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."

Comments

GM

[rossdee]

I Want to avoid Ford, Chrysler, and Toyota foods too

Re:GM

[blackest_k]

I just want to avoid Monsanto's products GM food might be 100% harmless but Monsanto isn't.

Re:GM

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

Spot on.

Although I don't agree with John's 'close ties to Monsanto. If you actually follow up on the links provided, Prof. Jones is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for Mendel Biotechnologies, which in turn does business with Monsanto.

This does not qualify him as a shill.

And I agree with his point that regulation is creating monstrosities like Monsanto, only not with his answer: regulate less.

It took us decades to fully realize the danger of radioactive materials, it might take decades to fully understand the implications of GM. Until we have a reasonable comprehension of the dangers and risks, we should use other methods for improving crop yields, which, also as the Prof. tells, are to be easily found in better irrigation and fertilisation for third world countries.

And let's not forget; famine is mostly an economical problem these days, bringing in the likes of monsanto to 'solve' this will not bring relief to the starving and ill nourished people of the world.

Re:GM

[FriendlyLurker]

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.

Re:GM

[Dachannien]

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.

That's kind of like saying that consumers are underinformed because there are no autism warning labels on vaccines. Anti-vaccine people aren't demonstrating that they're more informed than the rest of us - they're just demonstrating that they don't know WTF they're talking about.

Same applies to the anti-GM-food people who try to get the public into a panic by suggesting that GM food will make them sick or whatever, when the true agenda of the people who started the anti-GM movement is simply a far-left anti-corporate one. The misinformation they spread about GM foods is just as bad, if not worse, than the lack of information about which products are and aren't genetically modified.

That said, Monsanto is a bunch of assholes because they sue farmers for doing what farmers are supposed to do.

Re:GM

[stonewallred]

I agree with both of your conclusions. Throw in a bit about how the environmentalist movement is more concerned with lowering the US and Europe's standards of living to those of a third world country, rather than lifting the third world to ours, and how they oppose nuclear power even though it is the cleanest realistic energy source we have available, and you'd would be spot on. Of course, expect the wave of downmods to come heading your way when it hits lunch time in the land of the Euro.

Re:GM

[MoeDumb]

Monsanto: profits before truth.

Re:GM

[h4rm0ny]

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. We don't know what affect GM crops may have. They might prove relatively harmless to us directly (who knows?) but turn out to have a devastating effect on the environment. Remember that a lot of the high yields some like to report, are not because the crop has been engineered to be super-abundant (selective breeding has already done wonders there), but because they are engineered to resist pesticides that kill pretty much everything else. What does that do for run-off into rivers? What does that do to biodiversity and the general eco-system? What happens if these traits get loose into the wild or to the farm workers and local people exposed to the increased use of pesticides. Not to mention that if some of the GM traits do get loose in the wild, it's pretty much irreversible. So they've engineered plants that secrete a poison normally found in caterpillars to make the plant poisonous to pests. Sounds like one Hell of a survival trait to me. So a little way down the line and insect populations take a tumble because of this, and the birds that depend on them. Maybe everything will be fine, but the point is that we don't know and we can't reverse this if it does go wrong.

But leaving aside the biological issues, the economic ones that we do know for sure are frightful. These crops are patented. The developing world is Monsanto's poster child for GM crops and they'll do anything they can to get everyone using these crops. But first one's always free. If a staple food is monopolised, you're going to trust who that the licence fees stay low? Monsanto? Should there even be licence fees for growing food? And enforcement? Well, the seed they sell you is sterile. Terminator crops will not reproduce so you can't save seed from last year for this year's planting. You have to buy again and again. Sure you can try and go back to planting non-Monsanto crops. If you still have seed stocks that are viable. And if you can guarantee that their inspectors wont find any traces of Monsanto crops on your land. Good luck with that.

Monsanto tout things like their "Golden Rice" (such a dream name, that one) as helping the poor third world. It's been engineered to have high levels of Vitamin D. But why do some people in the Third World have vitamin D deficiencies? Because their historical balanced diet based on their usual range of crops, has been replaced with bulk rice farming because that's what the international market demands they grow.

But what's the genetically modified strawman that gets trotted out by Monsanto every year? "You said GM might be bad for people and our scientist has failed to find evidence that it causes disease X, so shut up, because there's nothing to worry about."

Re:GM

[B2382F29]

I think you did not understand the issue (or are a shill, you decide). The issue is not whether to have a "warning" label. It is whether there is any possibility to identify them at all. It would be enough if they just have a list of ingredients with (GM) after each genetically modified ingredient. (e.g. HFCS (GM)). For all those who love GM food (you?) it might also be great to know which product you need to buy to further the use of GM crops.

Re:GM

[h4rm0ny]

There are a lot more reasons to boycott GM food than just a concern about its effects on your immediate health. So it's not like autism warnings on vaccines. By lobbying to prevent people being able to find out whether or not a food contains GMOs, companies like Monsanto are preventing people from making informed choices. And regarding the autism / vaccine analogy, presumably people who think an MMR vaccine will trigger autism think that all combined MMR vaccines are similar in this respect. So it's not the same at all: people who take their children for an MMR know that this is what they're doing. Buy some rice and maybe you know it's GM and maybe you don't. You're likening a redundant labelling system with one that would actually convey information.

Re:GM

[h4rm0ny]

Actually, I should have also said that ultimately, whether you agree with people or not, everyone in a democracy has a right to make informed choices. If you feel that something is not a cause for concern, then the democratic approach is to persuade people of this. Not for a government to trick them into the path they've decided is best for them.

Re:GM

[zippthorne]

There are other reasons people might prefer not to buy GM foods, specifically Monsanto's, than just health reasons. For instance, suppose you wanted to boycott monsanto over their aggressive IP enforcement of cross-polinated neighboring farms, how would you go about doing that?

Re:GM

[erroneus]

While I appreciate some of the "wait and see" aspects of your view point, I would like to emphasise more your latter commentary that specifies that famine is an economic problem that Monsanto does not solve. In fact, Monsanto makes it worse. All of Monsanto's plants (living organisms) are covered by patents and other intellectual property laws such as trademarks. They have a history of taking advantage of the fact that plants, especially in agricultural/farming scopes, do not "contain" themselves. The fact that the wind blows means that seeds and pollen blow in the wind and travel to neighboring crops and lands contaminating them. And if that weren't enough, they use this as an excuse to sue people for "using their product."

Many foreign nations seek to avoid the likes of Monsanto even when famine is a problem simply to avoid legal entanglements with the giant.

So we don't need decades to learn what dangers there are in GM foods -- we already know a great many of them and are of our own making and society. To me, that is reason enough to avoid GM foods. And frankly, if we were somehow to get rid of that problem by making living things unpatentable, I have a feeling that Monsanto would pretty much disappear shortly thereafter... another problem solved.

Re:GM

[maxume]

Vitamin A.

Humans can synthesize vitamin D when they are exposed to sunlight.

Re:GM

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the business practises of Monsanto and the consequences everybody should be against, like seed debt suicides, life IP, improper applications of GM technologies and so on.

Re:GM

[lxs]

Well they did bring oil to the masses...

Re:GM

[h4rm0ny]

You're right. And thank you. Vitamin A is what I meant.

Re:GM

[Spazztastic]

Humans can synthesize vitamin D when they are exposed to sunlight.

I don't leave the house, you insensitive clod!

Re:GM

[h4rm0ny]

Or because you worry that turning most of the world's food supplies into a genetic monoculture might possibly be a bad idea. (Another thing that just occurred to me).

Re:GM

[Spazztastic]

and how they oppose nuclear power even though it is the cleanest realistic energy source we have available

I have a close family member who is a die hard environmentalist. She moved to Central America to get away from the US. I showed her all the information about nuclear power being safe, all the advancements, and it always comes down to "Well I still believe it's unsafe."

This is the same conclusion you'll come to with anybody who opposes GM crops or thinks 9/11 was a conspiracy perpetrated by the US Government. You can't get through to these people.

Re:GM

[Nadaka]

They also have a nasty habit of breeding strains that can not reproduce on their own.

DRM isn't that good of an idea for digital entertainment. But DRM on the human food supply? That is jumping off a cliff into cartoonish insane evil mega-corporation territory.

Re:GM

[h4rm0ny]

Right. And in other news, Osama Bin Laden speaks for all muslims, Rush Limbaugh speaks for all Americans, the Nation of Islam fairly represents the views of all black people and and all computer programmers are geeks who don't know one end of a football from the other. That there is a group of people who make as much fuss and try to get as much attention for themselves as possible whilst claiming to represent a group, does not mean that they actually are representative of that group. To whit, many people I know who consider themselves environmentalists (including myself) are hugely pro-Nuclear power.

