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Activists Destroy Scientific GMO Experiment
Freggy writes "In Belgium, a group of activists calling themselves the Field Liberation Movement has destroyed a field which was being used for a scientific experiment with genetically modified potatoes. In spite of the presence of 60 police officers protecting the field, activists succeeded pulling out the plants and sprayed insecticides over them, ruining the experiment. The goal of the experiment was to test potato plants which are genetically modified to be resistant to potato blight. It's a sad day for the freedom of scientific research."
That sounds like terrorism to me. "Stop making GM plants, or we'll fuck your shit up."
Don't treat it as a religion, especially when dealing with stuff that can contaminate things unrelated to your "scientific experiment". Or with "safely modified, strengthened, disease resistant food".
I don't want your GMO "food" to mix with my food. I don't want my food to even have a chance to be contaminated with your food, even if you think it isn't dangerous.
You're free to do things as long as you don't infringe on my freedom. And at this time in my life, I want freedom to eat non-GMO food.
Destroying a potato field... WHAT'S NEXT??? This is just more evidence of how badly we need the Patriot Act.
so the activists were protesting gm crops, but resorted to using pesticide? i didn't know the potato was a pest...
not very 'green' of them, was it?
idiots come in all colors and shades.
.Play.Open.Minded.
I was wondering why they'd have "sprayed insecticides over them." According to the article, "the trial was also allegedly sprayed with herbicide." There's a real distinction there. The article itself is about as long as the summary anyway.
They sprayed herbicide, not insecticide.
Open-field testing of GM plants is an inconceivably bad idea. Fifty cops can't stop cross-pollination with unmodified crops.
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
Funny thing is that the movement that called for the destruction is a movement primarily directed against multinationals. Of course, only one plant on the field was from scientific research of a multinational, the other plants were from a government initiative to do genetic research without relying on hard to regulate multinationals. By doing the research themselves they were hoping to prevent the multinationals gaining the upper hand in such research, and thus making a lot of this obscure by calling in protection of their research via patents and secrecy.
Anti-science, torch wielding mobs know best! Like the anti-vax thing on the weekend where 4 cops and 3 security people removed a woman for not drinking the anti-vax kool-aid.
Trolling is a art,
I think the submitter of this article is a little unclear on the concept of what companies like Monsanto are trying to do, they are trying to control the food supply, to get a "piece of the action" like a Mafia every time you take a bite of food, and no one who doesn't pay them will have food. They are evil, and this little incident is nothing compared to what should be done to those parasites on humanity. Think of Monsanto and their ilk as the MIAA/RIAA of food.
Monsanto is all that anyone needs to say these days to show what is most wrong with GM foods. I'm sure all sorts of amazing and magical things can come of GM foods research. But when it is used as a weapon to destroy people and to control something as vital as food for humanity for profit, I have to say NO MORE GM FOOD. Once the problem of commercial exploitation is resolved, then let's revisit the many potential benefits of GM foods.
And before anyone says "profits pay for the research" I will just say I don't care. Find another way that doesn't involve using the results to dominate and drive private farmers out of business and off their land.
I don't care for the tactics used here, and of course many researchers in this area really are just legitimately working on ways to increase food yields.
On the other hand, there really are plenty of rapacious Monsantos and wannabes out there, who have quite legitimately given the whole thing a bad name. So I do understand the backlash.
Honestly, they'd do a lot better to try and get genetic patents eliminated. That's what causes a great deal of the harm here, whereas those interested in altruism or a reasonable profit don't need them. Unfortunately, those aren't so easy to uproot as a potato.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
There may be some controversy over the "evilness" of GM foods. We've done artificial selection for hundreds of years to create the crops we have now. If you look at pictures of wild corn and wild wheat it is unidentifiable to the lay person. In fact most people laugh at the idea of banana seeds, which are basically gone now. I don't have a problem with GM foods that are properly tested. I do have a problem with the legality. I think GM foods should be a government/international effort. When you hear stories of Monsanto suing farmers which GM strains in their crops from cross contamination or killing off seed banks that gets me riled up.
It's a sad day for those who wish to live in a world free of frankenfoods. It wouldn't be so bad if GMO could live happily ever after all by itself, but we all know that it's going to cross and contaminate everything else. We should have a right to choose whether or not we want GMO but it's existence seems to threaten normal (organic) food. If a coal fired power plant is spewing sulfur into your backyard and you shut down their plant or force them to install scrubbers is it a sad day for power generation freedom??
Everything is genetically modified. It's called evolution. Large scale production of GM crops has been around for about 30 years and there's no evidence of any adverse affects in any of the data. This is like when Copernicus and Galileo said the Earth goes around the Sun, every body got freaked out. The irrational fear of science and discovery lives on in spite of facts.
Its not only about science, its about a company controlling the seeds and controlling the price market.
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A sympathetic farmer was quoted as saying, “They [the GM lobby] talk a lot about farmers, but we are never heard. This type of action strengthens us and seems like the only way forward for consumers and small producers who are independent of powerful interest groups like big agribusiness. “
Which amounts to small indie software studios saying: "The developers of that new hot 3D engine keep saying that they are doing it for the developers, but they never come around to my studio asking if I even want competition from better looking 3D accelerated games, or if I want to buy their engine. which I don't!. So we are going to raid there server-farm in a peaceful way, delete all their code an replace it with more developer friendly opensource code."
Farmers are a dying breed, and thank god for that, they all seem to be ignorant idiots who believe that it's the duty of politicians and pretty much the whole rest of society to make it profitable for them to make a living by inefficiently harvesting each of their individual little plots of lands. We are already throwing money at them like crazy to keep them happy, now they also want to stop all progress because some farmers are scaling up, and taking new measures to allow bigger better farms with lower overheads. So the small farmers collect to tear appart their fields.... Nice. I'm looking forward to the day when the lone farmer is just a bad memory.
> That sounds like terrorism to me
Yeh, I guess people concerned with public health should limit themselves to shouting. Because megacorps pay attention, y'know.
(Most forms of protesting must sound like terrorism to you.)
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So the stereotypes you imagine to keep your world simple make you chuckle? Aw, that's nice.
