17/June/21

 

Andrew Kimbrell, the public interest attorney who founded the Center for Food Safety, has accused a reporter for Mother Jones of running what is little more than a hit piece on his organisation while trying to rehabilitate the sullied reputation of Peter Daszak, the scientist at the heart of the campaign to stop people taking the SARS-CoV-2 lab leak hypothesis seriously. Kiera Butler has run what Kimbrell describes – in an excoriating letter to Butler – as a biased agenda-driven piece that seeks to bash GMO critics for raising concerns over what they, like a good number of leading mainstream scientists, regard as reckless research. GMWatch

 

 

Six years after glyphosate was classified as carcinogenic by the WHO's cancer research agency IARC, the EU authorities want to extend the approval of glyphosate again. This is despite the fact that the glyphosate manufacturers have not submitted a new (and exonerating) cancer study for the new approval procedure. The authorities are therefore stating, on the basis of the highly controversial old manufacturer studies from the previous approval procedure, that the existing regulatory classification of glyphosate as non-carcinogenic should be maintained. "This is incredibly irresponsible and negligent," explains Helmut Burtscher-Schaden, environmental chemist at GLOBAL 2000. GMWatch

 

 

On 15 June four EU member states (France, Hungary, the Netherlands and Sweden) released a statement which concluded that glyphosate does not pose risks for human health. HEAL is concerned at such a conclusion, which contradicts scientific evidence of the association between exposure to the popular pesticide and the development of cancer. Today’s announcement represents the first step in the new safety assessment of glyphosate, the current market approval of which will expire in December 2022. GMWatch

 

 

The Maine Legislature has approved a proposal to ban aerial spraying of some herbicides in the state’s forests. The proposal, introduced by Democratic Senate President Troy Jackson, would stop the aerial spraying of glyphosate and other synthetic herbicides as a forest management strategy. Glyphosate is a widely used weedkiller and is the active ingredient in Roundup. Jackson said he was concerned that the herbicides seep into rivers and streams, jeopardize ecosystems and pose threats to human health. Bangor Daily News

 

 

Dengue fever cases have been cut by 77% in a "groundbreaking" trial that manipulates the mosquitoes that spread it, say scientists. They used mosquitoes infected with "miraculous" bacteria that reduce the insect's ability to spread dengue. The trial used mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia bacteria. One of the researchers, Dr Katie Anders, describes them as "naturally miraculous". Wolbachia doesn't harm the mosquito, but it camps out in the same parts of its body that the dengue virus needs to get into. The bacteria compete for resources and make it much harder for dengue virus to replicate, so the mosquito is less likely to cause an infection when it bites again. [GMW: This is an obvious alternative to GM mosquitoes deployed against dengue.] BBC News

 

 

Deregulated food standards have always been at the heart of the Brexit plan. Hard Brexit has never been about sovereignty – it’s about creating a legislative bonfire to decimate protections enshrined in law, and hold the UK hostage to corrupt corporate interests. GM foods are one example. Scotland’s policy in this area is one rooted in a European-wide anti-GM network and in the precautionary principle, but it's under sustained attack as a result of Brexit. The National; comment by GMWatch

 

 

Boris Johnson should use Brexit to support UK farmers to grow GM crops, bring back imperial measurements and scrap General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a government taskforce, the Taskforce for Innovation, Growth and Regulatory Reform (TIGRR), has said. Led by Brexiteer and former Cabinet minister Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the taskforce has put forward more than 100 recommendations. Among them is the demand for the Government to “actively support research into and commercial adoption by UK farmers of gene edited crops”. [GMW: No doubt the ludicrous suggestion about imperial measurements is aimed at aligning the UK with the US, one of very few countries to still use imperial measurements, such as pounds, ounces, feet, and inches. The US is also, of course, a major producer and proponent of GM crops.] iNews