Do you really, honestly think farmers buy Roundup Ready crops so that they can just go and spray more herbicide for the hell of it? Yes, there are herbicide resistant crops, but the systems those are used in result in the replacement of other, harsher herbicides and the promotion of soil conserving no-till methods. When you put it in context, you find that it really isn't that bad of a thing at all. If anyone's got a better viable weed control strategy, I'm the agricultural community is all ears, but until then, herbicide resistant crops are a win.
We don't really understand what it does to the ecosystem when we introduce new traits at that speed and effectiveness.
Thing is, a lot of crops don't really work that way. Yes, it happens in some cases at low levels depending on the location and the species, but ask yourself, when was the last time you saw a population of feral corn just growing out in the wild? How much ecological risk is there in something that doesn't exist naturally in an area by adding an additional gene that really doesn't improve wild fitness? I can't prove that an ecological problem won't happen, but I can say that it does look very unlikely that genetic engineering is intrinsically prone to such things. It's complicated, but I feel that the fear is vastly overstating the actual risk.
Note even remotely how things work. Diversity is genetic sum of what you grow. Genetic engineering is a way of improving crops. They're not at all the same thing. What you are saying is like saying that spinning rims on cars are bad because it reduces the number of car models. It doesn't make any sense at all.
or unintended consequences
Oh like what? If you have evidence that there is some intrinsic deleterious effect of GE crops, show it. Otherwise, what you are doing is vacuous speculation. I could just as easily speculate on the 'unintended consequences' of vaccines, wifi, water fluoridation, or anything else I fell like opposing today, and it would be just as meaningless.
So "the point" is clear: to use labels to introduce non-health related message to consumners.
I call that deceiving people to advance an unscientific agenda.
Not quite. The insecticide in question is the Bt toxin. It has a very specific mode of action, affecting only coleopteran and lepidopteran insects, like European corn borer and cotton boll worm, and of course its only going to significantly affect the things that are actually eating the corn. Contrast that to insecticide sprays, and you get benefits in terms of field level insect biodiversity.
It can never be "pro-science" for information to be withheld from consumers.
Evolution is just a theory. I demand it be labeled on textbooks.
A study once found a link between vaccines and autism. I demand that parents be informed prior to vaccinating their kids.
Is either of those anti-science? If so, why? I'm just giving people information.
Thing is, a fact taken out of context and presented to those without the basic background information is deceptive. You want to lie to the public to force your anti-science agenda.
"Does somebody own the intellectual property on the corn in this cereal?"
Implying that GMO=patent and non-GMO-no patent. This is not the case. If you were well informed about the thing you wish to regulate,you'd already know that, and wouldn't be insinuating a falsehood. This is the problem here. Maybe the regulation of scientific matters should be left to those of us who actually understand the topic, and not put to popular vote of those who don't actually know the issue.
Oh, the corporate conspiracy card, that didn't take long. My university has often been accused of being part of that conspiracy. We're not, and it is an easily verifiable matter of public record, but the lovely thing about a conspiracy is that everything that disproves it is just part of the conspiracy. It's great for when you want to make wild claims with bugger all to back them.
I'd say its more like those who trust science and those who think science is a corporate conspiracy (see anti-vaxxers for reference). Just because a corporation uses something does not make that thing corporate in nature. Companies that sell GPS devices use relativity, but no one would ever bring up those companies in a physics discussion, unlike when the topic of genetic engineering and the related manufactroversy comes up.
Yes, accusing researchers of all being in a plot to make money. I've never heard anyone do that before. By the way, did you know that vaccination and climate change are also plots to make money?
People will say GE crops are bad if they can cross pollinate, bad if they can survive in the wild, bad if they can't cross pollinate, and bad if they can't survive on their own. Yay double standards.
Except you're wrong. That was not protecting Monsanto, it was protecting farmers from having to destroy their crops (conditional on regulatory approval) in the event a lawsuit challenged the deregulation of an already planted crop, as happened in the case of glyphosate resistant sugar beets. Of course, the GMO denialists, for whom everything is about the Monsanto conspiracy, decided to give that a clever and misleading name, Monsanto Protection Act, because they know bugger about the agricultural issues it centered around. But I'm sure Monsanto is so big and bad that lying to make you're wrong point is totally justified.
