Bernie, I can't speak for the Greens, and certainly not anyone in Labor. But your theory about greens is incorrect.

Our current way of life is destroying our life support system. For example, Australia's soil is degrading almost everywhere. How can anyone advocate continuing that? Many big technologies are part of the reason for that. If we want our society and civilisation to survive, we must adjust our way of life so it sustains and improves the world we are totally dependent on. (No mystical beliefs there, no hankering for the past, just simple reality.) Thus my opposition is to certain technologies that are used destructively, or are intrinsically destructive.

GM boosters have a very narrow view. It ignores the ecological context and it is selective in its choice of evidence. Living ecologies are unpredictable because they are so complex. We can never know if there will be an unanticipated "side effect". We have many examples in our history - rabbits, cane toads, etc etc. This means first of all that we are conducting an (another) open experiment on the biosphere and ourselves. If the wrong genes jump to the wrong related wild organisms we could have (another) major problem on our hands.

The industry boosterism that characterises this issue (and most of our politics these days) ignores plenty of evidence, including testimony of farmers and, for example, extensive reports like that of the Institute of Science and Society http://www.i-sis.org.uk/foodFutures.php .
It documents many examples, in developed and developing countries, where GM has failed to deliver, or has caused major problems, both agricultural and social. It also shows that modern natural/organic methods can equal or exceed industrial-ag yields, with fewer problems and with the soil improving instead of degrading.

So I oppose GM because it is destructive and unnecessary. I hanker for a sensible future with appropriate technologies.

This article is quite welcome. There has neve been any substantial evidence against GM crops. If you ask any GM objector what evidence they have you are handed what amounts to an objection to roundup, a chemical used for all crops, and nothing to do with GM specifically. The objection that we don't know what side effects a GM crop may have can be said about almost anything, but when all is said and done GM wheat or whatever is simply another form of wheat. New strains of wheat are always being introduced. The only real difference is that GM wheat has been developed by other means. The case against GM products has always been virtually non-existent.
As for Greens being conservative, they are conservative where technology is involved. They hate technology: hence their objection to GM crops. There is no reason involved.

Farmers in the US are being destroyed. GM is the latest method of transferring profit from farmers to agribusiness.
Here is a video of the Iowan farmers meeting the night before the official anti-trust hearing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1axAqJGEXI The stories are heartbreaking. The first farmer tells about a 5 year battle to stop Monsanto patenting wheat. “If anything belongs in the public domain... it’s the crops we grow for food.”
A rice grower talks about being squeezed between the seed companies and the buyers. Input costs high and sale price is low.
A dairy farmer from Wisconsin tells of his parents’ 29th wedding anniversary being a farm foreclosure and their 30th being a Sherriff’s auction on the court house steps. A farmer in NY State shot his 51 cows and then himself.
The last farmer says the problems of big ag is a worldwide issue. That the Mexicans driven north to the US and the Sudanese workers in the packing factory are family farmers being driven out by what is happening.
Phil Howard from Michigan State University has done fantastic work to graphically show what is happening to farming in the US. If you click on the graphics you get more graphics and info. The dots with Monsanto, Dow etc written on them show the consolidation of the seed industry. The bottom right graphic “The Food System” shows in more detail the various technological and input treadmills.
https://www.msu.edu/~howardp/infographics.html
This report was published last year by US farmers to highlight the serious damage being done to them by GM seeds.
http://farmertofarmercampaign.com/Out%20of%20Hand.FullReport.pdf
It details the increased costs of seeds, of the inability to buy non-GM seeds or to buy the best genetics without GM traits being included (which can reduce yield), of small seed companies going out of business, of research into seeds being very limited, farmers being sued and of farmers having to destroy seed that did not have a market for. Usually they would have used it for planting the following year. Because it was patented they could not do that and had to destroy it.

GM is about corporate profits.

