The Case Against Genetically Engineered Foods

[Jcrowley]

Before building the case against the range of GMO crops and the processes involved in bringing these crops into existence (the product and the process are intricately linked and this must be understood in full in order to completely assess the subject matter) it is necessary to address and debunk several of the key myths put forward by proponents of Genetically Engineered crops. After that it is done in initial posts I will post extensively on numerous facets of GE foods that show that not only is the promotion of GE foods a fraud of the highest order but it is an extremely dangerous process every step of the way.

A few additional points with the first being the wish that everyone add to the list with stories, articles and any information which you posses that bring to light the various concerns and hazards of GM foods. The next point being that my intent is to only address GM crops/foods. There are many arguments about the processes and products of GMOs that fall into any number of categories ranging from medicine to religion to live bait (not kidding). These are very important discussions but they are not within the scope of what I hope to address here. Lastly I'd like to encourage all of those who are proponents of GE crops/foods to participate most vigorously but do so with factual information and personal analysis. This is understandably a hot topic and I do not ever shy from heated discussions in fact those are often the ones where much is learned. However such immediate labellings that are devoid of any real meaning only betray the weakness of one's position. So please if you are going to simply shout "Luddite!" (which was a social movement when properly understood) understand that that does nothing to further the discussion or strengthen your position.

This is not about progress. You can’t stop progress. No, of course we cannot and why would we want to? Progress implies change for the better. Change for the worse is regression.

Now let us start at the beginning with THE BIG LIE pushed by the Gene Giants and the sundry proponents of genetically engineered foods:

BIOTECHNOLOGY WILL FEED THE WORLD

Even the representatives of biotech companies - such as Steve Smith of Novartis and Paul Rylott of Aventis - have publicly declared that "feeding the world" claims are a myth. Only corporate whores like Jack Gabriels seem still to be spreading this scientifically unjustifiable lie.

"If anyone tells you that GM is going to feed the world, tell them that it is not. To feed the world takes political and financial will"
Steve Smith, SCIMAC and Novartis (now SYNGENTA), Tittleshall Village Hall public meeting on proposed local GM farm scale trial, 29th March 2000

"GM crops may reduce chemical use and they may increase yields - but GM crops will not feed the world."
Paul Rylott - Aventis - at a public meeting at Low Burnham, Lincs on Wednesday 18th April 2001

Will Biotechnology Feed the World's Poor?

Biotechnology can never be a cure for hunger - Famines are not caused by lack of food but by lack of access to food and alternative sources of income in times of crisis. There are ample reserves of food in the world today yet the numbers of malnourished run into hundreds of millions. Increasing agricultural production (even assuming that this is possible through biotechnology) whilst leaving the structural causes of poverty and hunger unaddressed is a recipe not for feeding the world but for continuing to starve sizable numbers within it.

Biotechnology creates dependency - Biotechnology goes hand in hand with intensive agriculture, with single crops in large fields. The majority of Third World farmers are small-scale, farming a variety of crops. By switching to genetically engineered seeds they have to change their practices and become dependent on the companies which provide the "package" of seeds, herbicides, fertilizers, irrigation systems, etc. In India, farmers using Monsanto's genetically engineered seeds pay an extra $50 - $65 per acre as a 'technical fee' over and above the price of seed. Farmers who do business with Monsanto must sign a contract stating that they will not buy chemicals from any one else.

http://www.pmac.net/campbell.htm

Let us understand Biotech in the context of Industrial Agriculture and as an extension of all of its processes:

Myth one: Industrial agriculture will feed the world

The truth:
World hunger is not created by lack of food but by poverty and landlessness, which deny people access to food. Industrial agriculture actually increases hunger by raising the cost of farming, by forcing tens of millions of farmers off the land, and by growing primarily high-profit export and luxury crops.

There is no myth about the existence of hunger. It is estimated that nearly 800 million people go hungry each day. And millions live on the brink of disaster, as malnutrition and related illnesses kill as many as 12 million children per year. Famine continues in the 21st century, though few of us are aware of the truly global nature of the problem. In Brazil, 70 million people cannot afford enough to eat, and in India, 200 million go hungry every day. Even in the United States, the world's number one exporter of food, 33 million men, women, and children are considered among the world's hungry.

There is, however, a myth about what is causing this tragic hunger epidemic and what it will take to alleviate it. Industrial agriculture proponents spend millions on advertising campaigns each year claiming that people are starving because there is not enough food to feed the current population, much less a continually growing one. "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? 10 billion by 2030" proclaimed an old headline on Monsanto's Web page. The company warns of the "growing pressures on the Earth's natural resources to feed more people" and claims that low-technology agriculture "will not produce sufficient crop yield increases to feed the world's burgeoning population." Their answer is pesticide- and technology-intensive agriculture that will produce the maximum output from the land in the shortest amount of time. Global food corporations, they say, will have to serve as "saviors" of the world's hungry.

http://www.alternet.org/story/13900

Starvation and malnutrition are very real problems, but they are caused by unequal distribution of wealth, not by food scarcity. According to the United Nations World Food Program, there is currently more than enough food produced to feed everyone on the planet an adequate and healthy diet. The reason that approximately 800 million people go hungry each year is that they don't have access to food by either being able to afford it or grow their own. Biotechnology, by turning living crops into "intellectual property," increases corporate control over food resources and production. Rather than alleviate world hunger, biotechnology is likely to exacerbate it by increasing everybody's dependence on the corporate sector for seeds and the materials

[nam78_two]

1. Bookmarked.nt

[scarletwoman]

2. Excellent work!

Nothing I can add at this point -- just want you to know that your post is very appreciated!

k & r,
sw

[Kelly Rupert]

3. That is not a case against GM foods.

It is, rather, a partial refutation of a case for it. The closest you come is the final paragraph, but it has a few critical flaws, most notably that the existence of GM crops would in no way raise the prices or lower the availability of non-GM crops. Those farmers that would switch to GM would do so in order to farm more efficiently (that is, with faster-growing, disease-resistant crops). If GM crops were to become exploitatively priced (that is, above the value of the benefit they might provide), any farmer could immediately revert to using plain, old-fashioned seed.

[Jcrowley]

4. You are correct

All that was intended in the OP was to begin addressing the myths of the GM proponents and the most prevalent and egregious of those myths was the lie that GE foods will feed the world. I thought I made that clear if I did not I apologize. The case against GMO's will be made as the thread continues and I encourage you to add comments and criticism all along the way.

"World hunger is extensive in spite of sufficient global food resources. Therefore increased food production is no solution. The problem is that many people are too poor to buy readily available food. Therefore measures solving the poverty problem is what is required to solve the world hunger probem."

— It is a myth that world hunger is due to scarcity of food, Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Application of Science and Technology, October 1998


"Genetic Engineering Technologies Will Not Solve World Hunger
For the most part, genetic engineering techniques are being applied to crops important to the industrialized world, not crops on which the world's hungry depend."

“Companies like Monsanto keep arguing that genetic modification will feed the world, but that is specious,” argues Jonathan Kimmelman, a bioethicist at Yale University. “The financial benefits from genetic modification will flow mostly to the very largest agricultural producers, putting local agricultural economies at a tremendous disadvantage. That is really the central issue here.”

— Bruce Shapiro, Stalking the wild Frankensalmon, Salon.com News, May 5, 2000

As noted by Inter Press Service (April 24, 2000), “one of today's great injustices ... is the irony that those who feed the world are often least able to feed themselves.” As also pointed out in the same article, 1.3 billion people work in agriculture.

Amory and Hunter Lovins are quite blunt about this aspect:

"Genetically engineered crops were created not because they're productive but because they're patentable. Their economic value is oriented not toward helping subsistence farmers to feed themselves but toward feeding more livestock for the already overfed rich."

— Amory and Hunter Lovins, Founders of the Rocky Mountain Institute, quoted by John Robbins, Are Genetically Altered Foods The Answer to World Hunger?, Earth Island Institute, Winter 2001-2002, Vol. 16, No.

"Monsanto and other proponents of biotechnology continually tell the public that genetic engineering is necessary if the world's food supply is to keep up with population growth. But even with nearly 100 million acres planted, their products have yet to do a thing to reverse the spread of hunger. There is no more food available for the world's less fortunate. In fact, most of the fields were growing transgenic soybeans and corn that are destined for livestock feed."

— John Robbins, Are Genetically Altered Foods The Answer to World Hunger?, Earth Island Institute, Winter 2001-2002, Vol. 16, No. 4
Richard Robbins, Professor of Anthropology at State University of New York is also worth quoting, summarizing why food is produced in the first place (bulleting and spacing formatting is mine, text is original):

To understand why people go hungry you must stop thinking about food as something farmers grow for others to eat, and begin thinking about it as something companies produce for other people to buy.

[Jcrowley]

5. Myth: Genetic engineering is just like conventional breeding

I should, right away, dispel the myth that genetic engineering is just like conventional breeding techniques. It is not. Genetic engineering bypasses conventional breeding by using the artificially constructed vectors to multiply copies of genes, and in many cases, to carry and smuggle genes into cells. Once inside cells, these vectors slot themselves into the host genome. In this way, transgenic organisms are made carrying the desired transgenes. The insertion of foreign genes into the host genome has long been known to have many harmful and fatal effects including cancer; and this is born out by the low success rate of creating desired transgenic organisms. Typically, a large number of eggs or embryos have to be injected or infected with the vector to obtain a few organisms that successfully express the transgene.

The most common vectors used in genetic engineering biotechnology are a chimaeric recombination of natural genetic parasites from different sources, including viruses causing cancers and other diseases in animals and plants, with their pathogenic functions 'crippled', and tagged with one or more antibiotic resistance 'marker' genes, so that cells transformed with the vector can be selected. For example, the vector most widely used in plant genetic engineering is derived from a tumour-inducing plasmid carried by the soil bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens. In animals, vectors are constructed from retroviruses causing cancers and other diseases. A vector currently used in fish has a framework from the Moloney marine leukaemic virus, which causes leukaemia in mice, but can infect all mammalian cells. It has bits from the Rous Sarcoma virus, causing sarcomas in chickens, and from the vesicular stomatitis virus, causing oral lesions in cattle, horses, pigs and humans. Such mosaic vectors are particularly hazardous. Unlike natural parasitic genetic elements which have various degrees of host specificity, vectors used in genetic engineering, partly by design, and partly on account of their mosaic character, have the ability to overcome species barriers, and to infect a wide range of species. Another obstacle to genetic engineering is that all organisms and cells have natural defence mechanisms that enable them to destroy or inactivate foreign genes, and transgene instability is a big problem for the industry. Vectors are now increasingly constructed to overcome those mechanisms that maintain the integrity of species. The result is that the artificially constructed vectors are especially good at carrying out horizontal gene transfer.

Let me summarize why rDNA technology differs radically from conventional breeding techniques.

1. Genetic engineering recombines genetic material in the laboratory between species that do not interbreed in nature.
2. While conventional breeding methods shuffle different forms (alletes) of the same genes, genetic engineering enables completely new (exotic) genes to be introduced with unpredictable effects on the physiology and biochemistry of the resultant transgenic organism.
3. Gene multiplications and a high proportion of gene transfers are mediated by vectors which have the following undesirable characteristics:
a. many are derived from disease-causing viruses, plasmids and mobile genetic elements - parasitic DNA that have the ability to invade cells and insert themselves into the cell's genome causing genetic damages.
b. they are designed to break down species barriers so that they can shuttle genes between a wide range of species. Their wide host range means that they can infect many animals and plants, and in the process pick up genes from viruses of all these species to create new pathogens.
c. they routinely carry genes for antibiotic resistance, which is already a big health problem.
d. they are increasingly constructed to overcome the recipient species' defence mechanisms that break down or inactivate foreign DNA.

http://www.orpheusweb.co.uk/john.rose/ho.html

[NashVegas]

6. Myth: GM Crops Have Larger Yields And Higher Profits Than Traditional

Fact:

In May 2000, results of a two-year study by Nebraska University’s Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources showed RR soya yielded 6% less than their closest non-GM relatives and 11% less than high-yielding non-GM varieties . The yield penalty was attributed to the gene insertion process.

http://www.biotech-info.net/Roundup_soybeans_yield_less.html

Fact:
The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Iowa State University, interviewed 800 Iowa farmers in 1998 to determine if growing GM crops was more profitable. Random surveys of 62 continuous cornfields, 315 rotated cornfields, and 365 soya fields concluded that the difference in profitability was non-significant for both crops. Thus, the farmers who raised GM crops did not gain any competitive edge.

http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/news/9-22-99gmorel.html

The first farm-level economic analysis of Bt corn, in demonstrating less net profit, lower corn prices, and lost corn exports, questions whether planting GM corn is worth the cost <18>. From 1996-2001, American farmers paid at least $659 million in price premiums to plant Bt corn, while boosting their harvest by only 276 million bushels - worth $567 million in economic gain. The bottom line for farmers is a net loss of $92 million - about $1.31 per acre. Furthermore, the US has foregone about 350 million bushels of corn export sales to the European Union since 1996/97 because the EU doesn't want GMOs.

http://www.gefoodalert.org/library/admin/uploadedfiles/When_Does_It_Pay_To_Plant_Bt_Corn.pdf

According to a USDA study published in 2002, "GE crops available for commercial use do not increase the yield potential of a variety. In fact, yield may even decrease if the varieties used to carry the herbicide-tolerant or insect-resistant genes are not the highest yielding cultivars. However, by protecting the plant from certain pests, GE crops can prevent yield losses compared with non-GE varieties, particularly when events of infestation of such pests occur."

ie, if you have a year where there's a bad infestation of a pest the crop is engineered to resist, GE crop will come through for you. The thing is, such infestations are unpredictable.

http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aer810/aer810g.pdf < -- some nifty tables there.

[Jcrowley]

7. Myth: Biotechnology Will Reduce The Use of Pesticides

Herbicide tolerant varieties have modestly increased herbicide use

Corn herbicides account for about 40% of the total pounds of herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides that are applied annually by U.S. farmers (Table 3.2, Economic Research Service , 1997). Soybean weed management is the second biggest market, accounting for about 68 million pounds applied annually. For this reason, attainment of national pesticide use reduction goals and minimizing environmental damage and public health risks in corn-soybean production areas depends in large measure on innovation in weed management systems in these two major crops. Four years of USDA soybean herbicide use data (1997- 2000) are available and support four conclusions (ERS, 1999; Duffy, 1999; Benbrook, 2001a):

Slightly more pounds of herbicides are applied on the average acre of Roundup-Ready (RR) soybeans compared to the average acre planted to conventional soybean varieties.
Fewer herbicide active ingredients are applied on the average acre of RR soybeans relative to the average conventional acre.

Average per acre pounds of herbicide applied on RR soybeans exceeds by 2- to 10-fold herbicide use on the approximate 30% of soybean acres where farmers depend largely on low-dose imidazolinone and sulfonylurea herbicides.

Herbicide use on RR soybean acres is gradually rising as a result of weed shifts, late-season weed escapes leading to a buildup in weed seedbanks, and the loss of susceptibility to glyphosate in some weed species (Hartzler, 1999; HRAC, 2001).

While RR soybean technology has not reduced herbicide use, it has certainly been a remarkable commercial success. Farmers have embraced the technology because it greatly simplifies soybean weed management and provides additional degrees of freedom in managing weeds (Gianessi and Carpenter, 2000; ERS, 1999).

http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/More-GMOs-Less-Pesticide.htm

Myth #8 Biotechnology is a more environmentally sound approach to pest management and sustainable agriculture.

