16/September/21

 

New GM techniques have received the backing of the European Commission in a strategy paper, while NGOs promise an intense campaign against them over the coming years. According to Agrafacts, there is a tentative 4-year horizon to exempt some gene-editing and cisgenesis techniques from the GMO Directive, while a 10-year timeframe is seen as a likely option to regulate all the other new GM techniques on a case-by-case risk assessment. At the beginning of September, a coalition of NGOs, peasant farmer organisations and business associations sent a response to the Commission criticising the approach of its study. [GMW: This response was published and reported on by GMWatch on 6 September.] Euractiv.com

 

 

Ministers are set to give the go-ahead to the use of gene editing in agriculture which could see altered produce on the supermarket shelves in five years time. The government is expected to issue its response to its own consultation on the technology at the end of the month that will give the green light to the “cautious exploration” of genetic engineering in farming. The move will mark the biggest divergence by the UK away from existing EU laws since leaving the EU. inews

 

 

The US Environmental Protection Agency is failing to protect children by ignoring poisons in the environment and focusing on corporate interests, according to a top children’s health official who testified that the agency tried to silence her because of her insistence on stronger preventions against lead poisoning. “The people of the United States expect the EPA to protect the health of their children, but the EPA is more concerned with protecting the interests of polluting industries,” said Ruth Etzel, former director of the EPA’s Office of Children’s Health Protection (OCHP). The harm being done to children is “irreparable”, she said. A hearing was held on 13 September in which internal EPA communications were presented as evidence. The Guardian

 

 

New evidence has emerged that the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the nearby Wuhan University Center for Animal Experiment, along with their collaborator, the US-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, have engaged in what the US government defines as “gain-of-function research of concern", intentionally making viruses more pathogenic or transmissible in order to study them, despite stipulations from a US funding agency that the money not be used for that purpose. Grant money for the controversial experiment came from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, headed by Anthony Fauci. The award to EcoHealth Alliance included subawards to Wuhan Institute of Virology and East China Normal University. The principal investigator on the grant is EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak, who has been a key voice in the search for Covid-19’s origins. The Intercept