Another potential issue is horizontal gene transfer, that is the ability for genes to be transfered to other species.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with genetic engineering. HGT happens, indeed it does, it's how we get things like pea aphids with fungus genes and sea slugs with algae genes, but it happens at an extremely small rate, and there is nothing particularly exceptional about a transgene that makes is any more or less to be transferred in such manner. That is a completely nonsensical line of thought that somehow HGT implies we should not use genetically engineered crops.
In practice, that means that some of those pesticide resistant genes may eventually end up in plants that are supposed to be killed by pesticides.
In theory, yes, it is possible that an herbicide resistance gene could jump to a weed species. In practice, that's not really a concern. The selection of herbicide resistant weed mutants is a very real and very serious problem, but that is a problem older than genetic engineering, does not occur via horizontal gene transfer, is not a problem intrinstic to GE crops but rather is due to poor resistance management strategies and over reliance (which is not the same as over use) on one mode of action of herbicide, and let me remind you, it is a problem because it threatens the benefits that those herbicide resistant crops already provide. Anti-GMO groups would have you believe that herbicide resistant crops are without benefit while simultaneously saying that herbicide resistant weeds which lessen the benefits of herbicide tolerant GMOs are these world ending 'superweeds'. In other words, they're bad because they have no benefits at all and they're bad because their benefits are diminishing. Talk about having your cake and eating it too.
Mixing GMOs with water fluaridation and vaccination hysteria shows you have no idea what the problems is about GMOs.
Plant scientist here. It absolutely is.
The main objection to GMOs isn't that they kill humans directly.
You're lying, You're not just ignorant, you're actively lying right now. Google the term 'GMO' and you will find tons of such claims very quickly. Hell, Jeffery Smith, one of the most notable anti-GMO activists, claims that GMOs promote AIDS. Acting as if the opposition is not claiming all sorts of bogus health scares is patently deceptive.
The IP problems surounding GMOs should be enough for slashdot types to reject them.
What IP problems? The fact that they receive a patent for a certain amount of years? You know, exactly like conventionally bred crops which have no such controversy. Yes, plenty of conventionally bred crops are patented so I guess you oppose conventional breeding too, otherwise you are being pretty selective in your logic. Patents that expire, like Monsanto's first GE soybean patent does in a few months? Or are you referring to the often claimed but completely false myth that Monsanto goes around suing small farmers if they get cross pollinated by GE pollen? Because if so, you don't have a leg to stand on. So tell me, what exactly is wrong with the IP issues surrounding GE crops, and what is your proposed fair alternative?
Also most GMOs are simply more resistent to pesticides. So more GMOs => more poison in food production.
This right here is my big problem with the anti-GMO thing. You drop people who know bugger all about agriculture into a topic they don't understand and you get these sorts of misconceptions. Yes, some GE crops are resistant to certain herbicides (the other main type which you conveniently neglected to mention is insect resistant ones which require less insecticides). Sounds bad, I agree, but only because you have been dropped in the middle of a story you haven't been following from the beginning. Okay, you use more of one type of herbicide, like glyphosate or glufosinate, but you can use better weed management practices (like no till farming, which conserves soil nutrients and reduces runoff problems) and you use less of harsher herbicides like atrazine. I'd call that a win. Do you have abetter weed management solution?
Another argument is, that GMOs have genes inserted that no plant ever could acquire naturally. So we simply have no idea what in the long term will happen with these GMO strains. Most probably nothing, but when the entire food production is at stake, I would be carful.
An appeal to nature followed by an appeal to ignorance. I hope that's all I need to say about that. You could just as easily make the same claim about vaccines, wifi, fluoride, or damn near anything, and be just as wrong and for the same reasons. Also, you neglect to mention the very careful regulations these things already go through. How about you provide a good reason to suspect GE crops of being potentially intrinsically dangerous, rather than just saying that because I can't all-knowingly prove a negative that your point therefore has merit.
I hope I've demonstrated why the anti-GMO nonsense is exactly like the anti-vaccine nonsense.
Agreed, but self-reporting research by Merck and Pfizer isn't science.
The corporate conspiracy card doesn't make sense when anti-vaxxers use it, and it doesn't hold water here either. There is plenty of evidence demonstrating the safety and benefits of genetically engineered crops which have been published by independent sources. That the GMO denialists choose to ignore that or act as if big bad Monsanto somehow controls every single thing that goes against their ideology is their own self-made problem.
