directed evolution of Pseudomonas bacteria, also known as oil eating bacteria, at General Electric Company’s [GEC] facility. GEC applied for protection but the patent office refused until the case finally reached the Supreme Court. In the (in)famous Diamond versus Chakrabarty, perhaps influenced by big money because the case was fought for many years, patent was granted by the US Supreme Court (Diamond v. Chakrabarty), in a 5-4 decision [with serious dissenting notes], on the logic that “a live, human-made micro-organism is patentable subject matter under [Title 35 U.S.C.] 101. Respondent’s micro-organism constitutes a “manufacture” or “composition of matter” within that statute.

The judgment paved the way for patent on life forms. [6] A key sentence in the judgment is “While laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas are not patentable, respondent’s claim is not to a hitherto unknown natural phenomenon, but to a nonnaturally occurring manufacture or composition of matter — a product of human ingenuity “having a distinctive name, character [and] use.”

 On this premise the court accepted that Chakrabarty’s innovation was unnatural, an unknown natural phenomenon, a product of human ingenuity, having a distinctive name, character, and use. However, this decision opened the floodgate of life form patenting and widespread misuse of biotechnology in agriculture because companies like Monsanto, Bayer, Syngenta, Dow Chemicals and others could use exact same principles to claim patent right on their innovations now known as Genetically Engineered or Genetically Modified seeds. The raison d’être is that their seeds are a product of their ingenuity has ‘a distinct character and use [application]. They can claim that they have invented “an unknown non-natural event, a product of human ingenuity, having a distinctive name, character and use” and get patent protection.

Seed theft starts on a global scale

Ag-biotech firms knew that they can’t create life form. They needed natural seeds to modify and engineer for patenting.  From that time onward systematic globalised theft of indigenous seeds started. The first large scale theft of seeds in India was done by Swiss company Syngenta that stole 19,000 rice varieties collected by Dr Riccharia, a case known as ‘The Great Gene Robbery’ in which another ‘ever-present’ crony scientist Swaminathan was implicated. And some years ago Dr Mangla Rai, who actually believes in Vedic farming, personally deposited millions of India’s natural seeds at Svalbard Seed Vault which is controlled by a conglomerate of biotech seed corporations and Western Governments.     

Unknown, non-natural, even product of human ingenuity!!! Is GMO a non-natural, unknown event, product of human ingenuity, requiring patent protection? Can any company create a seed in the laboratory? If they can create an unknown, non-natural seed that is a product of human ingenuity, why are they stealing seeds from all over the world? Obviously, they can’t create a new seed type but they can create a new genetic sequence but is it non-natural and unknown?[A1]  If they can create a genetically engineered seed which is “unknown, non-natural and a product of human ingenuity, and by what standard it is “substantially equivalent” to natural seeds? If it is not, why has no company done serious biosafety studies?

What is the track record of GE seeds? 

The natural and known seeds produce healthy foods, do not harm the environment, and do not destroy human and animal health. If they had, human civilization would be extinct long ago before this current bunch of plunderers was born of their depraved, sub-human ancestors through inter-generational trait transfer.

What is the track record of GE seeds?  In late 1990s Dr Arpad Pusztai, head of the Rowett Institute, UK, was asked to test GM foods on animals. He found that GM foods destroy normal functioning of vital organs. Around the same time Dr Irina Ermakova of Russian Academy of Sciences also started her studies on rats and found that the offspring of experimental rats were half the normal size compared with those of the control groups, with severe vital organ malfunction. In 2013 Dr Irina Ermakova came out powerfully and said “It has been proved that, not only in Russia but also in many other countries, GMO is dangerous. Methods of obtaining the GMO are not perfect, therefore, at this stage, all GMOs are dangerous.” She further said that “one of the techniques uses tumor-causing soil bacteria” and that“consumption and use of GMOs obtained in such way can lead to tumors, cancers and obesity among animals. [7]

Using 20-year database on yields from GMO seeds, Dr. Doug Gurian-Sherman proved that the yields actually dropped and says “hard-nosed assessment of this expensive technology’s achievements to date gives little confidence that it will play a major role in helping the world feed itself in the foreseeable future.”[8] 1.2 billion Indians should repeat these lines for the benefit of Manmohan Singh.

Don Huber with 55 years of experience as plant pathologist proved that the ability of the roots of GE plants’ to absorb vital nutrients from the soil is seriously compromised. Huber went on to say that GE crops are destroying the agriculture system. [9]

Now, this is something Dr KP Prabhakaran Nair had warned of GMOs over a decade ago, but he was ignored because his scientific analysis was ‘inconvenient truth’ to the agriculture biotechnology janitors who masquerade as scientists. [10]

A Russian study [2010] by Dr Alexander Surov proved that by the third generation the offspring were infertile. [11] Educated Indians should ask Manmohan Singh, “Is this what you want to do to us?”

