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BASF Moves GM Plant Research From Europe To US
ananyo writes "The German chemical giant BASF is moving its transgenic plant operations from Europe to the U.S., it says, because of widespread opposition to the technology. The company on 16 January announced that it would move its plant science headquarters from Limburgerhof, Germany to Raleigh, North Carolina and no longer develop plants solely for cultivation in Europe. The division employs 157 people in Limburgerhof, plus another 63 at facilities elsewhere in Europe. BASF said it would relocate 123 of those jobs to the North Carolina facility. In statement, Stefan Marcinowski, a member of BASF's Board of Executive Directors, cited 'a lack of acceptance for this technology in many parts of Europe – from the majority of consumers, farmers and politicians.' The company instead plans to focus on plant biotechnology markets in the Americas and Asia."
And freak food that is genetically modified in an unbridled fashion ! what more can one ask .........
Read radical news here
At ACFP, we don't make a lot of the first posts you read. We make a lot of the first posts you read better.
The BASF facility in RTP has never been terribly large and/or important when compared to their neighbors.
These jobs will be a nice addition to the area and help elevate Biotech even further.
Thanks Limburgerhof!!!
"Murderer? Well, that's a harsh word. I prefer to think of myself as a Mortality Technician."
You have to admit, you weren't expecting to read that headline.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Unless your organic farm is hermetically sealed, chances are getting greater and greater that you'll be close enough to a GMO farm to cross pollinate, whether by wind or rapidly diminishing bee population. Monsanto, BASF and their ilk have already won, lets just hope that we got the non sterile seed time capsules fully stocked in preparation for the imminent food collapse.
Europeans aren't anti-science, they're against GM modified crops because they fear it's not safe. They don't want to be experimented on. I don't see GM modified crops as a problem, if they are tested for safety properly. But I would rather err on the safe side.
Wow!
BASF still exists? To me BASF is this, and I haven't heard them since. :)
/greger
If GMO food labeling would be happening in the US, some priorities on affected companies would change there as well.
This is nothing new, for years business has been shifting manufacturing to impoverished countries to take advantage of cheap labour. They are just thinking ahead!
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
People are quite rightly concerned because if there is something wrong with GM food and it gets into nature it's not going to disappear easily. if it can be proven to be safe no one has a problem with it.
And they are against GM food, because it's patent creep - doodle around in a little corner of the genome and patent the whole plant afterwards, thus gaining power over all people doing business with similar plants and destroying traditonal seed circulation.
...maybe BASF could investigate using sequencing some intelligence into the politicians
They made really great cassette tapes!
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In regards to your signature:
There are somewhere between 12 and 27 million slaves right now.
China, an ostensibly Communist country, has over a billion inhabitants.
The Nazis and American independence, those are valid points... except for the increasingly fascist rules the US keeps passing and forcing on other countries at the behest of corporations.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Worst signature I've seen on /. congrats.
In Capitalist US, the commerce controls the Government.
And that fear is an irrational fear of the science behind it. Many of the crops have been in use for several decades and proven not only safe but in the case of corn, highly effective at reducing pesticide use yet they are still banned in Europe. Not because there is any evidence showing that they are bad, but because the public at large fears them. In fact there has been lots of studies showing a complete lack of harm and not a single study showing harm yet they are still banned.
They were erring on the safe side in the first 5 years this stuff was used, 20 years down the road they aren't on the safe side anymore, they are on irrational side. And yes it is most certainly anti-science (anti crop science), it's just a different variety than the kind in the US.
They're Right-to-Work (without benefits) states and they've been enticing European companies for a while now. Why pay a union guy $20/hr with benefits when you can pay a Southerner $10/hr who will also vote to make sure you keep his pay and benefits low?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Sue, Crush. They are so interchangable in the US.
