I'm trying to reduce/eliminate the use of GM crops from products my family uses. Finding out about GM in food is fairly easy, in other products it becomes almost impossible such as textiles and oils.
What is your experience of GM crops?
Are you concerned there's no control over their usage?
Myarka
Hi
GM crops do concern me. I try and live my life as 'naturally' as possible, choosing to eat organic food and reduce my exposure to chemicals as much as possible and I think GM crops may threaten that ability to choose.
Although the scientists working for the Biotech industries are certain that GM is safe and they fully understand all the implications of growing GM crops, time and other more impartial scientists may prove them wrong.
Just one example is biotech industry's confidence about cross pollination that would lead to contamination of organic crops. Research from Exeter University says: [INDENT]Quote:
Field trials could be underestimating the potential for cross-pollination between GM and conventional crops, according to new research by the University of Exeter.
The research team recommends a new method for predicting the potential for cross-pollination, which takes account of wind speed and direction.
The research, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and published today (1 June 2007) in the journal Ecological Applications, used records of wind speed and direction from weather stations across Europe to predict the movement of pollen in the air. The findings show huge variation in the amount of cross-pollination between GM and non-GM crops of maize, oilseed rape, rice and sugar beet. Levels vary according to whether the GM field is upwind or downwind of the non-GM field given the direction of the prevailing wind over the flowering period of the crop.
[/INDENT]Cross-pollination would result in more and more crops becoming genetically modified, fine if there are no long term problems, but potentially disastrous and irreversible if there are.
If scientists were as omniscient as they think they are, we would not have had Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE)! I still remember 'scientists' and people in authority saying it was impossible for it to jump species. That 'little mistake' in the food chain has cost the lives of 183823 cattle and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD or nvCJD) has already killed 165 people and with the number expected to rise because of the disease's long incubation period.
Pete
Time indeed will (actually already has) prove that these crops are dangerous.
The use of GM cotton that includes an insecticide specifically against the cotton boll wevil now is showing the real cost of these products.
[DLMURL] http://www.ecotextile.com/headline_details.php?id=10176 [/DLMURL]
The boll vevil stopped being a problem when they were introduced, but now the other insects for which the insecticide is ineffective have increased in number - they are destroying other crops at a rate never seen before, they are increasing on the cotton and the boll wevil has built up a resistence.
The farmers are forced to buy new seed every year, theri crops are decimated and they have affected the rest of the agricultural environment.
Never before has an organism been introduced without major problems later down the road - the latest is the Japanese know weed predator - we are assured all will be well - by the same people who assured us about all the others. The massive cover up and propaganda exercise in the UK is also coming off the rails.
Simple is best.
chris
Having sat on the fence for a bit - one always hopes that something good comes of research - I am now very firmly on the side of NON-GM.
I have seen the hope of scientists putting a vitamin-A-producing gene into rice to reduce the incidence of blindness in Asia caused by lack of this vitamin, and for putting a gene into wheat that would form nitrate fixing nodules from legumes to reduce the necessity for using bought-in fertiliser and thought they were a good idea.
I have posted before and will [url]re post[/url] what horrified me about GM soya fed to hamsters and the awful defects produced in the 3rd generation who were virtually sterile. Perhaps they thought it was a good way to reduce the world population???? 😮
It is increasingly difficult for non-GM soya to be imported into Europe, as we use [DLMURL="http://www.foeeurope.org/agrofuels/FFE/Profundo%20report%20final.pdf"]vast quantities[/DLMURL] of it not only for ourselves but also in animal feeds. The main producers of soya in the world are USA and Brazil and nearly all their production is GM or GM contaminated.