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Europe Needs Genetically Engineered Crops, Scientists Say
First time accepted submitter Dorianny writes in with a story about the ongoing battle over genetically engineered crops in Europe. "The European Union cannot meet its goals in agricultural policy without embracing genetically engineered crops (GMOs). That's the conclusion of scientists who write in Trends in Plant Science, a Cell Press publication, based on case studies showing that the EU is undermining its own competitiveness in the agricultural sector to its own detriment and that of its humanitarian activities in the developing world. 'Failing such a change, ultimately the EU will become almost entirely dependent on the outside world for food and feed and scientific progress, ironically because the outside world has embraced the technology which is so unpopular in Europe, realizing this is the only way to achieve sustainable agriculture,' said Paul Christou of the University of Lleida-Agrotecnio Center and Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats in Spain."
When the lid is opened there is no way of closing it again.
There are certain technologies mankind is not yet responsible enough to use.
If nuclear power leaves waste for 10000s of years... gene modification does so for the rest of existence.
And no. Cross breeding is not the same as gene modification. There are very few herrings that mate with a tomato IRL.
No one *needs* genetically-engineered crops, they simply result in a higher profit (and possibly various unknown health risks).
EU pays farmers for not growing stuff because it it produces too much food. There have been surpluses for decades, only recently they have been depleted because of the world market.
Yes, obviously there are imports, but only in winter time or for exotic fruits.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
And does their name begin with M? Also, when does this obsession with profit and short termism start to wane over long term stewardship? As a species, we are getting so fucked up. In history we used to wonder how once great nations could possibly collapse back to nothing, well here it is on a global scale.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
... IP laws where removed so as to prevent the monopolization of species when (not if, look for the literature) genes jump from GMO to naturally occuring varieties.
It is the wholesale rejection of an entire body of science and technology on non-scientific bases that will affect both Europe's ability to contribute to scientific progress in those areas and its ability to produce its own food.
In other words you have confused the direction of the cause and effect relationship between scientific progress and food production in this case.
1. The world, and the EU, produce plenty of food. People in certain areas do not have enough food due to problems in the food distribution system.
2. 90%+ of GMO food is either herbicide resistant or produces its own insecticide. It's focus is not producing more or better food. Yes, this could change some day, but that's how it is and has been for a long time.
"Scientists claim Europe must surrender to Monsanto or starve."
To surrender to a corporate tyrant is just as bad as to surrender to any other sort of tyrant.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"Scientists claim Europe must surrender to the European Commission or starve."
To surrender to a corporate tyrant is just as bad as to surrender to any other sort of tyrant.
There, fixed it for you.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
"Yuck, no thanks, keep your s..."
Except for those getting paid for saying otherwise...
Except the people that sell them...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
the EU has a food surplus for decades
First, this guy developed the first transgenic soybean, which has then been sold by Monsanto ( http://www.sciforum.hu/programme/speakers/paul-christou-research-professor-university-of-leida-spain.html ). What else is he gonna say?
Then, there's enough food everywhere for everybody provided : it's seasonal, regional and mostly vegetarian.
Sure, if you want huge steaks for every meal, with tomato salads, mango and strawberries for dessert all year round, you'll need a lot of antibiotics, pesticides, GMO's, oil and water.
Paul Christou
He received a first class honors degree in Chemistry (University of London) followed by a PhD in plant biochemistry (UCL, London) in 1980. Following postdoctoral research at UCL, he joined one of the very first plant biotechnology companies, Cetus Madison Corp (subsequently Agracetus, Inc.) Madison Wisconsin, USA. He led a research group which achieved the first genetically transformed staple crop (soybean). Subsequently his team developed a variety-independent gene transfer method for rice. These two achievements had a significant impact, as the first transgenic soybean on the US and global markets sold by Monsanto was a direct output of his group’s research efforts.
It is the wholesale rejection of an entire body of science and technology on non-scientific bases that will affect both Europe's ability to contribute to scientific progress in those areas and its ability to produce its own food.
Actually that describes the report pretty well. It is blatant scare-mongering by an industry body and the university professor they sponsor.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Problem is complex. There's general fear of anything related with "genetic modification", because of this theme exploited so heavily in tabloids, junk and paperback sci-fi, and by conservative politicans betting heavily on science fearing crowd. And then there's huge greedy corporations like Monsanto, which are blinded by gold rush in this field. Then there's politicians, desperate to have at least some kind of investment in countries, relaxing some rules so far that it's really irresponsible.
In overall, GMO debate has almost same semantics as nuclear one. Done right, this field would really do right for humanity. However, there's that very strong question - can we really do right for humanity? It seems that we as society don't trust ourselves - or current capitalistic system we embrace.
So, this is actually discussion "we don't trust multinational corporations to do theoretically dangerous stuff", not "is GMO good or bad", isn't it? However no one discuss corporations, because it's well...just not worth it. Because when money talks, everyone asks how high to jump (including media).
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
This looks like GMO industry backed research to me.
And whats this about "undermining its own competitiveness in the agricultural sector"? the EU has never been competivie in the agricultural sector and thats clear, precisely why its highly subsidized. Its not GMOs that will make the EU competive against lower cost produce coming from the global south and the US. What the US is really looking for is a change in EU policy so that they can have a new market for all their Franken-crops.
Also, the whole research is based on the assumption that GMOs produce higher yeilds: not always the case.
Since 25 years GMOs were tested and not a single case of adverse effects has ever been described. GMOs are not more dangerous than plants coming from classical breeding, actually GMO products are much safer because they are actually being tested. While classic breeding products (even mutagenesis!) are not tested even though it causes massive uncontrolled genetic changes (e.g. jumping genes get activated).
There is also no documentation that organic products are healthier in any way. You can find cancerogenic compounds in many organic products (e.g. aflatoxins) and nobody cares about that because it is "organic".
You should get out of your romantic view of nature, nature is dangerous!
What is interesting is that only people who do not understand anything about biology, plant breeding and GMOs are against GMOs.
Yeah, I don't have a problem with genetically modified food sciences, but you give 'em an inch and they take a mile. If we could trust them to simply improve the size and frequency of fruiting bodies' production then that would be great, but they don't stop there -- Some of these GMO food producers decide that we need to make poisonous plants to prevent bugs from eating them without actual long-term studies to validate their claims of harmlessness -- Scientists don't make conclusions based on lack of evidence. We need proof they're not harmful to us and the environment. We don't have that proof.
It's the unwillingness of people to think clearly that is harming us. We can use SOME types of genetic modifications without using others; However, corporations maximize profits and pundits aren't typically adequately educated, so we end up with people polarized on the issue and no real way forward -- no compromises, no middle ground.
The wholesale rejection is the only option for some if the ones making the modified food say they'll put the poison gene in or you get no GMO at all... The gene splicers are just as much at fault for this, and that's without even delving into BS patent issues and neutered seeds that could lead to even MORE dependence on foreign entities for food.
Be careful when you paint with a wide brush, you may end up with paint in your eyes.
"ironically because the outside world has embraced the technology which is so unpopular in Europe, realizing this is the only way to achieve sustainable agriculture"
What kind of propaganda-soaked, bullshit statement is that? So for the past 4000 years humanity has been performing natural, "unsustainable" agriculture? The whole article reeks so much of bundles of pharmaceutical 100 dollar bills that it stinks.
Well, no surprise here, considering this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/03/wikileaks-us-eu-gm-crops
and this: http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2012/09/leaked-us-to-start-trade-wars-with-nations-opposed-to-monsanto-gmo-crops-2-2464512.html
According to this cables story, Spain and 'Murrica work closely together to get Europe to adapt GM-crops.
F*** them. They all should choke on their GM shit.
Isn't birth rate dropping fast in Europe? Fewer people, less need for food.
"We need proof they're not harmful to us and the environment. We don't have that proof."
That's why you lobby for solid government agencies who actually do very good job on checking food safety (at least in my country).
You can't ignore food problems with clause "we don't trust corporations". Well, I don't, but what choice we have. It's not like we gonna change capitalism for something workable and better (I believe we can, but that's for another day). We need to lobby and support actually working government institutions to check on corporations. EU has better success in this regard, despite some members being in bed and naked with corps for years (hey UK).
Let's work within system. GMO food can be good, just let's keep pushing stuff we see as necessary for it to work. Just inflicting fear in general public won't work in long term I'm afraid.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
It's a huge subsidy, but it also has a crucial strategic value. Without the subsidies, farming in the EU would steadily decline into irrelevance and you become ever more dependent on imports. But food is even more critical than oil. What if there is a drought in the future? Import restrictions? Huge price increases? Shit, suddenly the EU can't feed its own citizens anymore. Other countries can use the EU's dependence on its food imports to exert diplomatic influence, essentially up to the point of blackmail. Take Russia for example. The only reason why it gets away with its subjugation of democracy and freedom of speech is because Europe is hugely dependent on energy imports from Russia. If Europe is not self-sufficient in its food requirements, it opens up another attack vector.
Why don't the scientists open source their research so that many eyes can find the potential bugs?
Ohh boy. Please guys, don't fall to their level. GMO is valid technology if applied right, as was genetic selection in the past (your poor man's GMO).
If you don't trust corporations, fine. But if you want to be taken serious in counterargument, please don't use "that's what they said". If you think their assumptions are wrong, please at least explain why.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
There is already today an excess of food production. People do not starve because there is not enough food, they starve because they are not given the food, usually because they are too poor to afford it, or because their supply lines have been cut by wars or embargoes. There is no need to increase world food production, only to get the food to those needing it.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
I've been successfully cultivating anti-americanism in my backyard, thanks to the constant fertilization my crops receive from news like these. Growing perfectly fine without pesticides and\or GM.
But hen again I have noticed some deficits and unemployment in Spain, Cyprus, Greece, Italy and some of those other places that are...well mostly in Europe...they have a lot of people needing jobs, why not get them into farming? Sure, it's more efficient to use giant machines and GM crops to make certain key corporations filthy rich but on the flip side if they are obligated to employ a reasonable amount of people we might make a dent in those countries negative figures & turn that big Euro zone frown upside down...
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
Matt Riley of "The Rational Optimist" (http://www.rationaloptimist.com/) also argues for increased use of GM crops. GM crops can produce higher yields, using fewer insecticides and chemicals than even organic foods do.
Of course, the question is: what will we do with this increased yield? If we use it to convert redundant farm land into nature reserves and green spaces, then I'm all for it. If we use it to help ourselves to a nice population burst, then hell no.
This works like the cabinet shop on the corner. The owner can not compete if he pays his workers more than what he suspects his competitors
pay their workers. So if Europe does not apply the most modern methods in raising food the food providers will be out of business in short order.
Since food is vital in essence Europe has no real option. Whether it is good, safe, moral or wise are not even part of the decision process.
Our politicians can never confront the problem. We have way too large numbers of people to care for and the only real solution is serious birth control. Science does provide breakthroughs and the edge of the cliff does get pushed back a bit from time to time but the plain and simple truth is that we are in a death spiral due to over population. It is the root of almost all of our issues. Pollution, global warming, employment, energy are all nothing more than proof of excess population. Wars and hostile politics are also driven by over population.
The sad truth is that only in a dictatorship does the government have the ability to consider reproduction a privilege and determine exactly
who can create babies. In the US if a politician breathed a hint of wanting firm reproduction control he would be out of a job permanently.
GMO food can be good, no doubt about it. The problem is that the goal of producer and user are widely different. For the user, increased production is the goal whereas it is only the necessary evil to sell it for the producer.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
One problem "Monsanto"
They produce most of the GMO that people are aware of, are notorious for suppressing any study that they do not like, for not publishing results, for patenting entire plants, for suing poor farmers who never bought their seed, for poisoning the environment .... etc ....
They may not be typical of GMO companies, but they are the poster child and best known, and are the worst possible advert for GMO ....
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
There's also immigration, but that's a moot point.
Some EU countries produce more, some less, both by choice. The newer members on the other hand, those in the former communist block, produce less now, than they did 20 years ago, because it's cheaper to import, than subsidize.
Price is a good indicator for demand, and food prices have been growing in the past decades only because of the growing oil prices, not for any other reason.
Of course nature is dangerous, but not tested? Ever heard of evolution and selection?
Breeding also works since thousands of years and not only 25.
