08/March/22

 

Tomorrow MPs will have a chance to vote on a new law that removes all limits from GMO field trials in England. Use Beyond GM's platform to tell your MP to reject this law, which has been widely criticised for its lack of context, clarity and detail. Do it now! Beyond GM

 

 

Eggs and laying hens originating from transgenic hens could be marketed in the EU without these having to undergo an approval process, and without being labelled, reports Testbiotech. This is the conclusion that can be drawn from a letter sent by the EU Commission to the German Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) in July 2021. The letter has been made public after a request from the German Union of Peasant Farmers (AbL). In response, AbL and Testbiotech have sent a joint letter to the EU Commission, in which they point out that marketing the eggs without risk assessment or labelling would "profoundly violate" EU regulations. GMWatch

 

 

Paul D. Thacker writes: A week ago, Chinese government scientists posted a preprint online that analysed swabs sampled early in the pandemic at a market in Wuhan to detect the virus that causes COVID-19. The following day, a coterie of Western scientists rushed to publish two preprints of their own, analysing much of the same evidence. The Chinese preprint concluded that the market was the focus of either the pandemic’s origin or a spreading event where someone outside the market brought it in. Western scientists, however, argued that the same evidence showed the pandemic began in the market from an infected animal. The Western report formed the dominant narrative for New York Times science writers. But Alina Chan of Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and co-author of VIRAL: The search for the origin of COVID-19, pointed out that the Western scientists did not find the “incontrovertible” proof that was claimed — and Chinese researchers concluded the opposite. Virologists who downplay the possibility of a lab leak are not disinterested parties. The political context is a debate about regulating virus labs, and it’s hardly shocking that a large segment of the virus lab community doesn’t like that idea. Unherd