Two issues:

[Galmin]

GI's with zero medical experience operated (as in using scalpel, pliers and saws) at Abu Ghraib

No medical proferssionals at Abu Ghraib during 2003.





U.S. declares Iraqis can not save their own seeds

The "economic restructuring" implemented by the Bush Administration in Iraq, Iraqi farmers will no longer be permitted to save their seeds, which include seeds the Iraqis themselves have developed over hundreds of years. Instead, they will be forced to buy seeds from US corporations.





Discuss.

[HKRockChick]

This is a surprise? Indian farmers have been fighting this for years. I guess they are not convinced that an agricultural society thousands of years old should buy "patented" GM seeds from big businesses which may or may not work in their climates...



www.zurichmednet.org/deve...ulture.htm



www.organicconsumers.org/vandana.html



I guess there are two sides to every story. Comments?

[Galmin]

Quote:

---

Monsanto Co snared soy farmer Homan McFarling in 1999, and the company is demanding he pay it hundreds of thousands of dollars for alleged technology piracy. McFarling's sin? He saved seed from one harvest and replanted it the following season, a revered and ancient agricultural practice.

---

So genetically altered seeds are intellectual property.

I have nothing against that, the problem is that the altered DNA is made as a strong trait and pollenation (contamination of natural seed) will spread. Soon the owners of said intellectual property can sue every farmer on every continent that have a country where altered seeds has been used. Hard upon that the IP owner can sue every farmer in the entire world.



There will be no more natural seed.



Game over.



Who owns the cross-pollenated product?





Man has once again tampered with Gods work, hasn't that sort of thing pissed him off before?

[HKRockChick]

Seeds that have been grown for centuries in India are now being patented, repackaged, and sold at a premium to the farmers who have planted and replanted the same (sturdier) crops for eons. I remember someone tried to patent some herbs that had been around in India forever, there was a huge hue and cry about that. Its scary. There are thousands of herbal remedies that have survived centuries in India (ayurveda) and then a drug company comes along and patents it and then people who have been using it free now have to pay for it!!!



I just found a bbc story on this.



news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/459016.stm



Does anyone have a problem with this?

[Galmin]

Well, i think it's the right thing to do...



Though it doesn't matter that the International Plant Genetic Treaty has become Law to protect the genepool of the diversity of natural seed when they get contaminated.



Today there are only about 150 different crops that feed the world (and merely 12 [twelve!] crops provide 80% of dietary energy), the rate is declining.



The loss of diversity makes us more vulnerable, just look at the commercial banana industry that is under severe threat from a new fungal disease because all varities derive from one original banana variety.



So if we set aside the issue with intellectual property for a spell, there still remains one big questionmark: is there a built-in timebomb in altered crops?

[DreamTone7]

...same game, different name...with big industry as the culprits again. I saw this thing coming along time ago...the whole "bottled water" craze. Why do we need bottled water when we have it coming out of our ears? Because, for the first time in recorded history (this ocurred a few years back), the US Govt declared that there were no longer any uncontaminated (though not necessarily polluted) natural fresh-water sources in the US. I can imagine the same thing happening all over the world before long, too...if it hasn't already. What was once free (clean and pure fresh water) now has to be uncontaminated at a price...big undustry pollutes water, then charges us to clean it up. Same concept with seeds...people are now charged for what nature used to be able to naturally provide for free. With a twist this time...because the new seeds actually push natural seeds out of the game. But again, big industry cleans up. (No pun intended) You all watch...air will be next...and, as always, greed (or the love of money) is at the root of the evil.



As to the genetics, I echo what Galmin said about the time bomb...though it may actually be what these genetically altered crops do to us! "Mad Cow" disease is not noticable until it reaches a certain level...who knows what we are really doing to ourselves with this genetically altered stuff. Only time will tell...and, of course, it will be too late, then. I predict that natural seeds will be the "gold" of the future.

[HKRockChick]

I have a problem with tampering with nature - it will come back to bite us in the butt. Nature has a way of ensuring that plants and animals evolve naturally and survival of the fittest ensures we have species strong enough to withstand what we are dealt. GM foods could in fact be weakening us as a species... just my two bits.



I have a very very big problem with GM humans... we may be seeing some of these in our backyards soon!