Re:GM

[delinear]

Unfortunately, just as with the other examples you provided, the vocal minority are the ones who the reasonable people have to shape their world around because they know how to play the media/politics game.

Re:GM

[evrybodygonsurfin]

What exactly is the difference between one end of a football and the other?

Re:GM

[mcgrew]

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?

Re:GM

[mcgrew]

Prof. Jones is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for Mendel Biotechnologies, which in turn does business with Monsanto. This does not qualify him as a shill.

It does in my book. I'd listen if he had no ties, but his ties to Monsanto makes anything he says about Monsanto suspect.

And I agree with his point that regulation is creating monstrosities like Monsanto, only not with his answer: regulate less.

At the risk of a redundant mod, I'm going to link a comment I just made that completely refutes your assertions. Were it not for the EPA, you would not be able to breathe driving past a Monsanto plant. You need to stop drinking the koolaid and read up on some of the environmental disasters, disease, and sickness Monsanto and companies like it caused before environmental regulation.

I completely agree with the rest of your comment.

Re:GM

[Svartalf]

What they won't tell you is that there's a risk they'll peel part of the proteins, etc. that you might be allergic to from some other unrelated plant or animal matter and apply it to that other food that you thought was safe.

Sorry, the risks are quite high, really, for GM foods because of that alone- and we won't get into your line of thinking, because I concur with it and it's a whole level of risks above the ones I just alluded to.

Re:GM

[olderchurch]

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

Re:GM

[Svartalf]

Heh... They only last 28 years right now. The main problem is that Monsanto has taken to suing farmers for infringement/theft (and winning)- who didn't "steal" their seeds when the stupid pollen from Monsanto's GM crops cross-pollenated.

The courts are, in many of the cases, clueless about crucial details like the aforementioned, or other things in the agricultural space. I've some first-hand knowledge about what the Legal system appears to know and understand about many of these issues- and they're ignorant of a lot of things outside their sphere, namely the law. And, even when the law's explicit, they oftentimes don't have a clue as to how it applies to a given situation.

And this doesn't get into idiot things Monsanto's done like "terminator" wheat.
(Excuse me, you're risking the entire friggin' planet's food supply so you can make a buck and enforce doing so? NICE.)

Re:GM

[SomeKDEUser]

Asking that GM food be proven safe is inane. It is exactly equivalent to asking for a formal proof that every computer program existing now and forever be proven. (hint, this is an impossible and absurd task)

Now asking that every GM food be tested in the same way we test medicines is not absurd (probably excessively cautious, but hey). There is a procedure to get new edible species approved, and I expect it was followed. Is it stringent enough? I don't know.

As for the "poison" (btw, please don't shout -- don't people know their netiquette anymore ?) remember that water is poisonous. Poison is a question of dose, for one, and poisons can be very specific. What is poisonous to insects might not be to humans and vice-versa.

Digression: when one produces an new species, it is usually done through forced mutation and selection. Meaning you got to where you think you wanted to go through a random process. The GM way is less random as you put in the characteristic you wanted in one step (conceptually -- cloning is hard, and gene insertion and expression a thoroughly non-trivial affair). Thus there is not particular reason a GM food would be less safe than a non-GM one, quite the contrary.

Digression 2: there is also this argument that horizontal (inter-species) transfer of genes do not happen in nature. This is wrong: a large part of our own DNA comes from bits from viruses, themselves having jumped between species and bringing genetic material with them. So GM food are not something that could not happen in nature.

Re:GM

[BVis]

There's something I've never understood coming from critics of the environmentalist movement: Where do you get the idea that people want to drag down the standard of living? Does it come from the fact that you think most of the time making the 'environmentalist' choice (whether it be to recycle glass, or change a light bulb, etc) costs (most of the time, slightly) more money? And do those costs significantly affect people's standards of living? Really? Spending $3 on a light bulb will make me poor?

What exactly brings down my standard of living when I turn off a light when I leave a room? When I shut down my computer when I'm not using it? When I drive in a more fuel-efficient manner (NOT buying a different car)? All of these are 'environmentalist' choices, yet they cost nothing except the effort required to modify my behavior slightly. If you're so against changing a habit, to the point where you argue it damages your standard of living, I think you have other issues to be concerned about.

Re:GM

[Anonymous Coward]

A nuclear plant well-equipped with the latest technologies provided by advances in science and engineering could be perfectly safe, provided that it is indeed well-equipped rather than poorly furnished and well-run rather than badly mismanaged. The same could easily be said about oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico: the petroleum industry doesn't lack the technical prowess for safety, it lacks the will and common sense on the business end of things.

The real problem with energy safety, whether nuclear or petrochemical or of any other sort, is NOT the technology; it's the management. Any company that prefers cutting corners to cutting risk is going to be in jeopardy of misapplying safety technology.

The question isn't whether you'd want a nuclear power plant in your backyard: it's whether you'd want Tony Hayward running a nuclear power plant in your backyard. That's a different matter.

Re:GM

[spinkham]

Here's the rub: We've been genetically engineering food since the dawn of society. Society as we know it came from the ability to improve plants through breeding and mutations.

Before GM, we've been cross breeding and irradiating plants using X-rays or using mutagenic chemicals to increase mutation rate until we get what we're looking for. This is much more potentially harmful then carefully changing only the genes we need to.

All food is GM food. What gets that label is the carefully, methodically changed, safer food, while all of our foodstock has been randomly and chaotically modified over thousands of years. New GE plants are tested by the FDA, the NIH, and the EPA. New conventional crops get no testing. There have been toxic chemicals found in food sold that have been "traditionally" engineered, but none that have been "on purpose" engineered in in what has become known as GE.

GM food is safer then it's counterparts. I'll take the GM food, please..

BTW, for an excellent reading on the topic, I recommend the Whole Earth Discipline. Where he talks about his expertise (he's an ecologist/biologist by training) he's spot on. I don't agree with him on all the topics included in the book, but the arguments he makes on the rest (like urbanization and power generation) are also worth reading, if not the final word. But the GE and other ecological/biological topics he touches on are full of good insights.

Re:GM

[wcoenen]

It took us decades to fully realize the danger of radioactive materials, it might take decades to fully understand the implications of GM. Until we have a reasonable comprehension of the dangers and risks, we should use other methods for improving crop yields

1) Decades? German physicist Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen announced his discovery of X-rays in 1896. Less then a year later Elihu Thomson found that X-rays harm living tissue. 4 years after the discovery of X-rays, it was widely accepted that exposure needed to be limited.

2) I'm not convinced that it ever makes sense to be afraid of "unknown unknowns" without having a threat model. Don't we have to be afraid of everything in that case?

For example, it wouldn't make sense to say this: "It might take decades to fully understand the implications of reading slashdot every day. Until we have a reasonable comprehension of the dangers and risks, we should use other methods for getting our tech news."

It would work better to say something like "Reading slashdot every day is detrimental to productivity, because the time spent reading and posting would otherwise go to useful work." At least then we'd have a minimal model that we can analyze, discuss, test and refine. That way we can also avoid the same problems when we do switch to an alternative. You can't do that if you just cite "unknown risks".

Re:GM

[SomeKDEUser]

Poison and toxic in large enough quantities is, for intents and purposes, the same thing.

Actually, I cannot imagine something which is "poison" and not toxic at the dose. Conversely, I can imagine something toxic at dose which one would not label poison (water), but implicit in that is that you will only ingest small enough amounts, therefore, the expected dose is low enough.

But this is sophistry.

Re:GM

[agnosticnixie]

So hm... "hunting = animal husbandry"
"firewood = nuclear power plant"
"extensive agriculture = factory farms"
"mini = SUV"

Re:GM

[radtea]

That's kind of like saying that consumers are underinformed because there are no autism warning labels on vaccines.

Except for the part where it isn't.

For an analogy that isn't simply wrong, try: "That's a bit like saying consumers are underinformed because there are no contains mercury compounds labels on vaccines." By all means tell people what stuff contains and allow them to make (ill) informed choices about it.

But don't tell me I don't have a right to know what is in the stuff I put in my body.

Corporations are a pure product of state intervention the the free market: they were created in their modern form by the various Companies Acts passed in the mid-1800's. They have demonstrated repeatedly that as a creation of state power they need to be regulated by state power, including requiring labelling of the stuff they sell.