Here is the link to the farm graphics that didn't work in the previous post. Hopefully it will in this.
https://www.msu.edu/~howardp/infographics.html
If not copy it and it should work. The data is extremely revealing.

lillian - look back at your own comments. Hardly any of it relates to GM as such but a lot relates to problems in the agricultural sector. Sure farmers are being forced to sell, maybe some of them are blaming GM crops as an alternative to blaming themselves, but farm consolidation is world wide and was happening long before GM crops came along. The consolidation and reduction in farm land involves some sad stories it is true, but to give your case any credence you would have to prove that the process had been speeded up by the adoption of GM crops.
Another point is that you are using essentially a social justice argument to ban or restrict the use of a new form of crop, and that does not make a lot of sense. Farmers are always changing their crop mix - switching certain areas from crops to cows and back again. Or switching their crop mix. They do not have to grow certain types of crops, or can at least reduce their dependence.

Bernie Masters

Those who ignore past mistakes are bound to repeat them. I remind you of the most toxic chemicals ever manufactured – organochlorines and the cover-up of the scientific evidence by governments, industry and its sycophants for some 40 years.

The irrefutable evidence supplied by environmentalists was finally supported by the Stockholm Convention which saw a global ban on the “dirty dozen” including chlorinated chemicals. Furthermore, Australia’s continued use of chlorinated pesticides including Endosulfan is to its shame when over 60 nations (including developing countries) have banned this lethal product.

Since you are “a registered lobbyist with the government of Western Australia,” I would urge you to disclose this information when you write such articles. I also question why you have not informed the reader that all GM crops are dependent on Roundup (Glyphosate) or why the well known scientific evidence on the dangers of Roundup has been concealed by the proponents of GM crops?:

Scientists at the Laboratories for Estrogens and Reproduction Institute of Biology at the University of Caen France advised that they had evaluated the toxicity of four glyphosate (G)-based herbicides in Roundup formulations, from 10(5) times dilutions, on three different human cell types.

“This dilution level is far below agricultural recommendations and corresponds to low levels of residues in food or feed. All R formulations caused total cell death within 24 hours.

“……..This work clearly confirms that the adjuvants in Roundup formulations are not inert. Moreover, the proprietary mixtures available on the market could cause cell damage and even death around residual levels to be expected, especially in food and feed derived from R formulation-treated crops.

When our Cabinet Ministers and those with vested interests endeavour to assure an unwitting public of the "benefits" of GM crops by citing research papers specifically released by Monsanto et al, the general public have very good reason to be alert and alarmed.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19105591?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

Thanks Bernie, I expect we are not far away from the organised outrage of the greens but I wanted to thank you anyway (for braving their anger).

I love the term greenmailing - brilliant.

Geoff Davies - "Australia's soil is degrading almost everywhere" - We are the oldest continent on earth - what are you comparing our soil to? (BTW its only degrading if you let it be :))

"Many big technologies are the reason for that" - c'mon Geoff you can do better than that - is it really the size or the uptake of the technology that determines the outcome? Does that make pacemakers bad?

One last comment from Geoff - I love the word boosterism. That is somethign that could take off!

Observor - our soil is degrading, that means it's not as good as it used to be, so I'm comparing it to how it used to be. Plain English I think. Even Government summaries of the state of the environment acknowledge widespread degradation. Leaving it be, with healthy vegetation, would allow it to begin recovering.

Perhaps you're confusing geological timescales with human timescales. The age of Australia's land surface (yes I know about that) is irrelevant to what I said. It's irrelevant on other continents too, because soil is degrading almost everywhere across the world, regardless of its starting quality. Our lifestyle is not sustainable. Elementary.

Soil health is actually improving in many ag areas in Australia. There is a common belief held by most grain farmers that building organic matter in soil will result in healthier crop yields. (mind you much of the assertion comes from the zero-till proponents, backed largely by the chemical companies - if you dont till, then you have spray to remove weeds).

Claims that GM foods will end world hunger are absurd, propagated by those who have a financial interest in converting the world’s food supply to their own patented varieties in order to control it.

With the global increase in GM crops, comes the most recent estimate on malnourished people which was released on October 14, 2009 by FAO which says that 1.02 billion people are undernourished, a sizable increase from its 2006 estimate of 854 million people.

