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Oh, look. It was. They apologized for it. And cited papers that don't exist.

You are either a liar or a total moron.

http://www.gene.ch/genet/2003/May/msg00044.html

Mind telling us, if these seeds are sterile, then why is monsanto suing farmers left and right for saving these "sterile" seeds?

If buying new seeds was cheaper, monsanto has nothing to worry about and should not be suing farmer, correct?

And apparently monsanto insists that it has right to destroy crops of farmers even if their crops became contaminated by accident. In fact they are so sure of the said contamination happening(they innovatively call it black-market piracy) that they petitioned Argentina government to allow them to collect royalty at harvesting time from ALL farmers, rather than at the time of purchasing of seeds.

Unlike what Monsanto said, and you fell for

[Citation needed]

• Superweeds fear from GM crops
• Destructive creation: GM superweeds
• Rise of GM superweeds
• RE: Government Study Finds GM 'Superweeds'
• "Cross-Pollination Leads to Triple Herbicide Resistance"

Crops cross pollinate, GE or otherwise. And those who complain about GE crops need to Keep It Real - we've been genetically engineering for thousands of years through cross breeding.

We have not been inserting fish genes into tomatoes, or any other foreign genes into any other plant or animal life for thousands of years. Horizontal gene transfer happens rarely in nature. Simply selective breeding as is done in agriculture and farming does not introduce genes that do not occur naturally in plants or animals into those plant and animals. All it does is amplify traits that already there. I garden and if I come across a trait say in tomatoes I grow, I currently have four different tomatoes growing in the garden, I can save the seeds from the tomatoes I like and plant them the next year. If next year I do the same and keep doing that year after year I'll eventually create my own cultivar. That's a lot different than introducing foreign genes.

Yes, I know Monsanto are dicks, and I heard about that farmer. What I don't see, however, is how this is Gore's fault

It's not Gore's fault but he supports increasing genetic engineering.

The most a quick Googling brings up is that Clinton's secretary of agriculture was opposed to it while Gore was VP - pretty weak sauce.

Perhaps you searched for the wrong things. From wiki's article on Al Gore:
"Gore was one of the Atari Democrats who were given this name due to their 'passion for technological issues, from biomedical research and genetic engineering to the environmental impact of the "greenhouse effect.'"

• Famed geneticist creating life form that turns CO2 to fuel
• Al Gore's Mealy-Mouth Position on Genetically Engineeered Food

Falcon

Actually with genetic engineering and patents of life this might already be the case.

Monsanto sues North Dakota farmer on patent violation

http://www.gene.ch/genet/2001/Feb/msg00067.html

The St. Louis-based biotechnology giant alleges that the family saved its transgenic seeds from one season and planted them the next, a violation of the company's patent.
...
"I'm worried about control of our genetic resources with the patenting of these varieties," she says. "Seed traditionally has been in the public realm. With gmo seeds, corporations own it. It's not just the seed issue, but control over food."

Picture all the consequences.

CC.

It was solved by locating the major cities near water

Yeah, and a a little while before they solved it in America the Romans solved it by, without any modern tools just lots of labor building aqueducts that are works of art still.

Maybe new technology combined with old school craftmanship could solve the problems in Africa, but continent wide corruption would just fuck it up.

Despite what is on TV, everyone who I have hear who has actually seen it with their own eyes says no "Hunger Relief, UN blah, blah, blah" grain is ever given away it is always sold by small time thugs, of the same ilk as small time drug dealers in America.

If peopl think things are screwed up there now, wait 5 - 10 - 15 years after Monsanto's GMO plants have infected the whole damn continent and really caused the whole place to become more destabilized and desertified.

The US doesn't like our chemicals, but we grease some palms in Africa and bing!
We're all fucked soon
And the winner for most evil corporation is...
Vote for us because only then are you allowed the chance to buy grits

No one has proved (yet) these plants are unsafe, but our governement wants studies showing they're safe (!unsafe != safe).

Um, yes. Before you go making irreversible changes to the biosystem by introducting new plants, you'd better prove it's safe. Don't fsck with our spaceship's life support system. That's common sense.

If, for some reason I can't fathom, you want to eat GM crops, hey, be my guest. Just grow them in greenhouses with biohazard protections to keep them from spreading.

If we were afraid of using new technology we would still not using the wheel.

Non sequitor. Adopting a technology like the wheel (or room-temperature supercondictors) is a reversable change. Putting poorly-understood transgenic plants into the ecosystem is not.

