one hectare of recovered pasture could store four times as much carbon as one hectare of degraded pasture.
Rinderpest is as deadly to cattle as highly pathogenic H5n1 avian flu is to chickens. In past decades, outbreaks ripped through herds and wiped out up to 90%of animals, often leaving famine,
and the US Food and Drug Administration released reports that found inorganic arsenic in rice products.
Rat study sparks GM furoreeurope has never been particularly fond of genetically modified (GM) foods, but a startling research paper published last week looks set to harden public and political opposition even further,
The study1, published in the peer-reviewed journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, looked for adverse health effects in rats fed NK603 maize (corn),
The explosion of media coverage about the findings has energized opponents of GM food especially in Europe.
The European commission has instructed the independent European Food safety Agency (EFSA) in Parma, Italy, to assess the study.
and a managing editor of Food and Chemical Toxicology, says that the study raised no red flags during peer review.
has complained previously about the lack of independent feeding studies of GM foods. The controversy over the findings is likely to be settled only after detailed analysis of the paper and its data,
whether such feeding studies are appropriate for testing the safety of whole foods, says Peter Kearns, head of food safety,
nanosafety and chemical accidents for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris. They were designed for testing chemicals where precise doses of purified and well-characterized compounds can be administered,
whereas compounds in foods are heterogeneous, and doses are difficult to control. Regulators rely mainly on more robust tests that compare the toxicological and nutritional profiles of GM foods with their non-GM counterparts to screen for potential concerns.
Resolution of the debate over the safety of GM foods can come only from rigorous science clarifying the issues,
Kearns adds
Maize cells produce enzyme-replacement druggrowing crops is simpler and cheaper than culturing mammalian cells,
and must be kept at precise temperatures and fed particular nutrients. But culturing mammalian cells is currently the only way to make some complex protein drugs.
they are decorated usually with plant-specific sugar molecules, which could prompt a dangerous immune reaction if injected into patients.
a structure where the problematic sugars are added. The engineered maize seeds produced proteins decorated with sugars that could be converted to human forms.
Richard Pattison a cell biologist at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant science in Ithaca, New york, calls the approach"very elegant.
Most attempts to solve the sugar problem require mutating the protein, which could disrupt its function,
In May, the US Food and Drug Administration approved Elelyso (taliglucerase alfa) a drug for the lysosomal storage disorder Gaucher disease which is produced in cultured carrot cells.
However, making proteins with certain sugar patterns using these systems is still difficult or impossible.
yet many Americans are concerned increasingly about the health and safety of our food. The use of hormones, antibiotics and pesticides,
What steps would you take to ensure the health, safety and productivity of America s food supply?
our food safety system needed to be modernized. One in four people were getting sick every year due to food-borne illness,
and children and the elderly were more at risk. I signed the most comprehensive reform of our nation s food safety laws in more than 70 years â oe giving the Food and Drug Administration the resources,
authority and tools needed to make real improvements to our food safety system. We have strengthened standards,
prevented food from being contaminated with dangerous bacteria, bolstered surveillance used to detect contamination problems earlier,
and responded to illness outbreaks faster. I am also working to bolster the use of organic farming methods
and minimize pesticides and antibiotics in our food. I set the ambitious goal to increase the number of certified organic operations by 20 percent â oe
I am protecting human health by ensuring that the foods the American public eats will be free from unsafe levels of pesticides by making sure that all new,
And I will continue to work on food safety issues to ensure that public health is the priority in our food safety system.
Preventive practices are the best tool to reduce the incidence of food-borne illnesses because they provide the greatest control over the potential risks of contamination
to develop specific guidance for the commodities most often associated with food-borne illness outbreaks.
and a collaborative instead of combative relationship between regulators and businesses, America s food system will continue to be the world s best.
and secure safe drinking water for all Americans today and for years to come. I will modernize the federal laws
and improving the nation s drinking water and sanitation infrastructure. The Internet plays a central role in both our economy and our society.
says William Laurance, a conservation biologist at James Cook University in Cairns, Queensland, Australia.""Much of this forest disruption is illegal,
One-third of our greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculturethe global food system, from fertilizer manufacture to food storage and packaging, is responsible for up to one-third of all human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions, according to the latest figures from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural
Research (CGIAR), a partnership of 15 research centres around the world. In two reports published today1, 2, the CGIAR says that reducing agriculture s carbon footprint is central to limiting climate change.