Looks like we Irish are going to be screwed again...
I have hundreds of genetically modified dandelions on my unprotected yard.... where are the activists when you need them?!
I say don't drink and drive, you might spill your drink. Before you get behind the wheel just stop and think.
You can QQ about the moral implications of scientific progress all you like, but you won't be stopping it. Don't like stem cell research because it is an affront to God? Don't like genetics research because it isn't natural? Tough tiddly winks. It takes one researcher spending time on a subject, doing it right, and publishing their results. There is no stopping science.
If you are so terrified of a universe humans understand, shed the hypocrisy. Shut off your computer and all your lights. Refuse antibiotics next time you have a major infection. Reject models like the heliocentric solar system, gravity, electromagnetism, and all the rest.
Having a powerful model for genetics has the potential to outshine all the theories mentioned above in practical use for human life. It will doubtless be necessary if ever we get off our asses and go to the stars.
Aren't most vegetables and fruits that are grown today the result of genetic modifications, i.e. selective cross-pollination to promote beneficial qualities and mutations. I can't take these people seriously without ignoring 10,000 years of human agricultural practices. I understand and appreciate the people are concerned about long-term health effects, but anytime someone makes an argument based on some arbitrary limit, as in this is good and then you cross the line and now it's bad, I can't take them as seriously as I possibly should.
"and sprayed insecticides over them, ruining the experiment. It's a sad day for the freedom of scientific research." And a sad day for the bugs too, innocent by-standers in all of this.
A couple months back I read a blog where the blogger coined the term "progluddite" as a description of most self-identified progressives. This group demonstrated the complete aptness of that term.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
World hunger is a distribution problem not a production problem. We have always had more than enough food to feed everyone even without genetic modification. Get rid of the warlords and the corrupt governments, and everyone would eat.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
This is a good reason to think twice about fast tracking genetic modification and testing things in the wild
Yes, through preferential selection we have been practicing GMO for millenia. And yes, there's probably a good safe way to accelerate that process. But sometimes I think we play a little fast and loose with our food supply.
No, humans have to be terrified for it to be terrorism. For example, an IRA bomb in a rubbish bin is terrorism, even if they phone in a bomb scare and get everyone evacuated before it explodes.
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Here's something to ponder fellow Slashdot readers...
I've noted over the years of reading Slashdot a general liking of activist protests. I've also noted a love of science (don't we all?). Invariably though, these two movements come to clash. In some cases, we even see scientist activists, which in my opinion is in fact not science due to selection bias. Ultimately, each of us individuals will need to make a choice of whether to support the law abiding scientists or law breaking activists.
My personal view is that Rule of Law should be adhered to by activists. Just because society has overruled their agenda based on complex factors, doesn't give them the right to break the law. If they don't like something, they should voice their views in legal ways and understand that sometimes their agenda is not everyone else's.
unless humans are injured/die, its just vandalism isn't it?
So when the IRA blew up a large chunk of the City of London in the 80s or 90s, that was just vandalism?
Scientific freedom and exposing the public with all you can think of is not the same.
You can put gmo inside a laboratory to experiment all day and nobody will object.
But introducing it into the nature is not something that goes hand in hand with scientific freedom.
Else we could have Mengele's everywhere - or where should that freedom stop?
There are a lot more arguments I could bring all day against it, just simply keep gmo into confined areas and nobody will ever object against it (or at least not me) - but don't cry if you put it into public areas and activists come and stop you.
Since when did the police start actively guarding privatized scientific research?
When thugs are planning to destroy other people's property?
Presumably you don't want the police protecting your house from vandals either.
About 20% of the potatoes on the field have been destroyed, the researchers who are involved say that the end result is not too bad. There is however a lot of damage on the infrastructure.
The Flemish government will spend 250,000 Euros to keep the experiment on track
One researcher of the Catholic University of Leuven participated in the destroying. She will be punished by the university.
Bart Staes, a member of the European parliament for the Flemish Green Party, called the action "a democratic form of protest" and "civil disobedience". The Flemish Green Party distances itself from his statements.
The scientists have not yet decided if they will sue the protesters. They will decide this after they have seen the police reports.
Coverage in English on Flemish public radio/television. (The word "Flemish" is used so often in this post because Belgium is a federation, and the action was in Flanders.)
1) the total number of lawsuit Monsanto has files against farmers is in the low hundreds. (And most of these were for saving patented seeds to replant the next year. Which I still think is an abuse of intellectual property law, but has nothing to do with cross pollination).
2) Different plant species have different rates of outcrossing (mating with another plant instead of itself). A corn plant for example, will mate almost entirely with other corn plants and very little with itself. A tomato will mate almost entirely with itself.
3) Potato plants are at even less risk of outcrossing because they are propagated clonally. Potatoes from one year are cut up and planted in the ground to grow next year's crop and produce plants genetically identical to their single parent. No mating = no cross pollination.
In conclusion it seems likely you have not taken a course in biology since high school (which you likely slept through) and despite clearly feeling very passionate about the debate on genetic engineering, have not bothered to inform yourself on the issue, despite abundant and diverse sources of information.
No :-)
In my defence, painting protests as terrorism is all too common nowadays:
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Do you think we could feed 6 billion+ people with all natural foods? Think again.
In my experience, most of the 'direct action' eco-loons I've met on the Internet also believe that there are far too many humans on the planet and want to reduce the population to a fraction of its current level. Of course when you ask them how they plan to do that, and whether they plan to start by killing themselves, they generally shut up.
Selective breeding is not the same as modifying the genetics of a plant using a virus.
Selective breeds often means altering the genetics of a plant by a transposon insertion or gene deletion. These changes are just as drastic and unpredictable as those produced by genetic engineering, occur in nature all the time, and produce much of the variation that is selected for in traditional breeding. It's just that since traditional breeds selects based on the effect, rather than the gene itself, no one can tell you what strange and never before seen genetic alteration has just been introduced into the food you are eating.
