Glyphosate is a key ingredient in the herbicide, Roundup. Use of this herbicide has increased approximately 15-fold since 1994 when GM Roundup Ready (RR) glyphosate-tolerant crops were introduced. Used mainly on RR soy and corn, glyphosate is also sprayed on a substantial portion of wheat and oats grown in the US. In July 2017, glyphosate was listed by California as a carcinogen, following the WHO cancer research agency’s classification as glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic” to humans.

A study by the University of California San Diego School of Medicine (report published in the journal JAMA) compared urine excretion levels of glyphosate and aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA) in 100 people living in a Southern California community who provided samples during five clinic visits that took place over a 23-year timespan between 1993 to 1996 and 2014 to 2016, starting just before the introduction of GM crops in the US.

The study found that prior to the introduction of GM foods, very few people had detectable levels of glyphosate, but as of 2016, 70% of the study cohort had detectable levels, an increase of approximately 500%. Among this 70%, the mean level of glyphosate increased from 0.203 μg/L in 1993-1996 to 0.449 μg/L in 2014-2016 while the mean level of AMPA went up from 0.168 μg/L in 1993-1996 to 0.401 μg/L in 2014-2016.

Now some farmers say they are being forced to use the new GMO seeds to guard against dicamba.

Nathan Reed, a farmer in Marianna, Arkansas, whose crops were damaged by dicamba from fields more than two miles away, worries about his business.

"We use overwhelmingly non GMOs, not because we are anti-GMO but because we found some niche markets," Reed said at a public meeting last month. "We are in the business of making money, just like Monsanto is."

"It is going to put that ability at risk for us," he said.

Farming states Missouri, Minnesota and North Dakota have imposed restrictions on dicamba, though they permit farmers to use the herbicide one or two times at the start of the season.

Why is Monsanto offering such a sweet deal on its dicamba mix? It’s probably not what the company had in mind when it broke ground on a $975 million expansion of its dicamba plant in Luling, La., earlier this year.

The answer likely lies in the more than 3.6 million acres of non-dicamba-tolerant soybeans that the US Environmental Protection Agency reports were damaged by wayward dicamba applications during the 2017 growing season. In addition, the EPA notes, off-target dicamba hit a variety of fruit and vegetable crops, as well as residential gardens, trees, and shrubs.

In recent years, consumers have become more conscientious of the products they buy, leading to a number of certifications being added to labels of products, like “Gluten-Free,” “Non-GMO Project Verified,” “Vegan,” etc., and now there is a new label on the shelves — “Glyphosate Residue Free.”

Glyphosate is the world’s most commonly used herbicide that is typically known by the commercial name Roundup (a Monsanto-owned weed killer), and its presence has become a growing concern for conscious consumers. Extensive scientific studies have shown that glyphosate is detrimental to the health of humans, the environment, and animals, particularly bees.

The World Health Organization’ cancer agency declared the chemical to be a “probable human carcinogen” in 2015, and it has been shown to be an endocrine disruptor. Glyphosate is said to pollute up to 75 percent of U.S. air and water resources, and it is present in 90 percent of soybeans and 70 percent of corn grown in the U.S.

Gene-editing tools heralded as hope for fighting invader rats, malarial mosquitoes and other scourges may be too powerful to use in their current form, two new papers warn.

Standard forms of CRISPR gene drives, as the tools are called, can make tweaked DNA race through a population so easily that a small number of stray animals or plants could spread it to new territory, predicts a computer simulation released November 16 at bioRxiv.org. Such an event would have unknown, potentially damaging, ramifications, says a PLOS Biology paper released the same day.

“We need to get out of the ivory tower and have this discussion in the open, because ecological engineering will affect everyone living in the area,” says Kevin Esvelt of MIT, a coauthor of both papers who studies genetic solutions to ecological problems. What’s a pest in one place may be valued in another, so getting consent to use a gene drive could mean consulting people across a species’s whole range, be it several nations or continents.

In 2013, scientists discovered a new way to precisely edit genes — technology called Crispr that raised all sorts of enticing possibilities. Scientists wondered if it might be used to fix hereditary diseases, for example, or to develop new crops.

One of the more intriguing ideas came from Kevin M. Esvelt and his colleagues at Harvard University: Crispr, they suggested, could be used to save endangered wildlife from extinction by implanting a fertility-reducing gene in invasive animals — a so-called gene drive.

When the genetically altered animals were released back into the wild, the fertility-reducing gene would spread through the population, eradicating the pests.

Synopsis: A new grant means that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has now given $12 million dollars to the Cornell Alliance for Science. But according to Claire Robinson of British group GMWatch, the Alliance "is a propaganda machine for the GMO and agrochemical industry?.

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In a presentation yesterday at Cornell, Alliance for Science Director, Sarah Evanega, revealed that her organisation had received “a renewed contribution” of $6.4 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Originally endowed with $5.6 million by the Gates Foundation in August 2014, the new grant takes the total Gates contribution to $12 million.

PORTLAND, Ore.— Scientists from four national environmental-health organizations today called on the scientific journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology to retract a review downplaying glyphosate’s cancer risk because the review article was covertly edited and funded by Monsanto, the pesticide’s maker.

As detailed in a recent news report, the article’s conflict-of-interest disclosure stated that a third party hired by Monsanto was independently overseeing the assessment of the popular pesticide. However, Monsanto directlypaid at least two of the scientists who authored the article, and a Monsanto employee substantially edited and reviewed the article prior to publication, in clear contradiction to the disclosure statement.

Today’s letter from scientists at the Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, Pesticide Action Network and Center for Environmental Health noted: “These are serious offenses and if left unanswered will ultimately undermine the work of many scientists who view scientific ethics to be sacrosanct.”

The review paper in question was one of a series of five articles published in a 2016 supplemental issue entitled “An Independent Review of the Carcinogenic Potential of Glyphosate.” The review in question was an overview of the four other articles. All five articles were highly critical of the 2015 finding by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer that glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup, is a probable human carcinogen.

The chief benefit claimed for GMO pesticidal Bt crops is that, unlike conventional pesticides, their toxicity is limited to a few insect species. Our new peer-reviewed analysis systematically compares GMO and ancestral Bt proteins and shows that many of the elements contributing to this narrow toxicity have been removed by GMO developers in the process of inserting Bt toxins into crops. Thus, developers have made GMO pesticides that, in the words of one Monsanto patent, are “super toxins”. We additionally conclude that references to any GMO Bt toxins being “natural” are incorrect and scientifically unsupportable.

New Publication Title: The Distinct Properties of Natural and GM Cry Insecticidal Proteins

Authors: Jonathan R. Latham, Madeleine Love & Angelika Hilbeck (2017), in Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering Reviews, 33:1, 62-96,

DOI: 10.1080/02648725.2017.1357295.

Available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02648725.2017.1357295

OSAGE | “I am not mainstream, I am more in the process of growing food,” said Mike Lewis, who farms southeast of Osage. “All my stuff is non-GMO.”

Lewis, an Osage High School and a 1980 Iowa State University with a degree in farm operations, recognizes he has to deal with problems GMO farmers don’t have, but he also acknowledges the production of his food-grade soybeans brings a premium price, which overshadows some of the challenges he faces.

Thirty years ago, Lewis began a limited planting of the food-grade soybeans. Ten years later, he turned to full production of the soybeans.