Agrofuel roundup I: Scams, schemes, dreams

It’s been a while since we’ve covered the agrofuel scene, that wondrous playground of billionaires, Al Gore, and UC Berkeley millionaire patent-mongering profs.

There’s a whole lot to report, but we’ll start with one of the sweetest scams ever, in which a clever Canadian figured out how to make millions off Uncle Sugar simply by shipping trains full of agrodiesel south across the border, then bringing them right back to Canada without ever unloading a drop.

Then we’ll look at the latest news from BP and the university it owns right here in Berkeley.

In a second part we’ll give you a brief update on one of Berkeley’s agrofuel startups that isn’t and the fate of another partnership spearheaded by the same prof who launched the startup.

Canadian newsies investigate

The Canadian scam, which appears to have been perfectly legal, was first reported 3 December by John Nicol and Dave Seglins, a pair of intrepid journalists for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

In their first story, the reporters cited reports that the tasnkers made their down-and-back trips between 15 and 28 June 2010, earning CN Rail a potential $23.6 million [Canadian] in charges.

From their report:

“In 25 years, I’d never done anything like it,” one railway worker told CBC News on the condition he not be named for fear he might be fired. “The clerk told me it was some kind of money grab. We just did what we were told.”

>snip<

According to internal CN records, Train 503 shipped the biodiesel to Port Huron, Mich., from Sarnia, Ont.; Train 504 brought them back. The number of cars on the train would remain mostly the same, but cars were added and removed, between 68 and 89 cars at a time. As soon as the paperwork and car shuffling was completed, the trains made the return trip.

“This unit train will move at least once daily to Port Huron starting on Tuesday, June 18,” said an email written by Teresa Edwards, CN’s manager of transportation for Port Huron/Sarnia.

It will “clear customs and return to Sarnia. If we can get in more flips back and forth we will attempt to do so. Each move per car across the border is revenue generated for Sarnia/Port Huron.

“It will be the same cars flipping back and forth and the product will stay on the car.”

Damned fishy, right?

Why the hell would a company send a total of 1,984 tank cars full of fuel into the U.S., then bring them back without ever unloading them?

The reporters were back with a second story on the 20th, and it’s just as sordid as you might imagine.

They note:

It turns out the shipments were part of a deal by a Toronto-based company, which made several million dollars importing and exporting the fuel to exploit a loophole in a U.S. green energy program.

>snip<

Bioversel Trading hired CN Rail to import tanker loads of biodiesel to the U.S. to generate RINs, which are valuable in the U.S. because of a “greening” policy regulating the petroleum industry. The EPA’s “Renewable Fuel Standard” mandate that oil companies bring a certain amount of renewable fuel to market, quotas they can achieve through blending biofuel with fossil fuel or by purchasing RINs as offsets.

Because RINs can be generated through import, the 12 trainloads that crossed into Michigan would have contained enough biodiesel to create close to 12 million RINs. In the summer of 2010, biodiesel RINs were selling for 50 cents each, but the price soon fluctuated to more than $1 per credit.

Once “imported” to a company capable of generating RINs, ownership of the biodiesel was transferred to Bioversel’s American partner company, Verdeo, and then exported back to Canada. RINs must be “retired” once the fuel is exported from the U.S., but Bioversel says Verdeo retired ethanol RINs, worth pennies, instead of the more valuable biodiesel RINs. Bioversel claims this was all perfectly legal.

However, one of the companies Bioversel approached to be the ‘importer of record’—Northern Biodiesel Inc. of Ontario, N.Y. — discovered that the same fuel was going back and forth across the border and the same gallons were being used to repeatedly generate new RINs under their company’s name. The company called the EPA and also sent a letter that would become an open letter to the biodiesel industry, accusing Bioversel of “trying to perpetrate a fraud against NBI and the Renewable Fuel Standard program.”

And what was the result? Were the whistleblowers rewarded for their virtuous reporting of their inadvertent involvement in a potential ripoff of American taxpayers?

Yeah, right.

The CBC reports:

Northern Biodiesel insisted the RINs issued were not valid because it had never received any bills of lading or chemical analysis reports from Verdeo, and thus Northern Biodiesel never reported/certified them with the EPA. However, millions of these RINs were sold in its name.

As a result, Northern Biodiesel RINs became tainted within the industry and [company owner Bob] Bechtold said that put him out of business.

“That was about the dumbest thing we ever did,” said Bechtold about the letter and coming forward to the EPA. “We thought we were saving the industry, doing good to protect the industry, but it ended up being the kiss of death for us, because we are no longer able to participate in the field.”

Why are we not surprised?

BP turning sour on cellulosic?

