Aussies worry about food security
REUTERS
The Australian government took foreign investors by surprise Nov. 24, announcing a national audit of foreign ownership of farms and food production businesses, saying it wanted to get to the truth behind public concerns about rising foreign ownership.
Canadian companies’ recent investment plays in Australia include Agrium’s $1.16 billion takeover of AWB Ltd. and Viterra’s takeover last year of ABB Grain.
The influential Greens party, whose support is crucial to the minority government’s survival, welcomed the audit and called on the government to develop a “food sovereignty” policy. “There are clear moves by some countries to secure their own food supplies by buying up land and water in other countries, bypassing trade altogether in favour of a simple outsourcing arrangement,” Greens senator Christine Milne said.
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Cloned cattle meat likely safe
REUTERS
Meat and milk from cloned cattle show no difference in composition from that of traditionally bred cows and so are unlikely to pose a food safety risk, an advisory committee to Britain’s food safety regulator said Nov. 26
The European Commission has recently recommended introducing a five-year ban on the use of cloned animals for food production in the European Union.
Brendan Curran, a geneticist from the University of London, said the committee’s conclusion was consistent with the findings of regulatory bodies in other countries.
“Food safety risks aside, however, there is an ethical dimension to this technology that causes concern,” he said, adding that several studies had shown abnormalities in fetal development and in the neonates of cloned animals “Therefore, one of the significant issues regulatory bodies must deal with in deciding whether to permit the use of cloned animals in breeding programs will be whether the usefulness of this technique in animal breeding outweighs its impact on animal wellbeing,” Curran added.
