GM bans don’t work
Field of European Maize
The Weekly Times reported today that “canola bred in Victoria and planted on at least 35 farms across Australia has been contaminated with genetically modified material.” Further in the article (not online) it says the levels are 0.04% or one in 2,500 seeds. As Peter Hunt says in the Weekly Times this week (also not online!) “inadvertent, low-level GM contamination of canola is here to stay. … If you import ‘conventional’ canola breeding lines from North America where GM is widely adopted, then it is not just possible, but highly probable, you will end up importing that one GM seed among the 10,000.” He concludes by saying “let’s not kid ourselves that we can maintain a zero tolerance threshold on locally grown GM food crops.”
On Monday ABARE released a report that estimates that if Australia continues to ban GM Canola it could cost Australia $3 billion by 2015. Then yesterday Reuters reported that a new GMO maize to feed livestock in Europe will be approved by the EU Commission within the next month. This comes on top of the GM maize already grown in Spain and France.
So much for the oft repeated claim that Europe is GM free. Instead, Europe has already joined the US and Canada as producers of GMOs leaving Australian farmers unable to compete with these higher yielding varieties. Moreover, farmers who grow the GM maize are seeing the benefits of higher yields. As Pierre, a French farmer who this year planted GM maize said:
“The test results show there is less than 0.9 percent of GMO contamination in the conventional maize plants which are growing 25 metres away from the GMO crops,” he said.
Lower costs were also a reason, he added.
“I decided to sow one hectare of GM maize of the bt variety to save money on spraying insecticides,” he said, adding that the lower chemical usage also helped protect the environment.
The bans in Australia on growing GM canola are counterproductive and unachievable. It’s time State Governments listened to the science instead of the scarmongering and announced the bans will not be extended so Australian canola growers can start making investment decisions with some certainty.
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By Ernest Vairy, Wednesday, October 26, 2005 @ 5:46 pm
Safety: is being careful enough?
In reply to this blog.
It sad to think that people can be so cruel to a human.
I urge who ever wrote that to read the court transcripts and then make your opinion as you do not seem to know the real facts.
How many people have to be hurt before a warning is given.
There will be many many more people being hurt at this spot
How sad is that.
By gmopundit, Saturday, December 10, 2005 @ 10:41 am
Good to read your blog
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http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/