Hi Ronald,
Wednesday, February 23, 2000, 6:11:13 PM, you wrote a reasonable, well
founded response to Dale's truly glib, 3 monkeys (who see, hear and
say no evil - except that it's all part of a scam), nonsense:
RN> Ah, the sweet music, sleep, sleep everything is OK.
RN> A small number of corporations are indeed, very near to
RN> controlling the vital inputs to the world's food system ans well
RN> as the channels of commercialization. This concentration of power
RN> and control in the food system is a fact, it is documented, it is
RN> right before our noses everyday. Dale, I guess, thinks it's safe.
RN> I don't.
He's on the take. Dog's don't bite the hand that doles out the bones.
I bet he actually believes that ridiculous line himself - that it's
all for our own good, really it is - turning the food supply into a
proprietary Mister Potato Face, with mix'em and match'em genes and
never mind whatever evolution was all about. What's a few dozen
million years worth? Not much, to those who'd exploit for their own
limited and shorted sighted ends, that which could be more easily
worked with for the common good, if a different disposition was there.
Intrinsic, inherent value is trashed in favor of a very few persons
converting living organisms (like themselves) into proprietary
organisms whose purpose becomes that which their "creator" (read
devious deviator) envisions, even when this is deviousness occurs in
detriment to the organism's own nature. The concept of integrity at
the organism level (a fundamental concept) is thoroughly ignored here.
Incredible unconsciousness, intolerable callousness. There's a cold
and calculating war going on, with the blind leading the lame
literally down (what used to be) the garden path, until something
truly better comes along, hopefully before it's too late.
Meanwhile, there's a strong need for actively promoting legislative
responsibility regarding requirements for full disclosure with respect
to food content, nature and origin, as well as for protecting both the
public health and the environment from genetic combinations that have
no precedent in biology and whose long term effects are at best
unknown, in spite of all the thick and smelly hype paid for by the
proprietors of same, directly or indirectly.
The only responsible response is a 50 year moratorium on GMO's in food
(saving them for the treatment of specific pathologies only, where
alternatives methods are unavailable or unsatisfactory), until the
facts are in. So far, the objective feedback regarding the unforeseen
ramifications has been increasingly (and predictably) negative, but it
will take quite some work to make that stick, given the vested
interests involved; interests that typically ignore or deny the
greater vested interest in conserving an orderly and consciously
selective (via choices made by whole organisms), evolutionary based
web of biological systems undergoing constant interchange and
homeostasis at the biosphere level.
DH
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
RN> But it is not. That "99%" is already much less available than it was. As
RN> seed companies are scooped up by agribusiness (itself in ever fewer hands:
RN> who owns Pioneer these days?) what part of that range of "building blocks"
RN> in the public domain is really and truly "there for everyone (especially
RN> farmers) to use"? I understand I can't even buy non-transgenic varieties
RN> of Pioneers own "best varieties". I could only plant my grandfather's corn
RN> if I had saved the seed. But then I couldn't have got the USDA subsidies
RN> necessary for a "modern" grain farmer to survive (In fact, we didn't
RN> survive, not as farmers).
RN> Traditional, open-pollinated and heritage varieties of seed are in great
RN> danger because the small farmers that perserve them are under the severest
RN> threat in human history. They are literally starving and their children are
RN> leaving for the city. They are considered expendible by their govnerments
RN> and by the corporations who are setting the new rules of the game in the
RN> WTO etc.
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