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Evolutionary plant breeding within organic and agroecological farming systems is a better way to respond to the challenges of climate change than GM and other intensive farming methods, researchers from Italy show in two new open-access scientific reviews. In evolutionary plant breeding, crop populations with a high level of genetic diversity are deliberately subjected to the forces of natural selection (stresses like extreme weather conditions and pests). The most successful plants are incorporated into the breeding programme. Crop populations developed in this way start out better adapted to the local conditions for which they are intended – and continue to evolve in the field, as conditions change.
In another of a long line of studies showing unintended effects of gene editing, the CRISPR-Cas gene editing tool has been found to cause the loss of whole chromosomes and genomic instability in mouse embryos. The finding is yet another nail in the coffin for human germline (heritable) gene editing with CRISPR, though there are plenty of people who persist in advocating it. The study comes hot on the heels of another, which found that editing human cells with CRISPR caused chromothripsis, an extremely damaging form of genomic rearrangement that results from the shattering of individual chromosomes and the subsequent rejoining of the pieces in a haphazard order.
Europe’s environment ministers discussed for the first time the deregulation of a new generation of GMOs when they met on 20 December. On the same day, Friends of the Earth Europe published a new investigation on what lies beneath big agribusiness corporations’ push for EU deregulation of new GMOs. The briefing debunks the notion that the new generation of GMOs is just an easy and cheap solution to speed up progress in plant breeding techniques. In reality, new GMOs are driven by big agribusiness firms to increase their control over the food and farming sector.
The EU Commission's plans to deregulate gene editing threaten consumers, the "Produced Without Genetic Engineering" (“Ohne Gentechnik”) label – and the organic economy, says the German GMO-Free industry association VLOG.
In a report, ethicists say the UK government’s embrace of gene-edited food must not be used to prolong or worsen existing animal welfare problems in farming, such as using greater disease resistance as an excuse to crowd animals more densely together.
On January 1, 2022, a new federal law requiring labelling of GM foods went into effect. The Center for Food Safety (CFS) is waging a legal battle to rescind these final labelling regulations, issued by the Trump administration's USDA. The suit describes how the regulations leave the majority of GMO-derived foods unlabelled; discriminate against tens of millions of Americans by allowing the use of QR codes as a stand-alone for labelling products; prohibit the use of the widely-known terms "GMO" and "GE" in favour of the confusing term "bioengineered"; and prohibit retailers from providing more information to consumers. Mark Squire, co-owner and manager of Good Earth Natural Foods, said, "I believe that USDA's GMO labelling law forces me, as a grocer, to engage in deceptive labelling. I cannot look my customers in the eye unless I do whatever I can to stop this misleading labelling system that is so obviously designed to protect the agro-chemical and biotech industry at the expense of consumers everywhere."
Amid an ongoing lawsuit (see above) challenging deceptive USDA regulations for labelling GM foods, the Center for Food Safety announced the launch of a consumer action campaign using "citizen investigators" to identify corporations using QR codes instead of on-package text or symbol labelling to conceal their use of GMOs. Those companies will then be pressured to adopt on-package text or symbol labelling in addition to QR codes.
The Brazilian biosafety agency has approved the purchase of the GMO wheat grown in Argentina by the company Bioceres, the final step required to authorise commercialisation. The company had already reported that it had planted 55 thousand hectares of this variety, known as HB4, in Argentina. Socio-environmental movements and more than 1,400 scientists have criticised this variety on the grounds that it is tolerant to glufosinate, which is even more toxic than glyphosate. There is speculation that sales may be slow due to opposition from Brazilian millers and global consumers.
GM developers at the John Innes Centre have requested permission to plant highly experimental GM wheat in an open field near Norwich. Wheat has a particular tendency to escape from field trials. As wheat is a staple crop, any escape could cause havoc for our farmers, millers and bakers, as well as putting our health at risk. Please use GM Freeze's guide and take part in the public consultation on this risky and pointless trial, before Sunday 30 January.
China's Ministry of Agriculture has laid out a path for seed companies to get approval for GM crops, under proposed rule changes that could lead to commercial cultivation of GM corn.
We are sad to report that the eminent scientist Dr Arpad Pusztai died on 17 December. As the lead author of the landmark 1999 study that found that GM insecticidal potatoes had toxic effects on rats, Arpad woke up the world to the fact that some GM crops can be unexpectedly toxic, even when they are deliberately designed not to be. Read our tribute to Arpad, a response he wrote to one of his critics, and an excerpt from a book written about the persecution he suffered from some sectors of the scientific and political establishment.
