Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

On Mon, 28 Jul 2003 21:23:37 GMT, "Gordon Couger"
posted:

"Moosh:]" wrote in message
.. .
On Sun, 27 Jul 2003 19:35:15 GMT, "Gordon Couger"
wrote:

Just the opposite. There are many more beneficial insets since you don't
have to spray for worms. Try reading something besides green propaganda.

But Gordon, everything else is Monsanto propaganda produced by
scientists worldwide who are in Monsanto's clutches :)

The USDA experiment stations are not in Monsanto's clutches nor are the US
farmers. We buy what works. In face most seed breeders at universities are
very bitter about the loss of public funding for crop breeding and if there
is a bias it would be ageist private breeders.

Monsanto's main problem is they didn't have a public relation effort on the
benefits of GM crops for anything but the bottom line of the farmer. They
should have capitalized on the reduction of erosion, insecticide use and use
of less toxic herbicides and their positive effect on the environment.

I agree, but must say that I've heard of lots of advantages of GM,
often from the greenies saying that it is false :)

The whole scientific world was caught off guard by the lies that the green
lobby used to line their pockets at the expense of the environment they
claim to be protecting.

I understand that the US public were reasonably accepting of the
technology until, the European "Frankenfoods" scare campaign came to
town.

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

On Tue, 29 Jul 2003 00:42:22 +0200, Torsten Brinch
posted:

On Mon, 28 Jul 2003 21:23:37 GMT, "Gordon Couger"
wrote:
..GM crops .. reduction of erosion

Myth: Since 1996 GM crops have enabled a huge shift
to conservation tillage in USA.

Who claims this myth? What exactly is the definition of "conservation
tillage"?

Fact: During the period from 1996 (before GM crops) to
2002 the percentage of cropland acres in conservation
tillage in USA has remained nearly constant at 36-37 %.

And is it done better and easier with Roundup application?
It certainly makes a lot more marginal area usable in Australia.

Over the same period the percentage of cropland in
intensive tillage has increased from 38,5 % to 40,5 %.

As conservation tillage is likely to be done where necessary,
regardless of the consequences, the pertinent point is surely the
efficiency of being able to do it, where necessary, with modern
technology.

USA had 2.3 million more acres in intensive tillage
in 2002 than it had in 1996 -- and 700,000 less acres
in conservation tillage.

Maybe rainfall, and different crops can avoid temporarily the need for
conservation tilling. The net erosion and profit from land is surely
the kicker.

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

On Mon, 28 Jul 2003 18:01:40 +0100, Oz
posted:

Moosh:] writes
Good one! Thing that staggers me is how little of a pint of milk or a
pound of beef you producers actually get. You lot seem to supply a
cheap raw material for every other bugger to cop a markup on.
I know you've tried to take action on this, but I suppose there is
always a farmer in the next village who is hungrier and will cave in.
You need something like a builders' union or a miners' union. Big and
powerful that can fund you for a three month strike.

Illegal under uk law.

Well yes, so are many strikes. We just had an illegal bus strike here.
Worked out with a little win for the drivers who were being screwed
into the ground by the British company who bought the govt contract
recently. Illegal makes for good publicity, so long as it isn't
pollitically too dangerous for the authorities to "take the farm" so
to speak.

See cartels.

Cartels, Schmartels :)

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

"Moosh:]" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 28 Jul 2003 14:34:29 +0100, "Jim Webster"
wrote:


"Moosh:]" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 28 Jul 2003 13:10:50 +0100, "Jim Webster"
wrote:

Good one! Thing that staggers me is how little of a pint of milk or a
pound of beef you producers actually get. You lot seem to supply a
cheap raw material for every other bugger to cop a markup on.
I know you've tried to take action on this, but I suppose there is
always a farmer in the next village who is hungrier and will cave in.
You need something like a builders' union or a miners' union. Big and
powerful that can fund you for a three month strike.

in the UK supermarket chains make party donations, farmers don't.

I understand this, but what always amazes me is that supermarkets
don't vote.


farmers are now an insignificant proportion of the electorate in the UK, in
any constituency. So you can ignore them and just stuff the party coffers
with supermarket funds


Also a three month strike at the right time of year, even if possible
would
lead to a collapse of western society because people would starve.Even if
they imported the food, there isn't all that much food on the market (see
what UK fmd outbreak did to beef prices in the first couple of weeks of
the
outbreak and UK is not a big beef producer in world terms)
In the UK with a lorry drivers strike there was a panic and the
supermarkets
were nearly emptied overnight. I doubt there are the stocks of food in
the
country to stand a two week break in supply.

Yes, I believe London has only a short survival time if food imports
are cut.


I suspect very few major cities actually have meaningful food stocks.How
many public authorities actually do have any food stockpile?
Jim Webster

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

On 29 Jul 2003 08:52:24 GMT, Brian Sandle
posted:

Moosh:] wrote:
On 25 Jul 2003 15:01:43 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:

The Organic folk would not accept it if it were
properly labelled as GM.

I suspect they are so desperate for permitted pesticides, that they
don't want to know :)

Label it and find out.

It's not up to me. Talk to the regulator. I believe that there is so
much lies and ignorance about re GM, that labelling one way or the
other is a moot point. Perhaps the Organic crew accept this GMO, as it
is not food. They are very pragmatic when it suits. Afterall, at base,
it is just a commercial venture.

They would use the non-GM sort.

Then they may be restricted from the various BTs that target different
insects. Not sure which are GM, but there are BT chemicals for
mosquitoes and so on.

An dsupposed usefulness is at the cost of extra risk.

What extra risk?

All you have to
be amazed about is the labelling issue.

No, the hypocrisy of Organic growers trying to bend their rather silly
rules to accept what they need. Ferinstance, there are many safe
fungicides, but organic folk only permit the toxic and very persistant
heavy metal, mined, copper salts. Go figure.

Copper is an essential trace element.

So is manganese which is killing many pine plantations. The toxicity
(or nutrient value) is in the dose.

It is part of the respiratory enzyme
ceruloplasmin.
Desperation? Anyways, Bt has been so overused that it
only has a limited useful life.

Now that it is present perpetually, whether really needed or not, you are
right.

Well it is that by use of the protein powder by agriculture and the
home gardener.

No, because when GE'd into a crop it is present all the time, though
gradually fading in strenght as the crop matures.

But it is present whenever the caterpillars are present in the garden
or crop. When there is no plant predatiojn, there is no resistance
occurring.

As we discussed with DDT, anything used for too long breeds resistant
creatures.

So? The point is that the use of BT in the plant and on the plant is
hardly different. When the insects are not present, they can't be
developing resistance.

When the pesticide is interrupted then resistance to it is no
longer an advantage.

And the pest destroys your crop, and you go bankrupt.

So the non-resistant ones grow again and oust the
resistant ones.

Why do they? The resistant ones could just as easily oust the
non-resistant ones, if there are any left.

Then DDT will work again, or Bt. But if it is there all
the time resistance to it remains an advantage for pests.

Sorry, "there all the time" means nothing if the pests are not there.
It might as well be withdrawn if the pests are absent.
No contact, no advantage for the resistant mutations.

When home gardners use it, or non-GM soy farmers &c, it is only present as
needed, then disappears.

And why does it matter if it's there or not, if the pests aren't
predating the crop?

There are always a few about, from the mandatory refuges, or other crops
near by.

But how does this matter? The chances of a resistance mutation are so
much lower.

New specific pesticides will be
developed.

Which we do not know the problems with.

Same problems as with BT. Have you heard of testing?
Happens all the time.

So the Bt crop suppliers, who are ruining it, should be paying for the
research for something new organic.

They are, all the time. They developed BT, so why shouldn't they use
it, and develop further selective pesticides. BTW, who says they are
ruining anything?

They didn't invent the original stuff. They `developed' it.

Same thing.

In other words
they are in a marketing mode.

How else could it be done?

As Gordon says all that is wanted is money.

Without it, nothing will be achieved. No crop growth even.

In that respect the farmers are at the mercy of the `developers'.

Just as the consumers are at the mercy of the farmers. That's
commerce.

When
resistance develops then there are recommended packages of pesticides to
go with the product.

Which product? When resistance develops to one insecticide, another
must be used.

With spider mites, three classes of miticide were used in rotation as
each one developed reistance, and the one furthest away used has
regained its effectiveness.

Or when the plants are expending so much energy
producing Bt all throughout them that they have less for fighting the
other pests.

Get real. The plants produce hundreds if not more proteins for no
other purpose than to deter pests. One little BT protein is neither
here nor there. Didn't seem to worry the bacillus that made it in the
first place.

And the produce will probably not
sell as well as when the organic Bt stuff was used occasionally.

Only because the public has been hoodwinked into believing that
Organic is somehow better.

It is.

No evidence that it is.

More per acre,

Less per acre, because nutrients can't be replaced.

better antioxidants for nutrition,

Exactly the same for identical strains, grown in identical conditions,
and harvested at the same stage of ripeness, according to all properly
done comparisons.

less chemical cost,

That's why the yield is less, and nutrition gets poorer and poorer.
The soil nutrients can't be replaced.

the
only extra cost is a little more manpower and we needs jobs anyway.

Sorry, that does not provide for the nutrients needed to replace the
ones removed in the harvested crop.

Why buy corn with Bt protein in it?

To get a pest free crop, without having to spray, thus saving much
fossil fuel needed in applying the sprays a number of times.

I am talking about poeple who are looking for someting to eat.

Get to it before the insects do!

Why do they
want to eat Bt protein right throughout the plant,

It's as good as any other mixture of amino acids.

whereas the organic
producers sprayed it on the surface of the plant only if needed and it
dispersed again before eating?

And how is it harmful to humans? What is the witholding time on food
crops?

Why buy paste made from tomato which keeps longer, but with no guarantee
about the nutritional qualities lasting in proportion?

Huh? Tomato past is hardly a staple. It's a flavouring or a spice IME.
Does it matter if a bit of any nutrient in it disappears?

It has important nutrients for people eating `hamburgers' &c whatever you
call those meat filled bread buns for a meal. The few vegetable things in
them may the only source of vitamin C.

Tomatoes on hamburgers here. Nutritionists have labelled hamburgers as
quite nutritious, actually.

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

On 29 Jul 2003 23:31:37 GMT, Brian Sandle
posted:

Moosh:] wrote:
On 22 Jul 2003 12:45:08 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:
To my knowledge they only test people with protein that they expect the GM
plant to make. The actual plant could have the engineered promoters
switching on other genes, causing troubles you would not be looking for.

And do they look for unintended effects from mutations and cross
pollinating?

Possibly not as thoroughly as they ought. But those are not being applied
to such a wide sector of people as RR & Bt stuff, which goes to nearly
everyone in North America.

Mutations and cross pollinations go on constantly every minute in
every corn field in the world.

When the tryptophan from GE sources killed some people it might not have
been discovered if the symptoms were similar to some other lethal
but fairly common disease.

But that tryptophan affair was nothing to do with GE.

If the govt thought that lack of purification could cause such a terrible
thing what have they done about preventing future such things?

Applied factory/product safety regulations?

Linkname: The Thalidomide of Genetic Engineering
URL: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/tryptophan.php
size: 199 lines
Linkname: Speech by Jeanette Fitzsimons in Urgent debate on GE
decision - 30OCT2001
URL: http://www.ecoglobe.org.nz/ge-news/rcgm1o30.htm
size: 258 lines

The Royal Commission has been lauded by some as balanced, thorough,
informed, and many other plaudits. This was the same Royal Commission
which told the representative of oneorganisation, before they had even
made their presentation, that the Commission had already made their
decision and it would be the Great NZ compromise.
The same organisation, after handing in their written submission much
earlier, found there was an error and asked to correct it. They were
told it didn't matter as "no-one was going to read it anyway".
In fact the Commission disregarded a great deal of evidence which did
not support its conclusions and made numerous errors of fact - for
example in its reporting and assessment of evidence about the
poisoning of thousands by GE tryptophan

Sounds like grasping at straws -- after their key witness a few years
ago was charged with falsifying evidence?
The tryptophan poisoning had nothing to do with GE.

I can
list several cases of food stuffs that case harm bred with conventional
methods an you can't list a single one with GM methods.

They get withdrawn if they cause trouble that is plain obvious.

Just like foods from plant mutations and cross-pollinating, only these
are more likely

Who is doing studies comparing recent health changes in countries with GM
food compared to countries with non-GM? Who is ready for what may show up
in the next generation?

Health is always being monitored by hundreds of thousands of health
professionals. Have you got ANY evidence of any problems?

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

On 30 Jul 2003 10:28:05 GMT, Brian Sandle
posted:

In sci.med.nutrition Moosh:] wrote:
On 24 Jul 2003 05:04:37 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:

So you don't read Moosh:]'s articles, I have to economize somehwe
****
From: "Moosh:]"
Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition,nz.general,sci.agriculture
Subject: Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
Message-ID:
Lines: 89
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 11:54:52 GMT
[...]
In the junk DNA there is just about
everything that has been tried, if it hasn't been harmlessly corrupted
over the aeons.
[...]
****

That doesn't mean that it is a "memory bank" Just a repository for
turned off sequences. What turns them on again is a moot point.
Evolution isn't using these if needed, it is being lucky enough to
have a random mutation that confers a survival benefit. And when all
your non-mutated peers are dying from some environmental change
(antibiotics) , you will outcompete them.

But what if a mutation in the past had developed an ability to access the
junk DNA under stress? Would that be as complex as developing eyes
ears and advanced emotions by mutation?

The latter is as simple as falling off a log. The former is far more
complex. What is your proposed mechanism for sorting through the
sequences to find something suitable? What criteria would the search
engine use?

Where is there any evidence of this. I think you are
getting carried away with the classifications again. If you run out of
hosts
you just find more

Jump species? You would have to do that before you killed every last
one of the previous species.

which isn't a problem, those who prey on only one species are very much a
minority

Lots of viruses tend to be specific to certain classes of hosts.

