Food & Technology
TAKE ACTION: Why is Queensland fast tracking a blanket approval for irradiation of all fruit and vegetables?
Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) is recommending the irradiation of all fresh fruit and vegetables. NOW is the time to write a submission - the deadline is now 24th December 2020, at 6pm AEDT - extended after community pressure.
Food & Technology
What will be the future of food?
The global pandemic has exposed the flaws in our current highly concentrated, inequitable, industrial food system. At this moment, we stand at the crossroads with two starkly different, and fundamentally incompatible, visions for the future of food. One leads us to resilience, regeneration, and justice for communities, biodiversity, and our climate. The other entrenches current health, social and economic inequities, and worsens our climate and biodiversity crises.
Food & Technology
'Miracle cows' highlight the risks of gene editing
Louise Sales – They were the poster children of the gene editing revolution. In 2014, the US company Recombinetics announced they had developed gene edited hornless dairy cattle. They argued that the genetic modification was just a small genetic 'tweak' and that their cattle shouldn't be subject to onerous safety assessments or regulation. Really this was just a way of speeding up natural breeding – or 'precision breeding' as they called it. Except this wasn't actually true.
Food & Technology
'Click and Collect' shopping now available at Melbourne Food Coop and Cafe
The Melbourne Friends of the Earth Food Coop team have been working around the clock to continue to serve our Collingwood community and provide healthy affordable food during the COVID-19 crisis.
Food & Technology
GM dairy products could soon enter our supermarkets with no safety assessment or labelling
As reported on ABC’s Background Briefing, Victoria based company – Total Livestock Genetics – has bred dairy cows from ‘gene edited’ bulls whose genomes have since been found to unintentionally contain bacterial DNA. Furthermore, our food regulator Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) has proposed regulatory changes that mean milk from these cows could enter our supermarkets with no safety assessment or labelling.
Food & Technology
GMO? Soon you won't know
The Australian Government has removed regulations designed to keep us and our food safe. This means that from now, many genetically modified (GM) animals, plants and microbes will enter our environment and food chain with no requirement for safety testing or traceability.
Food & Technology
GM animals will intensify factory farming and may harm our health
As Australia is poised to become one of the first countries in the world to deregulate several new genetic modification techniques in animals, a new report highlights the urgent need for safety assessment and regulatory oversight.
Food & Technology
Keep GM animals off our farms
Australia could become one of the first countries in the world to deregulate several new genetic modification (GM) techniques in animals, plants and microbes if government plans succeed. Anyone could use techniques like CRISPR to genetically modify animals without the regulator or the rest of us knowing.
Food & Technology
Prominent Tasmanians warn of new threat to Tasmania’s GMO moratorium
Federal Independent MP Andrew Wilkie, Senator Nick McKim and smallholder and writer Matthew Evans have joined forces to warn that proposed amendments to the Federal Gene Technology Regulations will undermine Tasmania’s GMO moratorium.
Food & Technology
Antibiotic resistant bacteria genes found in gene edited cattle
Scientists from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have discovered that cattle gene edited not to grow horns unexpectedly contain bacterial DNA. These include complete DNA sequences that confer antibiotic resistance. The study demonstrates how risky the Federal Government’s current proposal to deregulate a number of these new genetic modification (GM) techniques in animals, plants and microbes is.