[Pil-pc-oceania] Monsanto GM vs Rural Farmers

Wed May 23 20:34:20 EST 2007

Thank you Robyn,
                            For the response and the information.  I will see that this information and the URLs shown receive the best circulation I can manage
Regards from
Bill Pilgrim
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Robyn Williamson 
  To: pil-pc-oceania at lists.permacultureinternational.org 
  Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2007 12:45 PM
  Subject: Re: [Pil-pc-oceania] Monsanto GM vs Rural Farmers

  Hi Bill

  If a product on the shelves in Australia contains GM corn, by law it should be stated on the label, but you might need to take your magnifying glass with you to the supermarket so you can read the fine print. This is not the case in the US where as far as I am aware it is open slather for the corporations and there are no labelling laws. GM corn from the US has been brought into the country for use in chicken feed but a successful campaign by Greenpeace a while ago managed to convince major poultry suppliers here that the couple of cents per bird they were saving by feeding their chooks GM corn was not worth the bad press.

  To answer your question though, I don't think we can ever be sure we will know without testing everything for GM contamination. It's already out of the labs, on the supermarket shelves and breeding in the fields, possibly at a secret site near you. GM food ingredients under a certain percentage of the total product do not need to be labelled. I could not figure out what percentage that is without spending hours at
  http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/foodmatters/gmfoods/
  and/or downloading millions of megs of PDF documents. However I did read what I consider is a false and misleading description on that web page of what GM foods actually are. What they don't say in my opinion is just as misleading as what they do, for example "[genetic] modifications usually involve changing one gene of the 30,000 - 50,000 or so genes that make up an organism". As far as I am aware the technology itself does not allow genetic engineers to splice and translocate only 1 gene. The genes are translocated across the natural species barrier via an assortment of genetically modified viruses and/or bacteria called "carriers" in a sort of shotgun effect into the target organism. GM is nothing like the horticultural selection and crossing of seeds with desirable characteristics over thousands of years that has brought us the amazing variety of good-looking "hybrid" plants that we enjoy today. I am a horticulturist by trade and know very little about genetics but my immediate thoughts were "that's bs" and further "I don't trust the information on this site". GM crops are not hybrid plants which is what the web page seems to imply. It's one thing to translate the jargon of complex sciences like chemical or genetic engineering into layman's language that everyone can understand but quite another for a presumably well-informed government agency to use that simplified language to mislead the public. Somebody please convince me I'm mistaken about this.

  I think we can only be guided by our own common sense and by independent bodies such as the Australian Consumers Association who we feel are doing good work, who are doing the research and following up with the hard yards to make people aware. Greenpeace's True Food Guide covers a majority of processed foods and rates brands according to the manufacturer's policy on genetic modification. At http://sites.greenpeace.org.au/truefood/guide2.html you can download, search or browse the latest guide and make up your own shopping list of the brands you choose to support.

  One ingredient to watch out for is something called "vegetable oil", it's often listed as an ingredient in margarine. If you see for example "Magic Miracle Marg with Mustard Oil" [the key word is "with"] check the list of ingredients and you will find it contains maybe 10 or 15% mustard [trade name "Canola"] oil but the bulk of it [the first ingredient listed] is often the mysterious and ubiquitous "vegetable oil". That could also mean cottonseed oil because strictly speaking cotton is vegetation even though it's not normally edible vegetation. I've never seen actual "cottonseed oil" for sale even though it is an approved "food". Cotton is sprayed something like 12 times a year with a variety of lethal "i-cides" and the introduction of GM cotton has only reduced that to something like 10 times a year. I wouldn't touch cottonseed oil with a barge pole let alone eat it, whether GM or not, even though the food standards website referred to above would have us believe it is safe. You might be able to run a diesel vehicle on it, maybe, but I certainly wouldn't feed it to my kids.

  As at December 2006 Food Standards Australia & New Zealand [FSANZ], our statutory body responsible for food safety, had approved 31 different GM "foods" including corn, cottonseed, Canola, soybeans, sugar beet, potato and wheat with a significant percentage being modified for glyphosate tolerance. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the trade-marked chemical known as Roundup marketed by Monsanto. "Modified for glyphosate tolerance" means the same as Monsanto's trade name of "Roundup Ready" [RR] seeds and refers to the ability of the plant to tolerate high concentrations of the broad-spectrum herbicide glyphosate in its tissues. Please note that "Canola" is a PVR marketing name for a plant, it is not a true plant species and not a "food" that you would eat a lot of. The plant it was derived from is in the mustard family, the same plant family that brought us mustard gas.

  In addition to the Genethics network mentioned by Deb Guildner, good information about GM can be found at:

  http://www.gmwatch.org - Browse the Biotech Brigade, a global directory on the deceptive PR push behind GM foods, starring Monsanto but featuring at least one .org.au that accepts funding from Monsanto. Read George Monbiot's opinion of gmwatch.org at http://www.gmwatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=51&page=1 [copy and paste into your browser if this goes to 2 lines]

  http:// www.grain.org contains info mainly about the big 5 GM crops [rice, corn, cotton, Canola and soybeans] with an emphasis on rice at the moment. One previously experimental variety of rice destined for pharmaceutical use contains human genes and was just approved for release last week in the US.

  The Institute of Science in Society http:// www.i-sis.org.uk has a good news story on their front page now about a coalition of independent scientists who will present comprehensive evidence to the European Parliament on 12 June 2007 for a European and worldwide ban on the release of GM crops.

  Robyn

  On Sunday, May 20, 2007, at 11:03 pm, pil-pc-oceania-request at lists.permacultureinternational.org/Bill Pilgrim wrote:

    Can anyone tell me if the talk about GM Corn on the shelves in Australia has any substance, regarding the fact that it was supposed to be Toxic to rats. This whole GM stuff is going to make us ill one way or another. If I know a product is GM then I will never buy it again, but can we be sure we will always know? I'm so old now that it will probably not make a lot of difference, but I detest the thought that I may, in some way support the production of the stuff
    Bill Pilgrim

  CONTACT DETAILS:

  Robyn Williamson
  PDC, Urban Horticulturist
  Local Seed Network Coordinator
  NORTH WESTERN SYDNEY COMMUNITY SEED SAVERS
  mobile: 0409 151 435
  ph/fx: (612) 9629 3560
  http://www.seedsavers.net
  http://www.communityfoods.org.au
  http://www.communitygarden.org.au
  http://www.bidjiwongcommunitynursery.org.au
  http://www.permaculturesydneybasin.org.au

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