Is it Safe
As far as getting GM out of a farm, you harvest the crop, feed it to pigs if you wish, or chicken or burn it if your that rich, and next use an appropriate herbicide, or tillage (which is more harmfull than some herbicides), to eliminate any residual plants. I gave the Starlink and the other example as evidence this can work. It may take two seasons.

You seem to have missed the reasoning behind my repeated comments that omega3 will be in oils, as you are going on as if other food will be containing unwanted omega3 like golden rice with vitaminA. The oil is squeezed and used separately- so only people who deliberately buy the oil, and informed about the content, need to be involved. Informed consent.

Let me respond to your supposition that I work using research grants from GM companies. I don't do research in the plant area.I dont get such grants. I work on medical subjects that have been funded by government agencies. Whats more, I have for years deliberately avoided taking earnings from GM companies so my voice cannot be silenced by the kind of question you are putting as I am well aware the antiGM groups use that slur to shut up criticism of their own poorly thought out opinions, and I consider their strategy to silence criticism to be unethical. In any case, its irrelevant to the argument. Do you really think I really read hundreds on comments on this thread (and many others) as a way of making money? The fact that you need to bring up money rather than evidence suggests that you yourself have run out of evidence.

If you wish to continue the argument that money cancels out evidence and argument, explain to me why groups who use scaremongering to make money, as the main anti-GM lobby do, and many in organic food, shouldn't be discounted because of their own self interest, from having opinions about hazards? And its your argument, not mine.

Drop in canola yields in the first few years of adoption? I can't see it in the figures (http://www.canola-council.org/acreageyields.html). The five years before GM was adopted yields were

1991: 24 Bu/acre
1992: 22.7 Bu/acre
1993: 23.9 Bu/acre
1994: 22.4 Bu/acre
1995: 21.8 Bu/acre

GM canola was first grown in 1996 when it was about 5% of the area.
Yields were 26.2 Bu/acre (obviously a pretty good year.

In 1997, GM was about 12% of the area, yields were 23.4 Bu/acre.
In 1998, GM was about 35% of the area, yields were 25.1 Bu/acre.
In 1999, GM was about 50% of the area, yields were 28.2 Bu/acre.

Except for 1996 when yields were higher, it looks pretty much like yields increased as GM area increased. How on earth can you conclude that yields went down except by using 1996 as a benchmark? If you are going to use any single year as a benchmark use 1995 when no GM canola was grown.

Choi and Daniell are wrong when it comes to canola. Roundup Ready canola has both a resistant EPSPS from a bacterium and a glyphosate oxidase from an other bacterium. You could have read this in the links I gave you if you had bothered. If your quotes are correct, Choi is also wrong about other Roundup Ready crops. Roundup Ready cotton, soybean, etc. have a resistant enzyme from a bacterium - they don't "overproduce EPSPS to resist glyphosate."

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5407595

Omega-3 fatty acids are a crucial component of a healthy diet—particularly, it seems, for pregnant women wanting bright, sociable children

Sadly, these days, the average see-food diet doesn't include enough seafood, even though fish are a good source of a group of nutrients known as omega-3 fatty acids.

... data from a long-term study of British children suggest they are even more important than had previously been realised. In particular, the amount of omega-3 in a pregnant woman's diet helps to determine her child's intelligence, fine-motor skills (such as the ability to manipulate small objects, and hand-eye co-ordination) and also propensity to anti-social behaviour.

...

Perhaps the most startling finding was that the children of those women who had consumed the smallest amounts of omega-3 fatty acids during their pregnancies had verbal IQs six points lower than average. ... And the finding is particularly pertinent because existing dietary advice to pregnant women, at least in America, is that they should limit their consumption of seafood in order to avoid exposing their fetuses to trace amounts of brain-damaging methyl mercury. Ironically, that means they avoid one of the richest sources of omega-3s.

Dr Hibbeln, however, says his work shows that the benefits of eating such fish vastly outweigh the risks from the mercury in them. Indeed, in the Avon study, it was those children exposed to the lowest levels of methyl mercury who were at greatest risk of having low verbal IQ.

The researchers' second finding was that at 3½ years of age, those children with the best measures of fine-motor performance were the ones whose mothers had had the highest intake of omega-3s. Their third finding was that a low intake of omega-3s during pregnancy led to higher levels of pathological social interactions such as an inability to make friends as a child grew up.

d, why exactly should the non-GM farmer be responsible for removing GM from our non-GM crop? The GM company should be legally responsible for recalling their product if it causes economic loss to others.
"Informed consent"? You still don't seem to understand that if a farmer can not keep this Omega 3 or any GM crop out of our crop, if it is too difficult and too expensive to segregate, we can't market our produce as GM-free or Omega 3 free. That is the issue, consumers want the choice to avoid GM and farmers want the choice to market to them. That choice will be denied unless we get fair risk management in place.
I found your comment about money hilarious. Most of the early sections of this post, the pro-GM sector constantly tried claiming I was funded by Greenpeace etc, I agree "their strategy to silence criticism" is "unethical", "irrelevant to the argument" and the "need to bring up money rather than evidence suggests that you yourself have run out of evidence."
I do not profit from the GM debate, it costs me money and time. Injustice and unfair play only fuels my determination to make the non-GM farmers voice heard.