You shouldn't make assumptions. I work in plant breeding, an area where patents are very controversial, with an active anti-agriculture movement who often claims that there should be no patents on the plants people like me work hard to develop, and that people like me should work for free or not at all. I've got some nifty new things right now I hope get patented in due time. I've dealt with real anti-IP sentiment, I've defended patents and copyright in general at length, and I fully agree that those who say there should be no IP of any kind are just looking to get stuff, and are deluding themselves when they say everyone can simply stop paying for movies, games, programs, ect. and the creaters will still, somehow, get a return on their creative investment.
But that's not that this is about. The copyright system as it stands now is broken, and badly. I fully realize that creators should get control of their works for a time, but this 70 years after you die stuff...how is copyright on the works of someone who has been dead for half a century fostering the arts? I get that if someone dies their next of kin should be supported and all, I'm certainty not saying IP should be automatically terminated at death, but lets face it, that's not what's going on here is it?
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman? Try the Lion King and Pulp Fiction. Works from 1994 should be in public domain. Twenty years sounds fair to me. Intellectual property is supposed to protect works, giving an ability and incentive to produce new works, not act as a perpetual revenue stream for whatever entity owns the rights to older books, music, games, and film. This life of the universe plus a month nonsense is completely counter to what IP should be.
Could be that's why they're doing this, so that the next time someone starts talking about River Crabs they can more easily do something about it, though if so I'm not sure what's stopping them already.
I don't think you know what I mean when I say hybrid. I mean the offspring of two separate, inbred lines. Sure, wheat for instance is a hybrid between species, but modern day corn lines are hybrids of a different sort, between lines. Seed doesn't go bad after a year (most species anyway) but if you have a variety of genotype AB, and it produces pollen with either the A or B gene and eggs with either the A or B gene, a simple Punnett square will show you the offspring will be either AA or AB or BB, and in a 1:2:1 ratio. If AB is the best, that's a problem for you now that half your seed is no longer of that genotype, and if that same thing is happening in many traits, then its a real bugger.
Heterosis and the genetics behind it are what they are and they favor hybrid seed, with annual repurchasing. This isn't Big Ag mantra, it is a simple fact of genetics.
So far it looks just like the same "Red Queen's Race" evolution has always provided.
Yes, that exactly. The Union of Concerned Scientists is, as usual, misleading. When we see hessian flies overcome conventionally bred resistances in wheat, where are the cries of superpest? When we see phytophthora overcome conventionally bred resistances in tomato, where are the activists saying that conventional breeding is flawed? Nowhere, and rightfully so, because saying that biotic factors can adapt, and therefore you should do nothing against them, is completely mind bogglingly daft. It's called resistance breakdown, it happens, its been around a lot longer than GMOs have, and as for herbicide tolerant weeds, the first of those showed up decades prior to the introduction of GE crops. And yet, when this very same thing occurs and GMOs are involved, suddenly all there are cries of superpest and superweed (horribly misleading terms) and people saying that basic facts of agriculture prove it worthless.
What I like most is how they try to have their cake and eat it too. GMOs have no benefits, but simultaneously, pests and weeds might adapt and take those benefits away. And the thing is, unless you actually know what you're looking at (which describes most people who work outside of agriculture), the cognitive dissonance is easy to miss and the whole thing sounds pretty convincing, but if you do understand, it is frustratingly biased.
They're not. They're GMO denialists who recently made misleading claims about the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation work in Africa. If you want a legitimate genetic resources organization, you want Biodiversity International. These guys are just professional activists who, rather than doing something worthwhile, are just looking for something to leech off.
Imagine you have a crop with genetype AB. It produces pollen (male gametes) with gene A, and with gene B. It produces eggs (female gametes) of A and B as well. The means you get a 1:2:1 ration of AA:AB:BB in the progeny. Say you only want AB, as it is the best, and now imagine this same thing is happening is a dozen traits. Do you see why seed saving of hybrids is problematic?
Through over use, weeds are developing resistance to these chemicals, meaning that more of it has to be used.
And this is a problem because it threatens to diminish just how useful those crops are, and it highlights the need for resistances to multiple modes of action of herbicide to mitigate the development or resistant weeds.
