Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:
> > I see small farms, rejection of the positive aspects of modern agricultural
> > science, and retreat to romanticised traditional ways and lots of rhetoric and
> > emotive claptrap-to put it in the least offensive manner :)
>
> Where I see farmer's unions and political movements that actively criticize
> 'modern farming' for it's environmental and social cost and try to offer
> viable alternatives by conducting serious research and creating aware
> consumer networks.
>
Comment: I have no argument with that. I support much of the work of the National Farmer's Union here (Canada) but disagree with their present position on GM foods.
>
> > I agree with those who would require labeling of GM products even though this
> > may indeed increase the costs.
>
> So what ? Considering the amount of food that's wasted in the world by
> industrially developped countries, that would hardly be a bad thing.
>
Comment: I don't follow. Your comment is incoherent. What is not a bad thing because food is wasted? That it be more expensive? My point is simply that people have a right to know whether they are buying food containing GM modified constituents. Critics of this position say it is an added expense for no good purpose. I disagree, informing people is worth it.
>
> Besides the containment problem, which is a public safety issue and so
> should not be left in the hands of so called experts, but rather be exposed
> to the public and discussed openly, there economic issues like Monsanto
> selling seeds that don't reproduce and keeping farmers to save those for
> later use. When GM is used to kill life in the sake of profit there is
>
Comment: Monsanto does not sell seeds that generate plants that do not reproduce. There have been several posts about this. Delta and Pine together with the USDA had a patent for terminator technology and Monsanto was going to take over Delta and Pine and get the technology but Monsanto changed its mind. Monsanto does require farmers to sign contracts before they purchase certain GM modified seeds such as ROundup REady canola that require that the farmers not save or sell or sell for seed grain from the resultant crop. There is plenty of choice of canola seed. There is the same requirement for non-GM but patented seed types under Breeder's Rights legislation in effect in many countries. If farmers want to save seed they can plant open pollinated types. By the way, you must be opposed to hybrids as well. If you save hybrd seeds from hybrid plants the buggers do not breed true. According to people such as Shiva open pollinated types yield better anyway-and they often do yield just as well depending on conditions. What is the GM killing life for the sake of profit? Are you talking about the terminator technology that is not used? Hey man you better get after those producers of seedless watermelons!
> something pretty wicked about it. (check the ref. I give at the end)
>
> > Perhaps you could explain to me how transfer of GM modified traits to the wild
> > could be uncontainable?
>
> Maybe you could explain how it _is_ containable ? Or maybe nobody can't ? So
> why take chances ?
>
Comment: Well. I did explain it for specific examples of three different types of possible escapes. Perhaps you have a specific criticism of my explanation?
>
> > There are two documented cases: rigid ryegrass in Australia--to Roundup and
> > goosegrass, also to Roundup, in Malaysia.
>
> Impressive, 2 documented cases and then we can play with the whole
> ecosystem...
>
>
Comment: You misunderstand. The 2 documented cases are meant as showing that there is an actual and not just a hypothetical risk of escape. The woman I was citing is a critic of GM seeds!
> > before the weeds go to seed. It is not as if there is just one method of
> > control of weeds. The only advantage this GM modified weed has is that it will
>
> And the above mentioned romantic farmers have found ways to deal with weeds
> without resorting to gm or environmentaly dangerous practices. Of course, it
> costs more (or rather, they produce less), but then, they don't have to
> label their products...
>
Comment: You seem incapable of following my argument. You comment is irrelevant. I was presenting an argument to show how containment was possible.
Of course organic farmers don't have to label their products but why wouldn't they? In many cases people will pay a premium for organically produced food. There are all sorts of regulations that organic farmers have to meet to label their products as organic. I would think that they would certainly want to label their products, and would also want to make sure that other produce not meeting those conditions was not labeled organic. But maybe you are not talking of organic farmers.
>
> > no readily available and simple alternative treatment. So antibiotics should
> > not have been developed?
>
> I never had the feeling the agro business started gm research with the idea
> of producing anything more than profit. Convince me.
Considerable research is not directly by agro business but by universities and government research institutions, unfortunately they often are more interested in the interest of corporations who help fund them in a period of underfunding than in doing research of greater social value. Of course agro business does research to produce profit! But to produce profit you have to produce some product -usually- and the product may have social value. Are you saying capitalism produces nothing of value?
>
>
> > By the way, GM technology is also used to create insulin for diabetics, and it
> > might be used to inject arctic flounder anti-freeze genes into plants so that
> > we could have a longer growing season and use a larger area for food
> > production. How does your critique apply to those areas?
> Sure gm tech can be applied to many fields, but there is no evidence that
> applying it to food production is the most useful field of application, but
> it's definitely where the big money is.
>
Comment: So you think that GM technology is OK in these other areas? There is money to be made by big corporations in these other areas too. In fact Monsanto is now part of Pharmacia-Upjohn, a big pharmaceutical oriented company.
>
> What about actually using the food we are actually producing, and not
> putting is straight to the garbage when millions of people die of starvation
> everyday ? That would probably be smarter than finding ways to produce more
> in even more agro business dependant areas while totally unballancing
> traditional production in sensible area (like sub saharian countries for
> ex).
>
> Did it ever occur to you that food production was actually more than just a
> business ? It is also a social process that roots whole communities. Does
> food production's social value ever come into account in gm research ?
>
Comment: I agree that the food problem is not so much production as distribution. Food production ought to be more than a business and it is for many people. Insofar as GM research is done by corporations the primary aim as you say is profit but often profit can be found by developing products of social value. Do you think insulin is of no social value, or protecting plants from insect pests is of no value? My position is that there should be public ownership of biotech companies and research should be publicly funded as well so that GM research does concentrate on social value rather than profits.
Cheers, Ken Hanly