New Year's Resolutions...

[stonepicker]

Wiseguy, i'm disappointed, you're a farmer and it appears you believe the anti GMO hype? New years resolution- make more efficient use of my time.

[TOM4CWB]

Interesting DTN Article:

Washington Insider- Thursday
WSJ and Genetic Progress
Thu Dec 31, 2015 07:13 AM CST

By DTN's Washington Insider

Here’s a quick monitor of Washington farm and trade policy issues from DTN’s well-placed observer.

Washington Insider: WSJ and Genetic Progress

As the year winds down, it becomes apparent that most of the lingering controversies in agriculture are making a running start toward even more intense fights in the New Year. For example, the Wall Street Journal, which typically supports technology that boosts productivity, carried an OpEd by Julie Kelly, “a contributor to the Genetic Literacy Project and a cooking instructor and food writer in Illinois.”

Kelly says that while it is commonplace to hear that most consumers mistrust biotechnology, she has a different take. She opines that no matter what the culinary elite say, genetic engineering is winning the day and gradually overcoming fear-mongering. The cites what she calls “a flurry of good news” this year and thinks it ought to convince the public, more than ever, of the safety and the tremendous promise of this technology.

She notes that FDA approved a new chicken that produces eggs that treat a rare and potentially fatal disorder called lysosomal acid lipase deficiency. “Add it to the small but growing class of “farmaceuticals,” including drugs made by transgenic goats and rabbits,” she says. She could have added Golden Rice with its enormous health potential, but her point is clear.

Then she talks about approval of an Atlantic salmon modified to grow faster with less feed that may ease pressure on overfished salmon stocks in the wild and moves on to modified fruits like apples that prevent spoilage and waste. She also includes a second-generation Innate potato, which includes a gene from a wild variety that resists late blight, bruising and browning.

She sees more progress on the way and discusses the rapidly developing genome editing method known as Crispr that Science magazine called “breakthrough of the year” and which is seen as holding amazing potential for agriculture. An example is research at the University of Missouri and Kansas State University on hogs that resist a viral respiratory diseases that costs the pork industry more than $600 million a year.

Are anti-GMO activists happy about these consumer oriented products? Well, no, she says. In fact they are spending heavily to force food manufacturers to label products, even though such mandatory requirements failed in ballot measures in Oregon and Colorado last year after similar failures in California and Washington State. Now, these several different state efforts are attracting the attention of Congress and led to a House of Representatives passed a bill to pre-empt state and local GMO-labeling laws. Kelly cites Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., ranking Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, who said earlier this month that a similar bill is on the radar in her chamber: “I think it will be the first thing we have to work on in January.”

Kelly also wonders about the effectiveness of company policies that rely on non-GMO products to deliver safer foods. She notes the recent cases of food-borne illnesses that have hit Chipotle locations across the country and somewhat snidely suggests that supporters of “traditional agriculture, who have felt maligned by the burrito company, have started keeping a tally of the number of people sickened by Chipotle’s food (ongoing, but more than 300) versus the number sickened by foods from GMOs (zero)."

She concludes that, “GMOs never looked so harmless” and predicts that, “…as science advances and consumers become more informed about genetic engineering’s benefits for human health, animal welfare and food safety, the anti-GMO movement will look ever more like an outdated ideological crusade as it becomes increasingly certain that renouncing technology doesn’t make your food safer or healthier.” She sees this as a lesson now being learned.

We’ll see. The fight against GMOs was never fact based but was heavily influenced by European and U.S. foodies who hate the technology. Even more basic is the feeling the elitists peddle that the less technology of any kind applied to food, the better—in spite of the fact that without historical plant and animal modification, our foods would nearly all be woody, often tasteless, frequently dangerous and certainly more scarce.

So, Kelly is probably on the right track in pointing out consumer benefits—especially, since many ag products already use GMOs in processing with mainly good results.

Still, agriculture is in a fight with foodies who actually know that scientists think GMOs are safe, but still want to kill the “mammoth corporations that produce them” for reasons known mainly to each other. In such a situation, perhaps a little hand-slapping by the Congress is in order, or even overdue, to avoid unnecessary consumer costs. However, it is far too early to conclude that the GMO battle is anywhere near over, Washington Insider believes.

Want to keep up with events in Washington and elsewhere throughout the day? See DTN Top Stories, our frequently updated summary of news developments of interest to producers. You can find DTN Top Stories in DTN Ag News, which is on the Main Menu on classic DTN products and on the News and Analysis Menu of DTN’s Professional and Producer products. DTN Top Stories is also on the home page and news home page of online.dtn.com. Subscribers of MyDTN.com should check out the US Ag Policy, US Farm Bill and DTN Ag News sections on their News Homepage.

If you have questions for DTN Washington Insider, please email edit@dtn.com

(GH/CZ)

© Copyright 2015 DTN/The Progressive Farmer. All rights reserved.

[parsley]

Resolutions: More writing, more painting, less garden, more pickled herring, minimalizing, more experimenting. Spend more time laughing with my friends. Work hard.

The very best to each one of you in 2016. Pars.

[tstep]

No machine change. Spent more time at lake with grandkids. More Dr. HD for therapy and less stressing on a crop.

[tstep]

No machine change. Spent more time at lake with grandkids. More Dr. HD for therapy and less stressing on a crop.