rstuart,
Claiming that non-GM farmers are going to have a choice is not correct and that is what this debate is about. By allowing GM farmers to give GM a whirl means that non-GM farmers are stuck with the responsibility of trying to keep GM from contaminating our non-GM property which industry knows is impossible. No choice for farmers means no choice for consumers.
How about resolving the issue and promoting legislative changes to ensure that the GM industry accept full liability for any economic loss that their product causes.
Repetive denial of a problem followed by denial by the GM sector to accept responsibility if our concerns are right is why issues are so boringly repititive. If the GM sector believed their misleading propaganda of "she'll be right Mate" they would happily accept liability.

lillian,
I don't think that lack of funding in agricultural sciences has anything to do with RNA allergies. The original material concerned shrimp. Since this was also the only paper that can be found that even mentions any sort of data on RNA allergy makes me suspicious of its accuracy. I would have thought that if RNA could actually cause allergies, then it would be funded by health research funding bodies, like the NIH or NHMRC. It has huge public health implications well past the area of GM food and yet seems to have been ignored for 20 years. If there appeared to be a case for the spread of allergies caused by errant RNA in our food, then I would certainly campaign for more research to be done. However, it would be difficult to get a grant funded that on the basis of only one study from over 20 years ago, for reasons that I think are obvious. Is there anything more recent?

As far as I am aware, the biotech companies are not working from old paradigms, nor stuck in the genetic dark ages. Alternative splicing and various other modifiying processes such as post-translational protein phosphorylation etc. are well known to all university based genetics laboratories, and have been for some time, they are in the textbooks.

I am a real person, and I am really interested in public health, but before I go off wearing my MADGE T-shirt and holding signs up outside my local members office, I would like to know more about the basis of what I will be arguing about. As far as I can tell so far, all I see is a bunch of shallow inferences on how some stuff we don't quite understand could possibly cause something that could be bad for us.

I'm sorry that you have found the level of discourse not to your liking, but I'm not entirely sure what you were expecting. I have little interest in jam. I don't like to have off the record discussions and certainly would not want any identifying information passed about here.

“These results are discussed together with the consequences of commercial release of transgenic crops. Transgenes can escape via seeds and volunteer rape, and seeds of interspecific hybrids between rape and wild relatives can survive and germinate after several years, ensuring genetic and spatial spread of transgenes.”
This is just one paragraph from the hundreds of references I found for the fact that canola (known as rape elsewhere) and wild radish do in fact cross pollinate, by following your link Agronomist, so thankyou.
I was told about the crossbreeding of canola with kale by associate professor Dr Bob Longmore... didn’t get the facts from the internet in that instance.
Buggsy you mentioned DDT and other persistent dangerous chemicals....all put out by the company that developed GMOs.... Monsanto. They said their PCBs were safe, they were not. They said their other inventions DDT,agent orange and even Roundup - ” the environmentally friendly herbicide”, were safe and of course we now know they are not.
In each case the company swore their products were safe and it was only after many lives were ruined and many millions of dollars were spent in court did it became blatantly obvious that these chemicals were deadly. Then they were slowly banned around the world......I know, roundup isn’t banned .Yet.
Now, Monsanto (with your help) is saying GM is safe, but in the case of GM it won’t be able to be recalled or banned, it will with us forever and everywhere.
rstuart ...you say lots of research on GM food has been done, none showing its unsafe...millions eating it with no discernible ill effect..blah blah.
People only need to look back at the start of this discussion to see the results of rats fed 10 days on GM spuds...scary!Shrunken brains and testicles.