One of the most prominent names in Berkeley campus politics has been BP, once known as the Anglo Iranian Oil Company.

The oil giant’s $500 million Energy Biosciences Institute [EBI] effort to create next generation fuels at th Helios lab at UC Berkeley was the largest corporate funding ever on an American college campus, and the subject of some intense faculty politics after the school’s administration accepted the cash without the requisite consultation with the academic senate [which eventually voted an ex post facto approval].

The research, conducted in a purpose-built taxpayer-funded lab complex in downtown Berkeley, with the corporation occupying most of the space for its own proprietary research and the rest of the complex protected from prying eyes by campus security.

While the research has been going on for the past five years, one thing that hasn’t happened is the development of the technology for production of cost-effective internal combustion fuels from plant cellulose, the widely truumpeted goal of most of the research.

Chris Somerville, the multimillionaire bioentrepreneur who heads the Energy Biosciences Institute [EBI], admitted as much in an interview published earlier this month on the EBI website:

[I]t is probably premature to build a biorefinery for production of lignocellulosic fuels. Academic work in the field has not yet converged to an optimal process. As I said, we think that such an optimized process will be continuous. When we get to a situation where academic studies have converged on the most efficient process and predict economic feasibility without subsidies, then it will be appropriate to start building biorefineries. Some companies appear to have started building lignocellulosic fuel biorefineries because they have adequate confidence in their own technologies, they want to capture possible business advantages of being early movers, and (because of) pressure from the government to get on with it in order to preserve the subsidies that are currently available for advanced biofuels. I cannot evaluate the merit of these possible motivations.  However, based on technical progress in the field, I remain very optimistic that we will eventually have a very large industry based on lignocellulose feedstocks.

Somerville has a habit of omitting inconvenient truths, as we learned early on when covering the birth of the EBI for the late Berkeley Daily Planet.

Back when he was selling campus colleagues and the community on the BP grant, he repeatedly claimed that the crops used for the new miracle fuels would be grown only on marginal land east of the Mississippi.

Chris Somerville

That was at best a gross distortion. First, the “marginal lands” were those which had been taken out of production under the federal Conservation Reserve Program, which was created to end farming on lands susceptible to catastrophic erosion. Lobbyists for Big Agra and Big Oil managed to get a law passed that removed the protection if the land is used for growing fuel crops — thus gutting a program created to head off a return of the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s.

The land also provides critical habitat for threatened and endangered wildlife

BBC exposé: The Men Who Made Us Fat

From the Beeb, a very important three-part look into the corporate capture of the food we eat and it’s devastating consequences for our health and well being.

H/T to The Situationist.

Part 1, the kings of corn syrup

The program notes:

Around the world, obesity levels are rising. More people are now overweight than undernourished. Two thirds of British adults are overweight and one in four of us is classified as obese. In the first of this three-part series, Jacques Peretti traces those responsible for revolutionising our eating habits, to find out how decisions made in America 40 years ago influence the way we eat now.

Peretti travels to America to investigate the story of high-fructose corn syrup. The sweetener was championed in the US in the 1970s by Richard Nixon’s agriculture secretary Earl Butz to make use of the excess corn grown by farmers. Cheaper and sweeter than sugar, it soon found its way into almost all processed foods and soft drinks. HFCS is not only sweeter than sugar, it also interferes with leptin, the hormone that controls appetite, so once you start eating or drinking it, you don’t know when to stop.

Endocrinologist Robert Lustig was one of the first to recognise the dangers of HFCS but his findings were discredited at the time. Meanwhile a US Congress report blamed fat, not sugar, for the disturbing rise in cardio-vascular disease and the food industry responded with ranges of ‘low fat’, ‘heart healthy’ products in which the fat was removed – but the substitute was yet more sugar.

Meanwhile, in 1970s Britain, food manufacturers used advertising campaigns to promote the idea of snacking between meals. Outside the home, fast food chains offered clean, bright premises with tempting burgers cooked and served with a very un-British zeal and efficiency. Twenty years after the arrival of McDonalds, the number of fast food outlets in Britain had quadrupled.

Part 2, the plague of supersizing

The program notes:

Jacques Peretti investigates how the concept of ‘supersizing’ changed our eating habits forever. How did we – once a nation of moderate eaters – start to want more?

Speaking to Mike Donahue, former McDonalds Vice President, Peretti explores the history behind the idea of supersizing. 40 years ago, McDonalds hired David Wallerstein, a former cinema manager who had introduced the idea of selling larger popcorn servings in his Chicago cinema. Wallerstein realised that people would eat more but they didn’t like the idea of appearing gluttonous by going back for seconds. By increasing the portion sizes and the cost, he could sell more food. In 1972, he introduced the idea to McDonalds and their first large fries went on sale.

