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	Money to Burn: More than 300 banks and investors implicated in rainforest destruction by Global Witness   The burning of the Brazilian Amazon this summer illustrated in the most graphic way possible humanity's war on the planet.   But such scenes play out every year in rainforests all around the world to make way for big agribusiness, away from the horrified stare of global television audiences.   These forests are earth's front-line defence against climate breakdown. One famous study published in 2017 estimated that forests and other ecosystems could make up more than a third of the total carbon mitigation by 2030 needed to limit global heating to a 2 degrees Celsius rise.   Yet between 2001 and 2015, over 300 million hectares of tree cover was destroyed: nearly the size of India. About a quarter of this loss was driven by the production of commodities such as beef and palm oil, according to a recent study. It also found that in south-east Asia alone, deforestation for growing commodities such as palm oil is responsible for as much as 78% of tree cover loss. This is madness.   That being the case, it is unsurprising many banks and investors proudly trumpet policies on ethical dealing, promising not to pump money into companies that fell and burn precious rainforests. There is only one problem: the same financial institutions often break their own policies at will, making them barely worth the paper they are printed on.   A Global Witness investigation now exposes the sheer size and scale of these financial flows and reveals how a veritable A to Z of global finance is enabling the destruction of the world's biggest rainforests.   The companies razing forests to produce palm oil, beef, and rubber are currently able to secure financing for new projects at commercially attractive rates from banking hubs in the US, Europe and Asia. Global Witness investigated the financing of six huge agribusinesses: three operating in the Amazon, two in the Congo Basin, and one in New Guinea.   Global Witness has discovered that between 2013 and 2019, they were backed to the tune of $44 billion by over 300 investment firms, banks, and pension funds headquartered across the globe. The household name institutions our expose highlights will be familiar to anyone who has looked at the skyline of Wall Street or Canary Wharf, read a quality newspaper or opened a current account.   While some of these institutions have developed their own deforestation policies, there is no penalty if they ignore them and they often do. Governments failure to regulate the financing of deforestation has left the foxes in charge of the hen-house. Members of the public may be shocked to learn the institutions they bank with enable the sort of apocalyptic destruction witnessed in the Brazilian Amazon this summer.   Ordinary people's pension funds and investments are channelled into companies revving up the climate crisis, stripping indigenous peoples of their ancestral lands and destroying the forests home to untold numbers of species.   Over the last decade, many financial institutions have committed to tackling deforestation, so often associated with human rights abuses or corruption. One group of 56 investors To inspect full datasets see bottom of page.jpgmanaging approximately $7.9 trillion in assets has urged the palm oil sector to commit to no-deforestation policies.   Some 12 banks adopted the Soft Commodities Compact, aiming to achieve net zero deforestation by 2020 in the soy, palm oil, beef and pulp/paper supply chains of around 400 companies with combined sales of 3.5 trillion euros.   But there remains little transparency and accountability over how banks put commitments into practice, and signatories now admit they will miss the 2020 target. Meanwhile, the world's largest financial institutions continue to sink vast sums into companies either levelling forests themselves or via other companies, often in blatant violation of their own deforestation policies and public commitments.   The NGO Global Canopy assessed 150 financial institutions and found nearly two-thirds had no policy covering four key forest-risk commodities, beef, soy, palm oil and timber. Yet as our investigation shows, even existing policies are widely ignored.   Global Witness can now reveal some of the largest names in global finance - Barclays, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Santander and Standard Chartered among them - provided tens of billions of dollars in financing between 2013 and 2019 to companies either directly or indirectly deforesting the largest rainforests in the world.   Leading investment banks including JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley are also implicated. And what you are about to read only scratches the surface of a global systems failure.   http://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/forests/money-to-burn-how-iconic-banks-and-investors-fund-the-destruction-of-the-worlds-largest-rainforests/ Visit the related web page
