Tuesday, 12 January 2016

GM or GM Free Grain or something else?

Not uncommon for a topic to get so polarising, where views are formed and so tightly held by the individuals on respective sides that change is hardly likely. Is a solution possible. Yes. But we'd need intervention from progressive thinking, lateral thinking problem solvers. Sounds easy but you need more than impartial hired thinkers rolling into town and solving the problem. You need them and you then need all other stakeholders involved coming front and centre with the least amount of bias and looking at the problems, looking at the levels of solution they'd need to be happy.

One of the first parts is... Is GM Bad For You? Here's why we'd need a relatively impartial and independent person or persons to sit over the facts first and make a range of recommendations. Why? Because 10 minutes of Dr Google can find you great volumes of "evidential scientific facts" to suit which ever side you're from. A lot of it needs filtering out so we can determine a few things. Lets just use cereals for debate's sake.

1) What harm is expected from consuming GM cereals
2) How likely is this with what doses?
3) Do we have any independent data?

I ask this because imagine we have 3 piles of wheat. A tonne of GM wheat, a tonne of GM Free wheat and a tonne of 50/50 GM/GM Free wheat. Now set about making processed products from them. Make a range of products from the 3 piles of grain. Now we have sample data points to assess. Now we have all 3 types of each product ready to be tested. Test away.

See what is differing between them, is there a detectable difference?
If so what is the difference and how will that affect people who consume it?

Is it harmful and how harmful is it?

If we get no detectable difference or an extremely low level of difference and an exceedingly low chance of negative outcome for a consumer we have the problem half solved.

For one, the level of harm being negligible we know straight away cross contamination isn't such a big deal and if its non detectable in differences, we know we can have 30-50% contamination before it makes any difference. Segregation at the wheat bin just got a lot easier. Neighbours with only a fence and two firebreaks between the GM and the Non GM crop haven't got a huge problem anymore either. They ensure they harvest their seed as far from the firebreak as possible and both will be likely to be seeding & therefore harvesting pure crops each year.

Now grains will vary and sad to say some may not be compatible next door with just a pair of scarifier breaks between them. Some may have big discernable differences. But until its tested we won't know. Its to be assumed that the negative affect will be because a genetic modification causes some harmful compound to be present in the grain. What is it and can it be engineered out? More questions with small prospects of answers with proper independent government regulated science

The sad court case between two neighbouring farmers in Kojonup should never have happened, it should never have been allowed to happen. An independent political party that represents rural & regional Western Australians should have stepped in and facilitated a solution. Instead it went through costly loss of income for one, then costly court appearances for both.

Now a GM Free cropper is not going to plant his or her crop anywhere near the neighbours GM crop, whether its safe to do so, has huge tolerances of contamination allowed or anything. They just won't.

Now you can virtually substitute GM & GM Free for Certified Organic and Traditional non organic.
In this debate, one of the problems I've heard bandied about (again with maybe-science attached) is the chemical exposure from herbicides and insecticides. I've never sprayed for nematodes so I'll just put that aside. Herbicides are pre emergent and post emergent. They have dose levels of LD50, the dose required to kill 50% of a rat population. There are also half lives of various chemicals. Depending what other chemicals they come into contact with. Chances are no one is going to be killed. Negative Health Affects? Well again, we need some comparative science with a 50:50 blend involved. Plants that have their leaves formed and their grain unformed do not store chemicals then send it for final storage in the grain.

Some of the organic eaters remind me of gluten free eaters, most of whom are not Celiac. Most think they're getting a health benefit. If so is it detectable, observable and of significance or is it just felt that organic is better. Some organic grain processed into breakfast cereal is joked to have the same nutritional value of the packaging. Again, not enough solid independent facts, verified, test and sorted by independent person/s.

If only one smart person was told "You, go fix this. If some of it can't be fixed, work out a plan B"
It would be so good if certain GM/GM Free grains can have their contamination levels raised 10 fold (number plucking from air) the court case would have gone differently, someone may have kept their GM accreditation, no income might have been loss and the only difference between the 2 crops is an operational one.

Department of Agriculture WA would have 30 years ago had the budget flex to go seek out solutions. It had the staff, equipment, resources, know how and ability to do trials. We could have got an answer. The department is now at best a regulatory agency or an advisory stop off point. It needs to rebuild and be a part of the science. We need some tough bruisers & fighters who're keen to return rural & regional research to its previous long lost highs. Until that happens we have more chances of court cases and high court appeals to resolve issues that should never have ended up in litigation.

Now yep is the answer...the question did I make a lot of big bold fluid like assumptions?
Isn't everyone in the GM debate. Until we get some independent panel to assess and fund research there'll be pseudo science preventing progress and hiding that which is actually 100% safe.

No comments:

Post a Comment