OFF: Meat, Trains

[M Holmes]

Sorry folks, but I just can't let it pass...

Adrian Parr writes:

> As for French meat. I heard someone on the news the other day saying there's
> absolutely no health risk from eating French cows that had been fed sewage.
> Are these people serious, or is this a new line in health foods now GM crops
> have been discredited?

GM is unpopular with folks who don't understand science. However there's
scant to zero actual evidence that genetic enhancement of crops causes
any more harm than the other unnatural means such as monoculture,
hybridisation and mutation selection that's been used for thousands of
years. There's considerable evidence that genetically enhanced crops
provide better yeilds and are less harmful to the environment because
they require less fertiliser and insecticides. People are of course free
to choose their own foods for emotional rather than scientific reasons
but the rest of us should also be free to choose to eat genetically
enhanced crops.

> A few weeks before that near Paddington, i also heard someone from the rail
> industry saying trains were safe.

In which case they were absolutely correct. Trains are twice as safe as
aeroplanes per passenger mile and an order of magnitude safer that cars.

> Then, we saw the British police steaming in on demonstrators waving Tibetan
> flags in London, which they subsequently confiscated, and were later given a
> gold star award from Home secretary Jack Straw.

I vote we use the Tibetan flag to protest visits from New Nanny
dignitaries in future.

FoFP