Gene-edited mushrooms

July 2022

In 1932, a legal issue which started with a tenacious Scottish single-parent shop-assistant, who took exception to being served up a decomposing snail in her ice-cream float and pursued her complaint all the way to the House of Lords, ended with the creation of a consumer rights law which became established throughout the world.

The significance of this case is that manufacturers of "articles of common household use" have a legal duty of care to ensure the safety of their products for anyone likely to use them.

From a GM food perspective, novel foods have never been comprehensively tested to ensure their safe, life-long, consumption by any likely consumers.

GM sceptics might suggest that the failure to carry out human trials or use up-to-date analytical techniques on GM foods is to make sure the manufacturer doesn't know about any potential problems.

What better way to avoid that pesky duty of care to ensure safety?

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.

Bad laboratory practice

December 2021

In the 1970s, there was a massive scandal when America's largest contract research laboratory, responsible for a third of all its pre-approval toxicology testing, was found to have been manipulating studies and systematically falsifying experimental data for over a decade. 

Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories (IBT) carried out around a third of US pharmaceutical and chemical product safety testing during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

When the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) audited the company, 71% of its studies were invalidated, and thousands were found to be fraudulent or grossly inadequate.

What started as serious concerns about poor quality research expanded into a criminal investigation, and in 1983 three men from IBT were convicted for fabricating key safety tests to gain government approvals. The fraud brought into question 15% of the pesticides approved for use, besides many pharmaceuticals and industrial chemicals.

IBT clients included Monsanto, Dow, and DuPont.

America's response to this fraud was to devise 'Good Laboratory Practice' (GLP). This quality assurance system provides a legal framework which specifies, for example, standard requirements for equipment and facility maintenance, experimental conditions, documentation of all procedures and data, archiving of all findings and materials, monitoring of personnel, and external auditing of test facilities.

Good Laboratory Practice was introduced into America in 1978 and adopted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1992 making it a world-wide standard. It was formally adopted by the EU in a 2004 Directive.

Problem sorted. 

Or, is it?

Caution! GM ahead

September 2021

Sedated by the GM food labelling and risk assessment requirements of the EU, many British people have been lulled into thinking GM has become a bit of a non-issue. However, just before Covid 19 obliterated all other news, many media outlets were picking up on the real possibility that, post-Brexit, "Supermarkets could be stocked with genetically modified food under future UK-US trade deal" (The Sun). Indeed, some were warning of the risk of a race to the bottom [1] and asking what happened to Westminster's pledge to take back control of our markets [2].

What started it was that, while "Boris Johnson has repeatedly claimed that negative impacts of Brexit will pale in comparison to the benefits" (Lib Dems quoted in PoliticsHome), the government's own figures suggest the 'benefits' could be as low as 0.02% of GDP. The UK Trade Policy Observatory at Sussex University commented "The numbers are very small. It just goes to show how tiny the gains are from a free trade agreement with the US compared to losing our present arrangements with the EU".

To avoid upsetting the public, the Government categorically ruled out involving the NHS in any trade negotiations, while allowing the health and safety issues surrounding US produce (which our Prime Minister has dismissed as "mumbo jumbo"), to be side-lined into the easily explained issues of chlorine-treated chicken and hormone-treated beef. On the subject of GM and food safety, however, the UK's negotiating stance has been over-generalised and elastic: "Any agreement will ensure high standards and protections for consumers and workers, and will not compromise on our high environmental protection, animal welfare and food standards." (quoted in The Sun)

This is not good news for British farmers who face the double-whammy of their home market being flooded with cheap (GM, and heavily subsidised) American produce just at the same time as their export markets to Europe have vanished.