Independant GM research is almost non-existent:
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/13/opinion/la-oe-guriansherman-seeds-20110213
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/companies_put_restrictions_on_research_into_gm_crops/2273/
http://earthopensource.org/files/pdfs/GMO_Myths_and_Truths/GMO_Myths_and_Truths_1.3b.pdf
Please stop spreading lies.
Problem is, we have humans applying it and that's where it gets screwed up.
Same with GMOs.
Or Nuclear power.
Ohh boy. Please guys, don't fall to their level. GMO is valid technology if applied right, as was genetic selection in the past (your poor man's GMO).
If you planted GMO anywhere in Europe you could argue, and win, that the technology was being applied incorrectly. EU farmers are being paid to not use their fields. For a variety of reasons, one of them being price of crops, another being that the soil cannot handle re-sowing of the same crop over and over again.
GMO is not going to fix that, it will make the problem worse. Fertilizer helps, but we'd rather not use that in a high enough degree to make it viable. So the option is to leave fields unused to let the soil recover. This is simple. Farmers in the fucking iron age knew this. This article is a fearmongering attempt because a really big market isn't drinking the kool aid, and Prof. WhatsHisFace is a sad panda.
... whatever
https://www.campact.de/saatgutvielfalt/appell/teilnehmen/
Mega bullshit! Europe is easily able to feed its own 450 million people with traditional crops. Hungary alone is able to feed its own 9.9 million and a further 14 million via exports, even though she has less territory than Maryland. Luckily Hungary has recently put into her national constitution that genetically altered crops are banned. Even if Monsanto bribes the European Union politicians, we will not let GMO into our country. Those lands where they were utilized previously have been torched and plowed over on government decree.
Remain GMO-free if you want to live!
Monsanto wants more money. Let them plant seeds in *one* plot, then they'll sue all the crops in the EU for royalties...
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
The problem is not the food production, it's how we waste it. The US imports 4 times more food than it physically can consume (even factoring in the obesity and things like this). I got this from a TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/tristram_stuart_the_global_food_waste_scandal.html
The numbers I found in a quick search suggest that EU-wide there is still a small population growth, but pretty close to zero. The import/export balance (PDF, see graphs on page 2) for raw and processed products combined seems to be roughly zero as well, but in terms of raw materials the EU is still net importing agricultural products. To say Europe is going to "become almost entirely dependent on the outside world" doesn't match these figures though.
Scientists don't make conclusions based on lack of evidence. We need proof they're not harmful to us and the environment. We don't have that proof.
You cannot prove a negative. What you can prove (and what already has been proven) is that all of the GMO crops are safer than peanuts, penicillin, and organic bean sprouts and spinach, and cell phones (GMOs 0 deaths with 100s of millions of exposures over nearly 20 years, the others many thousands of deaths between them due to anaphylactic shock, e. coli, driving-while-texting, etc) .
I am not arguing that there is no risk with GMO technology. What I am saying, however, that the rational approach is to formulate scientific hypotheses regarding risks such that those hypotheses can be tested via either examining existing data or conducting experiements that quantify the risk such that it is possible to determine whether those risks are acceptable based on our best current knowledge.
The "poison" genes you're referencing (e.g., Bt11) are currently based on proteins that are produced by soil bacteria, bacteria naturally found in milk, and other things that humans have been consuming for centuries and that are in many cases applied to organic crops as well. They have also been tested according to both USDA and EPA regulatory standards (in the US, pest control GM traits are regulated by both agencies whereas herbicide tolerance traits are only regulated by the USDA). At this point it is not a question of whether or not they have been tested, but whether they have been tested to a sufficient degree. My personal opinion is that given that they have been tested (both scientifically in controlled experiments and by default through market exposure) far more thoroughly than anything else I consume short of pharmaceuticals, I am OK with them. Beyond my personal comfort level I would challenge anyone to come up with a scientifically defendable justification to require greater testing that would not logically require much greater testing of non-GM foods as well.
The problem is not that there is a lack of "clear thinking" regarding GMOs. The problem is that the ratio of rational thought to irrational thought is unfortunately very small, and the ratio of rational communication vs. irrational communication regarding the issue is even worse. These difficulties are also compounded by the unfortunate fact that many people conflate GMOs with IP laws, religious beliefs, personal philosophy, etc.
I am really in a state of not knowing WRT to genetically engineered crops. I wish I could get clear on this issue.
On the one hand, it's a fact that all crops have been deliberately genetically engineered in the Mendelian sense over a longish (or even less longish) period of time. So we're all eating that and doing pretty well.
On the other it seems entirely possible that ADM or Monsanto could create a mutation or otherwise genetically altered crop whose unique dangers we would not find out about until it was too late for a very very large number of people, perhaps everyone. Asserting the opposite seems like the grossest hubris to me.
People in Europe also eat less than the west-of-the-ponders.
You cannot prove a negative. What you can prove (and what already has been proven) is that all of the GMO crops are safer than peanuts, penicillin, and organic bean sprouts and spinach, and cell phones (GMOs 0 deaths with 100s of millions of exposures over nearly 20 years, the others many thousands of deaths between them due to anaphylactic shock, e. coli, driving-while-texting, etc) .
By that rationale, cigarettes are also not dangerous.
Overall, cigarettes do not kill directly, except in very unlikely cases, e.g. people falling asleep in their beds with a lit cigarette. They do, however, poison your body, and large scale studies have shown that heavy smoking will reduce your lifespan by 9 years on average. Same thing could be true for GMO that are engineered to be poisonous to insects, but we have scarce evidence either way. What you are arguing is that we should not require that evidence prior to large scale adaption of GMO crops.
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head
They assume, that genetically engineered plants would cause a bigger yield than other plants. This has not been true for any genetically engineered plant so far. However, it allows big companies to control the plant and seed market. We all know how good private monopolies work.
Furthermore, in the EU, a lot of food is wasted (50%) before it reaches the customer. And large land areas are in an unused state, due to subventions to reduce the capabilities to produce goods. Even considering potential risks due to climate change, the production should be more than suffice for the EU itself and also provide a great amount of exports.
Indeed! Just spray those gmos fields with herbicides! oh wait ..... :/
The bad argument here is to argue that GMO is just like genetic selection, just pushed a bit further.
Of course it is not. Nobody is against genetic selection, neither in Europe not anywhere else.
or do proper crop rotation with crops that help replenish.
And what exactly is wrong with using fertilizer? Even the iron age farmers knew about spreading fertilizer although they mostly referred to it as manure or just shit. But continue down the luddite path if it makes you feel better about yourselves.
I think the US imports fruits and veggies from South America and the West Indies far more than from Europe.
He is at least as impartial as any so-called "climate expert." Yes, they do have a profit motive. It is always that they need more funding to develop more reliable models and do more research and attend more conferences and publish more Chicken Little predictions.
or do proper crop rotation with crops that help replenish.
And what exactly is wrong with using fertilizer? Even the iron age farmers knew about spreading fertilizer although they mostly referred to it as manure or just shit. But continue down the luddite path if it makes you feel better about yourselves.
Over-fertilization pollutes the groundwater. This has already been problematic and a reason for agricultural reform in the Netherlands.
It will happen.
Well, the guy is certainly 'pro' GM foods, as you would expect from his background, but 'OMG Europe won't be able to feed itself'?
Hardly. We've been paying farmers a fortune for years to let good farmland stand idle... The problem is not with the crops, it's the crazy CAP which distorts everything, including world trade. For example:
"In the autumn of 2007 the European Commission was reported to be considering a proposal to limit subsidies to individual landowners and factory farms to around £300,000. Some factory farms and large estates would be affected in the UK, as there are over 20 farms/estates which receive £500,000 or more from the EU."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Agricultural_Policy
Anyway, back on topic, it seems to me that the GM debate is like the nuclear one. On one side, the promise of a bright, science-led future, (limitless clean energy, cheap disease-free crops) with real or potential problems often glossed over or ignored, on the other the NIMBYs and hand-wavers with a "we're all gonna die" reflex. Where's the reasoned debate?
People don't trust the nuclear industry for a good reason, (and I say this as a firm believer in the promise of nuclear power over alternatives). It's not just about Three Mile Island etc, it's about how too many people have systematically covered-up shoddy work over the years, often to save or make more money.
These people should have been severly punished; none were. Seen any TEPCO Execs hanging from a tree recently? Nope.
It's the same with GM food. I'm sure the Scientists are sincere and have done great work, including field tests. But can we trust the agribusiness? Well, recent history (especially in Europe) says no. But it's too late anyway - even food advertsied as 'GM free' is not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_the_release_of_genetic_modified_organisms
Remember, this is also the same industry that brought you horsemeat labelled as beef. Oh yeah, and even when it really is beef, remember BSE ('mad cow' disease?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopathy
So, do I trust the technology? Yes. Do I trust the agribusiness? Hell no.
So this guy says we need to make more food? Is this so it can just be thrown away like we do currently? http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/half-of-the-worlds-food-is-just-thrown-away-8445261.html
Maybe if we did a better job of using what we make, this would be a total non problem (not that it is anyway, unless your a Monsanto salesman)
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
No need to look very far for the funding, just go to the journal site:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/13601385
The ad on the page has consistently Life Technologies GeneArt Strings DNA fragments "Synthetic Genes Ready to Clone—Affordable for Every Lab".
There is a bit of vested interest for that particular Journal to publish papers promoting genetic engineering:
It doesn't hurt that there is going to be a genetic engineering conference this June, so you would also want to prime the pump to fill up the conference hall. Nothing like a good controversy to sell tickets.
If you planted GMO anywhere in Europe you could argue, and win, that the technology was being applied incorrectly. EU farmers are being paid to not use their fields. For a variety of reasons, one of them being price of crops, another being that the soil cannot handle re-sowing of the same crop over and over again..
It's actually even worse than that. My local farmer has fields which are ploughed...but unseeded. I asked him why. It's so they can monitor, via satellite, that he is not growing crops on X% of his fields to get the EU subsidies. So, he has to expend energy to let weeds next to his crops, while accelerating soil erosion Great. He can't even plant something, like grass, which would be good for the environment, or crops that could be ploughed back into the soil to improve it. Totally fucking mad.
Not sure if that is true, this winter has been a long one the delay of seasonal weather due to the jet stream having been low longer than usual has caused a few problems. It finally moved northwards about 2 weeks ago.
For cattle and sheep apart from the many sheep dead in the UK frozen to death right in the lambing season there has been problems with grazing, the grass has been fairly dormant leaving farmers in a dire situation without feed or money to buy feed for their herds. In Ireland there has been a help line set up to help farmers who cannot feed their animals. For crops the persisting frosts have put many crops and plants around a month behind. The last couple of years the summer temperature and rainfall has lowered yields too.
It's pretty essential that the jet stream rise northwards for europe to experience its 'normal' climate. Without the warm air keeping back the cold air, you don't get the germination temperatures needed.
Natural selection should favour plants most suited to the climate that they grow in, as they will be the plants that grow to maturity and set seed which can be planted the following year. Wouldn't Monsanto seed policy of not allowing seed collection work against natural selection, so the seed available will be the seed Monsanto has decided has optimal characteristics and if they are wrong well that could be a major problem.
Fairly recently Colmans mustard crops were found to have falling yields and it turned out that they needed diverse seeds to get high yields luckily they do keep seed from past years and were able to reverse the trend but without that they were in big trouble.
I don't think Monsanto has it's GM Seed banned in Europe it just isn't welcomed by Europeans and if a product has GM on it, it is labeled as such and it doesn't sell. Fortunately for Monsanto the FDA refuses to label GM food in the USA, if that changed Monsanto likely would be in trouble as consumers boycotted their products.
why wouldn't it be the same as in Europe?
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
In Europe immigration is a problem because invasion and subversion by immigration and reproduction is an actual thing there. In the US it's a strawman for now, but in Europe it is a real and present danger. France is having issues dealing with a large fraction of the populace that demands Sharia [Muslim jurisprudence] be law, and uses Sharia in practice as law despite the official secular legal process.
I wouldn't have a problem with this but that the Muslim community doesn't seem to have a mechanism in place to moderate their non-secular idiots who feel it is their manifest destiny to kill everybody who doesn't agree with them, and their nonfriendly positions on gays, women, liquor and civil rights.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"The numbers I found in a quick search suggest that EU-wide there is still a small population growth [wikipedia.org], but pretty close to zero."
