tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53332596817992137002012-03-03T15:04:44.550ZCampaigning for the right to choose safe, natural foodGM-free Scotlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17882864138655171683noreply@blogger.comBlogger1701100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5333259681799213700.post-29403201112630442962012-03-03T14:43:00.002Z2012-03-03T14:47:24.016Z

March 2012 Puerto Rico. Photo by Ronny on Flickr Large agricultural areas in India now find themselves firmly under the biotech yoke (see FARMERS WISE TO GM - March 2012). But they're not alone. The island of Puerto Rico in the Caribbean has, it seems, been converted into a huge research laboratory for GM crops. Eight companies, seven of them multinationals including of course Monsanto,

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March 2012 Farmer spraying a cotton field. Photo by IFPRI Images on Flickr An American professor of anthropology and environmental studies has spent over 60 weeks in the field researching the impact of Bt insecticidal cotton on farmers in the Indian State of Andhra Pradesh. Professor Stone describes Indian farmers as being on a “seed and pesticide treadmill”. The modern high-yielding hybrid

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February 2012 Photo by She Paused 4 Thought on Flickr Anyone who's been following the GM food issue will be aware of periodic headlines announcing that GM salmon is about to hit shop shelves in the US at any time now ... These 'novel' fish have been under development since the 1990s, so where are they? GM salmon creator, AquaBounty, describes its grand plan thus. First gain a foothold

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February 2012 Amidst the dearth of animal feeding studies actually designed to assess the safety of GM food, a paper has at last been published which is like a breath of fresh air. The study is relevant to humans; it recognises and minimises confounding factors in the experimental materials; it examines specifically the organs which will be affected directly by toxic qualities in food; and it

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February 2012 Photo from Wikimedia Commons While in Europe, BASF and Monsanto were throwing in the GM towel (see HAPPENINGS IN FRANCE and HAPPENINGS IN GERMANY - February 2012), on the other side of the pond, regulators have been very busy smoothing the GM path.  Goaded by mounting pressure from the biotech industry and its allies to speed up GM approvals, the US Department of Agriculture (

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February 2012 Bee on clover. Photo by Guerito on Flickr Honeybee populations have been in serious decline for years: not just a few deaths here and there, but total annihilation of entire colonies. Many possible causes have been put forward, but none has been able to explain the huge scale of the collapse. The most rational explanation, as one insect specialist recently described it is that

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February 2012 Potato field in Sweden. Photo by SkÃ¥nska Matupplevelser on Flickr German biotech giant, BASF, has announced its intention to halt development and commercialisation of all GM seeds targeted solely for cultivation in Europe. The company's reason was: “there is still a lack of acceptance for this technology in many parts of Europe - from the majority of consumers, farmers and

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February 2012 Maize field in France. Picture by Lucy.Bold on Flickr The European Union has approved for cultivation only one GM crop specifically designed to enter the human food chain. This is Monsanto's MON 810 maize which has a bacterial gene inserted to produce 'Cry1Ab' insecticidal protein, and is used for animal feed. The crop has a checkered history in Europe. Spain is the only country

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February 2012 Harvesting cotton. India. Photo: © Ray Witlin / World Bank published on Flickr 'Bt' cotton, genetically transformed to generate its own insecticide against American bollworm, has been grown in India since 2003. The authorities there encouraged farmers to buy Bt cotton seed with promises of huge yields, a dramatic halving of expenditure on pesticides, and great profits, despite

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February 2012 Crop spraying. Photo by TaminaMiller on Flickr “I think people haven't even thought or even looked at (glyphosate), because the advertising says it's such a safe product. Why do we even do the research?” (Dr. Don Huber) Nearly four decades after the herbicide, glyphosate, first began to be sprayed on our environment, the search is still on for a fast, sensitive, reliable and

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January 2012 Greenpeace anti-GMO protest Photo © Greenpeace / Eric de Mildt Tell the Government that using a GM-sympathetic supermarket to persuade the public that GM is “good to eat and safe to eat” is NOT representing your best interests. At the same time, remind its pals in Sainsbury's that you won't buy GM food. Sainsbury's managers seems to have an attitude problem: they view their

