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2007-01-17 |

Why do you plant biotech seed? Labor a key driver, economists say

a) Adopting herbicide tolerant soybeans, under conventional tillage, reduces household labor by 23 percent. Consequently, "It appears that farmers are substituting HT soybeans for household labor, freeing up the resource for off-farm employment and leisure."
b) Neither Bt corn nor HT corn has a statistically significant impact on household labor. This result can easily be explained, in the absence of Bt technology many corn farmers simply do not attempt to control for corn borers.
c) Unlike Bt corn, adopting Bt cotton saves household labor. Bt cotton requires less spraying. This difference amounts to a 29% decrease in household labor.
d) With the exception of corn, we find that GM crops save labor.

2007-01-17 |

EU lifts extra GMO controls on U.S. maize imports

EU biotech experts have lifted extra controls on U.S. maize products for proving the absence of an unauthorised genetically modified (GMO) organism since they are no longer needed, the European Commission said on Tuesday. In April 2005, the EU said U.S. exports of corn gluten feed and brewers' grains, a by-product of ethanol, had to be certified by an internationally accredited laboratory to prove the absence of Bt-10 maize, a GMO not authorised in Europe. "Today, (EU) member states voted in favour of lifting the EU requirement for all imports of U.S. corn gluten feed and brewers' grain to be certified as free from the GMO Bt-10," the Commission said in a statement.

2007-01-17 |

Producing medicines in plant seeds

Using plants to produce useful proteins could be an inexpensive alternative to current medicine production methods. Researchers from the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) at Ghent University have succeeded in producing in plant seeds proteins that have a very strong resemblance to antibodies. They have also demonstrated that these antibody variants are just as active as the whole antibodies that occur naturally in humans. By virtue of their particular action, antibodies are very useful for therapeutic and diagnostic applications. From this research, it is now also clear that these kinds of antibody variants can be used in medical applications and that it is possible to produce them in the seeds of plants, which can have enormous advantages over conventional production methods.

2007-01-15 |

Adoption of Bt cotton in Pakistan

Saying that “Cotton is an important cash crop for Pakistan” would be an understatement. It accounts for 8.2 per cent of the value added in the agriculture sector and about 2% to GDP, adds over $2.8 billion to the national economy. [...] In my previous articles I have repeatedly discussed (now) widespread cultivation of illegal Bt Cotton. As Illegal seed is not subject to regulatory assessment, it can damage confidence and the long term adoption of agricultural biotechnology. Illegal seed can be of variable quality. [...] With national biosafety regulatory framework in place, so far public sector R&D centers, such as, NIBGE (National Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering) Faisalabad, and CEMB (Center of Excellence in Molecular Biology) University of the Punjab Lahore, have come forward and submitted applications to the National Biosafety Committee (NBC) - a directorate being established in the Ministry of Environment for commercialization and field trial approvals of their versions of Bt Cotton respectively.

2007-01-15 |

Greens urge battle against GM foods

GREEN Party leader George Perdikis has written letters to all deputies calling on them to ensure Cyprus resists everything to do with genetically modified (GM) foods. The party had been fighting against GM foods for years, saying crops would destroy the natural environment in Cyprus and would essentially be the submission of a sovereign nation to multinational and corporate global interests. “The time has come for us to resist the import of genetically modified seeds, plants and animals to our island,” said Perdikis yesterday, adding that once the door was opened it could never again be closed.

2007-01-15 |

Finnish working group supports genetic manipulation of grain crops

A working group examining options in Finnish agricultural policy says that Finland needs to start producing genetically modified crop plants. The working group, headed by top Finance Ministry official Raimo Sailas, submitted its final report on Thursday to Minister of Agriculture Juha Korkeaoja. Sailas said that the working group takes a positive view of technology and biotechnology. He says that new methods are needed to keep Finnish agriculture competitive. [...] Michael Hornborg, chairman of the Finnish Union of Agricultural Producers and Forest Owners [...] disagrees with the working group on the issue of genetic modification. He says that not having GM crops could be beneficial for Finland.

