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Lets take a quick look at this, shall we?

If I drink the recommended amount of water 3 liters for a male in a temperate climate, by the Mayo clinic: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/water/NU00283

That means I would consume 30grams of NaCl...

and the recommended amount for an average male? 2.3g, per the Mayo clinic: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/sodium/NU00284

So right there I am consuming 13 times the recommended amount.

4% in my food?

Let's see, according to http://www.usda.gov/factbook/chapter1.htm the average american eats 4.7 lbs of food, or 2.13 KG, or another 85.2 grams of salt.

So 115.2 grams when I should consume 2.3, or 50X what I should eat.

Yeah, that might cause some problems, it is half the LD50 for an average male.

Can you tell me how much testing is done to verify these things are safe?

A lot.

How long and how numerous are the human trials?

Why don't you tell me why they are necessary. Okay, a corn has a cspB gene, or a cotton has a Cry1Ab gene, or a soy has C4 epsps gene, or a papaya has prsv cp gene, or an apple has an antisense PPO gene. Why should that bother me, especially considering all the other mandatory testing?

I would be suspicious that anything developed in the past ten years or less is completely guaranteed to be safe for the duration of a human life.

You should be suspicious of things that you have reason to be suspicious of, not things that could potentially have an unknown unknown, which is pretty much everything. You can't prove that something won't be dangerous because you can't prove a negative, but there is neither reason to suspect that GE crops are dangerous nor is there evidence suggesting that GE crops are dangerous, unless you count Wakefield grade rubbish like the Séralini study. It irks me that when people say that some stuff about wifi or cell phones they are mocked but saying it about biotechnology is enlightened.

If you can convince me not to worry about that, I'm all ears!

Read these studies, and statements from various organizations like the WHO, FDA, EFSA, FSANZ,NAP, ANBIO, AAAS, ect. The scientific consensus on genetic engineering is pretty solid. You can hate on Monsanto all you want (although you should be aware that the business end, like the science end, is often fought with misconceptions, half truths, and downright FUD), and I'm not saying there are not nuances that should be rationally discussed (such as herbicide resistant weeds and resistance breakdown, although those are larger issues that have affected non-GE crops as well) but the science behind genetically engineered crops is solid. In many ways, the controversy over genetically engineered crops is the agricultural equivalent to the controversies surrounding evolution, climate change, and vaccines.

the aussies might fight back by not selling us Crocodile Dundee sequel movies or WTF they sell us.

Try beef. I hear 2012 saw some impact in beef livestock in US to the point of US seeing an estimated 11% growth in beef imports.

Corn subsidies don't promote really food security, they prop up a food additive industry, fuel industry and the ranching industry. If subsidies were targeted at *only* corn that was meant for direct human consumption (not animal feed, HFCS, etc)....then maybe it might be possible to label it as a "food security" program. But when the majority of corn acreage is dedicated for animal feed or HFCS, or ethanol production, its much more than just a simple "food security" program...

They're untested you say? No they aren't.

Wikipedia cites that plants have a metabolic conversion efficiency of six per cent [wikipedia.org].

As a biologist, this figure seemed a little high, so I took a look around.

Hallenbeck (2012) states on p. 250:

"...maximum photosynthetic efficiencies cannot be higher than 5.5% in theory, and in practice achieving efficiencies of 1 or 1.5% are exceptional".

However, this statement applies only to algae-based biofuels, and the discrepancy appears to be due to the current difficulty in dealing with real-life algae culture problems.

Zhu, Long, and Ort (2008) give some figures for land-plants:

"...the maximum conversion efficiencies of solar radiation into biomass are 4.6% (C3) and 6.0% (C4) at 30C... ...The highest solar energy conversion efciency reported for C3 crops is about 2.4% and about 3.7% for C4 crops across a full growing season based on solar radiation intercepted by the leaf canopy."

"These observed solar energy conversion efficiencies noted above for C3 and C4 crops, while well below the theoretical maximums that we computed in Figure 2, are nevertheless threefold to fourfold larger than the average conversion efficiency attained for major crops in the U.S."

I'm sure food stamps are abused on occasion, but I can't imagine that this happens on a large enough scale that anyone should care.

