No price too high for a GM-free Europe Maize growers in Italy, France, Germany and Austria lose an average ten percent of their harvests each year, just because governments won't approve any seed production technique that's more recent than the Bronze Age. As a result, their harvests contain higher levels of cancer-causing mycotoxins, and their fields require more pesticide applications. I bet you thought Europeans wanted to reduce reliance on imports, didn't like agricultural chemicals, and considered consumer health a top priority. If you did, you're wrong. More†

Legal

Comments reopen on a burning issue The US Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is seeking additional public comment on a burning issue: whether it should deregulate maize genetically engineered to produce a microbial enzyme that facilitates ethanol production. Why is this a burning issue? Simple. Global warmers lured us into turning food into fuel we can burn in cars. Protesters wailed that the process was too inefficient. GM maize makes the process more efficient. Everyone gets happy, right? Okay, maybe it's not simple, after all. More†

Sci/Tech

Getting plants to clone themselves Left to their own devices, plants reproduce sexually -- by combining genetic information from male pollen and female egg cells. What if it were possible to get plants to clone themselves, instead? This would allow a superior crop plant to be replicated, in quantity. A team of researchers in France and Austria is closing in on how to reproduce a plant that produces perfect potatoes, maize or rice, without the lottery of reassortment that each meiotic division and ensuing fertilization introduces. More†

Development

Drought tolerance on the way Drought tolerant maize has long been on the horizon for researchers around the world. Funds for public research are tight, and the costs of regulatory compliance are astronomical. The result: Monsanto and BASF have discovered a naturally-occurring gene that can help maize plants combat drought conditions and confer yield stability during periods of inadequate water supplies. And the farmers who need this technology most -- mainly in drought-stricken regions of Africa -- won't get to use it. More†

NGO Watch

Parade of the unscrupulous? (UPDATE 12) Opponents of engineered crops will say or do anything to get their points across. Many of them feign philanthropy, and glorify dishonesty -- and for them, the simple lure of profit operates in the stead of a functioning conscience. Even so, there are others who seem stranded in a nightmare realm, where fact and fantasy play equal roles. But which are which? All we know for sure is that none of them are embarrassed, and all of them want our attention... More†

Trees attacked, research destroyed With the exception of a few aberrant, probably psychopathic, idiots, anyone raised and educated in the Western tradition mourns, to some degree, the loss of the Library of Alexandria. Which was destroyed by vicious, largely illiterate, idiots. The contents of the Library are lost forever, but we still have aberrant, vicious, probably psychopathic, largely illiterate, idiots. Such as those who destroyed two hundred and seventy experimental apple trees in Germany, and with them, a decade's worth of research. More†