We grow by acquiring new countries as members, it's much easier that way.
And we don't like the Rolling Stones (they're English), we get what we want, not what we need. :-)
Modern farming techniques are washing both down our rivers to the ocean:
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/11/are-we-heading-toward-peak-fertilizer
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2006/03/slow-insidious-soil-erosion-threatens-human-health-and-welfare
At least one country gets it:
http://www.rodale.com/organic-farms
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
The GMO producing companies are the most evil entities in the world.
They keep suing farmers when the wind blows their cr@p on other people's land. The fertilizers that keep their seeds going are a natural disaster for the soil, for the animals and all other crops in the vicinity. They forced a law in the US that doesn't even *allow* people to find out whether the product they buy is GM or not. They bait new customers with low prices, then when those farmers can no longer switch back to natural seeds, they ruin them. They expressly want natural seeds to die out so the whole world has to buy from them: they are sworn enemies of natural seeds because farmers can save those.
I trust natural selection. I don't trust greedy corporations that don't care about anyone or anything else. If you want the truth about them, read the stories of farmers who battled their army of lawyers for years. Percy Schmeiser's moving story at http://www.percyschmeiser.com/ is a good start.
Anything pro-GMO should be subject to extreme scrutiny and is probably Monsanto playing the field. This pro-GMO guy is from a Spanish university and it's obvious that Spain is pretty far up the creek with a gigantic unemployment rate and staggering debt which surely had an impact on his university's funding. So where is the Monsanto link? Did anyone follow the money? Who funded their pro-GMO research? GMO is a bad idea and Monsanto's GMO patents and their litigation are in an evil scale of their own.
read his post again, there's a lack of evidence (either way) beause the necessary studies HAVE NOT BEEN DONE!
Depending on the genes they use, you can transfer an allergic response from one substance to another as the transfered gene is the one responsible for the allergen. But, due to the legislation sponsored by Monsanto - you can't label the food as containing the allergen.
In creating the GMOs they use certain resistance marker genes which are also embedded so they can easily wipe out the produce which does not contain the modifications. This then gives the resistance to the product, and possible transfer to other organisms - thus producing more problems as a wider population of organisms develop resistance to the weapons we have to wipe them out. But of course, Monsanto can always sell us more 'RoundUp Ready' crops. Or 'RoundUp Ready Plus' once everything is resistant to RoundUp.
Scientists owned by Monsanto claim Europe must surrender to Monsanto or starve. ,water it, it comes up, flowers, fruits, just like Monsanto.
What we need to hear instead.
Monsanto was banned from business in Europe and their patents stripped.
It's just time to go back to more natural high yield seed with no patents. For everyones good.
Put it in the ground, feed it
We need Monsanto and Cargill for what now?
Regulate the shit out of them. Uncover the bribery and make an example of the scientists backing Monsanto while we're at it.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
You must have stupid farmers in your country. That rule was abolished in 2008. You should know by now that when politicians in Europe say "Europe orders us to ...", what they really mean is "We order you to ... but don't want to take responsibility"
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Or that new peer-reviewed study on glyphosphate.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2315057/Is-worlds-popular-weed-killer-causing-Parkinsons-New-study-shows-Roundup-herbicide-linked-cancer-infertility.html
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Just to be complete, the Commission is pushing to reintroduce this in the upcoming bill for part of the "green" subsidies, which under Irish precidency should arrive around June 2013. This time the Parliament will need to vote too though, so if it is reintroduced, it's because our representation wants that, not some bureaucrat.
You cannot prove a negative.
GMOs 0 deaths
Apart from that detail, I personally have no problems with GM crops on the health side (*). I do have serious objections though concerning the misuse of legal ways to enforce mono culture and the elimination of small farmer's biodiversity. That is something GM crop companies should not have a right to do.
(*) Since the invention of antibiotics and vaccination, and widespread adoption of hygiene, the general life expectancy has grown very slowly.
Our bodies are currently part of a long time experience, which involves exposure to pollution from fossil fuels, radioactive particles from accidents and open-air atom bomb test (yes, until this day), processed fats and sugars, artificial electromagnetic waves of many wavelengths, GM food, and more.
Noone knows if one or many of these factors play a role in the ever growing effect of cancer, diabetes, and other deadly desases on our theoretical life expectancy.
While classic breeding products (even mutagenesis!) are not tested even though it causes massive uncontrolled genetic changes (e.g. jumping genes get activated).
Mutagenesis is not classical breeding. 'Classical' breeding is extremely well tested. It is a slow process that has been performed for thousands of years and involves selecting traits that already exist in the plants in nature (i.e. that lots of people have already been exposed to) and breeding the plants together to combine traits that you're interested in. Mutagenenis/mutation breeding, on the other hand, started in the 20th century and involves bombarding seeds with radioactivity or treating them with mutagenic drugs which damage their DNA to see if you can come up with new, potentially unnatural, traits by mutating their genes. Don't conflate the two things, it makes your argument meaningless.
There is also no documentation that organic products are healthier in any way. You can find cancerogenic compounds in many organic products (e.g. aflatoxins) and nobody cares about that because it is "organic".
You should get out of your romantic view of nature, nature is dangerous!
What is interesting is that only people who do not understand anything about biology, plant breeding and GMOs are against GMOs.
Nature is dangerous, that much is true. But you're talking about carcinogenic compounds that people have been exposed to in their diets for millions of years, and are well adapted to. It's actually not so much the new, untested carcinogens you should worry about, it's the immunogens - things which may cause an allergic reaction. If you're sticking proteins from bacteria in food, there's every chance that you're going to encourage people to become allergic to that food.
And that's not even to mention the risks of lateral gene transfer between GM and non-GM plants (e.g. crops to weeds). It hasn't been shown to be happening yet, as far as I'm aware, but a lot of biologists are concerned that it could easily happen, considering the much increased tendency of GM plants to outcross, and because there is evidence that lateral gene transfer between plants does happen in the wild. The problem is that it doesn't matter if it's unlikely, it only has to happen once and it won't be easy to undo.
I understand biology very well, thank you, and GM concerns me. The main thing that bothers me is the way people like you say "GM is good"/"GM is bad", without realising that each genetic modification is completely different and you can't predict the consequences of all of them together in one go. You have to do it on a case-by-case basis, and even if we are aiming for low-risk modifications that slightly increase the amount of nutrients in a crop, like golden rice, a lot of testing has to be done to make sure that this doesn't get transferred to other plants/ increase the production of other proteins in the rice/ do something else unpredictable, like make the rice more suceptible to infection by Aspergillus (yay, aflatoxins!).
Other modifications, like roundup resistance, bother a lot of people as they appreciate that not only could resistance be easily transferred to weeds, it also encourages the use of roundup in larger and larger amounts, which may well have nasty consequences for people eating the crops and giving themselves chronic low-dose exposure to a toxin.
I think a lot of people in this thread have already said some of this, showing that you don't have to be a trained scientist to be aware of the potential issues with GMOs, you just have to have an ounce of sense and to keep yourself informed.
Here is some reading matter regarding GMO foodstuffs, just randomly selected from Google results, which turns up many more.
That's sufficient scientific evidence for me not to touch the stuff with a 500km pole (even considering the sources).
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
I'm actually _less_ disturbed by the possible human toxicity of GM foods that I am by the lack of information on the potential negative impact on the rest of the environment by these cross-Domain genes being deployed in the wild.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
No, we don't. As simple as that. We don't need that monopolistic useless shit. We have enough food, and even in some places we have real food, instead of shit that looks like food.
Actually I know quite a bit about Biology and you are wrong. There have been several cases of poisoning by "natural" pesticides produced by GMO plants generally hushed up or covered up by retroactively slapping a "Beta" label on a production product so as to side step regulators. Monsanto gives Google a run for heir money with Beta testing.
Sorry about that FDA we were just testing it for safety and well found it is not as safe as we thought and whenever you feel like quitting your underpaid government job well we got a nice cushy one for you.
Monsanto is pushing legislation in Europe to allow GMO in the EU now for quite some time. Just recently, they started a new campaign. this resulted in a counter campaign from NGOs, like FoodWatch or via Avaaz.org. It is obvious that this news from a special research facility in Spain is triggered one way or the other from Monsanto and friends.
The research facility as such [http://www.icrea.es] is not easy to find in the net. Also searching for it and collaboration projects does not yield much results. However, on their site they give the impression to be a big research facility, while the website is rather small and uninformative compared to other research facilities. Furthermore, patents seem to be most important for them. Based on their publication, I do not believe that their a very credible source of information. However, some one here on /. may be able to provide more inside into the credibility of icrea
Please point to a documented case of climate stasis, ever in the history of the Earth.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
There is only so much fertilizer around the world. Soil is being depleted fast enough that countries like the USA are importing enough fertilizer every year to measure Earth destruction in the unit of cubic kilometers. I think that's mostly lime type imports.
When tens of cubic of kilometeres of land is torn up every year to extract lime to help fertilize one country that represents only 4.5% of the total population, I can't see us lasting too long on current consumption amounts.
Fertilizer helps, but we'd rather not use that in a high enough degree to make it viable.
What Europe "needs" if it wants to increase production and/or land use is holistic/organic methods, such as intensive managed grazing, pasture cropping, and permaculture design. This would have multiple beneficial knock-on effects...
1. Increase production.
2. Decrease chemical inputs.
3. Decrease fuel and capital costs.
4. Mitigate flood/drought cycles.
5. Increase carbon sequestration.
6. Increase biomass and biodiversity.
7. Decrease the need for veterinary pharamceuticals.
8. Replenish eroded topsoil.
Google a bit on "Joel Salatin", "Geoff Lawton" and "Allan Savory" for some excellent videos on this subject.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
We may be missing the smoking gun but as the parent said, 20 years of use and no real world problems with health that have been correlated with GMO.
Cheap corn syrup (probably GMO) is the biggest problem, causing the American obesity epidemic. That's not a GMO problem though.
Again we could be in the middle of a GMO related epidemic and not realize the cause but no one has announced it (and I'd expect someone is looking for it).
BPA in plastics is a bigger problem, antibiotics in live stock is a bigger problem, outbreaks of listeria and botulism are bigger problems, hormones and chemicals in the water supply are a bigger problem.
It's not a zero sum problem of course so I encourage people to look for the smoking gun but to date it has not been found and its been decades now of widespread use.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Farmers don't have to plant Monsanto crops. Consumers don't have to buy crops they don't want. And if Monsanto can get away with suing farmers whose fields they contaminated, you should blame the legislators for making that possible.
I don't think there is anything wrong with using fertilizer. In fact human civilization as we know it would not exist without it. The problem has been that in much of the world over use of inexpensive, easily applied, chemical fertilizers has become a substitute for good farming practices. Things like crop rotation, leaving fields fallow for a season, putting grazing animals onto your fallow fields to naturally enrich the soil etc have fallen out of use. In their place they just put ever more fertilizer on the land to compensate for burning up its natural fertility and polluting the ground water and oceans.
Since 25 years GMOs were tested and not a single case of adverse effects has ever been described. GMOs are not more dangerous than plants coming from classical breeding, actually GMO products are much safer because they are actually being tested. While classic breeding products (even mutagenesis!) are not tested even though it causes massive uncontrolled genetic changes (e.g. jumping genes get activated). There is also no documentation that organic products are healthier in any way. You can find cancerogenic compounds in many organic products (e.g. aflatoxins) and nobody cares about that because it is "organic". You should get out of your romantic view of nature, nature is dangerous! What is interesting is that only people who do not understand anything about biology, plant breeding and GMOs are against GMOs.
The only problem with you theory here (which is so large that it flaws your entire argument) is there is only one thing we shoul fear more than nature, and that is greedy, corrupt corporations attempting to manipulate it for nothing more than profit and gain.
If you stance had any validity to it whatsoever, then Monsanto would be a non-profit organization running patent-free, subsidized by the very governments, countries, and people that they are allegedly here to save. Others would be welcome to grow and even submit their own designs for GMO foods as a solution to saving the entire planet as our population grows, all without the horrors of litigation. Obviously, that is hardly the scenario today, and their tenacity in the courtroom reflects that.
Yes, you're right. Life is full of risk everywhere you turn. But some of us would like to sidestep any manufactured risk, including financial ruin, which ironically has been shown to be one of the largest causes of physical and emotional damage to the human body.