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January 2012 Question marks over GM maize. Photo © Greenpeace / Martin Langer A major issue highlighted by the GM food debate has always been what to debate. While Joe Public has deep misgivings spanning not only the immediate concerns, such as food safety, the scientific limitations, and the undue influence of commercial pressures, but about the long-term environmental, social and economic

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January 2012 Round bales of alfalfa in a Montana field, USA. Picture from Wikimedia Commons In 2005, the US government approved the growing of a 'Roundup Ready' (herbicide-tolerant) GM fodder grass, 'RR alfalfa'. Since people don't eat grass, this might seem one of the less controversial GM crops to go on sale. Or, is it? One US farmer, Philip Geertson, who has spent 30 years raising a

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January 2012 Evidence of deformities? ... what evidence? The publication of a study showing that the herbicide, glyphosate, caused deformities in embryos must have sent a shiver down many a spine. Using amphibian embryos (a recognised model for early human embryo development), Argentinean scientists found that glyphosate disrupted the formation of the 'neural tube' which goes on to form the

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January 2012 Rally for the Right2Know About GMOs, Washington DC, USA Photo by Millions Against Monsanto on Flickr Up until now, the biotech industry has succeeded in blocking just about every attempt to introduce honest labelling of GMOs in the USA. The result is that 74% of Americans don't know they're eating GM foods at all, and their food supply is being steadily polluted with both legal

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January 2012 If you're a regular visitor to GM-free Scotland's news, analysis and comment you'll be aware of what emerges as the GM threads are drawn together: no matter how bad each individual piece of news is, when you join all the dots, the bigger picture is always much, much worse. In putting our articles together, the greatest hurdle to be overcome is often getting hold of all the dots to

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January 2012 Here's an uncomfortable thought... The recognition that interconnectedness is the most fundamental quality lending stability to the natural world (living and non-living) has played a significant part in the ongoing global financial collapse. Simplistic thinking joined up all the financial institutions into one great big web thought to imitate nature. The theory was that

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December 2011 Rice farmers in Africa. Photo by Martapigs on Flickr The philanthropic and hugely wealthy Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation acknowledges that its goal of providing solutions to global food problems will not be easy:  “Having enough nutritious food to feed a growing population is a complex challenge; there's no silver bullet”.Strange, therefore, that the Foundation puts so much

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December 2011 Different types of rice. Photo from Wikimedia Commons Scientists in China have developed GM rice which could be used to produce an important human blood protein in the foreseeable future. The protein is ‘human serum albumin’ (HSA), a major constituent of blood. It has wide, life-saving, clinical applications in treating, for example, burns and blood loss, and is necessary for

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December 2011 Corn crop in Iowa Photo by Cwwycoff1 on Flickr Back in 2007, a young American scientist dared to discover that certain aquatic insects suffered growth-retardation and increased mortality after eating Bt-insecticide-containing debris from GM crops. News of environmental damage from biotech crops is a very sensitive issue: the researcher was subject to a barrage of professional

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December 2011 Photo by Matti Matila on Flickr In October 2011, an article appeared in the US press which had all the hall-marks of the Monsanto PR pen. The 'news' is that Monsanto is going to bring us fresh produce like we've never seen before. This it will do by “marrying conventional breeding methods with its vast technological resources to bring about changes in fruit and vegetables” and “

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December 2011 Illustration from The Emperor's New Clothes From Wikimedia Commons Remember the fable of the emperor who was so vain he happily allowed himself to be swindled? He eagerly believed two fraudsters when they told him they could weave a 'truly miraculous' cloth: a cloth which people who were not fit for their office or who were unpardonably stupid couldn't see. The emperor sent his

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December 2011 Photo by NS Newsflash on Flickr Reporting on GM safety by the media “is often unreliable and unrepresentative of the available scientific evidence” (see GM SAFETY REVIEW: 2011 – October 2011). By 'unreliable' is meant that, even if the press information comes directly from a Government Research Council, a University, a professor, a body with a respectable-sounding name, and

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December 2011 Photo by Claudio. Ar on Flickr Argentina has moved aggressively down an agricultural path of intensive, agrichemical-dependent, genetically modified monoculture. In many areas, the main crops are limited to transgenic corn and soya, on which the herbicides glyphosate, 2,4-D and atrazine, and the insecticides cypermethrin, endosulfan and chlorpyrifos, are applied an average of

