I smell a rat

This is very disturbing. Dr Egziabher is a distinguished authority in the field, and beyond that, he is a chief negotiator from Africa to a UN body. If our Citizenship and Foreign Affairs people are playing these games, they could be endangering Canada's future as a host to UN bodies.

I smell not just a rat, but a toady weasel.
Sheesh, it's not like Canada's even going to get anything from this kind of underhanded crap. Far as I can make out, none of the companies that benefit are Canadian owned, so this is not just illegitimate police-state tactics in the service of highly unpleasant political aims, it's craven bootlicking in the service of highly unpleasant American political aims.

March 5 this year, I had the privilege of hearing Mr. Mooney speak at a rally meant to bring attention to the barriers being placed in front of farmer's long standing practice of saving seeds. The Plant Breeders Rights (PBR) legislation currently in place to protect this practice is severely threatened by litigation brought forth by companies like Monsanto and Syngenta:

http://www.cropchoice.com/leadstry6e42.html?recid=2782

He spoke of the change in language regarding this practice from a "right" to a "privilege" for farmers. He also related information about Syngenta and their pursuit of a patent on the gene sequence responsible for the flowering of rice. This patent would extend to forty other species of plant - even plants yet to be discovered with the same gene sequence:

http://www.indymedia.org/en/2005/01/112760.shtml

Companies intent on patenting the natural biological processes that feed the world's people are...lacking? in ethical substance. It does not surprise me in the least that they have the kind of power over elements in our gov't that would bring about the situation described in your post. Thanks for talking about it - it's very important now and will only be more so.

> So how did our government end up in Monsanto's pocket?

Because the government was bought.

So?

Do you have a point?

You don't think YOU own Canada, do you?

Funnny little people.

Here, have a peanut.

Maybe its because I live on the Prairies and I am the daughter of a grain farmer, but I see things a little differently on this issue. The purpose of GM crops is that they are cleaner to grow because they require fewer pesticides and herbicides (also saving farmers money and time and fuel) and/or they are higher yielding per acre either because they are resistant to diseases or because poor growth characteristics have been reduced. There is no difference between GM crops and so-called 'natural' or 'bred' crops except that the bred crops were developed in government and university research field plots over many years, while the GM crops were created in corporate laboratories much more quickly. The companies want to make a profit on their investment, just like drug companies have a patent on the drugs they develop.
And as far as "labelling GM food" this is impossible -- in this case, canola oil would have to be labeled because canola was created by research scientists in the 50s. Many of the wheat varieties grown today were also created by science, along with apples, blueberries, you name it. The labelling issue is just a way to stigmatize GM foods -- people ask "who could object to a label?" but this is actually another version of the "colored only" drinking fountains and the "Canadian beef" labels which the US cattle industry is lobbying for. It would be just as logical to label hot dogs "contains up to 0.1 per cent rat droppings" or put a sign on bananas "watch for black widow spiders" or to label lettuce with "wash throughly to ensure all sand and cutworms are removed before eating" -- and if you've ever looked into a salad when you have half-finished it and seen one of the dressing-covered 'lettuce pieces' moving, well, its unforgettable, let me tell you.
Anyway, that's how I see it.

The issue is terminator crops, I think, not GM seeds generally. That's a fairly specific worry which should be taken very seriously--though as lots of our fruit and vegetable crops produce infertile or no seeds, it can clearly be dealt with. Cartel-like behaviour is also a problem, for reasons
having nothing to do with food safety :)

This comment is actually from Princess Monkey who sent it to me by email when the blog refused it due to "questionable content". I think the Blacklist plugin is working overtime. - pogge

Wrye is right. Cathie - I'd be surprised if your parents were against the idea of being allowed to save their own seeds for use the next year. Under the "terminator seed" system - they would have to re-buy them year after year from one of a handful of huge seed companies. As well, if the "germination" process of the wheat variety they grow was patented...This is not a slam of GM foods, it's a fear of huge companies taking away farmer's rights and holding patents over "natural occurrences". What if they patent the gene sequence that initiates fertilization of the egg in a woman's body? Extreme I know, but this is just as diabolical. And canola was not GM in the way that plant species are now - spliced with fish cells, bacteria, and whatnot. Wasn't it just a product of cross-breeding of plants (rapeseed with some others to make it less bitter)? Kinda like purposfully pairing two horses? Much of the GM today is not "precise" cross - breeding of plants - it's creating hybrids that are impossible in nature. In any case, this is a problem with our gov't bowing to "pressures" to keep a valuable speaker out of Canada so as to limit the discourse on a subject that affects everyone - everyone who likes to eat anyway.

The issue also seems to be that the way to resolve an issue is not to cut off debate nor to exclude opposing voices. That way not only yields terminator crops, but brings in a bounty harvest of tyranny, with government edict for hire to the highest bidder.

