Replies to post #237668 on Avid Bioservices Inc (CDMO)

[north40000]

Biopharm, more reason for MONSANTO angst:

http://ecowatch.com/2015/10/01/wales-bulgaria-gmo-bans/

I found it interesting that in the past MON sued farmers, accusing them of patent infringement.One such case went to the Supreme Court.
Bowman v.Monsanto,133 S.Ct.1761(2013)

Now farmers are suing MON---the allegations are that Round-Up, among others, cause their cancer.

[biopharm]

Cancer is not a mystery, it is not a stroke of bad luck, it’s time for the world to wake up and realize what research has been confirming for years.

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2015/05/30/why-the-netherlands-just-banned-monsantos-glyphosate-based-herbicides/

It has been proven many of the crop additives ...food supply additives...do cause flipped PS and CRISPR / RNAi research changing that but again, if someone has been coming up with patents besed on the facts they REQUIRED the knowledge of PS Targeting patents....what is Peregrine doing to defend their patents and anyone can see the value of PS Targeting patents that would be worth Billions to Bayer

Experimental GM crops from Dow Chemical and DuPont fail to repel pests
Sunday, October 30, 2016 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

NaturalNews) The utter failure of genetically-modified crops (GMOs) is once again on full display, this time with crop products made by companies other than the usual Monsanto. A novel variety of transgenic corn produced and marketed by both Dow Chemical Corporation and DuPont is not exactly working as claimed, new reports indicate, and agricultural experts are urging the chemical industry to immediately cease selling these failed products to farmers.

Known as "Herculex," the synthetic corn in question contains a gene modification that's supposed to prevent a pest known as the western bean cutworm from destroying crops. But so far, the genetic alteration has done nothing to stop this worm, which means farmers everywhere have been paying through their teeth for a technology that not only doesn't work, but that's also proprietary and exceptionally costly, especially when compared to non-GMO and organic crops that are open-source, and are not patented or owned by multi-national corporations.

A group of six entomologists published an open letter to the seed industry in a recent issue of Purdue University's Pest & Crop Newsletter, calling on those involved to do the right thing and fess up to the fact that Herculex doesn't work. Farmers will soon be gearing up to plant next year's crops, and they need to know that it's best to look elsewhere for corn that's not going to result in massive yield reductions.

"People are frustrated and angry and, more importantly, yield was lost," the letter states. "Before growers make seed choices for 2017, we again urge the seed industry to acknowledge the reality of what is happening in the field."

DuPont quietly admits Herculex doesn't work, but refuses to take responsibility

In typical corporate fashion, the owners of Herculex are refusing to take the letter seriously, resorting instead to excuses and legal speak to try to explain away the GM crop's failure. Rather than pull the Herculex product from the market, DuPont, according to Bloomberg, has instead decided to merely decreased its efficiency rating in the company's 2017 Product Use Guide from "very good" to "moderate."

DuPont has also issued an accompanying statement urging farmers to add other inputs to try to control cutworms, including spraying additional chemical insecticides. In other words, Herculex doesn't actually work, and DuPont's solution is to have farmers just go ahead and blast away with all those endocrine-disrupting, cancer-causing chemicals to kill anything and everything that might be living on or around the crop.

It's basically the same advice that Monsanto is giving to farmers who foolishly adopted a similar GM corn product known as "YieldGard" that was supposed to deter the western corn root worm. The insecticidal proteins in this crop product, just like the one in Herculex – known as Cry1F – haven't lived up to all the wild marketing claims, and yet both Monsanto and DuPont's products continue to be sold to farmers.

"Cry1F has failed in our states," the letter continues, adding that the scientists involved have already received dozens of calls and emails about the problem from concerned farmers. "For growers in our states, the costs of scouting and spraying Cry1F corn negates a major reason they purchased and planted a hybrid with the trait in the first place."

If left to run their course, western bean cutworms and western corn root rooms will effectively eat up all the corn kernels and leave the plant defenseless, encouraging the growth of harmful fungi and mycotoxins. And since none of what the chemical industry has proposed as a solution is working, their only recommended option is to spray more glyphosate, dicamba, 2,4-D and other chemicals on their products.


http://www.naturalnews.com/055817_Herculex_Yield_Guard_crop_failures.html

The EPA Quietly Approved Monsanto's New Genetic-Engineering Technology

It’s the first time RNA interference will be used to kill insect pests.

