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Majority of EU Nations Seek Opt-Out From Growing GM Crops
schwit1 writes: Nineteen EU member states have requested opt-outs for all or part of their territory from cultivation of a Monsanto genetically-modified crop, which is authorized to be grown in the European Union, the European Commission said on Sunday. Under a law signed in March, individual countries can seek exclusion from any approval request for genetically modified cultivation across the 28-nation EU. The law was introduced to end years of stalemate as genetically modified crops divide opinion in Europe. The requests are for opt-outs from the approval of Monsanto's GM maize MON 810, the only crop commercially cultivated in the European Union, or for pending applications, of which there are eight so far, the Commission said.
It's not about science. It's also about the stupid IP stuff that comes with it.
I call myself anti-monsanto. Them monopolizing agriculture is the most evil and reckless act i've ever seen. And that includes the oil companies killing all living in the oceans.
Monsanto play with all our lives. I'm not fearing of a sentient corn, i'm fearing of famine due to their corn one day becomes scarce because they are unable or unwilling to sell seeds.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
The problem isn't to do with GM, it's to do with the way in which profits are derived from GM. The difficulties of GM are that the producer is able to develop a dependancy on the product. This dependency should be illegal. It's why pimps get their girls (and boys) hooked on crack or heroin. It's why big tobacco is evil.
What compounds the issue is that the US patent system is known to be desparately broken. Intellectual property and copyright law are bracketed into the same brokenness. What that means is that not only do consumers of GM products become dependant on the product, but the producer is able to sustain an indefinite monopoly of it.
This isn't about science. Never was. It's about becoming Monsanto's bitch and not being able to do anything about it.
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We'll see all the usual "you're anti-science!" strawman arguments flung around here, I'm sure. A lot of us (my self included) happen to think the science is sound.
My beef is I don't like how Monsanto behaves, and I don't want to (knowingly) spend my money purchasing a product they might profit from.
And GMO is really a euphemism for Monsanto. They're the *only* meaningful player in this industry right now.
Two things: there's been mounting evidence Monsanto has been outright lying about the evidence they have on the toxicity of their crap, which means trusting them is idiotic. The evidence we have that their crap is safe is them saying so ... which means it's self-serving stuff which as like as not hides any information they had to the contrary.
And, hey, if the 'market' speaks and says it doesn't want this shit, Monsanto doesn't have the "right" to sell product to countries which don't want it. Monsanto has the right to piss off an go away.
So, boo fucking hoo ... countries tell Monsanto to piss off. That's Monsanto's problem. Nobody is under any obligation to allow Monsanto to sell their product, as much as the assholes who run that corporation think otherwise.
So if "the market" is sending a big fuck you to Monsanto ... too damned bad for Monsanto. They may have hoodwinked Americans into believing their crap, but that doesn't mean that countries shouldn't be able to say "we don't want your shit".
Because when all of agriculture is beholden to Monsanto, we'll all be pretty much fucked.
This isn't "anti science", this is anti Monsanto, and people simply not buying the notion that GMO is safe until proven otherwise. Sorry, but how about we put the burden of proof on Monsanto, instead of just taking them at their word?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
there's been mounting evidence Monsanto has been outright lying about the evidence they have on the toxicity of their crap, which means trusting them is idiotic. The evidence we have that their crap is safe is them saying so ... which means it's self-serving stuff which as like as not hides any information they had to the contrary.
[Citation Needed]
And, hey, if the 'market' speaks and says it doesn't want this shit, Monsanto doesn't have the "right" to sell product to countries which don't want it. Monsanto has the right to piss off an go away.
Are you insinuating that the market is always rational, and it is impossible for people with an agenda to manipulate the market by spreading FUD?
So out of curiosity how do you think we should develop GMO crops without patents? These things cost billions of dollars in very hard R&D to develop and bring to market. Without a patent then anyone will grow some of your seeds and then sell them next year to compete with your seeds and they had to do none of the work.
If you want to replace this system you must come up with an alternative.
No patents on living organisms would also screw over the biotech industry. What if I make a new tumor supressor gene from scratch that is better than any human gene and would 100% prevent cancer. As soon as I treated the first person someone would just have their DNA read and find the sequence and sell it without doing any of the R&D.
I understand not liking patents on living things but if you want technology developed our current economic system required a profit motive and without that motive the technology won't be created. This is not like computer programming where a few people on no budget can do amazing work and change things. This stuff is insanely expensive and hard to do. Reaction ingredients alone would bankrupt most people.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
What "dependency"? You can switch from GMO to non-GMO any time you like. Of course, you have to live with the lower yields if you do.
The US patent system is no more and no less broken than the European patent system. In fact, intellectual property laws were largely created in Europe and imposed on the US. Now that US corporations are successful at using them, Europeans whine and complain, while still having the same or more draconian laws at home.
Whether a farmer becomes "Monsanto's bitch" or not is a choice any farmer can make individually, the same way you decide whether to buy an iPhone or an Android phone, run Windows or Ubuntu, etc.
No, what really bugs you is that Europe is highly dependent on US high tech manufacturers and products, and that the European economy and agriculture would collapse if the US stopped supplying Europe with these products.
They're banning it for the same reason that requiring labeling for cell phone radiation levels is now banned: It's a pointless indicator designed to create consumer FUD because of somebody's silly religious belief.
Seriously, GMO food is safe people. So far the best argument against GMO food is "We haven't found any actual scientific evidence that there's anything wrong with it, but you never know, therefore it should be labeled and/or banned." File this under other phobias like Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity.
No, radiation is optional in organic. Organic just means you grow it in cow shit and don't pasteurize it, which is why organic farming is responsible for hundreds of death and thousands of illnesses every year.
http://www.geneticliteracyproj...
But remember kids, GMO is bad for you, even though nobody has ever gotten sick or died from it.
But remember kids, GMO is bad for you, even though nobody has ever gotten sick or died from it.
Since there are no labeling requirements regarding GM products in the US, how would someone even know?
file:
What happens when a GMO is released into the wild is irreversible genetic pollution of non-modified organisms.
The fact of the matter is there is NO science about how these GMOs interact in nature when left to their own devices, free to cross-pollinate other organisms. That kind of wilfull blindness is engaged in by companies whose goals are not science, but which are solely the pursuit of profit ( via omonopolistic wnership of genetic material).
As for your reductio ad absurdum argument about the non-dangers of "foreign" DNA: how does such an argument stack up against "foreign DNA" when it's wrapped up inside "invasive species"?
Not very well I would assert.
We've barely got our heads around the problems of plastic bags: from bags to the sea, where it's broken down, which is then eaten by microscopic organisms, which is eaten by larger ones which, quelle surprise! ends up inside us. Did we forsee that when we wrecklessly cast these plastic bags about the place? Did we hell.
Such wanton disregard and ignorance for the consequences of our actions seesm to be the human way. Wrapping up the persuit of profits with the guise of LIMITED science and subjecting the genetic material of the entire ecosystem to a vast experiment is not a sound, rational or wise thing to do.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
If you keep it a secret, it makes people much more nervous about it as if you tell. If there is no problem with it, why not be honest about it? If people realize that they are eating GMO food all the day, and they are still healthy, wouldn't that be much better for proving that GMO food is ok? Everyone thus can see it.