http://society.guardian.co.uk/societyguardian/story/0,7843,838495,00.html

Eco Soundings 

Paul Brown and John Vidal
The Guardian, Wednesday November 13, 2002 

False start

So whatever happened to the great British public debate on GM crops
promised by the government in July? Wait and see, is the official line
from the hapless Central Office of Information, which has landed the
task of organising it on the cheap. In the meantime, the senior
independent academics hauled in to advise say that the whole thing is
absurd. In a stinging eight-point letter to the government, they say
that the process is deeply flawed, the government's position "is
ambiguous and the object of suspicion" and there are "several specific
and serious failings" in the way the debate has been designed. It bodes
rather ill.    

Inside job

Andrew Bennett, former head of environment at Clare Short's Department
for International Development, has pulled off a coup within months of
joining the Syngenta Foundation, charitable arm of the biotech giant, by
gaining a place on the governing body of the consultative group on the
international agricultural research centres (Cgiar). This is the network
of international public research institutions which have been the target
of biotech companies for years but, until now, escaped infiltration.
Critics are appalled. "Cgiar has unabashedly adopted the corporate
research agenda, thereby accepting that it ceases to follow the original
mandate of conducting agricultural research for 'public good'," says one NGO.