Impossible bleeding burgers

September 2017

'Synbio', a.k.a. synthetic biology or synthia, began to look like becoming a reality in our food in 2014. Natural artificial additives such as stevia, vanilla and saffron look-alikes produced in vats of GM yeast were set to hit our plates [1].

The following year, 'Muufri' cowless milk emerged. Muufri has six key natural artificial cow's milk proteins produced in vats of GM yeast [2].

One year on, 'Soylent' meal alternatives became the must-have for the modern man who doesn't have time to shop, cook or sit down to eat. Soylent is "proudly made with GMOs" and doesn't even pretend to have any natural ingredients [3].

Feed me the truth

November 2016

Photo Creative Commons

Most people in the UK don't eat food made from GM ingredients, but supermarkets across the UK are selling products from GM-fed livestock with not a GM label in sight.  

This means that, unwittingly, people are eating eggs, milk, dairy products, poultry, red meat and farmed fish from animals that have been fed GM soya and/or maize.

On the subject of the absent labels, one professor of food marketing told farmers "we find it convenient not to make a big noise about it".

TAKE ACTION

It's time YOU made a big noise whether food marketers find it convenient or not.  

Check out GM Freeze campaign at www.gmfreeze.org/feedmethetruth/ and demand to be FED THE TRUTH on GM animal feed in your food-chain.

German herd sickened by Bt silage

March 2016

One GM-crop enthusiast in Germany has tried it, tested it, looked at the outcome, and changed his mind.

Farmer Glöckner is an experienced dairy farmer with an award for high productivity and a masters degree in Agricultural Sciences. He was one of the first to work with the biotech industry and to trial GM crops. From 1998 to 2002, he grew Syngenta's Bt176 GM maize and prepared silage from it to feed his herd. Progressively increasing amounts of the maize were included in the feed, so that by 2000, the maize content of the feed (40% of the total) was entirely Bt.

Glöckner kept meticulous records, was quick to notice changes in his herd, and quick to call for veterinary and laboratory support. When things had clearly gone wrong, he sued Syngenta and received partial compensation.

What had gone wrong with the Bt-fed herd has been summarised and reported in the scientific literature by Professor Giles-Éric Séralini, a scientist who has long had doubts about industry claims of GM feed safety.

New Zealand's GM cow disaster

January 2016

Ever since Dolly the cloned sheep was born in Scotland in 1996, biotech scientists have had their sights on GM livestock.

'Cloning' can now refer to several procedures, but generally involves removing a nucleus from the cell of an animal with desired characteristics and inserting it into an egg cell whose own nucleus has been removed.  The restructured egg is then stimulated to divide and form an embryo which is inserted into the womb of a surrogate mother.  If all goes well, the pregnancy goes to full-term and a healthy, fertile offspring ensues. 

For genetic engineers, that brief availability of the cell nucleus of a future animal is a golden opportunity to insert a gene.

The procedure involves at least three animals: the nucleus donor, the egg-cell donor, and the embryo recipient.  Because the success rate is low, it also involves multiple embryos and multiple sets of cell donors and surrogate mothers.  Add to this the veterinary surgeons, drugs, field-station facilities and staff, specialist laboratories and, of course, biotech scientists.  Clearly, cloning doesn't come cheap.

Ancient industry evidence won't do

August 2015

Photo Creative Commons

In response to the World Health Organisation International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) re-classification of glyphosate herbicide as a "probable carcinogen" [1], Monsanto said "We don't know how IARC could reach a conclusion that is such a dramatic departure from the conclusion reached by all regulatory agencies around the globe".

Well, here's how.

Natural food is simple

April 2015

Dr. Kellogg's corn flakes, patented in 1896, were probably the original, very simple, health food (even if no one would eat them until they were transformed into complex junk).

More recently, 'corn' has become associated with stuff that's definitely not in the healthy-choice section. For example: the number one staple junk food is corn syrup, then there's GM corn chock-full of its very own insecticide and specially accumulated weed-killer; and meat from intensively-reared livestock fast-fattened with GM corn to get them to market before their health buckles, washed down with milk from intensively reared dairy herds producing more milk than their bodies can handle (assisted by GM growth-hormone injections for good measure).

Milking (pardon the pun) the rising consumer concern about the cruelty involved in this routine extreme exploitation of cows to give them their daily pinta, scientists have invented Muufri (a worse pun).

Vermont's GM labelling first

June 2014



March against Monsanto in Washington US, May 2014.
CC photo by Stephem Melkisethain on Flickr

On 8 May, the Governor of the US State of Vermont signed into existence a State Law which will require all GM ingredients to be labelled from July 2016. Foods so labelled will no longer be able to be called 'natural'.