One large conglomerate basically controls the worlds oil supply. And look what has happened to the fuel prices in the last 30 years. How much do you think it's going to cost to put food in your body in the future with the globe now basically facing the same thing (or worse) with the protections now afforded to Monsanto?
Oh, and don't forget what awaits you on the other end of that GMO-laced population as you grow old with ailments. Socialized Medicine. Yes, pure innocence with that organization too, I'm sure.
It is not GMOs we fear. It is the intent behind it. And we should rightfully question it, given their history. Stating otherwise reeks of ignorance or corruption.
Right, and the government is also putting rainbows in our sprinklers.
You posted that, because you wanted to be an ass. Now you are name calling someone who says that it looks like the muslims will be the ones to start violence in Europe. AC said nothing against women, nothing against humans, did not advocate euthanasia, or genocide, and you can glean from the tone of AC's reply that they find genocide to be an abhorrent thing.
News flash AC also said nothing about disliking muslims either. Only that the radical portion of that religion does not seem to be under control, and likes violence. Ya know, a little like you.
I art more snarky, and terse than thou. I art Slashdot!
who initially read this as "genetically engineered cops"?
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
If in 10 years the rest of the world can produce food for even 10% less cost using GMO's than Europe can without using them, you're going to drive the farmers out of business. Unless you impose tariffs on incoming food (which can't be politically popular), subsidize the local farmers (and end up with people finding every loophole imaginable to meet the subsidy requirements without actually growing a damn thing), or convince people that GMO crops are in and of themselves evil and track every imported food item from source to store to make sure it's not GMO (and they apparently have trouble tracking even what species of animal their meat comes from, never-mind what particular plot of land an ear of corn originated in).
Both of you are off-topic and not insightful. Nowhere in this article does anyone mention Monsanto. Monsanto sucks, but:
Monsanto != GMOs
GMOs hold incredible promise to feed the world, but all anyone can ever talk about is Monsanto and "Frankenfoods." There is not one single shred of scientific evidence of any GMOs causing serious health problems (Note: I said "GMOs" not the pesticides farmers are using on those crops), and there are plenty of publicly funded GMO projects that have produced real-life benefits like saving Papaya crops, bringing crops to parts of Africa where they wouldn't normally survive, and bringing nutrient-rich rice to impoverished parts of China.
But you know what? All of this scientific progress is being stymied because of anti-science people screaming "frankenfoods!" In Africa, some countries refused American food aid because of GMO fears--until their people began to starve to death. The Blood Rice GMO could nourish millions, but China can't get anywhere with it because of GMO fears. GMO farm salmon has spent 15 years trying to get approved in the United States, but politicians have blocked it for fear of GMOs; meanwhile, our natural fish stocks collapse from over-fishing.
If you are anti-GMO, then I put you in the same class of people who don't believe in Evolution, who are anti-vaccine, or don't accept the very basic science of Global Warming. You believe things without evidence or are simply denying the scientific evidence that exists, and your ignorance is making life harder for the rest of us.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
That is not what he's arguing at all. He is saying: 1.- Current (very abundant) evidence and testing have not demonstrated any negative effects (unlike smoking). 2.- It is logically impossible to "prove" that something has no effect. There could always be (potentially) hidden effects that your tests do not measure. While reasonable efforts should be made to test potential effects, "reasonable" will never be "infinite", as that would prevent us from using any new technology whatsoever.
I agree 100% with you that GMO holds promise and != Monsanto. But we live in a corporate-dominated world and it's a legitimate fear that GMO will become a tool for control and profit rather than improvement of the human condition. Second point, mono-culture and gene-spliced is a lot less sustainable/more risky than natural high-yield. We could concentrate on eating less protein too, that's what takes the majority of the space/water etc.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
If it's effectively random, it'll improve the weather in half the places. If it's not random, it'll improve the weather in half the places.
The world's ecosystem has generally thrived when the planet was warmer than it is today.
Good post. The anti-GMO crowd is as foolish and dangerous as the anti-vaccine crowd. And, like the anti-vaccine crowd, they are self-deluded, and convinced that they are right, despite the absolute lack of any evidence.
The only point they have in their favor is the questionable behaviors of certain companies, which are a consequence of some bad laws we have, not anything to do with the technology.
... idiots who feel it is their manifest destiny to kill everybody who doesn't agree with them
[rant of disagreement]
You are still a stupid, misogynistic misanthrope whose euthanasia would improve the gene pool.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
>> Scientists don't make conclusions based on lack of evidence. We need proof they're not harmful to us and the environment. We don't have that proof. .. GMOs 0 deaths with ...
> You cannot prove a negative. What you can prove (and what already has been proven) is that all of the GMO crops are safer
Everyone that has eaten carrots has a 100% fatality rate. Therefore carrots are bad. See, I can abuse stats and provide bullshit arguments based on it too.
This phrase "prove a negative" is incorrect. If there are LONG-TERM studies (40 - 100 years) on the RESULTS of people eating GMO foods then we can make safety decisions based on EVIDENCE. i.e.
* Are people more or less healthy?
* Are there chemicals / toxins / etc that are there when they shouldn't be?
* Are there any effects on birth?
etc.
We don't have 100+ years of study on GMO foods. Man has a annoying habit of fucking everything up in nature. It would be more prudent to ban the commercial use UNTIL we have more complete LONG TERM data on their safety especially when you have corporations that are proven & documented as being dishonest, unethical, and have paid some shill to advocate their propaganda because they ONLY care about corporate greed.
References:
* The World According to Monsanto
* Food Inc.
... one country that represents only 4.5% of the total population,
And produces over 25% of the world's food supply, and growing.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
This is actually what the mexican farmers have been saying about NAFTA and it's effect on them. Even what had been luxury food products could be farmed cheaper in the US than they could in mexico and so farms started dying out. Some have struggled to hang on, but they are a minority.
Now that is the mexican farmer take on the subject, I have no idea how true it is.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
...our current world influences for food production and distribution.
If the Matrix style production of chicken does not make you sick, maybe the message at the end of the movie from Nestle's president will.
http://www.we-feed-the-world.at/en/film.htm
Although the movie is documentarily shocking, there are what feel like forced elments to make the point.
Like to get some feedback, not putting on my tinfoil hat yet.
The total Islamic population of France is probably under 10% - the total African and Islamic-descended population is under 15%. Even if ALL of those people wanted Sharia, they would be a tiny minority. I'm calling you on your thesis.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I don't know enough about GMO. I'm trying to learn more but I see anti-science hysteria all over the place. It sounds much like the arguments against electrifying houses as electricity was going to "leak" out of the unused sockets.
Too much of the argument is consumed by "big-bag-corporation" and un-realized scares such as used by the anti-smoking crowd (there's rat poison in cigarettes). In reality the "rat poison" argument comes from the fact that burning any organic compound releases trace amounts of arsenic. Since arsenic is used in rat poison then cigarettes have rat poison.
(By the way I'm not a smoker, think it's a dumb habit, and am not promoting it.)
I'm responding to your point about composted gmo foods start leeching into the water table. AFAIK a genetic trait does not leech anywhere. The gene that crop A has which makes it resistant to drought or X doesn't "leech" in the water supply.
I'm not a proponent of GMO. I'm just one more non-expert trying to sort this shit out.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Wait, what?
AC's post wasn't racist, nationalist, or even all that idiotic. A bit too stereotypical IMO, but damn - wishing death (viz euthanasia) on the guy just because he (she, it) pointed out that yeah, it's going to be a problem down the road?
Seriously - there are elements of that post which happen to be correct - unless the muslim communities in Europe ratchet back (and tamp down) the whole demand for (and occasional practice of) Sharia law, parts of the EU may well end up living under it. Given that the radical elements do have a penchant for violence, he wasn't too far off the mark there, either.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
When EU stops paying farms to not produce or imposing limits on productions, food production will go up!
When all this "scientists" must just to eat their own poison (ie: just ead GM food) for years several years, maybe they will change their mind.
When GM companies stop paying "studies", "scientists", politicians, etc and stop sueing everyone, then maybe there is a real analysis of the problems
When all food with GM is CLEARY marked as so, then the consumers can choose and let people vote with their wallet
Nothing to see here, move along, its just another try to pressure the EU to accept GM, when almost everyone clearly don't want then.
Higuita
Old/outdated news. The new simplified regulation that is intended to replace the old regulation had no exception for small, non-commercial farmers. After protests from the farmers organizations about the draft, the paragraph was added and the petition/open letter is moot.
Blacks make up about 13% of the US population and I wouldn't call them a "tiny minority" and 10% is not too much less, hardly a tiny minority either.
No matter where you go, there you are.
Last time I looked, there was quota on production in Europe, because we overproduce massively. This GMO nonsense is pure Monsanto BS. There is no underproduction crisis in Europe, and never will be. Capacity is at 60-70% of peak possible production w/o GMO. Population growth in europe is low. This is utter nonsense.
Is that like blaming google because patent trolls exist?
... and destroys poor countries agricultural ability with their 'aid' programs...
Farmers the world over all agree on such things like how they need government protectionism increased for whatever they grow, they need more agriculture subsidies and they need other countries to reduce trade barriers so they can export more.
No matter where you go, there you are.
However, saying that Europe needs genetically engineered crops is hyperbolic at best.
I frequently hear tales of GMOs saving the world and whatnot. But when I ask for a scientific measurement of their effect, all I get is studies - often sponsored by GMO proposers themselves - showing that, in developed countries (as Europe is), they can lead to modest increments in yeld (in the order of magnitude of 10% over ten years), and sometimes they don't (e.g. in Australia).
I can't talk about what happens in the vasty plains of Germany, but here on the terraced slopes of southern Europe tons of fruits are left to rot on the branches because picking them up would cost more than you'd earn by selling them (also because of the european subsidies which transfer money to latifondists no matter what they do with their land), and still no hungry mobs are plundering those fields. We can't compete with China on growing cheaper rice, no matter what seeds we use. What we can do is to promote our centuries-old cultivars, and the traditional foods based on them, and sell them for a premium because they don't taste like shit.
You'll forgive my diffidence, but in the latest years, every single time we've been told to drop a time-honoured habit of us in order to copy some other country's recipe for success, it ended up in grief and hunger (this one scientifically measured) for us. Timeo multinationals et dona ferentes.
To surrender to a corporate tyrant is just as bad as to surrender to any other sort of tyrant.
I'm pretty flamingly socialist, but that's just not true. If the corporate tyrant has the power to kill you legally against your wishes, then there's a problem with the government.
oh, wait, never mind.
I'm anti-food-crop patents, anti-seed-licensing, and anti-pesticide. I've got no problem with GMOs in principle, but right now the only bandwagon to hop on is the anti-GMO bandwagon. I'd much rather that we had an anti-abuse bandwagon to jump on. But I consider the patent issues, licensing issues and pesticide issues important enough to trump my distaste for the "throw everything into one bucket" solution.
Blacks make up about 13% of the US population
But they are 50% of certain states, and represent a sizable minority in huge regions of the country - so it's a difficult comparison to make. In any event, at no point in US history has the black population exerted their will upon the majority - in fact, until recent improvement over the last 40 years or so, they were chronically underrepresented. And the islamic population is at about 50% lower in France than the black population in the US. It's safe to say that they wield little-to-no political power that they could use to subjugate the majority. And even further, nowhere near 100% of that small population wants Sharia.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
if "suing the crops" was a thing in USA.
I have nothing to lose but my bindings.
You may not realize this, but you haven't contradicted with the person you are arguing with said. S/he didn't say that fertilizer doesn't work. S/he said that it's environmentally destructive. How much starvation are you willing to put up with in 25 years to get that 25% improvement now? Particularly given that we don't need it to feed the world?
A big problem comes when you conflate GMO which agribusiness.
They aren't necessarily the same thing.
The article points out that for a sustainable future in agriculture it looks pretty certain that GMO crops will be needed. We aren't going to have large scale sources of synthetic fertilizers forever, and certainly population pressure is continuing to increase.
Agribusiness is a different issue. There are clear political solutions to problems that people complain about that are independent of the choice of use of GMOs.
You can take my protein from my cold, dead hands! I suggest the bits around the base of the thumb, there is a lot of good meat there.
Hungary suddenly looks a whole lot awesome.