2007-01-15 |

The hybrid solution

A quiet revolution is sweeping across the cotton fields of Vidarbha, notorious for its farmer suicides. The seeds — genetically modified — are being sown. ET travels to Ground Zero Kamthiwada is just another faceless village in Yavatmal district in Vidarbha, the heart of cotton country in Maharashtra, one of the many that dot the state. It is one of the 640 villages in the district that have repeatedly hit the headlines for the wrong reasons: a spate of farmer suicides. In the past one year alone, Yavatmal had seen 324 such cases, the highest in the state.

2007-01-15 |

Biofuels boom pinches the world’s poorest

America’s appetite for fuel ethanol could take food away from some of the world’s poorest people. The price of corn and other crops is soaring because of the demand for grain to make ethanol, a gasoline additive, and that means the government’s budget won’t buy as much food as it used to. The price of corn alone, a key food in Africa, has more than doubled in the past year. [...] News of greater demand in corn yields boosted corn prices to their highest level in ten years Friday. Wilmington-based DuPont, the largest U.S. corn seed producer, and its St. Louis-based competitor, Monsanto Co., which produces genetically modified seeds, are expected to benefit. Last year, Delaware farmers produced 6 percent more corn, or 23.3 million bushels, than in 2005.

2007-01-15 |

GM hens’ medicinal eggs aid cancer fight

The UK’s leading cancer charity yesterday welcomed work by British scientists who created a breed of genetically modified hens that can produce cancer-fighting medicines in their eggs. The research could slash the cost of producing drugs and potentially save the NHS millions of pounds. Helen Sang, of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, where Dolly the sheep was cloned in 1997, genetically modified hens to lay eggs that contained complex medicinal proteins similar to the drugs used to treat multiple sclerosis, skin cancer and arthritis. The hens have had human genes added to their DNA, which means human proteins are secreted into the whites of their eggs.

2007-01-12 |

'Insulted' Andean farmers pick GM potato fight with multinational Syngenta

A coalition of indigenous farmers in South America will today (12 January) launch an international protest against the multinational corporation Syngenta, claiming that its plans threaten their region's biodiversity, culture and food sovereignty. In an open letter signed today by representatives of 34 indigenous communities in Peru, the coalition says Syngenta's claims that its patent for 'terminator technology' potatoes is neither relevant nor applicable in the region are "deeply offensive". The Indigenous Coalition Against Biopiracy in the Andes says that by commercialising such potatoes, the corporation would threaten more than 3,000 local potato varieties that form the basis of livelihoods and culture for millions of poor people.

2007-01-12 |

Watchdog refuses to allow hybrid embryos

British scientists were yesterday denied permission to create controversial human-animal hybrid embryos until doubts over the ethics and scientific value of the research are addressed. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority said it was deferring a decision on whether to grant licences to teams from King's College London and Newcastle University until a wide-ranging consultation on the issue concluded in the autumn.

2007-01-12 |

EU to debate UK cloned cow case

EU food safety officials will hold urgent talks to thrash out a strategy on food from cloned animals, after it emerged the calf of a cloned cow was being raised on a UK farm. Britain's Food Standards Agency (FSA) has asked the European Commission's Novel Foods Working Group to discuss the cow, named Dundee Paradise, at its meeting on Friday. FSA officials sought legal advice on Wednesday after details emerged of the calf, which is the daughter of a clone living in the US.

2007-01-12 |

Purity priority this season

Association of Official Seed Certifying Agencies (AOSCA) CEO Chet Boruff notes efforts are being intensified to assure seed purity for 2007 amid demand for a growing variety of biotech crops and concern over export “contamination.” [...] Boruff noted seed genetic purity is a “very big issue” especially for the GMO-sensitive European Union, a major U.S. corn gluten buyer that has influenced biotech acceptance policies among U.S. grain processors. But assuring purity poses an equally large challenge for the seed industry.

2007-01-11 |

SemBioSys' plant-produced insulin chemically and physiologically equivalent to commercial insulin in animal studies

SemBioSys Genetics Inc., a biotechnology company developing a broad pipeline of protein-based pharmaceuticals and non-pharmaceutical products, today announced that its proprietary plant-produced insulin has been demonstrated in animal models to be chemically, structurally and functionally equivalent to U.S. pharma grade human insulin. The results of analytical, in vitro and in vivo assays confirm that insulin produced in safflower, SemBioSys’ commercial crop, is indistinguishable from human insulin analytically and physiologically.