Yes, you can't fix hunger without fixing the underlying social issues. Everyone knows that, stop stating the obvious like it is an actual argument. You want to end world hunger, fix corruption, poverty, income inequality, infrastructure, education, healthcare, social welfare, sexual inequality, and all those other ills. But that is easier said than done. Do you have a solution to all those social, economic, and political problems? Because you're smarter by far than me if you do. Ticktock, people are hungry, and every second counts. In the meantime, I don't know how anyone could say that improving the lot of impoverished farmers is a bad thing. It isn't a panacea, but look at the benefits Bt cotton has brought to India (the ignorant but oft repeated claims them causing suisides notwithstanding), or the promise of Bt eggplant in Bangladesh, and tell me you think its a bad thing.
It's such a strange claim, you know. I doubt any anti-GMO activist would reject improvements in, say, automobile safety and say that instead of a technological solution people should all just drive safer. But suddenly when you talk about agriculture, that sort of reasoning is valid, the only way forward is wait for someone to fix that myriad of human centric problems and hope that too many people don't go hungry in the meantime, but don't you dare touch the technological side of things. How utterly absurd it is.
Why no labels? This is an issue that comes up again and again, and there are plenty of good reasons:
1) You irrationally single out a single aspect of crop improvement. Where are the labels for hybrids, open pollinated lines, crops developed with mutagenesis, crops developed with induced polyploidy, bud sports, crops produced with somaclonal variation, crops produced via embryo rescue or with wide crossing in their lineage, ect.? We don't label them. We don't label them because corn produced via a doubled haploid hybrid is still corn, an apple that is a bud sport is still an apple, and a zucchini that is genetically engineered is still a zucchini.
2) You tell the consumer nothing. I modified my computer; tell me what I did to it. If I say that a crop is genetically engineered, tell me what that means. Tell me what I did, why, what it means, what are the benefits. Is it insect resistant, herbicide tolerant (if so which one), virus resistant (if so which ones), drought tolerant, how do those genes work, why are they used, what are the benefits? Unless you already know what is what (see point 4), saying that something is GMO doesn't actually tell me anything, does it?
3) You do not correct any misinformation. People are afraid of GMOs. Unfortunate, not scientifically justified, but true. Non-GMO labels are everywhere, even on crops where there are no GMO varieties, as a marketing tool. I saw non-GMO labeled figs and non-GMO labeled basil the other day..there is no GMO figs or basil on the market, anywhere. Remember that old XKCD comic about marketing? Make no mistake, this is both marketing for the companies that convenient sell non-GMO crops, as well as ideology. Professional activists at Greenpeace and the Center for Food safety have made a career of denying science and spreading fear. A label does nothing to correct that and can very easily be taken as a sign there is something wrong with the food, when there really is nothing.
4) You can already tell what crops are and are not genetically engineered. Corn, soy, canola, cotton, alfalfa, sugar beet, summer squash, papaya. Learn about them, and you can know. Too hard for you? Too damned bad, this is your ritualistic impurity beliefs, you take responsibility for it. Just like Kosher or Halal, you can avoid what you find questionable, or buy specially labeled things.
So, you want to select one thing, tell nothing about it, and correct no deficiencies in public knowledge? That's not informing people, that's a lie of omission. It is no different from the 'Evolution is just a theory' labels. Yeah, it was technically true, but taken so far out of context that it was deceptive and everyone knows it. This labeling nonsense is politically motivated crap and everyone knows it.
We did that for millennia before switching to hybrid seed. Ever consider that there might be a reason why farmers would be willing to pay more for their seed? Over the past century hybrid seeds, as well as increased focus on plant breeding, have given massive yield gains. No one is saying that locally adapted traits shouldn't be used, of course they should, everyone including the companies selling they hybrid seeds know that, but hybrid vigor is a very real and very powerful thing, and there's no way around that.
To their credit it does mention 'despite layers upon layers of editing, peer review, and proofreading' right in the summery, so I assume it must in TFA (which I, as per tradition, have no intention of actually reading), but as we all know/. editors sure as shit don't have any room to criticize other people's mistakes in editing.
Slashdot Mirror
They let you spray MORE, not less.
