Tag Archives: Regulation of GMOs

Edible Vaccines Against COVID-19? Another Case of Genetic Engineering Déjà vu

Recent reports indicate that plant scientists in Mexico and Canada are working to produce “edible” vaccines against COVID-19.  But the idea that fruits or veggies could be genetically engineered (GE) to produce edible vaccines that could be easily shipped, stored … Continue reading

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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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Gene Editing’s Extra DNA Problem: Déjà Vu All Over Again

UC Davis researcher Alison Van Eenennaam described the experience of learning that the “poster animals for the gene-editing revolution” do not, after all, comprise the “same outcome [that] could be achieved by breeding in the farmyard,” like she and her collaborators … 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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New Salk Institute Study Reveals More Detailed Picture of “Scrambled Nature” of Gene Insertions in GMOs

Plant molecular biologists have known for decades that the techniques they use to genetically engineer plants are error prone and can result in GMOs with unintended: mutations in host plant genes, insertion of vector backbone DNA sequences, small duplications or … Continue reading

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Food Evolution Film Neglects to Mention Important Facts…Like Glyphosate is a Probable Human Carcinogen

The film Food Evolution, despite being narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson, has been called “a slick piece of GMO propaganda” by Marion Nestle, a prominent nutrition scientist at NYU who was interviewed for it. In response to Nestle’s tweet on … 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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The Good News About the Bad Effort in Congress to Thwart GMO Labeling by States

The Editorial Board of The New York Times declared a few days ago that it “is a bad idea” for the United States Senate to join the United States House of Representatives in trying “to make it harder for consumers to … Continue reading

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GMOs: All Facts, No Fiction

I participated in two panel discussions on genetic engineering called “GMOs: All Facts, No Fiction” that were sponsored by the University of California’s Global Food Initiative in 2015. One was held at UC Davis on November 3rd and the other … Continue reading

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Is FDA “Regulation” of GE Foods Legal?

Today marks twenty years–to the day–since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) first pronounced a “whole food produced by biotechnology,” Calgene’s Flavr Savr™ tomato, “as safe as tomatoes bred by conventional means.” FDA’s announcement “was accompanied by a new … Continue reading

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