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Event Tms60444 Cassava

Event Tms60444 (Cassava) Objections To The Application Made By ARC? Institute For Industrial Crops In Respect Of An Experimental Trial Release Application For Event Tms60444 (cassava) to the National Department of Agriculture, South Africa PREPARED BY THE AFRICAN CENTRE FOR BIOSAFETY and GRAIN, with special thanks to Elizabeth Bravo from Accion Ecologica, Ecuador for her […]

Africa’s Sorghum Saved: Applause for Second GM Sorghum Rejection

The African Centre for Biosafety (ACB) hails the decision taken by the Executive Council (EC)-South Africa’s GM regulatory body on the 30 January 2007 to turn down an application by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research’s (CSIR) to conduct experiments with genetically modified (GM) sorghum in a level three containment facility. This decision was […]

Monsanto’s Seed of Hope Campaign

The African Centre for Biosafety offers this briefing paper to you, titled “Monsanto’s Seed of Hope Campaign in South Africa.” In the briefing, we offer information about Monsanto’s Seed of Hope Campaign in the Eastern Cape-the poorest of South Africa’s nine provinces, where Monsanto’s project was subsidised with huge chunks of public funds, which enabled […]

Tainting Africa’s Heritage

Wambugu, Gates Foundation and Du Pont’s GM Sorghum Project, Jan 2007 Read here.

Objections to CSIR’s Application for Contained Use Permit for GM Sorghum

Sorghum, a grass of east African origin, is said to have present as early as 8000 years ago. The timing of the emergence of the domesticated sorghum, Sorghum bicolor from the wild species progenitor is disputed with dates ranging from 3700-4900 years ago to not much before 2000 years ago.[i] Four main groups can be […]

Turning Food into Fuel

GM Drought Tolerant Soybean and its use in the Production of Biodiesel Read the briefing here.

GM Wines TSGn and TCGn

Objections to the Application Made by the Institute For Wine Biotechnology, Stellenbosch University in Respect Of A Trial Release Application for GM Wines TSGn and TCGn to the National Department Of Agriculture, South Africa. Read here.

Wine Yeast ML01

Objection in Respect of the Application to the National Department Of Agriculture, South Africa by the Wine Research Centre (ubc) and Warrenchem Specialties for the Commercial Application of Ge Wine Yeast ML01. Read here.

GM Cassava fails in Africa

The Donald Danforth plant science centre (the ‘Danforth Centre’), who’s partners include Monsanto corporation, has been pursuing disease-resistant Cassava since 1999 for its projects in Kenya. Despite initially claiming a breakthrough, the group has subsequently conceded (on the 26th of May, 2006) that its GM virus resistant Cassava has now lost resistance to the African […]

Can the poor help GM crops? Technology, Representation, and Cotton in the Makhathini Flats

The adoption of Genetically Modified (GM) cotton in South Africa’s Makhathini Flats in 1998 was heralded as a case in which agricultural biotechnology could benefit smallholder farmers, and a model for the rest of the continent to follow. Using historical, political economic and ethnographic data, we find the initial enthusiasm around GM technology to be […]