[droolymutt]

Quote:

---

I have a problem with tampering with nature

---

Debbie's sentiment there sums up my feelings, too.







Genetically modifying stuff is like saying we know better than God....







Sure.. - sometimes what Nature does isn't Fun, from our tiny human perspectives..





But in the long run, I'll bet She knows better than us...

[droolymutt]

It's like....





Why would anyone want to second-guess God, or Mother Nature....?







Maybe that depends upon one's perception of "God" and "Mother Nature"........?







But I wax philosophic. I'll stop.

Edited by: droolymutt  at: 2/9/05 5:02

[droolymutt]

Another thought of yours, Debbie...:

Quote:

---

GM foods could in fact be weakening us as a species.

---

That was running through the back of my mind, (while doing other things) for the past few hours.....





I love your mind..

[Galmin]

Quote:

---

it may actually be what these genetically altered crops do to us!

---

Agreed. Though if it's actually world famine, an epidemic infectious disease that eats the enzymes of our brains out or a deficiency generated by the absence of some for us vital spores only found in natural seed doesn't really matter.



The human species would be in grave danger just so some companies could get a great guaranteed turnover thought genetically altered seed.

[Data Thieves]

Well those gm seeds should be fed to the scientist that produced them, dried first, then he/she should be watered until the seeds can absorb no more liquid, then he/she should be releaved of the bloat in the same way that a vet would releave a bloated bovine.



Seriously, they are idiots messing with nature, the same way that we are idiots using all the oil, bleeding the planet, and filling the atmosphere with carbon,

Our earth is the "eye" of the solar system, yes, and it looks out at the rest of the universe, how can we see what is there with smoke in our eyes,????

[answerraire]

From Checkmate:



Defending Good Science



December, 2004





Seeds of Stupidity





Every now and then I run into a story so ridiculous, it actually makes you stop and laugh out loud. The following piece of junk science - about poor Iraqi farmers now beholden to US multi-national seed corporations - definitely qualifies.



In fact, it's so insane I almost hesitated to profile it, for fear of drawing attention to allegations so far out in left field that they're not even in the same zip code, much less the same ball park.



Internet gossip/newshound Pierre Bourque highlighted this particular story on his website. In breathless fury, the article regales us with, "Iraqi farmers will no longer be permitted to save their seeds. Instead, they will be forced to buy seeds from US corporations -- which can include seeds the Iraqis themselves developed over hundreds of years."



The article concerns the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV. The actual convention can be seen here.) The interim government in Iraq has joined over 55 other countries and signed unto this convention.



Under the terms of the convention, a country may prohibit farmers from saving specific seeds from protected varieties of plants. Iraq chose to follow this rule - but this only applies to registered varieties that satisfy the requirements of the Plant Variety Protection Law.



It is simple acts like signing conventions and respecting international treaties which will pull Iraq into the 21st century. Establishing a framework of laws and principals is a welcome step to any developing democracy.



But more to the point - guess how many Iraqi farmers are going to be affected by this new order?



None. There is not a single ‘protected’ variety of plant currently being sold or marketed in Iraq. In other words, this doesn't affect Iraqi farmers one iota.



This doesn't stop activists from screaming "the US has declared a new war against the Iraqi farmer." Criticize all they want -- they're still wrong.



It's hard to get any blunter than this. This isn't a case of two differing viewpoints or interpretations. There's no amount of subjective analysis needed to counter this ludicrous allegation - it's just plain wrong.



When contacted to comment on this particular article, the Monsanto spokesperson I spoke to was nonplussed. "I'm not even sure we even HAVE a biotech business in Iraq," she replied.



Monsanto is certainly used to being criticized. They've shared blame for a long list of biotechnology related scares. But surely, even the most strident of Monsanto-haters has to realize the difference between healthy skepticism and a line like "In a short time, Iraq will be living under the new American credo: Pay Monsanto, or starve."



Welcome to the age of Internet "journalism." Articles like this (which, tragically enough, are still being highlighted on the front page of hosting website) are an end result of closed-mindedness and prejudice. When you take emotional hot-button issues such as the war in Iraq and USA global multi-nationalism and throw in some genetically modified food issues, the end result is hardly surprising.



www.checkmatepublicaffair...c2004.html





Here's the law:



www.iraqcoalition.org/reg...ts_Law.pdf

[Galmin]

Quote:

---

Every now and then I run into a story so ridiculous, it actually makes you stop and laugh out loud.

