At 09:16 AM 8/2/00 -0600, Steven Bissell wrote:
> I cut the excellent article from Rachael's on bio-tech.
>
>Basically the arguement still seems to be that GMO products "may" be harmful
>to human health, and they "may" be used to further the economic interests of
>large corporations. OK, say that is true? So what?
GMO biotech is harmful for many reasons. This year in the US, up to 92 % of
all soybean was treated with roundup. That is because Roundup ready soybeans
are now the most common variety of crop. Frogs in the US are very sick and
dissappearing in the midwest. The frog is very sensitive to the surfactants
in the Roundup Ready soybeans.
In India farmers have committed suicide because of the terminator seeds.
They cannot afford to grow the seeds because of declining returns on the
borrowed money. Instead of allowing the family to lose their land, they
commit suicide. The land is inherited by the family and the debts are not
paid because the farmer has died.
If you want a completely dead ecosystem devoid of all life, then use Roundup
ready GMO crops. That way every single hectare of arable land will be
treated to get rid of weeds: along fence rows, in the irrigation ditches, on
the crops, on the lawns, and along the highways. But if you like frogs,
birds, fish, well you will have to go somewhere else.
Read Gordon Conways' speech to Monsanto. This GMO technology is very bad
business for the US because food is one of the only major exports from the
US to other countries. The US imports up to 50 % of what it consumes, and
exports only about 5 % of what it produces, which means that it has a very
large international trade deficit. If the US does not realize the potential
economic consequences of GMOs, then it may be hit with a massive recession
because fewer and fewer consumers are going to buy the GMO crops.
The US could end up like Argentina did after it's economy collapsed back in
the first half of the century. The ever increasing gap between the rich and
the poor in the US just gets larger every year, and that is a very bad sign
since it means that there will be fewer opportunities for the average person
to obtain health, and education benefits. The US still does not have
universal medicare which most democratic societies have.
Yet the US has the largest per capita health expenditures in the world on a
percentage and on a nominal basis. It has the highest cancer rates, the
highest asthma rates, and in general the highest rates of diseases
associated with environmental toxins.
This is the current status of GMOs. It is becoming more and more the US
problem...and the US is threatening to complain to the WTO about something
as important as labelling, but the consumers are demanding the "right to
know" which foods are genetically altered. Now has become the US's most
serious economic problem simply because the rest of the world does not want
to be force fed GMOs. They want the right to know what the foods consist of.
If the Appollo 11 mission is any indication of reason, then the GMO issue
will be a grandaddy of a mistake. After all what kind of rational politician
would rather spend 20 billion dollars on sending a man to the moon so he
could knock a few golf balls around, rather than spend that money on
education and reducing poverty in the 1960s.
You see the USFDA who is supposed to regulate this sort of thing along with
the USEPA. These agencies could not have done anything more rash than allow
these GMOs to go market without any real consideration of the impacts to
life, not to mention the economy of the US.
No one onces these artificial organisms on their plants. Just imagine the
consequences of the GE chinnook salmon that grows to 90 lbs in 12 months.
Hell if several of those get out into the environment, whats to say will
happen? Does the USEPA know what will happen? Probably not.
Sometimes ignorance is bliss, some times it means the end of the road, and
no where to turn around.
chow,
john foster
How is that an
>environmental issue?
>sb
>
>
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