News
2014-11-03 | permalink
Germany: Edeka leads first own-brand with label
Hähnchenfleisch mit "Ohne Gentechnik"-Siegel (Foto: Edeka)
Start with GOOD & CHEAP chicken products at regional level Label "GMO-Free" provides clear guidance for consumers Edeka Center is a partner of the federation "foods without genetic engineering"Hamburg, 11.03.2014. Edeka has introduced the first own-brand with the label "GMO-Free". Various chicken products with private label GOOD & CHEAP since October are available in many markets in the southwest and southeast of Germany. The GOOD & CHEAP chicken products are currently sold in the regions of Southwest (Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland Palatinate, Saarland and parts of Hesse), and in northern Bavaria, Saxony and Thuringia.
EDEKA führt erste Eigenmarken mit Siegel "Ohne Gentechnik" ein
Germany set to see more widespread use of GM free soy label in coming months- ProTerra Foundation Executive Director, Sibyl Anwander
- Ohne Gentechnik
- Gen Burger Unerwuenscht
- Label-Suche | LABEL-ONLINE - Das Portal mit Informationen und Bewertungen zu Labeln in Deutschland
2014-10-28 | permalink
CBD Asks for Regulation on Synthetic Biology
In a unanimous decision of 194 countries, the United Nation’s Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) today formally urged nation states to regulate synthetic biology (SynBio), a new extreme form of genetic engineering.
2014-10-23 | permalink
Patents on plants and animals a threat to food sovereignty, new report warns
Patent on the severed broccoli (Photo: Cookthinker/flickr)
The European Patent Office (EPO) has already granted several thousand patents on plants and seeds, with an increasing number of patents on plants and seeds derived from conventional breeding, according to a new report published by the international coalition “No Patents on Seeds!” If politicians don’t ensure that these kind of patents are prohibited, our daily food will soon be controlled by big corporations and the patent industry, the report warns. Since the 1980s, around 2400 patents on plants and 1400 patents on animals have been granted in Europe. The EPO has granted more than 120 patents on conventional breeding and about 1000 such patent applications are pending. The scope of many of these patents often covers the whole food chain from production to consumption. The report gives an overview of patents granted in 2013 and early 2014, including a patent on conventionally bred peppers derived from wild, insect-resistant varieties from Jamaica. The patent granted to Syngenta covers the plants, fruits and seeds and even claims the growing and harvesting of the plants as an invention. The EPO also granted a patent to Monsanto on screening and selecting soybean plants adapted to certain climate zones, concerning wild relatives of soybeans found in Asia and Australia. This gives Monsanto a monopoly on the future usage of hundreds of natural DNA sequence variations in the conventional breeding of soybeans. “Industry together with the EPO is the driving factors turning the patent system into an instrument for misappropriation of basic resources needed to produce our daily food. They are selling out the future of our food”, warns Christoph Then, one of the authors of the report. According to European patent law, plant and animal varieties as well as conventional methods of plant and animal breeding cannot be patented. With its decision, the EPO has “intentionally created a situation full of legal absurdities that allows prohibitions to be circumvented”, serving the interests of multinationals such as Monsanto, Dupont and Syngenta who already control more than 50% of the international commercial seed market.
2014-10-22 | permalink
New Review: Not Enough Evidence that GM Crops are Safe to Eat
A recently published review by researchers at two universities has suggested that there is not enough evidence that GM crops are safe to eat.
2014-10-21 | permalink
Vancouver kicks off GMO-food awareness campaign
The City of Vancouver will kick off a week of events on Tuesday morning for Non-GMO Awareness Week in an effort to promote better understanding of the issues raised by genetically modified organisms in our food system.
Consumers are generally wary of GMOs when asked by pollsters, but many people hold serious misconceptions about GMOs and the risks they pose, especially to the environment, said Trish Kelly, a member of the Vancouver Food Policy Council.
“People are concerned about GMOs, but they don’t necessarily have all the facts, so the attention of having the city make this proclamation — the first one in Canada — allows us to have conversations about a pretty complicated issue,” said Kelly.
