Farmers in northeast China’s Heilongjiang province, China’s top grain producer, will be prohibited from growing Genetically Modified (GM) crops, according to a provincial regulation passed on Friday.

The regulation will become effective on May 1, 2017.

Growing of GM corn, rice and soybean will be banned, while illegal production and sales of GM crops and supply of their seeds will also be prohibited.

NEW DELHI: Researchers have found that a large share of scientific studies on genetically modified (GM) crops were tainted by conflicts of interest, mostly because of having an employee of a GM producing company as one of the authors or having received funding from the company.

Out of the 579 published studies on GM crops that were analysed, about 40 per cent showed such conflict of interest, the researchers affiliated to France's National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) found. Their study is published in the journal PLOS ONE this week.

UN Convention on Biological Diversity reaffirms its moratorium on climate-related geoengineering

CANCUN, MEXICO – The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which gathered at its 13th Conference of the Parties (COP 13) in Mexico from December 4-17, decided to reaffirm its landmark moratorium on climate-related geoengineering that it first agreed to in 2010.

Geoengineering refers to a set of proposed techniques that would intervene in and alter earth systems on a large scale – recently, these proposals have been gaining traction as a “technofix” solution to climate change. Examples include solar radiation management techniques such as blasting sulphate particles into the atmosphere as well as other earth systems interventions grouped under a second broad umbrella of ‘carbon dioxide removal.’

The reaffirmation of the CBD moratorium is even more relevant in the light of the Paris Agreement on climate change, in which governments agreed to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. Geoengineers quickly interpreted the Paris Agreement as allowing or encouraging geoengineering to meet that ambitious goal.

Public confidence in genetically modified (GM) crop studies is tenuous at best in many countries, including those of the European Union in particular. A lack of information about the effects of ties between academic research and industry might stretch this confidence to the breaking point. We therefore performed an analysis on a large set of research articles (n = 672) focusing on the efficacy or durability of GM Bt crops and ties between the researchers carrying out these studies and the GM crop industry. We found that ties between researchers and the GM crop industry were common, with 40% of the articles considered displaying conflicts of interest (COI). In particular, we found that, compared to the absence of COI, the presence of a COI was associated with a 50% higher frequency of outcomes favorable to the interests of the GM crop company. Using our large dataset, we were able to propose possible direct and indirect mechanisms behind this statistical association. They might notably include changes of authorship or funding statements after the results of a study have been obtained and a choice in the topics studied driven by industrial priorities.

Friends of the Earth International and allies call for greater regulation on synthetic biology at the COP 13

Mariann Bassey Orovwuje (Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria) and member of the Friends of the Earth International delegation at the thirteenth Convention of the Parties of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 13) in Cancun, Mexico, presented a statement on behalf of the Civil Society Working Group on Synthetic Biology during a plenary session, asking for more regulation on synthetic biology, 6 December 2016

Mariann warned the COP13,

"Gene drives have quickly emerged as an extremely high risk synthetic biology application since the last COP and should therefore be placed under a moratorium”.

This was part of a request from 168 organizations worldwide, including Friends of the Earth International, who signed a “Common call for a global moratorium on gene drives”. The signatories want the moratorium to be effective on any further technical development and experimental application of gene drives and on their environmental release.

Cancún, 12 Dec (Lim Li Ching*) – As the meetings of the United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Cancún reached their halfway mark, the issue of the continued work on risk assessment under the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety remained threatened.

The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, which is a Protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), is the only international treaty that specifically regulates genetic engineering and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or living modified organisms (LMOs), as they are known in the Protocol. Meetings of Parties to the CBD and the Cartagena Protocol are taking place in Cancun from 4 to 17 December.

Risk assessment is the central pillar of the Protocol, necessary to assess the effects of LMOs on the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, taking also into account risks to human health.

