14/March/22

 

For over 20 years in news story after news story they've been telling us that only GM can save the banana – and yet again, such claims turn out not to be true. Edible bananas are sterile, they told us, and they can only be cloned, so if they’re very vulnerable to things like Panama disease you can’t give them resistance except via GM. But at the end of last week under the headline, "This is how scientists are saving the world’s banana crop", the Telegraph reported that experts at Cambridge University have shown that different banana varieties can be grafted together to build in disease resistance and other traits to keep bananas healthy without any need for genetic modification. GMWatch

 

 

Today Green Party peer Natalie Bennett will bring a "fatal motion" in the House of Lords, trying to kill a new statutory instrument allowing GMOs to be released in England. She'll be referring to the role of the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE), which GMWatch found to be hopelessly conflicted. Natalie Bennett @natalieben on Twitter