Seralini studies, first of its kind over the normal life cycle of rats, which is about 700 days, showed massive malignancies and vital organ failure. This research conclusively proved that experimental animals did not complete their normal life. The experimental rats he used have a life cycle of around 700 days. Up until 90^th day, his team did not observe problems with GMO fed rats. From 90^th day onward his team observed tumours. Now, 90^th day out of 700 days is 12.85% of the entire life-cycle. Average human life is about 80 years. So, if a person eats GM food now, the onset of severe and cataclysmic health impact would show after about 10 years. Since there is no labelling in countries where GMOs are approved as food, there can be no traceability. Evidence is based on traceability. Since there is no traceability, culpability for premeditated murder or genocide can’t be established.

That is why all GM seed companies are bribing political leaders, bureaucrats and regulators to prevent labelling around the world including India. Does the Manmohan Singh gang named above understand this simple scientific fact? [12] What health catastrophe the USA is facing right now with obesity, cancers, diabetes and other degenerative diseases where GM foods were introduced in the 1990s without biosafety studies?

And this is most recent. Egyptian scientists carried out three studies and concluded that (a) GE foods were not equivalent to natural foods, (b) GE diet caused significant changes in body and organ weight indicating toxicity, and (c) histopathological examination showed severe impairment to vital organs and ‘examination of the testes revealed necrosis (death) and desquamation (shedding) of the spermatogonial cells that are the foundation of sperm cells and thus male fertility.’ [13]

The latest bad news came last week. GM foods are nutrition deficient. [14] This is the first time that we have clear scientifically validated evidence that GM foods are deficient in vital nutrients. GM soy, non-GM soy grown conventionally [using chemicals] and organic soy [with no chemicals] were tested. Organic soy was found to be far superior; GM Soy was found most nutrition deficient. The three sources of soy were tested on ‘35 different nutritional and elemental variables to characterize each soy sample.’[15]

The scientists whose works I have cited are neither ‘unscientific’ nor ‘prejudiced.’ In fact, as young scientists, they seriously believed that genetic engineering technology will serve humanity in a novel way. Some of the best scientific minds were attracted to this emerging discipline in science and technology. Little did they know that the field of ‘Eugenics’ that developed in the USA, was actually legalized, was tried on a  mass scale in Nazi Germany on Europeans, Germans, Jews and ethnic minorities and would be renamed ‘Genetic Engineering’ or ‘Biotechnology.’ Majority of scientists had no clue of the real dark agenda of agriculture biotechnology.

Perhaps Manmohan Singh, Sharad Pawar, Veerappa Moily, Montek Singh, and Raghuram Rajan are all part of the global conspiracy of mass culling of the ‘poor, coloured and useless eaters,’ exactly as desired by Henry Kissinger in his National Security Study Memo 200 in 1974, and earlier by the Eugenicists in the USA with first colossal trial in Hitler’s genocide in Europe.

Who is unscientific and prejudiced?

The citations show that GMOs neither increase yield nor nutrition in food. On the contrary, GMOs have adverse effect on plant and soil health. Most significantly, GMOs trigger lethal diseases and cause sterility in those who regularly ingest these foods. Premature mortality is the norm rather than exception.

Judge for yourself who is unscientific and prejudiced.

Manmohan Singh, Sharad Pawar and Veerappa Moily are not the only ones who genuflect to the eugenicist brigade. The emerging neo-fascists known as Aam Aadmi Party’s [AAP] think tank includes senior lawyer Prashant Bhushan who has fought the anti-GMO case in the Supreme Court since 2005. When his party won the December Delhi state election and formed the Government he could have banned GMOs in Delhi. That act alone would have won the hearts of millions across the world. Instead, Prashant did not even have the guts to respond to a simple letter asking him to clarify his stand on GMOs. The reason is not far to seek: AAP is almost entirely funded by CIA’s ‘civilized’ front Ford Foundation.

It is the same foundation that laid the groundwork to break USSR up. The break-up of India was planned even before India became independent in 1947. Perhaps the young goons brought up on foreign funds want to straddle over a dead India. The issue of GMOs is a cosmological event with which they have nothing to do although they all eat three meals every day. Or perhaps they are already been made tolerant of the Ford Foundation, UN-Framework Team and USAID nation-destroying Monsanto Roundup and Ready nation destroying herbicide.

