UPDATE: Please note that since 1st July 2013, all products produced in the FUTURELIFE factory have been made from NON-GMO raw materials. For more info please visit http://www.futurelife.co.za/gmo or see our post here

FUTURELIFE replaced GMO ingredients with NON-GMO ingredients in July 2013. Thanks for making a difference FUTURELIFE!

ACB's press release follows:

The African Centre for Biosafety (ACB) is outraged that several food products, including baby cereal, maize meal consumed as a staple, a renown and heavily promoted dietary supplement for active sports people and wheat free cereal, have tested positive for GM- yet are all unlabelled.

Via email from the African Centre for Biosafety and SAFEAGE

On the 1st April 2011, final regulations were published in terms of the Consumer Protection Act, on the labeling of GM foods. These regulations will come into effect on the 1 October 2011.

Its been a long and anxious wait to see what the final regulations governing the labelling of Genetically Modified GM Foods would entail. We are not ecstatic about the regulations, its more of a cautious welcome, please see our press release at www.biosafetyafrica.org.za

We originally asked for the regulations to:

1. Extend to all approved GMOs and food derived from such GMOs;
2. Set the threshold at 1% for technically unavoidable presence and thus GM content above 1% and not 5% should be labeled;
3. Exclude loopholes for companies to avoid testing and correct labeling.

What we ended up with, is the possibility of up to 5 different labels on GM foods:

1. Where the GM content is at least 5%, the food will be labeled as 'containing GMOs'. Cereals containing maize and soy could fall into this category as well as many supermarket breads that usually contain some soy.

You can urge the government to meaningfully label all genetically-modified (GM) foods by signing this petition , launched by ACB (African Centre for Biosafety), and SAFeAGE via Activist.

It was way back in 2008 that the government announced that GM food would 'soon' be labelled. but according to the two watch dogs, the latest draft regulations on GM food published by the DTI (department of trade and industry) 'fails to protect the citizens' freedom of choice of what they eat'...

Highlights from this article on the grist:

Monsanto has, in the last few weeks, gone from Wall Street hero to Wall Street doormat.

Thousands of farmers are reconsidering the merits of Monsanto's flagship Roundup Ready crop varieties...

What we're seeing is signs that GMO technology is much cruder and less effective than its champions have let on. After decades of hype and billions of dollars worth of research, much of it publicly funded, the industry has managed to market exactly two traits. More devastating still, it has failed on its own terms: it has not delivered the promised dazzling yield gains...

Tiger nearly extinct in the wild: pic by HeWhoWalksWithTigers

Eskom taken to court to reveal corporate tariffs

Sake24 has lodged a high court application to force electricity utility Eskom to reveal the tariffs it charges BHP Billiton, one of the world's largest mining companies, Beeld reported on Thursday. Sake24 wants to know how much its aluminium operations in Richard's Bay and Mozambique pay for electricity.

This comes after an investigations which showed that these operations used as much power as cities such as Durban and Cape Town.

Beeld said the tariffs BHP Billiton paid were lower than what it cost Eskom to generate the electricity. Eskom has declined to reveal how much BHP Billiton pays. More

Energy efficiency standards planned for this year

Business can expect mandatory energy efficiency standards, for both fuel and buildings, in a new

Slow Food Mother CityMy experience is that there is a growing disconnect between people and the food they consume (I use the word consume because I think eating has connotations which often don't apply). I have many friends who cannot cook, many more who struggle to determine the difference between healthy and unhealthy options and most people I know don't have a clue where their food comes from, how it got to them or how it was processed (I could use the word made instead of processed, but again it suggests human intervention which is seldom the case).

This trend is concerning to me, and I am not alone. Slow Food is represented in over 130 countries and has more than 100 000 members. The movement started about 20 years ago in Italy.

Wind power blows away tranquility?

BENEDICTINE monks living in the hills outside Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape, are angry about plans to build a wind farm near their monastery. Brother Timothy Jolley, the Mariya uMama weThemba Monastery prior, yesterday said the Anglican monks feared the noise and visual impact of the 135m turbines would forever destroy the “contemplative life” they had worked so hard to achieve over the past 12 years. More

The standard of water quality in the Cape under question.

The overall quality of the city's inland and coastal water has reached a 10-year low, and despite the associated health threats, budget and resource constraints mean the situation is unlikely to be reversed soon, says a City of Cape Town report.

Ammendments to the law in SA mean that, despite the fact that the country has been growing genetically modified crops since 1997 and has never conducted a single environmental impact assessment (EIA), the Minister of Environment now has the power to carry out EIAs.

Join The African Centre for Biosafety (ACB) in their most recent campaign – to call for an EIA for Syngenta's application to government to permit them to commercially release a new event of genetically modified maize, called GA21.

This maize is resistant to their herbicide, Touchdown Forte. The technology gives farmers the freedom to spray poisonous herbicide indiscriminately, as the poison will kill everything except the crop, which is modified to survive the poison (in much the same vein as Monsanto's Roundup).

A new GM study by the University of Caen in France shows a negative impact on the function of kidneys and liver in rats consuming GM maize varieties for just 90 days.

From the study:
"We investigated three different GM corn namely NK 603, MON 810 and MON 863, which were fed to rats for 90 days. The raw data have been obtained by European governments and made publically available for scrutiny and counter-evaluation.

“These studies constitute a model to investigate possible subchronic toxicological effects of these GM cereals in mammals and humans. These are the longest in vivo tests performed with mammals consuming these GMOs. The animals were monitored for numerous blood and organ parameters.

2010 is virtually upon us, but before we allow the new year to sweep us back into the swing of things, it's a good moment to reflect on the past year and what news stories were most popular with our readers.

1. is Woolworths just another bad egg?
So there you are; surrounded by posters of poultry basking in their freedom, your conscience and shopping experience clean because you are promised that the eggs you are buying came from free-range chickens. If chickens could smile, I’m sure we would be confronted by an enormous picture of a splendid beaky grin.

2. you can recycle tetra pak!
I have to confess to sending various irate messages to Tetra Pak over the last year about their apparent lack of recycling facilities in Cape Town, or the country for that matter. The perception out there, despite their very obvious drive to recycle overseas, is that one can't recycle tetra pak, and there are a fair amount of them if you consider things like fruit juice, some olive oil, long-life milk and custard all come in these containers – they heap up over time!