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Monsanto's Harvest of Fear
Cognitive Dissident writes "Intellectual property thuggery is not restricted to the IT and entertainment industries. The May 2008 edition of Vanity Fair carries a major feature article on the mafiaa-like tactics of Monsanto in its pursuit of total domination of various facets of agribusiness. First in GM seeds with its 'Roundup Ready' crops designed to sell more of its Roundup herbicide, and more recently in milk production with rBGH designed to squeeze more milk out of individual cows, Monsanto has been resorting to increasingly over-the-top tactics to prevent what it sees as infringement or misrepresentation of its biotechnology. As with other forms of IP tyranny, the point is not really to help the public but to consolidate corporate power. Quotes: 'Some compare Monsanto's hard-line approach to Microsoft's zealous efforts to protect its software from pirates. At least with Microsoft the buyer of a program can use it over and over again. But farmers who buy Monsanto's seeds can't even do that.' and '"I don't know of a company that chooses to sue its own customer base," says Joseph Mendelson, of the Center for Food Safety. "It's a very bizarre business strategy." But it's one that Monsanto manages to get away with, because increasingly it's the dominant vendor in town.' Sound familiar?"
Can we at least PRETEND to have a higher level of discourse here on slashdot rather than revert to juvenile tactics of calling people you don't like names?
I so rarely encourage violence, being an intellectual pacifist, but there are times when it is appropriate. As harsh as this may sound, I think somebody needs to physically grab a hold of each and every Monsanto executive and employee and firmly, not figuratively either, wedge their entire foot up these people's asses. If they were assassinated, I might actually smile.
How could I possibly make such "raving mad" statements?
Monsanto truly is among the most evil group of people this planet has ever seen. Truly. There is a lot that goes on this little twirling ball that gives me reason to lose hope and be fearful of the future, but not many more then this company and their actions.
These people are the REAL LIFE Umbrella Corporation from Resident Evil. I don't say that to add hyperbole to my post either. They ARE. This company is messing around with the very code of life itself. We're talking genetics here. The field as a whole has promise, great promise for us all, when the individuals in it pursue the knowledge in a responsible way. NOTHING the Monsanto corporation does could be considered responsible from a scientific or social viewpoint.
Remember the Monarch Butterflies? This company pursued research out in the open, without any environmental safeguards, and killed a large portion of the Monarch Butterfly population in recent years.
This same company pursues it's genetic research not in a "pursuit-of-knowledge-at-all-cost","we are benefiting humanity", and a "nothing-could-go-wrong" approach. It is motivated purely by the pursuit of profit at the expense of all else.
For those not aware, Monsanto has been avidly continuing to research ways to ensure that crops will die and not reproduce. As I said before, these people mess with the very code of life, and are deliberately researching ways to END IT . To modify an organism to die and remove it's ability to reproduce is an incredibly serious action. One cannot understate this fact. To even discuss doing so requires an enormous responsibility and dedication towards the preservation of life, all life. There has to be an incredible purpose to doing this. An example might be getting rid of Dengue Fever, or the elimination of Malaria, etc. The discussions surrounding it need to involve the entire scientific community, as the ramifications of such an act, the ethical and moral implications, NEED to be discussed.
To do it for Profit? How is that not evil? How is that different from the medical experiments at Auschwitz or any of the other Nazi Concentration camps?
I recommend to check out the great short SF story "The calorie man" by Paolo Bacigalupi. It appeared in Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine and it is now available in his thought-provoking collection "Pump Six" (Nightshade Books). I believe it got the Sturgeon award.
Anyway, it's about a not so far off future when fossile fuels are depleted and genetically engineered plants are cultivated both for food and energy. And this close future is a true IP hell with gigantic bio-engineering companies always on the wake for unlicensed use of their grains.
Darth Cheney will pwn your country and make you buy.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
they can keep planting the old garden variety ones
right until the modified crop contaminates their supply and they get sued for keeping the seeds.
You mean like the RIAA/MPAA?
Although I do think modifying crops to prevent offspring is not a nice thing to do, I do think nothing forbids the
farmers from hiring me to "crack the copy protection" (male sterility [in plants] isn't that hard to circumvent these days). Now if they offer me a better job compared to the current situation in research (shouldn't be to hard), I am all in for it.
waiting for your offers,
a biotechnologist.
I think you entirely missed the point. The way that Monsanto attempts to protect it's intellectual property rights is egregious. You say that they can "keep planting the old garden variety ones". They actually are. The vast majority of these farmers never purchased, or obtained in any way, the genetically modified seeds.
They were brought to these farmers fields outside of their control.
It would be like having a huge server farm with various flavors of Linux and then walking in one day and having Microsoft "pop" up out of nowhere. Microsoft then charges up the road with the BSA and sues you for IP theft.
What makes it even harder for farmers is that there are no "logos" on the plants. Farmer Bob cannot walk through his fields and look down and say, "Awww Shit! Got Monsanto up and growing in the fields again. MA! Get the kids we got to pull them bastards up outa the ground before they get here".
How do you deal with intellectual property that has "legs"?
I suggest checking out the documentary "King Corn."
The problem is mostly farm policy, which--like Social Security--seems to be too complicated a problem for our legislators to do anything about.
I may be misquoting a report here because I don't have it handy, but wasn't the problem that if your neighbor planted a gm crop and your crop became 'contaminated' (and therefore your next generations seeds), you could be sued for infringing on Monsanto's IP?
The proper way to implement this sort of business strategy would be to offer some sort of payment plan for that initial $20k so it works out the same over x number of years, not try and use stupid legal tactics to make a broken business model work (sound familiar?)
note 4 years for Australian farmers, ten years for EU farmers...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I often wondered why it is that a milk manufacturer who doesn't use BST (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_somatotropin) in their product has to put a label that states something to the effect of "there's no scientific difference between cows treated with BST and those who aren't").
The fact that a company can force a manufacturer to put a disclaimer on their product for NOT using the drug is really scary.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
A quick report on Center for Food Safety: http://www.activistcash.com/organization_overview.cfm/oid/11 I have little doubt that Monsanto may be up to some business practices that are less than ethical, but groups that like to fear monger about GM crops annoy me.
Irongeek's Hacking Videos / Security Videos and Articles
'Some compare Monsanto's hard-line approach to Microsoft's zealous efforts to protect its software from pirates. At least with Microsoft the buyer of a program can use it over and over again. But farmers who buy Monsanto's seeds can't even do that.'
Microsoft's approach has been far from zealous. If anything it is deliberately lax. The whole "One of your employees has installed unlicensed Microsoft software. Sign a long term contract with yearly fees and we'll forgive you." thing needs people who are used to pirating Windows to keep going.
The RIAA/MPAA and the way they're suing everybody would be a better analog for "hard-line approach [toward pirates]".
Even then it is a very poor and hardly meaningful comparison.
To be fair, he separated the Monsanto based seed from his own variety and was planting it intentionally. The Wikipedia article states this directly.
He would have been able to keep his own variety growing but chose to destroy all his seed and buy all new.
has the same "problem". but you will note that patents on new drugs run out quickly. that is, in a few years, not in a few lifetimes. this is because people needs these drugs to live. likewise, poor countries thumb their noses at things like patents on AIDS drugs, and the world community pretty much supports them
why?
see, in the field of morals and ethics, there is actually something more important than *gasp* profit. so your high holy moral indignation doesn't ring true, that anyone would not consider monsanto's search for profits a god-given right... how dare they!
its not like music. you can live without music. but you can't live without life saving drugs... and you can't live without food
so i agree with you that monsanto deserves some reward for its efforts. but don't you think there is a difference between a modest protection of a few years, versus a greedy ip grab supported by legions of lawyers that extends far beyond a logical concept of financial gain?
however, what is the motivation then to say make rice with vitamin a, or wheat that grows in the desert?
balance: you harness greed in order to serve mankind. you create ip to create incentive to reward companies. but that shit gets out of hand. it metastisizes, corporate greed takes on a life of its own, and then it deserves a smackdown, to remind it that it serves us, we don't serve it
progress in the fields of technology exists to serve mankind. human society created the legal framework so that corporations serve us through progress. but if corporations begin to think that the pursuit of the almighty buck eclipses all else, such as with the idiocy ip law has become, it deserves to be broken. and don't worry about it: legions of lawyers have proven to be ineffective against music hungry teenagers. how effective do you think they will be against literally hungry people?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
> If these farmers don't like the new genetically
> modified seeds, they can keep planting the old
> garden variety ones. Research is not cheap, and
> any commercial company is in the business of
> making money.
Making money yes, racketing his clients NO.
> Is copyrighting and DRMing (GRMing?) seeds
> ethical? Millions of dollars are needed to
> design the original transgenic, so unless
> farmers are willing to buy these once for the
> full price (say 1000 seeds for $20,000 each) it
> makes perfect business sense.
