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Sen. Barbara Boxer says she is co-sponsoring the Genetically Engineered Food Right-to-Know Act in part because, with 26 states trying to pass legislation requiring said labeling, it makes more sense to have a uniform federal law. California's junior Democratic senator has a point. It's probably better for the folks who keep affordable food on American tables to have one big gun pointed at their collective head than 26 guns. Except that most of these guns aren't loaded, including the big gun. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., introduced a farm bill provision, which was designed to protect states that require labeling for...

The scientists have successfully introduced human genes into 300 dairy cows to produce milk with the same properties as human breast milk. Human milk contains high quantities of key nutrients that can help to boost the immune system of babies and reduce the risk of infections. The scientists behind the research believe milk from herds of genetically modified cows could provide an alternative to human breast milk and formula milk for babies, which is often criticised as being an inferior substitute. They hope genetically modified dairy products from herds of similar cows could be sold in supermarkets. The research has...

The Bush administration has slipped a controversial ingredient into the $770 million aid package it recently proposed to ease the world food crisis, adding language that would promote the use of genetically modified crops in food-deprived countries.

Controversy over claims in favour of GM corn 09:25 29 May 2006 A LEADING researcher into scientific ethics is calling for the withdrawal of a paper published in the British Food Journal two years ago purporting to show that consumers preferred genetically modified to non-GM sweetcorn. The study, carried out at a farm store in Canada, claimed that sales of the GM crop were 50 per cent higher. The journal later awarded the study a prize as its "most outstanding paper" of 2004. Now the campaign group GMWatch has published a photograph that it says shows a large sign suspended...

oday: May 17, 2004 at 11:46:34 PDT U.N. Food Agency Supports Biotech CropsBy NICOLE WINFIELDASSOCIATED PRESS ROME (AP) - Genetically modified crops are helping poor farmers and have posed no adverse health or environmental effects so far, the U.N. food agency said Monday in a report on how biotechnology can help feed the world's hungry. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization called for greater government regulation and monitoring of genetically modified, or transgenic, products to ensure they are safely used and said more research is needed on their long-term health and environmental impacts. In a positive report likely to fuel...

UK's tentative go-ahead for GMs By Alex Kirby BBC News Online environment correspondent The maize will face challenges Five bitter years after the start of a national debate, UK ministers say GM crops can - on certain conditions - now be grown commercially in Britain. The Environment Secretary, Margaret Beckett, told Parliament ministers had agreed in principle to the growing of a single variety of GM maize in England. Anti-GM campaign groups are vehement in denouncing the decision, while from the biotechnology industry there is relief. But legal challenges, qualifications and scientific questions still remain. I do not in...

<p>The United Nations is supposed to be a watchdog of human rights, but it needs watching itself. It has been denying people, especially the poor, the right to feed themselves, buy from others and use their land as they wish. The inhabitants of less developed countries are literally dying as a consequence.</p>

Foes of the Earth by Alex Avery [ 29/07/2003 ] Stock Photo Those who call themselves advocates for the environment continue in their desperate campaign against biotech-improved crops -- the most critically needed farming technology in half a century. In a world that already farms nearly half the non-ice covered land on planet earth, yet faces a doubling of global food demand over the next half-century, neither humanity nor the wildlife we might otherwise plow down for more farmland can afford to lose such a promising technology. This month in the Times of London, Tony Juniper, the director of the...

CORE Problem By Richard Tren TCS NEW YORK - Greenpeace, the radical international environmentalist group, recently came under attack from an unusual source. The organization that has spent decades attacking the institutions of capitalism wasn't attacked by the oil or chemicals industry, but by the New York based Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). In what is increasingly a black and white issue, CORE charges Greenpeace with being racist and keeping Africa poor, sick and underdeveloped. Recently Greenpeace organised a run in Liberty State Park, New York, to campaign against chemicals that it considers to be a danger to human health....

They've got rhythm. They've got watermelon. They've got quaint folk customs. So what need have they for jobs, for education, for civil rights? So went the "Happy Darky" myth, prevalent among well-off whites in the segregated South of half a century or so ago. The "Happy Darky" myth is being resurrected in more pernicious form by environmentalists. The introduction of electricity is "destroying" the cultures of the world's poor, said Gar Smith, who edits "The Edge," the online magazine of the San Francisco-based Earth Island Institute. With the introduction of electricity, African villagers spend too much time watching television and...

Still wrong after all these years Worldwatch misdiagnoses the planet again by Ronald Bailey The World Summit on Sustainable Development will convene in Johannesburg, South Africa, in September 2002. The World Summit is the 10th anniversary follow-up to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.At the Earth Summit, ideological environmentalism achieved considerable success in advancing its agenda for reshaping the world's economy. That Summit saw the adoption of the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and the incorporation of the precautionary principle in international treaties.In the 10 years since the Earth...

<p>JOHANNESBURG — U.S. AID Administrator Andrew Natsios accused environmental groups yesterday of endangering the lives of millions of famine-threatened Africans by encouraging their governments to reject genetically modified U.S. food aid.</p> <p>"They can play these games with Europeans, who have full stomachs, but it is revolting and despicable to see them do so when the lives of Africans are at stake," Mr. Natsios said in an interview.</p>

Zambia warned over GM refusal Food is scarce in Zambia Two and a half million people could starve if the Zambian Government continues to refuse genetically modified food aid, the World Food Programme has warned. Executive director James Morris said that as concerns about the food appeared to have been allayed in Zimbabwe and Mozambique, Zambia remained the only one of six southern African countries facing severe famine. The suggestion the WFP is colluding with the biotech industry to impose unwanted maize on the people of southern Africa can find no currency except with the most extreme elements of the...

Blessed Are The Poor With SpiritConko and Prakash Article in Tech Central Stationby Gregory Conko and Dr. C.S. Prakash June 25, 2002 This year's UN-sponsored World Food Summit just concluded with a grim reminder that the goal of cutting world hunger in half by 2015 set six years ago at the first Food Summit still seems far out of reach. This time, however, delegates agreed to meet the challenge of achieving genuine food security with a very potent tool: agricultural biotechnology. Biotechnology holds the potential to increase food production, reduce the use of synthetic chemical pesticides, and actually make foods...