---

here's a snipplet of the actual text:

Quote:

---

66) Chapter Threequater, Article 15 is added to read as follows:

“A. Notwithstanding Article 14 of this Chapter, the breeder's right shall not

include the following acts of third parties for personal non-commercial purposes,

for purposes of experimentation or education of new varieties.

B. Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties or any

variety mentioned in items 1 and 2 of paragraph (C) of Article 14 of this

Chapter.”

---

Article 14, paragraph 2 [C] states any variety that is different from any other known variety may be registered in any country and become a protected variety of seed- thus defaulting it into the "protected class" of seeds and prohibiting the Iraqis from reusing them the following season.



Now, pollen is airborne and eventually you won't be able to save your own seed. Once the pollen infects your crops, you stole the patented IP. Viral IP law. That's a new touch.

Quote:

---

Monsanto is certainly used to being criticized.

---

You do realize Monsanto has already developed and patented a technology that has been called "terminator"?



Please continue to laugh.

Edited by: Galmin  at: 2/14/05 13:15

[answerraire]

"Please continue to laugh"



Vegsource: "Iraqi farmers will no longer be permitted to save their seeds"



Checkmate: "How many Iraqi farmers are going to be affected by this new order? None. There is not a single ‘protected’ variety of plant currently being sold or marketed in Iraq. In other words, this doesn't affect Iraqi farmers one iota."



Hence Checkmate dude's laugh.







Galmin: "You do realize Mansanto has already developed and patented a technology that has been called "terminator"?"



Old news. Monsanto has long abandoned the Terminator due to problems illustrated here:



members.aye.net/~hippie/me-14.htm



More Old News: Interesting Monsanto doings from April 4, 2001:



Goliath Whomps David



By Ronald Bailey



A Canadian federal judge last week ordered 70-year-old Saskatchewan canola farmer Percy Schmeiser to pay $10,000 in user fees and up to $75,000 in profits from his 1998 crop to Monsanto for infringing the company's seed patent. Activists have made Schmeiser a poster boy in their global campaign against crop biotech, portraying the lawsuit as a battle pitting a greedy corporate Goliath against a feisty family farmer David. Canola, also known as oil rapeseed, is a relative of the mustard family. It is raised to produce cooking oil and has become a very high value crop on the Canadian prairies.



The case arose when Monsanto, acting on a tip, sent private investigators to test canola growing in Schmeiser's 900-acre farm in 1997. The tip suggested that Schmeiser might be growing Monsanto's genetically enhanced variety Roundup Ready canola that resists Monsanto's herbicide Roundup. The benefit of the crop: Farmers can spray their fields to kill weeds without harming their canola crop. Before selling Roundup Ready seeds to farmers, Monsanto requires them to license the use of the seeds and sign a Technology Use Agreement (TUA). These agreements require that farmers using Monsanto seeds sell all their crops to approved grain merchants and that they not save seeds for replanting. About 40 percent of all canola grown in Canada is Roundup Ready and some 20,000 Canadian farmers have signed the Monsanto licensing agreements.



In 1997, Schmeiser refused to allow Monsanto's investigators to sample his crops, so they acquired samples from public road right-of-ways on which Schmeiser had planted some canola. These samples were tested and 100 percent were found to be resistant to Roundup. Monsanto also obtained samples from a local mill that had cleaned the 1997 seeds Schmeiser saved for replanting. The samples were tested at the University of Manitoba and 95 to 98 percent were Roundup Ready. "That range is evidence of the presence of commercial Roundup Ready canola," the court ruled.



Eventually, the court ordered Schmeiser to allow Monsanto investigators to sample his 1998 crop. Tests found "the presence of the patented gene in a range of 95-98 percent of the canola sampled."



Schmeiser does not deny that much of the canola growing on his farm in 1997 and 1998 did in fact contain Monsanto's Roundup Ready gene, but he claims that it got there via cross-pollination by the wind and bees, seed blowing off passing grain trucks, or from seed blown by wind onto his property from another farmer's field. Since he didn't ask for the gene to appear on his property, Schmeiser argued that he shouldn't be held liable for infringing Monsanto's patent. In fact, he countered that Monsanto should be held responsible for controlling the genes that it has let loose in the environment.