A great example of this is a lab at Cornell that has actually tracked down the genetic alterations behind those delicious purple and orange cauliflowers that started showing up in organic grocery stores across the US about a decade ago. Both were caused by transposon insertions (genomic parasites often related to plant viruses) that changed or broke genes. But nobody protests or rips up the fields because no one, not even the breeders at the time, know what was responsible for the change.
Sources:
Purple: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2971621/ Orange: http://www.plantcell.org/content/18/12/3594.full
I might point out that nowhere are companies required to label their products as GM.
In Detroit they are. Every Chevrolet that rolls off the line is labeled as GM.
Then the answer is to stop that practice, not to stop GMO.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Dump enough insecticides on a plant, and you'll kill it regardless.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Well, the main difference is that GMOs can and do incorporate genetic material from completely different species, like the GM tomato that incorporated genes from a species of salmon, creating organisms that NEVER could have arisen naturally or through traditional agricultural techniques like crossbreeding and artificial selection.
Of course, if you know of a way that a fish can successfully crossbreed with a plant without laboratory manipulation, please let us know...
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They are heros for saving our food supply.
GMO foods have serious health effects on people who eat them. Way more dangerous than the corn fructose they are already forcing millions to eat.
GMO corn causes liver, kidney problems in rats: study
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I don't think "terrorist" is especially appropriate. But when they graduated from protest to the willful destruction of other people's property, they certainly DID cease to be *activists*; and became nothing more than common criminals, who should be forced to pay restitution and then locked away from society.
Imagine all the people...
I think you need to read the article again, this doesn't have one thing to do with Monsanto.
Hardly unexpected or new.
Destruction of such experiments has been pretty standard in parts of Europe for as long as they've been being tested.
In the past, a lot of experiments were moved to the US or other GMO tolerant countries to avoid this. Do a search on "gmo field destruction" if you want lots of examples.
It's an issue that combines opposition from those who genuinely don't like GMOS with other groups that want a ban on foreign produce for competitive reasons. The latter often runs afoul of the WTO when done directly, but it can often be done successfully when it's presented in terms of banning GMOs or in terms of food safety regulations.
They are not in it for the science. GMO foods have been created in order to patent our food. If they were really altruistic and trying to save humanity from starvation they wouldn't be suing organic farmers that had their crops negligently pollinated by their neighbours GMO crop.
Yes, any competent farmer will tell you we can grow crops without laboratory GM technology. Now, without fertilizers and pesticides, that's another matter.
Terrorism is the sowing of fear. You dont have to kill anyone for that.
Good-bye
I've got no problem with people having a say in what foods they eat. But it's worth pointing out that, so far, potato blight has contributed to the deaths of millions of people, while GM crops have killed exactly nobody.
Yes, there were extenuating political circumstances for potato blight deaths, and yes, the GM folks are worried about the future, not the past, but it seems to me that dismissing the known body count as irrelevant is the first sign of political extremism.
Like Monsanto even less than GM. Activists were acting against a malign corporation. Good for them.
You find me those potato seeds, OK?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Listen up brothers and sisters,
come hear my desperate tale.
I speak of our friends of nature,
trapped in the dirt like a jail.
Vegetables live in oppression,
served on our tables each night.
This killing of veggies is madness,
I say we take up the fight.
Salads are only for murderers,
coleslaw's a fascist regime.
Don't think that they don't have feelings,
just cause a radish can't scream.
Chorus:
I've heard the screams of the vegetables (scream, scream, scream)
Watching their skins being peeled (having their insides revealed)
Grated and steamed with no mercy (burning off calories)
How do you think that feels (bet it hurts really bad)
Carrot juice constitutes murder (and that's a real crime)
Greenhouses prisons for slaves (let my vegetables go)
It's time to stop all this gardening (it's dirty as hell)
Let's call a spade a spade (is a spade is a spade is a spade)
I saw a man eating celery,
so I beat him black and blue.
If he ever touches a sprout again,
I'll bite him clean in two.
I'm a political prisoner,
trapped in a windowless cage.
Cause I stopped the slaughter of turnips
by killing five men in a rage
I told the judge when he sentenced me,
This is my finest hour,
I'd kill those farmers again
just to save one more cauliflower
Chorus
How low as people do we dare to stoop,
Making young broccolis bleed in the soup?
Untie your beans, uncage your tomatoes
Let potted plants free, don't mash that potato!
I've heard the screams of the vegetables (scream, scream, scream)
Watching their skins being peeled (fates in the stirfry are sealed)
Grated and steamed with no mercy (you fat gormet slob)
How do you think that feels? (leave them out in the field)
Carrot juice constitutes murder (V8's genocide)
Greenhouses prisons for slaves (yes, your composts are graves)
It's time to stop all this gardening (take up macrame)
Let's call a spade a spade (is a spade, is a spade, is a spade, is a spade.....
You are correct that "The wheat and corn from 50 years ago is NOT genetically modified in the modern sense of the word" however I believe the point the GP was making is that the changes made by artificial selection were equivalent to, if not greater than, those that are now being produced with genetic modification "in the modern sense of the word."
The genome of B73, a completely un-genetically modified variety of corn, was published back in 2009 and I've had my head buried in it ever since. I've seen broken genes, moved genes, genes missing the sequences that should control when and where they are turned on, even frankenstein genes assembled from the pieces of other genes. All these changes occurred naturally in individual corn plants and are found today in B73 as the result of either artificial or natural selection.
For example, and yes, this is real, they make crops that have weaknesses so that you need to buy more pesticides of the kind they sell.
Citation needed. I know there are GM crops resistant to certain herbicides, but in the absence of those herbicides they grow identically to their unmodified siblings. I don't even know how an effect like the one you describe could be produced. But if you can back it up I will certainly look into it.
I was mocking that exact thing, how you can call anything terrorism. Bullying? That's "child terrorism". Reckless driving? That's "commission of terrorism with a vehicle". Begging on the street? "Economic terrorism".
I'm actually kind of disappointed that it was rated "+5 Insightful". I was expecting "+5 Funny". I did, however, nab my first first post, so I'm still happy with it.
I do not think many slashdotters would understand, that world over, resistance to bio engineered and gene modified plants is mostly due to business reasons.
Or the "Monsato" model.
Most GM food is owned by corporations.
