August 2022
The latest food-like substance trying to transition from the laboratory to the factory, and hence to our dinner-plates, is fake real meat. That is, real animal cells, whose many-times-great grandparents were part of a real animal and which have been persuaded to multiply themselves in a great big tank, are squished together to make pretend mince-meat.
A better class of fake requires that the cells are exercised on a mini-muscle-gym to make them develop physically more like the real thing, and a scaffold for the cells to grow on to give them a muscle-like shape and texture.
Fake real meat is also known as 'lab' meat, 'cell' meat, 'cultured' meat, 'vat-grown' meat, 'lab-grown' meat, 'lab-cultured' meat, 'in-vitro' meat, and oddly 'cultivated' meat (although ploughs and weed-suppression do not feature in its production).
Showing posts with label safety. Show all posts
Showing posts with label safety. Show all posts
Gene-edited tomatoes
July 2022
According to media headlines, the UK government has declared gene-edited tomatoes could be in our supermarkets in 2023.
According to media headlines, the UK government has declared gene-edited tomatoes could be in our supermarkets in 2023.
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?
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?
Breeding Bt crops breeds healthy pests
May 2022
In the first decade of 'Bt' insecticidal GM maize growing, it was noted that aphids unexpectedly thrived on them. Aphids are sap-sucking insects which can reproduce prodigiously under the right conditions, but don't usually cause economic damage to maize crops. It was suggested that these overwhelmingly 'right conditions' in the Bt maize plants might be their slight, but significantly, increased levels of amino acids*, dismissed by regulators as of 'no biological significance'.
In the first decade of 'Bt' insecticidal GM maize growing, it was noted that aphids unexpectedly thrived on them. Aphids are sap-sucking insects which can reproduce prodigiously under the right conditions, but don't usually cause economic damage to maize crops. It was suggested that these overwhelmingly 'right conditions' in the Bt maize plants might be their slight, but significantly, increased levels of amino acids*, dismissed by regulators as of 'no biological significance'.
Super toxic Bt cowpeas
May 2022
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In 1990, Monsanto scientists published their latest discovery about the new 'Bt' insecticides generated by GM crops which were soon to become every farmers 'must-have'.
Their exciting finding, with an "immediate commercial implication" was that the insecticidal power of Bt could be increased many fold if its degradation was prevented by the plant itself. Many plants produce substances which prevent the breakdown of proteins, such as the Bt toxin, possibly to keep herbivores at bay by interfering with their digestion. The authors suggested this would confer "significant and long-term implications and benefits" on Monsanto's "genetically improved" Bt-generating plants.
Safety assessment of the new Bt crops was based on two strands of evidence.
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In 1990, Monsanto scientists published their latest discovery about the new 'Bt' insecticides generated by GM crops which were soon to become every farmers 'must-have'.
Their exciting finding, with an "immediate commercial implication" was that the insecticidal power of Bt could be increased many fold if its degradation was prevented by the plant itself. Many plants produce substances which prevent the breakdown of proteins, such as the Bt toxin, possibly to keep herbivores at bay by interfering with their digestion. The authors suggested this would confer "significant and long-term implications and benefits" on Monsanto's "genetically improved" Bt-generating plants.
Safety assessment of the new Bt crops was based on two strands of evidence.
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?
Gene-edited farming - rescue or last straw?
December 2021
Paving the way for the acceptance of Westminster's consultation on the regulation of genetic technologies, an opinion piece, written by a top UK crop-pest scientist, was published in the Guardian newspaper. Its headline was:
The villains that farming needs to be rescued from are "new (climate-change driven) plant diseases moving rapidly around the world", and some old plant diseases (such as the blight which caused the Irish potato famine in the 1840s) which still plague us, and the skill and patience required for the long process of conventional plant breeding.
The heroes which will rescue farming are super-fast, precise, trait-specific new crops courtesy of gene editing.
The article also acknowledged that, before farming can be rescued by gene-editing, gene editing will have to be rescued from negative consumer opinion.
Take a step back and look at why our agriculture is being caught so far on the back foot that it needs rescuing.
In old-style 'conventional' plant breeding (a.k.a. 'domestication'), seed is saved, exchanged locally, and possibly selected for planting the following year. The plants evolve* alongside the farmers and everything else which shares their mutual environment. Farmers are producers with key skills in food production, while their naturally genetically-diversified crops evolve into new genetically-diversified crops.
