01/May/22

 

 

 

Mexico’s decision to phase out glyphosate and GMO corn by 2024 gains support from the findings of a series of recently published scientific studies showing new harmful impacts on human, animal and plant health from glyphosate herbicides and other agrochemicals used in farming and food production, writes Silvia Ribeiro of ETC group. These are part of a significant volume of scientific articles that have been published since the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) reviewed hundreds of scientific papers and declared in 2015 that glyphosate is carcinogenic in animals and probably carcinogenic in humans. The recent study findings have confirmed the IARC’s findings, as well as adding other concerns. GMWatch

 

 

After Owen Paterson, another close ally of the GMO lobby is now embroiled in a parliamentary scandal. This time it is Neil Parish, who pushed hard for GMOs both in the European and Westminster parliaments. GMWatch on Twitter; The Independent

 

 

Frans Timmermans, vice president of the European Commission and executive vice president for the EU Commission's sustainability strategies, the European Green Deal, has hit back at agro-industry allies who are using the Ukraine war as a "crisis narrative" to scaremonger about food shortages and thus undermine the Green Deal and the related FarmToFork strategy. He tweeted, "EU food supply is currently not at risk. Scaring Europeans into believing that food might run out is incredibly cynical. There’s no need to add to people’s already high anxiety with false problems that serve to protect an unsustainable status quo. If we don’t understand that FarmToFork is an attempt to save agriculture, not punish it, in light of the devastating effects of biodiversity loss and climate change on food production globally, we are really in a wrong attitude." [GMW: For more on the agribusiness lobby's exploitation of the Ukraine war, see this.] Frans Timmermans on Twitter @TimmermansEU

 

 

This February, George Gao, head of China’s CDC (Center for Disease Control), published a scientific preprint co-authored with 38 other Chinese virologists. Using previously unpublished evidence, this preprint concluded that the Huanan market in Wuhan played no role in the appearance of SARS-CoV-2 in 2019. These authors implied that the origin of SARS-CoV-2 was not even in China. Within hours, two other preprints appeared. The authors of these included Western virologists but none from China. The two 'Western’ preprints assessed the Huanan market evidence and concluded the opposite – that the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2019 with multiple zoonotic spillovers at the market in Wuhan. This latter interpretation was widely covered by the Western media as discrediting the lab leak possibility. Neither of these viewpoints is an objective scientific analysis of the relevant data, however. Rather, they reflect an emerging scientific struggle between Western-affiliated scientists on one side and their Chinese counterparts on the other. Each side is trying to twist the COVID-19 origin story to fit their local political needs, which are really those of their respective government funders and other backers. What the combatant camps did not anticipate, however, was the appearance of a superior methodology for the genetic dissection of COVID-19's origins, along with researchers willing to use it. Consequently the data manipulations and stratagems of both sides – the Gao establishment in China and the Western virologists ginning up a market zoonosis – are being revealed for what they are. Independent Science News