Going back to a point of Sampson's patent application extract and the statements of fact there. The entire gmo food industry rests on claims of these genetically altered forms being equivalent to traditional varieties.
That's not equal in the legal sense of planting the patented seeds without paying a fee, it is only in the regulatory sense of letting the public be guinea pigs and eat them without being tested for human health effects, including food allergies caused by the novel proteins. See how those flexible Wall Street rules can work in the corporate owner's favor? See the reason the mom with the little allergy kids lunch bags is on the radar as a target?
The details of the patent application state quite clearly there are novel proteins and allergy issues. Even common sense will tell you, that a food which produces a pesticide to kill the bugs that eat it, is not identical to a food made by Nature to sustain life. Very simply, toxic agents designed to kill organisms and life giving foods are not identical. They never will be, no matter how profitable it is to keep claiming that or how many paid pundits will stand behind it.
If Severson's goal was to offer support for the claims that FAAN has no bias toward biotechnology she should have done a bit of background into their experts and checked the sources for her article.
Then there are the meaningless, petty digs which Severson makes that just frost me since they are the very tactics used by the supporters and front groups of biotech strategy.
She [ Anne Muñoz-Furlong] also cautioned against taking the advice of people who have no medical training or run Web sites not certified to have reliable medical information. “She’s a dot-com,” Mrs. Muñoz-Furlong said of Ms. O’Brien. “It’s completely different than a dot-org. From the very beginning our intent was education.”
What a stupid comment that was to maneuver into the article, unless discrediting Allergy Kids information is the main objective. Anyone in the world can have a dot.org if they want to. The dot.org extension may suggest anything, but it proves not one single thing, except how low the author will go to try to get a dig in. It shows me she will reach to grasp at straws support her smear theory and straws is all she's got to work with.
In fact adding details that lend weight to sway opinions is a key technique used by Monsanto supporters. They consistently refer to Ph.D's as doctor and imply a level of expertise that does not exist in reality.
Unlike Robyn O'Brein who represents herself as a mother, Monsanto supporters intentionally mislead consumers and farmers. One clear example is the case of their efforts to strip dairies in Pennsylvania, of the right to label milk as coming from cows not treated with Monsanto's rBGH/rBST growth hormones.
The cornerstone was medical advice from one of their main biotech bloggers, "Dr. Terry Etherton" who is widely quoted in all the Milk is Milk blogs and other fronts providing opinions to the human health effects of milk from cows treated with Monsanto's growth hormone. He appeared with other Monsanto dairy farmers including the head of Pennsylvania's Department of Agriculture, Dennis Wolff, former Monsanto dairy farmer.
Dr. Terry Etherton, Ph.D. department head, Penn State University department of Dairy and Animal Science, presented the realities of science and his assessment of the ‘rBST-free’ labeling issue. Etherton said: “There is a significant element of deception in differentiating whether milk is produced using rBST or not. Processors and cooperatives need to stand in the light of public understanding with some accountability.
Each one of us has thousands of hormones floating around in our bloodstream for our very survival. Recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST) is not orally active. It is digested as a protein like any other protein. It is not absorbed into the bloodstream intact -- and even if it were -- the human somatotropin (growth) receptor cells would not accept a non-primate somatotropin. There is no way on this green earth for rBST to have a biological effect on a human.”
In fact it is banned in all the world's developed countries and America joins with notables like Pakistan and Brazil and Mexico in feeding it to the public. The claims by Etherton make it sound as if it is a non-issue but show me the medical community standing behind the claims don't offer it as proof of anything but strong arming to make a buck when we already have milk surpluses and it only serves to worsen the over supply problem.
The feature is part of the network of Monsanto supporters and fronts and this specific post is run out of U Penn's dairy program where the noted "Dr. Etherton" is.often quoted on human health issues. The article appears at the main site for the hormone milk efforts run by Competitive Enterprise Institutes's Dennis Avery and it funds the Center for Global food Issues run by Dennis' son Alex Avery. CEI's funders are the giants of agribusiness and petrochemicals and that should speak to their devotion. http://www.earthfarmfriendly.com/News/frustvenmilkmrkt-102606.html
If the Times or Severson are concerned with going after consumer misinformation, they might look first to the groups like CGFI and their supporter including the biggest consumer fraud of them all, the old tobacco site of American Council on Science and Health. ACSH is so transparent in its aims even a child can spot the conflict of interest; in other words it is as easy as reading a menu.
Perhaps the most bothersome piece for me and the idea that this was an attack by design not a bit of coincidence mixed with ignorance was this pair of jabs by Severson.
The $30,000 Ms. O’Brien made from the products last year is incidental, she said. Working largely from a laptop on her dining room table, she has looked deep into the perplexing world of childhood food allergies and seen a conspiracy that threatens the health of America’s children.
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