On that note, seeing as plants cross polinate out in the wold, I wonder who gets to sue the poor farmer whose normal crops are pollinated by both Monsanto's and BASF's genetically modified strands.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
In Europe the market gets to decide if they want GMO food. That happens because they have labeling and menu laws that require the disclosure. It's capitalism at work. BASF is free to grow all the GMO it wants. But they have to sell GMO to the consumers. Here in the US you can pretty much put what you want into foods without nearly as much disclosure.
"if they are tested for safety properly" Right. With emphasis on "properly". Any GMO research done by the industry itself can obviously not be trusted, unless you are extremely naive and gullible. Let's see what independent researchers say about it: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/13/opinion/la-oe-guriansherman-seeds-20110213 Oh, wait. I find it pathetic that this "Anti-Science" garbage is thrown around any time someone is skeptic of something presented under the guise of "science". Perhaps that's part of the strategy though. Use some critical thinking, people, if you are capable of it.
Just as those who doubt humans are causing global warming, because its a conspiracy of socialist to screw them over somehow*.
Just as those who doubt evolution, because its just a theory and not a fact like gravity.
* ( never really understood that one, so its tought to parody).
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I keep waiting for all this "frankenfood" the Luddites promise I'll see, but all we get are more resiliant, disease and pest resistant crops that have the potential to feed the starving, etc etc.
Where are my grapples (grapes the size of apples)? Where is my chocolate flavored bananas that grow in a temperate environment? Where is the wheat I can bake into a pizza crust that has all my RDA vitamins along with a weight-loss ingreiant?
And god dangit, where are my real booberries?
Maybe. The thing is no one knows for sure the effects of GM on human bodies, animal bodies, plant bodies and Evolution in general, over a long period of time.
Marie Curie discovered the radium (1898) and died of its poisoning (1934), unknown at the time.
Time will tell.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
30 years of Conservative ideology has finally paid off.
Just about any business that wants to relocate the US is welcome. And really, we're well suited to this one. GMO doesn't scare us and whatever some people think it's the future.
So I'm very happy the US is increasing market share in an industry with huge growth potential and effectively infinite life span because this is a business that will never go away.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Is it so irrational? Look at Japan. People there believed in progress, in technology, with an almost religious fervour. Until a disaster laid bare not flaws in the science, mind you, but flaws in the humans profiting off it. The same goes for our European anti-GM sentiments: Do you in all seriousness trust the likes of Monsanto or BASF not to put cash over lives? No matter how sound the science behind GM is, there already are enough reasons to be very mindful of what food I buy. And all of them are down to some greedy fucks trying to skim off just a little bit more. I do not need another layer of adverse interests thrown into the mix.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
But I would rather err on the safe side.
Totally agree !
I'm european, and I suffer from an incurable illness: celiac disease http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coeliac_disease
I'm not a vegetarian, and I don't eat organic food.
When I eat gluten, and most particularly wheat, I become very tired, I get a giant dermatosis and my articulations hurt in less than one hour.
In fact, my intestinal villi are destroyed when exposed to gliadin, and this leads to cancer after several years.
It took me more than 10 years to discover why I was constantly ill, since my doctor thought it was the "Irritable Bowel Syndrome" (he never heard about celiac disease before).
All the symptoms disappeared after a week-long gluten-free diet.
Now, I need to eat and sleep less, because my body absorbs all the nutrients in the food, and I have less problems with my emotions (I'm probably less autistic).
BTW, since I have only been recently diagnosed, I still don't know what other kinds of food I'm allergic to.
Beer and milk cause me pain.
Buying food takes a lot of time, since wheat is everywhere: soy sauce, ham, bread, most frozen food, some chocolates, etc...
Wheat has been "improved" by selection, so GM food is probably even more dangerous. Who knows what kind of allergy might appear, and in how much time will it be detected ? Can you imagine that people may die from cancer at 40 after ingesting GM during all their life ? How can you prevent that ?
In fact, all the foods that have been improved (wheat, milk, corn, ...) are dangerous for me, so GM is a big no no.
Celiac disease seems to affect 1% of the population, but how much people will be diagnosed ?
You can't prove that something is safe. So you are setting up an impossible to satisfy barrier.
