23/November/20

 

Flinders’ University Professor Nikolai Petrovsky says there is no “truth or transparency” reflected in the newly released email correspondence which reveals a letter in the Lancet regarding the origin of COVID was authored by EcoHealth Alliance. In February 2020, the Lancet published a letter signed by 27 scientists saying the virus originated from animals and criticised those who questioned whether it instead originated from a laboratory for supposedly spreading misinformation. This week, new email correspondence obtained by US Right to Know exposed that the letter in the Lancet was organised and authored by the EcoHealth Alliance. EcoHealth Alliance has received millions of dollars from the US to do joint research genetically modifying coronaviruses with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It's the same type of research that is suspected of having inadvertently leaked the virus that causes COVID-19. Sky News

 

 

Scientists have estimated for the first time how nature-based solutions for agricultural pest control deliver US$ 14.6 to US$ 19.5 billion annually across 23 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. The new research, published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, suggests that non-chemical crop protection (or biological control) delivers economic dividends that far surpass those attained through improved “Green Revolution” rice germplasm (estimated at US$ 4.3 billion a year). CABI News and Nature Ecology & Evolution, via GMWatch

 

 

New research shows that pesticide companies are claiming that their products are an answer to the climate crisis. Yet they’re being pushed at policymakers and the public by a coordinated network of lobby groups with close ties to fossil fuels and proponents of climate science denial. The industry's plans serve to perpetuate the sector’s status quo of industrial, monocrop, chemically-laden and high-carbon agriculture. Among the groups promoting agricultural techno-fixes to climate change are the Gates-backed AGRA (Alliance for a Green Revolution) and the Cornell Alliance for Science. DeSmog has established a useful new agribusiness database that includes these two. OpenDemocracy