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2007-02-25 |

Russia approves 2 GM corn varieties

Russia recently approved two biotech corn varieties for use in animal feed. "The approvals are part of the World Trade Organization (WTO) ascension agreement between Russia and the United States," commented Alexander Kholopov, USGC [U.S. Grains Council] director in Russia.

2007-02-25 |

Keep Basmati rice areas free from GM crop trials: Indian commerce ministry

The Union commerce ministry has decided to intervene and ask the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) not to approve field trials of genetically modified (GM) crops in Basmati rice growing states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand and western Uttar Pradesh. The consensus emerged at a recent meeting of stakeholders convened by the commerce ministry. The meeting among others were attended by the chairman of Agricultural and Processed Food Export Development Authority (Apeda), Sashi Sareen of Export Inspection Council of India, advisor to the department of biotechnology, KK Tripathi and representatives of the All India Rice Exporters Association (Airea).

2007-02-25 |

China shelves commercial production of GM rice again

A Chinese national committee for safety of genetically modified (GM) food has shelved the commercial production of GM rice in Nov. 2006, at least the fourth time since 2004, the Beijing Times reported Saturday.
”The application was rejected because some safety-related data were missing,” said Lu Baorong, member of the State Committee for the Safety of Agricultural Transgenic living Things. He, however, revealed that a pest-resistant GM rice has been given the go-ahead to be put into experimental production, the last step before a security pass could be granted. The debate on the pros and cons of GM food has been waging on for years in China, as it is the case worldwide.

2007-02-23 |

The beef with cloned meat

The waiter places a perfectly grilled, prime-grade beefsteak before you and then reveals that it came from a cloned steer. Do you eat it? For most Americans, the answer is no. A survey conducted by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology found that the thought of dining on meat from animals copied via manual transfer of cell nuclei just does not sit well with six in 10 of us. Blame ethical or religious concerns or mistrust of the meat industry, but the idea of cloned meat elicits distaste even in many confirmed carnivores.

2007-02-23 |

Dolly’s legacy

Ten years on, mammalian cloning is moving forward with central societal issues remaining unresolved. Yet human reproductive cloning seems inevitable. [...] The world was simply not prepared for the debate. The cloning a year previously of sheep from embryonic cells had led Davor Solter, in an accompanying News & Views article in Nature, to warn that ”it might be a good idea to start thinking about how we might use” the ability to clone from adult cells. But others were dismissive of the prospect, or predicted it to be many years away.

2007-02-23 |

Pharming 2006 net loss widens on partnership reserve

Pharming Group NV, a biotechnology company that uses milk from genetically modified rabbits to make its most-advanced experimental drug, said its full-year loss widened on money put aside for future payments to a partner.

2007-02-23 |

Cabinet of Pakistan okays draft bill for (GM) plant variety protection

The federal cabinet has approved in principle the draft bill of Plant Breeders Rights to meet the WTO obligation and protect genetically modified crops (GM crops). The draft bill is an obligation for Pakistan being member of World Trade Organisation (WTO) under article 27.3b of the WTO TRIPs Agreement, says a copy of the draft bill available with The News.

2007-02-23 |

Planned Monsanto-D&PL merger angers black farmers in hte U.S.

Black farmers in Mississippi and around the country are bracing for a major seed company merger they say threatens to create a monopoly that will price them out of the farming business. St. Louis-based Monsanto Co. is forging ahead with a plan to purchase Mississippi’s Scott-based cottonseed company Delta and Pine Land, and a national black farmers group says its opposition to the deal has gotten lost in the mix. ”If this merger goes through, it’s going to have a drastic effect on black farmers and small farmers around the country,” said John Boyd Jr., president of the National Black Farmers Association.

2007-02-23 |

Patent held by Genentech is revoked by U.S. government

The Patent and Trademark Office has decided to revoke a fundamental patent held by Genentech, the biotechnology company, that was at the center of a recent Supreme Court decision. The patent office’s decision could cost Genentech hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties over the next decade but would save a like amount for rivals that are paying the royalties, including MedImmune, Abbott Laboratories, Johnson & Johnson and ImClone Systems.

