Organic will NOT feed the world. 700Don't have figures but qualitatively speaking: (a) We now have more people and population's till increasing. (b) "Third world countries" are starting to earn money on the world market and their people...
Thanks for the welcome 703On Thu, 22 Jun 2006 07:26:01 +0930, Anne Chambers This was sooo interesting! In parts reminded me of Russia, where, in villages women had no time to grow plants (edible), beacuse they spentso...
I believe that ATM the problem is political rather than quanbreasty. Quanbreasty may become the ruling factor in the not-too-distant-future, though.
We'll be a third world country then, I expect. Other countries will be able to outbid us for food. Shut up, Jane.
It's a big topic. Saying GM is ok-not is rather like saying manufacturing is ok-not. Depends what.
Yes. The buying public at large forgets once the media shut up.
Are we?
Big Ag? Do you mean major agric business? If the big chemical cos didn't keep their secrets I'm sure the uk govt would find some aspect of National Security to use to keep them.
Anyway, tell us more about horizontal gene transfer.
YES. That's the big one; poor farmers can't save their own seed and if some of your neighbour's "owned seed" crop seeds into your land you get threatened by a lawsuit from the chemical co. And then there's the modern tendency, even without GM, to grow most of the crops from a few strains - in the past, several strains would have been used. Have a problem with one of the major strains and most of production is hit. Where there are several strains grown the loss of one is less serious.
We're hovering on the verge of another food scare ATM; "atypical scrapie". "Clbuttical" scrapie's been around for centuries and hasn't apparently hurt anyone so there's no scare potential there but now the Food Standards Agency has gone on record saying it is "..NOT telling people not to eat mutton, goat or certain sausages..." and if that's not a recommendation to panic I don't know what it is. Anyway, to get back to the point there seems to be another form of scrapie or TSE that people are getting stirred up about now. So, what's this got to do with the topic? Well, there's been a govt campaign over the last few years to get rid of clbuttical scrapie by limiting the national sheep flock genetically to genotypes which are more resistant to clbuttical scrapie (by natural breeding not GM). OK, so far so good (well doubtful IMV, but for other reasons). BUT. Now it seems that the strains they are encouraging actually have LESS resistance to the "new" TSE. Whoops.
This is the problem in having everything relying on one or two strains; when something comes along that hits one of those strains you are "****ed". Nature relies on variety and I trust that a lot more.
research (leaves more tax money to finance regulations and inspectors etc but that's a personal hobby horse); research is now supposed to be done by commercial concerns (see M.Thatcher) and they will obviously want to get the max financial return from their investment.
Otherwise Yep.
Cheers jane
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