According to the USDA, the average (nation-wide) food stamp benefit was $133.42 per month. That's $4.39 per day! At a maximum, an individual can get $200 per month, or $6.57 per day.

http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/18SNAPavg$PP.htm
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1269

How the fuck could any of these people have anything left over after buying the minimum amount of food they need to not feel hungry? The idea that there are large numbers of poor people living large, paying for alcohol and drugs and strippers with their EBT cards, is retarded. Even if it does happen once in a while, it cannot be enough of a problem to warrant the amount of anti-poor vitriol that are in the comments here.

Why not go after things that actually waste significant amounts of money? Like tax evaders, corporate bailouts, corn subsidies, the broken health care system, useless wars, etc.

And if you think there really is any significant amount of food stamp money going to strippers, at least provide some proof and numbers to back up your claims.

For those of you outside the U.S., we have those who need financial help to get food. This in a county that exported about 3.5 million tons of rice. The government run help program is called SNAP. Through the SNAP program, the U.S. government is now spending roughly $5.6 billion per month on food assistance helping out 41,836,000 Americans. Doing the math that's $5,601,600,000 (monthly cost) / 41,836,000 (Americans on food assistance) = $133 per person

I think a lot of people like to beat up on those that receive food stamps because they find stories where the few are defrauding the system. Just look at the above data. How much can you do with $133 (99 euro) per month?

But hey, let's spend lots of additional money employing cops and tie up court time to go after someone that's defrauding the government on SNAP money. I mean the talking heads on TV tell you you should be mad that your fellow citizen is receiving aid. From your paycheck even!

I don't mind that my tax dollars goes to help feed fellow Americans. What I mind is being forced to help the banks (by taking my tax dollars) through the TARP bailout. That 700 billion could have paid for the SNAP program at current levels for close to a decade. As for TARP - how many bankers went to jail over that ?

Source:
Table I got my numbers from:
http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/SNAPsummary.htm

Not having read TFA, I hope that the summery given is a simplified version of what he meant.

The world is too complex and interdependent for something to be all good (with no drawbacks), or all good (with no benefits), and he seems to be insinuating that GMO foods have no drawbacks, which is just as wrong as saying the have no benefits.

But, other than that, I basically agree with his assessment that we NEED (or will need) it.

The world population is growing too fast for our current food production methods to keep pace with demand forever, and unless we are willing to sit passively by during mass starvation on scales never before seen, wars breaking out over farmland, crops, seeds and food animals, and extinction as local peoples turn to endangered species for food, we will REQUIRE GMO foodstuffs that can mature faster, grow larger, and sustain themselves on less, and/or in different environments.

Otherwise we will outstrip our planet's ability to support us.

We've already stripped the oceans of their most bountiful harvests, and are eating and passing off fish we once called "Junk Fish", as the high-demand fish become scarcer and scarcer.

But we must keep in mind and learn from our experiences with adding new substances and quantities to diets, such as plastics imitating estrogen, and causing population crashes and mutations in animals like frogs, and crocodiles. Also brain diseases like BSD / Scrapie / CJD / Kuru.

BSE (Mad Cow), first appears in 1984 and makes clear that there are dangers to radically changing the long-term diets of animals and humans by introducing substances and quantities of substances that have never before been seen in their diets. In this case, the introduction of massive amounts of proteins from meat (and brains) to replace vegetable sourced proteins in low quality animal feed, deniers point out that cattle have likely eaten meat proteins (via bugs) from time immemorial, though never in the quantities found in modern feed.

Mad Cow (and it's human variant vCJD [not CJD]) came from the well known, and well contained, disease called "Scrapie" (because it caused, among other things, the infected to rub up against things and scrape off their fur) in sheep and goats. The source of the disease was not known, but what WAS known was that it was common in some places, had been known of for at least 250 years, and that the meat AND brains of the Scrapie infected were human edible with no ill effects.

Scrapie remained a rare, species specific, disease that had no effect on predators UNTIL the introduction of industrial farming methods, specifically the use of low quality feed (farming byproducts, rather than valuable crops) that needed it's protean content supplemented by slaughterhouse waste. This introduced the Scrapie Prion into cattle feed, and eventually produced "Mad Cow Disease". But something changed in the transfer of disease from one species to another. It changed from a single species, predator resistant disease, to a food transmissible disease to which predators were not immune. (FSE, the feline version was first discovered in the 1970's, when domestic cats developed it after eating BSE infected cat-food. FSE is also found in captive big cats, thought to have been feed BSE infected meat. As far as we know FSE is unknown in the wild.)