If this sort of logic were applied at the time of the discovery of fire we would still be living in dark unheated caves and eating our food raw.
One problem with that notion. Europeans oppose publicly funded research that would not have that problem too. Ever heard of the potatoes at the University of Ghent, the government funded grape rootstocks in France, or the government funded wheat & potatoes and apples in Germany? Destroyed. Meanwhile, I've never heard of them having any problem with patented non-GE plants. Maybe the patents factor into it, but you really can't take the patent or corporate angle here. The main issue is the science. They're against genetic engineering and ALL GE crops, regardless of specific circumstances, period, and they're not going to let nuance or facts or science change their minds about that.
Sorry that's bullshit. The patent you get is on the improvement to the plant, not the plant itself.
It's funny - the IP/Patent Creep angle is actually the most compelling and possibly only legitimate argument against GM food. If this is the real reason behind the protesting, then it's doing the right thing (fighting GM food) for the right reason (Patent Creep / IP / Corporate greed controlling food)
However, I bet there really are a lot of "frankenfood" protestors there too.. folks who are doing the right thing (fighting GM food) for the wrong reason. I worry about that crowd because it's like handing the corporate apologists a giant strawman.
The Digital Sorceress
We have to stop this shopping around for the country with the loosest morals!
It starts here, but before you know it, they'll be migrating good jobs to countries with appalling labour and environmental practices because those low morals make manufacturing cheaper! Up to 40,000 factories in the US could be lost this way!
Oh, wait, my briefing paper says "1982" not "2012". Damn. What? It already happened?
Never mind...
The link you provided was to a description of a farmer getting sued for intentionally selecting the modified crops and replanting them to take advantage of the patented improvements.
It wasn't 'his normal crops' at all.
Milk's issue for Celiac disease sufferers is generally due to the lack of cilia. If you're gluten-free long enough to regenerate them, you should be fine with milk again. It's not because there's little gluten proteins in your GM milk. And in what world is genetically modified corn harmful to people with Celiac disease?
Maybe you don't have supermarkets in Europe, but there are tons of them here in the US. They always have a gluten-free section in the natural foods area, and many of our other products have dropped an ingredient and are now gluten-free as well (especially cereals). I don't know what frozen foods you're buying, but I constantly read labels and straight frozen vegetables and meat are always safe. Do you mean the frozen prepared meals? Here, you just need to be prepared to go to the right part of the store for those (and pay 3-5 times as much money). I even know local pizza places that have gluten-free options now.
I hate to sound like a jerk, but I'm surprised you haven't done more research on your disease. There's a lot of information on it out there, and life doesn't suck for you like it would have 20 years ago.
Screw that. /. don't like them.
The reason people don't want GMO'S is because they are pushed by Monsanto, a company that wouldn't be scared to eat babies and sell grand-parents for profit.
Microsoft is all rainbows and unicorns in comparison to them, and a lot of people on
Maybe they should move to the Moon instead, where their compatriots are already hard at work.
OK.
1. Failure to use turn signal.
2. Speeding.
3. Driving while intoxicated.
That's three.
You are welcome on my lawn.
That is incorrect. GM plants in the wild would only be adversely selected if the "wrong" characteristic impacted their ability to procreate, and then typically after many generations. In the meantime, the plants may out-compete indigenous species or introduce toxins up the food chain. For a non-GM example, read up on Eucalyptus trees as an iunvasive species.
Don't get me wrong here: I do not claim that GM plants exhibit any of these characteristics. I am merely pointing out that the "natural selection" argument about ecological safety/stability is utter horse shit.
Also, remember that before the risks were understood, "radium toothpaste", "radium health drinks" and "radium skin cream" were sold and their benefits advertised.
No sig for the moment.
The link you provided was to a description of a farmer getting sued for intentionally selecting the modified crops and replanting them to take advantage of the patented improvements.
It wasn't 'his normal crops' at all.
