For some conventional farmers trying to come to a decision,an important factor could be whether or not the contention that the initial benefit of herbicide tolerance is only temporary is true.If it is going to follow myxomatosis and penicillin into eventual impotence then it may not be worth making the change. It should not be too hard to ascertain the facts.After all, it's only arithmetic.
Ceres

At some point in this forum it was suggested there were no safety tests done on GM food. Well this link shoots that myth all to...
http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2007/06/150-published-safety-assessments-on-gm.html
Cheers

There has been a bit of fun and games on the food safety front Rob. In case you haven't caught it all, Greenpeace funded a study by a French research group to re-analyse data from feeding studies and prove the studies showed GM food was unsafe. The French "scientists" duly complied and published a paper to that tune. http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/releases/seralini_study_MON863

Greenpeace then insisted that the European Food Safety Authority investigate. EFSA then wasted countless hours and who knows how many thousands of dollars looking into this paper by the French researchers, only to conclude it was a load of hogwash.
http://www.efsa.europa.eu/etc/medialib/efsa/science/scientific_reports/mon863_ratfeeding.Par.0001.File.dat/sc_rep_efsa_stat_review.pdf

Needless to say, I doubt that Greenpeace will be offering an apology for their waste of taxpayer's money.

There is a nice discussion here: http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2007/06/mr-chance-of-wa-needs-to-go-back-to.html

Jennifer (Marahosey), are you being deliberately misleading? The consumer based traits in canolaa that are meant to dominate the canola industry are NON-GM!
High oloeic, low linolinic canola is the benefit and the low linolinic trait is achieved by conventional breeding by backcrossing to varieties that are naturally low in linolinic. High oloeic is managed by mutagenisis. Both are non-GM traits.
The GM traits grown commercially after 12 years of false promises are:
68% Herbicide tolerant (Ht), 19% Bt (the plant produces its own insecticide in cotton and corn to kill bollworm and budworm) and 13% both.
By far the most popular trait is Roundup Ready which only gives you resistance to glyphosate and can easily be achieved by non-GM means (our weeds are resistant to glyphosate without us wanting them to be).
See the Forum link: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6042 for more debate on the agronomic/economics.
GM is a scam but a scam where the research and development plan on cashing in big time. The problem is that farmers are expected to pay for the economic loss this scam causes.
Non-GM farmers do not want to accept any economic loss for a crop we do not want and do not need. Why should we be forced to be adversely impacted?
There is no intention to segregate, all farmers are expected to market as GM and farmers and consumers are to be denied the choice.

There is no market demand for GM food, so the palm-greased lobbyists will resort to any spin to try and impose it on unwitting markets.
Posted by Katherine Wilson, Tuesday, 12 June 2007 10:47:47 AM

Here Katherine echoes her claims at New Matilda recently that all media commentators in the press who argue the merits of gene technology are doing it because of dollars that they gain from participation in public debate, rather than honestly believing that GM bans are environmentally harmful and not in the welfare interests of Australians.

So Katherine, did you check whether your blanket assertion on financial gains was accurate with the people that you were effectively labeling as greasy-palmed before publishing your recent New Matilda article?

Second, Genethics has a vested interested in creating fear in order to sustain income. Isn't this therefore a financial conflict of interest when searching for the truth, or do you exempt it from the financial strictures you repeatedly apply to others?

There is nothing on the safety of GM in this report that you quoted.

The 3 contributors for this "report" and what they are:-

Earth & Life - ecological monitoring of genetically modified crops - a workshop

Board on life sciences - validation of toxicogenomic technologies - a workshop

Board on Agriculture & natural resources - board only - a report to buy a paperback book done by a committee.

Although in the book that they are all advertising there is an interesting article:-

http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10977&page=1

In this report, "genetic engineering refers only to recombinant deoxyribonucleic acid (rDNA) methods that allow a gene from any species to be inserted and subsequently expressed in a food crop or other food product. Although the process involving rDNA technology is not inherently hazardous, the products of this technology have the potential to be hazardous if inserted genes result in the production of hazardous substances".

There are no scientific research methods done at all so this is not scientific evidence that you are quoting. Give me a scientific paper on the research methods using qualititive and quantitive measures and maybe then I will think you are quoting something scientific.