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Greenpeace has a campaign to convince Nestlé to ban genetically modified crops from their products in India. They have an auto-letter set up that has been sent 25,808 times (as of 2:40pm Central time). That includes my letter which I sent through their site urging Nestlé to stand up against fearmongering. I’ve since sent a second letter thanking them for being strong through the Nestlé India contact form. I’m guessing that Greenpeace opted to The USDA Report by Cyndi Barmore, The Unexplored Potential of Organic-Biotech Production, has recently been pulled from the USDA website. This is the USDA’s explanation: “On May 26, 2009, the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) posted a Global Agriculture Information Network (GAIN) report titled, “The Unexplored Potential of Organic-Biotech Production.” This report should have been accompanied by a clear statement that the report does not represent the policy of the United States Government, and given this, the report has been removed from the agency’s Web site. It should be noted that USDA’s National Organic Program regulations exclude the use of genetically engineered organisms in organic production. Additionally, FAS has no role in the administration of the National Organic Program.” It turns out that there was a resounding negative response from certain organizations that do not like genetic engineering – and the very thought of organic + biotech is disconcerting. It led to a pile of emails sent in the USDA’s direction. The Organic Consumer’s Association told a whopper when they first heard about it:
Continue reading… I just upgraded Biofortified’s WordPress system, and it appears that the Features Gallery employed by the site theme is not functioning. I know how to fix it, but that will involve replacing the theme with a rewritten one. This might take me about a week to write it and test it out. In the meantime, the blog is going to look a little different with one post featured at the top instead of the It seems that now there is a lot more time for people to register and vote in the Changemakers “GMO Risk or Rescue” contest, or enter for that matter. Today the deadline for entering the contest has been extended by 40 days to October 21st, and voting will continue until the 28th of October. It seems that I might get some more competition entering the contest, but also more opportunity to convince people to |
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No risk assessment for sugar beets?
Often, risks of transgenic plants are made to appear larger than they are, and often risks aren’t put into context. There are always exceptions, of course. Sometimes, risks are underevaluated inappropriately. Thankfully, the USDA’s deregulation process has ways to involve stakeholders such that there are safety controls. It’s not a perfect system, but it seems to work. The latest example regards sugar beets in Oregon.
There is a large valley on the West side of Oregon named Willamette Valley (shown in green on the map). The valley is heavily agricultural in between all of those highways, and is where a lot of sugar beets, table beets, and chard are grown for seed (according to Organic Seed Alliance). Because these seeds are used all over the country, it’s important to have genotypic integrity.
This seed is even more sensitive because lot of it is organic. Farmers who buy the seed and eventually sell the beet roots as organic need to have them GM free, especially with the advent of new voluntary testing and labeling of products by the Non-GMO Project (which I discuss in Labeling GMOs).
According to the Organic Seed Alliance’s post Judge White’s Decision: USDA-APHIS Violated National Environmental Policy Act in deregulation of RR sugarbeets and Judge overturns approval of Roundup Ready beets from the Associated Press, USDA/APHIS failed to consider transgene flow to seed production fields in Willamette Valley in their environmental risk assessment. When I first read about this, I was shocked! How could the USDA release this transgenic plant before considering the impact!? Then, I did some research.
Continue reading…