How the gentic code of living organism can be the property of someone? Btw I think that their "investement" of millions of $ is wothless (and even harmfull) for the vast majority of the humanity. To make a parallel whith the IT world: this is "trecherous research" like "treacherous computing" of the IT world. I think that potential users of this "technology" all around the world should be educated to avoid the traps of these criminal organisations like Monsanto, and they should be sued out of existence whenever possible (unfair trade practices and monopolistic posture to begin with)
morals and ethics is so complicated. all this whining. as if their concerns are valid. pffft
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
See The World according to Monsanto, an excellent French documentary (in English) for another in-depth look.
Texas has the "Castle Law" stating that a person can defend their home, vehicle, or workplace with deadly force if they feel threatened. I wonder if Texas farmers can shoot lawyers on sight based on this law? ...seriously officer he came right at me with a briefcase...
I Don't Work Here
You're not misquoting. That's one of the main problems with the GM crop lawsuits. Farmer Bob decides that he's not going to use GM seeds and only plants non-GM seeds. His neighbor, Farmer Jim, though, plants GM seeds. One day a breeze blows a few seeds from Farmer Jim's property to Farmer Bob's property. These seeds take root and grow. The crops are similar, just GM versus non-GM, so there's no way for Farmer Bob to tell the difference.
Monsanto, knowing that Jim is using GM seeds but Bob isn't, sues Bob for infringing their rights. They check his field and find a few GM plants growing. He's then forced to pay Monsanto for the "right" to have those plants growing in his field. (Whether he wanted them or not is irrelevant to Monsanto.) And since the GM plants might pop back up in subsequent years or might blow over from Farmer Jim's field again, Farmer Bob's field is now contaminated and he must pay yearly fees to Monsanto or face legal action enough to make him lose his farm.
The lesson here is: Buy genetically modified seeds from Monsanto or you'll lose your farm.
Or put another way: Dat's a nice farm you've got dere. If you buy these seeds from us, we can ensure that you'll be "protected." Otherwise.... Well, it'd be a shame if something *happened* to dat farm of yours.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Maybe I am behind the times... but could someone please explain to me what harm comes to PEOPLE from treating cows with growth hormone? It's not like a pesticide - it doesn't get concentrated up in the food chain. Hormones are species-specific, and their effects are strictly physiological. At least that's the information that I have.
So if anyone could explain to me what the problem is, I would highly appreciate it.
However, what bothers me most about Monsanto, is that they are killing the concept of genetically engineered crops (which is sure to become a necessity as the Earth's population grows), by doing exactly the kind of genetic engineering that is risky, dangerous, and epitomizes the idea of taking the easy way out.
This has been reported in several newspapers over the last few years.
An important financial aspect that is very much overlooked with this Monasanto thug, is the thousands of dollars Monsanto expects famrers to pay when say a neighbouring field contaminates the fields of another farmer. Monsanto demands the contaminated farmer pay for the removal of these GM plants, even though the farmer is not at fault for these invading plants into his own land.
How is this for an equivalent example?: What company forceably installs it's software onto your computer network and then demands you pay to remove it form all areas of that same network or they will sue you. They don't even tell you were all portions of the software is located in your network but if they inspect, without warrant, and find any remaining portions they will sue you.
They also take a sort of "first one's free" approach to get people hooked. Through cheap rates or donated seed, they put whatever pressure or enticement or deceit they can to get people to the point where they no longer have stocks of unpatented seeds to grow. When that happens, you will see a gross change in policy because Monsanto will have patents on the food supply.
Aside from the ethics of patenting food, there are significant dangers to all of us. The spread of engineered crops removes the choice from the rest of us as we can no longer secure a "pure" alternative. Furthermore, Monsanto's aggresive pushing of its patented varieties brings about a homogenity of crops to a degree we've never seen before. Whilst the food supply is already more uniform than it used to be, the genetically identical crops being spread world wide by Monsanto go even further. Google for the Irish Potato Famine if you want a reminder of the dangers of putting all our eggs in one basket. Only in this scenario, it's world wide. And then there is the wider context to consider about what this technology actually offers us. For example, Monsanto's "Golden Rice" which is enriched with Vitamin A to help those who are deficient in it in the third world areas where they grow rice. The problem being that they are deficient only relatively recently since international agriculture business has forced them to only grow rice for commercial reasons. The Golden Rice looks like a good thing from a narrow perspective, consider the larger context and you realise it's comiong from the same root as what causes the problem in the first place. And all the issues about bio-diversity, establishment of monopoly, ethics of patenting food still stand.
Monsanto need to be stopped for all our sakes and I would love to do it.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
tried to burn that which they didn't understand out of ignorance. but there is no cure for fear and hysteria, so frankenstein had to go to the arctic. compatibility wasnn't possible
lesson: biotech firms need to make gm crops that grow in antarctica
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The example you showed is NOT a case of crop contaimination.
If you read the decision, not the various sites put up supporting Mr Schmeiser, you find it came about because Mr. Schmeiser identified the round-up resisant plants, then isolated them so they would increase in strength and then saved those seeds. He was deliberatly breeding seeds he knew were contaminated.
In a fair situation Monsanto would be allowed to research things, but would be sued into oblivion if their crops would contaminate a farmer's crop and then terminate. Farmers should be able to sue Monsanto for destruction of their property, instead of the other way around.
If we allow corporations to own species or subspecies, then the incentive is in the direction of biological warfare between corporations. Artificial species are then corporately designed to spread more aggressively, treat other species with more hostility and be more resilient. This is a disaster waiting to happen.
The reason we have ethics that say it's not reasonable for anyone to own a whole species is because of the problems we encounter down the road, on the long term. If millions of dollars are needed to create a GM crop and there is no way to recoup investment other than owning a species, then that business model should FAIL. There are lots of business models that should fail, because society is not willing to pay the price of sustaining such business models. From the business' perspective, this might make sense, since they are not the ones that are directly bearing the cost of their business model, but from society's standpoint: no deal.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
There is a French Journalist Marie Monique ROBIN who wrote a book on Monsanto and its GMO Products. There was a TV documentary done by the same person. I watched it.
I must say that if I am rather favorable to controlled GMO use, the way monsanto designs their product and their method are frightening. Even if the documentary has a strong anti-GMO bias, the objection (on food safety law and on incomplete studies) are more than troubling.
This is much worse than Microsoft. It may be necessary to investagate deeply in Monsanto's practices and sanction the abuse in order to save the very GMO technology. These guys are defnitly bad.
What is the court case or lawsuit that states this? Heck even a letter from a Monsanto lawyer.
There have been many people making this claim but whenever I ask they are never heard from again.
Which is not to say it does not happen just looking for an actual case where Monsanto has used lawyers against someone where this was the case.
An excellent resource documenting the myriad evils of Monsanto can be found here.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Throw in the old fashioned monopoly building of a megacorp, and you have viral licensing of life.
Step 1. Develop Roundup weed killer.
Step 2. Develop a seed that is resistant to roundup.
Step 3,4,5,6. Buy over 80% of seed companies so customers have almost no choice.
Step 7. Partner with large agri-businesses who buy up farms so they earn record profits while family farms can't stay profitable...
... I could keep going. Anyone who reads up on it, even if they're not at all into conspiracies, realizes this is wrong and leads to tight control of the world's food suply.
So fucking what?
Seriously, you have a field of crop X. Other farmers around you have a field of GM crop X from company Y.
You find that next year your crop has gained some of the properties/genes of the GM version through airborne cross pollination. You think this is a good thing and keep growing it.
Why should there be any consequences? Their modified genetic material has invaded your crop. You haven't stolen anything. Why should you be sued?
hell, the guy should be able to sell it on as his own roundup resistant strain in any sane world.
Regardless of whether or not Monsanto sue, there's still a problem as Farmer Bob can no longer legitimately sell his crop as non-GM. The choice of us, as the purchasers, is taken away from us. Reduction of options is bad.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
The problem with suing copyright violators is that copyrights last too long. Patents are issued for 3 years. They can be extended over and over for maybe 18 years. Usually they expire much sooner. They hardly prevent the innovation in research the way copyrights prevent innovation in arts. This is knee-jerk. And it's the first time in 10 years that I am considering switching my home page from Slashdot to something else. Maybe some site with news on it.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
> but could someone please explain to me what harm comes to PEOPLE from treating cows with growth
> hormone? It's not like a pesticide - it doesn't get concentrated up in the food chain. Hormones
> are species-specific, and their effects are strictly physiological.
Here in France we are just having a big trial about people who extracted growth hormone from human cadavers (if I understand correctly, this was the "normal" way to do this at that time), and injected them into children with growth problems : children grew, but several died from Creutzfeld-Jakob disease as the result...
If only we could let cows eat grass, chicken wheat, and communist babies !