But as often occurs, court cases turn on particular facts. First, expert testimony accepted by the court explained that mere cross-pollination could not produce a canola crop that was 95 percent to 98 percent Roundup Ready. Second, in 1996, when the alleged cross-pollination would have occurred, the nearest farmer licensed to use Roundup Ready Canola was five miles away. Third, an expert in road vehicle aerodynamics testified that canola seed falling from passing trucks would travel no more than 8.8 meters.



Furthermore, although Schmeiser claimed that he used other herbicides to control weeds in his fields, including Treflan, Muster, and Assure in 1997 and 1998, he could produce no receipts to show that he had purchased those chemicals. However, he did have receipts that showed that he had bought Roundup. Finally, a neighboring farmer testified that Schmeiser's hired hand had told him several times that Schmeiser had grown Roundup Ready canola and then sprayed Roundup on the crop.



The court concluded that it didn't matter how the Roundup Ready canola got onto Schmeiser's farm and that the salient point was that he specifically saved seed that he knew was tolerant of Roundup. Schmeiser's "infringement arises not simply from occasional or limited contamination of his Roundup susceptible canola by plants that are Roundup resistant. He planted his crop for 1998 with seed that he knew or ought to have known was Roundup tolerant." Thus he owed Monsanto a user's fee and some share of the profits from his 1998 crop.



Monsanto argues that it must pursue patent infringement cases against farmers like Schmeiser in order to protect its intellectual property. If farmers could save Roundup Ready seeds and replant them year to year, then Monsanto would not be able to recoup its research investment and invest in developing new biotech crop varieties. Also, infringers would get an unfair advantage over farmers who abide by their license agreements with Monsanto.



The court decided that "a farmer whose field contains seed or plants originating from seed spilled into them, or blown as seed, in swaths from a neighbour's land or even from germination by pollen carried into his field from elsewhere by insects, birds, or by the wind, may own the seed or plants on his land even if he did not set about to plant them. He does not own the right to the use of the patented gene, or of the seed or plant containing the patented gene or cell." (Emphasis added.)



Under this ruling it appears that a farmer is not liable for infringement if a patented gene is transferred into his crops by chance and it does not confer a significant advantage on him. For example, if he simply sells his crop without saving any seed, he would not violate the patent and he can pocket whatever money he makes from a crop. Fair enough, but some vexing problems could arise.



First, what percentage of a crop must contain the inadvertently transferred patented gene for it to constitute infringement? It certainly is not fair to hold farmers strictly liable for minor amounts of cross-pollination. Monsanto evidently agrees. "We didn't introduce the technology so we could go out and trick farmers and catch them and sue them for patent infringement," a Monsanto spokesman told Mother Jones last year. "What our concern is that if we have someone who purposefully plants the seed to create a competitive advantage."



Second, under the new international Biosafety Protocol, grain exports that contain more than 1 percent of genetically enhanced grains must be labeled and countries might require that such shipments be segregated from conventional food handling channels. This would be costly. Based as it is on bad science, the protocol does represent a significant obstacle to the international trade of biotech crops. It is not too hard to imagine that farmers trying to grow conventional crops for export may find that their fields have been pollinated with neighboring biotech crops and would therefore fall under the pointless, but onerous, labeling and handling provisions of the Biosafety Protocol.



Third, organic farmers have put themselves in a bind by agreeing to new federal regulations that exclude genetically enhanced crops from being defined as organic. Again, it may be that pollination from biotech crops would cause the crops of some organic farmers to fail to qualify as "organic" under the new regulations.



The good news is that technological fixes may be developed to solve some of these potential problems. For example, the Technology Protection System (TPS) developed by Delta Pine Land Co. and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is a complex of three genes that makes seeds sterile by interfering with the development of plant embryos. Pollen from plants containing TPS would allow seeds to develop but those seeds could not be used for replanting. Thus TPS gives biotech developers a way to protect their intellectual property while making sure that patented genes are not inadvertently transferred to neighboring farmers.



Another clever biotechnical trick is to confine patented genes to the small genomes of chloroplasts (subcellular mechanisms that use sunlight to make sugars in plants). Pollen doesn't generally contain chloroplasts and so could not transfer patented genes to neighboring farmers.