I have nothing to lose but my bindings.
for 1000 posts claiming that monsanto causes cancer...
for a 1000 posts confirming Monsanto IS a cancer. FTFY
The idea of turning over to GM foods is insulting. The use of the word "sustainable" in the second paragraph is offensive. How can a plant that requires you to buy seeds and that is unable to reproduce new plants naturally ever be considered sustainable? I did think it was interesting that the scientists made the claim that the EU will ultimately become dependent on outside food sources. That itself might lead one to believe that Europe cannot feed itself, but the science I think they are claiming is the math which pairs a population with its resources. You remember those graphs. The population keeps rising due to a high amount of resources (food perhaps) then when the resources become limited the population starts to drop until it finds a balance. Any statistician would claim that humans are not on a sustainable path if you go out far enough into the future. If there are 2-4 billion people in the EU then I could see food production being a problem. GM foods are not the answer here.
My biggest concern with GMO crops is that they infect non-GMO crops with their pollen and GMO seeds somehow find their way onto non-GMO farms. Then suddenly the farmer is sued for using their GMO crops without planting. The problem with GMO crops and Monsanto goes beyond the safety of the food and into the repercussions for using it. A handful of companies control the worlds food seeds because of the patents on GMOs. Then these same GMOs are created to be resistant to things like Roundup or Liberty pesticides. Followed up by creating weeds that are immune to these super chemical pesticides and other regular pesticides leaving non-Monsanto farmers screwed. Monsanto and others also are trying to push for suicide seeds that are unplantable a second year, which can spread to plants they don't own and ruining those for other farmers.
No. It's the job of legislators to make sure that laws are reasonable. You cannot blame Monsanto or any other company for using the legal system to enforce rights (however unreasonable) that they have under the law.
You may not realize this, but you haven't contradicted with the person you are arguing with said. S/he didn't say that fertilizer doesn't work. S/he said that it's environmentally destructive. How much starvation are you willing to put up with in 25 years to get that 25% improvement now? Particularly given that we don't need it to feed the world?
She also complained about lime. LIME! Sorry, but the US has some of the most abundant limestone deposits in the world, it doesn't import lime. So that's wrong. Also, lime (calcium carbonate) is used in agriculture to adjust the Ph. It doesn't now and never has caused any environmental issue whatsoever. To suggest so is just ignorant.
What is causing environmental issues is the over use and mis-application of nitrogen fertilizer (but the US is a net exporter of that, too, not an importer). That's what causes coastal and brackish oxygen depletion and problems with marine life. Too much mass-production, GMO and chemical-based factory farming.
It's also what caused the problem with the Snail Darter population in the San Fransisco Bay. And how was that solved? Well, thanks to people too ignorant about the real issues, like you and the OP, instead of reigning in the over-use of nitrogen fertilizer at the corporate farms in the watershed, they turned OFF the water to the lush (and family-owned) farmland in the San Joaquin valley, turning it into desert and forcing a lot of family farms into bankruptcy. THAT is what ignorance from environmentalists does. It causes more damage by focusing on symptoms and never treating the disease.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
There is only so much fertilizer around the world.
BZZZZT! Use all you want, I'll shit out some more.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
The total Islamic population of France is probably under 10% - the total African and Islamic-descended population is under 15%. Even if ALL of those people wanted Sharia, they would be a tiny minority. I'm calling you on your thesis.
And so what? Those who wanted a theocracy during the Iranian revolution were a minority, still Iran became a theocracy. Same stuff for the Arabian Spring. Mussolini became prime minister with just 35 members of parliament on a total of 535. The Bolsheviks, despite their name, were a minority in the revolutionary forces. The sheer numbers do not matter, but being vocal matters, laissez-faire matters: religious and political extremism in Europe is on the rise.
mod this guy up x1000.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
mod up
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
What I find most disturbing (and correct) from your essay is the issue about natural selection. You are right about Monsanto making crops that will grow best under certain conditions and if those conditions change, then they would have to change the genes to grow better. Practically I don't believe that conditions will change too much, but Monsanto really likes to manipulate the genomes down to every gene. What I am most worried about is the lack of mutations which should happen naturally. If your crop is genetically modified and unable to reproduce naturally, then all of the plants have little genetic variation. As you said about certain conditions species have become extinct because a new condition arose and there were no mutations which allowed that species to survive.
Part of the reasons people starve is because the food isn't where people are starving. It's hard to grow food in some African climates/soil, and most agriculture is low yield and results in failure. Genetic engineering would solve all those problems by enabling more hardy crops that can grow in tougher regions. The technology could very well solve the problem of world hunger.
In the context of crop regulation and protection of arable land 'fallow' does most certainly not mean 'neglected'.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Each time I see a documentary about mosanto, it looks like the future hell we must all fight to avoid in science fiction movies.
Much better than soylent red!
I see a lot of derp in this thread from Luddites that have an argument that they don't like GMO foods. What I haven't see is anyone give any science based logic case against GMO. Mindless political views being pushed without any backing is pretty much the very definition of derp, so can anyone give a science based reason?
Of course he can. If he cared about the environment. But, alas, apparently he only cares about receiving the subsidies.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Europe feeds itself and then some, and can likely do so for the foreseeable future; it doesn't need the increased yields and cheaper food that GMO adoption would produce.
Africa needs GMOs; cheaper food and nutrient-enhanced crops could save many lives there.
Africa can't adopt GMOs as long as they have to sell to Europe, and while Europe has its OMG-NO-GMO policies in effect.
Europe's anti-GMO policies are starving people in Africa. The morality of this is questionable.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Second point, mono-culture and gene-spliced is a lot less sustainable/more risky than natural high-yield.
Do you know what's not sustainable? Hunter/Gatherer society.
Like it or not, we're humans, and that means we change our environment to suit ourselves. Genetically engineered food is just another step in a natural progression. Did our ancestors argue about the sustainability of eating cooking meat? We shouldn't be changing our lifestyles, we should be changing the planet so more people can enjoy the same standard of living we do in the first world.
To surrender to a corporate tyrant is just as bad as to surrender to any other sort of tyrant.
Monsanto is not the only player in genetically modified crops. Sure, they're not a positive force, but talking about genetically modified crops does not mean automatically talking about Monsanto. Actually, by making that logical conclusion, you're giving more power to Monsanto, and less to their more friendly competitors, who could probably use the extra business to keep Monsanto at bay.
Not really, given that a lot of our lifestyles are unhealthy anyway. I have relatives in Korea where they eat tons of meat and then have regular colonoscopies, that seems to me to be faintly ridiculous. Why would we change the planet so that we can become obese and ill?
Incidentally there's a strawman argument there too. I'm not suggesting that we return to the state of hunter/gatherers.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
It would be more prudent to ban the commercial use UNTIL we have more complete LONG TERM data on their safety
Why not support long term studies on non-GMO food? I think it's possible that completely natural tomatoes cause cancer, but the studies just haven't been done because of the big-tomato industry. Just because we've been doing it for a thousand years doesn't somehow make it safe. Take tobacco for example. Tobacco is completely natural, yet contains carcinogens.
My proposal is that we ban ALL food until it's been conclusively been proven safe by a 40-100 year long study. There's no way we can let big corporations get away with this.
I should add that this is not the same as what Iron Age farmers practiced. If they had used these techniques, then the Sahara would not have turned into a desert in the first place.
Here's a video that explains how this process works. And another one that shows another method for desert recovery.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
The reasonable debate starts with education. /. (unfortunately regardless of age) have no clue about biology and physics. Hence they shout all the time "citation needed", "give me a peer reviewed journal", "where is unbiased evidence", "who has funded the study" ... however: they lack the basics to understand a citation (TL;DR), same for a peer reviewed journal, or any other evidence. Because Greenpeace says X, one half of you belives it (because they believe in Greenpeace) and the other half does not (because they hate Greenpeace or Al Gore or both)
If americans would learn in secondary school what europeans learn about physics and biology it would be a no brainer. No need for debate (at least not for one where the americans try to convince us that everything is better on the other side of the atlantic).
Most people here on
A debate can not happen if people know nothing ... and that is the plot in the USA since decades, uneducated masses voting for presidents that listen to or are manipulated by big money.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
"The European Union cannot meet its goals in agricultural policy without embracing genetically engineered crops (GMOs). That's the conclusion of scientists who write in Trends in Plant Science, a Cell Press publication, based on case studies showing that the EU is undermining its own competitiveness in the agricultural sector to its own detriment and that of its humanitarian activities in the developing world."
Pure bullshit. GMO crap is not needed, what is needed is more efficient cultivation. These 'scientists' are nothing more than goddamned shills and their tone is alarmist and designed to terrorize people into thinking their way.
I can produce in a 1/8 acre building an entire acre of crops, using far less water and fertilizer than traditional soil horticulture.
These 'scientists' are just fucking salespeople. I do real horticulture.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Well, the quesrion is where that number comes from :)
Total production of all american companies? Or total production on all american soil?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Hi, I'm a former computer nerd, now a biologist.
Don't overestimate the role of mutation in short-term evolution. The rate of mutation per site per generation in almost all extant species is very low, and almost all mutations are deleterious. For any de novo allele to persist in a population, it must confer a significant benefit to survival or reproduction. If its selective benefit is only slight, its chance of persistence or fixation in a population is equal to its initial frequency, which is extremely low (except in very small populations, but then you have other problems). Mutation is certainly necessary for evolution, but it works on extremely long time scales.
From a biological standpoint, what Monsanto does is pretty irrelevant. They create populations that, barring mutation, don't reproduce. What they do does not affect the genetic variation of natural populations, except insofar as it restricts the total acreage occupied by non-GMO crops. But it's important to realize that those non-GMO crops are _not_ natural populations, nor are they "natural" plants. Such crops have been as thoroughly modified by man as has any Roundup-Ready plant. That's exactly what selective breeding for greater yield, better taste, etc. are - genetically modifying organisms. Corn, wheat, cabbage, mustard, and a whole host of other plants that are grown "organically" and eaten every day do not occur in nature in the forms we consume. The only difference is that companies like Monsanto target single genes, because they can. There is an argument to be made that, by selectively adding or modifying only beneficial alleles, biochemical engineering is a safer way to shape crop plants to our needs; selective breeding is sloppy, messy, and can't eliminate negative genes that, for example, are in linkage disequilibrium with selectively positive genes. And, if you don't want to grow GM seeds... don't. Agribusiness isn't preventing anyone from growing old crops the old way.
From what I have observed, most people's objections to Monsanto boil down to what one of my non-major humanities professors said: "It just doesn't seem natural." People don't seem to realize that when engineering these plants, what is happening is simply a refinement of a process that's been going on in agriculture since we first figured out planting seeds makes plants grow. It's just a more precise version, and able to avoid a whole host of problems presented by the old way of doing things. But it's happening in a lab, so it's automatically unnatural, and interfering with either God's plan or evolution. Evolution is a tricky subject, and far more complicated than most people realize.
I guess what I'm saying is, don't get a gut feeling about something and just call it good. There is a huge amount of propaganda on both sides of this issue, and the reality of the situation is more nuanced than 99% of people realize. I'm probably going to get attacked for this as a Monsanto shill, but please note that I didn't take a firm position either way. There's a reason for that: despite all the screaming from both sides, there is not enough reliable data available to do real, objective science on the broader effects of widespread GMO agriculture. Unfortunately, this dearth of data just feeds the gut feelings on both sides.
Lecture over. Feel free to flame.
Arr! The laws of physics be a harsh mistress!
You can not know how many death we had to GMO food. As no one hardly looks for it.
So I don't feel need to look over the rest of your post to debunk it.
Ah, Btw, you actually do know that people die from allergic shocks because thay ate food they thought safe but it was containing proteins from other sources? Like tomatoes containing chicken genes? Allergic against chickens ... no tomatoes anymore ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Yes, that is what he tries to say.
However he is completely wrong there.
The evidence that GM food is dangerous is overwhelming.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The biggest problem with GMOs as they are being grown today, is that the most frequent genetic modification is Roundup resistance. Farmer's literally spray their GMO crops with Roundup to kill ALL PLANT LIFE, except the GMO crop. Now, I have seen the label for Roundup and the prognosis of ingesting the stuff is not good. It is known to the state of California to cause cancer and/or reproductive defects. Now if all you eat or GMO crops soaked in Roundup, how many years will it take your liver to accumulate the toxins into a lethal dosage? How is it that most over-the-counter herbicides and pesticides for home gardens have warnings not to use them on or near vegetables, but we are supposed to go to the store and buy vegies that have been soaking all their growing life in a sea of chemicals much stronger?
