Critical Discussion

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Klimaabkommen von Paris - Erfolg oder Beruhigungspille?

160318 COP21 Flyer

Friday, 8th April 2016, 17:30 Uhr
University of Zurich, Hauptgebäude,
Rämistrasse 71, KOL H 312

Speakers:
Prof. em. Dr. Andreas Fischlin
Dr. Michael Dittmar
Dr. Juanita Schläpfer-Miller
Marcel Hänggi
Martina Munz

Moderation:
Denise Battaglia
 
Language:
German

Conference

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Population, Envrionment, Ethics:
Where We Stand Now

160321 Paul Ehrlich Kopie

April 28th 2016
5:30 PM
Metro m1, Station UNIL-Sorge
Building Amphimax
Auditorium 350

Speaker:
Professor Paul R. Ehrlich

Moderation:
Christian Arnsperger

Round Table:
Guido Palazzo
Eric Verrecchia

Civil society organisations ask to revoke MON810 authorisation

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Bt crops

The wild ancestor of commercial maize, teosinte, has been detected in Aragon, Catalonia and Navarra, Spain and is spreading as an invasive species in maize growing areas. In one region where growing maize is the main source of income for farmers, the teosinte population has already reached such a high density, that the local governments has issued and enacted a ban on maize cultivation to prevent teosinte from spreading further.

Since in Spain the transgenic maize MON810 is grown on more than 100’000 hectares, it is feared that teosinte could interbreed with MON810, potentially resulting in an invasive transgenic teosinte species. If the hybrids between MON810 and teosinte inherit the insect resistant trait from MON810 they are likely to show higher fitness compared to the native teosinte plants, thereby increasing the invasive potential. 

The fact that maize has no wild relatives in Europe to cross and interbreed with, was an important precondition for allowing genetically modified maize to be cultivated in the EU. Thirteen civil society organisations have now asked the EU Commission and the Spanish government to ban the cultivation of MON810 in 2016. 

Joint Media Release

Open letter to the Commission

 

IG Saatgut Tagung

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Neue Molekulare Techniken in der Pflanzenzüchtung:
Neue Herausforderungen für die gentechnikfreie Saatgutarbeit

19. April 2016
Anthroposophisches Zentrum, Kassel

Programm und Ablauf: hier
Anmeldung bis 10. April an: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

CSS Christmas meet and greet

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Friday, December 18
CHN P12, Universitätsstrasse 16, 8092 Zürich

15:00
Internal CSS meeting & Welcome by the Chair.

16:00
Presentation by CSS member Prof. Dr. Christopher Portier, Senior Collaborating Scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund and former member of numerous WHO/IARC scientific committees including the one that declared Glyphosate a 'probable carcinogen to humans'.

 “Now you see it, now you don’t: How EFSA and BfR reached a different decision than the IARC Working Group on glyphosate.”

17:00
Questions & Discussion, followed by a Christmas Apéro.

Background
In November, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) concluded that glyphosate is “unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans”. 

The EFSA decision, based on the Renewal Assessment Report provided by the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung BfR), ran counter to the finding earlier this year by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) working group, the cancer arm of the World Health Organization, that glyphosate is "probably carcinogenic to humans". The IARC review linked glyphosate to dose-related increases in malignant tumours at multiple anatomical sites in experimental animals and to an increased incidence of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in exposed humans.

Subsequently to the EFSA decision about 100 international scientists wrote an open letter to the European Health and Food Safety Commissioner, Vytenis Andriukaitis, strongly challenging the EFSA’s decision and the BfR report that it was based on. Corresponding author of the letter is Prof. Dr. Christopher Portier, who has contributed to the development of cancer risk assessment guidelines for national and international governments and agencies and was invited as specialist to the WHO IARC assessment of glyphosate.

On December 18, Dr. Portier discussed the major differences in the risks assessments conducted by the IARC working group, BfR and EFSA and the underlying regulations and mandates of the different evaluation bodies that ultimately led to the contradicting conclusions about the carcinogenicity of glyphosate. 


2015 Whistleblower Award

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Prof. Dr. Gilles-Eric Séralini received Whistleblower Award 2015 for public disclosure of risks to life and health

On October 16, the Federation of German Scientists (VDW) and the German Section of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA) present the 2015 Whistleblower Award equally to the molecular biologists Prof. Dr. Gilles-Eric Séralini from the University of Caen (Normandy, France) and the former US drone pilot Brandon Bryant.

Whistleblower

In 2012, Prof. Dr. Gilles-Eric Séralini and colleagues published a long-term feeding study with rats, showing toxic and carcinogenic effects of the glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup and genetically engineered Roundup tolerant maize, in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology (Elsevier). Subsequently the publication was highly criticised and attacked and ultimately led Elsevier to withdraw the paper on grounds of "inconclusiveness". This meant that the data was no longer to be cited. According to the Committee on Publication Ethids (COPE) this procedure violates the international publishing ethics: Withdrawing papers and the data they contain is only justifiedin cases of severe offences such as demonstrable falsification or manipulation, "honest error" or plagiarsm. In 2014, another peer-reviewed journal, Environmental Sciences Europe (Springer) re-published the paper.