A look at GMO policies in different nations

In the debate surrounding GMOs, a statement that is often made is that many countries have banned transgenic crops, which suggests that they are not safe. Here’s an example from the Non-GMO Project’s website:

“Most developed nations do not consider GMOs to be safe. In more than 60 countries around the world, including Australia, Japan, and all of the countries in the European Union, there are significant restrictions or outright bans on the production and sale of GMOs.”

All countries have laws and regulations surrounding biotech crops, including the United States, which is why you can’t develop a transgenic crop and have it sold in stores the following season. Very few countries have an outright ban, where GMOs can neither be grown nor imported. According to GMOAnswers.com, only Kenya falls in this category, but I also found that Peru has a 10-year ban on the use and import of GMO seeds.
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The European Union’s opposition to GM crops has nothing to do with safety

Written by Alexander Huszagh

Two years ago, a woman in a classroom with me muttered “isn’t that a good thing?” about the ban on the cultivation and importation of most genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the European Union (EU), “it protects EU citizens, right?”
“Nope, the ban on GMOs merely allows the EU to act as an autonomous region through its politics of food security. The EU set up the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in part for food security, and the ban on GMOs is but an excuse to ban foreign imports and prevent dependency on foreign seed manufacturers in order to maintain the EU’s agricultural self-sufficiency,” my professor for my course on the development and politics of the EU responded. Continue reading “The European Union’s opposition to GM crops has nothing to do with safety” →

Food Crises and Technological Phobia

Image of farms brown from the 2012 U.S. drought. Credit: Theresa L Wysocki. — 2012 U.S. drought, credit: Theresa L Wysocki.

Drought across the United States has reduced substantially the expected yield of corn and soybean fields for the fall 2012 U.S. harvests. With reduced yield, prices have risen rapidly for these crops that are widely-used food and feed ingredients, huge international agricultural trade commodities, and important food aid essentials. With the price increases, persons around the world have expressed concerns that a situation similar to 2008 is about to occur. In 2008, high food prices led to social, economic, and political instability – hunger, export restrictions, riots, and the overthrow of governments.
In light of these concerns, commentators have expressed varying opinions about appropriate actions to prevent a 2008 food crisis from coming again in 2012 or 2013. Several commentators, including the FAO Director General and twenty-six United States Senators, urged the United States to waive its Renewable Fuel Standard that results in about 40% of U.S. corn being used for biofuel (ethanol) production. (Soybean, to a much lesser amount, is also used for biodiesel). Other commentators, including the Holy See’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva and several food aid NGOs, have expressed concern about commodity speculators. What these commentators have in common is a plea that the United States take actions to place food above fuel as the priority usage for its reduced crops.
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41 Swedish plant scientists speak out against harmful EU regulation of modern plant genetics

Quasi-science prevents an environmentally friendly agriculture and forestry

(see original blog post here)
European legislation in the field of genetic engineering is so narrow that it blocks the ability of researchers to take progress from publicly funded basic research on plants through to practical applications. We, 41 scientists who have received funding for basic research on plants from the Swedish Research Council, urge politicians and environmental groups to take the necessary steps to change the relevant legislation so that all available knowledge can be used to develop sustainable agricultural and forest industries.
One of the “Grand Challenges” facing mankind is to find ways to provide food, fuel and clean water to a burgeoning population using agricultural and forestry practices that are environmentally and economically sustainable. Research on plants has made tremendous progress and we now understand well how plants grow, how they protect themselves against disease and environmental stress and what factors limit production in agriculture and forestry. The prerequisite for progress has been basic research, especially studies of plant genes.

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The EFSA is doing traceback of E. coli contaminated fenugreek seeds imported into the EU. Preston and Tribe do traceback with plagiarised junk science.

The European food safety authority is currently tracing the sources and distribution of allegedly deadly E. coli contaminated fenugreek seeds originating in Egypt which have been implicated in several different outbreaks of severe pathogenic E. coli infections occurring these last weeks in Germany, France, and Sweden (see several other recent GMO Pundit Posts).

To quote from the European food safety authority’s website:
Continue reading “The EFSA is doing traceback of E. coli contaminated fenugreek seeds imported into the EU. Preston and Tribe do traceback with plagiarised junk science.” →

Real progress on EU E. coli outbreak: An Egyptian fenugreek seed source to European food disaster?

European Food Safety agency EFSA has traced the food chains from the seed sprout associated E. coli food illness in the EU that has killed 48 people. The evidence is pointing to imported Egyptian fenugreek seeds at this moment in the investigation. CIDRAP provide a good commentary on this, reposted here**.

The problem may be invalid seed sanitisation and seed supplier auditing.
If this common source of contamination is confirmed, it would demonstrate that all of the following are true:
1) Organic* seed sanitisation procedures at the farm linked to the German outbreak are faulty and unsafe.
2) Quality and safety standards for seed supplies used at the same organic farm are inadequate.
and
3) Legal standards for farm food safety compliance in Germany are faulty.

