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Avoiding GM Foods? Monsanto Says You're Overly Fussy
blackbeak writes "The BBC today characterized those who avoid GM foods as overly fussy, the very same day that the Wall Street Journal announced that picky eating may be recognized in the 2013 DSM as a psychiatric disorder. The DSM item refers to something completely different, though I'm sure many will confuse the two. Of course, this was not done without subterfuge; the BBC's author, Professor Jonathan Jones, in no way indicates his close ties to Monsanto. Point by point Jones regurgitates the same pro-GM arguments debunked numerous times all over the net for years, while serving up some stale half facts too."
They're the guys overly fussy about protecting their intellectual property in genetic modification, right?
I'm sorry but TFA says 'viewpoint' quite clearly. Apparently his points have been 'debunked numerous times' and his facts are 'stale half facts', but where are the links supporting these claims?
I think the [MS Word] paperclip is a great idea. - Miguel de Icaza
OH! That's what GM stands for. Good thing the summary mentions that. Oh, wait...
that's teh shizzle bizzle
Don't forget the fact that they create a monopoly by requiring farmers that plant their seeds to exclusively use certain brands of pesticide and fertilizers.
It is the universe that makes fun of us all.
that would be the same naturalnews that have such a firm grasp on the concept of medicine then..
For example their wonderful views on MMR http://www.naturalnews.com/025596_vaccines_immune_system_doctors.html
The best way to find the problems is to put it into mass use.
Health problems are often subtle, and frequently masquerade as something else.
As a non-obese diet caffeine free soda drinker in his early thirties that has recently found out he is diabetic ... I will eat GM food and use GM and nano products. Please make em available. If other people are to scared of the bogey man then great I'll have benefits they don't.
Like diabetes, eh?
It's completely ridiculous that they can't give GM crops to starving people because protestors,
It's completely ridiculous that there are starving people, with all the food that goes wasted or goes into ethanol/biodiesel. Mechanization -> unlimited abundance. Poverty is now a political problem more than anything else.
Please figure out a way to make carb free bread that doesn't suck.
How about this: your body can't handle bread. Stop eating it. That'd be the smart thing to do.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Very true. Monsanto and friends have bought off the political side and continue to lobby heavily so that clear labels on GM food are not required - preventing consumers from making an informed choice in the free market. Now as part of this broader campaign of voter/consumer deception, they just need to convince all the consumers that are not paying attention that their products are all A-Ok for consumption - so they trot out people like this Jonathan Jones so called "professor" to use his credentials to sway public opinion.
They have to do this campaign to deceive, since consumers tend to avoid GM Food in droves - just look at how fast McDonald's had to drop GM potatoes from their fries. They may be able to buy politicians and hide their GM labels, but consumers are still a force to be reckoned with, and thanks to the internet - more informed than ever.
How is this different to pesticide use, feed use, treatments, preparations et al? You aren't told about any of those either.
It's a little terrifying how much power Monsanto has in the US and really, the world. They have farmers all over the world under their thumb through royalty payments and the patents they hold on certain traits. There are plenty of cases where farmers have legitimately planted NON-GMO soy and corn only to find that pollen from their neighbors farms has drifted into their field and GMO'ed their crops. These farmers now have to supply the burden of evidence to show their innocence if Monsanto chooses to chase them into court over patent infringement. Monsanto has single-handedly, in a single generation of farmers, cut out seed saving. This is the single most important advancement that allowed us as a species to move from casual, opportunistic farmers to the agrarian based society we enjoy today.
I don't begrudge Monsanto for trying something new, but I am concerned with their disregard for the wellbeing of farmers and for their consumers. Over the last twenty years there has been mounting evidence to show that pests are developing resistance to BT Toxin and that many other crops are inadvertently horizontally transferring BT genes. But wait! There's more!
In recent studies researchers have found that BT maize (corn) can cause serious health problems in mammals. A diet heavy in GMO corn caused rats to develop liver and kidney problems. Most of the corn raised in the US carries the BT gene, along with a few other, like the RoundUp Ready. I'm sure you're thinking to your self, "gee, I'm glad I don't eat very much corn!" Oh, but you do. Almost everything that isn't a vegetable or a fruit found in American grocery stores has some form of corn in it. From ascorbic acid, citric acid, corn starch, high fructose corn syrup, food colorings and ink, and even some waxes applied to fruit are all derived from corn.