My own theory is that all natural predators have a natural immunity / resistance to "Spongiform Diseases", the prion's of which are found almost exclusively in nerve tissue. This means that catching i

Any why, oh why, is high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) cheaper than sugar? If you answered: because of US Federal government import tariffs, you are CORRECT!

For more information visit the US Department of Agriculture. So, kiddies, we're paying roughly double the world rate per pound of sugar so that US sugar producers don't have to worry about competition from foreign sources.

Less healthy, wrecking the environment, big pay-offs for well-connected corporate cronies in Washington...what's not to like?

True, but corn is pretty much "the" go-to crop these days, as corn is in everything.

Other studies have also been conducted:

Soybeans don't get much of a boost.

Other studies talk about "crop yields" in the abstracts but I didn't bother to go into the full text to see which crops, as the problem generally seems to be with C4 based photosynthesis, which is used by most (all?) grains, already being saturated by standard atmospheric CO2 levels.

Now, we could wind up with different arable lands farther north, with longer growing seasons, but the hope of greater yields simply because "plants like CO2" does not jive with experimental results. If more extreme weather develops (more CO2 forcing more warming, forcing more water vapor into the air, storm systems fueled by warm wet air occurring more vigorously and more frequently) then the result could be topsoil erosion, reducing nutrient and water retention in farm lands, reducing crop yields. How these two effects balance out remains to be seen, but more crops simply because more CO2 definitely doesn't work.

We don't know the exact results of global warming, and I sure don't know the best course of action to deal with it, but we always have to make sure we're basing decisions on observable and measurable facts.

That's kind of what I was thinking. Why would a frozen turkey contain any more water than a thawed turkey. I had no idea that they put extra water in the frozen ones to jack up the price. Of course, we only buy fresh, (never frozen) turkeys for thanksgiving, and for almost all our meat.

Okay, so I got curious after this. Given that we are talking about thanksgiving turkeys, so the US, I found the USDA explanation. Summary. No actual water injection. Apparently no glazing like seafood. However 12% or so "retained water" or "absorbed water" should be declared on the label and things like "up to 10% of a Solution" may be used to help with flavour. The poultry its self likely has more than 65% water, but I guess that is normally more bound up with the meat, since it doesn't cause a problem in normal deep frying. The same sheet mentions that freezing damages cells and releases water. This cryogenic freezing sales brochure mentions up to 5% of water being released.

So, a typical US frozen turkey could be up to 25% extra frozen water by weight and quite likely up to 28% available water when dropped in to the fat. That compares to a "normal dry cleaned" (normal, cleaned, dry) frozen turkey at about 5%.

I can see we need some serious experiments by an American Slashdotter equipped with a very large back yard appropriate fire equipment and a strong set of safe experimental experience.

This almost certainly refers to methods of poultry processing; immersion chilling of freshly slaughter poultry has been the rule in the U.S., but air-chilling is becoming more common: http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/ar/archive/apr08/chicken0408.htm

A traditionally immersion-chilled carcass absorbs a good deal of water; immediately freezing that carcass traps more water in the tissues.

An air-chilled, or "dry cleaned", bird is much more akin to the result of traditional animal husbandry, and by most accounts yields a superior cooking and dining experience.

False.
http://www.usda.gov/oce/reports/energy/aer-814.pdf

"How is eating less meat and having what little you do eat be grassfed/organic hurting the environment?"

"How is eating local grassfed beef hurting the environment?"

You are right in spirit, the downside is determining what constitutes "less". If everyone switched to local organic grassfed beef, we'd run out of beef in a day. Industrial farming was invented because we eat a lot of meat as a nation, too much than can be grown on an organic scale (IMHO). Even with the best practices for sustainable cattle, American's eat a colossal amount of beef. So the question is: how much is "less?" I don't have an answer, but if I had a gun to my head I would guess 1oz per year would be the limit to feed everyone beef sustainable, based on: the avereage american diet of 62lbs [1], 63,280 organic cows in 2008 [2], and 96m head of beef cattle in the USA in 2008 [3]. That's .07% of beef cattle in the US as organic, so 62lbs*16oz/lb *0.07%=992oz *.07% = .7oz round to 1oz.