These seeds are “engineered to kill,” patent protected, highly profitable silent weapons. The global war of globalists is being fought by other means, by eliminating the survival options. It’s the same old colonial strategy. But the political class and the NGO brigade of India has been genetically modified to remain silent on vital issues.       

[Arun Shrivastava was a journalist based in South Asia. An accredited management consultant, Arun was also a highly experienced researcher and writer. He studied in India and England and returned to India in 1989, after a brief stint as senior officer with Economic Development Unit of Birmingham (UK). From 1989 to 1994, he taught Strategic Management and Long Range Planning to MBA students at International Management Institute in Delhi.]

Notes

[1] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/PM-brings-hope-for-scientists-over-introducing-GM-food-crops-in-India-after-safety-trials/articleshow/29812575.cms

[2] http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/at-science-meet-pm-pitches-for-gm-crops/article5648525.ece

[3] http://www.genecampaign.org/policy_for_GM_Crops.php

[4] An Impleadment was admitted by the Supreme Court of India in April 2007 signed by Dr. Krishna Bir Chaudhary and Arun Shrivastava which was supported by around 6.5 million farmers.

[5] “Cultivation of Genetically Modified Food Crops,” Committee on Agriculture, 37^th Report, August 2012. Summary of the report: http://www.gmwatch.eu/index.php/report-on-gm-crops-and-food-security-from-india-s-parliamentary-standing-committee-on-agriculture

[6] Full judgement: http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/447/303/case.html

[7] http://rt.com/news/gmo-ban-russian-scientists-293/

[8] Failure to Yield-Evaluating the performance of Genetically Engineered Crops; Union of Concerned Scientists; 2009;  http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/food_and_agriculture/failure-to-yield.pdf

[9] http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/sign/dr_hubers_warning/

[10] http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=2711

[11] http://voiceofrussia.com/2010/04/16/6524765/

[12] http://www.gmoseralini.org/faqs/    

[13] http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php/news/archive/2014/15260-another-rat-feeding-study-shows-gm-bt-corn-toxic-to-mammals

[14] http://www.greenmedinfo.com/article/compositional-differences-soybeans-market-glyphosate-accumulates-roundup-ready

[15] Food Chem. 2014 Jun 15 ;153:207-15. Epub 2013 Dec 18. PMID: 24491722  by  T Bøhn, M Cuhra, T Traavik, M Sanden, J Fagan, R Primicerio

FLASHBACK | Conservation International: Privatizing Nature, Plundering Biodiversity

Seedling | Grain

October 2003

by Aziz Choudry

Conservation International’s corporate sponsor list reads like a list of the US’ top fifty transnational corporations. Biodiversity conservation is at the top of Conservation International’s list of goals. But as the list of Conservation International’s dubious ventures and questionable partners around the world grows, Aziz Choudry is starting to wonder if it is time to ‘out’ this ‘multinational conservation corporation’ and show its true colours.

Headquartered in Washington, D.C, with operations in over 30 countries on four continents, Conservation International claims to be an environmental NGO. Its mission is “to conserve the Earth’s living natural heritage, our global biodiversity, and to demonstrate that human societies are able to live harmoniously with nature.” [1] This all sounds very laudable and Conservation International has some very high profile fans. This year Colin Powell shared the podium with Conservation International President Russell Mittermeier at the launch of the Bush Administration’s “Initiative Against Illegal Logging” at the US State Department. In December 2001, Gordon Moore, who founded Intel Corporation, donated US $261 million to Conservation International, supposedly the largest grant ever to an environmental organisation. Moore is chairman of Conservation International’s executive committee. Conservation International has repaid Moore’s largesse by nam-ing an endangered Brazilian pygmy owl after him. [2] →

MUST WATCH: Dr Steve Best – The Paralysis of Pacifism

WKOG: An excellent lecture by Dr Steven Best. Not to be missed.

“The desire for a nonviolent and cooperative world is the healthiest of all psychological manifestations. This is the overarching principle of liberation and revolution. Undoubtedly, it seems the highest order of contradiction that, in order to achieve nonviolence, we must first break with it in overcoming its root causes. Therein lies our only hope.” — Ward Churchill, Pacifism as Pathology

Prof. Steve Best is a writer, speaker, public intellectual, and activist. Steven Best engages animal rights, species extinction, ecological crisis, biotechnology, liberation politics, terrorism, mass media and culture, globalization, and capitalist domination. He is Associate Professor of Humanities and Philosophy at the University of Texas, El Paso.

This conference has been organized by “Per Animalia Veritas” which is an organization that promotes antispecism as a radical revolution for a renewed cruelty-free and vegan society through militant activism.

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