Genetically modified (GM) cotton has been produced globally for almost two decades, yet to date only three African countries have grown GM cotton on a commercial basis – South Africa, Burkina Faso and Sudan.
Officials in Panama have fined the local facility of a U.S. biotechnology company for a series of permitting and regulatory failures around a pioneering attempt to create genetically modified salmon.
Residents of a town in Argentina have won the first victory in their fight against biotech giant Monsanto, but they are still at battle stations, aware that winning the war is still a long way off.
In the 2011 action-thriller "Unknown", scientists are persecuted by the biotech industry because they plan the open release of a drought- and pest-resistant strain of maize that could help eradicate world hunger.
A decades-long push to require the labelling of foods containing genetically modified ingredients in the United States received a significant boost Wednesday, when bipartisan bills on the issue were simultaneously proposed in the House and Senate.
Spain has more large-scale plantations of genetically modified seeds than any other country in the European Union (EU).
Food safety advocates, environmentalists and health professionals here are engaging in a fervent last-minute campaign to highlight a controversial legislative amendment they say would gut the ability of both the judiciary and the federal government to regulate genetically modified agricultural products.
Environmental activists are cautiously optimistic that a call by a court-appointed technical committee for a ten-year moratorium on open field trials of genetically modified (GM) crops will shelve plans to introduce bio-engineered foods in this largely agricultural country.
In 1994, genetically modified produce, in the form of tomatoes, first appeared in grocery stores in the United States. Numerous other types of produce have been genetically modified since, and consuming them has become common practise. But because the phenomenon is so recent, the long-term effects of eating such foods remain unknown.
The White House on Thursday announced the formulation of the National Bioeconomy Blueprint, aimed at shoring up the U.S. commitment to bioscience-related research.
Biodiversity and small and medium farms are threatened in Mexico by the looming approval of a reform of the law on plant varieties that will extend patent rights over seeds, activists and experts warn.
Catalina Salvador, an 87-year-old peasant farmer who grows pumpkins, beans, and above all corn on her small plot of land, was one of the opponents of transgenic crops who took part in the traditional corn festival in San Juan Ixtenco in the central Mexican state of Tlaxcala.
Researchers in Argentina have isolated a sunflower gene and implanted it into corn, wheat and soybean seeds to make them more resistant to drought and soil salinity, problems increasingly faced by this South American agricultural powerhouse as a result of global warming.
Argentina's soy boom has been a major source of foreign exchange. But the other side of the coin is the toxic effects among the rural population, from spraying agrochemicals.
Wild cotton in Mexico has been contaminated with genetically modified material, posing a risk to biodiversity, experts say.
Critics complain that a genetically modified bean developed in Brazil, resistant to one of the country's most damaging agricultural pests, was approved without enough debate or guarantees that the crop will not affect human health or the environment.
Home to a fast-growing network of farmers' markets, cooperatives and organic farms, but also the breeding ground for mammoth for-profit corporations that now hold patents to over 50 percent of the world's seeds, the United States is weathering a battle between Big Agro and a ripening movement for food justice and security.
Imagine a class of 24 children, three of whom take performance enhancing medicines that increase their chances of scoring high on standardized tests. Now quadruple that number, with one half of the pupils popping pills and the other pushing their pencils med free.
Maize, Mexico's staple food as well as a symbol, has the potential to adapt to climate change and mitigate its effects without any need for genetically modified seeds, according to agricultural scientists.
Fear is growing among environmental and indigenous organisations in Chile over the possible appropriation of native seeds by foreign companies, opening the doors to transgenic crops and their negative impact on biodiversity.
Farming with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is becoming more widespread in Kenya due the promotion of biotechnology through clever schemes, exacerbated by the lack of a legal framework for the commercialisation of these controversial products.