Hi Everyone,
At the risk of being a heretic (yes, you have permission to burn me at the
stake), I'd like to ask for comments on the use of GMO's and antibiotics for
organic production. The new proposed rules forbid both. I understand the
reasoning.
Has anyone considered that maybe some of the consumer GMO's might actually
be a good thing? For example, the vitamin enhance rice? By forbidding ALL
GMO's is the organic community ultimately shooting itself in the foot? If
use of GMO's is limiting to nutritional enhancement of the crop would it be
acceptable?
Low doses of antibiotics fed to maintain animal health because of rapid
weight gain and small space for the livestock/poultry strikes me as being a
bizarre way to treat animals to begin with. However, if an animal on
pasture gets sick and the treatment is antibiotics and the recommended
withdrawal period is adhered to, is that also a bad thing? If antibiotics
are forbidden in organic livestock/poultry production, will we have any?
Since one of the issues is the amount of space animals need, has anyone done
any studies on what might be required for the livestock/poultry to be
considered for organic production? To simple respond to USDA with "You have
to say the animals have to be outside" without some science to back up how
much is enough "outside" doesn't seem to be very productive.
Thanks for your patience with my heretical comments.
k.
Karen Mundy
Communications Coordinator
Rural Economic Analysis Program
Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics (0401)
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA 24061
(540) 231-9443
To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest".
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/san/htdocs/hypermail
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Apr 05 2000 - 20:00:26 EDT