A Sky News piece is headlined "Lab-grown food may be a step closer to being approved in UK as watchdog to research its safety". The "watchdog" in question is the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA), which is being given £1.6 million of taxpayers' money for the research project. The Sky article focuses on how the FSA's research will investigate the safety of "cell-cultivated products" (CCPs) made "without using traditional farming methods such as rearing livestock or growing plants and grains", to protect consumers, even though the headline suggests this is a prelude to approval. But by contrast, the final paragraph of FSA’s own statement baldly says: "The volume of evidence and expertise we’ll have built up by the end of the two-year programme means that we’ll be able to process CCP applications more swiftly and support businesses better in their applications. The sandbox will also help us develop assessment approaches that can be applied to other innovative foods, helping support innovation across the global food sector." So now we know what this "research" is really about: not protecting consumers, but fast-tracking fake meat and dairy products to market to benefit this industry sector. GMWatch comment on Sky News article and FSA press release

 

 

Politicians on both sides of the border between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia are calling for a federal inquiry into a mysterious surge of a brain illness that has gained international attention. N.S. Independent MLA [Member of the Legislative Assembly] Elizabeth Smith-McCrossin and N.B. Green Party MLA Megan Mitton want the Public Health Agency of Canada to step in and lead the investigation into what they’re calling atypical neurodegenerative illness, a disease that was previously thought to be only in New Brunswick. At first, it appeared as if New Brunswick was going to share information with PHAC and cooperate on an investigation into the mystery illness, Mitton said. “It sounds like they started to do that, and then something happened, and they stopped,” she said. The federal government had earmarked $5 million to help with the study, she said. One theory was that glyphosate, a widely used broad-spectrum herbicide applied to kill weeds and other vegetation, was causing the problem, Mitton said. National Post

 

 

Pesticides aren't always necessary. Researchers at the University of Zurich have conducted a comprehensive field study showing that damage from herbivores can be reduced by using biodiversity within a plant species. Different plant genotypes can cooperate to help fend off herbivorous insects. The study is published in the journal Nature Communications. Just like humans, plants interact with the individuals around them. For example, if the people around you are more susceptible to infections, your own risk of getting infected increases, and vice versa. The same is true for plants. When different genetic types of the same plant species are mixed and planted together, some combinations are more resistant to pests and diseases. This positive biodiversity effect is known as associative resistance. Phys.org

 

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