Canadian Statistics:
Yield/t/ha http://www.canola-council.org/acreageyields.html
= Adoption of GM-canola (million ha) MaxFosterABARE:
1995-NoGM
1996-1.499 =0.1
1997-1.299 =1.6
1998-1.136 =2.7
1999-1.398 =3.0

Statistics clearly indicate a reduction in yield, not an increase in yield. Like I said, yield is mainly dependent on seasonal conditions but one thing is proven, there was no dramatic increase of yield experienced with the adoption of GM canola in Canada. If there was the 30% yield improvement that we are being told to expect, you would have expected to see a 30% increase in yields in Canada.

If an article is printed in the Scientist, you would expect it to be a credible scientifically correct article. Where was your article to correct it?

http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/22191/

Re "The Scientist" article, by Choi: this is not a peer reviewed scientific paper, but is a journalists magazine article partly to promote new technology of business rivals of Monsanto.
Its title "GM crops detoxify glyphosate" might convince readers that what Agronomist says is true.
It has some obvious factual errors in it, perhaps due to the journalist's haste, or overenthusiastic business promotion.
QUOTE
“Commercialization of this trait may provide competition to Roundup Ready crops,” researcher Linda Castle of Verdia in Redwood City, Calif., told The Scientist. “Verdia is working with Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc. to evaluate the commercial potential in corn and with Delta and Pine Land Company to evaluate the commercial utility of the trait in cotton.” "

The glyphosate detoxification charactoristics of the Monsanto canola variety are on the public record in Australia, and support agrononomists comments too. They say Monsanto Round UP ready canola has a glyphosate degrading enzyme goxv247 added to it.
http://www.ogtr.gov.au/pdf/ir/dir020finalrarmp.pdf
QUOTE
Section 3.2 The goxv247 gene
86. The goxv247 gene from the bacterium Ochrobactrum anthropi strain LBAA encodes the enzyme glyphosate oxidoreductase (GOXv247) which inactivates the herbicide glyphosate by converting it to aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA) and glyoxylate (Pipke &
Amrhein 1988). Glyoxylate is a common plant metabolite and AMPA is degraded by several microorganisms (ANZFA 2000).
Pipke, R., Amrhein, N. (1988). Degradation of the phosphonate herbicide glyphosate by Arthrobacter atrocyaneus ATCC 13752. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 54: 1293-1296.

87. The goxv247 gene encodes a single polypeptide of 431 amino acids with a molecular mass of 46.1 kD. This gene is a variant of the bacterial gox gene and has improved affinity for glyphosate and therefore degrades the herbicide more efficiently. The goxv247 gene varies from the gox gene by only 5 nucleotides and the variant GOXv247 protein is 99% identical to the native GOX enzyme, differing by 3 amino acids out of 400 (Woodward et al. 1994, Monsanto Unpublished).
88. The goxv247 gene was also modified to have a plant-preferred codon usage which was achieved by site-directed mutagenesis (Barry et al. 1994, Monsanto Unpublished).

Ms. Newman:

I have now reviewed your comments in detail. You consistently misquote ABARE, Bureau of Statistics, Canadian Canola Council, and Oilseeds Federation incorrectly, as Agronomist has repeatedly pointed out. (You have also misquoted and misrepresented the American and Canadian organic standards, as shown below.) Further, you extensively quote here and/or at your website from Greenpeace and GM Watch, which are obviously anti-GM.

You also seem to confuse reliable and non-reliable sources of scientific information. Despite their names, "The Scientist” and “New Scientist” are not written by or for scientists. They are just popular magazines, and tend to be sensational to increase readership. As brief evidence, I point to the ad on The Scientist’s website (http://www.the-scientist.com/) last night:

“Is evolution just a theory? You can prove creation. Order free booklet” with a link to http://www.gnmagazine.org/evolution/

I guarantee you that no reputable scientific outfit would carry such an ad. The fact that The Scientist carries such ads speaks volumes about their anti-scientific approach. I’m still wondering how many articles about sex The New Scientist can average per year.

By the way, the Economist is also not written by or for economists, although it appears to have higher standards than either The Scientist or New Scientist.

With respect to the American National Organic Standards (http://www.ams.usda.gov/nop/NOP/standards.html), I know these very well because I am currently the Director of the University of California’s Sustainable Ag Program, which makes me responsible for organic farming research and outreach. You have clearly confused the use of “conventional” with GM ingredients in your claims about 95% purity in organic production (e.g., p 141 of the Standards). It’s conventional ingredients that are allowed, which is not different from the fact that Australian organic foods are occasionally found to have persistent synthetic pesticide residues (which were defended a few years ago by Biological Farmers on the legal grounds that organic is about process not product). GM is banned in US organics under section 205.105(e) (page 370), where GM is an excluded method in Section 205.2.

(This topic continued in my next message.