2007-01-11 |

Divergence, Monsanto extend collaboration to develop nematode-resistant soybeans; announce accomplishment of milestone

Monsanto Company and Divergence, Inc. announced today an extension to their ongoing collaboration agreement to develop nematode-resistant soybeans, as well as the accomplishment of a key initial milestone. The two companies initiated this relationship in 2004. Under the agreement, Monsanto had an option to extend the agreement for one year. Due to research and development accomplishments, Monsanto decided to exercise this option and take advantage of extending the collaboration for an additional year.

2007-01-11 |

Divergence, Monsanto extend collaboration to develop nematode-resistant soybeans; announce accomplishment of milestone

Monsanto Company and Divergence, Inc. announced today an extension to their ongoing collaboration agreement to develop nematode-resistant soybeans, as well as the accomplishment of a key initial milestone. The two companies initiated this relationship in 2004. Under the agreement, Monsanto had an option to extend the agreement for one year. Due to research and development accomplishments, Monsanto decided to exercise this option and take advantage of extending the collaboration for an additional year.

2007-01-11 |

Economic impact of GM crops in Argentina: Agricultural biotechnology has given the country a 20 billion profit

During the decade 1996-2005 Argentine agriculture went through a deep transformation. Argentina is the 2nd producer of these crops, after the USA. Biotechnology created 1 million jobs. A successful past. An uncertain future. Since the introduction of the first genetically modified crop, herbicide glyphosate-tolerant soybeans, in 1996, Argentina has become the second world producer of this type of crops, after the USA. Today, more than 17 million hectares are planted in Argentina with GM crops, which in the latest growing season, represented over 90% of planted area with soybeans, almost 70% of planted area with maize and around 60% in the case of cotton.

2007-01-11 |

UK crop science gets £13m boost for non-GE projects

British crop scientists have been awarded £13.3m for a series of research projects, including one aimed at keeping broccoli greener for longer. [...] When questioned whether their work would require delving into the field of genetically modified (GM) crops, the researchers told reporters it would not. Talking about his project, Professor Pink said: "It will all be using natural variations that are available in broccoli, or we could also go and look for genes that are currently in cabbage or cauliflower because they are [in the same plant group] but are not in the broccoli gene pool."

2007-01-11 |

U.S. Supreme Court favors companies that rely on others' patents

The Supreme Court has opened the door to a category of patent lawsuits that a lower court had barred, issuing a decision that will probably shift power in the courtroom from bigger patent-owning companies to smaller start-up companies that rely on obtaining licenses for patented technology. The court's 8-1 decision Tuesday held that the holder of a patent license can sue to challenge the patent's validity without first refusing to pay royalties and putting itself in breach of the license agreement.

2007-01-11 |

Out of bounds

With the use of transgenic crops expanding around the globe, we need to decide what level of unapproved plants we are willing to accept in our diets. Zero is not an option, says Heidi Ledford. Steve Linscombe still isn't quite sure how it happened. The director of the Louisiana State University AgCenter for Rice Research knows that he grew a few lines of transgenic rice in field trials between 2001 and 2003. He also knows that one of those lines, LLRICE601, was grown on less than one acre. What he is not clear on is how the line then wended its way into the food supply. That little mystery is now the subject of an official investigation and a class-action lawsuit.

2007-01-11 |

Barbados focuses on biosafety

Barbados is actively stepping up its focus on biosafety. All major stakeholders are expected to undergo an awareness and sensitisation programme next week as the first step towards the creation of an an operational framework for the management of biosafety issues relating to genetically modified organisms.

2007-01-11 |

Vietnamese scientists favor genetic engineering: report

Some leading Vietnamese scientists support genetic engineering, saying it is necessary for their country's socioeconomic progress, local newspaper Vietnam News reported Thursday. Comparing application of genetic engineering to traveling by plane, Le Tran Binh, director of Vietnam's Biotechnology Institute, said though people knew that accidents might occur, they had little choice if they did not want to be left behind.

