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6 stouffville suntribune saturday june 23 2007 0mxguffvmemmm suntnbune 6290 main st stouffville on l4a1g7 wvvwyorkregioncorri publisher ian proudfoot editor in chief debora kelly business manager robert lazurko director interactive media technology john futhey director advertising york region printing distribution barry black director circulation systems lynn pashko general manager bob dean letters to the editor good news for stouffville but lake needs park re students get say in town planning may 26 its great to have a to have a local coun cil is willing to invest time and money to buy land and plan so many local parks and amenities for your community this is great investment for stouffville to have a public park within a fiveminute walk of every home with great recreation al opportunities i live in vvhitchurchstouffvilles second largest community musselmans lake we have heard from our councillor that our community has the opportunity to rent space at a private business for six months a year for our parkland use well have to share park space with 6000 to 8000 people from all over the gta during the surrimer where is the investment in our com munity why do our kids have to travel away from our community to play at a park now if only we had the problems or even a slight possibility of having the opportuni ties that residents of stouffville have can we get a skateboard park or splash pad how about a jungle gym how about a place to call our own where our kids can go to kick a ball around play catch or even meet one another the community of musselmans lake asks that you invest in our community as you are willing to do in stouffville council the opportunity is there is the willing ness mark carroll chairperson friends of musselmans lake community supports sdss stouffville district secondary school thanks the community for its support in making the school closing event so suc cessful a special thank you to the town of whitchurchstouffville the stouffville lions club and our business community for their contributions we look forward to seeing you at the opening of our new schooloct 24 arlene smith principal john relph chairperson school council stoufffville district secondary school we should keep eye on transgenic crops did you know genetically modified or transgenic crops are now common place oh north american farms according to a recent survey in the united states the majority of americans have no idea just how pervasive this technology has become in fact north americans have been eating transgenic foods and using products made from their crops for more than a decade so what kind of effect for better or for worse are these crops having on the environment one of the major concerns many ecologists had a decade ago was transgenic organisms could inadver tently disrupt ecosystems by harming other organisms some transgenic crops for exam ple have been engineered to resist certain types of herbicide this allows farmers to liberally spray their fields with the herbicide knowing it wont harm their target crop these concerns were apparently warranted as farmscale evaluations two years ago in the united kingdom of some transgenic crops found vigor ous application of herbicides was also damaging to the diversity of other lifeforms around farms thats because many of the weeds killed by the herbicides were important for butterflies and bees populations of these beneficial pol linators on the test farms fell possibly having other more wideranging implications up the food chain for birds and mammals another common type of trans genic crop has an insecticide built- in these crops have been genetically engineered to produce an insecticidal toxin that wards off pests one of the most wellknown has been engineered using a certain kind of bacterium called bt the advantage in theory is bt crops do not need to be sprayed with an insecticide to kill pests and thus could be potentially cheaper and more environmentally friendly than their contemporary nontransgenic counterparts david suzuki concerns were raised however when lab tests showed pollen from bt crops could be potentially harmful to nontarget insects making them grow more slowly or reproduce less often however a new metaanalysis of the effects of bt cotton and bt maize on nontarget insects in the field has found these types of crops appear at least on the surface to be less harmful to insects than farming methods that use insecticides this report recently published in the journal science looked at 42 field experiments and found fields of bt cotton and maize contained more nonpest insects than those using insecticides to control pests of course insecticidefree control fields still had the greatest number of insects overall the authors point out further studies to examine the impact on specific species of insects rather than just all invertebrates are essen tial to better understand the environ mental impact of these crops disturbingly the researchers had to resort to obtaining much of their information on bt crops through the united states freedom of information act because the companies that produced them did not publicly dis close it the researchers also note the debate around transgenic crops has been a heated and emotional one however in the case of gm crops scientific analyses have also been deficient in particular many experi ments used to test the environmental safety of gm crops were poorly repli cated were of short duration andor assessed only a few of the possible response variables much could be learned and perhaps some debates settled if there were credible quan titative analyses of the numerous experiments that have contrasted the ecological impact if gm crops with those of control treatments involving nongm varieties transgenic crops are not simple products such as widgets ipods or even automobiles they are living organisms that can interact with other creatures in the environment in myri ad ways nature is complicated when you modify an organism at a genetic level it shouldnt surprise anyone that the results are also corn- plicated and often unexpected transgenic crops are in many ways radically new and should be subject to the greatest of scientific scrutiny not suppressed by propri etary concerns org take the suzuki challenge at davidsuzuki letters policy the suntribune welcomes your letters all submissions must be less than 400 words and must include a daytime telephone number name and address the suntribuncrcscrvos the right to publish or not publish and to edit for clarity and space letters to the editor the suntribune box 154 stouffville on l4a7z5 jmasonyrmgcom editorial editor jim mason jmasonyrmgcam interactive media marketing advertising manager dawna andrews laiidretusyrmgcom advertising retail manager staceyallen sallcnyrmgcom classified manager ann campbell acampbellyrmgcom production team leader sherry day stlayyrmgcom distribution manager megan pike mpikeyrmgcom ontario press council ape fdsilgj 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