For five years, genetically modified cotton was planted in an illegal area in Mato Grosso state, Brazil, openly disregarding a biosafety measures created by the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply (MAPA). Mongabay found plantations of GM cotton in the municipality of Marcelândia, 641 kilometers (400 miles) from the state capital Cuiabá, where agribusiness is the main economic activity. Until early May 2024, genetically modified cotton plantations were banned from 31 municipalities in Mato Grosso, in an area considered an exclusion zone under Ministry of Agriculture Ordinance 437. The protection, lifted with strong support from Embrapa, a government corporation that holds GM cotton patents, was aimed at preventing contamination of native cotton, a natural seed used by family farmers as well as Indigenous and Quilombola communities. Mongabay

 

 

A judge has ordered a council to provide further details about a closed landfill site that may have released chemicals into a waterway near the protected Ironbridge World Heritage Site. Stoneyhill, near Telford, was used by the former international chemical company Monsanto between 1985 and 1991. A tribunal concluded that the authority must release information about the site, after it refused to give it to a local campaigner. Telford and Wrekin Council said it would comply with the decision, and that information about the site "has been and continues to be" available on its website. Monsanto ceased trading in 2016, but tests done on another of the firm's former sites found levels of now-banned chemicals more than 12,000 times higher than the recommended UK levels. The tribunal case was brought by Paul Cawthorne, a vicar turned citizen scientist, against the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). In July 2023, Mr Cawthorne had asked the council to release the results of tests carried out at the site but the authority refused to respond. BBC

 

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