Huh, my math seems wrong, but assuming we could sustainable multiply local organic by 10x, that's still 7oz of beef per year.

Yeah, we eat a lot of effing beef.

[1] http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_pound_of_beef_does_the_average_American_consume_each_year
[2] http://www.agmrc.org/commodities__products/livestock/beef/organic-beef/
[3] http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/statistics-information.aspx

"The vast majority of farms and ranches in the United States are family owned and operated." http://www.nifa.usda.gov/nea/ag_systems/in_focus/familyfarm_if_overview.html Having grown up in the dairy industry in the midwest, I can back this up from experience. And many of the family farms are embracing technology to improve yield, quality, and efficiency.

...Malthus saw one iteration of a fixed-point solution to a resource allocation problem, and assumed it applied to *all* resource allocation problems. It doesn't. The mathematical model that these dire predictions are based on could benefit from a more game-theoretic approach. What is going to happen is the establishment of a series of Nash equilibria until our species lands on the right (read: optimal) strategy for resource allocation. Right now, a little under half the planet's food supply is produced in nations that account for less than a fifth of the planet's human population. These food producing nations are bound by extremely strong and resilient cultural, political, and social ties...you don't have to be John Nash to see where I'm going with this: there is no way in hell that humans aligned with these nations are going to suffer a food crisis under any new Nash equilibrium. Will there be food riots? Yes. Will they affect resource allocation? No. A new equilibrium will be established, and humanity will carry on.

[Item 1]simply converting the United States alone to organic standards would require substantial additional cropland.

[Item 2]Taking additional farmland ... is the leading cause of the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.

Note that item 1 and item 2 have no bearing on each other whatsoever. The deforestation in the Amazon is not the result of adopting sustainable organic farming methods. Requiring more cropland is not such a terrible thing if it is farmed more sustainably, and in any case this doesn't necessarily address the actual food needs of the US population.

Your conclusion boils down to this: organic farming is not sustainable. However that conclusion is not supported by your argument.

Add in rock dust, kelp or worm castings then see what they tests show. Those things don't have a lobby so they aren't considered important.

The US Department of Agriculture is very concerned about soil health and productivity. Most farms today must operate with an approved conservation plan, and any good farmer uses soil tests to determine what and how much nutrients to add. Spreading crushed rock or seaweed without testing both the soil and the amendment is like adding some mystery substance to your car's engine without even checking the dipstick first.

Thing is, you're kind of behind on what's been going on with organic food in the last few decades.

a) OK, yeah... chemistry can be used to describe living things. But we're talking about pesticides, not dyhydrogen monoxide.

b) Don't know much about copper sulfate myself except that it's mainly used in rice production (limted to once every 2 years) and can't be used as an herbicide in organic farming. It's also used in non-organic farming (especially aquaculture) in addition to other pesticides, fertilizers and herbicides.

c) There's 3 tiers or organic classification according to the USDA Organic Certifications which include the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 and the National Organic Program of 2002.

There's also the US and Canadian Organic Standards Equivalency Agreement of 1993 where the US and Canada agreed to recognize each other's organic standards.

and the California Certified Organic Farmers which has been around since 1973. There are other more stringent independent standards groups as well.

It's also worse for the environment because it takes a /lot/ more land for the same yield.

Organic yields are substantially lower than conventional yields and the only way to obtain additional farmland it to take wildlands. According to Dr. Steve Savage who did the first comprehensive study of organic farming for the USDA in 2008 simply converting the United States alone to organic standards would require substantial additional cropland.

        a switch to organic agriculture would require a 43 percent increase over current U.S. cropland, according to Savage. As he puts it, "On a land-area basis, this additional area would be 97% the physical size of Spain or 71% the size of Texas

Taking additional farmland (not necessarily explicitly for organic but the principal applies) is the leading cause of the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. I don't think I need to cite the significant loss in biodiversity and carbon offsets from the loss of wildlands for conversion to croplands. The trade off in pesticide use is more than offset by other ecological costs.

