GM-free Scotland

May 2008

• PR-generated illusions
  Were we being a bit too glib when we dismissed GM safety questions as “simply unasked”, or the GM production of drugs and plastics as taking up too much land space? If you think so, here are some more questions and answers for you.
• Finding the question to every answer
  Looking back over the questions raised by the GM answers, we consider what the useful, more practical, questions should be.
• Catering establishments must declare GM foods
  Last year we reported a survey carried out in York and North Yorkshire which revealed that up to 25% of independent caterers were using GM cooking oil without making its presence known to customers. The exercise has now been repeated in Norfolk where Trading Standards Officers found 42% of caterers were using GM vegetable oil or mayonnaise without the legally required declaration.
• GM spin at odds with the evidence
  In April The Soil Association released a report on the state of play of GM crops in the world. The contents of the report won't come as a surprise to anyone who has been following the GM issue. What is more interesting is what else has been happening.

 

April 2008

• More on Irina Ermakova and the review in Nature Biotechnology
  A leading science journal recently introduced its own novel version of the accepted process of peer-evaluation of scientific work. In a departure from the norm, four scientists with no experience of toxicology, animal behavioural testing, animal feeding or reproductive studies, conspired to prepare a criticism of an unpublished experiment on the effects of a GM-soya-containing maternal diet on rat offspring.
• Musings on an infant science
  A self-selected panel of reviewers who examined a very disturbing report of a study on rats whose mothers had been fed GM soya made some very valid comments. However, their criticisms about the adequacy of the experimental design are, unfortunately not unusual in the infant science of GM safety.
• Irinia Ermakova and a case of tabloid science?
  In September, 2007, a 'FEATURE' appeared in the scientific journal, Nature Biotechnology, entitled “GM soybeans and health safety – a controversy reexamined”. Since very few readers of this journal would have heard of this 'controversy', it served to draw wide attention among the biotech scientific community to a study which could simply have been ignored.
• Islands that have become GM-free zones
  Islands have an inherent level of autonomy in some respects, but are often connected to a mainland mother country and are always bound to world affairs. Have you ever considered what advantages, and disadvantages, there might be to an island in dealing with the global tidal wave of GM commercialisation?
• The profitability equation of GM crops
  In the face of consumer rejection, plus the huge R & D costs, plus farmer disadvantage from contractual obligations, the seed premiums and the necessary high chemical inputs, making a profit from selling biotech seeds must present something of a challenge.
• The problem with the grain trade
  Next in line to the handful of biotech companies producing GM seed for the world, is a handful of grain-trading companies who control the global supplies of GM seed.
• The truth about enzymes
  The global enzyme market is growing at 8% per year, and is forecast to be worth almost $1.2 billion by 2011. The food enzyme industry constitutes about 23% of the total. In case you never realised that enzymes were so important to your world, it's worth noting that these have become a vital part of the modern (processed) food supply.
• "Synthetic biology" poses new risks
  A whole new field of science has emerged in the form of “synthetic biology”. This apparent contradiction in terms has been dubbed 'Synthia'. The Royal Society describes it as a departure from traditional biology which sought to find out how life works.

March 2008

• Industrial IMOs
  What are IMOs? Find out what you should know about them.
• The dangers of DNA transfer are unknown
  There is only one predictable thing about transgenic organisms: they will change with time. However, the way in which they will change is entirely unpredictable. We take another look at the concept of gene transfer and some of the implications.
• Lessons from the pharmaceutical industry
  Lessons from the pharmaceutical industry show us how GM foods could be given every opportunity to cause us harm.
• The scientific straightjacket
  Reflection on the changing culture of science and commentary on the context in which scientists now work.
• Rice contamination still a problem
  In 2006, a flurry of contamination scares started when nearly 20% of long-grain rice from America was found to be contaminated with an illegal GM strain. Before the dust had settled on the first one, more GM rice contamination was discovered in US and Chinese rice.
• Real breakthroughs not GM
  While the biotech industry struggles with GM promises that no one else believes in, there are other new crops on the horizon which don't make the news but are much more interesting.



