www.czu.cz ; www.usab-tm.ro ; www.raupp.info

Nine years ago, U.S. farmers began harvesting soybeans infused with a gene
from bacteria that made them resistant to herbicide. The farmers could kill
the weeds; their soybeans would survive, June 2005 by Harold Brubaker.

Today, ingredients made with those soybeans can be found in breads,
cookies, candies, and other supermarket products - yet many people have no
idea they are buying genetically modified food.

Biotechnology opponents would like to change that. Beginnning tomorrow, they
are staging a festival, teach-in and parade to counter the Biotechnology
Industry Organization's international convention, which is primarily focused
on health care and runs here Sunday through Wednesday.

The "alternative" convention is meant to stir up public opposition - which
has been fierce in Europe and nearly absent in the United States - to
biotechnology's advance, organizers said. They contend that the technology
is moving too fast, with too little regulatory scrutiny.

Even if scientists could prove the complete safety of genetically modified
crops, many farmers and activists would remain opposed to the technology
because, they say, it tends to centralize control of food and perpetuates
large-scale agriculture.

"We can't let the multinational corporations hand everything to us," said
Sam Cantrell, president of Maysie's Farm Conservation Center in Chester
County. Maysie's is a working vegetable farm dedicated to teaching the
public about ecologically minded agriculture.

Cantrell distrusts any attempt to dominate nature the way genetic
engineering does. "We should expect that things are going to happen that we
cannot predict," he said.

Away from the farm, most Americans are generally unaware of genetically
modified food but would like to know if they are eating it, according to a
2004 survey by Rutgers University's Food Policy Institute in New Brunswick,
N.J. That finding, based on a telephone survey of 1,201 consumers, was in
line with generally increased interest about what goes into food, the
researchers said.

Commercially available since 1996, genetically modified crops were planted
last year on 200 million acres worldwide, or about 5 percent of global
cropland, according to the nonprofit International Service for the
Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications.

The cumulative acreage of biotech crops - adding the totals from each year -
reached one billion last month, according to another pro-biotech group.

"It's been the most rapidly adopted technology in the history of
agriculture, and is just going to keep expanding," said Tom West, vice
president for biotechnology affairs at Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc., a
major seed producer owned by DuPont Co.

Nearly 60 percent of last year's plantings of genetically modified crops
were in the United States, but industry advocates say the altered seeds are
rapidly gaining ground in developing nations.

Modified versions of four crops - soybeans, corn, cotton and canola -
account for nearly all the acreage. Most of the genetic changes made plants
resistant to bugs and herbicides. Industry experts say they expect
second-generation seeds to have increased drought tolerance, improved
nutrition, and more-effective herbicide resistance.

Pro- and anti-biotech groups agree that an estimated 70 percent of processed
supermarket foods contain at least traces of genetically modified
ingredients because of the widespread use of soy-based ingredients and corn
sweeteners.

Most unprocessed foods, including raw potatoes, tomatoes, and other produce
on grocery shelves, remain unaltered, according to the Union of Concerned
Scientists. The only genetically modified whole food on the market is the
papaya, which was engineered to be resistant to a virus that nearly wiped it
out in Hawaii.

The "Flavr Savr" tomato, introduced in 1994 with a genetic modification
causing it to ripen on the vine without going soft, fell flat with consumers
and was taken off the market in 1997.

Biotech opponents scored a victory - at least temporarily - last year when
industry leader Monsanto Co. suspended plans to introduce the world's first
biotech wheat. "Both the farmers and the major wheat buyers said: 'We don't
want this,' said Brian Tokar, biotechnology project director at the
Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont.

Pro-industry groups argue that agricultural biotechnology is simply the next
step in the age-old effort by humans to turn nature in their favor through
selection and breeding. They say genetic engineering is even more precise
than traditional breeding.

West, the Pioneer Hi-Bred executive, pointed out that knowledge of plant
genomes, and the ability to determine the presence of specific genes in
plants, has sped up the traditional breeding practice.

Nevertheless, he said he thinks genetic modification or "transgenics" -
moving genes from one organism to another - is still needed. For example,
that's how scientists might get "heart-healthy" omega-3 fatty acids from
fish or algae into soybeans.

The hazard, according to organic gardening expert Shepherd Ogden, is that
genetic engineers never have any idea where the gene is going to go.

That uncertainty and the speed at which plants are developed make the
technology inherently destabilizing, said Ogden, founder and former
president of the Cooks Garden seed company. "Change has to proceed at a
relatively slow pace," he said.

The issue also unnerves Tioga County, Pa., dairy farmer Brenda Cochran. "I
want to know who will pay the price if mistakes are made in altering life,"
she said

[registration.philly.com]
%2Fphilly%2Fliving%2Fhealth%2F11914529.htm

------------------------------------------
Posted to Phorum via PhorumMail