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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JeffA who wrote (102345)	4/28/2005 7:38:42 PM
From: Grainne	Respond to of 108807

If we are going to be generous and donate food to people, why can't we give them food they will eat. Surely there must be some non-GM corn somewhere! You might not be aware that there is huge opposition to GM crops in Europe. The Africans are particularly sensitive to this because when they are not in states of famine and political disarray, they want to be able to sell their crops in European markets, and will not be able to do so if they are contaminated. Anyone involved in sustainable agriculture is opposed to GM technology, because of the risks inherent in tampering with nature. It is possible that some GM crops might be okay, but we don't really need them at all. They are not the answer to feeding the world. So lots of people feel the risks aren't worth it, and that includes most Africans. Most Africans and Europeans also fully appreciate that this is not a dogooder effort by mostly American companies, but instead a very clever scheme to separate farmers all over the world from their ability to grow crops without technology they have to pay for. This little article was written by an individual and is highly opinionated, but I thought it was interesting because it does sort of concentrate all of the potential problems of GM technology: sumeria.net Eat Frankenfood or Go Hungry Here in America, possibly because of our Puritan heritage, we seem to feel the need to cast any rotten evil thing that we do in a guise that makes us appear as the world's benefactor. This is no less true of corporations than it is of government. Nowhere else in the world does a nation's propaganda ministry spend so much effort to appear "good" while justifying the most evil things the mind of man can imagine. In America, the "cover story" has been raised to an artform. Consider the willful destruction of the world's food chain by a merger of corporate and government interests as a case in point. A conference on genetically engineered agricultural products was recently sponsored by the US department of Agriculture in Sacramento, California. Police in riot gear were sent to control the angry crowds that swarmed the streets making very clear the fact that they do not want to be forced to consume GM food. The US department of Agriculture who, theoretically represent the interest of the American people, presented the needed "cover story" for the forcible promotion of GM foods. According to their story, it seems these GM food products were developed to "reduce hunger and improve nutrition by using advanced technology". The benefit is designed to be all for the small farmer who can "reduce the use of pesticides on his GM crops." Of course they can use less pesticide — pests don't like to eat franken food any more than people do. US Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman said "What we're talking about is increasing food productivity in areas of the world where people are both hungry and poor. Many developing countries get 90% of their food from local production and there isn't any infrastructure. That means that, without infrastructure, they save seed from one year to the next and do not have to come to the seed companies to buy seed to plant crops every year. Lets get the facts on the table. What Ann Veneman was really talking about is building a government/corporate monopoly that alone has absolute control over the food supply of the entire world. The independent farmer who does all the work becomes enslaved. Having total control over the food supply has been a dream of those who manage the American food chain since Wesson first started to engineer edible oils in 1911. Where is our antitrust protection from these ravening wolves? Exactly what is it that the FDA doesn't understand about its responsibilities to assure a safe food supply. A Glimpse at Agricultural History The step up to using genetic engineering technology to render our crops impervious to herbicides is a natural extension of the practice of establishing hybrid seed technology that is now an accepted fact throughout agriculture. Once, before the profit motive dominated every area of life, seeds reproduced their own kind with great repeatability. When seed companies got into the act they selectively bred a variety of hybrid seed that would not reproduce themselves. When the farmer, typically not any less gullible that most of us, bought into this scenario he found himself forced to buy seed every year for whatever price the seed purveyor chose to ask. Previously, with the expenditure of a little extra work every year he could save his seed and not have to pay anybody anything to plant his crops. Now the farmer has to come to the seed companies every year, hat in hand, to see what his seed is going to cost him. He is forced to pass on these costs in the price of food. GM agriculture was specifically developed to make the crops immune to the use of herbicides. When weeds develop in a field containing a food crop, the farmer sprays the field with an herbicide. Theoretically, if the concentration of herbicide is correct, it kills the weeds and spares the crops. The repeated use of this technology has bred a weed population that has proved increasingly resistant to the use of herbicides. The window between a lethal dose of herbicide for the weeds and a safe dose that would not kill the crop also has narrowed dramatically. The money making solution to this dilemma is to "engineer" the gene structure of the crop for increased resistance to the herbicide. The Keystone Cops of the Scientific Community Bad science; really, bad, inept, corrupt and bungled science is the norm in the agricultural community. The reality of what they're doing is far removed from the cover story presented by the US Department of Agriculture. Thinly veiled profit motives that rape the environment commonly masquerade as science in this community. There are at least three major scientific blunders hidden in Ann Veneman's plan to "reduce hunger and improve nutrition by using advanced technology." If this community's standard for advanced technology were the norm in other industries, as for example the transportation industry, we would all be still riding in horse drawn buggies, whose wheels kept falling off. First the process results in development of herbicide resistant weeds. When a field containing both weeds and herbicide resistant crops is sprayed with an herbicide the herbicide is supposed to kill the weeds and leave the crops. What actually happens is that the herbicide kills most of the weeds but not all. Those weeds that are not killed reproduce as herbicide resistant weeds. As this process is repeated from year to year a new class of weeds evolves that is immune to the herbicide. This process, at least outside of the agricultural scientific community, has been well understood for over a hundred years as the process of natural selection. As the evolution of increasingly resistant weeds proceeds, the "advanced technology" of the agribusiness community prescribes ever increasing doses of herbicide. Within a short time however, the weed population has become so resistant to the herbicide that it no longer works. That is where we are now in the battle of the weeds. That is why there is such pressure to market GM food products that can stand the ever increasing use of ever more ineffective herbicides. The so called scientists who want to force their "advanced technology" on the entire world have been raping our fields and plundering our farmers for decades. This is the "infrastructure" that our Department of Agriculture wants to force on third world nations. To a very large extent, the American farming community has been severely damaged by these profit oriented practices. Now we want to export them to the "poor farmer" in other parts of the world. Second, there is no way to prevent cross pollination of these genetically modified products with natural non-modified strains. Birds consume the seeds and scatter them where they will. GM seed will inevitably be transported into fields containing non-GM crops. Bees cross pollinate GM and non GM crops in a totally uncontrolled manner. The wind blows the pollen all over the landscape. The use of herbicides on fields that contain a mix of GM and non-GM crops preferentially kills the non-GM crop. The end result of this process is to inexorably eradicate the non-GM crop and replace it with the GM crop. This gives the owner of the GM seed patents absolute defacto dictatorial control over the food chain; a super efficient way to establish profit margin superiority. By the exercise of patent rights, good food has been rendered impossible to grow in these herbicide polluted fields. The goons that did the destruction must now be paid dearly for the only seed that remains capable of growing in the herbicide polluted fields. Needless to point out, the same scientists that sell the GM seed have a close business connection to the scientists that sell the herbicide. Third there have been no useful studies done to provide even a "cover story" type of assurance that the resulting GM strains are even edible let alone nutritious.