By the 1980s, we were eating more – and eating more often. Perretti speaks with industry professionals to examine the story behind the introduction of value meals, king-size snacks and multi-buy promotions. How did the advertising industry encourage us to eat more often?

The programme also explores the developments in dietary advice – by 2003, the Chief Medical Officer was warning of an ‘obesity time bomb.’ Peretti speaks to obesity expert Professor Philip James, who made recommendations in his 1996 report that the food industry should cease targeting children in their advertisements. He also speaks with Professor Terry Wilkin, who led a pioneering study into childhood weight gain; and former Labour MP David Hinchliffe, who chaired the 2003 Parliamentary Select Committee on Health.

Part 3, the wizards of marketing

The program notes:

Jacques Peretti examines assumptions about what is and is not healthy. He also looks at how product marketing can seduce consumers into buying supposed ‘healthy foods’ such as muesli and juices, both of which can be high in sugar.

He speaks with Simon Wright, an ‘organic consultant’ for Sainsbury’s in the 1990s, who explains how the food industry cashed in on the public’s concerns around salmonella, BSE and GM crops. By 1999 the organic industry was worth over £605M, a rise of 232% within two years.

How did the mainstream food producers compete? Peretti speaks with Kath Dalmeny, former policy director at the Food Commission, who explains some of the marketing strategies used by mainstream food producers to keep our custom.

The programme also explores the impact of successive government initiatives and health campaigns, such as the proposal of ‘traffic light labelling’, the introduction of which the food industry lobbied hard against.

But in 2012, when we have an Olympic Games sponsored by McDonalds and Coca Cola, has anything changed?

Headline of the day: The grass is always greener

. . .on the other side of the legal fence.

From the International Business Times:

Marijuana Legalization Benefits Now Include Profit Potential For Wall Street Investors: Report

And now for a word from our sponsor [not]

We’re voting yes on California’s Proposition 37, a ballot initiative that requires labeling foods containing the fruits of genetic modification.

Living in Berkeley, when “bioengineering” reigns supreme at the little college up the street, we’re rather bemused at the millions corporations are spending to defeat the measure, using the classic forms of deception previously employed to convince folks that smoking was equivalent to breathing pure mountain air.

You’d think corporateers would be delighted to have the efforts labeled and acknowledged. But no. They want to conceal their “contributions” to our dietary intake.

So here are two of the many excellent video spots produced by Vote Yes on Prop 37 featuring some very familiar faces:

Trust Us: Vote Yes on Prop 37

Grocery Costs: Vote Yes on Prop 37

Please join us in voting yes. Let’s give the corporateers their due acknowledgment.

And, no, we have no sponsors other than our own peculiar sense of obligation.

Take me to your litre: ‘How Beer Saved the World’

A Discovery Channel documentary, posted while undergoing an experiment with the substance in question following a congenial meet with a dear friend, via vlogger Nlsko:

Did you know that beer was critical to the birth of civilization? That’s right. Beer. Scientists and historians line up to tell the amazing, untold story of how beer helped create maths, poetry, pyramids, modern medicine, labor laws and America.

H/T to our perennial source of inspiration, Moussequetaire.

NAFTA & GATT: Demolition of peoples, nations

A brilliant and prescient dissection of GATT and NAFTA from 1994 by then-UT Austin Professor of Economics and Latin American Studies Michael Conroy, including impacts on U.S. labor, Mexican corn farmers, and so much more.

Note also that he compares the loss of sovereign state powers created by NAFTA to those implemented by the creation of the European Economic Community.

Note too that he predicts the rise of the Mexican drug cartels, enabled by NAFTA’s facilitation of fast movement of goods across borders.

We were warned.

Part 1:

Part 2:

From the late, lamented, and utterly wonderful Austin public access show, Alternative Views. Lots more on their website, including this previously featured and utterly fascinating conversation with a brilliant journalist on the role played by the Central Intelligence Agency in the Reagan-era collapse of the U.S. savings and loan industry.

A timely video: GMO Ticking Time Bomb

With Proposition 37, the California ballot measure to require labeling of foods, plunging in popularity because of a massive advertising campaign funded by Monsanto, DuPont, and other Big Agra giants, we decided it’s time to offer some support for the measure.

So here’s a documentary from Gary Null:

GMO Ticking Time Bomb – Part 1

GMO Ticking Time Bomb – Part 2

Monsanto has kicked in $7 million to the No on 37 campaign, with DuPont adding another $5 million. Altogether, the No camp has raised $34.6 million, compared to the $5.5 million raised by supporters of the measure.