People have many reasons for avoiding GM foods, some of them more plausible than others, and it is not for your or anyone else to decide for them what or why they want to put things (or not) in their body.

Personally, I avoid GM foods because of what I percieve to be both the economic and ecological effects of synthetic monocultures. We can debate whether that is rational. What is not up for debate is my right to know what I'm eating, and without labelling there is absoluely no way for me to ascertain that in practical contexts.

Re:GM

[spinkham]

It also seems like we are playing with fire. We assume a gene has a specific function and only a specific function, based on a few observations, and we start messing with the genetic code to plants that produce our food, which we've eaten for thousands of years.

This is my main problem with the anti-GM movement. There *is* no food which we've eaten for thousands of years. Our history is largely tied to our abiliyt to modify our food, both plant and animal.

All food is constantly being engineered and modified. All food has been chaotically modified over time, thorough mutation and breeding. "GM" produce is carefully modified, tested, and controlled by many government bodies for heath effects. All other produce is not tested or controlled for health effects.

Kevin Kelly put it this way:

Suppose the sequence is reversed. Suppose genetic engineering is what we have done all along. Then some group says, 'No, we’re going to use this new process called breeding. We’ll create all kinds of interesting recombinations, we’ll blast seeds with radiation and chemicals to get lots of mutations, and we’ll grow whatever comes up, pick the ones we like, and hope for the best.' What would people say about the risk of doing it that way?"

The battle is not GM vs non-GM. The push for profit has given us radical increase in agricultural yield over the past 80 years, and we're not likely to stop looking for more soon. The choices we have are careful GM vs reckless GM, which is what we would call traditional breeding techniques if they were invented today.

Re:GM

[Temposs]

First, traditionally developed crop varieties are great in that they are selected for in order to grow the best in hyper-localized regions of the world, and to have the particular nutrients needed for the people of a particular region to balance their diet, and they keep the local ecosystem more healthy by naturally meshing with the soil and critters that are around. This is simply not done with GM crops right now, and the GM industry prefers going with a monoculture, because it's easier to keep track of. Our crop varieties have dwindled so much these days, to where we only use one or two varieties of most crops in the industrial ag system. Crops aren't being adapted to their environment. We're forcing them to work everywhere. This endangers our food supply because if a sickness hits a crop, it can spread like wildfire to all the identical crops around.

There may be an identified toxin in some traditional varieties, but what if those toxins are naturally counteracted by eating in combination with the other parts of that traditional diet? Nutrition science is sooooo primitive right now, and influenced so much by big industries, so that I would not entirely trust the FDA, USDA, etc to tell me that something is healthy or not, because the science just has not gotten to that point yet. Sure they can tell you the chemical makeup of a food and most of its nutrients, but they have no idea how that will mesh with the rest of your diet. The least healthy people in the world are those under the jurisdiction of the FDA/USDA, while those eating traditional diets under the jurisdiction of no food regulator are *always* more healthy.

The problem is not that GM food is particularly harmful in itself, but moreso the tactics that companies like Monsanto take in order to make themselves fantastically wealthy at the expense of the average farmer.

The 'terminator' crops, which can't produce past the first generation, when applied to a staple crop, endangers the food supply, especially in poorer areas. Once the majority of farmers in a country choose to use this kind of GM crop and throw out their old seed, they've become dependent on Monsanto for their food supply, and if they don't pay up, they starve.

The legal aspect of GM crops is the biggest danger, and until that's settled out so that crops cannot be patented and farmers cannot be sued for simply having a GM seed blow into their field, then we should avoid GM crops as a policy.

Re:GM

[spinkham]

The problem is not that GM food is particularly harmful in itself, but moreso the tactics that companies like Monsanto take in order to make themselves fantastically wealthy at the expense of the average farmer.

I agree somewhat that the leagal issues are a problem. However, farmers are choosing genetically engineered seeds for the benefits, and Matasano isn't forcing them on them.

The truth is that most seeds we've used for the past 50 years are single season. You get better crops from buying carefully hybridized seeds whether GM or not then you will get from planting 2nd generation seeds. Pretty much no farmer reuses their seeds for yield reasons. It simply doesn't make economic sense.

My problem with GM food has nothing to do with GM food. It has to do with patents. The large corps involved are getting tons of patents to lock out independant research, including good humanitarian projects.

The problems with Matasano and our patent system are real, but that doesn't mean we should be scared of all GM food or techniques. "Green" campaigns against GM technology that is truely patent and licensing free, created by non-profits for the good of poor nations, is causing people to die of starvation and malnutrition. Dr Wambugu, a Kenyan plant pathologist puts it this way: "You people in the developed world are free to debate the merits of genetically modified foods, but can we please eat first?"

It is a good sign that the people who understand GM techniques are the least scared of GM food. Most arguments against GM seem to largely stem from ignorance and fear.

Re:GM

[noidentity]

[not having labels state that they contain GM organisms is] kind of like saying that consumers are underinformed because there are no autism warning labels on vaccines. Anti-vaccine people aren't demonstrating that they're more informed than the rest of us - they're just demonstrating that they don't know WTF they're talking about.

No, it's not. Stating that something contains GMs isn't claiming anything about the health implications, just what the hell is IN the product. Your example of an autism warning on vaccines is stating a claimed effect of what's in it. A better comparison would be to a vaccine simply stating what is in it, with no mention of autism or whatever.

It really gets under my skin when people like you argue that foods shouldn't state whether they contain GM ingredients, simply because you believe that GM ingredients are identical in all respects, and that no buyer could ever have a legitimate reason for wanting to know. Clearly, he is a nutcase who believes it will ruin his health. No way he might simply not want to support GM manufacturers, have some weird allergy to particular GM ingredients, or hell, want to only get foods made with GM ingredients.

Re:GM

[networkBoy]

Actually those Evil Bastards do produce sterile crop seeds.
For those crops where they don't they might as well be, they sue you into oblivion if you save your seed for later.

Did you know those Evil Bastards own 95% of the soybean crop? That there is only 5% of the corp left that is not GMO? Just in case someone from that group of Evil Bastards is reading this: I plan on planting non GMO soy, just to keep the strain alive. I will send my heirloom seeds to anyone who wants them, free of charge. Sadly I only have a 10 sq foot area to plant, but I'm going to do it anyway, just to make a point.

Also you Evil Bastards: Fuck you.
-nB

Re:GM

[Aqualung812]

However, farmers are choosing genetically engineered seeds for the benefits

And, those that are not choosing GM seeds are being pollinated by them, then getting sued by Monsanto. Don't get me wrong, I think that GM foods are perfectly safe. I do not buy GM foods, though, because I know that the production of them puts some farmers out of business and destroys the environment though "roundup-ready" farming, which is basically spraying herbicide on everything and killing all non-GM plants in the field and eventually downstream.

Re:GM

[mini me]

No, it's not sterile. Farmers aren't idiots and they refused to buy sterile crops.

Well, technically, Monsanto does not allow farmers to buy GM seed at all. Seed is essentially leased and final product must be sold after harvest. Attempts to use the seed outside of the terms of the contract signed with Monsanto will lead to finding yourself in court.

Re:GM

[Carnivore]

But they did add lead salts (Lead (II) Acetate) to their wine to sweeten and preserve it.

Re:GM

[Nadaka]

I hope you enjoy the immanent extinction of the Cavendish banana monoculture due to its complete inability to resist a parasitic fungus epidemic.

Breeding brings variation. Variation means that a single specific pathogen or environmental condition is far less likely to wipe out or significantly affect an entire population.

It is bad for this biological reason, but also from the standpoint that a single company like Monsanto can effectively corner the market and hold the entire worlds food supply hostage if it is the sole source of viable seeds for major food crops.

Re:GM

[Faerunner]

It's not sterile, but it doesn't produce "true". F1 (first generation) hybrids bred together will not produce seeds that have the same high yield or in some cases even the same taste and look as their parent crop. Soybeans are like this. You buy high-yield seed from Monsanto. If you choose to use the seed produced by your crop, it won't grow the same high-yield plants that it came from. I'm pretty sure the reason for this is that the plants won't self-pollinate. They cross-pollinate, and the hybrids that Monsanto sells don't produce good seed after the initial cross.

You can test genetics with some store-bought produce. Hybrids are all over in the produce department and their seeds often grow a plant entirely different than the parent. I've seen it happen with apples and pears, melons, and squash... I'm sure it happens with many other plants. Monsanto can control quite a few crops by providing plants that won't produce true, and the farmers can't do much about it, short of spending a lot of time and money on trying to breed new high-producers for themselves. Self-pollinating crops might be harder to control, but I'm sure they'll figure out a way to do it...