He was saving seeds produced by *his* plants. Monsanto couldn't control their crop and things cross-pollinated? Tough shit for Monsanto. It was his crop that was contaminated by theirs. He has every right to continue using the seeds. As for 'patented improvements', that's a load of horseshit too. They didn't invent anything. That's like design patents, a whole truckload of horseshit.
I'm not sure anymore how much of that is real, and how much is stereotype due to the tech gadgets and anime which come out of Japan. During the nuclear crisis, watching NHK coverage was a treat. I had expected the Japanese to be well ahead of the U.S. in fancy computer graphics in their news broadcasts. Instead, they had a hand-made paper mache 3D model of the nuclear plant, giant posters for various charts, and the weather reports used cardboard cutout drawings of clouds, sun, rain, etc. which the weather lady stuck to a cloth map with velcro as she was talking. For pointing, she used a stick with what looked like a colored ping pong ball glued to the end. Very quaint.
Wheat has been "improved" by selection, so GM food is probably even more dangerous.
That's not a particularly scientific or even rational-sounding argument, I'm sorry to say. If you have an autoimmune disease that's triggered by wheat, then GM wheat is wheat and you shouldn't eat it. The GM part is not your issue.
Breakfast served all day!
We can solve that problem. Allow non-GMO modified producers to label their products as such. And lets not do it like we did with rBST where there has to be some disclaimer. Producers should be able to add facts to there labeling (contains no GMO products, or from cows not treated with rBST). Neither of these imply anything about their competition except that they might be using modified products.
GMO is not about making plants that produce more, or are resistant to cold or heat or drought.
It is the control of the food supply, that is what it is about.
Ask any Biologist, and they will tell you, genetically creating strains of identical plant lines to maximize a trait is a truly dangerous thing to do. Whenever you take and engineer biological entities such as plants, that are gentically identical and create entire artificial eco systems that have low diversity, or in the case of GMO, _NO_ diversity, all sorts of catastrophic destruction can happen to the population.
Whether it be a GERM, a BUG or BAD WEATHER, having a food supply that is genetically diverse and NOT engineered is the safest and will produce the most food, consistently over a wide variety of environmental conditions.
GMO has got to be the worst possible idea of all time. It won't produce food for anyone except the rich, and it will not produce food that has the ecological diversity requirements to provide a safe consistent yield.
It isn't by accident you know, they will not put GMO labels on food. They know it is not safe, and they do not want you to know about it.
GMO also is causing massive extinction rates in our grain crops from gene contamination. If this isn't stopped, there won't be any grain species left that are safe to eat.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Allow non-GMO modified producers to label their products as such.
They are allowed. Walk down the organic section of your local supermarket and you'll see tons of stuff with 'non-GMO' on the label.
The thing is no one knows for sure the effects of GM on human bodies, animal bodies, plant bodies and Evolution in general, over a long period of time.
That, by definition, is true for anything. There is always the possibility of an unknown unknown. However, that notion cannot be falsified and as such is a poor point. A better question would be if any of the genes inserted into GE crops pose known any risk. Right now, the few that are (EPSPS protein, various cry proteins, bar enzyme, CMV/PRV coat protein) do not. The moment anyone has evidence supporting the notion that there is any harm from these, or any other inserted protein (since that must be taken on a case by case basis), or the process itself (though strangely not any other plant improvement method) then maybe that notion will have merit.
Also, I notice you're not applying the same logic to any given conventionally bred trait. You could ask the same question about the Cry1Ab gene as you could the sd-1 gene, and it would make about as much sense. The comparison I like to use is lets say you decided to apply that thinking to the smallpox vaccine. Hey, it might have some long term potential but as of yet unsubscribed side effect that could hurt a lot of people, so should it have been used. Yes, because you have to consider KNOWN facts, not what-ifs that may or may not (probably the latter) actually exist.
You don't unjderstand, Rix. There's an excellent reason for Europe to believe they are unsafe. It was promoted that way for some time.
