On a Tuesday morning in September, under a sweltering tropical sun on the island of Grand Cayman, 140,000 mosquitoes flit around in four large coolers in the back of a gray Toyota minivan. Behind the wheel is Renaud Lacroix, a Ph.D. in biology and medical entomology who works for the British biotechnology company Oxitec. A colleague, Isavella Evangelou, crouches behind him in a tight space next to the coolers. The minivan is idling on the side of a dirt road in West Bay, a quiet neighborhood where iguanas and roosters dart in and out of the yards of small homes painted in Caribbean pastels. The time has come for the mosquitoes to fulfill the purpose for which they were genetically engineered: a kamikaze mission to eliminate their own species.
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The U.S. Senate has passed, by a vote of 63 to 30, a bill that would create a national standard for labeling food made with genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Yesterday’s vote marks a win for food companies, farm groups, and biotech firms, which have been pushing the federal government to set a single national standard in hopes of heading off a patchwork of state labeling laws, such as one that went into effect in Vermont on 1 July. But GMO critics say the bill fails to adequately protect consumers who want to know if a product contains GM ingredients.
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Congress passed a bill on Thursday that wipes out state laws requiring the labeling of genetically modified ingredients in food.
The bill particularly strikes down a Vermont labeling law that just went into effect this month and required ingredients derived from genetic engineering to be disclosed on packaging.
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The focus on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) has lately been intense. While GMO has given the world new medications and new foods, the science has also created a backlash to companies like the agricultural/chemical giant Monsanto, which controls and develops proprietary rights to GMO plant seeds.
But scientific plant modification is hardly a new phenomenon. For instance,
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