
Cloning & Patenting
FDA Approves Food from Clones: Tell Grocers You Won't Buy It
The FDA may have lifted the ban on cloned meat, but that doesn't mean we have to accept cloned meat in our stores. Grocery stores will only stock cloned meat if it is profitable for them, and together we can make sure that it isn't. Let the grocery stores know that you intend to exercise your power as a consumer and vote with your pocketbook.
There has, of course, been no public debate about whether US citizens, let alone the recipients of US exports, wish to consume milk and meat from cloned animals.
And this isn't just an issue of democratic deficit.
A spokesman for the Biotechnology Industry Organization is quoted in the article as saying, "We clone an animal because we want a genetic twin of that animal. It's not a Read more
DECEMBER 26, 2006
Contact:
Joseph Mendelson, CFS,
(202) 547-9359, (703) 244-1724 (cell);
Andrew Kimbrell, CFS,
(202) 547-9359, (703) 927-2826 (cell)
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected later this week to release a preliminary safety assessment that clears the way for marketing of meat and dairy products from cloned animals for human consumption. The assessment and the agency's expected endorsement of cloned food comes despite widespread concern among scientists and food Read more
Simpson could sign a deal for millions with the Murdoch empire to reenact
the "hypothetical" murder of his wife and her friend, it may seem like
absolutely everything is now for sale in our mercenary culture. And that
far too many people are buying. (Though, mercifully, not in O.J.'s case.)
The latest evidence of this comes from, of all places, one of the most
trusted and admired of federal agencies. The National Park Service (NPS) is
quietly taking public comment through Read more
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
It seems that the majority of policy makers in Africa are unaware or uninterested in the fact that GM crops are patented, which threatens farmers' livelihoods and seed security, while granting GM corporations incredible political control over countries that chose to grow their crops.
Talk about biosafety frameworks at policy level consistently misses out the fact that patented GM crops will forbid farmers from saving their seed. But there can be no doubt that Monsanto and the other GM companies will be utterly Read more
"UH needs to show more respect for native Hawaiian culture," activist Walter Ritte told the press last March. "Hawaiians would never dream of patenting or genetically manipulating kalo (Taro is known as "kalo" to native Hawaiians). Kalo is a gift handed down to Read more
CURITIBA, Brazil - Two patents granted in the United States between 2000 and 2002 and another for which an application has been filed have put "maca", a high altitude Andean plant that is used by indigenous people in Peru, at the centre of a new battle against biopiracy, which involves the construction of an international network against the misappropriation of traditional knowledge.
One of the patented maca-based products claims to raise testosterone levels. But the countries that registered the plant "did not invent a thing," said lawyer Isabel Lapeña, with the Peruvian Read more
The winners of the Captain Hook Awards for Biopiracy announced in Curitiba today are an eclectic group that includes old favorites and new up-and-comers; Community-based biodiversity efforts win Cog Awards for defending food sovereignty
Google "Crashed" today at the Captain Hook Awards ceremony during the meeting of the Eighth Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). No, this doesn't mean that Internet service was interrupted in Curitiba's ExpoTrade Convention and Exhibition Centre where the CBD meeting is being Read more
MEDIA RELEASE
22 March 2006
FROM: Quechua-Aymara Association for Nature and Sustainable Development (Peru) and the International Institute for Environment & Development
Indigenous farmers in Peru, the birthplace of the potato, have pleaded with agribusiness Syngenta International to publicly abandon its patent on "terminator" technology to control sprouting potatoes which could put at risk more than 3,000 potato varieties in the region and undermine efforts to reduce poverty.
More than 40 indigenous leaders from potato producing
Read moreCURITIBA, Brazil - Meanwhile, Greenpeace International added another urgent action for saving life on earth: protecting international waters.
These announcements were made by the two global movements on Tuesday, at the 8th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP8), taking place in this southern, "ecologically-minded" Brazilian city from Mar. 20 - 31. ...the central, strategic battle will be waged around seeds, pitting peasant farmers who have produced and improved seeds for 10,000 years, thus expanding their genetic diversity, against the
Read moreEDMONDS INSTITUTE PRESS RELEASE
Monday, March 20, 2006
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Sunday, March 19. On the eve of the Eighth Conference of the Parties
(COP 8) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Edmonds
Institute, a US-based public interest, non-profit organization, released a report entitled, "Out of Brazil: A Peanut Worth Billions (to the US)" . Described by Institute director Beth Burrows as "a case of old-fashioned, but highly lucrative biopiracy," the report exposes how a peanut collected at a market in Porto Alegre,