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Amsterdam / Vienna -- The ProTerra Foundation, an international organisation based in the Netherlands, and the European Soya Organisation Donau Soja, an international NGO based in Austria, have agreed to work in close cooperation regarding the certification of sustainable soya grown in Europe. ProTerra recognises the Europe Soya Standard as the European interpretation of the ProTerra Standard. Soybean producers and processors within Europe will have their products certified according to the Europe Soya Standard, while soya producers outside Europe will continue to do so according to the ProTerra standard. This will allow all market participants to be certified according to one widely recognised standard and to maximize synergies between Donau Soja's European network and ProTerra's global experience. As the standard holder of Europe Soya, the Donau Soja Association will serve the European market with the support of the ProTerra Foundation.

"I am very pleased for the opportunity to work hand in hand with Donau Soja to provide synergies, alternatives and solutions for market participants who are securing the supply of sustainably grown European soybeans without GMOs that are equivalent to the soybeans and soya derivatives from Brazil and other origins certified against the ProTerra Standard. The pooled efforts with Europe Soya will result in a stronger and unified European soya standard that aims at zero deforestation and will benefit producers, processors, retailers, and – most of all – consumers", comments ProTerra Chairman Augusto Freire.

"I am extremely happy that our two organisations will be joining forces to certify and label sustainable European non-GMO soybeans and soya products according to a combined sustainability standard and quality scheme. We are convinced this will help us promote our mission to make European agriculture more sustainable by deploying legume crop rotation according to best practice standards. It will also be good for the market, there will soon be many more certified products available for all market participants. Thanks to our cooperation with ProTerra, we can have a much greater impact on the market and on sustainability", adds Matthias Krön, Chairman of Donau Soja Association.

EU legislation is the minimum requirement for the Europe Soya Standard and a baseline in all relevant aspects of the production chain, even for non-EU countries, such as Serbia, Bosnia, Moldova, and Ukraine. This is particularly relevant in terms of the use of chemicals, regarding which EU legislation exhibits more strict regulations than many non-EU countries. Europe Soya also forbids desiccation with substances like glyphosate. The Europe Soya Standard includes requirements such as a ban on land use change (e.g. no deforestation), the obligation to respect social and labour rights (ILO conventions), and a non-GMO status according to existing regulations. (For additional details see: www.donausoja.org/downloads.)

The continent of Europe currently imports the equivalent of around 40 million tons of soybeans per year that were grown on approximately 16 million hectares. The mid-term potential for European soy production and cultivation is around 15 million tons in the next ten years. Current production is approximately 9.2 million tons. ProTerra and Donau Soja share a common goal to jointly realise this potential via viable means and by way of sustainable soybeans grown in Europe as well as imported soybeans that are produced sustainably and in accord with the ProTerra Standard.

Augusto Freire and Matthias Krön jointly conclude that, "We are convinced that our new cooperation will allow us to contribute to a healthier and more sustainable agriculture worldwide."

The other shoe just dropped.

Four months after the publication of a batch of internal Monsanto Co. documents stirred international controversy, a new trove of company records was released early Tuesday, providing fresh fuel for a heated global debate over whether or not the agricultural chemical giant suppressed information about the potential dangers of its Roundup herbicide and relied on U.S. regulators for help.

More than 75 documents, including intriguing text messages and discussions about payments to scientists, were posted for public viewing early Tuesday morning by attorneys who are suing Monsanto on behalf of people alleging Roundup caused them or their family members to become ill with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. The attorneys posted the documents, which total more than 700 pages, on the website for the law firm Baum Hedlund Aristei Goldman, one of many firms representing thousands of plaintiffs who are pursuing claims against Monsanto. More than 100 of those lawsuits have been consolidated in multidistrict litigation in federal court in San Francisco, while other similar lawsuits are pending in state courts in Missouri, Delaware, Arizona and elsewhere. The documents, which were obtained through court-ordered discovery in the litigation, are also available as part of a long list of Roundup court case documents compiled by the consumer group I work for, U.S. Right to Know.

As suspected drift from dicamba took a toll on farmers the past two growing seasons, Monsanto — the Creve Coeur-based agribusiness company that helped give the herbicide newfound prominence with its introduction of dicamba-tolerant crop varieties — publicly urged growers not to spray illegal kinds of the product while new formulations supposedly less prone to drift waited for regulatory approval.

But a class-action lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in St. Louis accuses company sales representatives of secretly giving farmers assurances that using unauthorized or “off-label” spray varieties would be all right.

“This was Monsanto’s real plan: publicly appear as if it were complying, while allowing its seed representatives to tell farmers the opposite in person,” the suit alleges, based on farmer testimony. “Their sales pitch: assure purchasers that off-label and illegal uses of dicamba would ‘be just fine.’”

