Synthetic Biology and Stem Cells Combined to Make the World’s First “BioTractor”

Bob Parrott

Washington, DC: Is the much-anticipated new bio-economy finally here? After years of false starts and dashed hopes that question might just have been answered at a joint press conference today. In the presence of celebrated sequencer of the human genome, Craig Venter and Agriculture secretary Vilsack representing the Federal Government, Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant, announced what he called the end of the hype and the beginning of a new reality.
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The AquaBounty Salmon: Will the World’s First Commercial GE Animal Be an Albatross?

Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson (Photo Credit: Yodod)

Is it unrealistic to expect the scientific approval process for the world’s first commercial genetically engineered (GE) animal, the AquAdvantage salmon, to be rigorous and complete? Or for the applicant to present experiments that fully meet regulatory expectations? If you expect these things, it seems, you expect too much. Despite the biotech industry’s “dedication to rigorous science-based risk assessment”, the science of the AquAdvantage salmon is full of holes. Its maker, AquaBounty Technologies, has failed to provide key data on which the safety assessment process depends.

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Transgenic High-Lysine Corn LY038 Withdrawn After EU Raises Safety Questions

Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson

A Monsanto/Cargill joint venture has quietly withdrawn its application for high-lysine transgenic corn after EU regulators on the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) GMO panel raised questions about its safety for human consumption.

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Welsh Farmer’s Defiance of GMO ‘Ban’ Not So Defiant After All

Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson

An investigation by Welsh trading standards officers into the claims of a farmer to have contravened Welsh GMO-Free status has concluded there was no evidence that he grew GMO maize.
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US Crop Yield Increases Owe Little to Biotechnology

Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson

The latest advertising campaign from Monsanto claims that already its “advanced seeds… significantly increase crop yields…”, while since the mid-1990s the biotechnology industry has consistently proposed that higher yielding genetically engineered crops will be necessary to feed the world.
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Roundup Ready 2 Yield as much as Conventional Soybeans?

Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson

Gore Vidal once wrote that “I told you so,” was the most satisfying sentence in the English language. If so, then the imminent launch of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybean line is going to provide a lot of satisfaction, though not to supporters of Monsanto. The role of the new glyphosate-resistant line (insertion event MON88978) in the following story is to provide a single, but highly significant, new data point.

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