26/October/20

 

In a pattern that will be all too familiar to GMWatch readers, yet another paper has been published by researchers in the medical field, highlighting the wide range of unintended outcomes from gene editing, both at the site targeted for editing and at other locations in the genome. Meanwhile plant biotechnologists keep silent on the issue or make false claims about the supposed precision of the technology. The paper contains some remarkable quotes in which the authors extend the uncertainties and risks of gene editing beyond the medical field to agricultural applications in plants and animals. GMWatch

 

 

The 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry – named after the inventor of dynamite and founder of one of the largest bomb factories in the world – has been awarded to researchers who developed the genetic engineering technique CRISPR-Cas9. Some of the applications of this technology could have such an explosive effect on nature and people that it has been called a “gene bomb”. CRISPR and new forms of gene manipulation must not be allowed anywhere near our food systems or into the wider environment, writes Silvia Ribeiro of ETC Group. The Ecologist

 

 

A lawyer acting for the German Association for Food without Genetic Engineering (VLOG) has waded into the row over the newly developed detection test for Cibus's gene-edited herbicide-tolerant SU Canola (oilseed rape). He said that ENGL, the EU's GMO detection labs, were incorrect to dismiss the test on the grounds that it doesn't show that the change was induced in the canola via gene editing. He shares GMWatch's view that under the EU’s GMO laws, it is irrelevant how a specific mutation was generated – whether by tissue culture (as Cibus now claims is the case with this canola) or via gene editing. If genetic modification techniques have been used to develop a crop, it is a GMO, even if the specific trait that the genetic engineers are aiming to achieve is generated via spontaneous mutation in tissue culture. The lawyer reminds the European Commission of its duty to test imports for the presence of the unauthorised canola. GMWatch

 

 

Recent years have seen a massive push from the GMO lobby to exempt gene editing from the EU's GMO laws, thus enabling them to escape safety checks and labelling. This de-regulation would require the GMO Directive 2001/18 to be opened up in order to change the definition of a GMO. But a peer-reviewed paper suggests that there is no appetite among EU member states to support such a move. GMWatch

 

 

What would a truly resilient society look like? In an excerpt from his new book A Small Farm Future: Making the Case For A Society Built Around Local Economies, Self Provisioning Agricultural Diversity, and A Shared Earth, Chris Smaje examines the question of resilience from the points of view of politics, economics, and the physical world. He challenges both conventional wisdom and standard utopian visions to elaborate on the opportunities and the problems inherent in realising this goal. As Vandana Shiva notes on the book's cover, “Either we have a small farm future, or we face collapse”. Independent Science News

 

 

A backroom deal between the three biggest political groups in the European Parliament - the conservative European People's Party (EPP), the Social Democrats (S&D) and the liberals (Renew) - seems to give the kiss of death to the relatively ambitious Farm to Fork strategy, which aimed to make food systems more sustainable. The deal will keep the many problematic aspects of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which accounts for over one-third of the EU annual budget – completely undermining the EU's latest green ambitions. These politicians have effectively locked the EU into seven more years of subsidised environmental destruction. EU Observer