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November 2011 Cotton harvest in India Photo: © Ray Witlin / World Bank Photo Collection on Flickr Faced with a major public relations headache in 2008, when the high price attached to GM cotton seeds plus the failure of consecutive GM cotton crops were being blamed for rising farmer suicides in India, Monsanto's PR boys put together some 'news' to pour oil on troubled waters. Monsanto first

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November 2011 Indian brinjals (aubergine). Photo by YL Tan on Flickr India's Bt brinjal (aubergine), already infamous after being banned on health and safety grounds in February 2010 (see GM AUBERGINES – GMFS News Archive, February 2010), has now become a test-case for the country's biopiracy laws. A formal complaint was initially lodged by the Environmental Support Group (ESG) in 2010. This

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November 2011 The Human Genome. Picture from Wikimedia Commons The foundation of commercial GM technology is the concept that one gene gives rise to one protein. A gene is a precise sequence of DNA which forms a 'blueprint' for the creation of a protein. DNA expresses itself by producing a precise sequence of (chemically-related) RNA. RNA provides the 'blue-print' for the manufacture of the

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November 2011 Photo by Jaryl Cabuco | Fitted Life on Flickr Isn't there something paradoxical about the American way of doing things? Health care in America is not for the sick, it's for the healthy. To get health care in America, you need health insurance. To get health insurance, you have to be healthy. Health care and health insurance are both big business, and they feed off one

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November 2011 Longji rice terraces, China Photo by (Stephan) on Flickr The Chinese government has taken a “milestone” decision to suspend the commercialisation of GM rice and other staple grain crops, such as wheat, for the next 5 to 10 years. Since rice is the main staple food of 1.3 billion Chinese people, successful non-GM crop development on the scale needed will likely have world-wide

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November 2011 Western corn rootworm Picture from Wikimedia Commons The fact that western corn rootworm is toppling GM corn in America is bad news because the corn has had a 'Bt'-toxin gene inserted which is supposed to kill this major pest. Modern corn crops, which cover tens of millions of acres of the American mid-west, look very different from those of a generation back. Now, American

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October 2011 Organic vegetables. Photo by smith on Flickr What's 'natural'? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, 'natural' is “constituted by nature, existing in or by nature, not artificial”. This would seem to preclude anything re-constituted with artificial DNA, or containing or changed by artificial materials. Monsanto, for one, agrees that GMOs are not natural. The Company's

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October 2011 Wild Mustard. Picture from Wiki Commons GM crops were rushed into farmers' fields on the back of sweeping generalisations about what their influences in the environment might be, but very little actual science. An assumption was made that classic Darwinian mechanisms would render GM plants uncompetitive and therefore self-limiting outside of cultivation. Added to this was a lot

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October 2011 Canola. Picture by net_effekt on Flickr At one time, the GM brigade assumed, or at least hoped, that organic farmers would welcome genetically transformed seed as an easy route to avoiding artificial pesticides. While the US government continues to try to insinuate GM into organics, and the Western Australia agricultural minister, Terry Redman, wants the organic industry to

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October 2011 Canola field in Australia Picture by sachman75 on Flickr Australia is lagging many years behind America in the GM game, but its government is trying hard to play catch up. With polls showing a majority of Australians are 'uncomfortable' with GM plants and more so with GM animals, the government seems to be resorting to spin and subterfuge. In 2010, the Western Australia (WA)

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October 2011 Crop dusting in the US Photo by Roger Smith on Flickr Habitual GM-critics have been saying for years that crops resistant to Roundup herbicide would lead to an even bigger weed problem in the long-term than the one they were designed to solve in the short-term. These warnings were largely dismissed as scare-mongering. However, now even the press in Monsanto's home ground is

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October 2011 Round hay bales of alfalfa in a Montana field, USA Photo from Wikimedia Commons America has no regulations with which its authorities can control GM plants. Neither the consuming public, nor the environment, nor farmers are protected from any harmful consequences of the novel plants. You'll have heard repeated industry claims that its GM crops have been approved. This is true,