Lisa Baertlein of Reuters reports on the impact:

An intense advertising blitz, funded by Monsanto Co and others, has eroded support for a California ballot proposal that would require U.S. food makers to disclose when their products contain genetically modified organisms.

>snip<

For more than a week, an opposition group funded by Monsanto, PepsiCo Inc and others has dominated television and radio air time with ads portraying the labeling proposal as an arbitrary set of new rules that will spawn frivolous lawsuits and boost food prices, positions disputed by supporters of the proposed new measures.

>snip<

Support for the GMO labeling proposal has plummeted to 48.3 percent from 66.9 percent two weeks ago, according to an online survey of 830 likely California voters conducted for the California Business Roundtable and Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy by M4 Strategies.

At the same time, the proportion of respondents likely to vote “no” on the measure – known as Proposition 37 – jumped to 40.2 percent from 22.3 percent two weeks ago, according to the survey results released on Thursday.

Read the rest.

We’re voting yes.

EuroWatch: Warnings, woes, Spailout, Italy

We begin with the IMF’s latest warning, a declaration that Europe’s going to handbacket hell and only More Europe will save the continent. Next, another austerian advocate sounds off, a demand for memorandums every time, talk of European Union expansion, a no to the euro from Hungary, a bailout machine endorsement from the Austrian central bankster, German opposition to the Tobin Tax, and bad new for publishers and carmakers.

From France, we have a no homework promise from the president, announced before he offed off for a meet with the Spanish prime minister.

Spain gets another downgrade, Julio Iglesias makes big government bucks, Rajoy says Si to the Olympics, Madrid bails out another region, a harsh word comes down from Brussels, and the IMF warns of bond woes.

From Britain, we’ve got a cheesy Cameron pronouncement, some examples of British-style austerity and a demand for more.

From Italy, a shell game from Three-card Monti, more taxes for the Catholic church, and higher bond prices. Ireland gives us consumer woes, disbaled protesters, and farmer protesters.

IMF sounds a European alarm

And the solution proposed is More Europe. The very same agenda being pushed so vigorously by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

And given that the International Monetary is a key member of that austerity-inflicting Troika, the news should come as no surprise.

But the IMF call for deepening financial ties strikes deeper than many in Merkel’s Christian Democrats/Christian Socials may find comfortable.

The scenario outlined for a successful solution to the eurocrisis in the report [PDF] claims to present

a clear roadmap to a banking union and fiscal integration and deliver a major down payment toward those goals. Examples might include putting in place a euro area deposit guarantee scheme and bank resolution mechanism with common backstops, or concrete measures toward fiscal integration.

And then there’s this:

The process of further integrating the euro area as a monetary, fiscal, and financial union must be pushed forcefully ahead. Tangible commitments to the roadmap toward fiscal integration would help anchor expectations about the irreversibility of the euro area project. An immediate step toward greater risk sharing would be to provide a common fiscal backstop for a banking union. Common borrowing, with appropriate fiscal safeguards, could provide such a backstop, ensure market access for sovereigns under stress, and create safe assets for the banking sector.

And on with the coverage, first from Anna Yukhananov of Reuters:

The IMF’s stark tone on the euro area debt crisis in its semi-annual checkup of the world’s financial health was in marked contrast to the mood in Europe, where a European Central Bank decision to buy bonds of countries that accept an assistance program has removed immediate concerns about the survival of the euro.

“Despite many important steps already taken by policymakers, this agenda remains critically incomplete, exposing the euro area to a downward spiral of capital flight, breakup fears and economic decline,” the IMF said in its Global Financial Stability Report (GFSR) released on Wednesday.

It said the euro area’s debt crisis was the main threat to global financial stability, which had weakened in the last six months to leave confidence “very fragile”.

>snip<

A scenario where Europe muddles through, addressing haphazardly each new flare-up in the protracted crisis rather than adopting a comprehensive plan, would prove costly, Jose Vinals, director of the IMF’s monetary and capital markets department and the main author of the financial stability report, said.

“The more time that goes by without a complete solution, the more are the eventual costs for everybody of resolving the crisis,” he told Reuters in an interview.

Europe’s troubles should also serve as a lesson to the heavily indebted United States and Japan that delaying the necessary policy adjustments until markets force their hands would lead to “harsher economic outcomes”, Vinals told a briefing.

Read the rest.

More from Deutsche Welle:

“We find that delays in resolving the crisis have increased the amount of asset shrinkage at banks,” the IMF wrote in its latest Global Financial Stability Report. It warned that European lenders might have to sell $2.8 trillion (2.18 trillion euros) of assets unless policymakers found a way of ending the crisis.

