Thursday, May 24, 2007

Not of the Body!

A fun fact from the morning edition of The Asahi Shimbun of May 22...

Japanese consumers have exhibited no interest in--let us be honest, virulent hostility toward--genetically modified (GM) plants being grown for food. But it seems that allergen suppresant GM rice can be sold in Japan for human consumption. The trick is that growers have been working to make sure the GM rice is classified as a drug, not a food.

See that? That's how you work the system.

Now I wonder if American ranchers can get their beef reclassified as "a food supplement."

* * *

By the way, the English-language version of the article includes a line "and must go through strict animal experiments before it can be commercialized" which does not appear in the Japanese original.

No comments: