Exactly! Would these changes matter?
Rather than doing the health testing that consumers want that will check if these changes matter, GM crops are commercially released for humans to be the unmonitored guinea pigs.

What if it does matter? How will we know and how will we recall the product?
Thats the point of consumer rejection. Consumers that don't want to be the guinea pigs don't want to eat the product until they are satisfied with extensive testing related to human consumption.
In order to give concerned consumers the choice and an option to return to a GM-free status if required, we need radical changes in "coexistence principles" so that the GM industry is responsible for containing their product.

Interesting Reuters article on Agnet today regarding 90 Texas farmers suing Monsanto, Bayer Cropscience and Delta & Pine Land -"The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Marshall, Texas, seeks an injunction against what it calls a "longstanding campaign of deception," and asks the court to award both actual and punitive damages."
"farmers suffered widespread crop losses because Monsanto failed to warn them of a defect in its genetically altered cotton product."
"The farmers' essential claim is that Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" cotton did not tolerate applications of Monsanto's Roundup weed killer as it has been genetically altered to do."

"You want example misleading information..It was not evidence of a natural transgene as you claim as the fruit fly was injected."

I did not make this claim. My respose to it is briefy. The transgene you are talking about was FIRST discovered in nature to move around to different chromosomes. Thats why it is NOW being used in the lab. Just because they do LAB experiments with it does make the findings that it has moved repeatedly during natural evolution invalid. In fact, the lab experiment is a DIRECT VERIFICATION of its abilitily to shuffle DNA.

"Tell me how you will stop mutations and damage of the host DNA from forcing genes into the existing DNA structure. "

A vast amount of gene rearrangements occur in nature: and they dont just cause damage, they are the main source of evolutionary change.We cannot and shouldnt stop it. To take the position you is rather like trying to stop rainfall because people get wet and catch colds.

http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2006/02/shocking-scandal-grand-scale-theft-of.html
http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2006/02/natural-gmos-part-11-ground-control-to.html

I repeat, that the purpose of my comments is to explain that the hazard you are concerned about is far less than that to which we are already naturally exposed. This is not my personal opinion only, I gave you direct quotes of Doerfler making that point. You might like to think how it is that Doerfler, myself and many other geneticists have come to the same conclusion, even though have never talked to one-another.

If you dont want to accept this argument, fine with me. But it remains the core reason why your opinions about so-called CaMV DNA are misgiuded.

"You call me obnoxious but in reality I am a consumer questioning your research and you don’t like that at all. "
No part of this statement is true except the fact you are a consumer. I don't think you are or call you obnoxious, I don't do this research, and I'm happy to go on pointing any errors of fact or logic I can see in comments you care to make.

The Sperm paper IS ABOUT THE TRANSGENIC ISSUE YOU RAISED!

Stop yelling at me and going on about sperm research as I am not a scientist and don’t know why sperm would have something to do with what I may possibly eat. I have no expertise in the scientific jargon that you are throwing at me, so I would prefer this finer detail to be debated by the many scientists that have expressed concerns. I have no piece of paper that says “I’m wonderful sitting here with my degree and I can speak in a different language and I will make it hard for any person without a degree to challenge me”. Meanwhile, I as a consumer will choose not to eat GM and support farmers growing non-GM and independent scientists doing health tests which you have refused to say why you don’t want this. Give me the direct link to the scientific papers or none at all.

The EPA of America is finally opening up research for food allergies (closes March2006) which should have been done way before GM was ever put into the food supply http://es.epa.gov/ncer/rfa/2005/2005_star_biotech.html This is disgraceful that it was not done first by independent research outside of the GM companies. Now, if there is a problem with allergies what will we do? Let’s try and take all American grains and GM off the market and see if we can. And you say this doesn’t matter. Who are you kidding?

Why would I want to eat produce from a pesticide producing plant? What will I morph into? A Mortein can?

