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News Messages |
| 29 June 2006 | | EFSA: New Initiatives to Enhance Teamwork with Member States | With the EU Environmental Council’s June 27th discussion on GMOs approaching, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) informed the Council in an open letter of its ongoing and future plans to foster cooperation with Member States regarding GMO safety assessments. EFSA’s strategy for cooperation contains three main elements.
First, EFSA intends to increase the involvement of Member States in its GMO risk assessments. For instance, EFSA will communicate to Member States more clearly about how Member States’ comments have been integrated into its official Opinions on GMO safety, as well as provide reasoned argumentation to Member States in cases where their comments are not taken on board.
Second, EFSA will seek more input from Member States regarding the further development of its scientific approach to risk assessment, particularly for long term risks involving toxicology, allergenicity, and environmental impact. For example, EFSA will invite more national scientific representatives to discuss an on-going EFSA project on animal feeding trials. In addition, Member State scientific experts will be invited to attend a scientific colloquium on environmental risk assessment of GMOs in early 2007.
Finally, EFSA is committed to engaging in more active dialogue with Member States. One of the ways of doing this mentioned in EFSA’s strategy is regularly repeating its successful GMO Forum meeting held in May 2006 every one or two years.
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| 26 June 2006 | | Indian Company Develops Home-grown Bt-Cotton | Field tests are now underway with India’s first home-grown Bt-cotton varieties. The Bangalore based biotech company Metahelix is set to release its own Bt-cotton lines resistant to a spectrum of insect pests and adapted to India’s local growing conditions.
All Bt-cotton currently grown in India possesses a Bt gene licensed by the US agrobiotech company Monsanto. When Indian farmers first began planting Bt-cotton, Monsanto was the only entity in India permitted to sell the biotech seed. Since then, Indian seed companies have obtained permission to use Monsanto’s Bt gene and produce hybrid seed better suited to India’s local conditions. Although this diversified the market, Monsanto still collects royalties from every bag of Bt seed sold. Bt-cotton from Metahelix uses a Bt gene developed in the company’s own labs, which will make it possible for Indian farmers to access Bt-cotton without having to answer to Monsanto. Metahelix plans to undercut competitors’ prices by 30 to 40 percent.
The ongoing field trials are investigating the effectiveness of the Bt mediated insect resistance, cotton fibre quality, and environmental biosafety. The cultivars are expected to be ready for commercial cultivation by 2007-2008.
India’s Bt-cotton production in 2005 covered 1.3 million hectares, or 15% of India’s total cotton crop. Although India possesses 25% of the world’s cotton growing area, it only yields 15% of the worldwide harvest. Losses due to insect pests are partially to blame. |
| 26 June 2006 | | Authorisation Sought for Fish Protein in Low-fat Ice Cream | The food company Unilever has sought permission from the UK’s Food Standards Agency to use a fish-derived protein as a novel ingredient in ice cream. The protein lowers the temperature at which ice crystals form and changes their shape and size. Already approved in the US and some other countries, the protein makes it possible to cut back on fat without compromising the ice cream’s texture.
The protein, known as an ice structuring protein, is derived from an eel-like pout fish adapted to the extremely cold waters of the northern Atlantic. Many fish, plants, and insects harbour ice structuring proteins to better withstand sub-zero temperatures.
Harvesting the protein from the fish itself would be unsustainable and prohibitively expensive. Therefore, Unilever isolated the gene responsible for making the protein and inserted it into yeast. The genetically modified yeast can produce the protein efficiently and at a reasonable cost. Unilever asserts that the final product does not contain GMOs, and the protein would amount to no more than 0.01 percent of the total weight of the ice cream.
Novel foods must undergo rigorous safety testing before being allowed on the market. In the UK, safety assessments are conducted by the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes (ACNFP), a committee of independent scientists appointed by the Food Standards Agency.
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| 20 June 2006 | | Majority of Europeans Believe Biotech Will Improve Quality of Life | The findings of a new Eurobarometer survey on the attitudes of Europeans toward biotechnology was presented in Brussels on Thursday. The study reveals that 52 percent of Europeans believe biotechnology will improve quality of life. The survey is touted as evidence that Europe isn’t in fact intrinsically hostile toward technological advancement, a notion often voiced by North American stakeholders.
Europeans generally support medical applications of biotechnology, also known as “red” biotechnology. Europeans are also in favour of using biotechnology to produce industrial enzymes and chemicals such as biodegradable plastics and biofuels, the so-called “white” biotechnology.
About half of Europeans were undecided on how they felt about the use of genetically engineered crops for food – or “green” biotechnology. Of the half with a decided opinion, there were slightly more who discouraged green biotechnology (58%) than supported it. European opinion on GMOs is roughly in line with Canadian views, but the public in the United States is clearly more optimistic about the safety and benefits of GM crops. In contrast to the situation with genetically engineered crops, Europeans are markedly more optimistic than Americans when it comes to the potential benefits of nanotechnology. |
| 08 June 2006 | | 17 New GMO Field Trials Approved in France for 2006 | French agricultural minister Dominique Bussereau authorised 17 new field trials with transgenic maize and tobacco on May 19th. The tests were deemed safe for environment and for public health by France’s Commission du Génie Biomoléculaire (Commission of Biomolecular Engineering).
Two of the field trials are on GM plants that produce pharmaceuticals, three are on GMOs with herbicide resistance, ten are for insect resistance, one is for enhanced drought tolerance, and one is for altered onset of flowering. The applications for the tests underwent a round of internet-mediated, public consultation from April 14th to May 5th on France’s inter-ministerial website on GMOs. The website logged 2,451 comments, the majority of which were in the form of a standard petition condemning the release of GMOs into the environment.
As is the case with the rest of Europe, far more field trials with GM plants were conducted in France in the late 90s than today. |
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May 2006