The first comprehensive studies of organic farming came back saying that the health benefits are anecdotal and the loss of yield substantial. I'm inclined to say organic farming should be help in contempt and exposed as simple green washing. I think in years to come it will be looked at no differently than ethanol from corn.

I mean, the US Government even funded the development of multiple hop cultivars (descended from the very varities in use in this recipe)... the UK Fuggle could be switched with Willamette, there is a US Golding (but it's not quite the same... oh well, at least we have a global economy eh), and I've had good luck subbing Mt Hood for Hallertauer.

Munich malt can easily be sourced from the US (in fact, I'm not sure my LHBS carries non-US stuff), it's just the originating area applied as a name to a particularly processed malt.

Quick! Someone create the Americanized Version of this Commie Liberal Beer REcipe!

Cooked bacon is about 38-40% fat and 38% protein, and Wendy's Baconator still provides almost half of its calories from carbohydrates.

You provided a link to the nutrition facts, but this statement is false. The Baconator has 970 calories, and the website lists 570 of those as being from fat. 400 is close to half sure, but you're ignoring the sources of the calories.

The website says a Baconator has 63 grams of fat, 40 grams carbs and 60 grams protein. 1 gram of protein or carbs is worth 4 calories, and 1g of fat is 9 calories.

Using that a Baconator's gets it calories from the following sources:
567 calories from fat. (~58.5%)
240 calories from protein. (~24.7%)
160 calories from carbohydrates. (~16.5%)

So carbs aren't anywhere near almost half of the calories in a Baconator.

There's pretty much something there to sabotage everyone's digestive system and metabolic balance.

is completely meaningless.

There is a lot of FUD being spread around about various types of food, and a lot of misinformation about nutrition in general. Eating at a fast-food joint every day is probably going to be unhealthy depending on what you order, assuming you have a daily caloric expenditure that is close to the 2,000/d that the government bases its recommendations on. However, it is more important that your diet match your activity level, than that you avoid specific foods or food groups. As an illustrative example, Michael Phelps consumes 12,000 calories/d when training. He is obviously a statistical outlier, but that is partially my point. The maintenance energy requirement for every person is different, and very much dependent upon that persons activity level. Their is nothing inherently bad about any of the ingredients in a triple bacon cheeseburger, nor with the final product. It is when such calorie dense meals are consumed in excess of your calorie expenditure that they start to cause problems.

There's pretty much something there to sabotage everyone's digestive system and metabolic balance.

is completely meaningless.

There is a lot of FUD being spread around about various types of food, and a lot of misinformation about nutrition in general. Eating at a fast-food joint every day is probably going to be unhealthy depending on what you order, assuming you have a daily caloric expenditure that is close to the 2,000/d that the government bases its recommendations on. However, it is more important that your diet match your activity level, than that you avoid specific foods or food groups. As an illustrative example, Michael Phelps consumes 12,000 calories/d when training. He is obviously a statistical outlier, but that is partially my point. The maintenance energy requirement for every person is different, and very much dependent upon that persons activity level. Their is nothing inherently bad about any of the ingredients in a triple bacon cheeseburger, nor with the final product. It is when such calorie dense meals are consumed in excess of your calorie expenditure that they start to cause problems.

I'm as skeptical of revolving doors as anyone, but do you have any evidence he acted unethically?

The GM crops were subsequently approved with no testing, and no testing is required or even allowed to be performed on them

Bullshit. Do you even think about that statement? If that is true, why doesn't Monsanto just release whatever they want? Why is AquaAdvantage having such a tough time with the GE salmon, why can't I buy an Arctic Apple tree, where's the HoneySweet Plum, Golden Rice, or any of the university developed transgenic crops, if there is no need for stringent testing?

You can read more about it here (or hundreds of other sites, use google)

Oh wow, a conspiracy site, didn't see that coming. I love getting my information from people who say Obama isn't a citizen, 9/11 was an inside job, climate change is a hoax, and vaccines cause autism.

This stuff is BAD news for humans.

