There is a preliminary health study from Russia http://www.seedsofdeception.com/utility/showArticle/?objectID=293 which found that an astounding 55.6% of the offspring of female rats fed genetically engineered soy flour died within three weeks. The female rats had received 5-7 grams of the Roundup Ready variety of soybeans, beginning two weeks before conception and continuing through nursing. By comparison, only 9% of the offspring of rats fed non-GM soy died. Furthermore, offspring from the GM-fed group were significantly stunted—36% weighed less than 20 grams after 2 weeks, compared to only 6.7% from the non-GM soy control group. This is dated November 2005 and the Russian scientists want to do more thorough research to investigate these preliminary findings.
These are scary results that could be appropriate to humans and yet you deny me data and want me to stop asking for studies done on humans. You want consumers to be the guinea pigs. If more people knew about this, it would cause an uproar and consumers would demand no-GM and more tests.
This is why I want thorough independent studies done, so that it looks for major health concerns and shows under scrutiny the results of GM testing without the hidden agendas of GM companies fudging the reports.
GM should be stopped at the gates of Australia until proper scientific testing is done before it is too late to recall GM as a biohazard.

Non-GM Farmer, let us try this again. CMV, often CaMV, is cauliflower mosaic virus. CMV35S is the 35S promoter, a short stretch of DNA, from the CMV genome that is responsible for transcription of the CMV genes. Here is a website where you can get more information (http://www.bios.net/daisy/promoters/768/242/g1/250.html). A virus is in no way used or responsible for transforming plants.

E. coli is a bacterium common in the human intestine and in the environment. It does not infect plants. It is not used in transferring DNA to plants. The only thing E.coli is used for is housing plasmids.

Mutation. All DNA mutates. Are you equally worried about plant DNA mutating in your Atrazine Resistant plants? If not why not?

You need to read more carefully and not just assume things. I said in both posts that the patent was on the process not the plants per se. Think about it this way. If I were to grow a crop of Roundup Ready canola and were to sell the seed to a cattle feed lot, I would be free to do so without paying a license fee. The feed lot would also be free to feed the seed to the cattle without paying a license fee. In fact, I would be free to sell the seed to anybody I liked. The only thing we couldn’t do with it is plant the seed to grow a crop.

The rules covering the use of Roundup Ready canola are identical to those available under Plant Variety Rights, with one exception. The patent on the process stops anybody else using the seed to breed new varieties without a license. Such a restriction is not present in PVR.

Funding. Interesting you keep wanting to bring this up. You have stated on this forum that you have received travel support from Bayer. Why is it OK for you to get support from Bayer and not me?

Of course everyone is entitled to an opinion. It is a case of whether it is an informed opinion or just a bunch of fairy tales.

From a paper just published.

Upadhay et. al. 2006. Economics of integrated weed management in herbicide-resistant canola. Weed Science 54:138-147 (http://wssa.allenpress.com/wssaonline/?request=get-abstract&issn=0043-1745&volume=054&issue=01&page=0138).

Integrated weed management (IWM) decision strategies in herbicide-resistant canola-production systems were assessed for net returns and relative risk. Data from two field experiments conducted during 1998 to 2000 at two locations in Alberta, Canada, were evaluated. … When risk of returns and statistical significance was considered, several strategies were included in the risk-efficient set for risk-averse and risk-neutral attitudes at each location. However, the glyphosate-resistant cultivar, the 50% herbicide rate, and weed control at four-leaf stage were more frequent in the risk-efficient IWM strategy set.

To summarise, Roundup Ready canola consistently provided some of the best economic returns.

Is it safe: "inflammation research is not the only research...why are you defaming the research I mention": To discard a wrong hypothesis is good scientific method. The SandG review is the latest research with a new theory on the mechanism of EMS with a comprehensive review of all previous work. To state factually that your information is out of date and doesn’t cover the same ground as SandG was merelysupplying the logic for discarding a failed hypothesis.

Russian Studies: see-post-d, Wednesday, 30 November 2005 10:05:45 PM

Julie Newman:
QUOTE-FROM-SandG[Refs 311, 312] "We conducted a pharmacoepidemiological survey in Canada where access to L-Tryptophan is limited. Of 6423 patients assessed, 19 'definite' and 25 'possible' EMS cases were identified. Information from physicians did not suggest use of L-T in patients with definite or possible EMS. It was considered that the cases found an underestimate of the incidence of EMS. Its continuing occurrence in Canada brings causal interpretations of earlier studies into question.(Ref-numbers GMOPpunditwebsite). THUS EMS OCCURS WITHOUT TRYPTOPHAN SUPPLEMENTS.

It is totally misleading to continue saying, as you still do"It was only the GM L-Tryptophan that caused the problem."---this is refuted by SandGs paper, my previously posted quote about the MERCK pharmaceutical, and the fact that EMS is not a new disease but occurs widely without tryptophan being used.

It is misleading to describe SmithandGarrett2005 as pro-GM; to imply that adrenal malfunction is the sole contrary factor, and to obscure completely SandG2005 by not bothering to explain clearly what they discovered about a complex disease:----that tryptophan is a hazard, and whether or not it was made using GM is irrelevant. Non-GM sourced tryptophan can cause EMS and EMS can occur without tryptophan. EMS is quite frequent in the community and early stages of EMS may have INDUCED depressed people to try tryptophan; merely brief mention of contrary evidence to Jeffrey Smith's hypothesis on your NCF site is not good enough to accurately inform the public if you also completely misrepresent and obscure the scope and substance of the contrary case.

I have only asked about funding twice Agronomist (Bill Crabtree) and you ignored the first question and avoided answering it properly next. I am presuming that by your answer you are funded by Bayer Cropscience and Monsanto to take these tours. How much are you paid, expenses only or a fee on top of that? I’m not saying you shouldn’t be, I am just asking for the same transparency you demanded of me.

Bill, it was you who incorrectly said the GM plant was not patented. In the case of Roundup Ready GM crops, there is not only a patent for the GM trait but there is the PBR over the plant that the GM trait was added to. The patent is over the genes added to allow resistance to roundup. While Percy Schmeisser established that Canadian rules did not require him to pay a user fee unless he used Roundup on the crop.

What will Australian law establish? Will an Australian farmer need to pay the exhorbitant fees to challenge Monsanto in court to find out? We don’t want this patented product on our land but we can't stop it trespassing. If Monsanto own the patent and it is trespassing, they should be liable for removing it from our land. But no… the non-GM farmers are expected to remove it at our cost even though it can't be removed without removing the whole crop!

Its no fairy tale that non-GM farmers are expected to subsidise the GM industry and that is what my debate is about. Non-GM farmers will not accept liability for a product we don't want, can't control and will cause us economic loss.

Bills summary regarding RoundupReady and economic returns is misleading (again).
The best economic returns are not only based on weed control. Costs such as technology fee, segregation, volunteer control, quality assurance, resistance management plans, contractual obligations, lower price for commodity and insurance against liability all need to be deducted. Monsanto will not even reveal technology costs so how can we calculate economic return?

d, it is not my role to inform the public of every claim and counterclaim ever made on every facet of the GM debate. I volunteer my time and pay the costs to have a website to explain the concerns regarding GM. In many cases, including the one concerned now, I have alternative viewpoints or the pro-GM debate which is showing more courtesy than I have been shown. Unless you are planning to arrange for my debate to be put on every pro-GM site, I shouldn't be expected to put all the pro-GM debates on my website. I currently have over 2,600 stories on my site www.non-gm-farmers.com and you have objected to one. Not bad really.

Scientists working in this field have concerns about the technique used, I'm no expert at the GM technique and don't pretend to be. Invading genes into DNA in such an imprecise fashion could have dire consequences and it needs to be taken more seriously. The technique is not precise and scientists do not know exactly what they are doing. The success rate is extremely low and while the visual mutations are weeded out, what of the mutations that show no visual abnormalities? GM is a hit-and-miss-affair.

And now there is a global push to release GURTS (Genetic use restriction technology or the Terminator Technology). It was designed to make more money for the chemical companies by ensuring the majority of the offspring of GM traits is sterile so that farmers need to buy new seed every year and can’t dodge the patent fee. This means that contamination of non-GM crops results in less yield for us because the sterile gene can contaminate. This means that chemical companies can design plants where a chemical application can switch a trait on or off, even the progression of normal plant stages. No wonder chemical companies are so interested in GM technology!

Why exactly would consumers or farmers be happy with this one