Actualité
01.01.1970
Both sides cite science to address GE corn effects
A proposal that Europe?s top environment official made last month, to ban the planting of a genetically modified corn strain, sets up a bitter war within the European Union, where politicians have done their best to dance around the issue. The environmental commissioner, Stavros Dimas, said he had based his decision squarely on scientific studies suggesting that long-term uncertainties and risks remain in planting the so-called Bt corn. But when the full European Commission takes up the matter in the next couple of months, commissioners will have to decide what mix of science, politics and trade to apply. And they will face the ambiguous limits of science when it is applied to public policy.
01.01.1970
DNA pioneer James Watson is blacker than he thought
JAMES WATSON, the DNA pioneer who claimed Africans are less intelligent than whites, has been found to have 16 times more genes of black origin than the average white European. An analysis of his genome shows that 16% of his genes are likely to have come from a black ancestor of African descent. By contrast, most people of European descent would have no more than 1%. The study was made possible when he allowed his genome - the map of all his genes - to be published on the internet in the interests of science.
01.01.1970
State-owned farms not any longer covered by Thailand?s ban on GE crop trials
The tussle is over wording, but the implications will not be limited to paper only. The cabinet?s resolution on Christmas Day to ?amend? the 2001 ban on all field trials of genetically modified (GM) crops seems to be playing with the definition of the key phrase in the legislation: ?field trials?. As a year-end gift to Thai citizens, the Surayud government has decided that the term ?field trials? does not apply to experiments conducted in state-run compounds.
01.01.1970
What happens when genetic engineering comes to the forest?
Some proponents hope that the chestnut will be the first transgenic forest tree to confront federal regulators. (Forest trees, unlike the bioengineered plum and papaya, pose special issues because they have relatives in the wild.) They see it as a good test case because the chestnut is a tree that the public genuinely desires, and the environmental risks are lower since few chestnuts still exist in the forests. As Robert Kellison, former head of the Institute of Forest Biotechnology, put it in a 2006 interview: ?We need to get something through the system so we can set an example.? That?s exactly what many experts and environmental activists worry about.
01.01.1970
U.S. farmers form lobby group to support the use of rBST
Greg Jans, a dairy producer from Grove City, Minn., took the podium at the recent Midwest Dairy Expo, to talk about a new organization [...] AFACT - American Farmers for the Advancement and Conservation of Technology. ?It is our intent to raise our voice on behalf of producers to protect our interests and the interests of consumers,? said Jans. ?We support the choice of producers to use technologies.? AFACT was formed because producers are finding fewer markets that will take milk from cows given recombinant bovine somatotropin, or rbST.
01.01.1970
Monsanto busted for contempt of Advertising Authority in South Africa
The ASA ordered Monsanto SA to withdraw its advert which depicted a mother with two children in a kitchen looking at a cake. Among other false claims the advert stated ?no substantiated scientific or medical negative reactions to GM foods have ever been reported?. [...] On 19 December 2007 Judge King of the ASA ruled that despite the amended wording not being exactly the same, the overall communication remains unchanged. [...] Monsanto is therefore found guilty of breaching the previous ruling.
01.01.1970
Monsanto is looking overripe
Monsanto is now positioned as the leader in ag-biotech for growers and downstream customers, such as grain processors and consumers. With the exception of competitors in its vegetable and fruit seed business, too, most of the Company?s seed competitors are also licensees of its germplasms or biotechnology traits. In addition to the Seeds and Genomics segment, Monsanto is a leading provider of herbicides for residential lawn-and-gardens and animal agricultural feed products, with Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides contributing approximately $854 million to gross profits in FY ?07 -even though, glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, lost key patent-protection back in 2000.
01.01.1970
USDA-Monsanto deal on crop insurance program causes controversy
While the federal government doesn?t usually endorse products, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has struck an unusual arrangement with agribusines
s giant Monsanto Co. that gives farmers in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Minnesota a break on federal crop insurance premiums if they plant Monsanto-brand seed corn this spring. The arrangement has raised some eyebrows, particularly among organic farm groups that argue the government agency should not be promoting corn that contains an herbicide; the Monsanto brands contain chemicals that kill weeds and insects.
01.01.1970
Sea cucumber protein used to inhibit development of malaria parasite in GE mosquitos
Scientists have genetically engineered a mosquito to release a sea-cucumber protein into its gut which impairs the development of malaria parasites, according to new research. Researchers say this development is a step towards developing future methods of preventing the transmission of malaria.
01.01.1970
Thai cabinet refuses to lift ban on open-field crop trials
The Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry?s push for the lifting of the ban on open-field trials of genetically-modified (GM) crops was turned down yesterday by the cabinet which decided to leave the decision to the next administration. The cabinet instructed the ministry to conduct more studies on the impact of growing GM plants in open fields and to organise a public hearing on the matter as required by the constitution before seeking approval for field trials of transgenic crops from the next cabinet.