Iowa farmers face a crisis. Crop prices have fallen by more than 50 percent since 2013, with no end in sight. At the same time, farmers hold more debt and possess fewer capital reserves to fall back on. In fact, farmers’ debt levels are almost as high as they were prior to the farm crisis of the mid-1980s.

Meanwhile, a wave of mergers among the world’s agricultural giants is upending the markets for seeds, fertilizers and pesticides. If approved, the proposed merger would result in just two companies — Monsanto-Bayer and Dow-DuPont — controlling about three-quarters of the U.S. corn seed market. The power that these corporations would hold in the seed market is unprecedented.

Farmers are already being squeezed. The price of corn seed has more than doubled in the past 10 years — from $51 per acre in 2006 to $102 in 2015 — as a result of similar consolidation, including Monsanto’s purchases of DeKalb and Cargill's international seed business. If the Monsanto-Bayer merger is permitted, this problem will only intensify, further limiting farmers’ choices and making the products they need even more expensive.

On 3 July 2017 we submitted 1,320,517 ECI signatures to

STOP GLYPHOSATE

— now let’s get to 2 million!

We’re now 1323431-strong demanding a total ban on glyphosate in the European Union

Fruit fly experiments show hurdles remain before gene-editor can be used to control disease, pests

A genetic-engineering tool designed to spread through a population like wildfire — eradicating disease and even whole invasive species — might be more easily thwarted than thought.

Resistance to the tools, called CRISPR gene drives, arose at high rates in experiments with Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies, researchers at Cornell University report July 20 in PLOS Genetics. Rates of resistance varied among strains of fruit flies collected around the world, from a low of about 4 percent in embryos from an Ithaca, N.Y., strain to a high of about 56 percent in Tasmanian fruit fly embryos.

“At these rates, the constructs would not start spreading in the population,” says coauthor Philipp Messer, a population geneticist. “It might require quite a bit more work to get a gene drive that works at all.”

CHICAGO • Tennessee on Thursday imposed restrictions on the use of dicamba, becoming the fourth state to take action as problems spread over damage the weedkiller causes to crops not genetically modified to withstand it. Missouri on Thursday also announced restrictions, partially rolling back an emergency ban announced last week.

Dicamba is sprayed by farmers on crops genetically modified to resist it but it has drifted, damaging vulnerable soybeans, cotton and other crops across the southern United States. Farmers have fought with neighbors over lost crops and brought lawsuits against dicamba producers.

New Delhi, July 14 (IANS) Rajasthan, India’s top mustard producing state on Friday, expressed its reservations over commercial introduction of Genetically Modified (GM) variety of mustard, saying output from the traditional varieties was adequate.

Rajasthan’s Agriculture Minister Prabhu Lal Saini said it did not want to be dependent on any company for seeds.

“Production of mustard is quite good in our state. We are getting 32-33 quintals per hectare from the traditional varieties and oil content (recovery) is also between 40-42 per cent. The output from the traditional varieties is adequate and it is highly nutritious. Then why do we need GM seeds? We do not want to disturb our parental seeds,” Saini told reporters here.

A new report by the toxicologist Dr Peter Clausing shows that the EU authorities violated their own rules and disregarded evidence that glyphosate is carcinogenic to reach a conclusion that the chemical does not cause cancer

The EU authorities reached the conclusion that glyphosate is not carcinogenic by disregarding and brushing aside evidence of cancers in experimental animals and by violating directives and guidelines that are supposed to guide their work, according to a new report [1] by the German toxicologist Dr Peter Clausing.

The report shows for the first time that glyphosate should have been classified as a carcinogen according to the current EU standards. This would mean an automatic ban under EU pesticides legislation. However, the EU authorities disregarded and breached these standards, enabling them to reach a conclusion that the chemical is not carcinogenic.

In April 2016, Monica Eng of WBEZ, Chicago’s NPR station, published a critical story revealing that the agrichemical giant Monsanto had quietly paid a professor at the University of Illinois to travel, write, and speak about genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and even to lobby federal officials to halt further GMO regulation. In a grueling, year-long reporting project, Eng uncovered documents proving that Monsanto made the payments to University of Illinois professor Bruce Chassy, and that he advised Monsanto to deposit money in the university’s foundation, where records are shielded from public disclosure.

“I knew that this would be a big story,” Eng says.

What she didn’t expect was the massive blowback: The university accused her of being an activist, not a journalist, and she was hounded by Twitter trolls who jumped on her story and waged a campaign to discredit her personally.

“I’ve worked as a professional journalist in Chicago for more than three decades,” Eng says. “I’ve uncovered questionable activity in government groups, nonprofits, and private companies. But I don’t think I have ever seen a group so intent on trying to personally attack the journalist covering the issue.”

Eng’s experience is just one example of a strategy first invented by Big Tobacco to smear critics, spin reporters, and tamp down information that could damage the industry’s image.

“I don’t think I have ever seen a group so intent on trying to personally attack the journalist covering the issue.”

—Monica Eng