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.

No GM-labelling for America... yet

November 2012

Right2Know march by MillionsAgainstMonsanto on Flickr

Earlier this month, California's attempt to vote in a law which would have required labelling of GM foods in the State failed by a very narrow margin (43% for, 57% against).

Given the enormous support it had up until the beginning of October (3:1 in favour), this might come as a surprise. The reason for the sudden swing, however, is clear: the proposed law simply “got crushed under fat stacks of cash” (Philpott). The opposition comprised the biotech/agrichemical giants, including Monsanto, DuPont, Dow, and German firms Bayer and BASF (who obviously don't want the same thing happening in the US as has in their home market). It also comprised all the leading food-processing industries (including Kraft, Nestlé, and Coca Cola). They combined forces to throw $45.6 million into a campaign to persuade Californians that they don't really want to know what's in their food. Supporters of the bill raised a staggering $8.7 million, but were outspent by five dollars to one.

Choices no one wants

November 2012

Garfield Farmers' Market in United States. Photo by heacphotos on Flickr

 In the United States, 78% of families say they regularly purchase organic foods (Organic Trade Association Study, 2011). The market for locally-grown foods is worth some $7 billion, with small farms (less than $50,000 turnover) accounting for 81% of sales (USDA Economic Research Service Report, 2011).

Clearly organic and local foods from small producers can no longer be considered 'niche' markets: a great many US citizens are choosing to buy them.

Keep Britain buzzing

November 2012

Photo by BugMan50 on Flickr

The Soil Association has presented a time-line of the relentless waves of pesticides used in agriculture since the birth of the 'Green Revolution' in the 1960s. As each chemical has been introduced into our environment, a fresh wave of destruction has unfolded.

Consider:

• In the 1960s, DDT insecticide decimated bird populations; DDT was only banned in 1983
• In the 1970s, organophosphate insecticides (originally developed as a nerve gas for the military) took their toll of aquatic wildlife; some organophosphates were only banned in 2007
• In the 1980s, pyrethroid insecticides caused untold destruction to butterflies and bees; these were banned in sheep dips in 2010, but their use continues in other areas of agriculture
• Since their introduction in the 1990s, neonicotinoid fungicidal seed treatments (which spread throughout the plant as it grows) have been disrupting bee behaviour, very likely to the point of colony collapse.
• In 2004, after five decades of use, the herbicide and endocrine disruptor atrazine was banned
• In 2012, after four decades of use, the herbicide and endocrine disruptor endosulfan was banned.

Unsafe GM maize a trigger for food shortages?

October 2012 
 

The reaction of the pro-GM lobby to the long-term experiment which found evidence of harm from NK603 GM maize and its companion herbicide, had all the hallmarks of a full-scale panic (see UNSAFE GM MAIZE A TRIGGER FOR US LABELLING - October 2012).

The more savvy have identified the biotech industry itself as being behind the furore. Biotech finger-prints were all over the scientists who immediately jumped up and tore the study apart in their customary ungentlemanly and unscientific fashion. Not to mention the industry-funded Science Media Centre which rushed to feed all the correct 'science' to the media, most of whom dutifully repeated it. Add to these, who knows what lobbyists (including, it seems, members of the GM assessment panel itself) were primed to make sure the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) took the right pro-GM decisions. All this happened in record time as befits a pre-planned and orchestrated suppression of unwelcome news. Just what the biotech industry PR boys do best.

However, here's another interesting angle to the bigger picture. What are the chances the order to kill the offending science with all possible speed came directly from the Whitehouse? A hotline from the US administration to key parties in Europe?

If that sounds far-fetched, consider the position the USA has got itself into.

Pride in false and misleading advertising

October 2012

In 1996, the Attorney General of New York ordered Monsanto to pull advertisements that misrepresented Roundup herbicide as “safer than table salt” and “practically nontoxic” to wildlife. A decade on, the Company was convicted in France of false advertising of Roundup for presenting it as biodegradable, and claiming it left the soil clean after use. Perhaps believing Brazilians to be more gullible than Americans and French, the Company seems to have tried the same trick again just a few years later: the outcome was another fine.

What happens in your gut when you eat unsafe GM maize

October 2012

Amid the furore of concern, counter-attack, and orchestrated disdain over the French experiment which found evidence of harm from the long-term consumption of NK603 GM maize and Roundup herbicide, one aspect has not been investigated nor discussed.

The NK603 and Roundup eaten by an animal pass through its gut. In the gut, they encounter a huge diversity of microbes with which they must interact: the bugs alter the food, and the food alters the bugs.