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  • From: Alliums <garlicgrower AT earthlink.net>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Market-farming] Field peas and GMOs
  • Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2004 12:01:40 -0500

Allan wrote:


This reminds me of another question: aside from contamination, can we pretty safely rely on GMO products being MAREKETED to us and not simply sold as generic crops?

As someone who has written far too many book reviews on GMOs, I'd say that it's pretty safe to assume that a GMO is not going to be marketed as a generic crop. The whole purpose of GMOs is to make money on the patenting and the tech fee (added in addition to the seed cost) and Monsanto, etc, aren't going to pass up those added costs because that's where their profits come from. They want their money, so they aren't going to let it become "generic"

Companies create GMOs from plants that LOTS of growers use and even more buyers consume so that they can make economies of scale work for them. That's why the next great GMO battle is on wheat -- how many people in the world eat wheat bread?

Or is there some sort of 'registry', so, that even though it illogical that an $18 bag of field peas would be genetically engineered, I'd have some way to really feel like I'd done all I could to make sure that they weren't? (I'm aware of the contamination issues, unfortunately.)

SOC withstanding (;-)), there just ain't no money in cover crops, so I can't imagine that anyone is bothering with field peas. While there might be GM genes in your field pea (although I really doubt anyone is going GM with peas at all since they are not that much of a global crop), I don't think anyone has intentionally put them there.



Dorene Pasekoff, Coordinator
St. John's United Church of Christ Organic Community Garden

A mission of
St. John's United Church of Christ, 315 Gay Street, Phoenixville, PA 19460





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