Genetically modified crops: Gene-policy transfer

UK Only Article: 
standard article

Issue: 

Can she fix it?

Fly Title: 

Genetically modified crops

Location: 

BEIJING

Rubric: 

China may relax its almost total ban on growing GM food

AFTER years of fierce debate in China about whether to allow widespread growing of genetically modified (GM) food crops, a strong signal emerged in 2013 that the leadership wanted to push ahead. It was given in a speech on agricultural policy by President Xi Jinping. In it he recounted his own experience of hunger during China’s great famine in the early 1960s. He also recalled lean times later that decade during the Cultural Revolution when he went months without “seeing the tiniest drop of oil” or “knowing the taste of meat”. He said that guaranteeing China’s “food security” was still a serious worry. Hinting at what he saw as a possible remedy, he said China must “occupy the commanding heights of transgenic technology” and not yield that ground to “big foreign firms”.
Twenty years earlier, visiting European ...

Source: Biotechnology - April 21, 2016 Category: Biotechnology Source Type: news