04/March/21

 

The European Commission broke its own rules and is allowing companies that stand to profit from the weakening of GMO safety rules to help rewrite them, an investigation by Friends of the Earth Europe (FoEE) has found. The European Commission’s health division (DG SANTE) is due to publish imminently the findings of a consultation on the future of GMOs in the EU. The outcomes will determine how a new wave of GMOs, also known as new genomic techniques, or new plant breeding techniques, will be regulated. Crops grown using these methods are currently regulated under EU GMO safety and labelling laws. FoEE’s analysis reveals that DG SANTE officials ignored guidelines to produce a result that would support deregulating new GMOs. This makes it more likely that new GMOs will be exempted from safety checks and labelling requirements. GMWatch

 

 

An international food summit to address growing hunger and diet-related disease is in disarray as hundreds of farmers’ and human rights groups are planning a boycott. The meeting got off to a controversial start when UN secretary general António Guterres appointed Agnes Kalibata to head the event. The former Rwandan agriculture minister is president of the Gates-funded Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), set up in 2006 to open the continent up to GM crops and intensive farming. Further suspicions that big business was dominating the agenda came when the summit’s concept paper mentioned precision agriculture, data collection and genetic engineering as important for addressing food security – initiatives supported by big technology companies and philanthropists – but made no mention of ecological farming or civil society involvement. The Guardian

 

 

A study comparing 34 fields in Switzerland shows that organic maize yield is only slightly (-6%) reduced compared to conventional maize. This indicates that pesticide-free maize production should not be a problem, commented the corresponding author on Twitter. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment

 

 

More than 900 million tonnes of food is thrown away every year, according to a global report. The UN Environment Programme's Food Waste Index revealed that 17% of the food available to consumers - in shops, households and restaurants - goes directly into the bin. Some 60% of that waste is in the home. BBC News

 

 

On 10 March 2021, at 3pm CET, Navdanya International will host a webinar on old and new GMOs. This session will bring together Dr Vandana Shiva, president of Navdanya International, and a panel of global experts on both the victories against GMOs and their attempted impositions from all over the world, as part of Navdanya International's Gates to A Global Empire campaign. Navdanya International

 

 

More than a hundred French lawmakers have joined forces to denounce the EU’s evaluation of pesticides and demand that the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) step up its assessments in line with EU regulation. In a letter sent to EFSA, the signatories, who include both EU MEPs and national MPs, object to the fact that the cumulative effects of the different components of plant protection products are “totally ignored by the assessment practices of health agencies”. “EFSA evaluates only the substance declared active by the manufacturer and therefore without looking at its cumulative effect, with other substances present in the final product, known as the ‘cocktail effect,'” said the letter, published on 25 February. Euractiv.com

 

 

An open letter from twenty-six epidemiologists, virologists, and other experts calls for a credible investigation into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The letter criticises the World Health Organisation-convened investigation into the virus's origins, saying, "Because we believe the joint team process and efforts to date do not constitute a thorough, credible, and transparent investigation, we call on the international community to put in place a structure and process that does." Wall St Journal

 

 

A discussion on COVID-19 origins and the wisdom (or otherwise) of gain-of-function research with pathogenic viruses has been published, with contributions from several researchers, on the science website Somatosphere. The discussion is titled, "On the search for the origins of COVID-19: A forum". One of the contributors, Dr Filippa Lentzos, a biosafety expert at King's College London, provides a Tweetorial on the discussion here. Somatosphere