2 July 2020 — GMWatch
Three of the UK’s largest GM campaigns – GM Freeze, Beyond GM and GMWatch – have joined together to oppose an amendment to the Agriculture Bill that would give the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs George Eustice, the power to change the definition of a GMO and re-classify many forms of gene editing as non-GM.
2 July 2020 — GMWatch
The amendment to the Agriculture Bill seeking to de-regulate gene-edited foods and crops should be discarded
An amendment has been tabled[1] in the UK House of Lords to the Agriculture Bill, seeking to change the definition of a genetically modified organism (GMO) in the UK’s Environmental Protection Act (1990) in order to exempt certain types of new genetic modification techniques, such as gene editing, from GMO regulations, within the context of “Agriculture Research”. This would mean that certain types of genetically modified organisms, including gene-edited ones, would escape safety checks and labelling. The Agriculture Bill will go to the committee stage in the House of Lords on 7 July.
26 June 2020 — GMWatch
One of France’s leading daily papers, Le Monde, just published an article on how “a group of toxicologists with tenuous expertise and veiled conflicts of interest are working to derail the implementation of European regulations” on endocrine disruptors – synthetic chemicals that are toxic at very low doses.
21 June 2020 — True Publica
This week marks four years of political acrimony in the guise of Brexit – the most divisive and toxic ideology to hit Britain since the Second World War. Having reached nothing more than a negotiated stalemate with the EU, the likelihood is that Britain will inextricably tie itself to a form of Atlantasism that will do irreversible harm to the British way of life. This is the ultimate desire of American born Boris Johnson and the shadowy and largely undisclosed free-market fundamentalists that support him. And as each day counts down and the dawn of 2021 approaches many will wonder how Britain ended up sacrificing itself to a dying financial doctrine and become a de facto playground for wealthy foreign asset strippers.
28 May 2020 — Beyond GM
by Pat Thomas and Lawrence Woodward
MPs, peers and the research establishment are urging the government to introduce genome editing into UK food and farming by sidestepping parliamentary and public scrutiny.
7 April 2020 — GMWatch
Indigenous knowledge has a lot to teach us about global pandemics
EXCERPT: Indigenous societies… are based on worldviews where human needs are balanced with the needs of other life forms. This worldview inherently acknowledges the constraints of an ecosystem, the essence of sustainability. When the integrity of an ecosystem is guarded, the integrity and very existence of human communities are guarded as well. In a philosophical system that respects other life forms as relatives, an ethic of respect, responsibility and reciprocity automatically follows, mediated by reverence. This is the opposite of the vulgar, endless extraction of resources for short-term economic gain.
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13 March 2020 — Colin Todhunter
Colin Todhunter
3 March 2020 — GMWatch
Judging from the high number of media articles drawing attention to the post-Brexit threat of the US’s GM foods invading British supermarket shelves, it’s clear that the GM food issue is far from dead in the UK. It appears that it was only “sleeping” due to the fact that EU labelling and risk assessment requirements for GMOs, combined with public resistance, have mostly kept GM ingredients from going directly into human food for over two decades.
27 February 2020 — Global Research
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was launched in 2000 and has $46.8 billion in assets (December 2018). It is the largest charitable foundation in the world and distributes more aid for global health than any government. One of the foundation’s stated goals is to globally enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty.
18 February 2020 — Sustainablepulse.com
7 February 2020 — Colin Todhunter
This month, India’s Supreme Court will hold a lengthy hearing on the commercialisation of genetically modified (GM) mustard, which would be the country’s first GM food crop. The court has asked the chair of the Technical Expert Committee to be present and says that the decision on GM mustard cannot be kept pending. The TEC has come out against using genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in Indian agriculture.
GM seeds and GM food carry great risks for all nations, so much so that for many reasons it is probably imperative these foods be banned outright. This subject is too large to be discussed here, but one aspect requires brief notice. If we were to ask about the origin of GM seeds, how the idea was conceived and developed, who did the research and who provided the funding, how would we reply? We might reasonably suggest that perhaps the concept originated in the Biology or Agricultural Department of some university, or that a government lab doing research on food supplies might have conceived and pursued the idea. Or, we might suggest a private company in the agricultural field was looking for more productive varieties of grains and stumbled on this process.
