The Cellar Bar wrote:There is essentially a problem with contamination. Although few protestors "shriek" so far as I know - that sounds more like an effort to demean them by hinting at "girly" characteristics.....and by what right do women have the right to protest against anything? Happily no hint of any "hysterical outbursts" but also being "crazed" apparently that is probably only a matter of time I suppose.
It was tongue-in-cheek ridicule I admit. However, the tenor of the arguments used by the
Take The Flour Back groups (see:
http://taketheflourback.org/why-a-decontamination/) is sensationalist bordering on the irrational. Besides, have you see some of their philosophical cousins, the animal rights protestors, up close? I have, and they're not people you're likely to get a rational and civilised argument out of. They might even dig up your grandmother's corpse if you really annoy them (
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/staffordshire/6454671.stm).
Wide sweeping claim ok but previous such "small experiments" during Bliar's years showed that crops within a twenty mile radius of the fields used were actually contaminated by these modified crops. No efforts had been made to actually "contain" the GM experiment and the wind did the rest.
Testing the crops under glass or in growth chambers are very unrealistic conditions. Having the trangenic crops grown in the field provides a much better test as to the performance of such crops.
The alternative is as you say,
Beyond that, the wider controversy - which this event was useful to highlight - is the fact that world wide, the GM companies go in for crops which are "infertile" - they don't produce a seed crop and the result is that farmers across the world are tied in and obliged to buy fresh supplies of the seeds from the Monsantos of this world every year. Tying them in even further to a subservience to Western companies and increasing their costs by getting on for 4 and 5 fold every year.
If you want to prevent crossing with the non-transgenic varieties, rendering them infertile is the easiest way to do so. An alternative is to induce some sort of polyploidy (like an artificial speciation event), but I don't know whether this is feasible / possible.
A subservience which already sees the West consuming 80% of the world's food production and dictating to share croppers and farmers in the "Third World" that they produce mango, pineapples, coffee, chocolate, kumkwats and the other "essentials" we feel we need for our dinner parties and not actually producing staples for their own families. And then there is the Palm Oil scandal to ensure that our Mercs and BMW's are eco-friendly. The average Western child consumes more before the age of 5 than their "counterpart" elsewhere will eat in their entire life time!
You get no objection from me about the inequalities and injustices you highlight above. I would say that we need to be more efficient in our use of resources and encourage further development in the less developed and developing countries and foster a better trade balance than exists presently.
And the ODIOUS Jonathon Porritt, macgamer. What makes the man "odious" in your estimation? Three examples will do.
His smug face, his hectoring self-righteousness and his hypocrisy. I admit I have a viceral disliking for the man. I prefer (marginally) Prof. Richard Dawkins to him, which isn't saying much.
Compared say to the Brazilian and Argentinian and South East Asian landowners and corporations who have destroyed some 60% of the forested areas of the world already in pursuit of the mighty dollar. To mix two threads, I'd have more respect for a certain religious establishment if it campaigned in support of their adherents around the world - rather than either siding with the corporations or saying absolutely nothing at all!!
Well, there was that dodgy 'liberation theology' popular in the 1970s and 80s in Latin America. However, it lost its way when it got intangled with politics, armed struggle and priests and bishops running for political office. Yes, the Church has spoken up against the injustices. It's just that it doesn't make headline news.
"Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision."
- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908