Do you really, honestly think farmers buy Roundup Ready crops so that they can just go and spray more herbicide for the hell of it? Yes, there are herbicide resistant crops, but the systems those are used in result in the replacement of other, harsher herbicides and the promotion of soil conserving no-till methods. When you put it in context, you find that it really isn't that bad of a thing at all. If anyone's got a better viable weed control strategy, I'm the agricultural community is all ears, but until then, herbicide resistant crops are a win.
We don't really understand what it does to the ecosystem when we introduce new traits at that speed and effectiveness.
Thing is, a lot of crops don't really work that way. Yes, it happens in some cases at low levels depending on the location and the species, but ask yourself, when was the last time you saw a population of feral corn just growing out in the wild? How much ecological risk is there in something that doesn't exist naturally in an area by adding an additional gene that really doesn't improve wild fitness? I can't prove that an ecological problem won't happen, but I can say that it does look very unlikely that genetic engineering is intrinsically prone to such things. It's complicated, but I feel that the fear is vastly overstating the actual risk.
such as reduction in crop diversity,
Note even remotely how things work. Diversity is genetic sum of what you grow. Genetic engineering is a way of improving crops. They're not at all the same thing. What you are saying is like saying that spinning rims on cars are bad because it reduces the number of car models. It doesn't make any sense at all.
or unintended consequences
Oh like what? If you have evidence that there is some intrinsic deleterious effect of GE crops, show it. Otherwise, what you are doing is vacuous speculation. I could just as easily speculate on the 'unintended consequences' of vaccines, wifi, water fluoridation, or anything else I fell like opposing today, and it would be just as meaningless.
So "the point" is clear: to use labels to introduce non-health related message to consumners.
I call that deceiving people to advance an unscientific agenda.
Not quite. The insecticide in question is the Bt toxin. It has a very specific mode of action, affecting only coleopteran and lepidopteran insects, like European corn borer and cotton boll worm, and of course its only going to significantly affect the things that are actually eating the corn. Contrast that to insecticide sprays, and you get benefits in terms of field level insect biodiversity.
It can never be "pro-science" for information to be withheld from consumers.
Evolution is just a theory. I demand it be labeled on textbooks.
A study once found a link between vaccines and autism. I demand that parents be informed prior to vaccinating their kids.
Is either of those anti-science? If so, why? I'm just giving people information.
Thing is, a fact taken out of context and presented to those without the basic background information is deceptive. You want to lie to the public to force your anti-science agenda.
"Does somebody own the intellectual property on the corn in this cereal?"
Implying that GMO=patent and non-GMO-no patent. This is not the case. If you were well informed about the thing you wish to regulate,you'd already know that, and wouldn't be insinuating a falsehood. This is the problem here. Maybe the regulation of scientific matters should be left to those of us who actually understand the topic, and not put to popular vote of those who don't actually know the issue.
Oh, the corporate conspiracy card, that didn't take long. My university has often been accused of being part of that conspiracy. We're not, and it is an easily verifiable matter of public record, but the lovely thing about a conspiracy is that everything that disproves it is just part of the conspiracy. It's great for when you want to make wild claims with bugger all to back them.
I'd say its more like those who trust science and those who think science is a corporate conspiracy (see anti-vaxxers for reference). Just because a corporation uses something does not make that thing corporate in nature. Companies that sell GPS devices use relativity, but no one would ever bring up those companies in a physics discussion, unlike when the topic of genetic engineering and the related manufactroversy comes up.
Yes, accusing researchers of all being in a plot to make money. I've never heard anyone do that before. By the way, did you know that vaccination and climate change are also plots to make money?
People will say GE crops are bad if they can cross pollinate, bad if they can survive in the wild, bad if they can't cross pollinate, and bad if they can't survive on their own. Yay double standards.
Except you're wrong. That was not protecting Monsanto, it was protecting farmers from having to destroy their crops (conditional on regulatory approval) in the event a lawsuit challenged the deregulation of an already planted crop, as happened in the case of glyphosate resistant sugar beets. Of course, the GMO denialists, for whom everything is about the Monsanto conspiracy, decided to give that a clever and misleading name, Monsanto Protection Act, because they know bugger about the agricultural issues it centered around. But I'm sure Monsanto is so big and bad that lying to make you're wrong point is totally justified.
