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Anti-GMO activists went around Quezon City, in Metro Manila to educate the Filipinos about the environmental and health hazards of Genetically Modified Organisms in solidarity to the Global Week of Action against GMOs organized by Occupy Monsanto. © Creng Nitafan
Joshua the transgenic painted this distinctive flag to represent the so-called Freak Nation in the late, lamented television series, Dark Angel.
Please proceed to picture #30
Team members of the RIPE project transplanting seedlings for the 2016 field trials. RIPE is engineering crops that more efficiently turn the sun's energy into food. This project could increase yields by as much as 60% to help smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia feed their communities and provide for their families.
A Tsetse fly, one of Africa's most dangerous pests.
IAEA Entomology Unit, Seibersdorf, Austria
Photo Credit: IAEA
Sign "Round up ready soyabeans" in field of genetically engineered soyabeans. Accession #: 0.96.179.001.07
Monsanto produces Roundup Ready soy and cotton, Agent Orange and recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone.
Photo from Greenpeace.org
A young child walks across the organic rice fields in Barangay Malingin, Bago City.
© Greenpeace / Gigie Cruz-Sy
The Norwegian Food Research Institute (Oslo) hosted the first In Vitro Meat Symposium in April this year. Apparently the first meats to hit the market will be burgers, sausages, chicken and nuggets..
The scenario goes like this:
research in stem cells brought to the extraction of specific body cells, like muscle stem cells from cows, pigs and sheep to be cultured in a nutrient rich broth until the clusters of muscles are large enough to harvest.
Perhaps too simplistic, but the point is no animal body to support, hence no methane and nitrous dioxide from rearing livestock, which accounts for 18% of man-made greenhouse emissions. Furthermore this has also strong implications with the raising of the global demand for meat and diary products.
Will in vitro meat ever take off as an alternative to field livestock?
Certainly the lifelong legacy we experience with livestock won't be wiped out easily and it doesn't have to. But a change in perspective is needed. An other mindset shift to be added to the long list that sustainability requires for it to be practiced and ultimately chosen as a new way of living.
This issue goes beyond sustainability, because it's subverting some of the fundamental steps of humankind, that began with hunting and eventually breeding, grazing and finally slaughtering. What this means, if they make it to the market, is that your steak, fillet or sausage will come from a lab, but the cells that build up the muscles would be taken from a genuine cow grazing in the fields ( though using genuine to refer to the cow we are used to links the in vitro one to a perhaps negative image, but this goes beyond my purpouse here).
At this point I went shallow but pragmatic and thought... and what about the taste?
"Some scientists think it could be used to create novel foods that won't be quite meat, but won't quite be anything else either", which means they don't know.
It might be that marketers will make it sound appealing like juicy beef and consumers will come up with new folksonomies to define a good in vitro steak? or a v-steak perhaps?
The researchers say the nutritional qualities will be the same as conventional meat. But as you'll see the webpage is in progress.
To be honest, I'd rather keep going with my 90% vegetarian diet. Let me open a short digression here.
Alike my friend albe, I don't preach vegetarianism. Indeed I'm not even a pure vegetarian, as I eat fish. But in doing so I try to make an informed choice. Fishmeal production is the most carbon intensive stage of fishfarming, hence you should go for farmed herbivorous species like tilapia, bream and carp. Wild seafood is almost a bad deal to me, because of the fuel dependent fishing fleets and the practice of overfishing.
Sometimes I indulge in farmed scottish salmon, which is not so envirofriendly, but is not as bad as shrimp farm aquaculture.
Caring about your food carbon footprint is not easy, it requires research which often provides loads of contradictory numbers and vague rules of thumb like the fact that going veggie and organic doesn't always mean lower emissions: 'food miles' account usually less than actual production (how and where). So buying UK tomatoes if you are in the UK is no better guarantee that the ones from Spain are worse in terms of CO2.
My opinion on in vitro is nevertheless positive, I believe that this could be an incredible opportunity to avoid the environmental costs of rearing and killing livestock to produce meat. In the end we might even be able to restablish that missing link between the food on our tables and the cow in the field.
"I would be happy to eat in vitro meat and have steaks as a treat for special occasions" said my flatmate Chris. And I agree with him.
A farmer in Bago ploughs his land in preparation for the next planting schedule. Organic farmers usually plant rice two to three times yearly to give time for soil rejuvenation. © Greenpeace / Gigie Cruz-Sy
Plants genetically engineered to improve photosynthesis, specifically the photorespiratory bypass, are visibly larger than normal plants in this greenhouse field trial.
