Your statements about pesticide residues and natural elements here are
(obviously) true, but are unrelated to the discussion of GMO by-products
such as canola meal.
Assuming that my GMO canola meal has no pesticide residues or excess
arsenic, my question is whether I am to believe that the proteins,
carbohydrates, lipids, and genetic materials in that GMO canola meal
will persist in a composting system where similar biomolecules of a
natural canola meal will biodegrade.
Unless you have something very new to add to my education, I still
believe that the same deoxyribonucleotides are linked in the same types
of phosphodiester linkages, whether the genetic material is from a
GMO-byproduct or a natural product, so I further will accept that they
are equally susceptible to microbial attack. So, as an organic grower,
I would be philosophically comfortable with composting the GMO-meal and
using the resultant fully stabilized compost as a soil amendment, but I
would not feed the meal to my livestock.
> Analytical testing is not mandatory usually for these composts or manures.
> When organic standards call for no application of prohibited substances, we
> ought to demand of ourselves the same kind of strictness that we expect, for
> example, in the discussion going on over inerts in pesticides formulations
> used in certified organic production.
Well, a synthetic "inert" substance (what a fiendish word to use) is
applied to the plant, and thus is the application of a prohibited
substance. The GMO canola meal is not applied to the plant, and so
would not be analogous to the "inert" material in some formulation. If
it were composted, and if it did in fact degrade as expected, then the
resultant compost would not contain any prohibited substances. What
would you be looking for in an analytical test, in the case of composted
GMO canola meal? A DNA sequence? Then this experiment can be done and
the question settled. Or is it something else?
I am very cautious about what ought to be allowed as a compost feedstock
in organic production, but I can't seem to make myself worry about GMO
byproducts for this use, unless you convince me that I have overlooked
something! In the interests of closing materials loops, only those
things which will not decompose (or stuff contaminated therewith) ought
to be excluded.
> The anti-GMO trend is motivating consumers
> world-wide. Organic production prohbits GMOs and consumers expect that organic
> products will not contain them.
It seems the motivating force behind anti-GMO is building separate from
the momentum toward organic production. Certainly there is crossover of
interests and reasoning, but there are plenty of people who are very
concerned about the one issue and less interested in the other. I
prefer to keep the issues separate, because trying to satisfy two
conditions with one argument tends to compromise the strength of the
argument. Both issues are strong enough to stand alone!
-LM
To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg".
To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"subscribe sanet-mg-digest".
All messages to sanet-mg are archived at:
http://www.sare.org/htdocs/hypermail