February 2008

• Laws insufficient to protect consumers
  Despite insufficient information on safety and lack of consumer support, the government seems to be engaged in a four-pronged attack to force GM onto an unwilling people.
• Lack of evidence on safety of GM foods
  How can people make an 'informed choice' when the evidence on which to base the choice is just not there? How can we have an 'intelligent, practical and science-based debate' when the evidence is just not there? We review the lack of evidence on the safety of GM foods.
• New York rocked by food safety scare!
  In the middle of the presidential election-fever, New York has been rocked by a food safety scare: high levels of mercury have been found in sushi sold in Manhattan stores and restaurants. Apparently, sushi is such a staple in the New York diet that the entire city has panicked.
• New gene interference technologies
  Far from being a few genes sitting in a sea of 'junk' DNA, the genome science is now uncovering is a plethora of different types of DNA with different functions.
• National discussion on food - have your say
  The Scottish Government wants YOUR VIEWS on the future of food in Scotland. Find out how to have your say.



January 2008

• More questions over safety of GM animal feed
  In response to concerns about the human health effects of GM materials now widespread in animal feed, our food regulators have issued assurances that “safety assessments” have been carried out and all is well. We take a further look at some of the evidence.
• Who's liable in a GM-shaped world?
  We take another look at some more of the claims made by the biotech companies, the questions they raise and the lack of evidence to back up those claims. Two further Early Day Motions are open for your MP to sign.
• Silent invasion
  The alarming extent of the 'Silent Invasion' of our food chain by GM material hidden in animal feed was revealed by the Soil Association at the end of 2007. Ask your MP to sign the Early Day Motion on GM animal feed.
• Push-polling opinions
  Democracy EU-style seems to involve using the internet to create an illusion of informing and consulting the people, without really doing either. Overseas, governments are resorting to push-polling their people in an effort to 'prove' that GM crops are now becoming acceptable.
• Democracy direct
  Are taxes being used by the European Commission to fund thinly concealed industry-friendly propaganda? We take a look at a public consultation no one is told about, or can understand even if they do manage to get hold of it?
• EDM 425
  Increasing personal attacks on scientists who voice reservations about the safety of genetic transformation, and attacks on GM-concern groups have prompted an Early Day Motion drawing attention to the worst examples.
• Scottish Minister backs EU calls for rejection of GM maize varieties
  Cultivation of biotech crops in Europe is under an unprecedented, and possibly devastating, threat. EU Environment Commissioner, Stavros Dimas, has called for a rejection of the first two GM crop varieties to be considered for growing here since 1998. This call has been backed by the Scottish Minister for the Environment.



December 2007

• GM science and free speech
  Science of publishable quality is time-consuming and expensive. Acceptance by journals also requires full disclosure of the materials used. None of these is attractive to industry and so it seems to have been allowed to develop a habit of undermining the cornerstones with a system of its own.
• Bt toxins and their impacts - an ongoing issue
  GM sceptics have long doubted industry claims of the safety of the Bt-toxins, now widely inserted into biotech crops.
• GM sugar in US shops from 2008
  For those of you with a sweet tooth, watch out for US products containing sugar. American Crystal and several other leading US sugar providers have announced they will be sourcing their sugar from GM 'Roundup Ready' sugar beet. This will arrive, unlabelled, in the stores over there in 2008.
• Brazilian farm workers defend traditional, sustainable agri-knowledge
  An anti-GM protester was shot dead and seven others seriously injured in Brazil during an action to draw attention to the experimental production of GM seed which they claim is illegal in their country.



November 2007



• GM in the media - news or propaganda?
  PPM Alert! Or in other words, are we being treated to a little "public perception management"? Find out how GM has been treated recently in the UK papers.
• Terminator technology - what it really means
  A Green Party spokesman has no doubt about the implications of Terminator technology: it is “allowing big biotech firms to potentially develop an obscene level of control on the world's food supply”. Find out more.
• Wormier and wormier
  Read this article to find out why GM-free Scotland featured so many "wormy" articles in November '07.
• Wormy reasons
  An experiment carried out on a single small farm to examine the farm-to-fork agronomic and consumers considerations for three different crops accompanied by an exhaustive PR drive seems a huge effort to put in. Especially when you consider the tiny amount of generally useful knowledge likely to be gained by it. Yet, support was obtained from the Canadian Government, the biotech industry and commercial interests for just such a study, and, the resulting paper was published in a top scientific journal.
• A wormy cornerstone
  A comment on science as we know it.
• A wormy government
  The legal threats to free speech in Ireland and in England prompted a number of representations to the Canadian Government to take responsibility for the undemocratic actions of its employees.
• Slapp on free speech
  Yet another fascinating update on the "wormy sweetcorn" story.
• Misconceived worms
  An article re-visiting and updating on the "wormy sweetcorn" article we first posted in 2006.



