GM car? GE Money? The abbreviations can sometimes be rather amusing.

Julie, the motor car came before the road rules. Technology usually drives regulation and not the other way around. This is because technology is always in front and the good and bad are mostly sorted out later.

Genetically modified crops are no different in this aspect. But for one thing. They are being introduced into Australia by Australian subsidiariy companies to American mother companies.

The real driver behind much of the opposition to these crops has nothing to do with care for the environment or the public health but all to do with who owns the technology.

Australian farmers are generally open minded to inventions that will make farming more efficient. The second generation biotech crops have a lot to offer. See report from Bureau of Rural science on what is in the pipeline. See http://www.daff.gov.au/content/publications.cfm?ObjectID=17D7E073-2B1C-4B6C-89276D6DD41DA84D.

Dear Julie NonGM Newman:

In posts dating back to 27 November, you tried to tell us that atrazine wasn’t toxic but glyphosate was, and referred to your website, which in turn quotes the NGIN website. NGIN includes some text circulated by Greenpeace since at least 1997, and has been repeatedly rebutted.

NGIN claims "Glyphosate reduces the growth of earthworms and increases their mortality, is toxic to many of the beneficial mycorrhizal fungi which help plants take up nutrients from soils, can inhibit anaerobic nitrogen fixation in soil and is the second most toxic out of nine herbicides tested for toxicity to a range of soil bacteria, fungi, actinomycetes and yeasts. It has been linked to Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma and has caused gene mutations and chromosomal aberrations in animal experiments.

The citations are either very selective or don’t say what is claimed for them. For example, although repeated applications (once every 14 days!) in New Zealand lab tests show effects on earthworms, field trials in Adelaide involving the same and related species showed no effect (Dalby et al. 1995, Soil Biol. Biochem. 27: 1661-1662). Although glyphosate caused a significant short term effect on soil microbial activity in one study, the effects disappeared in 6 months. Further, a paper immediately following the one cited by Greenpeace and NGIN and by the same authors in the same journal found no effect of glyphosate on ectomycorrhizal symbiosis of red pine. In fact, 46-48% of seedling pines failed to survive in non-glyphosate treated plots, apparently due to competition with weeds, whereas all survived in the glyphosate-treated plots (Chakravarty and Chatarpaul (1990) Pestic. Sci. 28:243-247). The Hardell and Eriksson paper that claims an association between glyphosate and Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma in fact shows no closer relationship than chance, and shows a stronger association with glass wool (watch out for your air conditioner filters!).

Now that you know about these miscitations of the real literature, will you pull these claims from your website? What evidence is required for you to withdraw factually inaccurate claims from your website? Agronomist, gmopundit and others have been providing you lots of such evidence

More for Julie:
You still haven’t directly answered any of my questions, such for any evidence for losses, and you seem to ignore answers from other people, but I’ll help you with liability. It is often claimed that there will be losses in the US too, but there seems to be little evidence of uncompensated losses there. The exception is Starlink corn, and Bayer paid out millions in compensation under current tort law.

Back on 23 November at 10:20 PM, Sten explained strict liability and its irrelevance to the herbicide resistant canola approved by the OGTR. We don’t make the manufacturers of even more risky products strictly liable. If 2,4-D is sprayed on or drifts onto a cotton crop, there will certainly be liability, but it will be with the person doing the spraying, not the manufacturers of 2,4-D. I realise you think GM is so important that you want to change all of case law, but you would have to show some significant losses and some legal theory to justify the change.

As in case of liability, who pays should depend on the source of the problem.