Given the fact that US agriculture can undercut the cost of production in France and Belgium etc, The politicians there were quite happy to use protectionist trade policies to protect local farms etc. Sadly for them, that's limited by the WTO and international agreements. (The US is guilty of it too, so it's hardly unique to them.)
But, if you can make it a food safety issue, it's exempt. So, this was promoted not just by the actual anti-gmo sorts, but also the farm lobbies, local ag/food business and politicians.
But, some of the European ag industry is realizing they're losing ground in some areas due to foregoing the advantages of GMO. (Witness the repeated incidents of farmers smuggling in GMO seeds due to the better yields and lower production costs.)
Now, the Europeans have to deal with the phantom they themselves created for trade reasons. And it's damned hard to undo sowing fear in your consumers.
Given that I'm surrounded by agri-genetics work of all sorts locally (east central Illinois), I'm quite happy for yet another European company to bring the work here. And, yes, they'll find a lot of highly skilled ag types to hire here.
BASF is certainly not the first nor will it be the last.
Didn't say they were not, just said that it would solve the problem. But don't worry to much, the GMO corps are lobbying hard to get it outlawed or include a disclaimer like they did with rBST (A Monsanto product).
There's lots of independent testing confirming the safety of genetic engineering. Anyone who says otherwise either doesn't know much about the area, or is lying. Considering that Gurian-Sherman works for the Union of Concerned Scientists as an 'expert' in this field and wrote the report Failure to Yield, which claimed that GE crops yielded less than non-GE crops, while conveniently ignoring the fact that 1) those GE crops were not designed to be intrinsically higher yielding but to have other benefits, 2) there is no real reason why GE crops would have a lower yield than non-GE crops (beyond a minor fitness penalty), and 3) their data showed an increase in yield (a gain especially large in developing countries where they did not have access to pesticides to raise their yield as developed countries do), I'm going to have to assume he's just lying.
Everyone with a soft sport for some unscientific notion says the same thing. 'I'm not anti-science, its just that every scientists is either an ideologue or part of a conspiracy.' Sounds just like the anti-vaxxers or evolution denialists. Fact is, the vast majority of scientists in relevant fields support GE crops, and they make that decision based on the scientific literature out there. Accepting that is not gullibility, and ignoring that is not critical thinking. It is indeed anti-science.
If it is able to out-compete indigenous species, then there is by definition nothing wrong with it.
There's lots of independent testing confirming the safety of genetic engineering. Anyone who says otherwise either doesn't know much about the area, or is lying.
The problem is that issues we don't know to test for (either because they are as yet undiscovered or there was no reason to believe they would happen) can have serious consequences. "Confirming the safety" is rightly treated as suspect by the public as it generally means merely "We found no known reason to believe it is unsafe". The BSE crisis in the UK is the classic example -- the change to British law that allowed the temperature rendered feed was sterilised at to be lowered was deemed to be safe by the industry and regulatory authorities. No reason they could think of to deem it unsafe -- still plenty hot enough to kill any bacteria or viruses that might be lurking in there. Until "whoops, wasn't expecting badly folded proteins (prions)" that it turned out survived the lower temperature process, jumped the species gap and left at the time an unknown quantity of people with hard-to-detect fatal variant-CJD. (About 200 dead so far, but it could have been orders of magnitude worse.)
Safety of consumption is just one of the safety concerns. A much bigger problem is crosspollination, and escaping to the wild, messing up the ecosystem. By these standards even safely consumable GMO plants aren't safe.
If so, then your definition of "right" and "wrong" is limited to evolutionary pressure. It ignores the possible reasons why people may have concerns, such as an interest in local habitat conservation. It neatly ignores the context of the conversation:
Nobody else is worried about the GM food getting out and... dying. They're worried about GM food getting out and causing "invasive species"-like problems, which can be hard to predict and impossible to revert.
Seriously? You are going to judge nations state of technological advancement based on news report presentation? You might be a troll. I'm just too tired to see the difference.
