From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Date: Thu Aug 26 1999 - 11:55:35 MDT
On Tue, 24 Aug 1999, Brian D Williams wrote:
>
> If I recall correctly they were spraying a modified bacteria onto
> the plants to prevent frost damage. The bacteria involved was known
> to cause possible respiratory infection if inhaled in sufficient
> quantities, hence the precaution. Cheap maybe, funny definitely.
Yep, these are legitmate concerns. Perhaps an example of the
"premature" use of an emerging technology.
>
> I guess we agree to disagree on this one.
>
Lets reframe the discussion (see below).
>
> My bet is that if agribusiness had to label products with (contains
> genetically engineered materials) those products would fail in the
> marketplace......
>
Exactly! If we assume that most of the fears and naysaying is unjustified
(because the people don't understand the relative risks), then your
"right" to have free and complete access to information is conflicting
with my "right" to buy the cheapest food products. If some people
have and *misinterpret* the information, then companies fail to develop
markets that would otherwise be benificial to everyone. [You don't
have to buy it if its engineered, but you shouldn't be able to force
me into not being able to buy it as well.] Furthermore, if you look
at the agenda of the anti-Ag-Bio people, they not only want to take
away my right to buy cheaper food, they want to take away *your* right
to grow such food. So it would appear that you have a logical conflict
between your desire for full disclosure and your desire to grow whatever
crop you feel like on your property. [I'm assuming that you would
argue fairly strongly that if you want to grow *any* crop you should
be able to do so.]
Now, I suspect that companies would still develop the products because
there are people who can interpret the relative risks properly. They
might do some educational advertising or fund PBS specials, etc. It
would all take longer though because the ROI would be slower.
The real *sticky* point is going to revolve around the cross-pollination
and "natural crop" contamination issues. Who should have to bear the
burden enclosing their crops in "safe zones" (miles from other crops,
greenhouses, etc.), the Gene-Engineers or the Naturalists?
Robert
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:04:54 MST