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EU Blocks France's Ban of Monsanto's GM Maize
redletterdave writes with an update to news from a few months ago that France had banned the growing of Monsanto's genetically modified corn. After reviewing the evidence France submitted in support of the ban, the European Food Safety Authority has now rejected it. An official opinion (PDF) stated that they "could not identify any new science-based evidence indicating that maize MON 810 cultivation in the EU poses a significant and imminent risk to the human and animal health or the environment."
What about people not wanting massive use of round-up chemicals, small farmers being sued out of existence, and one corporation monopolising the entire seed supply?
huh. they couldn't prove God ~doesn't~ exist.
gonna need a better argument than that, though i'm not Monsanto's biggest fan.
Somehow, the media is hooked onto the theory that GM modified crops will make us all Zombies.
That is not the problem. I really doubt that these modifications will create crops which will cause health problems.
The actual problem is licensing and economics.
A seed is a thing which cannot be contained. If you neighbor has a crop, seeds will come to you farm.
If its a resilient crop, it may dominate too.
And then they lawyers come with their army, and drag you to court. How many small farmers can afford to fight.
Yes, there will be farmers who will willfully cheat, but right now the licensing model, and the law does not recognize this difference.
To be frank, GM crops can actually help coping with food shortage, but the licensing model has made something which is a boon, a bane.
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Yes, there is no shortage of french people ready to go burn GM crop fields. And jailing them pushes the issue into the political field. Add to that the new socialist government who's allied with the green party ; I don't see a bright future for Monsanto GM crops in France.
With GM food crops, the danger is more from handing of control of your seed stock to a potentially malevolent vendor, than to the health of consumers.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
"GM modified crops will make us all Zombies"
No they're concerned that a bug in the design will crash the system.
Essentially they make major changes to crops that would take evolution centuries to make. They don't tests those changes for centuries, so any faults will come out later. Any major fault can cause a collapse in the food supply which would be deadly to Europe.
They represent a major risk and really the GM lobby's glibness, and willful ignorance of the risk is the real danger here. As for the EU it doesn't have the authority to declare farming safe, it only has the authority to declare it unsafe. They're there to enforce MINIMUM standards below which food supply cannot drop, not 'UPPER' standards above which a country can't insist is met.
It's like the EU banning Bio food because you can't prove it's better than other food.
They have very limited powers to do with internal EU market, and they seem to be abusing that power for corporate benefit.
The "crop yield increases" so frequently touted as the great advantage disappear after a few years.
There is so much disinformation about the drop yield of GMOs (from both sides) that I have given up trying to figure out the truth. Anyway, this might also be the case for other cultivars, and isn't relevant in whether we allow people to use it, only to whether it is a good idea for the individual farmer to use it.
Herbs become roundup-resistant, requiring the use of more roundup, leading to more pollution
This would be a problem for any herbicide-resistant cultivar. If we are going to pollute, let's at least pollute with Roundup, which is not harmful for mammals, and is mostly bound to the soil. It is by far the least bad of the pesticides (not that that makes it good, but if spraying with Roundup is a problem, we should ban all pesticides).
, and the destruction of bee populations (like there's no tomorrow)
This is not caused by roundup. The best guess we have is a new insecticide (I forget which).
Then there's lock-in, aggressive law-suits by Monsanto to force other farmers to start using their products, etc.. Lots of problems that don't exist with other cultivars. (Because no, you cannot separate GMOs from their salesmen.)
That is a problem of contract law or IP law, let's fix it there in stead of banning a potentially useful tool.
it’s the Monsanto assholes. They don’t just walk over dead bodies. They *don’t do business* if it doesn’t involve walking over dead bodies.
Seriously Eli Lilly, the MAFIAA and Microsoft COMBINED look like fluffy playschool pussies in comparison.
Do you stop the sale of all new foods for 90 years? Where is the cutoff?
The cutoff is when you've done enough rigorous and open testing that nobody in the professional scientific community can raise any particular concerns.
Look, any time you introduce a new element into an ecosystem there WILL be impact of one sort or another. The people producing the GMO's have, for example, claimed there is no risk of their product escaping into other fields, which has been proven false over and over. Each time it happens, these assholes sue the farmers whose crops get contaminated for "illegally" using their patented product. That alone should have been enough to warrant a ban, cancer or not.
Then we have some very recent evidence that the rash of Colony Collapse Disorder among honey bee populations is being caused by a somewhat new pesticide. This just so happens to be the same pesticide which is integrated into the Monsanto corn, and preliminary tests indicate it DOES affect bee populations. While there isn't enough evidence to prove it yet, it's enough evidence to be very worrying. Especially when viewed in light of the other claims Monsanto has made about their product and have been shown to be false.
There just hasn't been enough testing of these products. What little testing has been done, is either not transparent enough or has to be done without their cooperation making it even more difficult. The judge should not have blocked this ban, if France doesn't want the product they shouldn't be forced to accept it.
If they don't like the outcome, they don't pay any attention. If they're forced, the populace start setting fire to cars and breaking stuff, The French do love a good riot now and then.
Awesome and this is how a democracy should work. Can anyone just remind me why we don't like the French?
Third world economies desperately need to transition from subsitence farming to producing cash crops. I'm no fan of Monsanto, but their actions will ultimately be beneficial.
[FUCK BETA]
"They created life that cannot reproduce, so that farmers have to come to them each year to buy new seeds." Actually they didn't the Agriculture department and two private companies did. Monsanto bought the two private companies in 2005 acquiring the rights but they didn't create the genes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technology
they eat corn alright, as does most of the world, in the form of processed food. You find corn derivatives in a bewildering varieties of industrial foods.
You imply that the French, and indeed the rest of the world, eat significant amount of processed food. It's difficult to get hard data on this, but my impression (from having lived there) is that processed food is a much smaller part of their diet than in the US. This article says that Americans eat rather more processed food than other countries, but it's difficult to compare because "baked goods" and "ready-to-eat" in the US and in France are rather different.
On the other hand, "most of the world" is certainly not eating significant amounts of industrial food - in China and India it's almost unheard of.
You do realize that if everyone started producing cash crops that the demand for food would go up at the same time that less was being produced?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Third world economies desperately need to transition from subsitence farming to producing cash crops. I'm no fan of Monsanto, but their actions will ultimately be beneficial.
Because Monsanto has been so successful in India and South America, right? There's a few documentaries on the subject, and I'm pretty sure they're on netflix. Monsanto really is one of the greatest evils in the world today, threatening human life far more seriously than any Muslim terrorist.
The point is that France attempted to spread their ban to the entire EU. Perhaps that is due to France trying to limit the production of corn in other EU countries so that can export theirs.
Or because the Monsanto seeds spread.
(And then Monsanto sues farmers who have had their crops contaminated, but won't recompensate those who through no fault of their own no longer can sell their crop as GM-free.)
I'm all for GM crops. As long as it's inside a double low-pressure bubble to prevent it spreading, and the rights holder assumes responsibility for any future contamination of GM-free areas, up to and including their CEOs crawling on their knees weeding.
They make a business of killing small farm businesses
Why exactly do they want less customers?
They created life that cannot reproduce, so that farmers have to come to them each year to buy new seeds.
No, they sell hybrid seed that produces genetically unstable seed. Welcome to the 1930's. They also have contracts that you must sign before buying seed, but that's contract law.