Calici haemorrhagic disease jumped to rabbits in 1970s in China, though I
don't know why.

Using pig organs in humans in concert with GM is a risk that pig viruses
will jump and spread through the human population.

What on earth does GM have to do with this? It happens whether or not,
surely.

Because GM enables more horizontal gene transfer outwitting the past
regulatory mechanisms.

Why does it enable more horizontal gene transfer?
What regulatory mechanisms?
This is just speculation, with no firm basis.

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

On 31 Jul 2003 01:42:57 GMT, Brian Sandle
posted:

Gordon Couger wrote:

"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
...
In sci.med.nutrition Moosh:] wrote:
On 24 Jul 2003 05:04:37 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:

So you don't read Moosh:]'s articles, I have to economize somehwe
****
From: "Moosh:]"
Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition,nz.general,sci.agriculture
Subject: Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
Message-ID:
Lines: 89
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 11:54:52 GMT
[...]
In the junk DNA there is just about
everything that has been tried, if it hasn't been harmlessly corrupted
over the aeons.
[...]
****

That doesn't mean that it is a "memory bank" Just a repository for
turned off sequences. What turns them on again is a moot point.
Evolution isn't using these if needed, it is being lucky enough to
have a random mutation that confers a survival benefit. And when all
your non-mutated peers are dying from some environmental change
(antibiotics) , you will outcompete them.

But what if a mutation in the past had developed an ability to access the
junk DNA under stress? Would that be as complex as developing eyes
ears and advanced emotions by mutation?

What if some thing that are now blue turn green on August 5th, 2005 and we
have a new color bleen, blue that turns to green.

You stabbing in the dark about thing you have no knowledge of. Do you trust
propaganda machines more than scientist that spend their lives working in a
field?

I am not stabbing in the dark, I am trying to get Moosh:] thinking.

You're not going to convince anyone with propaganda and fringe
science, and wild speculation. You must become far more
discriminating.


Linkname: Molecular Genetic Engineers in Junk DNA?
URL: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/MGEJ.php
size: 183 lines
[...]
Perhaps only 1% of the human genome codes for genes, and that's what
the human genome map contains. The rest is mainly repetitive DNA,
commonly known as `junk DNA'.

However, evidence has been emerging that lurking within junk DNA are
armies of transposons (mobile genetic elements) that play an
indispensable role in `natural genetic engineering' the genome. They
make up nearly half of the human genome, and serve as `recombination
hotspots' for cutting and splicing, and hence reshuffling the genome.
They are also a source of ready to use motifs for gene expression, as
well as new protein-coding sequences.

These important transposons are scattered throughout the genome. There
are two main categories: Long Interspersed Elements (LINEs) about 6.7
kilobasepairs in length and Short Interspersed Elements (SINEs) of
several hundred basepairs.

The most abundant SINEs are Alu elements, of which 1.4 million copies
exist, comprising 10% of the human genome, and are apparently only
found in primates.

[...]
There is increasing evidence that physical and chemical stresses to
the cell, such as heat shock, chemical poisons and viral infections,
tend to activate Alu elements. The resultant gene reshuffling may be
responsible for a variety of chronic diseases (see "Dynamic genomics
", this series).

Wild speculation. Perhaps a tiny truth here, but likely insignificant
in the washup.

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

Moosh:] wrote:
On 31 Jul 2003 01:42:57 GMT, Brian Sandle
posted:

Gordon Couger wrote:

"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
...
In sci.med.nutrition Moosh:] wrote:
On 24 Jul 2003 05:04:37 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:

So you don't read Moosh:]'s articles, I have to economize somehwe
****
From: "Moosh:]"
Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition,nz.general,sci.agriculture
Subject: Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
Message-ID:
Lines: 89
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 11:54:52 GMT
[...]
In the junk DNA there is just about
everything that has been tried, if it hasn't been harmlessly corrupted
over the aeons.
[...]
****

That doesn't mean that it is a "memory bank" Just a repository for
turned off sequences. What turns them on again is a moot point.
Evolution isn't using these if needed, it is being lucky enough to
have a random mutation that confers a survival benefit. And when all
your non-mutated peers are dying from some environmental change
(antibiotics) , you will outcompete them.

But what if a mutation in the past had developed an ability to access the
junk DNA under stress? Would that be as complex as developing eyes
ears and advanced emotions by mutation?

What if some thing that are now blue turn green on August 5th, 2005 and we
have a new color bleen, blue that turns to green.

You stabbing in the dark about thing you have no knowledge of. Do you trust
propaganda machines more than scientist that spend their lives working in a
field?

I am not stabbing in the dark, I am trying to get Moosh:] thinking.

You're not going to convince anyone with propaganda and fringe
science, and wild speculation. You must become far more
discriminating.


Linkname: The Spurious Foundation of Genetic Engineering
URL: http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0209-01.htm
size: 723 lines

[...]
Why, then, has the central dogma continued to stand? To some
degree the theory has been protected from criticism by a device
more common to religion than science; dissent, or merely the
discovery of a discordant fact, is a punishable offense, a
heresy that might easily lead to professional ostracism. Much of
this bias can be attributed to institutional inertia, a failure
of rigor, but there are other, more insidious, reasons why
molecular geneticists might be satisfied with the status quo;
the central dogma has given them such a satisfying, seductively
simplistic explanation of heredity that it seemed sacrilegious
to entertain doubts. The central dogma was simply too good not
to be true.

As a result, funding for molecular genetics has rapidly
increased over the last twenty years, new academic institutions,
many of them "genomic" variants of more mundane professions,
such as public health, have proliferated. At Harvard and other
universities, the biology curriculum has become centered on the
genome. But beyond the traditional scientific economy of
prestige and the generous funding that follows it as night
follows day, money has distorted the scientific process as a
once purely academic pursuit has been commercialized to an
astonishing degree by the researchers themselves. Biology has
become a glittering target for venture capital; each new
discovery brings new patents, new partnerships, and new
corporate affiliations. But as the growing opposition to
transgenic crops clearly shows, there is persistent public
concern not only with the safety of genetically engineered foods
but also with the inherent dangers in arbitrarily overriding
patterns of inheritance that are embedded in the natural world
through long evolutionary experience. Too often those concerns
have been derided by industry scientists as the "irrational"
fears of an uneducated public. The irony, of course, is that the
biotechnology industry is based on science that is forty years
old and conveniently devoid of more recent results, which show
that there are strong reasons to fear the potential consequences
of transferring a DNA gene between species. What the public
fears is not the experimental science but the fundamentally
irrational decision to let it out of the laboratory into the
real world before we truly understand it.

Barry Commoner is senior scientist at the Center for Biology of
Natural Systems at Queen's College, City University of New York
where he directs the Critical Genetics Project. Readers can
obtain a list of references used as sources for this article by
sending a request to [see http for email address and
fair use notice]


Linkname: Molecular Genetic Engineers in Junk DNA?
URL: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/MGEJ.php
size: 183 lines
[...]
Perhaps only 1% of the human genome codes for genes, and that's what
the human genome map contains. The rest is mainly repetitive DNA,
commonly known as `junk DNA'.

However, evidence has been emerging that lurking within junk DNA are
armies of transposons (mobile genetic elements) that play an
indispensable role in `natural genetic engineering' the genome. They
make up nearly half of the human genome, and serve as `recombination
hotspots' for cutting and splicing, and hence reshuffling the genome.
They are also a source of ready to use motifs for gene expression, as
well as new protein-coding sequences.

These important transposons are scattered throughout the genome. There
are two main categories: Long Interspersed Elements (LINEs) about 6.7
kilobasepairs in length and Short Interspersed Elements (SINEs) of
several hundred basepairs.

The most abundant SINEs are Alu elements, of which 1.4 million copies
exist, comprising 10% of the human genome, and are apparently only
found in primates.

[...]
There is increasing evidence that physical and chemical stresses to
the cell, such as heat shock, chemical poisons and viral infections,
tend to activate Alu elements. The resultant gene reshuffling may be
responsible for a variety of chronic diseases (see "Dynamic genomics
", this series).

Wild speculation. Perhaps a tiny truth here, but likely insignificant
in the washup.

[...]
Crick's theory includes a second doctrine, which he originally
called the "central dogma" (though this term is now generally
used to identify his theory as a whole). The hypothesis is
typical Crick: simple precise, and magisterial. "Once
(sequential) information has passed into protein it cannot get
out again." This means that genetic information originates in
the DNA nucleotide sequence and terminates, unchanged, in the
protein amino acid sequence. The pronouncement is crucial to the
explanatory power of the theory because it endows the gene with
undiluted control over the identity of the protein and the
inherited trait that the protein creates. To stress the
importance of their genetic taboo, Crick bet the future of the
entire enterprise on it, asserting that "the discovery of just
one type of present-day cell" in which genetic information
passed from protein to nucleic acid or from protein to protein
"would shake the whole intellectual basis of molecular biology."

Crick was aware of the brashness of his bet, for it was known
that in living cells proteins come into promiscuous molecular
contact with numerous other proteins and with molecules of DNA
and RNA. His insistence that these interactions are genetically
chaste was designed to protect the DNA's genetic message - the
gene's nucleotide sequence - from molecular intruders that might
change the sequence or add new ones as it was transferred, step
by step, from gene to protein and thus destroy the theory's
elegant simplicity.

Last February, Crick's gamble suffered a spectacular loss. In
the journals Nature and Science, and at joint press conferences
and television appearances, the two genome research teams
reported their results. The major result was "unexpected."
Instead of the 100,000 or more genes predicted by the estimated
number of human proteins, the gene count was only about 30,000.
By this measure, people are only about as gene-rich as a
mustardlike weed (which has 26,000 genes) and about twice as
genetically endowed as a fruit fly or a primitive worm - hardly
an adequate basis for distinguishing among "life as a fly, a
carrot, or a man." In fact, an inattentive reader of genomic CDs
might easily mistake Walter Gilbert for a mouse, 99 percent of
whose genes have human counterparts.

The surprising results contradicted the scientific premise on
which the genome project was undertaken and dethroned its
guiding theory, the central dogma. After all, if the human gene
count is too low to match the number of proteins and the
numerous inherited traits that they engender, and if it cannot
explain the vast inherited difference between a weed and a
person, there must be much more to the "ultimate description of
life" than the genes, on their own, can tell us.

Scientists and journalists somehow failed to notice what had
happened. The discovery that the human genome is not much
different from the roundworm's, led Dr. Eric Lander, one of the
leaders of the project, to declare that humanity should learn "a
lesson in humility."

[...]
The project's scientific reports offered little to explain the
shortfall in the gene count. One of the possible explanations
for why the gene count is "so discordant with our predictions"
was described, in full, last February in Science as follows:
"nearly 40% of human genes are alternatively spliced." Properly
understood, this modest, if esoteric, account fulfills Crick's
dire prophecy: it "shakes the whole intellectual basis of
molecular biology" and undermines the scientific validity of its
applications to genetic engineering.
[...]

Thus, in the living cell the gene's nucleotide code can by
replicated faithfully only because an array of specialized
proteins intervenes to prevent most of the errors - which DNA by
itself is prone to make - and to repair the few remaining ones.
Moreover, it has been known since the 1960s that the enzymes
that synthesize DNA influence its nucleotide sequence. In this
sense, genetic information arises not from DNA alone but through
its essential collaboration with protein enzymes - a
contradiction of the central dogma's precept that inheritance is
uniquely governed by the self-replication of the DNA double
helix.

[prions &c]

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

Moosh:] wrote:
On 30 Jul 2003 10:28:05 GMT, Brian Sandle
posted:

In sci.med.nutrition Moosh:] wrote:
On 24 Jul 2003 05:04:37 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:

So you don't read Moosh:]'s articles, I have to economize somehwe
****
From: "Moosh:]"
Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition,nz.general,sci.agriculture
Subject: Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
Message-ID:
Lines: 89
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 11:54:52 GMT
[...]
In the junk DNA there is just about
everything that has been tried, if it hasn't been harmlessly corrupted
over the aeons.
[...]
****

That doesn't mean that it is a "memory bank" Just a repository for
turned off sequences. What turns them on again is a moot point.
Evolution isn't using these if needed, it is being lucky enough to
have a random mutation that confers a survival benefit. And when all
your non-mutated peers are dying from some environmental change
(antibiotics) , you will outcompete them.

But what if a mutation in the past had developed an ability to access the
junk DNA under stress? Would that be as complex as developing eyes
ears and advanced emotions by mutation?

The latter is as simple as falling off a log. The former is far more
complex. What is your proposed mechanism for sorting through the
sequences to find something suitable? What criteria would the search
engine use?

How the living cells control enzymes to repair DNA to such
miraculous toerances may not be fully understood either. Recently I
gave Mae Wan Ho's words about recombination hot spots in the junk
DNA. Here is something else to get us thinking about the
complexity of the life which GM tinkers with, their safety
message based on the `Central Dogma' which is so lacking.


Linkname: The Spurious Foundation of Genetic Engineering
URL: http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0209-01.htm
size: 723 lines
[...]
Alternative splicing can have an extraordinary impact on the
gene/protein ratio. We now know that a single gene originally
believed to encode a single protein that occurs in cells of the
inner ear of chicks (and of humans) gives rise to 576 variant
proteins, differing in their amino acid sequences. The current
record for the number of different proteins produced from a
single gene by alternative splicing is held by the fruit fly, in
which one gene generates up to 38,016 variant protein molecules.

Alternative splicing thus has a devastating impact on Crick's
theory: it breaks open the hypothesized isolation of the
molecular system that transfers genetic information from a
single gene to a single protein.

