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Upon request from the European Commission, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) was asked to develop guiding principles that would aid the future establishment of protocols for chronic toxicity and/or carcinogenicity studies in rodents with whole food/feed. It was agreed that this EFSA scientific report would be a commentary on OECD TG 453, with specific considerations related to whole food/feed. The mandate was assigned to an internal EFSA task force composed of staff members with different key scientific expertise and was endorsed by the EFSA Scientific Committee. Experts in the role of external reviewers and Member State representatives of the EFSA GMO Network provided valuable comments during the development of the document. This scientific report comments on the applicability of OECD Test Guideline 453 for the carcinogenicity and chronic toxicity testing of chemicals (OECD, 2009a) for the purpose of testing whole food/feed. The report includes specific recommendations for performing and reporting experiments carried out with whole food/feed. These recommendations are in line with the guiding principles previously developed in the EFSA scientific opinion on conducting repeated-dose 90-day oral toxicity studies in rodents with whole food/feed.

The editor of the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT), Dr A. Wallace Hayes, has decided to retract the study by the team of Prof Gilles-Eric Séralini, which found that rats fed a Monsanto genetically modified (GM) maize NK603 and tiny amounts of the Roundup herbicide it is grown with suffered severe toxic effects, including kidney and liver damage and increased rates of tumours and mortality.[1] GMWatch believes FCT’s retraction of Prof Séralini’s paper to be illicit, unscientific, and unethical. It violates the guidelines for retractions in scientific publishing set out by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE),[2] of which FCT is a member.[3]. Video: http://www.activistpost.com/2013/12/how-monsanto-silences-scientific-di…

I know the answer to the question in the headline, but almost no one will believe me. The drastic decline in the quail (Coturnix coturnix) population throughout the South has been a passionate concern of mine for many years. The tragic and drastic decline in quail and other field-bird populations is the result of the massive and widespread spraying of herbicides by agriculture and forestry industries. I am as sure of this as I am that night follows day. There is a curious and almost hostile resistance to this assertion. I have written many letters to various groups and agencies that assume an authoritative role in such problems, but my efforts are always met with an almost hostile indifference. More specifically, I believe that Quail Unlimited and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Deptartment are more a part of the problem than the solution. To my knowledge, they have no experimental data to support their position that herbicides have no significant effect on field-bird populations. I have suggested that Quail Unlimited spray their Quail Demonstration Project acreages with herbicide and see what happens, but they declined.

The study, published Wednesday in the journal Cell, also identified the mechanism by which the chemicals induce Parkinson’s in those with the mutation. Stuart Lipton of the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute was the study’s senior author. Scott D. Ryan, also of the institute, was first author. Pesticide exposure has long been known as an increased risk factor for Parkinson’s, which gradually reduces the ability to move. However, the reasons for this vulnerability are unknown. The study found one genetic cause; others may also be involved. Environmental factors help determine whether Parkinson's actually develops, the scientists say.

In Carl Sagan’s 1995 book “The Demon Haunted World,” he makes an impassioned argument for the necessity of science in the modern world—acknowledging where science had faltered, but also framing science in relation to pseudo- and even anti-scientific strains of thought. Could the modes of thinking adopted by anti-vaccine crusaders and climate change denialists make him any more relevant? Sagan’s own words show his incredible foresight: "I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness".

The White-winged Flufftail, one of Africa’s rarest birds, is on the verge of extinction, conservation body the IUCN warned on Tuesday. The White-winged Flufftail (Sarothrura ayresi) has been listed as critically endangered, putting it on the edge of the extinction abyss. The small, secretive bird is found in Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. It feeds on seeds and vegetation as well as insects, spiders, earthworms, small frogs and small fish. The stomach contents of a deceased chick included coleoptera (Dystiscidae) imagines, Diptera larvae (Tipulidae and Tabanidae), and the remains of small crustaceans.

Fifteen bird species in India remain critically endangered and three bird species that were in the 'least concern' category, so far, face greater danger than before, as per the recently-released International Union of Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) red list. The avian species that fall under the critically endangered category include migratory and non-migratory birds found in wetlands, grasslands, forests as well as scavengers. "The Himalayan Quail and Pink-headed Duck (Rhodonessa caryophyllacea) are practically extinct although they are listed as critically endangered," said Atul Sathe, manager-communications of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS). In the latest list, two birds - the River Lapwing (Vanellus duvaucelii) and River Tern - that were listed as species of least concern have been registered as near threatened. A third bird, the long-tailed duck, which has been sighted in India on a few occasions, has moved from 'least concern' to 'vulnerable' on the red list, Sathe added.

On the first of November, when Mexicans celebrate a holiday called the Day of the Dead, some also celebrate the millions of monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) that, without fail, fly to the mountainous fir forests of central Mexico on that day. They are believed to be souls of the dead, returned. This year, for or the first time in memory, the monarch butterflies didn’t come, at least not on the Day of the Dead. They began to straggle in a week later than usual, in record-low numbers. Last year’s low of 60 million now seems great compared with the fewer than three million that have shown up so far this year. Some experts fear that the spectacular migration could be near collapse. “It does not look good,” said Lincoln P. Brower, a monarch expert at Sweet Briar College. It is only the latest bad news about the dramatic decline of insect populations. Another insect in serious trouble is the wild bee, which has thousands of species. Nicotine-based pesticides called neonicotinoids are implicated in their decline, but even if they were no longer used, experts say, bees, monarchs and many other species of insect would still be in serious trouble.