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France bans Monsanto's GM maize
Posted by jamie on 15 January 2008.
Sacre bleu. At the end of last week, French president Nicolas Sarkozy took a stand against biotech giant Monsanto and banned a strain of GM maize which has previously been grown by French farmers.
Their MON 810 variety - according to AFP, the only type of GM maize currently being grown in France - has been withdrawn after a committee of scientists, farmers and politicians raised doubts over its continued use. Advocating the precautionary principle, Sarkozy invoked an EU clause to stop Monsanto's maize being grown.
Read more »
Antibiotic resistance and Syngenta's Bt 10 Maize
Publication Date:
23 May 2005Body:
By Dr. Sue Mayer, Executive Director, GeneWatch UK
Summary
In May the journal Nature revealed that Syngenta had inadvertently produced and distributed a variety of GM maize, Bt 10, which did not have regulatory approval. Several hundred tonnes of the Bt10 maize was grown and distributed in the US between 2001 and 2004 and possibly exported elsewhere.
It has emerged that the Bt10 also contains a gene that gives resistance to the antibiotic ampicillin. Yet Syngenta will not disclose the full details of how Bt10 has been genetically modified.
Syngenta contaminates US maize with illegal GM variety
Publication Date:
21 Mar 2005Body:
Summary
Swiss chemical giant Syngenta has admitted it sold hundreds of tonnes of an illegal variety of GM maize to farmers in the USA over the past four years. The illegal GM crop, called Bt10, was modified with a gene from the soil bacterium bacillus thuringiensis, which makes the crop produce its own pesticide to kill insects.