[...]
Alternative splicing is not the only discovery over the last
forty years that has contradicted basic precepts of the central
dogma. Other research has tended to erode the centrality of the
DNA double helix itself, the theory's ubiquitous icon. In their
original description of the discovery of DNA, Watson and Crick
commented that the helix's structure "immediately suggests a
possible copying mechanism for the genetic material." Such
self-duplication is the crucial feature of life, and in
ascribing it to DNA, Watson and Crick concluded, a bit
prematurely, that they had discovered life's magic molecular
key.

Biological replication does include the precise duplication of
DNA, but this is accomplished by the living cell, not by the DNA
molecule alone. In the development of a person from a single
fertilized egg, the egg cell and the multitude of succeeding
cells divide in two. Each such division is precede by a doubling
of the cell's DNA; two new DNA strands are produced by attaching
the necessary nucleotides (freely available in the cell), in the
proper order, to each of the two DNA strands entwined in the
double helix. As the single fertilized egg cell grows into an
adult, the genome is replicated many billions of times, its
precise sequence of three billion nucleotides retained with
extraordinary fidelity. The rate of error - that is, the
insertion into the newly made DNA sequence of a nucleotide out
of its proper order - is about one in 10 billion nucleotides.
But on its own, DNA is incapable of such faithful replication;
in a test-tube experiment, a DNA strand, provided with a mixture
of its four constituent nucleotides, will line them up with
about one in a hundred of them out its proper place. On the
other hand, when the appropriate protein enzymes are added to
the test tube, the fidelity with which nucleotides are
incorporated in the newly made DNA strand is greatly improved,
reducing the error rate to one in 10 million. These remaining
errors are finally reduced to one in 10 billion by a set of
"repair" enzymes (also proteins) that detect and remove
mismatched nucleotides from the newly synthesized DNA.

Thus, in the living cell the gene's nucleotide code can by
replicated faithfully only because an array of specialized
proteins intervenes to prevent most of the errors - which DNA by
itself is prone to make - and to repair the few remaining ones.
Moreover, it has been known since the 1960s that the enzymes
that synthesize DNA influence its nucleotide sequence. In this
sense, genetic information arises not from DNA alone but through
its essential collaboration with protein enzymes - a
contradiction of the central dogma's precept that inheritance is
uniquely governed by the self-replication of the DNA double
helix.
[...]
Because of their commitment to an obsolete theory, most
molecular biologists operate under the assumption that DNA is
the secret of life, whereas the careful observation of the
hierarchy of living processes strongly suggests that it is the
other way around: DNA did not create life; life created DNA.
When life was first formed on the earth, proteins must have
appeared before DNA because, unlike DNA, proteins have the
catalytic ability to generate the chemical energy needed to
assemble small ambient molecules into larger ones such as DNA.
DNA is a mechanism created by the cell. Early life survived
because it grew, building up its characteristic array of complex
molecules. It must have been a sloppy kind of growth; what was
newly made did not exactly replicate what was already there. But
once produced by the primitive cell, DNA could become a stable
place to store structural information about the cell's chaotic
chemistry, something like the minutes taken by a secretary at a
noisy committee meeting. There can be no doubt that the
emergence of DNA was a crucial stage in the development of life,
but we must avoid the mistake of reducing life to a master
molecule in order to satisfy our emotional need for unambiguous
simplicity.
[... & Fair use notice cut]

Where is there any evidence of this. I think you are
getting carried away with the classifications again. If you run out of
hosts
you just find more

Jump species? You would have to do that before you killed every last
one of the previous species.

which isn't a problem, those who prey on only one species are very much a
minority

Lots of viruses tend to be specific to certain classes of hosts.

Calici haemorrhagic disease jumped to rabbits in 1970s in China, though I
don't know why.

Using pig organs in humans in concert with GM is a risk that pig viruses
will jump and spread through the human population.

What on earth does GM have to do with this? It happens whether or not,
surely.

Because GM enables more horizontal gene transfer outwitting the past
regulatory mechanisms.

Why does it enable more horizontal gene transfer?

Because gene transfer packages are included in the GM process to get
genes to outwit the natural barriers.

What regulatory mechanisms?

Those like the repair mechanisms of the cell on innacurate DNA
copying by itself.

This is just speculation, with no firm basis.

The research is moving very fast. Like Copernicus those at the
forefront are branded as heretics by those who stand to lose power
and money.

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

Moosh:] wrote:
On 29 Jul 2003 23:31:37 GMT, Brian Sandle
posted:

Moosh:] wrote:
On 22 Jul 2003 12:45:08 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:
To my knowledge they only test people with protein that they expect the GM
plant to make. The actual plant could have the engineered promoters
switching on other genes, causing troubles you would not be looking for.

And do they look for unintended effects from mutations and cross
pollinating?

Possibly not as thoroughly as they ought. But those are not being applied
to such a wide sector of people as RR & Bt stuff, which goes to nearly
everyone in North America.

Mutations and cross pollinations go on constantly every minute in
every corn field in the world.

As I skimmed last article the living cell has tremendous
discrimination. It constantly controls repair of the faulty DNA
replication. But it may be defeated when too many or too clever
stresses are applied, that it is not used to dealing with.

When the tryptophan from GE sources killed some people it might not have
been discovered if the symptoms were similar to some other lethal
but fairly common disease.

But that tryptophan affair was nothing to do with GE.

If the govt thought that lack of purification could cause such a terrible
thing what have they done about preventing future such things?

Applied factory/product safety regulations?

Maybe they are starting some standards for alternative products now,
as we see with a first recall in Australia. But if purity troubles
alone could cause so many deaths with that one product and there
being such a lax approach and so many many products I would have
thought much more trouble would have been evident from purity
considerations alone. It must have been more that purity, or else
purity testing would have been brought in for everything
much earlier.


Linkname: The Thalidomide of Genetic Engineering
URL: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/tryptophan.php
size: 199 lines
Linkname: Speech by Jeanette Fitzsimons in Urgent debate on GE
decision - 30OCT2001
URL: http://www.ecoglobe.org.nz/ge-news/rcgm1o30.htm
size: 258 lines

The Royal Commission has been lauded by some as balanced, thorough,
informed, and many other plaudits. This was the same Royal Commission
which told the representative of oneorganisation, before they had even
made their presentation, that the Commission had already made their
decision and it would be the Great NZ compromise.
The same organisation, after handing in their written submission much
earlier, found there was an error and asked to correct it. They were
told it didn't matter as "no-one was going to read it anyway".
In fact the Commission disregarded a great deal of evidence which did
not support its conclusions and made numerous errors of fact - for
example in its reporting and assessment of evidence about the
poisoning of thousands by GE tryptophan

Sounds like grasping at straws -- after their key witness a few years
ago was charged with falsifying evidence?
The tryptophan poisoning had nothing to do with GE.


Linkname: The Thalidomide of Genetic Engineering
URL: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/tryptophan.php
size: 209 lines
[...]

Those who search the Internet on this topic will soon discover
the claim by apologists for GE that the problem was only
decreased purification of tryptophan. We disagree for several
reasons - mainly, the first 3 GE strains had been causing EMS
(about 100 cases) for years before this slackening of
purification procedure in Jan 1989 when also the 'superproducer'
strain went into production and caused the epidemic. But this
question cannot be settled with finality unless Showa Denko
releases the GE microbes for detailed examination.

Whether you believe the impurities were due to incompetent
purification & monitoring, or to deviant metabolism in the
GE-bugs, or both, you had better believe that the fabled
'substantially equivalent' assumption flopped in that epidemic
of crippling & lethal illness.

Although GE proponents claim that the EMS epidemic was caused
solely by faulty filtering, it is possible to question their
seriousness. None of them has publicly argued that the Health
Food supplement industry should be subject to legal controls for
purity & efficacy comparable to those applied to the
pharmaceutical industry; yet this would be logical if indeed
such a deadly epidemic occurred solely as a result of inadequate
purification in manufacturing.

Either way, biotechnology - which includes GE but also includes
other processes such as purifying the mixture "lyprinol" from
green-lipped mussels - requires much-enhanced scrutiny.
[...]

I can
list several cases of food stuffs that case harm bred with conventional
methods an you can't list a single one with GM methods.

They get withdrawn if they cause trouble that is plain obvious.

Just like foods from plant mutations and cross-pollinating, only these
are more likely

Who is doing studies comparing recent health changes in countries with GM
food compared to countries with non-GM? Who is ready for what may show up
in the next generation?

Health is always being monitored by hundreds of thousands of health
professionals. Have you got ANY evidence of any problems?

I rely on what is allowed to be published. I note how the cigarette
and asbestos industries were aware of the risks of their products
though kept them covered.

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

In sci.med.nutrition Moosh:] wrote:
On 25 Jul 2003 11:48:19 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:

In sci.med.nutrition Moosh:] wrote:
On 24 Jul 2003 22:54:10 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:
I don't think randomity explains what goes on.

Well it can, so why look for fairies at the bottom of the garden?
Think of Ockham's razor.

You are behind, as I explained last article.

No, I'm not behind the fairy stories :)

Ockham's razor illustrating the simplest explanation given the
evidence.

But in the last few articles I have shown the troubles with Crick's
`simple and elegant' `central dogma', as it has been exposed to
wider light more recently.

You are several years behind.

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

On Fri, 01 Aug 2003 05:38:18 GMT, "Moosh:]"
wrote:
Perhaps he is an Australian like me?

Perhaps, but on check the similarity between John Riley and you
appears to run deeper than that. Substantial equivalence of mindset
if not identity would seem indicated.

E.g. 'soils with almost no phosphorus' is not particularly an
Australian expression. Yet, you and John Riley are the only persons
on Usenet who have used those words in that sequence. Furthermore,
looking at the expression in the contexts, striking semantic
similarities appear:

"I would love to know how you would farm "organically" in the
southwest of Western Australia. It has extremely old soils with
almost no phosphorus. There is often a deficiency in copper and
molybdenum (IIRC)" (John Riley 2001)

"Tell me then how an Organic farmer in SW Western Australia on
ancient impoverished soils with almost NO phosphorus, and no copper or
molybdenum and very little potassium should function?" (Moosh 2003)

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

"Torsten Brinch" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 01 Aug 2003 05:38:18 GMT, "Moosh:]"
wrote:
Perhaps he is an Australian like me?

Perhaps, but on check the similarity between John Riley and you
appears to run deeper than that. Substantial equivalence of mindset
if not identity would seem indicated.

E.g. 'soils with almost no phosphorus' is not particularly an
Australian expression. Yet, you and John Riley are the only persons
on Usenet who have used those words in that sequence. Furthermore,
looking at the expression in the contexts, striking semantic
similarities appear:

perhaps the common link is experience dealing with 'soils with almost no
phosphorus'?

If I were you Torsten, I would recommend you stick to looking for conspiracy
theories in iraq and leave agriculture to less imaginative people

Jim Webster

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

"Jim Webster" wrote in message
...

SNIP

perhaps the common link is experience dealing with 'soils with almost no
phosphorus'?

If I were you Torsten, I would recommend you stick to looking for
conspiracy
theories in iraq and leave agriculture to less imaginative people

Jim Webster

VBG Right on target.....

James Curts

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

Jim Webster writes

"Torsten Brinch" wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 01 Aug 2003 05:38:18 GMT, "Moosh:]"
wrote:
Perhaps he is an Australian like me?

Perhaps, but on check the similarity between John Riley and you
appears to run deeper than that. Substantial equivalence of mindset
if not identity would seem indicated.

E.g. 'soils with almost no phosphorus' is not particularly an
Australian expression. Yet, you and John Riley are the only persons
on Usenet who have used those words in that sequence. Furthermore,
looking at the expression in the contexts, striking semantic
similarities appear:

perhaps the common link is experience dealing with 'soils with almost no
phosphorus'?

If I were you Torsten, I would recommend you stick to looking for conspiracy
theories in iraq and leave agriculture to less imaginative people

My brother in law, some 20 years ago, on his farm SW of sydney:

"Our soils have almost no phosphorus, so we just apply superphosphate".

Sounds pretty typical to me.

--
Oz
This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious.
Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted.

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

On Fri, 01 Aug 2003 22:58:41 GMT, "James Curts"
wrote:

"Jim Webster" wrote in message
...

SNIP

perhaps the common link is experience dealing with 'soils with almost no
phosphorus'?

If I were you Torsten, I would recommend you stick to looking for
conspiracy
theories in iraq and leave agriculture to less imaginative people

Jim Webster

what a maroon


VBG Right on target.....

James Curts

Careful there, you wouldn't want Moosh and I to get started
on Iraq. Pretty soon you wouldn't know who of us you should
hate the most :-)

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

"Oz" wrote in message
...
Jim Webster writes

"Torsten Brinch" wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 01 Aug 2003 05:38:18 GMT, "Moosh:]"
wrote:
Perhaps he is an Australian like me?

Perhaps, but on check the similarity between John Riley and you
appears to run deeper than that. Substantial equivalence of mindset
if not identity would seem indicated.

E.g. 'soils with almost no phosphorus' is not particularly an
Australian expression. Yet, you and John Riley are the only persons
on Usenet who have used those words in that sequence. Furthermore,
looking at the expression in the contexts, striking semantic
similarities appear:

perhaps the common link is experience dealing with 'soils with almost no
phosphorus'?

If I were you Torsten, I would recommend you stick to looking for
conspiracy
theories in iraq and leave agriculture to less imaginative people

My brother in law, some 20 years ago, on his farm SW of sydney:

"Our soils have almost no phosphorus, so we just apply superphosphate".

Sounds pretty typical to me.

My soils aren't quit as old as those in Australia. They are some of the
oldest in North America. Diamoium phosphate was the main sauce we used.
Mixing it with ammonium nitrate, Urea or on the high pH soils ammonium
sulfate to get the ratio of N & P we wanted. Any trace elements would be
added to that. We couldn't get a economic response from potasium in most
cases. Intensely irrigated Bermuda grass would show a response. But sandy
soils just becomes a hydroponic media for Bermuda grass if you push it hard
enough.