I don't trust lab-modified foods. We've been genetically engineering our food supply for higher yield, taste, color, and insect resistance ever since the first seed was planted. Artificial selection of traits is part of why human agriculture was so successful. However, we have only recently started tampering with the genetic code directly. We don't usually eat poisonous caterpillars or pesticide-resistant weeds; why should we blindly accept that the things that we have inserted into our crops are "only poisonous to pests"? I'm not going to accept "The FDA says it's edible", because I don't trust the FDA either.

Re:GM

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Some may find this interesting:

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/lipid-hypothesis/the-vegetarian-myth/

He touches on some of those same points.

Re:GM

[spinkham]

Varieties produced by radiation and chemical mutagens can be and are sold as "organic".

I think most people's problem with GM comes from the misunderstanding of how limited a gene is.
We're not talking about putting in a whole chromosome. It's either doing the same thing as cross breeding (manually turning on the expression of certain genes) or putting a particular, very well understood, small piece of code to produce a certain compound in a particular tissue in a particular part of the plant. We have knowledge and control to that level.

What requires study is what that compound might do to humans, but its often a very benign compound found in may other foods.

Often, the whole point of GM is to reduce the need for "chemical enhancements to pesticides, or in fertilizers". GM foods are designed to be more hardy and disease resistant, as well as optimized for better yield. If you want to attack Matasano or Dow Agribusiness, go ahead, but their pesticides are a much better place to attack then GM foods.

GM produce is regulated and tested, non-GM food is not. At the moment yield is king over nutrition and flavor. What I'd like to see is better regulation of nutrition and safety for all new produce varieties, not just GM. That's a rational position I can get behind.

Re:GM

[Aqualung812]

Also, nobody's getting sued for cross-over pollination. That's a myth started by farmers who knowingly propagated seed against their contract, got caught, and lied about it

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.

ah, Monsanto

[FuckingNickName]

They're the guys overly fussy about protecting their intellectual property in genetic modification, right?

Re:ah, Monsanto

[data2]

Yes, and they are the same guy patenting pigs(!) which have eaten their crops.

Re:ah, Monsanto

[Spazztastic]

Yes, and they are the same guy patenting pigs(!) which have eaten their crops.

I'm going to patent any woman I sleep with.

Re:ah, Monsanto

[Culture20]

Yes, and they are the same guy patenting pigs(!) which have eaten their crops.

I'm going to patent any woman I sleep with.

That's called a marriage, and in the U.S. it seems to only lasts about 20 years, just like any other patent.

'Viewpoint'

[DCBoland]

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?

Re:'Viewpoint'

[SkunkPussy]

l2polite cuntfag

Obvious conflict of interest. Why is this news?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

In other news, U.S. Radium says radium paint is safe. News at 11...

Monsanto isn't an unbiased voice

[krisbrowne42]

I would personally prefer to stay away from Monsanto based products not because I don't trust their science, but because I dislike their business practices and media tomfoolery. GM crops are a double-edged sword by all neutral study, having definite benefits of their own but creating potentially disastrous consequences (super-bugs and super-weeds, which are nearly immune to conventional herb- or insecticides), but the Intellectual Property abuse that comes of their use is hurting more farmers than those issues for now.

Re:Monsanto isn't an unbiased voice

[Noam.of.Doom]

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.

Re:Monsanto isn't an unbiased voice

[cbope]

... and don't forget that Monsanto will come out with an exclusive patented super-weed killer to handle those pesky super-weeds. And since they are the inventor of both the super-weed and the killer to keep it under control, they win. It's a vicious circle that feeds itself.

Re:Monsanto isn't an unbiased voice

[txoof]

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.

Re:Monsanto isn't an unbiased voice

[takowl]

In recent studies researchers have found that BT maize (corn) can cause serious health problems in mammals.

Government scientists also read these things. See what the Australian & NZ Food Standards agency said about it. To paraphrase: "Oh, those guys again. Still using the suspect statistics that were criticised the last time they used them. This isn't evidence for any harmful effect."

Please don't confuse some of the evil things Monsanto does with the safety of GM as a whole.

Re:Monsanto isn't an unbiased voice

[Insightfill]

I'm sure you're thinking to your self, "gee, I'm glad I don't eat very much corn!" Oh, but you do.

"King Corn" is a fascinating movie that touches on this. Two guys rent an acre of farmland to grow corn for a season, documenting every step, from the government buyback contract prices to fertilizer and meeting with the locals. They also make HFCS in the kitchen and drink it straight.

But one of the most interesting scenes was where they break down how much food has a corn component, and actually do a chemical analysis of one of the guy's blood to determine how much of his diet is corn-based.

Re:Monsanto isn't an unbiased voice

[Joey Vegetables]

I stopped eating HFCS (but not corn in general) about half a year ago and while I did not lose the weight I had hoped to, I definitely notice fewer problems with hemorrhoids, as well as reduced cravings of varying types, less back pain, and less trouble sleeping.

pot calling kettle black?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kdawson complaining about crappy news reporting...heh.

Genetically Modified

[mogness]

OH! That's what GM stands for. Good thing the summary mentions that. Oh, wait...

Please give me GM everything.

[MikeFM]

All this alarmist bullshit that is hurting the availability of GM and and nano products is nothing more than people whining. Sure a small portion of this stuff may be harmful but it'll be overwhelmingly beneficial. The best way to find the problems is to put it into mass use. It's very unlikely that it is worse than the stuff people willingly expose themselves to - drugs, alcohol, sugar, fried foods, etc. Hell even vegetables can be bad for you. As a non-obese diet caffeine free soda drinker in his early thirties that has recently found out he is diabetic I can tell you that damn near everything you could want to eat seems to be cursed.

It's completely ridiculous that they can't give GM crops to starving people because protestors, that aren't starving, think it's better to let the people starve than give them more viable crops that offer more nutrients than other crops, which aren't even being offered, would.

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. Please figure out a way to make carb free bread that doesn't suck.

Re:Please give me GM everything.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are in the USA you are already eating a lot of GM food. But as for it being designed for your benefit, pfft, why would they do that? Current ones are for instance designed to leverage a companies monopoly in seed supply to a monopoly in pesticide.

Re:Please give me GM everything.

[nido]

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.

Re:Please give me GM everything.

[Anghwyr]

Why on earth do you need a carb-free bread? Unless you are allergic, just manage your eating habits in a normal way.

The point of the above sentence being: medicine is not always the best answer. Third world countries are starving because we 1. destroy their local farmers' economy by dumping free food on them (note that when the chinese are dumping textile on european / USA markets, we start adding trade taxes for a reason), and 2. destroy what food-production they still have by making it financial beneficial for individual farmers to grow cheap maize for our cattle, rather than food for their countrymen. (3. Because their governments are far from brilliant, but we're not making it easy for those governments either).

I can see that one solution is to make the few farmers these countries have be more efficient in producing grain with GM crops, but there's also the solution of 'lets stop to abuse the fcuk out of third world countries', which seems to be the higher moral ground.

Re:Please give me GM everything.

[DMiax]

Being a scientist, I would ask for the tests that show GM products to have a low risk of causing harm to the human body. In their absence, given the record of the companies involved that used dangerous pesticidal and antibiotics, I don't trust them to provide a correct view. They played with public health in the past and it would be foolish to assume they won't do it again.

Re:Please give me GM everything.

[FriendlyLurker]

You make it sound like choice is good - so why not label GM food clearly? . Why does Monsanto and their competitors need to lobby politicians so that they labels are not required?

Re:Please give me GM everything.

[Moraelin]

Just to make it clear what one aspect of those super-weeds is: if you're a farmer that doesn't use GM crops, if those spread to your field, then the weeds are much more resistant to herbicides than the actual crops. Your choice to plant anything else than what at least has the same genes just went down the drain right there. I don't think it's entirely fair to force that kind of a situation upon anyone.

Re:Please give me GM everything.

[agnosticnixie]

How will a company that makes people rebuy seeds every year, makes a pesticide that kills everything else, and sues the pants off farmers whose fields get pollinized by the monsanto seeds help feed starving people who can't afford that shit anyway?

Re:Please give me GM everything.