* Note Evolution is an ongoing, ecosystem-wide shifting to new states of equilibrium as all organisms interact with each other and with their non-living environment. "Like all organisms, humans alter the environments around them in ways which have evolutionary consequences" (Mueller and Flachs)
Seventy years of the inappropriately named 'green' revolution have given us new-style 'conventional' (a.k.a. 'traditional') intensively-bred crops which are mainly inbred-hybrids. Such crops have uniform genetics and often include desired traits induced by humans using random mutagenesis (absent safety testing). They are developed off-farm with a prime focus on high yield to supply a globalised market. Key to growing such crops are chemical inputs (fertilisers and pesticides), the cash to buy the inputs and new seed every year, water, and the machines to enable uniform planting, multiple chemical applications, and harvesting on a vast scale. Add to these, government subsidies and an elaborate market infrastructure. Farmers growing them have become consumers of whatever seed, chemicals and machines their suppliers want to flog them.
The green revolution's monocultures and transportation of seeds around the world are big players in the global spread of plant diseases (the ones gene-editing will 'rescue' farming from), and climate change.
The focus on yield, uniformity and scale has long side-lined the nutritional value, taste and sustainability of the crop, and the needs and knowledge of the local people, and evolution. While the on-farm environment keeps changing, just like it always has, industry-supplied inbred-hybrid seed has no capacity for evolution.
The latest shift in agriculture is to crops which have been genetically modified (GM) or gene edited (also GM). These have desired specific traits engineered into them in the laboratory. In a desperate attempt to normalise these GM creations, genetic modification has been absurdly described as "a continuation of the ancient process of (crop) domestication" by which humans "have been manipulating their crops for millennia". Gene-editing takes the public sedation exercise a stage further: it "could happen in Nature" and “allows us to give Mother Nature a helping hand to accelerate the process of evolution". Since all GM traits are bred into existing crops varieties with uniform genetic backgrounds, they are quite clearly nothing to do with old-conventional, evolving, plant breeding and everything to do with new-conventional, non-evolving, green revolution crop production.
Consumers have every reason to be just as uncomfortable with gene editing as they were with genetic modification.
For one thing, there's the science (which isn't difficult to find or to grasp):
For another thing, as some concerned New Zealand scientists pointed out "the risk of harm from gene technology accumulates over time and scale of production". If Big Biotech gets its way on the scale of gene-tech crops grown all over the world, it's just a matter of time before the risk of harm becomes actual harm.
Then, there's the desperate and unconvincing propaganda such as that described above. As the concerned scientists in New Zealand pointed out, "the risks from technology don't disappear by calling it natural" (and, an edited gene doesn't become natural by calling it evolution).
Suggestions in the crop-pest scientist's article for tackling the public confidence deficit in gene editing include the need for transparency and a 'national debate'. That same month, a letter published in Nature Biotechnology advanced principles for 'Responsible governance of gene editing in agriculture and the environment' which included 'robust, inclusive societal engagement'. Note that no one's suggesting any need for safety testing to reassure the public. What all that transparency, debate and engagement sounds like is a smokescreen for 'educating' the public to want this new-fangled GM food, just like in the 1990s when the first old-style GM crops emerged from the field.
Relaxing gene editing rules' as suggested by the top UK crop scientist translates into a means to avoid safety testing. Indeed, the outcome of the 'consultation' is that UK regulators will now permit field trials of gene-edited crops without risk assessment, and new legislation to exclude gene-edited organisms from the definition of a GMO is now on Westminster's agenda.
The top UK crop scientist acknowledged that "Organic farming has provided us with creative and powerful alternatives for how we grow food" and hints that combining crop 'improvement' using gene-editing with organic methods could be a solution for sustainable agriculture. Obviously giving Mother Nature a helping hand ... and giving the biotech industry an even bigger helping hand while compromising our future organic food supply. Organic farming doesn't need rescued, but it will if genetic engineers get their hands on it.
Ask your MP to take action. Rather than rush simplistic gene edited 'improved' crops to market, the UK government must promote small-scale, diversified, climate-friendly, unadulterated organic, regenerative, and agro-ecological methods that work with nature and put farmers back in the driving seat. In that way, farming might actually rescue itself along with our health, our food supply and our future.
