Agronomist, you and others have been repeatedly hounding non-GM farmer about Greenpeace when it is obvious they have not funded her. Why shouldn't she ask you about your funding?

What is scary is that GM when inserted into the DNA, not only are the inserted genes rearranged, but the plant’s own genomes also get scrambled around the insertion site. Genetic engineers have no control over where their foreign DNA constructs will be inserted into the host cell’s DNA. Research has revealed that the insertions often occur inside or near genes, which can be turned on or off by the invading foreign DNA. This can have serious consequences. More information can be located at www.commonground.ca/iss/0512173/cg173_gmo.shtml You are saying that its natural to change DNA but what about the stress on the plant DNA itself and the stresses associated with being bombarded with foreign DNA. All animals and plants get stressed as has been proven countless times, so the viral promoter that GM uses is possible potential to reactivate dormant viruses, which exist in the genomes of all higher organisms, including plants and animals. Cancer cells could be one of these reactivated cells. There is also a danger of the creation of new viruses by recombination. This is a potential disaster waiting to happen. The problem that scientists have is that unless they know what they are looking for in the DNA they will not notice changes occurring. They should therefore be doing tests for long-term toxicity and carcinogenicity before being given to the consumer. These safety criteria must be met for all drugs so the magnitude of harm caused by toxic food could well be much greater than that from any single drug.

No doubt there is just as much debate that Smith’s hypothesis in incorrect. Give me the direct site and not your pundit site so that I can read their full research papers so they can be analysed by myself and others without referencing your site.

Non GM farmer: If, Julie, you use misinformation to bring about events that potentially harm others economically and otherwise, there is every reason to question what you say in the public arena. And you say so much that wrong its difficult to keep up with all this misinformation.

For instance You've just mentioned plant sterility systems and how they supposedly can contaminate. How can sterile plants produce seed that or pollen that contaminates, if they are sterile. Its a contradiction. Sterile men don't leave children.

If Julie has every right to protect her interests as she sees them, others too, affected by Julie's activities, or concerned as I am for there effects on others, have the right to question misinformation.

Is it safe: I bought for US$30 , Smith and Garrett's article itself using a credit card, out of my personal funds over the internet. The citation is at my site (or can be found via Pubmed , Medline or other intenet literature services http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ ) if you want to avoid my site. Visit the original paper, it will only cost you as much as I paid. Or share the cost with Julie.

I regard doing homework like that as standard practice if one engages in public discussion. I have also read the key papers they cite.

d, (David Tribe), Just who is trying to mislead who?
We are told we will be "left behind" that GM canola yields up to 40% better and that we need GM to compete on the world market. What outright lies!

We are told that there are no market premiums, when GM-growing Canada has dropped from an average premium over Australian non-GM canola of $US32.68/tonne to a penalty of $US30/tonne.

We are told that segregation is possible and our choice will not be denied but the plan is that rather than the GM growers containing the GM product, non-GM growers need to take every step to avoid contamination and accept the liability if they fail.

We are told coexistence is possible when everybody knows it will be impossible and price prohibitive to the non-GM grower.

We are told that the OGTR has taken rigorous steps to ensure the safety of GM foods when they are reliant on the data supplied by the GM company and tests don’t address the concerns of the consumers.

We are told to trust scientists when scientists are manipulating facts and misrepresenting research to push through a GM product that they are reliant on lucrative funding from.

It is the norm for pro-GMers to attack by making a statement along the lines of "everyone is telling lies" when in reality, the pro-GMers want people to be more complacent and accept the lies that are told to us. No David, if you want to see who is misleading who, you need to look further than your narrow field of expertise.

You want the latest example?

You misunderstand GURTs yet you immediately presume I am lying. I'm not talking about sterile people, GURTs doesn’t have sterile pollen. It would not be of commercial value for the GM industry if the plant did not produce offspring ie. plant the canola seed and it will not produce seed to harvest.
No, the idea is that the offspring are rendered sterile. ie. plant the canola seed, harvest it and that seed is sterile requiring the purchase of new seed every year.

Non-GMFarmer. No you are no expert on GM Techniques and it shows. Just about every comment you have made about them is wrong.

You also have little understanding of breeding techniques, otherwise you would be aware of ho new traits are introduced. Two ways I will briefly describe.

One is from wide breeding. If you want a new rust resistance trait in wheat you might go looking for it in a distant relative, say jointed goatgrass. You make the cross, but only one in a hundred crosses are successful. The plants produced are deformed. They are all male sterile and female fertility is of the order of a few percent. You cross back to wheat and after 5 or 6 generations of crosses have restored fertility and along the way have thrown out thousands of deformed plants. You have a successful breeding program, but who knows what other non-visual traits have come from the weed? Atrazine-resistant canola was bred in this way.

The second is mutation breeding. Most of our crops have been through this. The idea is to treat seed with a mutagen at a rate that kills half the seed. You then plant the seed out and many of the seedlings have deformities, so you discard those. You find the ones with the new trait you want. You continue to breed from it, discarding any plants with obvious deformities. You have a successful breeding program, but who knows what other non-visual traits have been created by the mutagen? Clearfield canola was bred in this way.

As for GM, one of the reasons why so many events are discarded is because of the expense of bringing them to market. It is cheap to make events, but expensive in regulation costs. You only keep the very best. Also with GM it is possible to find out where the gene has gone and what genes are around it. You can actually test whether these have been disrupted.

Agronomist (Bill Crabtree), you have neglected to answer my question regarding funding by Bayer Cropscience and/or Monsanto.

The consumer rejection is not about non-GM techniques, it is about GM techniques. What is the success rate? I was told (and you were at that meeting) that about one in a million GM attempts are succesful. Not great odds and certainly not anywhere near the failure rate of conventional breeding.

Why would you possibly want to deny consumer health testing when that is the key to consumer acceptance? Why not admit this is the biggest PR disaster in history and face trying to resolve it rather than trying to ignore it?

Julie Newman,
Julie Newman,
I don't presume you are lying. I realise there are a variety of GURTS not just the ones I was thinking of and possibly you and I are talking at cross purposes.
This is the aspect of GURTs (=TPS) I think will not suffer from the problems you are concerned about:

http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/br/tps/?pf=1#how

Limiting the spread of genes

A concern has often been expressed that transgenes might escape from genetically modified plants into wild populations. One of the main purposes for the development of TPS was to offer a way in which the risk could be restricted or completely eliminated.

Cotton plants containing the activated TPS genes are evolutionary “dead ends.” They cannot reproduce nor can their pollen create a new generation when fertilizing a non-TPS plant. The activated TPS plant produces non-germinating seed and pollen. If pollen fertilizes a non-TPS plant, the seed produced cannot germinate. This renders the activated TPS plant self limiting.

The current TPS was designed for use in self-pollinating crops where pollen spread to neighboring fields is not significant. In crops that spread pollen over wide areas this TPS is not suitable, since the spread of activated TPS pollen would be detrimental to neighboring crops.

Research is currently underway to modify the TPS so that pollen will not contain any transgenes (neither TPS nor the inserted gene of economic importance). Pollen from such modified TPS plants would be completely normal.