ETC Blog

The biotech industry claims that the global area devoted to GM crops in 2005 was 90 million hectares - or 222 million acres. ETC Group does not endorse or agree with the validity of annual statistics on GM crops compiled by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA).

We agree with civil society critics who charge that ISAAA’s statistics are inflated and unreliable. However, even using industry-generated statistics, the biotech countdown is revealing. Here are the “vital statistics”:

Read the rest of this entry

On October 10, ETC Group attended the US Food and Drug Administration’s first public meeting on nanotechnology. About 40 people had signed up to make presentations, and we were each given eight minutes to say our piece to the FDA’s newly-formed Nanotechnology Task Force. (You can read the text of ETC Group’s presentation here.)
It [...]

Read the rest of this entry

The Economist this week has a Special Report on Synthetic Biology , the new field of building artificial life forms from scratch. As is to be expected from the Economist, this is a fairly upbeat assesment of the technology that fails to mention the growing opposition to Synthetic Biology, signalled a few months ago when almost forty civil society groups, trade unions and scientific associations signed an open letter calling for caution.

Here at ETC we have been busy writing our own special report on Synthetic Biology (which we are calling ‘Extreme Genetic Engineering’ - watch this space!). You can expect it to be a bit more critical than the Economist.

Read the rest of this entry

By Silvia Ribeiro
This article provides more information about the infamous case of two new experimental drugs derived from transgenic rice by Ventria Biosciences, tested without consent, on babies and children hospitalized at two pediatric institutes in Peru. The rice was genetically engineered with synthetic human genes to produce artificial human milk proteins. (Only spanish).
Fabrizio y [...]

Read the rest of this entry

Silvia Ribeiro*
The biotech company Ventria Biosciences sponsored tests, on babies and children hospitalized at two pediatric institutes in Peru, of two new experimental drugs derived from transgenic rice that was genetically engineered with synthetic human genes to produce artificial human milk proteins.
The experiments - results of which were revealed this May in the US [...]

Read the rest of this entry

Lucy Sharratt –
At 9:30 pm in Brazil, the 8th Conference of the Parties confirmed its decision on Terminator. It is now official.
We see a moratorium on Terminator that is now strengthened.
There is caution, however, as we celebrate since we know that corporations are still developing Terminator, that industry will not stop pursuing Terminator until [...]

Read the rest of this entry

The protests of Via Campesina and Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (Movimento Sem Terra - MST) have been critical to the outcomes of this meeting. The protests continue this morning as 6000 peasant farmers are outside greeting buses of delegates as they come in. The protests have been so important in maintaining momentum and reminding delegates [...]

Read the rest of this entry

by Lucy Sharratt –
Today Terminator was discussed again at COP8 - and the moratorium still holds! No country dared to challenge the consensus of last week.
Some governments made slight changes to a specific part of the text but this did not relate to the moratorium – it was just enough to make us nervous!
Tomorrow [...]

Read the rest of this entry

by Lucy Sharratt –
The debate over Terminator came and went in a flash. Well, sort of. The flash followed a week of intensive protest and lobbying – after 8 years of consistent pressure and the most recent pressure of the Ban Terminator Campaign.
However, there is another week left to the UN meeting and there [...]

Read the rest of this entry

by Lucy Sharratt –
Discussions on Terminator at the UN COP started this afternoon - actually they started this morning as governments kept intervening to make statements on Terminator, even though the discussions were on another agenda item.
With a Chair who demonstrated great understanding and facilitation skills yesterday when he recognized and thanked the Via [...]

Read the rest of this entry