US farmer Howard Vlieger has written a tribute to Arpad Pusztai in which he explains how the scientist encouraged him to investigate the behavioural effects of GMO consumption in animals – with worrying results.
The UN Food Systems Summit put biotechnology at centre stage, although agroecological innovations offer greater promise for sustainability, write academics Aniket Aga and Maywa Montenegro de Wit, in an important evidence-based article that is highly critical of GM crops and foods. The authors write, "A narrow focus on technology to address the complex structural problems of farming and food has an astonishingly poor track record. In more than two decades of GM crops’ cultivation, nearly every aspect of GM crop research, development and application has stoked scientific controversy. At its base, GM crops are rooted in a colonial-capitalist model of agriculture based on theft of Indigenous land and on exploiting farmers’ and food workers’ labour, women’s bodies, Indigenous knowledge and the web of life itself." Yet in spite of these problems, GM crops and foods are still being hyped as pro-poor technologies. Scientific American
Maywa Montenegro de Wit commented on Twitter on the process of getting her and Aniket Aga's article (see above) into print in Scientific American: "@AgaAniket & I wrote this in August when golden rice's approval was 'news'. Due to litigious biotech boosters, factchecking x100. Grateful for editor's unflagging support to air a position that is structural, anticolonial, *and* scientific."
As toxic dicamba herbicide drift from fields of GM dicamba-tolerant crops threatens to “tear the social fabric of farming communities” asunder, a new book by Bartow J. Elmore, Seed Money: Monsanto’s Past and Our Food Future, tells, among much else, the story of how this chemical storm came to be. It’s a historical account that shows how genetic engineering firms sold farmers a food future that is actually a toxic past. That past, of course, is not even past. A Q&A with Elmore has been published, in which he says of gene editing, "I hear a lot of overpromising and irrational exuberance”.
A firm pioneering GM salmon in Canada confirmed it was selling fish from its Prince Edward Island facility, as opponents to GM food offered a reward for any leads on where the fish, which doesn’t have to be labelled as GM under Canadian law, could be found. AquaBounty’s salmon represent the first GM fish to be harvested and sold in Canada. Mark Butler, with the conservation charity Nature Canada, said his group has launched a campaign with Quebec-based Vigilance OGM, offering a reward of $500 for any information about the location of AquaBounty’s salmon.
Consumer, environmental, and farmer groups across Canada are denouncing new regulatory changes expected to be published imminently by Health Canada that will allow private corporations to release onto the market many new GM foods without any government oversight. The groups are alarmed that the new guidance relies on corporate product safety determinations and limits the government to simply asking corporations to provide “voluntary transparency”.
In Canada, 105 groups have written to ministers demanding government oversight of all GM foods and seeds, including those produced through gene editing. They state that all GM foods and seeds, without exception, should be subject to government safety assessments and mandatory reporting to government. The signatories wrote, “The regulatory guidance proposals would result in an almost total lack of transparency over the use of genetic engineering in food and farming in Canada — the government itself would not know which genetically engineered foods and seeds may be on the market."
Health Canada is ready to hand over its regulation of new GM foods to the companies that develop them. After over twenty years assessing the safety of mainly herbicide-tolerant GM corn, canola and soy, Health Canada says it can now confidently surrender its safety checks for most of the future GMOs. But it’s a gamble to assume safety rather than assess it, writes Lucy Sharratt of CBAN. In fact, the scientific literature has many serious warnings that such an assumption about gene editing is incorrect.
Sanatech's CRISPR gene-edited tomato engineered to contain higher levels of a sedative substance, GABA, is being sold on the open market in Japan. While GABA is reportedly viewed as a health-promoting substance in Japan, findings in studies are mixed and there are no studies at all showing that eating the gene-edited tomato has health benefits or is safe to eat. In addition, on the horizon is the purple tomato developed by Cathie Martin at the John Innes Centre in the UK using older-style transgenic GM. Martin says she expects a regulatory decision from the USDA by the end of February for her purple tomatoes, which also have not been shown to be safe to eat.
In Florida, questions and concerns about Oxitec's GM mosquito release have been met with silence and inaction by officials of the County Commission. Officials are tongue-tied on a matter of health and safety in the community and when they have spoken, they have made misleading and false statements about the experiment, writes Barry Wray, executive director of the Florida Keys Environmental Coalition.
