Articles

Industrial livestock are responsible for a ‘huge’ environmental footprint. But alternative proteins aren’t necessarily the silver bullet solution they have been billed as, food systems specialists at International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) warn. FoodNavigator asks what role alternative proteins can play in repairing the broken food system.

Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) are proposing to exempt many new genetically engineered (genetically modified or GM) foods and seeds from regulation. If approved, the proposals would remove government oversight of many new genetically modified organisms (GMOs) produced through the new genetic engineering techniques of genome editing (also called gene editing), with no foreign DNA. Corporations would determine the safety of their own products. Take action to stop the release of unregulated, unidentified GMOs.

The EU GMO safety rules are under threat. Big chemical and seed corporations are pushing the EU to allow new genetically modified organisms (GMOs) onto the market without safety tests, monitoring nor consumer labeling. These companies have been lobbying the European Commission for years to exclude new GMOs from the European GMO regulation, making unsubstantiated claims on the supposed benefits for sustainability. But as they also hold patents on the seeds engineered with these techniques, their true motivation remains to increase their profits. Such an industry takeover of seeds would seriously threaten farmers’ seed autonomy and agricultural biodiversity as a whole. Following industry pressure, the European Commission is now taking the first steps to deregulate new GMOs.

Save Our Seeds Programme is a series of training meetings for young activists, educators, artists, local and national leaders of formal organizations and informal movements, experienced campaigners, agroecological farmers, breeders, scientists, philosophers and seed savers.

The programme will be divided into two parts – the public-open part, streamed online for a wider public and a closed part – an online workshop programme for our collective of activists.

The young activists interested in joining the collective will undergo an application process. All EU nationals between 16 and 30 years can apply by filling out THIS FORM till 10.04.2022.

CRISPR gene editing creates a "mess" in the cattle's cellular makeup, but the FDA thinks it doesn't matter. Report: Claire Robinson

US regulators at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have cleared the way for the sale of beef from gene-edited "slick-haired" cattle after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concluded the animals do not raise any safety concerns.

German brewery was involved in ‘beer monopolies’

Recent patent research by No Patents on Seeds! shows that the European Patent Office (EPO) is about to grant Carlsberg (EP1727905) another patent on beer and barley. Currently, an increasing number of patent applications are being filed for conventionally-bred barley and the beer brewed thereof. Besides Carlsberg, CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation), based in Australia, is especially active in this area. The largest German brewery, Radeberger, is also among the stakeholders who showed interest in using patented barley.

New report from CBAN (Canada) and Testbiotech (Germany)

In the European Union and Canada, there are ongoing debates about deregulating organisms derived from methods of new genetic engineering (New GE, also called genome editing or new genomic techniques). Proposals to exempt genome editing from government regulation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) largely rest on assumptions about similarities between genome editing and conventional plant breeding that are not supported by scientific findings. These assumptions have led to the impression that there are no new and specific risks caused by New GE as compared to conventional breeding.

Possibly due to the high price, sales of genome-edited tomatoes are not doing too well, and the developer Sanatech Seed and the manufacturer Pioneer Ecoscience decided to distribute seedlings free of charge to welfare facilities for the elderly and the disabled as well as elementary schools. The opposition movement against this distribution is gathering strength. On January 27, the OK Seed Project, which started self-labeling seeds and seedlings to make it possible to identify them as non-genome-edited crops, held a press conference to announce that it had collected signatures from people opposing the free distribution and submitted them to the two companies and other organizations. The 9,195 signatures were sent to governors, superintendents of schools, and disability welfare departments across the country and it was also reported that the lobbying of municipalities is strengthening.

In order to tackle the grave threat of the biodiversity crisis, the EU will table a proposal for targets for the reduction of pesticide use. This has put the pesticide industry into survival mode. A newly leaked document from pesticides lobby group CropLife Europe shows that while it talks a big talk about backing the Green Deal, in reality it is employing a wide variety of lobbying tactics to undermine ambitious, binding targets.

The pesticide industry's toxic lobbying tactics against Farm to Fork

In order to tackle the grave threat of the biodiversity crisis, the EU will table a proposal for targets for the reduction of pesticide use. This has put the pesticide industry into survival mode. A new leaked document from pesticides lobby group CropLife Europe shows that while it talks a big talk about backing the Green Deal, in reality it is employing a wide variety of lobbying tactics to undermine ambitious, binding targets.