The following press release from the Pastoral and Graziers’ Association (PGA) of Western Australia raises some interesting issues.
FAST AND LOOSE WITH THE TRUTH, YET AGAIN
Greenpeace and the Network of Concerned Farmers (NCF) have, once again, resorted to media grandstanding in their obdurate opposition to GM crops.
The Greenpeace press release titled “First Australian farmer falls prey to GE contamination”, released on 10.10.05, does nothing to advance the public debate. It merely reinforces the fact that
the misuse of scientific data is the principle technique employed by these organisations.The press release claims that GM contamination was found in a non-GM crop at a rate of 0.5%. It is important to note that testing was on a crop owned by Geoffrey Carracher, a NCF member and known anti-GM campaigner, and the analysis was paid for by Greenpeace.
Would Greenpeace accept a scientific analysis as to the benefits of a GM crop, where the data came from one farmer – one pro-GM farmer – and the analysis was paid for by a biotechnology company? Would the media?
Such an analysis is meaningless – certainly without significant corroborating evidence, and particularly as the supposed quantity found (0.5%) is actually well within the threshold set by the EU (0.9%) – one of the most restrictive markets in the world. Just as with the false ‘contamination’ scare in WA three weeks ago, the opponents of biotechnology will take any opportunity to run a fear campaign on this issue.
The PGA position on GMOs remains the same
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
dear jennifer , science will soon tell Australian farmers they have indisputable evidence of the gross GM contamination of their canola and you will believe them.
Unfortunately a minute later they will say to the farmers that science can not help them to reverse the irrervsible .
GM food is but evolution working in a different direction, so what’s the big deal ?
The Weekly Times, Melbourne, Letters Sept 28 2005
Quote
” Your front page story “GM escapes”… may lead readers to believe that genetically manipulated canola contamination is irreverible. Nothing could be further from the truth…”
Bob Phelps, Genethics Network
Thus according to Bob Phelps, an expert in this area, the current situation is reversible, so your worries are set at rest, kartiya, thanks to Bob Phelp’s advice.
I understand that the farmer in question estimates the commercial value of his herbicide resistant canola crop to $ 50,000. Now the farmer assisted by Greenpeace Australia is trying to clean up his land based on by hitting the mixed TT canola ( a herbicide resistant strain of canola derived through mutational breeding) and Liberty Link canola (the engineered crop that is resistant to another herbicide) allegedly growing on his land with liberal amounts of a herbicide , atrazine, that will wipe out the offending canola but is under investigation for its bad effects on the environment in EU .
His efforts are complemented by Greenpeace who is sponsoring the forensic DNA testing analysis at $500 per sample analysed.
The cost of this excercise is two fold. Firstly there is the cost to the environment since more herbicides has been applied and will find its way into the ground water. Secondly, there is the cost of the testing ( paid for by Greenpeace members through their fees?) to ensure that the crop is GM free or don’t contain any trace level of the herbicide resistant Liberty Link canola cultivar that has received regulatory cleareance for use as food and feed in Japan and our trading partners.
To me this seems to be a case of the cure being worse than the ‘contamination’ for the environment and the farmer. It is time that Australian Goverments issue a threshold acceptable to our trading partners for accidental presence of herbicide resistant GM canola in the canola crop before the harvest of this seasons 1 million hectares of canola starts in a few weeks time.
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