Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Don’t ask, don’t tell?
Don’t ask, don’t tell?
by Sam Ross-Brown
Utne Reader
May 08, 2012
Just over half of Americans say they wouldn’t buy a food they knew was genetically modified. Another 87 percent say they want to see GM labels at the grocery store. That’s one reason why Connecticut’s recent failure to require labeling is so surprising, says Treehugger. Now, genetically-modified food is controversial among consumers, farmers, and scientists, and it’s difficult to find a consensus on GM benefits and risks. The World Health Organization, for instance, while noting some potential human health hazards like gene transfer, maintains GM safety is a case-by-case issue.
But the biggest opposition in Connecticut didn’t come from scientists. The reason the bill failed appears to be pressure from Monsanto, which reportedly threatened state legislators with legal action. This was the same tactic that got a GM labeling provision thrown out in Vermont last month, as the one thing cash-strapped states don’t need is a big lawsuit.
Friday, April 27, 2012
‘Agent Orange Corn’
Farmers, scientists protest USDA approval Of Dow’s ‘Agent Orange Corn’
By Ashley Portero
International Business Times
April 27, 2012
When Margot McMillen was introduced to the Monsanto Co.’s Roundup Ready crops in the mid-1990s, she suspected the seeds, genetically engineered to be immune to powerful herbicides, were too good to be true.
“The idea was you could spray a field with Roundup and you could kill everything on the field, and then your crop would come up and be resistant to the poison. Then you could have a harvest without worrying about the weeds,” said McMillen, an organic farmer in Missouri who produces vegetables and meat for the restaurant trade.
The question of herbicide resistance was one raised by farmers from the beginning, according to McMillen. Constant use of glyphosate-based herbicides such as Roundup — designed to kill bugs, weeds, and all plant life other than the genetically modified crops engineered to resist it — has led to the emergence of resistant weeds that can no longer be controlled by Roundup, the herbicide of choice for the past decade.
That’s why McMillen, along with a host of consumer and environmental groups, is concerned now that the Dow AgroSciences unit of the Dow Chemical Co. is on the cusp of winning regulatory approval for corn that is genetically engineered to be resistant to 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, or 2,4-D, an old and robust herbicide that was an active ingredient in the Agent Orange defoliant used during the Vietnam War.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Mutant corn
Mutant corn created to fend off Agent Orange chemical
By Chris Nuttall-Smith
The Globe and Mail
April 26, 2012
Now that overuse has rendered Roundup, the powerful agricultural herbicide sprayed on genetically modified crops like corn and soy beans, useless against new strains of superweeds, a US chemical company is hoping to market one of the active ingredients in Agent Orange in its place.
Dow AgroSciences has submitted for U.S. regulatory approval a new strain of corn that’s genetically engineered to be resistant to the herbicide 2,4-D, The New York Times reported. The chemical was one of the active ingredients in Agent Orange, the militarized defoliant cocktail that was used to on Vietnamese jungles during the Vietnam War. Agent Orange cause widespread cancers and deformation in people who were exposed to it.
According to the Times, however, “Most experts agree that the harm from Agent Orange was caused primarily by its other ingredient, 2,4,5-T, which was taken off the market long ago. By contrast, 2,4-D, first approved in the late 1940s, is considered safe enough for use in many home lawn care products.”
Yet Dow’s new genetically engineered corn is nonetheless drawing plenty of resistance, and not just from the usual anti-GMO sources; one of the most vocal opposition groups, called Save Our Crops Coalition, is composed of other farmers and vegetable processors who say that have no problem at all with GMO crops. They’re worried that drifting 2,4-D spray will hurt other crops that haven’t been engineered to resist it but are planted in adjacent fields.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
BT brinjal row
BT brinjal row: National Biodiversity Authority decides to prosecute Monsanto
By Savita Verma
India Today
April 17, 2012
The National Biodiversity Authority (NBA), the country’s biodiversity-preservation watchdog, has finally woken up to its job.
It has decided to prosecute multinational seed company Monsanto for allegedly using Indian brinjal varieties for commercial purposes without permission.
The decision was taken in a vote at a meeting on February 28, 2012. The majority of the members voted in favour of initiating action against Monsanto for violating India’s biodiversity law.
The Ministry of Environment and Forests, too, is in favour of prosecuting the seed giant.
The vote was essential as some board members of the NBA were against holding Monsanto to task, sources said.
The decision is bound to send a clear cut message that any attempt to fiddle with the country’s biological wealth will not go unpunished.
Monday, April 9, 2012
E.P.A. denies ban
E.P.A. denies an environmental group’s request to ban a widely used weed killer
By Andrew Pollack
New York Times
April 9, 2012
The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday said that the widely used herbicide 2,4-D would remain on the market, denying a petition from an environmental group that sought to revoke the chemical’s approval.
The E.P.A. said that the environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council, had not adequately shown that 2,4-D would be harmful under the conditions in which it is used.
“At best, N.R.D.C. is asking E.P.A. to take a revised look at the toxicity of 2,4-D,” the E.P.A. said in its decision, which was posted on its Web site.
“Yet the ground for tolerance revocation is a lack of safety.”