Here is a paragraph from David R Schuberts article on nutritionally enhanced plants, like golden rice.http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/jmf.2008.0094?cookieSet=1

"There is in fact no data comparing the food safety profiles of GM versus conventional
breeding, and the ubiquitous argument that since there
is no evidence that GM products make people sick, they are
safe (see, for example, McHughen and Smyth,50 Bradford
et al.,51 and Miller et al.52) is both illogical and false. There
are, again, simply no data or even valid assays to support
this contention.53 Without proper epidemiological studies,
most types of harm will not be detected, and no such studies
have been conducted. The necessity of labeling all GM
products and particularly NEPs is therefore critical if there
is any hope of monitoring adverse health consequences due
to their consumption. For example, it would have been impossible
to identify the source of the toxic tryptophan supplement
if the product were not traceable through labeling."

He is referring to the tragedy of 1500 or so people harmed seriously, 37 killed by the GM food supplement L tryptophan.The article points out that the tiniest change to the genetic make up done by GE scientists wreaked this untold havoc. Please friends avoid American wine which may contain a GM yeast , unlabelled, with some seriously bad unintended by- products.
It is tiresome all right having to repeat these warnings because you keep repeating false assurances rstaurt.

INABILTY TO EXPLAIN;its not really'science'[as quoted]
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2305&page=0

>>took geneticists more than 270 tries to clone“Dolly”the sheep.But what of the 269 Dollys that didn’t make it?Many were deformed and disfigured,stillborn or unable to mature.

...Tobacco-plants were genetically modified with the intention to increase their natural acid profile.Instead they produced a toxic compound not normally found in tobacco.A genetically modified potato unintentionally increased its starch content some 40 to 200 times.

The biotech industry erroneously believes that their foreign gene will behave exactly as it does in its natural setting.The working assumption is that genes determine characteristics in linear/causal chains:one gene,[they believe]gives one protein,gives one function...

..Our current understanding tells us that genes behave in complex inter-related non-linear networks:causation is multi-dimensional and circular;and genes are subject to environmental feedback regulation.

All these factors are excluded by the central reductionist dogma of the biotech industry,which prefers to adhere to the“one gene,one protein,one function” model of yesteryear.

This narrow reductionist mindset allows GM companies to assert that their foreign gene will only produce the one intended protein and therefore will behave in the precise and controlled way they expect.

That the GM companies assume that their inserted foreign gene will only express the one intended protein...In fact,the number of genes in nature that actually express a single protein can be counted on two hands.Most genes code for many proteins.In fact,the fruit-fly holds ..highest number of proteins expressed by a single gene-38,016!

Disturbingly, the biotech industry and our food regulators do no testing for theses possible outcomes.

But there is a growing body of evidence that suggests that they should...

..Mice fed GM soy had unexplained changes in testicular cells and rats fed GM corn showed significant changes in their blood cells,livers and kidneys.

All these GM products had been tested and approved for human consumption.Could the narrow reductionist lens with which the biotech industry views genetic engineering be resulting in unintended effects ..the biotech industry is using the dim candle of 1960’s genetics to assure us that GM food products in the 21st century are safe.

AND yet you blindly accept their deceptions

Merri bee's reference about the absence of post-market testing is quite right...

GM promoters have repeatedly stated that we have been eating GM food for years with no ill effects. However there have been no studies to investigate if GM food has been safe to eat or not, and this was confirmed by Food Standards Chief Scientist Dr Paul Brent (02 6271 2222) at a Senate Estimates hearing on October 22nd.this year

http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/commttee/S11355.pdf pdf P83

Senator SIEWERT—Okay. Just to clarify, there is no post-approval review of any of the products that you have already approved?

Dr Brent—There is no post-market monitoring per se. There were attempts in the UK to do some research on this issue. The UK Food Safety Authority or agency actually commissioned some research to see how difficult it would be to do post-market monitoring on GM foods. I think the result of that and the consensus was that it was virtually impossible to do that sort of work. I think the UK spent almost £1 million on that research and it was dropped.

Senator SIEWERT—Thank you

For simple practical reasons it is impossible to fully assess the random alterations in the transformed DNA as a result of the imprecision of GM techniques. The safety of the food cannot be guaranteed before market, nor can the safety be assessed after.