ABC News reported last week:
When New South Wales and Victoria dropped their bans on genetically modified canola crops, GM supporters claimed farmers would have greater yielding crops as a result.
However recent trials showed there was little difference between the two.
So why bother growing GM canola if you can't get anything extra out of it?....
Chris Preston is associate professor at the School of Agriculture at the University of Adelaide.
He says trial results depend on region and climate, and the drought hampered the GM canola trails.
He says the trials do give an indication how canola performs in drought conditions, and if that's where it's being grown it's probably not worth growing GM canola variety. xxxx
WA Business News also ran this short article on 16 January:
Genetically modified canola crops in Victoria have performed no better than their non-genetically modified counterparts as Western Australia prepares to hold trials later this year.
Results from Grains Research and Development Council showed the yields, from the first independent trial crops in Horsham and Forbes in Victoria, were 0.7 tonne per hectare for GM and 0.8t/ha ha for non-GM.
The results are not good news for those wanting to farm GM canola, as to break even with the technology, profits must increase by up to 16 per cent.
Comment on the Business News article:
This article talks of yields, but what about sales? Thanks to this environmentally toxic rubbish being foisted on us Australians I simply boycott everything with Canola in it now because no-one can quickly prove to me it's GM free.
I'm not going to waste my time trying to find out either as you either encounter people who don't have a clue or spin doctors.
I'm becoming more aggressive with fish shops etc too, if they are using canola or cottonseed oil, the food could be GM contaminated.
We Can't Eat A Scorched Earth! Climate change and food security
Free public meeting promoted by Gene Ethics
Thursday 5th February 2009
5.45 pm for 6.00 pm talk start, concluding 7.15pm
NSW Teachers Federation
5.45 pm for 6.00 pm talk start, concluding 7.15pm
NSW Teachers Federation
23 - 33 Mary St, Surry Hills Sydney - (between Albion & Reservoir)
True Food Network latest guide to GM-free food and what to avoid
GM products approved as food, food additives and processing aids (PDF 79 KB)
GM products approved as therapeutics (PDF 19 KB)
OGTR current list of applications and licences to release GMO into the environment, laboratory trials and low risk dealings.
* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.
12 comments:
Hi,
I am married to farmer - our farm is near Horsham, Vic. My husband and I have sat back over several years and watched Monsanto and Bayer roll out their bullshit promises with GMO's.
I have been astounded to see several young farmers believe the crap they are told and they have dived head first, into the shallow end of the pool, and grown GMO canola.
Silly buggers.
Yields were crap - don't know if they even found a market for their product, and they will have to pay Monsanto big time, to grow the crap again next time!
I am an old girl who remembers the Vietnam war.
Monsanto told everyone that Agent Orange was so safe you could drink it! Deformed babies are still being delivered all these years later in Vietnam. Vietnam Vets. came home totally stuffed. Gee, I wonder if Agent Orange was a causal factor?
My advice? Forget GMO's - go ORGANIC instead.
People want food they can trust.
They don't want "Frankenstein Foods" - canola crossed with fish or pig.
All the best
Dee Dahlenburg
Nhill. Vic. 3418
Whatever the outcome of the first commercial GM canola plantings, it was always going to be an interesting, though probably predictable, flood of views about it, each side of the debate cherry picking and highlighting the bits that suited their agenda. In the context of this blog so far, I would be interested to know what people reading the comments and news items posted would think about GM canola if the yields had been remarkably better than the non-GM canola - everywhere rather than just in NSW? This is an academic curiosity as I am the manager of the Gene and NanoTechnology Information Service at the University of Melbourne. Our job is to communicate balanced and factual info about this and other such topics (stem cells, genetic testing, nanotech, etc) and hopefully generate and facilitate and more informed debate. Part of my role as a science communicator is looking at better ways to engage the public in the science and help the public have more of a role in determining how we develop and use emerging technolgies. And we are one place you can contact that will endeavour to help with any enquiry you may have about GM foods - without the spin or agendas. Our new web site (nearly completed) is www.gntis.edu.au
Jason Major
Manager, GNTIS
Jason,
Thankyou for alerting me to the upcoming GNTIS website.
I note that although this information service is run out of Melbourne University, it appears to be funded by the Australian Government.
Perhaps you might like to say if funding from other sources is also involved.
As to your 'academic' curiosity _ I hope that you get some feed back on the new website and look forward to reading the posts.
Myself, I rather suspect that crop yield tonnage is not the main issue - rather the insidious creep from treating a corporation as a legal person through to the patenting of genes, as well as the big questions still not fully answered about letting GMO out into the environment over the long term and health issues.
Because in Australia in particular we are aware of the importance of all forms of native and introduced agricultural grass and a lot of GMO crops are based on cropping species which were originally wild grasses or similar, there are a more than a few nervous people around the country.
