From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Mon Apr 30 2001 - 18:07:31 MDT
It was a very interesting show.
One point that I had not realized is that the patent lawyers have possibly
conflicting claims in respect to their products. For environmental and FDA
purposes, they stress that the product is 99.999% the same as other foods so
that no special rules are necessary. However, for intellectual patent
claims, they assert that these foods are radically different form
unpatentable food and share little commonality with regular foods.
The other surprise to me was the obvious statement that genetically modified
foods that produce their own resistance to bugs have the same problem as
pesticides. They will wipe out all the susceptible bugs and leave only the
resistant ones for the next generation. Thus, most of these types of
products are only expected to be useful for a few years before they no
longer work. The companies hope to provide a string of different crop
strains faster than they become obsolete.
What was not surprising to me was the explanation that these crops produce
the same poisons that are known to kill bugs, at low enough levels that it
hopefully affect humans. The technique of low-level poison is the same as
used by pesticide use. One possible difference is that this pesticide can't
be washed off.
All in all, the program was very positive toward the technology, and
generally portrayed the nay Sayers as kooks with no scientific evidence.
The key to the title was that people fear this technology (not that it is
horrible).
-- Harvey Newstrom <http://HarveyNewstrom.com> <http://Newstaff.com>
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