DAP would not be acceptable to an organic farmer but rock phosphate is. And
AFIK there is no rule against trace elements if they can use copper in their
fungicide they should be able to use it in their fertilizer or put on a
heavy treatment of fungicide. It doesn't take much copper.

Gordon

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

"Moosh:]" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 28 Jul 2003 21:23:37 GMT, "Gordon Couger"
posted:

"Moosh:]" wrote in message
.. .
On Sun, 27 Jul 2003 19:35:15 GMT, "Gordon Couger"
wrote:

Just the opposite. There are many more beneficial insets since you
don't
have to spray for worms. Try reading something besides green
propaganda.

But Gordon, everything else is Monsanto propaganda produced by
scientists worldwide who are in Monsanto's clutches :)

The USDA experiment stations are not in Monsanto's clutches nor are the
US
farmers. We buy what works. In face most seed breeders at universities
are
very bitter about the loss of public funding for crop breeding and if
there
is a bias it would be ageist private breeders.

Monsanto's main problem is they didn't have a public relation effort on
the
benefits of GM crops for anything but the bottom line of the farmer. They
should have capitalized on the reduction of erosion, insecticide use and
use
of less toxic herbicides and their positive effect on the environment.

I agree, but must say that I've heard of lots of advantages of GM,
often from the greenies saying that it is false :)

The whole scientific world was caught off guard by the lies that the
green
lobby used to line their pockets at the expense of the environment they
claim to be protecting.

I understand that the US public were reasonably accepting of the
technology until, the European "Frankenfoods" scare campaign came to
town.

The US public is still accepting them with no real problem. In the greenest
part of the country a vote on and anti GM law lost 3 to 1. We have some
problem with green terrorists but we have been having that for a long time
they just added crops to their list of targets. The hit conventional crops
more often than GM crops but that doesn't seem to matter to them.

They do have a very secure organization. The government or law enforcement
hasn't been able to penetrate them to any degree at all.

Gordon

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

Torsten Brinch wrote:
On Fri, 01 Aug 2003 22:58:41 GMT, "James Curts"
wrote:

"Jim Webster" wrote in message
...

SNIP

perhaps the common link is experience dealing with 'soils with almost no
phosphorus'?

If I were you Torsten, I would recommend you stick to looking for
conspiracy
theories in iraq and leave agriculture to less imaginative people

Jim Webster

what a maroon


VBG Right on target.....

James Curts

Careful there, you wouldn't want Moosh and I to get started
on Iraq. Pretty soon you wouldn't know who of us you should
hate the most :-)


This thread is on nz.general because in October the moratorium on GM field
releases expires.

I think it is important that we know if a person is speaking with more
than one net name, since they can give more apparent weight to their case.

The name Moosh:) appeared on Feb 11 with some 8 articles, after John Riley
had been having a gap in posting, following several to the microsoft
groups.

Approximately:

John Riley Moosh:)
Feb 11 8
12 3 1
14 1
15 3
16 6
17 2 8
18 2
19 2
20 1 4
21 5
22 3
23 1 5
24 1
25 3
26 1 1

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

Gordon Couger writes
My soils aren't quit as old as those in Australia. They are some of the
oldest in North America. Diamoium phosphate was the main sauce we used.
Mixing it with ammonium nitrate, Urea or on the high pH soils ammonium
sulfate to get the ratio of N & P we wanted. Any trace elements would be
added to that.

I don't think such complexities were warranted in the relatively
extensively grazed australian outback. A whiff of P&S gave a useful
response, dams gave water (well, more weirs down every valley to catch
stormwater) and that was as intensive as could be warranted. Oh, they
did use mineral blocks.

Quite pretty country, apart from the flies. Within the hour we all just
let them crawl over our arms and faces, one can get used to this
surprisingly easily. The alternative of flailing your arms *constantly*
is too stressful.

--
Oz
This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious.
Note: soon (maybe already) only posts via despammed.com will be accepted.

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

"Torsten Brinch" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 01 Aug 2003 22:58:41 GMT, "James Curts"
wrote:

"Jim Webster" wrote in message
...

SNIP

perhaps the common link is experience dealing with 'soils with almost
no
phosphorus'?

If I were you Torsten, I would recommend you stick to looking for
conspiracy
theories in iraq and leave agriculture to less imaginative people

Jim Webster

what a maroon

what a racist

I would say that the 'maroon' is the one who hasn't worked out the
difference between sci.agriculture and soc.culture.iraq

Jim Webster

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

Gordon Couger wrote:
My soils aren't quit as old as those in Australia. They are some of the
oldest in North America. Diamoium phosphate was the main sauce we used.
Mixing it with ammonium nitrate, Urea or on the high pH soils ammonium
sulfate to get the ratio of N & P we wanted. Any trace elements would be
added to that. We couldn't get a economic response from potasium in most
cases. Intensely irrigated Bermuda grass would show a response. But sandy
soils just becomes a hydroponic media for Bermuda grass if you push it hard
enough.

DAP would not be acceptable to an organic farmer but rock phosphate is. And
AFIK there is no rule against trace elements if they can use copper in their
fungicide they should be able to use it in their fertilizer or put on a
heavy treatment of fungicide. It doesn't take much copper.

There is a tremendous amount to learn.

Moosh:] has been relating about varied diets being more healthy for
humans. And varied life on earth seems more healthy.

Currently we have powerful technology and can change the earth in a large
region for the current whim. Well fire has always been a powerful
technology used, but is mused more. The Aboriginal Australians used to use
top fires before the bush got too dense. The resulting fire would not be
so hot. They had learnt over many years and passed on the knowledge. We
need to be doing that now.

The current GM action seems like a big fire going through a rain forest to
open up new land when the nutrients have been taken from the land cleared
the year or so before.

Yes we need to deal with nutrients. There is knowledge to learn in the
organic approach, too. Watch out for yellowcake in the rock phosphate
maybe one. I don't think plants absorb much lead from dolomite (allowed?).

Organics can be more intense farming. Then land such as New Zealand with
low iodine and selenium and specialised life adapted to that could have
had more areas saved. I do not think it is healthy to have uniform
agriculture and small range of plants and beasts the world over, suiting
only the current financial drives we create.

We should be taking care of the oceans. The ocean food comes from the
surface algae that can grow, and while the area is larger than the land
area, the volume cannot be great because the layer is quite thin in
contact with light and much oxygen. Seaweeds can anchor near shores and
have more volume per area.

Let us find out more about what life has done up to the present before
setting in to change it for financial reasons with GM things we cannot
undo.

Rather than put RR or Bt &c genes in several cotton types and say you have
increased diversity, increased profit for the mean time or whatever, find
out about companion planting, closed ecosystems like marvelously diverse
forests, and long duration success.

You have your cotton fields, thanks for the photos. Now when the wind
comes it moves the sandy soil. So can you get a crop which like marram
grass will enable dunes to form? Then you have a greater area of land to
some extent. And on the more shaded side of the dunes different plants
could grow. Harvesting technology would need to be developed. We need to
set aside thinking places and not only relating to what the govt
currently enables (Jim's posiiton).

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

"Oz" wrote in message
...
Gordon Couger writes
My soils aren't quit as old as those in Australia. They are some of the
oldest in North America. Diamoium phosphate was the main sauce we used.
Mixing it with ammonium nitrate, Urea or on the high pH soils ammonium
sulfate to get the ratio of N & P we wanted. Any trace elements would be
added to that.

I don't think such complexities were warranted in the relatively
extensively grazed australian outback. A whiff of P&S gave a useful
response, dams gave water (well, more weirs down every valley to catch
stormwater) and that was as intensive as could be warranted. Oh, they
did use mineral blocks.

Quite pretty country, apart from the flies. Within the hour we all just
let them crawl over our arms and faces, one can get used to this
surprisingly easily. The alternative of flailing your arms *constantly*
is too stressful.

One thing we have pretty well controlled is the damned flies. As a boy I can
remember the north side of the house being black with them. Now we have cost
effective was to control them.

My mother's uncle died in the 50's from lung disease he got from spraying
cattle for a living. The rest have to wear out before they die.

Gordon

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
...
Gordon Couger wrote:
My soils aren't quit as old as those in Australia. They are some of the
oldest in North America. Diamoium phosphate was the main sauce we used.
Mixing it with ammonium nitrate, Urea or on the high pH soils ammonium
sulfate to get the ratio of N & P we wanted. Any trace elements would be
added to that. We couldn't get a economic response from potasium in most
cases. Intensely irrigated Bermuda grass would show a response. But
sandy
soils just becomes a hydroponic media for Bermuda grass if you push it
hard
enough.

DAP would not be acceptable to an organic farmer but rock phosphate is.
And
AFIK there is no rule against trace elements if they can use copper in
their
fungicide they should be able to use it in their fertilizer or put on a
heavy treatment of fungicide. It doesn't take much copper.

There is a tremendous amount to learn.

Moosh:] has been relating about varied diets being more healthy for
humans. And varied life on earth seems more healthy.

Currently we have powerful technology and can change the earth in a large
region for the current whim. Well fire has always been a powerful
technology used, but is mused more. The Aboriginal Australians used to use
top fires before the bush got too dense. The resulting fire would not be
so hot. They had learnt over many years and passed on the knowledge. We
need to be doing that now.

The current GM action seems like a big fire going through a rain forest to
open up new land when the nutrients have been taken from the land cleared
the year or so before.

Yes we need to deal with nutrients. There is knowledge to learn in the
organic approach, too. Watch out for yellowcake in the rock phosphate
maybe one. I don't think plants absorb much lead from dolomite (allowed?).

Organics can be more intense farming. Then land such as New Zealand with
low iodine and selenium and specialised life adapted to that could have
had more areas saved. I do not think it is healthy to have uniform
agriculture and small range of plants and beasts the world over, suiting
only the current financial drives we create.

We should be taking care of the oceans. The ocean food comes from the
surface algae that can grow, and while the area is larger than the land
area, the volume cannot be great because the layer is quite thin in
contact with light and much oxygen. Seaweeds can anchor near shores and
have more volume per area.

Let us find out more about what life has done up to the present before
setting in to change it for financial reasons with GM things we cannot
undo.

GM is the most contorled and studied thing we have ever done in agricluture.
Would you eat food that was derived from seed that were irradiated by Cobalt
60 until half wouldn't sprout and then picked over for any thing that looked
good and incorpeted along with who knows what other mutations into crops
with no testing?


Rather than put RR or Bt &c genes in several cotton types and say you have
increased diversity, increased profit for the mean time or whatever, find
out about companion planting, closed ecosystems like marvelously diverse
forests, and long duration success.

We call those weeds.

Most mature forest are rather steril monoculutres compared to a monoculure
grassland.

You have your cotton fields, thanks for the photos. Now when the wind
comes it moves the sandy soil. So can you get a crop which like marram
grass will enable dunes to form? Then you have a greater area of land to
some extent. And on the more shaded side of the dunes different plants
could grow. Harvesting technology would need to be developed. We need to
set aside thinking places and not only relating to what the govt
currently enables (Jim's posiiton).

Before we could control the sand it was fairly common practice to plant 66
foot wide strips of cotton, wheat, milo and alfalfa with the rows
perpendicular to the wind and work our rotations off that. We progressed
beyond that in the 60's when 100 hp tractors came out.

No till give use many of the things organic supporters claim such as less
pesticide and it really does increase the organic matter in the soil.

Hitler and Geobles would be proud of the why the people that have taken over
the greens have used their methods to sway public opinion to support
practices that 180 degrees opposed to the claimed goals of the
organizations. The greens and others of their kind are responsible for far
more deaths that Hitler and Stalin combined by derailing public health
efforts in the world. Malaria program are almost at a stand still. In the
first world as many as 50% of the children in some areas are not getting
their childhood vaccines all becuse so people with more time than good sense
have take up the cause of a bunch of archest that have hijacked a once
respectable movement and use it to promote their own ends.

Their imagined dangers that have no basis in science make as much sense and
not having your kids vaccinated for tetanus, whooping cough, and measles
when we have real dangers of insecticides, persistent herbicides and water
erosion not only destroying our land but clogging our water ways with silt
and nutrients that are killing our estuaries.

In the mean time we have a ever-increasing number of hungry people to feed
unless you would have use starvation as a population control measure.

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
the story his farther told him about the year it frosted every month of the
year in Indiana. Look up 'the year without a summer' on google. Think what
that would do if it happened today. If you look at tree ring evidence it is
not unlikely it will happen in your life time.

I have direct family history back to 1874 form my great grandmother. Almost
everyone in agriculture has roots like this. We did not hatch in a suburb
with only our peers as guides for our thinking. We started work when we were
8 or 9 and had investment in crops or livestock by the time we were 13. We
were working out for neighbors from the time we do something that the
needed. By the time we were 12 we were expected to keep up with the grown up
chopping cotton until 10 or 11 O'clock in the morning and do just as good a
job as they did.

For almost every one in the business from the farmer to the boards of the
multinational ag companies have farm roots. It's not a deal like Enron.
These people eat the food they sell and can only stay in business by
providing a product that their customer finds profitable. No farmer will
give all the profit to the seed company and the bank they will take the what
that makes them the most money.

Gordon

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
...
You have your cotton fields, thanks for the photos. Now when the wind
comes it moves the sandy soil. So can you get a crop which like marram
grass will enable dunes to form? Then you have a greater area of land to
some extent. And on the more shaded side of the dunes different plants
could grow. Harvesting technology would need to be developed. We need to
set aside thinking places and not only relating to what the govt
currently enables (Jim's posiiton).


No the position caused by governments elected by urban electorates. If you
don't like the position change the government. Mind you I see very few in
the urban workforce telling each other that they have to give up a fifth or
similar proportion of their income for someone elses environmental good.