There is a general consensus that laboratory modifications of self-spreading viruses are genetically too unstable to be used safely and predictably outside contained facilities. However, a new publication warns that this decades-old evidence-based norm is being eroded, opening the door to risky research. A range of recent proposals on the release of GM viruses that retain the capacity to spread between individual vertebrate hosts raise biosafety, ethical and biosecurity concerns. In agriculture, for example, self-spreading viruses have been proposed as insecticides, or as vectors to modify planted crops. In health care, self-spreading viruses have been promoted as vaccines.
Glyphosate causes blood-testis barrier damage and low quality sperm via a destructive process called oxidative stress, shows a new study in rats and rat testicular cells. The study, conducted over 4 months, suggests that medium- to long-term exposure to glyphosate is a potential risk for male reproductive health.
The preliminary EU report on glyphosate prepared by the Dutch, Hungarian, French and Swedish regulatory agencies fails to take account of the vast majority of recent studies published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, according to a report by the association Générations Futures. The preliminary EU report (RAR, for "Renewal Assessment Report") would allow the reauthorisation of the controversial herbicide in Europe at the end of 2022. According to Générations Futures, out of 7,188 studies published in scientific journals, only 30 studies, equivalent to 0.4% of the studies they found, were judged by the RAR to be relevant and reliable without qualification.
A review of the EU assessment report from the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) on the toxicity of the popular pesticide glyphosate confirms that the evaluation is still mostly based on studies and arguments provided by the chemical industry and does not take into consideration all available scientific evidence showing health risks.
Only two out of a group of 11 industry studies given to European regulators in support of the re-approval of glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup herbicide, are scientifically “reliable”, according to an analysis. In a report, researchers from the Institute of Cancer Research at the Medical University of Vienna in Austria said their review of a set of safety studies submitted to EU regulators by Bayer and a coalition of other chemical companies showed that the vast majority do not meet current international standards for scientific validity.
The California Supreme Court has rejected a request by Bayer for review of the August 2021 court ruling, for the plaintiffs, that Monsanto knowingly marketed a product — Roundup — whose active ingredient (glyphosate) could be dangerous. The $87 million in damages awarded to the plaintiffs in the litigation, Alberta and Alva Pilliod, has thus survived Bayer’s challenge. This highest state court decision racks up another loss for Bayer (which now owns the Monsanto “Roundup” brand) — despite its dogged insistence, throughout multiple lawsuits (with many more still in the pipeline), that glyphosate is safe.
In India, the political organisation Swadeshi Jagaran Manch has demanded a complete ban on the use of glyphosate, saying it is carcinogenic and damaging to consumer health, ecology and interests of farmers, farm workers and their livelihoods.
In court documents filed on 9 December in Hawaii, Monsanto/Bayer agreed to plead guilty to 30 environmental crimes related to the illegal use of a pesticide on corn fields in Hawaii. After using the product in 2020 on corn fields in Oahu, Hawaii, Monsanto allowed workers to enter the fields during a six-day “restricted-entry interval” after the product was applied. The company further agreed to plead guilty to two other charges related to the storage of a banned pesticide. The plea agreement calls for Monsanto to serve three years of probation and pay a total of $12 million.
Beyond Pesticides has published an excellent analysis of the situation in Hawaii (see above), in which they note, “The island communities are left asking ‘when is enough enough?’” They conclude, “The movement to evict Monsanto from Maui has birthed a new generation of activists, organic farmers, and elected officials that do put mālama ʻāina [care for the land] at the center of their work, and statewide GE seed production has decreased. According to the US Department of Agriculture, the value of Hawaii’s seed industry was estimated at $106 million for the 2018-19 season. That’s a 13% drop from the previous year – and a 56% decline from 2011, when the industry’s value peaked at $241.6 million. There is still much work to do though, while community members continue to be affected by Monsantoʻs egregious pesticide use.”
Bayer faces a 2.5 billion-dollar investor class action lawsuit in Germany over the takeover of Monsanto, specialist law firm Tilp said. Tilp said it was representing more than 250 institutional investors and a large number of private investors who believed Bayer misled them about the economic risks of the $63bn acquisition and are demanding damages.