[value_added]

I don't need "lactose free milk"

Indeed. I suspect my milk is getting fussy being surrounded Monsanto's genetically-engineered, artificially-flavoured soy products. Or as Lewis Black put it,

There's no such thing as soy milk. It's soy juice. But they couldn't sell soy juice, so they called it soy milk. Because anytime you say soy juice, you actually... start to gag. Know how come I know there's no such thing as soy milk? Because there's no soy titty, is there?

Milk. Straight from the tit.

Re:Please give me GM everything.

[locofungus]

At least in Europe, this is really Monsanto's problem. The fact is that "the people" have spoken and the vast majority have decided that they'd rather pay more than eat GM food. The majority of people don't want it, so the shops won't sell it, so the farmers won't grow it. There isn't a step in that chain that wouldn't jump at GM if they thought it would increase their profits and they could get away with it.

There isn't a restaurant in the UK that doesn't have a sign "We do not knowingly use GM ingredients". Quite frankly, if they could be sure to not use them accidentally then there would instead be a sign "We do not use GM ingredients".

It's somewhat refreshing that, for once, "the people" have chosen a path that I want to follow. My concern about GM foods isn't that they couldn't be safer, or even better, than non-GM foods but that the drive to GM is being driven by the search for profit.

BP was drilling in the Gulf in the quest for profit. It made the choices it made because it felt at the time that they had the best return on investment. It doesn't really matter whether they were criminally negligent, too laissez-faire, or just unlucky, the results are the same. There's no reason to suppose that a similar scale of accident couldn't happen with GM crops.

Corporations have too much power and too little interest in "doing the right thing". They have as little regard for their host, the human race, as the malaria parasite has for its host.

Tim.

Re:Please give me GM everything.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see that one solution is to make the few farmers these countries have be more efficient in producing grain with GM crops...

Not really. Every time every one of these so called primitive third world countries gets Western Aid to modernize their agriculture the citizens of these countries always suffer. They often get kicked off of their land (i.e. in historical Britain this was referred to as the enclosure movement), for example, and their food consumption drops precipitously because most of the food grown on these Westernized farms gets exported to the West and the money gets put into the pockets of government politicians and corporate executives.

I remember once reading (a couple of decades ago) that some (IIRC) Mexican peasants celebrated because their government stopped receiving financial aide because of an economic recession that was happening in the market economies of the industrialized world. Things only got better for them without this corporate government assistance.

Re:Please give me GM everything.

[dkleinsc]

Because their governments are far from brilliant, but we're not making it easy for those governments either.

I'm going to disagree with that point, for a couple of reasons:
1. The governments of many if not most third world countries are in an impossible position of being in debt well beyond their ability to pay for it. Even worse, that debt is in a foreign currency (usually US dollars), so they can't devalue their currency to pay for it. The usual effect of this is that the International Monetary Fund basically controls any government action that involves the economy.

2. Governments of third world countries that take too aggressive a stance against first-world multinational corporations tend to get overthrown. In Latin America, the US has historically made sure of that, while in Africa the European colonial powers generally handled it. The unusual thing about Latin America's crop of socialist-leaning leaders (Chavez, Lula, Morales, etc) is not that they exist but that they've been allowed to retain power.

So it's not that the governments are stupid, it's that the governments are generally speaking subject to the whims of other countries and interests.

Re:Please give me GM everything.

[FriendlyLurker]

The fact is that "the people" have spoken and the vast majority have decided that they'd rather pay more than eat GM food. The majority of people don't want it, so the shops won't sell it, so the farmers won't grow it.

Too bad it has not played out that way in Australia. There they have deviously turned the tables: you have to pay to be certified GM Free as apposed to labeling GM food clearly.

In Australia, multiple surveys have shown that while 45% of the public will accept GM foods, some 93% demand genetically modified foods be labelled as such. Labelling legislation has been introduced and rejected several times since 1996 on the grounds of "restraint of trade" due to the cost of labelling. The controversy erupted again in 2009 when Graincorp, the nations largest grain handler, announced it would mix GM Canola with its unmodified grain. Traditional growers, who largely rely on GM-free markets, have been told they will now need to pay to have their produce certified GM free.

Woe to be an Aussie wishing to avoid GM food.

Re:Please give me GM everything.

[DMiax]

I am not asking to prove a negative. Probabilities can be bounded from above with some testing. And if there is a totally new effect that no one could imagine, well that is life and science. But if there is something we can discover now then it is our duty to try before we commit ourselves.

Re:Please give me GM everything.

[DMiax]

1. You quote me asking for low risk, then accuse me of asking to prove it is never harmful. Don't misrepresent my words, please.

2. How much risk? What about a good study with probability estimates and everyone can decide, or ask his/her preferred physician for an opinion?

3. It seems that you actually suggest to use paying customers as guinea pigs because testing is difficult. I must be misunderstanding, but if this is the case: will they pay sorely, should the product be proven harmful?

Re:Please give me GM everything.

[Zouden]

Not really; Monsanto didn't force farmers to use more Roundup - they just made it easier for them to do so. That widespread use of Roundup has led to the appearance of Roundup-resistant weeds, in the same way that indiscriminate use of antibiotics led to antibiotic-resistant bacteria. You can't sue the antibiotic companies because their products created MRSA, and Monsanto isn't directly responsible for the rise of Roundup-resistant weeds.

They still deserve the blame, however, since they directly profited from the scenario they created, but it'll come back to bite them soon - when all weeds are Roundup-resistant, they won't be able to sell Roundup, nor Roundup Ready crops.

Re:Please give me GM everything.

[s122604]

Like diabetes, eh?
Any reasonable evidence to back that up?, i.e. data that shows that a diet with GM based foods will cause diabetes, where the equivalent diet, with non-GM based food, would not?
I find that really hard to believe given that something like HFCS is defined at the molecular level, and is not going to be any different sourced from GM or non-GM

Or is that one of those special Fox News "I can make any kind of unsupported BS assertion I want, as long as I phrase it in the form of a question" type statement.

Re:Please give me GM everything.

[DMiax]

Definitely an informative comment, thank you.

A governmental survey is pretty much the best solution for introduction of new technologies... (of course a different test must be carried for any mutation!)

The intent is clear and complete and the list of assessments is definitely reassuring.

The only thing that rings a bell is that the submitter is only required to provide data. I suspect that the evaluators would be better served with samples. Unfortunately the governments do not have the money to run the tests and have to trust the producers for the results...

Finally, I do not appreciate being called luddite when I am just concerned about health. We introduced many dangerous technologies in the past without adequate testing... learning from mistakes seems wise to me.

Would you prefer "irrational"?

[QuantumG]

Genetically modified foods are just foods. There's nothing "natural" about selectively bred crops. Unless you're going into the woodlands and picking wild berries for breakfast you're eating unnatural food. Welcome to the modern world.

Re:Would you prefer "irrational"?

[izomiac]

Exactly. Modern crops have been artificially selected for over 10,000 years and bear little resemblance to their ancestors. Strangely enough, the leading causes of death are related to diet... Eating unaltered food is probably a good idea, but it's not like modern agriculture grows anything like that, GMO or not.

Heck, most genetic engineering methods (e.g. tranduction) can occur naturally, and probably have given the time-frame, so it's not like this is unprecedented. The primary difference being that a scientist is guiding it, rather than several generations of farmers waiting for it to happen randomly. Plus the farmer only has appearance and taste to go off of.

Re:Would you prefer "irrational"?

[Richard_at_work]

How is this different to pesticide use, feed use, treatments, preparations et al? You aren't told about any of those either.

Re:Would you prefer "irrational"?

[zippthorne]

To be fair, you can't do a full life-span study of *anything* in a time period shorter than a typical life-span, which means you'll forgo the benefits of things with few short-term side-effects for generations before releasing them to the general public if you demand to know all the long-term effects first.

Re:Would you prefer "irrational"?

[internic]

Genetically modified foods are just foods. There's nothing "natural" about selectively bred crops.

I used to take exactly the same view, but having thought about it a bit more I've realized it's a little silly for essentially two reasons. 1) The selective breeding that was used throughout most of human history introduces changes relatively slowly and involves either selecting out a subset of the crops you're already using that have desirable characteristics or cross-breeding with other crops that you're already using for food. So you're talking about a process that will lead to small changes over a series of growing seasons, which larger changes only being accomplished over a much larger timescale. Because the process is slow and usually involves selecting traits for things you can already eat*, there is a fair degree of safety automatically built in. Modern techniques of genetic engineering allow one to make significant changes to the genome of a plant over a comparatively very short timescale, and one can add in genetic material from a totally different sort of organism that may well not be a human food source at all. As such, there is a far greater risk of introducing significant harmful effects.