Jim Webster

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

On Sat, 02 Aug 2003 09:55:01 GMT, "Gordon Couger"
wrote:

Myth:
GM is the most contorled and studied thing we have ever done in agricluture.

Fact:
It isn't. Take just the dossier of the average pesticide, if you want
to see a more controlled and studied thing.

-----------

Excerpt from " Toxicological and allergological safety evaluation of
GMO - Summary Spoek A., Hofer H., Valenta R., Kienzl-Plochberger K.,
Lehner P., Gaugitsch H.., Monograph 109, Federal Environment Agency,
Austria http://www.ubavie.gv.at

"Out of 28 applications for placing on the market of GMP which are
presently under review or are already approved, eleven applications
were selected: applications for intended use for cultivation and as
feed stuff (RR-fodder beet A5/15, potato EH92-527-1, Bt-cotton 531,
RR-cotton 1445), "twin applications" (first application for import,
second application for cultivation; maize Bt11, RR-maize GA 21), one
application intended for cultivation as well as use as food and feed
stuff (rape Topas 19/2), applications for use as ornamental plants
(carnation 66, carnation 959A etc.). Besides the actual application
dossiers also correspondence, additional information from the
notifiers, opinions of the national competent authorities as well as
the Scientific Committee on Plants, and - if available - decisions of
the European Commission were considered.

TOXICOLOGY:

In general toxicological information is rather a minor part of the
dossiers. Differences in the intended use of the GMP do not affect the
extent of the toxicological evaluations. Most toxicity tests are
displayed as summaries or are just references to the literature and
can therefore not be verified and reviewed. Internal references are
often used improperly. Statements which are closely related to each
other are sometimes scattered over the dossier.

Apparently, toxicological tests were carried out rather sporadically,
most likely in cases of Bt-plants, as Bt-toxins had already been
approved before as an insecticide in some countries. Data on the
toxicity of the whole GMP are not provided in any dossier.

Toxicological acceptance is often justified by three arguments:
- low toxicity of the gene product,
- substantial equivalence of the GMP to their conventional
counterparts, and
- low exposure.

Potentially toxic effects resulting as a secondary effect from the
gene insertion are not considered in any case.

Most of the toxicological testing were not carried out in compliance
with quality assurance programs such as Good Laboratory Practise
(GLP).

GMP are very often declared as being safe just by assumption based
reasoning. Furthermore these assumptions are sometimes not easily or
not at all verifiable.

Risk assessment procedures which are carried out in a systematic way
consisting of a hazard assessment of the GMP on one hand and of an
analysis of exposure on the other hand, are lacking in the dossiers.

ALLERGOLOGY:

No direct testing of potentially allergic properties of GMP and
products derived therefrom was carried out.

The absence of allergenic properties was justified solely in an either
argumentative way and/or by giving rather indirect evidence (e.g.,
digestion studies, sequence homology comparisons).

Some quotations of literature intended to confirm the safety of the
GMP in the dossiers are cited wrongly or are outdated or are even
suspected to be selectively quoted.

The usual way of arguing is as follows:
(i) no homology could be detected between the newly introduced protein
and known allergens,
(ii)the expression level of target protein in the GMP is rather low,
(iii) the protein will rapidly be digested in the intestine,
(iv) the newly introduce protein originates from a non-allergenic
source,
(v) the protein is not glycosylated and will therefore less likely
exhibit allergic properties,
(vi) the protein will less likely exhibit allergenic properties
because it is not new.

Each of these arguments and their underlying assumptions have to be
questioned in the light of recent scientific data. Furthermore,
unintended secondary effects possibly caused by the gene insertion,
such as the possible upregulated expression of other allergens through
insertion and expression of the foreign gene in the GMP, are not
considered at all. A safety evaluation which is based exclusively on
the above described approaches is insufficient.

SUBSTANTIAL EQUIVALENCE:

Analysis and comparisons of plant compounds are part of each dossier
with the exception of carnation. However, no connection can be
established between the nature and extent of these analysis and the
intended use of the GMP or GMP products.

Compositional analysis are largely restricted to macro-nutrients and
known plant specific anti-nutrients as well as known toxins. A
detailed characterisation of macrocompounds is however, rarely done.

Substantial equivalence is referred to in each dossier in order to
argue for the safety of the particular GMP. The parameters chosen in
composition analysis are however, not comprehensive enough to justify
substantial equivalence and/or to detect probable unintended secondary
effects.

In each dossier some significant differences between the GMP
and conventional counterparts were either reported or could be found
by reviewing the displayed data. However, these differences did not
lead to a repetition of the analysis including an extension of
parameters investigated. In contrast, these differences were
argumentatively attributed to naturally occurring ranges, effects from
back-crossing, climate conditions etc.

Detailed descriptions of cultivation conditions, single examination
sheets and statistical data interpretation, information on storage and
preparation of samples as well as detailed data on the results of
compound analysis are lacking in most cases.

Detailed explanations on summaries of compound analysis are often
fragmentary or even missing.

On the ground of information given and data shown, substantial
equivalence often cannot be verified.

In case of herbicide resistant GMP it is often not quite clear if the
herbicide was applied during cultivation.

As a matter of comparing average values of different cultivation sites
the variance of analysed compounds is sometimes quite high, and might
be covering any unintended secondary effects e.g. resulting in changes
in plant metabolism.

Nutritional considerations in general and especially with respect to
substantial equivalence (e.g. vitamin profiles, characterisation of
fibre, analyses of different types of proteins) apparently do not play
a role in the dossiers and are just occasionally considered in
comparative composition analysis.

Composition of food products derived from animals fed on GMP was not
considered in any dossier."
[End quote]

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

"Torsten Brinch" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 02 Aug 2003 09:55:01 GMT, "Gordon Couger"
wrote:

Myth:
GM is the most contorled and studied thing we have ever done in
agricluture.

Fact:
It isn't. Take just the dossier of the average pesticide, if you want
to see a more controlled and studied thing.

Can you name any other food product that has been studied more than GE
maize?

Dave

-----------

Excerpt from " Toxicological and allergological safety evaluation of
GMO - Summary Spoek A., Hofer H., Valenta R., Kienzl-Plochberger K.,
Lehner P., Gaugitsch H.., Monograph 109, Federal Environment Agency,
Austria http://www.ubavie.gv.at

"Out of 28 applications for placing on the market of GMP which are
presently under review or are already approved, eleven applications
were selected: applications for intended use for cultivation and as
feed stuff (RR-fodder beet A5/15, potato EH92-527-1, Bt-cotton 531,
RR-cotton 1445), "twin applications" (first application for import,
second application for cultivation; maize Bt11, RR-maize GA 21), one
application intended for cultivation as well as use as food and feed
stuff (rape Topas 19/2), applications for use as ornamental plants
(carnation 66, carnation 959A etc.). Besides the actual application
dossiers also correspondence, additional information from the
notifiers, opinions of the national competent authorities as well as
the Scientific Committee on Plants, and - if available - decisions of
the European Commission were considered.

TOXICOLOGY:

In general toxicological information is rather a minor part of the
dossiers. Differences in the intended use of the GMP do not affect the
extent of the toxicological evaluations. Most toxicity tests are
displayed as summaries or are just references to the literature and
can therefore not be verified and reviewed. Internal references are
often used improperly. Statements which are closely related to each
other are sometimes scattered over the dossier.

Apparently, toxicological tests were carried out rather sporadically,
most likely in cases of Bt-plants, as Bt-toxins had already been
approved before as an insecticide in some countries. Data on the
toxicity of the whole GMP are not provided in any dossier.

Toxicological acceptance is often justified by three arguments:
- low toxicity of the gene product,
- substantial equivalence of the GMP to their conventional
counterparts, and
- low exposure.

Potentially toxic effects resulting as a secondary effect from the
gene insertion are not considered in any case.

Most of the toxicological testing were not carried out in compliance
with quality assurance programs such as Good Laboratory Practise
(GLP).

GMP are very often declared as being safe just by assumption based
reasoning. Furthermore these assumptions are sometimes not easily or
not at all verifiable.

Risk assessment procedures which are carried out in a systematic way
consisting of a hazard assessment of the GMP on one hand and of an
analysis of exposure on the other hand, are lacking in the dossiers.

ALLERGOLOGY:

No direct testing of potentially allergic properties of GMP and
products derived therefrom was carried out.

The absence of allergenic properties was justified solely in an either
argumentative way and/or by giving rather indirect evidence (e.g.,
digestion studies, sequence homology comparisons).

Some quotations of literature intended to confirm the safety of the
GMP in the dossiers are cited wrongly or are outdated or are even
suspected to be selectively quoted.

The usual way of arguing is as follows:
(i) no homology could be detected between the newly introduced protein
and known allergens,
(ii)the expression level of target protein in the GMP is rather low,
(iii) the protein will rapidly be digested in the intestine,
(iv) the newly introduce protein originates from a non-allergenic
source,
(v) the protein is not glycosylated and will therefore less likely
exhibit allergic properties,
(vi) the protein will less likely exhibit allergenic properties
because it is not new.

Each of these arguments and their underlying assumptions have to be
questioned in the light of recent scientific data. Furthermore,
unintended secondary effects possibly caused by the gene insertion,
such as the possible upregulated expression of other allergens through
insertion and expression of the foreign gene in the GMP, are not
considered at all. A safety evaluation which is based exclusively on
the above described approaches is insufficient.

SUBSTANTIAL EQUIVALENCE:

Analysis and comparisons of plant compounds are part of each dossier
with the exception of carnation. However, no connection can be
established between the nature and extent of these analysis and the
intended use of the GMP or GMP products.

Compositional analysis are largely restricted to macro-nutrients and
known plant specific anti-nutrients as well as known toxins. A
detailed characterisation of macrocompounds is however, rarely done.

Substantial equivalence is referred to in each dossier in order to
argue for the safety of the particular GMP. The parameters chosen in
composition analysis are however, not comprehensive enough to justify
substantial equivalence and/or to detect probable unintended secondary
effects.

In each dossier some significant differences between the GMP
and conventional counterparts were either reported or could be found
by reviewing the displayed data. However, these differences did not
lead to a repetition of the analysis including an extension of
parameters investigated. In contrast, these differences were
argumentatively attributed to naturally occurring ranges, effects from
back-crossing, climate conditions etc.

Detailed descriptions of cultivation conditions, single examination
sheets and statistical data interpretation, information on storage and
preparation of samples as well as detailed data on the results of
compound analysis are lacking in most cases.

Detailed explanations on summaries of compound analysis are often
fragmentary or even missing.

On the ground of information given and data shown, substantial
equivalence often cannot be verified.

In case of herbicide resistant GMP it is often not quite clear if the
herbicide was applied during cultivation.

As a matter of comparing average values of different cultivation sites
the variance of analysed compounds is sometimes quite high, and might
be covering any unintended secondary effects e.g. resulting in changes
in plant metabolism.

Nutritional considerations in general and especially with respect to
substantial equivalence (e.g. vitamin profiles, characterisation of
fibre, analyses of different types of proteins) apparently do not play
a role in the dossiers and are just occasionally considered in
comparative composition analysis.

Composition of food products derived from animals fed on GMP was not
considered in any dossier."
[End quote]

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

On Sat, 02 Aug 2003 12:16:35 GMT, "David Kendra"
wrote:


"Torsten Brinch" wrote in message
.. .
On Sat, 02 Aug 2003 09:55:01 GMT, "Gordon Couger"
wrote:

Myth:
GM is the most contorled and studied thing we have ever done in
agricluture.

Fact:
It isn't. Take just the dossier of the average pesticide, if you want
to see a more controlled and studied thing.

Can you name any other food product that has been studied more than GE
maize?

The FDA has reviewed more than 100 toxicological and clinical studies
with aspartame. How does that compare to the average GM event in
maize?

-----------

Excerpt from " Toxicological and allergological safety evaluation of
GMO - Summary Spoek A., Hofer H., Valenta R., Kienzl-Plochberger K.,
Lehner P., Gaugitsch H.., Monograph 109, Federal Environment Agency,
Austria http://www.ubavie.gv.at

"Out of 28 applications for placing on the market of GMP which are
presently under review or are already approved, eleven applications
were selected: applications for intended use for cultivation and as
feed stuff (RR-fodder beet A5/15, potato EH92-527-1, Bt-cotton 531,
RR-cotton 1445), "twin applications" (first application for import,
second application for cultivation; maize Bt11, RR-maize GA 21), one
application intended for cultivation as well as use as food and feed
stuff (rape Topas 19/2), applications for use as ornamental plants
(carnation 66, carnation 959A etc.). Besides the actual application
dossiers also correspondence, additional information from the
notifiers, opinions of the national competent authorities as well as
the Scientific Committee on Plants, and - if available - decisions of
the European Commission were considered.

TOXICOLOGY:

In general toxicological information is rather a minor part of the
dossiers. Differences in the intended use of the GMP do not affect the
extent of the toxicological evaluations. Most toxicity tests are
displayed as summaries or are just references to the literature and
can therefore not be verified and reviewed. Internal references are
often used improperly. Statements which are closely related to each
other are sometimes scattered over the dossier.

Apparently, toxicological tests were carried out rather sporadically,
most likely in cases of Bt-plants, as Bt-toxins had already been
approved before as an insecticide in some countries. Data on the
toxicity of the whole GMP are not provided in any dossier.

Toxicological acceptance is often justified by three arguments:
- low toxicity of the gene product,
- substantial equivalence of the GMP to their conventional
counterparts, and
- low exposure.

Potentially toxic effects resulting as a secondary effect from the
gene insertion are not considered in any case.

Most of the toxicological testing were not carried out in compliance
with quality assurance programs such as Good Laboratory Practise
(GLP).

GMP are very often declared as being safe just by assumption based
reasoning. Furthermore these assumptions are sometimes not easily or
not at all verifiable.