They sell you seed, and you grow the plants.
Then you need to buy seed again the next year.... and so on.
So as local less hardy varieties vanish, the corporation can set its own prices.
Traditionally, farmers buy seed just once, and then keep reusing in normal circumstances.
GM model is trying to alter whats being done for many millenia.
Its more difficult than making old world studios embrace the internet.
So around all this, you have a whole slew of conspiracy theorists and wack jobs who basically add fuel to the fire.
So here is the opposition.
In countries where farmers are a powerful vote bank(eg India), govt mostly does the GM corp kicking here and there.
In the west, I guess, its the activists.
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I know that Slashdot has kinda anti-GMO crowd here, and it is quite mainstream for activists to be that way, but this is wrong. I'm all about carefulness dealing with GMO but this anti crowd is no better than homofobs - afraid about something you can't explain. I know, I know that this is again all about big bad corps again, but we don't live in socialism, guys. Corporations are doing good job with researching new products. However, they tend to neglect or ignore possible risks and side effects. But in nutshell - if goverment would do all GMO research, you would still be protesting, right? Because you are just damn freaking not reasoning.
Genetic modifications has happened since life on Earth, with or without help of other living beings. Heck, bees are doing this for million years. And one thing is quite sure - yes, you can screw up something big time, but it is also true that you can't really create Frankenstein - forces of nature it will tearn down/apart.
Now about gen-corps ugly pratices - genetic patents, cross field poluting, suing farmers out of existance - this should be solved by laws not by vandalism. Put your money on Avaaz.org or other organisations who does it proper way, pusing lobbying. Shouting angrily won't help your case in long run, no matter how righteous you are or feel.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Meanwhile if some weird corn or wheat fungus emerged that threatened to bring massive starvation to first world countries, people would be blaming geneticists for not developing modified crops fast enough.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
The problem here is that potentially we could have another terrible outbreak of something that destroys crops across the globe of stables like rice or potatoes (irish potato famine anyone?)
By destroying such research, these groups are potentially dooming BILLIONS of people to starvation when the next wave of plat disease strikes.
I'm sure they believe they are doing the right thing but they endanger us all.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Bad day for scientific research? No. It's set back of limited duration.
Is GM food "bad"? Dunno, jury's still out on that and it really depends which camp you want to listen to.
Is the licensing and patenting of GM crops bad? Oh hell yes. The goal of "crop lock-in" is real, demonstrated and rather scary IMO.
Would this be a good time to discuss licensing or policies to halt this type of corporate behavior? Definitely. In fact it's so long overdue we may have passed the tipping point five years ago.
For your consideration:
Haitian rice
Monsanto Lawsuit / canola
Monsanto Lawsuit / soybeans
Patented disease
University gene patents
I think that this imbroglio underscores the need to limit or do away with gene patents, as there is little chance that the men in white coats (or the ones in black suits that pay them) will stop their tinkering, and I'm not sure that it needs to stop.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
Other than, "it's new and people don't fully understand it" ? Or, ?
If people had that same mindset/fear of the unknown that they did when penicillin and vaccines came out, I think we'd be seriously fucked as a human race.
I seem to remember the potato blight being a terrible thing that killed millions of people in the Irish/Scottish/European famines. And I personally know a family in Newfoundland who were farmers - several years back their potato crop contracted late blight, antifungals didn't help, they lost the crop and ended up bankrupt at the end of it. A blight resistant strain of potatoes seems like a pretty fantastic idea to me.
Besides, the more food that we grow that doesn't need antifungals, pesticides and other "of course they're toxic, they wouldn't work otherwise" chemicals sprayed on it for it to grow, the better. I'd eat a GM vegetable any day over that.
(Mind you, I'm personally against engineering salmon to be 10 times bigger and growing them in offshore fish farms. Grow that shit in an inland fish farm where it's guaranteed that they won't take over and fuck up an ecosystem.)
Some nations are better than others, but in the USA the "Rule of Law" is just a phrase used when it sounds nice; seemingly, the people who use it more respect it less.
Reality is that the law which was initially something a citizen could comprehend and manage, it has grown into a job protection jargon and raised in complexity for political, power, and for extortion. Politicians are usually lawyers so they are trained in the game and they create complicated things they can later become consultants on or to help some benefactors. It can be made complex enough that even experts have a difficult time unless they created it. Its much easier to create mazes than it is solve them.
The most powerful lobby is the lawyers. Here in the USA, the legal code is so vast and complex just about anybody is likely in violation of something (depending upon how hard one looks.) Legal procedure is made overly complicated and the power of juries and judges to reason is greatly undermined and narrowed with the excuse of their errors but never mentioning that policies are brain dead rules where 1 size fits all which grossly oversimplify reality down to the level of some hollywood B movie.
We all see the rich and powerful get almost no punishment, conviction, or even prosecution while some powerless citizen is "made an example of" with inequitable "punishment" and even more insane we call the system "corrections" as if it does treatment and re-education.
Then we have large scale systematic idiocy like the black and white approach to crime and punishment. Mental cases largely get treated as if they are some "evil" person and locked up with the sane people and THEN RELEASED after a fixed time period!! A pedophile is sick in the head, if not "cured" they should be in for LIFE; drugged or whatever treatments fit their condition. Sure, there are error rates and we often use imperfection as an excuse to screw things up and make it worse. There is no utopia, when will the public wake up? I bet the schizophrenics off their meds do LESS harm than when we locked them all up for fixed time periods; at least in the public they CONTRIBUTE $35k per year average instead of costing $40k per year to jail.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Well in Canada consumer groups wanted the government to require genetically modified foods to be labelled as such - so consumers could choose. The government refused. Why? Because people might be scared off and not buy it.
Part of me doesn't like the kind of mob action described in the summary but OTOH if governments are going to choose the well being of corporations over the rights of citizens to know what they are eating... it kind of seems like they are asking for this sort of thing to occur.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
after seeing what the genetically modified crap monsanto propagates around (curiously after a while the crap propagates itself without help from anyone), this is a win for my stomach.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/01/13/0328221/Organ-Damage-In-Rats-From-Monsanto-GMO-Corn?art_pos=1
https://www.facebook.com/notes/wood-prairie-farm/the-complete-text-of-dr-don-m-hubers-letter-to-usda-secretary-vilsak/197340006962367
http://vimeo.com/22997532
Read radical news here
"Thanks, but no thanks, we don't want your GMO anymore, we saw what it does."