Egyptian fenugreek seeds suspected in E coli outbreak**

Lisa Schnirring Staff Writer
Jun 29, 2011 (CIDRAP News) – New trace-back investigations in German and French Escherichia coli outbreaks are pointing to two lots of fenugreek seeds that were imported from Egypt, according to the latest threat assessment from European officials.
Continue reading “Real progress on EU E. coli outbreak: An Egyptian fenugreek seed source to European food disaster?” →

First they banned irradiation of foods, then GMOs, now they are starting on nanotechnology — all life-saving technologies.

Nanotechnology Now – Press Release: “Nanostructured water treatment products to be worth $2.2 billion in 2015”

Warnings from nutritional hell, with apologies to El Bosco

We live in a world where whole organisations make comfortable incomes by demonising technology. These self-styled “technology critics” early successes included active blocking of the use of irradiation to make food safe or years. This largely unused technology is based on using electrons or radioactively generated gamma rays to kill germs.
Eleven years ago the German government vetoed the use of such radiation based technology to make food safe to eat in the EU. Odd that they should do this given that it’s a widely used and successful tool to avoid deadly infections during modern surgical operations. It could have prevented the ghastly current E. coli sproutbreak in Germany that has killed 44 and has condemned near 900 people to coping with the vile aftermath of HUS — which include kidney transplants or a lifetime of being hooked to dialysis machines. [It could also have prevented a second outbreak of sprout promoted lethal disease from the same E. coli strain now taking place in France.]
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Worried about deliberate introduction of the German E. coli germ? Please read this.

Different EAEC and STpEAEC (E. coli) bacterial chromosomes and mini-chromosomes compared with one-another, with evolutionary changes highlighted by gaps (Kat Holt)

(Updated 21-06-2011] Enough information is now emerging from the frantic work of the DNA sequencing teams and the crowdsourced intense detective work by bioinformatics experts (all mentioned in several previous posts at this site) to assemble a broad picture of how the German outbreak germ has evolved in recent years in terms of changes to its overall chromosome structure.
The bottom line is this: the strain is roughly 75% conservative genes and 25% radical genes. It’s the newly arrived radicals that do the damage.
Kat Holt has presented in very visual terms her analysis of all the DNA decoding made public by several life-science workers and various corporations in Germany, USA, China, France and Britain. She has just made this available at backpathgenomics blog. Her latest work summarises DNA decoding data obtained on four different bacterial strains. It is similar to the picture sketched out by the BGI sequencing group when they released their fully analysed DNA data recently — but much easier for most people to understand because of the colourful graphics. One of her graphics is displayed above, but there are more detailed larger scale pixs of the individual chromosomes at her blog.
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More about how the EHEC germ may get transmitted in plant material such as seeds

It is widely known that pathogenic E. coli germs have ability to survive inside fresh vegetable produce such as spinach, lettuce and sprouts, where they are protected against disinfection. This ability may be a key factor explaining the transmission of the E. coli strain in the dreadful (and still ongoing) German outbreak.

A new article has just come out dissecting how related EHEC E. coli bacteria attach to plant surfaces. They have remarkable complex adhesion abilities that enable the deadly microbes to persist inside plant tissue cavities and on plant surfaces. These consist of various different surface protein hooks that are given names like pili, curli, and flagella.

Although we know that EHEC and EAEC bacteria are a bit different to one another, this new work on EHEC E. coli teaches us a lot about the possible routes of transmission of the German HUS germ– for example through seeds.

A scientific summary on the mechanisms of the EHEC germ attachment to plants is given below. The paper provides access to the latest research on this topic.

(The term STpEAEC which means Shigatoxin producing EAEC is now being used to describe the German outbreak strain; see previous GMO Pundit post for the latest news about STpEAEC)

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Genetic family trees show the German outbreak of E coli is a member of small family of germs called EAEC — that includes an African germ — and is distinct from EHECs

The latest news is that the German outbreak strain of Escherichia coli is a member of small family of germs called EAEC that includes an African member (Ec55989 ). This family is clearly distinct from classical EHEC (=STEC) bacteria such as E. coli O157:H7. The Pundit will now start calling them EAEC/STEC recombinant or hybrid germs, or alternatively Shigatoxin production EAECs.

Family tree for E. coli using genome sequence data.

Just hours back, as part of an astonishingly fast international crowdsourcing effort, Konrad Paszkiewicz from University of Exeter and Kat Holt University of Melbourne have taken great advantage of genome data kindly and very wisely freely made available to the scientific community by the several E. coli genome sequencing groups. Konrad and Kat have just now completed a preliminary family tree for the germs based on relevant genetic point mutation changes in the “genome backbone” genes.

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