RT reports China is quite serious in ending its own GMO programs amid public concerns on GM crops:
China’s Ministry of Agriculture has decided not to continue with a program which developed genetically-modified rice and corn. Some environmentalists say public concerns about GM crops played a key role in the decision.
On August 17, when these permits were up for renewal, the Ministry of Agriculture decided not to extend them. In 2009, the ministry's Biosafety Committee issued approval certificates to develop the two crops, rice and corn.
According to the South China Morning Post, state television commissioned tests on five packets of rice, which were picked at random, and found three contained genetically-modified rice. It is illegal to sell or commercially grow GM rice in mainland China. The safety certificates issued in 2009 only allowed the rice to be planted for research purposes, but never for sale on the open market.
The strain, which was found, was one of two developed by Dr. Zhang Oifa, who is a professor at the Huazhong Agricultural University. He said, "it was not impossible" for the seeds to be put on to the open market. "You can't say [the seeds] were leaked on purpose. It's possible the seed companies have taken away the seeds and reproduced them illegally," he said, as reported by the South China Morning Post.
The move comes after a (relatively) recent ban on the importation of GMO crops in China: as early as Nov 2013, China started to reject shipload of GMO corn from US with specific restrictions put in place later, affecting also livestock feed concentrates and even GMO lucerne hay.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Theophrastus on Friday August 22 2014, @08:30PM
(type something even remotely critical of Haskell over on hacker-news and watch your 'karma' zoom into the negative column) but what is it with Soylent News and genetically modified crops? yes Monsanto.et.al bad; but GMO is a useful tool, and a considerably larger topic than the knee-jerk anti-tech folks would have you believe.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 22 2014, @08:39PM
The summary doesn't judge GMO crops at all, it just reports the facts of what happened. This story ran on Slashdot yesterday.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 23 2014, @06:05PM
Talk about knee jerk, calling all people who oppose GMOs anti-tech, you gullible moron.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 24 2014, @02:09AM
I believe you just proved his point.
(Score: 2) by Theophrastus on Friday August 22 2014, @08:59PM
i could've sworn there were about a posts remonstrating the evils of GMO but, lo:
SoylentNews Searching For: GMO
[X] Stories [] Comments [] Users [] Polls [] Journals [] Submissions
No stories were found that match your query.
so i apologize, i must've just dreamt-up the whole matter. Soylent News has no GMO bias. huzzah!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by e_armadillo on Friday August 22 2014, @09:25PM
Shouldn't *this* article show in the search? I know we have had at least two stories with USB in the title, but when I search USB, I get nuthin . . .
"How are we gonna get out of here?" ... "We'll dig our way out!" ... "No, no, dig UP stupid!"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Friday August 22 2014, @09:50PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday August 23 2014, @01:49AM
The biggest risk is that the changed biochemistry of the plants is incompatible with the human body. And thus may cause accumulation of products that interrupts your bodies biochemistry. Or plainly destruct your body's function in other ways by being poisonous in the long term.
Another risk is gene mixing with bacteria, virus or fungi in the gut. As a normal course of functioning the gut has these components. But GMO food may contain gene combinations that have unintended consequences. The human race as a collective is incredibly stupid.
(Score: 3) by hemocyanin on Saturday August 23 2014, @01:08AM
Somebody in China must have gotten a translation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Windup_Girl [wikipedia.org]
And BTW, the reader of the audiobook version Audible has does a great job.