Speak for yourself, and not for the rest of us.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
This seems like a straw man argument. While there may be wild-eyed protesters with ill thought out objections to change, it's crazy to pretend that everyone who disagrees with you does so for the poorest of reasons:
At least some of the objections are because
Unnatural is not the only objection - it's not even a good one.
At least some of the objections are because
There can and sometimes must be. During the last world war, scientists performed all sorts of barbaric experiments on those they thought of as less human. In very very few of these cases, useful science was produced. In more recent decades, coloured people in the americas were deliberately infected with diseases by scientists, to "advance medical knowledge". But it is ethically unacceptable to treat humans in that way. In third world countries, drug studies are carried out that would be unethical in the west.
Sometimes scientists need to be stopped. Science is not the supreme good.
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
As all slashdotters know, no one EVER violates IP restrictions.
More seriously, yes intellectual property law is broken. But the one great thing about patents is that they still expire (in reasonable lengths of time, unlike copyrights).
Right when it first became possible to patent hybrid crops there was a big rush by the seed companies to do just that. But to do that one of the requirements was that they deposit seed with the ATCC, and now you can order all the inbreds you'd need to make your own copies of those hybrids from the ATCC website (which yes costs some money) but once you have the seed in had you can happily propagate the inbred parents and produce your own hybrid seed from now until the sun burns out without paying anyone a dime. Of course your hybrid seed would be a coupe decades out of date, so it won't perform as well as modern ones (and that's the reason not many people do this). But it'd be yours free and clear of any patents on plant variants or transgenes.
What are you claiming? That if food is not genetically modified it is not safe to eat? When the fuck were you born?
He's probably talking about things like "organically" spreading "organic fertilizer," i.e., "shit," on the produce that is then sold to the consumer to eat. Unfortunately, even 100% organic non-GMO antibiotics-free shit can make you sick enough to die.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
I will be honest that I don't know enough about how they genetically manipulated specifically these potatoes but I find the whole idea of directly genetically engineering food is bloody scary when you consider _all_ the risks and potential disadvantages.
I know that hybridising and cross breeding for selective traits has been going on for millenia and the food crops we have today wouldn't ever have evolved naturally, however direct modification of the core organic mechanisms of our food is a whole other level. Doing it while at the same time admitting we don't know everything is plain crazy.
Apart from the whole safety of our food issues, do we really want our whole food ecosystem to be under tight patent control by megacorps like Monsanto?
History shows us over and over that with any decision made by a megacorp, maximising profit is the ONLY factor. Morality, safety, common sense and whats actually the best for the people/planet NEVER affect corporate decisions.
I digest cow's milk just fine, thank you.
Is there a correlation between lactose intolerance and an inability to process logic?
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
By genetic manipulation, you might think Mendelian genetic selection with a little extra juice, but when you're talking plants with animal genes that secrete pesticides that wipe out other key species and are cross-pollinating into the wild, and have health implications? That have weird switches on the seed to insure that farmers are completely dependent on suppliers like Monsanto?
When the inter-generational studies that haven't, by definition, been done in humans are done in hamsters, yield frightening results? http://www.naturalhealth365.com/food/lorem-ipsum-is-simply-dummy-text.html
Biggest thing of all that I would expect the Slashdot crowd to be wise to, when we're talking a whole food supply built on plants modified with *patented* genes?
When it's like that I say the FLM come off as heroes!
....EVERY crop grown for human consumption has been generically modified?
EVERY SINGLE ONE.
There is not a single food staple crop that exists in its as-evolved state. Every single crop has been changed by humans to better suit us.
Most of them were done over time, through breeding programs. Recently, it has been possible to speed up the process using more direct methods. But the same process has been going on since the Sumerians discovered agriculture some 6000 years ago,
And you are calling people "morons"? Glass houses, mon ami.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
The people don't want their food to be genetically modified. The purpose of genetically modifying food is to patent crops with the result being the control of all food by companies like Monsanto. We don't want them to control our food. We don't want to have to use their seed when we can save our own seed. If the government refuses to listen to the will of the people then the people have every right and even the responsibility to destroy those crops to protect themselves and their future generations.
- A Frog in a pond utters an azure cry. -
Well said.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
For example, in India hybrid varieties are mostly produced by govt funded universities.
Farmers are free to re-use seed without fear or persecution from law.
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Refusing to buy GM foods is IMPOSSIBLE. GM foods aren't labeled as GM foods. You have no way to know that any food item you buy is GM. I also find it funny that you are so uneducated as to be totally ignorant of the fact that companies like Monsanto create these GM foods in order to force farmers to buy their seed (yes potatoes are just like seed and are used to grow new potatoes). Companies like Monsanto contaminate the farms of those who refuse to buy seed from them with their PATENTED GM seeds then they SUE those farmers for using their PATENTED seeds when they were the ones who contaminated the land through cross pollination accomplished by merely driving by a field and throwing a handful of their patented seed in the field. These people are HEROES and should be commended for their service to humanity for destroying these evil crops.
- A Frog in a pond utters an azure cry. -
I want to hear the well supported claim that the GM food is safe. With tests, statistics, etc. Please.
it might be a sad day for scientific research, but it's a good day for the freedom of eating natural veggies.
Like sweet yellow corn?
The fruits and vegetables you eat can be thousands of years removed from their wild kin. Most, I suspect, like Golden Bantam, or the Fordhook Lima Bean, are little older than this century.
We humans are not perfect, so we still can not separate those 2 topics.
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lol, you're right. But you get the point right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato#Growth_and_cultivation
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Such outrage! I see you disagree with these people and are trying your best to paint them as the boogey-man-word of decade I'm more concerned with the terrorism being practiced by the US Government in the middle east.
Blar.