The report highlighted the ongoing movement of large amounts of capital from troubled euro area nations to more economically stable regions in the world, including Japan, adding that this had become a major headache for Tokyo.

“Safe-haven flows have driven the yen exchange rate to near historic highs, impacting Japanese exports and domestic production,” the IMF commented, while describing the eurozone crisis as the main threat to global financial stability.

But the German Finance Ministry on Wednesday warned the eurozone dilemma must not become the only topic at the upcoming annual meeting of the IMF in Tokyo at the end of this week, pointing to growing growth problems in emerging nations and increasing US debt levels.

Read the rest.

Here’s a euronews report on the capital flight warning:

And this from Bruno Waterfield of the London Telegraph focuses on the More Europe banking union project:

The IMF is pressuring the EU not to back away from reforms to rapidly create a powerful new eurozone bank supervisor under the auspices of the ECB, including controversial proposals, opposed by Germany, for a European deposit insurance scheme.

“The existing strains in the markets require a leap to better policies if the euro area is to stabilise funding markets and reduce spreads, arrest capital flight, and begin to reintegrate financially,” the report said.

The IMF has identified an “increase in macroeconomic risks” as investors flee southern European countries and move investments to the North or outside the eurozone, creating a new economic divide in Europe.

“Within the euro area, capital has continued to move out of the periphery, both to the core and to countries outside the euro area altogether, as official measures to safeguard integration have so far proved insufficient to offset strong private–sector forces for fragmentation,” said the report.

Read the rest.

The EU economics boss endorses austerity

European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs Olli Rehn, a veteran of the Finnish centrist party Suomen Keskusta, says Europe must stick to the harshest forms of austerity, even though the IMF warned that an overzealous approach threatened recovery.

From Xinhua:

Earlier Tuesday, the IMF published a report forecasting the eurozone economy would contract 0.4 percent this year, 0.1 percentage point less than forecast in July, and grow 0.2 percent in 2013, compared with 0.7 percent predicted three months ago.

Reacting to the report, Rehn cautioned that while the impact of austerity on growth was important to consider, it was also essential to take into account the “confidence effect” budget consolidation had.

“There is always some short-term impact on growth. But on the other side, you have to take into account the confidence effect, which is much difficult to quantify,” Rehn told reporters at a press conference after a meeting of EU finance ministers.

Read the rest.

New bailouts must carry memoranda, says eurobankster

The second in command at the European Central Bank wants to make it very clear that all future bailout will demand those “structural reforms” so beloved of Disaster Capitalism.

It’s kind of like those Mafia loan sharks who’ll “structurally reform” your leg by breaking it if you fail to pay on time.

The bankster in question, Vitor Constancio, is from Portugal, a country that knows the austerian lash quite well.

From Reuters:

Structural reforms must be a highlight of any new bailout programs in the euro zone, European Central Bank Vice President Vitor Constancio told news agency MNI on Wednesday.

A country must request aid before the ECB can intervene with its new bond purchase program, which has calmed financial markets, even if it has not been used yet.

Any aid program “should of course very much include structural reforms,” Constancio told MNI on the sidelines of the meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Tokyo.

“The (European) fiscal part has been considered a lot already in the excessive deficit procedure. The (European) Commission will see what is necessary. But structural reforms must be a highlight of any precautionary program,” he added.

Read the rest.

More Europe, now with added countries?

More Europe really does mean more Europe, if by that you mean the number of countries in the European Union.

With the count almost 28 [Croatia joins next July], the EU is pushing to admit even more countries, despite — or perhaps because of — the crisis.

From Agence France-Presse:

“Enlargement policy continues to contribute to peace, security and prosperity on our continent,” said the EU executive’s annual enlargement report, a 75-page paper summing up the progress — or failings — of the eight candidate nations currently queuing to join the bloc.

With Croatia to be ushered in as the 28th EU member in July after years of reform, and others in the western Balkans on the road to membership, enlargement “is an investment in sustainable democracy and demonstrates the EU’s continued capacity as a global actor,” the report said.

“Enlargement to southeast Europe helps avoid the far higher costs of dealing with the consequences of instability.”

The 2012 report gave good marks to Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro, while telling Serbia and Kosovo they needed to further reduce mutual tensions before being welcomed into the club.

Bosnia-Hercegovina was bluntly asked for “more work” before lodging “a credible” membership application.

There was little new in this year’s score-card on the other big candidates for membership — Iceland, currently split over whether it would like to join or not, and Turkey, whose 25-year bid to join remains paralysed largely by its quarrel with EU member Cyprus.