Please explain to me how the enzyme produced by the C4 EPSPS (the bacterial version of the ESPSP enzyme that all plants have that glyphosate targets that is inserted into Round-Up Ready crops to give them their ability to resist glyphosate) is bad news for humans? Go into all the biochemical nitty gritty if you please.

a somewhat optimistic study on population and agriculture. unfortunately not addressing water or growth. http://soils.usda.gov/use/worldsoils/papers/pop-support-paper.html

A 2007 USDA study found that receiving Food Stamps long term (24 months) was associated with a 50% increased obesity rate among female adults
http://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/32855/PDF Our poor is OBESE for god's sake.

Also, if a person satisfies criteria for food stamps he/she will also be eligible for other goverment handouts like housing assistance, Medicaid, disability payments etc.
For example, a child he/she also will be receiving free lunches at school which will cover 2 out of three daily meals.

Do not make it sound like $133/person is all they are going to get.

How do you get that school lunch covers '2 out of three daily meals' ? Lunch is one meal, not two.

Healthy food costs more than unhealthy food. Poor people buy cheap food for the quantity and cheap food is not healthy food and unhealthy food leads to obesity.

We are talking about food for a day for a person so none of the other 'handouts' apply here. Disability is only for the disabled and we're not talking about the disabled here, but about single mothers, for example, the highest category of families with food insecurity.

So if we look at this for a single mother trying to feed her family, even if you eliminate lunch from the equation (and the nutrition of US school lunches is not very high but whatever, leave it out of the equation) you're still talking about trying to have two meals for 4.43.

Tell me how you can feed a child two healthy meals for $4.43 in a day?
Tell me how you can feed an adult three healthy meals for $4.43 in a day?

You're also assuming that everyone who has hunger in the US qualifies for food stamps, which is not the case.

A 2007 USDA study found that receiving Food Stamps long term (24 months) was associated with a 50% increased obesity rate among female adults
http://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/32855/PDF Our poor is OBESE for god's sake.

Also, if a person satisfies criteria for food stamps he/she will also be eligible for other goverment handouts like housing assistance, Medicaid, disability payments etc.
For example, a child he/she also will be receiving free lunches at school which will cover 2 out of three daily meals.

Do not make it sound like $133/person is all they are going to get.

$1180 is gross income the $908 figure I used is net income. I used net because you but you can't spend gross income, only net income they allow deductions on net and not gross but if you take home $908 you probably already gross nearly $1180.

http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/applicant_recipients/eligibility.htm

In either case. That is a far from middle class in the US. If I remember right you can't collect for more than 6 months without getting gainful employment either. Of course if you are a disabled single mother with three kids you can probably keep your whole $1200 social security check and still bank a fat $200/month with which to feed them all. The kids might even have medical care covered. With low income housing (if you can get that) you'll have food, shelter, and basic healthcare. But you certainly won't be anywhere near middle class income.

"My parents own a carry-out restaurant. They are forced by competition to accept EBT (food stamps)."

I don't know what they're selling via EBT, but to clarify for those interested...

http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/Retailers/ELIGIBLE.HTM

From the site: "In some areas, restaurants can be authorized to accept SNAP benefits from qualified homeless, elderly, or disabled people in exchange for low-cost meals."

http://asktheexpert.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5336/kw/buy%20meal/session/L3RpbWUvMTM0MzE1NDUxNC9zaWQvMXpORERZMWw%3D

(via the advanced search using term "buy meals" on usda SNAP FAQ dated November 28, 20011)

"In some States, restaurants can participate in SNAP as a meal service that serves special populations (e.g., elderly, homeless or disabled persons), and the restaurant has been approved to participate in this program. At this time, Michigan and California are the only States that participate in this initiative, with a couple of other States in pilot phase. Participating restaurants must offer meals only to these three groups of program recipients and offer them at concessional prices. Other SNAP recipients cannot use their EBT cards in these restaurants. USDA works with States to authorize restaurants participating in these special program where they exist. Whether or not States offer these special programs is totally up to individual States, not USDA."

Otherwise, hot foods are not eligible. Cold prepared items in retail packaging are allowed under normal rules.

Organisations like the FSA exist to ensure that each transaction that occurs is audited to make sure that it has a financially sound objective, not just gaming the system for weaknesses. Market participants can fined very significantly for getting this wrong.

I find this assertion laughable, FSA clearly is more concerned with soy futures. Hold on, from you spelling of organization you must be referring to the ths FSA which is likely just as understaffed as its US equivalent and no doubt run by individuals hopping to get gigs in private industry. IAAMBA (I am a MBA) so I know pointed-headed-ness.