This is a classic case of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. I'll bet these ecoterrorists will turn right around and bitch about how people are dying of starvation in sub-Saharan countries. They are NIMBYs. They have the same warped moral compass as those yelling and screaming for "green" energy but will fight tooth and nail to keep a wind farm or solar plant from going up in their neighborhood. These are the same people who demand that we all buy from local farmers but will file lawsuits to stop the same farmers from drilling new water wells. These are the same people that claim Cuba has the best healthcare system or that North Korea is a "worker's paradise" yet won't emigrate there to prove it to the rest of us.
lol, you're right. But you get the point right?
My grandparents (immigrants from Europe) started US life as potato farmers in American Falls, Idaho... I'm all too familiar with the growing patterns - and harvesting - of potatoes! Plenty of relatives who still do it...
But this is a great example - idiot feel-good-anti-GM folks who attack EXACTLY the wrong crop, to try to make a point. They're so upset about the "corruption of science" and how it's "destroying our food system" that they show their scientific AND farming ignorance and destroy potatoes. Ignorance all around, and then they wonder why much of the populace who could actually care, simply ignore their rantings. Might as well go out and start a campaign to ban dihydrogen monoxide since it kills hundreds of thousands every year...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Not granting patents for GMO would eliminate most if not all of the concern here.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The absence of control over the cross fertilization from GM plants is a legitimate issue that is thus far not adequately addressed.
People breeding pure strains that are inadvertently contaminated from adjacent GM plants may see their business destroyed with no recourse. This has happened in the case of some orange growers. It also is a concern for those seeking to market GM free vegetables that command market premiums.
Thus far, the proponents of GM plants have essentially had a free ride on this issue and no consequential damages have been paid. This is unjust, as it puts the burden of adjustment on the injured party, rather than on the originator of the damage. When the law acts thus unjustly, people will respond similarly.
I would not be happy either if someone moved a contamination source into my neighborhood and told me that adjusting to it was my problem.
They became rioters, although I seriously question if that was not their intention. Organized, politically-motivated destruction of property... not so sure terrorism is the wrong term.
Great Intellect...
Monsanto in the U.S. has made it illegal to label produce as "not" being genetically modified. There is no way to know if the produce we buy is GMO or normal. We have to assume it is. That has to stop. Allow us to be informed and make choices then I don't care. But when I serve my family corn or potatoes I want to know they are not GMO.
I go out of my way to complicate the simple things, so that I can simplify the complicated things.
No, humans have to be terrified for it to be terrorism. For example, an IRA bomb in a rubbish bin is terrorism, even if they phone in a bomb scare and get everyone evacuated before it explodes.
George Carlin, is that you?
First of all there is no agreed upon definition of terrorism. We are going to have to invent our own. IMHO terrorism is mean to be a word reserved for people who pose a serious and realistic violent threat to human life. I think that an organization armed with bombs (or the balls to make bomb threats) plays in a whole different league than an organization with herbicide spray cans. If you refer to both as terrorist groups you have not only vilified a relatively harmless group of people, but also devalued the word terrorism.
even if you don't understand or don't care, you have to respect someone with guts and drive to do something they feel strongly about.
Yeah, really? Do you "respect" neo-nazis and the Fred Phelps church too?
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Everyone seems to have an opinion on this yet we don't have the capability to understand the long term evolutionary implications of human endeavours be it GMO or highly aggregate seed selection.. both place negative pressures on genetic diversity and can trigger large scale disruptions at any time.
A GMO disaster could occur. A natural food disaster could also occur. Our current capability to predict the future is extremely poor. GMO companies with their rediculous IP schemes, lobbying/corruption, offloading of risk to farmers and "terminator gene" copy protection schemes all suck ass and deserve to be globally outlawed, disbanded and referred to the hauge for crimes against humanity.
There are plenty of natural things that grow on trees, shrubs and in the ground that can make you sick or kill you. There are plenty of ways to engineer unsafe food that can produce the same effect.
My personal view is rather than trying to legislate methods I would rather see time and energy spent into legislation and efforts that insured food is safe to eat without regard for "how" it was made. Natural does not mean good for you. Natural does not mean good for you....Natural does not mean... Capiche?
Nature conducts genetic experiments automatically itself continually in the form of genetic mutation and evolution. This can and has lead to blights, invasive species and sometimes better versions of their parents. Globalization even before the age of direct genetic manipulation has wreck havoc on many ecosystems.
Unfortunatly sustaining world population requires modern farming techniques. I think there is a way forward with some genetic tinkering if we are extremely careful and respectful of nature.
Unfortunatly this is not happening due to regulatory environment that does not properly internalize externalities and government corruption/lobby activities.
I can't be the only one on slashdot who thinks this is great. Giant corporations are tampering with the fabric of life itself with virtually no safeguards or restraint. We need more of this.
Amen! Down with the corporatocracy!!!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Were you planning on eating that fetus?
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
The problem with your reasoning is this...
At least in the US, laws have been en acted to prevent GM content of foods. There are also laws against labeling non-GM foods that say only non-GM foods are used. The corporations praise the virtues of consumers making informed choices about what to buy. At the same time, they prevent the consumer from making an informed choice by keeping relevant information from them.
As far as I know, they had. There were entire civil wars fighted by the pro and against vaccines populations.
Also, you seem to be ignoring that most GM crops that reduce the need of pesticides do so by being toxig themselves.
Rethinking email
I don't know who "idiots" are you talking about.
People protested and they do to make a point. If Monsanto loses some PR, that is not a back step for science.
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If they think spraying GM crops with herbicides is okay because they disagree with genetic modification, does that mean I can spray them with poison because I disagree with them?
So, you figure these anti-GMO activists are also anti-embryonic stem cell research? Or are sympathetic to, say, evangelical Christians who are? I admit its possible, but it seems unlikely.
So, what company controlled the seeds on that particular field?
It is some GROUPS of humans that have problems with it. You know... those that weren't using cow milk for those couple of millennia that much.
And even some among them are fine with it.
So like... They don't teach about googling shit in your kindergarten?
Or are you home-schooled, since you mention do "the very foundation of life", "the kernel" as you put it.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I would be in favor of GMO foods as long as they are:
1) Not patented.
