Tag Archives: GMOs

In Light of Big Mistakes Made by Developers of “Poster Child” GMO Products like Hornless Cattle and Golden Rice, FDA is Justified in Requiring Regulation

Earlier this month, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published its analysis of what has been touted as the “Poster Child” of gene-edited animals: cattle genetically engineered (GE) to prevent them from developing horns. As mentioned in an … Continue reading

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U.S. Grain Industry Believes USDA APHIS’s “New Proposed Rule [for regulating GMOs] Is Fundamentally Flawed”

I’ve got to give credit to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) for persistence. USDA APHIS has proposed new rules for regulating genetically engineered (GE) crop plants (AKA genetically modified organisms: GMOs) … Continue reading

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Golden Rice: Of Good Intentions, Insertional Mutants, Human Error, and the Need for Better Regulation of GMOs

After learning that the genetically engineered (GE) Golden Rice “event” being bred into varieties of rice favored by Indian farmers turned out to have a mutation—a mutation created as a result of the genetic engineering process itself (you can check … Continue reading

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Golden Rice Showcases Both the Potential Benefits and Potential Risks of Crop Genetic Engineering

It’s been nearly two years since a group of Nobel laureates published a letter supporting “Precision Agriculture (GMOs)” and, more specifically, Golden Rice, the genetic engineering project first embarked upon in the mid-1990’s to “reduce or eliminate much of the … Continue reading

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Update on “Extra DNA” and Other Problems with Crop Genetic Engineering

I received an email recently from a distinguished professor of plant sciences who encouraged me to update my knowledge of the “extra DNA” problem I mentioned in an article published in the January 2018 issue of Comstocks magazine. He sent me … Continue reading

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Monsanto, Henry Miller, and the FDA

I have been reading with interest various articles reporting on the trove of internal documents obtained from Monsanto during the discovery phase of a federal multidistrict litigation against that company that is currently pending in the United States. (The documents, … Continue reading

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Transparent Information about the GMO Ingredient(s) in the “Impossible Burger”

Have you heard about this new non-meat burger that—due to an ingredient produced in a genetically engineered (GE) yeast—has a taste and “blood” like what you would expect from the real thing? Or, since they are already commercially available for … Continue reading

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Scientific Uncertainty and Professional Ethics as Related to GMOs

Fred Gould, the chairman of the committee that produced the most recent National Academies report on GMOs, and I were invited to speak at the third and final NSF-funded workshop on the topic of “Scientific Uncertainty and Professional Ethics: Getting … Continue reading

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Would Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman Have Signed that GMO Letter?

From what I have read about him, I am pretty sure that Richard Feynman would not have signed the recent letter in which a large percentage of our living Nobel laureates urged Greenpeace to end its opposition to genetically modified organisms … Continue reading

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US Food Standard: Reasonable Certainty of No Harm

There seems to be some confusion among people I have interacted with recently as to whether the standard for food safety in the United States is one of “relative safety,” i.e. one that permits foods, food additives or foods with … Continue reading

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