farmdoc's blog post number 402

I’ll have to write to Sergey and Larry. Because I’ve found a question Google can’t help me with: How did the saying ‘pimple on a pumpkin’ come about? The closest I can get is that in a pumpkin competition, a blemish automatically disqualifies an entrant. Anyway I think you know the saying’s meaning, if not its origin. It jumped into my consciousness last weekend when I read in the Tasmanian Country newspaper that last Wednesday the Tasmanian Parliament passed the GMO Ban Bill, so extending the current GMO ban for five years. Widespread acclaim ensued: ‘A huge positive’, ‘Important to our meat producers’, ‘A good development for us as far as the clean green image goes’, ‘We knew that GMOs were never going to fly down here’, ‘The key to the Tasmanian brand’ and so on. Tasmania and South Australia remain the nation’s only GMO-free States. All good stuff. Very positive. Very encouraging. But very out of character for the Tasmanian Government – whose decisions typically ignore environmental concerns and the precautionary principle. Wait. Perhaps Tasmania’s farmers, agricultural companies and government really do think that introducing GMOs would be detrimental on economic grounds alone. In which case the Tasmanian Parliament’s decision wouldn’t be a pimple on a pumpkin, but rather as smooth as a baby’s bottom.