Read the rest.

Yep, goitta get them strays rounded up into the herd.

But one country that’s already in the EU has decided to back off on the next step.

Hungary rules out eurozone membership

They decided, to paraphrase a former U.S. president “that wouldn’t be prudent.”

We suspect they’re right.

From Agence France-Presse:

Hungary is under no obligation to join the euro and doing so at the current juncture would be “irresponsible”, the country’s prime

Fueling the Food Crisis — ethanol and hunger

From The Real News Network [transcript here], a fascinating discussion between Paul Jay and Timothy A Wise about the role of government ethanol mandates in fueling Third World hunger:

Some background on Wise via TRNN:

Timothy A. Wise is the Research Director of the Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE), Tufts University, and leads its Globalization and Sustainable Development Program. With a background in international development, he specializes in agricultural policy and rural development. He is involved in ongoing research in the areas of: Sustainable Rural Development, Beyond Agricultural Subsidies, Mexico Under NAFTA, WTO and Global Trade. He is the co-author of the book (in English and Spanish), Confronting Globalization: Economic Integration and Popular Resistance in Mexico, and The Promise and the Perils of Agricultural Trade Liberalization: Lessons from Latin America. He is the former executive director of Grassroots International, a Boston-based international aid organization. He holds a Masters in Public Policy from Tufts’ Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning Department.

Al Jazeera has an extended report on Wise’s work here. His report on the impacts of the U.S. ethanol mandate on Mexico is here [PDF].

A reminder: Tonight’s the night for GMO meeting

A very important meeting tonight in Berkeley will confront some of the most important issues of the day, both for folks concerned about the future of the University of California and for the world.

We hope to see you there.

A reminder: Questioning the Green Agenda

An important talk coming up this Thursday here in Berkeley with some excellent speakers, some of whom we know and respect.

Headline of the Day: Journalist thoroughly cowed

From the Watertown [N.Y] Daily Times, reporting on a catastrophic journalism failure by one of America’s leading magazines in a story reporting on the non-existent flight of Amish farmers from a New York county:

AN UDDER MESS: How the Atlantic got it all wrong in St. Lawrence County

France may call for ban on Monsanto GMO corn

The fallout from that controversial study of the health effects of Monsanto`s NK603 genetically modified corn and the weed-killer it`s designed to resist could result in the crop`s banishment from France and, utltimately, the rest of Europe.

The study, by a team of researchers headed by Gilles Eric Séralini, Professor of Molecular Biology and co-director of the Risk Quality and Sustainable Environment Unit at University of Caen, focused on the effects of the corn and Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide.

The results, published in the peer-reviewed journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, found that rats fed a diet of the corn and/or water treated with a level of the herbicide considered safe for human consumption in the U.S. lived short lives and developed mammary tumors and severe liver and kidney damage.

From Radio France Internationale:

France will ask for a Europe-wide ban on a genetically modified maize developed by US agribusiness Monsanto if the findings of tests made public Wednesday prove to be true. The study found that rats fed on the corn for two years developed tumours the size of ping-pong balls, liver damage and digestive problems.

France will call for a ban “at a European level” if the national health agency (Anses) backs up the findings of the study by French scientist Gilles-Eric Seralini, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told an audience in the Burgundy city of Dijon on Thursday.

And a communiqué from Agriculture Minister Stéphane Foll, Ecology Minister Delphine Batho and Health Minister Marisol Touraine said that Paris may demand a ban on the import of Monsanto’s NK603 corn, the subject of the tests.

The question will also be taken to the European Union’s Food Safety Agency, which green campaigners have often accused of conflict of interest because several members are alleged to be connected to seed companies.

Read the rest.

A video report from euronews:

More from Agence France-Presse:

Agriculture Minister Stephane Le Foll, Ecology Minister Delphine Batho and Health and Social Affairs Minister Marisol Touraine said they had asked the National Agency for Health Safety (ANSES) to investigate the finding.

“Depending on ANSES’ opinion, the government will urge the European authorities to take all necessary measures to protect human and animal health,” they said in a joint statement.

“(The measures) could go as far as invoking emergency suspension of imports of NK603 corn to Europe pending a re-examination of this product on the basis of enhanced assessment methods.”

Read the rest.

UPDATE: Séralini refuses to hand over data

From Agence France Presse:

The French scientist who linked Monsanto genetically-modified corn to cancer in rats on Thursday refused to let the EU’s food safety watchdog, EFSA, verify his results.

“It’s out of the question that those who authorised (Monsanto’s) NK603 carry out a counter-study of our findings as there’d be a conflict of interest,” Gilles-Eric Seralini said at a news conference at the European Parliament.

