The GM stance of Greenpeace is very strange, everyone must remember Greenpeace is moving further and further into the fantasy world inhabited by groups like PETA, and anti-vaccines mobs.

Greenpeace is very good at running scare campaigns, not real good at coming up with solutions. Can the Author show us commercially successful farms run along its guidelines? Given that the Author has made these claims its important that they back them up with reality, however I think that will be a bridge to far for Greenpeace.

A few comments, in the interest of encouraging an informed debate.

Your article says, opinion polls show that the majority of consumers reject GE food and 90% want it labeled (I have seen it written elsewhere in the media as 90% of people reject GM food). Yes, most do want GM food labelled. But whether it is 90% reject GM food or even a majority, this figure, used without context, is misleading for two reasons: first is that there is plenty of public attitude research on GM foods that have very different results – See Biotechnology Australia research (http://www.biotechnology.gov.au/ ) and Swinburne University’s Australian Centre for Emerging Technologies and Society (http://www.swinburne.edu.au/lss/acets/ ). And second because workshops that I conduct on this topic reveal a more complicated and significantly contradictory picture to the one you paint. For information on that I refer readers to the GNTIS blog on this topic. Go to the Blogs from the GNTIS site www.gntis.edu.au and click on the “Would you eat GM rice containing human genes? post

A clarification. You say, Marker Assisted Selection (MAS), a form of gene research which identifies the cells in plants… You mean identifies the genes in the plant associated with the trait they are interested in.

A second clarification: You say, the best non-GE plants perform better than GE plants on both weed and pest tolerance. A crop can be herbicide tolerant, but none that I am aware of are weed tolerant. And you will find that Bt or Bollgard cotton is very effective at resisting pests, regardless of other issues people may have with the crop.

Finally, your reference to the peer-reviewed research about the safety issues of eating GM food. The research may well be scientifically robust, but you have cherry picked your data. There are loads of other independent, peer-reviewed research papers out there that show no statistical differences between the health of animals fed GM feed and those fed the equivalent conventional food. I have many of these papers on file, if anyone is interested in getting them.

Jason Major
Gene and NanoTechnology Information Service
www.gntis.edu.au

Whether you agree with the line or not articles like this one are an important addition to the debate.
If GM crops wish to compete in the market then they need to make a market-based pitch.
Of course, it is not as easy as saying - well, let the farmers choose what they want to grow and we'll see who wins in the end - though, is it? Governments are regulating the use of GM crops and campaigners are worried about cross-contamination of GM and non-GM farms.
Only time will tell but, in the meantime, the public is entitled to be informed and to make their own choice - and that means strengthening labelling laws.

Laura Kelly is continuing the same exaggerations given by Greenpeace over the last decade. Laura clearly has no respect for the acumen of farmers. She clearly thinks they are dunces. They must be, they don’t agree with her. Has Laura ever bothered to wonder why if GM crops offer no financial advantages to farmers, more and more farmers plant GM crops every year? Clearly the crops do offer financial advantages to farmers where they have been adopted.

Laura also repeats the fairy tale that Japan doesn’t want GM canola. In the past year, Japan has imported just under 2 million tons of canola from Canada – virtually all of it GM. http://www.canolacouncil.org/currseedexp.aspx This is more than Australia’s whole harvest. The demand for non-GM canola from the Japanese consumer group (who represent a mere 2% of Japan’s consumers) was a whole 3,500 tonnes http://www.getfarming.com.au/pages/farming/speeches_view.php?sId=9200020071207112712

Clearly GM crops are not a solution to every problem, but they can be used successfully by farmers to efficiently and effectively manage specific problems.

I could go on about the other errors, including GM canola producing a 16% increase in liver size, the 400 leading scientists finding no evidence GM crops increase yields, but there is insufficient space.

This is not an atricle, it's propaganda. It's B grade propaganda at that, if it's aimed an any other than twit yuppies.

Telling farmers they are too stupid to buy the seed that gives them the best return, is unlikely to win them to your piont of view.

Of course, that's not the point, is it? The objective is to have these things banned, so the farmer has no choice.

I get so sick of these twits.

Thanks Jason for saving me the trouble of correcting Laura Kellys' ill-researched statements. An article like this arises when one begins with the 'opinion' (that GM foods are bad) and then performs the research to support their claim. You would think that someone who's description is 'GE campaigner' they would have some kind of expertise in the area. Google scholar doesn't count.

As the author states 'the strongest arguments against GM foods isn't a moral argument'. Great, let the market sort it out and be gone with lobbyists either pro- and anti-GM.