REVIEW OF

The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race

The Code Breaker contains 481 pages of Oscar-level cinematic prose, providing a whistle-stop tour of how Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley, and a large supporting cast discovered and developed the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR—an acronym for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. These repeating DNA features were found to be part of the defense system that bacteria have evolved over their billions of years of warfare with viruses. Enzymes associated with CRISPR sequences cut up attacking viral DNA and insert a section of it into the bacteria’s own genome in order to recognize it in the future. Doudna and her colleagues’ innovation was to configure and use this viral “mugshot” system to target and insert specific genetic sequences, creating a flexible DNA cut-and-paste tool.

The USDA has opened up a second public comment period to seek input for the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) they plan to prepare on whether or not to approve the GE American chestnut.

We need to respond in force. The pro-GE tree side is mobilizing their base to submit comments promoting GE trees. We must remind the USDA that people across the world oppose GE trees and will not allow them to be planted in our forests.

Soy leghemoglobin does not have a history of safe use in food

Impossible Foods, the US-based fake meat maker that uses genetically engineered ingredients, has already managed to steer its fake meat Impossible Burger products past regulators in several countries, most notably the US and Canada, though not without challenge.

And they have other countries in their sights, including Australia and New Zealand, where they hope to have a product on the market within the next two years.

The next generation of herbicide formulations sold widely throughout the Heartland will include multiple active ingredients and will be paired with specially-bred GMO crops. Glyphosate-based herbicides are used on nearly all conventional GMO corn, soybean, and cotton seeds, in various combinations with the following herbicides:

Glufosinate herbicides (Bayer’s Liberty)

Dicamba herbicides (Monsanto/Bayer’s Xtendimax, BASF’s Engenia, DuPoint’s FeXapan)

2,4-D herbicides such as Dow AgroSciences Enlist Duo and Corteva’s Frontline

The wrong kind of Food Systems Summit

Our latest communiqué looks at how the Food Systems Summit (FSS) planned for the fall of 2021 is not about changing food systems, but about spinning a story that props up and expands the industrial food chain at the expense of other food systems. The FSS’s proponents argue that the “food system” is broken, that population growth and climate change mean that we will not be able to feed everyone, and that only new technological developments can save us. But this is a story that has been carefully constructed by those who stand to profit from it – it is intended to enable the expansion of the corporate-controlled industrial form of food production.

New York Times Magazine publishes false and misleading statements in pro-GMO fairytale. Report: Claire Robinson and Jonathan Matthews

For those who wondered whatever happened to Cathie Martin's GM purple "anti-cancer" tomatoes that were hyped to the skies more than a decade ago, they're back – and taking centre stage in an article published in the New York Times Magazine, titled Learning to love GMOs and with the subhead, "Overblown fears have turned the public against genetically modified food. But the potential benefits have never been greater".

A biotech company is harvesting the first GMO salmon right now.

It's shocking because just last year a court found FDA's first-ever approval of this GMO salmon to be illegal because it violated core environmental laws. But until FDA makes a new decision, GMO salmon could still be coming (unlabeled!) to your plate in a restaurant, especially if that restaurant buys seafood from Samuel and Sons Seafood, which just announced purchasing this GMO salmon.

In a 2018 Washington Post article, new GMO techniques were described in blushing terms: “the future of food” and “precise, fast and inexpensive.” While new techniques including gene-editing, gene-silencing and synthetic biology proliferate across industries, there are serious concerns about their precision and efficiency.

Read our recent blog post New GMOs and Where to Find Them

Before we look at what can go wrong, let us see what happens when gene-editing goes right. The most commonly used technique of the up-and-coming gene-editing lineup is undoubtedly CRISPR, which is relatively inexpensive and accessible (CRISPR kits are even available by mail order for the home geneticist).

Recently, I did something I had not done in a long time. I ate in a restaurant with my family. Actually, we ate on the outdoor patio, since my kids are too young to be vaccinated and we are somewhat more squeamish than average about COVID, but it was nevertheless a refreshing return to normality and a welcome rest from battling traffic on the way to the Delaware seashore.

I ordered a salad with blackened salmon. If we make the trip again, I will make a different choice.

That’s because last week, biotech company AquaBounty Technologies Inc. announced that it is harvesting several tons of genetically modified salmon, which will soon be sold at restaurants and other “away-from-home” dining retailers around the country. So far just one distributor — Philadelphia-based Samuels and Son Seafood—has reportedly said that it will be selling the novel salmon. But AquaBounty has announced plans to sell its salmon via “food service channels” across the Midwest and East Coast.

Some growers report losses of up to 95 percent.

The volatile nature of the pesticide dicamba has meant that it can wind up miles away from where it was sprayed.

Dicamba, and dicamba-resistant seeds, were meant to be the next huge product for Monsanto, which was bought by agrochemical giant Bayer back in 2018. But “dicamba drift,” the name for the phenomenon in which dicamba particles float through the air onto plants that have no protection against it, has affected farmers and forests across the country. Most often, we’ve seen dicamba drift pegged as a damaging agent on unprotected soybean fields, but soy is far from the only victim. A new lawsuit claims that dicamba drift leveled extensive damage on vineyards—in Texas.