EFSA, which authorises the sale and planting of GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms), was asked by the European Union executive Wednesday for an opinion as soon as possible, hopefully by year’s end, on a study headed by Seralini.

Read the rest.

While he’s right to be suspicious, given the tremendous political clout of Monsanto, it’s an unfortunate move, certain to be used against the study.

Research ties GMO crops to cancer, early death

The new findings, just published in the peer-reviewed journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, has already led to a call by the French government to follow up, possibly leading to intervention by the European Union.

The study, by a team of researchers headed by Gilles Eric Séralini, Professor of Molecular Biology and co-director of the Risk Quality and Sustainable Environment Unit at University of Caen, focused on one strain of genetically engineering corn and the herbicide Roundup [glyphosate], which the plant was created to resist by genetic modification.

The strain in question, Monsanto’s NK603, was approved for use in food for human consumption by the European Commission seven years ago.

The findings were just released, and they’re certain to set off a firestorm of controversy.

The report, needless to say, is hidden behind a costly paywall, so we’ll have to rely on a combination of news reports and statements by advocacy groups.

First, a video report featuring Patrick Holden of the Sustainable Food Trust and Dr. Michael Antoniu, a molecular biologist at Kings College London School of Medicine:

First, the breaking news, reported by Reuters:

Gilles-Eric Seralini of the University of Caen and colleagues said rats fed on a diet containing NK603 – a seed variety made tolerant to dousings of Roundup – or given water containing Roundup at levels permitted in the United States died earlier than those on a standard diet.

The animals on the GM diet suffered mammary tumours, as well as severe liver and kidney damage.

The researchers said 50 percent of males and 70 percent of females died prematurely, compared with only 30 percent and 20 percent in the control group.

Seralini was part of a team that flagged previous safety concerns based on a shorter rat study in a scientific paper published in December 2009 but this takes things a step further by tracking the animals throughout their two-year lifespan.

Read the rest.

Reaction from the French government was prompt, reported by the Australian Associated Press:

The French government has asked the country’s health watchdog to carry out a probe, possibly leading to EU intervention, after a study said genetically modified corn caused cancer in rats.

In a joint statement, Agriculture Minister Stephane Le Foll, Ecology Minister Delphine Batho and Health and Social Affairs Minister Marisol Touraine said they had asked the National Agency for Health Safety (ANSES) to investigate the finding.

“Depending on ANSES’s opinion, the government will urge the European authorities to take all necessary measures to protect human and animal health,” they said.

“(The measures) could go as far as invoking emergency suspension of imports of NK603 corn to Europe pending a re-examination of this product on the basis of enhanced assessment methods.”

Read the rest.

The London Daily Mail reports a critical reception by some several scientists, which can be read here.

Perhaps the most telling example:

Mark Tester, Research Professor, Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics, University of Adelaide, said: ‘The first thing that leaps to my mind is why has nothing emerged from epidemiological studies in the countries where so much GM has been in the food chain for so long?

‘If the effects are as big as purported, and if the work really is relevant to humans, why aren’t the North Americans dropping like flies?!

‘GM has been in the food chain for over a decade over there – and longevity continues to increase inexorably!

‘And if the effects are as big as claimed, why have none of the previous 100+ plus studies by reputable scientists, in refereed journals, noticed anything at all?’

The announcement

Here’s the press release from the Center for Research & Independent Investigation of Genetic Engineering [CRIIGEN], which is headed by Seralini:

For the first time, the health impact of a GMO and a widely used pesticide have been comprehensively assessed in a long term animal feeding trial of greater duration and with more detailed analyses than any previous studies, by environmental and food agencies, governments, industries or researchers institutes.

The two tested products are in very common use : (i) a transgenic maize made tolerant to Roundup, the characteristic shared by over 80% of food and animal feed GMOs, and (ii) Roundup itself, the most widely used herbicide on the planet. The regulatory approval process requires these products to be tested on rats as a surrogate for humans.

The new research took the form of a two year feeding trial on 200 rats, monitored for outcomes against more than 100 parameters. The doses were consistent with typical dietary/ environmental exposure (from 11% GMO in the diet, and 0.1 ppb in water).

The results, which are of serious concern, included increased and more rapid mortality, coupled with hormonal non linear and sex related effects. Females developed significant and numerous mammary tumours, pituitary and kidney problems. Males died

Scientists Under Attack, corporate power run amok

Scientists Under Attack, Genetic Engineering in the Magnetic Field of Money, a 2010 documentary by Bertram Verhaag for Denkmal Films, focuses on the confrontations between two biologists and the power of the genetic corporateers.