 

Marking the importance of this first-of-its-kind law*, the occasion merited an outdoor signing ceremony.

*Unlike the bills passed last year in Maine and Connecticut, which require four or five other states to pass GMO labelling laws before they can be enacted, Vermont's law contains no "trigger" clauses.

 

Certainly no one in the US Government, biotech companies, nor food industry is underestimating the significance of this event.

Sickly GM-fed cows

October 2013

Photo credit: See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Dairy farming is a major industry. Modern veterinary science has well-established normal reference values for the blood chemistry of cows: a rise or fall in key blood components signals disease in specific organs.

The expected norm in a dairy herd is healthy animals demonstrating normal blood biochemistry.

European dairy cows are now routinely fed on commercial concentrated feed consisting of soya, maize and other grains. The feed is designed to promote optimum milk production.

Strange, therefore, that a study of 240 cows drawn from eight different (run-of-the-mill) farms in Denmark should all show signs of liver and muscle toxicity, and some had impaired kidney function also.

It seems the new norm in our dairy herds is that they are sickly.

A recipe for MRSA

March 2013

Milk production. Photo by Farm Sanctuary on Flickr

At the end of 2012, the media reported that MRSA 'ST398' had been found in British milk for the first time.

This antibiotic-resistant 'superbug' has been a problem in many countries for some years and is now spreading through UK farms too.

In milk, the bacteria will, of course, be destroyed during routine pasteurisation before sale to the public. However in the animals, such bugs will still be transmitted by dairy-hands, vets, abattoir staff and meat.

Anti-allergen milk... with added allergens

November 2012

Photo of non-gm cow by JelleS on Flickr

The U.S. media has made much of the latest “impressive (GM) technical feat that won plaudits in the biotechnology world”. This impressive feat is the creation by scientists in New Zealand of a GM cow called Daisy.

Daisy's milk is missing 'β-lactoglobulin', a “key” protein often responsible for triggering allergies. In the first year of life, as many as two or three in every hundred infants are allergic to this protein.

Rather than report the huge ethical, scientific and safety issues surrounding the novel cow, journalists have chosen instead to lament the “hopeless logjam” caused by the U.S. government in its failure to rush GM animal products to market. Also due to the regulatory incompetence which, it seems, is having “a chilling effect on animal biotech efforts”, GM animal research is being abandoned or transferred overseas. One Canadian scientist is quoted as saying his GM pigs have had to be banked in cold storage until “societal attitudes improve”.

Before blaming the government and public for the lack of GM super-animals in the world, perhaps the journalists should have considered the matter in more depth.

EuropaBio ambassadors an old and failed tactic

April 2012

Bob Geldof an 'interested' party. By IMF Photograph/Stephen Jaffe
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

In October, 2011, the Guardian newspaper reported the latest stunt being pulled to promote GM in Europe.

Documents leaked from a PR company employed by biotech industry representative, 'EuropaBio' (see below) detailed how high-profile “ambassadors” such as Bob Geldof were to be recruited to lobby European leaders on GM policy.

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EuropaBio

EuropaBio, is the European Association for Bioindustries based in Brussels. It is the 'voice of the European biotech industry' made up of some 600 companies. Members include all of the major European multinationals who have significant biotechnology interests, such as Bayer, Novartis, Monsanto Europe, Nestlé, Rhone-Poulenc, Unilever, and GlaxoSmithKline.

The primary focus of EuropaBio's lobbying is the European Union, where it seeks to shape legislation in a way that suits its members' interests. It provides a steady flow of information about biotechnology to the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of Ministers.

www.powerbase.info/index.php/Europabio

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Interestingly, the tactic has been tried before.

Milk from a Hucow

May 2011

Image from Wikimedia Commons

In ancient China, the emperor and empress could drink human milk throughout their lives. This was believed to be the height of opulence.

In modern China, despite the massive economic growth and industrial expansion, the gap between the rich and poor is widening. The answer sought is in biotechnology: the country seems to have set its sights on making human milk available to all, babies, children and adults. The catch is that this 'human' milk will come from a cow.

In March, China held an exhibition to showcase its major technological achievements during the 'Five-Year Plan' of 2005-10. Among the wonders on display were photographs of a herd of more than 200 cows that had been genetically transformed to produce 'humanised' milk.

The actual genes, the techniques used to produce the herd, the health of the herd, and the quality of milk obtained are shrouded in mystery and hype, not helped by the need to translate or interpret all the information from Chinese.