21/July/21

 

For those who wondered whatever happened to Cathie Martin's GM purple "anti-cancer" tomatoes that were hyped to the skies more than a decade ago, they're back – and taking centre stage in an article published in the New York Times Magazine, titled "Learning to love GMOs" and with the subhead, "Overblown fears have turned the public against genetically modified food. But the potential benefits have never been greater". Written by Jennifer Kahn, the article appears to aim at supporting the deregulation push for GMOs. It is stuffed with misleading and false statements, and relies heavily on paid pro-GMO sources like Mark Lynas and Cathie Martin. It conjures up a fairytale world that ignores much of the reality of GM crops. GMWatch has debunked the falsehoods. GMWatch

 

 

The Arkansas Department of Agriculture thinks anywhere from 650,000 to 800,000 acres of crops have been damaged by dicamba herbicide drift just in the eastern Arkansas areas they visited on one day. Farmers agree that spraying by one person can devastate thousands of acres of crops. “I don’t know of a field yet that hasn’t been hit,” said the owner of Matthews Sweet Potato Farm. KAIT8

 

 

A California judge gave Monsanto and its German owner Bayer AG a pre-trial boost in a ruling issued Monday, a week before the scheduled start of a new courtroom challenge to the safety of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicides. Judge Gilbert Ochoa of the Superior Court of San Bernardino County in California agreed with Monsanto that federal law regarding pesticide regulation and labeling preempts “failure to warn” claims under state law, and the plaintiff in the trial set to start next week will not be allowed to pursue such claims. US Right to Know