One unintended consequence of Roundup resistant crops is that now superweeds are developing, through natural selection, that are also resistant to Roundup. Doesn't sound like "sustainable" agriculture to me. Scientists have often claimed that something is safe and there is no danger because they haven't found evidence of any harm - but once the whole world is committed to GMO crops there is not going to be much chance to turn back once we realize that there is a problem. Keep the GMO crops in smaller regions and test markets and expand their use gradually so that if decades from now if a problem is identified there is a chance to revserse it.
As for these scientists, let's Google the sorts of things that scientists told us were safe in the past:
1. Some scientists once thought it was safe to dump garbage into the oceans, believing the oceans were large enough to absorb sludge without harmful effects. .this cigarette has been scientifically proved less irritating to the nose and throat . . .eminent doctors report that every case of irritation of the nose and throat due to smoking cleared completely or definitely improved.” In 1943, Lorillard promoted its Old Gold brand by claiming it was “lowest in nicotine, lowest in throat—irritating tars and resins.” In 1946, Brown and Williamson used baseball legend Babe Ruth to pitch Raleigh cigarettes, with the claim that “Medical science offers proof positive . . .No other leading cigarette is safer to smoke!” Ironically, Babe Ruth later died of throat cancer.
2. Scientists have claimed that some cigarettes were "safer" than others: “you're safer smoking Philip Morris . .
3. I'm pretty sure that the Brazilian geneticists crossbreeding mild-mannered European honeybees with their more aggressive, territorial cousins from Africa in the 1950's thought that their experiments were safe.
4. Cane toads in Australia - notorious!
5. Fen-phen - it was first deemed safe, until later when studies showed that fatal heart and lung conditions developed from as little as three months exposure.
6. Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories - fabricated research data to the extent that upon FDA analysis of 867 studies, 618 (71%) were deemed invalid, including many of which were used to gain regulatory approval for widely-used household and industrial products. (see
Investigators charged that three big chemical companies—[Monsanto, Olin Corporation, and FMC Corporation]—knowingly submitted flawed data to the EPA in support of a widely used swimming pool chlorinator that was suspected of causing kidney and bladder problems." All three companies denied allegations of wrongdoing and reaffirmed the safety of their products. LISTEN PEOPLE - this is the same company who just a few decades ago duped us into thinking their products were safe - when they weren't and they knew they weren't! Now we want to believe them when they say GMO is the only way to go? OPEN YOUR EYES!
For the scientists to even argue that GMO crops are essential to sustainable agriculture, it is clear that they do not understand the definition of "sustainable". Never mind the fact
yeah, because competing with subsidized corn is super easy. It was a valid complaint, and exactly the type of behavior that warrants a tariff.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
for all that fancy lab equipment.. ;->
Wow, you know more about france than the eople living in france. Perhaps you should come over and educate us? Sharia demanded by muslims in france, what a laugh! Muslimes not living in 4th world countries are pretty glad that they live in countries with solid law systems.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
That's like saying that taking vaccines or pharmaceuticals is surrendering to Merck or Pfizer, or using computers is surrendering to Microsoft, Apple, IBM, or Toshiba, or that using pens is surrendering it Bic or Papermate. It is an absolutely vacuous statement to make, and demonstrates very little understanding of the modern world, or agriculture in general (farmers already buy seed from seed companies like Monsanto and Syngenta...this is just them and others using another crop improvement technique along with the rest).
Most of sharia law contradicts the charter of human rights. How do you come to the braindead assumption that parts of the EU would be able to fall under sharia?
By what process would thta happen?
By voting? ROFL. So you think people vote their basic rights away? Or do you think they still would belong to the EU afterwards?
If Bosnia Herzigovina joins the EU and then introduces Sharia, they get kicked out again. Sure, no super argument, however claiming / believing parts of the EU would become a "non constitutional state" is ridiculous.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
So your assertion is that we should require "100+ years of study" before deploying any new technology? If not any new technology, how do you determine a priori which technologies should be subjected to that level of scrutiny?
By that logic we should not be using televisions, digital electronics, new cultivars developed after the 1920s (and most developed prior, as though they are over 100 years old, very few specific cultivars had been in production for 100+ years), any antibiotics, the polio vaccine, any of the procedures and drugs associated with modern medicine, etc.
Natural selection should favour plants most suited to the climate that they grow in, as they will be the plants that grow to maturity and set seed which can be planted the following year. Wouldn't Monsanto seed policy of not allowing seed collection work against natural selection, so the seed available will be the seed Monsanto has decided has optimal characteristics and if they are wrong well that could be a major problem.
True, but they only disallow seed saving with GE varieties, not with all varieties. The reason even non-GE varieties are not saved is due to the fact that repurchased seed will give hybrid vigor. And do you honestly think plant breeders have never heard of locally adapted varieties? What breeding do you think they do to develop the varieties they sell?
Fortunately for Monsanto the FDA refuses to label GM food in the USA
And why should they? We don't label things as hybrid, produced with tissue culture, produced with mutagenesis, produced with chromosome doubling, or produced with bud sport selection either. You could perhaps bring up health concerns, but those are unscientific. You can, however, voluntarily label, and there's plenty of things out there labeled as such.
if that changed Monsanto likely would be in trouble as consumers boycotted their products.
And if you labeled food as having been grown in dihydrogen monoxide, or grown in 400-700 nm radiation, or produced through mutation, it would have the same effect, and you know it. It would serve only to frighten and mislead those who do not understand the topic.
You mix up cost of production with price at the market.
If global food prices drop the market in europ would be uneffected. Food sellers still woul d try to sell ti for the highest possible price.
Or what do you think why stuff like aspirin costs dollars in a stor, when you can produce a ton for s dollar?
I think tit is time that people like you realize that prices on the market are far less driven by supply and demand than you believe. They are driven by "money supply" and "willingness of the customer to pay" the demanded price. Nothing else (well taxes ofc).
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Perhaps you should google a bit and educate yourself. ... but I guess you are a kind of "believer" so facts wont cure you ...
E.g. organic produced food obviously can not have traces of fertilizers, perstizides or insectizides in it, right? But it is as unhealthy as food is, that contains such traces? Interesting! You should publish your thoughts!
Post that start with "there is no evidence" are usually wrong from top to bottom. Perhaos you should google for the evidence
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
mono-culture and gene-spliced is a lot less sustainable/more risky than natural high-yield.
You are right about monoculture. That is a very serious problem (although it is generally more complicated than many realize). However, genetic engineering is just adding in a few genes. That's it. It doesn't really make things more risky, although it is risky to over rely on those genes alone. I think you are confusing it with the selection for very similar genes, which is the result of good old fashioned, totally non-controversial conventional breeding.
Most of sharia law contradicts the charter of human rights. How do you come to the braindead assumption that parts of the EU would be able to fall under sharia?
You assume that majority rule is trumped by the UN, perhaps? More likely, you're not thinking of the same timescale I am - I'm looking at 50-75 years from now.
Further note that it wasn't 75 years ago when certain central European powers not only spat on the precepts of the UN Human Rights Charter, but became the historical impetus for forming the UN (and the aforementioned charter) in the first place.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Another problem is that fertilizer use efficiency has fallen. The more fertilizer you apply, the more yield you get, but less of the fertilizer as a percent is taken up as you apply more. Among other techniques like green manure and crop rotation, plants with efficient fertilizer uptake are a must for the future.
Those who wanted a theocracy during the Iranian revolution were a minority, still Iran became a theocracy.
Iran was a dictatorship, not a democratic republic like France. It was pretty easy to get support for the revolution when the alternative was the Shah. Further, Iran is ethnically pretty homogeneous. Same thing for the Arab Spring - not one of those countries was anything resembling a democracy. Nor was Czarist Russia. Your best example, Mussolini, was not brought to power by an ethnic or religious minority. Even if he were, he was installed not through an election, but by coup d'état. The king at the time (Italy was a monarchy) refused to rubber-stamp the existing Prime Ministers plans for martial law and forced his resignation. The king then installed Mussolini.
France killed their monarchy.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
In 75 years the third or fourth generation "muslims" wil be exactly like the "christians". Which means: they don't believe in god or are in any way touched by religion. They only do the initial rites (if at all) and thats it. Especially in France where the seperation between state and religion is very strict.
75 years ago is 75 years ago. We made progress since then. The enemy is not the muslim living in my country, the enemy is the nation that is destroying the world (and working on it since 50 years and more).
The only danger whould be newly immigrating muslims in 50/70 years, however I believe their countries will then be developed countries.
Anyway, regardless of all this: there is a population of people already living in the EU, and I doubt they will let their freedoms slip away.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
One problem "Monsanto"
If they are the one problem, why do people hate on the Rainbow papaya developed by the University of Hawaii or Golden Rice developed by the IRRI or the Arctic apple developed by Okanagan Specialty Fruits? And why did the hate and fearmongering start with the Flavr Savr tomato, produced before Monsanto started selling GE seed?
are notorious for suppressing any study that they do not like
Give some examples of them suppressing valid studies. All I've even seen is shitty studies like the Pusztai or Séralini studies getting ripped apart for being piss poor and anti-GE people claiming that it is Monsanto suppressing them.
for not publishing results
They really should do that, yes.
for patenting entire plants
So? If you don't like it, don't buy them. If you do those patents enable them to make a return on their investment to develop more things. Some of my favorite plants were developed because the developers could patent them and thus non go out of business if someone else decided to undercut them and propagate & sell their plants thus leaving the developers with the bill (and I might add these plants are not GE; don't forget that a plant does not need to be GE to be patented).
for suing poor farmers who never bought their seed,
Examples? I've heard of them suing farmers like in the Schmeiser case, but that only happens when someone knowingly and intentionally selects for and propagates patented material. If you don't want to be sued, don't do that.
for poisoning the environment
If you are talking about their chemical dumping, like their PCB, then absolutely that is a reason to hate on them. If you are talking with respect to genetic engineering, not so much.
they are the poster child and best known, and are the worst possible advert for GMO
They are also the ones who attrct the most falsehoods by those who wish to slander genetic engineering by attaching Monsanto and playing the guilt by association card. do you really think those who reject science and spread Wakefield level garbage about genetic engineering will stop at that? I'm not saying that Monsanto are saints or anything, but IMO a lot of hat you hear about them is simply the anti-GE crowd doing whatever they can to demonize any aspect of genetic engineering, and attaching a big corporation, one that has already had a history of some bad thing (like the PCB dumping), is hardly unexpected.
In 75 years the third or fourth generation "muslims" wil be exactly like the "christians". Which means: they don't believe in god or are in any way touched by religion.
Wait - you're assuming a conditions which really isn't a constant. Turkey's secular-friendly culture is an exception, not the rule... and only through a government dedicated towards stamping out the extremists has Turkey figured out how to keep Sharia law at bay.
France (for example) is becoming a way different story - you have an exploding demographic that really doesn't give a damn about integrating with the local existing culture. They are also busily helping to import as many fellow worshipers as the national immigration office will allow. Let me repeat this: in the past 20-25 years, there has been little-to-no cultural integration going on at all - instead, there are increasing demands that the existing culture integrate with them**.
While I don't know the deal in all of Europe, I can tell you that in most central EU nations, if you want to instigate a good mass fight in short order? Insure there's a mix of immigrants and native-born folks in a crowd, then ask any question out loud with the word "immigration" in it.
** Note that there is a less-volatile example of this in the US: Note how the Spanish language has become the unofficial 2nd language of most government-public interactions, and definitely in most publications.
75 years ago is 75 years ago. We made progress since then.
Our great-grandparents were saying something extremely similar in 1919... :/
Anyway, regardless of all this: there is a population of people already living in the EU, and I doubt they will let their freedoms slip away.