To emphasize the point that very different genetic material can be added, it seems that in some cases genetic material is added to produce toxins that act as an insecticide. I believe that Bt-corn is one such example. I presume that this compound is known to be safe (in reasonable concentrations) to humans, yet my point is that adding in genes from non-food sources for the production of insecticidal compounds it considerably different than, say, selectively breeding corn with bigger sweeter kernels.

Understand, I share your frustration with anti-science Luddites who assume that "natural" means good and "chemicals" are bad. I also think it's silly that people don't understand the level to which our modern food crops are a human creation (resulting in things like "the atheist's nightmare" video). I believe these things should be examined through a rational discussion based on scientific evidence. I don't think genetically modified organisms are generically a bad thing, but I do think that saying that directly injecting foreign genetic material into the genome is no different than selective breeding is disingenuous, and doesn't help us have a rational fact-based discussion of the merits of GM crops. Personally, I'm far less concerned about the health implications and far more concerned about the ecological impact, which I think is both harder to predict and harder to control.

Re:Would you prefer "irrational"?

[internic]

the people decrying the lack of long term studies about the safety of GM quietly ignore (or are ignorant of) the fact that thousands of new artificial drugs enter medical and over-the-counter usage every year without long term studies.

Besides any unknown deleterious side-effects, most drugs have well known undesirable side-effects (well, drugs that actually work anyway, as I've tried to explain to people who trumpet homeopathic remedies for their lack of side-effects). There is still a rational basis for taking a medication, however, when the problem it treats is worse than the side-effects. For many prescription drugs, weighing these factors is a significant part of a doctor's job (whether they do that job correctly is a different issue). It's true that many drugs are approved without study of their long term effects, but this is because with medicine there's always an ethical dilemma: If you approve a drug too soon, you may be exposing patients to unknown side-effects (or giving them a drug that doesn't actually work); however, if you wait too long you may be denying patients medicine that would help them.

Now, you might argue that some similar ethical dilemma exists for GM crops in cases where you believe their introduction could alleviate malnutrition in developing nations, but in developed nations where food availability is not a big problem there is no such calculation. Where medicine is hopefully only taken by a small proportion of the population who needs it (often under the supervision of a doctor), GM crops could be introduced into the food chain of a large proportion of the population on a relatively short time-scale. If one were to make an analogy to medicine, it would be like telling all patients across the country to start taking a new drug, which treats something that can easily go without treatment, which would be unwise and probably unethical.

Now, there is in fact a balance to be struck (assuming that GM crops, in fact, offer benefits) between caution in introducing a new technology and it's potential benefits. If you subtract out the people screaming about "chemicals" and "frankenfoods", I think you can find a rational debate about whether this balance is being properly struck, and indeed a similar debate does exist in medicine. It's just that in medicine the factors counter-balancing caution are much more compelling, so the balance must be struck differently. That's why it's sort of comparing apples and oranges.

Re:And I say

[Halo1]

Monsanto can suck my dick.

Given Monsanto's business model, that might render you infertile more quickly than you can say "Monsanto's SuperSperm Discount Pack".

Millions Against Monsanto

[mim]

Why Monsanto is Evil... http://www.organicconsumers.org/monlink.cfm

Re:NaturalNews talks a lot about this stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:GET A CLUE

[DMiax]

He did not do genetic engineering. Stop clouding the issue. It is complicated enough when discussed rationally.

2 words for Monsanto...

[cbope]

Fuck. You.

There is probably no more evil company on the planet. It's got nothing to do with so-called GM foods, but rather their business model based on blackmail and coercion. They are destroying what's left of America's agriculture industry and trying to spread their influence into other countries as well. If they are not stopped they will have a complete and utter monopoly over our food supply from the fields to the table.

I refuse to buy any product known to have come into contact with anything related to Monsanto.

Re:2 words for Monsanto...

[Anonymous Coward]

If I had mod points, I'd mod the parent up. The scam here is that Monsanto sells genetically modified seeds which are able to grow in the presence of Roundup, the pesticide that they also produce and sell -- after which nothing else except their seeds will grow in that area of ground anymore. Their required agreement to obtain the seeds includes not keeping/stockpiling any seeds for following seasons, thus mandating that you re-buy THEIR seeds every year, which are EXPENSIVE. This is putting Indian crop producers out of business and causing them to commit suicide, as they are going into debt buying Monsanto seeds and unable to grow anything else afterwards. Then if some of the crop goes airborne and grows in an adjacent field, Monsanto sues that plantation for patent infringement even though they weren't even involved in choosing to grow GMO crops. It's a vicous cycle that shows no end in sight. It's ridiculous.

Re:2 words for Monsanto...

[will_die]

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

Re:2 words for Monsanto...

[Bob9113]

There is probably no more evil company on the planet.

I was recently discussing Monsanto with a friend of mine. It went a little like this:

Me: They actually sued farmers whose crops got pollinated by Monsanto crops.

Him: And they modify their corn to not reproduce.

Me: Well, yeah, but suing farmers for getting pollinated is really evil. It's virtually a protection racket -- buy our corn, pay us. Don't buy our corn, get hauled into court.

Him: Yes. But making our food not capable of reproducing could end the human race.

Me: Hmmm, I see your point.

Re:2 words for Monsanto...

[freedumb2000]

You must be referring to terminator seeds. This technology is actually on hold and not being used, which is a bad thing IMHO. This could have effectively prevented cross-pollination with regular plants. They way things are now, it is entirely possibly that all plant life will be GMO contaminated at some point.

Re:2 words for Monsanto...

[Rayonic]

Wait, so if the corn isn't capable of reproducing, then how would it spread over the globe in some kind of apocalyptic way? And no, not all farmers will adopt it. And yes, genetic backups of original crops are kept by Monsanto and other organizations.

Also, I would think anti-GM people would be against GM crops cross-pollinating with other crops. Because of random mixing of genes and what not. It is possible to keep crops segregated so they don't cross-pollinate, you know. (Or they could buy the sterile variety.)

I think its a worrying trend

[Chrisq]

I think its a worrying trend when a company attempts to have people who don't like their product as suffering from a psychiatric disorder. The corporate masters of Western society are using the same techniques as the Soviet Government. What's next, compulsory treatment of people who avoid certain foods? I know that all they probably have in mind mow is having their detractors classed as mentally unstable, but if that becomes generally accepted what will the next step be?

Re:I think its a worrying trend

[Trepidity]

I don't think it's quite that. Even the summary admitted that "the DSM item refers to something completely different".

I'm not quite sure what the cause of it is, but there is an odd prevalence in mainly white, upper-class, liberal-ish areas of strangely heightened food allergies, with many people being supposedly allergic to two or three things that would otherwise be quite rarely found at all, much less together. Maybe there's a scientific reason that there are so many more food allergies among upper-class white residents of San Francisco than among lower-middle-class black residents of Atlanta, but it's at least possible that the reason is psychosomatic.

Re:I think its a worrying trend

[Chrisq]

Oh, the next step is mandatory vaccinations against all sorts of bullshit, like swineflu/birdflu. Oh, and Tamiflu is an anti-viral drug, not a vaccine just so you know. Be sure to tell them that when they strap you to a chair so they can ram it in you. Rumsfeld has major stakes in the flu business. That alone should make you realize what kind of powers we are dealing with.

Patient: But doctor I don't tink this injection is really necessary!
Doctor: Don't worry we have another injection that will cure you of that delusion.

what risks are we talking about ?

[Moabz]

Eating those crops _might_ not pose a health risk, you might not die from it. This can be and will be proven again and again, but that's not the issue.
Allowing a company like Monsanto muscle itself into the world food business by IP protected crops, that's the real illness that we must protect ourselves from.
There is so much evidence that Monsanto is a dirty company, anyone who eats there GM stuff must be a Microsoft fan boy.

This Mr. Jones is on the scientific advisory board of Mendel Biotech, which states on their own web page: "Mendel's most important customer and collaborator for our technology business is Monsanto".

Re:GET A CLUE

[agnosticnixie]

A) Mendel did not do engineering, he did experimentations on crossbreeding
B) He also did not then patent the genome of wheat or peas so that all german farmers would have to buy their seeds from his monastery, their fertilizer from his monastery, and their insecticides from his monastery, while suing people who would accidentally get his seeds through natural pollinization.
Die, shill

Superweeds

[idji]

what about superweeds that are now glyphosate resistant and mirid bug plagues in Northern China because they haven't been using pesticides on their bollworm killing GM-Cotton from Monsanto. Nothing is as simple as Monsanto wants you to believe. We are only now seeing the effects of decades of use of this stuff.

debunked?

