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.

'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.

Doing the maths of bacterial burgers

November 2021

Do the sums of farm-free food fermented in the desert as the saviour of our over-heating planet really add up? [1].

USA missing the main markets

October 2018

America has been gung-ho about declaring gene-edited plants somehow not really GM, paving the way for the new-GM crops now lining up for entry to the US food market [1,2].

The back-drop to this is interesting.

New GM wheat with fibre

October 2018

Wary of negative public reaction and export market collapse, America has never pursued the commercialisation of GM wheat.

However, the recent US Department of Agriculture (USDA) decision that gene-edited crops are somehow not genetically engineered [1], has opened the door to the development of new-GM wheat.

Another neurotoxin to add to the mix

March 2015

The possibility that neonicotinoid-type insecticides are contributing to the decline of insect pollinators is hotly contested by the agri-industry.

However, experimental evidence has just emerged form a Scottish laboratory demonstrating serious harm to bumble bees from neonicotinoids.

When bumble bees were fed the insecticide at low levels, as found in the nectar and pollen of the plants they forage on, there were clear signs of brain dysfunction. The poisoned bees exhibited learning difficulties and disruption to their ability to forage, accompanied by a decline in healthy brood cells and decimation (57%) of the total bee mass in the nest.

Another GM soya data fraud?

July 2014

Soybeans. CC photo by USDAgov on Flickr

In the 1990s as the first GM 'Roundup Ready' soyabeans were entering the market, Monsanto reassured the public that its “Roundup Ready soybeans are just like any other soybeans in safety, nutrition, composition and the way they process into high-protein animal feed ...”

 

A team of Japanese scientists has now pointed out that Monsanto's own data show this to be untrue.

 

The evidence they examined was submitted by Japan-Monsanto to the Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare for approval of the GM soya for importation. Their findings received no response from the Ministry.