Immigration and birthrates will do what democracy and ideals will not.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Exactly. Equating GMO with Monsanto is silly. This is a lot like the Spanish inquisition, people are on a witch hunt, they use the language of science but it is a thin layer over their dogmatic way of thought. "Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge." - Carl Sagan
Of course little of what you claim is actually true, the "suppressing any study" is really "exposing false and biased research". And "suing poor farmers" is actually "taking thieves to court for knowingly stealing seed"
There is a large and virulent anti-corporate and pro-organic lobby out there that is dedicated to attacking GMO and Monsanto in particular. The same discredited and outright false stories & so-called research get trotted out over and over, and when they're faced with actual evidence and truth they cry "shill!!!' and wrap themselves in the flag of self-righteous defenders of the common man.
Same mindset as the anti-vaccine in my opinion.
Sorry, your view about france is completely wrong.
France is _the country_ in the EU where integration works the best.
However they right now have economic problems.
France will be the least country where muslims or sharia will be any problem.
In fact I relly wonder: do you habe ever been to france?
Chineese peaople in frnsce speak frensh. Even amoung each other. Arabic immigrants speak frensh, even amoung each other. Immigrants usually always speak frensh. If you travel via metro there are only two exceptions african mamas and tourists. Everyone living in france and working there, speaks frensh, more or less. The more he is there he speaks frensh.
You cam say everything about the frensh people, but they are mot as racist as ou ight believe.
You speak frensh? You are frensh! Colour or ancestry does not matter.
Sorry, yÃur idea that islam will subvert europe and start with france is just nonsense.
Iff they would try that they would start with a country where integration is bad, like in germany or perhaps spain.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
If the government implemented it you might be right. I say might rather than would because countries routinely ignore it anyway.
But if it's called "community mediation" or "folk arbitration" and most importantly it's, ahem, voluntary then that's different. Nothing wrong with that. I mean you and I could agree to settle our disputes under Klingon law if we both wanted wanted to. Or if I wanted to and my 17 brothers threatened to pour acid on your head if you went to the decadent infidel western pig-dog crusader police.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
CS can't get our 100% man made testable and perfectly running computers to work reliably enough to risk so many lives and ecosystems upon it. Hell, in the abstract we can mathematically prove that we can't detect or prevent some problems in CS. Even if the CS and Software Engineering was perfect we have Microsoft and others producing poor quality software...
DNA hacking on a system we barely even understand in a coding language we know even less with systems larger than the human genome. THAT IS WHAT WE ARE DOING. Why don't you start engineering humans before messing with plants which have more DNA? Oh that's right, because of the moral implications... those don't apply to other creatures because we are not part of nature, not animals, not evolved from primates... We still don't even understand human nutrition.
YOU can't prove GMO is safe; the burden is on YOU making the claims it is perfectly safe not on us skeptics. Yes, WE are the skeptics not you. It is not science to be DNA script kiddies and merely say "it's alive!", possibly test it with mice, bribe some officials, and then unleash it on the public saying "prove nobody is being harmed." Trying to claim the scientific high ground after you unscientifically claimed the position is hypocritical.
We are not lab rats developing liver cancer from eating GMO corn... oh, wait... perhaps we are!
FYI, the lab rats did already, but as expected, "we" are skeptical about the lab tests on the rats but we weren't so skeptical before approving the GMO corn!
Aside:
EU agriculture is subsidized. Most of it can't compete with the 3rd world. They prop it up for security and economic reasons and they already depend on outside sources - too many people, too little farm land. duh. Population growth is the real problem not production rate.
If terrorists weren't ignorant Luddites, GMO would be their greatest weapon.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Mo, you amd me could not settle any dispute under klingone law. As exactly thisis forbidden in our cÃuntry and mine.
What was your point exactly?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I would think that a forum still full of people pissed at monopolistic abuse in the computer industry would not be a place to get away with a more basically evil abuse of the biosphere and its food supply.
First, while genetically modifying things isn't inherently evil, it's tremendously risky to cross genes between kingdoms and phylums for the purpose of corporate profit.
Second, they're using a tactic we should recognize: "How is Europe going to be *competitive*?! How are you going to feed 7 billion people?" A good answer to those questions doesn't involve Monsanto's profit margins. There are plenty of good answers, and those who know the actual options can easily spot this sham for what it is.
Here's a good answer: for a ton of food production even in urban settings, there's aquaponics, something that gardeners and gadget geeks can both love. Come on, do you want to grow an adult human's entire vegetable produce requirement in 25 square feet? It's possible.
http://www.growingpower.org/aquaponics.htm
Having these close to the kitchen not only systemically eliminates the pesticides (the fish aren't down for that) and slashes overall water consumption, it also kills the built-in transportation costs. Also, if it's fresh and right there, you just pick it. No refrigeration necessary. You can do it for yourself in an apartment or on a large scale for the town.
Monsanto's GMOs are a stupid, wrong answer for everyone except Monsanto itself.
There is enough reason to have worries about single strain crops.
Bananas crops are genetically Identical (clones) and people still remember what happened to them. Luckily there was another breed to use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_disease#Banana_breeding_impeded_by_triploidy
Great counterargument full of facts and citations.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
If by "poisonous" you mean producing their own Cry proteins just like the BT bacteria do, then we have plenty of proof that they're harmless because of how the Cry proteins work. You've likely ingested much Cry protein harmlessly over the course of your life as it is an ingredient in some pesticides as well as being produced naturally by BT bacteria. The proteins bind to specific receptors located in specific insect guts, which is why they are so targeted. The proteins also can only function in an alkaline environment such as that found in insect guts. In acidic environments such as human guts, the proteins are broken down into harmless constituents.
Is the Bt Protein Safe for Human Consumption?
Health risk assessment of the adjuvant effects of Cry proteins from genetically modified plants used in food and fodder
So who's painting with a wide brush now?
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
You don't see it mentioned because allergenicity is exactly one of the kinds of things that is tested for before a crop goes anywhere near the marketplace. Any product that produced an allergy response would be scrapped or adjusted to not produce the allergenic protein if possible. What about all the random mutations that happen all the time in non-GMO crops? What if one of those were to suddenly start producing an allergenic protein? Why are you not calling for the extreme testing of every other crop in the world that has this same potential yet isn't tested?
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Do you really believe that a company would allow a product to make it all the way to market with a known allergenic protein in it? Monsanto and others have developed potential products that were found to contain allergy-causing proteins. These problems were caught in testing and the products either scrapped or tweaked.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Sadly, you're right. ,the NEW DEAL Repubmocrats spread it like venereal disease. I didn't have anything to do with it.
Sorry about the democrazy garbage
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Please take your own advice about not spreading lies.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
[citation needed]
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
So overwhelming that you cited all of it in your post here, I see.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Are you kidding me? With all the backlash against GM food in the last 20 years, NO ONE has been looking to see if there are any deaths or other health issues related to it? If no one looks for it, then where the hell does all of the anti-GMO propaganda come from about GMOs causing cancer/diabetes/hypertension/autism/restless leg syndrome/erectile dysfunction/anything else that sounds good for propaganda? Either no one is looking for it and you can't possibly make the claims that the anti-GMO crowd does or the anti-GMO crowd is simply making up bullshit. Which is it?
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
I'm reminded of something G W Bush senior said "I don't like broccoli, I've never liked broccoli and now that i'm president I still don't want to eat it", or some along those lines.
The point being he felt he should be able to choose what he ate, and why not. The recent horse meat scandal was not so much about eating horse meat as unknowingly eating horse meat. There is nothing wrong with horse meat in of itself in fact it can be better quality meat than the cow it replaced.
Since becoming an adult you have had the right to choose what to eat, even as a child you could refuse to eat some things. Do you look at the ingredient list on foods that you buy, I do and so do many other people, some times it is for allergies, sometimes for quality. Sometimes for ingredients you would rather not consume.
Do you like to drink carva when the label says champagne can you not distinguish between a golden delicious and a granny smith or a bramley apple?
Do you prefer to buy fish or do you want to choose cod or haddock from china or the north sea?
Can't you see it is all about choice. I really don't care if you live off GM food, myself i'd rather pay a little more and buy a quality product with the flavour and texture that it always has had. The genuine article no less.
Unlike george i do like brocolli, but like george i want to choose what i eat.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Who the fuck else would do biotech studies besides the biotech industry?
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Seriously, how long do you imagine that the modern crops that we use today have been around? A thousand years? Are you kidding me? You might want to look into the history of modern crops such as potatoes, corn, wheat, bananas, and others, and how they compare to the original plants they were bred from. You probably wouldn't even recognize that they are the same plant. Educate yourself, n00b.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Which is why Pioneer (one of the other companies that does "GMO" crops, as well as conventional) is working on corn engineered for more efficient use of nitrogen.
(Of course, this isn't something that will be acknowledged as a yield improvement; it doesn't raise the maximum "intrinsic yield", just yield when you can't put as much in. Which most GMO critics like to ignore, even if it means that the average farmer could raise more bushels with less water pollution...)
Also, more efficient use of resources allows more land to be fallowed and rotated. If you have 10% more yield you can put 9% of the land in alternate crops, such as legumes.
So I mostly agree with your sentiment, but the facts you're using to justify your sentiment are suspect.
Then suddenly the farmer is sued for using their GMO crops without planting.
Farmers aren't sued because their crops are tainted. Farmers are sued when they utilize the patented genes. If their crops are contaminated, but they don't actually change their approach to dealing with pests, or change how they harvest their crops, they aren't getting any of the benefit of the genes and so they aren't infringing on the patent and would prevail in a lawsuit.
You're probably alluding to the Schmeiser case here. The key thing to remember here is that Schmeiser (a) suspected that his crop was contaminated, (b) tested the contaminated plants to confirm his suspicions, (c) saved and isolated the seed in question, and (d) used that "contamination" seed to produce something like a thousand acres of crop. That was what got him in hot water, and that's why he lost against Monsanto. That wasn't about the contamination, it was about the exploitation of the (patented) traits of that crop.
A handful of companies control the worlds food seeds because of the patents on GMOs.
GMOs aren't forced onto farmers. Farmers, at any time, can decide to buy "public domain" seed and produce non-GMO crops all they want. Seed from most every conceivable crop is banked and can be purchased trivially from universities and governments. Farmers choose GMO seed because GMO seed produces more profitable crops, either because the traits sell better in the market, or because the crops have higher yields. This isn't about GMOs and patents, except to the degree that these (superior) crops wouldn't exist but for the patents that allow companies to be profitable researching and producing them.
Followed up by creating weeds that are immune to these super chemical pesticides and other regular pesticides leaving non-Monsanto farmers screwed.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with Monsanto or GMOs. Glyphosate-resistant weeds exist because they evolved to exist, exactly the same way that antibiotic-resistant bacteria exists, and being a customer of Monsanto does not mean you don't have to deal with herbicide-resistant weeds. The problem is one of poor weed control practices by the farmers. If you kill all of your weeds, with a variety of herbicides, the problem doesn't exist. If you rely entirely on a single herbicide, and allow some of the weeds to survive, you end up breeding herbicide-resistant weeds. It doesn't matter if the herbicide is Glyphosate or something more typical.
which can spread to plants they don't own and ruining those for other farmers [citation needed].
It is a difference whether you check after a death if the guy ate gamefood (and how much and how often and if he died to it) or if you analyze the gen food as such.
The later is done and many foods are found dangerous. The former is not done, hence my answer to our parent
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Google is the wrong place to educate yourself. The only true source are scientific publications, everything else is BS.
get educated here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
Many people don't know but organic farming does use dangerous products such as: copper (dangerous heavy metal) and nicotine (cancerogenous insecticide)
I totally agree about the case by case assessment that should be done about GMOs, and indeed there are too few GMOs that have direct advantages for the end consumer.
But some plants are now coming and your statement that golden rice will "slightly increase the amount of nutrients in a crop" is really a scandal! This plant is going to save millions of lives, whether you like it or not. This is why Greenpeace is so upset about it because they now run out of arguments.
Regulation has become extremely exaggerated for GMOs. Even if classic breeding that has been done for thousands of years, it can have unexpected outcomes (I know of one case where a new cucumber plant that looked normal accumulated toxins like crazy) and nobody is asking for stronger regulation.
Many people don't know: while organic might be a vere generic term in europe those terms get . :) nicotine and copper would be forbidden anyway ... regardless wether it is conventional agriculture or organic. At least the food may not comtain any nicotine and copper only according to the limits set by law.
That means that no particular additions may be put on the fields no fertilizers, no pesticides, no herbicides etc.