* Biotechnology emerges in an area when there is widespread concern about the long-term sustainability of our food production systems. Many scientists raise questions about the growing dependence of farming on non -renewable resources, the depletion of soils through erosion and the heavy reliance on chemicals which are costly but also raise questions about food and environmental quality.
* Agroindustrial's model reliance on monoculture and inputs such as pesticides and fertilizers impacts the environment and society: topsoil has been lost, biodiversity has eroded, and toxics have damaged wildlife, soil and water. As biotechnology requires reliance on monocultures these negative trends will become exacerbated.
* Worldwide, 2.5 million tons of pesticides are applied each year with a purchase price of $20 billion.
* In the US, 500,000 tons of 600 different types of pesticides are used annually at a cost of $4.1 billion.
* The cost to Latin America of chemical pest control is expected to reach US $ 3.97 billion by the year 2000
* An investment of $4 billion dollars in pesticide control saves approximately $16 billions in US crops. But indirect environmental and public health costs of pesticide use (reaching $8 billion each year) need to be balanced against these benefits.
* By weight of active ingredients, herbicides now constitute 85% of all pesticides applied to field crops. Monsanto alone sold $1 billion worth in 1982.
* Biotechnology treats agricultural problems as genetic deficiencies of organisms, and treats nature as a commodity.
* Biotechnology is being used to pursue to patch up problems that have been caused by previous technologies (pest resistance, cost of pesticides, pollution, etc.) which were promoted by the same companies now leading the bio-revolution
* Transgenic crops for pest control follow closely the pesticide paradigm of using a single control mechanism which has proven to fail with insects, pathogens and weeds. As such, they do not fit into the broad ideals of sustainable agriculture.
* The "one gene - one pest" resistance approach is rather easy to be overcome by pests which are continuously adapting to new situations and evolving detoxification mechanisms.
* As with pesticides, biotechnology companies will feel the impact of environmental, farm labor, animal rights and consumers lobbies

http://www.orpheusweb.co.uk/john.rose/biomyth.html

Myth No.8: GE crops will reduce the use of herbicides and pesticides.

FACT: Crops engineered to be resistant to specific herbicides may encourage more liberal use of those herbicides. This has been anticipated by one manufacturer, who has applied to ANZFA (Australia & New Zealand Food Authority) to have the allowable residue of the herbicide glyphosate (Roundup®) in foods sold in New Zealand increased by 200 times. In areas of the USA where crops engineered to produce their own insecticide are grown, pesticide use has not decreased.

http://prorev.com/genetic.htm

[Buzz Clik]

9. Your research is very thorough, but I will take issue with a specific point.

Roundup ready soybeans are designed to be sprayed, of course, with Roundup. Glyphosate is applied at higher rates than some of the other herbicides (and you mentioned this). A huge advantage of glyphosate is that it is effectively immobilized in the soil. Infiltration to groundwater is rare, and it will appear in runoff only in the suspended load.

So, commenting that GM crops don't require less herbicide is very, very misleading.

[Jcrowley]

14. On whether RR soybean systems reduce pesticide use and increase grower profits

On whether RR soybean systems reduce pesticide use and increase grower profits, our analysis shows that -

RR soybean systems are largely dependent on herbicides and hence are not likely to reduce herbicide use or reliance. Claims otherwise are based on incomplete information or analytically flawed comparisons that do not tell the whole story.

Farmers growing RR soybeans used 2 to 5 times more herbicide measured in pounds applied per acre, compared to the other popular weed management systems used on most soybean fields not planted to RR varieties in 1998. RR herbicide use exceeds the level on many farms using multitactic Integrated Weed Management systems by a factor of 10 or more.

There is clear evidence that Roundup use by farmers planting RR soybeans has risen markedly in 1999 because of the emergence of a degree of tolerance to Roundup in several key weed species, shifts in weeds toward those less sensitive to Roundup, price cuts and aggressive marketing.

Roundup use on soybeans may well double from 1998 levels within the next few years. But if current trends continue in the way RR technology is used, the efficacy and market share of Roundup may then fall just as quickly.

The RR soybean yield drag and technology fee impose a sizable indirect tax on the income of soybean producers, ranging from a few percent where RR varieties work best to over 12 percent of gross income per acre.

The remarkable popularity of Roundup Ready soybeans, despite their cost and the significant yield drag associated with their use, is evidence of the difficulty and high cost of today's herbicide-dependent soybean weed management systems. The rapid evolution of weeds better able to withstand applications of Roundup reinforces the need for more integrated, multiple tactic weed management systems.

http://www.mindfully.org/GE/RRS-Yield-Drag.htm

I wouldn't suggest increasing grower profits is a worthy criteria but this study is an example of what is out there. Better get rest.

[Buzz Clik]

21. Well...

RR soybean systems are largely dependent on herbicides and hence are not likely to reduce herbicide use or reliance. Claims otherwise are based on incomplete information or analytically flawed comparisons that do not tell the whole story.

I agree. Interestingly, some years back I had dinner with one of the scientists who helped develop RR soybeans. It wasn't intended to be a professional discussion -- his mom and my mom are old friends, and we all met in a local restaurant. In his discussions with me about his work, he mentioned that a great deal of the push for RR soybeans came from the producers (farmers) who were desperate for this crop. At no time did he ever suggest that reduced herbicides was one of the goals or benefits. One would never expect it to be, because Roundup is applied at significantly higher rates than other herbicides. But, as I mentioned earlier, glyphosate is strongly retained by soils and is a very small environmental threat.

The remarkable popularity of Roundup Ready soybeans, despite their cost and the significant yield drag associated with their use, is evidence of the difficulty and high cost of today's herbicide-dependent soybean weed management systems. The rapid evolution of weeds better able to withstand applications of Roundup reinforces the need for more integrated, multiple tactic weed management systems.

I agree. However, I view the RR soybeans not as a failure but as an indication of the potential of this approach for delivering customized plant materials.

[Jcrowley]

29. The whole premise

of Biotech crops is flawed. A good place to examine this is the Bt potato. Why the engineering of the potato? Well we know the ostensible reason. But the real reason for why there is a pest problem is that the perfect milieu has been developed for the pests meaning monocropped agriculture with denuded soil. This scenario holds true for the other cases we are discussing.

If you wish I'll walk you through some diversified fields nearby and you'll see how wrongheaded and shaky is the very ground upon which Biotech proponents reside. And they know this.

But in reality Biotech was never meant to anything other than an extension of Industrial Agriculture and a boon for Biotech Cos. which do not have the good will of the people in mind no matter how much they push that myth in their glossy ads and 50 million a year PR campaigns.

[Buzz Clik]

37. Ah. We've arrived at the foundation of your argument.

I won't pretend to be able to read the minds of corporate management, but I won't argue against the notion that corporations are interested in making money. Some companies -- most doomed to failure -- think only in the short term and are willing to push flawed products with glitzy advertising and false promises. When these intentionally false promises are not realized, the corporations will be in dire straights.

As mentioned before, RR soybeans were a demand from the bottom up -- the consumers wanted it. They got it, and most are happy with the ease of field management.

The complaints that you outline about monocultures and denuded soils are not unique to GM crops, nor are they necessarily part of the GM crop system. A farmer growing GM crops is under no obligation to denude the soil or keep his soil in monoculture for decades on end. And, to be honest, I'm not sure how you're making this flawed connection.

[Jcrowley]

40. Please give an example

You say that RR soybeans were a demand from the bottom up. What do you mean by that? Who are the folk you speak of at the bottom that demanded RR soybeans? Please cite some references.

If you're saying people buying soybeans demanded RR soybeans that is laughable. The American populace overall knows nothing about their food sources and certainly less about agricultural practices. I mean if you are saying that 15 years ago American consumers were demanding RR soybeans I don't even know how to address that as it is not even a thought that would enter into their consciousness. Now of course there is a massive Propaganda machine run by Biotech ($50 million/yr) that attempts to tell consumers what to think. And of course the rest of the world, not so gullible, knows what's up with RR soybeans and other GE foods which is why they so roundly reject them.

GM crops are an extension of industrial agriculture of which monocropping is one feature as is denuded soils due to heavy chemical use and the litany of practices that you are well aware of I assume.

A farmer using GM crops is under very tight restrictions and obligations if you have seen the contracts, I have, you would know this. What is involved in these obligations of course denudes the soils as well as contaminates water supplies.

Sometimes I wonder while in these abstract discussions how many if any people have actually been to the wastelands of the Idaho hills or the brown fields of Iowa or any number of spots decimated by Industrial Agriculture. One could not have designed a more destructive way of farming than what is currently being practiced in the US by the majority of farmers, particularly large-scale farmers. Biotech crops does nothing to address, nor can it as it fits hand in glove with these processes and will further the theft of topsoil and distract people from the very real and already available practices which are based on time honored techniques of agricultural practices and new low-scale innovations.

I suggest you visit The Land Institute in Salinas, Kansas and learn what they are doing there or just visit their website for an introductory. I also recommend that you look into the works of Wendell Berry starting with "The Unsettling of America."

We know how to do all of this. The Biotech industry is part, a big part, of the problem.

[Buzz Clik]

42. .

You say that RR soybeans were a demand from the bottom up. What do you mean by that? Who are the folk you speak of at the bottom that demanded RR soybeans? Please cite some references.

If you're saying people buying soybeans demanded RR soybeans that is laughable. The American populace overall knows nothing about their food sources and certainly less about agricultural practices...

I made this pretty clear in my post. It was the producers who wanted this, and why not? They could spray a single broad spectrum herbicide on their field of soybeans to take care of all grasses and broadleafs. I wouldn't mind the same advantage for my lawn. And, I'm sorry, but I cannot provide a reference -- how would you suggest I do this? Have some farmer send you a letter? If you don't believe this, there is nothing I can do. Likewise, you cannot even begin to prove that RR soybeans was invented and mandated by corporate management.

Now of course there is a massive Propaganda machine run by Biotech ($50 million/yr) that attempts to tell consumers what to think. And of course the rest of the world, not so gullible, knows what's up with RR soybeans and other GE foods which is why they so roundly reject them.

Roundly reject them? Who, outside of fringe vocal activists and isolated countries, have rejected these products? The popularity of biotech crops is soaring, not declining -- double digit percentage increases in acreage grown every year for over a decade.

GM crops are an extension of industrial agriculture of which monocropping is one feature as is denuded soils due to heavy chemical use and the litany of practices that you are well aware of I assume.

This is completely false. RR soybeans, for example, enable a no-tillage approach to growing soybeans that is difficult without them.

A farmer using GM crops is under very tight restrictions and obligations if you have seen the contracts, I have, you would know this. What is involved in these obligations of course denudes the soils as well as contaminates water supplies.

Really. How about sharing the contract the obligates the user of the GM crop to denude the soil. That will be a very interesting contract.

Sometimes I wonder while in these abstract discussions how many if any people have actually been to the wastelands of the Idaho hills or the brown fields of Iowa or any number of spots decimated by Industrial Agriculture.

You've really stepped into one, my friend. I make my living in agriculture. I live in the heart of agricultural country in Indiana, my father was a farmer, and I've lived my entire life in agricultural regions. Yes, I've seen the bad aspects of "Industrial Agriculture", but I've seen equally horrible treatment of the land by family farmers. Bad practices are bad practices -- there is no great conspiracy by corporations to destroy the resource that keeps them in business.

Biotech crops does nothing to address, nor can it as it fits hand in glove with these processes and will further the theft of topsoil and distract people from the very real and already available practices which are based on time honored techniques of agricultural practices and new low-scale innovations.

Wrong again. As already stated, RR soybeans enhances the ability of farmers to use no tillage.

I suggest you visit The Land Institute in Salinas, Kansas and learn what they are doing there or just visit their website for an introductory.

I've not only been there, I've instructed Wes Jackson's inturns in my labs and I have hire some of his former employees. (I lived in Manhattan Kansas for 15 years.)

[Jcrowley]

49. Um?

Who, outside of fringe vocal activists and isolated countries, have rejected these products? The popularity of biotech crops is soaring, not declining -- double digit percentage increases in acreage grown every year for over a decade.

Russians reject GM foods

30/05/2005 - Two thirds of Russians are against genetically modified foods and the majority of experts support a ban on GM crops as the government prepares new production laws, reports Chris Mercer.

Only one in every three Russians had heard of GM products yet 95 per cent of those who were aware of GM said they were strongly against it or seriously concerned, according to new research by VCIOM, Russia's largest public opinion research body.

http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/news/news-ng.asp?n=60290-russians-reject-gm

Food Firms Reject GM Ingredients

Apr 15 2004

The UK's biggest food companies will continue to reject GM ingredients in their products when tougher GM labeling laws are introduced on Sunday 18th April, a survey by Friends of the Earth has revealed. The news will be welcomed by consumers across the UK who made it clear that they do not want to eat GM food. Meanwhile the UK Government, which opposed plans for tougher GM labeling rules to "minimise the risks" of alienating the US <1>, is backing applications for GM rice and sweetcorn to be imported into Europe.

http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/food_firms_reject_gm_ingre_15042004.html

The Zambian Government has finally decided not to accept a donation of genetically modified food for nearly three million of its people facing famine.
The decision was taken after the Zambian Government despatched a team of scientists around the world to study the potential effects of importing GM crops.

The food aid was initially offered by the international community to Zambia and five other Southern African countries, but President Levy Mwanawasa referred to the food as "poison".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2371675.stm

EU ministers reject GM food crop

04/01/2005 - European environment ministers failed to back a proposal to bring a GM food crop designed by US biotech giant Monsanto onto the EU market.

At a council meeting this week the ministers were unable to reach a majority decision on a Commission proposal to approve the importation and feed use of Monsanto's GT73 GM oilseed rape into the EU.
The European Commission asked ministers to take a decision after member state experts failed to reach an agreement in June.

The major food use of rape, also known as canola, in North America and Europe is as a refined vegetable oil. Typically, rapeseed oil is used by itself as a salad oil or cooking oil, or blended with other vegetable oils in the manufacture of margarine, shortenings, cooking and salad oils.

http://www.bakeryandsnacks.com/news/ng.asp?id=57060-eu-ministers-reject

EU Governments Maintain GM Crop Bans

By Geoff Meade, PA Europe Editor, in Brussels
24 June 2005


European governments defied the Brussels Commission today by
voting for the right to keep bans on genetically-modified
crops and food.

Five member states ? Austria, Luxembourg, Germany, France and
Greece ? were under pressure to give up their current bans
because of a trade dispute in which the US claims they are illegal.

http://www.connectotel.com/gmfood/pa240605.txt

Europe rejects transgenic crops in food and environment


Europe also parts company with the United States on genetically modified food. Despite enormous pressure from Monsanto and a full-court press from the trade, agricultural, and regulatory arms of the US government, the Europeans have effectively said "No" to genetically engineered crops and food, at least for the time being.

This landmark event in the history of technology is the outcome of a spirited, far-flung public debate. In most European countries, the risks, benefits, ethics, and economics of genetically modified food (the term genetically engineered never caught on in Europe) have long been front-page news. French farmers and English lords have gone to jail for destroying GM crops. Major UK food retailers and food companies like Marks and Spencer, Sainsbury's, and Unilever have promised consumers entire lines of food free from GM ingredients.

http://go.ucsusa.org/publications/nucleus.cfm?publicationID=189

UK public strongly rejects GM foods
11:00 24 September 2003
NewScientist.com news service
Andy Coghlan

The UK public resoundingly rejected the case for growing and eating genetically modified food on Wednesday.

The emphatic snub comes in a report announcing results of the UK government's "GM Nation" public debate on the future for GM foods.

It sums up feedback from 1200 letters and more than 600 public meetings attended by at least 8000 British people since June 2003.

The news comes at a time when British and other European governments are coming under increasing international pressure - particularly from the US - to lift a five-year moratorium on the growing and approval of GM crops.

The document, along with major scientific and economic evaluations of GM crops published earlier in summer 2003 and forthcoming results of field trials, will help inform the UK government's decision on whether to end moratorium on the commercial growing of GM crops later in 2003

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4191

I could go on I'll stop there. Keep the gauntlet I'll stick with the facts. As for training interns for the Land Institute that can mean many things so until I know the specifics it means nothing.

As for why Americans are happy to swallow GM contaminated food- Corporations have a greater control of the debate here. It's cultural here. Everything is already wrapped in plastic. You take it for granted. It's like the air you breathe. The links between the GM industry and the government have been carefully cultivated. The dominant corporation in the field, Monsanto has covered all its bases, making significant financial contributions to both Republicans and Democrats. The debate is controlled. Like so many other arenas Propaganda rules the mental processes in America and creates decisions and shapes opinions.

