My first post on GM foods at this web-log was on 8th June and the first comment was from Stephen Dawson, he wrote:
In 1903 the first heavier-than-air machine achieved flight. A decade later aircraft were still custom-built, dangerous and had hardly any load-carrying capability. Now for five per cent of the average Australian income one can fly to London and back, being fed hot food and watching in-flight movies.
It would be a very brave, or silly, person who insists that GM techniques should be stopped because of some inchoate fear. GM will happen. It will yield unimagined new products and possibilities. If preserving land or other resources are signalled through the market to be high priorities, GM will help hugely. Not this year, maybe not in the next decade, but eventually for certain.
And, yes, GM food will happen. It may even become widespread. Other GM techniques and products will be developed. Because there is no way to stop it. Pandora’s box has been opened and its contents cannot be stuffed back inside. GM techniques will just get cheaper. And if one country, or a dozen, bans it, then it will just happen elsewhere.
While the European Union has imported tonnes of GM soy as animal feed for years, they have otherwise professed to being anti-GM and have banned the technology. Indeed a reason for not growing GM in Australia has been fear that we will be shut out of European markets.
Low and behold, French Farmers are now about to plant GM maize! Read the Reuter’s story here:
Published yesterday it is titled ‘French farmers head for gene maize harvest’ and begins:
French farmers are days away from starting work on a maize harvest that includes the first documented evidence of genetically modified (GMO) grain, the country’s AGPM maize growers’ association said on Tuesday.
The AGPM said 500 hectares of authorised GMO maize had been planted, more than half of which was destined for commercial outlets and would be sold to the animal feed industry in Spain.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.