And one other technique that might be useful is a technology that turns on patented genes in a crop by treating them with certain chemicals that can be purchased from the patent holder. Thus if a farmer saved his seed, he could decide whether he wanted to take advantage of the patented genes in any given year simply by deciding to buy the relevant treatments or not. These patented genes might be transferred via pollen, but they would have no effect on their neighbors' crops.



The fact of the matter is that worrying about farmers infringing on patented genes may just be a transitory problem since U.S. farmers and farmers in other countries with sensible biotech regulations are rapidly adopting genetically enhanced crops. Increasingly, they are finding that the advantages offered them by biotech crops outweigh any costs associated with licensing agreements and the requirement to purchase new seed every year.



Ronald Bailey (rbailey@reason.com) is REASON's science correspondent.



------------------------------



Here's a link to Monsanto:



www.monsanto.com/monsanto/



Here's a link to the Council Of Biotechnology information:



www.whybiotech.com/





Here's an article on 'FrankenFood':



reason.com/bi/bi-gmf.shtml



---------------------------------



More Old News, this from early 2000



Crop Busters

Self-righteous vandals lead a desperate, ill-informed campaign against genetically modified foods.



By Michael Fumento



One night last August, a group calling itself Seeds of Resistance used machetes to hack down a half-acre plot of corn at a farm operated by the University of Maine. The crop's offense: It had been genetically engineered to resist herbicides.



This characteristic would reduce the number of herbicide applications needed, saving farmers money and reducing chemical runoff into water supplies. It could also reduce or eliminate tilling and hence control topsoil erosion. To gain these advantages, a specially chosen gene from another plant had been inserted into the corn.



For that, the corn had to die. Seeds of Resistance said it was sending "a message to those who seek to benefit from the risky endeavor of genetically engineering the food supply."



So far this year, anti-biotechnology vandals have struck 13 crop sites in the United States, from Maine to California. The attacks tell us much about biotech opponents, many of whom have increasingly abandoned rational persuasion in favor of "direct action" that shows contempt for the choices of the people they claim to represent.



The U.S. vandals acknowledge a debt to overseas activists, especially in the U.K., where wrecking crops that offend one's sensibilities is commonplace. "Many thanks to our comrades in other countries for the inspiration to join them," declared a September communiqué from Reclaim the Seeds, one of the more active American crop-busting groups. The British attacks are not random and are not exclusively the work of tiny fringe groups. Some have been carried out by the world's most prominent environmentalist group, Greenpeace. Most environmentalist groups that don't participate nonetheless refuse to criticize the sabotage.



According to an August report in the London Guardian, between the U.K. and the Continent, more than 70 sites where biotech plants were being tested, out of an estimated 150 to 200, "have been wholly or partly destroyed, with almost 50 in the past 12 weeks." The British biotech-bashing Genetic Engineering Network, which gleefully claims that "over 80 [European biotech crop] trial sites have been decontaminated over the last two years," sent me a detailed list of 46 sites destroyed between January and mid-August.



On this side of the Atlantic, crop busters started late but are making up for lost time. "There was only one [attack] that I know of in the U.S. in 1998," says Jeffrey Tufenkian, spokesman for the San Diego-based anti-biotech group Genetix Alert, which tracks and applauds crop wrecking. This year there were two attacks in July, three in August, seven in September. Only an end to the growing seasons seems to have kept the numbers from continuing their upward spiral. There was one attack in late October, but it consisted only of vandalizing a building where the corn had already been harvested. "These actions are just starting to expand over here," says Tufenkian. "But I think this is just the start of the trend of resistance to this new technology."



The British terra-terrorists are aided by their government, which insists on giving out the exact locations of the test plots. (Notwithstanding this assistance, non-modified crops are often mistakenly destroyed.) The government is considering changing the disclosure policy, even as it gives out the locations of new test tracts. Though the U.S. government doesn't hand out maps to the homes of the biotech crops, the Bioengineering Action Network of North America (BAN),an anti-biotech group, has a Web site (www.tao.ca/~ban/) that claims to offer helpful hints.



Numerous groups with names that sound like high school sports teams, such as the Lincolnshire Loppers and Cropatistas in Britain and the Bolt Weevils and California Croppers in the U.S., are now joining in the fun. Britain's Genetix Snowball published a book describing the best tactics for stealing into a field at night and destroying it. BAN says a "Night-Time Gardener's Guide," which it describes as "a `how-to' for would-be crop saboteurs," will soon be available on its site.



