GM staples in Africa

February 2022

The vast continent of Africa has long been a key target for GM agriculture [1,2]. So far, three GM crop types (cotton, soya and maize) all with the standard insect-resistance or herbicide-tolerance traits have been released across six African countries, the most widely adopted one being 'Bt' insecticidal cotton. These are all commodity crops designed for maximum yield, and are promoted as a tool to boost agricultural productivity and alleviate food insecurity. There has, however, been a clear gap between the promises and the reality.

A study published in 2021 explored this problem.

GM wheat in Argentina

February 2022

In 2004, the US, Canadian and European wheat markets breathed a sigh of relief when Monsanto yielded to pressure and withdrew its glyphosate-tolerant GM wheat from the pipeline.

Predictably, it was just a matter of time before GM wheat popped up again, this time as 'HB4' with combined drought-resistance and tolerance to glufosinate herbicide.

HB4 has now been approved by Argentina: no surprise there, because the country has long been a key route used by the agrichemical industry as a bridgehead to the rest of Latin America for the (legal and illegal) dissemination of its products.

GM animals on the menu

January 2022

As we enter 2022, what happened to the GM edible animals that we've been promised over the years?

Super-fast growing GM salmon have been trying to emerge from the lab since 1989 [1,2,3].

Having gained regulatory approval in America in 2015, GM salmon are now legal to produce and sell there despite being declared unlawful in 2020 due to the absence of any environmental risk assessment.

Gene edited 'healthy' bread

January 2022

One elusive, and potentially very lucrative, holy grail long pursued by the biotech industry is GM wheat. Not just any GM wheat of course, but one which is acceptable to consumers and to their food suppliers.

Realising that the ace to play in winning over a biotech-sceptical public could well be the anti-cancer card, the US market is being sounded out using gene-edited potatoes designed not to give you cancer [1] and cancer-busting GM purple tomatoes [2]. In the UK, the government is forging ahead with a field trial of gene-edited wheat which they claim, like the GM spuds, won't give us cancer. 

'Stress busting' tomatoes

January 2022

In 2021, a Japanese university start-up company, Sanatech Seed, launched the world's first direct consumption genome-edited tomato with "enhanced nutritional benefits".

The novel product was carefully chosen to minimise consumer suspicion: a popular strain of tomato was used and a nutrient that people are "already used to buying in other products" which have naturally high levels.

Sanatech Seed's president explained "This tomato represents an easy and realistic way in which consumers can improve their daily diet" ... "we felt it was important to introduce (consumers) to the technology in a way that was already familiar to them".

This cosily familiar nutrient which Sanatech Seed wants you to want more of is γ-aminobutyric acid (a.k.a. 'GABA').

If you don't recall ever putting GABA on your shopping list, that's because the "other products" referred to are things like cabbage, broccoli, spinach, soya, mushroom and peas.

GM toy tomatoes

January 2022

Genetic engineers have always liked playing with tomatoes.

The first GM food to hit US supermarket shelves was a tomato with a gene for ripening switched off [1]. This was Calgene's Flavr Savr tomato designed by science to last longer on the vine (it did), to be easier to handle during distribution (it wasn't), to taste better (it was pronounced 'mediocre') and to sell at a premium (it didn't). The Flavr Savr tomato's main claim to fame was its inappropriate (some would say absurd) use as a model GMO to set US regulations for all subsequent GM foods. Launched in 1994, the disappointing Flavr Savr finally sank into oblivion three years later.

The first GM food to hit UK supermarket shelves was Zeneca's cheap tinned Californian tomato puree made from GM tomatoes designed for lower processing costs due to their engineered reduced water content. These sank into oblivion in 1999 after two successful years and one disastrous year when consumer awareness caught up with the meaning of its "genetically modified" label.

Fast forward to 2008 when the media went wild reporting preliminary results of a GM 'anti-cancer' tomato produced by GM crop research scientists at the UK's John Innes Centre (JIC). These novel purple-fleshed, high-antioxidant ('anthocyanine') tomatoes were going to "save your life" (Martin).

Hopefully, no one held their breath waiting for their life to be saved by a tomato, because they'd still be waiting.

Unhealthy healthy soya oil

December 2021

In a curious chain of reductionist science, assumption, generalisation, extrapolation and failure to investigate ambiguous data, the western diet shifted from traditional, saturated animal fats to novel unsaturated vegetable oils in the space of a very few decades. Studies in the 1950s and 1960s linked the saturated fats in a typical American animal-based diet to increased risk of cardiovascular disease. This led to a dogma that all saturated fats are unhealthy and so, conversely, all unsaturated fats are healthy. Similarly, this logic extended to whatever is healthy for the heart is healthy for the rest of the body too.

As a result, soyabean oil has moved from having a negligible presence in the diet to constituting more than 60% of the edible vegetable oil which people are now eating instead of animal fats. Key to this shift, were US government subsidies to soya growers which helped soya to become a leading commodity crop. These subsidies later enabled the adoption of GM Roundup Ready soya in American agriculture too.

Soya oil is now ubiquitous in modern processed foods, margarines, salad dressings and snack foods, and is the oil of choice in many restaurants and fast food establishments.