Genetic Engineering

Are those tortillas you’ve been making with Maseca flour toxic?

On October 9, the Organic Consumers Association reported that samples of Maseca white and yellow corn flour tested positive for concerning levels of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller.

Testing also revealed that some Maseca flour samples tested as high as 94.15 percent for the presence of genetically modified organisms (GMO). That’s a startling finding, given that GMO crops are not allowed to be grown commercially in Mexico.

Those findings can mean only one thing—Mexico-based

American agrochemical giant Monsanto paid a public-affairs consultancy up to €200,000 to set up a ‘grassroots farmers’ operation across Europe to oppose a prospective EU ban on glyphosate, Unearthed has learned. Glyphosate is a key ingredient in Monsanto’s signature Roundup weedkiller.

Genetic engineering isn’t everyone’s childhood dream. Even I didn’t care for it when I started studying biology at the University of Amsterdam, but my professor explained it was an acquired taste and the best option for a good job. So, I suppressed my doubts and learned to extract DNA from plants, recombine the DNA in test tubes, reinsert the fusions into plant cells, and use hormones to regenerate new plants.

People say that love is blind, but I started loving what I did blindly. Or, perhaps, what started as an acquired taste soon became a dangerous addiction. Genetic engineering

Citrus growers hope to fend off fruit-munching katydids, but one weapon is under scrutiny. Researchers found that children growing up near fields where the insecticide chlorpyrifos was deployed exhibited autism-like symptoms. A court ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to ban the insecticide’s use, but Trump’s EPA is fighting back. Science correspondent Miles O’Brien reports.