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| Photo: button mushrooms. Adam Fagen on Flickr |
GMO mushrooms
June 2016
As if to illustrate how simple the latest technique for gene
modification is, it seems likely that Americans will be eating 'CRISPR/Cas9'
[1] gene-edited 'anti-browning' mushrooms within a couple of years.
Eugenics - closer than it's ever been before
June 2016
Feature
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| Photo: Creative Commons |
US regulators seem determined not to grasp that any
humanly-contrived direct remodelling of DNA is genetic modification no matter
what you call it, and that any genetic modification has unpredictable
side-effects.
This has worrying implications for our food chain [1]. However, the major focus of the latest
gene-changing technique, CRISPR/Cas9 [2], is actually human beings.
Cracks in GMO America
June 2016
After over a decade of GM commodity crop growing, the first
visible cracks began to appear in the carefully crafted American public's
'acceptance' of their novel diet.
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| Photo: Creative Commons |
Two years ago, it was clear that a deep scepticism towards
the food industry and its use of technology had taken root.
Cancer in the air
June 2016
Glyphosate is the world's most used herbicide, widely
applied in both urban and agricultural locations, and increasingly heavily
sprayed on most GM crops.
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| Photo Creative Commons |
Just a year ago we reported on science indicating that,
while glyphosate enters skin at low levels, repeat doses to damaged skin can
increase absorption of the chemical many fold [1].
Links between glyphosate and DNA damage, plus links between
glyphosate and impairment of the mechanism for natural cell death, have led to
suspicions that our rapidly-dividing skin cells could become cancerous if
exposure to the herbicide interfered with their normal transition to the outer,
dead, dermal layer.
Since our report, the World Health Organisation
International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified glyphosate as
a "probable carcinogen" [2].
A key GM question
June 2016
Question: do GM crops benefit people?
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| Photo: Creative Commons |
This isn't a simple question.
For one thing, 'GM crops' can mean all manner of different
types and varieties of crop plant, into which a vast range of artificial bits
of DNA has been inserted.
For another thing, 'benefit' can mean all manner of
important societal parameters: good for finances, good for health, good for
quality of life, or good for future security.
And moreover, 'people' can mean all manner of unique sectors
of society: farmers, consumers, traders, corporations, share-holders,
individuals, communities, the literate, the illiterate, the young, the old, the
healthy, the unhealthy ...
This level of complexity hasn't helped generate any
meaningful science nor discussion on GM.
Indeed, a team of Swedish scientists noted that "the fragmented
knowledge on the social impacts of genetically modified (GM) crops is
contributing to the polarised debate on the matter".
Enlist duo
June 2016
The biotech industry's answer to the huge weed-problem it
has inflicted on farms after years of spraying glyphosate weedkiller on biotech
seeds, is (predictably) more of the same.
Indeed, packages of dual herbicide formulations plus dual
herbicide-tolerant GM seeds are the business now.
Glyphosate weed-killer is still in there, but Dow Chemical
has added in '2,4-D' to create ‘Enlist Duo' formulation for spraying its latest
generation of GM corn and soya. '2,4-D'
is another decades-old herbicide, and was one of the two major components of
the infamous Agent Orange defoliant used to clear the jungle and destroy crops
in Vietnam.