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Modified Crops – Facts not fiction!
Examiner
22/04/05
Amanda Devine (Examiner, 20 April) provides a list of ‘world worries’ and then makes a huge, and completely false link, to suggest these are somehow related to GM crops and foods.
Gene technology is a tool being used to improve plant varieties. It can be used to develop GM crops, but is also being extensively used to enhance Australia’s conventional breeding programs through identifying genes, understanding their function, and using this knowledge to improve conventionally bred crops.
In Australia, the only GM broadacre crop commercially grown is cotton. Varieties, with in-built insect protection, have resulted in a significant pesticide reduction of 50 per cent per season, with CSIRO researchers predicting that new varieties will increase this to 80 per cent – a significant result for farmers and cotton growing communities. In addition, this new tool has provided growers with a much better knowledge of integrated pest management – enhancing their overall farm management.
To suggest that gene technology is linked to illness is simply not true. As the President of the Australian Academy of Science said in 2003, “I have calculated that at least thirty billion meals involving the products of these (GM) crops have been eaten in the last six years. This is a lot of food consumed by a lot of people and there is not a single report of adverse health effects. Nor is there a single case of negative effects on biodiversity or on other aspects of the environment in which these crops were grown”.
Everyone is entitled, and should be encouraged, to form an opinion about such important topics, but these must be based on factual, scientific evidence, not completely false claims and unrelated incidents.
Paula Fitzgerald
Executive Director
Agrifood Awareness Australia Limited
Canberra
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