And then we could ask how it is that organics (fraught with it's own contradictions) have been booming.

[Buzz Clik]

51. LOL! Cut and paste much?

Come on, Crowley. Tell the people how many acres are planted to GM foods. In how many countries?

I'm out, dude.

[Jcrowley]

56. Tell them why

those GM crops were planted. Tell them who was responsible for the plantings. Tell them how it was done.

Though it really isn't necessary for anyone reading this thread without a vested or ideological interest can see quite clearly how this like the so-called "Green(d?) Revolution" has been shoved down peoples throats with the the most cynical facade of helping the poor and lesser folk (more white-man's burden BS) being used as political cover for taking people's lands and controlling their resources.

And now we have an extra layer of cover through organizations that you cited like the ISAAA who work with the State Department to push the agenda of corporate control upon the rest of the world. But it's still the same colonialism no matter how many layers you add. It's still Monsanto destroying the land and profiting from it every step of the way. Sorry I'm not down with that and I see right through it.

[truedelphi]

60. In the USA some 60% of all our corn is now GMO corn

Rice is catching up, and may soon surpass the corn.

There is no stopping it - like a bad genie out of a bottle - once it is out there, GMO pollen will be air bourne and it cannot be limited by fencing or hedges and above all, once it has been planted anywhere, it can not be stopped by law.

After all, pollen does not read legal decrees!

[Jcrowley]

65. The United States is the World Leader in Production of Biotechnology Crops

The United States is the World Leader in Production of Biotechnology Crops

The United States accounts for nearly two-thirds of all biotechnology crops planted globally. GM food crops grown by U.S. farmers include corn, cotton, soybeans, canola, squash, and papaya. Other major producers of GM crops are Argentina, which plants primarily biotech soybeans; Canada, whose principal biotech crop is canola; Brazil, which has recently legalized the planting of GM soybeans; China, where the acreage of GM cotton continues to increase; and South Africa, where cotton is also the principle biotech crop.

Worldwide, about 672 million acres of land are under cultivation, of which 25 percent or 167.2 million acres – an area greater than twice the size of the United Kingdom – consisted of GM crops in 2003. Since 1996, the United States has consistently planted more GM crops than any other country, with 105.7 million acres supporting GM crops in 2003. Argentina is the next largest producer, with 34.4 million acres, followed by Canada with 10.9 million acres, Brazil with 8.4 million acres, China with 6.9 million acres, and South Africa with 1.0 million acres in 2003. Together, these six countries grew 99 percent of the global GM crop area last year. Australia, Mexico, Romania, Bulgaria, Spain, Germany, Uruguay, Indonesia, the Philippines, India, Columbia, and Honduras also planted significant acreage in GM crops in 2003.



http://pewagbiotech.org/resources/factsheets/display.php3?FactsheetID=2

[NashVegas]

52. Some Questions

It was the producers who wanted this, and why not?

By producers, are you speaking of indpendent, landowning farmers? If so, how have their results turned out in yield and economics? Verifiable information?



I make my living in agriculture. ... I've instructed Wes Jackson's inturns in my labs and I have hire some of his former employees.

Is it safe to assume you have a vested interest in biotech?

Who, outside of fringe vocal activists and isolated countries, have rejected these products?

When did the EU countries become isolated?

[truedelphi]

59. No great conspiracy...

<<there is no great conspiracy by corporations to destroy the resource that keeps them in business.


Corporate America currently is all about the monopoly, BABY. There is no room for any one any where to raise their hand and suggest something that would offer an alternative.

Now depending on how we define conspiracy, we could prove that there are indeed vast conspiracies afoot. Define conspiracy differently and with equal ease we could decide that there are no such conspiracies afoot.

However there are certain UNFRIENDLY WEIRD and downright nasty activities going on. Consider:

For instance a short while ago, Hartz Mountain, the bird seed company, was acquired by one of the bigger players, And guess what happened? The heirloom seed that HM had carefully retained and inventoried was destroyed inside of a week. That's right - fifty years or more of seed collection that would offer variety to the grower gone - all gone.

Or consider the GMO researcher that went off to Mexico and discovered a certain type of maize that one of the indigenous people were relying on as a main crop. The researcher felt that it was indeed a wonderful seed and food. He brought this maize back to the USA where it immediately was patented by one of the major GMO companies - and then the community in Mexico was "noticed" by the American company that they better cease to raise this type of maize. Severe economic penalties were to be issued against the community should they fail to heed the warnings.

For American corporations the "game"is acquiring all the power. The farmer is denied the right to collect his or her seed at the end of the year (Subsistence farmers around the world rely on doing this as they lack the funds to perpetually buy the seed)

Also, and equally insidious, should GMO seed blow from one farmer's land to another - the American company can now demand a huge amount of money for the finding of GMO seed on land where the secondary farmer had his field suffer invasion from the GMO seed. Percy Schmeiser in Canada fought the system for years - spending a great deal of time and money in the Canadian courts and his fight is the best known example of how tyrannical the current system is (It is akin to the peasant shooting game birds that are pilfering his crops and then being hung by the king for taking from the Crown the life of the game animals.)

Personally I think that the fact that so many people in the USA are now suffering from acid reflux,
arthritis etc is an indication of the unhealthiness of our food and air systems. Between being encouraged by ubiquitous commercials about the need to spray benzenes all over our homes in order to mask odors, we also have our entire food supply impacted by first pesticides and now GMO,

But I forgot - proponents of GMO think that those of us in the public smart enough to be concerned should trust the bought-out scientific companies and the University laboroatories now owned by the GMO producers to be the "deciders"

I am not willing to go quietly into that dark and sickly night of ill health, whether it be government and laboratory approved, or not!

[Jcrowley]

62. GENE DUMPING IN MEXICO

GENE DUMPING IN MEXICO


A number of the biotech giants have been involved in initiatives that bring transgenic crops to small-scale farmers in the South. The motivation for doing so is presented as philanthropy. But a closer look uncovers a hidden agenda.

Monsanto, for example, donated genes for Potato Viruses X and Y (PVX and PVY) to Mexican researchers for introduction into varieties grown for local consumption. This is an example of effective market segmentation. The company had nothing to lose because its own interests are in the commercial market (particularly the export market), and because of the difficulty of transferring the genes into other varieties. Monsanto provided the genes and training for Mexican researchers, one of whom studied field trial protocols and regulatory issues in the US. Here was the big gain for Monsanto. According to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agribiotech Applications, which brokered the deal, it "helped Mexico establish regulatory procedures and a biosafety review system ... The US companies were able to supply Mexican authorities with information on field problems, on potential risks that field testing might pose, and on how to deal with them."

In this way, Monsanto gained not only from getting farmers used to the idea of transgenic crops, but also in managing to export the US' industry-friendly regulatory procedures to Mexico. In doing so, Monsanto managed to ease the entry of its commercial varieties into the country. Small-scale farmers, meanwhile, are being drawn onto the technology treadmill and down the diversity drain, albeit in a more subtle fashion than sometimes (ie by impregnating their own favourite varieties rather than introducing new ones). Rosita, one of the Mexican varieties transformed using Monsanto's genes, and some virus-resistance genes for sweet potatoes, have now been dumped on Kenyan farmers, along with the same biosafety regulations.

Other examples of gene dumping by corporations include Asgrow's donation of cucumber mosaic virus resistance genes for melons in Costa Rica and Mexico; and Novartis' contribution of sweet potato weevil resistance genes to Vietnamese researchers.

Source: “The ISAAA Biotechnology Fellowship Program,” ISAAA, Ithaca, New York, www.isaaa.cornell.edu/FellowR.htm

[truedelphi]

57. However RoundUp is much more than pure

Glyphosate

It is 41% Glyphosate (Glyphosate being its "active" ingredient)

It is 15% Polyoxyethalineamine or POEA which becomes a major carcinogen known as dioxane (not to be confused with dioxin) Bioremediation groups are called in to employ their often expensive techniques to reclaim the land under cyclone fences where RoundUp is so often sprayed at the behest of the US government's military (i.e. Navalbases, Army installations etc.) It takes quite abit of effort to get rid of the dioxane from the POEA.

The remainder of the product is water,though in formulations available until about four or five years ago, it contained formaldehyde.

[Buzz Clik]

8. You've done a nice job of addressing some "myths"...

... but there are some important things you don't address in this thread.

First, increasing yields may not be the point of a given genetically manipulation. Roundup ready soybean varieties, for example, were designed to allow easier weed control. (Of course, this selects for Roundup resistent weeds, but that's another story.)

Examination of yield trends in the US is not particularly meaningful. Some of the greatest potential for feeding starving populations are not in the US. Crops have been developed to be grown in areas where they simply cannot be grown now and where they could fill nutritional requirements of undernourished people.

I will agree that some GM varieties have been rushed to production in the US before a market or need existed. However, that is not always the case in all locations.

And I am somewhat curious about the motivation for this thread. My experience with the resistance to GM crops is the fear of the unknown, not an argument that they are not delivering on promises.

[fed-up]

11. my BF is an organic farmer he worries about cross contamination, I have food

intolerances that started around 1999.

Were they caused by GE foods? I will never know

Organic and conventional rice farmers in my county/area are terrified of GE rice. They will lose their Japanese and Earopean markets if GE rice contaminates any rice in CA.


http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/state/16832392.htm
Posted on Sun, Mar. 04, 2007
Bill would hold engineered crop makers liable
Bill would clarify legal ramifications for tainting of conventional or organic crops by genetically modified seeds or plants
By Steve Lawrence
ASSOCIATED PRESS
SACRAMENTO - Stepping into the middle of a growing debate, a freshman assemblyman has introduced legislation that would make companies developing genetically engineered crops liable for damages if their work results in contamination of other fields.

The bill by Assemblyman Jared Huffman also would ban open-field production of genetically engineered crops used in the development of medications. And it would require growers to give county agriculture commissioners at least 30 days notice before engaging in open-field development of other genetically modified plants.

Huffman, D-San Rafael, said the measure is needed to protect California farmers against significant losses if their conventional or organic crops are contaminated by genetically engineered plants, seeds or pollen.

His bill would cover cases in which a grower claimed annual losses of at least $3,500.

[Jcrowley]

12. I'm not sure if this will address

all of your quite valid points in your two points in fact I'm sure it will not but I will give a more thorough treatment of your questioning tomorrow night if you'd like.

As a backdrop to this consider that Monsanto's exclusive patent on Glyphosphate was for 20 years(?), please check this for me, and the exclusive rights for that ran out in about 2000(?) again please check. Whatever the exact numbers their primary product, some argue that if they hadn't that cash cow they'd be out to pasture, was in jeopardy and so they worked all sorts of angles to tie farmers into continued use of THEIR glyphosphate (which has numerous toxic properties-for another thread) as well as other contractual arrangements. We could go into more detail if you wish.

Your concept of what might be the motive for this thread is completely false. This has nothing to do with the fear of the unknown in fact it has all to do with disgust and contempt for the known. What's really interesting with that point is how it fits neatly with what the Biotech PR machine promotes. If need be I'll bring up my old Monsanto glossy mags and recant to you verbatim their promotionals.

As for this statement could you cite specific examples:

"Crops have been developed to be grown in areas where they simply cannot be grown now and where they could fill nutritional requirements of undernourished people."


ST. LOUIS -- Monsanto jumped headfirst into the future five years ago, when it spun off its old-line chemicals business and rechristened itself a "life sciences" company that used biotechnology to develop genetically altered crops.

After investing billions in that vision -- some of it to create bioengineered corn, soybeans and other crops, and some to buy large seed companies -- Monsanto is prospering. But not because of any proliferation of genetically modified supercrops, which have been widely accepted in the United States but have come under fire in Europe and Japan.

What keeps Monsanto healthy is Roundup, a chemical herbicide developed more than two decades ago. It is the best- selling agricultural chemical product ever, with $2.8 billion in sales last year; it outsells other chemicals five to one.

The growth of Roundup, which accounts for about half of Monsanto's revenue, is the primary reason that the company reported a solid profit in the second quarter, despite the resistance overseas to bioengineered crops and a depressed agriculture economy that has battered other companies.

http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/Monsanto-Build-On.htm

You may also wish to research further the impact of Biotech crops upon weeds. You'll see it is very bad and getting worse each year. It's a calamitous scam. I encourage your distrust and investigative abilities.

As far as the boast that GM crops WILL NOT require as much herbicide, if that is what you are saying in Post #9, that is not my claim that is in the Biotech literature everywhere you look and has been for years.

[NashVegas]

15. About Those 'Fear of the Unknown' Arguments

Pro-GM advocates are very happy to take "Frankenfood" arguments, poke fun of the people making them and in so doing, publicly dismiss them and squash debate.

[Buzz Clik]

19. That hasn't happened here.

As indicated in the OP, this is the perfect place to document problems.

[NashVegas]

23. I Beg Your Pardon?

26. Newsflash! Paranoia about the unknown continues to scare human beings.

"Hey, I know it's irrational, but it scares me. I made mom check under the bed for monsters when I was a kid. Now I'm afraid of GMOs."

Care to announce the author?

[Buzz Clik]

24. I was talking about this thread.

[NashVegas]

25. And I Answered Your Question About Why This Thread Exists.

In fact, I believe we have no physically demonstrated why this thread exists.

Anything else, Mr. Fleisher?

[Buzz Clik]

36. You'll do anything to start an argument.

This discussion is for adults. Care to join us?

[Jcrowley]

43. Have you seen these studies?

A study by Iowa State University economist Mike Duffy says GMOs weren't any more profitable than non-GMOs in 1998. Duffy recently analyzed a survey of 800 Iowa farmers by the National Agricultural Statistics Service and found return to land and labor nearly identical for GMOs and non-GMOs in 1998. GMO beans, for example, had lower herbicide costs but lower yields. Net return was $144.50/A for GMO beans versus $145.75 for non-GMO varieties. (See: 'Does planting GMO seed boost farmers' profits?' by Mike Duffy) <http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/99-3gmoduffy.html>

And this?
SOYBEAN: The University of Nebraska findings of reduced yield with GM soya are exactly in line with the pattern of findings from over 8,200 university-based varietal trials in 1998 which have shown the yield drag for GM soya averaging nearly 7%. <http://members.tripod.com/~ngin/soy.htm> <http://members.tripod.com/~ngin/empsum.htm>

And this?
CLAIM: GE crops do not harm soil ecology

+ BT: Bt toxin from GE plants is very short-lived in soil (Eric Sachs of Monsanto, in response to a question re impacts of Bt corn on soil microbial community, 18 Jun 1999 EPA-USDA Bt corn workshop, as cited by Charles Benbrook)

- Bt toxin stays active in the soil and binds to clays. (See: Tapp, H., Calamai, I., & Stotzky, G. 1994. Soil Biol. Biochem. 26:663-679)

- The bound Bt toxin retains its insecticidal properties. (See: Tapp, H., & Stotzky, G. 1995. Applied and Environ. Microbiology 61:1786-1790)

- By binding to soil particles, the Bt toxin is not degraded by microbial action. (See: Koskella, J. & Stotzky, G. Sep 1997. Microbial Utilization of Free and Clay-Bound Insecticidal Activity after Incubation with Microbes. Applied and Environ. Microbiology 63:3561-3568)

- The Bt toxin also binds to humic acids. "Bound humic acid-toxin complexes were toxic to larvae of the tobacco hornwork (Manduca sexta). The lethal concentration necessary to kill 50% of the larvae (LC50) of the bound toxin was comparable with that of the free toxin, indicating that the binding of the toxin to humic acids did not affect insecticidal activity... The result of these studies indicate that the toxins from B. thuringiensis introduced in transgenic plants and microbes could persist, accumulate, and remain insecticidal in soil as a result of binding to humic acids, as well as on clays, as previously described. This persistence could pose a hazard to non-target organisms and enhance the selection of toxin-resistant target species." (See: Crecchio, C. & Stotzky, G. 1998. Insecticidal activity and biodegradation of the toxin from Bacillus thuringiensis subsp. Kurstaki bound to humic acids from soil. Soil Biol. Biochem. 30:463-470.)

