When the biotech company Bayer CropScience AG requested federal permission in August to market a variety of gene-altered rice, it assured itself a small, unwanted place in history: the first to seek approval for a genetically engineered food that was already - illegally - on the market. Now, as federal regulators consider that belated application, they are finding themselves under scrutiny, too - from scientists and others who say the 20-year-old system of biotech crop oversight is failing.

Today over two dozen experts in science, medicine, law and ethics released an open letter to news media and the people of Missouri on the state's proposed ballot initiative known as Amendment 2. They conclude that "the people of Missouri should know what they are actually voting on. Amendment 2 creates a constitutional right for researchers to engage in human cloning. Efforts to deny this are misleading and deceptive."

The signers include experts in embryology, microbiology and maternal/fetal medicine, as well as past and present members of the President's Council on Bioethics and several founding members of Do No Harm: the Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics.

A state committee on biopharming made final recommendations Monday on how to regulate crops designed to make drugs.

The committee's report suggests ways Oregon can protect public health while leaving the door open to new technology.

The 10-member group's meeting in Portland ended a year of work. Its report to Gov. Ted Kulongoski and the Legislature is designed to provide guidance on a bill expected to be introduced during the next several months.

Harvesting pig organs and transplanting them in humans may not be that far off, says one doctor, whose Boston-area lab is genetically engineering swine, putting their organs in baboons and waiting to see if it works well enough to try in people.

“I see the possibility in the future of having pigs available that would be tailored to have the best possible kidneys or best possible liver or lungs to transplant into a human being,” said Dr. David Sachs, director of the Transplantation Biology Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital.

24/10/2006 - Consumer groups in the US have united against government plans to allow milk and meat from cloned animals into the food chain, highlighting a potential dilemma for dairy firms interested in the technology.

One consumer lobby, the Center for Food Safety, has filed a legal petition asking the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to launch a moratorium on food from cloned animals.

Debate was re-ignited last week after the FDA said a draft of plans to regulate food from cloned animals could get government backing by the end of the year.

UNL researchers have confirmed the first glyphosate-resistant weed species in Nebraska — marestail, also know as horseweed. While Nebraska researchers first suspected resistance had developed almost a year ago, it took tests and growing plants from last year's seeds to confirm it.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - KFC on Monday said all 5,500 of its U.S. fried-chicken restaurants will switch to a cooking oil with no trans fat by the end of next April.

The company, a unit of Yum Brands Inc. , is also switching oils at its 786 restaurants in Canada.

With fast-food restaurants under increasing criticism that they contribute to obesity and the risk of heart disease, KFC joins hamburger chain Wendy's International Inc. in cutting out artery-clogging trans fats.

Participants at BioDemocracy 2005, the alternative conference to the Biotechnology Industry Organization’s yearly gathering, are demanding a ban on the release of genetically engineered trees into the environment.

Genetically engineered trees are already being researched in the field, and industry is moving rapidly toward commercialization without regard for the predictable and inevitable impacts they will have on ecosystems and communities.

Conventional breeding of temperate fruit trees is constrained by their extensive reproductive cycle with long juvenile periods, complex reproductive biology, and high degree of heterozygosity. As the commercial production of transgenic annual crops becomes a reality in many parts of the world, the question remains whether genetically engineering fruit trees will find commercial application.

Today at a press conference on genetically engineered trees held during the Second meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (COP-MOP 2), participants called for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to enact a moratorium on the release of genetically engineered trees into the environment, including the removal of any outdoor test plots currently in existence.