GENetwork

The Genetic Engineering Network

[Beyond GM @Beyond_GM]

We're celebrating! 🎉🎉 We've had a significant win in our high court challenge the precision bred GMO regulations. The court has ruled that the Defra Minister's decision not to label PBOs in the food chain was unlawful. Read the full story: https://t.co/Tr4DdgMDm6

[GENetwork @GenEngNetwork]

The Twelve Days of #CRISPR https://t.co/TpvLmAb1ST

[GENetwork @GenEngNetwork]

MRNA Vaccines have caused….

[GENetwork @GenEngNetwork]

A World without seeded fruits? No way Jose’ https://t.co/IBEU9WZndZ

[Beyond GM @Beyond_GM]

Time is running out! Judicial reviews are complex, time consuming and expensive. But they can also create change. That's why we are challenging the hidden GMOs in our farming and food system. Read more about our case and why people are supporting us. If you agree that GMOs should be visible and traceable in our food system help us keep going by contributing to our legal fund today. https://t.co/TQ2j3Limfa

[gmodebate.org @gmodebate]

CEO of Sustainable Food Trust asks: "... here is what I find genuinely shocking, and what I think demands an honest reckoning. Where are the voices against #GMO?"

The 2026 fight against GMO https://t.co/2G3mDU41wj

[Kelly Ryerson @GlyphosateGirl]

We do NOT need gene edited citrus to beat citrus greening. We need to stop spraying herbicides all around the root of the trees, destroying the soil and natural immunity. THAT is why greening has killed the majority of the orange crop. Happy to provide a tour of examples!

[PAN Europe @EuropePAN]

🚜 The EU negotiations on the Omnibus proposal to weaken the #pesticide regulation are being pushed through at speed, with little scrutiny, no democratic debate, and insufficient expert input.
📨 We sent an open letter to the @CY2026EU: https://t.co/OZY1gbkG81

[Johnny Midnight ⚡️ @its_The_Dr]

Digital Gulag! Remember those words.

[GMWatch @GMWatch]

Gene edited meat 'on dinner plates soon'. Well-researched piece that starts with the ample evidence of gene-edited livestock suffering that has been exposed in New Zealand—and applies it to what's planned in the UK where there may be far less transparency. https://t.co/tkc5s8bAS0

[Valerie Anne Smith @ValerieAnne1970]

Erin Brockovich is outraged...

"EPA, FDA, political leaders...where have you been?! CHEMICALS are the biggest environmental threat we've ever faced. They're in our soil, our water, our food. Chemicals have DESTROYED our health and welfare."

[Regeneration International @regeneration_in]

Tearing Down Organic Won’t Cost Them a Thing. It Will Cost You Everything. https://t.co/YYh0LwFyQr

[AFSA @Afsafrica]

In this episode of The Battle for African Agriculture, the second part of a three part series, Dr. Million Belay speaks with Pat Mooney, member of the IPES-Food, co founder and former director of ETC Group - Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration, IFOAM Ambassador, and chair of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. Continuing their conversation, Pat reflects on how new technologies are repeatedly introduced as solutions while often creating new forms of dependence. He argues that this is not accidental but part of the economic logic of capitalism, where each new technology is designed not only to replace an older one but also to maintain control over markets and customers. From that perspective, he sees gene editing not as a genuine break from GMOs, but as a logical extension of the same trajectory of manipulating life for commercial control.

The discussion then turns to Africa, where Pat Mooney warns that governments are under pressure to loosen biosafety laws and open the door to technologies presented as modern and necessary. He links this pressure to Africa’s land, climatic diversity, rich genetic resources, and rapidly growing population, all of which make the continent attractive to powerful commercial interests. He also addresses synthetic biology and the growing ability of companies to replace crops such as vanilla, cocoa, coffee, and tea with laboratory produced substitutes, shifting value away from farmers in the South toward industrial production in the North. For Pat, the core issue is not simply the novelty of the technologies themselves, but who controls them, who benefits from them, and who gets to decide whether they are safe, useful, or harmful.

Pat Mooney also offers a wider critic of digital agriculture and the growing role of big tech companies in farming, warning that firms such as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft approach agriculture not as a living system but as another field of data to capture, process, and monetize. At the same time, he insists that digital tools could still be useful if they remain in the hands of farmers and communities, helping them share knowledge, monitor weather, respond to pests, and strengthen agroecological systems. He contrasts this with what he calls “high tech,” controlled from above, and “wide tech,” rooted in the collective intelligence of farmers working within their own ecosystems. The episode closes with a powerful story of resistance, as he recounts the global campaign against Terminator seeds, where farmers, civil society, and social movements came together to defend the moratorium and stop a technology that would have forced farmers to buy seed every season.

