Yesterday I sent an Italian translation of the information on “Golden rice” from the Smithsonian magazine, signaled to us by Bill Lee, to people interested in bulbs.
In many European countries (and elsewhere in the world too) biased people and pressure groups are opposed to any introduction of GM plants.
Therefore I was not surprised that three Italians reacted negatively to my email.
I sent them the link http://www.goldenrice.org/Content4-Info/info.html which might be useful also to others who may have to deal with criticisms based on insufficient information.
N. poeticus recurvus with its rim full of beta-carotene
Regards to all.
Henry (Rome)
Although I don’t find this a topic for this group, I must chime in here, living in a country that forbids transgenetic crops, much to the anger of Monsanto and other firms. There is a good ground for this, which is not discussed in the refferenced Golden Rice propoganda: all grain crops are wind pollinated. This means any new genetic material will quickly become distributed into the general existing population of related grasses. This leads to contamination of the original crops being still grown. This has happened with the gene manipulated grains introduced into India and the USA, for example. The result has been the loss of genetic purity of desirable grain strains/races, as well an ensuing law suites from the gentec companies, claiming that their product has been illegally procured! Farmers have simply been sued out of existence via greed, as they have chosen NOT to grow these genetically manipulated crops, but the genetic material has simply made its way into the general wild gene pool.
In other words, don’t believe the propoganda as to the positive side of genetic changed plants without knowing the negative side! It is a very disturbing state of affairs, as we, the people that simply want to get a bowl of rice, are quickly loosing control of what they consume. As much as I am for genetic improvements of plants, we are still in the infancy of this technology and proper testing is simply never done. Any gene, animal, bacteria, fungus, etc., that is released into our planets biosphere will make changes. We have seen this with the many animals now at home in alien lands, diseases that are now common place, yet we simply refuse to learn from such errors.
Don’t be naive! Money is still ruling the world, not good will.
Ciao für now,
Jamie V.
Cologne
Germany
JS schrieb: