Articles

China will launch a nationwide investigation over the suspected illegal cultivation of genetically-modified crops, the agriculture ministry has posted on its website.

The investigation follows a report by an official financial newspaper this week that genetically-modified soybeans have been found in the country’s top growing area for the oilseed.

China is the world’s top buyer of genetically-modified soybeans, but Beijing has not given the go-ahead for domestic cultivation of genetically altered crops, although it has spent billions on research.

However, some farmers in the northeast province of Heilongjiang are growing GM soy crops illegally to seek higher yields, the China Business Journal reported this week.

Parliament beefed up the Commission’s initial proposal to ban animal cloning to include the cloning of all farm animals, their descendants and products derived from them, including imports into the EU, in a vote on Tuesday.

"The technique of cloning is not fully mature, and in fact, no further progress has been made with it. The mortality rate remains equally high. Many of the animals which are born alive die in the first few weeks, and they die painfully. Should we allow that?" said the environment committee co-rapporteur, Renate Sommer (EPP, DE).

The legislative report was adopted by 529 votes to 120, with 57 abstentions.

The Puppetmasters of Academia (or What the NY Times Left out)

by Jonathan Latham, PhD

Synopsis: Although hailed as great investigative reporting in many quarters, a new front page article (NY Times Sept 5th) by reporter Eric Lipton left out the most important elements of the story. Some were left out from the main article, others from the email trails linked to in the article. Some of these facts Lipton could not reasonably be expected to have known (though it seems he didnt investigate far). But others he should have, including that the "Nina Fedoroff", who played a prominent role in the emails he examined, was the President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and that senior administrators at Cornell were in on the PR activities of their academics. Yet both these important facts were omitted entirely. Numerous others were buried as the article focussed instead on little academic fish. This article is the story Lipton should have written.

Public must know about risk to their health - ENSSER demands transparent glyphosate assessment – away with double standard favouring producers

A new British scientific study confirms that the glyphosate herbicide Roundup, an essential integral component of the majority of GM crops, causes liver and kidney damage below levels allowed in EU drinking water. At the same time, the European Commission has denied independent experts access to an important glyphosate risk assessment report, while Monsanto and other producers of glyphosate do appear to have had access to it. The European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility (ENSSER) calls this an anti-scientific double standard, and demands consistency and immediate full transparency in glyphosate risk assessment, since important public health issues are involved.

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ENSSER further draws attention to the mounting evidence suggesting that glyphosate causes birth defects (e.g. Argentine research on frogs and chickens[5] and people's reports of affected children in Argentina[6]). Moreover, the research group lead by Gilles-Eric Séralini has recently published the first independent review of glyphosate herbicides toxic effects below regulatory limits. Around 30 studies showing toxic effects below the regulatory no-observable adverse effect levels have been neglected in the establishment of safety tresholds[7]. This publicly available evidence has, however, so far been ignored by EU regulators in their re-evaluation of glyphosate, quoting unpublished industry studies claiming that glyphosate is safe instead. ENSSER takes the stance that public health policy like this should be based on independent sound scientific data, publicly verifiable and published in peer-reviewed science journals. We hope that the European Commission, in the face of the accumulating evidence of adverse effects and risks of glyphosate-based herbicides, will severely restrict or, best for public health, ban its use.

Essay by Ronnie Cummins

If governments won’t solve the climate, hunger, health, and democracy crisis, then the people will… Regenerative agriculture provides answers to the soil crisis, the food crisis, the health crisis, the climate crisis and the crisis of democracy. -

Dr. Vandana Shiva, speaking at the founding meeting of Regeneration International,

La Fortuna de San Carlos, Costa Rica, June 8, 2015

Degenerate—(verb) to decline from a noble to a lower state of development; to become worse physically and morally; (noun) a person of low moral standards; having become less than one’s kind…”. - New Webster’s Dictionary, 1997 Edition

Welcome to Degeneration Nation.