In Scotland, our Environment Minister tells us:
Modern 'conventional' farming: too big, too uniform, too much fancy technology, too hype-ridden, and unsustainable.
Paving the way for the acceptance of Westminster's consultation on the regulation of genetic technologies, an opinion piece, written by a top UK crop-pest scientist, was published in the Guardian newspaper. Its headline was:
"Science can rescue farming. Relaxing gene editing rules should be the start"
The villains that farming needs to be rescued from are "new (climate-change driven) plant diseases moving rapidly around the world", and some old plant diseases (such as the blight which caused the Irish potato famine in the 1840s) which still plague us, and the skill and patience required for the long process of conventional plant breeding.
The heroes which will rescue farming are super-fast, precise, trait-specific new crops courtesy of gene editing.
The article also acknowledged that, before farming can be rescued by gene-editing, gene editing will have to be rescued from negative consumer opinion.
Take a step back and look at why our agriculture is being caught so far on the back foot that it needs rescuing.
In old-style 'conventional' plant breeding (a.k.a. 'domestication'), seed is saved, exchanged locally, and possibly selected for planting the following year. The plants evolve* alongside the farmers and everything else which shares their mutual environment. Farmers are producers with key skills in food production, while their naturally genetically-diversified crops evolve into new genetically-diversified crops.
* Note Evolution is an ongoing, ecosystem-wide shifting to new states of equilibrium as all organisms interact with each other and with their non-living environment. "Like all organisms, humans alter the environments around them in ways which have evolutionary consequences" (Mueller and Flachs)
Seventy years of the inappropriately named 'green' revolution have given us new-style 'conventional' (a.k.a. 'traditional') intensively-bred crops which are mainly inbred-hybrids. Such crops have uniform genetics and often include desired traits induced by humans using random mutagenesis (absent safety testing). They are developed off-farm with a prime focus on high yield to supply a globalised market. Key to growing such crops are chemical inputs (fertilisers and pesticides), the cash to buy the inputs and new seed every year, water, and the machines to enable uniform planting, multiple chemical applications, and harvesting on a vast scale. Add to these, government subsidies and an elaborate market infrastructure. Farmers growing them have become consumers of whatever seed, chemicals and machines their suppliers want to flog them.
The green revolution's monocultures and transportation of seeds around the world are big players in the global spread of plant diseases (the ones gene-editing will 'rescue' farming from), and climate change.
The focus on yield, uniformity and scale has long side-lined the nutritional value, taste and sustainability of the crop, and the needs and knowledge of the local people, and evolution. While the on-farm environment keeps changing, just like it always has, industry-supplied inbred-hybrid seed has no capacity for evolution.
The latest shift in agriculture is to crops which have been genetically modified (GM) or gene edited (also GM). These have desired specific traits engineered into them in the laboratory. In a desperate attempt to normalise these GM creations, genetic modification has been absurdly described as "a continuation of the ancient process of (crop) domestication" by which humans "have been manipulating their crops for millennia". Gene-editing takes the public sedation exercise a stage further: it "could happen in Nature" and “allows us to give Mother Nature a helping hand to accelerate the process of evolution". Since all GM traits are bred into existing crops varieties with uniform genetic backgrounds, they are quite clearly nothing to do with old-conventional, evolving, plant breeding and everything to do with new-conventional, non-evolving, green revolution crop production.
Consumers have every reason to be just as uncomfortable with gene editing as they were with genetic modification.
For one thing, there's the science (which isn't difficult to find or to grasp):
- Apart from the question of functional disturbances in the genome caused by the intended DNA change, there's a mounting body of evidence that the gene editing process itself induces damage elsewhere in the genome [1,2,3].
- The latest alarming discovery is the possibility that CRISPR gene editing can cause the chromosome to shatter and re-assemble haphazardly, with who-know-what effects on the GM organism.
- Crop scientists check the success of their genetic engineering by looking for the desired edit at the 'precise location': random wreckage elsewhere remains invisible.
