looking for non GM

[gogogadget]

a friend of mine is asking anybody with un-genetically modified vegi's and or herbs he is willing to pay cash, please pm me with anything you may have to propagate, many thanks everyone.

[random]

Try eden seeds?

They have a heap of heritage seed varieties collected from before the days when flavour was chucked out the window in favour of shelf life.

[gogogadget]

thanks bud ill pass it on.

[mescalito]

Join The Diggers Club too!

[gogogadget]

thanks mesc i passed on the info

[Mr Stay Puft]

is it trolling if i point out that most edible varieties are the result of 'genetic modification' in the form of artificial selection... GM is not as bad as it's made out to be and in some instances may be useful in providing food to those currently unable to produce enough to survive...

[Magicdirt]

`

Edited May 8, 2011 by Magicdirt

[gilligan]

I'll second diggers, been a member for years, always good products from seeds to trees. Plus 8 free packs of seeds a year :-)

[WoodDragon]

Genetic modification from selective breeding is very different to cross species genetic modification, like we see now in food crops.

What Magicdirt said.

In all the worst famines this planet has seen in the last 100 years there has been millions of tonnes of food going to waste in stockpiles or reserves, corporations couldn't give a fuck about people and they never will.

 

What Magicdirt said.

GM technology is never going to feed poor starving masses, it's all about profit.

What Magicdirt said.

Oh, and Greenpatch is another good organic seed supplier. Highly recommended.

[Mr Stay Puft]

without turning this into a gm, non gm debate... i don't think GM can solve the world hunger issues either... BUT the best tool for job... one thing people need to be aware of is the process behind the creation of GM crops... it is a very natural process, not very much more unnatural than pollinating in the hope of producing valuable offspring...

before you right off a particular technology, make sure you fully understand the concepts behind it... and the terminology used that is both confusing and ambiguous so as to confuse... in Australia I can chemically alter DNA with mutagenic compounds and under Australian law this is considered non GM and can be sold to you with no labeling as to the production of say mutant plant... where as with 'GM' it must be a gene (sequenced etc) inserted into the genome of another organism (can even be the same species) and then this insertion must be mapped to know the full implications of the inserted gene... so we know a million times more about approved GM crops than we do of chemical or organic pest and disease control...

AND regulations mean that especially in countries such as Australia it is much safe to consume an approved GM crop than the mass produced, chemically doused shit most of us buy off the shelves!

starvation, hunger, suffering, and poor advances in society are all to do with someone trying to make a profit...

also i'd just like to point out that there are infact very few GM plants in Australia.. so unless you intend on growing canola, cotton or maybe carnations i don't believe anything you buy will be 'GM'

[WoodDragon]

BUT the best tool for job... one thing people need to be aware of is the process behind the creation of GM crops... it is a very natural process, not very much more unnatural than pollinating in the hope of producing valuable offspring...

before you right off a particular technology, make sure you fully understand the concepts behind it... and the terminology used that is both confusing and ambiguous so as to confuse... in Australia I can chemically alter DNA with mutagenic compounds...

I worked with GM in bacteria when it was first practiced in Australia, so I have direct experience with it, and I have a long-time understanding. I am certainly not confused by the terminology, and these days working as an ecologist my concerns are even greater than they were when I did medical research.

The problem is that gene insertion technology involves more than the equivalent of mutation with something like colchicine or whatever. It involves the addition of completely novel (to the genome) genes, and with novel promoters, terminators and regulators, and frequently the marker sequence is left tagging along. Often the gene is randomly inserted into the host genome, and even with deliberate gene targetting there is a low chance of extraneous insertion.

The trouble is that, whether targetted or not, the host genome is not evolved to deal with this additional functionality. Sometimes the practical consequences in the environment are not discernible (to humans or to corporations, at least) and sometimes it takes years, or unusual situations, for unintended environmental consequences to manifest.

The same can happen with natural point mutations, deletions, insertions, or rearrangements in organisms, but such are essentially never as profoundly altering as are GE technologies (else we wouldn't 'need' GE technologies), and natural mutation is more incremental over time in how it modifies the organism, and in how the environment adjusts.

Through virus action such insertion processes can be regarded in a limited fashion as "natural", but in effect there is a very large difference, in that there is not wholesale movement of genetic material between completely unrelated taxa, and most importantly because in nature insertions rarely enter the germ-line cells, except on extended evolutionary timescales. The story is different in the case of unicellular organisms, and especially in protists, which are genetic swingers, but even in this context they rarely pilfer the genes of higher taxa to the extent that GE technology is now introducing it to bacteria.

On the matter of GM deletions, they are a much more 'naturally benign' alteration usually, in that they more closely mimic the effects of natural deletion. But then, most deletions are used to explore, in the laboratory, the function of the targetted gene, and the resulting modified organism is compromised to the point of not being functional without constant and ongoing human intervention, which results in a much lower potential risk to the environment.

I won't go too much into the ecological implications of GE technology, but one obvious one is the emergence of weedy varieties. Another not-so-obvious one (and somewhat complementary to the first) is the dilution or even the complete loss of natural resistance to pests and diseases. Then there's the fact that the matter of adding 'nutritional value' to a species seems to skirt over the fact that for every new energetic process installed into a crop, there is an energetic cost (in nature there is no such thing as a free lunch, and the thermodynamics of biochemistry takes especial note of this), so growers pay either by having to expend more resources to grow the crop (a problem when Peak Oil really starts to bite), or original, less acknowledged benefits from the crop might be diminished.

