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Just wondering what your thoughts are on this subject.
I wasn't to concerned about it until I started to reading studies done on GM produce, some of it is very alarming. A study done in Norway over the last 10 years showed hazards that we should be concerned about. GM corn and corn based products caused obesity in all the animals tested, this I find interesting seeings how GM corn has been used since 1996 here in the US and couple that with the rise in childhood obesity, this kind of makes me wonder.
Then there is "BT-corn" this corn has been modified to produce BT toxins which is a pesticide, this allow the corn to have a defense against insects. The problem is, this toxin is starting to show up in the human population. A study done in Canada found that 93 percent of pregnant women tested, 80 percent of umbilical blood in their babies and 67 percent of non-pregnant women tested positive for BT toxins.
My thoughts have changed a lot on this today, human population got along just find in the last 1000's of years without GM foods, I think we manage without them. I really feel that we are just at the tip of the ice berg in the hazards of these crops and the affects it will have to the general population.
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My thoughts have changed a lot on this today, human population got along just find in the last 1000's of years without GM foods, I think we manage without them. ............
The measures are different, and it is possible that the Josephine County measure won't stand because the initiative was approved AFTER the state banned local measures on the topic. The Jackson County measure was already in the works prior to the state ban, so it was allowed to proceed.
In Jackson County, the impetus for the measure was Syngenta planting test GMO sugar beet crops (Syngenta is a Swiss company and their crops/trials are banned in Switzerland) - since sugar beets and swiss chard are closely related and the pollen is easily wind-blown, several local farmers had to plow under both crops for seed and crops for market because the wholesale buyers wouldn't buy potentially contaminated seeds/produce. Unlike the wide, long Willamette Valley, where there are exclusion zones that can't be planted in GMO crops, the narrow, steep-sided Rogue Valley has virtually no "safe" zones for the spread of pollens - it is all one big air- and water-shed
The local paper has lately had several articles on both the aging of farmers and the lack of profitability in big agriculture farming in the valley, in the crops that were sent out-of-area - the future of the valley farmers is in the relatively young farmers putting in organic crops on much smaller acreages, sold locally (or closer to locally).
There's a lot of anti-GM junk science out there. It's dishonest to design an experiment or study to show a negative effect of GM crops. Most people don't realize that correlation has nothing to do with causation. The classic reductio ad absurdum is that everyone who drinks water dies. That's a 1:1 correlation, which proves that drinking water is lethal. In fact, the correlation means nothing.
As for BT, would you rather have BT in your food or parathion, which is so toxic that farm workers have to wear full hazmat suits when they apply it? They have to do something to control the bugs, and BT is totally non-toxic to humans. Hundreds of thousands of acres of forest are sprayed with BT solution every year to control gypsy moth outbreaks. This includes residential neighborhoods in Eugene and Portland. Your alternatives are to live in a denuded landscape without forests or put up with being drenched in toxic chemicals that kill wildlife and cause adverse health effects in humans.
There is a lot to be said for organic farming, which is done without most toxic chemicals. Even organic farmers use "organic" pesticides based on nicotine, pyrethroids and BT. Yes, BT is an approved organic pesticide.
Putting issues like this on the ballot is nonsense, because the average voter has no idea what they are voting on. They hear doomsday predictions and think it's a problem, when in fact the doomsday predictions are just fantasies.
There's a lot of anti-GM junk science out there. It's dishonest to design an experiment or study to show a negative effect of GM crops. Most people don't realize that correlation has nothing to do with causation. The classic reductio ad absurdum is that everyone who drinks water dies. That's a 1:1 correlation, which proves that drinking water is lethal. In fact, the correlation means nothing.
I am not in favor of junk science (being a trained scientist myself) but it is no less dishonest to design a study to look for negative events than it is to narrowly focus a study such that any negative events are neither recorded or analyzed, which is what the ag and pharma companies do.
The big players in GMO put a lot of lip service to "ending world hunger" - but look at their annual reports, that isn't where they actually spend their money. They spend it on patenting crops which then require the use of their other patented products to "unlock" and grow well.
15-119 wasn't doing quite so well in Jackson County until huge donations started to come in from out-of-area (and out-of-country) sources - sources that don't give a flying hoot about Jackson County and the people who do live here, but who are worried about the potential for setting precedent.
Last edited by PNW-type-gal; 05-10-2014 at 11:42 AM..
Reason: typo
The measures are different, and it is possible that the Josephine County measure won't stand because the initiative was approved AFTER the state banned local measures on the topic. The Jackson County measure was already in the works prior to the state ban, so it was allowed to proceed.