For another thing, as some concerned New Zealand scientists pointed out "the risk of harm from gene technology accumulates over time and scale of production". If Big Biotech gets its way on the scale of gene-tech crops grown all over the world, it's just a matter of time before the risk of harm becomes actual harm.
Then, there's the desperate and unconvincing propaganda such as that described above. As the concerned scientists in New Zealand pointed out, "the risks from technology don't disappear by calling it natural" (and, an edited gene doesn't become natural by calling it evolution).
Suggestions in the crop-pest scientist's article for tackling the public confidence deficit in gene editing include the need for transparency and a 'national debate'. That same month, a letter published in Nature Biotechnology advanced principles for 'Responsible governance of gene editing in agriculture and the environment' which included 'robust, inclusive societal engagement'. Note that no one's suggesting any need for safety testing to reassure the public. What all that transparency, debate and engagement sounds like is a smokescreen for 'educating' the public to want this new-fangled GM food, just like in the 1990s when the first old-style GM crops emerged from the field.
Relaxing gene editing rules' as suggested by the top UK crop scientist translates into a means to avoid safety testing. Indeed, the outcome of the 'consultation' is that UK regulators will now permit field trials of gene-edited crops without risk assessment, and new legislation to exclude gene-edited organisms from the definition of a GMO is now on Westminster's agenda.
OUR COMMENT
The hype surrounding all things GM hasn't changed in quarter of a century. Don't let yourself be 'educated' to think that gene-edited foods will ever be anything but a quick, commercially-lucrative patch shoring up an over-sized unsustainable system with multiple opportunities for harm to health.The top UK crop scientist acknowledged that "Organic farming has provided us with creative and powerful alternatives for how we grow food" and hints that combining crop 'improvement' using gene-editing with organic methods could be a solution for sustainable agriculture. Obviously giving Mother Nature a helping hand ... and giving the biotech industry an even bigger helping hand while compromising our future organic food supply. Organic farming doesn't need rescued, but it will if genetic engineers get their hands on it.
Ask your MP to take action. Rather than rush simplistic gene edited 'improved' crops to market, the UK government must promote small-scale, diversified, climate-friendly, unadulterated organic, regenerative, and agro-ecological methods that work with nature and put farmers back in the driving seat. In that way, farming might actually rescue itself along with our health, our food supply and our future.
In Scotland, our Environment Minister tells us:
"Scotland's policy towards GMOs has not changed, and we have no plans for a similar review. As for gene editing, we are disappointed DEFRA would choose to move unilaterally on this. The Scottish Government is committed to keeping aligned with the EU, and we are monitoring the EU's position closely".
Now is a good time to tell your MSP that you don't trust the new gene technology trajectory of English agriculture and that you fully support Scotland's no GM and no gene editing policy.
Background
[1] THE PRECISION PROBLEM IN GENOME EDITING - August 2021
[2] CRISPR'S EPIGENETIC SCARS - August 2021
[3] CRISPR CATASTROPHE IN THE MAKING - August 2021
Background
[1] THE PRECISION PROBLEM IN GENOME EDITING - August 2021
[2] CRISPR'S EPIGENETIC SCARS - August 2021
[3] CRISPR CATASTROPHE IN THE MAKING - August 2021
SOURCES:
·
DEFRA Consultation outcome, Genetic
technologies regulation: government response, updated 29.09.21
·
Nick Talbot, Science can rescue farming.
Relaxing gene editing rules should be the start, Guardian 19.09.21
·
Natalie G. Mueller and Andrew Flachs, September
2021, Domestication, crop breeding, and genetic modification are
fundamentally different processes: implications for seed sovereignty and
agrobiodiversity, Agriculture and Human Values
·
Barbara Van Dyck, The Stories We Trust:
Regulating Genome edited Organisms, Agroecology Now! 23.07.21
·
British farmers 'could lead the way' on gene
editing after Brexit, Farming UK 4.12.18
·
Jack Heinemann and others, Calling the latest
gene technologies 'natural' is a semantic distraction - they must still be
regulated, The Conversation, 22.09.21
·
Doria R. Gordon, et al., September 2021, Responsible
governance of gene editing in agriculture and the environment, Nature
Biotechnology Correspondence
·
Mitchell L. Leibowitz, et al., 2020, Chromothripsis
as an on-target consequence of CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing, Preprint
(subsequently published in Nature Biotechnology)
· Chromothripsis: Bad news for gene editing, GM Watch, 22.09.21
Photo Creative Commons
How much don't we know about our food?
