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Why the fear of GM Crops?
Jim Webster wrote: wrote in message ... Indeed. One is forever hopeful. Why? No-one would buy your product... Do you know of anyone, other than yourself and Monsanto, who wants this stuff? so far cumulative global consumption of GM soya is over 300 million toones. where are the bodies? GM is spreading and will cease to spread if it is shown to be uneconomic where it is grown, or it is proven to be dangerous. So far, appart from almost hysterial efforts of the antis, neither of these have been done Jim Webster A generic defense of GM products is like a generic defense of bacteria. Most bacteria do not kill you. You are doing the equivalent of defending all bacteria. Just because you can find example of no damage detected does not mean that all GM products are safe. Even more, some have already been proved dangerous and have been removed from the market before they could kill millions. Even traditional plant breeding can have unintended consequences There are plenty of examples of mistakes being made, including for example a mistake that could have produce a world wide famine with the failure of genes used worldwide for hybrid corn production. Traditional plant breeding at least has the safeguard, in most crop cases, of 10 to 15 years between the original cross and the final contact with a large number of consumers. Today one can GM incorporate, for example, allergenic peanut proteins into potatoes. Would that be safe? Today one can incorporate genes coding for alkaloids or many other drugs into bananas or cassava. Should we do it? Should we deny percentages of pollination by wind and insects even in cases where the crop species is not open pollinated? Should we deny crosspolinization between many crops and many of their wild weedy relatives? Should we deny the impossibility of gene recall? And what about the tools of Genetic modification? Who is going to guarantee their safe use? You argue that we have not seen the deleterious effects of GM crops. That is difficult to prove and getting more difficult to prove by the day. One can visually detect the first drop of milk in a cup of tea, but once the cup of tea has that first few drops of milk, one can not easily detect any additional milk. The background 'noise' does not let us see any obvious changes. Allergies are in the increase and we do not why. Asthma is in the increase too. Is it an increase in cat population or is it the sneak GM of the omnipresent soybean. or is it because traditional breeding has modified wheat proteins so much that they do not resemble the old cereal? Is a world with no safguards, privatized, with laws written by monsanto and Kraft foods, and with engineers and wallstreet salesmen that often fool even people that once in a while read a science article or two and that have totally lobotomized a US population that has less scientific understanding than the europeans during the middle ages. |
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