- The bound Bt toxin persists in various soils for at least 234 days (termination of experiment). (See: Tapp, H. & Stotzky, G. 1998. Persistence of the Insecticidal Toxin from Bt subsp. Kurstaki in Soil, Soil Biology and Biochemistry, Vol 30 No 4:471-476.)

- The Bt corn plant exudes Bt toxin from its roots, the insecticidal properties intact, into the soil. Larvae placed on medium containing exudates from Bt corn stopped feeding and began to die after 2 to 3 days and had a mortality of 90 to 95% after 5 days (dose lethal to 50% of larvae, LC50, was 5.2 mu.g protein). There was no immunological reaction or larval mortality obtained with the exudates from non-Bt corn. We have no indication of how soil communities might be affected by Bt toxin in root exudates in the field. Bt toxin in the rhizosphere might improve the control of insect pests, or it might promote the selection of toxin-resistant target insects. Receptors for the toxin are present in non-target as well as target insects, so there may be a risk that non-target insects and organisms in higher trophic levels could be affected by the toxin. Further investigations will be necessary to shed light on what might happen underground. (See: Saxena D., Flores, S. & Stotzky, G. Dec 1999. Transgenic Plants: Insecticidal toxin in root exudates from Bt corn. Nature 402:480) <http://www.nature.com/server-java/Propub/nature/402480A0.pdf>

- ``We were surprised,'' Dr. Stotzky said. ``I'm sure it hangs around longer. We just terminated the experiment after eight months.'' (See: NYTimes, pg. 1, 3 Nov 1999, "Reassessing Ecological Risks of Genetically Altered Plants" by CAROL KAESUK YOON)

- ``There is a potential hazard that it (the toxin) builds up and could enhance the selection of resistant target organisms and could possibly effect non-target organisms,'' Stotzky said in an interview. ``Theoretically it could affect any organism that is susceptible to the toxin.'' Stotzky called for more studies to determine the impact of the toxin's build-up in the soil on insects and other organisms. ``Those studies need to be done. They should have been done a long time ago before the regulatory agencies allowed the release of these plants,'' he added. (See: Reuters, 1 Dec 1999, "Gene-Modified Corn Insecticide in Soil - Study" by Patricia Reaney) <http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991201/sc/science_corn_1.html>

- Dr. Stotzky and his colleagues found that the poison binds to clay particles and humic acids found naturally in most soils. Instead of disappearing in about 25 days, it is active for at least 234 days. The scientists note that pollen falling on the ground and corn stocks plowed back into the soil add to the toxin that roots exude. They don't know if build-up would continue or level off. Bt corn toxin is different from Bt sprays widely used as an alternative to chemical insecticides, Stotzky explains. The latter are crystals that only become active in the target insects' digestive systems. That's why they don't harm other creatures. The corn carries a gene that produces the active form of the poison, which puts pressure on soil organisms. No one knows the consequences, Stotzky says, but ``we should stop at this point and consider these things.'' (See: CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR - USA, 2 DEC 1999, "New findings say genetically altered corn can poison the soil" by Robert C. Cowen)

I highly recommend you look into all of this and I want to stress this point:
The Bt corn plant exudes Bt toxin from its roots, the insecticidal properties intact, into the soil.

You may wish to investigate the tests done in Corvallis, Oregon St. that proved conclusively that GM crops damaged root systems and also spread within the soil like wildfire. They shut that experiment down post haste.

Please go to the studies themselves as some of the links are no longer available. Take the time over the next few days or weeks to read up.

[Buzz Clik]

45. I'll bookmark this for another time.

It will take me a few hours to read those articles, and I haven't the time right now.

Don't go away -- this discussion isn't over yet. If you want to take this to a scientific level (and you just dropped that gauntlet), you'd better be ready for it.

[Jcrowley]

68. This report is essential

Genetically engineered (GE) crops present different risks than other agricultural technologies, such as chemical pesticides and fertilizers, in part because genes can be perpetuated indefinitely by the reproduction of the plant. One way the persistence of engineered genes, or “transgenes,” can occur is by spreading into sexually compatible wild relatives of crops. This process, known as “gene flow,” can perpetuate whatever harm may be caused by transgenes, because once they escape into wild relatives, some will become a permanent part of the environment. This is because wild relatives, unlike most of their related crops, can survive in the environment without human intervention. For this reason, transgenes in wild relatives may harm parts of the environment, such as natural areas, that would not be directly harmed if the same genes were restricted to crop plants. Transgenes could harm the environment by increasing the weediness of wild relatives; or by harming plants, animals, or environmental processes. Many wild relatives are also serious crop weeds, and therefore gene flow may also harm agriculture. The possibility of irrevocable impact on the environment should serve as a warning to prevent gene flow, or to ensure that harm will be minimal if gene flow occurs. To better understand the risks from gene flow to wild relatives, this report evaluates the regulation in the U.S. of GE field trials, which are outdoor plantings of experimental GE crops. All genetically engineered plants must acquire USDA approval to be grown outdoors in field trials. This report evaluates whether current USDA regulation is adequate to prevent gene flow from field trials, or environmental harm if gene flow occurs. Gene flow from GE field trials is of particular concern because these trials contain experimental genes that have undergone little or no risk assessment by USDA or other regulatory agencies. In most cases, GE crops grown in field trials are not formally assessed for safety by USDA until the crop is slated for commercialization, which usually occurs after many field trials have already been completed. The types of experimental genes tested in field trials far G outnumber the few types of transgenes found so far in commercialized GE crops, so these genes present risks that have not been carefully evaluated. And because most transgenic crops are never commercialized, many genes in field trials never undergo more than a cursory safety assessment. Concern about gene flow from GE field trials to wild plants recently acquired new urgency with the discovery that an herbicide resistance gene had spread via pollination into wild creeping bentgrass plants in Oregon. Transgenic seed was found on creeping bentgrass plants and another related species up to 13 miles beyond field trial boundaries—far beyond the 900 foot isolation distance accepted by USDA. 1 This breach of confinement is not unique; another occurred during a previous creeping bentgrass trial. As these data indicate, USDA’s existing standards for transgene confinement, which typically have been based on the less-critical needs of conventional plant breeding, are unlikely to prevent gene flow. The likelihood of gene flow is further magnified by the large number of field trials for crops with wild relatives. For example, in addition to the aforementioned trials, 168 other bentgrass field trials have been approved, often for genes that may spread more easily in the wild than herbicide resistance. Whether pollination or gene flow from other trials has already occurred is unknown, because tests to detect gene flow to wild relatives are rarely conducted. Since 1987, when USDA began regulating GE crop field trials, over 2694 trials for crops with wild relatives have been approved for the 20 crops examined in this report. This is about a quarter of all approved field trials. There were 294 such field trials approved in 2004 alone. 1710 GE field trials—16% of the total of all field trials—have been approved for states where wild relatives are reported to grow, increasing the likelihood of close proximity that facilitates gene flow. Furthermore, wild relatives are often common weeds of crops, and therefore are even more likely to be found close to GE field trials. 2) Some field trials are large, covering hundreds or thousands of acres, substantially increasing the likelihood of gene flow. Although it may be assumed that field trials are very small because they are often used for research, many are quite large. Large field trials produce more pollen, increasing the probability of more gene flow over greater distances. At least 290 trials of 50 or more acres have been approved, including the recent creeping bentgrass trial in Oregon, which was granted for 600 acres. There have been 17 large trials of creeping bentgrass, with an average size of 214 acres, and 32 large field trials of canola with an average size of 563 acres. The largest field trial, for cotton, was 34,350 acres.

http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:fO-2h2Un0gUJ:www.centerforfoodsafety.org/pubs/Contaminating_the_Wild_Report.pdf+contaminating+the+wild&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=safari

And here:
http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/publicatio.cfm

[Buzz Clik]

72. I owe you an apology.

This wasn't an adult conversation at all. It was an exercise in raging anti-technology paranoia.

I guess I had to see it close up to realize that it truly exists.

Holy effin' shit.

[truedelphi]

79. First, increasing yields may not be the point of a given genetically manipulation

As far as I can tell, corporate monopolistic control is the be all and end all of the GMO game.

It is my belief that this stuff is making the population ill - the acid reflux epidemic started right around the time that this stuff became pervasive in our foods (Even "organic" long grain rice contains GMO in many instances)

It is a perfect win-win for Corporate AMerica.

So if Novartis' GMO beets are making you sick, by upsetting your stomach, hey, Novartis is also a pharmaceutical producer - and Novartis will come up with a prescription medication that will take away the nasty feeling in your stomach.

[fed-up]

10. There has been NO LONG TERM HUMAN HEALTH TESTING FOR GE foods

I read a long thread the other day that claimed that GE crops and foods had been "tested" and declared safe for human testing.

This is the largest unmonitored biological experiment in the history of mankind

To date there has been NO LONG TERM HUMAN HEALTH testing of these foods (at least not any that Monsanto wants to release to the world)

Most GE foods are considered "GRAS"=generally recognized as safe, because according to (I forget which now) the FDA or EPA they are considerered similiar.

Companies can "voluntarily" test new foods

http://www.fda.gov/oc/speeches/2004/vatican0924.html

New substances introduced into food via plant breeding (either traditional or bioengineered) are considered food additives if they are not GRAS or pesticides.

In 1995, we provided additional guidance on a voluntary consultation process whereby producers of genetically engineered foods voluntarily notify the agency before marketing a bioengineered crop seed or food. This prior notification is to ensure that new food products are safe and lawful. Genetically engineered crops are evaluated on a case-by-case basis, there is no “required’ battery of tests. The level of consultation needed is dependent on the novelty of the genetically engineered product.




then read this

http://www.biointegrity.org/fdaPMP.html
WHY FDA POLICY ON GENETICALLY ENGINEERED FOODS VIOLATES SOUND SCIENCE AND U.S. LAW
Statement of Steven M. Druker, J.D.
Executive Director, Alliance for Bio-Integrity
Delivered at the FDA Public Meeting, Washington, D.C. November 30, 1999
Panel on Scientific, Safety, and Regulatory Issues

B. FDA Policy is Scientifically Unsound

This is encouraging, since current FDA policy is sorely in need of change. While it claims to be science-based, it is seriously out of line with the standards of science -- and with the requirements of federal law.

1. Eminent Scientists Fault the Policy for Ignoring Biological Reality

Numerous experts have criticized FDA policy as scientifically flawed. Further, nine of these experts think it is so unsound and irresponsible that they have taken the unprecedented step of becoming plaintiffs in the lawsuit my organization is leading to amend it and institute mandatory, rigorous safety testing of all genetically engineered foods. These scientist-plaintiffs are eminent, and their concerns deserve attention. They include a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California at Berkeley, a respected molecular biologist at the State University of New York, and the associate director of targeted mutagenics at Northwestern University Medical School. This latter scientist routinely employs bioengineering in the medical field, but is troubled it is being used in food production without adequate safeguards. Also included is Professor Philip Regal, an internationally renowned plant biologist at the University of Minnesota, who has stated in a sworn declaration to the court "... there are scientifically justified concerns about the safety of genetically engineered foods, and some of them could be quite dangerous."


...snip

http://www.mindfully.org/GE/GE4/Feed-The-World-GMOs.htm

You Are What You Eat<96>

A study commissioned by the UK Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF), at Leeds University found that DNA is not degraded under most processing conditions. This means that GE products eaten by livestock is not decomposed

“Current animal feed is likely to contain substantial amounts of undegraded DNA, and secondary horizontal transfer of intact antibiotic resistance genes to bacteria and other organisms cannot be ruled out. Other components of transgenic DNA may also have significant health impacts on livestock and human beings up the food chain.”

MAFF recommends:

“In view of the potential health impacts due to the secondary horizontal transfer of transgenic DNA on livestock and human beings, all current animal feed should be withdrawn immediately. Steps should be taken to ensure that no GM material will be fed to animals directly or incorporated into commercial animal feed.”<97>

Since livestock is being fed GE feed that contains undegraded foreign DNA that was inserted into it, the next logical question is to question whether or not that foreign DNA survives the digestion processes of the livestock. And the answer is that the DNA most certainly can survive digestion. Nutrition scientists of the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena/Germany detected DNA fragments of genetically engineered corn in organs and meat of chicken.<98> It then passes through the digestive processes of humans:

"In contrast to earlier views of long-standing, DNA is not fragmented in the intestine but rather remains stable surprisingly long. DNA ingested with food can be excreted only after partial digestion. Moreover, it can also pass into the blood and be taken up by leukocytes and cells of the liver and spleen."<99>

A famous study by Dr. Arpad Pusztai found that rats fed a diet of GE potatoes caused an abnormal increase in the number of normal cells in normal arrangement of connective tissue surrounding the small intestine. The rats in his study that ate GE potatoes that express GNA lectin experienced decreased organ weights and immune damage. Dr. Pusztai’s work was discredited by the agbiotech industry, which also had him discharged from his research position at <100>

Regulators Can’t Test or Regulate GE foods

Corporate media campaigns boast of rigorous and thorough testing of GMO food products’ safety, however it cannot actually be done. Presently, the FDA, EPA, and USDA have no means to test GE foods for one even aspect of safety. In January of 2002, EPA, director of the Human Studies Division at EPA's National Health & Environmental Effects Research Laboratory Linda S. Birnbaum confirmed that there is insufficient knowledge to test these novel life forms.

Attention was brought to this issue because StarLink corn was found in a great number of products and fields that it had no place in. The great controversy was because it was illegal for StarLink corn to be used in human foods. Forced recalls of products illegally containing StarLink corn cost Aventis several hundred million dollars. They had to reimburse farmers and compensate food producers. Newly found StarLink-containing products are still being found a year after the recall.<117> Originally approved for use as animal feed, StarLink has never been proven safe for human consumption, or that it will not cause an allergic reaction in humans.

In September of 2000, Kraft Foods recalled its Taco Bell taco shells that were in grocery stores all across the US. From the onset of these findings, Aventis claimed in many public statements that StarLink was safe.<118> Day after day, week after week, and month after month, StarLink corn turned up in everything from Taco’s and Kellogg’s Corn Flakes to Sausage and Chips. The FDA reported recalls of StarLink-contaminated products well into 2001.<119>

While StarLink corn was grown on less than 0.4% of the total US acreage—about 300,000 acres<120>—it was found to contaminate nearly 25% of the entire US corn crop when finally searched for by USDA inspectors. The National Corn Growers Association was even surprised by the degree of contamination.

"It really tells you how much grain is co-mingled, that's the lesson from it. It's amazing how a very few kernels get mixed in with millions of bushels. None of us are convinced that we'll be able to abandon the testing for domestic food use and exports any time in the near future."<121>

The lesson of this continuing incident is that no person, animal, or plant is protected from these genetically mutated genes once they are released anywhere in the environment in any way. The FDA and EPA cannot force a corporation to test for adverse effects when they don’t know what effects to look for and there are no tests even if they knew what to look for. Nobody has enough knowledge of the process or its resultant products to have released any of them in any amount. Yet a great proportion of our lands are planted with GE foods that we know extremely little about. How they act in the wild is completely different than in the test tube. The variables of interactivity are infinite.

NYT article

[Buzz Clik]

22. Huh?

Since livestock is being fed GE feed that contains undegraded foreign DNA that was inserted into it, the next logical question is to question whether or not that foreign DNA survives the digestion processes of the livestock. And the answer is that the DNA most certainly can survive digestion.... In view of the potential health impacts due to the secondary horizontal transfer of transgenic DNA on livestock and human beings...

Excuse me, but are you suggesting that the DNA we consume is incorportated into our own DNA?

