Inf'OGM has published a special issue on GM animals, titled "GMO animals: The logical continuation of intensive farming". Currently, few GM animals are marketed and sales remain low. As with plants, genetic engineering aims to accelerate the development of traits considered interesting by humans: it is a quantitative and qualitative leap in animal domestication. However, for livestock, undesirable effects are accumulating. Indeed, sold as ethical improvements or to produce more meat with fewer resources, these modifications are imposed to the detriment of animal welfare, the animal's physical integrity and health, and the ancestral relationships it has with humans. Some authors from the French public research institute INRAE believe that genetic modifications renew [the ethical questions linked to the use of animals for the benefit of humans and exacerbate them. Inf'OGM (click on an individual article title and then click "English" for English translation from the French)

 

 

On February 13, 2023, Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court ordered Bayer to pay back to the soybean growers’ association Aprosoja the full amount of royalties improperly collected since 2018 for a patent on the Intacta RR2 PRO technology inherited from Monsanto: 1.3 billion Brazilian Reals, or about 237 million euros. Brazil’s highest court has, in effect, accepted Aprosoja’s arguments that this patent could not benefit from more than 20 years of protection and had indeed expired in March 2018. It thus implements its ruling, from the “Direct Action in Unconstitutionality” no. 5529 of May 2021, declaring unconstitutional the provision of the Brazilian Industrial Property Law allowing to extend the validity of patents for more than 20 years. According to Aprosoja, this is the first trial that implements this unconstitutionality decision. This latest episode may not be the last. This decision can be appealed to the same Supreme Court. Inf'OGM

 

 

An email made public by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) casts doubt on the credibility of a ProPublica/Vanity Fair investigation based on an interim report released by Republican staff of a US Senate Committee, writes journalist Paul D. Thacker. That Senate interim report concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic was “more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident”, pointing blame at China’s lack of transparency for preventing more definitive conclusions. Democrats have labelled as “partisan” all evidence tying virus research in Wuhan, China to grants from Anthony Fauci and the NIH. Senate staff stripped this evidence from their interim report, which concluded, “The lack of transparency and collaboration from government and public health officials in the People’s Republic of China with respect to the origins of SARS-CoV-2 prevents reaching a more definitive conclusion.” The interim report was a whitewash, Thacker was told, and purposely did not look at NIH funding for gain-of-function research and the involvement of Anthony Fauci. Some congressional staff now speculate that scientific evidence of US involvement in dangerous virus research is being ignored by Members of Congress to protect jobs and contracts in the US biodefense industry, a lucrative career for former politicians and their staff. The Disinformation Chronicle

 

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