Pro-GM lobbyists out in force at MOP-3

As usual, pro-biotech lobby groups will be out in force for the upcoming meetings in Curitiba, Brazil, of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP-8) from 20-31 March and the supplementary Biosafety Protocol, also known as the Cartagena Protocol (MOP-3), from 13 to 17 March.

The biggest lobby group will be the International Grains Council but at least delegates will know just who the IGC and its constituent bodies represent. Much more insidious are lobby groups like the Public Research and Regulation Initiative - a pro-GM lobby which will be fielding over 40 representatives, mostly picked from the developing world and trained and scripted by PRRI, to promote identical goals to those of the industry.
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=316

Also active at these events is the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) which will once again be showing its Monsanto-backed film on GM: 'Voices from Africa' on the 16th. Anyone going to MOP-3 should be encouraged to read this background article.
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The Uncle Tom Award
Jonathan Matthews
Freezerbox magazine, 14 March 2005
http://www.freezerbox.com/archive/article.asp?id=337

Meet the civil rights group whose rhetoric comes from Wise Use, whose support comes from Monsanto, and whose agenda coincides precisely with that of George W. Bush.

A couple of years back I wrote a piece called 'The Fake Parade'. It was about a march at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg that had been widely reported as a protest by poor Third World farmers in support of GMOs. A leading light of the Biotechnology Industry Organisation declared the march "a turning point" because "real, live, developing-world farmers" had begun "speaking for themselves". What they had to say seemed pretty unpalatable to the environmental and development NGOs that have raised concerns over GM crops. A commentary on the march in The (London) Times was headlined, "I do not need white NGOs to speak for me" while, during the march itself, a "Bullshit award" was presented to the Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva for being "a mouthpiece of western eco-imperialism".

'The Fake Parade' showed the march was a charade. For instance, the main "developing-world farmer" quoted by the man from BIO turned out never to have farmed in his life. Instead, Chengal Reddy headed a lobby for big commercial farmers in Andhra Pradesh that aspired to becoming the operational arm of the trade association for the agrochemical companies active in India. Similarly, the "media contact" for the march and for the "Bullshit award" was the daughter of a US lumber industrialist, who had worked out of various free market NGOs, such as the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute. Her specialty was "counter protest".