SARAH ZHANG
JUN 23, 2017

DvSnf7 dsRNA is an unusual insecticide. You don’t spray it on crops. Instead, you encode instructions for manufacturing it in the DNA of the crop itself. If a pesky western corn rootworm comes munching, the plant’s self-made DvSnf7 dsRNA disrupts a critical rootworm gene and kills the pest.

This last step is called RNA interference, or RNAi, and the Environmental Protection Agency last week approved the first insecticide relying on it. Just a few years ago, RNAi was the hot, new biotechnology generating both hype and controversy. But its first approval as an insecticide has been surprisingly low-key. The EPA’s decision attracted little attention from the press or even from environmental groups that reliably come out against new genetically modified crops.

The first product DvSnf7 dsRNA will show up in is SmartStax Pro, a line of genetically modified corn seeds made in collaboration between two agricultural giants, Monsanto and Dow. The RNAi part comes from Monsanto, which has its eye on a number of RNAi applications. Monsanto expects corn seed with RNAi to be on the market by the end of this decade.

For some corn farmers, this can’t come soon enough. The western corn rootworm is known as the “billion dollar pest” because of the damage it wreaks on cornfields. And it keeps becoming resistant to the toxins farmers throw against it. First it was spray-on pesticides; then it was corn genetically modified to make the Bt toxin, a technology also commercialized by Monsanto. “When I go out and I talk to farmers,” says Joseph Spencer, an entomologist at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “you talk about Bt resistance and invariably the moment will come where they say, ‘We’ll have the RNAi soon and that’ll take care it.’” To cover all the bases, SmartStax Pro will contain both Bt and DvSnf7 dsRNA.

RNAi is useful because it can be highly specific: It’s supposed to, in theory, turn off one specific gene in one specific species while leaving others unharmed. Plants and animals naturally use this process to “silence” their own genes. And scientists have previously harnessed RNAi to create genetically modified crops, like apples and potatoes that don’t brown because their browning gene is silenced. With Monsanto and Dow’s genetically modified corn, however, the DvSnf7 dsRNA is actually silencing a gene in another living organism, the western corn rootworm. Rather than modifying itself, it modifies its environment.

The Center for Food Safety, along with other groups, vocally opposed the apples and potatoes modified through RNAi. Bill Freese, CFS’s science policy analyst, admits they were caught a bit off guard by the EPA’s decision with RNAi in corn. The EPA only allowed for 15 days of public comment, and the agency did not post its proposed decision in the Federal Register. It’s not the first time the EPA has approved pesticides quietly like this, but Freese argues the unprecedented use of RNAi as insecticide should have merited more public scrutiny.

“We need to treat these things carefully because we really can’t just afford to throw them away.”
The EPA was the last of three agencies—along with the FDA and USDA—that signed off on the safety of DvSnf7 dsRNA. Critics often point to a 2011 paper to question the safety of tinkering with RNAi. In that study, Chinese scientists found naturally occurring RNA molecules from rice circulating in the bloodstream of people eating it. That paper has gotten a lot of criticism, and scientists have had trouble replicating its findings.

The real problem, says Freese, goes beyond RNAi itself. “There’s faddish interest in the latest technology,” says Freeze. “It often neglects the basic issues of the unhealthy practices used in planting corn.” Rotating crops, for example, rather than planting corn multiple years in a row in the same field can cut down on the western corn rootworm problem.

Spencer, the entomologist in Illinois, also stresses the importance of rotating crops and planting refuges of non-genetically modified corn. He’s seen what happened to Bt, when overplanting of Bt corn led to resistance.With RNAi, farmers get a new tool and a fresh start. “We need to treat these things carefully because we really can’t just afford to throw them away,” he says. (Spencer has received funding from Monsanto for his research into western corn rootworms.)

Western corn rootworm is just the beginning of Monsanto’s ambitions for RNAi. Robb Fraley, the company’s chief technology office, ticked off the other RNAi products in the pipeline: a soybean that makes oil containing omega-3 and an insecticide that kills mites harming honeybees. “I would put RNA in the suite of really advanced, next-generation technologies that are adding to the excitement from a research perspective,” he says.

In recent years, CRISPR has displaced RNAi as the newest darling of genetic engineering. (Monsanto has licensed CRISPR, too.) Getting technology from the lab into the field takes time. SmartStax Pro, when it is on the market in a few years, will finally be RNAi pest-control technology’s entry into the real world, and it could just be the beginning.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/531288/