2) Are marked.
3) Cannot contaminate the biosphere with naturally growing varieties with some of the interesting side effect proteins they produce as part of the GMO process.
If they really are superior foods, then people will naturally pick them. That is how the free market works.
But for some reason, the large GMO companies don't want you to know what corn you eat is GMO.
Why?
????
-gc
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Wait, why is this tagged "Monsanto"? Where does TFA mention Monsanto?
I hope they get to watch their families and friends starve to death.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Nah, make them work for local farms for 8 weeks. They'll perhaps learn the meaning of hard work and humility.
We are talking GM crops here. Surely a more elegant solution would be to make the crop protester resistant? Once we have Triffid(TM) Potatoes they'll be no more problems with annoying protesters.
On the hope that your writing skills are simply lack of English language knowledge rather than intentionally trolling, please answer this question:
What is the difference?
No, seriously, what is the real-world difference between waiting until random mutation produces a trait you want, cross-pollinating that plant with another that has a different trait you want, selecting only the resulting strain that has both desirable traits (and no crippling undesirable ones), and then repeating forever... and manipulating the traits directly?
There are only two differences: one of them takes much, much longer (how long would it take to produce a disease-resistant potato strain with otherwise desirable traits by random mutation and selection? Well, it hasn't happened yet, in thousands of years), and one of them involves "scientists" in a lab, while the other involves "farmers" in a barn (in quotes because the practical difference is less than you might think; it's mostly a matter or emotional investment in the term).
If you want natural crops, go find them where the seeds were dropped by birds, and scatter some of the seeds around as you eat. Otherwise, please get out of the way of human advancement. I would applaud you if you were taking a stand against unethical corporate behavior, but you're not. Genetic research and unethical behavior are not inextricably linked, and people like you actually promote the latter (indirectly): you get people scared about things they shouldn't be scared about, which makes progress more difficult, which rises costs for those trying to make progress, which makes it harder to make a profit ethically.
Out of curiosity, would you have also opposed the concept of selective horse breeding back when everybody else just let the horses work it out among themselves? I mean, sure, it felt like the selective breeders were "cheating" and it reduced genetic diversity somewhat when some lines wouldn't be allowed to breed, but it could also give you faster, stronger, sturdier, and/or healthier horses at a rate far above that of simple evolution. I'm sure it seemed "unnatural" to some people at the time, though.
So, I ask you again: what is the difference?
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Wow, irrational much? Here's an equivalent for you (the scale is lesser, but the validity is equal), complete with your whacky grammar left intact:
The last part of your post actually gets close to making sense, but you're still completely backward about it. The problem isn't GM crops, it's Monsanto and its behavior. The solution isn't to shut down the research, it's to enforce ethical behavior upon the corporation. It's easy to target Monsanto because they're big and in the news, but there's lots of smaller-scale efforts going on (just as there was with PC software). Slap down the giants when they get out of hand, but don't condemn an entire industry because of what the biggest player in that industry is doing.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
The potatoes were sprayed with a herbicide, not an insecticide!
Not to mention that the article is incorrect. Phytophthora infestans is the pathogen that causes the disease called late blight. It is not the disease itself.
Harrumph.
The parent has identified the problem pretty well. I've seen articles that referred to Monsanto as the "Microsoft of seeds", with little exaggeration. Once we take the patents away, Monsanto will have to send their kids to college using some other scheme. It's worth noting that a lot of this research can be or is funded by governments suckered into the promise of patented food.
If there is anyone who should be called a terrorist, it's Monsanto and their ilk. Why? Take the farmer who is sued by Monsanto, not for using seed without a license, but for growing plants that were pollinated from patented crops planted upwind. Who's fault is that? Should Monsanto be able to take ownership of an entire crop due to upstream pollen? *That* is legal terrorism of the worst kind. To add insult to injury, Monsanto uses government intervention for protection of their "intellectual property" while blathering about the free market with the other face.
The sad part about this is not the destruction of the experiment, but rather, carrying out these experiments and placing GMO's into the food chain without clear and proper labeling and without popular consent.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
"In Belgium, a group of activists calling themselves the Child Liberation Movement has freed several children from a basement where they were being held prisoner as part of a psychological experiment into how children develop in the absence of social contact. The goal of the experiment was to better understand social development disorders such as autism. It's a sad day for the freedom of scientific research."
The idiots are those that destroyed the potatoes. Apparently they didn't realize how they grow and propagate. And if you would have read TFA you would notice the LACK of "Montsanto" in it. This is just scare-mongering and terrorism. And a lot of displays of ignorance - including those who cannot read the article and realize that Montsanto wasn't involved.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Your statement implies that the technology is currently in use, when in reality it is still in development. Presumably such seeds would be marketed as having this gene, if they are not I'd think a farmer would stop using them after a year in the event they were planning to reuse the seeds (since they'd have to buy more). As the parent pointed out, farmers are already barred from planting the seeds they've grown by the contracts they've signed. You're playing it like this is some insidious backdoor "gocha" GMO manufacturers are trying to pull over on farmers, and that really isn't the case. It's stupid to get on the case of GMO manufacturers over this, since selling these seeds is their bread and butter and they obviously don't want someone else producing the seeds and under-cutting their prices (which would be easy to do). The people you should be complaining about/to is farmers, who are ok with buying the seeds year after year.
it's in belgium. the belgians were probably trying to crossbreed the potato and the waffle. the belgians are always doing dark science with waffles. who wants to eat a belgian potato frankenwaffle? not me. stop messing with the holy sanctity of the waffle you evil belgians!
although i do like your experiments with potato fries. have at the potato fry belgians, your science there is good
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Corporations that create genetically modified food have to be looked at closely. Do you think they do this for the benefit of human kind? Genetically Modified "Anything" created by large companies (private or public) will be used as a weapon against the masses.
Funny, I never heard the spread of Roundup-resistant weeds being blamed on farmers using only Roundup.
I read that it was due to the marketing of Roundup to suburban home-owners, as an easy one-step way to keep their lawns free of dandelions and crabgrass.