(just joking)
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
You have an actual trial or lawsuit showing this is the case, or even some papers from lawyers?
"To be fair, he separated the Monsanto based seed from his own variety and was planting it intentionally."
So what?
He likely got cross pollination. In any sane world it would have been no issue at all.
Your ignorance on this matter is so profound I simply don't have time to disabuse you of it. Please do just a little research before shooting off your mouth like this. I'd suggest:
http://www.psrast.org/
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2001/03/14/gm-foods-part-one.aspx
http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/GEessays/gedanger.htm
as places to start. If you have any real interest in informing yourself about the situation, that is.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
1. company invests billions in developing a wheat strain that grows in the desert, or orange rice with vitamin a in it, etc.
2. poor people get a hold of the crop, and grow it to feed themselves, but don't repay the company
do you force them to pay, and they starve? or do let your investment fizzle? how do you pour money into a venture which has a moral hazard attached to it?
the answer is simple, and taken straight form medical research: you only invest in research which guarantees a return. what do i mean? you spent trillions on heart attack medication, because most people having heart attacks (and are willing to treat them) are overfed overpaid rich people. meanwhile, you completely ignore malaria, which kills millions every year, because the only people who die from that are poor
so monsanto will invest billions in wheat, because wheat is primarily grown in rich northern climes, and will completely ignore tropical foods, as those crops are grown in poor countries
sorry africa, so gm yams for you
compare the prevalence of various diseases according to socioeconomic status, and you will find a direct correlation to the amount of money that goes into medical research into those diseases
now compare the prevalance of various food crops according to the GDP of the countries they are grown in. you will also find a direct correlation to the amount of $ into the biotech research in those food crops
this is the world we live in. morals and money don't mix. for those of you involved in medical or biotech research, please notice where your progress actually falls in the grand scheme of things. you serve filthy lucre, not the progress of mankind. the poor, the ones who can benefit the most from medical and food crop research, are served last, and can only hope for trickle down progress after many generations
in such a way, we are allowed to look very poorly on ip lawyers. yes, progress is served by the ip they protect, but progress only for the rich who can afford to pay for those expensive fruits (literally) of progress. but frankly, shaming people will not reverse this truth about the world we live in. a sense of high and mighty moral superiority does not pay the bills
however, it does make you immortal in terms the fame one achieves if one could find a way to serve the poor instead of serving the rich. we remember martin luther king, and mahatma gandhi. we don't remember the peers of those great men in the 20th century who served filthy lucre instead. i didn't say the way was easy, or cheap. but whoever can find a way to make it work, and give us wheat that grows in the desert, or rice with vitamin a in it, for free, for the poor, without any ip strings attached, will earn the accolades of the ages, if not a fancy BMW in the driveway
in 100 years, your nice house in the suburbs and your fancy bmw will be rust and rotting floorboards, and you will be a bunch of ash or bones. all that will live on is your name. what will you do with your time, who will you serve?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Bit of a bugger if you don't think it's a good thing though. For example if you're entire market is based on selling Organic Produce.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
synopsis:
me: "there should be rational limitations on the ip legal framework"
you: "how dare you empty the cities and make us all live on farm collectives! communism is evil!!!eleventy"
whu?
kind of like:
me: "perhaps gays should be allowed to marry"
you: "why are you for bestial necrophilic pedophilia!"
como?!
its called hysteria, fear. you have it. please read what i actually said: ip law is not some ayn rand natural right. it was created by society, an artificial legal construct that allows ip holders to extract financial gain for their research or creativity. it makes sense for sicety to have LIMITS on this artificial construct it created
and then you blather on about slavery in response. what a spastic twit
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Specifically, the contention of some broadcasters that they can control every use of the #$%#$6ing electromagnetic waves that are *shooting *into *your *house. You want to keep control of X and all its externalities? Keep it and all of its externalities off my property!
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Hello.
Leave a wolf among sheeps. Please do not be surprised, after a day no to see the wolf having a nice singing party with the sheeps. What's that story to do with our business here ? Well...
Leave ultra-liberalism drive business for a while. Please, do not be surprised after some time to see it maximising financial profit regardless of any other consideration. Please all, let's not condemn Mosanto for doing what the system precisely expect it to do.
I hope people will keep me free of the usual bullshit like : so what you want is comunisme?. I trust we could talk about issues without being immediately pushed into extremist positions.
The thing which causes me trouble a lot, is to have realised years ago, that no one actually need GM agriculture. It's now proven that on the long run plants adapts as well as fauna, which ruins pro-GM arguments. We already have enough productivity per surface. The issue with food worldwide, is not technical but instead political. The talks served by Mosanto n Co. are only valid within absolutlism : making more money.
Don't get me wrong, we are using controlled-closed environment GM technologies for years. That's fantastically beneficial, safe and needed. What is non needed, dangerous, non efficient and a mascaraed is agricultural GM applications.
Bye. Z.
i had misgivings the moment after i wrote those words. a world without culture isn't really worth living. however, i was simply trying to contrast the urgency between something that is biologically necessary and that which isn't. psychologically necessary, yes, but given the choice between a crate of bananas and a walkman for a 100 day stay on a desert island, the biggest culture vulture would pick the bananas too ;-P
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
How about this for an actual trial?
From the BBC News (May 21, 2004):
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
This issue was discussed in the documentary "The Corporation". A short synopsis is (as I recall): Monsanto resorted to deceptive testing and reporting practices to secure approval from the FDA. They engaged in heavy and deceptive advertising for the product. They made it difficult or impossible for 3rd party investigators to verify the accuracy of their testing. They denied the results of more recent studies linking both rBGH to cancers and the presence in the milk of cows treated with it. They bought complicity and editorial cooperation from Fox News Corp. They sue companies who advertise milk free of their chmeicals... and then my memory sort of runs out.
Anyway the film is worth watching and if I recall correctly they didn't mind people sharing it.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
i would be screaming about ip law too ;-P
you can't eat me, you will be violating my drm! do you know what a pain in the ass those ip lawyers are? you think an eternity of hunger is painful? think about that courtroom! and put away the fork!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The Southern Corn Leaf Blight epidemic of 1970 would be a better analogy and illustrate your point much more eloquently. The Great Irish Potato famine wasn't caused by lack of food. There was food, it was social and political issues that forced the peasants to rely on potatoes, which failed, while in fact there was adequate food that they produced. It just was sold to pay the landowners bills.
The SCLB epidemic was a result of using the same genetics in the vast majority of corn planted in the US.
Also recent trials have shown that GM seeds remain viable for up to ten years after the initial sowing... so even if you've stopped using their seed on your fields, the damned things can still germinate several years later and leave you liable, or your successor (if you've cashed up and sold on) liable to IP violation charges...
The point missed is what happens when the farmer uses clean seed from his heritage and his crop is cross polinated from the GM field next door? Now his seed crop is a half breed of GM stock. As the years go by, the cross contamination from the field next door continues until his crop isn't much diffrent than the field next door. This is done without stealing a single seed.
He still gets hit with the same lawsuit for theft of IP when the genetic crop is found in his field.
The truth shall set you free!
Develop a Round-Up resistant strain of weeds and release it under the GPL.
Sorry, I should've specified - I'd like a scientific explanation... one devoid of the word "corporation".
The idea of rBGH-treated cows, somehow causing cancer in people is preposterous from a biological point of view... which is why if you're going to claim it, I'd like to see primary peer-reviewed literature telling me so. But for Slashdot, I'd be fine if you could just provide me with a theory of what happens biochemically to have such an effect... you know... in reality... not in a hippie wet dream.
Providing better crops to a non-industrialized, poorly governed nation will not improve life there. They will just have more kids, feed more money into an already corrupt system, and end up right back where they started.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The real problem with the growth hormones is that the fast growth usually makes cows ill if they aren't given an antibiotic agent at the same time to combat the secondary effects of the growth hormone. Therre have been reports of pus-contaminated milk because of diseases related to the growth hormones. Also, the permanent use of antibiotics creates antibiotics-resistant bacteria on the cows, that are just waiting to get a chance to cross over to humans. Moreover, since these cows are often fed with GM crop that "naturally" produces pesticides which stay inside the plants when they are harvested, the milk and meat from the cows gets contaminated with pesticides.
Oh absolutely, could ruin your whole market. I think the non-monsanto customer has far more grounds for suing them thatn the other way around.
Well, two major ones, at least:
First in GM seeds with its 'Roundup Ready' crops designed to sell more of its Roundup herbicide
"Roundup Ready" or glyphosphate-resistant crops actually weren't developed by GM techniques, but by regular selective breeding. And the point of RR is not that you use more pesticide, but actually that you use less - because you can treat the field at a stage when the plants are younger, and more susceptible to a smaller dosage, than you can when you have to wait for your crops to be hardy enough to withstand indirect exposure.
