Spinning soya into gold

February 2011

If you read HIGH-OLEIC SOYA - February 2011, you'll know all about Monsanto's latest GM venture: added-value, nutrient-enhanced GM soya. You probably also noticed a hint of sarcasm in the description of the regulatory oversight of GM crops in the USA.

American GM 'oversight' takes the form of a voluntary consultation with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) during which all parties can ensure they have a get-out should anything go wrong: the biotech company can spin the process into FDA 'approval' of its GM crop, and the FDA can spin it into a thoughtful assessment of all the available evidence.

Although the FDA consultation sounds like a foregone conclusion in favour of the biotech industry, its completion in regard to MON 87705, high-oleic acid, GM soya was a cause for jubilation. So much so that Monsanto put out a press release telling the world about it.

High oleic soya

February 2011

The first nutritionally altered, gene-altered, food is poised to arrive on your plate.

Monsanto's next-generation, MON 87705, GM soya is high in oleic fatty acid like olive oil only even more so. It's also low in saturated fatty acids like rapeseed oil only even more so.

The novel oil is “well suited for use in bottled vegetable oil, salad dressings, margarine and other similar food products for which commodity soybean oil is used”. Clearly, it's intended for widespread use in most processed foods and by caterers. It's also “well suited for industrial applications”, such as lubrication and biodiesel.

Viral DNA dangers

News archive - June 2009

Almost every GM crop ever created has included of a useful little piece of DNA copied from the 'Cauliflower Mosaic Virus' (CaMV). This chunk of DNA is referred to as 'CaMV 35S', and as its name suggests, it is part of the DNA found in a virus which commonly infects cauliflower and related vegetables. In infected plants, its normal function is to switch on the genes needed for the virus to replicate itself. In GM plants its function is to switch on the engineered DNA attached to it which otherwise would likely remain dormant: effectively it overpowers the host cell's own self-regulatory mechanisms to permanently turn on the inserted genes which then generate huge amounts of the transgenic proteins. The value of the CaMV 35S 'promoter' to genetic engineers lies in its promiscuity: it acts on all types of DNA in the genome of all types of plants.

Genes on the move

News archive - December 2010

What do Agrobacterium and human beings have in common? One's a soil bacterium and the other's a primate with a very large brain: the scope for sharing anything seems limited. However, both carry out genetic transformations of other life-forms to provide food for themselves.

Put more accurately, the genetic engineers with the big brains have hijacked the gene transfer mechanism of their microscopic counterparts to provide human food.

Well done, humans!

Yet more health risks from GM food (on top of those we already know about)

News archive - August 2010

One of the earliest concerns raised about GM foods was that a disturbed genome would generate strange proteins to which our bodies would react.

Regulators 'addressed' this concern by assessing the potential toxicity and allergenicity of the novel protein produced by the inserted gene. This neatly side-steps a fundamental safety problem with GMOs: it ignores the potential for the production of toxins or inflammatory agents due to changes in the wider genome and the metabolism it governs.

The dark side

February 2011

Refuting any suggestion that Mayan predictions claim the world will end in December 2012, one Mayan elder (a priest and spiritual guide) has a very different version of what the world is heading towards just now.

He tells us we are in a time of cosmic transition.

“As we pass through transition, there is a colossal, global convergence of environmental destruction, social chaos, war, and ongoing Earth Changes.” 

Considering the recent unprecedented droughts, floods, snow-storms, gales, tsunamis, fires, sub-zero temperatures, volcanic eruptions, political upheavals, financial crises, declining human fertility ... he may have a point.

What Roundup does to people

February 2011

If you visited GM-free Scotland in October 2010, you'll have discovered that ROUNDUP CAUSES BIRTH DEFECTS.

A shocking report, commissioned by one State Government in Argentina, documented what had been happening there in the ten years (2000 to 2009) since Roundup Ready crops were introduced. It found a four-fold increase in both cancers and birth defects in the villagers living near where the GM crops were sprayed with Roundup.