Joel Salatin has long campaigned against industrialised agriculture and he articulates well the difficulties in argueing stats that can be manipulated to suit the corporate agenda.
My thought is that it is (GM) completely unnecessary and takes us as farmers and society in the wrong direction altogether.We need to biologically reinvigorate and regenerate our land and soil. As Joel says "We need agriculture that grows worms, not kills them".

http://www.acresusa.com/toolbox/reprints/April04_Salatin.pdf

I too am on the WA Ministerial GMO Reference Group and can tell an opposite story. As constantly mentioned to Ian at these meetings, the funding was approved by government well before this reference group was started so it has little to do with it.
Our reference group is involved in assessing economics and industry preparedness, not on health. However, economics explains the absolute fear of independent health testing. Plant breeders such as Ian Edwards plan to profit significantly by owning the GM patents and forming alliances with very financial corporate investors (eg Monsanto, Bayer Cropscience). These companies are investing in GM and plant breeding techniques and are setting up alliances because they ultimately want to profit well from the investments they have made. The drive is money.
The risk is to the farmers and consumers.
Farmers are expected to pay more for GM varieties and get paid less for GM or GM contaminated produce because consumers dont want GM.
Consumers are told GM is rigorously tested but it is not. Take GM canola... the canola oil (the bit consumers eat) is not tested at all. The meal was tested and after a few weeks of eating Roundup Ready canola meal, the test animals had an increased liver weight of around 16%... not what consumers want but considered "safe" because the animals did not die.
Judy Carman has concerns because she has many degrees in this field and is very professionally experienced to be able to make the judgement that there is genuine reason for concern.
Yes there is a vigorous slander campaign against Judy Carman but what are those with a vested interest so worried about? Judy Carman can not make results up as the tests will be rigorously scrutinised. Why so interested in wanting to know who is on the panel, are they to be interrogated and/or bribed as has been reported as regularly practised by the pro-GM sector?
Why the fear? Do they know something that Judy might find?

The following comment was posted on another discussion group and is equally applicable to the anti-GM mob writing here.

Mark Twain is alleged to have observed:

"A lie can race its way around the world while truth is still tying its shoes."

michael_in_adelaide, while you might serve on an IBC, allow me to suggest you know nothing about farming. ABARE have just published a report GM canola markets and found little evidence that consumers are paying more for non-GM canola. http://www.maff.gov.au/releases/03/03199wt.html Full report http://www.abareconomics.com/publications_html/crops/crops_07/gm_canola.pdf

At the same time your farmers are suffering from yield failure compared to Canada http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2006/08/australian-canola-currently-has-price.html

And at the same time Canadian farmers are happily selling their GM canola around the world. Even the EU has started to get in on the act. Soon the last trait in Canadian canola will be approved in the EU. Even now the EU gets around the problem by importing canola oil from Canada and from 3rd countries that crush Canadian canola.

If you want to believe conspiracy theories about corporations owning the food supply, do so, but understand you are flying the face of the Canadian experience. Canadian canola growers have choice. 50% choose Roundup Ready canola, 35% choose InVigor canola, none choose Atrazine resistant canola.

Ah, Julie, nice to know you are back in these pages. You also serve on the reference committee do you? And you can tells us the opposite story? I suppose you are going to say that Minister Chance agreed to provide the protocol, that he provided the names and expertise of those who sit on the steering committee (you don’t happen to sit on it do you?) and the names of the eminent scientists from 8 countries that reviewed the proposal? Please do, I have been dying to find out what has happened to this study since you first mentioned it over 18 months ago.

By the way, I do hope you are getting rain. The Canadian canola area is up another 12.5% this year. It will be close to another record crop.

Yep and lies have led the pro GM debate.
I would like to dispute the claim that farmers want GM based on facts. As a previous senior vice president of WAFarmers Grains Council, I have seen farmers influenced by outrageous lies and I have worked hard to expose these lies and give balance. WAFarmers only recently changed their anti-GM stance to a pro-GM stance at a policy day held only weeks after I was sacked unconstitutionally for a supposed crime of warning farmers about the liabilities associated with pooling with AWB (evidence has since proven that I was very conservative). Lies, deception and bullyboy tactics have led to many policies that do not reflect the concerns or the issues that need addressing.
A fair detailed debate would counter the pro-GM push but this is avoided by the pro-GM sector.
What are the benefits? A=very little if any.
What are the alternatives? A=many
What are the risks? A= many
What is the risk management needed? A= Many but ignored.
Who benefits? The R&D sector, governments wanting to withdraw and even profit from funding R&D, GM sector, seed sector.
Who pays? The farmer... why does the above sectors think that farmers can afford to pay the extra when GM growing countries are either subsidised heavily or do not recognise the patent.
Who takes the risks? Consumers and farmers.
Ian, being a plant breeder with a vested interest in commercialising GM crops, does not make you an expert on health and because Greenpeace quoted an expert on health, does not mean that the expert on health can or should be discredited.

The difficulty with rat testing is that they require experienced laboratories and experienced analysts. An example of bad interpretation is a botch-up of rat test interpretation by Giles Seralini. The European Food safety authority has just issued reports showing how this Greenpeace sponsored French group has misused statistics and come to false conclusions

"At the request of the European Commission (EC), EFSA has examined a paper by Séralini et al. on the statistical evaluation of a 90-day feeding study in animals with genetically modified maize MON 863, to identify any consequences for EFSA’s risk assessment of the safety of MON 863. The paper presents an alternative statistical analysis of the 90-day rat study that was considered in the original risk assessment. Following a detailed statistical review and analysis by an EFSA Task Force, EFSA’s GMO Panel has concluded that this re-analysis of the data does not raise any new safety concerns."

http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/press_room/press_release/pr_efsa_maize_Mon863.html

Similarly, rats like a good laboratory and the right food, and some strains of rats are not suited to such toxicology studies
If you look at papers in J. Toxicol. Sci., Vol. 30 Special Issue (2005) you can see good labs (J. Toxicol. Sci., Vol. 30 special issue: 97-116, J. Toxicol. Sci., Vol. 30 special issue: 59-78, 2005), and bad ones (J. Toxicol. Sci., Vol. 30 special
issue: 39-58 and 117-134, 2005). How do we know the Adelaide group has mastered all these pitfalls.