I am sure the original poster knows about generic drugs, but I am sure the original poster also knows how profitable it would be for a drug company to spin up some bad press about this drug, get it banned, and then rush a new drug, with one atom of the molecule changed, out to the market. They can then say this new drug fixes the imaginary problems of the last one, charge an assload for it, and everybody will be glad they waited!

The ones that aren't glad about it can just keep their mouths shut, and be glad they didn't get arrested for their illegal canadian imports of the drug they used on their dying relatives. Remember: In Corporate America, the government controls YOU.

No. The real problem is that this is insidious. It's taking technology which is potentially very dangerous and making it feel warm and fuzzy (err, ok, cold and slimy -- but still). This is the problem with this fish. It encourages a laissez-faire attitude about genetically modified organisms -- and I for one don't believe that they should be treated like toys.

One of the problems with genetically modified organisms is that humans themselves are not a homogenous population. What causes no problems for one set of people may make another population seriously ill or kill them (see allergies). In general with normal, unaltered vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, grains, whatever, you know what you're buying. With GMOs you really don't. Do you know what kind of gene the corn in the tortilla chips you ate was crossed with? Nope? I'm not surprised.

Okay.

Monsanto is suing farmers for having the audacity to re-plant seeds from plants they grew. Apparently, you're supposed to keep paying Monsanto year after year for your seed stock.

Note: Many farmers actually do buy new seed every year, as commercially available seed is of a higher and more consistent quality compared to harvested seed from the field. However, Monsanto is trying to take this choice away from farmers, and force them to keep paying.

So just don't buy Monsanto seed, right?

Wrong.

Monsanto is also suing farmers for patent infringement, because they had the audacity to have their plants have sex with the plants from the next farm over's field. Therefore, Monsanto's patented genes are present in that sneaky farmer's field, even though he didn't pay for it.

The way this works is that Roundup inhibits the plant form of a gene involved in amino acid synthesis (according to this message, anyway). The "Roundup Resistant" plants have a version of the same gene that instead comes from a plant-infecting bacteria, which is not so sensitive to the chemical in Roundup, and continues chugging along producing the necessary biochemical products.

Here's an analogy - imagine the WWF didn't learn from the experience with the XFL and decides it wants to make it's own version of another sport - auto racing. Let's imagine that the rules of "Xtreme racing" specify that you must use Plymouth Neons as your car [perhaps they bid the highest for the ad rights...], but that you can make minor modifications and replacements.
Now imagine that you've developed a fuel additive that manages to clog every fuel injector manufactured in america, but for some reason doesn't bother Honda fuel injectors much. You replace the fuel injector in your car, otherwise identical to all of the other Plymouth Neon's in the race, with a Honda fuel injector...then spray your fuel additive into the racetrack's communal fuel tank.
The day of the race comes, and all of the cars with the standard fuel injectors die, while your car with the "foreign" fuel injector continues chugging along...just as the plants with the Agrobacterium gene keep chugging along while the plants with the off-the-shelf version of the same gene die.

Pretty straightforward and harmless. The overused "Frankenstein" analogy really doesn't fit here. It's a "labor saving" device allowing a farmer to spray a field rather than going through and more carefully weeding it.

I do worry, though, about the tendency towards lazy and harmful farming practices. Flood irrigation in California is slowly salinizing the soils, and those sprinklers spraying the water high into the air in the middle of summer end up wasting a great deal of water as it evaporates before it hits the ground...but both are cheaper and easier than installing and working with drip-irrigation systems.

While the herbicide resistance isn't itself much of an issue, if all farmers insist on using the same strain of plant from the same provider because they're cheap and easy, you're worries about having a disease come along that particularly likes the specific strains that Monsanto uses for their "roundup-ready" seeds can be a serious concern. The problem isn't "biotechnological" at all, but cultural. The solution is to discourage "monoculture" farming.

These do _not_ produce any toxins themselves. Instead, they were modified to be resistant to Roundup, a glycophosphate based herbicide

You're quite right, Monsanto modified Canola does not contain any toxins.

It's Monsanto's Bt-Maize(tm) which contains toxins. Specifically,the "Bacillus Thuringiensis" (Bt) toxin included to combat the corn borer. Unfortunately this insecticide has a nasty side effect of... killing insects.

TomV

good article with realvideo here . i think percy should counter sue Monsanto for allowing nature to diseminate their genetically altered seeds into his field. they have contaminated his crops.

this whole thing make me sick. here is an account from a meeting where Percy spoke.

Here's a link

Apparently, Monsanto has developed such a rice, too. This article (in german) says they intend to provide it to farmers without demanding royalties.

This paper claims golden rice is a hoax and will not alleviate vitamin A deficiency.
Propaganda, by the look of it, but then I'm no biologist.