Another potential issue is horizontal gene transfer, that is the ability for genes to be transfered to other species.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with genetic engineering. HGT happens, indeed it does, it's how we get things like pea aphids with fungus genes and sea slugs with algae genes, but it happens at an extremely small rate, and there is nothing particularly exceptional about a transgene that makes is any more or less to be transferred in such manner. That is a completely nonsensical line of thought that somehow HGT implies we should not use genetically engineered crops.
In practice, that means that some of those pesticide resistant genes may eventually end up in plants that are supposed to be killed by pesticides.
In theory, yes, it is possible that an herbicide resistance gene could jump to a weed species. In practice, that's not really a concern. The selection of herbicide resistant weed mutants is a very real and very serious problem, but that is a problem older than genetic engineering, does not occur via horizontal gene transfer, is not a problem intrinstic to GE crops but rather is due to poor resistance management strategies and over reliance (which is not the same as over use) on one mode of action of herbicide, and let me remind you, it is a problem because it threatens the benefits that those herbicide resistant crops already provide. Anti-GMO groups would have you believe that herbicide resistant crops are without benefit while simultaneously saying that herbicide resistant weeds which lessen the benefits of herbicide tolerant GMOs are these world ending 'superweeds'. In other words, they're bad because they have no benefits at all and they're bad because their benefits are diminishing. Talk about having your cake and eating it too.
Mixing GMOs with water fluaridation and vaccination hysteria shows you have no idea what the problems is about GMOs.
Plant scientist here. It absolutely is.
The main objection to GMOs isn't that they kill humans directly.
You're lying, You're not just ignorant, you're actively lying right now. Google the term 'GMO' and you will find tons of such claims very quickly. Hell, Jeffery Smith, one of the most notable anti-GMO activists, claims that GMOs promote AIDS. Acting as if the opposition is not claiming all sorts of bogus health scares is patently deceptive.
The IP problems surounding GMOs should be enough for slashdot types to reject them.
What IP problems? The fact that they receive a patent for a certain amount of years? You know, exactly like conventionally bred crops which have no such controversy. Yes, plenty of conventionally bred crops are patented so I guess you oppose conventional breeding too, otherwise you are being pretty selective in your logic. Patents that expire, like Monsanto's first GE soybean patent does in a few months? Or are you referring to the often claimed but completely false myth that Monsanto goes around suing small farmers if they get cross pollinated by GE pollen? Because if so, you don't have a leg to stand on. So tell me, what exactly is wrong with the IP issues surrounding GE crops, and what is your proposed fair alternative?
Also most GMOs are simply more resistent to pesticides. So more GMOs => more poison in food production.
This right here is my big problem with the anti-GMO thing. You drop people who know bugger all about agriculture into a topic they don't understand and you get these sorts of misconceptions. Yes, some GE crops are resistant to certain herbicides (the other main type which you conveniently neglected to mention is insect resistant ones which require less insecticides). Sounds bad, I agree, but only because you have been dropped in the middle of a story you haven't been following from the beginning. Okay, you use more of one type of herbicide, like glyphosate or glufosinate, but you can use better weed management practices (like no till farming, which conserves soil nutrients and reduces runoff problems) and you use less of harsher herbicides like atrazine. I'd call that a win. Do you have abetter weed management solution?
Another argument is, that GMOs have genes inserted that no plant ever could acquire naturally. So we simply have no idea what in the long term will happen with these GMO strains. Most probably nothing, but when the entire food production is at stake, I would be carful.
An appeal to nature followed by an appeal to ignorance. I hope that's all I need to say about that. You could just as easily make the same claim about vaccines, wifi, fluoride, or damn near anything, and be just as wrong and for the same reasons. Also, you neglect to mention the very careful regulations these things already go through. How about you provide a good reason to suspect GE crops of being potentially intrinsically dangerous, rather than just saying that because I can't all-knowingly prove a negative that your point therefore has merit.
I hope I've demonstrated why the anti-GMO nonsense is exactly like the anti-vaccine nonsense.
Agreed, but self-reporting research by Merck and Pfizer isn't science.
The corporate conspiracy card doesn't make sense when anti-vaxxers use it, and it doesn't hold water here either. There is plenty of evidence demonstrating the safety and benefits of genetically engineered crops which have been published by independent sources. That the GMO denialists choose to ignore that or act as if big bad Monsanto somehow controls every single thing that goes against their ideology is their own self-made problem.