BTW, suburban lawns (and lawns in general) are TERRIBLE for the environment in multiple ways.
Your distinctions between "high tech" and "low tech" fighting actually refer to guerilla warfare vs. "traditional" warfare.
Terrorism is a tactic, violence intentionally directed against civilian targets in order to damage morale.
What's happening now in Afghanistan and Pakistan, for instance, has elements of both. IEDs and ambushes of NATO and government forces are guerilla warfare. Suicide bombers targeting markets and mosques are using terrorist tactics.
Nonono...
The GMO seeds are sterile to prevent spreading, to avoid them "taking over" in the wild.
This is a very natural safety technique and I would be very concerned if they did not use it.
The sterile GMO seeds do not flower so can not cross-pollinate with neighbouring fields. Further more, if they make people sterile it is due to compounds created and not directly from the self propagation limits. This undesired effect could also happen with normal breeding and cross-pollination techniques and as such have no bearing on a case at all.
I agree that it can appear unfair to be forced to buy new seed every planting, but this is where free market should come in and force pricings on non-heirloom seeds to drop. Unless ofcource the martked deems the increased yelds, reduced infections, increased shelf-life and better taste to be compensating for this.
Not all scientific articles which are published are correct. Far from it. The two articles about GM corn upon which you are basing your argument were funded by Greenpeace and seem to be more propaganda than science. Read the Wikipedia article about it.
That doesn't mean I don't agree with you that this could be a problem. The articles merely rehash the (forcibly) published data from Monsanto's studies, and I was appalled to see that those studies were: (1) very short-term (only 90 days compared with an average lifetime of 2-3 years), and (2) seem to have been run on very small numbers of animals (it's hard to understand the wording of the anti-GM paper but it seems to me that no more than 80 mice ate the GM corn, of which only 40 had extensive testing like blood tests).
This seems to be because separate studies were done which just fed mice large doses of the pesticide which is being produced by the introduced gene (and the results were negative for significant toxicity). Still, living systems are complex and I'd prefer that the authorities would make Monsanto fund an independent lab to do more comprehensive testing of the whole plant.
I just turned 20 and I don't know any of them either.
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
I thought we wouldn't get an unbiased presentation of this story on Slashdot - the US media have done their job well in shilling for the agrogiants. In Europe we take a much more sceptical view of genetically modified food. We aren't about to allow organisms to be released into our environment that have only been tested by people who have a very strong financial incentive to keep quiet about the dangers.
Let's do some research to develop an resistent strain of . It will be a boon for food crop. .....20 years later farmers are getting sued* by Monsanto because the bees decided to pollenate non-Monsanto crops with Monsanto pollen.
Maybe the people trashing the field were protecting their future food supply from a corrupt legal system.
[*] - http://foodchronicles.blogspot.com/2007/01/monsanto-problem.html
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That's a self-rectifying problem.
Assume the "sterile" gene is carried in the pollen - and we're making a HUGE assumption here; that all GM plants are coded to be sterile. But let's go with it for now.
Let's also assume the sterile gene is recessive.
Assume those plants fertillize 50% of the next crop through cross-pollination, and that the "sterile" gene expresses itself in 50% of those plants. Now 25% of the seed from those plants are sterile, and 50% total carry the "sterile" gene.
Well, the seed from the sterile plants won't grow - so those ones are gone from the gene pool.
Assuming the same proportions each successive year, the "sterile" gene will breed itself out, because the progeny from the an expressed sterile gene don't grow, and so are culled from the pool.
If the "sterile" gene is dominant, it happens even faster - in a single generation, in fact.
This is basic Darwinism - genes with a negative survival value, given sufficient time, breed themselves out. If we assume that your "ice age" (are we done with "Global Warming" and back to the 1970s "Global cooling"?) stops the production of new GM "sterile" seed, the gene pool will purge itself fairly quickly
DG
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The action of this mob is reminescent of the story of the ignorant idiots with torches and pitchforks going after Frankenstein's monster. That there have been no arrests and prosecutions is regrettable. These terrorists trespassed on private property and destroyed that which was not theirs. They had no right to do it, no matter how against genetic modification they are. As for the GM experiments, I don't understand why some people are so afraid of it. The products created from these experiments are the ones selected as successful modificaitons and the others are rejected as failures or unusable. There are no insecticides or poisons, no radiation, no gasses or biohazards. The end result would have been ordinary potatos that were resistant to potato blight. The previous commenter's concerns about cross-fertilization are legitimate, but can be addressed with simple and effective precautions. The hysteria of anti-GM activists is similar to the religious fanatics against stem-cell research in the U.S., both based in ignorance and superstitious fear of the unknown. Genetic modification is now producing better foods, synthesizing medicines and other chemical substances which were previously hard to manufacture or extract, and many other benefits. The activities of scientitists and growers to selectively breed and cross polinate plants in efforts to emphasize good genetic traits and minimize traits that are not desired. Is this not GM, but approached over generations of the plants or animals being modified, so is this not GM too? Humans beings now have the ability to speed up the selection process and the quickly weed out unsuccessful modificaitons, and this is just another extension of the growth of our technology in this industrial age. The bottom line is that I am all for designing and breeding plants that can survive and thrive in adverse conditions, produce more edible material than non-modified plants for higher yields to better be able to feed the growing human population. The people doing this research may not be as altruistic as they are seekers of profit, but with each successful accomplishment that betters the human condition, I say, God bless them all-they are unsung heroes.
GM often (but not always) uses genes from a completely different species. Monsanto's Soy has an insect gene inserted to make it resistant to Round-up (Gramoxone). This makes it fundmentally different from selective breeding which was what drove the 'Green Revolution' in the 60's producing today's high yield, low waste crops of rice, wheat and others. However genetic researchers are now finding that there is some natural cross-infection between very different species, though it appears to be rare and I don't believe the mechanisms are well understood.
Here is some good info. Plenty of information from just about every government and university in the world. Just need to look.
You did read them, right? And there are from some respectful source, right? And there with all the documents and statistic, right? Otherwise.......there a plenty of monkeys doing better job than the before mentioned "authors", literally.
Damn the Belgians! Full Spud Ahead!