[originalpckelly]

30. This stuff is about as crazy as the shit on the right about soy making people gay.

:eyes:

[NotGivingUp]

13. k&r! this is extremely important stuff, and more people need to hear about it. n/t

[Jcrowley]

16. Potential effects of Genetically Engineered (GE) crops on soil microbes

Potential effects of Genetically Engineered (GE) crops on soil microbes

In genetic engineering, a package of novel genes are inserted into the recipient organism. In addition to the desired property gene, a number of other genes have to be added to ensure successful insertion.

Among the potentially problematic genes inserted into plants, those that help overcome the barriers against the introduction of foreign genes are of particular interest in the context of soil ecology. They function as vectors for successful insertion and prevent rejection of inserted foreign genes. These vector packages are chimaeric combinations of genetic elements commonly from pathogenic bacteria and viruses and from transposons.

Ho, M.W. & Tappeser, B. (1997) have proposed that the vector DNA in GE crops may promote horizontal transfer of genetic material between unrelated bacterial species. They warned that the result may be new human pathogenic bacteria.

This idea was further developed by Ho, M.W. et al. (1998). They refer to experimental observations indicating the possibility of gene transfer not only between related bacteria but also between bacteria of different species, as well as between bacteria and fungi and between bacteria and higher organisms, including mammals. They warn that the vector DNA may be transferred from GE plants to soil bacteria and soil fungi and contribute to increased horizontal transfer. They suggest that this may have contributed to the emergence of new human pathogenic bacteria during the last 10-15 years, some of which have been very harmful.

We want to extend this idea of Ho et al to Soil Ecology:


Hypothesis

Horizontal transfer of genes between soil micro-organisms may be facilitated by vector DNA from genetically engineered plants, resulting in such changes or disturbances in the functioning of the micro-organisms that soil ecology and fertility may be affected.

http://www.psrast.org/soilecolart.htm

[Jcrowley]

17. Horizontal gene transfer and genetic engineering

Horizontal gene transfer and genetic engineering (1)
1.1 Horizontal gene transfer refers to the transfer of genes or genetic material directly from one individual to another by processes similar to infection. It is distinct from the normal process of vertical gene transfer - from parents to offspring - which occurs in reproduction. Genetic engineering bypasses reproduction altogether by exploiting horizontal gene transfer, so genes can be transferred between distant species that would never interbreed in nature. For example, human genes are transferred into pig, sheep, fish and bacteria. Toad genes are transferred into potatoes. Completely new, exotic genes, can therefore be introduced into food crops.

1.2 Natural agents exist which can transfer genes horizontally between individuals. These are viruses, many of which cause diseases, and other pieces of parasitic genetic material, called plasmids and transposons, many of which carry and spread antibiotic and drug resistance genes. These are able to get into cells and then make use of the cell's resources to multiply many copies or to jump into (as well as out of ) the cell's genome. The natural agents are limited by species barriers, so that for example, pig viruses will infect pigs, but not human beings, and cauliflower viruses will not attack tomatoes. However, genetic engineers make artificial vectors (carriers of genes) by combining parts of the most infectious natural agents, with their disease-causing functions removed or disabled, and design them to overcome species barriers, so the same vector may now transfer, say, human genes, which are spliced into the vector, into the cells of all other mammals, or cells of plants.

1.3 Typically, foreign genes are introduced with strong genetic signals - called promoters or enhancers - to boost the expression of the genes to well above the normal level that most of the cell's own genes are expressed. The most commonly used promoters are from plant viruses which are related to animal viruses (see below). There will also be selectable "marker genes" introduced along with the gene(s) of interest, so that those cells that have successfully integrated the foreign genes into their genome can be selected. The most commonly used marker genes are antibiotic resistant genes originally isolated from bacterial plasmids and transposons, which enable the cells to be selected with antibiotics. These marker genes often remain in the genetically engineered organisms.

1.4 One viral promoter which is in practically all transgenic plants is from the cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV), which is closely related to human hepatitis B virus, and less so, to retroviruses such as the AIDS virus. The CaMV promoter can drive the synthesis of these other viruses;(2) it is active in most plants, in yeast, insects (3) and E. coli.(4) As all genomes contain dormant viruses, there is a potential for the CaMV promoter to reactivate them. Its strong promoter activity causes introduced genes to be overexpressed, and may also have effects on host genes far away from the site of foreign gene insertion. The promoter from another virus - the figwort mosaic virus, is similar to CaMV in many respects, and therefore equally hazardous. Recombination between the figwort and CaMV promoters in the same plant is bound to take place with untoward consequences for the crop plant, and also in creating new, broad host range viruses.

<snip>

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/ireaff99.php

[bryant69]

18. Yeah, but what if I want a banana that crawls over to me when I'm ready to eat it?

I mean I don't know you get that without bio-engineering.

While i'm thinking about it, we should cut off further study on improving computers as well - I mean computers are just tools for the man to keep people down. Plus you ever see that Tron movie? Computers are scary.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[KittyWampus]

20. Anyone have that little Dancing Banana smilie?

:)

[Jcrowley]

26. You're not making any point

whatsoever. Your analogy is odious and lacking in any purpose. I'm not sure why you'd waste the time punching keys if you are not saying anything. Please address specific issues and in particular build the case for GMO's as you see it.

[bryant69]

27. I apologize if my output does not meet your current needs

I am not a luddite - I am not opposed to technological innovation. If you are, or the author of this piece is, that's your concern not mine. I do think you overreach though - certainly there is something to be said for tighter FDA guidelines on testing and development.

Bryant

[Jcrowley]

31. Look again

From the OP:

So please if you are going to simply shout "Luddite!" (which was a social movement when properly understood) understand that that does nothing to further the discussion or strengthen your position.

This is not about progress. You can’t stop progress. No, of course we cannot and why would we want to? Progress implies change for the better. Change for the worse is regression.

And then step back and look at the words of those who appear to be supporting GMO's. They are simply not saying anything, not even the slightest bit of analysis. There is simply no way to take mild derision as a convincing argument for anything. So again make an attempt to build a case for GE foods based on what you know.

I'll check back later.

[bryant69]

33. I think we've done this before

Is the debate over whether Genetically Engineered foods should be researched and developed? Or over whether they should be marketed and put on the table?

If I read you right, your argument is that they should not be researched or developed - is that correct?

Also allow me to point out something that seems to have slipped your notice - you are the one argueing for a change - you are arguing in favor of doing something - i.e. ending GE foods. You are suggesting that I and the rest of DU should follow your lead.

In other words the burden of proof is on you, not on me.

Bryant

[Jcrowley]

38. One point that is not considered

even by many of those who are against GE research and development and it is definitely kept off the table by all those companies and institutes involved in GE research and that the amount of energy and waste that goes into all of this. it is extremely breathtaking to witness the level of pollution these people churn out. For more information on this I recommend you research how much energy the massive Biotech center overlooking the Missouri River in St. Charles, Mo. uses and research the amount of waste that comes with this. If you can't find it let me know and I'll try to dig it out of my papers let me assure the amount of giga-joules is astounding. You should also examine the rate of failure. It's unbelievable. If there weren't massive subsidies involved in this toxic process it would fall under immediately.

This fraud of GE organisms being perpetuated upon the public is just another example of bad science combined with corporate largess. I suggest you look into this matter in-depth. Based on what I've read so far I'm afraid there doesn't seem to be much in the way of substance and I'd like to see more.

You've also got it completely backwards as to who has something to prove and that is the same flawed and disturbing argument that is put forth by Monsanto et al to avoid responsibility and to skirt the reality that there is zero positive to be offered by Biotech crops.

The basis for what we are talking about here is the Precautionary Principle. It is not incumbent upon me or anyone else to prove these foods to be hazardous and unnecessary, though I shall as this thread continues and I hope you stick with it, rather it is the responsibility of those pushing these crops (and those defending them) to prove their safety. Now of course they cannot and they know this, they have failed on every occasion, avoiding tests (they are not the most thoroughly tested foods in the least as they claim substantial equivalence AND novelty- this is a contradiction revealing their lies) and pushing these foods through a thoroughly corrupted regulatory system. That's what seems to have slipped through your notice.

Now please tell me as no one has yet, and you seem to defend this process so must have something substantial to say in this defense, exactly what problem are GE foods going to solve?

[Buzz Clik]

44. Oh, my.

Now please tell me as no one has yet, and you seem to defend this process so must have something substantial to say in this defense, exactly what problem are GE foods going to solve?

As well read as you are on this subject, I know that you are doing this on purpose -- you are intentionally spreading misinformation. I am going to confess to being mightily disappointed.

Are you interested in just one answer to your question? Here:

http://www.isaaa.org/Regional_centers/Africenter/banana.htm

[Jcrowley]

47. That's a Biotech propaganda mouthpiece connected to USAID

You are now in the realm of citing from a Monsanto brochure to promote Biotech.

Who is ISAAA?

The first task of ABSP II is to set its priority crops, which in Africa currently appears to be led by Bt cowpea and virus resistant cassava. For Mali and Uganda, USAID found that Bt cotton is the only short-term possibility for field trials. However, ABSP II cannot work directly with cotton as internal rules prevent USAID from financing research on crops that compete with US exports. Therefore, ABSP II is putting together longer-term research projects with local scientists, such as multiple virus resistant tomatoes for Mali, whilst working with PBS to prepare the general groundwork for GM field tests. More direct support for Bt cotton from the US will take place through the funding instruments the US has mobilised to counteract international efforts to end its cotton dumping practices.

ABSP II does not implement its projects alone; it is a consortium that works through and with its various partners. One of its key consortium partners is ISAAA, a pro-GM outfit funded by the GM industry, ABSP II and USAID. ISAAA has become famous for its annual reports on global production of GM crops. ISAAA is very active in supporting GM crop projects for ABSP II and similar programmes:

• ISAAA brokers the IPR deals between US corporations and participating public research centres in the South.

• ISAAA offers fellowships to scientists in its target countries to train in GM techniques at US private and public labs.

• ISAAA carries out socio-economic impact assessments of the potential GM crops and, most importantly.

• ISAAA handles much of the “communication and outreach” work, through its network of Biotechnology Information Centres.

This makes for a lot of crossover between ABSP II, PBS and ISAAA.

<snip>

http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=331



ISAAA in Asia: promoting corporate profits in the name of the poor

Hidden agendas in donating private technology
Kuyek, D. / Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN) , 2000

The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) is one of the most focused promoters of gene technologies in Asia. Through the formation and support of key local elites, ISAAA is helping carry out an agenda set by transnational corporations (TNCs), in the name of Asia’s rural poor. This paper assesses the successes and drawbacks of ISAAA's presence in Asia

Conclusions:

- ISAAA appears to be successfully influencing the development of biotechnology in Asia; bringing together a large number of scientists and officials, and generating enthusiasm among them for biotechnology. ISAAA is influencing the course of public policy development related to genetic engineering in the region,encouraging US-style biosafety and intellectual property regimes

- ISAAA’s agenda will only make conditions worse for small farmers. Biotechnology is controlled by foreign agribusiness whose interests are diametrically opposed to the needs of small farmers. Small farmers need sustainable, inexpensive technologies that do not come with high risks, or generate dependency on foreign companies. ISAAA’s technology projects, despite their modest nature and especially because of their larger intent, offer no practical help to small farmers

- through ISAAA, industry is using local people — from illustrious scientists to anonymous small farmers — across Asia to promote biotechnology and expand markets for its own benefit through ISAAA, small farmers are being put at risk. Biotechnology comes packed with both environmental and socioeconomic threats that will be borne primarily by the farmers.

- ISAAA is pushing a much broader agenda than the donation of private technology, one that benefits industry from the North while offering no clear benefits to the South. People of Asia should make a much more critical assessment of what biotechnology, and its agents like ISAAA, really have to do with "development"

http://www.eldis.org/static/DOC8543.htm

Please. You are dealing here with an organization that is promoting Western, particularly US, corporate interests. You are also dealing with someone who knows quite deeply what is going on.

Should I post more about the ISAAA or is that sufficient?

That article you posted is the most cynical form of propaganda. I have a Monsanto brochure in my presence and it reads in the "Feed the World" section just as does that piece you are holding up as some defense of Biotech.

Are you truly defending these people?

[Buzz Clik]

48. Jesu Cristo. Yes, I know who ISAAA is.

God almighty, you sound like the most paranoid rightwinger I've ever debated. God forbid that you address the information -- you go straight to the "Biotech mouthpiece" crap. Thank god you said that before I wasted one second on the journal articles you gave me.

Listen, pal. You have yourself a great time telling the world that "the man" is out there to destroy the earth. I mean, it makes sense, right? Monsanto needs to destroy all the agriculture in the world in order to ... whatever the hell reason you think.

Pardon me while I go back to the science. You, on the other hand, need to tighten your tinfoil.

[Jcrowley]

53. Bad science

Essentially you did not say anything. You simply went on attack mode. That doesn't assist your endeavor.

Who's science are you going back to? What you are speaking of is bad science.

"Down which river has academic science been sold?" began John Ziman in a provocative mood. Ziman, well known both as a physicist and for his work on the social responsibility of science, argued that there are two kinds of science: "instrumental" and "non-instrumental". The first is generally directed towards practical ends, wealth creation, improving health, preserving the environment, and so on, which are foreseen at the outset. It is also generally proprietary (someone owns the results), local, limited (to foreseen problems and needs), and partisan.

In contrast, the goals of non-instrumental science are not so clearly defined. It lays the foundation for instrumental science, and fulfils other roles as well. It provides trustworthy knowledge of the world and of ourselves, and is a source of wonder. It helps us develop an attitude of critical rationality, reminding us not to accept without questioning, dogmas, theories, ‘facts’ or authority. It is a source of non-partisan expertise, a necessity in an age when governments require scientific advice in taking many decisions. Non-instrumental science is public, available to all, imaginative, self-critical and disinterested. It has traditionally been largely carried out in universities, though also to some extent in government sponsored laboratories.

Society needs both kinds of science, but there is an increasing tendency to focus on practical utility to the exclusion of everything else. This leads to a new ‘post-academic’ culture in which everything, in universities as in industries, is directed towards practical instrumental values. All the UK research councils except PPARC (Particle Physics and Astronomy) have wealth creation at the top of their missions, and Ziman reminded his audience that particle physics too got its big push during and after the war on practical grounds. But post-academic science cannot perform many of the functions society requires of science, and so by treating all science as a saleable commodity, society risks losing many of the benefits.

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/isisnews/i-sisnews9-7.php

The 'Golden Rice' - An Exercise in How Not to Do Science

ISIS-TWN Sustainable Science Audit #1
Evaluating science and technology for sustainability and social accountability

ISIS believes science as much as scientists should be socially and ecologically accountable, and has launched a sustainable science audit project jointly with the Third World Network

The ‘golden rice’ - a GM rice engineered to produce pro-Vitamin A - is being offered to the Third World as cure for widespread vitamin A deficiency.

The audit uncovers fundamental deficiencies in all aspects, from the scientific/social rationale to the science and technology involved. It is being promoted in order to salvage a morally as well as financially bankrupt agricultural biotech industry.

The scientific/social rationalization for the project exposes a reductionist self-serving scientific paradigm that fails to see the world beyond its own narrow confines. The ‘golden rice’ is a useless application. Some 70 patents have already been filed on the GM genes and constructs used in making the ‘golden rice’. It is a drain on public resources and a major obstruction to the implementation of sustainable agriculture that can provide the real solutions to world hunger and malnutrition.

‘Golden rice’ is not a ‘second generation’ GM crop as has been claimed. It involves standard first generation technology, and carries some of the worst features in terms of hazards to health and biodiversity. Rockefeller Foundation, the major funder of the project by far has withdrawn support from it. The project should be abandoned altogether.

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/rice.php

Beyond Bad Science and Big Business

Lecture for ‘Big Money Bad Science’ Teach-in on globalisation and genetic engineering, Vogue Theatre, Vancouver, November 10, 2000. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho

Abstract

The mechanistic mindset of western science is all of a piece with the neo-liberal economic theory promoting globalisation - the removal of all international barriers to trade, investment and finance - that has enabled corporations to ruthlessly exploit human beings and destroy our planet in their quest for maximum profit. This paradigm has failed us in life as it has within science, but is still perpetrated by the academia and the political mainstream, if only because it serves so well to promote gene biotechnology and to make even unethical uses seem compelling.

