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Montreal
The Secretariat of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) today released their Article 13 report entitled, Maize and Biodiversity: The Effects of Transgenic Maize in Mexico: Key Findings and Recommendations.
The CEC Secretariat was petitioned in 2002 by members of the public to investigate the effects of transgenic maize in Mexico under Article 13 of the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation, a side accord to NAFTA. That Article stipulates that the Secretariat may prepare a report for the Council on any matter within the scope of the CEC annual program.
This independent report, prepared by the CEC Secretariat, includes findings and recommendations developed by the independent advisory group selected by the Secretariat. On September 14, 2004, the Secretariat delivered this report to the organization's governing Council, the environment ministers of Canada, Mexico and the United States, for its consideration. Comments from the Council members are appended to the report.
Publication of this report does not constitute endorsement of its contents by the Council of the CEC or the governments of Canada, Mexico or the United States.
A .pdf copy of the report is available online at http://www.cec.org/files/PDF//Maize-and-Biodiversity_en.pdf. Hardcopy versions will be available soon.
For more information, please contact Spencer Tripp at (514) 350-4331.
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Researchers at the University of California, Riverside, with colleagues at the University of Florida and at UC Davis, have uncovered how viruses circumvent the immune response of plants.
The findings were published in the Nov. 2 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in a paper titled "Three Distinct Suppressors of RNA Silencing Encoded By a 20-kb Viral RNA Genome" [click for .pdf], UC Riverside Associate Professor of Plant Pathology Shou-Wei Ding, at the Center for Plant Cell Biology, and UCR colleagues Rui Lu, Wan-Xiang Li and Michael Shintaku, co-authored the paper with Bryce W. Falk at UC Davis and William O. Dawson at the University of Florida Citrus Research and Education Center.
RNA silencing is a recently discovered defense mechanism against virus infection in plants and invertebrates. For successful infection to occur, viruses must be able to suppress the RNA silencing's antiviral response. "Our results demonstrate that citrus tristeza virus (CTV) produces three proteins that are suppressors of RNA silencing and each inhibits RNA silencing in a distinct manner," said Ding.
CTV is one of the most important virus pathogens affecting citrus worldwide, causing significant economic losses not only from disease, but also from the need to remove CTV-infected trees. Since viral suppressors are also known to interfere with plant development, further analyses of the CTV suppressors will explain why CTV is capable of such destructive effects. One approach for the control of CTV in a number of labs is to genetically engineer virus-resistant citrus trees.
"Our findings will help improving the efficacy of this approach, e.g., by directly targeting the CTV suppressor genes," Ding said.
"Our work indicates for the first time that viruses may have to produce more than one suppressor of RNA silencing to overcome the antiviral immunity," he added. "Secondly, one of the CTV suppressors identified is mechanistically novel as it inhibits spread of RNA silencing without interfering with intracellular RNA silencing."
As a result, that type of suppressor cannot be identified by the methods in wide use today by labs around the world.
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Agricultural scientists say a 40 percent increase in international prices of rice this year following production shortfalls is a reminder that "Asia's ability to feed itself cannot be taken for granted".
Announcing this, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) said after a meeting in Tsukuba, Japan, that an "international effort" has been launched to renew focus on the development of sustainable strategies to feed half of the world's population that depends on rice.
The meeting, World Rice Research Conference from Nov 4-7, was organised as part of the United Nations International Year of Rice 2004 for focusing on the food security of three billion rice eaters.
Rice, covering about 150 million hectares worldwide, has a profound impact on the environment and natural resources.
One big challenge facing Asia, say scientists, is to meet national and household food security needs with an ever-declining natural resource base, especially water and land.
Current annual rice production of 545 million tonnes needs to be increased to 700 million tonnes to feed an additional 650 million rice consumers by 2025, using less water and less land, which is a big challenge.
In addition, rice is seen as crucial in meeting a prominent UN Millennium Development Goal -- the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger.
Says the IRRI: "Rice is so central to the lives of most Asians that any solution to global poverty and hunger must include research that helps poor Asian farmers reduce their risks and earn a decent profit while growing rice that is still affordable to poor consumers."
The Philippines-based IRRI announced details a new environmental agenda. It listed seven "key challenges" to producing enough rice for the world and doing it sustainably. These are poverty and the environment, farm chemicals and residues, land use and degradation, water use and quality, biodiversity, climate change and the use of biotechnology.
