geneticliteracyproject.org

On May 20, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that after a 6-year-long legal battle with anti-pesticide activists, it endorsed a voluntary withdrawal of 12 insecticides by a group of agri-chemical companies that a coalition of environmental groups had blamed for health problems in bees. The respected publication The Scientist headlined its article, EPA Cancels Registrations for 12 Neonicotinoid Pesticides, noting in the first line: Out of concern for bees, the Environmental Protection Agency announced on May 20 that the registrations for 12 neonicotinoid-based products used as pesticides in agriculture would be canceled… [Read the GLP profile on the Center for Food Safety] Celebratory comments from Kimbrell aside, an expensive multi-year court battle initiated by environmental activists to try to force the EPA to ban or heavily restrict neonicotinoids on the basis of their alleged harm ended with a whimper—an affirmation by the judge in the case that there is no evidence that the pesticides cause demonstrable harm. [Read the GLP’s special section on Bees & Butterflies: Facts about pesticides and pollinators to learn more] As the GLP has reported, honeybee populations are growing, including in North America, where hive numbers recently reached their highest levels in more than two decades.

A House committee on Tuesday [June 4] restored to pending legislation a ban on altering the genomes of human embryos intended for pregnancies, despite calls from some scientists to lift the ban and allow the Food and Drug Administration to review applications for new technologies. Lifting the prohibition could have opened the door to clinical trials of babies being made with genetic material from three people or with genomes that had been changed in ways that would be passed on to future generations. The ban has been attached to bills that fund the Food and Drug Administration in the form of an amendment, or rider, since December 2015. The rider blocks the Food and Drug Administration from considering clinical trial applications “in which a human embryo is intentionally created or modified to include a heritable genetic modification.

The ability to make targeted, intentional changes in chromosomal DNA using the tools of genome editing has been a tremendous boon to the practice of genetics, particularly with the advent of the easy-to-operate CRISPR platform. to identify off-target mutations and by careful phenotyping to reveal any adverse effects on either the health of the organism or the quality of the food product. Many existing strains of crop plants were derived by breeding selection after broad, random mutagenesis with radiation or chemicals; and those strains retain a substantial load of background mutations that are never characterized or acknowledged In every application of genome editing, a thorough risk:benefit analysis should be applied. With the tools currently available for analysis and avoidance of unwanted genomic cleavage, most applications will not be limited by off-target mutagenesis, as long as users are diligent in their approach.

The seed-and-pesticide maker, formed from the 2017 merger of Dow Chemical Co. and DuPont Co., began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on [June 3] as an independent entity …. Corteva’s debut follows Bayer AG’s $63 billion purchase [in 2018] of Monsanto, the biggest seed company, and Syngenta AG’s $43 billion sale to China National Chemical Corp., commonly known as ChemChina, in 2017. That consolidation has reshaped the roughly $100 billion global market in seeds, pesticides and biotech plant genes, as low crop prices and trade disputes pressure farmers’ incomes. Seed makers pursued mergers to combine research efforts and cut costs, as the agriculture industry trudged through a period of low crop prices brought on by big harvests and growing grain stockpiles.