Sugar Beets Article 90% engineered?

[Dan L]

[Billy]

As Percy Schmeiser found out, if Monsanto's patented genes find their way into your seeds, then the seeds belong to Monsanto.

Monsanto, supported by the USDA, apparently, will not isolate its beet seed crop, thereby exposing the environment to genetically modified pollen.

[Billy]

Introducing the Frankenapple

Designed by British Columbia-based Okanagan Specialty Fruits, the new "Arctic" apple -- or what critics are calling the "botox apple," reports Gawker -- is said to have "silencing" enzymes, which would prevent it from looking old, no matter how old it gets. While this may be arguably okay for foreheads, we take it most people would rather know when their food is past its prime. Just like waxing fruit and piping nitrogen into fish to make it look younger, preventing fruit to brown would no longer allow us to know when it's gone bad.

[Bill who putters]

Sad to think this issue needs to be in a curriculum.

I have to go 20 miles to get cider that is not pasteurized used to be

6 miles 5 years ago. I believe germ paranoia is a part of our quality food decline. Still some folks that say cleanliness is next to godliness are sort of not understanding that our immune systems need challengers to be strong. I contend playing in a dirty sand box is good and living in a sterile world is bad.

[David Hare-Scott]

I assume that the reporting here is straight, I am not about to wade through the court ruling.

That being the case this is a good example of what I see as the key problem of GM food. The potential risks to the environment and human health are there but minor compared to this. The central problem is the big companies are looking to control major sections of human food production and are prepared to use the law (or not if it doesn't suit them) to achieve that. I don't think the precedent history nor the legal minds who wrote patent law and intellectual property law ever imagined that it could be used for such a purpose.

The true absurdity of this situation and the power of The Machine can be seen in media reactions to GM issues. Too often any oppostion to Monsanto et al is portrayed as opposition to free enterprise and hence to freedom. It is exactly the reverse. The very people who will only very grudgingly give their goverment power are quite happy for the electorate to lose control of food production to organisations that cannot be controlled by the democratic processes that allow those people to control their government.

The Space Merchants are here and gaining ground.

David

[Dan L]

I read about the apple also, the article stated that it would be more than five years before it would be on the market. They only have one tree.

Welcome to Eaarth :)

[Billy]

Sounds more like Helll :O(

GMO plants that let you spray more herbicides. It's not a hand basket, but it should do.

[Billy]

It is sufficient to cross pollinate existing cultivars with GMO pollen, and it is destroyed. Once Monsanto's gene is in the cultivar, it belongs to Monsanto.

[Doug Freyburger]

This is a point where current law needs to catch up but it's not an easily resolved issue.

On the one hand seed stock from Monsanto can be sold with the caveat that the plants be harvested before they bloom. And reasonable efforts can be made to keep cross polination from happening.

On the other hand if a farmer took no action to encourage pollination bees will be bees and it happens.

Apple patents can be enforced because apple trees don't breed true. The only way to get a specific cultivar is to graft a branch from an existing tree. The more widely pollen spreads the less enforcible a patent is. The problem is this makes the investment by Monsanto less profitable so they have less incentive to make the next development in crop changes.

[Billy]

"Poor Mexico - so far from God and so close to the United States!"

- Porfirio Diaz

corn contamination confirmed Tuesday, 24 February 2009 A team led by Elena Alvarez-Buylla of the National Autonomous University in Mexico City looked at nearly 2000 samples from 100 fields in the region from 2001 and 2004, and found that around 1% of the samples had genes that had jumped from GM varieties.

"We confirmed that there was contamination in 2001 and also found contamination in 2004, which means that it either persisted in the local maize that we sampled or that it was reintroduced, which is less likely," says Alvarez-Buylla.

She says the difference between previous studies and her research lay in the samples chosen for gene sequencing and in the molecular technique for decrypting the DNA.

The investigators looked for two specific genes that had escaped from biotech corn, and found them in some fields, but not in others.

Shielding failure

Alvarez-Buylla says the evidence sheds stark light on the failure of efforts to shield Mexico from unauthorised GM corn. The country imposed a moratorium on the planting of transgenic maize in

1998 in order to protect genetic diversity. It is the home of about 60 traditional domesticated strains, also called landraces, as well as several wild strains.

Transgenic seeds are entering the country, most probably from the United States, and getting mixed with local seeds in trade among small farmers, says Alvarez-Buylla.

FEBRUARY 23, 2009 Transgenic contamination found in wild Mexican corn

Some people might ask why I continue to talk about this. Well, that is because biodiversity to me is the linchpin to our survival as a species. Without it and with GMO monocrops deciding our food source it is highly likely in my view that we will face a worldwide famine in the future because of this transgenic contamination that is killing biodiversity.