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It’s been a running joke that when asked her mission if crowned, every national beauty pageant contestant responds “to end world hunger,” but world hunger is no joke and neither is the biotech science that might one day solve it.
In the next 40 years, the world population is expected to nearly double, but it’s unlikely the number of the world’s farmers will do the same. It stands to reason that farmers who remain will have an even greater responsibility to feed a growing population.
How will farmers, farming less land with fewer inputs and smaller profit margins, meet the growing demand? Through biotechnology.
Technology, regardless of its applications, is moving forward. Short of global annihilation, farmers will never go back to planting seeds with a stick. Instead, they will look to biotech crops and science to feed the growing world.
This technology is being developed right here in Louisiana.
The Louisiana State University AgCenter is working with a humanitarian organization on a genetically engineered product known as “Golden Rice,” which could help reduce malnutrition in developing countries.
The rice was grown in tests at the LSU AgCenter’s Rice Research Station in Crowley this summer and has been genetically modified to produce beta-carotene, which our bodies convert to vitamin A. Its distinctive amber hue from beta carotene led to its name.
In many countries, vitamin A deficiency causes numerous health problems, including a form of blindness and a weakened immune system. In 1999, scientists in Europe successfully inserted genes from daffodils and bacteria into rice DNA. That process caused the rice to express beta-carotene. In 2001, scientists in Japan inserted the genes into the “Cocodrie” rice variety. Since Cocodrie was developed at the LSU AgCenter Rice Research Station in 1998, it has become the most widely used variety of rice grown in the United States.
“This is the first field evaluation where golden rice actually has been grown on any level in the field anywhere in the world,” said Steve Linscombe, the LSU AgCenter’s regional director for southwestern Louisiana and its chief rice breeder.
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By John Mintz And Joby Warrick
Washington - The United States remains woefully unprepared to protect the public against terrorists wielding biological agents despite dramatic increases in biodefense spending by the Bush administration and progress on many fronts, according to government officials and specialists in bioterrorism and public health.
While administration officials have spoken at times about bioterrorism's dangers, they are more alarmed than they have signaled publicly, U.S. officials said. As President Clinton did, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have thrust themselves into the issue in depth.
"There's no area of homeland security in which the administration has made more progress than bioterrorism, and none where we have further to go," said Richard Falkenrath, who until May was President Bush's deputy homeland security adviser and is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Unlike many areas of domestic defense, which are centralized in the Department of Homeland Security, responsibility for biodefense is spread across various agencies. It is coordinated by a little-known White House aide, Kenneth Bernard, whose power is relatively limited.
Biological and nuclear attack rank as officials' most-feared types of terrorist attacks. Because of the technical difficulties in creating such weapons, they reckon the chances of a devastating attack are small. But the consequences of a big biological strike could be catastrophic, and rapid advances in science are placing the creation of these weapons within the reach of graduate students, they said.
Given the escalating risks, many public health and bioterrorism experts, members of Congress, and some Bush administration officials express mounting unease about what they believe are weaknesses in the nation's biodefenses:
The great majority of U.S. hospitals and state and local public health agencies would be overwhelmed attempting to carry out mass vaccinations or to distribute antidotes after a large biological attack. Hobbled by budget pressures and day-to-day crises, many health agencies say they can't comply with federal officials' demands that they prepare for bioterrorism.
Overlapping jurisdiction among federal agencies working on biodefenses -- including the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services -- leads to confusion inside and outside government about who is in charge of preparations for, and response to, bioattacks.
In tabletop exercises, missteps by top administration officials reveal that more work is required to plan how the government should communicate with the public after an attack and manage the potential flight of millions of people from city centers.
Despite considerable progress since the 2001 attacks, the National Institutes of Health, which has the lead role in researching biological warfare vaccines and antidotes, remains largely wedded to its traditional role of doing basic research and is not producing enough new drugs. Large drug firms with track records of developing medications have little interest in making bioterrorism vaccines and treatments.
Because of the scientific complexities, there is no technology to detect a biological attack as it occurs. Under the most advanced current program, called Biowatch, technicians remove filters from air-sniffing units in about 30 cities once a day, and carry them to labs for computerized analysis in search of about 10 biological agents.
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