Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Ireland Abstains From Potato Vote


GMO HOT POTATO ISSUE
The European Union can't agree on allowing the new genetically modified potato to be used as animal feed. As usual, these stories don't provide enough information for the average person to get a feel for the whys behind GMO controversies. Around 1999 I did a bunch of research on this, and it's actually pretty interesting.

Several EU countries voted on the issue...
Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland and Portugal abstained in the vote.

Also, if you love potatoes...go to www.potatonews.com

In related news
New potato chips from Golden Flake coated with caffeine
BIRMINGHAM (AP) — For a generation already buzzing on energy drinks, here's a new snack — potato chips coated with caffeine.
Potato Buzz

That doesn't sound good to me at all.

4 comments:

Ed said...

out of interest how did those countries vote?

MarT said...

"A dozen EU member states voted against authorising the GMO potato -- Austria, Cyprus, Denmark, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Romania and Slovenia -- thereby ruling out the qualified majority required.

Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland and Portugal abstained in the vote.

The minority of countries in favour of authorising the potato were Britain, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden," -Yahoo News

Ed said...

Well i dont know who was involved in this voting to be honest, but i hope it wasnt the general public, because to be honest no normal person knows the actual ramifications of gm crops and is just scared by the word genetics to begin with.
My dad was head of genetics in Irelands top university last year, and he'd have a few stern words about critics of this initiative.

MarT said...

It was "the EU" that voted, whateverver that means. I know what you're saying. I see both sides of it. My research uncovered that there are reasons that it should be reviewed very carefully, and the problems that were the worst (to me) were actually commerce related...see all Monsanto issues (let's gentically engineer this product so that people have to buy our other product).