BS: Meanwhile, back on the farm...

Subject: RE: BS: Meanwhile, back on the farm...
From: DougR
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 03:43 PM

Aw shucks, SRS, I was about to send you a PM expressing my gratitude for your finding ONE think Bush can't be blamed for. I was going to print off your comments and frame them, hanging them in a prominent place in my office. Then you go and spoil it a few post later by disputing your original statement!

Oh well. I'll keep hoping. I think you will have another four years to find something.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Meanwhile, back on the farm...
From: Metchosin
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 03:15 AM

Here is one of the better articles which IMO explains why GENETIC ENGINEERING IS NOT AN EXTENSION OF CONVENTIONAL PLANT BREEDING: How genetic engineering differs from conventional breeding, hybridization, wide crosses and horizontal gene transfer

Subject: RE: BS: Meanwhile, back on the farm...
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Oct 04 - 10:29 PM

Bush may be off the hook for the origins of the genetically modified food crisis, but his administration has done everything it can to mess up our environment in many other ways. Sierra Club RAW weekly newsletter.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Meanwhile, back on the farm...
From: dianavan
Date: 18 Oct 04 - 09:50 PM

I'm opposed to Monsanto's underhanded means of bullying farmers into buying seed from them exclusively. When Monsanto is around, you have no choice. They are heavy handed bullies. I especially do not like the idea that they want to be the only game in town.

d

Subject: RE: BS: Meanwhile, back on the farm...
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Oct 04 - 09:30 PM

I don't think this has to do with Clinton or Bush, GUEST. It has to do with multinational companies that assume they are bigger than any government they come into contact with and can do just about whatever they want to do. They've been out of control for a long time. They probably go back to at least the Reagan administration's deregulation frenzy.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Meanwhile, back on the farm...
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Oct 04 - 04:31 PM

Another Clinton initiative people will try and blame on Bush?

And BTW, the Organic Consumers Association has to be the most obnoxious, overbearing grassroots organization I've ever encountered. I got on their mailing list some years ago, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get off the phone list. They called me EVERY DAY FOR THREE YEARS, until I moved.

I now have an unlisted number, just so they can't find me.

Subject: RE: BS: Meanwhile, back on the farm...
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Oct 04 - 04:27 PM

The "food mountains" grow--in some areas. And the land is parched in others where there is far too little food. In some cases the GM crops are designed to try to deal with dietary deficits--I think in the last year or two a type of "yellow rice" has turned up that has a high vitamin E level. This is supposed to help in places where there is a dietary shortage of this vitamin. But too often these big seed producers pull their genetic engineering hat tricks to try to manipulate the seed and marketplace in places where the farmers live on the extreme margins and simply can't afford to buy new seed each year.

Those high production areas will pay (or are paying) for those high-yield crops. Depeted soil, heavy dependence on chemical fertilizers, loss of topsoil.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Meanwhile, back on the farm...
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 18 Oct 04 - 02:35 PM

We have always kept the seed of the best of this years crop to plant for next year, and thus the crop improves. Maybe a bee or a wasp, will cross pollinate a plant by chance, but what are the chances of a fish swimming through your glasshouse, or grain field? Once you have created a transgenic organism, one that sets seed, then you make it possible for these genes to be absorbed by other plants. If you make a crop immune to roundup or some other pest/pesticide how long will it be before other plants acquire the immunity. What will happen to the birds, and other animals who eat this seed which contains new and possibly harmfull ingredients. It is a can of worms and I for one would prefer not to open that can. It is crazy in this day and age when farmers can crop 10 tons an acre, where before modern fertilisers he could only harvest 3 tons for us to be inventing yet more ways to increase yields. In the EEC farmers are paid not to cultivate fields, and still the yields increase, and the food mountains grow. Where will it all end?
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: Meanwhile, back on the farm...
From: open mike
Date: 18 Oct 04 - 02:21 PM

oh, and monsanta can afford lawyers up the wazoo
and farmers are barely squeaking by..

Subject: RE: BS: Meanwhile, back on the farm...
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Oct 04 - 09:38 AM

Genetically modified foods have some gene splicing going on in the lab and are made to tolerate things like Roundup being applied to them (won't kill the crop, just the weeds). Sometimes animal materials have been introduced, or in other cases, genes from other plants entirely. They've been altered as to their content, and in the case of Monsanto, many are engineered so that seed saving isn't possible, they're not viable the next year. (This is it in a very slim nutshell). Oh, and Monsanto will sue the hell out of any poor adjacent farmer whose crop is contaminated by the drifting pollen from their GM plants, and will claim that the neighbor somehow stole their patented crop.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Meanwhile, back on the farm...
From: Mrrzy
Date: 18 Oct 04 - 09:17 AM

Thank you Rapaire, I have been wondering that meself...

Subject: RE: BS: Meanwhile, back on the farm...
From: Rapparee
Date: 18 Oct 04 - 09:12 AM

Just out of curiousity (my own), I'd like to ask a questions I've never heard either side of the GE debate answer. Here ya go.

Since agriculture became "big business" around 10,000 years BCE or so, crops have been cultivated to give us the current types of corn (maize), wheat, potatoes, tomatoes, and so forth which we enjoy. Without this hybridization, crops would be far more liable to disease and produce far less yield than they do. Hybridizing plants is done by altering their genetic makeup, selecting for what humans consider desirable traits and breeding undesirable traits out of the plant. Granted, hybridization takes far longer than genetic engineering but, given that the end result in either case is a changed plant (and possible extinction of the original strain), what's the difference? Other, of course, than that one is done in a lab and the other in a field.

Subject: RE: BS: Meanwhile, back on the farm...
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 18 Oct 04 - 04:29 AM

Over here in the UK one large supermarket has banned GM food from the shelf, and the public in general are wary of the whole idea. In the case of growing GM foods there have been protests, and fields of maize on trial sites have been trashed, on the whole it is disliked in the UK. From what I've read about other countries, it appears that in poorer countries where they keep seed from this years crop for next year, it is not possible to do this with GM crops, and farmers are thus falling into the grip of the seed companies. Our government is in favour of it, and only public opinion stops them allowing more of it into the UK.
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: Meanwhile, back on the farm...
From: dianavan
Date: 18 Oct 04 - 04:11 AM

Were any of these questions even considered in the debate?

We know how Bush and Nader stand. Where does Kerry stand on genetically modified food? It effects the whole world - its our food!

Yes - We have to keep up the pressure by refusing to buy, writing letters, signing petitions and buying organically until we find out how much damage has already been done.

Whatever you do in the U.S., do not let this Fast track legislation go through!

d

Subject: RE: BS: Meanwhile, back on the farm...
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 18 Oct 04 - 03:49 AM

Meanwhile, back on the farm...

Tonto, disguised as a glove...

Subject: RE: BS: Meanwhile, back on the farm...
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 17 Oct 04 - 10:28 AM

OOps... Here's
a link about the genetically modified organism situation we're in, and it's an interesting article...
ttr

Subject: BS: Meanwhile, back on the farm...
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 17 Oct 04 - 10:24 AM

While we are all focused on the war in Iraq, and homeland security, and health care, and shipping jobs overseas, and the looming meanace of Ralph Nader ...*bg*... Fast track legislation could become the corporate shortcut to sidestep democracy.