Tag: Risk management

Natural GMOs Part 83: Natural biology comes with no guarantee of safety

Scanning electron micrograph of Escherichia coli, grown in culture and adhered to a cover slip: Image: National Institutes of Health (part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services)/Public domain. Natural GMOs can be really really bad and fundamentally unsafe, because Nature is not scrutinised by any human regulatory agency, and many natural GMOs…

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The lethal elephant in the room: Real risks in our food

Even as speculation about imaginary risks of GM foods continues, particularly among some organic sector enthusiasts, real food risks in the food chain remain unmanaged. Exposure of fresh vegetable produce to manure is a case in point. Pathogenic Escherichia coli are one of more frequent health dangers of fresh vegetables. These bacteria can be present…

Food

Major suspects for bee colony collapse disorder –namely insect viruses– are widespread among pollinating insects in general

GMOs have been blamed by anti-GM activists for bee colony collapse disorder. But there are other likely explanations for bee colony losses — including viruses that affect insects, and which spread in pollen. Consider this news on the topic: Public release date: 22-Dec-2010Public Library of ScienceMovement and threat of RNA viruses widespread in pollinator community…

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Choose meat and other foods by levels of microbial contamination? I’d like to see that!

Whole Foods safety sucks but they care …21.nov.10barfblogDoug Powellhttp://www.barfblog.com/blog/145226/10/11/21/whole-foods-safety-sucks-they-care-%E2%80%A6 I bought a turkey yesterday for Thursday’s Thanksgiving food orgy – 15 pounds at $0.68 per pound at Dillions supermarket in Manhattan (Kansas).We usually don’t go anywhere because the town is more serene with the students gone, and we host a dinner for various international stragglers…

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Managing the risks of GM salmon

Risk Assessment and Mitigation of AquAdvantage SalmonAnastasia BodnarAqua Bounty Technologies, Inc. has recently applied for deregulation of their AquAdvantage salmon-salmon that have been genetically engineered to grow faster than wild-type salmon. The salmon have the potential benefit of providing high-quality animal protein without putting additional pressure on declining wild fish stocks.

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Obsessive precaution leaves us with no choice but to defer to our fate.

Fear is key to irresponsibilityFrank Furedi From: The Australian October 09, 2010 12:00AM In a world rife with conspiracy theories, there’s little scope for human agency WHO decides our individual fate? How much of our future is influenced by the exercise of free will? Humanity’s destiny has been a subject of controversy since the beginning…

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Parents cannot weigh risks sensibly

Parents are poor risk assessors Parents are worried about all the wrong things when it comes to their children’s safety, Lisa Belkin writes in a New York Times column published Saturday. They constantly overestimate the danger of rare but highly publicized risks like school snipers, terrorists and strangers, when in fact the real risks to…

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Badly designed regulations lead to unnecessary deaths.

Regulation must be revolutionizedUnjustified and impractical legal requirements are stopping genetically engineeredcrops from saving millions from starvation and malnutrition, says Ingo Potrykus. Nature Volume 466 , July 29th 2010, page 561 The crop [Golden Rice] was stalled for more than ten years by the working conditions and requirements demanded by regulations (see ‘From bench to…

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