[1u3hr]

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.

I'm afraid that "debunked numerous times all over the net" isn't a persuasive argument. Any nutcase can claim to "debunk" anything, and many do. You can find many self-proclaimed "debunkers" of climate change, evolution, the Holocaust, Obama's nationality ... anything. Having a bunch of bloggers attacking a topic doesn't have a damn thing to do with how scientifically accurate an idea is. Why didn't this guy actually cite some SCIENTIFIC refutations instead of a scaremongering blog?

Personally I think that Monsanto has some pretty evil business practices, but as for health effects to consumers, I have no problem. I don't believe Monsanto could cover up evidence of that if they tried. There are already a lot of unpleasant things in food -- pesticides, rat droppings, steroids, antibiotics, radioactives, etc, etc. As much in "organic" foods as anything else. Not to say these are fine, but that there are no perfectly pure and healthy foods if you examine them in microscopic detail. You have to measure and set a limit; but zero is just impossible. The real world is imperfect.

Bad Public Policy

[sqrt(2)]

These problems can nearly all be traced back to one thing: corn subsidies. We pay farmers to grow corn so intensively that it has become cheaper to chemically process corn into whatever food-like product we want than it is to grow real, healthy food. Our entire food chain is dependent on mass produced, cheap corn - but it doesn't have to be that way. Farms do not have to be operated on the factory model, and we don't have to sacrifice output to do things the right way, the sustainable way if good public policy decisions are made. We WOULD however be sacrificing profitability and efficiency and that's why market forces cannot be trusted to fix the problem, as the market will always tend towards higher profits regardless of the long term problems it causes. We need policy that will encourage small scale farming, and discourage the kinds of practices that we know are harmful to our health and the environment: chemically altered corn-derived ingredients like HFCS, use of hormones, over-use of chemical fertilizers and insecticides, feed lots, shipping food hundreds of miles to be sold. I'm thankful I can afford to buy healthy food, millions cannot and this is a tragedy worthy of the greatest of efforts to end.

Re:Bad Public Policy

[yyxx]

Quite right. Actually, the problem is food subsidies in general. In the US, corn subsidies are the big culprit, in Europe, it's milk and other products. Food subsidies in the US and Europe also keep other nations from developing a reasonable economy; if we stopped subsidizing food production in our countries, dropped import duties, and imported more from South America and Africa, those nations would actually have a chance to get out of poverty and develop decent, functioning economy. Instead, we send them "development aid", which simply gets misused as subsidies to our own corporations and disappears in corrupt governments and aid organizations.

Re:Bad Public Policy

[dkleinsc]

The real kicker about corn subsidies is that while the real economic effect is to dramatically decrease the cost of corn to Archer Daniels Midland Inc and other corn distributors, because it's paid to farmers rather than the companies directly any Senate candidate from any state that depends on corn for a large portion of its economic output would get creamed if they failed to support corn subsidies. Oh, and of course most senators from corn-heavy states get significant donations from ADM.

Why did I focus on the Senate? Because the Senate is the only place where the representation of 11 states with relatively small population can prevail over the vast majority of the population of the country.

Re:Bad Public Policy

[drinkypoo]

It's not that funny, c6gunner is a long-term troll. Check his posting history if you don't believe me.

The simple truth is that factory farming is inherently harmful. Literally everything about "Green Revolution" agriculture is inferior to what we were doing before, with simple crop rotation. And that in turn is inherently inferior to no-till forms of agriculture like permaculture where plants are grown in guilds which support one another. Of course, there is one superior aspect to growing food in monocultural fields: machine cultivation. Unfortunately, that is also a down side; nutrition suffers because the varieties grown must be conducive to machine processing, and that means breeding (or altering) them for shelf life, firm flesh, et cetera, as opposed to being driven by nutrition or flavor.

We need more distributed food production in this country. Having the majority of the food grown in one state just doesn't work. It's inefficient at best.

Re:They will ALL abuse the tech

[agnosticnixie]

The world is starving, and Monsanto is a huge contributor to it thanks to having a monopoly on their seeds, while roundup kills pretty much everything else, and of course their "license agreement" doesn't allow stocking seeds for the next year, and has led to farmers getting sued to ruin for having their field pollinized by GM crops. Fuck off shill.

So not eating Monsanto products means you're nuts?

[J.J. Dane]

So, basically Monsanto is lobbying to have people declared certifiably insane if they don't eat their products ..?

This is going to make child rearing so much easier..."Eats your damn peas,Timmy,or it's back in the straightjacket"

Biodiversity

[Max Romantschuk]

The greatest risk with GM food is possibly not the food itself, but the lack of biodiversity that using such crops exclusively will lead to.

As an example, the Cavendish banana is practically all the same clone:
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-06/can-fruit-be-saved

GM foods are not far off, since the genome needs to be tightly controlled in order to guarantee the presence of the artificially introduced genes.

GM Food supporters == Blind Faith

[FriendlyLurker]

The misinformation they spread about GM foods is just as bad, if not worse, than the lack of information about which products are and aren't genetically modified.

The evidence is currently against pro GM food blind faith supporters - the fact is that Pro GM food really "don't know WTF they're talking about". Quote from the link:

As of January 2009 there has only been one human feeding study conducted on the effects of genetically modified foods

ONE STUDY. So much for peer review. On the other hand, there have been numerous non human studies, and every single one that has found evidence that indicate that things might not be as rosy as Monsanto and friends claim has been contested by the GM industry - in some cases not attacking the science, but resorting to character assassination and smear campaigns.

If you claim that GM food skeptical consumers don't know WTF they are talking about - what does that make GM supporters, given the massive void of research into long term effects of GM Food? Personally I would call it blind faith - so I prefer my food to be clearly labeled and my politicians to be unbiased, so I can make an informed choice for me. You can eat whatever you want.

Re:GM Food supporters == Blind Faith

[FriendlyLurker]

We have been running a long-term study of the effects of GM food on the human population for the last ten thousand years, since GM food was introduced with agriculture. So far, we're doing okay.

10K years were of selective breeding crops in small isolated pockets, which then spread into other suitable areas at a very slow rate. Not mass worldwide introduced on never before experienced timespans like they are now. Further, the last 10k years were not dominated by monocultures, with all the problems they bring. whether we are talking about GM crops or not.

Show me one scape of evidence that our ancestors successfully crossed and then selectively cultured any type of crop with any type of non-plant based life (or even non-related species of plant) - e.g. with caterpillars, to produce poison protected crops. It has never happened before in human history. Claiming that GM food is safe based on "everything we understand about the natural world" sounds awfully like blind faith, at worst intellectual dishonesty.

Re:GM Food supporters == Blind Faith

[Grishnakh]

Sorry, I think it's scary as hell, and it's all about trust and reputation. Who's doing the genetic engineering? Monsanto. What's their reputation like? It stinks. We already know that Monsanto is doing all kinds of horrible things, like adding caterpillar poison genes to crops, making terminator crops, promoting monocultures, etc. They can't be trusted.

Why would you trust someone with a bad reputation to make safe food? Would you trust BP to do deep-drilling safely? Would you trust the designers of Chernobyl to build a safe nuclear plant? I wouldn't.

At least with drilling and nuclear plants, we have alternatives. There's lots of other oil companies that haven't had any major accidents (yet). There's many nuclear companies, including the one that runs all the plants in France, and has a great safety record. But AFAIK the GM food companies are few, and just like Monsanto. It's not like I can get food genetically modified by some nice small company with a good reputation.

Straw man

[Anonymous Coward]

The main argument against GM foods is that it is bad for the environment, not that it is bad for your health. To suggest otherwise is just a straw man argument.

Re:Straw man

[todrules]

To suggest otherwise is just a straw man argument.

But it's a GM-straw man, so it's OK.

not harmful to you, but harmful to the world

[yyxx]

Most GM food is biologically perfectly safe to eat. The problem is that it's not economically, ecologically, and socially safe.

It's not just genetic hacks that monsanto is into

[bl8n8r]

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

Healthy suspicion

[jonnat]

You have to be at least a bit suspicious when people ask Monsanto for more studies on the safety of their GM crops and, instead, they get a massive PR campaign.

Make a distinction between Monsanto and GM

[BangaIorean]

In the EU, Japan, etc., you need special labeling on GM food so that the consumer can choose for himself if he wants to buy it (or not). Let's not confuse Monsanto and it's policies with GM food as a whole...

