The Norwegian Food Safety Authority has approved a genetically modified canola oil for use in feed for farmed salmon. The canola was genetically engineered to contain healthy omega-3 long chain fatty acids. The GM canola, called NS-B50027-4, was developed as a land-based source of marine ("fishy") fatty acids. This is being touted as an environmental benefit, since farmed salmon are normally fed on fish oil to boost their omega-3 levels. Wild fish get their omega-3 from eating algae. But wild fish stocks are depleted and the price of fish oil has risen, meaning that the amount of fish oil in salmon feed has decreased markedly in recent years. The "Aquaterra" omega-3 canola oil is being promoted as a sustainable alternative to fish oil. But the GM canola from which it is derived is engineered to be grown with an EU-banned herbicide and contains oils that caused deformities in butterflies. GMWatch

 

 

The French government's food safety agency ANSES has demolished the European Commission’s proposal for a definition of a class of new GM plants (so-called Category I NGT plants) that would be exempted from risk assessment, traceability and labelling because of their supposed “equivalence… to conventional plants”. The Commission has specifically proposed as the criterion for this equivalence a threshold of no more than 20 genetic modifications per plant, at the target site and at sites with similar sequences, and a size of 20 nucleotides for insertions and substitutions. But ANSES says there is no scientific basis for such an assumption of equivalence. GMWatch

 

 

Tactics Monsanto used to challenge a $175 million Roundup verdict earned the company a sharp rebuke from the judge on the case. In a January 5 opinion, Judge James Crumlish III of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas slammed Monsanto for raising what he considered to be non-credible concerns about the court’s conduct during the trial. Crumlish’s ruling soundly rejected the defendant’s bid to kick the judge off the case, which he called a “transparent attempt that has purposefully created an impossible morass”. Crumlish went on to write that the defence’s efforts presented ”a dilatory and cynical diversion aimed not at the merits of the evidence at the trial but at promoting a vindictive campaign against the jury and disqualifying the assigned trial judge from promptly artfully and fairly considering post-trial motions, impugning jurors… and challenging the integrity of the jury’s considered verdict entirely”. law.com

 

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