And to help to ensure food security, farmers across the globe will probably have to switch to cultivating more climate-hardy crops and farming practices."
"The food-related emissions and the impacts of climate change on agriculture and the food system will profoundly alter the way we grow
and produce food, says Sonja Vermeulen, a plant scientist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and a co-author of one of the studies,
 Vermeulen and her colleagues examined for the first time the carbon emissions for all stages of the global food system.
2007 and 2008, the researchers found that agricultural production provides the lion s share of greenhouse-gas emissions from the food system,
releasing up to 12,000 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent a year up to 86%of all food-related anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions.
The researchers found that the whole food system released 9, 800-16,900 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere in 2008, including indirect emissions from deforestation and land-use changes."
an ecologist and director of the CGIAR research programme on climate change, agriculture and food security.
and transport contributes a large proportion of the food system s greenhouse-gas emissions, whereas in China, for example, fertilizer manufacture has the biggest role, the researchers found.
and distribute food, boosting the risk of food-borne illnesses and diarrhoeal diseases, they add."
"Food safety will in future be a crucial issue. This is a different take from the usual focus on crop yields
and emissions, says Campbell. In the second report2, Philip Thornton, an agricultural scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute, headquartered in Nairobi,
Bid to curb fried-food chemical goes coldthe rich, roasted aroma of coffee or the golden-brown colour of crispy French fries are enough to set most mouths watering.
But the high-temperature cooking that gives these foods their alluring taste, scent and texture also adds a sting:
The finding sparked an international effort to reduce concentrations of the chemical by changing ingredients and cooking methods.
Ten years on, a report2 from the European Food safety Authority (EFSA) in Parma, Italy, suggests that this effort has stalled, amid patchy monitoring,
uncertainty about acrylamide s true health effects and the challenge of weeding out a mole  cule present in hundreds of products.
4. They found that sugars and amino acids such as asparagine found in potatoes and cereals were making acrylamide (C3h5no) as a by-product of the Maillard reaction,
flavour and taste in cooked foods. Subsequent epidemiological studies involving tens of thousands of people have looked for links between acrylamide and various forms of cancer in humans
And last month, a study8 showed that women who ate acrylamide-rich food during pregnancy tended to give birth to smaller babies.
Europe s legislators and food producers vowed to take action. Since 2005, the industry group Fooddrinkeurope has maintained a toolbox of tactics to help reduce acrylamide levels,
According to Beate Kettlitz, the group s director of food policy, 90%of large and medium-sized companies in Europe now select potato varieties with low levels of the sugars that can form acrylamide,
the authority released the most recent figures2 showing that acrylamide levels in finished food products hardly changed between 2007 and 2010.
in soft bread, for example, mean acrylamide levels dropped from 75 to 30 â°Ã Â g per kilogram.
But for crispbreads, the mean actually rose, from 232 to 249 â°Ã Â g â°kg Ë 1. Overall, 6-17%of the food categories tested exceeded indicative values
Figures for 2007-10 suggest that fried and baked foods in Europe often contain worryingly high levels of the probable carcinogen acrylamide.
ref. 2mottram, who has worked closely with the food industry to reduce acrylamide levels, says that he is disappointed the report does not reflect the huge strides taken by industry, not least in the period 2002-06.
The US Food and Drug Administration has collected not routinely data on acrylamide in food since 2006,
although it is currently calling on the food industry to submit more data, says agency spokesman Sebastian Cianci.
In August, he showed that acrylamide levels in French fries can be predicted from the cooking methods and the presence of key precursor chemicals in the partially cooked,
frozen fries used by fast-food restaurants10. This model revealed that a change to the potato blanching process could make a big difference to the final acrylamide level."