Do you in all seriousness trust the likes of Monsanto or BASF not to put cash over lives? No matter how sound the science behind GM is, there already are enough reasons to be very mindful of what food I buy
You should be skeptical of corporate claims, but not so skeptical that you reject what the science says just because someone else has a profit motive. At that point, which is where we are now with GE crops, yes, it is pretty irrational. No one is saying you should trust Monsanto or BASF, just that all the available science indicates that GE crops are no more likely to hurt you than any other variety of crop, and I'll also note that those same companies are altering your food with other, non-GE methods as well.
Is it so irrational?
You've got a first-world problem. You might pay more for some non-GM food, you might not be affected by the downstream problems of pesticides, you might be impacted negatively by the patents involved in the system.
But, this fear has spread to Africa, to the point where relief shipments of grain to starving people have been turned around at port.
I'm cautious of GM food - there may be some studies linking some to DNA damage - but if I were starving I'd gladly scarf it down like there's no tomorrow!
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Kind of. With cross pollination, that happens. Every plant does it. The only difference is that now people care. That's more of a people issue than a plant one. I really don't much see how it is too big of an issue myself, because if you're growing hybrid seed you're probably going to buy new seed next year, and if you're growing OP seed then you aren't going to want any cross pollinated seed anyway.
As for escape into the wild and other environmental concerns, this is potentially problematic, however, it is equally probable that conventional breeding could have similar issues, and it really depends on where you are too, and what crop. Most crops really aren't that weedy and aren't going to overrun an ecosystem (canola seems to do pretty well though, but herbicide tolerance isn't going to give it much of an advantage in the wild over non-GE escaped canola, which is a man made crop to begin with), and they're only going to cross with wild plants if they're being grown where the crop originates. For example, GE corn in Germany isn't going anywhere, end of story. You also have to weigh the benefits against the risks. GE crops have been good for the environment, and while they may cause harm, you have to balance those two, not consider only one. And so far, none of the ecological disasters that anti-GE folks said would happen have materialized.
So, even if we consider the environment, GE crops are pretty safe.
Supposedly, more than half of the outraged farmer's crop had been pollinated by Monsanto crops, which Monsanto pointed out cannot happen naturally. The implication, not often voiced when people are going after Monsanto, is that he pollinated his crops, by hand, with Monsanto's pollen (which he acquired by illicit means). A little less "the wind blew pollen across the road, and it fertilized my crops!" a little more "he walked across the road, extracted pollen from a fair number of flowering plants, walked back to his farm, and pollinated them with the newly acquired pollen."
I am John Hurt.
Good riddance, glad to see this moving out of the EU. For you guys on the other side of the Atlantic... hope you realize what is coming. We don't accept it here in Europe and you shouldn't either.
A Comparison of the Effects of Three GM Corn Varieties on Mammalian Health
Differential Effects of Glyphosate and Roundup on Human Placental Cells and Aromatase
Glyphosate-Based Herbicides Produce Teratogenic Effects on Vertebrates by Impairing Retinoic Acid Signaling
If crop cultivars were going to do that, they already would be.
Tentacles are, evolutionarily, a gateway to intelligence. They're excellent tool-manipulation appendages, and one presumes they would be "free" and not used for locomotion. Generally speaking, intelligence is a maladaptive trait and natural selection works against it (which is why it's so rare). After all, it consumes a lot of calories but offers pretty much no practical value to an animal that can't communicate or use any kind of tool. But give a cow tentacles (or any other suitable tool using appendage, such as our own which were designed for hanging on to tree branches) and you could reverse that trend.
Personally, I don't want to eat anything smarter than a pig (including octopuses, primates, etc) and I'm frankly not all that sure about pigs, but I choose to believe they aren't as smart as some think simply because they're really, really delicious. I certainly don't want you fostering a new super-race of smart cows. Not only would I not feel comfortable eating them, but I'm afraid they might judge us harshly.
Is the bane of the 124th employee.