The National Farmers' Union (NFU) for England and Wales, whose mission is to give farmers a voice, to protect their way of life, to campaign for a stable and sustainable future for British farmers, and to secure them the best deal, has been narrowly focusing on a ban on chlorine-treated chicken. At the same time, despite knowing its members' customers clearly rejected GM foods in the past and have no reason whatsoever to have changed their minds, the NFU is lobbying hard for gene editing. The organisation claims that this unproven GM technology will put the UK "in a world-leading position to showcase sustainable climate-friendly farming " (Blythman). Given the unpredictable disturbances in gene edited genomes increasingly being revealed by science [3,4,5,6], the NFU's wild optimism really doesn't sound like the best deal for farmers. This US-style, high-tech idealism puts the NFU at odds with its sister organisations in Scotland and Northern Ireland which have banned GM crops of all kinds.

As journalist Joanna Blythman warned pre-Brexit:

The precision problem in genome editing

August 2021

In 2018, the European Court of Justice gave its opinion on EU law with regard to gene editing. It concluded that techniques which use lab-made nucleic acids (such as DNA or the related RNA) to alter genetic material in a way that does not occur naturally are GM and are, therefore, subject to GMO regulation [1].

What happened to taking back control?

February 2020

• Democracy - government by the people, direct or indirect
• Tyranny - government by an absolute ruler

The huge and complex task of 'taking back control' of our regulations preparatory to Brexit seems to be ensuring that current and future rules will not be subject to proper political or public scrutiny [1].

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.

Patent-unfriendly broccoli

January 2019

After a lot of moaning by food rights activists, the European Patent Office (EPA) reconsidered its ideas on the patenting of life, and in 2017 set new rules.

Following on from this (and a whole lot more moaning by food rights activists) the EPA revoked a patent it had granted five years previously on a new strain of broccoli.

Cost-cutting in Brazil

November 2018

In 2016, organic food sales in Brazil were mushrooming by 20 to 30 percent a year.  At the same time, some 70 percent of organic produce was being exported to Europe.  Farmers there recognise that "Growing organics is the future", and the people are increasingly "wanting healthier food free from pesticides".

Were it not for the alliance between the government and Big Agriculture, which is driving the economy, and the supermarkets, which are controlling the food supply system, organics would be a key growth industry.  Instead, it remains a tiny fraction of the whole, swamped by Big Ag's desire for GM crops and their supporting chemicals.  Supermarkets, of course, promote cut-throat competition amongst their suppliers, and the 'winners' are the unrestrained fraudsters passing off conventional pesticide-laden food as 'organic'.

Faced with this scenario, the Brazilian government is busy pushing through two far-reaching pieces of legislation.

Let there BE labels on genetically modified food

July 2018

'Genetically engineered food' has never sounded like something anyone would rush to eat, and frankly "If you put a label on (it) you might as well put a skull-and-crossbones on it" (Asgrow Seed Company President 1994).

So, how do you sell genetically engineered food to the public?

A soya model NOT to follow

April 2018

Argentina's 'modelo sojero', once promoted as a shining economic example for others to follow, seems instead to have led straight to the social disaster many predicted.

The 'modelo sojero' [1] is based on a move to high-tech monocultures of a few commodity crops (in this case mainly GM soya, a lot of wheat and GM maize) produced for export markets and for growing the country's GDP. Boosted by extreme free-trade, light-touch regulations and privatisation, the model channels the cash flowing in from far-off lands into state hand-outs to reduce poverty.

Pesticide divorce proceedings

April 2018

Protest against pesticides in Paris 2016
Photo Creative Commons

The EU's biggest grain grower, grain exporter and food producer, France, has been leading the way in healthy food and farming for the last decade.

France was one of the first Member States to 'opt out' of growing GM crops in 2015 (see Note below).

The following year, a ban on pesticide use in public green spaces was announced by the French government, plus a prohibition on over-the-counter sales of pesticides to non-professional gardeners. From 2019, pesticide use will be prohibited in private gardens also.

'Bt' and kidney disease

April 2018

The EU probably has the most detailed, carefully drafted and thought-out GM regulations in the world. All Member States can give their opinion during the GM approval process, and the precautionary principle underlies it.