You shouldn't make assumptions. I work in plant breeding, an area where patents are very controversial, with an active anti-agriculture movement who often claims that there should be no patents on the plants people like me work hard to develop, and that people like me should work for free or not at all. I've got some nifty new things right now I hope get patented in due time. I've dealt with real anti-IP sentiment, I've defended patents and copyright in general at length, and I fully agree that those who say there should be no IP of any kind are just looking to get stuff, and are deluding themselves when they say everyone can simply stop paying for movies, games, programs, ect. and the creaters will still, somehow, get a return on their creative investment.
But that's not that this is about. The copyright system as it stands now is broken, and badly. I fully realize that creators should get control of their works for a time, but this 70 years after you die stuff...how is copyright on the works of someone who has been dead for half a century fostering the arts? I get that if someone dies their next of kin should be supported and all, I'm certainty not saying IP should be automatically terminated at death, but lets face it, that's not what's going on here is it?
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman? Try the Lion King and Pulp Fiction. Works from 1994 should be in public domain. Twenty years sounds fair to me. Intellectual property is supposed to protect works, giving an ability and incentive to produce new works, not act as a perpetual revenue stream for whatever entity owns the rights to older books, music, games, and film. This life of the universe plus a month nonsense is completely counter to what IP should be.
Could be that's why they're doing this, so that the next time someone starts talking about River Crabs they can more easily do something about it, though if so I'm not sure what's stopping them already.
Haste can only lead to trouble.
Says the one who isn't hungry.
I don't think you know what I mean when I say hybrid. I mean the offspring of two separate, inbred lines. Sure, wheat for instance is a hybrid between species, but modern day corn lines are hybrids of a different sort, between lines. Seed doesn't go bad after a year (most species anyway) but if you have a variety of genotype AB, and it produces pollen with either the A or B gene and eggs with either the A or B gene, a simple Punnett square will show you the offspring will be either AA or AB or BB, and in a 1:2:1 ratio. If AB is the best, that's a problem for you now that half your seed is no longer of that genotype, and if that same thing is happening in many traits, then its a real bugger.
Heterosis and the genetics behind it are what they are and they favor hybrid seed, with annual repurchasing. This isn't Big Ag mantra, it is a simple fact of genetics.
So far it looks just like the same "Red Queen's Race" evolution has always provided.
Yes, that exactly. The Union of Concerned Scientists is, as usual, misleading. When we see hessian flies overcome conventionally bred resistances in wheat, where are the cries of superpest? When we see phytophthora overcome conventionally bred resistances in tomato, where are the activists saying that conventional breeding is flawed? Nowhere, and rightfully so, because saying that biotic factors can adapt, and therefore you should do nothing against them, is completely mind bogglingly daft. It's called resistance breakdown, it happens, its been around a lot longer than GMOs have, and as for herbicide tolerant weeds, the first of those showed up decades prior to the introduction of GE crops. And yet, when this very same thing occurs and GMOs are involved, suddenly all there are cries of superpest and superweed (horribly misleading terms) and people saying that basic facts of agriculture prove it worthless.
What I like most is how they try to have their cake and eat it too. GMOs have no benefits, but simultaneously, pests and weeds might adapt and take those benefits away. And the thing is, unless you actually know what you're looking at (which describes most people who work outside of agriculture), the cognitive dissonance is easy to miss and the whole thing sounds pretty convincing, but if you do understand, it is frustratingly biased.
They're not. They're GMO denialists who recently made misleading claims about the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation work in Africa. If you want a legitimate genetic resources organization, you want Biodiversity International. These guys are just professional activists who, rather than doing something worthwhile, are just looking for something to leech off.
not that the seeds get any weaker.
Imagine you have a crop with genetype AB. It produces pollen (male gametes) with gene A, and with gene B. It produces eggs (female gametes) of A and B as well. The means you get a 1:2:1 ration of AA:AB:BB in the progeny. Say you only want AB, as it is the best, and now imagine this same thing is happening is a dozen traits. Do you see why seed saving of hybrids is problematic?
Through over use, weeds are developing resistance to these chemicals, meaning that more of it has to be used.
