Tag Archives: Science

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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Disappointment in the First 25 Years of GMO Foods

The world’s first, commercially available GMO (genetically modified organism) created for human or animal food was first sold in U.S. grocery stores twenty-five years ago today. I can still remember the excitement my colleagues and I at Calgene, Inc. felt as … Continue reading

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UC Professors Weigh in on Glyphosate (AKA Roundup) and Carcinogenicity

Glyphosate, the “most widely used herbicide in the world,” is in the news a lot lately, largely because the first of thousands of lawsuits, filed by folks who used Monsanto’s Roundup (or other glyphosate-based herbicide products) for decades–who assumed it was … 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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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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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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The Products of GE Technology Must be Assessed for Safety on a Case-By-Case Basis

Mark Lynas was at it again in an opinion piece in The New York Times last week, making claims once more about a so-called “worldwide scientific consensus on the safety of genetic engineering,” and calling those 17 countries in Europe … Continue reading

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Time To Talk “Conflicts of Interest” In Relation to GMOs

Scientific conflicts of interest have been in the news a lot lately. For example, a federal judge recently ruled that various members of the FDA’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee had conflicts of interest and, consequently, the chairman and three … Continue reading

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