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Moderator’s Note: While Spain is not a center of origin and diversity of maize (corn), there is growing concern in that country over the threat of genetic contamination of the wild ancestors of the grain as a result of cross-pollination with genetically engineered (transgenic) maize. The proven threat of gene flow posed by transgenic corn has led a coalition of civil society organizations involved in agricultural and environmental advocacy in Spain to issue a letter urging their government to ban the planting of transgenic corn. The concerns expressed by the coalition are troubling indicators of an area of environmental risk that has been tragically underplayed in the USA movements to regulate the commercial planting of GE corn. This despite the fact that the USA has multiple bona fide centers of origin and diversity of maize, including the Culebra watershed in Costilla County, Colorado. In August of 2015, the Sangre de Cristo Acequia Association, which represents more than 300 acequi...

Charting the transgenic threat A TOOL FOR ACTIVISTS AND FARMERS Devon G. Peña | Seattle, WA | November 4, 2014 Note: In the world of seed saving and plant breeding, this is the biggest news all year. A new peer-reviewed scientific journal, Food Contamination , has just published a meta-analysis of the GM Contamination Register that was compiled over the past ten years by Genewatch and Greenpeace.  Janet Cotter (Greenpeace) and Becky Price (Genewatch) were the lead compilers of this important database. Here is my take on the significance of this sort of data mapping for  farmers concerned with protecting the genomic integrity and organic or biodynamic status of their land race and heirloom crop varieties. Image courtesy of Transgenic Study Blog One of the most significant issues in the debate over the environmental impacts of transgenic [1] crops is the irrefutable scientific fact posed by gene flow.   As a farmer, seed librarian, and plant breeder, I am deeply concern...

Transgene escape. Courtesy of: ETC Group Moderator’s Note: One of the most significant proven threats to the environment stems from the use of genetically engineered organisms, including the widespread near global deployment of transgenic crops. With recent news that both China and Russia are retreating from the embrace of commercial agricultural biotechnology, it seems that the momentum against GMOs is increasing. A major issue facing the non-GMO movement stems from the decades long work done on the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) and the Cartegena Biosafety Protocols, which establish rules for the protection of biodiversity including threats posed by transgenic organisms. An international coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has issued a call for an end to the spread of transgenes – the snippets of bacterial, viral, and other genetic materials that are used to assemble GMOs. Note that I use the term assemble because these are not inventions, they are assemblages of...