At least with Microsoft the buyer of a program can use it over and over again. But farmers who buy Monsanto's seeds can't even do that.'
No modern farmer "reuses" seeds, GM or no. Modern hybrids don't breed true, for one thing. And by planting part of the harvest, you miss out on protective seed-coat treatments, and terrestrial pests eat your crops before they've even sprouted.
For some reason Monsanto comes under fire from people who would rather distort the facts, or argue from a position of hostile ignorance, than debate the case on its merits. Monsanto does plenty of things I think are wrong, particularly their legal department, but figuring out ways for farmers to get larger yields with less pesticide use, less land use, and less water use certainly isn't one of them. For christ's sake, when did feeding people become something "evil"? What, you thought we could feed a world of 6 billion people organically? Forgetting for a moment the fact that organic crops are less safe, there's simply not enough arable land and water for that to be realistic.
I never have frustrations, the reason is, to wit:
If at first I don't succeed, I quit!
The main problem is that there are groups of people who are against any type of GM modified food, the fears range from stories out of Outer Limits to fears that they will increase poverty(you cannot produce the better product no-one wants yours) to loss of diverisity.
As for milk and rBGH it is not the BST that is the main concern but IGF-1, insulin growth factor-1. This is naturally occuring in the human and cow body. High levels of IGF1 has been linked to increased chances of certain types of cancer and mabye the increased chance of giving births to twins. Science has not shown in dietary intake of IGF-1 will increase this amount.
Injecting cows with rBGH may increases the amount of IGF-1 found in milk, some studies have shown an increase but all of the studies have shown that it amount falls within the normal amounts. There is no scientific test that can tell you if the milk you are drinking comes from rBBGH injected cows or not. FYI you would have to drink around 95 quarts of milk, any kind, to equal the amount IGF-1 the average human body produces in day.
Now the reason most countries have banned rBGH has not been IGF-1 but because of a udder infection called mastitis. While this is likly to effect all types of cows it can be more common in rBGH cows because they are milked more often. mastitis prevention is mainly done, in the US, by testing at the farms, testing at the plants and pasturization.
For the US that can work since we generally want to consider all milk and dairy products, (cheese, yogurt,etc) to be dead. We freeze and cool them if there is any type of life(mold) we will toss them. In other parts of the world that is not the case and mastitis can be a problem. FYI test to check for the presence of mastitis are cheap and can be purchased at various lifestock stores on even on the internet.
However with that all said, cows milk is probably one of the worst things you can drink as an adult, it is full of sugar and other things needed by children not adults. As an adult you are better off switching to goat milk or using cow milk just for the cream, cheeses or yogurts.
While I am pretty sure that they really are doing these things to farmers I find it disturbing that the quotes and statistics are from the CFS which has a known biased source that wants to prevent all GM products.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Some reporters at fox news found strong evidence that the Monsanto BGH hormone to make cow's produce more milk was pushed through too quickly. They tried to report on it, Monsanto threatened to sue. Fox pulled the report before the air and set about having their reporters change the story. Finally the reporters were told to lie outright, they refused. Hilarity followed with the courts ruling that corporate media has no legal obligation to tell the truth.
There has been ongoing lawsuit coverage and other related issues.
Monsanto reminds me of the Ag firm in the Clooney movie Michael Clayton .
Interesting you object to film "The Corporation". I work for one of the companies mentioned in the film and have for nearly 20 years. I found their treatment of information I had personal knowledge of to be completely accurate.
I think you'll find links to the actual peer reviewed paper hard to come by. However, there are a variety of sites (readily discoverable thanks to google) which adequately describe the biological processes (which in my opinion are not preposterous but I am not a biologist, I am a chemist) and the risks possed. However from your use of "hippie's wet dream" I conclude youâ(TM)ve already made up your mind... so Iâ(TM)ll leave it you find the links for yourself and decide whether or not to believe them.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
You really should read the Wikipedia article on this topic. The crop that got Schmeiser sued was 95%+ RoundUp resistant rapeseed. The only way that could have happened was an intentional informed effort to bypass Monsanto's patents. Accidental wind blown contamination does not give anything close to that result.
And... is there a problem with that? Farmers have been breeding plants for a really long time, plants that regularly exchange genetic material with other plants. Just because Monsanto can't control its 'property' doesn't mean farmers should stop using tried and true tactics.
I'm no specialist, but one of the problems is that the functioning of growth hormones does not stop in the animal ... also the consumers of the meat will be exposed to the growth hormone with all of its medical implications.
... there is no reason to give animals growth hormone but to increase the profits of the farmers. There is no medical benefit. We don't go around giving our kids growth hormones, do we?
Another problem is ethical
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
Monsanto's patent on the original round-up ready canola expires 2 years from now (2010), after which you can do whatever you want with that plant and its modifications.
They will have to innovate to keep their market.
This might be why the court decided to grant them 'insane' rights on the plant, because after the patent expires, it's a free-for-all.
'ts called hysteria, fear.'
no, it's called "learning from experience".
so when you blather on about slavery in response for my call to put limits on ip law, this is speaking from experience?
huh?
so my call for limits on ip law is what, exactly in your mind? the first step on an unstoppable slippery slope to pol pot?
LOL
dude: its not learning from experience your thoughts come from on this issue. it comes from hysteria, fear, and panic. really
you're quite the hysterical twit. you really are
so, in your mind: ip law and its continued extension by corporate lawyers is completely natural and valid, it does not need to be reigned in. and for me to even suggest such an idea is tantamount to communist ideology. this is your position?
you're just trolling me, right?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There is an interesting book, called "The World Without Us", detailing a hypotheticacl scenario of what would happen if all humans would magically disappear from Earth in the next minute. Maybe not the main topic of the book, but a large part of it deals with the effects of invading species. Asian trees on the east coast, extinction events fueled by changed conditions and species composition. It is truly frightening that most of this was caused mainly accidentally and the naturally occuring species simply being placed at another location wrecked such a huge havoc. We absolutely do not want to see the same process on steroids due to a plant artificially made more aggressive (in the way it spreads, survives, resists).
Also, population problems won't be solved by any kind of increase in food production. Even a 0.002% increase in population size very quickly turns into a physical impossibility to sustain, if continued long term. We either control the human population, or the increase is prevented by starvation and death. I'll illustrate the case by quoting Richard Dawkins: Now, to answer your original question, first we have to postulate that whatever Monsanto says about the issue needs fact checking, as evidenced by Samuel Epstein's affair with Monsanto.
As far as I know the amount of IGF-1 content is significantly increased (+ 40-70%) in Posilac treated cows compared to untreated ones. (source)
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Why should there be any consequences? Their modified genetic material has invaded your crop. You haven't stolen anything.
*sigh* If a money transport van crashes into your garden, is the money yours?
We can argue about how crazy patent laws are, but don't try to characterize that case as Monsanto suing a guy that harvested a field with some accidental cross-pollination.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
... if they're not paying.
Just saying.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
they are human beings, just like you and me. not some weird abstract one dimensional construct on par with fungus that just keeps growing and growing
if your view of the third world is that hopeless, then you are a misanthrope. or a racist. or both. you do not go below the rio grande or the straights of bosporus and then suddenly logic and reason cease to exist. population control is not a very difficult concept to grasp, really
but from your point of view, apparently you are all too happy for the current state of suffering to continue unstopped. for cruelty to control population instead of planning
which makes you part of the problem, asshole. you have no human conscience
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There is currently a bill in the Missouri (USA) house, obviously written by Monsanto lobbyists, and brought to the floor by their bought-off legislators. The bill specifically prohibits organic milk producers from being able to label their product as BGH-Free, but fails to force any BGH-based milk from labeling their products as being produced with this substance.
Sorry, but that's evil. As a consumer, regardless of whether I like BGH or hate it, I have a right to know. There are enough people concerned about the possible effects of BGH that they want to steer clear. But if Monsanto gets their way with this bill, how will a Missouri consumer be able to know?
This is just one example of Monsanto's evil-ness. There are similar bills in other states in the US that are written by Monsanto lobbyists as well. It needs to be stopped. Yes, I've written my house representatives and told them I am against the bill.
All pass beyond reach of medicine. None pass beyond the reach of love.
if the money transport van was designed in such a way that it spewed money onto my property as it drove by, maybe. Especially if the transport owners knew it would do this.
I think the analogy is getting stretched a bit though.
:x
In India there was a massive movement away from subsistence farming to cash crop farming, mostly rice. When the rice market collapsed there were suicides as a result.
This guy took it a step further by knowingly and deliberately selected for the Monsanto trait. He actually killed off all of the non-Monsanto rapeseed deliberately.
I happen to agree with you, I think. But that doesn't mean that you and I get to set public policy in Canada.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
So it really isn't giving Monsanto a monopoly on the chemical business with their round-up ready seed. There are many generic Glyphosate herbicides on the market now. Though I have to agree though, Monsanto does rather alarm me, as well as farmers that I do business with, and my dad.
