GEO Watch: Global coalition calls for enforcement of biosafety rules
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...