2007-01-11 |

Scientists discover new, readily available source of stem cells

cientists have discovered a new source of stems cells and have used them to create muscle, bone, fat, blood vessel, nerve and liver cells in the laboratory. The first report showing the isolation of broad potential stem cells from the amniotic fluid that surrounds developing embryos was published today in Nature Biotechnology. "Our hope is that these cells will provide a valuable resource for tissue repair and for engineered organs as well," said Anthony Atala, M.D., senior researcher and director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

2007-01-10 |

Rapid evolutionary change may help annual plants cope with global warming better than long-living species

Countering Charles Darwin’s view that evolution occurs gradually, UC Irvine scientists have discovered that plants with short life cycles can evolutionally adapt in just a few years to climate change. This finding suggests that quick-growing plants such as weeds may cope better with global warming than slower-growing plants such as Redwood trees – a phenomenon that could lead to future changes in the Earth’s plant life. “Some species evolve fast enough to keep up with environmental change,” said Arthur Weis, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. “Global warming may increase the pace of this change so that certain species may have difficulty keeping up. Plants with longer life cycles will have fewer generations over which to evolve.”

2007-01-10 |

New report: GM crops still not performing

A new report to be released tomorrow shows that genetically modified (GM) crops have failed to address the main challenges facing farmers in most countries of the world, and more than 70 percent of large scale GM planting is still limited to two countries (U.S. and Argentina). The new report, 'Who Benefits from GM crops? An analysis of the global performance of genetically modified (GM) crops 1996-2006' [1] also notes that the 'second generation' GM farm crops with attractive 'traits' long promised by the industry has failed to appear. "No GM crop on the market today offers benefits to the consumer in terms of quality or price, and to date these crops have done nothing to alleviate hunger or poverty in Africa or elsewhere," said Nnimmo Bassey of Friends of the Earth Africa in Nigeria.

2007-01-10 |

Grow Green

It’s often said that the largest of trees comes from the smallest of seeds. When Ibrahim Abouleish opened the Sekem Farm on a plot of empty desert, his critics must have thought he was crazy. But now, with a network of crops covering more than 70,000 acres of organic farmland, he is all smiles. [...] Genetically modified foods are among organic farms’ top enemies. To create a GMO, scientists manipulate genes in a plant’s or animal’s DNA to produce desirable characteristics, for example, a certain pest resistance or a larger fruit. Although some GE proponents say it can reduce the use of chemicals, the evidence is so far inconclusive. On the other hand, claims that GMOs are more susceptible to diseases and infestation are equally unproven. The use of GMOs does, however, risk uniformity across species because it reproduces the same strain of plant over and over again.

2007-01-10 |

Avesthagen advances in Salt Tolerance Program

Today, Avestha Gengraine Technologies Pvt.Ltd,India’s leading fully integrated biotechnology & bioinformatics firm, announced that the Indian Patent Office has granted a patent to the company on ‘cloning and sequencing of AGTSAL 11 rice gene from IR-64 variety implicated in salinity stress tolerance’.

2007-01-09 |

Canada and India to collaborate on agriculture and biotechnology information exchange

Canada's New Government has announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with India to extend scientific collaboration in exchanging technology and expertise and in conducting research. The agreement will provide opportunities for researchers and institutions to exchange information and expertise in agriculture, agri-food and rural development. Of particular interest to both countries are agricultural biotechnology, bio-pesticides and bio-fertilizers, functional and nutraceutical foods and environmental technologies.

2007-01-09 |

The next considerations about cloned food are the ethical ones

The end of the year is often the time for prophecies of doom and, at the end of 2006, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration helped those prophecies along by releasing a long-awaited report on cloned food. The document, which was itself peer-reviewed, reviewed hundreds of studies and concluded that meat and milk from cloned cattle, pigs and goats "are as safe to eat as food from conventionally bred animals." This echoes an earlier report from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

2007-01-09 |

Wine industry and environmentalists eye government over GMO applications

The government is being watched like a hawk by the wine industry and environmentalists as it prepares to make two key decisions on the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in wine. The first relates to an application by Professor JJ Hennie van Vuuren, director of the British Columbia Wine Research Centre at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, to use genetically modified yeast in wine-making in 20 wine- producing regions of the western and southern Cape. The second - completely unrelated - is by Stellenbosch University's Wine Biotechnology Institute for field trials for genetically modified (GM) grapevines to produce both fruit and wine for research purposes.

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