This week's protests were an initiation for 21yr old Patti Topette of Cypress. She doesn't claim membership with any organization or have any specific agenda."It has something to do with growing up in the suburbs where everybody's pretty well-off," said Topette, who drove to the protests every day from Orange County.

And now for some real perspective
In central Orange County melting pot,
  life is far less "conventional."
8.18.00   Terry McDermott L.A. Times pU5

SAN DIEGO   Up to 1,000 demonstrators, some dressed as ears of corn or genetically engineered tomatoes, staged a colorful but largely peaceful protest Sunday on the opening day of a biotechnology trade show. Many demonstrators said they are concerned that businesses are introducing genetically modified crops and seeds into the food supply without knowing the long-term consequences. "The biotech industry is conducting a real-time experiment with our biosphere,'' said 26-year-old Shannon Service of Boulder, Colo., who was dressed as a monarch butterfly. "They don't know the results, they can't possibly know the results. The monarch butterfly represents that well.'' Research has suggested pollen from genetically engineered corn can be toxic to the butterflies, whose favorite food, milkweed, grows in and around corn fields. The altered corn produces its own pesticide to kill an insect pest.

Earlier this year, a panel of scientists who advise the federal government urged more research into such crops to determine their effect on the environment. The estimated 750 to 1,000 demonstrators gathered in Balboa Park for an afternoon march to the San Diego Convention Center, where participants registered for the Biotechnology Industry Organization's annual conference. They listened to speeches, performed street theater and hung banners. One man was dressed as a tomato and wore a sign reading "I was a test tube veggie.'' Another carried a sign reading "Biocide is Homicide.'' The protests were largely peaceful. Police arrested two people for carrying concealed knives, police spokesman Dave Cohen said. Outside the convention center, a black-dressed protester burned an American flag.
Some spectators disagreed with protesters' concerns about genetically altered crops. "I have no problem with their right to protest, but they have no clue what they're talking about,'' said Jessica Van Wert, 52, of San Diego. "People are starving. We so desperately need technology to step up and feed the world.'' Protest organizers had expected several thousand participants and blamed the lower turnout on police and the media. They "drummed up a tremendous amount of paranoia and hysteria,'' said Han Shan, spokesman for the Ruckus Society, which trained protesters in nonviolent tactics for the event. "The whole downtown of San Diego has been militarized,'' Shan said. "There are a lot of people out here who feel we're being criminalized for simply expressing concern with biotechnology.''

Police said they were determined to avoid a repeat of the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, which caused $2.5 million in downtown property damage. More than 600 people were arrested. Uniformed officers kept their distance from protesters in the park, but dozens of police cars, motorcycles and officers - some in riot gear - were available on nearby streets. Police followed demonstrators on their march to the convention center. Police said their main concern was the anarchist groups that have disrupted previous anti-globalization demonstrations around the country. Members of those groups often dress in black and wrap their faces in ski masks or bandannas, or carry gas masks. Several were among the marchers Sunday. Conference organizers acknowledge the protesters' concerns but defended the industry and the trade show, which is expected to draw 15,000 participants.

CRAWFORD, TX   President Bush on Saturday proposed forbidding employers, insurance companies and others from denying jobs or health coverage to people based on their genetic makeup. Bush said in his weekly radio address that scientific advances making it possible to unlock a person's genetic code have also opened the door to potential discrimination against people with a genetic propensity to disease. "Genetic discrimination is unfair to workers and their families," Bush said in the address. "It is unjustified, among other reasons, because it involves little more than medical speculation." The address was recorded on Thursday and broadcast while Bush was taking a weekend break at his ranch in Texas. Bush said he was working with Congress to develop legislation that would outlaw such discrimination.

Rep. Louise Slaughter, a New York Democrat, welcomed Bush's interest in the issue, "given the fact that the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives have failed to act on this issue for over five years." Slaughter has sponsored a bill that would ban discrimination in the workplace and in health insurance on the basis of genetic information. Her legislation has 250 bipartisan co-sponsors in the House, and Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle has sponsored a companion bill in the Senate. "I hope the president will support this strong, enforceable genetic nondiscrimination bill," Slaughter said in a statement. "We must pass this law as soon as possible because individuals are already suffering genetic discrimination."

Similar Legislation In Texas
The White House said Bush had signed legislation while he was governor of Texas to outlaw genetic discrimination in employment and group health plans. Genetic differences have been linked to up to 4000 diseases, including cystic fibrosis, cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, schizophrenia and heart disease, the White House said. However, said Bush: "A genetic predisposition toward cancer or heart disease does not mean the condition will develop. To deny employment or insurance to a healthy person based only on a predisposition violates our country's belief in equal treatment and individual merit. Just as we have addressed discrimination based on race, gender and age, we must now prevent discrimination based on genetic information." Bush also used the address to make another pitch for his version of "patients bill of rights" protections for customers of health maintenance organizations (HMOs), as the U.S. Senate debates the issue.

Democrats won an early procedural test on Thursday on a bill which Bush has threatened to veto for failing to adequately limit lawsuits, but key Democrats on Friday signaled they could support changes in their favored bill to limit the liability faced by employers. "The system should not favor HMOs, and it should not favor trial lawyers," Bush said. "It should favor patients, with quick action to make sure they get the treatment they need."