In Switzerland, Bayer will have to pay over 34 million francs of Monsanto uncollected taxes. Monsanto, which markets agricultural seeds and the controversial weedkiller Roundup, benefited from a tax exemption from the canton of Vaud, for ten years, when it was established in Morges. But in 2018, it was bought by Bayer and left Morges for Basel two years later. However, in the conditions of its tax exemption, there is a so-called "claw-back" clause: It requires that a company remain on site for another ten years after the end of the exemption if it does not want to have to pay taxes for those years. For Monsanto this means that it should have stayed in Vaudois until 2024. But it left in 2020. The lawyer and Green MP Raphaël Mahaim said he was pleased because Monsanto were "predators" who tried "to use the tax rules to optimise their situation, but in a shameless way!"
Thailand's Criminal Court has ruled in favour of Witoon Lienchamroon, founder of BioThai, a conservation group that promotes sustainable farming. The case stems from a post that was published on BioThai’s Facebook page and statements made during an TV interview, in which Witoon warned about the danger of using pesticides.
According to a report published 30 November, the cost of pesticides may far outweigh the economic benefits. The Bureau for the Appraisal of Social Impacts for Citizen Information (BASIC), a Paris-based NGO, found pesticide producers cost the EU €2.3bn in subsidies. At the same time, the sector makes about €900m in profits, and the study argues this is not an efficient way of spending agricultural funds. "Tripling organic farms by 2030 would cost €1.85bn per year - less than the annual subsidies being spent on pesticides," researchers connected to BASIC wrote.
To build a more sustainable future amid successive droughts, Utah farmer Stan Jensen is breaking with generations of conventional farming by changing over to best practices drawn from organic farming, permaculture and other sustainable practices. Jensen believes these practices can help the family farm weather the dry years ahead on several levels. When asked why more agricultural producers don’t move toward holistic farming practices, Jensen said there is no manual. “You know who’s educating us?” Jensen said, “Monsanto spends a billion dollars a year educating us. Bayer spends a tremendous amount. That’s where our education comes from.”
Syngenta has already set aside $187.5 million to settle legal cases filed by farmers exposed to paraquat. But the total bill could run into billions as lawsuits pile up. A study sponsored by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences published in 2011 found that users of the herbicide developed the neurodegenerative disease 2.5 times more often than non-users.
Social activists working among farmers led by Kavitha Kuruganti have come out against the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India's (FSSAI) draft regulation on GM food, terming it "unacceptable". FSSAI should explicitly say GM foods will not be allowed into India by way of production or imports, Coalition for GM-Free India, which Kuruganti represents, has demanded. "Any kind of GM food in India is a threat to health of our people, to our environment, and to the diverse food cultures of India," said Kuruganti.
The Coalition for a GM-Free India has published its submission to the FSSAI on its draft regulation on GM food. The Coalition notes that the draft regulation fails to "embed several critical aspects that are essential to policy-driven, science-based regulation of GM foods" and demands "independent studies in public domain that establish safety of long term use of GMOs and GM foods".
In India, a PVP (plant variety protection) certificate granted to PepsiCo India Holding (PIH) on a potato variety has been revoked on multiple grounds. The application to revoke the certificate was filed by activist Kavitha Kuruganti of the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture. She said, “This judgement sets a precedent for all seed and food and beverages corporations and other registrants to not only uphold, but also more importantly, not to transgress the legally granted farmers’ seed rights and freedoms in India."
The last-minute amendments crowbarred by the UK government into the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill are a blatant attempt to stifle protest, of the kind you might expect in Russia or Egypt, writes George Monbiot. Priti Patel, the home secretary, shoved 18 extra pages into the bill after it had passed through the Commons, and after the second reading in the House of Lords. It looks like a deliberate ploy to avoid effective parliamentary scrutiny. Yet in most of the media there’s a resounding silence. Among the new amendments are measures that would ban protesters from attaching themselves to another person, to an object, or to land. Not only would they make locking on – a crucial tool of protest the world over – illegal, but they are so loosely drafted that they could apply to anyone holding on to anything, on pain of up to 51 weeks’ imprisonment.
Email your MP to oppose the dangerous policing bill.
Many US consumers are worried about possible health risks of eating food produced with pesticides, antibiotics, and hormones, as well as about climate change. One way to address all these concerns is to expand organic agriculture. But the US isn’t currently setting the bar high for growing its organic sector. Across the Atlantic, Europe has a much more focused, aggressive strategy. The European Union’s Farm to Fork strategy, the heart of the European Green Deal, calls for increasing the percentage of EU farmland under organic management from 8.1% to 25% by 2030.
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