STRAUBING, GERMANY — Archer Daniels Midland Co. (ADM) announced on June 2 that it has successfully started up its new soybean crushing capacity at its oilseeds plant in Straubing, Germany and is now looking at further expanding its soy crushing options at other facilities in northwest Europe.

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Straubing’s new capability allows the site to crush soybeans sourced from the Danube region in order to market European non-GMO soymeal and oil to customers in Western Europe.

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“We are pleased with the product throughput and quality we are seeing at the plant and excited that we are now also able to supply non-GMO soymeal and oil from Danube-grown soybeans to our customers,” said Rene van der Poel, general manager of ADM’s Straubing facility. “I wish to thank the whole project team and our customers for their help and support in successfully getting this project off the ground.”

Information about GMO-free Labeling in Germany is updated.

Concerns about health risks due to residues from spraying glyphosate in combination with other herbicides

Friday, 8 April 2016

In a recent letter to Testbiotech, EU Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis made it clear that the Commission finally wants to allow the import of genetically engineered soybeans produced by Bayer and Monsanto, despite concerns about health risks. These soybeans can be sprayed with a combination of glyphosate and other herbicides such as dicamba or isoxaflutole. The European Food Safety Authority EFSA just recently stated that the health risks of these residues cannot be sufficiently assessed and safety levels cannot be defined since the relevant data are missing. Nevertheless, market authorisation is imminent after massive pressure from industry.

Within the last few months, Testbiotech has received several letters from the Commission about these plants. While it was first argued that safety would be ensured by so-called maximum residue levels (MRL), the Commission has now had to admit that those levels are not sufficiently defined. In fact, they are presented as work in progress, and as the Commission states, no further comment can be given “at this point in time, as the Commission is in the process of establishing its position”.

In a new French-Hungarian study, the co-formulants of glyphosate herbicides are shown to be endocrine disruptors, i.e. to interfere with the human hormone system. Two ENSSER board members, Nicolas Defarge and András Székács, are involved in the study.

Despite a great deal of scientific criticism pointing at serious potential health hazards, the European Commission has recently proposed to extend the approval of the world's most popular herbicide glyphosate for another 15 years. One of the points of criticism is that both the EU risk assessment and the acceptable daily intake (ADI) refer only to the active substance glyphosate, while the commercial product ('formulation') contains more substances: 'co-formulants' are added to modify the physico-chemical properties or to improve penetration or stability of the active substance. The co-formulants are usually presented as inert and their identity is generally protected as 'confidential business information'. However, the new study demonstrates that known co-formulants of six commercial glyphosate formulations have endocrine-disrupting effects by themselves.

The endocrine disrupting effects of the co-formulants were assessed by measuring the activity of aromatase, a key enzyme for the balance of sex hormones, in human placental cells, using a method validated by the OECD to assess endocrine disruptors. Aromatase is responsible for the irreversible conversion of male sex hormones into female sex hormones.

A group of fourteen experts, including ENSSER member Michael Antoniou and CRIIGEN[i] member Robin Mesnage, warns that current safety assessments of glyphosate based herbicides (GBHs) as well as their maximum daily intake limits are based on outdated science. Also, exposure levels have risen because drinking water, rain and air, especially in agricultural regions, but also foods, are increasingly contaminated. Moreover, glyphosate turns out to be more persistent in water and soil than previously recognized.

In a new peer-reviewed paper in the journal Environmental Health, the experts list their concerns, distinguishing between certainties, confident estimations, model-based predictions, unconfirmed presumptions based on existing data and relevant uncertainties in current safety assessments.

In 2016 the agricultural turnaround must begin: We call on EU Farm Commissioner Phil Hogan, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, German Federal Minister Sigmar Gabriel and German Federal Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt: Stop the blind support of agri-businesses! Instead of pushing for exports, stand in for more quality food. Ensure fair trade around the world – stop TTIP and CETA!

We are calling for farmers, manufacturers and consumers to send a common message in Berlin on 16. January 2016. We are the people from the countryside and from the city, from the north and from the south. We are fed up with agro-industry – we want a rural an organic agricultural and food system that is accepted by society.

More info (in English, French and German) visit: wir-haben-es-satt.de

Germany's farmers are having a tough time, with farm-gate prices for their produce in a radical slump. Organic produce and wine-growing are the only bright spots in an otherwise difficult agribusiness environment.

Over the past year, German farmers have experienced the dark side of global markets, as farm-gate prices for their products have crashed, with a global oversupply facing weakened demand.

One major factor was that Russia imposed an embargo on imports of European Union food products in August 2014. It was Moscow's tit-for-tat response to EU economic sanctions against Russia, imposed in connection with the geopolitical competition for influence over Ukraine.

Another factor was that the EU dropped its system of dairy quotas in April of this year - leaving European dairy farmers fully exposed to the vagaries of global supply and demand. It's a move they may have cause to regret.

In the EU, regulations have been devised to mandate the assessment of risks to the environmental, human food and animal feed safety arising from genetically modified organisms (GMOs). However, there is currently debate over whether, or which of, the new plant breeding techniques (NPBTs) under development would be classified as producing GMOs and whether any exemptions might apply. Here, we examine whether the NPBTs collectively termed “geneediting” techniques, i.e. oligonucleotide directed mutagenesis (ODM) and site-directed nuclease (SDN) techniques fall into the classification of a GMO within the EU. The grounds for any possible exemption of GM plants developed through cisgenesis from the EU GMO regulations are also discussed.

STOP THESE SINISTER TRADE DEALS

TTIP and CETA are not yet defeated. Keep signing! The former ECI continues under the new name European Initiative... read more

https://stop-ttip.org/

7. October 2015

Stop TTIP applied to carry out an official European Citizens’ Initiative in July 2014. This application was rejected by the European Commission on really shaky legal grounds. We’re challenging this decision in the European Court of Justice (ECJ) but the case is still ungoing. We decided in early October 2014 not to wait for the ECJ but to start a self-organised ECI.

With the deadline for EU countries who wish to ban genetically GM crops drawing near, writes Oliver Tickell, Poland is the latest to register with the European Commission to go GM-free. Now the division of the EU into pro and anti-GM zones may test the single market beyond its limits.

Poland has just registered with the European Commission as an official GM-free zone. This makes it the tenth EU member state to opt out of cultivating genetically modified (GM) crops.

It joins France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Greece, Slovenia, Lithuania and Latvia in either filing the necessary papers with the Commission, or announcing their intention to do so.