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October 2011 Corn kernels Photo by Ian Hayhurst on Flickr In 2007, one reviewer of the published science on toxicological and health risks of GM foods, ended his short study with a question:  “where is the scientific evidence showing that GM plants/food are toxicologically safe, as assumed by the biotechnology companies involved in commercial GM foods?” The same author, José Domingo, has now

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October 2011 Monarch butterfly Picture from Wikimedia Commons In 1999, American citizens were briefly alerted to encroaching GM crops, and to the possibility such crops might not be totally benign. The first warning didn't concern any risks to human health, soil integrity, agricultural sustainability, environmental stability, nor economic and commercial interests. Ironically, it sounded an

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September 2011 Questions over GM maize. Photo © Greenpeace / Martin Langer The 'Precautionary Principle' entails identification of risk, scientific uncertainty and ignorance, and involves transparent and inclusive decision-making processes (Freestone and Hey, 1997).  It is a primarily a tool for policy decision, but must impact on the scientific research agenda.  It is the scientists, not the

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September 2011 The Government's new e-petitions, which allow the public to create and sign petitions online, got off to an interesting start. Twenty per cent of the early e-petitions to the House of Commons were calls for a re-instatement of the death penalty in Britain. One such petition got more than 2,000 supporters, while a petition opposing the restoration of capital punishment had

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September 2011 ... and fruit... Photo by /charlene on Flickr Up until now, the biotech industry has been busy inventing GM crops attractive to farmers and the food-processing industries. The end-consumer was expected to eat whatever this trio chose to give them, and health be damned. Interestingly, there's a sea-change in the offing. Between January 2010 and January 2011,

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September 2011 Photo © Greenpeace / Eric De Mildt Over the years, Monsanto has repeatedly sued farmers alleging they have stolen the company's intellectual property by saving GM seed. The Company has admitted to filing lawsuits against farmers from 1997-2010, settling out of court with 700 others for an undisclosed amount. Because wind, animals and agricultural activity can spread pollen

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September 2011 ... With or against the tide? Anti-GM protest in Berlin Photo by cephir on Flickr After decades of using its huge muscles to block GM-food labelling worldwide, the US has suddenly stopped swimming against the international tide (see GM LABELLING MILESTONE IN US – September 2011). At much the same time, BASF Plant Sciences decided to pull the plug on GM development in the EU

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September 2011 Photo by brdavid on Flickr “If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it.” (Norman Braksick, President of Asgrow Seed Co., a subsidiary of Monsanto, quoted in the Kansas City Star, 7.03.94) “The Achilles heel of Monsanto and the biotech industry is consumers' right to know.” (Ronnie Cummins, of the Organic Consumers

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Anti-nuclear protests in Japan, April 2011 Picture by VOA news on Wiki Commons August 2011 As Japan tries to pick up the pieces left behind by the triple disaster, the earthquake, the tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear-plant explosions, which struck in March this year, the long-term implications are becoming evident. The Japanese Prime Minister said it will take decades to clean up the

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August 2011 “Modern man does not experience himself as part of nature but as an outside force destined to dominate and conquer it. He even talks of a battle with nature, forgetting that, if he won the battle, he would find himself on the losing side.” E. F. SchumacherIf you've been reading about the Scottish scientists who seem unaccountably keen to produce genetically-improved livestock using GM

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August 2011 Image from Wiki Commons In May 2011, two land-mark statements were made by globally-influential organisations. One was that mobile 'phones are “possibly carcinogenic to humans”. The second was that lower exposure limits to such devices are necessary on health grounds. These are 'landmark' statements because they recognise, for the first time, that the accepted measurement of '

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August 2011 2011 O104H4 bacterial outbreak Source Wikimedia Commons A new strain of pathogenic E.coli, 'O104:H4', emerged in Germany in 2011. Within six weeks, the bacterium had killed 36 people, made 3,332 people ill, and left 100 with kidneys so badly damaged they face dialysis for the rest of their lives or a transplant. Investigation quickly revealed that the DNA of O104:H4 is a

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August 2011 ... all across Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa Photo from Baluchistan on Flickr If you've already read about GM WHEAT IN THE UK (July 2011) or GM WHEAT IN AUSTRALIA (August 2011), you'll have realised that neither of these GM varieties are necessary: natural aphid-resistant wheat strains already exist but have been by-passed in favour of GM (patentable) versions;

