Latest GMOs/Biosafety in South Africa Resources

On 20 April, Business Day carried a public notice of Monsanto’s application to the South African GMO registrar for permission to import Smartstax maize, arguably the world’s most controversial and risky commercially grown GMO. While the majority of commercially grown genetically engineered crops contain at most 3 foreign genes, Smartstax contains eight, 6 of which […]

Monsanto has been conducting field trials of drought tolerant maize in South Africa since 2007, and has recently applied to have these trials extended. Monsanto has presented the trials as forming part of the much larger Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) Initiative, of which the African Centre for Biosafety has already criticised in a […]

On 13th of December 2009, Syngenta published a public notice of their intent to apply to the GMO Registrar for a permit for the general release of genetically modified maize, GA21. Having obtained a ‘non-confidential-business-information’ version of Syngenta’s application, it is our contention that the application cannot be adequately assessed. The information provided is sketchy […]

Prepared for the African Centre for Biosafety by Dr William Stafford September 2009 Description of Application GA21 and Bt11xGA21 transgenic maize are genetically modified maize events. The Bt11xGA21 stacked maize was produced by the conventional breeding of individual GA21 and Bt11 transgenic events. GA21 maize produces a modified maize 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase enzyme (mEPSPS) that confers […]

ACB’S OBJECTIONS TO MONSANTO’S APPLICATION FOR FIELD TRIAL RELEASE OF HERBICIDE-RESISTANT CANOLA (BRASICA NAPUS RT73) Prepared for the African Centre for Biosafety by Dr William Stafford September 2009. Read here.

(Bt11xMIR162xGA21) Prepared for the African Centre for Biosafety by Dr William Stafford CONTENTS Read here.

GMOs Contribute Towards Food Crisis Read objection here.

The African Centre for Biosafety is a non-profit, activist NGO based in South Africa, focussing on biopolitics, including inter alia, biosafety, biopiracy, biofuels and challenging industrial agriculture models in Africa and the commodification of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge. Read here.

The African Centre for Biosafety submits these scientific objections in respect of he application for commodity import by Syngenta of its GM maize, MIR604xGA21. We have over the years made several submissions on various legal aspects concerning GM applications in South Africa and will not repeat these here. In addition, we note that the de […]

The application is for a genetically modified virus (GMO) to be used as a vaccine for chickens. Vaxxitek HVT + IBD is a live vaccine based on the turkey Herpesvirus (HVT) expressing the VP2 transgene from the Infectious Bursal Disease Virus (IBDV). The vaccine is indicated for the active immunisation of chickens to help prevent […]

Objection to Monsanto’s GM Cotton Cry 1 Ac and Cry 2 Ab Read more.

The Agricultural Research Council (ARC) Institute for Industrial Crops (IIC) submitted an application to the Directorate of Genetic Resources (DGR) within the Department of Agriculture (DOA) in 2006 for a trial release of genetically modified cassava. The African Centre for Biosafety (ACB) submitted its objections to the proposed trial release. On the 19th March 2007 […]