good evening everybody this is ann o'brien back again with ask the experts and tonight the topic is jamel labeling and the expert that's here with me in the studio in richmond is dave rogers who's a policy advisor for no for vermont's and he's been a policy adviser for eight years there prior to that he was on the faculty at u t and at the in the college of agricultural life sciences as a lecturer and worked there for twenty eight years teaching courses and yeah i will and if i may though before i answer that i do want to just put from the center that has been working for almost two years with several other organizations on the collaborative project and to to move this bill through the legislature and have it become law so those other organizations of rural vermont from the public interest research group c to circle farm and the environment and natural resources law clinic at from a law school been modifying our foods for ten thousand years through traditional breeding and so to to use the word genetically modified organism with the term is confusing and we agree with that teaching agriculture policy at the time that the genetic engineering was being developed by like the biologists and cell biologists around the country in the world and involves inserting genes being it figuring out how to trick cells so that they will accept foreign genes genes that have never been introduced into into that plant family or so in traditional breeding you think you have two lines of colon let's say you cross the into a new offspring and that can confer you know new traits improved traits so a swapping blocks of genes functional blocks of genes that that you know the help us reach our goals in genetic engineering we really have the whole world of genetics every gene on the planet the ability to sniff it out of let's say a bacteria that and put it into a plant or an animal things that never made it certainly have never sexually or asexually reproduce in and in the history of the world and so you know so every every every trait that organisms have whether the bacteria  animals or plants there are so many interesting things that you know this world is made of in terms of you know genetics we can we can now transfer that into something of interest so that being a good thing could be a good thing toxin and you insert it and that's what's called insertion mutagenesis you insert it into the corn plant at a very early stage and then the corn creates its own toxin every cell in that co toxin every bite of that corn stalks it to the insects and so you don't have to spray so that sounds like a good thing but the question is about what people eat it you know toxins safe by the power of corn plants that are growing in nature and expressing high levels of detox and can they be grown in complex ecological communities without destroying soil seed companies too so it's a very good model of business and the only thing is we've got a food system out there with a lot with predominant in many with many important crops the predominant varieties are genetically engineered and the research in recent last decade or more from around the world is showing that all the questions that we should have asked and all the research that should have been done before this these got we do have a live call in show and we would appreciate your questions if you have questions for dave about g m o labeling our genetic engineering labeling and we're going to move into this whole kind of question about  labeling in the bill but if you'd like to call in the number is four three four five five zero if you have any questions if you'd like to call in during the program tonight so we did has a bill in the house which you worked on and i concern legitimate questions the house agriculture committee the house judiciary committee and members of the house really took that as a very serious concern and you know our response is if you the cons and there's a pretty interesting article online where bill gates i'm going to kind of read the quote that he says in the face of climate change devastation that world leaders must invest in agricultural technology and you absolutely i mean sometimes people people who are proponents of genetic engineering accuse people who don't know who those technologies being anti science are not true genetic engineering is not the only arrow the quiver in terms of agricultural technology there are there are conventional breeding technologies that are doing far more than genetic engineering has done which is basically nothing to provide for food security and less developed countries and in secure communities a little brazil right now is working with conventional breeding techniques to raise the level of vitamins and minerals to to deal with the deficiencies in their population and corn and their breeding corn and rice and sweet potatoes all all staples of their diet and they're breeding them to raise the levels of higher vitamins that the biotech industry says you know we got this rice variety it's golden rice it has a lot of vitamin a we developed it we're going to give it to people let him planted well the question is is this part of the diet does this fit in with their local agricultural soils and it make more sense to to develop a conventionally using staple crops grown right there involved farmers in the growing of it and get that out there so and there are advanced genetic  you know breeding techniques that have been developed in recent years sort of in parallel with genetic engineering and they are not only as or more powerful that much cheaper so you know this is a line  so it's interesting most of the research that has done long term health studies and really have looked into questions and raised the important questions about whether these things which  and dribbling out i would say and how that will play out in terms you know that that work needs to be followed up on requires you know you raise a question you get an interesting result somebody disagrees with ok let's have a powerful research program to  happening so how long will it take for these questions related to unintended consequences and health effects i don't know how long it takes but you know the patent law companies have a stranglehold on science and it's not just critics on to the senate for the conversation and half of the violin but the federal at the congress they don't seem to see it as a problem our no one seems to be taking  power and money arrayed against the whole idea of revisiting these questions funding the research it may be admitting that there are some differences that could have unintended consequences that people perhaps should be concerned about or reasonably could be concerned about therefore labeling is reasonable we don't have an in congress there is an effort there is a bill in congress that has a lot of support a lot of co sponsors there's a whole just label  want to but we have last year we had a series of public forums in different parts of the state will probably do that again but the best way to stay informed about all that's going to go to the you know if you're if you're interested and concerned but get the information it's all out there so what's thank you and if anyone is really interested in diving into the weeds it's h one twelve that you go to the legislative website you can read the bill there on this will be one to watch in the next legislative session we'll be back at it in january and i really appreciate your taking the time to come here to any shit about this i