Gene Technology

Government announces deregulation of risky new GM techniques

roman April 30, 2019

Government announces deregulation of risky new GM techniques the day before the election is called
Apr 18, 2019

On the day before the Federal election was called, the Government quietly announced changes to Australia’s Gene Technology Regulations that will allow a raft of new genetically modified (GM) animals, plants and microbes to enter our environment and food chain with no safety assessment and potentially no labelling.

These include super-muscly pigs, non-browning mushrooms, and wheat with powdery mildew-resistance.

The deregulation comes as a new study adds to the growing body of evidence that new GM techniques such as CRISPR are not as safe as claimed.

The study found that in 50 per cent of the cells looked at, the use of CRISPR resulted in unexpected effects, including the production of new proteins.

There is a risk that these proteins could be novel toxins or allergens. It is vital that GM animals, plants and microbes produced in this way are assessed for safety before being released into our environment and our food supply.

Commenting on the new study, London-based molecular geneticist Dr Michael Antoniou said, “The discoveries described in this study add to the increasing number of ways in which gene editing can go wrong. Regulators need to fully take on board these and other findings of off- and on-target unexpected outcomes from gene editing and subject all products produced with these methods to a comprehensive health risk assessment before considering market approval.”

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Adelaide FoE Notes, Food, Gene Technology

Please tell our governments to regulate all new GM CRISPR

roman January 30, 2019

from the SAGFIN/Gene Ethics mailout…

Please spend just a minute to email your state Minister at this link now.

It’s quick, simple and important to have your say!!

State and Territory Ministers will decide this month whether to retain GM CRISPR** regulation, or to declare open season on the makeup of all animals, plants, microbes and humans.

Last year, the world was shocked when a Chinese scientist used the new genetic modification (GM) technique CRISPR to produce the world’s first GM babies. Scientists globally condemned the research, saying it was too risky to use this technique in human embryos.

But now the Australian Government proposes to deregulate the use of CRISPR and other GM techniques in animals, plants and microbes.

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Actions, Gene Technology, Old_Notes

Genetic extinction technology challenged at UN Convention on Biological Diversity

roman November 23, 2018

FoE International Press release, 18 November, 2018

SHARM EL SHEIKH, EGYPT — Today, the African Centre for Biodiversity and Friends of the Earth International held a press conference at the 2018 UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) 14th Conference of the Parties to call for a global moratorium on the environmental release of gene drives, a new genetic extinction technology, and to caution for stronger regulation of synthetic biology.

From November 17-29^th, international conservation and environmental leaders will meet to call on governments to protect biodiversity and Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ rights from controversial new biotechnologies. Gene drives have the capacity to wipe out or alter species forever, and to significantly disrupt or modify the ecosystems on which humanity strongly depends for its survival. Gene drives pose serious and potentially irreversible threats to biodiversity and ecosystems, human health, as well as national sovereignty, peace and food sovereignty.

The first proposed application for gene drive is being led in Burkina Faso by the Target Malaria Project, funded by the Gates Foundation, designed to eradicate mosquito populations and thus malaria transmission. This Trojan horse project is exploiting a public health crisis in Africa, despite the lack of underlying science to support its efficacy as a sound medical intervention.

“We should not be used as lab rats in an experiment that could devastate African ecosystems. We ask delegates at COP14 to put the brakes on any release of gene drives.”

Mariann Bassey, Friends of the Earth International and chair of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa

“Burkina Faso is about to face a health and ecological catastrophe. This project risks creating a social and environmental crisis in these local communities. Burkinabe civil society groups are denouncing the project: we refuse to be the guinea pigs of the science of the unknown. We have our own indigenous solutions to put an end to malaria.”

Ali de Goamma Topsoba, president of Burkina Faso based Terre a Vie

Agricultural proposals such as spreading pesticide susceptibility back into weeds that have developed resistance, along with reports that the US military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is the largest funders of gene drive research, highlight wider corporate and military interests in the technology that are being masked by the Target Malaria project.