Listen to the full conversation:

YouTube:
https://t.co/6KAuolb4HI
Spotify: https://t.co/t4IUSKrJUy
Apple Podcast:
https://t.co/fMiIg08fG2

[AFSA @Afsafrica]

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐀𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐀𝐠𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐏𝐨𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐭 || 𝐄𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝟐𝟔 - 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐏𝐚𝐭 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐲

In this episode of The Battle for African Agriculture, the first part of a three part series, Dr. Million Belay speaks with Pat Mooney, a member of the @IPESfood, co founder and former director of @ETC_Group, IFOAM Ambassador, and chair of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. He is a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, often known as the Alternative Nobel Prize, the Pearson Peace Prize from Canada’s Governor General, and the American Giraffe Award for “sticking his neck out,” and has also received honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Waterloo in Canada and the 17 Advanced Research Institutes in Mexico.

Widely regarded as one of the most influential voices in global civil society struggles for seed sovereignty, biodiversity, and food justice, Pat reflects on a journey that began in the 1960s, when early exposure to global hunger debates and international food politics pushed him beyond a simple belief in development assistance and toward a deeper understanding of power, inequality, and control in food systems.

The conversation traces Pat Mooney’s central role in exposing the rise of corporate control over seeds and agricultural research. He explains how, from the 1970s onward, large oil, chemical, and pharmaceutical companies began buying seed companies and pushing intellectual property regimes that would give them monopoly power over agriculture. He discusses the founding of RAFI, later ETC Group, and the long political battles around plant breeders’ rights, farmers’ rights, biopiracy, and the creation of international mechanisms on plant genetic resources.

Throughout the discussion, Pat emphasizes that the consolidation of power in agriculture has never been simply about feeding the world, but about control over markets, technologies, and regulatory systems. He argues that patents and other monopoly tools have narrowed diversity, strengthened corporate influence over public research and policy, and enabled a handful of firms to dominate global agriculture. Looking ahead, he warns that the same historical logic is now unfolding through data and digital technologies, with new corporate actors seeking to control agriculture through platforms, artificial intelligence, and information systems. For him, understanding that history is essential, because the future of resistance depends on recognizing how these systems evolved, why they succeeded, and how they continue to reshape the food system today.

Listen to the full conversation

YouTube
https://t.co/kWPuNwM5Ma
Spotify
https://t.co/v7eaQpHG7b
Apple Podcast
https://t.co/ciLVOuTOBQ

[GENetwork @GenEngNetwork]

Roast dinners sprayed with 100+ pesticides, Greenpeace says | The Grocer https://t.co/yCMBO7zrFu

[Beyond GM @Beyond_GM]

2/ In arguments it was accepted that, legally and scientifically, PBOs are GMOs.

[Children’s Health Defense @ChildrensHD]

🚨 WARNING: Glyphosate exposure is “completely unavoidable at this point.”

“It’s in the air.”

“It’s in the soil.”

“It’s in the water.”

Farmer Angela Huffman just exposed that pesticides have contaminated nearly everything around us:

“I am into organic regenerative type production, so I don’t use any of those kinds of products at all.”

But she is “surrounded on all sides by that kind of production.”

“Eating organic really helps.”

“We know that there's a much lower amount of residues in the organic products, but it’s still there.”

And this is exactly why she’s calling on Congress and the Supreme Court to reject the pesticide industry’s push for a liability shield:

“Even those farmers who are using that product should have the right to hold the company accountable if they’re harmed by it.”

@AngelaSHuffman @holistichilda

[GENetwork @GenEngNetwork]

Super Bowl Ad: Mike Tyson, Processed Food Kills, Eat Real Food only. Organic! https://t.co/PQdXG39qKr via @YouTube

[GMWatch @GMWatch]

📣 Stand up for food transparency—tell your MEPs to defend it!
⚠️ Soon the European Parliament will vote on if new GMOs can enter our food untested & unlabelled, so:
👉We can’t know if we eat GMO food
👉GMOs aren’t checked for safety
👉Farmers can’t keep their production GMO-free

[Regeneration International @regeneration_in]

🍅 We beat the pesticide industry in a House vote — and your voice was part of it.
https://t.co/Svpz3TDjiY

But this issue of Organic Bytes is also a reminder of why we can't stop. Pesticides are being linked to colon cancer in young adults. Toxins and heat stress are threatening fertility across species. Your food still contains chemicals no one has independently tested.

And yet — grass-fed farms are healing soil, urban farmers are building community in city backyards, and science keeps confirming what organic advocates have said for decades.

This week, read about all this and more, about your health, our food system, and using our power to make this a world where people come before profit. 🌻