Action on new GMOs

August 2019

Pro-GM lobbyists continue to put pressure on EU regulators to abandon their precautionary laws requiring approval, safety checks, traceability and labelling of all GM crops, foods and livestock.

In particular, the biotech lobby is striving to evade any regulation of 'new' GMOs produced with 'gene editing' techniques. With recent EU elections and Brexit, this is the perfect time for them to push for light-touch, corporate-friendly GM laws.

Meta analysis shows how different GM really is

August 2018

Domestic breeding has been a 'powerful evolutionary force' on our food plants, to which the introduction of GM plants has added a whole new dimension. Noting this, a Mexican team of scientists took a look at the extent of the changes now present in conventional and GM crops compared to their wild ancestors.

America: one vast outdoor GMO experiment

November 2014

Prairie road through canola. CC photo by Jeff Franklin on Flickr

In 2010, a US specialist in plant populations found GM canola thriving widely along North Dakota roadsides. It was genetically transformed to resist proprietary herbicides and had been sprouting for generations. Recently, she gave an update:

“It's still there, and it's always going to be there. When you're driving down the road, and the only thing standing is herbicide-resistant canola, biodiversity has taken a hit.”

Commercial strains of herbicide-resistant canola growing where they shouldn't be are easy to spot. But the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), the body responsible for promoting and protecting US agriculture, has approved nearly 20,000 field trial permits covering some 100,000 plantings of experimental GM crops.



Are these crops already joining the roadside GM canola which is "always going to be there"?

More inconclusive data on GM safety

October 2014

The French scientists whose long-term GM feeding experiment suggested harm to health, have voiced concerns about another study accepted by the same journal which published, then retracted, their own study [1,2]. This newly-published paper described a short-term GM feeding study carried out by a team of scientists from biotech company, DuPont Pioneer.

Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT) withdrew the French paper last year due to the 'inconclusive' nature of some of the data (a novel ground for rejection apparently invented by the journal editors). The French team pointed out that the DuPont Pioneer study used feed compromised by an unassayed GM content which could have masked significant differences between the feeds, and ironically made the results 'inconclusive'.

GM crops in decline

May 2014

Field of cotton in Canada. CC photo by Mike Beauregard on Flickr

The total area planted with GM crops in industrialised nations has fallen for the first time since the technology was commercialised in 1996. Last year, GM plantings in those countries fell by about two percent.

 

These figures don't come from any "wicked", "environmentalist", "Luddite", "GM crop-trashing vandals" trying to say "I told you so". They come from the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA).  

Gene pollution update 2013

November 2013

Wheat growing in Oregon, USA. Photo Gary Halvorson
Oregon State Archives [Attribution], via Wikimedia Commons

The chance discovery of illegal GM wheat growing in a field in Oregon highlighted some uncomfortable home-truths (see GM CONTAMINATION DÉJÀ VU - June 2013).

Despite its wholesale move to GM agriculture and widespread field-trials of experimental GM plants, America isn't monitoring gene 'escapes': the rogue herbicide-tolerant wheat only became obvious when it survived spraying with Roundup herbicide, and its source has never been pin-pointed. While it seems unlikely that a single field could become so widely contaminated accidentally, no other similarly polluted areas have been identified.

Why 'co-existence' is impossible

January 2013

Canola. Photo Gary Halvorson, Oregon State Archives [Attribution]
via Wikimedia Commons

1. GM canola flows along roads

A year ago, we reported that GM canola (oil seed rape) was being found everywhere.

This “everywhere”, referred to the well-established and happily inter-breeding GM plants now widespread on roadsides in Canada and America.

Sense in pollution

September 2012

Canola field in Western Australia. Photo credit: I [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html),
CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or GFDL
(www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], from Wikimedia Commons

Australian farmers have had eight years to learn that GM canola (oilseed rape) isn't wanted. Most have learned the lesson well, but in Western Australia they've learned the hard way.

Once upon a time, manufacturers supplied retailers with what the end-customer wanted, and the end-user paid for the goods. The system flowed and everyone lived happily ever after.

Down-under, this supply-and-demand logic seems to have been stood on its head.

Proof that 'wild' GM plants can quickly become a reality.

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 of wishful thinking about the effectiveness of man-made protocols to prevent gene 'escape'.

Since then, the rarity of reported GM introgression into the wild has been an additional excuse to dismiss environmental risks.

In many cases, the assumptions and wishful thinking may be true. But there's certainly one major GM crop which doesn't, and never could be expected, to fit the man-made mould.

Australian organic farmer in first GM contamination lawsuit

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) agricultural minister, Terry Redman, ended his state's ban on the growing of GM canola. At the time, he declared confidently that the crop could be controlled, and quoted scientific trials which “proved GM and non-GM canola can be segregated and marketed separately. The report on the trials indicated there were 11 minor events (on 18 sites) and all were managed appropriately and segregation from paddock to port was achieved”

Somerset GM contamination

March 2011

In December 2008, the UK Government announced that unauthorised GM oil-seed rape (OSR) had been found growing in Somerset.

The offending grain received EU approval for import, food and animal feed use in 2005 providing the handlers had been given appropriate plans for eradicating any volunteer GM OSR plants which could arise.

The contamination was found in a small trial field of a new non-GM variety of OSR shipped from a Monsanto seed production farm in Idaho. It was found to be contaminated with about five GM seeds in every 10,000. This doesn't sound like a lot, but nevertheless an adjacent OSR trial crop was found to have been contaminated at a measurable level of one in 10,000.

Waves of gene pollution

January 2011

A land-mark federal court case in the US in 2010 has, at last, formally recognised the existence of real dangers from gene pollution, and at the same time highlighted the irresponsible attitude of regulators and industry.