A single food seed can be as tiny as a grain of sand. Yet many say the fate of the entire organic industry rests upon our efforts to protect the integrity of these small, but vital agricultural inputs.
Genetically modified food gets consumed by billions of people across the globe. Please do what this incredible young man did and find out how your food is prepared before supporting a product. If an 11-year-old is brave enough to stand up and talk about this, then the rest of us have no excuse.
The African Centre for Biosafety (ACB) is outraged that several food products, including baby cereal, maize meal consumed as a staple, a renown and heavily promoted dietary supplement for active sports people and wheat free cereal, have tested positive for GM- yet are all unlabelled.
Greenpeace announced in Brussels recently that annual industry figures to be released early next week are expected to confirm the commercial failure of genetically modified (GM) food in Europe.
The European Parliament today voted to strengthen a draft EU law giving member states a new right to ban genetically modified (GM) crops from being grown in their territories.
Greenpeace welcomes this positive outcome, but warns that national bans are no substitute for thorough safety testing at EU level.
Greenpeace EU agriculture policy adviser Stefanie Hundsdorfer said: 'The European Parliament today added real punch to draft laws to protect our farms and food. But let's not forget that GM contamination doesn't respect borders. National bans are no substitute for thorough safety testing at a European level, something the EU is failing to do so far.
On the day of the release of annual industry-sponsored figures, a new report from Friends of the Earth International reveals that the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops across Europe continues to decline ' with an increasing number of national bans, and decreasing numbers of hectares dedicated to GMOs [1].
All South Africans need to act urgently and immediately to the proposed regulations in the Consumer Protection Act (CPA) governing the labelling of Genetically Modified (GM) food. The regulations are weak and undermine the consumer's right to know and consumer choice, while addressing the needs of big business instead.
The spraying of glyphosate herbicide on genetically modified (GM) Roundup Ready soya is coming under fire in Argentina from scientists and residents, who say it causes health problems and environmental damage. GM soya is genetically engineered to tolerate spraying with glyphosate, the most common formulation of which is Roundup®. The Roundup Ready gene enables the farmer to spray the herbicide liberally onto the field, killing weeds but allowing the crop to grow on.
In the last four months, South Africa has dumped almost 300,000 metric tons of genetically modified (GM) maize onto Kenya, Mozambique and Swaziland. According to a paper released by the African Centre for Biosafety (ACB) titled "A Good neighbour? South Africa forcing GM maize onto African markets and policy makers", these are the first documented cases of commodity exports of GMOs from South Africa to the rest of the African continent, and set a worrying precedent. Even Kenya, which is of vital strategic importance to the biotech industry in Africa, and where the vast majority of the GM maize ended up, severely lacks the capacity to ensure the safe handling and monitoring of such a huge volume.
South Africa is the only country in Africa that has allowed the genetic modification of food crops to date and the only country in the world to have allowed the modification of a staple food - maize. Great numbers of consumers around the world have rejected GM food because it is not labeled as such in shops, and its effects are unpredictable.
