From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Mon Jul 31 2000 - 06:41:48 MDT
At 12:16 PM 31/07/00 +0100, "Steve" <steve@multisell.com> wrote of my
sarcastic remark:
>>any GM-crop `contamination'.
>>I wonder why we don't hear more about added `vitamin contamination', `folic
>>acid contamination', `iodine contamination' (of table salt)... The memetic
>>war is being won by default.
>Or contaminated by phosphates, insecticides and weedkillers indeed.
Well, that entirely reverses the point I was making, but hey.
>The difference between GM and the others you mention is that GM spores are
>freed into the environment to affect other (non-GM crops) whether the
>farmers like it or not.
I agree that this is a, maybe the, risk. But using a madly loaded word like
`contamination' of foodstuffs on the store shelves is malignant and
analysis-blocking.
If some pressure group started running around shouting that `those evil
chemical vitamins' are contaminating us (and of course one hears comments
nearly as silly from people who don't seem to have the brains to realise
that all vitamins are chemicals, just as all everything is chemicals), the
store owners would start snatching the dangerous things off the shelves in
a second, or insisting that all those dangerous vitamin chemicals be purged
from vegetables before they're put on sale.
Damien Broderick
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