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By TODD BENSON SÃO PAULO, Brazil, March 3 - In a significant victory for large biotechnology companies like Monsanto, Brazil's lower house of Congress has overwhelmingly approved legislation paving the way for the legalization of genetically modified crops.
After months of delays and heated debate, legislators passed a biotechnology law late Wednesday night by a vote of 352 to 60. The bill had pitted farmers and scientists against environmental and religious groups. Besides lifting a longstanding ban on the sale and planting of gene-altered seeds, the legislation also clears the way for research involving human embryonic stem cells that have been frozen for at least three years.
The bill, which was approved by the Senate in December, is expected to be signed into law by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the next two weeks. Mr. da Silva, whose own Workers' Party is packed with environmentalists who fiercely oppose genetically engineered crops, issued temporary decrees twice in the last two years allowing the planting of modified soybeans, even though it was technically illegal to do so.
Until now, Brazil was one of the last of the world's major agricultural producers not to have granted blanket permanent approval to the planting of genetically modified crops. Even so, farmers have been flouting the ban for years, sowing modified soybean seeds that have been smuggled across the border from neighboring Argentina.
Agricultural specialists estimate that about 30 percent of Brazil's soy crop is already grown with genetically engineered seeds.
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Feb. 25 (Bloomberg) -- A shortage of money and scientific resources hampers the global fight to prevent a bird flu pandemic that might kill millions, the United Nations said at an international conference in Vietnam, as a new human case of bird- flu infection was reported in the host country.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Organization for Animal Health repeated a $100 million request to fight the disease. Last year's request generated only about $18 million in emergency funds, and FAO officials said inaction a year ago may now have tripled the bill by allowing avian influenza to become endemic in parts of Asia.
Vietnam, the nation hardest-hit by bird flu, told more than 25 countries meeting in Ho Chi Minh City that it needs help to diagnose the H5N1 bird flu virus and research its transmission and virulence. Vietnam's call was echoed in the conference declaration, which said regional animal health networks are insufficient for timely bird flu detection or response.
``The virus is already circulating and entrenched,'' Shigeru Omi, the World Health Organization's regional director for the Western Pacific, said at a press conference in Ho Chi Minh City today. ``It is our moral obligation to share this kind of information with the general public, because we know the longer it persists, the greater the chance.''
On Wednesday, Omi told the conference that the world is ``now in the gravest possible danger of a pandemic.''
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MADRID (Reuters) - A Spanish clinic that allows women to adopt frozen embryos to save them from scientific research said Monday 14 women were pregnant with adopted embryos.
The Barcelona clinic launched a scheme last year to allow embryos left over from fertility treatment and destined for stem cell research to be implanted into women.
Tens of thousands of embryos are currently frozen in Spain and the launch of the program coincided with the government allowing scientists to use them for research.
Scientists believe investigation on stem cells -- master cells with the potential to grow into any human cell or tissue -- could provide cures for diseases such as Alzheimer's.
The Institut Marques said couples who had lost a child, infertile couples, and single and homosexual women were among those who had decided to have an embryo implanted.
But there were also women who wanted to save the frozen embryo from being used in scientific research. Opponents of stem cell research including the Roman Catholic Church say it is unethical to destroy a human embryo.
"There are also couples who already have children and for ethical reasons consider this a new kind of parenthood, to provide a solution for a leftover embryo and avoid its use in research," Dr. Olga Serra, head of the program said in a note.
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New York
Ex-Greenpeace activist turned biotech supporter believes that auditing the performance of biotech products is the only way to convince people of their value.
Associated Press, CP, Richard Lam
Nobody can say Patrick Moore doesn't have the courage of his convictions. When he was at Greenpeace, an organization he cofounded, he stood between seal pups and hammer-wielding thugs. Armed with no more than a life preserver, he steered a dingy in front of a harpoon-mounted whaling ship. The self-described radical environmentalist even planted himself on rail tracks to stop trains carrying materials to nuclear power plants. Ironically, he now finds himself standing up to the forces he was instrumental in creating: Greenpeace and the environmental movement.
Moore abandoned Greenpeace in 1986 after growing frustrated by what he calls the infiltration into the movement of radicals bent on nothing short of ridding the world of capitalism and biotechnology. He now pursues his environmental agenda under the umbrella of his consultancy, Greenspirit.
