by Karl Haro von Mogel on 25 August 2010 For more genetically engineered goodness!
For almost a year we have been anticipating this. It was one of the specific items that I brought up during the Changemakers contest as to why we needed the grant money. I’m talking, of course, about the ability to syndicate feeds from contributor’s blogs – but not only that – to have it automatic, hands-free, and self-formatting for this blog. Like many a layperson might be able to imagine a genetically engineered plant that they would not know how to transform, setting up this capability was beyond the coding abilities of the geneticists editing this blog. I for one, have learned about html and php through fiddling as a geneticist might make a mutation and study its downstream effects. Although the metaphor may seem backwards, it makes perfect sense to me to see lines of computer code as if they were analogous to genes and not the other way around.  But like many genes in a genome database, there’s no easy annotation for special features for blog plugins that don’t yet exist. Rather than wait for natural variation to give something for bloggers to select for, we had to call on the help of an intelligent designer to produce it ex nihilo.
Charles Johnson created the highly versatile plugin, FeedWordPress, which allows you to subscribe to feeds on other blogs to import their posts into your own. It was perfect for a group blog like Biofortified with authors that already have their own blogs to manage, except it imported the whole post without any pleasing front-page breaks. I got in touch with Charles and he agreed to
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by Anastasia B on 25 August 2010 Roundup Ready sugar beets have been back in the news due to the decision by Judge White to revoke approval. As I understand it, the USDA conduced an Environmental Assessment for Roundup Ready sugar beets but did not conduct an Environmental Impact Statement. According to regulation, an EA is sufficient if potential harm is found to be minimal, but an EIS is needed for anything that is less well understood, such as a new trait (and this is hardly a new trait). After reading the EA, I agree with the USDA that the potential environmental harm is minimal, and I think the potential economic harm is minimal as well, due to some very specific characteristics of beet biology, which I’ll explain in this post, followed by a discussion of mitigation strategies that might be used to control gene flow in beets (sorry, folks, this is going to be another long one).
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by Anastasia B on 23 August 2010 We’ve talked about high fructose corn syrup many times here at Biofortified. There’s a lot of subjects to be considered, including whether we should be growing so much corn in the first place. The biggest concern about HFCS, though, judging by popular magazines and websites, is health. People are worried that corn syrup is worse for us than other sugar sources, which has resulted in the latest marketing scheme of switching corn syrup for other sugars so products can be labeled “HFCS Free”.
Does changing the sugar actually make the product healthier? Unfortunately, no. Because HFCS is sweeter than cane or beet sugar, more calories of sugar have to be added to achieve the same level of sweetness. The only thing that would make a product healthier is to reduce overall sugar content. This is especially true because cane and beet sugar as well as other caloric sweeteners all contain fructose, which has been correlated with or directly connected with a variety of health problems.
Over at Science-Based Medicine, Dr. Jim Laidler (an accomplished physician turned researcher) has written High Fructose Corn Syrup: Tasty Toxin or Slandered Sweetener? It’s a very informative post, one that anyone with concerns about HFCS should read and share! He concludes that fructose is something to be concerned about, but that’s only part of the story:
For people who are worried about their health or their children’s health — and who isn’t, these days — the data suggest that the best choice is to reduce intake of all sweeteners containing fructose. That includes not only the evil HFCS, but also natural cane sugar, molasses (which is just impure cane sugar), brown sugar (ditto) and honey. Even “unsweetened” (no added sugar) fruit juices need to be considered when limiting your family’s fructose intake.
Finally, the best nutritional advice is to eat everything in moderation — and that includes sweets. While a diet high in fructose may increase your risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease — maybe — a fructose-free diet is not guaranteed toprevent those diseases. Eat a variety of foods, including a small amount of sweets, get enough exercise, watch your (and your children’s) weight and see your doctor for regular health check-ups.
And stop worrying that HFCS is poisoning you and your children.
by Anastasia B on 19 August 2010 We’ve discussed labeling many times at Biofortified, usually looking at things from a practical perspective, such as in the posts What’s in a label? and Labeling GMOs. I argue that anything that is scientifically proven to be a hazard should be a mandatory label. For example, a label that a product contains nuts is justified by severe allergic reactions, even though the additional label may add to the cost of a product for people who don’t have allergies. Any label that doesn’t have a proven hazard is simply a label of preference, so should not be mandatory. Instead, voluntary labels are appropriate. For example, producers may choose to label products as free from animal products if they think the cost of sourcing non-animal ingredients, testing, and labeling will be rewarded by additional purchases of their products by vegetarians and vegans. Non-vegetarians shouldn’t have to pay for a label is based on preference, not science.
Practical concerns are not the only reason to label or not label foods, however. Ethics definitely comes into play. Do people have a right to labels, such as labels that indicate a product contains ingredients derived from genetically modified organisms?
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by David Tribe on 16 August 2010 From GMO Pundit.
French protesters destroy biotech grapevines – Taiwan News Online
Item via Associated Press
2010-08-15 11:48 PM
Associated Press are reporting that Protesters have destroyed vines of genetically modified grapes at a government research site in eastern France.
The item says that the security chief for the Haut-Rhin region, Jean-Christophe Bertrand said that 50 people were detained after the incident Sunday morning.
Government ministers for the environment, agriculture and research condemned the “intentional destruction” at the National Institute for Agronomic Research in Colmar.
Research on the biotech vines poses no risk to health or the environment, and was meant in part to study a virus that damages grapevines.
French environmental vandals have routinely destroyed fields of genetically modified crops.
This post was syndicated from GMO Pundit. You may comment below or on the original entry.
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