A US District Court has held that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA)'s decision to allow genetically engineered (GMO) foods to only be labelled with a "QR" code was unlawful, and that USDA must instead add additional disclosure options to those foods under USDA's National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard. The Court sent back to the agency the QR code portions of the 2018 Trump administration rules for GMO labelling that went into effect on January 1, 2022, which hindered consumer access with burdensome electronic or digital disclosures. "This is a victory for all Americans," said Meredith Stevenson, Center for Food Safety (CFS) staff attorney and counsel in the case. "Today's decision marks a key step toward ending the food industry's deceptive and discriminatory GMO food labelling practices, which have kept consumers in the dark by concealing what's in their products." GMWatch

 

 

The scientists' and policy experts' statement opposing the use of the term “precision breeding” to describe gene or genome editing, on the grounds that it is “technically and scientifically inaccurate and therefore misleads Parliament, regulators, and the public”, has now gained 80 signatories from all over the world. GMWatch update

 

 

Sixteen years after its foundation, the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS), which notoriously greenwashed glyphosate herbicide-doused GMO soy as "responsible", is totally unabashed at holding its 2022 meeting at the campus of Bayer Crop Science, which took over Monsanto, in Monheim, Germany. Does anyone wonder why even its co-founder WWF has since left its ranks? For more on the RTRS, which was always a Big Ag platform, see this. GMWatch comment on RTRS web page

 

 

Saving American honey production — and the beekeeping industry — will require a sea change in agricultural practices, as the Midwest’s landscape becomes an inhospitable environment for bees and honey production drops. Richard Coy, a 4th generation beekeeper, said his honey production took a nosedive in 2017 immediately after his farmer neighbours in Arkansas began spraying their crops with dicamba, an herbicide that has wreaked havoc on ecosystems and farm communities due to its propensity to drift. “The difference with dicamba [compared to other pesticides] is you can’t get away from it,” he said. Reports from the US Environmental Protection Agency and several nonprofits have documented how dicamba has drifted off fields of GM dicamba-tolerant crops and caused widespread damage to non-agricultural plants and trees. One 2016 study found dicamba drift delayed and reduced flowering on alfalfa and perennial shrub plants and that pollinators visited plants affected by dicamba drift less often. Civil Eats

 

 

At a meeting of the International Seeds Treaty in India next week, governments will discuss how smallholder farmers, peasants and Indigenous Peoples can use and manage their own seeds. Peasant and Indigenous Peoples’ organisations are mobilising to assert their rights and fight laws that threaten their livelihoods while boosting the profits of agribusiness corporations. These groups want a treaty that protects their right to maintain their own seed systems. FIAN

 

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