Yeah, but that guy actively selected for the seeds. Further, the judge found that it was unlikely that his claims about not planting the seeds were true.
I don't think they've gone after anyone for incidental contamination. As long as you don't kill off your entire crop with RoundUp looking for the Monsanto trait, you'll be okay.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I understand that, more's the pity. The post I replied to made it sound like this was natural and good though.
it's an easy call. in monsanto's world, they stole the food.
so they starve, that is if they are not hacked to pieces or gang-raped and murdered first,
you did use africa as your example
Yes, the people that designed the crops should only get a one time payment. That is all that it is reasonable for any party to profit off the sale of crop seeds.
Society determines what is reasonable for a party to profit off, and what is not reasonable. For example, society determined it should be illegal for people to "negotiate" additional profit into the price of ice when the power goes out for an extended period of time.
Farmers have always paid once for crop seed. That's the way the transaction worked since the beginning of time. Monsanto and other agribusiness giants are trying to change the terms of the business. Well... sorry. We're happy with the terms of business exactly as it was for thousands of years. If Monsanto isn't happy with the way the business of selling seeds was done for thousands of years, Monsanto needs to find another business. We're more than capable of funding U. S. Government research on crops at Universities, etc that has no patent issues that will be available to all.
"*sigh* If a money transport van crashes into your garden, is the money yours?"
*sigh*
That's the worst analogy I've ever heard. And I'm not kidding laddie, that one could win prizes.
Money doesn't require your own nutrients and your own plants to interact, breed with and nourish it. Money doesn't waft over walls with nobody to miss it, somebody probably cares and takes effort to stop money floating away. Money doesn't invisibly turn up and change your crops into something someone else has patented.
In short, sorry, but that analogy is so wide of the mark you may as well have said "*sigh* If a pizza truck crashes into your toenails, is the cat dead?"
This research is most certainly not worthless. Natural strains of food crops will only produce so many calories per acre. If new types of crops can be developed to increase that yeild, then that's a benefit to everyone.
And there's nothing unfair or monopolistic about the way Monsanto does business. Farmers are not forced to do business with them, and as noted above, the widely cited case of a farmer being sued for producing Monsanto's seeds isn't a simple case of crop contamination.
By this I am talking about those farming less than 2,000 acres. The number one rule for small farmers is not to get in bed with these fucks
I heard a lot about the things Monsanto was doing, and growing up on a small farm(well under 2k acres) I was pretty upset. The next time I was back home to talk with my dad I asked him what he thought of the nasty things they did. He usually doesn't hesitate to criticize big entities that are hurting farmers like himself, so I expected an ear full. Much to my surprise the earful I got was about all the people protesting against companies like Monsanto on the grounds of them hurting small farmers. He reminded me that if farmers couldn't make more money with Monsanto's seeds they wouldn't use them. My mind immediately started forming all the usual rebuttals like massive input costs and price control and stopped when I remembered that guys farming small farms are just as smart as me. It reminded me the reason I brought the whole thing up with my dad was to get a more informed opinion. Intelligent farmers, with excellent business skills and a more complete understanding of the economics of farming make decisions that are good for their bottom line. For better or worse, Monsanto's round-up ready varieties are a very profitable product for farmers, large and small alike. There are other reasons to criticize Monsanto, but crushing small farms isn't one of them.
Hey, I heard this great song from the car next to mine this morning. So I recorded it, cleaned it up, and burnt it to a CD.
I'm gunna be rich!
The Future Of Food covers the Monsanto thing in good detail. Summary: a large company buys up all the seed, genetically modifyies some strains to be Roundup-ready, then sues into submission anyone who ends up with a cross-pollination with Roundup-ready strains, while creating a strain that is _inferior_, requiring increased fertilization and dependence on said company. File under 'Stuff that matters'.
I come here for the love
Yes, let's all blame Monsanto for the farmer suicides. After all, it couldn't be a huge, institutionalized problem created by years of government mismanagement? Nope: it's the big bad guy from the West! Wait, well, let's look it over, shall we?
The Indian government, during the "green revolution", convinced huge numbers of ordinary joes to take up farming. The government subsidized their crops, and held a monopoly over them. They then instituted rationing programs across the country. Huge, rousing success. Famines were nearly eliminated. Problem was, it created a huge number of new farmers who used to be auto mechanics, dhobi-wallahs, shopkeepers...etc These guys had never farmed in their lives, and had no experience. Their efficiency rates didn't matter back in the days of the Green Revolution, they just needed to produce anything. Fast forward to now, however, and the problem this created is apparent. The Indian government has opened the market up to international trade, and these farmers can't be competitive. They're competing with Thai and Indonesian farmers who are two to three decades ahead of them in terms of technology, and whose families have been farming for ten generations. So, big problems. What does the Indian government propose? GM seeds! They dole them out by the tonne without explaining that they can't be reseeded (it's not illegal, it's just impossible: the crops can't be replanted). The farmers plant them, get huge yields, go apeshit, take out huge loans, and then go bankrupt when they realize that the have to buy seeds for the next year.
"But ringmaster_j," you say, "isn't that proving that Monsanto is responsible?!?!" No. The crops themselves are not to blame. They have the potential to bring prosperity to the farmers of the Green Revolution, and make India competitive. No, what needs to be seen is the horrible way in which the farmers have been treated by their government. This is a very typical Indian government move: dump tonnes of grain from on high, get elected, move on to the next town. No planning, no advice on how to use the grain, no caveats; just "Apne GM grain he! Vote BJP/Congress/AIADMK/DMK/CPI(M)! Namaskar!" It's horrible. Then, when farmers start killing themselves, they blame it on "evil grain", and burn effigies.
Yours,
-A Canadian Living in India
You know, one of the points were not talking about is cross polination. That is not a good thing. What happens 20 years from now when they discover that GM'd corn causes cancer? Because of cross pollination, there will be no more non-modified corn anymore. And befor people jump all over me, remeber how long it took to figure out the dangers of Dioxins, and PCB's. (Both of which Monsato made!)
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
Let's assume you replant from your own harvest.
Farms use seeds in rather large quantities. For a solid estimate I'd have to ask my brother-in-law, but a metric ton per farm seems a halfway realistic guess. The seed corns are pretty small, under one gram each. So you end up with more than a million seed corns, some of them Monsanto(r) plants because of that field your neighbor planted.
How do you propose to sort them out?
If there was an easy way to do it, farmers would just sieve out the Monsanto(r) seeds and use the "pure" corn for replanting.
Now if you're talking about Monsanto replacing the entire corn for replanting, that would get really expensive. Similar to that what they otherwise get paid. Would kill their business model.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Well..
1) He asked for a trial, I found him one.
2) May I refer you to another slashdot article Wikipedia Breeds Unwitting Trust (Says IT Professor) dated today ;) .
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
See my earlier post. The guy lied. He scooped seeds and planted them, not pollinated.
I love conspiracy addicts. So Monsanto edited the court records and newspaper coverage as well? Wikipedia is only a friggin' starting point. Read.
Because I read the Canadian Supreme Court decision too.
http://www.mindfully.org/GE/2004/Monsanto-V-Schmeiser-Ruling21may04.htm
I quote:
"The respondents are the licensee and owner, respectively, of a patent that discloses the invention of chimeric genes that confer tolerance to glyphosate herbicides such as Roundup and cells containing those genes. Canola containing the patented genes and cells is marketed under the trade name "Roundup Ready Canola". The appellants grow canola commercially in Saskatchewan. The appellants never purchased Roundup Ready canola nor obtained a licence to plant it. Tests of their 1998 canola crop revealed that 95-98 per cent was Roundup Ready Canola. The respondents brought an action against the appellants for patent infringement. The trial judge found the patent to be valid and allowed the action, concluding that the appellants knew or ought to have known that they saved and planted seed containing the patented gene and cell and that they sold the resulting crop also containing the patented gene and cell."
I am sorry, but this windblown nonsense is a crock of bullshit. 95-98% is clearly a deliberate action to circumvent.
If Monsanto was going after somebody who had a small percentage of contamination, I would be mad at Monsanto too. But this was clearly a cynical action and even worse a program to manipulate public opinion with a campaign of disinformation using politically motivated media sources.
1. doesn't work to increase growth, not "doesn't work to do anything at all".
3. that's controversial in of itself.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
I agree with the issue you raise. The big difficulty is to how to best achieve the following goals for the benefit of all:
1. Encourage development of technology.
2. Make the results of this research available to everybody for the cheapest price possible.
Obviously the simplest solution for this is government R&D. This achieves both goals, but neither is optimal. Some avenues of research might not get studied due to politics/etc, and the cost could end up being high (just in the form of taxes and not license fees).
