North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["tanis cuff" <tanistanis@hotmail.com>]

I agree, re quality control/ figuring out what the heck we're doing !   But, 
isn't there a case of gmo techniques being used to put some genes of wild 
potatoes into some cultivars of commercial potatoes-- the same thing that 
traditional plant breeders aim for, but in much shorter time.  The work I 
heard about was for increased resistance to the blight.   Lots of benefit 
for really probably zero risk, but these can't be used by any country which 
has a "NO GMO's" rule.

Having worked on a traditional plant-breeding project, if the same goals 
could have been achieved faster in a nice air-conditioned lab, that would 
have been my choice !

tc


----Original Message Follows----
From: Art
To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Plum Pox information sources
Date: 10 Feb 2004 19:25:10 -0600

I bought the story about curing all of mankind's ailments, too.

But the more I learn about genetic engineering, the less I like it.
I say this as someone who has spent part of my career in agriculture,
and part of my career in FDA validation. I have helped set standards for
internal validation efforts, and have been involved in cosmetic and
pharmaceutical validation.

The current crop of GMOs appear to have taken a shortcut across the
normal FDA validation process. They were unique enough that they got a
patent, but apparently not unique enough that food safety testing was
done. I don't see how it could be both. I attended a lecture at Iowa
State University by Dr. Arpad Puszta, from Great Britain, in December.
Dr. Puszta is the man whose research was destroyed and whose reputation
was slandered when his study on the nutritional effects of GM potatoes
showed necrosis in rodents.

It looks like we've been sold a bill of goods with genetic engineering.
I would be glad to share some references for what I've found off-list if
anyone is interested.

My main concern is that we not pollute our genetic resources. This isn't
a concern with Frankenfood, it's a concern about the lack of knowledge
that we have on the effects of gene insertion, gene removal, and general
DNA helix tampering with respect to helix sequence and angles. The
effects of genetic engineering are largely unknown, and what we do know
is very incriminating.

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