Who needs tremors, tsunami, AIDS, or oil drilling?

[Deja Q]

http://allafrica.com/stories/200412301089.html

Medicine and farming are merging as genetically engineered (GE) maize and soy crops promise cheap drugs, but they also threaten to contaminate food and the environment, warn activists and experts.

The United States has planted very small amounts of these experimental 'pharma crops' since the early 1990s, including about 18 ha in 2004, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Although full-scale production is a few years away, a new report is warning that when it begins, the U.S. food supply will be contaminated sooner or later.
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"It is sobering that drugs and industrial chemicals could have so many routes to the food supply," said David Andow, the report's editor and a professor at the University of Minnesota.

[Deja Q]

1. Kick

?

[Tinoire]

2. Great. Just what else we need to go from Dante's 7th circle to the 8th

The U.S. food and drug safety system is considered among the best in the world, and Rissler has no doubt the drugs derived from biopharming will undergo extensive safety testing. However, those responsible for food safety at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) have not put strict regulations into place to prevent pharmalogically-active proteins from slipping into America's foods, she said.

And that is despite the fact it almost happened two years ago, when experimental maize plants containing a pig vaccine were accidentally mixed with about 14 million kilograms of soybeans in the U.S. mid-west. ProdiGene, the Texas biotech company responsible for the mishap paid three million dollars in clean-up costs and fines. All of the soy was destroyed.

The USDA tightened its rules after the huge public outcry, which even included the Biotechnology Industry Organisation (BIO), the powerful U.S. biotech industry lobby,asking its members to start growing biopharma crops in more isolated regions.

[Deja Q]

3. Yipes

:shakes head in depressive tone:

[Karenina]

4. Not good

at all.