2007-02-22 |

SEARICE (Philippines) opposes GM rice by German company

The Southeast Asia Regional Initiatives for Community Empowerment (SEARICE), a non-government organization, has urged the Bureau of Plant and Industry to turn down the application of a German company for its genetically modified rice varieties to be used for feed, food, and processing. The LLRice 62 (LL stands for Liberty Link) is a genetically modified rice variety developed by Bayer Crop Science, a German company based in the United States.

2007-02-22 |

EU allows Hungary to uphold ban on GMO corn

”This is not just an environmental issue, as Hungary’s export markets favour non-GMO products,” Environment Minister Miklós Persányi said. ”In addition, the elm bark beetle, against which the GMO plant is protected, is a rarity in Hungary, therefore other methods are preferable,” he explained.

2007-02-22 |

Leading advocates against GM rBGH milk file citizen’s petition with U.S. FDA

Tuesday morning February 20, three major advocacy organizations representing consumers, family farmers, and cancer prevention advocates filed a citizen’s petition to the FDA, seeking the Withdrawal of Approval for Posilac - Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH).

2007-02-22 |

Group wants to halt herbicide-resistant alfalfa seed in the U.S.

A coalition of farmers, environmentalists and food safety organizations plans to ask a federal judge in California to halt the sale of Roundup Ready alfalfa seed, the group’s lawyer said Tuesday. The request follows a decision released two weeks ago in which U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer in San Francisco ruled that the U.S. Department of Agriculture failed to follow environmental law before approving the genetically modified forage.

2007-02-22 |

Indian report on patent law reform withdrawn after plagiarism row

Stung by charges of plagiarism, the R A Mashelkar committee, which had recommended drastic widening of the scope of patentability in India, has taken the unusual step of withdrawing its controversial report. In a letter dated February 19, Mashelkar, former head of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, requested the commerce ministry to allow the committee to ”withdraw the report, re-examine it and resubmit a report, which meets with the requirements of the highest standards.” This followed an article in TOI on February 12 exposing the fact that key excerpts of the Mashelkar committee report submitted in December were reproduced almost verbatim (although without acknowledgement) from a paper published by UK-based, industry-friendly think tank.

2007-02-22 |

‘Too stringent biosafety norms harmful’

FOUNDER-CHAIRMAN of the International Society for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), Dr Clive James,says the time has come for governments to state decisively whether to say yes to key food crops linked to alleviation of hunger such as GM rice.

2007-02-21 |

EU vote reinforces resistance to GMOs

Resistance to genetically modified crops in Europe was underlined yesterday when EU governments rejected an attempt to force Hungary to lift a ban on them. Only the UK, Netherlands, Finland and Sweden among the 27 members voted that Budapest should allow in bio-engineered maize, although it has been approved as safe by food safety authorities. Last year ministers permitted Austria to maintain a ban on the same product, MON810, which contains a toxin to kill pests and was created by Monsanto, the US group.

2007-02-21 |

Food Standards Agency (UK) challenged in court over GM contamination

A pressure group plans to legally challenge the UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) over its alleged failure to act over imports of illegal GM rice. The Judicial Review, called for by Friends of the Earth (FoE), is due to be heard in court today. The case centres on the contamination of long grain rice with an experimental and GM strain grown in the US. On 18 August last year, the US Department of Agriculture announced that an illegal GM rice strain, unapproved for human consumption, had been found in long grain rice supplies destined for export.

2007-02-21 |

Columban calls for Catholic stand on GM food in Australia

The use of new genetic engineering technologies in the production of food crops poses unknown health risks, Columban Fr Charles Rue says, in a call for an informed Catholic voice on genetically modified foods in the lead up to the NSW election. In a statement issued this week, the Columban Missionary Society says it is concerned that a future NSW Government will lift its moratorium on the commercial growing of genetically modified food crops in the state.

2007-02-21 |

EU Ministers fail to agree on GMO carnation imports

European Union environment ministers failed to agree on Tuesday to authorise imports of carnations whose colour has been genetically modified, again revealing the bloc’s deep divisions over biotech policy. There was no qualified majority of member states -- the amount needed under the EU’s complex weighted voting system -- for or against the proposal, a European Commission spokeswoman said. The application for EU approval was filed by Florigene, one of Australia’s first biotechnology companies and part of the privately owned Suntory group. Florigene wanted its flowers to be imported into EU markets for general distribution and sale.