October 2007



• Participatory democracy
  In January 2005, Greenpeace published a landmark report, “No market for GM labelled food in Europe”. This described a virtual shut-down of the EU market for identifiable GM food.
• The end of the illegal LL rice story
  The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced the conclusion of its investigation into last year's contamination of American long-grain rice by two illegal, genetically engineered strains.
• Morgellons
  A very strange disease seems to be sweeping the globe. It has been nick-named 'Morgellons disease' by the mother of a two-year-old boy who started to complain that he had 'bugs' on his lips.
• GM pie 'n' a pint
  Trading Standards Officers in York and North Yorkshire have recently taken time out to visit cafes, takeaways, pubs, restaurants and hotels to establish the extent to which GM-sourced oils for cooking were being used, and whether the public was being informed.
• The non-gm ball
  A short update on the current GM situation in the Scotland.
• Frog-skin wine
  No GM grapes have yet been commercialised. However, there are lots in the pipeline, and the Institute of Science in Society predicts a “small deluge” of releases any time now.



September 2007



• One big Indian mess
  The latest reports coming out of India indicate a fresh wave of GM cotton crop disasters. The Punjab Agricultural department has said that, although a greater area has been planted with cotton than ever before, production will be down 20 to 25 %. The increased planting is overwhelmingly Bt cotton.
• Super super bugs
  After many years of constant effort, the Soil Association finally succeeded in persuading the whole of the EU to ban the use of antibiotics to promote the growth of livestock. However, this is only half the battle. Antibiotics are still given routinely and regularly to intensively reared animals. This allows them to survive near intolerable living conditions without succumbing to contagious diseases. Farming accounts for over one-half of all the antibiotics used, and 75 per cent of these are given as mass medication in feed.
• Novel and everywhere
  At least one American State has found cotton bollworms feeding in large numbers on GM cotton containing a 'Bt' toxin specifically designed to kill this pest. In several States a previously rare corn pest, 'western bean cutworm', is becoming increasingly established. Researchers suspect that the cause is the widespread planting of Bt crops which are now suppressing the pests' major predators.
• Try yoga
  Cotton is the biggest 'non-food' agricultural crop in the world. Thirty per cent of global cotton now contains transgenes for 'Bt' insecticides, and the proportion is expected rise to 50 per cent by 2010.
• Agri-chemicals and realism
  In 2006, a large scale study of 57 of the world's poorest countries reported that traditional farming techniques such as crop rotation and organic farming increased crop yields by an average of 79% without the risks and costs attached to the use of agri-chemicals. The authors were cautiously optimistic about the use of low-tech farming to help the world's poorest farmers out of poverty.
• Urgent action on biofuels
  Science watchdog, Econexus, has prepared a petition calling for a moratorium on all EU promotion of agrofuels citing unresolved concerns surrounding the use of agrofuels as an alternative source of energy, in particular, the exploitation of southern developing lands whose local livelihoods, water supplies and environment are threatened by spreading soil damage and desertification, promoted by intensive agriculture and GM crops.
• The junk in the genome
  How scientists who originally claimed 97% of DNA was full of historic "junk" were spectacularly wrong.
• Join the action
  Come and visit us at the Soil Association Scotland's Organic Food Festival in Glasgow this October. Find out more about the issues and what you can do to take action.

   

August 2007



• GM wine
  Did you know that wine produced using GM yeast has been marketed in the US for the past three years? The potential problems of GM yeast are huge. Find out more.
• Second-generation disasters
  The sudden headlong rush into first generation biofuels has been worrying. Moves to develop second generation biofuels promise to be even worse, because effects on the environment, and therefore on the carbon-balance, will be very long-term indeed.
• Farmer Scott Power
  Scottish Power has announced it is turning taking up farming. Plans are underway to grow 250,000 tonnes of energy crops to fuel Scotland's two coal-fired power stations, Cockenzie and Longannet.
• Designed to breakdown
  Our administrators seem to have given themselves one big GM headache. Their problems start as far away as the country of origin of our imported staples.
• The meaning of 'agreement'
  The biotech industry knows what side it is on: it exists to make money. The public knows which side it is on: it exists to lead a long, healthy, useful and fulfilling life. The regulatory authorities at all levels are bouncing about in between swapping sides and tripping over each other and their own feet.
• Dodgy data
  An independent re-evaluation of the safety data supplied in support of an application to market a GM maize came to a very different conclusion from that reached by EU regulators.
• GM blowing in the wind
  The contamination of our food chain with illegal GM strains is already a very real problem. Around the world, over 140 incidents have come to light since 1997. One “non-GMO” shipment of maize which nearly ended up in Ireland, was found to be 20 per cent GM, and even 'organic' soya beans in the US have tested 20 per cent positive for GM content.
• Take a chemical and a patent
  The story of the most widely commercialised GM plants starts and ends with a chemical and a patent. The chemical is glyphosate, or 'Roundup' as it is known in the trade, and once upon a time it had its very own patent.



