GMO potatoes may be grown in Ireland.

Danuogma

The can stick their GMO spuds where the sun doesn't shine, I won't be eating that carcinogenic "food".

From The Sunday Times
January 4, 2009
Blight fears spark call for GM potato
Scientists step up bid to create variety resistant to new aggressive strain

Lynne Kelleher

A genetically modified variety of spud may have to be produced in Irish laboratories because of the growing threat from blight.

The fungal disease that wiped out the potato crop in the mid-19th century, causing more than 1m deaths, is posing a renewed menace after a more aggressive strain arrived, according to a leading scientist. This has prompted experts to intensify work, including using GM technology, to find a blight-resistant variety.

Dr Ewen Mullins, a research officer with Teagasc, the agriculture and food development authority, said the risk of blight has become more serious in the past two years.

He said: “It’s primarily our geographic location. We have humid, damp summers and the past two years have seen outbreaks of blight, probably the worst on record.

“That’s a significant challenge to the industry. Our research shows a new strain has come in. It migrated westward across Europe probably in the past 12 to 18 months. It was in the UK about two years ago and in the eastern counties of Ireland in 2008. It’s a highly aggressive strain.”

Currently, potato farmers have to spray their crops up to 12 times a year. But Mullins and his colleagues at Teagasc’s research facility in Oak Park, Co Carlow, hope to create a variety that will only need to be sprayed four times a year.

The decreased use of pesticides would in turn mean less damage to the environment.

Mullins said farmers relying on normal potato crops would also be affected by new EU regulations aimed at reducing use of pesticides and fungicides. “If we were to reduce chemicals by up to 40% on our potato crop, that would challenge potato growers,” he said. “We [think] GM is worth investigating from that point of view.

Full:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article5439525.ece

GMO potatoes and their links to cancer:

Suppressed report shows cancer link to GM potatoes

By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor
Saturday, 17 February 2007

Campaigners against genetically modified crops in Britain last are calling for trials of GM potatoes this spring to be halted after releasing more evidence of links with cancers in laboratory rats.

UK Greenpeace activists said the findings, obtained from Russian trials after an eight-year court battle with the biotech industry, vindicated research by Dr Arpad Pusztai, whose work was criticised by the Royal Society and the Netherlands State Institute for Quality Control.

The disclosure last night of the Russian study on the GM Watch website led to calls for David Miliband, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to withdraw permission for new trials on GM potatoes to go ahead at secret sites in the UK this spring. Alan Simpson, a Labour MP and green campaigner, said: "These trials should be stopped. The research backs up the work of Arpad Pusztai and it shows that he was the victim of a smear campaign by the biotech industry. There has been a cover-up over these findings and the Government should not be a party to that."

Mr Simpson said the findings, which showed that lab rats developed tumours, were released by anti-GM campaigners in Wales. Dr Pusztai and a colleague used potatoes that had been genetically modified to produce a protein, lectin. They found cell damage in the rats' stomachs, and in parts of their intestines.

Full:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/suppressed-report-shows-cancer-link-to-gm-potatoes-436673.html

More links:

http://www.ghorganics.com/GM%20food%20can%20cause%20cancer.htm

http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2007/02/geneticallymodified_potatoes_c.php

Now the Greens have the chance to do something both positive and popular, nip this in the bud and declare this country GMO free.

Will they I wonder:rolleyes:. Probably not.

humanji

A lot could of happened in the two years between each article.

Danuogma

humanji wrote: »

A lot could of happened in the two years between each article.

Would you feel comfortable eating something on a regular basis and knowing that it could be potentially harmful to your health?. I know I wouldn't. The agrichemical company's that produce this garbage couldn't a F about peoples health, that is blatantly obvious.

robtri

So are the Irish guys doing the research, copying the russian research? if they are not copying the russian research exactly, why shouldn't they be given a chance to research and test their product?

