Dear All

I welcome Joe's enthusiasm for challenging industry or government over the
regulation of GMs.  It has to be healthy to question how a new and powerful
technology is being implemented, and if Tier 1 tests apply in the way you
describe to GMs that carry genes potentially toxic to insects then as a
beekeeper I would share your concern.

Joe - yes, I am sure that your erroneous statements were indeed
unintentional.  Mark Winston was good enough to email me the text of that
article today, and I can see where you have been misled.  I have some
sympathy with you and others who try to find out some of the facts of the
situation for themselves.  There is so much mis-information around, it is
hard to see the truth.  This is why I publicised some sites where you can
see at least some of the information.  Joe is right: 'we should maintain a
healthy skepticism regarding claims coming from all sides of this
controversy'.

Some specific points which Joe raised.  We agree that the French research
did not demonstrate that GM pollen has any deleterious effects on bees.  In
fact they never looked at GM pollen as it did not make detectable
anti-insect protein.  The New Zealand research you mention (thanks again to
Mark Winston who sent me the details) is of the same type: anti-insect
proteins added to artificial bee diets.  No GM pollen was involved, the
study was just a risk assessment of the proteins themselves.  I will send
the abstract to Joe, and to anyone else who requests it (not all 900 of you,
please!).

I would be very surprised if the EPA and the FDA operate some parallel
approval system that allows GM crops to be released independently from
APHIS - AFAIK they just provide an extra level of scrutiny above that in
APHIS.  As far as I can tell, according to the sources of information
available, tetracycline resistance was not in crops for release.  It is
possible (I'm speculating, and I've just thought of this) that tetracycline
resistance was used during the multiplication of the DNA in bacteria prior
to its use to transform plants.  Additional markers are used for this step
and the extra sequences are (almost always!) lost during the transformation
process.  I still think that this issue is a red herring as far as
Terramycin-resistant AFB is concerned; it 'just happens', like
fluvalinate-resistant Varroa.

So, I'll deny the 'apparent errors' in my previous post.  And wiggle-words?!
I chose all my words carefully, not attempting to deceive or mis-inform but
just to be accurate.

In case anyone is starting to wonder, I am certainly not infallible either.
In my 17 Nov post on Varroa tolerance (see the archives!) I made an error of
fact.  Shame on me! It doesn't really affect the point of the post, but I'm
embarassed about it anyway.  A jar of Scottish Heather Honey awaits the
first one who correctly points it out.  One tip: you'll need access to the
Journal of Economic Entomology.  I know, its unfair, who has access to an
entomology library?  Maybe this is a chance to winkle out more lurking
scientists on the list .....

cheers

Gavin.