Image Credit: Claire Benjamin/RIPE
Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE) is engineering plants to more efficiently turn the sun’s energy into food to sustainably increase worldwide food productivity. The international research project is funded by a $25 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Learn more at ripe.illinois.edu.
Greenpeace activists dressed as GMO "monster crops" accompanied by "mad scientists" march to the Department of Agriculture. Greenpeace together with other concerned organizations are demanding the Philippine government to "stop GMO invasion" by cancelling all commercialization and field trials of genetically-modified organisms in the country.
The Department of Agriculture, responsible for regulating GMOs, has never denied approval for any GMO crop. Greenpeace contends that GMOs are dangerous to human health, biodiversity and farmers’ livelihoods.
© Luis Liwanag/Greenpeace
Plants genetically engineered to improve photosynthesis, specifically the photorespiratory bypass, are visibly larger than normal plants in this greenhouse field trial.
Image Credit: Claire Benjamin/RIPE
Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE) is engineering plants to more efficiently turn the sun’s energy into food to sustainably increase worldwide food productivity. The international research project is funded by a $25 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Learn more at ripe.illinois.edu.
Greenpeace activists dressed as patients and lying on a hospital bed today gathered in front of Thailand's Ministry of Industry to demand that the government immediately declare Map Ta Phut a Pollution Control Zone. The activists carried banners saying "STOP KILLING MAP TA PHUT" after the National Environment Board (NEB) delayed the declaration, despite clear evidence of severe health and environmental impacts from the polluting factories in Map Ta Phut.
© Greenpeace / Vinai Dithajohn
Erlinda Rosales helps her aunt harvest rice grains under the scorching heat in Sito Canaan, Barangay Crossing, Negros Occidental. The farmers are maximizing the good weather to avoid bad harvest threatened by the unpredictable change in climate.
© Greenpeace / Gigie Cruz-Sy
'EXTREMELY TOXIC' #GMOs Terrify You Yet? DNA from GMOs can pass DIRECTLY INTO HUMANS, study confirms www.naturalnews.com/045710_GMOs_gene_transfer_DNA.html
Plants genetically engineered to improve photosynthesis, specifically the photorespiratory bypass, are visibly larger than normal plants in this greenhouse field trial.
Image Credit: Claire Benjamin/RIPE
Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE) is engineering plants to more efficiently turn the sun’s energy into food to sustainably increase worldwide food productivity. The international research project is funded by a $25 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Team members of the RIPE project transplanting seedlings for the 2016 field trials. RIPE is engineering crops that more efficiently turn the sun's energy into food. This project could increase yields by as much as 60% to help smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia feed their communities and provide for their families.
Greenpeace together with other organizations protest in front of the Department of Agriculture calling for food safety. Greenpeace together with other concerned organizations are demanding the Philippine government to "stop GMO invasion" by cancelling all commercialization and field trials of genetically-modified organisms in the country.
The Department of Agriculture, responsible for regulating GMOs, has never denied approval for any GMO crop. Greenpeace contends that GMOs are dangerous to human health, biodiversity and farmers’ livelihoods.
© Luis Liwanag/Greenpeace
Plants genetically engineered to improve photosynthesis, specifically the photorespiratory bypass, are visibly larger than normal plants in this greenhouse field trial.
Image Credit: Claire Benjamin/RIPE
Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE) is engineering plants to more efficiently turn the sun’s energy into food to sustainably increase worldwide food productivity. The international research project is funded by a $25 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Learn more at ripe.illinois.edu.
Anti-GMO activists went around Quezon City, in Metro Manila to educate the Filipinos about the environmental and health hazards of Genetically Modified Organisms in solidarity to the Global Week of Action against GMOs organized by Occupy Monsanto. © Creng Nitafan
Team members of the RIPE project transplanting seedlings for the 2016 field trials. RIPE is engineering crops that more efficiently turn the sun's energy into food. This project could increase yields by as much as 60% to help smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia feed their communities and provide for their families.
Plants genetically engineered to improve photosynthesis, specifically the photorespiratory bypass, are visibly larger than normal plants in this greenhouse field trial.
Image Credit: Claire Benjamin/RIPE
Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE) is engineering plants to more efficiently turn the sun’s energy into food to sustainably increase worldwide food productivity. The international research project is funded by a $25 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Learn more at ripe.illinois.edu.