November 2021
Pity the poor plants. If you find something trying to eat you, you can run away, hide, bite back, kick, claw, or twist your way out, or avoid being in the wrong place at the wrong time to start with. Plants, held fast by the earth, can't evade or fight off predators: and there are lots of animals out there wanting to eat them.
One self-defence trick plants do have is a huge arsenal of chemicals with which to make themselves taste bad, look bad, indigestible, or poisonous.
Just how huge this arsenal might be can be judged by the composition of the humble iceberg lettuce. Mainly water and a little green colouring you might think? The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) recognises eleven constituents in an iceberg lettuce: detailed analyses have identified more than 4,000.
For those of us shoe-horned into thinking of food in terms of sugar, protein and fat with a few vitamins and minerals thrown in, this one real-life figure of 4,000-plus in a lettuce tells us just how dumbed down the information about our food is.
Avoiding evidence about cancer (linked to Glyphosate of course)
October 2021
Because humans can't be subjected to experimentation, regulators assessing the safety of a chemical have to weigh whatever other, imperfect, evidence they have at their disposal. Safety assessment is particularly challenging when dealing with a possible carcinogen, such as glyphosate herbicide [1]. It's even trickier, it seems, when the chemical is, like glyphosate, a major money-spinner produced by the powerful biotech industry for use on its commodity GM crops [2].
There are two important types of evidence available to regulators: laboratory experiments using animal models, and epidemiological studies. Neither can yield definitive conclusions, and their limitations are particularly evident in investigations of suspected carcinogens.
The shortcomings of animal models stem from the biology of cancers.
Isoxaflutole - The Next Herbicide Headache?
October 2021
Isoxaflutole is a newcomer in the world of herbicides and is recognised as a probable human carcinogen because it induces liver and thyroid tumours in rodents. This herbicide is potentially toxic to the liver, blood and eyes, and may have negative developmental effects. It's pretty good at drifting, and is persistent and mobile in the environment, possibly accumulating in ground water.
All this may sound like a good reason not to approve isoxaflutole nor the GM crops designed to escalate its use.
Dicamba - Worse Than Glyphosate
October 2021
After all the whitewashing of glyphosate herbicide revealed when its manufacturer, Monsanto, was taken to court by users who now have cancer [1], it should come as no surprise that dicamba herbicide [2] looks like being a re-run of the same story.
We're back!
August 2021
Dear readers,
While GM-Free Scotland has been in lockdown, the biotech industry has been busy convincing our food regulators that gene-editing is somehow so safe and dependable that it doesn't need regulation, testing or labelling.
Biotech industry rhetoric, obediently repeated by government (both Westminster and Holyrood), is that gene editing is "like nature", simply "speeding up something which would happen with breeding eventually", "precise" and involving "no foreign genes". We are told we must not "shut our eyes to scientific advancement" and that we must "be led by the science on gene editing technologies". But this science-led advancement doesn't seem to extend to actually using science to make sure these new GMOs are safe and healthy for the current generation, for future generations, for our food crops and for our environment.
If you're not sure what the problem is with gene-edited food, make sure you catch the next few GMFreeScotland articles on what science is telling us about them.
Stay safe!
Quotes are from:
Farmers to be at the helm of future policy direction in a new Holyrood by Claire Taylor, the Scottish Farmer, 29.4.21
Why new genetic techniques need to be stringently regulated, Third World Network Biosafety Information Service, 4.04.21
Glyphosate on the plate
March 2020
Food-related uses of glyphosate-based herbicides in a nutshell:
The vast majority of commercial GM food crops - including maize, soya, canola, sugar-beet and cotton (consumed as cotton-seed oil) - are glyphosate tolerant and therefore sprayed with glyphosate-based herbicides. Applications of the herbicide on these crops have been stepped up year-on-year due to evolving weed resistance.
Besides GM crops, glyphosate-based herbicides are used as a pre-harvest desiccant on wheat, barley, oats (and other grains), sugar cane, lentils, beans, peas, chickpeas, sunflower, mints, potatoes and cantaloupe.