Patents encourage private development, and generally tend to result in highly efficient applied R&D. The problem is that they don't work if people can just copy the results without paying for them. Even a model where everybody pays once doesn't always work, as the up-front cost could be prohibitive - especially to smaller farmers. If only mega-conglomerates could afford efficient crops then smaller farmers would just go under and you'd have the Walmart effect.
I agree that some of these activities should be reigned in. On the other hand, you can't just allow people to freely copy patented seeds otherwise there is no incentive to make them in the first place. I'd be curious as to what Monsanto detractors would recommend as an actual compromise solution.
Clearly farmers should not be penalized for undesired contamination of their crops. On the other hand, farmers should not get a free ride to be able to essentially deliberately cultivate GM crops and claim ignorance of what is going on. How can your prove intent?
How is it preposterous from a biological point of view that a growth hormone accelerating the lifecycle of a mammalian farm animal, in use for under 20 years so long-term effects are uncharacterized, can have a direct or indirect effect on the concentration of carcinogens in those animals and their milk?
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Yawn. Citation needed.
You're correct. I just posted the first trial I found where Monsanto was fighting to protect it's IP rights. The parent post was just asking for trials and/or papers.
To start another line of thinking...
What would our reaction be if music studios created files that self propogated onto other network servers, and the RIAA actively pursued the server owners who tried to take advantage of the files found on their equipment?
My points being that (regardless of the facts in the case that I referenced):
1) Maybe Monsanto should protect its IP by engineering its products to minimize the possibility of spreading its genetic material to nearby crops. This would make its product more environmentally friendly.
2) Unless the farmer actually stole specimens from a neighbouring field, shouldn't he be allowed to manipulate the crops he owns as he sees fit?
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Ohhh the temptation to let you fall is so great... http://www.preventcancer.com/consumers/general/milk.htm
We do when they don't grow well. That's a therapeutic treatment for situations where the child is seriously sick in the first place. And you're suggesting that it's OK to use that in all circumstances? Do you also want healthy people to undergo chemotherapy?
You've been given citations of ample reason to be wary of the newly introduced use of any hormones. Yet you have ignored those replies and concentrated on attacking the less scientific ones. Do you have a vested interest in the use of rBST?
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I don't (knowingly) grow GM crops, you insensitive clod! On the other hand, my neighbor, Robert, does, and I've found evidence of cross pollination over a road and waterway, not just side by side. So far we haven't seen any of the mafia in town, but we've got the second amendment just in case.
Thank you. That is a much better example and I will remember it.
Cheers,
-H.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Infants and young children are most sensitive to bad milk. If we can't drink bad milk, then I guess goat milk will have to do, maybe satan will leave goat milk alone.
The dangers are real, not fictitious, do the research folks.
Something I can tell none of you know...
You cannot, in north america, commercially buy a hen that will lay a clutch of eggs, then sit on them until they hatch, then raise them.
They have been bred out of existance, in favour of egg hens, and meat hens....
I could go on about vegetables but that would clearly be beneath your concern.
These things are the very basic elements of the means of production for common folks.
A 1930's experience without laying hens will be something to see.
So what has this to do with Monsanto you are sure to ask. All I can say to that is would you trust monsanto as a neighbor in really tough times?
Wikipedia may breed unwitting trust in unwitting trusters should have been the article title. The simple fact is that ALL information provided by others should subject to evaluation and fact checking.
And that includes information from opponents of GM tech too - who in this case are looking like dupes of the Schmeisers and have lost several levels on the credibility meter.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Yes, if your entire market is based on selling imaginary "organic" benefits to gullible people, then you're in trouble.
But, really, it was only a matter of time.
Yesd, likewise if your entire market consists of people who have genuine concerns about the health and environmental impacts of the use fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides. That and the recently proven better nutritional value of organic produce.
Just because you have an inferiority complex because you can't afford organic food doesn't mean other people don't have good and valid reasons for choosing to buy it.
IGF-I had been associated with the growth of numerous tumors, including colon (Tricoli et al., 1986), smooth muscle (Hoppener et al., 1988), breast (Rosen et al., 1991), and others (Pavelic et al., 1986). You're making a very common mistake. You're drawing conclusions based on inadequate information. This is what you're given: 1. IGF-1 overexpression has been associated with cancer 2. IGF-1 is identical for cows and humans 3. IGF-1 is increased in cows treated with growth hormone.The data you're NOT given are the most essential figures: 1. How much IGF-1 is transferred from consumed cow products into the human bloodstream 2. What is the absolute contribution of the xenobiotic IGF-1 to the total IGF-1 3. How is the latter value related to the amounts of IGF-1 found in cancer.
Without those 3 figures, you can't make ANY conclusions... especially given that a 70% increase in blood levels of IGF-1 in cows is unlikely to transfer efficiently through the digestive system of people into the bloodstream, and what makes it across is probably going to be irrelevant against the background levels of IGF-1 already present in the host bloodstream.
This is a very common mistake that people make, when they are not used to analyzing data on a daily basis. I think it took me the better part of a graduate degree to learn to see it, and I still miss it a lot more than my advisor.
Farmers who get pulled in are infected and are PART of the EVIL.
Then I hope you maintain that consistency in your own life and don't travel in anything that indirectly provides money to big oil execs.
> So the farmers should be getting all the profits from higher yields
As if farmers are making profits. There are huge agri-business entities that are doing well. There are also still a few little guys trying to survive. They don't really have much choice but to milk every last drop out of their land, unless they've been fortunate enough to find a niche market. And it's these little guys that Monsanto attacks.
> the people who designed the crops should be getting a one time payment?
Did Monsanto invent corn? It's been genetically modified incrementally for thousands of years. What Monsanto has done is engineered their crops to be less susceptible to RoundUp so that they can sell more RoundUp. And as a free added bonus, their "terminator technology" renders their crops sterile so the farmers have to buy their seeds all over again next season, instead of saving seeds from their crop as farmers have done through the previous millenia.
I'm ok with Monsanto making money off of RoundUp. I'm ok with them making money off their "RoundUp-ready" seeds. I'm really uneasy about this "terminator technology" and general unintended consequences. But this business of suing the little guys is just rubbing salt into their wounds.
As the population grows, climate changes, topsoil is washed away and toxified, groundwater is depleted, etc, this will become ever more serious. We will need to use GM higher-yield crops if we want to keep our population growing (as economists demand). There will simply be no way to move away from it. And of course here in the USA it is private corporations who will offer the service of basic survival. "Take away our rights as patent holders, and you will all starve."
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
That would be easy to get them to do.
Any farmer who has this happen to his/her Non-GMO crops gets together with an environmental group and sue Monsanto or whoever, for criminal tresspass, theft of private property, pollution, and ecoterrorism. It is basically what Monsanto does to everybody else.
Push the publicity continually.
Make sure everyone knows that if ANY GMO crop shows up where it is not supposed to be, the person with that unauthorised crop will be sued to bankruptcy by Monsanto , or others.
I'm not a farmer, but if I were one, and my field got some peripheral seeding from a neighbor's farm, I'd have two questions:
1) The seeds have already been paid for - by my neighbor. How is this patent infringement? Sounds like double-dipping to me.
2) I'd ask them, at their expense, to go through my fields, identify all the incorrect plants, and please destroy them. That should remedy the patent infringement, get rid of the GM seeds which I didn't want, and not require me to pay a cent. Why can't they do that (because, of course, they don't want to pay for the infringement to be remedied, they want you to pay them for crops you never planted)?
I have one other question: Is it possible for GM crops to cross-polinate/infect non-GM varieties? I'd be truly ticked off if I had planted all my own seeds which weren't from Monsanto, only to be told I had to pay Monsanto because their product ruined/infected my fields.
ALL "intellectual property" is based on government-granted monopolies. If Monsanto keep abusing their powers over what is essential to a country's food supply, Monsanto risk that a government revokes their patents on the GM seeds under national emergency laws (which the WIPO accept as far as I know).
So step gently, big corporation - you only get to play by government fiat.
1) Maybe Monsanto should protect its IP by engineering its products to minimize the possibility of spreading its genetic material to nearby crops. This would make its product more environmentally friendly.
2) Unless the farmer actually stole specimens from a neighbouring field, shouldn't he be allowed to manipulate the crops he owns as he sees fit? Re 1: I agree. And to their credit, they are working on making seeds that will not reproduce. This is a technical solution, and I prefer that to an IP-law based solution. It would be like DirectTV trying to create hard-to-beat encryption instead of suing the pants off of everyone.
Re 2: Again, I think I agree - though I do think that some kind of IP law for seeds is probably a good idea so that we encourage innovation. Patents are short enough so that we don't have the ridiculous 100 year problem that copyright experiences.
I think a farmer should not be penalized if some bits of patented genetic material enter his field from natural processes and he inadvertently breeds it into his crop. To my knowledge, none have had this occur.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Does this surplus rot in warehouses or is it given away as aid?
