Quick Reads

Report Release: Outsmarting Nature?

Submitted by Joëlle Deschambault on

New Report Questions Risky Synthetic Biology Developments Promoted Under “Climate-Smart” Guise

Paris, 27th November 2015 – Some of the world’s largest agro-industrial corporations will be flying the flag for ‘climate-smart agriculture’ at the upcoming Climate Summit. They will claim that hi-tech crops and intensive industrial agriculture are needed to rescue farmers (and the hungry) from a warming world – a claim widely dismissed by peasant movements and civil society groups.

Report Release: Extreme Biotech meets Extreme Energy

Submitted by Joëlle Deschambault on

New report exposes biotech’s big bet to prop up fossil fuels + International video release.

Paris, 24th November 2015 - At the upcoming Climate summit in Paris, some governments and much of civil society will be pushing for an urgent transition away from the carbon-rich fossil fuels responsible for climate chaos. However, one hi-tech sector, the multi-billion dollar Synthetic Biology industry, is now actively tying its future to the very oil, coal and gas extraction it once claimed to be able to displace. That’s the conclusion of a new report released jointly today from the ETC Group and Heinrich Böll Foundation. Titled “Extreme Biotech meets Extreme Energy”, the report predicts that as the extreme biotech industry and the extreme extraction industry move towards deeper collaboration, the biosafety risks and climate threats emanating from them will become ever more entangled.

Sortir des impasses du progrès

Submitted by Joana Chelo on

Soirée-Lancement du Numéro "Danger:Impasse du progrès" de la Revue RELATIONS

La notion de progrès est piégée. Si, à l’origine, elle désignait une aspiration légitime à l’amélioration des conditions de vie, elle semble aujourd’hui devenue la justification d’une démesure et d’une toute-puissance techniques qui étendent leur emprise sur le monde, jusqu’à compromettre la survie de l’humanité. Quels changements dans nos modes de vie implique le refus de voir dans l’idole technologique la solution à tous les maux ? Sur quoi, au Québec, devrait-on s’appuyer pour sortir de l’impasse technicienne et redonner du sens à un projet commun?
À Montréal
Jeudi 22 octobre 2015
CAFÉ L’ARTÈRE, 7000, AVENUE DU PARC
AVEC:
YVES-MARIE ABRAHAM, professeur de sociologie à HEC Montréal et co-directeur du livre Creuser jusqu’où?
Extractivisme et limites à la croissance (Écosociété, 2015) ;
JOËLLE DESCHAMBAULT, directrice des opérations, Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group) ;
ERIC MARTIN, professeur de philosophie au Cégep Édouard-Montpetit et membre du Groupe interuniversitaire d’études de la postmodernité (GIEP).
En collaboration avec: Écosociété

Sortir des impasses du progrès

Submitted by Joana Chelo on

Soirée-Lancement du Numéro "Danger: Impasse du progrès" de la Revue RELATIONS

sortir_des_impasses_du_progres

sortir_des_impasses_du_progres
La notion de progrès est piégée. Si, à l’origine, elle désignait une aspiration légitime à l’amélioration des conditions de vie, elle semble aujourd’hui devenue la justification d’une démesure et d’une toute-puissance techniques qui étendent leur emprise sur le monde, jusqu’à compromettre la survie de l’humanité. Quels changements dans nos modes de vie implique le refus de voir dans l’idole technologique la solution à tous les maux ? Sur quoi, au Québec, devrait-on s’appuyer pour sortir de l’impasse technicienne et redonner du sens à un projet commun?
 

Filme del Grupo ETC sobre Biología Sintética

Submitted by Veronica Villa on

En este filme del Grupo ETC sobre biología sintética se describe el acecho de la industria biotecnológica a la agricultura campesina y los riesgos desconocidos a que nos someten las corporaciones al imponernos  alimentos, cosméticos, limpiadores, fragancias y otros productos derivados de la también llamada “ingeniería genética extrema.”

Véanlo en YouTube:

 

Una mala apuesta en biología sintética

Submitted by Joëlle Deschambault on

LAS VEGAS – Las Vegas parece un lugar apropiado para lanzar una apuesta empresarial arriesgada que podría destruir los medios de subsistencia de millones de pequeños agricultores. En este mes, el conglomerado alimentario Cargill eligió el famoso Strip de esa ciudad para presentar su próximo producto, EverSweet, un edulcorante hecho de “los mismos componentes dulces de la planta estevia”, que, según espera, será un bombazo. EverSweet no contiene una sola hoja de esa planta. El nuevo producto de Cargill es un ejemplo de biología sintética, una forma de ingeniería genética que utiliza organismos modificados para fabricar compuestos que nunca se producirían de forma natural. Lo que da el gusto dulce a EverSweet no es la estevia, sino un compuesto producido por una levadura creada mediante ingeniería biológica.

A Bad Bet on Synthetic Biology

Submitted by ETC Group on

Cargill's Eversweet is competing with farmers and misleading consumers

Las Vegas seems to be an apt place to launch a risky corporate gamble that could destroy the livelihoods of millions of small-scale farmers. Earlier this month, the international food conglomerate Cargill chose the city’s famous Strip to introduce what it hopes will be its next blockbuster product: EverSweet, a sweetener made of “the same sweet components in the stevia plant.”
And yet, despite Cargill’s heavy reliance on stevia in its promotional material, EverSweet does not contain a single leaf of the plant. Cargill’s new product is an example of synthetic biology, a form of genetic engineering that uses modified organisms to manufacture compounds that would never be produced naturally. What makes EverSweet taste sweet is not stevia; it is a compound produced by a bioengineered yeast.

Brasil ataca la moratoria internacional sobre semillas Terminator

Submitted by Joëlle Deschambault on

Los Derechos de los Agricultores y la Soberanía Alimentaria bajo fuego

En un momento en el que Monsanto, DuPont y Syngenta controlan el 55% de las semillas comerciales del mundo, revive en el Congreso de Brasil una iniciativa de ley que busca revertir la prohibición de 10 años sobre la tecnología Terminator, diseñadas para asegurar las ganancias de las corporaciones al eliminar el derecho ancestral de los agricultores a plantar las semillas de su cosecha.

Brazil Aims to Torpedo International Moratorium on Terminator Seeds

Submitted by Joëlle Deschambault on

Farmers’ Rights and Food Sovereignty Under Fire

At a time when just three corporations – Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta – control 55% of the world’s commercial seeds, industrial farming interests in the Brazilian Congress have introduced a bill that aims to overturn the country’s 10-year old ban on Terminator technology – seeds that have been genetically modified to render sterile seeds. The technology is designed to secure corporate profits by eliminating the age-old right of farmers to save and re-plant harvested seeds.

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