The report states the increase has been due to three factors: 1) neglect of agriculture relevant to very poor people; 2) the current worldwide economic crisis, and 3) the significant increase of food prices in the last several years which has been devastating to those with only a few dollars a day to spend.

GM giants – Monsanto et al, claim that the volume of pesticide use in agriculture has fallen , however, researchers (including those at the Universities of California, and Buenos Aires, Argentina) report a big rise in pesticide use:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5AG0QY20091117

Incidence rates of cancer of the liver, pancreas, kidney, oesophagus, and thyroid have continued to rise in the US, (the largest producer of GM crops) as have the rates of new cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, leukaemia, myeloma, and childhood cancers. The incidence rates of cancer of the brain and bladder and melanoma of the skin in women, and testicular cancer in men, are also rising.

Monsanto has been lobbying for carbon credits for their Roundup Ready crops - some grown for agrofuel. As Country Gal advised, Roundup Ready crops don’t need ploughing because they can be heavily sprayed with herbicides, thus humans and animals are forcefed weed killer through the food chain.

Not ploughing the fields leaves more CO2 in the ground, but the vast spread of soy monocultures in Latin America have caused deforestation, the displacement of people, and massive amounts of toxic weed-killer.

This is deception and delusion of momentous proportions based on preposterous notions and ideas whose time should never have come. Fraud passed off as logic and ignorance passed off as wisdom.

There has never been a serious study that prove GM crops do not have long term consequences on human health and the environment. There have been marked increases in allergic and immuno related conditions in the Western world that remain unexplained.

GM crops will make no difference to the developing world while the economicy system and corrupt governments continue unabated. This argument is a furphy.

There has been much written about the negative impact on roundup ready GM crops and impact on soil bacteria. Issues like cross pollination and patent rights have the potential to impact our agriculural systems for the long term. These risks outweigh any furphy argument about the benefits of GM for poorer nations.

Thank goodness for healthy scepticism on this issue. Imagine if the failures of some regulatory bodies such as in the use and effect of pesticides, were played out in the radical pro-GM groups. It is confronting.

At the end of the day some aspects of GM may prove safe but until that time I fear money is going to win over common sense, science, truth in labelling and long term studies.

"Farmers are currently the primary beneficiaries of GM technology, with higher yields and lower pesticide usage keeping their costs down."

I'm happy to acknowledge BT modifications have reduced pesticide loads but Roundup resistant GM products have certainly increased herbicide use.

The American soy farmers are putting 50% more Roundup or its equivalents on their crops which are now nearly 100% GM.

Half truths always seem to bedevil this debate.

The Killing Fields - Australian governments do deals with GMO corporate fascists and move closer to committing additional crimes against humanity.

1) UNITED STATES ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
WASHINGTON D.C. 20460

SUBJECT: Criminal Investigation of Monsanto Corporation - Cover-up of Dioxin Contamination in Products - Falsification of Dioxin Health Studies:

http://www.pbs.org/pov/stories/vietnam/discuss/38/post.5

2) The story of how three corporate giants -- Monsanto , GE and Westinghouse -- covered their toxic trail:

http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200103/conspiracy.asp

3) EPA's Phony Investigation of Monsanto by William Sanjour – physicist and former senior officer at the USEPA:

http://www.greens.org/s-r/078/07-49.html

4) Seeds of Deception by Jeffrey Smith - Institute for Responsible Technology:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-smith/monsanto-the-worlds-poste_b_434900.html

http://www.seedsofdeception.com/Public/SeedsOfDeception/TableofContentsChapterSummaries/index.cfm

5) The desecration of Nature in a world ruled by Monsanto et al:

http://bst.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/29/3/236

http://www.grain.org/seedling_files/seed-06-01-3.pdf

6) Crime and Corruption - Monsanto and cancer milk - Fox News Kills Story & Fires Reporters:

http://asbestoscancerlung.co.cc/news-articles/monsanto-cancer-milk-fox-news-kills-story-fires-reporters.html

The good news:

http://current.com/items/90333588_federal-court-upholds-ban-on-genetically-modified-alfalfa-monsanto-petition-denied-in-full.htm

Well the other big bonus with zero-till (spray instead) is much less carbon emissions. If farmers end up wearing a carbon tax it is going to drive towards spraying even in cases that they may otherwise choose to till. Its a tough choice - there are currently only 2 ways to remove weeds from crop competition and to preserve nutrients and moisture. Both have their upsides and their downsides. If you want to promote one over the other, best that you do so with both eyes open.