Nevertheless, the chemical will always be present in our food, says Margareta TÃ rnqvist from Stockholm University,
Egg freezing is safe Egg freezing is no longer an experimental procedure, says the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in Birmingham, Alabama,
That change in policy is expected to accelerate the growth of clinics that offer to freeze the eggs of women who face fertility-damaging treatment
after criticism that the rules have contributed to rising food prices and concerns that biofuels may produce greater greenhouse-gas emissions than fossil fuels (see Nature http://doi. org/bmssn7;
) The proposals retain a target that 10%of transport fuels should come from renewable sources by 2020 but set a 5%cap on food-based biofuels.
She rejected nine provisions that, among other things, would have removed forest protection along rivers and slopes,
India GM concerns Prospects for growing genetically modified (GM) food crops in India receded further
so the obvious argument to make is that they were going after food, says Anemone. The team behind the identification of the fossils point out that flowering plants went through a period of major diversification just
For Van Eenennaam, a geneticist at the University of California, Davis, the scientifically unfounded assertions that transgenic foods are increased responsible for incidence of autism,
But the film reflects attitudes that have thwarted Van Eenennaam s research into the genetic modification of animals to reduce food costs
Inquiries By nature reveal that fewer than 0. 1%of research grants from the US Department of agriculture (USDA) have gone to work on GE food animals since 1999, in part because of a poor public image.
where advocates of GE animal research aired their frustrations with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA),
which has yet to issue a decision on any GE food animal submitted for approval (see Off the table).
A brief history of some of the genetically engineered food animals submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for review.
Politicians also reference unforeseen dangers from GE foodstuffs. The FDA evaluates animals as strictly as it does drugs.
More than 20 GE food animals are in development in China, he says, including a fast-growing carp and cows that produce milk with reduced allergenic potential.
The Biotechnology and Biological sciences Research Council (BBSRC) supports work on GE food animals, including chickens engineered to be resistant to the bird-flu virus. A BBSRC spokesperson told Nature:"
"We consider it important to fund research that provides a range of technological options that can be applied to the challenges that we face as a society
Badger battle erupts in Englandengland s West country is a bucolic landscape of winding country lanes and gently rolling pastures.
Adam Quinney, a beef farmer and vice-president of the National farmers union in Stoneleigh which is lobbying for the cull,
In July 2011, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs (DEFRA) laid out a plan for bovine TB eradication in England.
Food Chem. Toxicol. http://doi. org/jgq; 2012) has been criticized roundly by the European Food safety Authority.
On 4 october, the agency called on the study's authors to share more of their data
The company plans to file for regulatory approval with the US Food and Drug Administration.
Originally, engineered animals were produced with the aim of making food safer, healthier and more abundant.
The same study in Zambia found that five more of the 150-odd complex sugars in breast milk seem to have a protective effect.
HIV-negative infants who consumed these sugars had a better chance of reaching their second birthday than did HIV-negative babies who drank breast milk lacking those sugars irrespective of their mothers'HIV status. Once a baby had caught HIV, however
Several labs are trying to identify how variation in the prevalence of the large sugar molecules in breast milk, collectively known as human milk oligosaccharides (HMOS), influences infant health.
and the inability of affected infants to secrete a suite of oligosaccharides in their mucus. These babies are considered particularly likely to benefit from drinking the sugars via breast milk,
In rats, they found that upping the levels of that sugar could reduce the severity of NEC on its own3.
A quick milk test for this sugar might be able to tell physicians how much they should worry about infants developing NEC. In a step towards that approach,
But adding DSLNT to the diets of premature babies is still a long way off. It is longer than any oligosaccharide that has so far been synthesized in the lab
its output second only to that of the United states. Fermenting the sugars in the country s abundant sugar cane produced a motor fuel that lowered carbon dioxide emissions,
Biofuels are falling from grace around the world as critics charge that devoting millions of hectares of agricultural land to fuel crops is driving up food prices
That, combined with the cost of pure ethanol, has meant that"the share of alcohol in our transport fuel matrix has dropped from 55%in 2008 to 35,
J. Tabasco is something of a porcine goddess at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where her ruddy,
which genes were involved in the selection of desired traits such as a longer spine to give more bacon on different continents."
is not an especially picky eater and, although it prefers grasses, will dine on many items including humans.