I'm not a biochemist and I certainly don't have any idea how rat models scale (or don't scale) up to humans, but the study cited above suggests that a diet rich in BT corn (which most of us well-fed americans eat) might be bad for us. Perhaps some diversity and choice in our market would be a good thing. At least some public discussion about this subject, and less media schilling on behalf of giant multi-nationals would definitely be welcome.
This one's tricky. You have to use imaginary numbers, like eleventeen... --Hobbes
The only thing ridiculous is your ignorance of science.
There is nothing in glyphosate that will stick around beyond a very short period or leech itself into the ground and modify it future non-glyphosate protected seeds will no grow.
Please show some scientic info that even hints at soil being modified by glyphosate protected seeds so they will not grow other seeds.
You do more damage to the soil for a longer time by using vinegar based herbicides then you do with round-up and glyphosate
They are also into putting family farms out of business[0] and monopolizing future food stocks[1]. Overly fussy? screw you monsanto. frickin crooks.
[0] - http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/26/eveningnews/main4048288.shtml
[1] - http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7529
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Vitamin A.
Humans can synthesize vitamin D when they are exposed to sunlight.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I've grown GM crops, and I've grown heirloom crops using hydro, soil, organic, chemical, SEA-90, etc.
Under identical nutrient regimens across multiple crop tests, the heirlooms ALWAYS tasted better than the GM. Sure, they were smaller, but then I had a full bioassay done on a sample from each plant - all the heirlooms had higher nutritional content PER FRUIT, despite being MUCH smaller in mass versus the GM ones. The GM stuff was flavorless, near-malnourished, and like cardboard made wet in texture.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
This is right, roundup does not prevent non-resistent plants from growing where it was applied. So yes, Monsanto is evil, but the grandparent AC claim is false, unless AC wants to log in and clarify.
Indeed. Monsanto is filthy. I grew up in Caholia, IL, two miles south of the Monsanto plant in Sauget, before the Clean Air Act was enacted in 1970. They dirtied the air so badly that you literally could not breathe if you drove up highway 3 past the plant with your windows down; what passed for air literally burned your lungs. Since Nixon signed the Clean Air Act, you seldom smell anything driving past.
Knowing how little Monsanto cares about anyone's health, no way will I knowingly touch any food Monsanto produced until it's heavily regulated, and maybe not even then.
IIRC while they were filthying up the air their motto was "better living through chemistry", a blatant lie. Why should I listen to anything they say today?
Free Martian Whores!
I agree with your comment, but you might want use another introduction next time:
It reminds me of how the Romans brought in lead piping for their water. They thought it was great - water pumped to your home, the ultimate sign that you'd made it. An entire ruling class slowly poisoning themselves.
The calcium in the water was deposited on the pipes, which prevented the introduction of lead in the water: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/leadpoisoning.html
Disclaimer: This opinion was created without the use of any facts
Again, it's not that simple.
What helped bacteria get so resistant to antibiotics so quickly, was horizontal gene transfer. Bacteria exchange short loops of DNA from one bacterium to another, even across entirely different species. So once one bacterium had that advantage, suddenly a lot more bacteria than its descendants started to have the same resistance. So you don't just have MRSA, but also antibiotic-resistant TBC and a few others by now.
And it's the _same_ genes that confer resistance to the same antibiotics. Convergent evolution would have produced different combinations in different species, or even in different batches of the same bacterium which developed it independently. But that's largely not the case.
The biggest pain in the butt isn't evolution, is horizontal gene transfer.
And in the case of Roundup-resistance, what we're seeing in those super-weeds isn't just some freak other gene that also blocks Roundup, but basically a verbatim copy of Monsanto's gene. What we're seeing is horizontal gene transfer again.
And if you had read my previous message, we also have a pretty darned good idea about _how_ that kind of thing happens. There's an entire class of bacteria whose very survival depends on transferring genes from one plant to another. It's mostly genes which cause a root tumour in which said bacteria thrive, but essentially it can be loaded with any payload you wish. (That's _how_ the GM companies transfer for example a pesticide producing gene from a non-plant species to grain.) And occasionally it can on its own transfer a bit more, or the wrong segment.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Tell that to Mr. Schmeiser. Never bought their product and was sued by Monsanto because THEY contaminated HIS field. http://www.percyschmeiser.com/ Sounds like you just don't want to accept that Monsanto really is as evil as they appear.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.