GM petition

[Brengirl]

Why? The petition is for more information....

More than happy to get more information but if it's full of bull will I be any the wiser?

[binley100]

I'm not sure that fiddling with nature is good..........
These scientists come up with stuff that's meant to be wonderful and quite often it backfires. A couple of things spring to mind:_
Thalidomide and BSE

[Hilary B]

I'm not sure that fiddling with nature is good..........
These scientists come up with stuff that's meant to be wonderful and quite often it backfires. A couple of things spring to mind:_
Thalidomide and BSE

That is the sort of situation I had in mind, and there are others..... IMO it happens because the business side puts pressure on the science side to go into production too soon (and sometimes the research stops at that point as well, until problems are proven).
The snag with the GM idea is that if we mess up the environment with half-tested stuff, there isn't a spare!

[beefy]

Out of curiosity, Beefy, what don't you agree with?

Gm crops are already being grown safely in America , the research has already been done and peer reviewed but thats not good enough for a small band of people who are determined to keep the technology from being used here in the UK. The "Organic Association " have set themselves up as the only way to produce food in this country and are fully focused on stopping any other method of producing food . Who set them up and who gives them the mandate to speak for us ? They certainly don't speak for me but I was born and raised on a farm , attended agricultural college and have my degree in agriculture . I've read and followed the research for years and would be more than happy to grow it and have been to America and seen the production and have happily eaten the end result .
Some want to scaremonger the rest of the population into beleiving that" GM is bad and Organic is good " and are quite happy to quote BSE & Thalidomide as examples of why we should keep our heads firmly in the sand even though they have absolutely nothing to do with GM food. Then when all else fails you get the " Interfering with nature - thats not good".
Show me EVIDENCE that GM food is harmful to humans . Last year it was shown that organic food was no better nutritionally for you than "ordinary" food . Look how quickly that was jumped on by the organic lobby "It couldn't be right " but nobody ever produced any facts or figures to back up the organic point of view.
Research and development has gone as far as it can , all the lab work has been done , the next step is field trials - they have taken place in America and have passed the Food Standards Agency equivalent over there . The same has to be done here in the UK so that the FSA can pass the crops here but the Anti GM movement won't let it happen because once it does then they would have in their eyes " lost " which would decimate their arguments and income stream . Something they are not prepared to give up easily.
Wait and somebody is going to come along with " Americans are the most obese nation on earth"Thats because they eat to much - not because they are eating GM food .
The whole "Organic" and "GM Free " movement is built on fear not on fact - someday it's going to be exposed for the nonsense that it is - that day can't come soon enough for me .

[binley100]

Some want to scaremonger the rest of the population into beleiving that" GM is bad and Organic is good " and are quite happy to quote BSE & Thalidomide as examples of why we should keep our heads firmly in the sand even though they have absolutely nothing to do with GM food. Then when all else fails you get the " Interfering with nature - thats not good".
.

I for one am happy to quote thalidomide as I could very easily have been one of those affected. My mum was given the drug when she was expecting me and only the fact that it made her feel worse so she stopped taking it meant that I was born "normal" . Evidence that it's harmful may not come to light until a later time.
Yes, I grow my own food and only use natural fertilisers etc, but I don't buy only organic produce so I'm not not one of those who thinks only organic is good and everything else is bad . I just can't understand why they think they have to produce some sort of superfood .

[Alison]

Signed , really don't believe that we should be rail roaded into something like this.

[ladylottie]

I've signed too - we just don't know enough about GM crops.

[beefy]

I for one am happy to quote thalidomide.

Simple question -" What has Thalidomide got to do with food production?"
Nothing - it was a mess created by a pharmaceutical company . Nobody brings it up when the lastest cancer drugs that may be able to help prolong a sufferers life are released . By your arguement all new pharmaceutical products should be banned just in case . Thats were the thalidomide arguement takes you .I'm not saying thalidomide wasn't a terrible thing - it was - but the pharmaceutical industry continues .
If GM crops are as bad as the anti GM movement makes them out to be why won't they let a small scale trial go ahead? That would prove how dangerous it was but of course it might just prove that there were no risks with Gm crops . We all get to see the results when the white coveralled gangs destroy a field trial splashed across the TV news at night but yet 1000's of hectares of GM crops are grown across the USA (one of the most compensation conscious cultures in the world) every year without incident .
Maybe it's the NIMBY attitude more than anything else here in the UK.

[binley100]

The point was not about food production the point was about making sure that new technology is safe in the longterm . Why do we have to do something just because the good ol' US of A says it works . They reckoned the atom bomb was the best thing since sliced bread.........

[Hilary B]

Show me EVIDENCE that GM food is harmful to humans . Last year it was shown that organic food was no better nutritionally for you than "ordinary" food . Look how quickly that was jumped on by the organic lobby "It couldn't be right " but nobody ever produced any facts or figures to back up the organic point of view.

Show me evidence that it is NOT harmful to THE ENVIRONMENT!
Allow me the option to AVOID it, if I so choose, but how, if it is grown in many places? There WILL be cross-pollination and that WILL put the altered genes into seed that was not intended to be GM. If you can prevent that in the 'field trials' all well and good, but I don't know of any mechanism for doing so.
As with the BST milk and the hormone-growth-promoted beef, I want to make my own decision on whether I include these things in my diet. It is because America refused that option on the beef (they wouldn't label it as whether the stuff was there) that imports of American beef were banned for years (I don't know if this still applies), because customers were refusing to buy beef unless they KNEW it didn't have this stuff in.

[Glutton4...]

Beefy, I fully agree with you. But the whole reason for this petition, is not to blindly accept GM Foods, but because most of us want to have more information. How can we reasonably be expected to say Yes or No to GM when we don't know enough about it!? I think you're very brave accepting it so readily, but if you believe in it, that's fine for you. I don't have the knowledge, so don't want to accept it until I know more.

I disagree with your argument regarding the Pharmaceutical Companies, surely they are the ones behind all this genetic modification work - it's what they do!

[FROSTYFRECKLE]

Signed. Mother Nature has a tendency to kick ass when messed with

[binley100]

I disagree with your argument regarding the Pharmaceutical Companies, surely they are the ones behind all this genetic modification work - it's what they do!

agreed, I decided last night to do some reading on GM foods and was a little bit concerned to see that it had been suggested about adding into the genes something as a vaccine against Hepatitis. Good thing you might say for the underdeveloped countries but if they can add that what else could they be adding ........and also Mr Beefy you say that you have eaten them and that you have suffered no ill-effects , can you see into your future health or the future health of your offspring (if you have any of course)

[Glutton4...]

agreed, I decided last night to do some reading on GM foods and was a little bit concerned to see that it had been suggested about adding into the genes something as a vaccine against Hepatitis. Good thing you might say for the underdeveloped countries but if they can add that what else could they be adding ........and also Mr Beefy you say that you have eaten them and that you have suffered no ill-effects , can you see into your future health or the future health of your offspring (if you have any of course)

That's also a really worrying thing (well it worries the chuff out of me! ) We (the so-called civilized Western World ) use these poorly educated people as Guinea Pigs to test 'our' theories out. Like those Women that are given Contraception injections, and told they are Vitamins. What gives 'us' the right!?