According to a GMO-boosterish article in the Telegraph, “Britain’s first genetically-edited (GE) foods will be on supermarket shelves in the new year as a result of Brexit freedoms. Crops which have been genetically edited to be tastier, longer-lasting and healthier will now be legally sold in England for the first time under the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023.”The article says that among these products are “bread with less cancer-causing chemicals, longer-lasting strawberries and bananas, sweeter tasting lettuce and disease-resistant potatoes”. What it doesn’t say is that not only are hardly any of them ready for commercialisation, but none of them are necessary or even desirable. They certainly won’t provide any better solution to our food and farming problems than the non-GM solutions already available. GMWatch

Are genetically engineered foods safe? In an interview with Stacy Malkan of US Right to Know, the leading molecular genetics expert Prof Michael Antoniou discusses the scientific evidence behind health concerns tied to GM corn and pesticides, how GMOs are changing in ways that increase health risks, and how regulatory systems have failed to keep pace with modern genetics. Prof Antoniou has studied for more than 35 years how genes function and how they are disrupted. His decades of rigorous independent research into the risks of GM foods and glyphosate-based herbicides have raised serious concerns about the safety of these technologies. In a report he prepared for the Mexican government, as the country attempted to restrict GMO corn imports for health reasons, Prof Antoniou cited “a large body of evidence from well-controlled laboratory animal toxicity studies that show evidence of harm to multiple physiological systems” from toxic agents found in GM corn. US Right to Know, via GMWatch