In
This Issue:
USAID Gets
$30m for Third World Biotech
The
US Government has awarded the U.S. Agency for International Development
$30 m for its programme using biotechnology to combat Third World
malnutrition. "This money will help liberate millions the
world over from the tyranny of hunger and malnutrition,'' said
Sen. Kit Bond, who pressed for the money to be made available.
The
aid agency plans to enable "Golden Rice'', enriched in vitamin
A to be delivered into varieties usable by poor farmers in developing
countries. In addition it will support research investigating putting
vitamin A into mustard oil, widely used in Northern India and Bangladesh,
agency official Robert Bertram said.
USAID
has spent $7-9 million on genetically engineered crop research
Bertram noted that USAID is committed to ensuring that biosafety
considerations are taken into account and local laws are applied.
Prospects "Bright" for
Agbiotech Products
The
Fredonia Group, a market research company based in Cleveland, USA,
predicts that sales of agricultural biotechnology products will
increase by more than 12% per annum to US$2.9 billion in 2004.
These products include transgenic seeds and crops, particularly
maize and soyabean with insect or herbicide tolerance traits.
In its
latest study, Biotechnology in Agriculture, Fredonia sees farmers
buying stacked seed with multiple agronomic characteristics, and
markets selling crops with value-added traits. It is also likely
that plants capable of chemical, pharmaceutical and vaccine production
will become a commercial reality.
Among
the major crops, transgenic cotton is expected to be cultivated
more widely since growers are willing to pay substantial premiums
for a variety that is insect-protected and/or herbicide-tolerant.
In addition, cotton does not suffer from the negative publicity
directed to genetically modified foods such as maize and soyabeans.
Fredonia estimates that by the end of the decade, nearly 80% of
the US cotton crop will be transgenic. Greater demand for other
crops is also expected, although at a much slower rate.
Mixed
prospects are predicted for agricultural diagnostics and biopesticides.
Freedonia claims that while biopesticides will have to compete
with transgenic crops and chemical pesticides, they will benefit
from the increased interest in organic farming.
Similarly,
agricultural diagnostics will gain from the controversy surrounding
GMOs, as growers, grain processors and importers seek to determine
what fraction of any given shipment is transgenic.
Contact:
Corinne
Gangloff
The Freedonia Group Inc.
767 Beta Dr., Cleveland, OH 44143-2326, USA
Tel: +1 (440) 689 0600
Fax: +1(440) 646 0484
Swaminathan Awarded
Indira Peace Prize
Indian
President K.R. Narayanan has conferred the Indira Gandhi Prize
for Peace, Disarmament and Development for 1999 on agriculture
scientist M.S. Swaminathan for his outstanding contribution in
the field of plant genetics and ensuring food security to hundreds
of millions of people in the developing world.
The
award, carrying a cash prize of Rs 25 lakhs ($70,000), was presented
to Dr. Swaminathan at a function held at the Rashtrapati Bhawan.
Accepting
the award, Dr Swaminathan said that hunger and deprivation could
be substantially reduced by April 15, 2007, if India launched a
community-led food and water security system with the help of elected
local bodies. Stating that biotechnology, space, nuclear, information
and communication technologies and energy technologies were impressive,
he said, "if technology has been a cause of economic and social
inequity in the past, we now have an opportunity for enlisting
technology as an ally in the movement for social, gender and economic
equity".
"GM-fed
Meat, Milk and Eggs are Safe" says FASS
After
a review of published data, the US Federation of Animal Science
Societies (FASS) has declared that the meat, milk and eggs from
livestock and poultry fed genetically modified (GM) feeds are safe
to eat. In order to reach this conclusion, FASS scientists reviewed
all of the data available worldwide from research studies in which
results have been published in refereed, peer-reviewed journal
articles.
FASS
maintains that these research results conclusively indicate that
there is no effect of feeding biotech crops to livestock and poultry
on the nutritional value or safety of meat, milk and eggs. A FASS
member, Dr Jimmy Clark, a dairy cattle nutritionist from the University
of Illinois, USA, commented, "In over 20 different animal
studies, livestock growth, milk production, milk composition, and
health are equal, whether fed conventional or biotech feeds..Nutrients
in meat, milk and eggs from livestock fed biotech feeds are the
same as those from livestock fed conventional feeds."
His
view is supported by Dr. Terry Etherton, of Pennsylvania State
University and an expert on farm animal physiology. He commented, "Because
most components of feeds are broken into smaller components during
digestion by the animal, plant proteins have not been detected
in milk, meat or eggs." Dr. Marjorie Faust, Iowa State University,
a leading expert on the evaluation of biotech crops for dairy cattle,
added, "The DNA or other proteins from biotech crops are not
found in the meat or milk from animals fed biotech crops."
The
FASS evaluation concluded that meat, milk and eggs from livestock
and poultry consuming the biotech feeds are safe and often may
be safer for human consumption. Dr. R. Lee Baldwin, University
of California, Davis, and Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences,
commented, "By 2020, global protein consumption from meat,
milk and eggs is predicted to increase dramatically, a "livestock
revolution". Therefore, with biotech crops, and animal food
products, we will benefit the nutrition and well being of the world's
population, especially children in developing countries".
FASS
was established in 1998 to form a unified voice for the advancement
of animal agriculture and animal sciences. FASS consists of three
founding member societies: the American Dairy Science Association
(ADSA), the American Society of Animal Science (ASAS), and the
Poultry Science Association (PSA). These three founding member
societies comprise nearly 10,000 professionals from animal agriculture.¨
Contact:
Barbara
P. Glenn
Executive VP-Scientific Liaison, FASS
9650 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20814, USA
Tel: +1 (301) 571 1875
Fax: +1 (301) 571 1837
URL: http://www.fass.org/ |