Risk assessment procedures which are carried out in a systematic way
consisting of a hazard assessment of the GMP on one hand and of an
analysis of exposure on the other hand, are lacking in the dossiers.

ALLERGOLOGY:

No direct testing of potentially allergic properties of GMP and
products derived therefrom was carried out.

The absence of allergenic properties was justified solely in an either
argumentative way and/or by giving rather indirect evidence (e.g.,
digestion studies, sequence homology comparisons).

Some quotations of literature intended to confirm the safety of the
GMP in the dossiers are cited wrongly or are outdated or are even
suspected to be selectively quoted.

The usual way of arguing is as follows:
(i) no homology could be detected between the newly introduced protein
and known allergens,
(ii)the expression level of target protein in the GMP is rather low,
(iii) the protein will rapidly be digested in the intestine,
(iv) the newly introduce protein originates from a non-allergenic
source,
(v) the protein is not glycosylated and will therefore less likely
exhibit allergic properties,
(vi) the protein will less likely exhibit allergenic properties
because it is not new.

Each of these arguments and their underlying assumptions have to be
questioned in the light of recent scientific data. Furthermore,
unintended secondary effects possibly caused by the gene insertion,
such as the possible upregulated expression of other allergens through
insertion and expression of the foreign gene in the GMP, are not
considered at all. A safety evaluation which is based exclusively on
the above described approaches is insufficient.

SUBSTANTIAL EQUIVALENCE:

Analysis and comparisons of plant compounds are part of each dossier
with the exception of carnation. However, no connection can be
established between the nature and extent of these analysis and the
intended use of the GMP or GMP products.

Compositional analysis are largely restricted to macro-nutrients and
known plant specific anti-nutrients as well as known toxins. A
detailed characterisation of macrocompounds is however, rarely done.

Substantial equivalence is referred to in each dossier in order to
argue for the safety of the particular GMP. The parameters chosen in
composition analysis are however, not comprehensive enough to justify
substantial equivalence and/or to detect probable unintended secondary
effects.

In each dossier some significant differences between the GMP
and conventional counterparts were either reported or could be found
by reviewing the displayed data. However, these differences did not
lead to a repetition of the analysis including an extension of
parameters investigated. In contrast, these differences were
argumentatively attributed to naturally occurring ranges, effects from
back-crossing, climate conditions etc.

Detailed descriptions of cultivation conditions, single examination
sheets and statistical data interpretation, information on storage and
preparation of samples as well as detailed data on the results of
compound analysis are lacking in most cases.

Detailed explanations on summaries of compound analysis are often
fragmentary or even missing.

On the ground of information given and data shown, substantial
equivalence often cannot be verified.

In case of herbicide resistant GMP it is often not quite clear if the
herbicide was applied during cultivation.

As a matter of comparing average values of different cultivation sites
the variance of analysed compounds is sometimes quite high, and might
be covering any unintended secondary effects e.g. resulting in changes
in plant metabolism.

Nutritional considerations in general and especially with respect to
substantial equivalence (e.g. vitamin profiles, characterisation of
fibre, analyses of different types of proteins) apparently do not play
a role in the dossiers and are just occasionally considered in
comparative composition analysis.

Composition of food products derived from animals fed on GMP was not
considered in any dossier."
[End quote]

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

"Torsten Brinch" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 02 Aug 2003 12:16:35 GMT, "David Kendra"
wrote:


"Torsten Brinch" wrote in message
.. .
On Sat, 02 Aug 2003 09:55:01 GMT, "Gordon Couger"
wrote:

Myth:
GM is the most contorled and studied thing we have ever done in
agricluture.

Fact:
It isn't. Take just the dossier of the average pesticide, if you want
to see a more controlled and studied thing.

Can you name any other food product that has been studied more than GE
maize?

The FDA has reviewed more than 100 toxicological and clinical studies
with aspartame. How does that compare to the average GM event in
maize?

It does not compare at all with GE maize. It is a man-made substance and is
not made in living organisms. How about information about tomato? What
toxicological data was known about the tomato before human began consuming
it?

Dave

-----------

Excerpt from " Toxicological and allergological safety evaluation of
GMO - Summary Spoek A., Hofer H., Valenta R., Kienzl-Plochberger K.,
Lehner P., Gaugitsch H.., Monograph 109, Federal Environment Agency,
Austria http://www.ubavie.gv.at

"Out of 28 applications for placing on the market of GMP which are
presently under review or are already approved, eleven applications
were selected: applications for intended use for cultivation and as
feed stuff (RR-fodder beet A5/15, potato EH92-527-1, Bt-cotton 531,
RR-cotton 1445), "twin applications" (first application for import,
second application for cultivation; maize Bt11, RR-maize GA 21), one
application intended for cultivation as well as use as food and feed
stuff (rape Topas 19/2), applications for use as ornamental plants
(carnation 66, carnation 959A etc.). Besides the actual application
dossiers also correspondence, additional information from the
notifiers, opinions of the national competent authorities as well as
the Scientific Committee on Plants, and - if available - decisions of
the European Commission were considered.

TOXICOLOGY:

In general toxicological information is rather a minor part of the
dossiers. Differences in the intended use of the GMP do not affect the
extent of the toxicological evaluations. Most toxicity tests are
displayed as summaries or are just references to the literature and
can therefore not be verified and reviewed. Internal references are
often used improperly. Statements which are closely related to each
other are sometimes scattered over the dossier.

Apparently, toxicological tests were carried out rather sporadically,
most likely in cases of Bt-plants, as Bt-toxins had already been
approved before as an insecticide in some countries. Data on the
toxicity of the whole GMP are not provided in any dossier.

Toxicological acceptance is often justified by three arguments:
- low toxicity of the gene product,
- substantial equivalence of the GMP to their conventional
counterparts, and
- low exposure.

Potentially toxic effects resulting as a secondary effect from the
gene insertion are not considered in any case.

Most of the toxicological testing were not carried out in compliance
with quality assurance programs such as Good Laboratory Practise
(GLP).

GMP are very often declared as being safe just by assumption based
reasoning. Furthermore these assumptions are sometimes not easily or
not at all verifiable.

Risk assessment procedures which are carried out in a systematic way
consisting of a hazard assessment of the GMP on one hand and of an
analysis of exposure on the other hand, are lacking in the dossiers.

ALLERGOLOGY:

No direct testing of potentially allergic properties of GMP and
products derived therefrom was carried out.

The absence of allergenic properties was justified solely in an either
argumentative way and/or by giving rather indirect evidence (e.g.,
digestion studies, sequence homology comparisons).

Some quotations of literature intended to confirm the safety of the
GMP in the dossiers are cited wrongly or are outdated or are even
suspected to be selectively quoted.

The usual way of arguing is as follows:
(i) no homology could be detected between the newly introduced protein
and known allergens,
(ii)the expression level of target protein in the GMP is rather low,
(iii) the protein will rapidly be digested in the intestine,
(iv) the newly introduce protein originates from a non-allergenic
source,
(v) the protein is not glycosylated and will therefore less likely
exhibit allergic properties,
(vi) the protein will less likely exhibit allergenic properties
because it is not new.

Each of these arguments and their underlying assumptions have to be
questioned in the light of recent scientific data. Furthermore,
unintended secondary effects possibly caused by the gene insertion,
such as the possible upregulated expression of other allergens through
insertion and expression of the foreign gene in the GMP, are not
considered at all. A safety evaluation which is based exclusively on
the above described approaches is insufficient.

SUBSTANTIAL EQUIVALENCE:

Analysis and comparisons of plant compounds are part of each dossier
with the exception of carnation. However, no connection can be
established between the nature and extent of these analysis and the
intended use of the GMP or GMP products.

Compositional analysis are largely restricted to macro-nutrients and
known plant specific anti-nutrients as well as known toxins. A
detailed characterisation of macrocompounds is however, rarely done.

Substantial equivalence is referred to in each dossier in order to
argue for the safety of the particular GMP. The parameters chosen in
composition analysis are however, not comprehensive enough to justify
substantial equivalence and/or to detect probable unintended secondary
effects.

In each dossier some significant differences between the GMP
and conventional counterparts were either reported or could be found
by reviewing the displayed data. However, these differences did not
lead to a repetition of the analysis including an extension of
parameters investigated. In contrast, these differences were
argumentatively attributed to naturally occurring ranges, effects from
back-crossing, climate conditions etc.

Detailed descriptions of cultivation conditions, single examination
sheets and statistical data interpretation, information on storage and
preparation of samples as well as detailed data on the results of
compound analysis are lacking in most cases.

Detailed explanations on summaries of compound analysis are often
fragmentary or even missing.

On the ground of information given and data shown, substantial
equivalence often cannot be verified.

In case of herbicide resistant GMP it is often not quite clear if the
herbicide was applied during cultivation.

As a matter of comparing average values of different cultivation sites
the variance of analysed compounds is sometimes quite high, and might
be covering any unintended secondary effects e.g. resulting in changes
in plant metabolism.

Nutritional considerations in general and especially with respect to
substantial equivalence (e.g. vitamin profiles, characterisation of
fibre, analyses of different types of proteins) apparently do not play
a role in the dossiers and are just occasionally considered in
comparative composition analysis.

Composition of food products derived from animals fed on GMP was not
considered in any dossier."
[End quote]

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

On Sat, 02 Aug 2003 13:03:26 GMT, "David Kendra"
wrote:


"Torsten Brinch" wrote in message
.. .
On Sat, 02 Aug 2003 12:16:35 GMT, "David Kendra"
wrote:
Can you name any other food product that has been studied more than GE
maize?

The FDA has reviewed more than 100 toxicological and clinical studies
with aspartame. How does that compare to the average GM event in
maize?

It does not compare at all with GE maize.

Why now avoid the question? I mean, you brought it up, and it is
rather straightforward, a simple count. How many toxicological and
clinical studies have been done on the average GM event in maize?

It is a man-made substance and is not made in living organisms.

A GM event is also man-made, so there.

How about information about tomato?
What toxicological data was known about the tomato
before human began consuming it?

It's a very long time ago, I don't think
that will ever be known.

Dave

-----------

Excerpt from " Toxicological and allergological safety evaluation of
GMO - Summary Spoek A., Hofer H., Valenta R., Kienzl-Plochberger K.,
Lehner P., Gaugitsch H.., Monograph 109, Federal Environment Agency,
Austria http://www.ubavie.gv.at

"Out of 28 applications for placing on the market of GMP which are
presently under review or are already approved, eleven applications
were selected: applications for intended use for cultivation and as
feed stuff (RR-fodder beet A5/15, potato EH92-527-1, Bt-cotton 531,
RR-cotton 1445), "twin applications" (first application for import,
second application for cultivation; maize Bt11, RR-maize GA 21), one
application intended for cultivation as well as use as food and feed
stuff (rape Topas 19/2), applications for use as ornamental plants
(carnation 66, carnation 959A etc.). Besides the actual application
dossiers also correspondence, additional information from the
notifiers, opinions of the national competent authorities as well as
the Scientific Committee on Plants, and - if available - decisions of
the European Commission were considered.

TOXICOLOGY:

In general toxicological information is rather a minor part of the
dossiers. Differences in the intended use of the GMP do not affect the
extent of the toxicological evaluations. Most toxicity tests are
displayed as summaries or are just references to the literature and
can therefore not be verified and reviewed. Internal references are
often used improperly. Statements which are closely related to each
other are sometimes scattered over the dossier.

Apparently, toxicological tests were carried out rather sporadically,
most likely in cases of Bt-plants, as Bt-toxins had already been
approved before as an insecticide in some countries. Data on the
toxicity of the whole GMP are not provided in any dossier.

Toxicological acceptance is often justified by three arguments:
- low toxicity of the gene product,
- substantial equivalence of the GMP to their conventional
counterparts, and
- low exposure.

Potentially toxic effects resulting as a secondary effect from the
gene insertion are not considered in any case.

Most of the toxicological testing were not carried out in compliance
with quality assurance programs such as Good Laboratory Practise
(GLP).

GMP are very often declared as being safe just by assumption based
reasoning. Furthermore these assumptions are sometimes not easily or
not at all verifiable.

Risk assessment procedures which are carried out in a systematic way
consisting of a hazard assessment of the GMP on one hand and of an
analysis of exposure on the other hand, are lacking in the dossiers.

ALLERGOLOGY:

No direct testing of potentially allergic properties of GMP and
products derived therefrom was carried out.

The absence of allergenic properties was justified solely in an either
argumentative way and/or by giving rather indirect evidence (e.g.,
digestion studies, sequence homology comparisons).

Some quotations of literature intended to confirm the safety of the
GMP in the dossiers are cited wrongly or are outdated or are even
suspected to be selectively quoted.

The usual way of arguing is as follows:
(i) no homology could be detected between the newly introduced protein
and known allergens,
(ii)the expression level of target protein in the GMP is rather low,
(iii) the protein will rapidly be digested in the intestine,
(iv) the newly introduce protein originates from a non-allergenic
source,
(v) the protein is not glycosylated and will therefore less likely
exhibit allergic properties,
(vi) the protein will less likely exhibit allergenic properties
because it is not new.

Each of these arguments and their underlying assumptions have to be
questioned in the light of recent scientific data. Furthermore,
unintended secondary effects possibly caused by the gene insertion,
such as the possible upregulated expression of other allergens through
insertion and expression of the foreign gene in the GMP, are not
considered at all. A safety evaluation which is based exclusively on
the above described approaches is insufficient.

SUBSTANTIAL EQUIVALENCE:

Analysis and comparisons of plant compounds are part of each dossier
with the exception of carnation. However, no connection can be
established between the nature and extent of these analysis and the
intended use of the GMP or GMP products.

Compositional analysis are largely restricted to macro-nutrients and
known plant specific anti-nutrients as well as known toxins. A
detailed characterisation of macrocompounds is however, rarely done.

