Letter about sugar was misleading
Charlie Bauer, a sugar beet farmer in Michigan, wrote a letter to the editor of a local newspaper in response to an article urging readers to boycott companies using GM sugar. Bauer writes that he supports biotech sugar beets because it benefits not only the farmer, but the consumer as well. He states that in addition to allowing the farmer to plow less and use fewer pesticides, the consumer benefits from this as well, with less exhaust emissions and fewer pesticides in the environment.
C.S. Prakash
Letter about sugar was misleading
Hillsdale Daily News
Aug 08, 2008
I am responding to the misleading and inaccurate statements in the Aug. 2 letter to the editor “Don’t support companies that use genetically engineered sugar.”
As a Michigan sugarbeet grower, I am particularly supportive of genetically enhanced Roundup Ready sugarbeets because in addition to addressing one of the most significant challenges growers face – weed control – they lessen impacts on the environment (which is a benefit to consumers), while producing pure and natural sugar.
The bottom line is that the sugar is the same, no matter its original plant source. Scientific analyses showed that sugar from Roundup Ready sugarbeets is identical at the molecular level to the sugar from the sugarbeets we’ve grown for decades. And regulatory agencies around the world – including Canada, Japan, the EU and Australia – have confirmed that food and feed products derived from Roundup Ready sugarbeets are the same as those derived from other sugarbeets grown in a similar way.
