by Anastasia on 20 January 2011 Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has some pretty complicated problems facing his Department. On the one hand, he has biotech companies developing products that have been determined by science to be safe and many farmers who wish to use them. On the other hand, he has a small but growing group of organic farmers who claim that biotech crops will “destroy their ability to farm organically”. He’s looking for coexistence between both types of farmers.
At this time, coexistence between organic and conventional farms is worked out individually by neighbors. On a national scale, organic groups have initiated multiple lawsuits against the USDA in what some say are blatant attempts to prevent biotech crops from being grown at all (sugar beets, alfalfa).
In an effort to solve the problem, a creative potential solution has been devised – partial deregulation of biotech alfalfa. This would “include isolation standards from other crops, set geographic restrictions on where the crop is grown, spell out harvest periods and regulate equipment use,” writes Charles Abbott on Check Biotech.
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by Kevin Folta on 14 September 2010 The last talk of the IHC2010 session on transgenic plants and public policy was Dr. Carmen Popescu. Her first words hit me in the chest like a sledge hammer and I’ll save them for the conclusion of this entry. Dr. Popescu is a scientist in Romania, working at one of the country’s several crop testing laboratories. The information herein is paraphrased from her presentation.
First let’s talk about Romania. I’m no expert, but I’ve hosted Romanian scientists in my lab. It is a country and people trying to join the highly industrialized nations of the world. There is a desire to move from the historical challenges of being a former Eastern Bloc nation into a modern economic power. Right now a sagging economy is weighing heavily on the country and impairing their ascent.
Until recently, one of their strengths was agriculture, and one of their major crops was potato. In particular, they used Bt-producing transgenic potato to resist attack of the Colorado Beetle, a beetle clearly out of its jurisdiction in Romania. Switching to Bt potato saved $10 million USD a year for farmers, $4 million in insecticides and $6 million in their application. Here transgenic technology made the farmer more competitive and helped Romania grow as a food exporter.
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by Karl Haro von Mogel on 18 December 2009 This was a pleasant surprise in my news feed. Israel Deladem Agorsor, in the department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology at the University of Cape Coast in Ghana just published a column on GE crops and the future of African Agriculture. The debates on Genetically modified organisms at crossroads: Which way for Africa? Africa is busy trying to catch up to the developed world in order to feed itself on into the future, and genetic engineering is a contentious topic over there. Perhaps nowhere else in the world is it as touchy of an issue, for a variety of reasons that Agorsor details. Is Africa embracing biotechnology an inevitability, welcome or not? Will it help with adaptations to climate change?
Here is a good excerpt:
Now, here we are at the crossroads with what looks like a monkey business, confronted with a choice as to whether to go east or west, as to whether to embrace or ignore plant genetic engineering and GMOs.
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by Guest Posts on 10 November 2009 By Rob Hebert
Consumer advocacy groups are a strange animal. It seems that for every influential lobbying group with a senator’s ear, there are hundreds or thousands with only vague mission statements and no clear agenda for attaining their stated goals. I once spent a summer working for the latter type. A hallmark of this kind of crew is the use of the petition (bonus points if it’s online and has been circulating for more than a year). Issue-specific petitions almost never work when directed at agencies; they are often unsophisticated (in a legal sense) and rife with ambiguous language and emotional rhetoric. If I were more cynical, I might point out the possibility that many people in charge of these groups are aware of their petitions’ minuscule chances for success and instead use them to gin up controversy and interest in their cause, which is always a great way to get a few email addresses or financial contributions–some petitions even have a convenient donate button right next to where you “sign” your name!
 A quick google search for “gm labeling petition” pulls up, well, more petitions than I really care to count. Most make seemingly modest demands about the “right to know,” consumer education, and truth in advertising. Is that an accurate view of the debate: Consumer education versus corporate secrecy? Truth is, the legal reality is a little more complex than these petitions would seem to indicate. Below, I’ve written a short synopsis of the government’s current stance on GMO labeling. It’s written for people without any legal training, so it’s only a sketch. I’ve also listed a few helpful resources at the bottom for anyone who wants to dig a little deeper. This is exclusively about U.S. law, but in future posts, I’ll discuss recent developments in the biotech laws of Canada, the European Union, and Japan.
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Terminator 2: My Mission is to Protect You
“Terminator” technology, also referred to as “Suicide Seeds,” are marketing terms coined by GE opponents to reframe what is technically called Genetic Use Restriction Technology, or GURT. This technology can take several forms, the most widely discussed one was developed by scientists working at the USDA and the Delta and Land Pine company, which is now owned by Monsanto. It works by means of three engineered genes, that when brought together in one plant, they act in combination to halt the development of embryos in the seeds the plant produces. The result is a plant that produces food as normal, but does not produce fertile seeds.
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