And this is a problem because it threatens to diminish just how useful those crops are, and it highlights the need for resistances to multiple modes of action of herbicide to mitigate the development or resistant weeds.
Yes, you can't fix hunger without fixing the underlying social issues. Everyone knows that, stop stating the obvious like it is an actual argument. You want to end world hunger, fix corruption, poverty, income inequality, infrastructure, education, healthcare, social welfare, sexual inequality, and all those other ills. But that is easier said than done. Do you have a solution to all those social, economic, and political problems? Because you're smarter by far than me if you do. Ticktock, people are hungry, and every second counts. In the meantime, I don't know how anyone could say that improving the lot of impoverished farmers is a bad thing. It isn't a panacea, but look at the benefits Bt cotton has brought to India (the ignorant but oft repeated claims them causing suisides notwithstanding), or the promise of Bt eggplant in Bangladesh, and tell me you think its a bad thing.
It's such a strange claim, you know. I doubt any anti-GMO activist would reject improvements in, say, automobile safety and say that instead of a technological solution people should all just drive safer. But suddenly when you talk about agriculture, that sort of reasoning is valid, the only way forward is wait for someone to fix that myriad of human centric problems and hope that too many people don't go hungry in the meantime, but don't you dare touch the technological side of things. How utterly absurd it is.
Why no labels? This is an issue that comes up again and again, and there are plenty of good reasons:
1) You irrationally single out a single aspect of crop improvement. Where are the labels for hybrids, open pollinated lines, crops developed with mutagenesis, crops developed with induced polyploidy, bud sports, crops produced with somaclonal variation, crops produced via embryo rescue or with wide crossing in their lineage, ect.? We don't label them. We don't label them because corn produced via a doubled haploid hybrid is still corn, an apple that is a bud sport is still an apple, and a zucchini that is genetically engineered is still a zucchini.
2) You tell the consumer nothing. I modified my computer; tell me what I did to it. If I say that a crop is genetically engineered, tell me what that means. Tell me what I did, why, what it means, what are the benefits. Is it insect resistant, herbicide tolerant (if so which one), virus resistant (if so which ones), drought tolerant, how do those genes work, why are they used, what are the benefits? Unless you already know what is what (see point 4), saying that something is GMO doesn't actually tell me anything, does it?
3) You do not correct any misinformation. People are afraid of GMOs. Unfortunate, not scientifically justified, but true. Non-GMO labels are everywhere, even on crops where there are no GMO varieties, as a marketing tool. I saw non-GMO labeled figs and non-GMO labeled basil the other day..there is no GMO figs or basil on the market, anywhere. Remember that old XKCD comic about marketing? Make no mistake, this is both marketing for the companies that convenient sell non-GMO crops, as well as ideology. Professional activists at Greenpeace and the Center for Food safety have made a career of denying science and spreading fear. A label does nothing to correct that and can very easily be taken as a sign there is something wrong with the food, when there really is nothing.
4) You can already tell what crops are and are not genetically engineered. Corn, soy, canola, cotton, alfalfa, sugar beet, summer squash, papaya. Learn about them, and you can know. Too hard for you? Too damned bad, this is your ritualistic impurity beliefs, you take responsibility for it. Just like Kosher or Halal, you can avoid what you find questionable, or buy specially labeled things.
So, you want to select one thing, tell nothing about it, and correct no deficiencies in public knowledge? That's not informing people, that's a lie of omission. It is no different from the 'Evolution is just a theory' labels. Yeah, it was technically true, but taken so far out of context that it was deceptive and everyone knows it. This labeling nonsense is politically motivated crap and everyone knows it.
We did that for millennia before switching to hybrid seed. Ever consider that there might be a reason why farmers would be willing to pay more for their seed? Over the past century hybrid seeds, as well as increased focus on plant breeding, have given massive yield gains. No one is saying that locally adapted traits shouldn't be used, of course they should, everyone including the companies selling they hybrid seeds know that, but hybrid vigor is a very real and very powerful thing, and there's no way around that.
To their credit it does mention 'despite layers upon layers of editing, peer review, and proofreading' right in the summery, so I assume it must in TFA (which I, as per tradition, have no intention of actually reading), but as we all know /. editors sure as shit don't have any room to criticize other people's mistakes in editing.