Leonard untangled the taxonomic mess of similar-looking, but only distantly related, fungi with multicellular dark spores that were causing disease in grains such as corn.
Leonard found E. rostratum on corn, sorghum and Johnsongrass fairly often, although it was not nearly as common as several more severe corn pathogens.
It's a fungus that is not, apparently, very picky about its food. It's just a really common fungus in the environment that mostly lives on dead and dying plant tissue,
The nutrients are there, and the temperature is certainly right. Those who suffered the worst infections,
South Pacific coconut gene bank under threatthe international collection of the South Pacific's coconut palm species,
The warning came at a meeting on the Pacific coconut research and development (R&d) strategy in Samoa last week (31 october-1 november),
The deadly disease, Bogia Coconut Syndrome, is threatening the survival of a gene bank of region's most important tree
the coconut, a number of which are endemic. Named after the town of Bogia on the north coast of mainland PNG,
because the country was relatively free of coconut pests and diseases. In an attempt to contain the disease, movement of coconuts and coconut palms, both from the gene bank and for commercial reasons,
out of the affected region has been banned, with roadblocks in place to help enforce this. But these restrictions are preventing the gene bank from fulfilling one of its key roles:
and is one of five international coconut collections around the world. Roland Bourdeix, coordinator of the International Coconut Genetic Resources Network, is arranging an urgent mission to PNG to assess the situation.
We hope to rescue the collection, Bourdeix says. We'll relocate it if there's a safe way to move the plants.
The crisis is at least providing an opportunity to rethink the strategy for regional coconut conservation
We are supporting research to try to identify the Bogia Coconut Syndrome vector and better understand the host range of this disease.
everyone will be placed better to assess the threat both to coconuts and livelihoods in general
Fungus that controls zombie-ants has own fungal stalkeran article by Scientific American. An unsuspecting worker ant in Brazil's rainforest leaves its nest one morning.
Deadly infection This clever Ophiocordyceps fungus depends on ants to reproduce and spread, but it has found an abundant host animal.
they noted, comparing the stumbling gait with a drunkard's walk. The clumsiness cannot, however, be blamed on the ant.
scientists have seen also small bugs laying their eggs in the infected ant corpse, where their larvae can then eat the growing fungus.
It seems their entire nutrition comes from eating the fungus that manipulates ant behavior. are specialized such hyper hyperparasites a freak occurrence?
Lots of the pure discoveries we make have great import for food security and the challenges farmers in tropical countries face from insects and fungi that infect their crops,
UK unveils plan to fight deadly ash diseasethe UK government today announced an action plan to control the spread of'ash dieback,
but Ian Boyd, chief scientific adviser for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs (Defra) Â says that it is more likely that the spores arrived naturally.
Even if biologists can halt the spread of C. fraxinea in the United kingdom, the worldwide spread of plant pathogens shows little sign of abating in a globalized economy."
"We are going to have to re-prioritize the Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs. We need to treat plant diseases as seriously as we do said animal diseases,
Paterson this morning.""We need a radical rethink in how we deal with plant diseases, and the word is radical
fights for females and food with a formidable horn. Thomas Martin, Jean-Philippe Sobczak & Hendrik Dietz, TU Munichentomologist J Â rgen Schmidl collects arboreal insects in San Lorenzo forest by fogging trees with biodegradable insecticides.
Art of cheese-making is 7, 500 years oldtraces of dairy fat in ancient ceramic fragments suggest that people have been making cheese in Europe for up to 7, 500 years.
In the tough days before refrigerators, early dairy farmers probably devised cheese-making as a way to preserve,
and get the best use out of, milk from the cattle that they had begun to herd. Peter Bogucki, an archaeologist at Princeton university in New jersey, was in the 1980s among the first to suspect that cheese-making might have been afoot in Europe as early as 5
500 bc. He noticed that archaeologists working at ancient cattle-rearing sites in what is had now Poland found pieces of ceramic vessels riddled with holes, reminiscent of cheese strainers.
Bogucki reasoned that Neolithic farmers had found a way to use their herds for more than milk or meat1.
"This research provides the smoking gun that cheese manufacture was practiced by Neolithic people 7, 000 years ago, says Bogucki."
