Flax?

[charliep]

On your comment, I have to admit to getting frustrated. If you think moving organic products through the supply chain in the same manner as other commodities, then you have a recipe for disaster. The same net that got flax will get your industry (better testing and tight tolerances including zero). The commodity system can't afford to be loaded up with supply chain requirements to meet the needs of your industry. Too expensive and too risky.

The route many of these issues will not be regulation but rather contract terms and supply chain checks/balances. If a system exists that can move new varieties from the plant breeder to a farmer with varietal, surely a system can be developed to move organic grain forward farm to customer. You and the buyer can put whatever terms you want in the contract and be held to them by the court system.

[parsley]

I don't think it's a matter of sides, charliep.

I don't want to pit farmer against farmer. Taking sides is not winnable for anyone. Or throwing pies at fran. I's sooner make the pie and he makes the coffee.

I actually support conventional flax farmers to sell linoleum flax for fifty dollars a bushel.

But all farmers have to understand the food issue. Food is not industrial. And accept that food is our future generation's survival. Not just nutritional, but genetic survival.

I know I am old fashioned. And ornery. But I am sincere.

When it comes right down to it, there isn't hardly a farmer reading this, that doesn't have a tiny seed of doubt about eating genetically modified FOOD. Even fran? lol

And organic is, at the very least, your insurance policy.

If the massive GMO experiment on North Americans is a miserable failure, organics is at least a backup of sorts.
Agriculture Canada came here years ago to select weeds with no resistance in them.

I understand why farmers sell what they see as making the most money. We need money We have taxes. We have children to educate. My gawd, ours never seemed to finish school. LOL

But there can be a place for both organics and conventional if we commit to due diligence between food and industrial.

At some point we have to deal with the moral issues of modification.

[charliep]

Hopefully nothing I says says I am anti organics or food. You didn't say that by the way Parsley.

I am a mechanic and look at the process. Farmer takes flax and gets a cash ticket including grade. Blended and sampled on loading a rail car. Hauled Thunder Bay where blended some more and sampled. don't know if shipped direct Europe or handled St. Lawrence. In a ship across the ocean. Unloaded Belgium - sampled and tested. Trucked or railed mill Germany - tested. Cleanliness and attention to detail has the ability to impact the flax/organics at each step along the way. This is the commodity world with all its worts. If organics is loaded containers (farm to mill), then there is opportunity to put much tighter specifications and testing even to the genetic level - a good thing. If organics are going to meet the specific needs of customers through the commodity system, a lot attention has to be spent on detail (clean legs in elevators, clean trucks/railcars, clean holds of ships, etc). Zero is an extremely tough target in this new world of testing.

[Fransisco]

The issue of industrial vs food grade crops just isn't there, it's another red herring. If you are growing something for an industrial purpose such as flax for paint there is a possibility that it will end up in the food supply. Accidents happen. That is why Triffid flax was tested for human consumption even though that was not it's intent. If it hadn't passed that requirement it would not have been granted approval. I think that's a good thing.

And no, there is no doubt in my mind that food produced from GM is safe. I have asked many times if it's so dangerous can someone please show me a body? And at this point, 12 years in you're going to have to point to a whole lot of them.

There are far greater risks to things such as the new H1N1 vaccine out there that I and many other people find perfectly acceptable. No doubt a small number of people will have negative reactions to this vaccine but I would still much rather have it than not.

[parsley]

charliep,

There is no such thing as perfection and no one can expect it.

My main purpose in this discussion is to make farmers and handlers and shippers, and ordinary people working with grain companies, and university plant breeders, or "foodies" to be reminded, be more aware, that they are dealing with human food.

And to treat it thus.

All of us are careless.

But if we consciously make an effort to guard, to label, to brand, to brag, that we're dealing in GRAINFOOD that nourishes our minds, anyone who eats...gains.

If Triffid had been handled differently, this fiasco would not have occurred. Handling is a result of the way it was viewed. Linoleum flax shouldn't end up in your porridge.

At some point, fran, there is going to be a modified crop you are NOT going to want to put into your mouth.

[Fransisco]

Brussel sprouts.

I would be in favour of a ban on brussel sprouts. Conventional,organic, GM,the works. It is the devils food and it needs to be stopped before its too late.

[Fransisco]

Then there are the children of the devil...red beets. I could do without them as well.

[ward.toma]

Canada requires simultaneous safety approvals for
environmental release, human food safety and
animal feed safety for all novel foods. This includes
transgenic, or GMO events, as well as non-
transgenic events that do not occur in nature. Immy
tolerant wheat/canola and low-phytate barley are
novel plants that are not GMO's.

To not require all 3 safety approvals for every novel
plant, which some advocates of industrial crops
support, would effectively remove the millions of
acres of cultivated land in Canada from the
production of food.

Ward Toma
General Manager
Alberta Canola Producers

[parsley]

"children of the devil"?

Like I said before,'learning about something' and 'thinking' are not synonymous, but you are smart, so I have not given up on you,franny.

Being the witch that I am I ran a market barn for twelve years. Predominantly city people buying. We are a two hour drive time away from every city.

Every year for twelve years, beets was the #1 top selling vegetable.

Yes, #1, by far.

Go ahead, tell the buyers they were stupid.

Now,fran, if you came up with the idea that the red-color gene from beets should be inserted in all industrial crops, which would distinguish industrial from food crop for both the farmer and the user, then, you might redeem yourself for at least doing some thinking.

Knowing your style, you'd choose the bright red gene from the tomato. LOL

Pars

[parsley]

"Triffid likely contaminated most North American flax exports including 'organic' flax because the crop is significantly insect pollinated. Why has the GM contamination escaped careful scrutiny in Europe during those years of Flax export? One explanation may be partly technical at least. The herbicides tolerated by GM flax are sulphonylurea derivatives and the genes transforming flax are not the usual genes used to produce herbicide tolerant crops. The promoter and terminator genes are native from the plant source of resistant genes Arabidopsis. What I am saying is that is that Triffid is a University of Saskatchewan product and does not employ the usual large company genes and that may be a reason they were not detected earlier." <p></p><p class="EC_style8ptBK"><strong><a href="http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp; id=11507:re-illegal-gm-contaminates-flax"> (Click to read the rest)</a></strong></p>