“Gene drives are threatening food sovereignty and peasant-led agriculture. Small scale farmers don’t need synthetic biology such as gene drives organisms or genome editing to feed communities. La Via Campesina insists that the industrial agriculture process annihilates the human family that is at the heart of small-scale agroecology.”

Geneviève Lalumière, Peasant seed saver from La Via Campesina North America

CSIRO planning US military funded genetic extinction experiments in WA

roman March 1, 2018

A raft of emails obtained through a Freedom of Information request (The Gene Drive Files) reveal that CSIRO and University of Adelaide scientists are part of a US military funded global network researching a risky new genetic modification (GM) technique referred to as gene drives. The group have already identified six potential islands in Western Australia where they intend to use the technique to drive local mice populations to extinction.

Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA – the US military’s research arm) is contributing US$6.4M to fund the Genetic Biocontrol of Invasive Rodents Program (GBIRd). This is being spread between the CSIRO, the University of Adelaide, several US research institutes and the NGO Island Conservation.

The release of gene drives could have potentially catastrophic ecological consequences. Even gene drive proponents have now admitted that the gene drives are too risky to be released into the environment. We find it incredible that CSIRO and its GBIRd partners are already considering the environmental release of this technology.”

Gene drives are a new and highly controversial technique that can force altered genetic traits through successive generations. The GBIRd scientists intend to use the technique to develop mice that only produce male offspring in order to drive local populations to extinction.

Mice are notorious for stowing away on boats, which is how they have spread globally. One of the proposed release sites for the gene drive mice is Boullanger Island – a popular tourist destination just 1km from the mainland. There is no way that a release of gene drive mice there could be geographically contained.

Most rodents are considered keystone species in their ecological communities as herbivores, seed eaters and seed dispersers, and prey for many carnivores. Many other species depend on them for survival. The ecological impacts if mice are driven to extinction in their natural habitats in Europe and Asia could be catastrophic.

Gene drives are a classic ‘dual use’ technology, meaning that gene drives ostensibly developed for one use could also be used as a weapon. For example, gene drives could be developed to make insects, parasites or microbes spread disease or toxins. And releasing a gene drive into agricultural fields could attack a country’s food production. DARPA has sunk approximately 100 million dollars into gene drive research making the agency probably the largest single funder of gene drive research on the planet.

DARPA has no interest in funding public interest research. It is interested in the militarisation of this technology and it is deeply disturbing that CSIRO is aiding and abetting it in this work.

In the GBIrd coalition CSIRO has the highly conflicted responsibility of both promoting gene drives and assessing their risks. According to the FOI documents, the CSIRO is planning community engagement “as part of a wider effort to gain social license for environmental applications of synthetic biology (1) technologies“. CSIRO has allocated $3.5M for community/stakeholder research related to synthetic biology and is attempting to secure more money from DARPAspecifically for this work on the GBIRd project.

CSIRO scientists have already decided they want to release gene drive mice into the environment. The community engagement work they are planning is no more than a cynical marketing exercise. They clearly have no interest in a genuine societal debate on the use of this technology.

The Government is currently reviewing whether new GM techniques such as gene drives and CRISPR should be regulated. CSIRO gene drive developer and GBIRd partner Mark Tizard is currently advising both the Department of Health and Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) on the regulation of new GM techniques.

This starkly illustrates the extent of the capture of our regulatory agencies by vested interests. Here we have a gene drive developer who has called for the complete deregulation of new GM techniques such as CRISPR advising the Government on whether these new techniques should be regulated.

The Government needs to urgently remove individuals with clear conflicts of interest from its advisory committees and introduce a moratorium on gene drive research.

Read our briefing on the Gene Drive Files

(1) Synthetic biology is an extreme form of genetic engineering that involves re-engineering and designing genes to create new synthetic organisms that do not exist in nature.

Adelaide FoE Notes, Gene Technology