Re: NANFA-- Genetically Modified Corn and its effect on the

Sajjad Lateef (sajjadlateef_at_yahoo.com)
Mon, 9 Sep 2002 08:46:24 -0700 (PDT)

--- John Bongiovanni <bongi_at_cox-internet.com> wrote:
> Sajjad,
>
> I may remember incorrectly but I think the Mexican occurance of
> transfer was debunked. Be that as it may
> You have a lot of good points. The issues that concern me the most
> is that the seed companies are able to breed into teh plants the
> "inability" to produce viable seed thus forcing tohe farmers to
> purchase
> more seed from them. Teh second issue is that at some point all the
> insects etc will develop resistance to BT and the other substances
> and that brings us right back to where we started from. 3rd (and my

> favorite!) While we are able to debate the organic vs GM vs selective
> breeding etc. the third world is starving. They will gladly eat BT
> corn, BT wheat, BT whatever if the options are cancer at 60 years of
> age vs starvation at 20.

You are correct, John.

Starving African countries would eat BT-corn (we do!). However,
they do not want to have BT-corn inter-breeding with their
native corn varieties, wiping out the diversity of the native
genes and if #2 (above) occurs, the countries would be even
more worse off (no food, no plants for future generations)
than they are now (no food due to famine).

The truth is no one really knows if BT-corn is good or bad
for humans. It has not gone through enough testing yet.
It's one of those things that we will learn more about
it as time passes.

The big companies who develop and market this corn (Abbott,
Monsanto, etc.) maintain their trade secrets wrt GM-foods. They
do not want to have independent researchers investigating
their technology.

Realistically speaking, we need research into growing food
more efficiently. Genetic Modification of food represents
a highly effective avenue to achieving better yields.
However, we should not become complacent about this and
forgo research into it's effects on Humans or allow the
genetic diversity of plants on OUR EARTH to be diluted.

I hope that my position is understood.

Sajjad

=====

-- 
Sajjad Lateef
sajjad_at_acm.org
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