Substantial equivalence is referred to in each dossier in order to
argue for the safety of the particular GMP. The parameters chosen in
composition analysis are however, not comprehensive enough to justify
substantial equivalence and/or to detect probable unintended secondary
effects.

In each dossier some significant differences between the GMP
and conventional counterparts were either reported or could be found
by reviewing the displayed data. However, these differences did not
lead to a repetition of the analysis including an extension of
parameters investigated. In contrast, these differences were
argumentatively attributed to naturally occurring ranges, effects from
back-crossing, climate conditions etc.

Detailed descriptions of cultivation conditions, single examination
sheets and statistical data interpretation, information on storage and
preparation of samples as well as detailed data on the results of
compound analysis are lacking in most cases.

Detailed explanations on summaries of compound analysis are often
fragmentary or even missing.

On the ground of information given and data shown, substantial
equivalence often cannot be verified.

In case of herbicide resistant GMP it is often not quite clear if the
herbicide was applied during cultivation.

As a matter of comparing average values of different cultivation sites
the variance of analysed compounds is sometimes quite high, and might
be covering any unintended secondary effects e.g. resulting in changes
in plant metabolism.

Nutritional considerations in general and especially with respect to
substantial equivalence (e.g. vitamin profiles, characterisation of
fibre, analyses of different types of proteins) apparently do not play
a role in the dossiers and are just occasionally considered in
comparative composition analysis.

Composition of food products derived from animals fed on GMP was not
considered in any dossier."
[End quote]

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

Gordon Couger wrote:

"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
...

Let us find out more about what life has done up to the present before
setting in to change it for financial reasons with GM things we cannot
undo.

GM is the most contorled and studied thing we have ever done in agricluture.

That is the image that the sellers like to give.

Would you eat food that was derived from seed that were irradiated by Cobalt
60 until half wouldn't sprout and then picked over for any thing that looked
good and incorpeted along with who knows what other mutations into crops
with no testing?

That speeds up the process of cosmic rays.

But there has to be testing.

In the early eighties I visited a place which was using colchicine
to break the cell wall of haploid barley and so allow new plants to
be formed speeding up things even more. There were many of the
plants and they had to be watched for time of flowering &c. It would
be same with radiation. Wide crossing would pose some problems, too.
But with those techniques there is no potent force of artificial
gene transfer introduced to allow genes to jump between organisms
between which there are natural barriers.


Rather than put RR or Bt &c genes in several cotton types and say you have
increased diversity, increased profit for the mean time or whatever, find
out about companion planting, closed ecosystems like marvelously diverse
forests, and long duration success.

We call those weeds.

Most mature forest are rather steril monoculutres compared to a monoculure
grassland.

In New Zealand we have a lot of pinus radiata growing. They grow
fast, in about 30 years or less, on the land which native bush has
been cleared from where there is plenty of rain. (I think they run
out of nutrients for a second crop).

Those forests are rather bare. Some fungi grow. Herbicide can be
made from pine oil.

When the trees get into sheep farms they are weeds, also when they
get into native bush. But they are not weeds to the plantation
owners.

The native bush is not regarded as weeds either it is timber. Near
where I live is Banks Peninsula and I have spent much time gazing at
its bald shape:

***********************
From: `Tales of Banks Peninsula,' H.C.Jacobson. 3rd edition facsimile
1991. 1st edition 1883.

"As the bush was cut down fires became frequent, and a great deal of
damage was done at times. The great fire which started in Pigeon Bay
about five and forty years ago spread to O'Kain's. The fire had lasted
for a long time, and for weeks the sky was scarcely seen through the
thick volumes of smoke. There have been several bush fires started in
O'Kain's, but none as bad as this one. The summer had been a dry one,
and the wind was favourable to its spreading. The whole Peninsula was
ablaze, and after it had died out many wild pigs were found burnt to
death. The native birds besides were never so plentiful afterwards as
they were before the fire."

The fire I calculate to have been a bit before 1850, from the first
edition date of that book. But it seems more damage was done by logging
which went on after that with mills being opened, water driven in 1854
and steam driven starting in 1857.

From: `Picturing the Peninsula,' by Gordon Ogilvie, 1992.

"When the first Europeans settled on Banks Peninsula in the 1830s two-
thirds of it was still bush-covered. By the end of the century there was
very little bush left, and one of New Zealand's finest tracts of
primeval podocarp forest, with ancestry dating back millions of years to
Gondwana, was seemingly gone for ever."
[...]
"By then [1903] some forty sawmills, large and small, aided by both
accidental and deliberate burning as well as the urgent endeavours of
hundreds of dairy and cocksfoot dairy farmers trying to pasture the
landscape, had almost completely denuded the Peninsula of its bush
cover. Less than one percent of the forest survived those sixty years. A
dozen native bird species vanished with the bush."

"By the time the first Europeans arrived, about a third of the bush cover
had been burnt and some thirty bird species rendered locally or
completely extinct."

******************

There are still some birds in the forests elsewhere, and quite a few
of various plants. I believe a bit of our bush shows in `The Lord of
the Rings.'



You have your cotton fields, thanks for the photos. Now when the wind
comes it moves the sandy soil. So can you get a crop which like marram
grass will enable dunes to form? Then you have a greater area of land to
some extent. And on the more shaded side of the dunes different plants
could grow. Harvesting technology would need to be developed. We need to
set aside thinking places and not only relating to what the govt
currently enables (Jim's posiiton).

Before we could control the sand it was fairly common practice to plant 66
foot wide strips of cotton, wheat, milo and alfalfa with the rows
perpendicular to the wind and work our rotations off that.

How well did that work? I suppose agriculture was work for a few
more people in those days.

We progressed
beyond that in the 60's when 100 hp tractors came out.

The farming approach has been designed around the machinery with
some compromises made?

No till give use many of the things organic supporters claim such as less
pesticide and it really does increase the organic matter in the soil.

When you say less pesticide you are going for more than no till. Or
did you mean less herbicide?

If you are going to the less pesticide option, then you pay the
extra cost you gave, in terms of lint and dollars. And it only works
for the intended boll worm. There are other pests still possible
which may cost. And you do not know which ones at the time you buy
the seed. Then the question to research is does the Bt gene
insertion silence any useful pest resistance or agronomic traits?
Your adviser will tell you to select seed with proven good
performance also. It is not just a matter of taking what is on
offer.

If you are going just for the Roundup Ready then how will it do
under stress?

Here are some things about how the resulting feed affects beasts so
it must be likely to have other differences:

Comparison of broiler performance when fed diets containing
grain from roundup ready (NK603), YieldGard x roundup ready
(MON810 x NK603), non-transgenic control, or commercial corn
Taylor ML, Hartnell GF, Riordan SG, Nemeth MA, Karunanandaa K,
George B, Astwood JD
POULTRY SCIENCE

82 (3): 443-453 MAR 2003

[...] Differences (P 0.05) were noted for
breast meat and fat pad weights across treatments.[...]



Soybean meal from Roundup Ready or conventional soybeans in
diets for growing-finishing swine
Cromwell GL, Lindemann MD, Randolph JH, Parker GR, Coffey RD,
Laurent KM, Armstrong CL, Mikel WB, Stanisiewski EP, Hartnell GF
JOURNAL OF ANIMAL SCIENCE

80 (3): 708-715 MAR 2002
[...] Longissimus muscle samples from barrows
fed conventional soybean meal tended (P = 0.06) to have less fat
than those fed Roundup Ready soybean meal, but water, protein,
and ash were similar.[...]


P=0.05 means there is 5% chance the result might be spurious given
the amount of data available.

Who knows if it is the extra Roundup or something else? Will it show
up in agronomic traits of cotton?


Hitler and Geobles would be proud of the why the people that have taken over
the greens have used their methods to sway public opinion to support
practices that 180 degrees opposed to the claimed goals of the
organizations. The greens and others of their kind are responsible for far
more deaths that Hitler and Stalin combined by derailing public health
efforts in the world. Malaria program are almost at a stand still.

Malaria mosquito resistance to DDT was what ceased its use. It may
be used for outbreaks if the resistance has faded.

In the
first world as many as 50% of the children in some areas are not getting
their childhood vaccines all becuse so people with more time than good sense

It is being found that too many vaccines given at the wrong time
increase diabetes. That is more of a problem than the diseases
intended to be resisted. vaccines.net.

have take up the cause of a bunch of archest that have hijacked a once
respectable movement and use it to promote their own ends.

Their imagined dangers that have no basis in science make as much sense and
not having your kids vaccinated for tetanus, whooping cough, and measles

May be too much assault on the immune system all at once.


when we have real dangers of insecticides, persistent herbicides and water
erosion not only destroying our land but clogging our water ways with silt
and nutrients that are killing our estuaries.

Farmers may still be using some organophosphates on Bt cotton.

In the mean time we have a ever-increasing number of hungry people to feed
unless you would have use starvation as a population control measure.

There is plenty of food available, it is distribution that is a
problem - people cannot get work to pay for it.

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
the story his farther told him about the year it frosted every month of the
year in Indiana. Look up 'the year without a summer' on google. Think what
that would do if it happened today. If you look at tree ring evidence it is
not unlikely it will happen in your life time.


Yes, from 1811 to 1817.

I read in New Scientist in about the 80s something about that.

Our weather is affected by volcanoes. In turn volcanoes may be
affected by changes in the earth's rotation. The earth's rotation
may be affected by movement of its atmosphere - same as a skater
rotates slower when they put their arms out. The atmosphere can be
affected by particles coming from the sun. More particles come from
the sun when it has more sunspots or solar flares. Around 1812 I
think the sun was doing something interesting. The sun is not quite
at the centre of the solar system because it is in gravitational
balance with the planets. It moves around the centre. The sun also
rotates on its own axis. Usually both directions of rotation are the
same, but around 1812 they were contrary. So more upset sun, more
flares, disturbed weather on earth, disturbed rotation of earth,
more volcanoes, more shielding of earth from sun's warmth. Or some
sort of mechanism.

New Scientist predicted it would happen again in the 1990s sunspot
maximum and mask global warming. I must check that.

I have direct family history back to 1874 form my great grandmother. Almost
everyone in agriculture has roots like this. We did not hatch in a suburb
with only our peers as guides for our thinking. We started work when we were
8 or 9 and had investment in crops or livestock by the time we were 13. We
were working out for neighbors from the time we do something that the
needed. By the time we were 12 we were expected to keep up with the grown up
chopping cotton until 10 or 11 O'clock in the morning and do just as good a
job as they did.

Interesting history.

For almost every one in the business from the farmer to the boards of the
multinational ag companies have farm roots. It's not a deal like Enron.
These people eat the food they sell and can only stay in business by
providing a product that their customer finds profitable. No farmer will
give all the profit to the seed company and the bank they will take the what
that makes them the most money.

Yes, and it may be a loss leader they are sold for a few years. And
it may not be possible for the seed companies to keep bringing out
new lines as resistance develops. Resistance to Bt showed before GM
was very prevalent from trad farming. Now if several strains of Bt
resistance go into crops then Bt could be lost. There have not been
many generations to test it.

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
...
Gordon Couger wrote:

"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
...

SNIP
Before we could control the sand it was fairly common practice to plant
66
foot wide strips of cotton, wheat, milo and alfalfa with the rows
perpendicular to the wind and work our rotations off that.

How well did that work? I suppose agriculture was work for a few
more people in those days.

A lot more. It worked very well.

By the time every one had 50 hp tractors the annual sand storms that turned
the sky black once or twice each spring had stopped by the late 50's or
early 60's. A sand storm in the early 80's was unique enough to make the
national geographic. I don't rember the year but I remember the day very
well. The winds were beteen 50 and 60 mph most of the day and the cotton and
corn land up and down the Great Plains and rolling plains that adjoin that
run north and south throung the US on the west side of the Rocky Mountians
were being worked up smooth incroating preplant heribcide.

Noraml methods of stopping sand from blowing wouldn't work that day. The
soil was too dry to turn up moist soil to stop it from blowing and much of
the soil was worked up too fine for that wind.

Post emegengence hericides let you have a much shorter window with the soil
in condition to blow and wash if you farm conventinaly. You can combine a
disk and planter and make a seed bed and plant in one operation. Corn has
Artazene that can be used post plant but the post plant and post emergence
cotton herbicides have uncretian results in dry conditions of Oklahoma and
Texas.

We progressed
beyond that in the 60's when 100 hp tractors came out.

The farming approach has been designed around the machinery with
some compromises made?

No till give use many of the things organic supporters claim such as
less
pesticide and it really does increase the organic matter in the soil.

When you say less pesticide you are going for more than no till. Or
did you mean less herbicide?

If you are going to the less pesticide option, then you pay the
extra cost you gave, in terms of lint and dollars. And it only works
for the intended boll worm. There are other pests still possible
which may cost. And you do not know which ones at the time you buy
the seed. Then the question to research is does the Bt gene
insertion silence any useful pest resistance or agronomic traits?
Your adviser will tell you to select seed with proven good
performance also. It is not just a matter of taking what is on
offer.

The boll worm or corn ear worm (same worm) is the limiting factor in
spraying cotton for any pest. Once you knock out your beificical insesects
you have to spray for bollworms every 4 to 7 days for the rest of the
season. With BT cotton we can control the other pest such as the boll weevil
that has shut down cotton growning in my area twice. We now have a spray
program that everyone prticaptes in except orgaic groweres that is sprayed
in the fall to kill the weevel befor they can over winter and once in the
spring to get the ones that did. Then we have traps out that are check
periodicly and any infestions sprayed with chemicals that hopefully don't
kill the benificicals or plowed up. The organic farmer has the choice of
spraying or plow under and reciveing a payment equal to the crop insurance
payment the convental famer does not have this payment.

If you are going just for the Roundup Ready then how will it do
under stress?

We can see no differnce under stress from drought. No till RR cotton
general does better in dry weather than conventional non RR cotton. We have
had only one good year of moisture since RR cotton came out. So the mosture
stress deal is crock.

