China deal include GM?

Received this from a overseas source:

"China Banks on GM Crops
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mounting evidence conclusively points to China's clear intent to become a world biotechnology leader, disseminate and utilize the technology itself, and thus strive to avoid dependence on imported technologies for food, feed, and fiber security.

All GM crops now commercialized in China--including several rice varieties, sweet pepper, papaya, tomato, and poplar, and excepting some varieties of Bt cotton--have been developed by Chinese state institutions with public sector funding.

By 2010, GM rice and cotton, taken together, are estimated to potentially generate US$5 billion annually in economic benefits for up to 110 million Chinese households. An additional dozen or more GM crops are being field tested currently."

Under the FTA signed last week with aunty Helen and all the hangers on, how can we refuse to take part in GM technology here in NZ. If they wanted to in the future, China could make us jump through hoops backwards. So what chance do we have of being GM free with a trading partner this committed to GM?

Winston Peters ain't so daft then is he!

organicltd;160252 wrote: Received this from a overseas source:

"China Banks on GM Crops
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mounting evidence conclusively points to China's clear intent to become a world biotechnology leader.

Please cite your source. A newspaper? A scientific report? Some guy in the pub?

A

I don't think you are far off the mark Organicltd, regardless of source (and I understand why Ame wants to be able to verify its source so not knocking her for asking) but we thought the same as well.

Fill the world full with cheap crap and then pull back sharply once we are all dependent on the market having "killed" (removed) all the opposition, could be compared to supermarkets offering the cheaper fuel voucher system etc, gets rid of all competition until there is none....

I do not believe for a microsecond that this deal will be good for NZ in the long run. Having a long memory, I remember when Australia refused to allow Asians (but not sure which ethnicity) to build retirement villages for their elderly, on the Gold Coast from memory. What happened in NZ? We had a "village" for "disabled" (mentally) youth in West Auckland that resulted in a young man being killed by six other "pupils".

Anyone who has worked in the disability sector knows that there are many ethnicities that are "ashamed" to have a disabled family member and they are not introduced to society. Scary really when you know the inroads that have been made over the years but how is it that we have a points system to get into NZ and yet disabled youth can come here independant of their parents and be "schooled" in an Asian run set up? How did this pass the critria? How is it that allowances are made for people to have an interpretor when sitting their driving licence and yet we had a politician last week saying that no one can get into NZ if they don't speak English. Is it called "family reunification" perhaps?

It is all the lies and hidden agendas that have me beaten and to be living in a so called "democracy" is a nonsense... and people hated Muldoon for his meglamaniac type way of running the country!

Ah, MM, yeah, Winnie is - but maybe not for these reasons, although I believe he is well equipped to fill Piggy's meglamanic shoes......

ame;160485 wrote: Please cite your source. A newspaper? A scientific report? Some guy in the pub?

A

What difference does the source make? You either believe it or not.
FYI it was an excerpt from CROP PROT. MONTHLY, 220, March 2008.

Having (or being) a credible source makes all the difference. I am certainly not going to believe something I hear (or read) without a credible source. Thank you for stating where this information came from.

A

I read an interesting article about GM in China. This was written by Dr. Fox for Organic Consumer Association last year.

---

1. The wheat gluten imported from China was not for human consumption, because, I believe, it had been genetically engineered. The FDA has a wholly cavalier attitude toward feeding animals such frankenfoods but places some restrictions when human consumption is involved (yet refuses appropriate food labeling).

2. The rat poison aminopterin is used in molecular biology as an anti-metabolite, folate antagonist, and in genetic engineering biotechnology as a genetic marker. This could account for its presence in this imported wheat gluten.

3. The plastic, wood preservative, contaminant melamine, the parent chemical for a potent insecticide cyromazine, could well have been manufactured WITHIN the wheat plants themselves as a genetically engineered pesticide. This is much like the Bt. insecticidal poison present in most US commodity crops that go into animal feed.

4.So called overexpression can occur when spliced genes that synthesize such chemicals become hyperactive inside the plant and result in potentially toxic plant tissues, lethal not just to meal worms and other crop pests, but to cats, dogs, birds, butterflies and other wildlife; and to their creators. (For details, see my book Killer Foods: What Scientists Do to Make Food Better is Not Always Best. Lyons Press, 2004).

---

It appears the wheat is good for their economy but not good for living things.

Well the freetrade deal with China has 'killed' a local manufacturer - Fisher and Paykel are to shut the Mosgiel plant outside of Dunedin in 12-18months time with the loss of 430 jobs ...ouch[:0]. One of the reasons: Free trade deal with China - they won't be able to compete with the cheaply made goods flooding in if they manufacture here (so are heading to Thailand and Mexico).

We have a large manufacturer in our town of a couple of thousand people. There have been rumours they are to shut down and move offshore as well and already have cut the workers days down. That would be bad for our towns economy.

How many of us are willing to pay more for NZ made goods to support local industry? My guess is very few .

NZers unwillingness to vote with their consumer dollar is the main reason that local companies fail. It boils down to the same issues we've been discussing in the locavore threads.

Plenty of businesses have switched countries of production before this trade deal, as even with a measure of protection against cheap imports, they couldn't rely on us to keep them going with our spending power.

Most NZers will be chuffed with cheaper appliances and won't even see the real cost behind them .

I am not arguing that this trade deal is a good thing. I'm lamenting that we as a society have become such good little consumers that all other considerations take a back seat to the short term benefits of a cheap deal.

This company here exports as well as providing NZ.

This has been happening for years in the UK, businesses sending products to be made in China is not a new thing.
BD having worked in engineering maintenance for years in the UK saw companies closing down all over as whatever they were manufacturing was cheaper to produce in China. When I questioned BD about the quality he said it was as good as produced in the UK, either China got better or the UK standards dropped, who knows.
Either way a highly trained skilled workforce in the UK are either out of work or having to retrain, or as in our situation leaving the country! And whilst New Zealand need those skills then more will come here but what happens when NZ stop producing like whats happening on the UK, where do we go then?

Somewhere in the world in a richer country than NZ there are communities like this also lamenting that they are losing jobs/factories because of cheaper imports - from New Zealand []

It's a sad fact that when you open your doors to international trade, people get hurt. I don't like it either, and I don't know what the answer is. Social and environmental issues should be factored into price as far as I am concerned, but our current economic system doesn't seem to operate that way.