Let’s take the case of your Network member, Geoffrey Carracher. First, will he suffer any losses from having some 0.5% GM in his canola? What are the losses going to be? Assuming he does have some losses, his most likely defendant would be his seed supplier, especially if the supplier warranted that the seed would be GM free. Because it is well documented in Canadian and Australian data (such as Mary Rieger’s) that canola pollen flow is very low (less than 0.5%) in neighboring paddocks, seed purity is the biggest issue. In a whole harvest load, even grain left in a harvester is not likely to be enough to push admixture up to 0.5%. In short, seed companies have the greatest burden. Follow the US mode and next will be the marketers. Only organic growers have any obligations for testing costs in the US; it is a burden that they have placed on themselves as the purveyor of an upmarket product

Would some of the Pro GM people pontificating on this site care to advise me :Who is going to accept responsibility for the increase of dioxin in Sydney Harbour to the degree that a total ban has been imposed on the harvesting of Shrimps. I understand about a score of fishermen have lost their livelihood as a result of the ban which is expected to be in place for decades.
Was this a foreseeable consequence to the use of pesticides , herbicides and PVC manufacture.
Is the forecast for GM food consumption guaranteed not to have potential health hazards for consumers.
If a hazard is discovered in the future,who will take responsibility?

The rules I am proposing are exactly what US and Canada want to introduce for the next GM crop. They have learnt from their mistakes and contrary to what Rebel is suggesting, if GM wheat is introduced, US and Canada do not want to sell their wheat as GM if they do not grow GM wheat. That is the issue. If Australia introduces GM under existing rules, all Australian farmers are expected to market their produce as GM and there is clear market rejection to GM. Once introduced, the rules can not be turned around after contamination occurs. Once contaminated, the non-GM farmer, if he wants to develop a niche market of non-GM, is expected to pay to try to keep GM out and be liable if he can’t. This is ludicrous, why shouldn't Australia learn from the mistakes of other countries and get the rules right first?
The APVMA report on Atrazine: findings = "no major toxicology concerns" and the article is showing GM is no safer than non-GM.
There is evidence of losses when Canada's GM introduction changed their US$32.68/tonne premium to a US$30 penalty but farmers and now taxpayers through increased subsidies are paying for those losses.
Geoffrey Carracher has already experienced losses. His testing cost him $1200 and the seed companies refused to guarantee a GM-free status.
How will we assess for market loss caused by losing customers wanting guarantees that there is no GM canola present?
Spraydrift can be avoided and identified immediately but GM contamination can not. Yes, we plan to take legal action against GM farmers under that same law, but their legal defence is that they followed the crop management plans prepared by the GM company. We don’t support the GM farmer being liable either.
The liability for the next wave of pharmaceutical products will be far worse.
I have been in this debate long enough to know that the pro-GM PR giants make a concerted effort to try to discredit any negative report on GM and I have learnt by experience not to trust the GM industry.

NonGMFarmer. Unfortunately, I got no real pleasure from having my prediction about you proved correct. However, your response has totally stunned me. Perhaps you could explain to me how the 27th November 2005 doesn’t qualify as “this years statistics”? According to my calendar, this was only last week. Are you living in some sort of time warp?

So, I had a paid PR consultant come to Australia to help me? This is news to me. Perhaps you can tell me who and when it was and I will check my diary. Actually, I don’t need a paid PR consultant to tell me that you are spouting a lot of misinformation to support your cause. I can look the data up for myself.

As far as I can tell, the $38 premium you talk about was due to better quality and availability of Canadian canola – nothing more. For an example, total Australian production in 1994 was 262,000 T, Canadian production was 7,232,000 T. In 1994, oil content of Australian canola (that is what it is sold for) was only 39% compared to 42.9% for Canadian canola. That is, in 1994 Australia was trying to market small amounts of poor quality canola. Any improvement in quality and volume would help price. The only market Canada lost on going GM was the EU market. This was an occasional market only and offered no premium over other markets. Indeed, Australia has since lost the Mexican market to Canada. You haven’t heard that there is a bumper canola crop in Canada this year? Perhaps you should check as it might influence your canola prices.

Oh, and by the way, I didn’t mention Monsanto’s Cafeteria at all. This morning I looked up the news reports and found that in fact the headquarters of Monsanto in St Louis doesn't seem to have a GE cafeteria. The report referred to a company called Granada Food Services, who supply the cafeteria in Monsanto’s UK offices, and they have decided not to carry GE foods. Never mind, don't let the facts get in the way of a good story!