Agronomist: Your link is to the briefing packet, not final decision. Among other things, the briefing addresses fertility thus: "based on research on other triploid fish, particularly females, we have reason to believe that the population of triploid, all-female AquAdvantage Salmon will be effectively sterile, with fertility greatly reduced or eliminated as a result of triploidy. However, it is recognized that a small proportion of the fish population, particularly those that are not triploid (i.e., ≤5%), may be fertile." Plenty of potential there to impact the fertility of wild stocks as Devlin's modelling work (not referenced by the FDA) attests. The briefing also says: "ABT has not submitted any specific data to show whether or not AquAdvantage Salmon are indeed sterile."

The food safety assessment is based on 'substantial equivalence' not experimental data as far as I can tell. Not good enough!

Tony Lavis: The flaw in your approach is that there is no effective labelling in Australia of any foods made using genetic manipulation techniques. Download Food Standard 1.5.2 here: http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/F2013C00199/Download and you’ll see that only 1 of the 50+ events approved may sometimes require a label. You are gratuitously insulting to most people as you are in the small minority who do not care if an animal is GM, or why.

>>The flaw in your approach is that there is no effective labelling in Australia of any foods made using genetic manipulation techniques. Download Food Standard 1.5.2 here: http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/F2013C00199/Download and you’ll see that only 1 of the 50+ events approved may sometimes require a label.<<

The Food Standards Code is statutory law that can be easily changed by an Act of Parliament. Parliament enact new laws and amend old ones all the time. In fact, that is their job: why we elect them and why we pay them. A bad law is not an excuse to throw your hands up in dismay and say 'woe unto us for the law will not permit a reasonable course of action', it is an opportunity to lobby Parliament to have the law improved.

I am quite familiar with some sections of the Food Standards Code but I had no idea there was such an oversight when it came to the proper labelling of food. When I finish this post I'll be writing to my local member seeking advice on how to best address this oversight.

>>You are gratuitously insulting to most people as you are in the small minority who do not care if an animal is GM, or why.<<

I am also in the small minority of people who do not care about interest rates, or why. Does that also make me gratuitously insulting to people who do? Is it really a 'gratuitous insult' to the majority just to hold an opinion that differs from their own?

I guess it is to hippies who want everyone to think exactly like they do: when people resist group-think and do their thinking for themselves it must be quite shocking and insulting to hippies that think we will all just fall into lockstep conformity at their decree.

Cheers,

Tony

Minus 30 points to Hufflepuff for dubious conclusions in herbology on the basis of scant evidence.

Cheers,

Tony

There is no evidence of damage or danger from consuming GM foods because virtually no credible, long term research has been done. We don't actually know one way or the other.

Farmed fish consume fish - so all fish farming does is convert less palatable fish to more palatable ones. No net gain in fish, which is worrying when we have depleted the oceans by 90%. The solution to food security doesn't lie in fish farming.

The scars of war do not vanish with the victory.
They linger on to poison the future.

Sailors on old warship dumped thousands of tons of radioactive waste for years
http://www.tampabay.com/news/military/veterans/the-atomic-sailors/2157927

"We turned off all the lights," George Albernaz testified at a 2005 Department of Veterans Affairs hearing, "and … pretend that we were broken down and … we would take these barrels and having only steel-toed shoes … no protection gear, and proceed to roll these barrels into the ocean, 300 barrels at a trip."

Not all of them sank. A few pushed back against the frothing ocean, bobbing in the waves like a drowning man. Then shots would ring out from a sailor with a rifle at the fantail. And the sea would claim the bullet-riddled drum.

Back inside the ship, Albernaz marked in his diary what the sailors dumped into the Atlantic Ocean. He knew he wasn't supposed to keep such a record, but it was important to Albernaz that people know he had spoken the truth, even when the truth sounded crazy.

For up to 15 years after World War II, the crew of Albernaz's ship, the USS Calhoun County, dumped thousands of tons of radioactive waste into the Atlantic Ocean, often without heeding the simplest health precautions, according to Navy documents and Tampa Bay Times interviews with more than 50 former crewmen.