July 2007



• Iffy science
  The EU authorisation procedure is intended to ensure that only genetically modified organisms (GMOs) which are safe for human and animals consumption and for release into the environment can be placed on the European market. EU rules also ensure clear labeling to allow consumers and farmers to choose whether or not to buy GM, and rules to ensure traceability at any stage of use.
• Be prepared to be persuasive
  A Food Standards Agency (FSA) survey into the key concerns of today's consumers had some interesting implications.
• The good news, and the silly
  Legally approved GM animal feed continues to flood onto European shores and into our food chain. However, no new GM crops have been released for cultivation in Europe since 1998. For the moment, this situation looks likely to continue.
• There's more than one way to deal with drought
  Current changing weather conditions, strongly suspected of being linked to global warming, have led to increasing drought in many areas.
• Doctor from Kildare
  Lots of real GM unease has been growing in Ireland, and increasingly, it is being translated into action.
• The next revolution
  The Green Revolution transformed food production across the globe, with grain harvests increasing a staggering 250%. This revolution was, of course, fuelled by oil. As a result, energy input of industrialised farming consumes fifty to a hundred times that of traditional agriculture.
• The carrot that glowed
  The incredible story behind Sainsbury's cancellation of Patrick Holden's organic carrots.
• Marriage of the giants
  The prospect of increasingly limited crude oil stocks and rising concern about the deleterious effects of oil end-products has sent oil companies in search of business elsewhere.



June 2007



• Hush hush mode
  America continues to be in denial about the reality of the dangers of food contaminated with artificial DNA. The lack of support from the World Trade Organisation for the complainers' anti-precautionary approach to GM seems to have switched US bullying efforts into a new hush hush mode.
• Make GM-free history
  Ground-breaking agreements are emerging in Ireland. Not only has the Irish Green Party agreed to form a coalition government with the Fianna Fail, but also they have agreed to negotiate for the WHOLE island of Ireland too become a GM-free zone.
• Mugged for a fish supper
  The Food Standards Agency (FSA) didn't come out of its handling of the recent rice GM contamination scandal too well. Its action was limited to reassurances to consumers that the rogue rice posed no imminent safety concern and that they could continue to eat it, and reminders to retailers that they had legal responsibilities not to sell such produce. Friends of Earth were goaded by the weakness of this response to take the Agency to court.
• Vision of the future
  Scottish-born CEO of Monsanto, Hugh Grant, recently voiced his vision of the GM future.
• Greening Scotland
  Efforts to introduce GM solutions to curb carbon emissions seem to have had very little direct effect on Scotland.
• Precise hoops and hurdles
  Science is well known for its fundamental precision. Before the rest of the world gets to know about an experiment, it is examined by a chosen panel of other scientists to ensure these precise qualities have been met. One team of senior scientists isn't so sure. It submitted a paper to the British Medical Journal after concluding that animal trials, a key component of safety testing, are often so flawed by poor standards of methodology that their value has to be questioned.
• GM-deficiency syndrome
  Be on the watch for symptoms of GM-deficiency syndrome. The symptoms of this new disease are not yet well characterised, but you will know when you've contracted it when you hear your voice pleading for more GM food.
• What makes good food
  We know what is good food and what is bad food. So why do we still fill our bodies, and even worse, our children's bodies with bad food?

