"There are signs that ministers are ready to "take on" the green lobby, putting the onus on them to say why GM crops are unsafe on the grounds that the science has not shown this"

Um, well our politicians are clearly insane, 'science' has not been conducted correctly in general with GM as it is companies who have controlled the 'science'; and where the GM crops have been trialled on animals there were serious implications for humans.

Our ministers must want non-GM crops to be contaminated so we have to purchase Monsanto seeds, the sell-out evil scum.

er Darell ... just a second there laddie:

Your two points:

1. What article have you been reading that tells you that GM crops are going to feed the hungry. Do you have any ideas why people are going hungry in this age of super-technology and our western gluttony? Politics and because it is cheaper to delay legislation, obfuscate the matter, and otherwise avoid making a commitment to act. The world is not food-poor: it is commitment, compassion, and concern-poor however. Whilst there's money to be had, everybody starves if it is economically expedient. Once the money starts to talk, governments become clients, and we are mere consumers of whatever is pushed our way - so many cattle at the feeding trough, being fattened up, our girth and bottomless capacity to consume everything - entertainment, food, shopping, digital fantasies - being the sweet sound of corporate coffers overflowing.

Which leads to ...

2. Food is a commercial product it is true, but there is nothing stopping anyone from growing it on their own land, in cooperatives, or even starting their own big farm. The onus is on the individual/ group to produce their own food if they don't buy from a supermarket. With GM, any patent, even with a government customer, is really not likely to ever have been let go of until a better technique/ genome is patented and the government weaned gradually onto that as the technology continues to evolve. But unlike most rapid growth tech business, we are not making digital components here. The government will be in control of the seeds you are able to grow, and GM foods can and have colonised adjacent fields, and could well take over non-GM crop spaces if it has been beefed up (literally?). Now you are unable to even grow your own foods, even if you assumed the onus to convert produce into edibles.

And then one must ask why would you trust a government - this one in the UK? The one over the pond? You trust these people with the legal rights to our very livelihood? Are you one of those people who leaves their home or car unlocked? I doubt it. Why? Because you don't want someone taking your stuff. So, here you go, you're saying let's trust the government with our food rights and the common ownership of seeds. That is far more stupid than leaving your home or car unlocked!!

So, Darell - c'mon guy: the science is untested, despite what the corporations would have you believe, and it has *ALWAYS* been the responsibility of the new technology to justify why it should be implemented and that doing so is safe. That's why these regulations exist. But once money starts to flow, and there is sufficient corporate weight and reach, these regulations can become flexible. We are not beholden to demonstrate why we don't want it. The onus is on the science (but the corporations will be doing the spin on any science - think "dodgy dossier on Iraq's WMD!!) to argue its case for the systematic contamination of existing seed stocks, its intended hegemony of food supplies (already supported legally in Canada), and the vastly divergent scientific opinion on the relative and assumed values of the new species in the first place. There is a related debate that we have been excluded from, that of nanotechnology. We have reached the capacity to bring forth novel species - be this via cloning, genetic transmutation, nanotechnology, etc. - and we haven't even settled our secular problems before trying to play Gods. What are we taking forwards with us that future generations are going to have to deal with. Is it really enough to just shrug our shoulders and say "oh well, change is inevitable and humans always adapt to progress"? I don't think so. That's really not good enough. We have the responsibility to make the life better for those who follow: we are the pioneers for the successive generations, just like our forebears did for us. We owe it to those who follow and to our own sense of pride of stewardship to improve quality of living for all, not to gradually empty the world of its life and replace it with automatons and clones and transgenetic foods, just so that we could get high on how advanced we are, how powerful we could make miniature computers, the mediatisation of experience, the brainwashing we call advertising and keeping that money flowing through us all like electricity. What do we really have to show for it? A damaged biosphere, bleak cityscapes of soulless faces, yet more promises for a better world - take a holiday, vote this party, agree with this policy, buy this product.

You have to take a stand somewhere. Somewhere it is going to reach a point when enough is enough. It happens for all drug dependent people, and sooner or later we each have to reach that space and stop this madness, this suicidal drift while we pleasure ourselves into oblivion.

GMOs are that point. This has to be the line in the sand. If not this, if not here, then when and where? At what point would we look back and realise we left it too late to act?

I f I may be forgiven for widening this Topic to include the broader issue of how food plants can be best adapted to the changes likely to be brought about by Global Warming and paradoxically how this adaptation might turn what seems to be a curse-increased levels of CO2-into a blessing?
Specifically should we not be looking beyond the current concerns of agronomists with GM strains of food crops that will give increased yields and focus on the biological catalysts known as enzymes which speed up important chemical reactions/processes such as photosynthesis? RubisCo -the enzyme in question here-is regarded as something of a sluggard but with proper investment in R&D might have its genetic code tweaked to transform it into the thoroughbred the world needs to mop-up excess CO2 and in the process boost food production in another "Green Revolution".

I do not believe this