GM crops destroy livelihood and self-sufficiency, and are strenuously opposed by family farmers everywhere. There is compelling evidence that genetic modification is inherently unsafe, as are many of the GM products. While the benefits of GM crops remain illusory, the success and benefits of ecological, natural farming systems are well documented. It is time to turn the tide on bad science and big business, to reclaim the good life in every sense for everyone.

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Vancouver.php

[Buzz Clik]

71. And there it is -- splattering your brains with a bullet from your own gun.

This is my favorite aspect of the anti-science crowd: try to use pseudo science to dismiss solid scientific research. You should be pleased -- you've joined the ranks of the global warming skeptics and the Kansas School Board that doesn't believe in evolution.

Yes, I've read it all, and yours is absolutely no different. You have an agenda, and you will do anything to promote it.


This is my favorite quote of yours:

The audit uncovers fundamental deficiencies in all aspects, from the scientific/social rationale to the science and technology involved. It is being promoted in order to salvage a morally as well as financially bankrupt agricultural biotech industry.

Now THERE'S some solid science.

Tell you what -- why don't you find some wind powered vehicle and sail on in to the Land Institute (or "The Land", as Wes likes to call it) and tell us how his technological innovations are coming along. Last I heard from him, he had bought some draught horse to plow their fields.

Luddites anyone? Science bad!

[bryant69]

75. I agree - it's clearly an argument that the research should stop

not that it should slow down or that people should be careful or that a certain product shouldn't be developed.

Of course the top layer of anti-capitalism isn't to my liking either - we can't develop it because big business will just find a way to fuck it up?

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Jcrowley]

85. Putting the kindergarten in charge of nuclear power

Quantum bio-physics in living organisms

'putting the kindergarten in charge of nuclear power'
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/quantumbiology.htm

December 2001

One of the great concerns arising from the development of genetic engineering in modern science is that new organisms are being created when very little is still known about the functioning of biological systems at the molecular level. Making synthetic alterations to a complex natural system whose basic organisational patterns are not understood is considered by many to be the equivalent to leaving the development of new computer software to technicians who know next to nothing about computer programming.

Despite this level of ignorance at the molecular level there is growing evidence of influences on gene expression and function emanating from an even deeper level of bio-physical existence - influences which emanate from the subatomic or 'quantum' levels of life.

The potential role of such influences open up new possibilities for a more sophisticated understanding of organism management from the most fundamental level of biological structure. This is a level of which even less is currently understood by the biotechnology community than the aspects of gene control and regulation operating from the molecular level.

Until this deeper level of functioning is recognised and accommodated it is highly unlikely that the long term consequences of randomly introducing extraneous molecular sequences into organisms through genetic engineering can be adequately predicted. Quantum bio-effects are likely to operate through channels whose existence is currently barely even conceived of by most genetic engineers. The primary focus of the genetic engineer continues almost exclusively at the molecular level of biological functioning, and essential interdisciplinary communication with the physics community remains extremely limited. This area is completely 'off the radar' for all but a few biotechnologists, such is the fragmented nature of modern science.

http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/quantumbiology.htm

[originalpckelly]

28. I guess our acceptance of science only goes so far.

:eyes:

[Jcrowley]

70. Bad science

Genetically Engineered Foods Are Being Rejected by Consumers The British and Portuguese Medical Associations are calling for a global moratorium on the planting of GE crops. Research in Great Britain has shown that rats developed tumours when fed GE potatoes. Research also shows that incidences of soy food allergies have increased corresponding with the sale of Roundup Ready soybeans. GE crops contain antibiotic resistance marker genes, bacteria genes, and virus genes. None of these have ever before been part of the ecosystem or the human diet. Germany has banned all planting, growing, and selling of GE corn produced by Novartis, based on research published in Freiburg, Germany, that showed the GE corn can cancel out the effect of antibiotic treatments for illnesses because the corn has been modified to resist certain antibiotics.

10. Genetic Engineering Raises a Host of Unanswered Questions

- What are the long-term impacts of increased Bt toxins on soil
ecology? How can genetically engineered toxins be removed from
the environment once they have been introduced?

- What are the impacts of one spliced gene on a target organism's
genome?

- What are the impacts on the ecosystem into which the transgenic
organism is released?

- What are the impacts on livestock which consume GE proteins?

- Why do cows, when given the choice between GE corn fodder and
non-GE fodder, consistently choose the non-GE feed?


http://www.pirm.org.nz/submissions/gm2000.html#B(b)

Simply stating it is "Science" doesn't say anything. Nuclear weapons could be said to be 'Science' right? So yes acceptance of Destructive Science only goes so far amongst people who understand the issues and what is at stake.

Could you address some of the above questions with your understanding of the science?

[Lurking Dem]

32. I read somewhere recently

that all tofu in the US is GM soybean.

Freaked me out.

[Jcrowley]

67. Not all

Overview
Organic soyfoods have experienced the fastest growth of all consumer food segments during the past 10 years. This phenomenon is driven by the fact that soymilk and meat analogs have made substantial improvements in versatility and have been recognized for their health attributes. Once reserved as a staple for “true” vegetarians, organic soy products are now finding their way onto the shopping lists of more traditional consumers.

By volume, soybeans make up the largest segment of organic legumes but still only encompass less than one percent (0.17) of the total soybean production in the United States. The number of acres planted to organic soybeans peaked in 2001, at 174,467 acres. Since then, the number of acres of organic soybeans has hovered around 120,000.

In 2005 organic soybeans were produced on 122,217 acres. Minnesota reported the largest number of acres planted to certified organic soybeans that year: 26,581. That same year, Iowa had 15,570 acres planted in organic soybeans, and Michigan had 15,456 acres. (Source: Organic Production, USDA, Economic Research Service, December 2006.) In comparison, Canadian producers planted organic soybeans on 19,922 acres in 2005 (Source: Certified Organic Production in Canada 2005, Canadian Organic Growers, August 2006.).

http://www.agmrc.org/agmrc/commodity/grainsoilseeds/soy/organicsoyprofile.htm

http://www.greencuisine.com/soybeans.html

At present it seems to be between 50-60% are GE soy plants with the remainder in conventional and a smidgen in organics. Often the GMO soy and the conventional soy get dumpede in the same silos so you are assuredly getting much GMO soy in your soy products unless it is organic and even then....

[Lurking Dem]

69. Thanks for the great info!

I'll make sure I buy the Farmsoy which is available here.

After all the crap with Horizon, I'm not all that trusting though.

[The2ndWheel]

34. Unfortunately you're fighting a losing battle

In our search for perfection, GM foods will happen. It won't be tomorrow, but the progression of progress will get us there. Each year a little less will be said about them. Each generation will grow more and more comfortable with agricorporations owning the very DNA of life. Why shouldn't they be? They have nothing to do with the food they eat. Like you said, can't stop progress. Perfection, predictability, lack of actual diversity, this is what our way of life requires.

I'm in your side though.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

35. Patents, patents, patents.

Genetic engineering isn't evil.

Forbidding people to plant their own seeds is.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

39. How many GM crops are out there...

and how long have they been there?

[Jcrowley]

41. A bit dated

This list is from around the year 2000 so the list has grown.

http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_environment/genetic_engineering/engineered-foods-allowed-on-the-market.html

here's another list:

The following is a list of genetically engineered crops that have already been approved for sale:
• canola
• corn, including popcorn and sweet corn but not blue corn
• cotton
• flax
• papaya
• potatoes (Atlantic, Russett Burbank, Russet Norkatah, and Shepody)
• red-hearted chicory (radicchio)
• soybeans
• squash (yellow crookneck)
• sugar beet
• tomatoes, including cherry tomatoes

Notes

GE canola, corn, cotton, and soy are the crops whose derivatives are commonly found in packaged foods.

GE flax was approved for release but has not yet been planted. Genetically engineered seed was multiplied in Canada, but the Flax Council of Canada successfully petitioned against planting. The 600,000 bushels of multiplied seed were crushed and, as far as we can tell, did not directly enter our food supply.

GE potato planting has gone way down. It appears that consumer concerns have caused the major buyers to favor genetically natural potatoes. Note that not all Atlantic, Russett Burbank, Russet Norkatah, and Shepody potatoes are genetically engineered.

GE radicchio was never commercialized. Approval was voluntarily withdrawn on 2 Feb 2000.

GE squash approval was originally for the yellow crook-neck variety. However, the approval may be taken to cover all varieties of squash. Thus, application of the same technology to other varieties either through genetic engineering, breeding, or natural cross pollination would not require separate approval by government agencies. There are now other varieties of genetically engineered squash, including straightneck yellow squash and two strains of zucchini, "declaration 2" and "independence 2", both of which are medium green in color.

The list could be extended to include recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), a hormone produced by genetically modified organisms. Dairy products from cows injected with rBGH may differ from other dairy products in having higher levels of antiobiotics, white blood cells, and growth hormone factor IGF-1. There may be other differences due to the stress and hormonal cascades created by rBGH in the cow. For more details, visit the Fox-BGH lawsuit website.

Several agricultural inputs, such as soil bacteria that produce the Bt toxin, and a rabies vaccine have also been approved.

http://safe-food.org/-industry/crops.html

Beware of this common myth:

MYTH:Genetic engineering (GE) is not new. It is just the same as selective breeding.

FACT: Genetic engineering (GE) and conventional breeding are worlds apart. Breeding
does not manipulate genes, it involves crossing of selected parents of the same or closely
related species. In contrast, GE involves extracting selected genes from one organism
(eg. animals, plants, insects, bacteria and/or viruses) and artificially inserting them into
another completely different organism (eg. food crops). GE usually employs virus genes
to smuggle in and promote the inserted genes, and antibiotic resistance genes to act as
markers. All these inserted genes are present in every cell of the plant.

There are many folks who have fallen for this lie which is understandable considering plant biology isn't everyone's field of study and considering this was hammered into their heads by the likes of Monsanto. This was one of the key mechanisms used by Monsanto to state that they didn't need to test these products because they were essentially the same (susbstantial equivalence) which of course they knew to be false. An interesting point here is that while they were claiming this they were also stating that these were novel products and therefore patentable. What do you think of that?

Are you familiar with viral promoters in particular the primary facilitator in inserting genes the CaMV?

[Morgana LaFey]

46. Most excellent. Thank you!

:thumbsup:

[Jcrowley]

50. GM crop 'ruins fields for 15 years'

GM crop 'ruins fields for 15 years'

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor

Published: 09 October 2005, The Independent, UK

GM crops contaminate the countryside for up to 15 years after they have
been harvested, startling new government research shows.

The findings cast a cloud over the prospects of growing the modified
crops in Britain, suggesting that farmers who try them out for one
season will find fields blighted for a decade and a half.

Financed by GM companies and Margaret Beckett's Department of the
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the report effectively torpedoes
the Government's strategy for introducing GM oilseed rape to this country.

Ministers have stipulated that the crops should not be grown until rules
are worked out to enable them to "co-exist" with conventional ones. But
the research shows that this is effectively impossible.

http://www.connectotel.com/gmfood/in091005.txt

[truedelphi]

61. Well when will they teach these pesty seed crops to

read the labels and obey the laws.

<<Ministers have stipulated that the crops should not be grown until rules
are worked out to enable them to "co-exist" with conventional ones

[Jcrowley]

64. What Labels?

Do you know what is in your food?
Is it genetically engineered?



You don't know --
because they won't tell you...

Frequently Asked Questions

Question: Why don't the food manufacturers and the biotech companies want you to know if your foods have been genetically engineered?

Answer: Because if they are labeled, you will start asking questions such as "Have these genetically engineered foods been safety tested on humans?" The answer to that question is NO!

Question: Doesn't the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) require genetically engineered foods to be safety tested like they do for new drugs and food additives before they are sold to the public for consumption?

Answer: NO! With limited exceptions, under current FDA regulations, companies are not even required to notify the agency they are bringing new genetically engineered products to the market.

Question: How much of the food I buy in the grocery stores contain genetically engineered ingredients?

Answer: Since genetically engineered soy and corn are used in many processed foods, it is estimated that over 70 percent of the foods in grocery stores in the U.S. and Canada contain genetically engineered ingredients.

Question: Are people all over the world eating genetically engineered foods?

Answer: No, all of the European Union nations, Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand and many other countries require the mandatory labeling of foods that contain genetically engineered ingredients. As a result, food manufacturers in all those countries choose to use non-genetically engineered ingredients.

http://www.thecampaign.org/

[truedelphi]

73. I ws referring to a comment that a woman in the

Audience shouted out.

"Ban GMO in Marin and SOnoma Counties!" shouts she.

But no ban can protect us. Now that the crops have been grown in fields across the nation, the next blackbird that lands in a patch of organic corn in Snta Rosa could be carrying some GMO seed from a test plot planted in Berkeley.

(I should have made my earlier post to read "Pesty seed crops can't read legislation.)

[Jcrowley]

54. The Principle of Substantial equivalence is Unscientific and Arbitary

The Principle of Substantial equivalence is Unscientific and Arbitary

The Principle is Intentionally Vague and Ill-Defined to Be as Flexible, Malleable, and Open to Interpretation as Possible

"Substantial equivalence embodies the concept that if a new food or food component is found to be substantially equivalent to an existing food or food component, it can be treated in the same manner with respect to safety (i.e., the food or food component can be concluded to be as safe as the conventional food or food component)" (Joint FAO/WHO Biotechnology and Food Safety Report, 1996, p. 4)

This principle is unscientific and arbitrary, encapsulating a dangerously permissive attitude toward producers, and at the same time it offers less than minimalist protection for consumers and biodiversity, because it is designed to be as flexible, malleable, and open to interpretation as possible.

"Establishment of substantial equivalence is not a safety assessment in itself, but a dynamic, analytical exercise in the assessment of the safety of a new food relative to an existing food. The comparison may be a simple task or be very lengthy depending upon the amount available knowledge and the nature of the food or food component under consideration. The reference characteristics for substantial equivalence comparisons need to be flexible and will change over time in accordance with the changing needs of processors and consumers and with experience." (Joint FAO/VMO Biotechnology and Food Safety Report, 1996, pp. 4 and 5)
In other words, one can choose to compare whatever is the most convenient at a particular time, and for a particular purpose. And if on one set of criteria the product is not substantially equivalent, a different set of criteria could be used, always to the advantage of the producers.

Comparisons Are Designed to Conceal Significant Changes Resulting From Genetic Modifications

In practice, this principle allows comparison of the transgenic line to any variety within the species, and even to an abstract entity made up of the composite of selected characteristics from all varieties. That is exemplified in the safety evaluation reported by the company Calgene on several of their products (Redenbaugh et al., 1995). By a judicious use of additional varieties, any changes from the control recipient variety could be bracketed. In theory, a genetically engineered line could have the worst features of every variety and still be substantially equivalent. Such comparisons rather than comparing the transgenic line to the parental nontransgenic line would rarely, if at all, pick up significant changes resulting from the genetic modification per se, which should alert conscientious researchers to a more careful characterisation of the genetically modified organism-

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/subst.php

[truedelphi]

55. BTW when one sifts through the newly drafted Constitiution

For the Government of Iraq, one finds that in the Brave New World of this American puppet-mastered country (OOPS I mean,democracy) all the new crops to be planted are mandated to be GMO.

[Jcrowley]

58. IRAQI ORDER 81

IRAQI ORDER 81


IRAQI ORDER 81...and they said that we were there to bring freedom
and liberty...it is time to tell the troops the truth How did this
happen? While few of us were paying attention, the Coalition
Provisional Authority, representing the government of the United
States, imposed a set of 100 orders on Iraq. A careful examination
of these orders could lead to the conclusion that the war is being
waged to enrich corporations at the expense of the ordinary
citizens. Many of these orders take freedom and liberty away from
the people of Iraq. The orders also have a profound effect on us.

