The New Dark Age

The US Food and Drug Administration has greenlighted CRISPR gene-edited pigs, engineered to resist the respiratory virus known as porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, or PRRS, for consumption in the US. The virus thrives on intensive factory farms and kills piglets in the womb. The pigs were developed by the British company Genus. After the approval, the company’s stock value jumped up by a couple of hundred million dollars on the London Stock Exchange. According to Matt Culbertson, chief operating office of the Pig Improvement Company, a Genus subsidiary, the pigs appear entirely immune to more than 99% of the known versions of the PRRS virus, although there is one rare subtype that may break through the protection. Culbertson says gene-edited pork could appear in the US market sometime next year. He says the company does not think the meat will need to carry any label identifying it as GM. “We aren’t aware of any labelling requirement,” Culbertson says. MIT Technology Review (paywall)

A widespread narrative holds that tillage (ploughing) can increase greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by disturbing the soil and releasing stored carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, as well as increasing nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions. GMO proponents often claim that GM herbicide-tolerant corn and soy have enabled uptake of no-till or minimum-till farming, saving soil from erosion, increasing carbon sequestration in soil, reducing GHG emissions, and thus contributing positively to “regenerative” farming. But a new report from Friends of the Earth (FoE), Rethinking No-Till, refutes the widely held assumption that no-till automatically equals “regenerative”. Indeed, the report shows that not only does GMO-based no-till fail to solve the climate crisis, but it is part of the problem. The report also finds that most no-till systems are so heavily dependent on toxic herbicides to manage weeds that a staggering one-third of the US’s total annual pesticide use can be attributed to no- and minimum-till GM corn and soy production alone. The FoE report comes hot on the heels of a peer-reviewed study published in Nature Food, showing that GM crops have led to increased tillage and greenhouse gas emissions in US corn and soy. GMWatch