GMW: Only a matter of time

[Guest guest]

GM WAT. CH daily

http://www.gmwatch.org

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Dr Suzanne Wuerthele is a toxicologist with the U.S. Environmental

Protection Agency. Here she writes in a private capacity but clearly she

knows what she's talking about.

 

The incident Dr Wuerthele is referring to involved a failure to follow

containment rules with GM plants at a New Zealand research facility -

see: http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5495

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Dr Wuerthele's comments:

 

This lab incident in NZ is illuminating, like Starlink, Bt10, and U.S.

pharmcrop contamination incidents before it. But will we ever learn?

 

Humans being what we are, intentional as well as accidental violations

of rules are to be expected. This is why we have traffic cops,

regulatory agencies, and jails. So, risk assessment must build into

it the

assumption that rules will not always be followed, and attempt to

predict the outcome. Decision-makers have to ensure that simple rule

breaches cannot create an unacceptable outcome.

 

This is what makes genetic engineering of food crops to make drugs and

industrial chemicals so disturbing. There will be mistakes. There

will be accidents. And there will be intentional violations. The US

Department of Agriculture has mandated procedures which it believes will

prevent contamination of the food supply, and it is so confident in them

that it does not monitor to see if those procedures are working. That

certainly looks like a mistake.

 

But even if their procedures really work, humans being what we are, it

is only a matter of time before such crops are contaminated with

biologically active chemicals never intended to be in the food supply.