Articles

The inaugural harvest of genetically modified salmon began this week after the pandemic delayed the sale of the first such altered animal to be cleared for human consumption in the United States, company officials said.

Several tons of salmon, engineered by biotech company AquaBounty Technologies Inc., will now head to restaurants and away-from-home dining services—where labeling as genetically engineered is not required—in the Midwest and along the East Coast, company CEO Sylvia Wulf said.

Thus far, the only customer to announce it is selling the salmon is Samuels and Son Seafood, a Philadelphia-based seafood distributor.

AquaBounty has raised its faster-growing salmon at an indoor aquaculture farm in Albany, Indiana. The fish are genetically modified to grow twice as fast as wild salmon, reaching market size—8 to 12 pounds (3.6 to 5.4 kilograms)—in 18 months rather than 36.

Leading EU supermarkets such as Aldi, Rewe and Lidl say that all products stemming from new genetic engineering methods such as CRISPR/Cas, TALENs and others, must be classified as GMOs.

The "Retailers' Resolution against Deregulating New GMOs" demands protection for "Non-GMO“ and organic products. All GMOs on plates and fields should remain strictly regulated in the EU; the precautionary principle and labelling must not be undermined

In a statement published today, "Retailers' Resolution: European retailers take a strong stand against deregulating new GMOs", leading companies of the European food retail sector, among them major international brands as well as numerous national and organic retailers, demand that the proven-effective regulation of GMOs on the European market be maintained. This applies to products of "old genetic engineering" (primarily soy, maize, rapeseed) as well as to those produced with "new genetic engineering" methods such as CRISPR or TALEN.

Calling on the Japanese Government to Strictly Regulate All Gene-edited Organisms

22 May 2021

Consumers Union of Japan

22 May is the International Day of Biodiversity, established by the United Nations. Although this day should be a day to celebrate the abundance of nature, in May this year, the free distribution of gene-edited tomato seedlings has begun in Japan, threatening biodiversity. In addition, gene-edited rice and potatoes are being grown on a trial basis, and there is even a new move to approve fish developed in this way.

Agrifood related social controversies tend to involve scientific issues and advocacy groups increasingly turn to citizen science (CS), participatory data taking by regular people, to produce health and environmental data. A common assumption is that CS’s value lies in the data produced, and its volume and quality decide its persuasive power. This article describes participatory monitoring of genetically engineered rapeseed (canola) in Japan to suggest that social movements can leverage CS not only for the production of scientific data but also as occasions for recruitment, political awareness-raising, and collaboration with other civic organizations. The article proposes a new framework for understanding CS–social movement relations that is multi-actor (vs. expert–laypeople dyad); process-oriented (vs. product/data-oriented); and long-term (vs. one-shot and isolated data taking). There is an increasing awareness of the diversity of CS. Even those that are led by grassroots organizations have multiple and shifting uses of data and foster varying political subjectivity among participants. The proposed framework helps to understand the dynamics that shape such heterogeneous pathways of CS.

Gene editing could revolutionise agriculture, with some scientists promising healthier and more productive crops and animals, but will consumers want to eat them?

With the first gene edited crops recently approved for sale, Emily Thomas hears why this technology might be quicker, cheaper and more accurate than the older genetic engineering techniques that produced GMOs, and asks whether these differences could make it more acceptable to a deeply sceptical, even fearful public.

Contributors:

Jennifer Kuzma, North Carolina State University;

Hiroshi Ezura, University of Tsukuba and Sanatech Seed;

Neth Daño, ETC Group;

Philippe Dumont, Calyxt

Episode 1 | What’s Going on with New GMOs?

What are new GMOs? How do they differ from old GMOs? What are the EU latest developments on the matter? We asked three experts to answer these questions and many more:

Elisa D’Aloisio, peasant farmer at the European Coordination Via Campesina with a PhD in genetics and practical expertise in GMOs

Martin Sommer, policy coordinator at IFOAM Organics Europe, the association for organic food and farming in Europe

Madeleine Coste, Policy Officer at Slow Food Europe

The Organic Cotton Accelerator (OCA) has released the Non-GM Cottonseed Production Guidelines to safeguard the integrity of the entire Indian organic cotton value chain from seed to shirt. These guidelines aim to create a standardised industry approach for the production of non-genetically engineered (non-GM) seed marketed to organic cotton growers.

Led by OCA, these guidelines have been developed in consultation with sector experts and via field pilots at three Indian seed producers. They are now made available to producers of non-GM cottonseed who want to implement solid practices to monitor and prevent GMO presence along their seed supply chain, OCA said in a press release.

Trade union Unite is urging caution over moves by both the UK and the EU to relax rules governing the commercial use of gene editing in agriculture.

China and the United States have found common cause in exerting influence at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. Global food production could be permanently changed.

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During that visit, Chinese and US officials negotiated what appears to be a gentleman’s agreement that would allow the two countries to work together in FAO. That understanding appears to have been built on a common economic interest of the two countries, namely the continued expansion of commercial technologies in animal and crop health, including pesticides and pest-resistant genetically modified (GM) crops, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia—regions adversely affected by the fall armyworm but in which the application of these technologies is still relatively low. In other words, areas that represent large potential markets for agricultural technologies.

The mainly Western corporations producing these technologies, with robust support from the US Agency for International Development, have long lobbied to move commercial agricultural practices such as pesticides and GM crops into Sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the developing world now alarmed by the arrival of the fall armyworm. At the same time, there are clear signals that China intends to compete against the West, with hopes to dominate those markets.