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August 2011 Image from Greenpeace Australia Pacific. Click to view a larger version In March 2011, the Premier of Australia's largest wheat growing state said “We are not contemplating GM wheat”. In particular, he noted the threat such wheat would pose to important export markets because “Japanese consumers would not support GM wheat”. Only four months later, Greenpeace Australia Pacific

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July 2011 Photo © Greenpeace / Christian Lehsten Cloning animals isn't strictly a GM-food issue. However, it does involve removing DNA from its native environment and putting into a new one, with all the same, inevitable, disruption of genomic coherence and compromised health (see Nuclear Transplant (Cloning) below). There's also no doubt that the major incentive for cloning animals is that

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July 2011 Photo by brdavid on Flickr America is very fond of selling itself around the world: it sells its model agriculture plus chemicals plus GMOs; it sells its model business plus globalisation plus 'voluntary' self-regulation; and especially, it sells its democracy. Paradoxically, regarding the 'home' agriculture and 'home' market, it seems that US consumers are going in one direction

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July 2011 Non-GM wheat kernels Photo by David Shand on Flickr Genetically transformed wheat of any kind has been decisively rejected throughout the world, including America. Strangely however, the message never seems to have reached biotech scientists, nor their funders. The development of GM wheat has continued behind lab doors regardless of public or commercial desires. At least two

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July 2011 Photo from Flickr American rice growers will give you two practical reasons NOT to grow GM crops. One, you might contaminate your neighbour's non-GM fields. If you're lucky all you'll have to suffer is guilt and the loss of goodwill of someone it would be better to be friends with. If you're unlucky you'll also have to pay him compensation for his loss of non-GM sales. Two, the

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July 2011 Photo from Flickr The Coalition Government in Westminster has released its first policy statement on “Genetic Modification (GM)” (see Below). Its “overriding priorities” are “the protection of human health and the environment”. To ensure these priorities are met, the government “will only agree” to the release of GMOs (crops and others) and to the marketing of GM food and feed

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July 2011 Photo from Flickr A recently published paper demonstrates the breathtaking assumptions on which commercial GM crops are based. When genetic transformation of plants was first attempted, it was soon discovered that, while all DNA has a simple four-fold chemical structure which can easily be translated by man into a specific protein, DNA is not just DNA. Most artificial DNA

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June 2011 Photo from Flickr In December 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made a landmark decision that the process of conventional plant breeding could not be patented. Concerns were voiced at the time that the move was window dressing, and that all the products of conventional breeding would still be patentable. Sure enough, almost immediately, a patent was granted on a

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June 2011 Photo from Flickr 'Roundup' herbicide is toxic, and not only to plants. In animals, it causes “endocrine disruption, damage to DNA, reproductive and developmental toxicity, neuro-toxicity, and cancer, as well as birth defects.” The science has been summarised in a new report, “Roundup and Birth defects”, co-authored by a group of international scientists and researchers. The

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June 2011 Fran Murrell, co-founder of Australia's Mothers Are Demystifying Genetic Engineering (MADGE), describes how she became an anti-GM campaigner:  “I was curious about genetic modification of plants – it struck me as a promising idea – so I went to talks given by various GM proponents. It worried me that they were just talking in generalities, saying it was 'highly unlikely' there was

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June 2011 Harvesting sugar beet Photo from Flickr The tortuous issue of GM sugar beet, transformed to resist Roundup herbicide, has come to its final conclusion. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been ordered to prepare a full rigorous review of the environmental impacts of the GM beet before re-considering its future commercial use. All planting of Monsanto's patented beet must

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June 2011 Field of GM soya Photo © Greenpeace / Alexandra Buxbaum In 2005, the World Wildlife Fund proposed the creation of the “Roundtable on Responsible Soy” (RTRS). No doubt formed with the best of intentions, the RTRS is a multi-stakeholder forum which labels soya products 'sustainable' if they fulfill its defined criteria on the protection of wild-life, responsible pesticide use, and

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June 2011 Activists blockade BASF warehouse © Greenpeace / Christian Åslund In the north of Sweden, biotech giant, BASF, is trying to plant Amflora, GM potatoes (for background see EU TO CULTIVATE HOT POTATO, GMFS News Archive, May 2010). The Swedes are not known for hot-blooded activism, but nevertheless, have been riled enough to block the entrance to BASF's potato warehouse. (Find out more