01.01.1970
Pandora?s Box of ills: soybeans in Paraguay
As the world?s hunger for meat increases because of expanding middle classes and changing tastes, feeding the animals to feed that hunger is having a significant impact on our planet?s agriculture - nowhere more so than Latin America where forests are giving way to soybean empires. Paraguay is the world?s fastest growing soy producer; its eastern region - 2,5 million hectares of it - is devoted to the crop that has brought wealth and development to one of the poorest countries in South American. But the soybean monoculture has also opened a Pandora?s Box of ills - environmental damage to the land, and ill health to its most vulnerable people. Thanks to genetically modified seeds, soybeans are now the country?s largest export, worth a billion dollars annually.
01.01.1970
Transgenic maize knocking at th door
Mexico?s first experimental trials of genetically modified maize will take place next year, a government official has announced. The news has put environmental and campesino (small farmer) organisations, still hoping that this will not happen, on the alert. The country will be dealt a severe cultural, environmental and economic blow if synthetic species of maize are allowed in, opponents of genetically modified (GM) crops warn.
01.01.1970
News on GE animals
Researchers from Russia and Belarus working under the federal state program have for the first time in the world got two transgenic kids, each cell of which contains the lactoferrin (human breast milk protein) coding gene. In several years, a flock of transgenic she-goats will be produced from them, the milk of which will make basis for a new generation of highly efficient and biologically safe drugs.
- InformNauka, Russia (14.12.2007): First transgene kids with the human lactoferrin gene
- McGill University, Canada (06.12.2007): Canada?s first cloned pigs born at McGill
- Reuters (13.12.2007): Pharming denied marketing application for Rhucin
- People?s Daily Online, China (22.12.2007): World?s 1st cloned horse pregnant
01.01.1970
Public say on New Zealand?s GE cows trials at risk
An AgResearch plan to move genetically engineered (GE) cattle out of a secure North Island site to other locations around the country may go ahead without the public having their say. The Crown Research Institute is applying to the Environmental Risk Management Authority early next year to expand and develop its eight-year-old programme involving a herd of 96 GE cows at Ruakura, near Hamilton.
01.01.1970
Successful field trial of Evogene?s GE tomato for improving yield and abiotic stress tolerance
Evogene Ltd. today announced successful third year field trial results for Evo133, one of its candidate genes for improving plant yield and tolerance to abiotic stress conditions. Transgenic tomato plants over expressing Evo133 demonstrated an increase of up to 25% under normal conditions, and up to 20% under abiotic stress conditions compared to control plants under the same conditions. Results from this third field trial are consistent with two previous field trials conducted in 2005 and 2006.
01.01.1970
EU GMO policy: Fear versus science
The European Union?s environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, recently indicated that two genetically engineered varieties of corn might soon be banned in Europe because they could possibly harm certain beneficial insects. The European biotechnology industry countered that the very scientific studies cited by Dimas actually bolstered the already overwhelming evidence of the safety of these corn varieties. [...] At the core of this dispute is the ?precautionary principle? - the idea that regulatory measures should be taken to prevent or limit actions that raise even conjectural risks, even when the scientific evidence of the existence, magnitude or potential impact of a risk may be incomplete or inconclusive.
01.01.1970
Samples of GM maize found at deserted farm in Thailand
Genetically-modified maize has been found at a local farm near agribusiness giant Monsanto?s maize farm in Phitsanulok province, bringing the leakage of transgenic crops in the country to three. The GM maize contamination was exposed yesterday by Biothai, a non-government organisation working on organic farming. The group collected 19 samples of maize, soybean and cotton from local plantations and farm shops in Phitsanulok, Nakhon Sawan and Sukhothai late last month and sent them for testing at Chulalongkorn University?s food research and testing laboratory.
01.01.1970
EU decision to stop GMO testing opens door for U.S. rice
A decision to stop testing U.S. rice for genetically modified traits when it arrives at its destination should help restore trade with the European Union, which has virtually stopped since August 2006, said U.S. rice traders on Thursday. The EU Standing Committee of the Food Chain and Animal Health made the decision on on Thursday and it could take effect as early as mid-January.
01.01.1970
Don?t look for GE wheat anytime soon
Although there is the possibility of great economic return for wheat producers from the development of biotech wheat, don?t expect to see that option available anytime soon. That was the basic message Dr. Bill Wilson brought to those attending the Prairie Grains Conference in Grand Forks on Dec. 13. Wilson, a professor of Agricultural Economics at North Dakota State University who has done extensive research in cereal grains, expects the first use of biotech wheat will probably come from a country like Australia, where drought is a regular occurrence.
01.01.1970
Successful field trial of Evogene?s GE tomato for improving yield and abiotic stress tolerance
Evogene Ltd. today announced successful third year field trial results for Evo133, one of its candidate genes for improving plant yield and tolerance to abiotic stress conditions. Transgenic tomato plants over expressing Evo133 demonstrated an increase of up to 25% under normal conditions, and up to 20% under abiotic stress conditions compared to control plants under the same conditions. Results from this third field trial are consistent with two previous field trials conducted in 2005 and 2006.