The first is Árpád Pusztai, a respected scientist who lost his job with the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland, after a furor erupted over then-unpublished results of experiments revealing that a genetically engineered potatoes changed the epithelial cells in lab animals.

The second scientist, UC Berkeley’s own plant micobiologist [and friend] Ignacio Chapela [previously], was targeted by Monsanto for research demonstrating that genes from the company’s genetically modified corn had infiltrated native seed stock in Mexico, the land of origin for modern maize and the source of its greatest biological diversity.

As a result of the campaign, he was denied tenure at Cal, winning it only though a court battle, events we covered when we reported for the Berkeley Daily Planet.

From Denkmal Films:

Árpád Pusztai and Ignacio Chapela have two things in common. They are distinguished scientists and their careers are in ruins. Both scientists choose to look at the phenomenon of genetic engineering. Both made important discoveries. Both of them are suffering the fate of those who criticise the powerful vested interests that now dominate big business and scientific research. Statements made by scientists themselves prove that 95% of the research in the area of genetic engineering is paid by the industry. Only 5% of the research is independent. The big danger for freedom of science and our democracy is evident. Can the public – we all – still trust our scientists?

Headline of the day: But we forget the question

And, damn, we’ve got the munchies.

From Al Akhbar:

Lebanon Agriculture: Hashish Remains the Answer

Breaking the set: Coups, GMOs, and superbugs

Another episode of Breaking the Set, the new RT show from San Francisco Bay Area alternative journalist Abby Martin:

From RT:

Abby Martin brings up the issue of Corporate Personhood and unregulated political donations.

Dr. Wilmer Leon is interviewed about what he calls a Coup D’Etat of American Democracy.

Breaking The Set exposes truths about Bahrain through today’s Hero Amber Lyon, and reveals Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir as today’s Villain for his crimes against humanity.

Abby Martin then talks to RT Web Producer Andrew Blake about how taking a picture might land you in an interrogation room, and finally calling out GMO giant Monsanto for their agricultural mis-practices.

Edible City: Remarkable film about city farming

From director Andrew Hasse, a delightful documentary on the urban agriculture movement, focusing mainly on what’s happening along the eastern side of San Francisco Bay.

Local readers will see a lot of familiar faces, including UC Berkeley’s Miguel Altieri, the last remaining faculty member from the university’s now-gutted agroecology program, Jason Harvey of the Oakland Food Collective, Eric Holt-Gimenez, Willow Rosenthal of Oakland’s City Slicker Farms, educator Joy Moore of Berkeley Alternative High School, Leon Davis of the Hope Collaborative, permaculture specialist Brock Dolman, and more. Altieri also addresses the short-lived occupation of the university’s Gill Tract in Albany.

Hasse’s done an excellent job of exploring a very important response to the global economic crisis, a way to reclaim some of our independence as citizens and communities. And note the job on the faces of the young people as they participate in growing food to feed themselves and their families.

The film’s website is here.

Headline of the day: Starved for cash

From The Independent:

Barclays makes £500m betting on food crisis

Outrage as bank revealed to be major speculator while millions face starvation

Chart of the day: The German agrofuel time bomb

From Spiegel, a graphic look at the rapid increase in land use to produce corn for ethanol:

The competition for land is already driving up some food prices, including potatoes. But there’s an even more troublesome side effect, as Spiegel’s Nils Klawitter reports:

These days, corn is already being planted in marshlands, such as those near the northwestern town of Bremervörde. Although biogas has long been lauded as a means of rescuing the environment, here its devastating effects are on full display.

“In such soils, the carbon captured in the bog is released over the long term,” says Uwe Baumert, a senior official with the Lower Saxony branch of the Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU). NABU estimates that growing corn releases 700 grams (25 ounces) of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for every kilowatt hour of energy it produces. And this happens for years on end. This is comparable to the carbon-released-to-power-produced ratio of some coal-fired power plants.

Karsten Specht, the managing director of OOWC, the water supplier of Oldenburg and northern coastal region of East Frisia, has grown increasingly worried while watching the boom of corn used for energy. Each biogas facility generates about 20,000 metric tons (44,000 pounds) of fermentation residue each year. This waste is then used as a fertilizer on the fields after the corn has been harvested. And just like pure liquid manure, these residues are nitrate bombs.

Specht has measured the nitrate-pollution levels in groundwater lying near the surface under corn fields. In most cases, it is somewhere between 80 to 120 milligrams per liter of water, which is clearly above the threshold value of 50 milligrams per liter.

“What we are setting in motion here is a big problem,” Specht says. “We are tolerating the fact that the quality of the groundwater is going down the drain.”

Read the rest.