Biotechnology // Current TV

Seeds and sustainability: Maize Pathways in Kenya

This short film from the STEPS Centre brings together an engaging cast of characters... more

stepscentre
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6 months ago
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In at the birth of biotech investment

Biology has replaced chemistry as the primary science behind drug discovery: how did... more

littlemissdebbie
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6 months ago
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Article: DARPA Builds First Bio-Engineering Factory

turning the 'building bricks' of nature into a factory process where your... more

frankpatton
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7 months ago
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Ancient body clock discovered that helps to keep all living things on time

The mechanism that controls the internal 24-hour clock of all forms of life from human... more

JRBarilla
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1 year ago
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Lose a Gene, Re-grow a Limb ..

Genetic Manipulation in the near future could mean understaning how to develop... more

EddieStarr
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1 year ago
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GLOBAL POLITICAL AWAKENING: Shamanism is the Technology of the Spirit

A little known fact is one of the greatest breakthroughs in 20th century medical... more

GLOBALPOLITICAL
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1 year ago
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F.D.A. No Labels For Genetically-Modified Salmon

As the Food and Drug Administration considers whether to approve genetically modified... more

The_Global_Report
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1 year ago
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Bacteria can 'smell' their environment, research shows

Research has shown that bacteria - among the simplest life forms on Earth - have a... more

GoldenHeart
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1 year ago
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Judge's ruling uproots use of biotechnology beets

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE (AP) SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge has revoked the... more

JackHerer
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1 year ago
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Algae, the next big source of green energy

In a laboratory where almost all the test tubes look green, the tools of modern... more

GoldenHeart
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1 year ago
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BBC News - 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists

Two edged sword. Both exciting and scary.

BrushwithDeathToothpaste
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1 year ago
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Don't Panic, Go Organic-And Feed The World

Be not troubled by Robert Paarlberg's scaremongering. Organic practices can feed the world -- better, in fact, than wasteful industrial farming.

In May 2004, Catherine Badgley, an evolutionary biology professor at the University of Michigan, took her students on a research trip to an organic farm near their campus. Standing on the acre-and-a-half farm, Badgley asked the farmer, Rob MacKercher, how much food he produces annually. "Twenty-seven tons," he said. Badgley did the quick math: That's enough to provide 150 families one pound of produce every single day of the year.

"If he can grow that quantity on this tiny parcel," Badgley wondered, "why can't organic agriculture feed the world?" That question was the genesis of a multi-year, multidisciplinary study to explore whether we could, indeed, feed the world with organic, sustainable methods of farming. The results? A resounding yes.

Unfortunately, you don't hear about this study, or others with similar findings, in "Attention Whole Foods Shoppers," Robert Paarlberg's defense of industrial agriculture in the new issue of Foreign Policy. Instead, organic agriculture, according to Paarlberg, is an "elite preoccupation," a "trendy cause" for "purist circles." Sure, sidling up to a Whole Foods in your Lexus SUV and spending $24.99 on artisan fromage may be the trappings of a privileged foodie, but there's an SUV-sized difference between obsessing about the texture of your goat cheese and arguing for a more sustainable food system. Despite Paarlberg's pronouncements, Badgley's research, along with much more evidence, helps us see that what's best for the planet and for people -- especially small-scale farmers who are the hungriest among us -- is a food system based on agroecological practices. What's more, Paarlberg's impressive-sounding statistics veil the true human and ecological cost we are paying with industrial agriculture.

Since most of us aren't well-versed in the minutia of this debate, we can't be blamed for falling for Paarlberg's scaremongering, which suggests that by rejecting biotech and industrial agriculture, we are keeping developing countries underdeveloped and undernourished. Paarlberg suggests that we could eliminate starvation across the continent of Africa were it not that "efforts to deliver such essentials have been undercut by deeply misguided ... advocacy against agricultural modernization."

It's a compelling argument, and one industry defenders make all the time. For who among us would want to think we're starving the poor by pushing for sustainability? (At a Biotechnology Industry Organization conference I attended in 2005, a workshop participant even suggested pro-organic advocates should be "tried for crimes against humanity.")

But the argument for industrial agriculture and biotechnology is built on a misleading depiction of what organic agriculture is, bolstered with shaky statistics, and constructed by ignoring the on-the-ground lessons of success stories across the globe.

continuedBe not troubled by Robert Paarlberg's scaremongering. Organic practices can feed... more

JanforGore
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1 year ago
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Taking Stock After Gene Patents Are Invalidated - NYTimes.com

Many biotechnology stocks fell on Tuesday as investors struggled to understand the... more

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1 year ago
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Vatican’s Perspective on GMO: Signaling Winds of Change?

While the Vatican’s semi-official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, recently reported that the Church has no official position on the practice of modifying the genes of produce, it appears that change may be in the air for Pope’s inner circle. The hope is that the appointment of Cardinal Peter Turkson in January as the head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace to replace the notably pro-GMO Cardinal Renato Martino would usher in a more cautionary perspective about GMOs from the Vatican.

The L’Osservatore Romano comments concerning the alleged neutrality of the Holy See’s were made shortly after the European Commission approved for commercial cultivation Amflora, a genetically modified starchy potato. Amflora, produced by the largest chemical company in the world, BASF, is currently only approved for starch production, not human consumption, but the leftover skins will be fed to cattle. It will used for industrial purposes like paper and yarn production and making spray concrete.

