Vietnam to grow genetically modified crops aka frankenfoods

HANOI (AFP) – Vietnam plans to test genetically modified (GM) agricultural crops from now until 2010 and then grow them on a large scale, media reports in the communist country said on Thursday.

Agriculture Minister Cao Duc Phat announced the plan in a National Assembly session this week, said the state-run Vietnam News Agency.

Under the government plan, Vietnam would from 2011 plant GM species of maize, cotton and soybean, said the news site Vietnamnet quoting experts attending a recent biotechnology workshop.

The Ho Chi Minh City Biotechnology Centre plans to grow a GM maize variety from the Philippines on a trial basis, the report said.

GM technology has been highly controversial, praised by some for increasing yields and improving varieties, and condemned by others for creating "frankenfoods" that pose dangers to the environment and people's health.

Environmental group Greenpeace has called for a worldwide recall of GM foods, with a spokesman saying this week that distributing them was "like playing Russian roulette with consumers and public health."

Pope Expresses Opposition to GMOs, Cites Need for ' the Respect of Nature ' .............http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/GEessays/PopeGMO. ....

" I will mislead them, and I will create in them false desires, I will order them to slit the ears of cattle, and to deface the ( fair ) nature created by Allah " ( The Holy Al-Qur'an 4;119 ).

Salam,

Gatot S Astari

So what.

GM foods are widely grown and consumed in the US without consequence. GM foods with increased yields and decreased need for fertilizers and insecticides can help feed the starving. Do we let pseudoscientific paranoia take food from the mouths of the hungry?

Nature has been modifying foods for years. Why is it suddenly bad when scientists do it in a less random manner?

Feed the hungry, clothe the poor, and give people something to complain about.

Pope John Paul II said that using genetically modified organisms to increase production was contrary to God's will. Speaking to an estimated 50.000 farmers ............Pope told them and their colleagues worldwide to " resist the temptation of high productivity and profit that work to the detriment of the respect of nature. " " when ( farmers ) forget this basic principle and become tyrants of the earth rather than its custodians ..........sooner or later the earth rebels. "( Nov 12, 2000 ).
Furthermore, the Pope said, if modern farming techniques " don't reconcile themselves with the simple language of nature in a healthy balance, the life of man will run ever greater risks, of which already we are seeing worrying signs. " He did not specify the signs.

Vietnam, Nov 18, 2008 ..................Noul ! The signs ?

Since God always creates everything in accordance with " the size ", so that God does not like the exaggerated thing. For those who always exaggerate will be precisely mislead by their own empty illusions.

We must learn our limits ............... Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false ? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exist. ( Blaise Pascal ).

Gatot S Astari

You can't really be saying that they should just let people starve because it must be god's plan? The quote about exaggeration can be directed at population control and huge families also, which is one reason it takes so much to feed the global population. And I highly doubt Pascal was talking about feeding the hungry.

What a great god to not let people use their intelligence to save other people.

Disease and disaster are always cleverer than human being. Like the war, disease and disaster sometimes comes just like a thief. It comes unpredictably ................All efforts and undertakings of human being to prevent and avoid the occurrence of disease, disaster, and war often come to failure, even in this more advanced and modern world .....................

Gatot S Astari