| To: pie-faced-mutt who wrote (1708) | 3/1/2005 3:52:59 AM | | From: GUSTAVE JAEGER | | | | Follow-up to my post #3922:
While agro-Luddites keep freaking out public opinion in Europe, China takes the lead in life sciences:
China Seen Opening Door Soon to Biotech Rice
Mon Feb 28, 8:35 AM ET
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.
"Once China does (approves) rice, it's a momentous decision. It's the most important food crop in the world. They've worked on this very carefully and had large-scale field trials for several years, so there's a substantial database," said James, the full name of whose organization is the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications.
China is already the world's top grower of insect resistant GMO cotton, known as bacillus thuringiensis cotton, which has been effective in controlling damage from the bollworm pest.
Around 20 percent of China's annual investments in crop biotechnology were earmarked for rice, and the country looked set to become the world's second largest investor in this area after the United States, he said.
"There's fairly good evidence that in China, they are investing $200 million minimum a year, with the intention to increase that to $500 million. And that's only in crop biotechnology -- China is already a very significant player."
Maize was another area where China was likely to develop GMO strains since demand was expected to jump by 80 percent between 1997 and 2020, he said, adding that consumer demand for a richer diet meant that more maize would be used in animal feed.
"China and India alone have tremendous opportunities," said James. "The policy of China is to be least dependent on outside territories: rice, maize and, maybe in the medium term, wheat."
story.news.yahoo.com |
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| To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (3925) | 3/4/2005 1:54:10 PM | | From: pie-faced-mutt | | | | Dissension in the ranks:
March 4, 2005
Brazil Passes Law Allowing Crops With Modified Genes
nytimes.com
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.
Perhaps China does not intend to pay any royalties to any company for their GM foods. |
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| To: pie-faced-mutt who wrote (3926) | 3/5/2005 7:20:47 AM | | From: Yaacov | | | | Now you worry about Brazil! Young lady, you should make-up your mind what you want to do when you grow-up! GG
Lenny, focalize on your hot-dog stand on 555, 5th ave. (you didn't know I know you!) and stop printing lies. If you don't behave I will ask Mr. N. Sherman of Nat Sherman Ciagrs to have you removed from the store front. You do understand me girl? LOL |
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| To: pie-faced-mutt who wrote (3931) | 4/13/2005 4:34:00 AM | | From: GUSTAVE JAEGER | | | | While the US and Europe waste their time and energies tilting at al-qaeda windmills, the Asian powerhouse forges ahead....
Globalist: The roar of a new Asia is on the global horizon
Roger Cohen International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
HONG KONG The war on terror has obscured the fundamental strategic shift of the past decade: the emergence of China and India as rapidly growing powers that have thrown off their complexes, patched up their own relations, embarked on a buying spree and made talk of the Asian century persuasive.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to speak of the countries' re-emergence. In 1820, China accounted for about 30 percent of the global economy and India about 15 percent. The United States then weighed in with less than 2 percent. But by the 1950s, America was dominant and China and India accounted for only about 4 percent each of world economic activity.
Today, the two Asian countries' share of that activity has risen to close to 20 percent between them, and the graph points sharply upward. Indians are looking east for economic opportunity. Intra-Asian trade is growing much faster than trans-Pacific trade and Japan now exports more to China than to the United States.
The numbers turn the head. In China, 250 million to 400 million people have been lifted out of poverty as the economy has opened. India and China account for about 40 percent of the world's working-age population. China is talking of quadrupling the size of its economy by 2020; it could have the world's largest by 2030.
"Things have changed forever," said John Thornton, a former president of Goldman Sachs and now professor of global leadership at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Yes, they have. While America took on Iraq, and Europe mulled its constitution, and France debated the 35-hour week, Asia has been booming, driven by growth rates in two giant countries that would make Europeans swoon. Asia hums while America worries and Europe sleeps.
But the Asian party is not all sunshine - and the shadows are not merely those of the widening gaps between rich and poor or the environmental depredations in China that send a yellow smog wafting through the genteel residences of Hong Kong's Peak district.
No, the deepest shadow is that of regional insecurity. Taiwan, North Korea, rising nationalisms, disputed histories and contested islands form a heady brew. The danger looming over Asia reflects the failure to match rapid economic growth with the growth of regional institutions to ensure the stability on which the money-making is based.
Indeed, a senior American official in Seoul argued that the region's only true multilateral institution is the U.S. military, with its large bases in Japan and South Korea and its strong relationships with many of the region's armed forces.
That is an exaggeration. It also tends to gloss over the fact that uncertainty about the security "architecture" the region should embrace results in part from America's hesitation about how to respond to the rise of India and China and its neglect of Asian issues other than fighting terrorism.
There is a broad sense in Asia that APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation), the 21-member trade organization of which the United States is part, has been allowed to drift by the Bush administration or been seen only as a means to get messages across about fighting Islamic radicals in Indonesia.