Bernie, I am not sure that kow-towing to the Greens was big on Kim Chance's agenda with GM crops. I am told it was the advice he was getting from his minders and the fact that certain emotive anti-GM groups had those minders ears.

Needless to say, Chance didn't let the truth get in the way of his actions on this subject. Having put himself out on that limb, there is little chance of him climbing down - hence his most recent attack.

Protagoras would have us believe Jeffrey Smith, a self confessed believer in his ability to levitate. Sad, but true.

Country Gal, as you say no-till is more dependent on chemicals. However, it is certainly better for the soil than old fashioned tillage. I suppose it is a case of whether people think soil erosion is better than herbicide use as to which one they choose.

“Needless to say, Chance didn't let the truth get in the way of his actions on this subject.”

Agronomist – You, Chairman Bernie and Big Ag. GM totalitarians need to understand that in a democracy, “No” from a majority public, means “No!”

And no sane man would regard the insidious hijacking of our food supply by multi-national greed merchants as anything more than criminal folly in conception and criminal in execution.

In Chairman Bernie’s state of WA, soil salinity is engulfing the equivalent of 19 footy fields every day while Australia feeds 60 million people every year. However the state of Australia’s environment is of no concern to GM lobbyists or indeed, the APVMA who disgracefully “regulate” agricultural chemicals by implementing standards inferior to those in developing countries.

When the science says "No" Monsanto and its clones fudge the data while Nature suffers the lingering death of a thousand cuts:

1) 9 Feb. 2010: “Former managing director of Monsanto India, Tiruvadi Jagadisan, is the latest to join the critics of Bt brinjal, perhaps the first industry insider to do so.

“On Monday, he elaborated by saying the company (Monsanto) "used to fake scientific data" submitted to government regulatory agencies to get commercial approvals for its products in India":

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/Story/83093/Monsanto%20%27faked%27%20data%20for%20approvals%20claims%20its%20ex-chief.html

2) “Robert Kremer is a microbiologist with the US Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service and an adjunct professor in the Division of Plant Sciences at the University of Missouri. He is co-author of one of five papers published in the October 2009 issue of The European Journal of Agronomy that found negative impacts of Roundup herbicide..:

http://www.nongmoreport.com/articles/jan10/scientists_find_negative_impacts_of_GM_crops.php

3) “After 24 hours, the application of Roundup reduced juvenile wood frog survival from 96% to 32%, juvenile tree frog survival from 100% to 18%, and juvenile toad survival from 100% to 14%. Across all species, only 21% of all juvenile amphibians survived the Roundup application after one day:”

http://4ccr.pgr.mpf.gov.br/institucional/grupos-de-trabalho/gt-transgenicos/bibliografia/pgm-e-riscos-ambientais/Relyea,%202005,%20Ecolo%20Appli.pdf

A GM pig will remain a GM pig, no matter how much gloss one applies.

Protagoras, the public may believe they want to change the facts, but unfortunately the facts remain the facts. The simple facts are that regulatory authorities around the world have reviewed GM crops and found no evidence of health risks. They have been consumed now for 15 years among millions of people worldwide and not so much as a sniffle has resulted. No humans have grown tails, despite Kim Chance’s claims.

Jagadisan’s claims about Monsanto faking BT brinjal data are farcical. The guy is 84 and retired decades ago before BT brinjal was even thought about. He then goes on to distance himself from the supposed fraud conducted when he was the GM in India. It wasn’t him, but supposedly someone else – he doesn’t know who. His comments about Terminator technology are also laughable. It wasn’t even Monsanto’s technology– the USDA and Delta & Pineland had the patent and it hadn’t even been patented when Jagadisan last worked. This is where I have problems with these claims. If they have that many obvious errors, how can I believe anything else they say?

