Sanet Post, Daniel Worley
Ag, politics, biotech, and SANet -Reply to Bob MacGregor
December 31, 1996

Extremely little, if any, energy was spent in verifying whether new introductions of crops or non-crop plants or animals was benign in the past. It was just done. In the more recent past, some small attempt was made to appease those objecting by doing a "study" here and there. But those were not true, in depth studies as I am sure you are aware. You mentioned a few. Right here in PR there were several, some of which turned out to be beneficial, some benign, and a few (or maybe more than a few) caused more problems than they solved. We now have all but eradicated the snail that is the primary carrier of the parasite that causes Balarzia by the careful introduction of a species of snail that devoured all the carriers and then turned cannibalistic and destroyed itself. But that one excellent result is overshadowed by the now rabid population of mongoose that was introduced to get rid of rats and snakes. We still have both BTW. There are many more examples I cold cite.

But, from where I sit, I don't see anywhere nearly enough care being taken to determine if these genetically engineered crops and the hormone injections and so on are going to be harmful or not. I do see some of them as having been shown to be harmful and they are still with us, and still being sold and grown. Not only that, there appears to be a concerted effort by the corporations and our own government to make it impossible to get rid of them by such actions as mixing the GE soybeans with normal soybeans.

You go on to say much of this in later paragraphs. I think what I am saying is I agree with your position, but....Maybe we need to yell just a bit louder. Maybe we need to push the government (and ultimately the corporations) into conducting much more comprehensive studies before unleashing these possible monsters onto an unsuspecting world population.

--Dan in Sunny Puerto Rico--