Watershed Sentinel, Summer 2021: Designed to push new genes through entire populations in the wild, gene drive technology raises serious questions about monitoring, reversibility, and human control of nature

The Western Producer, June 10, 2021. Despite biotechnology industry complaints that regulation is just red tape that hampers competitiveness, companies rely on the legitimacy that government regulation provides. Asking Canadians to accept the safety assurance of product developers and rely on corporate co-operation is fuel for public mistrust.

Ontario Farmer, May 25, 2021: Health Canada is proposing new regulatory guidance for products of gene editing. The biotechnology industry is pleased that many gene edited foods could get to market faster but the public may be less enthused about the proposed lack of government oversight.

Toronto Star. May 23, 2021. Everyone agrees that we need evidence-based decision making. Yet Health Canada is proposing to let companies sell some new genetically engineered (commonly called genetically modified or GM) foods without presenting evidence of their safety to the government.

There is a new international fight brewing over the regulation of genetically engineered (genetically modified or GM) foods, plants, and animals. New genetic engineering techniques called genome editing, or gene editing, have opened up negotiations over national regulation, leading some countries to exempt certain genome editing techniques from government oversight. Canada is about to become one of them. April, 2021.

Genetic engineering is set to leave the farm for the forest. After over twenty years of growing genetically engineered (GE or genetically modified) crop plants in North America, researchers are now proposing to plant GE trees in the forests of eastern US and Canada. This is a precedent-setting request that asks us to accept, even embrace, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the wild. January 2021.

More genetically modified (GM or genetically engineered) Atlantic salmon will soon be on the market in Canada. This is because the first ever Canadian-produced GM salmon will be ready for harvest in early January 2021, and the first US-produced GM salmon is being harvested right about now. The GM salmon will be sold unlabelled in Canada. November 2020.

Welcome to CBAN’s Year-End Catch-Up! Our Yule Blog is an occasion for us to share some of the important news and analysis that you may have missed this year, with some info or implications that we didn’t have a chance to share. All year long, we monitor a wide range...

Our experience with genetic engineering provides some important lessons about the impacts of focusing on the potential of techno-fixes. If we rely on corporations to develop the solutions to our problems, we will be buying our solutions, if they ever materialize. We can ill afford to wait for the perfect technology to solve our problems. This approach invites dependence and inertia. Winter 2019, British Columbia Organic Grower, The Journal for the Certified Organic Associations of BC (COABC). 

The Canadian Biotechnology Action Network provides you with this special year-end e-news to highlight critical new issues and recap some important stories you may have missed this year. 2018 was a year of mergers and escapes. Illegal rogue genetically modified (GM,...