Conventional agriculture here seems headed into GE without much apparent
awareness of or concern about the public resistence building in much of the
rest of the world. I'm concerned that growers may end up painting
themselves into a corner marketwise.
Most of the growers I work with are in tree crops, a significant chunk of
which is exported from here into the high-end fresh fruit market elsewhere.
As a region, we wouldn't make it on our domestic sales alone.
What happens when a year or three down the line, those markets are just
*not there* for anything grown on genetically modified root stock or
genetically modified soil, whether because of consumer preferences as
expressed at the cash register or in the streets, or due to overt laws
restricting products of GE or banning them outright? Tree crops have a
significant lead time invested upfront, not easily recoverable should the
market prove unreliable.
Local growers here rail against globalization when the new avocado thrips
arrives here from elsewhere or when the new Argentine lemon acreage gets up
to speed, threatening to lay claim to 'our' marketshare (Ventura County
produces 45% of the lemons grown in the US). Yet the same ag community
counts on world trade negotiations to pry open reluctant markets elsewhere
on our behalf, assuming any regulation or restriction of GE products will
be dealt with strictly as a trade barrier and discounted.
Hard to have it both ways. Like claiming patentable novelty for something
said to be substantially equivalent. (So it's different or it's *not*
different? And those differences (or lack of them), they count or they
*don't* count?)
Several upcoming international meetings assure that the issue will remain
prominent in the news for the foreseeable future, at least elsewhere.
Beth von Gunten
colibri@west.net
-----------------------------------------------------------
Steve Groff posted:
>Seminis-Zeneca produce biotech tomato for UK Market
>
>A research and development alliance between Seminis and Zeneca Plant
>Science has >yielded a genetically modified tomato product that consumers
>in the United Kingdom >favor two to one over its traditionally developed
>counterpart.... <snip>
>
>Since its introduction two years ago, the product has outsold its
>competition, made >from traditionally bred processing tomatoes, according
>to officials of Safeway and J. >Sainsbury, the United Kingdom-based
>grocery chains that market the product. More >than 1.6 million cans of the
>puree were sold from the time of its introduction in >February 1996
>through November 1997... <snip>
Ann Clark responded:
>I wonder, with all that has since come out on the health implications
>(sorry, >potential health implications, a la the GE potato effects on rats
>study) of GE, how a >similar offering of GE products explicitly labelled
>as such on a UK grocery shelf >would fare today? This leads to the
>question of education.
>
>How well did the presumptive shoppers in that survey understand what they
>were >doing? How well did Zeneca et al. understand the risk that they
>were putting their >clients to? Is the adamant refusal of Monsanto (in
>particular) to label as GE their >products explicitly to avoid
>accountability for adverse human health effects...?
<snip>
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