Genetically engineered Corn

[Guest guest]

Dear Herbalists,

Now that the effects of Genetically Engineered Corn are becoming

known to many, there is thought of seperating the corn in the huge corn

areas of the Mid West.

Here is an E Mail from a farmer in Oklahoma about the practicality

of this suggestion......

 

As a farmer and feed lot operator I have watched the handling of grain

from the seed dealer to the farm from the farm to the elevator and from

the elevator to the feed lot.

 

Our current facilities cannot assure the segregation of crops. They are

handled on a bulk basis and to maintain even a 5% tolerance is not

possible with our present system. The system we use has a number of weak

 

points. Starting at the seed cleaner the wrong load can be cleaned.

After

it is cleaned it can be tagged wrong or a pallet of the wrong seed put

in

the wrong place. When it is loaded, the wrong seed can be loaded.

Planting

equipment is not usually cleaned between fields unless they are seed

plots.

 

At harvest the combine may get in the wrong field or cut two spirited

fields as one. The truck driver may not tell the elevator about

anything.

He may have the wrong owner of the seed or the wrong field. This is a

daily occurrence during harvest.

 

Once in the elevator the belts, pits and elevators are not cleaned

between

bins and most of the folks that work in elevators are not very bright

folk

or they would get a better job. The mix bins dump truckloads in the

wrong

pit and so on. Again this is a daily occurrence.

 

We can improve this a lot, but the only way to have grain you can

identify

is to put it in bins on the farm under the farmers' supervision and ship

 

it in sealed containers. Bulk carriers won't keep the purity the Eco

freaks are trying to demand and they know it. Their purpose is not GM

labeling, it is trade protectionism. The EU's defiance of hormone

treated

beef shows that. They would rather take a chance on getting BSE than let

 

competing beef in the country and give the consumer a choice of US or

Canadian beef that is BSE free.

 

Food safety is not the issue, it is protectionism. They are turning

people

against safe, plentiful food with the exact same methods Hitler gained

support for his methods -- from the best educated population in the

world.

If you tell the same distortions of truth long enough people will

believe

them. We aren't doing much better than his enemies did. We talk among

ourselves but we won't mount a unified public campaign against these

thugs. The law will not prosecute them and we don't call them to task

for

that. If we just complain among ourselves we are sure to lose.

 

IMO

Gordon

Gordon Couger gcouger

Stillwater, OK