May 2007

• Babies, drugs and politics
  A dramatic increase in the number of difficult births, attributed to increasing age and obesity in the modern mum, is straining the workload of midwife services to breaking-point (Metro 22.05.07). If hormone-disrupting toxins associated with GM foods begin to exacerbate this problem, the suffering for mothers and babies would be huge, and the costs in medical care enormous.
• Read widely and wisely
  The UK Farm Scale Evaluations (FSEs) showed that growing GM herbicide-tolerant (GMHT) sugar beet crops could have a detrimental effect on farmland birds. The 'weed free' management of these crops resulted in fewer early season invertebrates and fewer late season seeds, both of which form a vital food supply for birds.
• The Transgenization of Latin America
  To the cynical, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was put in place so that the USA could off-load its GM crops, which no one else will take, onto vulnerable Latin American countries. Indeed, Greenpeace estimates that the six million tons of US maize imported annually into Mexico are 40-60% transgenic
• Biofuels: the sums don't add up
  Biofuels are shaping up to become a 'GM success story' of the sustainable, economical, clean, safe, environmentally friendly, solution to our energy problems and global warming. But, what does the bottom line actually look like?
• No GM potatoes in York
  After fierce and organised public opposition to the planting of GM potatoes in Yorkshire, the biotech company, BASF, which created them, has decided not to proceed with the trial this year.
• Biofuels: a sustainable sham
  Anyone who has opened a newspaper or magazine this year will have read a great deal of hype about biofuels. What are the issues?
• Soya patent in the dock
  Three cheers for common sense! Even if it has taken over a decade. The European Patent Office has revoked one of the basic patents on GM soya.
• A nation of moaners
  A recent international petition to the Codex Task Force on Foods Derived from Biotechnology called US proposals to allow food contaminated by undefined 'low levels' of any GM material in our food to be rejected.

 

April 2007

• Competing with reality
  Two major biotech companies, which should be locking horns in 'healthy' competition to win the agri-GM race, seem to be holding hands instead. Monsanto and BASF are entering into a long-term joint venture, supplying three quarters of a million dollars each, to develop high-yielding and drought resistant crops. A second agreement is falling into place to research nematode (root-worm) control.
• Patent insanity
  In view of the expense of development, limited successes and customer rejection of GM crops, the only reason to continue with the technology is because its outcomes can be protected by patents.
• Lights, camera... action
  With only one month left before the 2007 sowing of GM crops might begin, activists in Montreuil, France, have only one month in which to convince their government to implement a moratorium .
• GM Fads
  Five varieties of GM crop have been quietly dropped from the European market by their manufacturers. All of these crops have a history of causing concern.
• Eternal Q & A
  A recent TV programme on the uses of GM seems to have raised all the same tired issues which should have been laid to rest, finally, with the GMNation Debate in 2003. The focus remains on avoiding inconvenient research, and on discrediting the views of anti-GM lobbyists as backwards, unethical, and intent on making a fuss about nothing.
• Mutatoes
  GM potatoes have had a bad press ever since 1998 when Dr Arpad Pusztai catapulted the dangers of high tech gene tinkering into the public awareness with the revelation that rats fed on lectin-containing GM potatoes had suffered organ damage and had ominous signs of immune-system stimulation.
• Killer in the fields
  The Indian press has reported that, during January and February this year, over 200 animals have died and huge numbers have fallen ill after grazing on residual Bt cotton crops.
• Omega-3 with everything
  A biotech team, including Monsanto, is gearing up to produce a genetically modified food which they hope will excite health-conscious customers into, not just accepting, but demanding GM food.