As an environmental heretic, Moore took to op-eds and the environmentalist-bashing lecture circuit with the zeal of a recovering alcoholic preaching about demon rum. This reversal of allegiances has earned him high praise from the biotech community and the scorn of the environmental community, who see him as a traitor to the cause.
In a recent Wired article, Greenpeace director Paul Watson called Moore a "corporate whore...eco-Judas...lowlife bottom-sucking parasite, who has grown rich from sacrificing environmentalist principles for plain old money." To Moore, suffering personal insults like these is no more painful than getting arrested for trespassing and disturbing order during his Greenpeace days. "If personal insults are the price I have to pay, then so be it," he says.
"The [public and media] have bought into this idea biotech can't be trusted," Moore remarks, "I say it's the environmental groups who can't be trusted anymore and I can prove it." Moore's new crusade—one among many in his career—is precisely about giving legitimacy to biotech application vis-à-vis environmental opponents. To do so, he suggests that an audit of the performance of biotech products is sorely needed to prove their strengths and weaknesses.
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Two new retroviruses - the type of virus which causes AIDS - have jumped from non-human primates to people, a new study reveals.
The study of blood samples from nearly a thousand bushmeat hunters or handlers in Cameroon showed that at least six viruses had crossed from monkeys to the people who were exposed to freshly caught bushmeat. And two of these viruses have never been seen before in humans.
The newly discovered human T-cell lymphotropic virus 3 (HTLV-3) and HTLV-4 are closely related to the known viruses, HTLV-1 and HTLV-2. These are implicated in cancers like leukaemia and can cause inflammatory or neurological diseases.
Retroviruses such as HTLV or HIV insert their genetic material into a host cell's DNA. The emergence of HIV is widely blamed on a primate retrovirus, SIV, jumping to humans. Previously, it was thought that the emergence of these viruses was limited by the rarity of successful cross-species transmission.
But the identification of two entirely new human retroviruses from one study, along with a previous discovery by the same group that simian foamy viruses can jump from monkeys to humans, may be ominous.
"What's increasingly clear is that the hunting and butchering of non-human primates is associated with the transmission of retroviruses to humans," says Nathan Wolfe, at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, US, who led the study.
He says the new results suggest the team's previous find of simian foamy viruses in bushmeat hunters was "not just a fluke". In the blood-screening study, 13 out of 930 people were found to be infected with simian retroviruses, and two with the new human strains.
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Nearly 50 people have died from bird flu in south east Asia Millions of doses of drugs to ward off a flu pandemic are to be stockpiled, the government has announced.
It said without the antiviral drugs an outbreak could kill 50,000 in the UK.
Experts say a pandemic is inevitable and will probably emerge in Asia if bird flu mutates with human flu, creating a highly infectious new virus.
The UK Influenza Pandemic Contingency Plan also includes quarantine measures, as well as arrangements for the emergency services.
Concerts and football matches could both be banned and travel restricted in the event of an outbreak to stop the virus spreading.
But the government decided against buying up vaccines as ordinary flu vaccines will not be 100% effective because the strain which would be responsible for any future pandemic has not emerged yet.
It could take up to six months to develop a vaccine once a pandemic has started.
Instead, the Department of Health is to stockpile 14.6 million doses of the antiviral drug Tamiflu, which is made by Swiss drugs firm Roche and works by reducing the symptoms and the risk of a carrier passing on the virus, at a cost of £180m.
It will be enough for a quarter of the population - the World Health Organization's recommended level.
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By Jeremy Smith
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - China could open the door to biotech rice within two years, paving the way for the GMO crop to enter the food stream across Asia, the head of a trade group said Monday.
"Rice is likely to be approved in China in the near term, maybe in two years," said Clive James, chairman and founder of ISAAA, a group with industry and public foundation support that promotes biotech as a way to halt global hunger.
"And once China approves rice, this will move through the rice countries of Asia -- like India, Pakistan and the Philippines -- where rice is king," he said in an interview.
Knocking down the barriers to using GMO (genetically modified organism) rice would be a major coup for industry and other backers of GMO crops.
Rice is the staple of half the world's more than six billion people. China has long been seen as the pioneer in GMO rice, and is the world's top producer and consumer of the commodity.
As yet no GMO rice is produced commercially, but China is at the forefront of developments and is poised to approve the commercialization of modified strains that can resist insects and diseases.
Many governments are wary about authorizing GMO crops due to consumer concern over possible risks to human and animal health. But the global biotech industry says GMO crops can help feed millions of the world's hungry, particularly in developing countries.
