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01/04/17

In response to the threats to Prof. Damián Verzeñassi and his team from the Institute of Socio-Environmental Health (Medicine School of the National University of Rosario, Argentina), ENSSER wrote and endorsed a letter of support {link}. Since 2010, Prof. Damián Verzeñassi together with his medical students conducted perhaps the largest epidemiological study to date by collecting a data set consisting of records from 96,000 Argentinian people living in the areas  where GM soy  heavily sprayed with Roundup is grown. Final year medical students under Prof. Verzenassi’s supervision are required to practice in one of the ‘health camps’ of the areas, following the people with questionnaires and recording diagnostic elements provided by the people. This allowed Prof Verzenassi to compile a massive medical record basis of almost 65% of the population living in these areas.
Prof. Damián Verzeñassiserved as a witness to the Monsanto Tribunal in the Hague (the Netherlands, 15-16th October 2016). On October 28th, shortly after he returned, his team found the office where they kept the results of the health camp investigations locked with chains and locks, preventing them from entering their workplace. Previously the Adjunct Professor had been fired from management positions days after he had appeared in the media reporting some of the results of the health camp investigations and the same happened with the Co-Chair of the Socio-Environmental Health course, who guaranteed the inclusion of these topics in the curricula. These actions provoked the resignation of other members of the team.
After international protests from CRIIGEN and other organisations, the office of the  team was unlocked, access to the data was restored and the team members were restored to their previous positions. However, since this harassment of Prof. Verzeñassi‘s team, which strikingly coincided with his participation in the Monsanto Tribunal in The Hague, was hardly noticed in the international media, ENSSER has also sent a letter of protest to the Rector of the University of Rosario to express full support to Prof. Verzeñassi and his team from the Institute of Socio-Environmental Health.

05/19/16

The EU is about to create a new directive for “the protection of undisclosed know-how and business information (trade secrets) against their unlawful acquisition, use and disclosure”. This directive will protect the co-called ‘confidential business information’, but will stifle investigations into potential hazards or risks to human health, the environment or society related to such information. Especially scientific investigations in which such information may play a role may be intimidated or prevented. In fact, the directive will greatly expand the scope for prosecuting whistleblowers, including journalists and scientists. The draft directive has surprisingly been accepted by the European Parliament and will now be subject to the final vote by Member States on May 25, 2016. On May 13, Corporate Europe Observatory therefore wrote an , co-signed by 51 other civil society organisations including ENSSER, to EU heads of state and government, urging for significant amendments to the directive before its approval and for the introduction of specific EU legislation on the protection of whistleblowers.

02/25/16

Maize ancestor teosinte found in Spain and France: transgenic maize authorisation should be rescinded

Thirteen civil society organisations have alerted the European Commission to the fact that teosinte, the wild ancestor of maize from Mexico, has been growing as an invasive weed in Spain and France for a number of years. This fact could have far reaching consequences, for the absence of wild relatives with which a genetically modified crop could cross is an important condition for the latter’s authorisation. Maize has always been thought to have no wild relatives in Europe. Thus, the CSOs demand that the authorisation of GM maize MON810 for cultivation is immediately withdrawn.

Press release of the thirteen CSOs

02/02/16

Press Release from Corporate Europe Observatory

Biotech industry lobby intent on ransack of EU GMO rules

Food safety, the environment, and consumer choice are at stake, as biotech industry lobbyists pressure decision makers to deregulate a new generation of genetic engineering techniques ahead of a crucial European Commission decision in February.

“Biotech lobby’s push for new GMOs to escape regulation”, a new report by Corporate Europe Observatory, shows how industry has been pushing for the deregulation of new GM techniques despite widespread consumer rejection of GMOs and the absence of sound legal and technical reasoning.

After eight years of deliberation, the Commission will take a key decision next month on whether a new generation of genetic engineering techniques will continue to be regulated or bypass Europe’s hard-won GM laws. The ‘New Breeding Techniques Platform’ has acted as industry’s lobbying vehicle to get its agenda across. Yet the claims made by the NBT Platform and other industry actors in favour of the deregulation agenda, have been debunked by various independent legal analyses and reports, as is summarised in CEO’s study.

Case studies highlight how Canada-based Cibus – a company that develops new GM crops – has attempted to sidestep the European policy process to get its products into the Europeans’ food supply unregulated. Meanwhile Dutch ministries, the Dutch Parliament, the Dutch Permanent Representation in Brussels, and Dutch MEPs have lobbied to have another of the new techniques (cisgenesis) excluded from EU GMO regulations, as detailed in the report.