Depending on the "label" you want to carry on the stuff you sell, you hae to have worked your field in an organic way for quite long time before you may use the label. It depends on the label, e.g. "biologisch dynamisch" or "organisch biologisch" what exactly is alowed and what not.
Some products need to be by law "organic", like food for toddlers.
Many products, like beer, are made from full organic ingreedients. That means Hops and Grain are grown organic. This is a voluntary obligation most beer breweries put on them selves.
Well, your link is stramge
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
In that case, you should be able to cite all these many many instances of dangerous food for me. Please, show me your evidence.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
No it isn't. If we had a dispute in the pub we could ask the ten blokes sitting at the bar to adjudicate if we both agreed. I know "arbitration" is a big word - ask teacher on Monday.
The bit in italics. Or you could try this.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You really should get briefed about organic farming:
In Switzerland:
for copper
: Inorganic copper products, for fruit, vegetable, potato and hop production and viticulture (maximum legally permitted application of 4 kg of pure copper per hectare and year)...
nicotine, OK they call it tobacco extract...
you can find it all here: http://www.bio-suisse.ch/media/en/pdf2012/rl_2012_e.pdf
Why don't you google yourself? Or just scrap this discussion for all the links people have brought up?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
So you can agree in the USA. that someone kills you? And you believe this? Rofl ...
At least for sure you can't in my country, however there are tlaks to allow assisted suicide.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
As I said, every lanel has its own rules. No idea in which countries which particular regulations hold and which label allows this or that. Nevertheless organic cultivation does have much stricter limits than noon organics. If you may use 40kg copper on a hectar per year on an organic field you ofc can use the same or more on a conventional one. ...
In the EU it is e.g. only 6kg per year and hectar, for conventional agriculture. As I said before: in germany for organic farming it depends on the label. In total organic farming uses less than a tenth of what conventional agriculture does. That would be 600g per hectar
(Source is greeenpeace) Usage of copper containing fungicides will likely be forbidden soon in the EU anyway.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
- They link to some article about the Seralini long-term study that was utter science fail and was eviscerated by the scientific community for its obvious bias and lack of scientific rigor. It's pretty much an example of how not to do science properly and has been rejected by oversight and governing boards around the world.
- They link to articles about Monsanto suing some poor little farmers somewhere for growing crops that were innocently pollinated by RoundUp Ready crops nearby them. They somehow always fail to report that the farmer than actively sprayed their fields with glyphosate to intentionally separate and harvest the RoundUp Ready crops which they then replanted.
- They link to some study that is tangentially related to GMO crops and make claims of doom and gloom, hoping that no one will ever actually click through and read the study and find out that lo and behold, the study doesn't actually say what they claimed it did.
I asked YOU for some evidence. You made the claim. You have still yet to provide any. So has anyone else. Until you do, I'm going to assume that you're just full of shit and making things up because you want it to be true.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Someone posted above: GMO in crops such as tobacco has been around for that long but in food crops only since ~1994. But anyway,
There is plenty of documentation about nutrient density and pesticide residue in organic products. Just like any other subject this charged, you can find a study that says anything you like. But to claim there is no documentation is to discredit yourself. E.g., in 30 seconds I founda review of such studies with varying results along several dimensions: http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-007-0394-0_7
Secondly, many of the more grounded concerns I have followed regarding current use of GMOs has little to do with direct health benefits (that's just an easy point to use by media to scare people) and more to do with mono-culture and the economic ramifications. While use of GMO does not necessarily imply these things, in practice it does and you can't separate them from each other in a practical debate
Lastly, to claim that all people who are against GMOs share a certain trait, like lack of knowledge in some field of science, is not a convincing argument. What do you know about my educational background?
Note that when you refer to the <insert-cause-here> crowd, you are referring to the loudest, most extreme and sensational activists in a very broad group of related interests, and it should be no surprise that there are many misinformed opinions in that crowd. If you care about the issue (and I'm not saying you do or should), you can look harder to find the better-reasoned arguments on many sides of the GMO debate.
I was talking about golden rice version 1 as I'm ten years out of date. I now see there's a version 2 coming out that's much improved, so good point.
I'm not against GM per se, but depending on the modification it can and should warrant more caution than traditional breeding. It's not just the dangers within one plant (your cucumber example is a single one in a huge history of nothing untoward happening in traditional breeding, though, I'd just point out), it's the fact that this is genetic material that's often from an entirely different kingdom being introduced to a plant, that then has good potential for lateral transfer between different plant species; genetic material that may have unexpected effects.
You're probably right and governments are being overcautious, but it's better to be overcautious than to unleash a super-plant that grows and reproduces like a weed, is resistant to herbicides, sucks all the water out of the soil and is generally an unstoppable pest, for e.g.
The numbers I found in a quick search suggest that EU-wide there is still a small population growth, but pretty close to zero. The import/export balance (PDF, see graphs on page 2) for raw and processed products combined seems to be roughly zero as well, but in terms of raw materials the EU is still net importing agricultural products. To say Europe is going to "become almost entirely dependent on the outside world" doesn't match these figures though.
===
Europe, Stay away from the obesity vendors and there will be enough food to last 10 more generations. You do not want GMO crops.
a) If you bring them, your pollination from bees and other flying insects will drop substantially
b) You will have, perhaps, a higher yield crop, but not repetitive. You will be forced to purchase seeds every year.
c) Genetically modified wheat is stated (I have no proof) to show that GMO wheat is much more absorbed by the body and leads to weight gain, for the same quantity of ingested food.
d) Your pasta loving Italians are slim today, but with GMO, in 20 years they will be as Obese as Americans and Canadians. Welcome to heart-attack and other chronic illness land.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
are so transparent.
The President signed into law what last weekend a bill that would hold Monsanto blameless when, not if, their products finally start killing people in an even more obvious manner.
Until I start hearing some of these GM proponents start talking about protecting the genetic diversity of what's alive now, everything from their lips is obvious lies, all lies.
I posted that to encourage right minded Muslims to police their own community. Islam has been perverted to be a cause for violence, as Catholicism had once upon a time (and some say, still). For myself I don't really give a damn. I'm not going to subscribe to either aphorism. The longer these fools expend their resources fighting against each other the better is it for those of us who attend neither school.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I told you the three main problems of GMO.
For what exactly do you now need evidence?
That the three problems exist? Sorry if you can not follow simple logic or can find such evidence on the net you are hopeless.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
While I can find plenty of links about tomatoes with chicken genes, I have yet to find any single reference to an allergic reaction because of this. Perhaps this stems from you completely not understanding how both genetic engineering and allergies work. Please provide a reference of someone dying from eating a tomato that had chicken genes. So far as I have ever found, any instances of a GMO event causing allergenicity in a resulting organism have been tested for, found, and removed or the product canceled.
If you really can't provide any citations, just say so; don't blame someone else's lack of Google-fu for your lack of evidence. You have still yet to cite your many instances of dangerous food other than hypotheticals that you continue to pull out of your ass. Good luck.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
There is o gotcha. The problems I pointed out are completely obvious, for obvious stuff I don't citate anything. Either you understand the problems or you don't. If would be interested you had googled some, as your english is better than mine you much easier find relevant data. And as Isaid before: e.g. crossing chicken genes into tomatoes so that the tomatoes comtain chicken proteins is a risk for people who are allergic against chicken. What the fuck do you need a citation or as you call it EVIDENCE for that staement?
This is a complete no brainer.
The fact that as you claim, no one died so far, does not remove this argument as general problem. Your claim is nonsense anyway. How do you know no one died to allergic reactins after eating the wrong tomato? I did not know that there is an open accessible death list wich lists all dead people of the last 30+ years with the cause of desth. And I really doubt if a guy comes with an allergic shock into a hospital they figure: oh, it was the tomato.
Of course the main danger is so far hypothetical! WTF, that is the whole POINT!
And there is no way to prevent this hypothetical danger for ever. Sooner or later one will make a mistake, like they did with the corn that makes its own insecticides.
So: how can YOU guaranty that there will never be a fruit that causes an allergic shock, because the eater does not know it contains the allergene?
YOU can't! It is as simple as that! And this the whole point of the discussion, for that I don't need to provide any links. Either grasp this simple problem or you don't.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Allergic responses occur due to exposure to PARTICULAR proteins, not just "chicken" proteins. What is it about a protein that make it "chicken" anyway? Did you know that you share tons of proteins in your body with many many other organisms? Move a gene from a chicken to a tomato and it will produce a protein. If it doesn't produce the particular protein that causes an allergy, NO ALLERGIC REACTION. These things are almost trivially easy to check for: find the protein that has been transferred, run it through the very very large database of known allergens and toxins for molecular property or structure similarity. Unless someone has a completely unique and brand new allergy (in which case they would be the only one), no match means significantly low enough probability of an allergic event in the general population as to be safe enough for general consumption. How can you guarantee that some random fruit crop growing somewhere isn't the result of a random genetic mutation event that produces a new or similar protein that is a potential allergen? Unless you are also in favor of testing EVERY SINGLE CROP on the planet for natural random mutations that could also produce differently shaped proteins that might possibly produce allergic reactions as well, you're a fucking retard. While "natural" crops subject to random mutations that could cause this same scenario with no way of knowing since they aren't test, GMO foods are engineered to produce specific, known proteins, verified that the process worked as intended, and don't even make it even close to market without testing to determine allergenicity which, if found, takes the project back to the drawing board or scraps it completely.
If a guy with a known chicken allergy dies after eating a tomato but knows that he wasn't eating chicken, do you think that might not cause some red flags to go up? That there might not be an autopsy done to determine cause of death with a follow up investigation? Are you really enough of a moron to think that random deaths don't get investigated?
I'm not sure why you also think that corn that makes its own insecticide is either a mistake or somehow dangerous. If you know anything about the BT bacteria and its Cry proteins that were engineered into the GM corn, you'd know that this particular insecticide is not only harmless to humans but is incapable of being harmful to humans due to the very way that it works as an insecticide.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
We're going to have to learn to feed people better using less energy.
Or we're going to learn how to process people into food.
Why do you claim I have no clue?
You behave like an idiot.
I gave super simple examples to avoid to get intto specifics. I perfectly know that allergies are caused by specific proteins. And? What has that to do with the discussion?
If you craft a fruit with a protein to which I am allergic I want it written in the label. The GMO industrie believes they don't need to do that.
Your claim that every allergic option is tested is nonsense.
Sorry, it would be nice if that was the case, many people would sleep better then, but you write like a payed pro GMO advocate.
The corne I tlaked about was in the media quite often resently. So I'm pretty convinced the the informtions that it indeed is dangerous for animals and humans are correct. I guess you are talking about a different corn and are absolutely not aware about the latest happenings in the GM world and world press regarding it.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Please cite the particular corn that you're talking about that was recently in the media and how dangerous is it. (Hint: if you're referring to the thoroughly debunked Seralini study, then don't waste my time and actually go and read up on the follow ups to that failure.)
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Sorry to disilusionize you.
I very likely know 100 times more about the topic then you do, except you have a Ph.D. of. top univeristy.
I dont go into specifics: because my Mac is broken and sent to the repair shop.
I'm typing this on an iPad, and the /. code is somehow broken, so you can not cut and paste and quote stuff.
I don't know if the corn I talked about has anything todo with something called 'Seralin'.
As I memtioned before: I'm typing on an iPad, I'm not going to post you hundrets of links of studies for this or that.
Good luck in your campaign.
If you think I'm an idiot that is fine for me. However I have the stromg assumption that you have no clue about what you are talkig. Otherwise you would not jump to braindead conclusions and would not try to insult me constantly.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
IF the EU can't make enough bread for itself and still insists on GM free, then let them eat GM free cake.
Has anyone noticed that the accusations leveled at GMO's eerily similar to those leveled at medievel witches? Unexplained Diseases Suicides Crop Failures Livestock deaths Sterility/Impotence Ecological disasters
Fortunately for Monsanto the FDA refuses to label GM food in the USA
If you'd like an explanation, from University experts in the field as to WHY, check out this webinar I attended a few weeks ago. It was sponsored by the Federation of Animal Science Societies as part of their series of Science Policy Webinars.
For the tl;dw crowd... If you can't be bothered to spend 80 min learning about the why of a policy from the most qualified scientists in the field, then please shut up and stop pretending your objections are anything other than religious in nature.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde