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•In April, a UK judge seemed to condone last year's uprooting of Monsanto's (St. Louis, MO) field trials in Oxford by protesters against genetically modified crops. The judge said he could not issue an injunction preventing the protest group GenetiX Snowball (Manchester, UK) from repeating its action, because the protesters may have a defense argument on the grounds that they are protecting public health. The judge ordered a full hearing, and issued a temporary injunction on six protesters, preventing them from continuing their campaign until the case is closed.

•Research from the University of Keele (Keele, UK) suggests that pollen from genetically modified (GM) plants could travel beyond 200 meters, the current buffer zone to prevent cross-pollination with wild-type plants required by European law. By planting sterile male rapeseed plants (i.e., unable to self-pollinate, the normal mode of rapeseed fertilization) next to GM rape and phenotyping the resultant seeds, the researchers were able to assess how far pollen from GM plants had traveled. At 400 meters, GM pollen had fertilized up to 7% of the seeds. The researchers acknowledge this is a "worst-case scenario" experiment. However, in earlier "realistic" experiments using normal, nonsterile plants capable of self-fertilization, the group showed that cross-pollination with GM plants did not occur using only a 150 M buffer zone.

•Jumping on the GM banning bandwagon, two major global agricultural and food processing businesses pledged in April not to deal in genetically modified crops. AE Staley (Decatur, IL), a major US corn refinery and a subsidiary of the UK's Tate and Lyle (London) sugar producer, announced it would not trade in GM corn unapproved by the European Union. Archer Daniels Midland (Decatur, IL), one of the largest agriculture businesses in the US, followed suit a week later.

•In a far from charitable report, Christian Aid (London), has taken a swinging swipe at biotechnology's admittedly paltry efforts to "feed the world." Christian Aid (motto, "We Believe in Life before Death") is one of the largest UK charities offering aid to the developing world. Its report released in mid-May, "Selling Suicide: Farming, false promises, and genetic engineering in developing countries" bears both the tone and the content of other anti-genetic engineering literature. It contains quotes from "experts" who provide varying degrees of insight into plant biotechnology. The head of India's National Research Centre on Plant Biotechnology, V.L. Chopra, for instance, has apparently come to the somewhat astounding conclusion that "Monsanto are in it for the profit."