The Smoking Gun

[tcmgpt13]

Afraid that China is another part of the GM problem (from time mag Feb. 18 200 eight) as Posey points out. Some info about GM and China from last year. I wonder when we will ever have a government which decides that although we cannot compete on price we could compete on quality (if we can ever get GM foods out).

Who else is sick of the latest food scare which involves food that were grown in foreign countries under rather dubious conditions? This view about US production should not be limited to just food items. We should be bringing back textiles woven and sewn here in the US. Who else is sick of dish towels which cannot be bleached because the dyes will run? Who else is sick of the awful flimsy, poorly printed materials and weirdly sized clothes coming out of China, India and other third world countries? Clothes which often quickly fall apart because they are sewn with not very good thread? Is anyone else tired of the stainless steel which passes for stainless steel in knives which rusts within a few washings by hand? I know there is more that could be produced here because it would be quality not quantity and could have been sold like that instead of having jobs shipped overseas. It is a shame that no one for over thirty years has cared enough to keep industries in this country that no one in the world so far has equaled for quality. On that footing we could have stayed competitive in the world. Sorry for digressing, but GM foods just led to these thoughts:

China's Genetically Altered Food Boom - TIME

China's Genetically Altered Food Boom

In the wake of poisonings in Japan linked to Chinese-made dumplings, last week brought a fresh wave of scrutiny to China's control over its food industry. In 2006 and 2007, European officials discovered an unauthorized variety of genetically modified (GM) rice made in China — illegal in both Europe and China — in processed food exported to European Union nations. Last Tuesday, the European Commission enacted an emergency regulation on Chinese food imports: Starting April 15, food products containing Chinese rice will require mandatory certification that they've been tested for the experimental GM variety called Bt63.

The measure underscores a discomfort in the West with China's growing dominance in the business of inventing and selling genetically modified seed. Faced with feeding every fifth person on the planet with less than one-tenth of the world's farmland, Beijing has been pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into transgenic crop research and development, hoping the plants, whose DNA is combined with genetic material that programs them with traits like pest and weed resistance, will help farmers yield more food and commodities at a lower cost — especially as farmland is being lost to development and drought. Most of China's cotton is already transgenic, and rice, wheat, maize, soybeans and livestock are in the pipeline. "China decided that conventional technology would not allow it to feed its people," says Clive James, chairman and founder of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA). In the 12 years since GM crops have been commercially grown, James says most planting has been in the Americas. "I believe that the second decade will be the decade of Asia," he says.

It's a shift that's causing second thoughts on both sides of this enduringly controversial technology. The United States is the world's most enthusiastic adopter of GM crops, growing vast amounts of crops like herbicide-tolerant soybeans and insect-resistant corn; here, the seeds of globally operating companies like Monsanto and DuPont have passed health and environmental muster. While U.S. regulators have determined GM foods are safe to eat, China's fast growth raises the question of whether one country's health safety trials can translate in another. "We've been saying, 'Trust us,'" says Gregory Jaffe, director of the Biotechnology Project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington. "Now the shoe is on the other foot. And we're not sure we like that system."

More bad news, this time officially sanctioned by China. This article discusses GM seeds from a Chinese company. Most likely all these seeds will require copious amounts of water to grow. Since water supplies are already critical worldwide this should become interesting:

Beijing Company Announces Approval For GM Seeds - China Sourcing News

Beijing Company Announces Approval For GM Seeds

June 18, 2008 | By Editor Origin Agritech Ltd. a Beijing based technology-focused supplier of crop seed and agri-biotech research in China, has announced that it has had approved four new varieties of seed.

These are three new corn hybrid varieties and a new GM cotton variety for distribution during the 2009 sales season in five provinces throughout China. The Company has a total of 68 corn seeds and 15 cotton seeds approved for sale in China.

The new corn seed products include Ao Nuo 1, Yu Ao 6, and Li Yu 16. Ao Nuo 1 is approved for provincial distribution in Beijing and Liaoning. Yu Ao 6 is approved for provincial distribution in Inner Mongolia, and Li Yu 16 is approved for distribution in Hubei province.

Ao Mian 6 is a genetically modified cotton seed approved for distribution in Henan province.

The corn seed approval process is reported to be one of the most rigorous regulatory requirements in all of China. The approval requires the applicant to undergo two growing seasons of monitored growth in at least five different locations in the region. Seeds submitted for testing are planted together with control seeds, which are typically the most popular seeds in the testing regions. Only seeds that have an increased yield of 5-8% or higher versus the control seeds are cleared to proceed to the second year of testing.

Origin develops, grows, processes, and markets crop seeds to farmers throughout China and parts of Southeast Asia via a network of approximately 3,800 first-level distributors and 6,500 second-level distributors. The hybrid seed industry is estimated at USD2 billion and this is expected to double by 2010.

[jonsi]

Holy batmobile TCM!

That is a lot of grain that Monsanto owns now. & when their seeds cross pollinate with native seeds, Monsanto will own the whole lot.

We need to support organic farmers. [u]Heirloom seeds: those Seeds that have traditionally been saved by families, generation after generation. These seeds have many qualities and are desirable for their ... HEIRLOOM SEEDS HISTORY - About our company.

Why am I concerned about Genetically Modified Food (GMO)? Our bodies don't recognize what is in the GMO's and we get sick.... another link to "Morgellons"...?

In the white light,
~jonsi