Why does everyone thinks that GM is always about food? For example BASF is researching very carbohydrate-rich potatoes... For food? Hell no! You see: There's more things you can make out of these things... Like certain chemicals needed to make drugs or organic, compostable plastic... So stop being paranoid...
In the wake of the BSE/vCJD scare, can you really blame them?
(I say "them" as although I'm a European, I'm not scared of GMO food - as others have pointed out though, I am worried about the attendant patent-abuse issues)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Errr... what? You think there should be so few regulations as to not even require a sticker with the truth on it?
Such a condition could only work if it's possible to buy the truth from somewhere. Where are these truth-telling organizations, and where is their barcode reading app, allowing us to filter our food purchases on whatever criteria we desire?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
with the moving of infectious animal disease research from Plum ISLAND to Manhattan, Kansas - in eye sight of the football stadium, basketball coliseum, and rec center of Kansas State University. Pork-barrel projects: WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?
Regulations kill jobs! Europe's tougher rules around GMOs has driven jobs overseas to our shores. Lets make sure we don't drive them over other seas to Asia.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Unleashing modified tinkered plants into the US via inevitable errors and deception IS a recipe for disaster, it it the height of irresponsibility, and has the potential to be far more of a threat than mere atomic annihilation.
It isn't about what researchers think they know for sure, it's about how wrong they've been every step of the way, nobody seems to recall back in the early 90's the surprise in discovering that the genome of rice was more complex (well, three times larger at least) than the human genome.
Do you really want to trust the scientists with the ability to destroy every last vestige of the natural world in search for a way to feed far more people than is reasonable to even attempt to have living in it ?
They already are. Google is full of examples, but here is one: http://www.cwss.org/proceedingsfiles/2010/26_Joseph%20DitomasoabstractBiofuel%20and%20invasives%202010.pdf
Korma: Good
I think that more European peoples than US peoples enjoy having the choice of a very large variation of food. It's in the culture and probably give larges benefits to the health, and to the biodiversity. I hope that the capitalism point of view will not trash all of this, because this is only profitable for a small subset of companies that grab as much revenue as possible. If you look more globally, this benefit for only a few have big negatives consequences on local market, biodiversity and health. The profitable companies will just deny the problem and let the community pay the damage. Look at the situation in India.
You are choking me, really. You just prove that your definition of capitalism is to hide and lie as much as possible to extend the profitability to the maximum.
Many, many, and even more scandals are about hiding to the consumer the real nature of what there expect to buy. This is a constant thread. Every single day. And you expect that by just asking, a consumer will get the real answer ? Are you so naive ? The reality is that even with regulation that require careful tracing of the food, there is is still fraud.
Not only label is a basic requirement, but tracing and control, in addition to anti-corruption force are all absolutely a necessity to have a chance to get the food you have pay for, instead of cheap relabeled crap.
Nothing is completely safe. Drinking too much water can kill you. However realistically water is safe. Except of course in countries like the US where they're keen to pollute their own environment.
I'm more than happy to eat GM food if I know it's not likely to cause problems. It's all well and good the US says they're happy to do it but they don't have the greatest record for looking at their people in regards to food. After all they're probably still trying to find things to squeeze more corn syrup into.
Unless of course someone lords a patent over your head for using their designer plant.
The anti-vaxxers won, didn't they? RISC is everywhere, from ARM chips in smartphones to Watson running on POWER to SunOracle's SPARC-powered database systems.
The people who think that climate change is a socialist plot are convinced that climate scientists are making claims about global climate change because it fits well with the people clamoring for renewable power, emissions control, and energy saving, and not the other way around. These people are what we like to call "wrong."
If you want to filter your food purchases, buy from dealers who will supply the information you want. There is no possible way we could demand information on every possible superstition.
That has nothing to do with whether they're transgenic or not.
When we're talking about food safety, sure. When we're talking about superstitious dietary regulations, no, there's no public interest in tracking it.
I would be most amused to see someone sue a wild field.
That's right, transgenics and non-transgenics are more or less equally liable to generate invasive weeds which share some of their genetic material.
