Archive for September, 2005

The Future of Food and Medicine

September 2005
AgBioWorld
By: Karri Hammerstrom
As a mother and a consumer, I want to know that the food I eat and prepare for my family is safe and nutritious. I also want to know that technological advances are occurring to keep the food safe and that those same technological advances include research to protect my family against [...]

‘No risk to human health’ from GM crop drug resistance

September 29, 2005
SciDev.net
By: Wagdy Sawahel
GM plants containing genes that make them ‘immune’ to antibiotics will not lead to a breed of ’superbugs’ that we would be powerless to treat, say researchers in the October issue of The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Antibiotic resistance genes, often referred to as ‘markers’, are used to prepare GM crops. Researchers [...]

What a Stale Argument!

Does politics has a place in genetically modified (GM) food debate? “No”, is the obvious answer. Politics and science are such sworn adversaries that they cannot eat from the same plate. Politics mainly thrive on propaganda, vilification, name-calling and personal gratification at the expense of the general good. Science is anchored on verifiable facts, it [...]

Biotechnology and Millennium Development Goals

Two weeks leading to the just ended Millennium conference at the United Nations, New York, dozen cities in Africa, Asia, East Europe and Latin America held what has come to be billed, “anti-poverty rallies.”
Donning white banners proclaiming, 2015: No excuse! The World Must Be a Better Place, the forlorn looking, shabbily dressed and [...]

Sale of Monsanto’s GMO Cotton Seed Rises 131% in India

September 07,2005
Associated Press
U.S. agribusiness giant Monsanto Co. (MON) said Wednesday it had sold more than 3 million packets of its genetically modified cotton seeds so far this year in India, a 131% jump over last year’s sales.
Monsanto touted the sales growth of its BT cotton seeds as a vindication of its effort to market genetically [...]

Biotech Can Fight Deadly Wheat Fungus

This past week, hundreds of scientists met in Nairobi, Kenya, to launch a global initiative to tackle a fungus that threatens world wheat production. The Global Rust Initiative (GRI) is a welcome idea considering the role wheat plays in global food security. Ug99 was discovered in Uganda in 1999. It is feared that the [...]

Expo celebrates commercial biotechnology

September 09, 2005
Creamer Media’s Engineering News
South Africa’s first Biotechnology Expo - Biotech Africa - that runs at the Sandton Convention Centre from October 18 to October 20 is timed to coincide with the 10th year of commercial use of plant biotechnology products around the world.
This milestone also marks more than 20 years of research [...]

Biotechnology for food security and poverty alleviation

September 08, 2005
The Independent (Bangladesh)
By: Mohammad Tarequl Islam
During the 1970s, scientists developed new method for precisely making recombination some portions of de-oxy-ribonucleic acid (DNA); the bio chemical material in all living cells that govern inherited characteristics and for transferring portions of DNA from one organism to another. This enabling technique is referred to as DNA [...]

Setting the record straight…….

Often times, we rely on the mass media to educate, inform and entertain us. The mass media has strong proclivities to shape public opinion. With the emergence of modern communication technologies, mass mediated messages can now reach global audiences in real time. And this calls for careful examination of messages prior to transmission. Broadcasts and [...]