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June 2011 Photo from Flickr The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has received its first request for approval of a GM apple. Currently, sliced apples to be sold fresh are rinsed in acids to prevent browning of the flesh and “maintain freshness” (you can do much the same at home with a little fruit juice). Gene-silencing technology developed in Australia to prevent potatoes browning when

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June 2011 GMO protest. Photo from Flickr Guerrilla theatre, aimed at educating shoppers about the GM nature of what's being sold to them, is in progress in major cities across the USA. Activists, covered head-to-toe in white HAZMAT suits, have been dramatically busy: they buy well-known health-food brand items with GM-suspect ingredients, put a GM-warning label on them, and ceremoniously dump

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May 2011 Corn grenade. Image by Greenpeace Monsanto's marketing antics would be funny, if they didn't have serious implications. At the beginning of the year, reports were filtering out of America about a nation-wide advertising campaign. In place of the tough and handsome Marlboro-smoking cowboys of yore, billboards and bus-stops are being festooned with with hardy American farmers showing

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May 2011 Photo from Flickr In April, GM-free Scotland warned that pesticides linked to GM food have been found to end up circulating in the body of the consumer, and can pass into the unborn child. (See GM PESTICIDES INSIDE YOU – April 2011) GM Freeze are particularly concerned about the finding that Bt protein is clearly not digested as previously assumed. Warnings have been given

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May 2011 Photo from Flickr GM-free Scotland could face the same genre of accusations as those aimed at Eric Schlosser (1), Robby Kenner (3) and Michael Pollan (2). All three have been described as 'self-appointed food elitists' (a.k.a. 'food fascists'), and 'hell-bent on misleading consumers'. We plead guilty to the first charge. Scottish food is among the best, purest and most natural in the

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May 2011 Mirid bug. Photo from Flickr A decade after the introduction of 'Bt' insecticidal GM cotton in China, scientists started to give unequivocal warnings that problems with the management of the crop were increasing, and change was needed before these problems become crippling. Field data collected in 2004, indicated that during the first six years of Bt-cotton seed planting, the initial

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May 2011 Protest in Germany. Picture Michaela Muegge on Flickr In February this year, Friends of the Earth Europe prepared a report on the extent of cultivation of GM crops in the EU over the last three years (2008 – 2010). The trends are interesting. Spain, which is the only Member State to grow GM crops on any scale, has steadily reduced the area devoted to biotech crops. The 2010 area

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May 2011 Protest in Sweden. Photo from Flickr A landmark, unanimous vote by the government of Cyprus has passed a law making it compulsory to display GM foods on separate shelves in supermarkets. The new bill provides for a prominent sign stating clearly that the food is GM and, also, for labelling in all three languages appropriate to Cypriot culture, Greek, Turkish and English. It

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May 2011 Image from Wikimedia Commons In ancient China, the emperor and empress could drink human milk throughout their lives. This was believed to be the height of opulence. In modern China, despite the massive economic growth and industrial expansion, the gap between the rich and poor is widening. The answer sought is in biotechnology: the country seems to have set its sights on making

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May 2011 Image from Wikimedia Commons Throughout the short history of GM plants, the crops have been promoted for their higher yields. British academics are repeatedly quoted as saying that GM crops allow farmers to attain “high yields” while using less chemicals. However, at least one Canadian Professor of Plant Agriculture, Ann Clark, has suggested “let's stop with the 'higher yield' mantra

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April 2011 Picture from Wiki Commons A two-day conference of senior judges and farmers in India has identified some very uncomfortable aspects relating to the regulatory procedures and growing of GM insecticidal, 'Bt' cotton. The issue under consideration was “Emerging Jurisprudence of Genetic Engineering: Food, Farming and Biosafety”. Eleven farmers described their experiences after they had

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April 2011 Picture from Wikimedia Commons ... and other landmark decisions Bolivia is set to pass some landmark new laws. The country will soon have the world's first laws granting all Nature equal rights to humans. Politicians and grassroots social groups have agreed the 'Law of Mother Nature' which redefines the countries natural resources, its rich mineral deposits, as “blessings”.