Iraqi Order 81 is of special interest because it goes a long way in
affecting every living being on the planet. This order prohibits
Iraqi farmers from using the methods of agriculture that they have
used for centuries. The common worldwide practice of saving heirloom
seeds from one year to the next is now illegal in Iraq. Order 81
wages war on Iraqi farmers. They have lost the freedom and liberty
to choose their own methods of agriculture.

http://www.thepowerhour.com/news/iraqi_order81.htm

Full copy here (27 pages):
http://www.grain.org/brl/?docid=977&lawid=1118

It's all connected isn't it?

[Jcrowley]

63. GM Foods Are Safe- Says Who?

The money for scientific research on GE comes from either the biotechnology companies or the government. Both are committed to the promises of biotechnology. This means that even when scientists have concerns about the safety or commercial application of the technology, it is often hard for them to risk their careers by being openly critical. (See: "13 Myths about Genetic Engineering", Consumers for Education about Genetic Engineering, Dunedin Polytech, as posted by <[e-mail]> on the SANET list)

- A "revolving door" exists between the biotech industry and U.S. regulatory bodies, seriously compromising the U.S. regulatory process. Many other countries rely on the U.S. process, so their approvals for GE field-testing or commercialization have been compromised too. Some examples:

- DAVID W. BEIER, former head of Government Affairs for Genentech, Inc., now chief domestic policy advisor to Al Gore, Vice President of the United States. <http://www.edmonds-institute.org/door.html>

- LINDA J. FISHER, former Assistant Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Pollution Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances, now Vice President of Government and Public Affairs for Monsanto Corporation. <http://www.edmonds-institute.org/door.html>

- MICHAEL A. FRIEDMAN, M.D., former acting commissioner of the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Department of Health and Human Services, now senior vice-president for clinical affairs at G. D. Searle & Co., a pharmaceutical division of Monsanto Corporation. <http://www.edmonds-institute.org/door.html>

- L. VAL GIDDINGS, former biotechnology regulator and (biosafety) negotiator at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA/APHIS), now Vice President for Food & Agriculture of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO). <http://www.edmonds-institute.org/door.html>

- MARCIA HALE, former assistant to the President of the United States and director for intergovernmental affairs, now Director of International Government Affairs for Monsanto Corporation. <http://www.edmonds-institute.org/door.html>

- MICHAEL (MICKEY) KANTOR, former Secretary of the United States Department of Commerce and former Trade Representative of the United States, now member of the board of directors of Monsanto Corporation. <http://www.edmonds-institute.org/door.html>

- JOSH KING, former director of production for White House events, now director of global communication in the Washington, D.C. office of Monsanto Corporation. <http://www.edmonds-institute.org/door.html>

- TERRY MEDLEY, former administrator of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the United States Department of Agriculture, former chair and vice-chair of the United States Department of Agriculture Biotechnology Council, former member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) food advisory committee, and now Director of Regulatory and External Affairs of Dupont Corporation's Agricultural Enterprise. <http://www.edmonds-institute.org/door.html>

- MARGARET MILLER, former chemical laboratory supervisor for Monsanto, now Deputy Director of Human Food Safety and Consultative Services, New Animal Drug Evaluation Office, Center for Veterinary Medicine in the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In effect, the FDA hired Monsanto's top dairy scientist to review Monsanto's research in the process of approving rBGH, a Monsanto product. <http://www.edmonds-institute.org/door.html>

- MICHAEL PHILLIPS, recently with the National Academy of Science Board on Agriculture, now head of regulatory affairs for the Biotechnology Industry Organization. <http://www.edmonds-institute.org/door.html>

- WILLIAM D. RUCKELSHAUS, former chief administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA),,now (and for the past 12 years) a member of the board of directors of Monsanto Corporation. <http://www.edmonds-institute.org/door.html>

- MICHAEL TAYLOR, former legal advisor to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s Bureau of Medical Devices and Bureau of Foods, later executive assistant to the Commissioner of the FDA, still later a partner at the law firm of King & Spaulding where he supervised a nine-lawyer group whose clients included Monsanto Agricultural Company, still later Deputy Commissioner for Policy at the United States Food and Drug Administration, and later with the law firm of King & Spaulding., now head of the Washington, D.C. office of Monsanto Corporation. In effect, the FDA hired a Monsanto lawyer to write the labelling laws that would govern rBGH, a Monsanto product. <http://www.edmonds-institute.org/door.html>

- LIDIA WATRUD, former microbial biotechnology researcher at Monsanto Corporation in St. Louis, Missouri, now with the United States Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Effects Laboratory, Western Ecology Division. <http://www.edmonds-institute.org/door.html>

[Jcrowley]

66. True costs of industrial food production system

True costs of industrial food production system
• 1 000 tonnes of water are consumed to produce one tonne of grain

• 10 energy units are spent for every energy unit of food on our dinner table

• 1 000 energy units are used for every energy unit of processed food

• 17% of the total energy use in the United States goes into food production & distribution, accounting for more than 20% of all transport within the country; this excludes energy used in import & export

• 12.5 energy units are wasted for every energy unit of food transported per thousand air-miles

• 20% of all greenhouse gases in the world come from current agriculture

• US$318 billion of taxpayer's money was spent to subsidize agriculture in OECD countries in 2002, while more than 2 billion subsistence farmers in developing countries tried to survive on $2 a day

• 90% of the agricultural subsidies benefit corporations and big farmers growing food for export; while 500 family farms close down every week in the United States

• Subsidized surplus food dumped on developing countries creates poverty, hunger and homelessness on a massive scale

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/SustainableWorldInitiativeF.php

[mainegreen]

74. Gee, and 'Better living through chemicals' turned out so well!

Corporations just can't be trusted, and our food chain is just to damned important to ever be trusted to a group of people that want a patent on it. That alone should be reason enough.

However, it's not like we need GE food. We already have food, and with proper farming techniques, and proper crop choice the need for GE food for mass consumption totally goes away.

[Jcrowley]

76. Report of Gene Transfer from GE Rapeseed to Bacteria and Fungi in Bees

Report of Gene Transfer from GE Rapeseed
to Bacteria and Fungi in Bees
BEATRIX TAPPESER

The German Television station ZDF reported on Sunday May 21, 2000 that a German researcher found a gene transfer from genetically engineered rapeseed to bacteria and fungi in the gut of honey bees. Prof. Hans-Hinrich Kaatz from the Institut f?r Bienenkunde (Institute for bee research) at the University of Jena experimented during the last three years with honey-bees on an experimental field with transgenic rapeseed in Saxony, Germany.

106. The field trial was performed by AgrEvo, the rapeseed was engineered to resist the herbicide glufosinate (Liberty, Basta). Prof. Kaatz built nets in the field with the transgenic rapeseed and let the bees fly freely Within the net. At the beehives, he installed pollen traps in order to sample the pollen loads from the bees' hindlegs when entering the hive. This pollen was fed to young honey bees in the laboratory. (Pollen is the natural diet of young bees which need a high protein diet). Then Prof. Kaatz took the intestine out of the young bees and spread the contents on growth medium to grow the micro-organisms. He probed the micro-organisms for the pat-gene, the gene that confers resistance to glufosinate. In some bacteria and also in a yeast he found the pat-gene. This indicates that the gene from the genetically engineered rapeseed was transferred in the bee's gut to the microbes.

107. Dr Beatrix Tappeser of the Oeko Institute in Freiburg, Germany who commented on this latest finding on risk research in Germany on German television, said later that Professor Kaatz had submitted his research to the science journal, Nature, but they had refused to accept it. - Dr. Beatrix Tappeser,
Institute for Applied Ecology,
Postfach 6226,
D-79038 Freiburg.

http://www.pirm.org.nz/submissions/gm2000.html

[Jcrowley]

77. Bt Crops killing organisms in soil

Bt Crops killing organisms in soil

Toxins from genetically engineered Bt crops accumulate in the soil, killing organisms and altering soil ecology, according to research at New York University. The GE Bt toxin was found to exude from the roots of living Bt corn plants. After 234 days, the toxin had not degraded. The research abstract concludes: "there may be a risk that non-target insects and organisms in higher trophic levels could be affected by the toxin." This is a huge, and previously unanticipated, issue. Genetically engineered Bt toxin is significantly different from the topically applied Bt sprays which have been used by organic growers for 50 years. Natural Bt must be digested by an insect and react with enzymes and digestive acids in order to be toxic. Left on plants, it degrades under UV light in a matter of days. GE Bt is an active toxin found in every cell of the altered plant. It is not dependent on digestive enzymes and acids to become actively toxic, and it does not degrade in UV light.

109. As confirmed by the EPA's recently published restrictions on Bt corn, it is inevitable that insecticidal GE crops will result in pesticide resistant pests, because the GE toxins are present in every cell of every plant at all times. Any biologist or entomologist knows that this is a recipe for resistance. As insects develop resistance, organic growers will likely lose access to a previously effective, selective, least-toxic, and natural pesticide. Research in Canada shows that herbicide resistant canola cross-pollinates with wild and domestic relatives, creating "superweeds" which are resistant to herbicides. And despite what the biotech industry would like us to believe, farmers are spending more on pesticides than ever before. Source Jim Riddle - Founding President Independent Organic Inspectors Association and member US delegation to Codex Commission on Food labelling.

http://www.pirm.org.nz/submissions/gm2000.html

[Jcrowley]

78. Sick people used like laboratory rats in GM trials

Sick people used like laboratory rats in GM trials
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Published: 04 March 2007
Genetically modified potatoes developed by Monsanto, the multinational biotech company, have been fed to sick patients in an experiment. Rats that ate similar potatoes in the research suffered reductions in the weight of their hearts and prostate glands.

Dr Michael Antoniou, reader in molecular genetics at Guy's, King's and St Thomas' School of Medicine, said use of humans was "irresponsible and totally unethical, especially when already ill subjects were enrolled. These people truly were guinea pigs." Other scientists said the trials were too short, on too few people, to give meaningful results of long-term effects.

Monsanto said the vegetables were safe, and the researchers conducting the experiment said effects on the rats were within "permissible" limits.

The experiment is described in a hitherto unpublished report by the Nutrition Institute of the Russian Academy of Medical Science, done "by agreement with Monsanto Company" in 1998.

The report says "10 patients suffering from hypertensive disease and ischemic heart disease" were fed a pound of the Russet Burbank potatoes - modified to resist Colorado beetles - every day for three weeks, and monitored.

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2326209.ece

[Jcrowley]

80. Biotech GM Seeds Buccaneers destroy India's Rice Economy

Biotech GM Seeds Buccaneers destroy India's Rice Economy

by Arun Shrivastava

Global Research, December 21, 2006

The India Government is firmly under control of buccaneers of bio-technology and spurious Life Sciences multinational corporations. Despite rules to the contrary, GM experiments have been going on across India with the complicity of the Indian Government. Most importantly, the attack is now on rice.

India is a centre of origin for rice and the centre for diversity for rice genes, in the same way as Mexico is for corn. It is therefore much more than just a rice country. This makes the Government’s cavalier attitude to India’s Non-GM status for rice, one of irresponsible criminal negligence. In embarking on high-risk field trials of GM-rice, it exposes our rice farmers to contamination by GM including transgenic contamination of wild species and the rice seed stock. If we Indians lose control over local rice seeds we lose our right to food and nutrition. We lose our sovereignty.

<snip>

Thus, the big seed companies have committed crimes against humanity with full connivance of officials of the Department of Biotechnology and members of GEAC .

This is a crime against the people of India and against India’s farmers because these approvals have been given knowing the fact that in the last two years, 70% of the farmer suicides in the Maharashtra belt are Bt cotton farmers suicides.

<snip>

"For example, the USAID-backed initiative, Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project-II (ABSP-II), is based and directed from Cornell. ABSP partners have included Asgrow, Monsanto, and Pioneer Hi-Bred. Promoting GM is, of course, an official part of USAID's remit - one of its roles being to "integrate GM into local food systems."

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=SHR20061221&articleId=4230

The Trojan horse of GE seeds in India

That war has been taken to new heights by Monsanto. Few know that Mahyco is the Trojan horse through which Monsanto is slipping in GM seeds. Monsanto’s website says:

Joint venture with Mahyco 50:50 for marketing of biotech cotton seeds and 74:26 for marketing of seeds. Both these joint ventures are by parent company and not MIL.
Parent Company is 51 per cent investment in Joint Venture with EID Parry (Hybrid rice seed business).
R & D centre of Bangalore also belongs to parent Company.
http://myiris.com/shares/company/reportShow.php?url=AMServer%2F2001%2F09%2FMONCHEIA_20010925.htm

In effect, Mahyco is the front.

[Jcrowley]

81. GM Soil Microbes Invade North America

GM Microbes Invade North America


A number of GM microbes are being widely deployed since their first release six years ago. Sinorhizobium meliloti is a bacterium added to soil or inoculated into seeds to enhance nodule formation and nitrogen fixation in the roots of legumes. It was released for commercial production in 1997.

The other commercial GM microbes are designated as bio-pesticides. These include GM Agrobacterium radiobacter k1026, used to prevent crown gall disease in fruit and vegetable plants, and Pseudomonas fluorescens modified with a number of different Cry delta-endotoxin genes from different subspecies of Bacillus thruingiensis (Bt). The modified P. fluorescens cultures are killed by heat pasteurization and provides a persistent biopesticide preparation that degrades much slower in sunlight than Bt.

Neither the people selling nor those using the preparations are necessarily aware that the microbes are genetically modified, however. Even organic farmers may be using them inadvertently.

The legume symbiont, Sinorhizobium meliloti, is tremendously important for fixing nitrogen from the air into plant roots and the soil. Legumes signal to the bacterium by exuding flavonoids from their roots, activating the expression of nodulation genes in the bacterium, resulting in the production of Nod factors that regulate the formation of nitrogen fixing root nodules <1>. The S. meliloti genome has been fully sequenced. It is unusual in containing three chromosomes (or a chromosome and two very large plasmids), all of them contributing to the symbiosis with the plant roots <2>. The genetically modified commercial strain (RMBPC-2) has genes added that regulate nitrogenase enzyme (for nitrogen fixation) along with genes that increase the organic acid delivered from the plant to the nodule bacterium. It also has the antibiotic resistance marker genes for streptomycin and spectinomycin <3>. The commercial release was permitted in spite of concerns about the impact of the GM microbe on the environment.

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GMMINA.php

[Jcrowley]

82. Genetically Engineered Crops May Produce Herbicide Inside Our Intestines

Genetically Engineered Crops May Produce Herbicide Inside Our Intestines

By Jeffrey M. Smith

Pioneer Hi-Bred’s website boasts that their genetically modified (GM) Liberty Link<1> corn survives doses of Liberty herbicide, which would normally kill corn. The reason, they say, is that the herbicide becomes “inactive in the corn plant.”<2> They fail to reveal, however, that after you eat the GM corn, some inactive herbicide may become reactivated inside your gut and cause a toxic reaction. In addition, a gene that was inserted into the corn might transfer into the DNA of your gut bacteria, producing long-term effects. These are just a couple of the many potential side-effects of GM crops that critics say put the public at risk.

Herbicide tolerance (HT) is one of two basic traits common to nearly all GM crops. About 71% of the crops are engineered to resist herbicide, including Liberty (glufosinate ammonium) and Roundup<3> (glyphosate). About 18% produce their own pesticide. And 11% do both. The four major GM crops are soy, corn, cotton and canola, all of which have approved Liberty- and Roundup-tolerant varieties. Herbicide tolerant (HT) crops are a particularly big money-maker for biotech companies, because when farmers buy HT seeds, they are required to purchase the companies’ brand of herbicide as well. In addition, HT crops dramatically increase the use of herbicide,<4> which further contributes to the companies’ bottom line.

There are no required safety tests for HT crops in the US—if the biotech companies declare them fit for human consumption, the FDA has no further questions. But many scientists and consumers remain concerned, and the Liberty Link varieties pose unique risks.

Liberty herbicide (also marketed as Basta, Ignite, Rely, Finale and Challenge) can kill a wide variety of plants. It can also kill bacteria,<5> fungi<6> and insects,<7> and has toxic effects on humans and animals.<8> The herbicide is derived from a natural antibiotic, which is produced by two strains of a soil bacterium. In order that the bacteria are not killed by the antibiotic that they themselves create, the strains also produce specialized enzymes which transform the antibiotic to a non-toxic form called NAG (N-acetyl-L-glufosinate). The specialized enzymes are called the pat protein and the bar protein, which are produced by the pat gene and the bar gene, respectively. The two genes are inserted into the DNA of GM crops, where they produce the enzymes in every cell. When the plant is sprayed, Liberty’s solvents and surfactants transport glufosinate ammonium throughout the plant, where the enzymes convert it primarily into NAG. Thus, the GM plant detoxifies the herbicide and lives, while the surrounding weeds die.

http://www.responsibletechnology.org/utility/showArticle/?objectID=505

[Jcrowley]

83. Risks Associated with the Use of the CaMV Promoter in Transgenic Crops

Risks Associated with the Use of the Cauliflower Mosaic Virus Promoter in Transgenic Crops

( The address of this page is www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/camv.htm )

The Cauliflower Mosaic Virus promoter (CaMV 35S) is used in most transgenic crops to activate foreign genes which have been artificially inserted into the host plant. It is potentially dangerous.

It is inserted into transgenic plants in a form which is different to its naturally ocurring state arising in its natural brassica plant hosts. This enables it to operate in a wide range of host-organism environments which would otherwise not be possible.

"The 35S cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) promoter is commonly used to drive transgene expression in the genetically engineered (GE) crop plants that have been commercialized so far. Whether, and how far, the 35S promoter might be active in mammalian cells has been scientifically unsettled and controversial...... We constructed expression vectors with 35S promoter inserted in front of two reporter genes encoding firefly luciferase and green fluorescent protein (GFP), respectively, and performed transient transfection experiments in the human enterocyte-like cell line Caco-2. It was demonstrated that the 35S CaMV promoter was able to drive the expression of both reporter genes to significant levels...."

<snip>

"Probably the greatest threat from genetically altered crops is the insertion of modified virus and insect virus genes into crops. It has been shown in the laboratory that genetic recombination will create highly virulent new viruses from such constructions. Certainly the widely used cauliflower mosaic virus is a potentially dangerous gene. It is a pararetrovirus meaning that it multiplies by making DNA from RNA messages. It is very similar to the Hepatitis B virus <*>and related to HIV <**>."

Dr. Joseph Cummins, Professor Emeritus in genetics from the university of West-Ontario

<snip>

The initiation site for the +DNA strand synthesis in CaMV is a polypurine tract (PPT). It has recently been reported that the PPT from HIV-1 gives up to 50% of the efficiency for CAMV +DNA strand synthesis as CaMV’s own element (29). All eukaryotes and prokaryotes share the core TATA box promoter element. It is not inconceivable that the TATA box, as well as other elements and motifs within the CaMV promoter, when recombined with dormant animal viral promoters, may reactivate the virus, generate new viruses or give functional viral promoters that make cellular oncogenes over-express, resulting in cancer...."

http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpWESSEX/Documents/camv.htm

[Jcrowley]

84. Approval of GM Crops Illegal, US Federal Courts Rule

Approval of GM Crops Illegal, US Federal Courts Rule

The courts said it three times so it must be true Prof. Joe Cummins and Dr. Mae-Wan Ho

In a surprising development that may well stump the further approval of GMOs, Federal Courts in the US have ruled against the Department of Agriculture (USDA) in three successive cases for failing to carry out proper environment impact assessment, making the original approvals of GM crops illegal.

It has been twelve years since the world's first GM crop, the Flav Savr tomato, was commercially approved, and hundreds more GM varieties were granted deregulation status. The global area of GM crops has reached 102 million hectares, according to industry sources <1>, though this has been strongly contested around the world <2> ( Global GM Crops Area Exaggerated , SiS 33)

The first case was on drug-producing GM crops. A federal district judge in Hawaii ruled in August 2006 that the USDA violated the Endangered Species Act as well as the National Environmental Policy Act in allowing drug-producing GM crops to be cultivated throughout Hawaii, and failing to conduct even preliminary investigations on environmental impact prior to the approval of planting. The plaintiffs were the Center for Food Safety, KAHEA (The Hawaiian Environmental Alliance) , Friends of the Earth, and the Pesticide Action Network, North America. The defendants were the US Secretary of Agriculture and administrators of the USDA.

From 2001 to 2003, four companies, ProdiGene, Monsanto, Hawaii Agriculture Research Center (HARC), and Garst Seed, were allowed to plant corn and sugarcane genetically modified to produce experimental pharmaceutical products such as vaccines, hormones, cancer fighting agents and other proteins that are still under development and hence not yet approved.

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Approval_of_GM_Crops_Illegal.php

[BluePatriot]

86. I just want clear labeling

Why can't we even have that? I just want a choice to figure out what's going into my body, whether or not GM foods are dangerous (and yeah, I would pick non GM foods given the chance)

[Jcrowley]

87. They fight that every step of the way

Not only would people avoid those contaminants if they knew they were in there they would also begin to examine exactly what GMO's are and the truth is they can't stand the light of day or an honest debate which is why they deceive everyone.

[stonebone]

88. kick

[Jcrowley]

89. Frankencorn: Additional Environmental Hazards

Frankencorn: Additional Environmental Hazards

The threat to thousands of traditional varieties of corn in Mexico is just one of the environmental hazards of genetically engineered corn. Other environmental dangers include:

Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis)-spliced corn and crops pose a mortal threat to organic and sustainable (low-chemical input) agriculture, since they may soon destroy the effectiveness of organic farmers' most important biopesticide. In its non-GE, natural Bt spray form, Bacillus thuringiensis is the most important pest control agent in organic agriculture, with yearly sales in the US alone of $60 million. This non-GE spray form of Bt is applied externally and evaporates within 2-7 days. Scientists predict that the super-potent, long lasting toxin found in Bt gene-spliced corn and other plants are likely to give rise to Superpests such as corn ear-worms which will be immune to the natural organic Bt sprays.
Bt-spliced crops such as corn damage the soil food web, killing beneficial soil microorganisms and reducing soil fertility. Bt corn leaches its powerful genetically engineered poison into the soil (a toxin which differs considerably from the naturally occurring Bt soil bacteria) and remains toxic up to eight months, even after being plowed under the soil.
Bt-spliced crops kill off natural predators and disrupt the balance among insects, leading to pest infestations.
Bt-spliced crops kill beneficial insects such as lacewings and ladybugs.
Bt-spliced crops, due to increased insect mortality, reduce the food supply for birds and other insect predators such as bats.
Bt-corn pollen (ingested along with other Bt-contaminated corn tissue) kills monarch butterflies and related species, such as the endangered Karner Blue butterfly.
Herbicide-resistant GE corn, sprayed with Monsanto's Roundup Ready weed killer, kills all the foliage in and around cornfields, depriving butterflies and related insects of important food sources such as milkweed. Roundup or glyphosate residues also remain in the soil and water, killing soil microorganisms and marine life.

http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/ra02/geff12.html

[Jcrowley]

90. Gene placement and inter-chromosomal relationships

What little science there is already tells us that gene placement and inter-chromosomal relationships between genes are important, and yet even many of the genes themselves within the plants that we are currently modifying have yet to be identified. There is not a single agricultural plant which has had its gene map completed.

Even before properly establishing this elementary information, we are then proceeding to randomly insert into our food foreign genetic material from viruses and bacteria which have never been an integral part of the human diet. In the words of Professor Philip James, the principal advisor to the UK government on the establishment of the proposed Food Standards Agency: "The perception that everything is totally straightforward and safe is utterly naive. I don't think we fully understand the dimensions of what we're getting into."

This scenario is far from encouraging. The scale and penetration of what is proposed is almost beyond belief. It is estimated by some that the majority of the world's food supply will be genetically engineered within 5-10 years if what currently sits in the corporate pipeline is allowed to go ahead.

What this astonishing situation reveals is not simply a problem concerning the 'science' of genetic engineering itself, or even of the health of the relationship between science, commercial interests, regulatory authorities, and government. What it demonstrates is a problem of our own consciousness. It is essentially a problem of the way we think, both as individuals and collectively as a society. And what it particularly demonstrates is our inability to learn from experience and to think and act holistically.

http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/eagmconf.htm

[Jcrowley]

91. Ten Reasons Why Biotechnology Will Not Help the Developing World

3. The integration of the seed and chemical industries appears destined to accelerate increases in
per acre expenditures for seeds plus chemicals, delivering significantly lower returns to growers.
Companies developing herbicide tolerant crops are trying to shift as much per acre cost as
possible from the herbicide onto the seed via seed costs and technology charges. Increasingly
price reductions for herbicides will be limited to growers purchasing technology packages. In
Illinois, the adoption of herbicide resistant crops makes for the most expensive soybean seed-
plus-weed management system in modern history -- between $40.00 and $60.00 per acre
depending on fee rates, weed pressure, and so on. Three years ago, the average seed-plus-weed
control costs on Illinois farms was $26 per acre, and represented 23% of variable costs; today
they represent 35-40% (Benbrook, l999). Many farmers are willing to pay for the simplicity and
robustness of the new weed management system, but such advantages may be short-lived as
ecological problems arise.

4. Recent experimental trials have shown that genetically engineered seeds do not increase the
yield of crops. A recent study by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Economic
Research Service shows that in 1998 yields were not significantly different in engineered versus
non-engineered crops in 12 of 18 crop/region combinations. In the six crop/region combinations
where Bt crops or herbicide tolerant crops (HTCs) fared better, they exhibited increased yields
between 5-30%. Glyphosphate tolerant cotton showed no significant yield increase in either
region where it was surveyed. This was confirmed in another study examining more than 8,000
field trials, where it was found that Roundup Ready soybean seeds produced fewer bushels of
soybeans than similar conventionally bred varieties (USDA, l999).


5. Many scientists claim that the ingestion of genetically engineered food is harmless. Recent
evidence, however, shows that there are potential risks of eating such foods as the new proteins
produced in such foods could: (1) act themselves as allergens or toxins; (2) alter the metabolism
of the food producing plant or animal, causing it to produce new allergens or toxins; or (3) reduce
its nutritional quality or value. In the case of (3), herbicide resistant soybeans can contain less
isoflavones, an important phytoestrogen present in soybeans, believed to protect women from a
number of cancers. At present, developing countries are importing soybean and corn from the
United States, Argentina, and Brazil. Genetically engineered foods are beginning to flood the
markets in the importing countries, yet no one can predict all their health effects on consumers,
who are unaware that they are eating such food. Because genetically engineered food remains
unlabeled, consumers cannot discriminate between genetically engineered (GE) and non-GE
food, and should serious health problems arise, it will be extremely difficult to trace them to their
source. Lack of labeling also helps to shield the corporations that could be potentially responsible
from liability (Lappe & Bailey, l998).

6. Transgenic plants which produce their own insecticides, closely follow the pesticide paradigm,
which is itself rapidly failing due to pest resistance to insecticides. Instead of the failed "one
pest-one chemical" model, genetic engineering emphasizes a "one pest-one gene" approach,
shown over and over again in laboratory trials to fail, as pest species rapidly adapt and develop
resistance to the insecticide present in the plant (Alstad & Andow, l995). Not only will the new
varieties fail over the short-to-medium term, despite so-called voluntary resistance management
schemes (Mallet & Porter, l992), but in the process may render useless the natural Bt-pesticide
which is relied upon by organic farmers and others desiring to reduce chemical dependence. Bt
crops violate the basic and widely accepted principle of integrated pest management (IPM),
which is that reliance on any single pest management technology tends to trigger shifts in pest
species or the evolution of resistance through one or more mechanisms (NRC, l996). In general,
the greater the selection pressure across time and space, the quicker and more profound the pests
evolutionary response. An obvious reason for adopting this principle is that it reduces pest
exposure to pesticides, retarding the evolution of resistance. But when the product is engineered
into the plant itself, pest exposure leaps from minimal and occasional to massive and continuous
exposure, dramatically accelerating resistance (Gould, l994). Bacillus thuringiensis will rapidly
become useless, both as a feature of the new seeds and as an old standby sprayed when needed by
farmers that want out of the pesticide treadmill (Pimentel et al., l989).

http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:-msW9qxIR2AJ:www.agroeco.org/doc/10reasonsbiotech1.pdf+biotechnology+will+reduce+pesticides&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us&client=safari

[Jcrowley]

92. The Substantial Equivalence Doctrine

The Substantial Equivalence Doctrine

Confidential documents made public in an on-going class action lawsuit have revealed that the FDA’s own scientists do not agree with concept of "substantial equivalence between GE and normal seeds.

“FDA does not receive notice of GM-plant pesticides, and its 1992 Policy Statement suggests that it requires very little notice for foods derived from the vast majority of GM plants. If a manufacturer or an importer decides that a genetic modification results in the addition of a food additive to food, i t must provide notice to FDA by way of a petition for approval of that food additive prior to marketing the food. So far, however, only one food additive petition has been filed for GM foods the Calgene petition for approval of the kanamycin resistance gene. At present, the voluntary approach adopted in the 1992 Policy Statement allows manufacturers and importers to market GM foods that they determine to be GRAS without informing FDA. FDA invites companies to request consultations with the agency, but it does not insist upon them. On May 3, 2000, after worldwide protests placed GM foods high on the political agenda, FDA published a press release promising to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking to require notice to the agency of GM food GRAS determinations, but the promised notice has not yet appeared in the Federal Register. The agency has in fact expressed doubts in the past about its authority to require manufacturers and importers to provide notice to it of their GRAS determinations.

One need not be a fierce skeptic of GM foods to conclude that the existing regulatory regime allows manufacturers and importers a great deal of discretion in deciding whether to notify regulatory agencies of their plans to introduce GM plants into the environment and into commerce. Although a company that desires to play it safe will provide notification to USDA, EPA and FDA in close cases, no serious consequences are likely to befall companies that decline to provide notice to those agencies if they can plausibly argue that their plants are not regulated articles or plant pests (in the case of USDA), are GRAS in the case of FDA, or come within the agency-created exemptions in the case of EPA. Consumers are therefore ultimately at the mercy of the proponents of the technologies to exercise their judgment wisely in deciding whether to inform regulatory agencies of the introduction of GM plants into the environment or the food supply. In the case of imports, the fact that GM foods are not likely to be detected at the borders means that consumers must in effect place their trust in the regulatory regimes of the exporting countries to evaluate the safety of GM foods imported into this country. Many consumer and environmental groups do not trust the companies to make wise decisions in this regard. Given the aggressive development of GM foods in some countries like China, consumers may not trust importers and exporting countries to make decisions with the best interests of U.S. consumers in mind.”<105>

Substantial equivalence does not deal with the subtle or unexpected changes that are inherent to GE foods. It is based on subjective determinations made by the corporations themselves and low-level bureaucrats, and upon a policy of encouraging GM foods, rather than scientific principles. There are no standardized objective tests that a regulator could employ to determine equivalence or to measure substantiality.<106>

The concept of substantial equivalence as used for GE foods, is a reductionist method for their rationalization. It ignores the how GE foods have been produced. Food is not just a chemical or a machine as set out by Descartes, in his 1637 Discourse on method. He viewed living organisms as sophisticated machines ruled by the laws of physics and chemistry, thus reducing all life to what he could understand. Reductionism refers either to a philosophical approach that attempts to reduce complex phenomena to the simplest possible explanation or to the belief that such reduction constitutes the only valid style of explanation. But humans relate to food beyond the level of the mechanics of nutrition or immediate toxicity. Food is our tie to the environment. And food is a strong part of human society. In addition other things, we relate to each other through food.<107>

http://www.mindfully.org/GE/GE4/Feed-The-World-GMOs.htm

[Nikki Stone1]

93. kick

:kick: