18/November/21

 

The Brazilian biosafety agency has approved the purchase of the GMO wheat grown in Argentina by the company Bioceres, the final step required to authorise commercialisation. The company had already reported that it had planted 55 thousand hectares of this variety, known as HB4, in the country. The decision “unleashes effects that are yet to be seen”, according to the progressive media outlet Lavaca. Socio-environmental movements and more than 1,400 scientists have criticised this variety on the grounds that it is tolerant to a herbicide 15 times more toxic than glyphosate. GMWatch

 

 

China's Ministry of Agriculture has laid out a clear path for seed makers to get approval for genetically modified crops, under proposed rule changes that should lead to commercial cultivation of GM corn. [GMW: We haven't been able to access the proposals so can't comment on the detail, but it seems as if this is a proposed weakening of regulations.] Reuters

 

 

In the last month, science writers at Nature, Science, and the New York Times wrote articles arguing that viruses found in Laos, Southeast Asia — and closely related to the SARS-CoV-2 virus — added further evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic could not have started from a lab leak in Wuhan, China. Unfortunately, a batch of documents released earlier this month point to the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a possible source of these viruses found in Laos. According to those emails, researchers with the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance apparently were collecting viruses in Laos since around 2016 and shipping them to… the Wuhan Institute of Virology. One would think these emails would send science writers scrambling to contact their friends at the EcoHealth Alliance to figure out what happened. But, no. Disinformation Chronicle

 

 

In Florida, questions and concerns about Oxitec's GM mosquito release have been met with silence and inaction by officials of the County Commission. Officials are tongue-tied on a matter of health and safety in the community and when they have spoken, they have made misleading and false statements about the experiment, writes Barry Wray, executive director of the Florida Keys Environmental Coalition. Keys Weekly

 

 

In Canada, 105 groups have written to ministers demanding government oversight of all GM foods and seeds, including those produced through gene editing. They state that all genetically engineered foods and seeds, without exception, should be subject to government safety assessments and mandatory reporting to government. They write, "We oppose the sale of unregulated, unreported genetically engineered foods and seeds. We oppose the proposals from Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) that would allow many gene-edited genetically engineered foods and seeds onto the market with no government oversight." CBAN