Why vaccination by potato got chopped
New Scientist, February 19, 2005 (Online)

One of the first human trials of an edible vaccine produced promising results. But the vaccine, a potato engineered to produce a hepatitis B protein, has been abandoned because of fears that "pharm" crops could be mixed up with normal produce.
The idea of edible vaccines like this was to enable developing countries to produce cheap vaccines that could be stored without refrigerators. But enthusiasm has cooled because of fears that vaccine-laden fruit and veg might be confused with normal produce, with potentially dangerous consequences.
So the team that developed the vaccine axed the project two years ago. Instead, it is switching to producing vaccines in non-food plants such as Nicotiana benthamiana, a relative of tobacco. The idea is to immunise people by giving them pills containing the preserved, ground-up leaves of the plants.
Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/032005/01.html

Biotech withering as a food source?
USA Today, February 2, 2005 (USA)

After years of significant growth, the number of biotech crops in the regulatory pipeline has plummeted, says a report out today from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a group that supports a cautious approach to biotechnology.
CSPI says it takes twice as long today for such crops to be approved by the government than it did in the 1990s. Both the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture approve each biotech variety.
The FDA approved an average of 9.4 varieties a year between 1995 and 1999 but only three per year from 2000 to 2004, CSPI found. The USDA approved 8.2 per year from 1994 and 1999 but only 2.6 per year from 2000 to 2004.
"It's been our experience that there was a decrease in the number of submissions to FDA for a number of years following the initial wave of products," says Jim Maryanski, the FDA's food biotech coordinator.
Most [US] soy, cotton and canola is biotech, as is almost half of the field corn. But in those four crops, only two genetic traits have been added - herbicide resistance and a built-in pesticide. Though engineering large-commodity crops made economic sense, experts say the process is too expensive to do in so-called minor crops.
Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/032005/02.html

American food aid in Southern Africa
Food Policy 29, December 2004 (Online)

The inclusion of genetically modified maize in food aid shipments to Southern Africa during the 2002 food crisis rekindled debates over agricultural biotechnology. By situating the decision to send GM maize to Southern Africa in the context of US-European debates over agricultural biotechnology it becomes clear that the promotion of biotechnology has nothing to do with ending hunger in the region, the author notes. This paper argues that US food aid policy following the 2002 crisis was intended to promote the adoption of biotech crops in Southern Africa, expanding the market access and control of transnational corporations and undermining local smallholder production thereby fostering greater food insecurity.
Research News:http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/032005/03.html

Biology's new forbidden fruit
Op-Ed by Oliver Morton, NY Times, February 11, 2005 (USA)

Biologists tend to assume that their studies are inherently, if indirectly, beneficial; that knowing how life works is the foundation of all medical progress, and thus a pursuit that deserves more or less unquestioning support from society at large. The potential for interrupting and subverting life that flows from biological research rarely receives their attention.
The scientific, commercial and destructive possibilities of this [GE] biology are easily as great as those once offered by the transformation of chemistry. But they will make themselves felt far more quickly, raising ethical and moral questions that many biologists have been poorly trained to handle.
There has been some discussion of how the dangers inherent in this technology can be contained. But the small group of people thinking about the issue has reached no consensus. At this stage, the most important thing to do is to widen that discussion. The best basis for oversight is a concerned citizenry that wants to keep up with what is possible and discuss what is desirable. But to spur such debates in the wider public, biologists will have to become more willing to think and talk about the ever more powerful technologies that they increasingly take for granted in the lab.
Suggested ways of spreading this awareness range from a Hippocratic oath for researchers to more and better courses in ethics and history. As in so much education about danger, though, the best results will come from intense conversations with peers. These concerns need to be the drivers of late-night bull sessions as much as they need to be on the syllabus.
Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/032005/04.html

UN agency accused of distributing GM foods
Inter Press Services, February 17, 2005 (USA)

Environmentalists in Central America have accused the World Food Programme (WFP) of distributing GM food in this region, including one kind of corn that has never been approved for human consumption.
Genetic ID, an independent US laboratory, analysed over 50 samples of food aid and imports from these six countries, and detected the presence of GM organisms in more than 80 percent of them, including all of the food aid samples.
The activists also said the laboratory tests confirmed that WFP food aid handed out in Guatemala contained StarLink, a GM variety of corn that has never been authorised for human consumption. [It] was found in human food products in the US in 2000, leading to supermarket recalls.
Alejandro López with the WFP regional office for Latin America rejected allegations that the food aid distributed by the UN agency poses any threat to the health of the beneficiaries. With respect to the distribution of GM food products, López said the WFP does not carry out DNA testing.
Mario Godínez, who represents Friends of the Earth-Guatemala, said it is "not acceptable" for food aid to contain corn that is not authorised for human consumption.
"Finding StarLink four years after it was banned clearly shows that GM foods are not under control," he added.
Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/032005/05.html

Email blast puts heat on GM beans
NZ Herald, February 8, 2005 (New Zealand)

GE-Free New Zealand organiser Jon Carapiet spotted the words "genetically modified" in the small print of the ingredients list on American-made Stagg's Vegetable Garden Four-Bean Chilli last month.
Yesterday the Australasian general manager of the United States-based importer Hormel Foods, Scott Martin, said that he had received 1000 emails from "Green Party supporters" asking him to withdraw the product, and he was considering doing so. "Americans are about as laissez-faire about GM as you can get, and Australians are somewhere in between, but New Zealand is just the country, like Sweden, that's taken its cleanness to heart. I can understand that."
He said the GM corn made up only 4 per cent of the product and was forced on the company because most American corn was now modified to withstand Monsanto weedkillers.
Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/032005/06.html

Ban endures on terminator seeds
IPS, February 11, 2005 (Canada)

An international moratorium on the use of controversial "terminator technology" in GE crops survived efforts to overturn it at a United Nations interim meeting on the Convention on Biological Diversity in Bangkok Friday.
The Canadian government initiated the move to lift the de-facto moratorium and allow testing and commercialisation of the GE technology that makes seeds sterile.
Leaked Canadian government documents obtained by ETC, a Canadian-based NGO, state that negotiators were instructed to "block consensus" on any other option.
However, African countries, Austria, Switzerland, Peru and the Philippines strongly objected to Canada's proposal, and on the final day of meetings were successful in keeping the moratorium in place, he says. The precautionary moratorium was first instituted in 1998 over fears about the impact on agricultural biodiversity, farmers' ability to save seeds, and the risk of "sterilisation genes" ending up in wild plants.
Canada's National Farmer's Union (NFU) was upset to learn that their country wanted to overturn the moratorium. In a letter to the country's prime minister, they said the terminator technology is "the most controversial and immoral agricultural application of GE to date". Terry Pugh, NFU executive secretary: "First they unleash this contamination problem on us and then they say this (GURTs) is the solution?"
Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/032005/07.html

Chicken producer phases out GM feed
ABC Rural News, February 14, 2005 (Australia)

One of the nation's largest chicken meat producers, Bartter-Steggles, says phasing out GM feed shouldn't increase the price of chicken. Bartter-Steggles is one of three companies which have agreed to source non-GM feed, to satisfy consumer perceptions that GM-free is better. Chairman Peter Bartter says the company has found an overseas port which can segregate GM soy beans from non-GM beans. "So while we can buy soy beans at the same price, we should do it."
Full item: http://www.GEinfo.org.nz/032005/08.html