About that DSM classification

[luckytroll]

The Monsanto arguments all have a lot of merit, and we should be working to fix that aspect of our agriculture.

However, blaming them for the DSM categorization of picky eating is a bit beyond. I had a friend who suffered from this picky eating disorder and it was horrifying. It started with vegetarianism, then veganism, then avoidance of an increasingly expanding list of politically incorrect foods. Eventually she became a skeleton who had to be fed through an IV because she was eating little more than a couple very specific kinds of white rice. With treatment, they managed to get her back to a surviveable diet, but it was a close shave. It wasnt anorexia per se - it was something else that Doctors need to be aware of. Making informed choices that make the world a better place and make ones diet more nutritious is one thing - succumbing to a psychological disorder like picky eating is way different.

Simple rule -- don't trust corporate assurances

[jollyreaper]

What did Enron say about their finances? Perfectly fine, perfectly fine, nothing to see here. What did BP say about their drilling practices? Perfectly fine, perfectly fine, nothing to see here. And what will we say in ten years when GM foods are proven to wreck your DNA and give your kids monkey lung and restless genitalia syndrome? "Who could have possibly foreseen this after we suppressed all the data? It's an act of a cruel and uncaring God, not us."

Rule #1: Never trust the prospectus. And taking a company's word on risk assessment -- a company with a significant interest in the risks being low to non-existent -- because they're going to be lying their fucking asses off.

Rule #2: Did you forget about rule 1? because I see you taking the salesman's word for it! Go back and read rule #1!

Rule #3: Oh, there's an auditing firm involved, a disinterested third party that gave a review. It's a bond rating agency telling you the bonds are good or an engineering company telling you the well design is solid or hey, it's Arthur Anderson! Your new rule is to make sure the third party isn't operating under the same moral hazards as the first, otherwise you're just getting yourself bullshat from both directions.

Re:And I say

[Khyber]

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.

Coounter-labelling

[Midnight Thunder]

Very true. Monsanto and friends have bought off the political side [guardian.co.uk] and continue to lobby heavily so that clear labels on GM food are not required [google.com] - 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.

Given this climate, the alternative approach is for companies using non-OGM food sources to label their foods as such.

I did a bit of searching to see what there was in this way and came up with the following links:
  - http://www.non-gmoreport.com/FDA_disallows_GMO-free_label.php
  - http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/europe-says-gmfree-food-labels-need-not-tell-truth-737880.html

The only thing I couldn't seem to find is some form of accepted label or logo to indicate GM free food.

Re:debunked numerous times?

[agnosticnixie]

Many of the starving african nations are there because food aid completely fucks up local agriculture and leads to their agro industry only being used for exports to fatten up eurasians and americans.

Re:wrong! roundup has no soil activity

[shadowofwind]

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.

Here's The Reason...

[pandrijeczko]

...too many people are far too full of their own self-importance these days to "never have the time" for anything - this is one thing you start to realise when you get to middle-age like me.

As soon as you hand over too much personal responsibility to big, evil corporations like Monsanto, they will exploit you for financial gain - that is the purpose of a corporation.

The solution is to take your head out of your backside and make time to grow a few things yourself - in plastic tubs, on a small patch of soil, whatever. No, you don't need to be self-sufficient, grow a few things so that you can feed yourself to a degree, then with the money you save use it to buy better produced home-grown foodstuffs.

Companies like Monsanto exist because there are certain problems that are created when you try to grow foodstuffs in places where it wouldn't normally grow or when it's only economical to grow it there in the first place if there is a certain minimum yield per acre, hectare, etc. We ourselves create those problems because we expect food at a certain price and refuse to eat based on seasonal produce.

Monsanto is a demon created by our own consumer demand - go back 40 years and foodstuffs were transported less, more of it was homegrown and took up a higher proportion of incomes because local producers had to pay reasonable pay to their workers.

I'm not one of these green "loonies" either, I'm more scared about the power we willingly give to huge corporations over what we may or may not be doing to the planet.

Actually, it's not like that at all

[Moraelin]

Actually, it's not like that at all. If you want to find out what's in a vaccine, it's usually right on the label. If you're concerned that the mercury in thiomersal in that vaccine will turn your kid autistic, nobody is hiding from you whether or not there's thiomersal in that vial.

Besides, since you accuse the anti-GM of having some far-left anti-corporatist agenda, wouldn't it make sense to propose to let the free market solve it?

But the concept of a free market is based on some key concepts, one of which is: perfectly informed buyers. No, really. It would be fun if all the Austrian school proponents (mostly libertarians) and the other right-wingers actually read what it says instead of just the bulleted propaganda points. That's the key assumption behind the idea that the market will sort out good from bad: the buyers actually know all aspects of it, and make an informed choice which to buy.

If a product's or company's survival depends on keeping the public uninformed, on people not knowing they got product X instead of the Y they wanted, that's a more gross violation of the very idea of free market than any far-left proponents ever went.

So you're telling me... what? That unlike those "far-left anti-corporatists", you're just against the free market? Or that it's only good until it gets in the way of the corporations, and then you're better off just bending over and trusting them to lube you first?

Re:Actually, it's not like that at all

[Logic and Reason]

But the concept of a free market is based on some key concepts, one of which is: perfectly informed buyers. No, really. It would be fun if all the Austrian school proponents (mostly libertarians) and the other right-wingers actually read what it says instead of just the bulleted propaganda points. That's the key assumption behind the idea that the market will sort out good from bad: the buyers actually know all aspects of it, and make an informed choice which to buy.

Bullshit. What you're talking about is an idealized, "perfect" free market, which economists sometimes talk about in the same way physicists sometimes talk about frictionless surfaces. Real markets do not in any way require perfect information to function well. And what, exactly, is "it" in the phrase "read what it says"? The dictionary? I find nothing about "perfectly informed buyers" in mine.

Re:Actually, it's not like that at all

[Myopic]

If your book defines "free market" as anything other than "unregulated market", then it is not in line with the contemporary understanding of the term. My guess is that the book doesn't actually say that.

Dangerous

[BCW2]

As long as Monsanto can sue farmers whose crops get "polluted" by pollen from GM crops, we have a serious problem.

Actually "the BBC" is not saying any such thing

[Raging Bool]

If you look at TFA more closely, you will see that this is a contributed piece, not the BBC's view at all. The author is credited at the foot of the article as being an external contributor.

By all means, let's have a discussion about GM foods, but please let's not confuse the medium and the message in the original post.

Re:debunked numerous times?

[pandrijeczko]

I agree that the current global economic model has it flaws but there are benefits also - money being paid to food producers & workers means they can afford to put in pipes for fresh running water, build schools for education & to get an improved standard of living.

No, it's not perfect and exploitation of workers and pay is still rampant - but those same people wouldn't work out in fields picking foodstuffs if they didn't get some benefits themselves from it.

Oh, and Monsanto are still nasty evil fucks also.

Golden rice

[Zouden]

Monsanto has nothing to do with Golden Rice. It was developed by university researchers and is distributed for free. Yes, in an ideal world everyone would have a balanced diet and we wouldn't need vitamin A-enriched rice. But the world is not ideal, and we do.

Monsanto has been pulling punches

[betterunixthanunix]

You may decry their legal attacks on seed saving, but Monsanto has been holding back their worst tactic: terminator genes. A few years ago, Monsanto acquired a company that developed plant genes which would prevent the formation of viable seeds.

Of course, here in the USA, that would not change much. Most of the crops we grow are hybrids, and farmers do not save hybrid seeds because of the unpredictability of future generations (you can see this for yourself if you want -- plant the seeds from some tomatoes you buy at the supermarket). The technology was actually developed to attack third world farmers who frequently save seeds, and whose countries do not respect patents on genes. Luckily, the resistance to the deployment of the technology was so strong that it remains unused, although it is still discussed at industry conventions.

Again, it's not that simple

[Moraelin]

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.

Externalities

[mpapet]

What you describe are called Externalities in Economics. Monsanto is waving away the externalities because they don't want to see them or ever have the externalities discovered.

The classic Free Markets ideology as practiced by Americans is to privatize the profit and socialize the costs and externalities. It's a form of welfare for the ruling class and their wealthy sponsors.

GM crops are also a poison pill of sorts for farmers who are not Monsanto customers. Monsanto 'discovers' their GM crop on an unlicensed customer's fields next door to their customer then sues the farmer next door for intellectual property violations. GM in this case is being used as a trojan horse for all kinds of other nefarious (albeit legal) economic activity.