This product was finally removed from the market. Family farmers have much to lose and little to gain from gene manipulation. Besides food safety, health and environmental issues, the loss of bio-diversity could put us in the position of looking down the gun barrel of disaster. We should not forget so easily the damaging effect that corn blight had on the nation's corn crop a few years ago caused by a lack of bio-diversity. We need a larger gene pool in production agriculture in order to assure food security.
Soybeans are the second largest crop produced in the United States.
We believe, Europeans will be forced to use alternative products if we do not supply that market with clean soybeans. This would bring about increased economic pressure to family farmers in the United States. This is out of a total US population of 260 million people. That means that farmers account for less than 73 hundreds of one percent. Remember, these are 1992 figures and the impact of our farm bill, vertical integration of the livestock industry and trade policy mean even fewer farmers today.