2007-02-21 |

Californian Valley rice farmers take a hard line

A splinter group of more than 200 Sacramento Valley rice farmers is claiming that even experimental plantings of genetically modified rice jeopardize key export markets. The group, Rice Producers of California, plans to release today a market study that documents the powerful opposition to such technology in several key export destinations: Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Turkey. While the study generally reinforces conventional wisdom about these markets, the fact that the group saw fit to commission a study at all illustrates the anxiety that many export-dependent farmers continue to feel about genetically modified crops.

2007-02-21 |

New Zealand’s Food Safety Minister seeks a Ministerial Council review of GM corn approval

A number of groups have raised concerns with Food Safety Minister Annette King about the proposed approval of genetically modified high lysine corn LY038, and as a result she has requested that the Ministerial Council seek a review of the Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) proposal to approve the corn.

2007-02-20 |

Cardinal Rosales urges Philippine President to ban ’Uncle Sam Rice’

Church leaders in Manila have asked the Philippine president’s intervention in sales of genetically engineered rice reportedly unsafe for consumption. In separate letters on Feb. 9 and 13, respectively, Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales of Manila and Father Benito Tuazon, head of Manila archdiocese’s ecology desk, urged President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to ban Uncle Sam Texas Long-Grain Rice, variety 9LLRice 601, from supermarkets.

2007-02-20 |

Tax payers’ money for ineffective Pharma peas: Genetic engineering scandal in Eastern Germany

The German Federal Ministry of Research and the State of Saxonia-Anhalt promote the development of ineffective pharma peas by the Eastern German biotech company Novoplant with a more than 1 million euro tax payers’ money. This is the outcome of the investigations of the Munich Environmental Institute. The genetically manipulated plants are to be cultivated this year in Gatersleben (Saxonia-Anhalt).

2007-02-20 |

Poland pledges to defend ban on genetically modified crops

Poland’s government will defend its ban on genetically modified foods against any European Union demands to allow the planting of biotech crops, Environment Minister Jan Szyszko said. ”Poland is to be free of food produced on the basis of genetically modified organisms,” Szyszko said at a news conference today, adding that a bill the government sent to parliament this week will maintain the current ban.

2007-02-20 |

Auckland Regional Council (New Zealand) adopts anti-GMO policy position

The Auckland Regional Council (ARC) today voted to oppose the release of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in field and food in the Auckland region. The Council does not, however, oppose creating GMOs in laboratories for medical purposes. ARC Regional Strategy and Planning Chair Paul Walbran says the Council adopted the policy in principle as a precautionary approach because there are significant uncertainties about GMOs, and issues that are yet to be understood and resolved.

2007-02-20 |

Coexistence of genetically modified, conventional and organic crops in the Nordic countries

This report describes the status of adoption or preparation of regulation of coexistence between genetically modified (GM), conventional and organic crops in the Nordic countries by the end of 2006.

2007-02-20 |

Asia seen as next focus of agricultural biotech production

The next decade of research in crops improved by biotechnology will include a major role for the rapidly increasing number of projects in Asia, according to the head of a leading agricultural research institute. Countries in Asia increasingly are investing in agricultural biotechnology research aimed at helping them meet their growing needs for food, feed, fiber and fuel, said Clive James, chairman of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA).

2007-02-19 |

Montana State University (USA) wheat breeder discusses GE wheat

The idea for biotech, or genetically engineered, wheat was to develop a variety of wheat that is herbicide resistant. An international agriculture company developed such wheat and other commodity crops by infusing bacteria with genes that produces proteins resistant to Roundup, which kills essential plant proteins, said Talbert. [...] Unfortunately for this international company, the wheat customers didn’t buy the concept of using DNA to alter or modify wheat varieties. There is a bill in the Montana Legislature that makes it difficult for Montana producers to grow genetically engineered crops and making sure the company selling the wheat is liable for contaminant damages, said Talbert.

2007-02-19 |

Uruguay stops approval procedure for transgenic plants

Uruguay temporarily suspended the processing of new requests of authorization to introduce genetically modified plants. The measurement was established by means of a decree signed by president Tabaré Vázquez Monday 29 of January. According to the document, Uruguay is carrying out a process of revision and strengthening of its guidelines and policies on biotechnology.

2007-02-19 |

Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (New Zealand) claim over GE cron

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) has tried to invoice a US seed supply company for the costs of a genetically engineered (GE) sweetcorn importation blunder, despite admitting its border procedures were not up to scratch.

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