Korma: Good
The real issue isn't GM foods isn't that it is "bad". It is that corporations are patenting it. They are better in the fact that they out compete natural varieties, because they are made more resistant, hardy, etc... which really is a good thing right?
Evil Scheme Muhaha GM Beta 1
Step 1) Create GM food. Patent it.
Step 2) Let GM food kill off all natural competition.
Step 3) Sue the bajesus out of everyone that doesn't pay you licencing fees.
Step 4) PROFIT!
When you product kills off your competition, its pretty much the perfect product profit model. Add to that the amount of control you now have over world food markets by way of your patent.
Anyway I would feel much better about GM foods, if they just sold the stuff, and didn't patent them. I mean patents are retarded enough these days, this just makes it much much worse.
So then it is acceptable, unless you're arguing against agriculture itself.
Let the peoples (=public) decides themselves what are in there interest. This is not the role of a lobby to decide this kind of question. I am very confidant that most European are in favor of requirement that make mandatory the inscription of GMO origin of food. In fact, many society around Europe that protect the consumers already asking for that since many years.
Food and goods composition is becoming an increasingly more important issues for more and more consumers. Not only because there want to protect themselves, but also because there are more and more educated about the consequences of the food and goods productions to the environment. And yes, even if actually only a minority, a few already chose there foods and goods to not give money to some too arrogant companies.
Didn't the federation almost go to war with the Carasians over transgenic weapons!!!
That is exactly my argument.
If the public considers this important, that there will be a commercial advantage to labelling food. If it does not, the only way to get food labelled would be legislation.
You have an objection to GMO food that is not based on data, but on your irrational fears. Don't project that on anyone else.
I am not irrational at all.
There is already a large chunk of data that are very alarming, especially for the long term. GMO are not as stable as the marketing suggest. There is already samples of hybrid organism almost everywhere experiments or productions have used GMO. Bugs and illness evolve, some of theme faster than expected, alienating the GMO initial advantage.
But the most problematic aspect of GMO is the pressure of there lobby to gain control of government decision, and there systematic deny of the problematic aspects of GMO. All in the only goal to grab as much money as possible. And yes I am very afraid of this kind of lobby. There is a urgent needs of regulation to keep them under control.
GMO is far far too new to be used safely now. Nuclear reactor is about a half century old and is still not safe a many would expect. Every new technology bring new risks. Some of them are only detected many years after there introduction. The GMO technology is even more risky than anything done before, because this is not a relative static setup in a confined plant like a nuclear reactor with a lot of controlling devices, but a dynamic process (life) into a completely open environment full of others organisms that inevitably will react with the GMO without any way to keep control.
The "not based on data" argument is a well know one. It have been abused already a lot of time in the history from peoples that simply wants to deny the reality of a risk. A risk in not a data, this is a possibility that could raise as long as a impossibility is proved. How much catastrophe have already existed and will exists with the very same comment from there promoters : "We could not believe that has happened, we have done everything possible to assert this will never happens !".
Actually there is data that show high concern about GMO in the long term. Even if you chose to deny them. But the most urgent aspect of the GMO is the money extortion business done by his lobby.
Just an example how important it's to protect the biodiversity:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malus_sieversii
This specific specie is resistant because it vary quickly. Quit the opposite compared to the current GMO technology goal.
Nothing that you've mentioned in has in any way to do with GM technology. It's not surprising that you prefer coal to nuclear as well.
You're making arguments from ignorance and superstition. Stop it or stay out of the political process.
Complete horse manure. The crops on Percy's land were 90+% Roundup resistant. The only way you get that is intentional cross pollination and then selection of the plants by treatment with Roundup before harvesting the seeds.
Well, it would seem a valid way to evaluate whether the population worships technology with religious fervor. Wouldn't such a populace be expected to demand high-tech news, since they apparently demand high-tech everything else?
His point wasn't that their nuclear plants were poorly designed. His point was that the Japanese view of technology isn't really that much different than it is anywhere else...