One practical implication of the use of GE technology is that it provides the patent-owning trans-national corporation with a way to claim royalties even without intent for use on the farmer's/land owner'spart. Remember Percy Schmeiser? To date the trans-nationals have shown no desire, effort or ability to contain the spread of GM genomes from specific fields to the general environment, so neither the non-GE using public or the natural envirnment has a choice in whether GM is allowed to spread.

Having said all this, I still believe that GE has great application in a lab setting, and especially in the commercial production, in bacteria, of specific biochemicals. But that milieu is very different to agricultural release into an unrestricted environment, and given that for just about every GE solution there is a cheaper, unpatentable and just as effective non-GE solution, it's use is an enormous and ongoing example of having a great big hammer and seeing every challenge in the world as being a nail.

[Halcyon Daze]

There's a lot of damning proof that GM foods are dangerous.

The CSIRO had to scramble to scrap their own super-pea project after it was found to be causing cancer in rats.

http://www.gmfreecymru.org.uk/pivotal_papers/suspicions.htm

New Suspicions about GMO

"By Hervé Kempf Le Monde Thursday 09 February 2006

Do transgenic plants have a negative effect on health? Ever since their commercialization in 1996, the question has agitated circles of experts and ecologists, without any indisputable proof allowing an affirmative response. Now, several recent studies effected by credible researchers and published in scientific reviews tally with one another to throw doubt on GMOs' complete harmlessness. They don't assert that GMOs generate health problems. But at the very least they suggest that GMOs provoke biological impacts that must be more widely studied. This new questioning arises just as the Council of Ministers adopted a proposed law on GMO Wednesday, February 8, and as the World Trade Organization (WTO) handed over an interim report February 7 to the parties in a conflict that opposes the United States, Canada, and Argentina to the European Union on the issue of transgenic plants.

In November 2005, Australian researchers published an article in a scientific review (Vanessa Prescott et al., Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, 2005, p. 9023) explaining that the transfer of a gene that expresses an insecticide protein from a bean to a pea had provoked unexpected problems: among the mice fed the transgenic peas, Csiro (the Australian equivalent of the French National Center for Scientific Research, CNRS) researchers observed antibody production, markers of an allergic reaction. The affair, which made headlines in the Australian and English press, led Csiro to stop development of that transgenic pea, while West Australia Minister of Agriculture Kim Chance announced that his government would finance an independent study on feeding animals with GMO: "The state government is aware of the anxiety concerning GMO safety, while most of the research in this domain is conducted or financed by the very companies promoting GMO," Mr. Chance explained in a November 2005 communiqué.

During the summer of 2005, it was an Italian team led by Manuela Malatesta, cellular biologist at the Histological Institute of the University of Urbino, that published intriguing results (European Journal of Histochemistry, 2005, p. 237). In prior studies, that team had already demonstrated that absorption of transgenic soy by mice induces modifications in the nuclei of their liver cells. This summer's publication proved that a return to non-transgenic food made the observed differences disappear. It also showed that several of these changes could be "induced in adult organisms in a very short time."

In Norway, Terje Traavik, scientific director of the University of Tromsö's Institute of Genetic Ecology, just published a study in European Food Research and Technology (January 2006, p. 185): he demonstrates that an element of the genetic structures used to modify a plant, the catalyst 35S CaMV, can provoke gene expression in cultured human cells. Now, according to GMO promoters, that catalyst normally only operates that way in plants. ... etc"

Here it is in New Scientist

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8347

Probably the most worrying thing is that it was big news at the time and now you can't even find it on Google news.

These big companies pay to have these things concealed. We don't even know that much of what we eat is already GM, they have to hide it from us.

There's your conspiracy right there!

[mescalito]

Thanks for the insight WoodDragon.....very interesting.

Steve Marsh is battling with GM and so he should !

http://permaculture....ertified-crops/

Monsanto and the Round up ready shit:

http://www.sourcewat...ady_Controversy

Anyhow Soy's shit!

Hemp and seed is all we need

Edited April 29, 2011 by mescalito

[WoodDragon]

 

Unintended consequences.

[mescalito]

If only they'd leave nature to do it's thing

[synchromesh]

Anyhow Soy's shit!

 

You've got that right...

Dangers of Soy

GM soy linked to birth defects, cancer: new study

Genetically Modified Soy Linked to Sterility, Infant Mortality in Hamsters

[mescalito]

Trouble is it's in heaps of stuff,man I'm not sure if it was actually the wheat that turned me away from products containing it because of adverse GI problems or the fact that SOY is in nearly all these products.

I worked out Soy didn't agree at about the same time after going through the fail-safe food testing from fedupwithfoodadditives(good site!Lead to better labeling and removal of "hyper" additives etc,well worth checking out)

Most bread flours are "cut" with soy even at the Mill!!..My mate used to work at the local one here and he also told me stuff about the flour that would make you think twice about eating the resultant bread-stuffs,unless your into Entomophogy and rat turds and urine,oh and the odd "rat-bits"

Though some of the alternative breads/gluten free stuff are a bit dubious still,as a lot contain corn-starch(maize-starch) which can be affected by GM crops around them.

Thus GROW YOUR own foods and start now....I'd sooner eat home grown Oysters Mushies than Chicken any day for obvious reasons AND they are far better for you.

I'm Manifesting a decent sized grow-room