Hi Joe,
Since the USDA organic standards do not mandate freedom from GM
contamination, and since there is a virtual consensus among
mainstream scientists that such corn is "substantially
equivalent" the court would probably find that no damage had been
done".
USDA probably screwed the organic producers by their rather
arbitrary declaration that organic or conventional growers will
not lose certification if their crop is polluted by a nearby GM
Crop(this point I have frequently pointed out many times in earlier
letters). This seems to mean that GM polluted organic can be
marketed at will in USA.
Think how bad it would be for organic growers if they had to test every
batch of their product for every transgenic construct. It would be a
testing nightmare. Only the very largest organic farmers would be able
to sell anything. The situation is not really any different with
long-residual pesticides. That beautiful, dark, organic soil on your
farm might have traces of dieldrin or DDT from 30 years ago, that get
on the crop and could be found relatively easily with an electron
capture detector on a GC. It would only cost about $300 a pop.
I realize you would like to foment a political crisis and flood of
legal action by pushing the GM-in-organic contamination issue. But for
the reasons I described in my first post, the crisis would probably
backfire legally and crush small organic farmers.
There is only one thing that could turn this around politically in the
US, a bonafide health catastrophy from transgenics. Not too likely.
Dale
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