On Fri, 08 Aug 2003 20:42:48 -0700, Walter Epp
posted:

"Gordon Couger" wrote:
Like most of the detractors of modern framing you have no practical
experience faming. I have been at this 46 years and watch crops lost to

Agriculture scientist know what their doing and they learn from the past. I
have oral history of family farming back to 1816. My grand father told me

There is no one in the world who has 46 years of experience with
genetic engineering. The wisdom distilled from multiple generations
of your forefathers does not exist for GE biotech.

And the difference, in the broad scheme of things?

But all you do is spout the same tired dogma of the
ludilits that are starving people to death in India and Africa. Dream about
them tonight. I have done every thing I can to provide food for the world

May the ghosts of the millions that have died and will die haunt you for
your disregard of the world situation that has cause the break down in the
fight against disease in the third world and now you want to deny them the
benefits of modern agriculture as well.

Of course there are lots of people with good intentions including
both farmers and biotech employees.
The problem is that good intentions are not enough.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
We have to have respect for Nature's ways

Capitalisation noted.

and real-world consequences,

Which are?

and our ignorance of both of these.

But nothing in our extensive knowledge base to indicate any problem?

For example, genetically engineered constructs are unstable -

Just like many mutations. So what? That's good, isn't it?

the
artificial mechanisms that enable foreign genes

What's a "foreign gene"?

to be inserted also enable
them to jump out and re-insert somewhere else, resulting in unpredictable
recombinations. The realization is dawning that if genetically engineered
crops are planted on a large scale and contaminate large amounts of non-gmo
crops before the cascading instabilities end in a genetic implosion, the
result could be the largest famine in history.
Go to http://www.i-sis.org.uk/meltdown.php
and http://www.i-sis.org.uk/unstable.php for explanation and references.

Another propaganda group?

It's a bit arrogant to presume we know more about how to grow things
in africa than africans do.

Why? We each know more about some things than about other things.

I heard from a ugandan who works on agriculture issues who said
when they were given seeds by the west during a drought, many of them
did not even sprout, so they learned the next time around to say thank
you, eat the western seeds, and plant their indigenous ones which are
adapted to local conditions and do sprout.

Have you got a link to this urban myth?