In Jackson County, the impetus for the measure was Syngenta planting test GMO sugar beet crops (Syngenta is a Swiss company and their crops/trials are banned in Switzerland) - since sugar beets and swiss chard are closely related and the pollen is easily wind-blown, several local farmers had to plow under both crops for seed and crops for market because the wholesale buyers wouldn't buy potentially contaminated seeds/produce. Unlike the wide, long Willamette Valley, where there are exclusion zones that can't be planted in GMO crops, the narrow, steep-sided Rogue Valley has virtually no "safe" zones for the spread of pollens - it is all one big air- and water-shed
The local paper has lately had several articles on both the aging of farmers and the lack of profitability in big agriculture farming in the valley, in the crops that were sent out-of-area - the future of the valley farmers is in the relatively young farmers putting in organic crops on much smaller acreages, sold locally (or closer to locally).
It would make more sense to just ban growing beets, since chard seed could as easily be contaminated by any beet crop. Beets were bred from chard, and they are the same plant. Beets are just a variety that has more bottom than top, which of course would ruin the chard seed. The inverse is true, that growing chard would ruin the beet seed. However, you can grow beets right next to chard and you will just get beets and chard. Cross-pollination would not have any effect until the next generation.
Whoever plowed their chard crop was not a farmer. They were just indulging in histrionics. It's possible that they were suffering from histrionic personality disorder. They had certainly taken leave of reality.
Whoever plowed their chard crop was not a farmer. They were just indulging in histrionics. It's possible that they were suffering from histrionic personality disorder. They had certainly taken leave of reality.
Nonsense, it's called cutting your losses - you have a crop that you are growing for a specific buyer and that buyer (and group of buyers) announces they won't buy it. Your choices are: cut your losses or continue to spend money and effort on a crop that you might not be able to sell at all. The choice is to plow it under and put in another crop that you know you CAN sell.
Nonsense, it's called cutting your losses - you have a crop that you are growing for a specific buyer and that buyer (and group of buyers) announces they won't buy it. Your choices are: cut your losses or continue to spend money and effort on a crop that you might not be able to sell at all. The choice is to plow it under and put in another crop that you know you CAN sell.
You totally ignored the fact that any chard seed grown in the proximity of beet seed crops could not be sold for seed because of cross-pollination. It's irrelevant if it is GM or not. It's the same reason canola is banned in the Willamette Valley. There is a major broccoli seed crop in the WV and cross-pollination would ruin it. My mother's farm grew a nice crop of turnip seed last year, precisely because neither broccoli or any other brassica is being grown anywhere for miles around.
Making this a GM issue is just histrionics. It's not.
I am not in favor of junk science (being a trained scientist myself) but it is no less dishonest to design a study to look for negative events than it is to narrowly focus a study such that any negative events are neither recorded or analyzed, which is what the ag and pharma companies do.
OK, then you know that a study that claims eating GM corn increases obesity in rodents is not applicable to humans. It's also very incomplete, since there are hundreds of varieties of corn to test. Physically and chemically, GM corn is indistinguishable from conventional corn except at the genetic level, so there is no obvious reason for the result. Perhaps the result is caused by pesticide residues. In that case, is it residue on the GM corn that increases obesity, or residue on the conventional corn that interferes with digestion and causes emaciation? It would be interesting to know how the researcher dealt with these problems. Unfortunately, as is the case when the general public gets involved, no link to the actual paper was given, or any links to researchers who had succeeded or failed at reproducing the results. That's junk science.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PNW-type-gal
The big players in GMO put a lot of lip service to "ending world hunger" - but look at their annual reports, that isn't where they actually spend their money. They spend it on patenting crops which then require the use of their other patented products to "unlock" and grow well.
15-119 wasn't doing quite so well in Jackson County until huge donations started to come in from out-of-area (and out-of-country) sources - sources that don't give a flying hoot about Jackson County and the people who do live here, but who are worried about the potential for setting precedent.
Are you aware that glyphosate has been off patent for many years? The popularity of GM crops is because it reduces the inputs farmers have to use. Sugar beets in particular compete very poorly with weeds. In the past, it has been difficult or impossible to control competing weeds with herbicide, so a glyphosate resistant sugar beet was a boon for farmers. When the USDA approved GM sugar beet planting, farmers quickly ordered the new seed. Beet seed production is biennial, since the plant doesn't blossom until the second year. When a lawsuit threatened to block planting of GM sugar beets, the judge was faced with shutting down the whole crop, because nobody had ordered any conventional seed for planting.
BTW, all sugar beet seed in the USA is grown in Oregon.
If some people want their food marked to indicate the presence of GMO products, then they should have it. However, since they are the ones who want it and the rest of us don't, then they should be the ones to pay for it.
It makes more sense to mark foods that are GMO free as free from GMO, instead of marking all of the food for everyone else. The people who want it get to pay for it and they get the GMO -free food that they want.
Personally, I find it very irritating for someone else to agitate so stridently to get the cost of my food raised and I also find it irritating to have someone else try to dictate what I can eat.
You want to know if there is GMO in your food, ask your food producers to mark food that is GMO free and you can buy that.
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