Consumers can claim against Wesson Oils

After more than a decade of legal proceedings – including a rejected US$8M settlement – a federal judge has given preliminary approval for consumers to file claims against Wesson Oil’s vegetable oil containing genetically-modified (GM) soyabean or corn, CNET reported on 5 January.

A class action suit filed in 2011 alleged that ConAgra Foods, Wesson’s parent company at the time, falsely advertised the oil as “100% natural” from at least 2006 until 2017 despite the fact it was made from GM crops, the report said.

Customers were “induced to pay more for Wesson Oils due to that false and deceptive claim”, according to the complaint.

By July 2017, ConAgra had removed the “100% natural”

WORLD: A new CRISPR/ Cas9 technique has been developed which could be used to improve crop yields, Phys Org reported on 3 January.

Published in Nature language from Wesson packaging and stopped advertising its products that way, the report said.

Biotechnology, the technique developed by scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology combined grafting with a 'mobile' CRISPR tool. CRISPR-Cas9 allows the editing of the genome by removing, adding or altering sections of the DNA sequence.

The scientists grafted an unmodified shoot onto roots containing a mobile CRISPR/Cas9, which allowed the 'genetic scissor' to move from the root into the shoot. There, it edited the plant DNA without leaving a trace of itself in the next generation of plants.

This discovery would save time, money and circumvent current limitations in plant breeding and contribute to sustainable food solutions across multiple crops, the Phys Org report said.

While the project used Arabidopsis or thale cress as the model plant, the research team also grafted shoots of its commercial relative – oilseed rape – onto Arabidopsis roots.

Calyxt says seedless hemp offered improved yields and quality

In 2018, it agreed to a US$8M settlement to resolve the case. However, a federal judge rejected the deal as nearly US$7M of the total would be used for lawyers’ fees.

In November last year, a US$3M settlement was preliminarily approved and an official settlement site went live in December, with customers who had purchased Wesson oil for personal consumption during the specified time frame able to file for compensation, CNET wrote.

“Our novel gene editing system can be used efficiently for many breeding programmes and crop plants. This includes many agricultural important plant species that are difficult or impossible to modify with existing methods,” Dr Friedrich Kragler, who led the team of scientists, said.

India proposes new regulations for GM foods, ingredients

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare/ Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has proposed draft regulations for genetically modified (GM) foods and ingredients, according to a report by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s Foreign Agricultural Service.

“No person shall manufacture, pack, store, sell, market or otherwise distribute or import any food or food ingredient produced from GMOs, except with the prior approval of the food authority,” the draft Food Safety and Standards (Genetically Modified Foods) Regulations 2022 proposes.

All food products (GMOs intended for food use and food ingredients produced from GMOs that contained modified

DNA) with more than 1% GM ingredients would need to be labelled with the words “contains genetically modified organisms/ ingredients derived from GMO”, the 27 November USDA 27 Global Agricultural Information Network (GAIN) report said.

The draft regulations were opened for public consultation for 60 days from the post date of 18 November.

USA: Global agribusiness giant Cargill and US agribusiness co-operative CHS plan to expand the export side of their joint venture TEMCO. The addition of Cargill’s export grain terminal in Houston, Texas, would provide additional shipping access for grains, oilseeds and by-products through the port of Houston, Cargill said on 13 January.

A 24-year partnership between Cargill and CHS, TEMCO currently operates three facilities in the Pacific Northwest: Portland, Oregon; and Kalama and Tacoma, both in Washington. These three facilities distribute grain to global markets, primarily in the Asia-Pacific region.

The Houston terminal is located approximately 64km inland from the Gulf of Mexico via Galveston Bay. With 6M bushels of storage and capacity for 350 rail cars, the facility handles up to 250M bushels/year.

WORLD: Shipping fuel prices are falling despite the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, FreightWaves wrote on 5 December.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, shipping fuel prices reached record highs but had now fallen to prewar levels due to fears of future demand weakness, the report said.

Based on prices at the top 20 refuelling hubs, the price average for very low sulphur fuel oil (VLSFO) – the fuel used by most commercial vessels – on 2 December was US$685.5/tonne – a 39% drop from the record high on 14 June, according to a report by Ship&Bunker The average price for high sulphur fuel oil (HSFO) –the fuel burned by ships using exhaust gas scrubbers – was US$457/tonne – a 32% reduction on the 5 May rate.