Turkey’s economy grew in Q2 for the ninth successive quarter, and by 8.8% on the previous year. The rate of GDP growth surprised even the central bank, and while inflation is not yet a concern, food prices are high and rising. This has brought the complicated issue of genetically modified food to the fore, with a request to the government from feed, poultry and egg producers to allow imports of three types of genetically GM corn to be used as animal and chicken feed. “We can solve our raw material problem only through imports,” says Ulku Karakus, chief of the Turkish Feed Industrialists Union, explaining the problem. “Costly feed translates into expensive meat. Unless we pull down the cost of feed, we cannot drive down meat prices.”

According to the cables, GMO supporters in Bulgaria are actively backed and financed by the American Embassy, as Bivol writes. In a cable, sent in 2006, Charge d’Affaires, Alex Karagiannis, informs the US Department of State that the main obstacle for the passing of more liberal GMO legislation has been opposition coming from the President of the Bulgarian Academy of Science, Ivan Juchnovski. “According to Atanas Atanassov, Director of the Agro-Bio Institute, Juchnovski sent various “experts”, who knew little about the science of GMOs, to the Environmental and Agriculture Parliamentary Committees to critique the draft law.

President Bronislaw Komorowski vetoed a new controversial seeds bill, which fails to properly regulate GMO production but does not ban it [...] Though he himself is not against GMOs, he says the bill is a ”bad and irresponsible” piece of legislation with controversial provisions relating to GMOs included at the last moment. ”It is bad legislative practice to throw socially controversial problems into a bill at the very last moment,” Komorowski said last week.

Friends of the Earth Spain celebrates the suspension of GM trials with human genes after mass mobilisations by the general public. Valencia’s local government has revoked the permit of an Italian pharmaceutical company to experiment with GM rice combined with human genes in Vinaros, Castellon. [...] The aim of the GM trial was to obtain enzymes to treat Gaucher’s disease. However, there are several treatments for this disease that are obtained through genetic engineering in confined environments.

American seed giant Monsanto and its Indian collaborator, Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company are to be prosecuted for allegedly ‘stealing’ indigenous plant material for developing genetically modified brinjal variety known as Bt brinjal. The National Biodiversity Authority, a statutory body set up under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, has decided to initiate legal proceedings against the two companies and their collaborators for using indigenous brinjal germplasm without necessary permission.

The Bharatiya Kisan Sangh and several NGOs took out a protest on Tuesday against US genetically-modified seed producer Monsanto. They took out their protest on the lines of the ‘Quit India Movement’ launched by Mahatma Gandhi against the British on August 9, 1942, and asked Monsanto to stop its activities in the country and quit India. NGO representatives told mediapersons at Gujarat Vidyapeeth that if Monsanto gets total control over the country’s agriculture, it will begin interfering in the political affairs and virtually become another ‘East India Company’.

82.7 percent of the area for soybeans, 64.9 percent of the area for corn and 39.7 percent of the area for cotton will be using GM seeds; the Central-Western region is now leading in the size of the area planted with GM soybeans. [...] The area planted with transgenic soybeans for thenext harvest will be 13.4 percent greater than it was in the 2010/11 harvest, occupying 20.8 million hectares (82.7 percent of the total area projected).

In the Netherlands, the Community Council of Nijmegen last night declared the city GE-free. After Culemborg and the province of Friesland, this is only the third GE-free region in the country, whose national government considers itself neutral as to GE agriculture, but is seen as a staunch supporter of it by industry, other governments and civil society alike.

Greenpeace protesters have broken into a CSIRO experimental farm in Canberra to destroy a crop of genetically modified wheat. In the early hours of this morning a group of Greenpeace protesters scaled the fence of the CSIRO experimental station at Ginninderra in the capital’s north. Greenpeace says activists were wearing Hazmat protective clothing and were equipped with weed string trimmers. They say the entire crop of genetically modified wheat has been destroyed. About half a hectare of GM wheat is being grown on the site, as part of Australia’s first outdoor trials. No genetically modified wheat strain had ever been approved for cropping in Australia before.

When news of arrival Monsanto senior official from Mumbai are in near village munjala cotton farmers of village karanji 140 K.m. from Nagpur has taken him to their field where complete failure of ‘Paras Sudarshan’ BT. cotton seed was shown to him when he failed to admit the lapse he was severely beaten up even local agriculture officer has not came to his rescue as per reports published in regional news papers. daily all regional papers in vidarbha and marathwada region of Maharashtra where more than 4 million hector are in under bt. cotton cultivation are reporting the flood of bogus seed supplied local agents of American cotton seed MNC giant