More than fields are coming under attack. On the last day of September, two groups wrecked sites growing melons, corn, and sunflowers in Woodland, California. They also disabled an irrigation system and vandalized three greenhouses. Earlier in the month, the Bolt Weevils whacked a biotech corn crop at Pioneer Hi-Bred's Minnesota facility, trampling 50 rows of research corn, damaging company vehicles, and spray-painting slogans ("Free the Seed" and "Stop Agribusiness") on sheds. The last confirmed attack as of this writing was by Seeds of Resistance against Pioneer Hi-Bred in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, on October 27. Genetix Alert's press release called the action "nonviolent," though the vandals themselves used the term smash, which has a rather violent sound to it.



The vandals say they won't stop with fields and surrounding facilities. "Crops, research facilities and corporate offices are all sources of this technological threat and should be targeted," say the Weevils. An anonymous e-mail message recently sent to growers of biotech crops declared: "All of a sudden `venture capitalist' @#%$ realize that biotechnology is not such a great investment and they flee with their bags of cash with them....Our view is that if corporations, governments and universities have any relationship to biotechnology, they are targets."



Even those who merely sell the products are being threatened. One British group calling itself Smash Genetic Engineering is warning of violence against clothing stores that use biotech crops such as pesticide-resistant cotton. Genetix Snowball threatens vandalism this autumn, "once we are certain who [the retailers] are." The famous British chain Marks & Spencer has already buckled under the threats by removing biotech foods from its shelves.



While their crimes are serious, the rationalizations and euphemisms served up by the crop busters are laughable. Consider a recent Greenpeace U.K. press release: "At 5:15 a.m. today in a peaceful direct action, a Greenpeace decontamination unit removed genetically modified pollution from the third farm-scale experiment to be disrupted in the U.K. over the last eight weeks." So trespassing on private land and ripping up crops is "peaceful," while destroying something you don't like is "direct action" or "decontamination." And it was "pollution," not the science of transgenics, that was under attack.



Greenpeace U.K. Executive Director Lord Peter Melchett, who was arrested in July for personally "decontaminating" crops, claims vandalism "is not lawlessness," because "we act within strong moral boundaries." Thus the criminality of an act can be negated by the actor's opinion. If you feel morally justified in "peacefully decontaminating" your spouse via "direct action" with a shotgun, your actions are "not lawlessness."



Though these claims come from a nation that prides itself on civility, this is not civil disobedience. The peaceful American civil rights activists who risked, and sometimes lost, life and limb by seating themselves in "white only" establishments or drinking from segregated water fountains never pretended that they weren't lawbreakers. They acknowledged it and accepted incarceration, often accompanied by beatings. They questioned the morality of the law by making the authorities enforce it. That's civil disobedience. "We accept responsibility for the consequences of our action," Melchett claims. Yet after he was jailed for his "decontamination" outing, he sprung himself by complaining to the press that he would miss his already-paid-for vacation in Tanzania.



American groups have adapted the British euphemisms. Reclaim the Seeds speaks of its "nonviolent direct action," while the BAN Web site refers to "direct actionists." The U.S. groups also make similar claims of heroism. "We are risking jail and injury, as well as sacrificing time, energy and sleep," declare the Reclaimers. It's certainly conceivable that an overenthusiastic Reclaimer brandishing what they call "California Corn Cutters" could slice the Achilles tendon of another Reclaimer. But it hasn't happened yet. As for jail, not a single American crop vandal has been arrested so far.



Biotech crop trials are "backdoor commercialization of GM crops that nobody wants," says Doug Parr, campaigns director for Greenpeace U.K. "Sadly," he says, "when democracy fails, direct action is the only recourse. The authorities are not taking the correct action and unfortunately it has fallen to Greenpeace to protect everyone's interests."



While Greenpeace International's latest annual report, released in August, is titled "In the Name of the People," the eco-warriors insist they are "the people." Melchett calls his group's actions a "direct expression of `people's power.'" One Genetix Snowball representative declared, "The public has made it clear they don't want [genetically modified] crops, and there is no need for these tests." Another insisted, "If the government isn't going to get involved, then it's up to us."



