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Showing posts with the label genetically modified

The Time is Right for GM Crops

That's a fact? According to environment secretary Owen Patterson, the time is right for GM crops and it is the duty of the British Government to convince the public that this is the case. He then said that GM crops are probably  safer than conventional crops and seven million children have gone blind or died over the past decade because attempts to grow a strain of GM rice ( Golden Rice ) commercially have been thwarted (implying, perhaps, by anti-GM campaigners and that there are no other solutions to malnutrition). The minister went on to back a scientific approach: "We need evidence-based regulation and decision-making in the EU. Consumers need accurate information in order to make informed choices. The market should then decide if a GM product is viable,"  A rigorous and transparent scientific evidence-based approach is to be welcomed,  although this goes a bit further than Mr Patterson's statement. Assuming that the evidence based regulation allows only GM...

Aphid Resistant GM Wheat

The Rothamsted Institute has frequently been in the news in recent weeks over their trials of a new genetically modified strain of wheat. This particular genetic modification splices genes from other plants, such as mint, hops or apples, which naturally produce an odour which simulates that released by aphids when distressed or under attack. This phenomenon has evolved in some plants as a natural defence as aphids that would otherwise attack the plant detect the odour and avoid the host plants.