A special issue of Elementa journal has been published, on Gene Editing the Food System. The issue contains eight open access articles from critical researchers who provide perspectives from the US to Japan, from the Netherlands to Canada. They raise persistent questions at the intersection of science and society: about sharing and using technologies; rights of access, ownership, and control; safety, risk, and limits of knowledge; technology’s relationship to political economy; values and cultures; and how humans relate to the non-human world, among others. Elementa
GMWatch's response to the EU Commission's Inception Impact Assessment, laying out its plans to deregulate gene editing, is available
here. It's adapted from a
document that GMWatch and other NGOs generated as their initial response to the Commission's plans.
GMWatch Yesterday we wrote in our Daily Digest that 69,000 citizens participated in EU Commission consultation on gene editing, the vast majority to oppose plans to deregulate this technology. However, the total number of "valid" citizen submissions to the consultation
was actually 70,879, including 68,183 from EU citizens and 2,249 from non-EU citizens (click on the "Statistics" tab). The 69,000 number refers to submissions via the web tool that GMWatch and other groups installed on their websites to enable citizens to participate in a quick and easy way. The overwhelming majority of these opposed GMO deregulation. So while the true figures are slightly different, our verdict is the same: Well done to all who took part!
50,000 hectares of GMO wheat have been planted in Argentina, despite the crop not having been fully approved for commercialization and not having been approved anywhere else in the world. It was developed to tolerate glufosinate ammonium, a herbicide restricted since 2013 in the European Union due to the harmful consequences it has for health. BiodiversidadLA (Spanish text)
A mother in Argentina describes her family's severe health problems linked to the large quantities of pesticides (notably glyphosate) sprayed on GM soy. Toxicology tests showed that her son's body contains a level of pesticides 120 times higher than he is capable of tolerating. Her daughter has a little less, 100 times more than she could tolerate. They both have at least twice the levels found in the adults. The entire family has genetic damage. Sudestada (Spanish text)
Yesterday the House of Lords chose not to vote on an amendment that would have put into law a guarantee of an informed pollinator risk assessment prior to any pesticide approval decisions. The House of Lords had previously voted for improved bee and pollinator protection, but their wishes were rejected by the Conservative Party in the Commons, and the clause ran out of momentum when it came back to the Lords. The refusal of the government to acknowledge that the current process results in the approval of pesticides that destroy bee and pollinator populations is a sad and regressive outcome. Buglife
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