Of the “five papers published in the October 2009 issue of The European Journal of Agronomy that found negative impacts of Roundup herbicide” all but one showed effects from spraying glyphosate on susceptible plants. Yep, if you treat plants with herbicides there will be an effect, because herbicides are designed to kill unwanted plants. What is so surprising about that?

Lastly, if you treat frogs with detergents they get sick. Particularly if you treat them with 64 L/ha of product as Relyea did.

“ The simple facts are that regulatory authorities around the world have reviewed GM crops and found no evidence of health risks.”

Agronomist - Both you and I know that the above statement is meant to deceive because peer-reviewed scientific papers have long ago debunked your myth. Genetically modified crops are not thoroughly tested, regulated or proven safe.

Just one example is the research conducted by David Schubert, Ph.D, who is on the faculty of the Salk Institute of Biological Studies in San Diego California, where he is head of the Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory:

“The U.S. regulators rely almost exclusively on information provided by the biotech crop developer, and those data are not published in journals or subjected to peer review,” said Schubert.

Co-author William Freese added: "In one case, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ignored a published study by an FDA scientist suggesting that GM corn could cause food allergies, and instead asked Monsanto and Syngenta to essentially re-do FDA's analysis.

"GM food regulation in the U.S. bears as little relation to good science as the typical used car ad to the true state of the automobile. Both are designed to sell a product," said Freese.

Astonishingly, user agreements drawn up by companies such as Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta explicitly forbid the use of the seeds for any independent research. Under the threat of litigation, scientists cannot test a seed to explore the different conditions under which it thrives or fails or whether GM crops lead to unintended environmental side effects.

Protagoras “Astonishingly, user agreements drawn up by companies such as Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta explicitly forbid the use of the seeds for any independent research. Under the threat of litigation, scientists cannot test a seed to explore the different conditions under which it thrives or fails or whether GM crops lead to unintended environmental side effects.”

That is truly amazing, because I have done farmer-funded trials on GM crops. All I had to do was submit the protocol to Monsanto and get their approval. It really was as simple as that. But I see now that according to you such trials could never have happened.

David Schubert has conducted no research on GM food. All he has done is write cherry picked articles on the matter. Schubert in any case is wrong. The data on GM food is reviewed by the regulatory agencies and by independent scientists they consult before the product is allowed on the market. More than is done for any other sort of food.

Agronomist – It was clear from the information I provided that Schubert’s paper, to which I referred, was an investigation into the failure to adequately test GM organisms in plants and animals and the lack of regulation.

However, Schubert has published over 200 reviewed manuscripts in the areas of molecular genetics, cell biology, and protein chemistry and has written and lectured on the potential health hazards associated with genetically modified crops. Alas for you Agronomist, his credentials in the area of human health, unintentionally place you at the bottom of the pile.

Subsequent to Schubert’s findings, Elson J Shields at Cornell University, the spokesperson for a group of 24 leading corn insect scientists, found during their research in 2009 (published by Scientific American) that some papers on genetically modified seeds are indeed published, but only studies that the seed companies have approved ever see the light of day.

In a number of cases, experiments that had the implicit go-ahead from the seed company were later blocked from publication because the results were not flattering.

“It is important to understand that it is not always simply a matter of blanket denial of all research requests, which is bad enough,” wrote Shields, in a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency (the body tasked with regulating the environmental consequences of genetically modified crops in the US), “but selective denials and permissions based on industry perceptions of how ‘friendly’ or ‘hostile’ a particular scientist may be toward [seed-enhancement] technology.”

Consequently Agronomist, that places you, a GM proponent, at the top of the pile but only with the seed companies - albeit bereft of any credibility.

FOE’s 2010 report on global GM crops found that:

“GM crops are also not feeding the world. They remain confined to about 2.6% of agricultural land worldwide, and 99% are grown for animal feed and fuels rather than for food crops.

“The US, Argentina, Brazil, India, Canada and China grew over 94% of GM crops in 2008, with the first three accounting for 79% of the total:

http://www.foe.org/sites/default/files/who_benefits_full_report_2010.pdf