You’ve said “what would it matter” and I believe it will be life threatening for some. One small drop of cucumber is enough to send me into anaphylactic shock and sent to hospital in an ambulance. Researchers would not put a warning that it has possible cucumber allergens in my food. While I enjoy a joke from time to time, don’t trivialise the seriousness of this issue. This would be life threatening when we as consumers and people with allergies, could be killed by your product and because there is no monitoring, nobody would know

I think you have a good point isitreallysafe. You have concerns and they are being ignored and you reserve your right to avoid GM products but if GM is forced in without fair risk management, your choice will be denied. I also think we should avoid the capitals which is the indication that the comment is yelled.
d(David Tribe) Are you against independent health testing?

Agronomist (Bill Crabtree), Pre-emergents are not only restricted to post-planting pre-emergent. Preemergent control includes any knockdowns as it is not a post emergent control. Pre = before emergence (including before planting) and post = after emergence.

How can you possibly recommend no spraying prior to emergence?

You have sent me a photo of Canadian weeds prior to planting previously - melting snow and lovely small and easy to control weeds with large gaps of soil in between. Even the light tillage of planting could be enough to control weeds.

Compare that to Australian weed burden after a rain. A thick blanket of ryegrass that you can't poke your finger through never mind trying to get a canola plant to emerge. Within weeks we see massive capeweeds and melons that you can almost see growing. Now unless that rain waits until you are ready to plant, you have got little chance of controlling the weeds without chemicals.

Of course we use glyphosate as a preemergent and we are applying it when Canadian weeds are covered in snow so Canadians don't need to use glyphosate as a preemergent. The snow melts and they plant their crop.
Australia has a serious problem with the evolving resistance problems that we have with overuse of glyphosate but using it post emergent too will only speed up the resistance problems

The chances of DNA surviving in the human gut are small. Equally the chances of a piece of intact DNA being taken up whole by a gut lining cell are very small. I would argue that this might happen in one in a billion meals. We could make it one in a million, but it will hardly matter. The chances of that DNA carrying a CaMV 35S promoter is smaller again. In a GM food, the promoter might represent 1 millionth of all the DNA. The chances that the promoter would then work in the human cell would be 1 in 125 (from Traavik’s work). This is giving a chance of at most 1 in 125,000,000,000,000 that a protein attached to a CaMV 35S promoter would be expressed in a gut lining cell. Are the proteins introduced into GM crops dangerous? No. So, even if the protein were expressed there would be no foreseeable harm. There are currently about 6 billion people in the world. If they each ate 3 meals a day, consisting entirely of GM food, that makes 6,250,000,000,000 meals a year. Therefore, on average there would be protein expressed in the gut lining of one person every 20 years.

So are we worrying about something that might happen to one person every 20 years where the possible harm is at most unforeseeable and at least entirely absent? In contrast, cucumbers create a known harm at frequencies of at least 1 in 6 billion. I say we should ban cucumbers.

By the way NonGMFarmer, you must be mistaken again. I don’t ever remember sending you a photo of anything. Canola growers in Canada can now sow canola before applying herbicides because they have highly effective post-emergent herbicides like glyphosate that control the weeds after the crop goes in. If your weed problems are so bad that you can’t get the crop in the ground, I suggest you are not managing your weeds properly. Roundup Ready canola could help you do this.

Once again you are deliberately missing the point Agronomist (Bill Crabtree - who sent me the photo). My point is that if we did not spray as you suggest, there would be no way that we could sow a crop into the weed burden.
We have an excellent weed control system. It involves pasture manipulation or good weed control in crop the year before, it involves summer weed spraying, it involves another knockdown as sowing nears, it involves a pre-emergent when sowing - then that takes us to where Canada starts their spraying system. Wow! Imagine having the easy weed control system of snow.
The biggest yield drag on canola occurs at emergence due to weed competition.
If we ignored weed control in Australia and sowed directly into the dirt, the canola crop could not compete against the weeds.
I suggest we include your theory of no pre-emergent weed control necessary when designing the trials to compare GM with non-GM. To be fair though we shouldn't have all GM plots grown in uncontrolled weeds.