-Long time lurker first time coward.

Here you go. As if banning everything the authoritarians DON'T want you to eat isn't fundamentally the same as forcing you to eat specific things.

First, genetic engineering is a way of improving a plant. A monoculture is growing all the same thing. these are entirely different concepts. Trying to link the two only makes it look like you don't know the definition of either.

Second, how are Monsanto's seeds wrong? sure, the make Monsanto a profit, but there's nothing wrong with that. The insect resistant ones have feared pretty well, reducing pesticides and even benefiting farms that don't grow them. The herbicide tolerant ones have, for all their ill will, been environmentally positive, having reduced the need for tillage to control weeds (tillage degrades the soil quality and promotes fertilizer runoff into water systems), reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and replaced harsher herbicides.

Monsanto? Is that why anti-GE groups are protesting the publicly funded Rothamsted GE wheat trial in the UK? Is that why they complain about the Rainbow papaya, Arctic apples, Golden Rice, and BioCassava, or why groups destroyed the GE grapes in French, GE wheat in Australia, GE potatoes in the Netherlands, and GE wheat in the UK? It might be true for you, but that is minority thought. You can not play that card while the vast majority of the protest against GE crops is also applied to those that have nothing to do with Monsanto.

Some fruits might be rich in fibre but not all. For instance, apples are low in fiber but high in sugars. (Apples are water and sugar and that's about it, the balance being some microscopic amount of minerals.)

That makes apples a poor dietary choice, but it doesn't stop the fruit-industrial complex's fruit-is-good-for-you propaganda. We should be eating less fruit and more vegetables.

In the US, the USDA certifies food products that meets certain criteria as "organic".

Obviously, there are other definitions of "organic". Interestingly the definitions are not uniform across disciplines.

No idea, why don't you read the study and see.

According to the USDA, it is the cost of an average family to raise a child born in 2010. Linkypoo Actual study linkypoo

My comment below, Price increases are far more than interest rates, had some errors. I'm posting a corrected version again here. I don't have the time to do more research.

Inflation is around 2% only if the reduction in house prices is considered, I'm guessing. The fact is that prices for everything are being raised rapidly.

U.S. dollar inflation, some examples:

Food, +4.8% -- Food Price Outlook, 2012
Quote: "The food-at-home Consumer Price Index (CPI), in turn, increased more than expected '4.8 percent in 2011' which means that food price inflation was not as strong as in 2008 when it increased 6.4 percent over 2007."

Medical treatment, +8.5% -- Medical cost trends for 2012
"This year's report from PwC's Health Research Institute finds that the medical cost trend is expected to increase from 8% in 2011 to 8.5% in 2012."

University tuition, +8.3% -- College costs climb, yet again.
"Tuition at the average public university jumped 8.3% to $8,244."

Gas, +108% in 8 years -- Historical Price Charts

U.S. dollar inflation, some examples:

Food, +4.8% -- Food Price Outlook, 2012
Quote: "The food-at-home Consumer Price Index (CPI), in turn, increased more than expectedâ"4.8 percent in 2011â"which means that food price inflation was not as strong as in 2008 when it increased 6.4 percent over 2007."

Medical treatment, +8.5% -- Medical cost trends for 2012
"This year's report from PwC's Health Research Institute finds that the medical cost trend is expected to increase from 8% in 2011 to 8.5% in 2012."

University tuition, +8.3% -- College costs climb, yet again.
"Tuition at the average public university jumped 8.3% to $8,244."

Gas, +208% -- Historical Price Charts

And, Trolly McHypocrite, demanding citations, without providing any yourself, here's where you can learn a thing or two:

USDA Food Database. You'll see that meat is extremely rich in nutrients, wheat is poor in nutrients, and that's even before realizing that the nutrients in meat are highly absorbable, while the nutrients in plants, and especially cereals, are more difficult to absorb.

Many of the United States' agricultural land is in danger of turning to dust due to several factors. Part of it is the poor use of land; Overuse of pesticides, chemical fertilizer, genetically engineered crops (the crops are not the problem, the business practices of companies like Monsanto are), and the loss of top soil due to erosion are just some of the problems. We have several states that are largely desert right now (the "dust bowl" was a ecological disaster caused by irresponsible farming practices).