I do like the part you have underlined....
Mr Simpson said the findings, which showed that lab rats developed tumours, were released by anti-GM campaigners in Wales. Dr Pusztai and a colleague used potatoes that had been genetically modified to produce a protein, lectin. They found cell damage in the rats' stomachs, and in parts of their intestines.

Pusztai, set out to modify a potatoe to produce lectin and he got harmful results??? OK, are the irish crowd looking to produce this protein as well???

would I be content eating stuff, I know is potential damaging to my health, well no!!! but I am not happy about eating potatoes that are after being sprayed 18 times with chemicals.... that can't be good for you either..

lostexpectation

bit of non story and the usual lies about the famine and lack of comment on business side of this research.

humanji

Everything you eat is potentially harmful to your health. If you can find any evidence that the batch of GM potatoes they're considering cultivating are carcinogenic, then please show us and we'll all happily avoid them. Until then, to paraphrase yourself, stick your scaremongering where the sun don't shine.

Keeks

humanji wrote: »

Everything you eat is potentially harmful to your health.

“All Substances are poisonous - the right dose differentiates the poison from the remedy”

Paracelsus (1493-1541)

djpbarry

Danuogma wrote: »

The can stick their GMO spuds where the sun doesn't shine, I won't be eating that carcinogenic "food".
...
Now the Greens have the chance to do something both positive and popular, nip this in the bud and declare this country GMO free.

So you'd rather eat a crop that has been sprayed umpteen times with a fungicide (which was, in all likelihood, produced by a genetically modified fungal strain) than a genetically modified crop that has been sprayed relatively few times? I'm not saying that GM crops are necessary, but I do find GM-provoked hysteria to be quite irrational.

lostexpectation

neither please

djpbarry

lostexpectation wrote: »

neither please

What's the alternative? "Organic" production? There are very good reasons why food is not mass produced organically.

Macha

djpbarry wrote: »

What's the alternative? "Organic" production? There are very good reasons why food is not mass produced organically.

The alternatives are more efficient farms that do not rely so much on expensive inputs, more people involved in the production of food, internalisation of the real costs of food, less subsidisation, more support for local, seasonal producers rather than just blindly buying out-of-season food from other countries etc.

It will never happen but not because the alternatives don't exist.

We're so short-sighted that we don't pay for our "cheap food" in other areas: in the strain on our health system, in subsidies paid through taxation, in the emptying out of rural ireland..

I highly recommend this article by Michael Pollan:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html

djpbarry

taconnol wrote: »

The alternatives are more efficient farms that do not rely so much on expensive inputs, more people involved in the production of food, internalisation of the real costs of food, less subsidisation, more support for local, seasonal producers rather than just blindly buying out-of-season food from other countries etc.

Absolutely, but I'm just making the point that fungicides, pesticides, herbicides, etc. are not being used just for the hell of it.

Macha

djpbarry wrote: »

Absolutely, but I'm just making the point that fungicides, pesticides, herbicides, etc. are not being used just for the hell of it.

Very, very true. With the recent proposed ban on certain pesticides, the IFA stated that the price of food would go up as a direct result of the ban.

But what they don't talk about are the negative impacts on biodiversity, human health, the fact that most of these chemicals essentially come from oil and are inherently unsustainable.

SilverLiningOK

"On 27 February 2012, Teagasc (the Irish Government's Agriculture and Food Development Authority) made a formal notification to our Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requesting consent for a 4-year field trial of GMO potatoes that have been genetically modified in hope of making them resistant to late blight potato disease.

The proposed experiment is part of the AMIGA project funded under the EU Framework 7 programme, involving 22 partners in 15 EU countries and Argentina, and co-ordinated by Italy's National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) – even though there is widespread consumer rejection and no market for GM food in Europe.

Unless the EPA refuses consent, the field trials would begin this Spring and continue until November 2016. The deadline for stakeholders to make submissions to the EPA is 5pm on 27 March"

Sign the petition on GM Free Ireland's website - [MOD]Link to petition removed.[/MOD]

djpbarry

Digging up old threads to add a new dimension to the discussion is sometimes welcome.

Digging up old threads to post a petition is definitely not.