Here's an article that explains how they are doing the same thing in Iraq. This is an ilustration of the ugly side of globalization.

http://www.wcr.ab.ca/columns/suzanneelston/2004/suzanneelston110804.shtml

I believe that the weasel responsible for this,
(and I do apologize to weasels everywhere)
Made the statement a few years ago in a book or something he wrote “ its better to be subservient than to be ignored”.
Now I believe that he is being considered for a post with , the OAS but even if this is not true I’m sure there is a money position
In it somewhere.

Get the name and read more here

http://www.polarisinstitute.org/polaris_project/public_service/articles_presentations/wto_cancun.html

Hi, Princess via Pogge
Actually, I don't think my dad worried too much about saving seed for next year, though I suppose it depended on the quality of the yield. I think usually he purchased it from a seed grower in the spring -- cleaner (not contaminated with weed seeds), improved germination percentage, and this way he would get the highest quality or most up-to-date seed variety. But you may be right, that he would have wanted to have the choice on whether to save or buy.
(And by the way, isn't it refreshing to have a discussion on a blog about something which we may not agree on, without anybody descending to gratituous insults and name calling -- like we seem to get whenever a right-winger posts a comment on a progressive blog. "Jane, you ignorant slut" seems to be their motto, doesn't it.)

Cathie said:
("And by the way, isn't it refreshing to have a discussion on a blog about something which we may not agree on, without anybody descending to gratituous insults and name calling "

I say...Amen to that!

Smell the smell of new money in the morning, pogge. Everybody else does.

it is revolting, how these short-term, close minded, pig-headed corporate thugs weild their power through bullying, and violation of free speech, to keep harming our environment, ourselves, and future generations of plant, animal, and human life. There should be more discussion on this, before next week. the website that I am associated with CitizenSHIFT: http://citizen.nfb.ca has a "speak up" section, and we are featuring Biodiversity on the site. We have a large outreach, and RSS/XML feed to get information out there quickly, and to many people and organizations. I believe this is an important topic that should be discussed, and I would love if some one who has reliable information about Dr. Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher would get involved with CitizenSHIFT (we are based at the montreal NFB office).
aisling
A.Chin-Yee@nfb.ca
http://citizen.nfb.ca

So basically, I think we're all pretty much in agreement on
1. The patenting-of-basic-life-processes thing
2. Terminator seeds and the right to retain seed for planting, whether one chooses to exercise it or not (and I would suggest that any advantages from buying seed come largely because one does have the choice--as soon as that choice is gone, prices can go up)
3. Stopping people with contrary views from entering the country, rather than debating them

On GM crops, there's a legitimate debate. CathieFromCanada, I think you're wrong on this one, but the reasons aren't obvious, they flow from the evidence and from specifics of the situation today. There's nothing wrong with the idea of genetically modifying crops. Sure, it's unnatural, so are condoms and so is dentistry. It just so happens that the present-day science of GM crops sucks, and this fact is being studiously ignored and in some cases actively abetted by the very few very large corporations pushing the GM crop agenda.
There are three major problems with GM crops as they exist, all of which would probably disappear if the science were being done as public research with no profit involved.

First is patents, and why public research would eliminate it is obvious.

Second, corporate agendas designing them to do the wrong stuff. Take the ones that require less pesticide. The reason they don't need as much pesticide is generally that they make the stuff themselves--so there's just as much pesticide around, really. That seems like a net zero, so at least not a loss--except plants engineered to produce pesticides produce them constantly rather than in short, sharp applications the farmer can control. This creates two problems. One, they kill all insects, all the time (for as long as they keep working). Two, it's the method of delivery most prone to creating resistance. The herbicide-resistant crops create similar problems--they're a recipe for "superweeds" and of course they actually call for more chemicals to be used, rather than less. And none of that gets into gene-transfer issues.

Third big problem though is that the fundamental science is deeply, deeply flawed. Specifically, while someone creating a GM crop has ways of testing that the characteristic they want is there, they currently have no real way of knowing what other characteristics may have been introduced. The basic way genetic modification is done is you find a gene in some critter somewhere that codes for the protein you want the cells in your target critter to make. Then you shoot it into the nucleus of your target critter. Then you check if it's making that protein, and if it does you do as sketchy of trials as you can get away with and go to market.
So, what's the problem? Here's the problem: Genes code for an average of about three or four proteins, and what they make and what it does varies depending what's around them in the genome. So, in the procedure I've defined, you don't know what else that gene did where it was in the first place. And you really definitely don't know what it's going to do in the random place you've shot it into in a totally different genome. Even if you knew exactly what all proteins it made, you probably wouldn't know what the ones you're not looking for would do in a cell with way different other proteins from where it came from will do there. But you don't know any of that--you don't know what it used to do, and it may now be doing different stuff anyway. In fact, if you started from a bunch of different ones that got the gene shot into different parts of the genome, different ones may be doing all different stuff. Not only that, but the whole firing-genes-into-the-genome (literally, on microscopic gold pellets) process destabilizes the existing genes, and the gene you fired in may crash into position right in the middle of an existing gene, splitting it in two. What will that existing gene be doing now? Who knows? And as far as Monsanto's concerned--who cares, as long as it sells?