Citation needed. The dust bowl was a combination of factors, one of which was not realizing that the relatively cool/wet period at the end of the 19th century and early 20th when the land was brought under cultivation was unusual. But if you've ever been to the Midwest you would know that much of the soil there is loess, obviously the Dust Bowl had been repeated many times over millions of years.

The rest of your post is FUD, US agriculture productivity continues to increase.

Want to bet where the two injuries came from?

Cornea burns? It's a better bet than tinfoil.

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/BiotechCrops/

Soybeans: 94%
Corn: 72%

The first GM crop was planted in the US in 1996

Huh. And what about Ford and Chrysler crops?

Of course, I'm sure Toyota, Honda, and the other Japanese companies did it waaaay before the Americans and with better fuel economy to boot!

I understand that BMW has some "ultimate" growing crop in the making.

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/BiotechCrops/

Soybeans: 94%
Corn: 72%

The first GM crop was planted in the US in 1996

This is definitely a bigger problem than just Detroit. It's big enough, in fact, that the USDA did a national survey of it:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/fooddesert/fooddesert.html

(Yes, I know, government statistics may be fabricated, but there's very little reason for them to do so here)

The USDA food pyramid shows only 2-3 servings from both

The USDA food pyramid is a Right Wing conspiracy to make companies money. Like getting tomato growers the right to have "Tomato Paste" on top of a slice a pizza counted as a serving of VEGTABLES!!

Last time I check tomatoes are a FRUIT!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato
"The word "tomato" may refer to the plant (Solanum lycopersicum) or the edible, typically red, fruit that it bears."

"The real funny thing is at the bottom of TFA, people are posting rants against the Gov'ment and Michelle Obama, but it's a North Carolina rule"

Who funds the school lunch programs - the state with federal funds from the USDA perhaps?

As I've already said in other replies, the note is questionable as to when it was sent home. The article linked to from this story did not specify that the note regarding the school checking lunches was received the same day; it could have been a policy note that was sent home earlier.

The note was specific about the charge "in her case". It's hard to imagine that a note sent home two months ago would tell a mother that her child would not bring a sufficiently healthy lunch and thus be required to pay $1.25 on Jan. 30 of the next year. That makes the argument that is was a "form letter" sent home "earlier" hard to accept.

The receipt for the chicken nuggets only shows that the girl bought chicken nuggets. It does not, however, support the allegations that she was ordered to not eat her own lunch and have instead only the chicken nuggets as many "news" sites want us to believe.

I think the fact that there has been an admission from DHHS that someone did inspect lunches and order them not to be eaten, but won't or cannot identify who specifically did it, is pretty good evidence that someone did tell her not to eat her lunch, and DHHS doesn't have the courage to say who.

Of course, this ignores the overarching question of why state inspectors are required to force children to eat every food group during their lunch. The USDA food pyramid shows only 2-3 servings from both the dairy and fruit groups. One at breakfast, one at dinner, you got all you need. None at lunch are required. The state is forcing requirements outside the USDA suggestions onto children and implying to them that their parents aren't taking good care of them.

If the state wants to regulate what the cafeteria sells, that's one thing. To regulate what a parent provides for their child's lunch is preposterous. What's next, forcing every child to eat their lunch under the direct supervision of a state inspector so the state will know that the child actually ate each mandated item?

The "synthetic chemicals" part has to do with adjuncts added to the soil, not the growing seed, so I don't think that would apply. But, as I'm reminded, Federal bureaucrats always provide their own interpretations of laws in the Federal Register, and enforce the law based on those rules, not the way consumers or businesses interpret them. The applicable version is found here, and states, in part:

A variety of methods used to genetically modify organisms or influence their growth and development by means that are not possible under natural conditions or processes and are not considered compatible with organic production. Such methods include cell fusion, microencapsulation and macroencapsulation, and recombinant DNA technology (including gene deletion, gene doubling, introducing a foreign gene, and changing the position of genes when achieved by recombinant DNA technology). Such methods do not include the use of traditional breeding, conjugation, fermentation, hybridization, in vitro fertilization, or tissue culture.’’

So I'm convinced that the USDA will exclude any kind of GMO crop from certification as "organic".