And speaking of junk science.

[Fransisco]

From where I sit it was the organic junkies that screwed up the European flax scene. They're the ones who needlessly inserted themselves between willing buyers and willing sellers.

And yes I've been denied all sorts of wonderful crop improvements because of expensive, time wasting, crazy regulations meant to appease the unappeasable.

[hlg]

We still have to educate the end user that they need our product, otherwise there is no point to more production. That means jumping past the politics to the people who need the food to survive.

[furrowtickler]

So we may be forced to burn 2x-3x more fuel to grow crops that are not GMO? That makes envionmental sense!!! There is still no evidence what so ever that GMO crops are nutitionaly different than non-GMO.

[Fransisco]

"Maybe for a change we should make sure that our customers will actually accept our NEW and improved product"

The customers have never been the problem, it's the busybodies who think they know what's best for our customers that are the problem.

[cottonpicken]

LOL..size,make me look like a shrimp.

[cottonpicken]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AWktx-
tCZg&feature=player_embedded

[TOM4CWB]

Parsley,

You are being logical and fair on this one.

If there is one thing I have learned from the flax event that has cost 100's of $ millions... organic growers didn't cause this... and any flax grower lost 20% of their income pronto after the gm contamination occured.

DID we LEARN anything from this Billion dollar blunder?

Are we farmers just stupid or what?

We can grow more... so we can get paid much less... wow... how smart we are!

Shouldn't the triffid gm event have been registered in the EU... before it was released?

[parsley]

Local or international, cott? You talking about the big Swede?

[parsley]

Your words sound as happy as if they've been coated with acid reflux, fran. LOL Maybe that's why you're telling tall tales.

You screwed up your own market. Your European buyers couldn't have made it any plainer from Day#1 NO GMO

Take a round out of your elite seed growers and the University of Saskatchewan's Crop Development Centre. Was it that the former couldn't keep their bins clean and the latter were too lazy to rogue a row? This pair are responsible and where you should point fingers.

Organics never grew, distributed or developed Triffid, and even the dullest would agree that organics was not the perpetrator.

You say:" And yes I've been denied all sorts of wonderful crop improvements because of expensive, time wasting, crazy regulations meant to appease the unappeasable."

Lawsey. GM biotechsters have begged/lobbied every available ag research tax dollar, year after year. Still not enough for you?

Why don't you personally write your customers and ask them plainly what they want? You say:
"The customers have never been the problem, it's the busybodies who think they know what's best for our customers that are the problem."

Your flax customers seem to be able to communicate their message ably, imho.
NO GMO

Hey, fran, and while you're at it, tell the flax Council of Saskatchewan they'd better get up to speed just like you did, because here they have been saying all along, even back in the '90's:

****"Europe has not authorized any GMO flax events"
****" Europe has a zero tolerance policy for events not authorized in Europe".

You'll next be advocating that the flax council also needs to be informed that the whole Triffid fiasco is organics' fault!

You are such a biotech sleuth, fran, with GMlogic; well, my my, all farmers will be relieved that the GM industry is in such sound thinking hands. Pars

[charliep]

Too correct your statement, Canada never went through the process of getting triffid flaxseed approved as a genetic event in Europe. To put another way, the EU was never given the chance to approve or reject triffid flaxseed.

The EU has approved genetic events involving genetic engineering including most recently sugar beets which can be grown in Germany. The EU has been importing GE soybeans for years.

[charliep]

I should high light that Europe is a big user of biotechnology in plant breeding. Not genetic engineering however in the stuff available for release in the current market. Same companies that are doing genetic engineering in other regions of the world are also working in Europe so a change in consumer attitude would have product available to EU market in short order.

A project and a workshop highlighted that advances in biotech have been as much a matter of money and research versus access to any individual technology (eg. genetic engineering). If anything, current technology picked off the wins (eg. herbicide tolerance via GE or mutagenesis). Solutions to other agronomic issues (nutrient use, salinity tolerance, drought tolerance, disease, etc) are going to come via a whole range of breeding techniques/technologies. This creativity is occurring all over the world via a number of programs/activities.

The process may not be genetic engineering in Canada. Too much risk in a country based on export markets. I suspect we need to continue to invest in other breeding alternatives including conventional enhanced by things like marker assisted gene selection. Will Canada be on the bleeding edge, leading edge, early adopters, go with the flow or be a lagard in plant breeding research? What does Canada bring to the table in terms of dealing with issues like fusarium graminearium/more virilant DON types with implications for human health/tolerances in crops?

[Fransisco]

Sigh...

There you go again Pars, working under the assumption that EU bureaucrats are our customers. They're not, they never have been, and they never will be. But you just go on pretending that they are and pretending that you know better what my customers want than they do.

No, organics never grew(although who knows maybe they did and just never said so), distributed or developed Triffid. But the organic fingerprints are all over the crazy non-science based, zero tolerance rules set up by the eurocrats. Heck, the green lobby in the EU is heavily funded by taxpayer dollars to petition for exactly this kind of ridiculous rule.

BTW- speaking of being denied cropping opportunities I haven't grown flax for a long,long time now. Why? Because of low yielding varieties. If Triffid had actually gone commercial I think that wouldn't be the case. But some folks who thought they knew what was better for my farm and my customers made the decision for us and yanked it before we could even decide for ourselves.