"This is the first and only evidence of Neolithic cheese-making in the archaeological record, says Richard Evershed,
the origins of our culture and cuisines, he says. Cheese-making would have given the Neolithic farmers a way to make the most out of the resources available from their herds.
Early humans were unable to digest milk sugars, or lactose, after childhood; however, traditionally made cheese contains much less lactose than fresh milk."
"The making of cheese would have allowed them to get around the indigestibility of milk without getting ill,
Evershed says.""It s one small step, but it s filling out the picture of that transition from nomadism,
says Heather Paxson, a cultural anthropologist at Massachusetts institute of technology in Cambridge, who studies US artisan cheese-makers.
She suggests that Neolithic people might have curdled their milk with bacteria that are found in nature, resulting in a clumpy version of modern mozzarella.
so there is no indication that cheese was being made there
China sacks officials over Golden Rice controversychina has sacked three officials for breaching Chinese laws and ethical regulations during a trial in
a nutrition scientist at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, and was part-funded by the US National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney diseases,
According to a paper published online by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition on 1 august, each group of two dozen or so children aged six to eight ate meals containing Golden Rice, spinach or à Â-carotene capsules for lunch every week day during the three-week trial1.
But none of the children, their parents or school teachers was aware that Golden Rice was involved
GM study rebutted A final review by the European Food safety Authority (EFSA published on 28 Â November,
Mess in Texas The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) announced the freezing of an US$11-million commercialization grant to Peloton Therapeutics in Dallas on 29 november,
including the production of energy and food, that will guide public spending on research during 2013-16.
"It s a great city for a test case, isolated and flat as a pancake, says Shepson.
Scientists torn over Kenya's recent GM food banan article by Scidev. Net. Scientists fear that Kenya's recent banning of the import of genetically modified organisms (GMOS) may be a significant blow to progress on biotechnology research and development in the country.
In a statement to the press, the cabinet said there was a lack of sufficient information on the public health impact of such foods.
data and knowledge demonstrating that GMO foods are not a danger to public health, it added.
The essence of GMO research is to provide a product that can complement efforts towards food security.
says that the wet weather in some areas of Ceylon was ideal for the spread of the fungus,
the country abandoned coffee for the tea it is associated with today. The disease is so universal that it"is not going to be eradicated;
Reports spark row over bee-bothering insecticidesthree reports by Europe s food safety body have stoked controversy over the possible links between the use of neonicotinoid insecticides and declining bee populations.
The latest assessments from the European Food safety Authority (EFSA) in Parma Italy, are based on existing studies of three neonicotinoids:
so that the insects are exposed not to the insecticides through pollen and nectar. Dust and plant sap contaminated with the chemicals may also pose a risk to bees,
In the United kingdom, for example, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs (Defra) has commissioned field studies on the impact of the insecticides on bees.
US food safety On 4 january, the US Food and Drug Administration released the first of its long-awaited proposals for protecting food safety.
The draft regulations are a result of the Food safety Modernization Act signed into law in January 2011,
stance on food-borne illness. One of the two proposed regulations requires food makers to develop plans for preventing contamination;
the other sets safety standards for farms that grow produce, including, for example, permitted levels of microbes in irrigation water.
according to the German reinsurance group Munich re. Sandy alone accounted for an estimated $50 Â billion. 17 billion Number of stars in the Milky way that harbour a roughly Earth-sized planet in a close orbit,
Being able to judge which flowers will provide the most nectar, and which have already been plundered by other pollinators,
It has long been known that bumblebees build up a positive electrical charge as they rapidly flap their wings;
while hovering around looking for pollen or nectar. So it would make sense for them to attend to such cues
Higher consumption of meat and diary products, especially in developed countries, has increased substantially global nitrogen pollution."
Seed-patent case in Supreme Courta technology called a terminator was never going to curry much favour with the public.
a seed that could be harvested for food but would not produce offspring. The controversial proposal raised concerns that it would make farmers dependent on industry for their livelihood.
and food safety groups are concerned about contamination of food crops with products from a new generation of crops engineered to produce chemicals or pharmaceuticals.
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