	EU Parliament says no to patenting plants bred naturally by European Parliament, agencies   The European Parliament has repeated its opposition to patenting plants obtained through natural processes.   On 19 September, MEPs voted in favour of a resolution stating that plants obtained through conventional breeding processes, such as crossing and selection, must not become patentable.   They fear that allowing natural plant varieties to be patented would concentrate plant breeding material in the hands of a few powerful multinational companies. The resulting loss of genetic variety could in turn endanger food security and raise food prices.   Background:   Behind the controversy are two cases where the European Patent Office (EPO) granted patents to a reduced water content wrinkly tomato and a broccoli variety, which could reduce the risk of getting cancer. These plants were created through crossing and selection with no genetic manipulation.   After a Parliament resolution in 2015 and Commission intervention in 2016, the cases are being discussed in EPO's final appellate instance. The deadline for submitting written statements is 1 October.   Patents:   Patents are a form of intellectual property that gives its owner the right to to prevent others from making, using or selling their invention. They are a tool to encourage investment in innovation. Patentable inventions must be new, inventive and applicable industrially.   The European Patent Convention grants exception to patentability to 'plant or animal varieties or essentially biological processes for the production of plants or animals'.   However, the exception excludes microbiological processes and their end products. The controversy around the patentability of naturally obtained plant varieties stems from the different interpretations of this exception.   The breeder's exemption:   The aim of plant breeding is to create new, more resistant, more productive and better quality varieties of plants. Innovation in the field is essential to guarantee sufficient food production at reasonable prices, especially with the changing environmental conditions caused by climate change.   Traditionally breeders have been able to protect their plant varieties through plant variety rights (PVR). The main difference with patenting is that PVR would not stop other farmers from using protected varieties for further breeding and developing new varieties.   * The number of patents on plants worldwide has increased a hundredfold from just under 120 in 1990 to 12,000 today 3500 of them are registered in Europe,according to the European initiative No-Patents-On-Seeds.   http://www.dw.com/en/patents-on-plants-is-the-sellout-of-genes-a-threat-to-farmers-and-global-food-security/a-49906072 http://www.no-patents-on-seeds.org/index.php/en/node/610 http://scroll.in/article/942361/monsanto-versus-farmers-in-brazil-the-agribusiness-giant-has-won-a-7-7-bn-lawsuit http://www.srfood.org/images/stories/pdf/officialreports/20091021_report-ga64_seed-policies-and-the-right-to-food_en.pdf   Feb. 2019   Greater international cooperation is needed to prevent unsafe food from causing ill health and hampering progress towards sustainable development. (WHO, agencies)   Food contaminated with bacteria, viruses, parasites, toxins or chemicals causes more than 600 million people to fall ill and 420,000 to die worldwide every year. Illness linked to unsafe food overloads healthcare systems and damages economies, trade and tourism.   Because of these threats, food safety must be a paramount goal at every stage of the food chain, from production to harvest, processing, storage, distribution, preparation and consumption.   'There is no food security without food safety', says FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva. 'Safeguarding our food is a shared responsibility. We must all play our part. We must work together to scale up food safety in national and international political agendas', he said at the First International Food Safety Conference.   'Food should be a source of nourishment and enjoyment, not a cause of disease or death', says Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization. 'Unsafe food is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths every year, but has not received the political attention it deserves. Ensuring people have access to safe food takes sustained investment in stronger regulations, laboratories, surveillance and monitoring. In our globalized world, food safety is everyone's issue'.   'Food safety is a central element of public health and will be crucial in achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals'.   The aim of the conference is to identify key actions to ensure the availability of, and access to, safe food now and in the future. This requires a strengthened commitment at the highest political level to scale up food safety in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. http://bit.ly/2UVCaq7   Oct. 2018   Plans to limit the use of antibiotics on farms, in order to keep food free from resistant bacteria, were adopted by European Parliament this week.   'Veterinary medicines must not under any circumstances serve to improve the performance or compensate for poor animal husbandry, says the new law. It would limit the use of antimicrobials as a preventive measure, in the absence of clinical signs of infection (known as prophylactic use) to single animals and not groups.   