Concern is also spreading that America tends to see Asia with what Yu Xintian, a professor at the Shanghai Institute for International Relations, called a "zero-sum or cold war mentality," one that seeks to play one power off against another and is wary of regional alliances that exclude the United States.
In response, Asians have set in motion the creation of an embryonic equivalent to the European Union, the East Asian Community (EAC), whose birth would be symbolized by the first East Asia summit meeting in Kuala Lumpur in December.
The EAC would seek to build on the achievements of Asean, which comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, by adding the economic giants China, Japan and South Korea and bolstering cooperation in the economic and security spheres.
But the composition and very idea of the EAC, the first broad Asian regional grouping encompassing China that would exclude the United States, is controversial. "It's a mistake," said Richard Holbrooke, a former United States ambassador to the United Nations. "Exclude America and you damage relations across the Pacific."
Of course, America's concern that the EAC would soon become China's plaything would be eased if the Malaysia summit meeting included invitations to Australia, New Zealand and India. The former two countries are firm American allies; the latter is seen as a counterweight to China.
U.S. allies including Japan, supported by Indonesia, are pressing for these countries to attend the summit meeting that will birth the EAC, but the issue is not resolved. "We don't want the United States to see the new architecture as exclusionary or tailor-made for China," said Marty Natalegawa, the Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman.
Other countries, however, including Malaysia, see the likes of Australia as U.S. Trojan horses. They want Australia to first sign the Asean nonaggression treaty, but that might conflict with Australia's U.S. defense pact. China, as ever, is playing its cards carefully, while supporting the EAC idea. "America should welcome a peaceful and prosperous East Asia community," Yu said.
Yu is right. The train has left the station as far as the building of an overdue East Asian Community is concerned. Institutions seldom hurt and sometimes help.
Any organization that bolsters Asian dialogue when the growth of China and India are so unsettling and the threats to regional security are so acute should be welcomed in Washington. America will be troubled by the EAC, as it has been at times by the EU, but a more cohesive Asia at peace is in its interests.
At the same time, the nascent EAC should be inclusive. One thing about India, Australia and New Zealand is they will balance China. Another thing is that they are all democracies. The EU has served to spread democracy. Over decades, an EAC including these countries may even do the same.
E-mail: rcohen@iht.com
iht.com |
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| To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (3932) | 4/20/2005 10:04:06 AM | | From: pie-faced-mutt | | | | "But the composition and very idea of the EAC, the first broad Asian regional grouping encompassing China that would exclude the United States, is controversial. "It's a mistake," said Richard Holbrooke, a former United States ambassador to the United Nations. "Exclude America and you damage relations across the Pacific."
I wonder if Mr. Holbrooke is at all concerned about America's role in the U.N., such as not paying its dues, threatening other members with trade sanctions or favored-nation status depending upon how they cast their votes and outright veto powers.
There are still some in this country that have an inflated view of themselves and their country.
It is their believe that the world cannot function without the United States.
While these folks bask in their illusions, believe what they read in their corporate, scripted, heavily edited "newspapers" (we tell you what you need to know and believe), the rest of the world are seeking alliances for resources, industry, and cooperation.
Good (non-U.S.) article to read Gus.
Thanks,
len |
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| To: pie-faced-mutt who wrote (3933) | 4/29/2005 4:09:27 AM | | From: GUSTAVE JAEGER | | | | What Agro-Luddites don't want you to know:
Farmers say GM rice cuts pesticide illness
Tim Radford, science editor
Friday April 29, 2005
The Guardian
Small farmers in China growing GM rice reported higher yields than for conventional varieties, a lower use of pesticides, and less illness related to the use of the pesticides, Chinese and US scientists report today in Science journal.
In eight field trials in two consecutive years, the 69 farmers grew a rice genetically engineered to be resistant to stem borer and leaf roller, and also a rice fitted with an insect-resistance gene from a cowpea plant. They were not paid and made their own decisions about pesticide use; the research was funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
For comparison, the researchers also surveyed farmers who used conventional varieties, or who grew both types. All applied the same kinds of pesticides, but on a per hectare basis the quantity and cost of those applied to conventional rice was eight to 10 times higher.
Yields of one GM variety were 9% higher than normal; the harvest from the other was about the same.
The researchers also asked the farmers' families if they had headaches, nausea, skin irritation, or digestive upsets after spraying. None of the farmers who completely converted to GM crops had pesticide health problems in either 2002 or 2003. Of those that grew both GM and conventional varieties, 7.7% reported some illness in 2002, and 10.9% in 2003.
"This study provides China and other nations with objective, research-based information about whether GM food crops can actually improve farmer welfare," said Carl Pray of Rutgers University in New Jersey.
guardian.co.uk |
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