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April 2011 Corn field in Argentina by Irargerich on Flickr Green alternative? Or expensive mistake? Biofuels are not, it seems, going to carry on where fossil fuels left off. Biofuels are one of the fastest growing industries. The biofuels sector is attracting high levels of investment from venture capitalists. Its massive growth is being stimulated by funding from such agencies as the

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April 2011 Crop dusting in Mississippi by Roger Smith on Flickr GM plants are designed to generate or sequester pesticides. Where do all these pesticides go when you eat the plants? Fifteen years after staple GM crops began to spread through our food chain, a scientific study has been completed into the question of whether the GM-linked pesticides (present in all these crops) actually end up

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April 2011 Bt-crops have huge direct and indirect costs attached. Monsanto spends millions of dollars on PR to persuade maize farmers that their crops, and profits, will be eaten to oblivion by the European Corn Borer (ECB) As its name indicates, ECB is a very expensive mistake introduced to America in 1910 on imported broom handles. It is an especially problematic pest because it produces

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April 2011 Dr. Arpad Pusztai (who was instantly vilified when his research provided evidence of immune-system responses in the gut of rats) focused his science on the gastro-intestinal tract of his experimental animals. Since the gut is the feed-animal interface and the largest lymphoid (immune-system) tissue of the body, it will be the first organ likely to react to any dietary allergens or

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April 2011 Many of these are our pollinators Bees Recent years have seen waves of massive bee decline around the globe. Some of these can be traced to infection or infestation, but others are a complete mystery. However, the finger is being increasingly pointed at agri-pesticides in and on the flowering crops from which the bees gather their food. Two forms of colony collapse are being seen

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April 2011 Soil fungi  Bt insecticidal toxins generated by GM plants will enter the soil as root exudates, as decomposing litter and as ploughed-in stubble. The toxins are known to be able to accumulate in soil where they can remain active for several months. In 2008, an Italian study looked at the effects of Bt-toxin on soil health, with particular reference to the soil fungi which play a

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April 2011 Aquatic wildlife In 2007, a US study looked at the potential for Bt corn by-products to poison waterways. It found that GM plant detritus and pollen make their way into streams. Once there, they can be sequestered, consumed or carried considerable distances. Insect life in the streams which consumed such GM plant debris had reduced growth and increased mortality. Other animals which

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April 2011 Since the dawn of GM foods, much of the argument about their acceptability has revolved around the question of whether genetic transformation of an organism is “playing with nature” or, indeed, whether this even matters since human beings seem to be “playing with nature” all the time. One way to judge these questions, is to have look at what genetic engineers actually put into your

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April 2011 In April 2005, an American opinion was published in the scientific literature stating that genomic characteristics need no longer be considered by regulators. A team from the biotech industry and US universities suggested that, to regulate GM crops “sensibly”, the present impediments posed by costly restrictions and requirements could now be safely “modified”. The team argued that

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April 2011 Time-lapse photographs taken of a single point on a chromosome inside the nucleus in a living cell, demonstrated very graphically why GM is an inherently disruptive technology. The marked spot, which could represent any gene, was seen to be in constant rapid motion, travelling between the periphery and the centre of the nucleus four times within a 60 second period. When the normal

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April 2011 There is only one predictable thing about transgenic organisms: they will change with time. However, the way in which they will change is entirely unpredictable. All GMOs are subject to inescapable destabilising influences. These come from intrinsic structural qualities of their artificial DNA, and, from the natural life-processes within which the artificial DNA must operate. Both

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April 2011 Twenty years ago, when genetic engineering was in its infancy, and commercialisation of a genetically tranformed plants no more than a dream, genes were viewed as fixed units of DNA embedded in swathes of 'junk' DNA. The genes in this out-dated model could be relied upon to reel off messenger molecules of RNA which trotted out into the cell, where they ordered the production of

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April 2011 What's going on in the real world of Roundup Ready farming? Crop spraying by TaminaMiller on Flickr An article in Ag Journal gives some useful, at times poetically vivid, insights into what's really happening in GM Roundup-based agriculture in the USA. The problems described are much the same as we've been hearing elsewhere. Roundup Ready seeds genetically transformed to resist

