Hello Mike Miller, Thanks for the interesting comments. You ask, why the canadian food inspection agency (CFIA) and USDA think that the pollen from the transgenic biopharmaceutical constructions will be spread less rapidly than food GM crops? Both CFIA and USDA have cloaked the field test and production of transgenic biopharmaceuticals in secrecy. The testing is designated confidential business information (CBI) as any risk analysis they may have done. There is no reasonable way to find out what or whether the agencies were thinking. Both agencies seem to assume that 1% or 2% crop contamination will be acceptable even though the reasoning is the thoughts of chemists not geneticists.A transgenic plant may produce many toxic seeds that will injured a browser that feeds on that plant. Transgenic plants will form clusters in the fields making hot spots of polluted seeds. Genes like hirudin may provide selection advantage against browsing pests and become rapidly enriched in the crop. In general the effects of chronic feeding of low-level hirudin or human growth hormone have not been studied but should be avoided. What I am saying is that CFIA and USDA seem to have felt that we will passively and submissively accept whatever risks they deem we should take to make biopharmaceutical producers richer. Using biopharmaceuticals as weapons of bioterrorism seems very likely. Hirudin that may cause delayed internal bleeding seems like an interesting prospect. On the other hand human growth hormone might have us looking like Arnold, even the girls. Regarding tracing the biopharmaceutical contaminated food crops,it is technically within reach to use techniques such as PCR and ELISA to detect the genes and their products. The main problem is CBI, our governments in North America prefer to keep us in the dark about the field tests and production of biopharmaceuticals. To them a few fatalities amy be an acceptable risk so long as they are not caught out. Even with full publicity of the corn pollution with a CBI genes the bureaucrats in USDA refuse to divulge the nature of the genes and their products , they require that we passively and submissively accept their dictates about crops. Personally, I absolutely believe that the safety assurances of CFIA and USDA are hollow and meaningless because the agencies ignore conflicts of interest and are biased regarding the transgenic products. WE should demand that the CFIA and USDA bureaucracies be replaced with independent agencies acting on behalf of the taxpayers. Others may have good ideas on shedding light on dim bureaucrats but my preference is to just replace them. Sincerely, Joe Mike Miller wrote:
Joe, I have several, sometimes rethorical, questions that consumer may want to ask related to this topic. I am asking about Canola specifically but the ideas applies to other food crops used for pharaceutial production as well. We know it took a lot less time for triple herbicide resistant canola and related weeds to show up than was originally thought. Any ideas as to why Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the FDA/USDA now thinks that the pollen containing these new gmo constructs will somehow be any less rapidly spread than before? Has anyone considered the potential consequences if a group that wishes us ill got ahold of the seeds for these pharaceutical crops and deliberated contaminated the fields where food canola is grown? It is not like you can keep an eye on a several thousand acre field all the time. If the gumshoes from Monsanto can slip into farmers fields, then a terrorist can do the same. How will we know if the canola oil we buy at the store is contaminated with the blood thinner, hirudin or some other gm product? Are they going to inspect the output from all the processing plants for each and every drug or hormone being grown? Has anyone considered the effect of the unintended stacking of these various genes all in the same contaminated plant by Mother Nature? It seems there are some issues that should have been addressed with the public before releasing this stuff into food crops. Olive oil anyone? They haven't gm'ed that yet. Mike Miller On Saturday 16 November 2002 08:12, you wrote:The patent application below is for the production of animal growth hormones in canola and other crops. Bovine growth hormone is used extensively in USA to increase milk production while human growth hormone has both legal and illegal applications (in body building). Currently the blood coagulation drug, hirudin, is reported to be being produced in western canada canola farms. Hirudin will cause internal bleeding in many instances and should be designated a dangerous pollutant. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has allowed commercial production of hirudin with little or no public awareness or input. Development of growth hormone production is likely to equally secretive. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency seems to be more a coconspirator than regulator. No effort seems to have been made to evaluate the impact of biopharmaceuticals on food production and to look for food contamination with a deadly drug. Pollution with growth hormone genes could devastate canadian food production. United States Patent Application 20020100073 Kind Code A1 Moloney, Maurice M. ; et al. July 25, 2002
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