07/July/22

 

Boris Johnson, who in his very first speech as Prime Minister vowed to liberate GMOs, looks to be finished. But did you know that while Boris was ordering up deregulated/unlabelled GMOs for you, he was secretly tucking into luxury organic foods? Johnson joins a long list of world leaders who are happy to unleash GM foods onto the plates of the people but make sure that they eat organic themselves. GMWatch on Twitter @GMWatch

 

 

In the European Union and Canada, as in many other countries around the world, there are ongoing debates about how to regulate organisms derived from methods of new genetic engineering (new GE, also called genome editing or new genomic techniques). Proposals to exempt genome editing from regulation are however not supported by scientific findings. Genome editing has the unprecedented power to make large parts of the genome accessible to change, by overriding the natural mechanisms of genome organisation such as repair mechanisms or backup genes. Thereby, new GE techniques can cause pervasive changes in the genome of plants and animals, even without inserting additional "foreign" genes. These processes are also known to result in unintended effects, especially if "gene scissors" (site directed nucleases or SDNs) such as CRISPR/Cas are applied. A report from Testbiotech and the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network discusses these issues. [GMW: We've announced this report before but it's so important we're putting out this reminder.] Testbiotech

 

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