I wholeheartedly support the over-production of food in the US, so that when we have a bad crop year we still have enough food to eat. It's like the story with the ant and grasshopper.
Maybe you'd like to see the food rot in a warehouse so that food prices will go up, but the people in Haiti rioting will disagree with you.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
How about a link to the actual ruling. "Monsanto wins Canada seed battle" is very misleading to say the least--I'm surprised to see such horrible spin from BBC--at least from my reading of the decision. I'd be inclined to say that, all things considered, the victory is squarely in Percy's hands. Don't agree with me? Here's a quote from the decision:
Farmers are not forced to do business with them
Apparently you didn't read the article. If someone's seeds blew into my yard, I'm then forced to do some sort of business with them. I can use the seeds and hope I don't get sued, or take a lot of time and money and try and sort out my seeds from Monsanto seeds.
Even if I didn't do anything like that and I left it up to the lawyers, someone else's mistake (not keeping the seeds in a closed environment) is affecting me.
I've actually listened to Percy Schmeiser speak
Perhaps something your not aware of, again, from the supreme court findings:
However, the appellants in this case actively cultivated canola containing the patented invention as part of their business operations. Mr. Schmeiser complained that the original plants came onto his land without his intervention. However, he did not at all explain why he sprayed Roundup to isolate the Roundup Ready plants he found on his land; why he then harvested the plants and segregated the seeds, saved them, and kept them for seed; why he next planted them; and why, through this husbandry, he ended up with 1030 acres of Roundup Ready Canola which would otherwise have cost him $15,000. In these circumstances, the presumption of use flowing from possession stands unrebutted.
He deliberately sprayed round up on his own crop while it was still growing and then saved what survived for seed. Farmers know round-up kills everything, so either he wanted to kill a few acres of his own crop or he wanted to take the fullest advantage of any blow over from his neighbor's land. I'm not inclined to believe he just wanted to destroy his own crop for kicks.
I read the article. Did you? You're conflating the case of the Canadian farmer that made headlines with what's in the VF article. The farmer in question was deliberately cultivating Monsanto's strain. It wasn't a question of a few seeds blowing onto his property, or a guy who's just minding his own business getting sued for a few GM plants in his field.
The farmers in the article are Monsanto customers. They've signed contracts, and they're being accused of breaking the contracts. This may or may not be true - clearly the writer's sympathies are with the farmers, but from this article there's no way to know what's really going on. If you buy seeds from Monsanto on the condition you won't save seeds from the harvest, then you need to live up to the agreement. If you're not prepared to do that, don't buy seeds from Monsanto.
Now, could Monsanto use a little help in the customer relations department? Sure. But that doesn't mean they don't have a legitimate case here.
Yup.Very true.
All tru its existence, EU has protected, fawned over and shielded its high cost farmers.
Let EU first open its markets to produce from other non-subsidized markets and then we can talk.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
The US, Canada and, the EU have literally 100's of millions of tons of stockpiled grain
I learned today - from an expert plant breeder - that the United States has less than a 30-day supply of wheat, currently, and that Indonesia is rolling back rice exportation to ensure adequate local supply.
So, yeah. Is there a single thing in your post that actually turns out to be true?
I never have frustrations, the reason is, to wit:
If at first I don't succeed, I quit!
Genetics is NEW
Yes, that's right. Gregor Mendel never existed. DNA only came about in 1950.
You people crack me the fuck up.
It is not a toy to be played with and we don't know jack.
Oh, I agree that you definitely don't.
I never have frustrations, the reason is, to wit:
If at first I don't succeed, I quit!
Trespass is exactly what is happening. But it is Monsanto that is guilty of trespass. Take the case of Percey Schmeiser, he planted non-GM seeds and Monsanto pollen trespassed onto his property. As a result he is unable to use his seeds anymore.
Monsanto pollen has clearly trespassed onto his property and taken his livelihood from him.
These detectives who go out to find unlicensed farmers are also trespassing (and stealing) when they enter someones land to take a sample to see if it is roundup ready.
people are suddenly so interested in saving someone elses job. of course these people were probably the first to buy foreign cars american factory workers be damned.
In any case even if we go with the argument that we need more yield, etc, etc, then there will still be a much larger second problem we need to address: where the fsck is the water going to come from?
Nowhere. We're not going to get any additional water. In fact we're liable to have a lot less of it, and a lot less arable land, as time goes on.
So doesn't it make a lot more sense to concentrate on improving yields from the land and water we do have, rather than switching to land- and water-intensive, wasteful forms of farming like so-called "organic"?
I just simply don't trust the likes of Monsanto to ensure that they don't release something into the wild that could potentially fsck the food chain in its entirety guarunteeing that we really wouldn't be able to feed the resultant starving billions.
Monsanto isn't any more likely to release an agricultural super-plague than regular old evolution is. The so-called "terminator genes" are far more likely to keep proprietary germplasm out of the wild populations than introduce it.
That's the most hilarious thing. Monsanto is actually addressing your concerns about losing control of proprietary genetics, and that's precisely the one thing you choose to attack them for. Unbelievable.
I spent a significant part of my childhood in wheat farming country and the effects of the previous round of technological "improvements" to farming practices to improve yield, throwing herbicides and pesticides around like they were water, extreme mono-culture and the loss of the technique of crop rotation has turned once beautifully productive land into salt filled desert.
Yes, exactly. It's the 50's-era farming techniques that scare the shit out of me; the return to Silent Spring-type pesticide use that anti-GM hysteria will necessitate. GM modification of crops helps prevent the stuff you're talking about. Pesticides poisoning the water table. Monocultures leeching nutrients out of the land. GMO's are the solution to those problems - and you want to take us back to those days!
You're expert wouldn't contract to Monsanto by any chance?
No, he wouldn't, actually.
I never have frustrations, the reason is, to wit:
If at first I don't succeed, I quit!
I can't fathom that you believe that labeling an item correctly is wrong, and bad for the consumer.
I personally, don't like to consume animal products unless I'm sure the animals animals are raised in a natural 'humane' environment (free range chickens)
As long as corpoartions are "persons" in the eye of the law; people have argued that the law should be applied equally. Of course, sending a coporation to jail doesn't make sense, but the death penalty would be fairly straightforward: shut it down, auction off the tangible assets, free up its IP, revoke it's corporate charter. Of course, it'll never happen, but if there were a petition to sentance Monsanto to the corporate death penalty, if the petition had any authority, I'd sign.
Barring that, has anybody ever considered chartering a non-profit holding company, with the charter having the expressed purpose of buying enough outstanding shares of Monsanto to effect a change in its practices? Their market cap is $67 Billion, I just checked. Certainly not an easy mountain to climb, but merely acquiring a significant voting block of shares could be enough to make a difference, and there are plenty of wealthy people who don't agree with their current policies. Oh, and it pays a dividend. The non-profit could take all those dividends and donate them to defendants in the lawsuits. Delicious.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
It most certainly is true that farmer have always paid once for crop seed.
According to Monsanto.com, Monsanto has only been around since 1901.
Now... how long has cultivated agriculture been around?
"...archaeobotanists/paleoethnobotanists have traced the selection and cultivation of specific food plant characteristics, such as a semi-tough rachis and larger seeds, to just after the Younger Dryas (about 9,500 BC) in the early Holocene in the Levant region of the Fertile Crescent. There is earlier evidence for use of wild cereals: anthropological and archaeological evidence from sites across Southwest Asia and North Africa indicate use of wild grain (e.g., from the ca. 20,000 BC site of Ohalo II in Israel, many Natufian sites in the Levant and from sites along the Nile in the 10th millennium BC). There is even evidence of planned cultivation and trait selection: grains of rye with domestic traits have been recovered from Epi-Palaeolithic (10,000+ BC) contexts at Abu Hureyra in Syria, but this appears to be a localised phenomenon resulting from cultivation of stands of wild rye, rather than a definitive step towards domestication. It isn't until after 9,500 BC that the eight so-called founder crops of agriculture appear: first emmer and einkorn wheat, then hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chick peas and flax. These eight crops occur more or less simultaneously on PPNB sites in the Levant, although the consensus is that wheat was the first to be sown and harvested on a significant scale...."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_agriculture
Funny... not one bit of evidence anywhere Monsanto or any other agribusiness corporation was getting a single cent from farmers for 10-20,000 years of human history.
It most certainly is true that farmer have ALWAYS paid once for crop seed.
Also... Monsanto's claims on greater yields are not true.