Organic farming can reduce world hunger   UN FAO

Frankenkosher
3.6.01   Dara Colwell AlterNet

San Diego   Critics of genetically modified foods are letting bioengineers know their concerns at the world's biggest biotech conference here, accusing companies of favoring profits over consumers' health. Among the products being touted & and condemned "golden rice,'' has come to represent the hopes and fears about biotechnology, even though not one single seed of it has yet to be planted. Industry supporters launched a spirited discussion about golden rice, named for its yellow hue and because it is genetically engineered to produce Vitamin A in the hope that developing nations can use it to stave off malnutrition. "We could not have come up with a better example of what biotechnology is all about,'' said Mike Phillips, a spokesman for the Biotechnology Industry Organization. "It's a wonderful story of the public and private sectors have come together.''
Critics call it "Frankenfood.'' They view golden rice and other genetically modified foods as potential health hazards, and argue that not enough research has been done to determine whether they are really safe. It will probably take another 5 to 10 years before poor subsistence farmers can begin growing the crop in large amounts, and that's "if everything goes right,'' said Ronald Cantrell, executive director of the International Rice Research Institute. Its many proponents see the rice, infused with two daffodil genes and a bacteria gene to add vitamin A, as a panacea for starving populations in developing nations where rice is a staple. Traditional rice lacks vitamin A, and as many as 2 million children die each year because of vitamin A deficiencies. Another 500,000 go blind. Biotechnology researchers say genetic engineering is the only practical way to fortify the rice.

"It was clear from the beginning that biotech was needed instead of typical crop breeding,'' Swiss plant cell professor Peter Beyer, one of the two inventors of golden rice, said Monday at the annual Biotechnology Industry Organization conference. "No rice anywhere has vitamin A.'' Opponents call it science run amok. They say no plants should be genetically changed to include elements of other organisms, and particularly not rice. Once the plants are released into the environment, cross-pollination with traditional rice could have unpredictable long-term impacts on the food billions of people eat every day. "The purported benefits of golden rice are completely fabricated,'' said Brian Tokar, a member of Biojustice, a group opposed to genetic engineering. Tokar dismissed the golden rice project as merely a public relations ploy to improve biotech's media image.
"The way to cure blindness and hunger should not come from big agribusiness,'' he said. Still others praise the science but say the distribution system is flawed; govts & nonprofit agencies are too big & bureaucratic to properly handle getting the seeds to poor farmers once the product is perfected. Villoo Morawala-Patel, who owns an India biotech start-up that works on the aroma of Indian rice, says golden rice's keepers should turn to companies like hers to help distribute the seeds. Still, Beyer and other major supporters of the rice cautioned that years of fine-tuning must be done before poor subsistence farmers will be able to use it on a wide scale. Today, golden rice is grown only in a few greenhouses, including at the Rice Research Institute's headquarters in

San Diego   The outpouring of protesters expected to greet the Bio2001 conference failed to materialize Monday as 15,000 scientists and biotech business people descended on the San Diego Convention Ctr. Almost all of the rancor came from within the hall itself. On Sunday, a peaceful march from Balboa Park to the Convention Ctr was orchestrated by a consortium calling itself Biodevastation¹, which opposes the use of genetically modified foods as well as globalization. Security was beefed up to handle a lot more than the approximately 750 marchers who showed. Earlier news reports said police expected as many as 5,000 protestors, and the riot cops marched conspicuously as six helicopters flew overhead and squad cars patroled miles outside the city limits. On Monday, a lone protestor was spotted. And that was it. All of the action, such as it was, was inside.

The Golden Rice Humanitarian Board, a board created by scientists and companies developing vitamin A- enhanced rice, took harsh words during a panel discussion, not only from opponents of genetically modified food, but from one of their own: the CEO of a biotech startup. Villoo Patel, CEO of Avesthagen, an agricultural biotech company in Bangalore, India, said she has been trying repeatedly to collaborate with the makers of the rice but has gotten nothing more than pat responses. Patel took issue with the company's plans to distribute the rice seeds through local governments once it's on the market. National seed distribution projects are too slow and bureaucratic, she said, to distribute the seed effectively enough to make it a viable product. Members of the panel agreed that government-run seed distribution will be inefficient, but said they didn't see other options. Patel said the rice producers need the help of small, local companies like hers, or else the people who need the rice will never see it. "It will be 5 years later and these guys will have massacred the market," Patel said. "They have to use mediating companies."
Distribution could be the biggest hurdle to clear for the rice to become a viable product, but there are several others that precede it. Not the least of which is a major PR problem. The board has been vilified by groups such as Greenpeace, which have campaigned against the idea of genetically modified rice. They say the promotion of Golden Rice is a public relations campaign disguised as a Good Samaritan effort. Opponents argue that there are better ways of getting Vitamin A to people, such as helping farmers grow leafy-green vegetables instead of growing genetically modified rice. And, they add, it will be 3 years until enough rice can be produced even for testing. After that, it will be another couple of years before an analysis can be completed on the rice's safety. Then, assuming it clears these hurdles, the rice must be accepted by consumers.
As the name suggests, this particular rice is yellow. In Asia, where vitamin A deficiency is common, many people have a cultural or religious preference for pure white rice. Still, the researchers are determined to introduce Golden Rice to the international grain market. "We cannot fail at this," said Ronald Cantrell, director general of the International Rice Research Institute in Manila. "The eyes of the world are watching."