With all those problems with the process, it's not surprising that despite all the Monsanto lobby's vicious and often successful attempts to muzzle researchers and destroy the careers of researchers who won't toe the line, evidence has begun to surface that in fact there are health and safety issues with the actual GM crops right now, not just theoretical we-don't-know precautionary principle issues. I would recommend anyone with an interest read Seeds of Deception by Jeffrey Smith, a powerful, indeed devastating, but carefully researched debunking of the GM foods issue.

GM foods should be in public research labs, probably for at least another decade or two yet, while they work out the basic scientific problems with the current model for doing genetic modification. They should not be getting marketed right now.

On the differences depending where a gene is stuck in, here's a half-assed computer metaphor.
If you think of a gene as something like a "PRINT" statement, then it seems just fine to move it from one program to another. No sweat, it says "This is a protein for pesticide X" in that program instead of this one.
But a gene is more like some sort of complicated "IF" statement, which points to different things depending what input it gets. Imagine shoving one of those into a complex program at a random point. Except, if an "IF" in a real program asks about variables that don't exist in the program you stuck it into, you just get an error. Imagine the "IF" instead latched onto whatever variables were around and calculated on them, and sent the results off to whatever subroutine the new program had that seemed "kind of like" the ones it would have sent to in the old program.
That "IF" you shoved in would screw up your program, wouldn't it? And it'd be an utter bitch trying to figure out how.

Monsanto has a long history of involvement with the federal govt... I remember hearing about their "partnering" with govt researchers years ago in the development of "novel traits" for industrial corn and whatnot.

This "partnering" is incredibly widespread and has helped to make govt agricultural research dependent on companies like Monsanto. Which then helps Monsanto's cause when they apply to have their products certified by the govt for safety standards etc. It's one of the oldest games in town, and it leaves me less than confident in the ability of "public" research labs to work out the issues ...

One of the major concerns in all this must be corporate control over our food supply. If terminator seeds become the standard, then food becomes one more commodity to manipulate, complete with inconvenient shortages that crank up the prices. If we think corporations will balk at a little famine in order to increase their profits, then we haven't been paying attention to history.

Yes but does it matter if we don't know what the other protiens are doing? Do you know what all the protiens in the apple you're eating are doing? I don't think so. As long as the protiens aren't poisonous they should be safe to eat. Human physiology does not randomly incorporate genetic sequences. As a (budding) molecular plant biologist, if the protiens are deleterious (bad) for the organism, then it would simply die.

I meant to add in "we learnt" between biologist and if

Of course it matters if we don't know what the other proteins are doing. Your key assumption is "as long as the proteins aren't poisonous", and it's a doozy. Why can that be assumed? The fact is, adequate studies to determine whether these crops are harmful to people aren't generally being done. The few that have been done suggest that there are, in fact, toxic effects. There are tons and tons of plants that we don't eat because they're toxic to one degree or another; you're a budding molecular plant biologist and it hadn't been brought to your attention that many plants (and other creatures) use toxicity as a defense mechanism? You're a budding molecular plant biologist and it hadn't occurred to you that what might be toxic for a plant, especially one that grows for a single season only, might be a bit different from what might be toxic to a human? The proteins could perfectly well do things in the organism that make it contain stuff that will cause cancer in people in ten years, without any problems being noticeable in a crop that lives for eight months and is then harvested, even if the proteins were equally harmful to both. For that matter, as a budding biologist, had you ever heard about pollutants becoming increasingly concentrated higher on the food chain? If one plant stores a little bit of a toxin, and I eat tortillas made from that kind of plant three times a week for a year, I've stored a whole bunch more of the toxin in my body than any single plant would.
The advantage of knowing a lot about a subject is that if you're confronted with an issue involving that subject, it allows you to know more about the factors that are involved, so that you can consider various aspects and come to a less simplistic conclusion. There isn't much point becoming knowledgeable if you're just going to ignore most of what you know in favour of a simplistic knee-jerk response.

Oh, yeah--"as long as the proteins aren't poisonous" is of course also an oversimplification. Proteins don't just sit in organisms, they interact with other proteins, with RNA, with various other chemicals. The question isn't whether the proteins actually encoded are poisonous, it's whether any of what results from their presence is.