Here are some things about how the resulting feed affects beasts so
it must be likely to have other differences:

Comparison of broiler performance when fed diets containing
grain from roundup ready (NK603), YieldGard x roundup ready
(MON810 x NK603), non-transgenic control, or commercial corn
Taylor ML, Hartnell GF, Riordan SG, Nemeth MA, Karunanandaa K,
George B, Astwood JD
POULTRY SCIENCE

82 (3): 443-453 MAR 2003

[...] Differences (P 0.05) were noted for
breast meat and fat pad weights across treatments.[...]



Soybean meal from Roundup Ready or conventional soybeans in
diets for growing-finishing swine
Cromwell GL, Lindemann MD, Randolph JH, Parker GR, Coffey RD,
Laurent KM, Armstrong CL, Mikel WB, Stanisiewski EP, Hartnell GF
JOURNAL OF ANIMAL SCIENCE

80 (3): 708-715 MAR 2002
[...] Longissimus muscle samples from barrows
fed conventional soybean meal tended (P = 0.06) to have less fat
than those fed Roundup Ready soybean meal, but water, protein,
and ash were similar.[...]


P=0.05 means there is 5% chance the result might be spurious given
the amount of data available.

Those are intersting studies but many more show no differces so they may be
that 1 in 20 that are invalid or there may be other things in the experment
to account for it like the lack of calcium in the diet of the bird used in
the DDT study to show that DDT caused thinning of egg shells. I am leary of
experments that suddenly show differnt results than experments just like
them done in the past.

Who knows if it is the extra Roundup or something else? Will it show
up in agronomic traits of cotton?


Hitler and Geobles would be proud of the why the people that have taken
over
the greens have used their methods to sway public opinion to support
practices that 180 degrees opposed to the claimed goals of the
organizations. The greens and others of their kind are responsible for
far
more deaths that Hitler and Stalin combined by derailing public health
efforts in the world. Malaria program are almost at a stand still.

Malaria mosquito resistance to DDT was what ceased its use. It may
be used for outbreaks if the resistance has faded.

The replent effect of DDT never failed and there is no inseticed you can use
in house that will last 6 to 8 months. The EU not buying products from
countries that use DDT is reaching way beyond thier bounds in interfering
with other countries public healt for populist reasons. DDT has never been
proved to be any harm to humans.

In the
first world as many as 50% of the children in some areas are not getting
their childhood vaccines all becuse so people with more time than good
sense

It is being found that too many vaccines given at the wrong time
increase diabetes. That is more of a problem than the diseases
intended to be resisted. vaccines.net.

have take up the cause of a bunch of archest that have hijacked a once
respectable movement and use it to promote their own ends.

Their imagined dangers that have no basis in science make as much sense
and
not having your kids vaccinated for tetanus, whooping cough, and measles

May be too much assault on the immune system all at once.

Bull shit.

when we have real dangers of insecticides, persistent herbicides and
water
erosion not only destroying our land but clogging our water ways with
silt
and nutrients that are killing our estuaries.

Farmers may still be using some organophosphates on Bt cotton.

In the mean time we have a ever-increasing number of hungry people to
feed
unless you would have use starvation as a population control measure.

There is plenty of food available, it is distribution that is a
problem - people cannot get work to pay for it.

And what about Africa?
snip
For almost every one in the business from the farmer to the boards of
the
multinational ag companies have farm roots. It's not a deal like Enron.
These people eat the food they sell and can only stay in business by
providing a product that their customer finds profitable. No farmer will
give all the profit to the seed company and the bank they will take the
what
that makes them the most money.

Yes, and it may be a loss leader they are sold for a few years. And
it may not be possible for the seed companies to keep bringing out
new lines as resistance develops. Resistance to Bt showed before GM
was very prevalent from trad farming. Now if several strains of Bt
resistance go into crops then Bt could be lost. There have not been
many generations to test it.

Why test it different than any other pesticide? Monsanto is bringing out the
second generation of RR and BT cotton next year. There are a lot of natural
BT proteins to work with and no one has tried adding man made stuff to them
yet. We have been able to stay ahead of most resistance problems in
agriculture if you deal with them in rotation instead of using all one
method. The refuge method seems to work very well both in theory and
practice.

You assume that farmers can't learn from past mistakes and have a model of
agribusiness as a greedy rapist. They are all in it for profit but not short
term profits. To make a profit every one has to make money on the deal and
it has to preserve the environment so it well still be there to make money
one a hundred years from now. Go try to buy stocks in Delta Pine, Pioneer,
or Dunavant cotton company and see what happens. I think that they are all
privately held companies. Most agri business is because it doesn't work very
well with the corporate model. The profits are too small and the time frame
to long to work that way.

Gordon

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

On Sat, 02 Aug 2003 23:09:56 GMT, "Gordon Couger"
wrote:

"Brian Sandle" wrote in message
...
..
Comparison of broiler performance when fed diets containing
grain from roundup ready (NK603), YieldGard x roundup ready
(MON810 x NK603), non-transgenic control, or commercial corn
Taylor ML, Hartnell GF, Riordan SG, Nemeth MA, Karunanandaa K,
George B, Astwood JD, POULTRY SCIENCE, 82 (3): 443-453 MAR 2003

[...] Differences (P 0.05) were noted for
breast meat and fat pad weights across treatments.[...]

Those are intersting studies but many more show no differces snip

The differences Brian has highlighted were noted in the experiment
with NK603 corn.

So, you are saying that many other studies on broiler performance with
GM event NK603 in corn have been made, finding no differences for
breast meat or fat pad weights. ---- References, please. --------

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

On Fri, 1 Aug 2003 10:53:24 +0100, "Jim Webster"
posted:


"Moosh:]" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 28 Jul 2003 14:34:29 +0100, "Jim Webster"
wrote:


"Moosh:]" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 28 Jul 2003 13:10:50 +0100, "Jim Webster"
wrote:

Good one! Thing that staggers me is how little of a pint of milk or a
pound of beef you producers actually get. You lot seem to supply a
cheap raw material for every other bugger to cop a markup on.
I know you've tried to take action on this, but I suppose there is
always a farmer in the next village who is hungrier and will cave in.
You need something like a builders' union or a miners' union. Big and
powerful that can fund you for a three month strike.

in the UK supermarket chains make party donations, farmers don't.

I understand this, but what always amazes me is that supermarkets
don't vote.


farmers are now an insignificant proportion of the electorate in the UK, in
any constituency. So you can ignore them and just stuff the party coffers
with supermarket funds

Don't you have those bumper stickers "Without farmers we starve and go
naked"? Seems like a little factual "propaganda" should work wonders,
although you don't have compulsory voting there, do you. That's a
bummer. You could convert a dozen villagers, and they will not likely
bother to vote if it's raining.

Also a three month strike at the right time of year, even if possible
would
lead to a collapse of western society because people would starve.Even if
they imported the food, there isn't all that much food on the market (see
what UK fmd outbreak did to beef prices in the first couple of weeks of
the
outbreak and UK is not a big beef producer in world terms)
In the UK with a lorry drivers strike there was a panic and the
supermarkets
were nearly emptied overnight. I doubt there are the stocks of food in
the
country to stand a two week break in supply.

Yes, I believe London has only a short survival time if food imports
are cut.


I suspect very few major cities actually have meaningful food stocks.How
many public authorities actually do have any food stockpile?

None that I know of, they leave it to the supermarkets. I have a
couple of Woollies and Coles pantech barrelling up the road every day.

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

On 1 Aug 2003 13:20:53 GMT, Brian Sandle
posted:

In sci.med.nutrition Moosh:] wrote:
On 25 Jul 2003 11:48:19 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:

In sci.med.nutrition Moosh:] wrote:
On 24 Jul 2003 22:54:10 GMT, Brian Sandle
wrote:
I don't think randomity explains what goes on.

Well it can, so why look for fairies at the bottom of the garden?
Think of Ockham's razor.

You are behind, as I explained last article.

No, I'm not behind the fairy stories :)

Ockham's razor illustrating the simplest explanation given the
evidence.

But in the last few articles I have shown the troubles with Crick's
`simple and elegant' `central dogma', as it has been exposed to
wider light more recently.

So what? How does this change the fact that GM has not caused any harm
ever?

You are several years behind.

Not in the broad picture. You quote far too many "scare propaganda"
quotes.

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

On Fri, 01 Aug 2003 21:16:44 +0200, Torsten Brinch
posted:

On Fri, 01 Aug 2003 05:38:18 GMT, "Moosh:]"
wrote:
Perhaps he is an Australian like me?

Perhaps, but on check the similarity between John Riley and you
appears to run deeper than that. Substantial equivalence of mindset
if not identity would seem indicated.

The mindset of a West Australian interested in native plants perhaps?
There are thousands of us.
Probably not too many wasting their time on newsgroups, however :)

E.g. 'soils with almost no phosphorus' is not particularly an
Australian expression.

Sorry, but as most of our soils are thus, I would regard it as a
*very* Australian expression. We've imported whole islands of guano to
remedy this.

Yet, you and John Riley are the only persons
on Usenet who have used those words in that sequence. Furthermore,
looking at the expression in the contexts, striking semantic
similarities appear:

"I would love to know how you would farm "organically" in the
southwest of Western Australia. It has extremely old soils with
almost no phosphorus. There is often a deficiency in copper and
molybdenum (IIRC)" (John Riley 2001)

And? This could have been written by me, and many others. Many in the
different classes I've attended. I don't remember meeting a John Riley
but there you go.

"Tell me then how an Organic farmer in SW Western Australia on
ancient impoverished soils with almost NO phosphorus, and no copper or
molybdenum and very little potassium should function?" (Moosh 2003)

Seems a very reasonable question, from one who has a reasonable
acquaintance with this huge state.

All very interesting (is this your hobby?) but have you considered
that these may be facts which are commonly known to Western
Australians? How else would you express "soils with almost NO
phosphorus"? It is such a well known fact amongst wild flower growers
and botanists. Many native plants are poisoned by normal amounts of
phosphorus. If you look on bags of fertiliser, as I am wont to do, you
will often notice that Super has added Mo and Cu. Trucks and rail cars
full of it sent all over the state. I've even spread it around from
the back of a tractor in several states.

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

Xref: 127.0.0.1 sci.med.nutrition:169134 nz.general:586107 sci.agricultu63176

On Sat, 02 Aug 2003 03:25:31 +0200, Torsten Brinch
posted:

On Fri, 01 Aug 2003 22:58:41 GMT, "James Curts"
wrote:

"Jim Webster" wrote in message
...

SNIP

perhaps the common link is experience dealing with 'soils with almost no
phosphorus'?

If I were you Torsten, I would recommend you stick to looking for
conspiracy
theories in iraq and leave agriculture to less imaginative people

Jim Webster

what a maroon

Violet, is that you? You are the only one I've seen use that
expression :)

VBG Right on target.....

James Curts

Careful there, you wouldn't want Moosh and I to get started
on Iraq. Pretty soon you wouldn't know who of us you should
hate the most :-)

The hypercorrect "Moosh and I" seems to ring a bell. Are you sure
you're not.....

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

On Sat, 02 Aug 2003 02:26:43 GMT, "Gordon Couger"
posted:


"Oz" wrote in message
...
Jim Webster writes

"Torsten Brinch" wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 01 Aug 2003 05:38:18 GMT, "Moosh:]"
wrote:
Perhaps he is an Australian like me?

Perhaps, but on check the similarity between John Riley and you
appears to run deeper than that. Substantial equivalence of mindset
if not identity would seem indicated.

E.g. 'soils with almost no phosphorus' is not particularly an
Australian expression. Yet, you and John Riley are the only persons
on Usenet who have used those words in that sequence. Furthermore,
looking at the expression in the contexts, striking semantic
similarities appear:

perhaps the common link is experience dealing with 'soils with almost no
phosphorus'?

If I were you Torsten, I would recommend you stick to looking for
conspiracy
theories in iraq and leave agriculture to less imaginative people

My brother in law, some 20 years ago, on his farm SW of sydney:

"Our soils have almost no phosphorus, so we just apply superphosphate".

Sounds pretty typical to me.

My soils aren't quit as old as those in Australia. They are some of the
oldest in North America. Diamoium phosphate was the main sauce we used.
Mixing it with ammonium nitrate, Urea or on the high pH soils ammonium
sulfate to get the ratio of N & P we wanted. Any trace elements would be
added to that. We couldn't get a economic response from potasium in most
cases. Intensely irrigated Bermuda grass would show a response. But sandy
soils just becomes a hydroponic media for Bermuda grass if you push it hard
enough.

DAP would not be acceptable to an organic farmer but rock phosphate is.

Even though it is next to useless as it is glacially slow to dissolve.

And
AFIK there is no rule against trace elements if they can use copper in their
fungicide they should be able to use it in their fertilizer or put on a
heavy treatment of fungicide. It doesn't take much copper.

Yep, there's always a convenient rationalisation :)

Paying to find non-GE wild corn?
 

On Sun, 03 Aug 2003 12:03:48 GMT, "Moosh:]"
wrote:

On Fri, 01 Aug 2003 21:16:44 +0200, Torsten Brinch
posted:

On Fri, 01 Aug 2003 05:38:18 GMT, "Moosh:]"
wrote:
Perhaps he is an Australian like me?

Perhaps, but on check the similarity between John Riley and you
appears to run deeper than that. Substantial equivalence of mindset
if not identity would seem indicated.

The mindset of a West Australian interested in native plants perhaps?
There are thousands of us.
Probably not too many wasting their time on newsgroups, however :)
snip

You misunderstand the situation. I am not trying to prove you are the
John Riley I refer to, I am trying to find evidence to disprove it.
Now, I think I have given it a fair try, and since I can't find any
good evidence of differences, I shall assume you and he are
substantially equivalent.