The controversy surrounding Amflora is that the potato contains a gene that is resistant to antibiotics including kanamycin, neomycin, butirosin, and gentamicin. When antibiotic resistance is making frequent headlines, the European Commission’s approval, and BASF’s cultivation of such crop, is, in the eyes of many, irresponsible.

Despite the Vatican’s alleged neutrality, GMO Journal, which has previously expressed an opinion that reverberations from the Pope’s inner circle suggest a pro-GMO stance, hopes that the recent appointment of Cardinal Turkson signals that the Vatican is ready to confront the GMO debate with greater objectivity and less willingness to blindly repeat the industry jingles of needing GMOs to save the world from hunger.

In fact, unlike his predecessor Cardinal Martino, as the new head of Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Turkson would urge an attitude of caution and further study of the possible negative effects of genetically engineered organisms.

Continue reading: http://gmo-journal.com/index.php/2010/03/30/vaticans-perspective-on-gmo-signaling-winds-of-change/While the Vatican’s semi-official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano,... more

GMOJournal
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1 year ago
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Seeds Of Life: Hybrids and the Emergence of Seed Monopolies

Throughout much of agriculture, a remarkable span of 10,000 years, farmers were... more

JanforGore
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1 year ago
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1 comment

GMOs contaminate the world- and no one here cares

Ever felt that the approval of GM crops and foods by GM 'regulators' across... more

JanforGore
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2 years ago
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Hopkins JayStreet Journal brings scientific entrepreneurship and good writing together

You've heard of The Wall Street Journal. Now Baltimore has the JayStreet Journal?... more

greekmaria
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2 years ago
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Monsanto GMOs Linked To Organ Failure

The website Food Freedom reports that researchers, in what is being described as the... more

The_Global_Report
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2 years ago
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4 comments

Help STOP GE trees in 2010

As we ring in the New Year, I am writing to give you a quick update about the progress... more

JanforGore
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2 years ago
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4 comments

Biotechnology 'No Sure Fix' for World's Nitrogen Fertilizer Pollution Problem, New Report Finds

Traditional Breeding and Ecological Practices Show More Promise in Curbing Nitrogen Overload

WASHINGTON (December 9, 2009) – After more than a decade of effort, the biotechnology industry has yet to produce any commercial crops engineered to reduce nitrogen fertilizer pollution, while traditional breeding and other methods have improved the nitrogen use efficiency of wheat, rice, and corn by about 20 percent to 40 percent, according to a report released today by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

"Nitrogen pollution is among the world's worst environmental problems," said Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist in UCS's Food and Environment program and author of the report. "A number of very promising solutions have begun addressing the problem, but so far genetic engineering has yet to make a contribution."

Plants, including commodity farm crops, need large amounts of nitrogen to thrive and grow. Soils often do not contain enough nitrogen for plants to attain optimal productivity, but many farmers apply far more synthetic nitrogen fertilizer to their soils than what the plants can use. More than half of the nitrogen fertilizer applied on U.S. farms, for instance, is not absorbed by crops, and much of it becomes a pollutant.

Nitrogen pollution causes harm in multiple ways. Chemical fertilizers from farms, for example, are the largest contributor to the Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone"—an area the size of Connecticut and Delaware combined where excess nutrients indirectly rob the region of oxygen, making it uninhabitable for commercially valuable fish and other marine life for much of the year. In addition, nitrogen in the form of nitrate can seep into drinking water and become a health risk, especially to pregnant women and children. Nitrogen entering the air as ammonia, meanwhile, contributes to smog, respiratory diseases and acid rain, which damages forests and other habitats.

Nitrogen overuse in agriculture also is the largest domestic, human-caused source of nitrous oxide, a global warming gas that is nearly 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, agricultural soil management accounts for two-thirds of the nation's human-induced nitrous oxide emissions.

One solution to the nitrogen overload problem is to develop crops that use nitrogen more efficiently, which would reduce the amount of nitrogen fertilizer farmers apply to their fields. Traditional breeding methods have already proven successful at doing this. Meanwhile, the biotechnology industry has identified genes that have the potential to reduce nitrogen pollution and have tested them in laboratories and field trials, but none are commercially available. The UCS report, "No Sure Fix: Prospects for Reducing Nitrogen Fertilizer Pollution through Genetic Engineering," evaluated the new genes and concluded that the prospects for their commercial use are uncertain due to the complexity of nitrogen metabolism and genetics in crops.

The report documents a number of practices that can complement nitrogen-efficient crops in reducing nitrogen fertilizer pollution. Precision farming, for instance, times fertilizer applications to match crop growth, which reduces the amount of nitrogen applied to fields. Farmers also can grow cover crops—plants grown between cash crop growing seasons—to protect the soil, add organic nitrogen and other nutrients, and remove excess nitrogen. Even if genetically engineered crops were commercially viable, they would not be able to reduce the large amount of nitrogen pollution that occurs when farmers are not growing cash crops.Traditional Breeding and Ecological Practices Show More Promise in Curbing Nitrogen... more

JanforGore
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2 years ago
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