Food-related uses of glyphosate-based herbicides in a nutshell:
The vast majority of commercial GM food crops - including maize, soya, canola, sugar-beet and cotton (consumed as cotton-seed oil) - are glyphosate tolerant and therefore sprayed with glyphosate-based herbicides. Applications of the herbicide on these crops have been stepped up year-on-year due to evolving weed resistance.
Besides GM crops, glyphosate-based herbicides are used as a pre-harvest desiccant on wheat, barley, oats (and other grains), sugar cane, lentils, beans, peas, chickpeas, sunflower, mints, potatoes and cantaloupe.
What happened to taking back control?
February 2020
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].
- 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].
US to eliminate animal testing
January 2020
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is moving to eliminate all animal testing of new chemicals by 2035. In its place will be cheap, quick and easy computer modelling, cultured cells and tiny invertebrates.
To achieve the shift only requires that the Agency cuts its funding for animal-based trials.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is moving to eliminate all animal testing of new chemicals by 2035. In its place will be cheap, quick and easy computer modelling, cultured cells and tiny invertebrates.
To achieve the shift only requires that the Agency cuts its funding for animal-based trials.
The Brexit race to the bottom
January 2020
By the time this article pops up on the net, who knows what Brexit chaos might be unfolding. It is, however, worth being forewarned about what's been sneaked into place at the time of writing. As GM Watch points out, there's so much political upheaval in the UK and Europe, we risk "being so overwhelmed by the noise and sense of urgency that we miss what's really going on".
For example ...
By the time this article pops up on the net, who knows what Brexit chaos might be unfolding. It is, however, worth being forewarned about what's been sneaked into place at the time of writing. As GM Watch points out, there's so much political upheaval in the UK and Europe, we risk "being so overwhelmed by the noise and sense of urgency that we miss what's really going on".
For example ...
Science born of perverse incentives
December 2019
Perverse: 'persistent in error'; 'different from what is reasonable or required'; 'perverted'; 'wicked' ... (Oxford English Dictionary)
A paper on 'Academic research in the 21st Century' describes how scientific progress and integrity are being adversely affected by the current climate of "perverse incentives" driving research.
For example, the yardstick for the most 'successful' scientist is the one who has published the greatest number of papers, and who has been awarded the most funding.
The outcome of this is an avalanche of substandard papers and short-term experiments. More care and attention is paid to writing grant proposals, in which positive results are oversold and negative results are downplayed, than on data quality. Research 'hot topics' generate a windfall in both potential papers and funding opportunities.
The pinnacle of the scientific profession is, of course, the Nobel prize.
Perverse: 'persistent in error'; 'different from what is reasonable or required'; 'perverted'; 'wicked' ... (Oxford English Dictionary)
A paper on 'Academic research in the 21st Century' describes how scientific progress and integrity are being adversely affected by the current climate of "perverse incentives" driving research.
For example, the yardstick for the most 'successful' scientist is the one who has published the greatest number of papers, and who has been awarded the most funding.
The outcome of this is an avalanche of substandard papers and short-term experiments. More care and attention is paid to writing grant proposals, in which positive results are oversold and negative results are downplayed, than on data quality. Research 'hot topics' generate a windfall in both potential papers and funding opportunities.
The pinnacle of the scientific profession is, of course, the Nobel prize.
Bogus bleeding beef
August 2019
Remember the bleeding GM veggie-burgers
rolled out across America in 2017? That's the fake meat produced by
a similar method to the way Belgian beer's been made for nearly a
thousand years? [1]
The Impossible Burger arrived courtesy
of $80 million worth of research plus $300 million worth of promotion
from foodie celebrities, and a heap of hype. Breathless write-ups
name the Impossible Burger this year's 'It' food craze taking America
by storm, and a wake-up call to the meat industry.
Indeed, the long-term goal of the bogus
burger's manufacturer, Impossible Foods Inc., is to disrupt the meat
industry and convert meat eaters to their products. Impossible
Burgers are set to be followed by Impossible Sausages for pizzas and
Impossible Steak.
America's GM plans
August 2019
Since the Big Bang of synthetic
pesticides during World War II, US regulators from both major
political parties have adopted lax, pro-industry standards that have
kept potentially dangerous pesticides legal. This attitude has
extended to GMOs.
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.
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