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Cartoon woodblock etching of the Lancashire Witch Trials.   Moderator’s Note: Over the past six years, we have been tracking and analyzing why the official risk science on GMOs is experiencing a legitimation crisis. We have noted how many risk scientists have sold their expertise to the highest corporate bidder and are finally becoming incapable of obscuring the truth by cherry-picking the evidence in order to serve their corporate masters. Some of the reasons for the legitimation crisis facing pro-GMO scientists include: 1.       Their inability to refute the well-established fact of gene flow and increasing occurrence of introgession events threatening the genomic integrity of center of origin land race varieties and their wild relatives; 2.        A tendency to ignore, flippantly dismiss, or purposefully misinterpret growing evidence of environmental and public health harms associated with the use of transgenic crop technologies...

Photo source: North Country Public Radio Moderator’s Note: This being the first week after Seattle declared Columbus Day to be re-designated as Indigenous Peoples Day, it seems timely to bring this particular report to my readers about the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) and its campaign against genetically-engineered (GE) trees. Writing from North Carolina, Rachel Smolker, co-director of Biofuelwatch (UK), reports on the U.S.-based IEN campaign against deregulation of GE eucalyptus developed by Arborgen, a South Carolina biotechnology startup company. Smolker locates the anti-GE tree campaign in the context of enduring anti-colonialist struggles waged by Native Americans, which have most recently taken place as part of the broader environmental justice movement. Smolker’s short and pithy piece reminds us that colonial domination is inscribed in the environmental history of places and the deep South makes for an exemplary case study: Europeans introduced industrial monoculture...