05/May/22

 

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The EU Commission’s health division has launched a new public consultation on the new wave of genetically modified plants (new GMOs), moving ahead with far-reaching deregulation plans. With this consultation, the EU Commission is yet again widely following the wish list of some agribusiness lobby groups as nearly all the questions are framed in a way to support the Commission’s deregulation plans. Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides is tragically giving credit to agribusiness’ false promise that new GMOs – currently in the research pipeline stage – would be a useful tool for the transformation of food systems towards sustainability. GMWatch

 

 

ENGA (the European Non-GMO Industry Association) has warned of the threat that deregulation (see above item) poses to labelling and traceability of new GMOs in EU food. ENGA called on retailers and food producers to take part in the EU Commission's consultation and have their say on the future of their industry. Current regulations mean that GM food is labelled, but if the European Commission goes ahead with its plans to deregulate new GM techniques (such as CRISPR/Cas, TALENs and others), 95% of all new GM plants currently in the pipeline could be excluded from GMO legislation and thus from any transparency requirements. GMWatch

 

 

Monsanto ghostwrote research and essays to promote the safety of the pesticide glyphosate and to attack the World Health Organization, as detailed in a presentation by investigative journalist Paul Thacker. Monsanto front groups then published these essays and the studies ran in journals that have argued tobacco, asbestos, and fossil fuels are safe. Even before the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) found glyphosate to be dangerous, internal emails show that Monsanto scientists began discussing how to undermine the findings. GMWatch

 

 

A video recording of a presentation by GMWatch editor Claire Robinson, on "New GMOs: Threats to Health and Environment", with a Q&A session with Claire and Dr Michael Antoniou, is now available on Youtube. The presentation was given at a webinar organised by Friends of the Earth Hungary. Friends of the Earth Hungary on Youtube

 

 

Gujarat Bt cotton seed has made its way into Punjab illegally, with farmers falling for the claims of traders from there that their cotton seed was pink bollworm resistant. The Punjab Agriculture Department has warned that there is no seed that can stop the attack of whitefly or pink bollworm. Pink bollworm has reportedly infested the seed even before the farmers plant it. [GMW: GM Bt cotton is falsely promoted as bollworm resistant.] The Tribune (India)

 

 

A new study finds that glyphosate residues in soil affect phytohormones in plants. The researchers found that oat plants growing in soil that contained minimal concentrations of glyphosate residues showed decreased levels of phytohormones. In contrast to oat, potato plants responded to herbicide residues in soil by elevating stress-related phytohormones and increasing plant growth, while strawberry plants largely did not respond to herbicide residues in soil, which shows how plant species-specific the responses to glyphosate residues in soil can be. The study shows that herbicide residues in soil can interfere with biochemical plant processes, which determine the plants' responses to their environment. At the farm scale, these changes could affect beneficial insects such as predatory or pollinating insects, which is likely to affect essential ecosystem services. University of Turku