08/June/20

 

A group of MPs, peers and the GMO research establishment is urging the government to introduce genome editing into UK food and farming by sidestepping parliamentary and public scrutiny. If adopted, the Amendment would open the door to the deregulation of genetically engineered crops and animals produced using gene-editing technologies such as CRISPR. Now two scientists familiar with gene editing have written to George Eustice, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, asking him to reject the Amendment on grounds of democracy, science, and the protection of public health. GMWatch

 

 

Chemicals manufacturers BASF and Bayer have been given enormous payouts of COVID-19 support cash from the British government just weeks after announcing plans to distribute billions to shareholders in dividends. The world’s largest chemicals company BASF, which makes agricultural, industrial and automotive products at its eight UK plants, has received £1 billion in support funding — by far the biggest payout so far agreed under the UK scheme. The news comes just weeks before BASF shareholders will vote on a proposal for the company distribute to more than three times that amount to them in dividends. Meanwhile Bayer, which acquired Monsanto in 2018 and is one of the industry’s biggest players in its own right, was handed £600 million. Unearthed; comment by GMWatch

 

 

On 3 June the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in the US vacated (nullified) the US EPA's approval of dicamba herbicides applied to GM herbicide-tolerant soybeans and cotton. This momentous decision, provided it is implemented, will transform US agriculture. It is also a stern rebuke to the EPA for its reckless approval of this drift-prone herbicide, which has destroyed neighbouring crops and set farmer against farmer in America's farming regions. Here are comments on the ruling by Tom Philpott of Mother Jones and Dr Charles Benbrook. Mother Jones; GMWatch

 

 

Consumers most spontaneously associate “sustainable food” with “low environmental impact” (48.6%), “use of GMOs and pesticides to be avoided” (42.6%) and “local supply chains” (34.4%), according to a new survey spanning 11 European countries, coordinated by the consumer organisation BEUC. The survey found that whilst consumers have little appetite for insects and cultured meat, they are more likely to consider plant-based "burgers" (if made without GMOs) and traditional vegetarian foods (e.g. pulses) as alternative sources of protein. GMWatch

 

 

Long before Trump and Co. sought a Chinese scapegoat for the president’s incompetence in dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak, researchers understood that the possibility of a laboratory escape was plausible. It is most definitely not “a conspiracy theory". Documentary evidence indicates that novel-bat-virus research projects at Wuhan CDC and the Wuhan Institute of Virology used personal protective equipment and biosafety standards that would pose high risk of accidental infection of a lab worker upon contact with a virus having the transmission properties of the outbreak virus. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists