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2009-11-11 |

Monsanto to introduce Bt corn in India

Unfazed by the ongoing opposition to the commercialisation of Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) brinjal, Monsanto India Limited (MIL), a subsidiary of US-based global biotech food major Monsanto Company, is planning to introduce genetically modified corn in the country by 2012-13. The proposed corn seed would be embedded with not only Bt but also with the company’s ’Roundup ready’ technology that would be helpful in management of weeds and insects, MIL’s director- corporate affairs, Gyanendra Shukla, told Business Standard.

2009-11-11 |

The fight over the future of food

At first glance, Giuseppe Oglio’s farm near Milan looks like it’s suffering from neglect. Weeds run rampant amid the rice fields and clover grows unchecked around his millet crop.
Oglio, a third generation farmer eschews modern farming techniques -- chemicals, fertilizers, heavy machinery -- in favor of a purely natural approach. It is not just ecological, he says, but profitable, and he believes his system can be replicated in starving regions of the globe.

2009-11-11 |

Food: Is Monsanto the answer or the problem?

Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, had only months to live when he received a visit from an old friend, Rob Fraley, chief of technology for Monsanto Co. Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work increasing food production in starving areas of the globe, welcomed Fraley to his Dallas home, where the two men sipped coffee and tea and discussed a subject dear to their hearts: the future of agriculture and the latest challenges of feeding the human race.

2009-11-11 |

Monsanto’s new soybean yields at low end of forecast

Monsanto Co., the world’s largest seed producer, said the increase in farmers’ yields generated by its new genetically modified soybeans is at the low end of its forecast range. Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybeans, which were planted on 1.5 million acres in their first year on the market, boost yields 7.3 percent, St. Louis-based Monsanto said today in a presentation on its Web site.

2009-11-10 |

Time for Japanese food manufacturers to provide info on GM products

In Japan, many food manufacturers are reluctant to label GM foods for fear of a consumer backlash. Furthermore, as GM labeling is not mandatory for high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) -- a sweetener made using GM corn -- and cooking oil because GM genes do not remain in those products after processing, consumers have no way of knowing if such products were made from GM ingredients.

2009-11-10 |

Stop selling out science to commerce

DO COMMERCIAL pressures have a negative impact on science? This debate has been raging for so long that it usually raises little more than a shrug of indifference. That is no longer a defensible response. A new report from our organisation, Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR), exposes problems so serious that we can no longer afford to be indifferent to them.

2009-11-10 |

Jamaica to start testing imported foods for genetic modification next year

THE Scientific Research Council (SRC) will next year start testing imported foods to determine whether they have been genetically modified (GM). Executive director of the SRC Dr Audia Barnett, who made this disclosure during yesterday’s Observer Monday Exchange meeting of reporters and editors, said the decision comes in light of global consumer concerns over GM foods, which are not mandated by law to have labelling.

2009-11-10 |

China starts building center to test genetically modified foods

Beijing Economic-technological Development Area, or BDA, on Oct. 29 held a ground-breaking ceremony for the National Center for the Assessment and Testing of Genetically Modified Agricultural Products, the first national-level center of its kind in China. [...] The laboratory facilities at the center will analyze genetically modified agricultural products for edibility and environmental safety.

2009-11-10 |

Monsanto withdraws applications for GE high lysin corn from EFSA

For the first time, a GM multinational has pulled two GM corn varieties from the regulatory and assessment process at the eleventh hour, after planning for a future income of several billion dollars per year from global sales. [...] Under conditions of great secrecy, Monsanto has informed EFSA that it no longer wishes to pursue its application for approval of GM maize LY038 and the stacked variety LY038 x MON810.

2009-11-10 |

Leading European Food Safety Authority staff member moves to yngenta

A leading staff member of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has quit to work in industry. Suzy Renckens, scientific coordinator of the GMO panel, officially represented Syngenta in an expert hearing at EU level in 2008. She now holds a position there as Head of Biotech Regulatory Affairs for Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The Swiss company Syngenta is one of the world’s leading producers of genetically engineered plants.

2009-11-09 |

GM potato gets roasting in South Africa

South Africa’s Agricultural Research Council has appealed against the government’s decision to reject a genetically modified (GM) potato it was hoping to release to farmers. The Executive Council for Genetically Modified Organisms dismissed the application for a permit to release the potato on safety and economic grounds.

2009-11-09 |

Bid to revive Kenia’s ailing cotton industry with GMO variety

The country is edging closer towards the adoption of the GMO cotton variety in a move that might boost production in the ailing sub sector. Research on the new variety is in the final stages and is expected to be completed in February next year, with tests indicating the genetically modified type is resistant to the destructive African Bollworm which claims up to 100 per cent of harvests if no pesticides are applied.

2009-11-09 |

African NGOs review Gate’s initiative for Africa

A coalition of leading environmental pressure groups in Nigeria who met recently in Abuja to study the development initiative of US billionaire Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), land grabs and non-ecological agriculture have recommended that Africa should not be a dumping ground for unverified technologies such as genetically modified crops.

2009-11-09 |

Controversy about Turkish biosafety law continues

The legislation which allows the genetically modified organisms to be imported to Turkey has been issued. It is claimed to be a scandal by the Organization of Cultivation Engineers. [...] The head of Cultivation Engineers Organization, Gökhan Günaydın stated that this legislation is ”a scandal in terms of laws, sovereignty and public health”

2009-11-09 |

GM contamination fears ’being ignored’ by Australian industry

Concerns that canola may become contaminated with the genetically modified (GM) variety are falling on deaf ears, a non-GM farmers group says. The Network of Concerned Farmers says it’s worried that non-GM canola being stored alongside GM varieties in silos in Victoria, NSW and Western Australia will be at risk of contamination.

2009-11-09 |

Illegal GM ’Triffid’ seeds found in UK Marks & Spencer bread

Illegal genetically modified ’Triffid’ flax seed has been found in bread sold by Marks & Spencer. Critics of GM farming say the discovery provides damning evidence that Britain’s food watchdogs are failing to police the nation’s food chain. Flax seed oil, which is also known as linseed, is often used in health foods because it contains high levels of beneficial Omega-3 fatty acids.

2009-11-06 |

Monsanto’s high-lysine LY038 corn withdrawn in EU, but still sold in New Zealand

[Monsanto’s high-lysine LY038 corn] authorised as safe for New Zealanders to eat has been withdrawn from commercial development in Europe because of safety concerns there. [It] was approved as safe for human consumption in New Zealand in December 2007 [...] despite concerns from Canterbury University’s Centre for Integrated Research in Biosafety (INBI) that it might cause cancer, diabetes or Alzheimer’s disease if it accidentally entered the human food chain.

2009-11-06 |

AgResearch makes specific application to ERMA to permit GM ruminant research

AgResearch has submitted a limited application to ERMA for specific research using genetically modified goats, sheep and cattle in containment. This is necessary so that AgResearch can meet contractual requirements. In 2008 AgResearch applied to ERMA for four new approvals to continue the transgenic livestock programme for a number of species and a range of activities, from pure scientific research, to maintaining transgenic animals in containment

2009-11-06 |

GM grass trial aims to cut cows’ gas in New Zealand

A plan to grow paddocks of genetically modified grass created to cut the greenhouse gases produced by cows is in the pipeline at Crown-owned company AgResearch. The proposal has already provoked criticism from anti-GM groups, who say outdoor trials could jeopardise New Zealand’s reputation as a GM-free dairy exporter.

2009-11-06 |

Canadian flax farmers worried about future

Prairie flax farmers are worried they will be forced to undergo costly testing to regain their soured reputation with Europe. The $300-million-a-year Canadian flax industry is losing money every day, said Terry Boehm, head of the National Farmers Union. ”If we don’t straighten this out and become a reliable supplier we could lose that market indefinitely,” he said.

2009-11-06 |

Turkish NGOs take controversial GMO regulation to court

When the regulation allowing the trade of GMOs was adopted in late October, agricultural organizations, consumer associations and the opposition parties criticized the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government for putting the public’s health in danger by allowing the import of these foods. The Food Safety Movement and the Turkish Health Care Workers’ Union (Türk Sağlık-Sen) applied to the Council of State yesterday for a postponement of the regulation, claiming that the regulation protects GMO producers and runs contrary to both the Constitution and the UN’s Universal Declaration on Consumer Rights.

2009-11-06 |

U.S. refuge rules on GE corn skirted, study says

As many as 25 percent of the American farmers growing genetically engineered corn are no longer complying with federal rules intended to maintain the resistance of the crops to damage from insects, according to a report Thursday from an advocacy group. The increase in farmers skirting the rules, from fewer than 10 percent a few years ago, raises the risk that insects will develop resistance to the toxins in the corn that are meant to kill them, the report says.

2009-11-05 |

West African farmers interbred rice hybrids with land races

The surprising emergence of hybrid rice varieties in West Africa may partly have been caused by war, scientists say. The region is unique in that African and Asian rice co-exist there. It was assumed that the two (Oryza glaberrima Steud and Oryza sativa L.) could not interbreed because they produce sterile offspring – and when scientists successfully crossed them in the laboratory a decade ago to create New Rice for Africa (NERICA), it was hailed as a technological breakthrough.

2009-11-05 |

GM crops no panacea to food insecurity says expert from Botswana

Genetically Modified (GM) crops cannot address food insecurity, principal research officer at the Ministry of Agriculture, Maria Molefe has said. Speaking at a Botswana Council of Churches (BCC) food security workshop in Gaborone yesterday, Molefe asserted that there is too much emphasis on the yields of GM crops than on the quality of food from the crops. She said there is lack of capacity and accredited technology for testing and monitoring GM products.

2009-11-05 |

Africa’s organic peasantry - Beyond romanticism

The development agencies that are hugely influential in African policy-making because of their large funding are in turn influenced by the attitudes of the Western NGOs. Although the clients of the development agencies are African, their paymasters are American and most especially European. A few years ago the World Bank estimated that around 80 percent of its incremental resources would come from Europe. Europe, even more than the United States, is romantically attached to the peasant lifestyle that its own societies have abandoned. As a result the development agencies have been silent on the issue of GM, and have virtually ignored commercial agriculture.

2009-11-05 |

Public and private partnership launches to breathe new life into West Africa’s commercial seed sector

A broad coalition of public and private sector organizations today announced a new partnership committed to raising the yields and incomes of smallholder farmers in West Africa by increasing their access to improved, locally adapted varieties of major food crops. The partnership between the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), the African Seed Trade Association (AFSTA), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) greatly reinforce the West Africa Seed Alliance (WASA).

2009-11-05 |

Food crisis in Africa forces changes on GM crops

If money was not a constraint we could achieve a green revolution through not necessarily biotechnology, but if we could put irrigation systems in place, if we could afford to purchase fertilizer, pesticides, we should be able to reach a green revolution as what happened in Asia. But being resource poor if we can now incorporate drought tolerance into the seed we then do not necessarily have to invest in massive irrigation infrastructure.

2009-11-05 |

Can GE food cure world hunger?

With food prices remaining high in developing countries, the United Nations estimates that the number of hungry people around the world could increase by 100 million in 2009 and pass the one billion mark. A summit of world leaders in Rome scheduled for November will set an agenda for ways to reduce hunger and increase investment in agriculture development in poor countries. What will drive the next Green Revolution? Is genetically modified food an answer to world hunger? Are there other factors that will make a difference in food production?

2009-11-04 |

Overlooked Ethiopian biosafety law makes big waves for international aid

Four months have gone since the ratification of a bill on GMOs, passed into law by the Parliament, authorising the Enviromental Protection Agency to regulate anything involving genetically modified grain. This little bill (now a law) is currently making big waves [...] ”The United States does not export viable modified organisms such as corn, soy grain or other seeds to Ethiopia”, an official of the USAID told Fortune.

2009-11-04 |

Monsanto’s omega-3 fatty acid GE soy - A golden age for GM crops?

THE war over genetically modified foods is entering a new phase. At last, the GM industry has produced what it promised at the outset: a product designed to have real benefits for consumers. It’s an oil from soybean modified to produce omega-3 fatty acids essential for health and proven to reduce the risk of heart disease. It can be added unobtrusively to ordinary food products, potentially bringing health benefits to millions.

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