After decades of self-destructive business-as-usual—empire-building, waging wars for fossil fuels, selling out government to the highest bidder, lacing the environment and the global food supply with GMOs, pesticides, antibiotics, growth hormones, toxic sweeteners, artery-clogging fats, and synthetic chemicals, attacking the organic and natural health movement, brainwashing the body politic, destroying soils, forests, wetlands, and biodiversity, and discharging greenhouse gas pollution into the atmosphere and the oceans like there’s no tomorrow—we’ve reached a new low, physically and morally.

Agriculture committee opposes national bans on Imports of GM food and feed

AGRI ENVI Press release - Agriculture − 03-09-2015

The agriculture committee on Thursday rejected the Commission's draft law that would give member states the power to restrict or prohibit the use of EU-approved GM food or feed on their territory. It fears that arbitrary national bans could distort competition on the EU's single market and jeopardise the Union's food production sectors which are heavily dependent on imports of GM feed.

The agriculture committee's opinion, adopted by 28 votes in favour to eight against, with six abstentions, will now be scrutinised by the environment committee, which has the lead on this file, before the Parliament as a whole votes on the matter.

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Next Steps

The environment committee, the lead committee for this draft law, will adopt its position at its meeting on 12 and 13 October. Parliament could then scrutinise the proposal at the 26-29 October plenary session in Strasbourg.

Synopsis: I am a scientist who once made and used GMO crops for research. Twenty years of experience has taught me important lessons about them. One concerns the lack of scientific integrity of GMO risk assessments. Careful study of the documents shows that applicants (mostly companies) are gaming the system in numerous ways; at the same time, government regulators are allowing them to do so. None of this would matter if GMOs were inherently safe, but they are not. They even have dangers that are rarely discussed, even by their critics, but which should be more widely known. These two understandings have led me to conclude that no GMO currently on the market would pass an honest risk assessment, even by the rather low standards that most national regulations and laws require.

Jonathan Latham, PhD

Executive Director

The Bioscience Resource Project

www.independentsciencenews.org

www.bioscienceresource.org

Latvia, Greece win opt-out from Monsanto GM crop

Monsanto said it would abide by Latvia's and Greece's requests under a new EU opt-out law to be excluded from its application to grow a genetically modified (GM) crop across the European Union, but accused them of ignoring science.

Under a law signed in March, individual countries can seek exclusion from any approval request for GM cultivation across the EU. While the European Commission is responsible for approvals, requests to be excluded also have to be submitted to the company making the application.

GM crops are widely-grown in the Americas and Asia, but Monsanto's pest-resistant MON810 is the only variety grown in Europe, where opposition is fierce.

France and Germany have said they are opposed to GM cultivation, and while Britain is in favour, the Scottish government is against.

EU Wants To Keep Europe GMO Free

The European Union (EU) said it wants to keep Europe free of genetically modified crops as ministers and other officials from 15 EU and Western Balkans gathered for an international conference in Slovenia.

“Most of the EU sees its future free of GMO,” Slovenian Agriculture, Forestry and Food Minister Dejan Zidan told the press at the conference on Friday on the eve of Agra, the region’s biggest agriculture and food fair due to be held on Saturday, Xinhua reported.

The conference, which was organised together with Hungary, also featured Luxembourg’s Fernand Etgen, the current president of the EU’s Agriculture Council, and focussed on a recently adopted directive which allows EU countries to limit or prohibit the growing of genetically modified plants.

Germany: No More GMO Seeds

Germany is taking steps to outlaw the cultivation of genetically modified crops in the Europe’s biggest economy.

The Agriculture Ministry plans to officially request that producers of GMOs exclude Germany when applying to sell seeds in European Union, Christian Fronczak, a spokesman for the government, said Tuesday. Scotland took similar measures earlier this month.

“The German government is clear in that it seeks a nationwide cultivation ban,” Fronczak said by phone from Berlin. “There’s resistance from all sides, from the public to the farmers.”