Over 20 years since GM crops reached the public consciousness, the industry has struggled to get off the ground. Had it played a better hand, it could all have been very different.
New EU rules on GM attempt to unblock logjam that has hung over the technology in the region for most of this century. To work, anti-GM member states and Big Biotech will need to cooperate.
Peter Langridge, Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics
Welcome to GM in Australia, a series looking at the facts, ethics, regulations and research into genetically modified crops. In this first instalment, Peter Langridge describes two GM techniques: selective…
In a landmark West Australian Supreme Court decision, a farmer growing a genetically modified canola crop has been spared the blame after his neighbour accused him of contaminating his organic farm next…
The UK Council for Science and Technology recently called on prime minister David Cameron to reassess EU rules on GM crops. Two days later the Observer published an editorial bluntly declaring: “There’s…
Arguments surrounding the use of genetically modified crops and whether they are the solution to the world’s problems of food supply and public health are no nearer to resolution than when GM was introduced…
Once again, genetically modified crops are in the news for all the wrong reasons. In Western Australia’s Supreme Court, organic farmer Steve Marsh is suing his neighbour and fellow farmer Michael Baxter…
Recently Zac Goldsmith MP – a former editor of The Ecologist, no less – branded the views of Environment Secretary Owen Patterson as “grotesque” after the minister called anti-GM campaigners “wicked…
The ABC recently reported that 400 people in the Philippines trampled vitamin-enriched “golden rice” trial crops because of fears to human health and biodiversity. A Greenpeace representative in Manila…
Today’s wars are not about food, but not too far in the future they could be. The number of people dying of starvation has been falling for decades, but the decline in the numbers of hungry people is slowing…