Never mind that the government did get involved when it approved the test plots--you can't grow genetically modified crops without regulatory permission--and stays involved as it continues to grant approvals. Never mind that this government was elected by the people and that the electorate's numbers swamp the combined membership of all the green groups.



This contempt for democracy has crossed the Atlantic. Brock Ohlee of the American crop vandalization group Future Farmers declares, "Direct action against corporate greed is both a political necessity and a moral imperative." Thus "the people have the right and the responsibility to fight back." Yet the Future Farmers give hints that they and the nation are at odds, as when they spell the name of the country as "U$A" or "Amerikkka."



After a corn crushing in Minnesota last September, the Bolt Weevils declared "a WARNING to the entire `life-sciences' industry that opposition to its sinister plan is far more widespread than they think, and growing exponentially." That same month, Reclaim the Seeds ripped up a sugar beet field at the University of California at Davis, proclaiming "these acts as self-defensive measures on behalf of all beings against Monsanto, UC-D and the university system's corporate boot-licking, and the global GE [genetic engineering] takeover!" (Emphasis added). So it's not just "the people" any more. This group claims to speak for every living thing, right down to the lowliest amoeba. After crunching a corn crop at the same university, the group stated, "Modern agri-business and genetic mutilation is a capitalist machine that must be dismantled," adding that vandalism "is a direct action that destroys corporate power and authority."



Sometimes it seems the groups can't decide whether they want to be revolutionaries or professional wrestlers. "Seeing their profits as a slap in the face of the earth and all its occupants, we took the liberty of paying them back," Seeds of Resistance said of its attack on the Eau Claire building. "We, Seeds of Resistance, smashed all the windows on one side of their disgusting building. Wisconsin is now another state that cannot hide from this growing resistance against GE culture."



Not to be outdone rhetorically, the Weevils declared, "We see what the corporations give back to the public." They give back "houses we cannot afford to live in" (notwithstanding that home ownership is at an all-time high) and "jobs our bodies cannot do for long without breaking" (notwithstanding that fewer jobs than ever consist of manual labor and occupational accident rates are at an historic low). "Corporations," warned the Weevils, "give back to the people death."



Bio-engineering of food has become symbolic of every evil any corporation has perpetrated (or, more precisely, everything corporations have done that members of these groups don't like). Attacking biotech is therefore just another way of attacking capitalism and technology. The Luddite analogy is one that critics of environmentalism have overused, but here it fits almost too well.



We can always argue over politics, but whenever the crop busters venture into scientific territory, they trip over their shears. When Reclaim the Seeds "decontaminated approximately 7 acres of a `Frankenfood' corn" in its third attack on the University of California at Davis, they invoked their "profound sense of the sacredness of life." Said the Seeds, "We believe that protecting the result of more than three billion years of evolution is a duty to ourselves, all living beings, and the generations to come."



They might be shocked to hear that probably every ear of corn that's been sold in the United States was created by man, using the forerunner of bio-engineering called "cross-breeding." Instead of isolating a single gene or a few genes from one strain of corn and injecting it into the DNA of another, people crossed whole strains, hoping that the desired traits would be expressed. (It reportedly took Orville Redenbacher 30,000 attempts to make the ideal popcorn.)



This process apparently began over 5,000 years ago, when American Indians essentially created corn by combining two types of wild grasses. Modern hybrids were first commercialized in the 1930s. Humans have been doing such "tampering" with livestock for thousands of years as well. Ever see a wild cow or chicken? There are related creatures, but strictly speaking there's no such animal. Indeed, almost nothing we eat, aside from nonfarm fish and things whose names include the word wild (such as Ewell Gibbons' "wild hickory nuts"), is a product merely of undirected evolution.



The groups that attacked the Woodland, California, sites claimed to be part of "the growing movement to protect the fabric of life." If anything could be labeled "the fabric of life," it's simple DNA. There is no inherent difference between the DNA of "natural" plants and those created through selective gene transfer.



Reclaim the Seeds has also said its actions are necessary to "stop the massive destruction of biodiversity." But crop biodiversity began declining long ago, simply because farmers want the best strains, not the most strains. If anything, biotech may improve diversity by developing strains especially suited to a given area's temperature, rainfall, soil type, and pest threats.