CRISPR/Cas9 gene drive (CGD) promises a highly adaptable approach for spreading genetically engineered alleles throughout a species, even if those alleles impair reproductive success. CGD has been shown to be effective in laboratory crosses of insects, yet it remains unclear to what extent potential resistance mechanisms will affect the dynamics of this process in large natural populations. Here we develop a comprehensive population genetic framework for modeling CGD dynamics, which incorporates potential resistance mechanisms as well as random genetic drift. Using this framework, we calculate the probability that resistance against CGD evolves from standing genetic variation, de novo mutation of wildtype alleles, or cleavage-repair by nonhomologous end joining (NHEJ) -- a likely byproduct of CGD itself. We show that resistance to standard CGD approaches should evolve almost inevitably in most natural populations, unless repair of CGD-induced cleavage via NHEJ can be effectively suppressed, or resistance costs are on par with those of the driver.

Citizens/environment will not be impacted by novel experiment releasing millions of GE mosquitoes

WASHINGTON— The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it will not move forward with the controversial release of millions of genetically engineered (GE) mosquitoes in the community of Key Haven in Monroe County, Florida. The release of the GE mosquitoes would have been the first-ever in the United States, but FDA failed to conduct adequate testing for potential impacts to people, threatened and endangered species, and the environment. During the November 2016 election, local citizens voted against the release of the insects.

A coalition of public interest groups – including Center for Food Safety (CFS), Friends of the Earth (FOE), Foundation Earth, the International Center for Technology Assessment (ICTA), the Florida Keys Environmental Coalition, and Food & Water Watch – yesterday received a response to their 60-day notice of intent to sue FDA under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) for failing to take into account impacts to federally listed species in a fast-tracked approval of the release of the GE mosquitoes.

Missouri’s largest peach producer has filed a lawsuit against Monsanto Co., alleging that the biotech company bears responsibility for illegal herbicide use suspected of causing widespread crop damage in southeast Missouri and neighboring states.

The suit filed Nov. 23 on behalf of Bill Bader, who operates Bader Farms near Campbell, Mo., seeks compensation for extensive damage to the farm’s peach trees suffered over the last two years — an interval which coincides with Monsanto’s release of crop varieties resistant to the herbicide dicamba.

Despite the Creve Coeur-based company’s rollout of dicamba-resistant Xtend crops in 2015, the corresponding herbicide was not approved for use until last month. Its absence meant that some farmers are suspected of using highly volatile, unauthorized forms of dicamba, prone to vaporizing and drifting to surrounding areas where nonresistant crops can be harmed.

The case was filed in Circuit Court of Dunklin County, an area of southeast Missouri’s Bootheel region where alleged dicamba damage has been especially pronounced. Many soybean farmers in the area have reported diminished yields due to suspected drift, and Bader thinks the same has happened to peaches and other crops around his farm.

GMWatch & The Ecologist

160 global groups have called for a moratorium on new 'genetic extinction' technology at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity meeting in Cancun, Mexico. Gene drive technology, they say, poses serious and irreversible threats to biodiversity, national sovereignty, peace and food security.

International conservation and environmental leaders from over 160 organisation are calling on governments at the 2016 COP13 of the Biodiversity Convention to establish a moratorium on the controversial genetic extinction technology called 'gene drives'.

Gene drives, developed through new gene-editing techniques, are designed to force a particular genetically engineered trait to spread through an entire wild population - potentially changing entire species or even causing deliberate extinctions.

The statement urges governments to put in place an urgent, global moratorium on the development and release of the new technology which, they say, poses "serious and potentially irreversible threats to biodiversity, as well as national sovereignty, peace, and food security."

Dr. Ricarda Steinbrecher, representing the Federation of German Scientists, said: "It is essential that we pause, to allow the scientific community, local communities and society at large to debate and reflect. We can't allow ourselves to be led by a novel technique.

"We lack the knowledge and understanding to release gene drives into the environment - we don't even know what questions to ask. To deliberately drive a species to extinction has major ethical, social and environmental implications."

"Gene drives will be one of the fiercest debates at CBD this year", added Jim Thomas of ETC Group. "Gene drives are advancing far too quickly in the real world, and so far are unregulated. There are already hundreds of millions of dollars pouring into gene drive development, and even reckless proposals to release gene drives within next four years."