Prodigene - The One That Got Caught

Prodigene - The One That Got Caught
GM Crop Mishaps Unite Friends And Foes

"CropGen, a pro-GM group based in the UK, agrees that the [ProdiGene] incident showed the effectiveness of monitoring....." (see below)

Oh yes, and how do you know that? Scientifically speaking of course, given that we are dealing with 'scientists' here.

The UK has much more strict GM rules than the US but its own monitoring system failed to find that unapproved GM constructs had been getting into trial crops for three years ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2195762.stm ) until someone stumbled upon the situation.

According to DEFRA: "ACRE are critical of both Aventis, for a lapse in the quality control of their seeds, and the regulatory authorities for not detecting it" ( http://www.connectotel.com/gmfood/re150802.txt ). In other words for three years the monitoring system was not effective even though people believed it was.

Environmental agencies run by Governments around the world are awash with monitoring systems for breaches of environmental law. Despite this every single week breach cases come to the courts. And these are simply the ones that get caught (consultants regularly encounter breaches that have not been picked up by officialdom).

Monitoring does not stop breaches of environmental law, because:

1) Some people make mistakes

2) Some people think they can get away with it

Does anyone seriously believe that the GM industry is the first industrial sector to which these facts of life do not apply?

The only way to stop this kind of thing is to make the creation of such GMOs in food crops illegal in the first place - as now sought by organisations representing major food chain businesses in the US ( http://www.connectotel.com/gmfood/ap151102.txt ).

This is no longer an issue simply for 'green groups' as the New Scientist reports below.

NATURAL LAW PARTY WESSEX

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993073

GM crop mishaps unite friends and foes

17:10 18 November 02

NewScientist.com news service

Friends and foes of the use of genetic engineering in US agriculture have united in criticising two accidents in which a food crop was contaminated by a crop from the previous year designed to yield pharmaceutical products.

Jane Rissler of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, DC., said, "This is a failure at an elementary level. They couldn't distinguish corn from soybeans and remove them from a field. That's like failing nursery school."

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