Likewise, Reclaim the Seeds is exactly wrong when it says, "If you care about social justice and don't want to poison farm workers with pesticides and herbicides, you should resist genetic engineering." Actually, if you're worried about farm workers' exposure to pesticides, you should resist such propaganda. Probably the main p.r. problem biotech crops have right now is that almost all those currently grown do nothing but allow less use of pesticides (of which herbicides are a subcategory). There's nothing, therefore, to please consumers. Though the situation will soon change, as biotech foods that stay fresh longer and have more nutrients come to market, currently only farm workers and owners, along with the seed developers, benefit from transgenic crops.



The anti-biotech groups pay lip service to environmentalism, as with the Future Farmers' claim to "stand for environmental sustainability" and "community stewardship of resources." But it is the environmentalists who have been demanding reduced use of pesticides, and are now getting it thanks to biotech crops. They are the ones who (rightly) pushed the nation's farmers toward no-till agriculture to prevent topsoil erosion, a goal that is hardly served by destroying corn designed to reduce erosion, as Seeds of Resistance did in Maine. Likewise, it is hard to see the environmental rationale for destroying a plot of poplar trees developed to reduce the use of chlorine and energy during the pulping process, an act of sabotage carried out by an anonymous British group in July.



Despite the ways in which attacks on biotech crops work against the environment, I was able to identify only three environmentalist groups, two British and one American (the Environmental Defense Fund), that have decried such vandalism, and all the criticism has been mild. Many other groups have kept mum.



As for the mainstream British press, it has "uncritically embraced this phenomenon," says Frank Furedi, a sociology professor at the University of Kent at Canterbury. "The activists [say sympathizers in the media] are the good guys," who, "unlike sleazy politicians," are "untainted by corruption or self-interest" and are "portrayed as altruistic and idealistic souls whose motives are beyond reproach." Indeed, many British columnists have lauded the destruction of modified crops, while reporters routinely refer to the crop killers as "protesters," a mild term, or even an accolade.



In the U.S., by contrast, the news media have shown no support for crop busting. News stories routinely refer to the attacks as "vandalism," and opinion pieces on the topic have been critical. "There's nothing wrong with peaceful protest or with insisting that troubling eco-questions be answered," declared a Boston Globe editorial. "But slashing an experiment and attempting to stop science is the height of ignorance." The Sacramento Bee editorialized, "A technological revolution like this can't be kept on course by masked fools with scythes." The problem is that, aside from a few sentences in The Washington Post and Newsweek and a 150-word item in The New York Times, the national press has acted as if the problem doesn't exist.



Still, there are at least a couple of reasons to believe that the crop busters will be defeated.



First, it may not take much for crop growers to resist cowardly groups like Seeds of Resistance. When a call went out over the Internet for a "Day of Action" on October 27, the would-be Transgenic Tet Offensive resulted in but a single act of vandalism. Apparently a little heightened security was enough to keep the self-styled "guerrilla gardeners" at bay. The American vandals know that, unlike their European counterparts, if they're arrested they'll go to jail, not Tanzania.



Second, to use the groups' own analogy, history shows that terrorism is a desperation tactic of guerrillas who've abandoned hope of winning the "hearts and minds" of the people. As a Portland Press Herald put it, "Seeds of Resistance has unilaterally decided that there is `absolutely no benefit to humanity' from the corn its members destroyed. How do they know? By turning to vandalism, they destroyed the chance to learn."



That's the whole point. The eco-terrorists know that just around the corner is the second wave of biotech foods, from which consumers as well as farmers and the environment will benefit. They know that pressure will build in the Third World for crops to relieve malnutrition problems that lead to crippling, blindness, and early death. They know that when that happens, they will not be able to win the ensuing war of ideas.



-----------------------------------



But until then, in addition to composing compelling poetry like:



'modifying stuff is like saying we know better than God....'



and



'GM humans... we may be seeing some of these in our backyards soon!'



and



'how can we see when there is smoke in our eyes?'



why not take the advice of Mark Dennis from the University of Texas and go a bit further into the underlying science? Why not mention the current research that reveals severe ecological and physiological problems, both extant and potential, with transgenic technology for agricultural purposes? Why not explain the very real differences between intraspecific selection and transgenic manipulation? Why not explain the simple concepts of resistance and natural selection for fitness based on that resistance? Why not explain why this is so alarming to traditional farmers and other critics of bio-engineered seed technology?