“Big biotech and seed companies have invested in techniques designed to circumvent the EU’s GMO regulations, and in recent years have ramped up their lobbying for deregulation of new techniques. Deregulation means GM products could enter the food chain and the environment without having to meet the EU’s regulatory requirements. In other words, they would be untested, untraceable, unlabeled and – crucially for industry – patented. This is a clear and dangerous push for corporate control of the food chain,” says author of the report and CEO campaigner Nina Holland.

Read the report here:

corporateeurope.org/food-and-agriculture/2016/02/biotech-lobby-push-new-gmos-escape-regulation

Two case studies:

corporateeurope.org/food-and-agriculture/2016/02/canadian-company-railroads-eu-decision-making-new-gm

corporateeurope.org/food-and-agriculture/2016/02/apples-and-potatoes-dutch-lobby-deregulation-cisgenesis

All documents referred to in the report and case studies are directly available in the footnotes.

11/23/15

Comments on EFSA Draft Strategy 2020 by Prof. Erik Millstone (University of Sussex).

#scienceVlobbying – public conference

The conference Science vs. Lobbying – how to escape regulatory capture? took place in Brussels 22-23 September. Please find here relevant information to the program and here a link to all videos of the conference.

10/30/15

ENSSER and other organisations demand glyphosate ban by EU

ENSSER and forty-six other organisations today send an open letter to EU Commissioner for Health & Food Safety Vytenis Andriukaitis, demanding a robust and credible scientific assessment of the carcinogenicity of the popular herbicidal substance glyphosate. Because of the existing disagreement on its carcinogenicity, however, the organisations also demand an immediate ban on the use of glyphosate from the precautionary perspective which the EU supports.

The International Agency for the Research on Cancer (IARC) of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has recently classified glyphosate as a “probable carcinogen” after a peer review of the scientific evidence about its safety. In the EU, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is at present alsocarrying out a peer review of the scientific evidence about the safety of glyphosate. However, EFSA’s starting point is an assessment prepared by the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), which stated that glyphosate is “unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans”. This striking difference prompted the organisations writing to Andriukaitis to compare the scientific standard of the two assessments. In the letter, the organisations point out that on a number of points the scientific rigour and reliability of BfR’s assessment are significantly below that applied by IARC. For example, relevant peer-reviewed published scientific studies have been ignored in the BfR review. The organisations  therefore ask the commissioner to ensure that EFSA applies rigorous scientific standards, including the use of published studies only, in its review of the glyphosate assessment. However, they also point out that when different scientific bodies come to different conclusions about the carcinogenic nature of glyphosate, it is already the obligation of the European Commission to invoke the precautionary principle. This means banning the use of glyphosate where it results in the greatest public and worker exposure, at least until sufficient scientific agreement is achieved about the (un)safety of the herbicidal substance. Over 1.4 million citizens have also, through a separate Avaaz petition, demanded a precautionary ban on glyphosate use from Commissioner Andriukaitis.

Find here the

10/05/15

BERNADETTE OEHEN, DEPARTMENT OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC SCIENCES, RESEARCH INSTITUTE FOR ORGANIC AGRICULTURE (FIBL), SWITZERLAND

ANGELIKA HILBECK, ETH ZURICH, SWITZERLAND

How can inefficient, poorly managed smallholder systems be transformed into productive agroecological systems? And how can environmentally destructive, energy and chemical-intensive industrial systems be converted into productive agroecological systems? What role does international trade play in today’s agro-food systems, and are short supply chains relevant? This brochure explains many reasons why change is needed, based on strong science to underpin the arguments. At the same time, the authors make recommendations for the transformation of the global industrial agro-food system, highlight the main needs for further research and describe impediments to the progress of agroecology.

The focus is on small-scale farmers who, all over the world, are prone to food insecurity, but who nevertheless feed more than 80% of the world’s population. Many of these farmers are located in what we often call the developing world, but we should make no mistake: change is needed in developed and developing countries alike. Food insecurity in today’s world results from a globally dysfunctional agro-food system that is failing to meet the needs of many people in both developing and developed countries. There is an urgent need for a transition from the existing agro-food systems to sustainable agroecological systems. This brochure provides a platform to a number of experts working in various fields relevant to these issues. It gives them space in which to share their visions and voice their concerns about how we are feeding the people of the world.

10/08/15

Whistleblower Award for Séralini

Find here

Find here the laudatio by Christine von Weizsäcker (in German)

Find here the speech by Gilles-Eric Séralini (in English)