Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie

Half of Europe opts out of new GM crop scheme but "green" Ireland does not!?

Options
2»

Comments

  • Options
    #32
    Chisler2
    Registered Users Posts: 436 ✭✭Chisler2


    Qtrip wrote: »
    theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/01/half-of-europe-opts-out-of-new-gm-crop-scheme

    "Bid for exclusion by 14 countries and three regions would make two-thirds of Europe’s population and arable land GM-free"

    Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales and other countries opted out of allowing GM to be grown but I don't see Ireland listed as one of those countries.
    Whether or not you agree with GM crops this just removes any credibility from statements highlighting the quality of our produce.

    What the 'ell is wrong with our government? They should be protecting the green image used to promote Irish food around the world and its unique selling point that differentiates it from the rest of the produce on the market.

    Big Business invariably masks its self-interest as increasing benefit to mankind. A couple of thoughts. Last week in Mayo a friend in the hotel-business reported with awe on the increasing number of American tourists who asked to be directed to the butcher shop or the greengrocers. A high point in their visit, they said, was "clean, tasty Irish produce". Across the pond, our American home is located on the vast corn and soy-growing belt. Over the past two decades the mid-west is increasingly depopulated as farms (often over 300 acres each) which followed the trend and succumbed to GM pressure found themselves (b) left with hundreds of acres of unsold food as prices on the international corn-market plummeted year on year and were then gobbled up by the Agri-giants. Increased yields have NOT driven down the price to consumers or put food on the family table. Corn is now processed into environmentally-costly bio-fuel and into feed for the vast cow-calf operations throughout the mid-west.......which are in turn genetically modified, never move off tracts of mud laced with their own faeces and are laced with antibiotics and steroids. Vast quantities of GM corn are converted into high-fructose corn syrup. It is now virtually impossible to purchase ANY processed foodstuff which does not contain some of this liver-destroying entity.

    There is evidence that introduction of GM benefits the shareholders of global agri-business. Where is the evidence that GM either improves the quality of crops, OR makes affordable food available to those who currently lack it? Just a few associations and concerns.


  • Options
    #33
    Capercaillie
    Registered Users Posts: 1,732 ✭✭✭Capercaillie


    Chisler2 wrote: »
    Big Business invariably masks its self-interest as increasing benefit to mankind. A couple of thoughts. Last week in Mayo a friend in the hotel-business reported with awe on the increasing number of American tourists who asked to be directed to the butcher shop or the greengrocers. A high point in their visit, they said, was "clean, tasty Irish produce". Across the pond, our American home is located on the vast corn and soy-growing belt. Over the past two decades the mid-west is increasingly depopulated as farms (often over 300 acres each) which followed the trend and succumbed to GM pressure found themselves (b) left with hundreds of acres of unsold food as prices on the international corn-market plummeted year on year and were then gobbled up by the Agri-giants. Increased yields have NOT driven down the price to consumers or put food on the family table. Corn is now processed into environmentally-costly bio-fuel and into feed for the vast cow-calf operations throughout the mid-west.......which are in turn genetically modified, never move off tracts of mud laced with their own faeces and are laced with antibiotics and steroids. Vast quantities of GM corn are converted into high-fructose corn syrup. It is now virtually impossible to purchase ANY processed foodstuff which does not contain some of this liver-destroying entity.

    There is evidence that introduction of GM benefits the shareholders of global agri-business. Where is the evidence that GM either improves the quality of crops, OR makes affordable food available to those who currently lack it? Just a few associations and concerns.

    The GMO companies are probably like the rest of the Agri-food companies "out to make maximum profit". Who would trust the fertilizer companies, pesticides companies, Dairy companies, meat factories, retailers?


  • Options
    #34
    Chisler2
    Registered Users Posts: 436 ✭✭Chisler2


    Capercaillie wrote: »
    The GMO companies are probably like the rest of the Agri-food companies "out to make maximum profit". Who would trust the fertilizer companies, pesticides companies, Dairy companies, meat factories, retailers?

    One hope I cling to is that Ireland's small scale and ecological diversity still has potential (but for how long more, given the exponential rate of change) to produce clean healthy food-crops and meats still fit for human consumption. We can learn from evidence in the public sphere of wrong turns taken elsewhere without having to cycle through the s**t ourselves, surely?


  • Options
    #35
    Capercaillie
    Registered Users Posts: 1,732 ✭✭✭Capercaillie


    Chisler2 wrote: »
    One hope I cling to is that Ireland's small scale and ecological diversity still has potential (but for how long more, given the exponential rate of change) to produce clean healthy food-crops and meats still fit for human consumption. We can learn from evidence in the public sphere of wrong turns taken elsewhere without having to cycle through the s**t ourselves, surely?
    Unfortunately ecological diversity is something I would definitely not say about agriculture in it's present form in Ireland and with unsustainable intensification it will get worse.


  • Options
    #36
    Chisler2
    Registered Users Posts: 436 ✭✭Chisler2


    Capercaillie wrote: »
    Unfortunately ecological diversity is something I would definitely not say about agriculture in it's present form in Ireland and with unsustainable intensification it will get worse.

    Unfortunately!.......a future small rocky outcrop in the Atlantic stocked from coast to coast with cows,d rimmed with fish-farms and gas-rigs.


  • Advertisement
  • Options
    #37
    Capercaillie
    Registered Users Posts: 1,732 ✭✭✭Capercaillie


    Chisler2 wrote: »
    Unfortunately!.......a future small rocky outcrop in the Atlantic stocked from coast to coast with cows,d rimmed with fish-farms and gas-rigs.

    Would still be portrayed as the sustainable and green though! There is only so long that charade will last.


  • Options
    #38
    Chisler2
    Registered Users Posts: 436 ✭✭Chisler2


    Capercaillie wrote: »
    Would still be portrayed as the sustainable and green though! There is only so long that charade will last.

    Charade only lasts until the bluff is called.


Advertisement