March 2007

• A fatal black eye
  An article in the Wall Street Journal in 2005 paints a vivid picture of Monsanto's modus operandus and connections with the US overseers. Without admitting or denying anything, Monsanto agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle charges of bribing foreign government officials. The Company is quick to point out that it voluntarily notified the US authorities after uncovering the evidence of wrong-doing in its Indonesian operations.
• Natural GM?
  The suggestion that an organism can live a healthy life with uncontrollable, man-made genes attached to bacterial, viral and totally invented bits of DNA, tacked inside its cells would be a joke if it wasn't seriously being done.
• Roll out the spin doctors
  In 1999, in the immediate aftermath of Dr. Arpad Pusztai's broadcast of research suggesting that the health of rats was damaged by GM potatoes, the Guardian newspaper asked “How do you handle an explosive issue that embraces food safety, the environment, corporate power, little understood science, and ethics?” How, indeed?
• A slow awakening
  Since 1986, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has approved over 10,600 application for more than 49,300 field trials of GM crops. The biotech industry is investing millions of dollars to develop GM plants for food and feed, or to produce industrial compounds and medicines.
• US courts rule
  So far, the biotech industry has had pretty much its own way with its commodity crops of soya, maize, oilseed rape and cotton, genetically modified to resist herbicides, produce insecticides, or both. Attempts to develop a GM grass industry and drug-producing crops, however, are meeting with resistance from the most powerful possible source. In a decision which may broadly affect all field trials of such crops, a US judge has ruled that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) must halt all new GM field trials until more rigorous environmental reviews are conducted.
• Bye Bye BST
  US coffee shop giant, Starbucks, is dropping milk products from cows treated with Monsanto's 'recombinant Bovine Somatotrophin' (rBST). rBST is an artificial hormone produced by GM bacteria which is injected into about 22% of US dairy cows to boost milk production.
• Just too convenient
  A review of media spin on the potato crop trials run by biotech company, BASF in December 2006.
• The big question
  From 1965 onwards, Monsanto knew that toxic PCBs were accumulating in human milk, rivers, fish, seafood, wildlife and plants and did nothing. Has it improved its attitude in the intervening years? And what might this mean for GM pollution?

February 2007

• Shooting the messenger
  Oil companies, discourses and the environment - lessons for the organic food movement
• Cloned realities
  The prospect of food derived from cloned animals coming onto the market has suddenly moved a definite step closer
• A step too far
  Besides the obvious global regulatory deficiencies revealed by the world-wide contamination achieved by a tiny field trail in a single area more than five years ago, does LL601 rice present other causes for alarm?
• Action on illegal rice
  Friends of the Earth Europe has spelled out a clear list of lessons to be learned and action to be taken following the LLRICE 601 contamination incident in which a GM strain, trialled on a very small scale and rejected FIVE years previously, has contaminated staple food on every continent.
• Regulatory elastoplast
  Codex Alimentarius, the United Nation's food regulatory agency, has agreed to accept a US proposal on procedures for dealing with low-level presence of engineered DNA in crops, commonly referred to as 'adventitious presence'.
• Comfortable with potatoes
  The Government has decided to allow trials of a new strain of potato, genetically engineered to be resistant to 'late blight', which is the disease responsible for the Irish potato famine of the 1840s.
• Purgative tests
  Now that Romania has joined the EU, it will have to put its GM House in order.

January 2007

• MAS rice
  MAS is a form of biotechnology in which a distinctive section of DNA is identified within or close to a gene or genes of interest. Is MAS better than genetic engineering?
• A question of qualification
  The Scottish Executive has recently appointed a new chief scientific adviser, Professor Anne Glover of Aberdeen University.
• Last word or first?
  The European Union (EU) has made a decision, described by one green group as 'disappointing', not to appeal the World Trade Organisation (WTO)'s final ruling on the complaints brought by America, Canada and Argentina on the regulation of GM foods crops.
• Action on oil
  By law, catering establishments which use GM ingredients must inform their customers. One English anti-GM campaigner recently reported a restaurant and a pub to his local Trading Standards Office for covertly using GM cooking oil.
• Approval by contamination
  The latest way to get GM crops approved in the USA is to cause widespread genetic contamination using a few GM field trials. Then you sit back and wait a few years for the contamination to spread across the American continent and around most of the globe.
• Europe in 2006
  A review of the current situation across the EU at the end of 2006.
• Legal wake-up call
  Friends of the Earth have won the right for a full judicial review in the High Court of the Government's policy on the contamination of our food supplies by GM rice, LL601.
• 'Twisnae me
  Contamination, evasion and other fiascos - the need for stronger and more effective legislation to close loop-holes.
• Wriggling out
  As the full impact of the illegal LL601 GM rice contamination is beginning to be felt in the US, the future looks bleak.

December 2006

• Silly season
• Next, next, next
• The Gut and the Brain
  
  

November 06

• Fuelling distrust
• Ditching disease
  
• The Brilliant Light of Science
  
• Distract and attack
  
• Good practice
  
• Hyper hype
• Important new book
  
• One GM potato
  
• Our most important asset
  
• Ricebergs
  
• Soya bad news
  
  

October 2006

• Proving anything
• Organic markets
  
• Nutrigenomics
  Monitoring problems
• GM animal debate
• Applying technology
  

September 2006

• Catching on
• Squandering resources
  
• Choosing organic
  
• Chinese rice too
• Illegal rice
• Clear rice contamination
  

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