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April 2011 To scale up or scale down? That's the big question facing global agriculture. The US and UK Governments and the biotech industry say up, the United Nations and Development Agencies say down. At the start of 2011, the UK Government produced a report on 'Global Food and Farming Futures' (referred to as 'Foresight' in reference to the thinktank which produced it). This “mammoth” Report

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April 2011 GM crops could cause a pandemic of psychiatric disorders. How far-fetched is that? The scientific wisdom of yesteryear held that a “blood-brain barrier” exists which protects the brain from substances and cells in the blood which would otherwise upset brain function. There is, indeed a physical blood-brain barrier. But it can be breached. Stress and inflammation can make

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April 2011 Roundup herbicide and its active ingredient, glyphosate, have been getting a lot of bad press recently.  But it seems there's worse to come. Background In 1997, just when the first GM Roundup Ready crops were emerging in the fields, Monsanto scientists were successfully arguing against any possibility that weeds might also manage to make themselves Roundup Ready. The evidence to

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April 2011 The latest thing in genetic manipulation is RNA interference: this is even less predictable and controllable than artificial DNA. The first commercial GM crop, back in the 1990s, was a long-life tomato which had had one of its genes switched off. The engineered DNA which achieved this wasn't a gene, but a 'back-to-front' version of one of the plants own genes. The effect of the '

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April 2011 What is the evidence that “no one has ever been harmed by GM”? There's no doubt that GM foods have been part of the typical American diet for many years. This is hardly surprising when an estimated 70% of all foods on US supermarket shelves contain genetically modified ingredients, including most things bulked up with starches, sugar syrups, vegetable oils, 'protein' in various

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April 2011 Artificial DNA copied from viruses is in most GM plants. Almost every GM crop ever created has included of a useful little piece of DNA copied from the 'Cauliflower Mosaic Virus' (CaMV). This chunk of DNA is referred to as 'CaMV 35S', and as its name suggests, it is part of the DNA found in a virus which commonly infects cauliflower and related vegetables. In infected plants, its

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April 2011 What happen if you eat unintelligent food? You are what you eat. How could it be any other way? The statement sounds simple and obvious, but think of the implications. Food is living matter, formed under the guidance of the intelligence of Nature. The soil from which our food grows is made by a vast array of living organisms, organised by Nature's intelligence to work in concert.

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April 2011 What happens to the artificial DNA, novel proteins and by-products inside once they've been eaten? After a New Zealand poultry producer claimed in advertising that its products contained “No ... GM ingredients”, the question was raised: do products made from chickens given a 13% GM soya diet really have “no GM content”? Canterbury University's Professor of Genetics and Molecular

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April 2011 What do Agrobacterium and human beings have in common? One's a soil bacterium and the other's a primate with a very large brain: the scope for sharing anything seems limited. However, both carry out genetic transformations of other life-forms to provide food for themselves. Put more accurately, the genetic engineers with the big brains have hijacked the gene transfer mechanism of

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April 2011 GM soya is perfectly legal in Europe and could appear in your food at any time. Why look out for it? After all, the soya we eat is so heavily processed and artificial anyway, is it really any different in GM form? Consider that soya beans themselves are rarely eaten as beans: they don't taste very nice and both animals and humans find them difficult to digest. They're routinely

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April 2011 Introduction Where will the biggest risk to our health from GM foods come from: Allergies? Toxins? Antibiotic resistant infections? Or, something more insidious? One of the earliest concerns raised about GM foods was that a disturbed genome would generate strange proteins to which our bodies would react.   Regulators 'addressed' this concern by assessing the potential toxicity and

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April 2011 How often have we heard that GM food is safe because scientists know exactly what they are doing? True, they know all about the gene they have constructed, all about the protein generated by their gene, and something about the bit of the plant's genome their engineered chunk of DNA has landed in. Safety regulations demand disclosure of this information, plus tests of the toxicity and

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April 2011 Australia's Mothers Are Demystifying Genetic Engineering (MADGE) has been busy gathering information on possible links between GM in the food chain and the incidence of severe allergic reactions in the population. The MADGE investigation kicked off with the Australian research which found that peas (with no history of being allergenic) transformed with a gene from a bean (with no

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