New biotech crops on the market come stacked with multiple artificial genes*. In such cases, even if the 'parent' single-trait crops have already been accepted, the EU quite rightly considers the crop to be a new GM organism needing its own regulatory approval.

How the EU system works in practice, however, is less impressive.

Scientific dysfunctional advice mechanism

April 2018

The European Commission (EC) is clearly struggling with the wealth of novel genome tweaking techniques streaming out of the laboratory.

Problem No.1 is finding a collective name for what it's trying to regulate. 'New breeding techniques' seems to be favoured despite the notable presence of manufacturing and absence of procreation in the techniques themselves [1]. Some new breeding techniques, such as CRISPR/Cas9 [2], are referred to as gene- or genome-editing giving them an aura of minor and precise correction. Concerned scientists and green organisations have no hesitation in calling them what they are: new GM techniques producing new GMOs which have much the same uncertainties, risks and potential for indirect negative impacts as the old kind.

Juggling with glyphosate

January 2018

Not, perhaps, the best way to start a new year is the announcement that the European Commission has re-approved the use of glyphosate herbicide for five years.

This means that responsibility for the consequences of this highly controversial weedkiller is off-loaded onto Member States: France and Italy immediately announced their intention to phase out glyphosate over the next three years, and Austria is set to join them.

Brexit, imports and GMOs

January 2018

The big issue for Scotland in 2018 is going to be Brexit, especially the associated risk that it could usher in GM crops to our fields and to our food.

Without the carefully crafted EU Directives controlling the cultivation, import and sale of GMOs in force, major safeguards will disappear. Gone will be the precautionary principle, the recognition of the irrevocable nature of any harm caused to the environment, the right not to grow GM crops, the respect for ethical concerns, traceability and labelling.

Our biggest threat is from uncontrolled imports of GMOs from America.

American agricultural suicide

November 2017

A retired Senior Executive of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently described how American agriculture is on a "treadmill to oblivion", blinding itself to the reality of what's happening on the farm and of where that pesticide treadmill isn't going. Add to this, an "unparallelled ability ... to forget what we once know" about how to keep the soil healthy the pests at bay, and the crop yields high without fertilisers and pesticides.

Corporate Communism?

November 2017

Denying local communities the freedom to choose their own agricultural system, not only what they grow but how they grow it, has suddenly become a priority in the USA.

By August this year, 28 States had passed "seed pre-emption laws" never deemed necessary nor desirable before.

The new laws are primarily designed to block counties and cities from banning GMOs, but the language used in some bills could enable them to extend to such things as manures, fertilisers and irrigation (these could be used to promote, for example, agri-chemical corporate interests, agri-chemical dependent GM crops, and futuristic drought-tolerant GM crops).

GMM contamination

September 2017

Many food and feed additives, produced once upon a time by chemical synthesis or extraction from natural sources, are now derived from fermentation of GM micro-organisms (GMMs).

EU rules require that such additives in the final product must be pure. This means that the GMM itself (alive or dead) or any artificial DNA inserted into it must have been removed.

Accordingly, no special labelling is required for GMM-derived additives. Also, there is no regulatory control system in place for the products of GMMs. It is assumed the company marketing the additive will verify the absence of the GMM and its novel DNA in the final substance.

Besides use as food processing aids and as a means of conferring artificial qualities on food products, GMM-derived additives include 'health' promoting substances, such as vitamins.

In 2014, EU regulators were notified that a German official enforcement laboratory had detected live GM bacteria in a consignment of 'riboflavin' feed additive from China.

Let's campaign

July 2017

Now that you have a newly-elected representative in Government, just burning with enthusiasm to serve you, it's a good time to speak out.

The Great Brexit Bungle could have many outcomes damaging to the quality of your food and your long-term health. All the existing EU food laws on GMOs might remain intact. However, it seems more likely we'll find ourselves with the GM products of US light-touch regulation on our plate and not a label in sight. Or, we could end up in a limbo into which any country will be able to dump surplus GM stuff no one else wants.