The drugs can be used only when fully justified by a veterinarian in cases where there is a high risk of infection. Metaphylactic use (i.e. treating a group of animals when one shows signs of infection) should be a last resort, and only occur once a veterinarian has diagnosed infection and prescribed the antimicrobials.   To help tackle antimicrobial resistance, the law would empower the European Commission to select antimicrobials to be reserved only for treating humans.   As advocated by MEPs, the text also imposes that imported foodstuffs will have to meet EU standards and that antibiotics cannot be used to enhance the growth of animals'.   "This is a important breakthrough for human and animal health and is by far the more serious attempt that Europe has ever made to achieve responsible antibiotic use in farming," said Coilin Nunan, campaign manager of the Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics, a coalition of EU-based medical, health, agricultural, environmental, consumer, and animal welfare groups who campaigned for the action.   It is estimated that 73 percent of the world's medicines are currently used on livestock, and "farming accounts for about two thirds of all antibiotic use in Europe, so if the legislation is implemented correctly, we should be seeing large reductions in use in years to come."   The "long-awaited" law, which is set to take effect in 2022, will limit preventative use of antibiotics on groups of animals; empower European regulators to designate certain medicines for human use only; impose restrictions on imports; and encourage new research and protections for new drugs.   It was approved in a 583-16 vote with 20 abstentions. A separate measure that also garnered support from an overwhelming majority of MEPs will set restrictions on the sale and use of medicated feed for livestock.   MEP Molly Scott Cato, of the U.K., pointed out that the legislation could have broader positive impacts, explaining to the Guardian that it "will also challenge the factory farming model where animal suffer appalling conditions and are packed together in unhealthy conditions," because "without the routine use of antibiotics, farmers will need to adopt better farming practices."   MEP Francoise Grossetete of France: 'This is a major step forward for public health. Beyond farmers or animal owners, the use of veterinary medicines concerns us all, because it has a direct impact on our environment and our food; in short, on our health. Thanks to this law, we will be able to reduce the consumption of antibiotics on livestock farms, an important source of resistance that is then transmitted to humans. Antibiotic resistance is a real sword of Damocles, threatening to send our health care system back to the Middle Ages'.Her remarks echoed those of England's chief medical officer, Sally Davies, as her government launched the Keeping Antibiotics Working Campaign earlier in the week.   Davies warned "that without swift action to reduce infections, we are at risk of putting medicine back in the dark ages - to an age where common procedures we take for granted could become too dangerous to perform and treatable conditions become life-threatening."   A Public Health England report published this month found 3 million common surgeries such as caesarean sections and hip replacements could become hazardous without serious and widespread efforts to prevent the rise of superbugs, or strains of bacteria resistant to antibiotics.   Despite the report, campaign, and Davies warning, there are concerns about which aspects of the EU legislation the United Kingdom will follow, as it is slated to take effect post-Brexit. Michael Grove, the nation's Tory environmental secretary, has reportedly challenged the provision that will outlaw preventative mass medication of livestock.   While urging the U.K. to comply with Europe's new rules - which largely align with suggestions from the World Health Organization (WHO) - Nunan concluded, "The EU must now use its collective power, alongside the WHO, to push for tighter regulation of global farm antibiotic use, or else we will be soon facing into the post-antibiotic era."   Praising Europe for passing the legislation, Matt Wellington, head of the U.S. Federation of State Public Interest Research Groups antibiotics program, said, "let's follow the example here in the U.S."   http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20181018IPR16526/meps-back-plans-to-halt-spread-of-drug-resistance-from-animals-to-humans http://www.who.int/news-room/detail/07-11-2017-stop-using-antibiotics-in-healthy-animals-to-prevent-the-spread-of-antibiotic-resistance http://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/antibiotic-resistance http://www.who.int/antimicrobial-resistance/interagency-coordination-group/IACG_final_report_EN.pdf http://www.saveourantibiotics.org/news/press-release/european-parliament-votes-to-ban-preventative-mass-medication/ http://uspirg.org/topics/antibiotics http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/12/antimicrobial-resistance-knows-no-boundaries/ Visit the related web page
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