Regulation, Procedures, and Rules for Triffid

[parsley]

I took the data link from the flax Council's webapage charlie. The chart compares from last year to the next year which is what I found interesting, seeing the stats side by side, comparing apples to apples, without someone pulling out figures that muddy.


Speaking about the Flax Council, I came across their Director Jane Goodridge:

Jane Goodridge represents the Feed Industry, and works for FeedRite/Ridley Inc

Ridley has been buying feed companies like I buy candy,

http://www.ridleyinc.com/Companies/

They are an international feed company. As a side note, but rather interesting, Ridley was the feed company involved in the BSE class action in Canada, supplying the feed. Pars

[TOM4CWB]

Wd9,

The problem is in the FLAX meal. NOT the oil. The meal is used in pet foods and some human consumption applications. I can't blame the EU... being careful is better than the BSE fiasco.

EU is now able to test to find 1 in a million seeds with event.

Rice that was contaminated is now clear. It is not impossible to eliminate... it is simply an excuse not to take our flax industry back to square one and reconstruct. That would cost $ billions.

No one wants to pay that bill in the Canadian scientific community (ie CDC).

In my opinion it will take 10 years to clear our farm of terror-riffid flax.

We never grew it... or so we thought.

We will never even know... if there was actually one plant on our farm... but the flax option has been removed from our rotation tool box... of crops to plant.

OBSCene. Crazy. Life in 2011. The bold NEW world.

[wd9]

At ppb levels its in the oil.

[parsley]

What has been learned?.

1. We have watched how regulation, procedure and rules have NOT been followed.

2, Duty of care has been disregarded by officials in gov't instiutions, councils, and organizations, as proven by the lack of open accountability and lack of punishment for non-compliance.

Governments, institutions, bureaucrats and farmers in leadership roles have learned nothing except how to pass th buck.

Have you heard an "I'm sorry."?

As a result, all future failures will be downloaded on ordinary farmers over and over again.

As you read, a scheme to introduce, for example, biotech barley, will probably be unveiled this year, and past failed protocol will be blindly embraced, copied, and hoisted on farmers.

And the hoisters will argue over and over that "it's for your own good", or "how else will it get done, you ornery goat?",or "we'll get left behind if we don't hurry".

I use the word 'failed' on behalf of everyday farmers, because the rest of the bedbug-crowd have always lived high on taxpayer and farmer checkoff welfare, and they expect it to continue.

I will predict that a barley scheme will propose including more and a wider grasp of checkoffs on sales to elevators, feedlots, feed mills etc.

I suspect there will be barley varieties being developed as you read, that need to be paid for and as you well know, governments are cutting back.

That leaves goats to pay more.

I also suspect there will eventually be a barley council set up that will operate similar to the failed flax councils. Ordinary farmers will again be a negligible voice at the table.

Councils are proven vehicles, becoming merely institutions set up to gather up crop-taxes, as well as planners for directing the matching taxmoney towards "more deserving" interests.

Developing Perennial barley should be #1 on the list, but it would only serve the interests of Prairie farmers.

Imagine planting a barley that could be harvested for eight years without seeding!

Instead, checkoff money will be used for funding scientsts who's directed mandate is to develop drought resistant barley for Africa to coincide with the irrigation system being set up at the same time, in the same region of Africa.

Biotech barley will not be compared to Harrington barley in all the thousands of studies yet to be studied, because "We musta forgot it because it's not important".

As well, barley with selenium in it will escape. Barley that is red will escape. Barley that has goat dung in it will escape. Escape into the wild. They will cross pollinate.

No one will claim ownership of the goat dung barley, but the odd dog eats it.

Only then, can farmers can finally move on to fund "getting it right this time" with tritica or buckwheat or one of the many other councils to set up.

Is there one funding paradym in play in the ag community we should pay attention to?

Yes:

"FARMERS WILL PAY"

Especailly when you listen to the whispers:

'Even if they have to be legislated to pay.'

Parsley

[charliep]

Way off triffid flaxseed but what would do in the case of barley.

Not competitive relative to other crops grown in western Canada such as canola on a profit per acre basis. Lack of R. and D. funding has been a major issue as well as other resources including human capital. No money in barley breeding so no private investment.

Not competitive relative to other regions of the world that grow barley. Europe and Australia have well developed and executed barley breeding programs. Both use biotechnology although Europe does not acknowledge genetic engineering.

Not competitive with other crops grown in the world such as corn. Corn has been driven by ethanol on the consumption side and biotech on the production side.

Does it matter that western Canadian barley has a declining competitiveness on a dollar/acre profit basis relative to other alternatives here at home and around the world? If it is western barley competitiveness is important, what resources around research and development need to be brought together? Based on some agreed definition of biotechnology, what approval and risk assessment processes need to be done to move barley plant breeding forward using the alternatives available? Genetic engineering may not even be in the tool box - plant breeders very difficult with barley. There are other biotech tools used by all regions including the EU.

So what is the process to create more value for barley using the tools available? How should these process be funded?

[wd9]

Its not a perfect world. What a surprise!

If a food in europe contains technically unavoidable GMO admixtures in maize raw materials up to a part of 0.9 per cent, and the food produced thereof, are not subject to a labelling requirement.

Starch based products from GMO maize need to be labelled but for example Dextrin which is seveal steps from starch are not in the ingredient list are can easily be made from much cheaper gmo maize. Amino acids are not labelled either and can be GMO.

Given that corn has a 0.9% accceptance of 'technically unavoidable gmo content" why doesn't flax for paint and linoleum have at least the same tolerance?

Its a simple rule of don't pay more then you have to.

So parsely a quick side question, how much triffid does "organic flax" contain? Has it been tested to ppm or ppb?

[wd9]

Its also interesting to note GM soy is approved in almost every country and while the EU can't grow them they import that evil stuff from Canada USA and Brazil totaling around 40 million tonnes and process that raw product into millions of others products. Labelled and not labelled GMO.

It a fixable marketing problem for flax.

[charliep]

wd9

Would highlight all genetic events have to be registered in Europe through both their technical (EFSA) and political processes even in the case of low level presense. This can happen quickly if there is political will (example the registration of corn genetic events ensure corn dust in soybeans put the importation of the latter offside).

The thing that makes Europe different is there are two of processes. A scientific approval process (likely not too different from our plant with novel trait regulation) and a political one.

[parsley]

"How should these process be funded?"

I'm quite sure private interests welcome unlimited, perpetual funding by other people's money.

But, the world is mostly gone broke, charliep. Did you just find out?

I realize that farmers are unique folks with their own wealth creation actutually tied up in their living, as a friend in jail reminded me awhile ago in a letter, but you know, a dollar here and there and everywhere, and we seem to be struggling a bit from the increasing automatic debits that plaque our bottom lines.

Maybe sainfoin, barley, alfalfa, garlic, etc, dozens of them, actually cannot afford to "move forwards" because there is not enough money. Yup.

As well, the government can only provide "private interests" with er, my and your money.

Maybe only the few commodities that ALREADY did "move forward" and are already begging for MORE additional funding are eating all the available funds. Did you ever think of that? Pars

[charliep]

Maybe those organizations have a strategic plan, an execution strategy and ways of measuring/demonstrating success. Not likely involved in navel gazing and remembering the good old days. They have worked with government as a supply chain to deal with issues like regualation, procedures and rules - the theme of this thread.