Pressure to launch GMO rice comes at a time when Beijing faces a tough task in raising the country's grain output and in narrowing the income gap between farmers and urban citizens.
China's 2004 rice crop is expected to rise to about 180 million tons from 161 million last year, the lowest since 1994. The country's supply deficit is around 10 million tons.
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U.S. believes it's safe, but will investigate anyway
By Philip Brasher
Washington, D.C. - The government is again investigating the safety of genetically engineered corn.
This time, the issue isn't StarLink, the corn variety that spawned nationwide food recalls in 2000, but a variety developed by Des Moines-based Pioneer Hi-Bred International and Dow AgroSciences. The new variety produces corn resistant to rootworm.
Like StarLink, the Pioneer- Dow product contains a protein that takes longer to break down in the human gut than many other proteins. That's a characteristic of foods that cause allergic reactions.
"At this stage, any kind of reasonably cautious approach would say hold off on their protein until we get data that is more definitive," said Doug Gurian-Sherman, a for- mer scientist for the Environmental Protection Agency who doesn't believe the EPA should approve the new corn variety, which could end up in food.
Gurian-Sherman, who worked on the StarLink issue while at the EPA, is now senior scientist with the Center for Food Safety, an advocacy group critical of agricultural biotechnology.
The EPA believes the corn is safe, based on research provided by Pioneer and Dow, as does the Food and Drug Administration, which also assesses the safety of biotech foods.
However, the EPA is convening a panel of scientific advisers today and Wednesday to look into the companies' data.
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By Jeremy Smith
BRUSSELS - Europe's leading food safety agency gave a clean bill of health on Friday for the planting of a genetically modified (GMO) maize, only the first step towards possible EU approval for growing.
While the EU has now lifted its 6-year ban on allowing imports of new GMOs, there have no approvals since 1998 on any new gene-spliced crop that could be planted in Europe's fields -- and the EU's 25 governments are deeply divided on the issue.
A handful of GMO crops, mainly maize types, were authorised for growing across the EU shortly before the moratorium began in 1998. No new crop has been allowed for planting since then.
Spain is the only EU state to grow gene-altered crops on a commercial scale, although field trials exist elsewhere.
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is key to the biotech debate, since it is independent and non-political.
It has already given several positive assessments of GMOs for use in food and animal feed, but never for a "live" one that can be planted. Now, it has made its first foray into the controversial area of whether GMO crops are safe to be planted.
The maize, known as 1507, is made jointly by Pioneer Hi-Bred International, a subsidiary of DuPont Co.
"The Panel considers that 1507 maize will have similar impacts on the environment as other comparable non-GM maize cultivated plant varieties," EFSA said. The maize was also safe for use in animal feed and industrial processing, it said.
"The Panel is of the opinion that there is no evidence to indicate that the placing of 1507 maize and derived products on the market is likely to cause adverse effects on human or animal health or the environment," it said in a statement.
EFSA's views are used by the European Commission as independent scientific opinion on the safety risk of GMO products for entry into the food chain, for consumption by humans and animals and for release into the environment.
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By Catherine Bremer
EL ROSARIO, Mexico (Reuters) - A plunge in the number of monarch butterflies migrating from the United States and Canada to Mexican winter colonies has experts worried logging and pesticides are endangering the fragile insects.
Although masses of sleeping butterflies still hang like clumps of dead leaves from branches in the El Rosario sanctuary in central Mexico, and the air is filled with fluttering monarchs woken by the sun, biologists say the population this year is the smallest ever and down three-quarters from 2004.
"Their numbers always fluctuate, but if you look at a chart of the past 10 years, it appears the trend is going lower," said Eduardo Rendon, a local World Wildlife Fund coordinator.
In a mysterious migration that fascinates biologists and delights tourists, tens of millions of bright orange butterflies make the grueling annual trip south to sit out the winter months in central Mexico's temperate fir forests.
Tracking them is hard as those that arrive in November are the great-grandchildren of those that left the previous March.
But Mexican and U.S. biologists are studying different points along the migration route to work out what is hurting most -- U.S. pesticides, bad weather, deforestation in Mexico, predatory birds or even climate change.
At El Rosario, which drew 133,000 tourists last year, the butterflies are clustered high above where they used to gather -- making them more vulnerable to cold weather -- because logging has thinned out the lower slopes.
In 2002, some 65 million died when snow fell on El Rosario.
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