There are so many previous instances where Australian contemporary science and agriculture got it plain wrong and, the track record of the big multinationals is littered with deceit and corporate wrong doing.
Jason, I am a farmer and would not grow GM canola even if it yielded more as it is obvious that it is about Monsanto and the research sector and the seed sector making more money out of farmers not for farmers.
What annoys me about having GM crops rammed down our throats is the misleading advertising and the lack of respect for others that has led to non-GM farmers left carrying the can for any economic loss that is caused by a GM product we do not want and do not need.
If its so good and if the GM industry believe their own propaganda, the least you can do is accept liability for the economic, health and environmental problem that GM crops cause.
www.non-gm-farmers.com
Way to go, Julie!!
As a former farmer myself I am appalled by the misleading and sometimes downright false claims made by the major biotech companies.
I have several takes on this issue, but here's one that's motivated an incredible amount of work...
I discovered in January 2008 that I'd been eating genetically modified foods while pregnant and breastfeeding and serving it to my developing children COMPLETELY AGAINST MY WILL.
I wouldn't never have eaten nor served this 'food' if I had known what it was.
Millions of Australians would not have eaten this 'food' if they had known what it was.
I don't like profit by deception.
The deception that has been wrought on consumers is in my view a trade crime, facilitated by our Food Standards and OGTR bodies, the Political parties protecting them, and the Media these political parties depend upon.
These bodies all knew how much this food production method mattered to Australians, and consorted in covering it up.
The vast majority of this food has never been labelled in Australia, and Australian consumers would never have expected to have to search through the tiny list of ingredients to identify these products, in the rare event that they were labelled.
I'm a member of MADGE (Mothers are Demystifying Genetic Engineering), a rapidly growing network exposing the GM myths and those that perpetrate them.
www.madge.org.au
info@madge.org.au
As soon as people learn about the GM issue, they reject it. And that goes for nanotech too.
hi everybody, iam not a farmer, but even i agree with anonymous who has said that MONSANTO is telling bullshit to the farming community. these big multinational comapnies do not have the right to push their lies and crap onto the general public let alone the farmi ng community.
I would like to suggest a close look at this final conclusion. Surely this says it all
Final conclusions One has to agree with the opinion expressed in Science (Domingo, 2000) that there are many opinions but very few data on the potential health risks of GM foods even though research to exclude such risks should have been carried out before the GM crops were introduced into the food chain. Our present data base is therefore woefully inadequate. This is clearly seen from a closer scrutiny of the reference lists of recent reviews which contain only a handful of toxicological/nutritional and immune studies of GM foodcrops published in peer-reviewed science journals (Kuiper et al, 2001; Betz et al, 2000; Ruibal-Mendieta and Lints, 1998; Pusztai, 2001). Moreover, the scientific quality of even what is published is, in most instances not up to the standards that ought to be expected. In this review data published in peer-reviewed and some non-peer-reviewed journals has been examined in detail. However, as our future is claimed to be dependent on the success or failure of the promise of genetic modification delivering GM foods which will be wholesome, plentiful and, most importantly, safe for us all, the emphasis was on strict but fair criticism. From the results the conclusion seems inescapable that the present crude method of genetic modification has not delivered GM crops that are predictably safe and wholesome. The promise of a superior second generation of GM crops is still in the future. It is possible that some of the first generation of GM crops may superficially satisfy some commercial endpoints, such as their use in broiler chicken production. However, we need to consider that these GM feed ration-fed animals will eventually be consumed by humans and there is absolutely nothing known about the potential hazards (if any) on human health of this indirect exposure to GM food. Furthermore, the examples in the papers highlighted some differences even between such crude things as macronutrient composition of GM and conventional lines. It is argued by some that these differences have little biological meaning. However, it was clear that most GM and parental line crops would arguably fall short of the definition of "substantial equivalence". This crude, poorly defined and unscientific concept outlived its possible previous usefulness. There is an urgent need to come up with novel scientific methodologies to probe into the compositional, nutritional/toxicological and metabolic differences between GM and conventional crops if we want to put this technology on a proper scientific foundation and also to allay the fears of the general public. We need more science and not less. For proper safety assessment our first concern ought to be to establish on a case-by-case basis the impact of components of GM foods on the digestive system, its structure and metabolism, because the way our body will respond to GM foods will be pre-determined at this level. According to The Royal Society (1999) we need "to refine the experimental design of the research done to date". New ideas were also advocated in the Lancet debate (Noteborn et al., 1999; Ewen and Pusztai, 1999a) and at the OECD Conference in Edinburgh in February 2000.
Hi Jason from GNTIS here again
re: our funding sources. They will be on our web site, but they are as follows:
Australian Office of Nanotechnology (the Australian government part which makes up about 80% of the funding)
CSIRO Education
CRC Sugar
Molecular Plant Breeding CRC
Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics
Department Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry
Food Standards Australia New Zealand
And yes, some of these organisations do research into GM foods, but I don't tell them how to do their research and they don't tell me how to run the GNTIS. Our agenda is simple: Provide balanced and factual information and facilitate an informed debate on all emerging technologies.
