07/September/22

 

For decades GM foods on sale in Britain have required a label, allowing consumers to choose whether they wish to buy and eat such foods. Labelling also allows producers and processors to decide if they want to produce foods containing GMOs. Consumer surveys consistently show that the public wants GM foods to be labelled. The draft Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill, currently before Parliament, removes all statutory requirements for labelling of GMOs. It does this by rebranding GMOs as “precision bred organisms”, or PBOs and redefining them as the products of “natural transformation” or “traditional breeding”. Developers wishing to grow or place PBOs on the market will only need to self-certify that their organisms qualify for a regulatory, and therefore labelling, exemption. Currently, the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) has indicated that it intends to remove any labelling requirements for these GM foods and will also remove these foods from the novel foods register. With no statutory requirement for labelling and no apparent effort on the part of FSA to maintain and enforce labelling, we will no longer know what we are eating, Beyond GM writes. GMWatch

 

 

In the UK, the Tory government is deregulating (removing regulatory controls from) a new wave of GM crops, many of them created through CRISPR technology. In 2018, the first CRISPR gene-edited babies were born. But Stop Designer Babies points out that "despite the wave of international outrage, scientists are pushing forward and next year they will try to legalise the creation of GM babies in the UK. This will likely lead to a free-market, designer baby eugenics. In a climate of rising racism, disability hate crime and right wing authoritarianism, these oppressions will increasingly dictate which kinds of people get born." Although these issues may seem different, they are linked through shared histories and underlying ideologies of progress through technological control of nature and neoliberal choice. Join Stop Designer Babies to discuss the links between these twin threats and how they can be fought. GMWatch

 

 

An industry study showing the neurotoxicity of glyphosate was withheld from European authorities. It highlighted the possible damaging effects on brain development of prenatal exposure to glyphosate. Regulatory agencies have claimed a study into the neurodevelopmental toxicity of glyphosate "isn't necessary" as "there's no evidence of neurotoxic potential". But the withheld study provided that evidence 20 years ago. And more evidence has been accumulating in other studies. Le Monde (French language article) via @GMWatch on Twitter

 

 

In the earliest days of the pandemic, Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins emailed about coronaviruses under study at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and about whether they had steered money to the lab, an email obtained by US Right to Know shows. Collins, then leader of the National Institutes of Health, and Fauci, leader of its infectious diseases institute, exchanged emails on February 1, 2020, about a preprint authored by Zhengli Shi, director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases. The preprint described bat coronaviruses under study at the lab, including a coronavirus 96 percent genetically similar to the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The emails show that Collins and Fauci were concerned about links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and NIH. About two hours after the email exchange, Collins and Fauci would join a secret teleconference with a group of virologists who were closely examining the novel coronavirus. The teleconference touched off a high profile push to discredit the lab leak hypothesis. US Right to Know

 

 

A senior World Health Organization expert expressed skepticism in 2020 that the COVID-19 pandemic originated in a wet market, according to a US State Department cable obtained by US Right to Know. The November 20, 2020 cable provides a window into the views of a high-ranking WHO expert about the pandemic’s origin, and contrasts with the certainty of some Western virologists that the pandemic crossed over from wildlife at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China. US Right to Know

 

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