Last month RePlanet Africa held small pro-GMO demonstrations in the capitals of both Uganda and Kenya in support of the widely opposed lifting by Kenya’s President of his country’s GMO ban. RePlanet Africa describes itself as “a grassroots movement” and Mark Lynas hailed this event as “Africa’s first pro-GMO peoples’ march”. But as Lynas previously misrepresented a pro-GMO protest in India by well-funded free market fundamentalists as “Ghandi-style civil disobedience” and “very grass roots”, it’s worth taking a closer look at RePlanet Africa and their “peoples’ march”. GMWatch's Jonathan Matthews found that this “grassroots movement” is directed by comms professionals paid to promote GMOs, including one trained up in New York by an organisation given multi-million dollar funding by the Seattle-based Gates Foundation to support its technological choices in Africa. GMWatch

 

 

The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) has published a paper on the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill, which reports the results of its consumer research on gene editing. The level of consumer awareness of the technology was low. In GMWatch's view, this is not surprising given the fact that gene editing and other GM technologies were described by the FSA as "precision breeding", a phrase that the UK government invented to hide the fact that the products of these technologies are in fact GMOs. Accordingly, three-quarters of polling respondents (75%) had not heard of precision breeding. Consumers thought benefits outweighed risks if the technology was properly regulated, but they "were very clear in their desire for thorough safety testing of all new precision bred products. They wanted to know that risk assessments would have high standards and require strong evidence and that the FSA’s work to regulate precision bred foods would be adequately funded so that consumers can trust that the processes are followed thoroughly." They also wanted labelling (they don't seem to have been given the choice to demand a "GM" label but were restricted to demanding a "precision bred" label): "Workshop participants felt very strongly that precision bred products should be labelled as precision bred. While existing mandatory labelling would inform consumers of any changes to the characteristics of the product, participants felt that this would not be sufficient on its own. They argued that being able to identify precision bred products via labelling is critical for transparency, and therefore to consumer choice and public trust. Survey respondents agreed, with nearly four in five (77%) saying it would be important when buying a food item to know if it had been precision bred, and nearly half (45%) saying it would be ‘very’ important. Only one in six (15%) say knowing this would not be important." GMWatch comments on FSA paper

 

We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible by readers’ donations. Please support our work with a one-off or regular donation. Thank you!