Julie, as much as I respect your opinion, you are a well known anti-GM activist, and so I am well aware of your position re: my question. It would be interesting to know what the average farmer, who is sitting on the fence wondering which path to take, is thinking about all this.
Also, in reference to the person who said that most foods in Australia aren't labeled. If you find a product you know contains GM and isn't labeled you should report them as by law most products that contain GM foods in Australia have to be labeled. The exemptions are oils and food processing ingredients such as enzymes, etc. Any product containing GM maize, soy meal, sugarbeet, etc will (or should) state that it is GM on the ingredients label. See FSANZ's web site for full details on labelling requirements - www.foodstandards.gov.au
You may not agree with the labelling laws, but they are clearly stated on the site. It is actually hard to find products containg GM ingredients in Australia, so unless you eat loads of highly processed foods, then your exposure to GM foods would be neglible.
On a final note, in response to false claims coming from industry. I have seem as many false and misleading claims from anti-GM groups as I have from industry, of which none are helping foster an informed debate
Also, I have seen a lot more than 4 peer-reviewed papers about the safety of GM foods. There are well over 100 in reputable journals - possibly more, though I would need someone more expert than myself to attest to how robust the science is.
Jason Major
Manager
Gene and NanoTechnology Information Service
Why should we be forced into eating something that even you have not checked the full research? If you did you will find that within the research itself there are warning signs that GM is harmful to health. Have they only given you 4 papers that do not have any significant wording that says how safe GM is? That's putting the blindfold on isn't it if you are meant to be telling us how safe it is. Even I have looked at dozens of papers and been appalled that the conclusion does not match to the science within the document. The conclusions are written by the GM industry.
Instead of telling us that it's safe and forcing us to show without doubt that it is not, you prove to us with independent (and I mean independent not paid by the GM industry to set up a "not-for-profit" co.) and allow their results to be known. GM food should have and we demand to go through the rigorous testing of a pharmaceutical company and drugs because we are not being told the truth. It should be tested rigorously through generations of tests. You are contaminating what we eat. Simple as that.
GM is dangerous (according to the research done) and the GM industry and the pro-GM sector are forcing this down our throats when we have a right as consumers to demand to know if you are poisoning us. Are you? You don't know! You haven't even looked at all the paperwork critically.
Don't tell us that we are emotional about this issue as no way do I as a consumer want this food to contaminate our food supply. I also don't want our farmers being conned by Monsanto and Bayer which will eventually cost way more than any benefit which doesn't seem to have shown itself as yet. How many years do you want the yield reports to show that there may at one time be minimal increase. C'mon, get real. GM does not increase yield and this has been shown. Get over it, GM has no benefits to the farmer or the consumer. The only farmers that have taken it up are people that have not looked into reality but accepted glossy pamphlets and GM hype. They will regret their decision, it's only a matter of time.
Concerned.
GNTIS
Just to clarify a point re: the peer-reviewed research done. I was merely pointing out that there are more than 4 papers out there concerning safety of GM crops on human health and environment. I didn't state what that conclusions were of that research. It is simply that I continually see claims that there is no independant research done and any literature search will show you that there is - regardless of the conclusion. By independant, I mean no funding from any industry - none that I can find after a bit of digging anyway. There is no doubt that a lot of the research done by public research institutes that ends up in peer-reviewed journals is partly or wholly funded by industry, but that doesn't mean the science isn't robust, though there is likely a lot of research that is considered commercial-in-confidence as well and will never be peer-reviewed. That is the only point I was making. It is not for me to make the judgement on whether a particular GM food or crop is safe or not. That is for individuals such as readers of this blog to make. Your decision is your own.
Jason Major
Gene and NanoTechnology Information Service
"It is not for me to make the judgement on whether a particular GM food or crop is safe or not. That is for individuals such as readers of this blog to make. Your decision is your own."
Now that reads well, Jason.
However it is just a mite disingenuous.
It doesn't take long to realise that once a GMO crop type is legalised in Australia and reaches commercially viable harvest volumes it becomes increasingly difficult to find food products which do not contain at least one ingredient which has the potential to be a GMO (and which may not be required to be identified due to prior processing or low percentage in a given product).
For starters, just try inspecting a range of bread, pastry, biscuit, battered fish, corn chips, crisps, potato chips, at your local supermarket this week.
It would be hard to find an item which did not have at least one of the following: soya flour, cotton seed oil (usually just identiifed as vegetable oil), or canola (sometimes just identified as vegetable oil).
So deciding for oneself if a GMO crop is unsafe does not equate with being able to elimiate it from your diet.
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