"Monsanto claims that yield on its Bollgard Bt cotton will be up by 30 to 40 percent on conventional hybrids, and that pesticide use will be 70 percent down because Bollgard kills 90 percent of bollworms....Agricultural scientists Dr Abdul Qayum and Kiran Sakkhari conducted the first independent study on Bt cotton and released their report Bt cotton in Andhra Pradesh: A three year assessment in 2005. The study involved a season-long investigation in 87 villages of the major cotton growing districts - Warangal, Nalgonda, Adilabad and Kurnool. It found against Bt cotton on all counts and was vital in getting the hybrids involved banned in AP:
* It failed miserably for small farmers in terms of yield; non-Bt cotton surpassed Bt by nearly 30 percent and at 10 percent less expense
* It did not significantly reduce pesticide use; over the three years, Bt farmers used Rs2 571 worth of pesticide on average while the non-Bt farmers used Rs2 766 worth of pesticide
* It did not bring profit to farmers; over the three years, the non-Bt farmer earned on average 60 percent more than the Bt farmer
* It did not reduce the cost of cultivation; on average, the Bt farmer had to pay 12 percent more than the non-Bt farmer
* It did not result in a healthier environment; researchers found a special kind of root rot spread by Bollgard cotton infecting the soil, so that other crops would not grow...."
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/IndianCottonFarmersBetrayed.php
Monsanto has enough money to keep enough lawyers on retainer to basically sue anybody over anything over and over again. If they lose, who cares. They judge shop enough, and they might hit one of Bush's far right extremist judicial appointment and win one.
The Amish-American farmers that I live next door to don't seem to be having any problems. (Probably because they choose to use "open source" corn seeds, rather than patented Microsoft....er, Monsanto seeds.)
If the Amish have the source code to (compiled) DNA, then hats off to them!
I believe God violates OSS by not including source code in every life form. He only distributes the executables which manage to modify their binaries at runtime. (I contend that DNA is more similar to machine instructions and/or settings [data, not instructions] rather than open-source).
I, for one, think we should go after the All Mighty Smiter...
Nuclear power was a fairly new technology. I remember lots of nuclear power advocates saying stuff just like your claims up there this article is a smear job, GM food is safe and organic isn't healthier.
Then Chernobyl happened.
Those nuclear power advocates suddenly vanished about a millisecond after the true nature of Chernobyl disaster really was.
GM crops are new science. Organic food is new as well. There hasn't been time for the science to get done determining whether GM crops are dangerous.
The fact that the jury is still out on the safety of GM crops does not mean GM crops are safe. The fact that the jury is still out on health benefits of organic food doesn't mean is isn't more healthy. It means the jury is still out and the answer isn't available yet.
"Organic" foods is by and large just a pseudo-scientific bunk phrase like "moisturizes your skin". That's not to say that I don't approve of some forms of agriculture over others. I'm seriously pondering getting my own chickens, for the fresh eggs and maybe even a few meat birds.
Do you have any scientific evidence to back up your claim? Here's some links to science articles on organic food:
At the same time, if we're going to feed a growing global population, we're not going to do it by "organic" means.
Some scientific studies on this conclude organic food can't feed the world while others say it can:
Maybe I missed it but I didn't see one key way to feed the world in any of the articles above, cutting out a lot of meat if not moving to a vegetarian diet. Raising animals to eat requires more land to grow the food to feed them than if people didn't eat meat.
Falcon
Oh, don't take what I wrote in that last paragraph to mean I'm vegetarian, I'm not. I love going to BBQs where we'll cook some frog legs, gator tail, and wild boar or hog.Should there be a Law?
Is it possible for GM crops to cross-polinate/infect non-GM varieties?
Yes cross pollination can happen, and does. Actually because it happens superweeds are being created.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Monsanto's dominance stems from the destruction of its European competitors by so-called "activists". The EU was happy to back them and ban GM crops. They had provided a ready made excuse to maintain Europe's barriers to trade as the old barriers came down. You can re-use wheat 2 or 3 times, then it drifts too far from the parent crop and yield plummets. This is why organic farmers purchase named varieties from seed companies.
Wow, that's definitely a case of comparing apples to a rack of lamb dipped in trans fats.
GM crops have been evaluated extensively by the FDA and USDA. They've even been pulled from the market when they were shown to be other than safe. I don't remember the name of the corn but it was removed from the market because it turned out that the pesticide it was producing was also toxic to the butterflies that fed on it.
No one was claiming that Nuclear plants were without risk, just that the risks were manageable and being managed appropriately. My understanding of Chernobyl was that the plant wasn't being managed appropriately, The existence of Nuclear plants from the same era around the world that haven't melted down (France has a lot of them) shows that the first part can be true.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
The extra yield doesn't come for free, more energy is used, the sunlight is essentially free, but more water will also be used;
Evidence?
if you think monsanto is able to give you a free lunch then perhaps you should consult the laws of thermodynamics and the processes of cellular biology.
I'm aware that the processes of cellular biology aren't already maximally efficient; there's room for improvements.
I agree with your premise but not your observations about organic farming, most organic farming techniques emphasise less water use.
When you have to grow three tomatoes for every one you can take to market, that's a great deal of water waste, regardless of how much "less water" you're using per crop. The fact that organic produces so much less usable crop completely obviates the gains in water efficiency.
But given their track record I simply don't believe them.
Their track record of success in the field of plant breeding? Their track record of charitable contributions worldwide to the tune of 30 million dollars? Their track record of funding public research all over the country?
Compared to the track record of the anti-GMO hysterics - wrong on every substantive point - I actually think they come out looking ok. Not saintly, but then no corporation is. But they're not "pure evil." What nonsense!
I don't necessarily disagree with the science but a full balanced scientific review of the technology is not going to be forthcoming from Monsanto's management, and that is all I am really wanting...
Do you think that Monsanto is the only outfit in the nation doing work on GMO's? The scientific review is already out there. I've been telling you what they determined! If you want it, go out and get it!
And for you to claim that I was making such an argument is ingenuous at best.
It's the inevitable result of turning our back on GMO technologies. There's simply too many people to feed with inefficient, wasteful organic farming. Too many people to risk widespread e. coli poisoning. Too many people to expose to pesticides, either in the crop naturally, or on the surface of produce people didn't wash because they thought "oh, organic means no pesticides."
that's part of the strategy herbicide resistant crops so you can be completely indiscriminant in your use of herbicides.
Wrong again. The point is to use blanket coverage of pesticides once, when weeds are especially susceptible to them; instead of having to hit the weeds over and over again, because you had to wait for your crops to mature enough to be resistant to pesticide drift and other accidental exposure.
Varietals like glyphosphate-resistant crops result in the use of less pesticides overall. Even more so when we consider crops like Bt corn and soybeans, which can protect themselves from insect pests without the need for pesticide sprays.
Pesticides are expensive. They constitute a large portion of a farmer's budget. Reducing the required applications is a large part of how GMO crops make economic sense for farmers, and ecological sense for the rest of us.
Perhaps you are shilling for them then?
Maybe you own an organic farm? We could play this all day.
The truth of the matter is that I researched some of Monsanto's crops in the USDA, and even locked horns with them at one point, for doing resistance studies that they would have preferred to do in-house (in case the results were unflattering.) We did the studies anyway, of course.
I'm not shilling for anybody but the science, here. I don't get paid by Monsanto, but I know a lot of the people that are being slandered here - personally - and it's tiring to have them accused of being "pure evil", and worthy of being murdered, for the crime of wanting to feed people.
I never have frustrations, the reason is, to wit:
If at first I don't succeed, I quit!
One human mistake caused the Bhopal tragedy, too.
Human beings screw a lot of things up. The only guarantee that can be made in science is that human being will screw thing up.
Nuclear power was such an unsafe technology, one human screw-up caused what we now call a "Chernobyl-sized" disaster.
One human mistake in genetic engineering could do something like.... maybe make wheat store the element arsenic in it's seeds. That's a screw-up most of humanity would not survive.
Oh, and please don't you dare EVEN suggest one single scientific study done during the Dubya White House counts. Mr. Dubya "I think we'll doctor the NOAA studies to hide global warming" lost his science card. Every bit of science done during Dubya White House gets re-done from square one.
...and the US does not protect their farmers ...?
Hell yes they do! and so does every other western nation...
But in Europe the rejection of GM crops is by the consumers not the farmers (the farmers like GM crops they get subsidies for growing them, but they also get bad press and cannot sell them...)
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
"The reason is to increase yield of meat or milk per animal. Yet it seems that you're bothered by even the possibility that the farmer may benefit..."
Bugger off. I come from a long line of diary farmers.
I have grown up with a love for animals, but also an understanding that farm animals have to be productive. That doesn't mean they are a milk machine, they are living animals which earn respect.
In my personal opinion, giving them growth hormones is uncalled for and blurs the line between a living being and some kind of meatmachine producing milk.
Growth hormones in livestock are banned here in Europe, and I believe with good reason.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
1. no, the us does not protect its farmers anywhere near as zealously as the europeans. no one does
2. if the european consumers reject gm food, they are morons. OH NOES, IT HAS GENEZ! SAVE US!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it