Assuming fandom equals obsession is rather absurd, don't you think? No one is saying obsession is bad, but jumping from MLP fandom straight to obsession, as if trying to imply they are somehow more linked than other obsessions and baselines, is pretty silly. Sure, there are obsessive bronies. There are also sports nuts, crazed foodies, people who played video games to death, animal hoarders, and all sorts of other obsessions out there. The obsessive minority does not define the baseline.
You average brony is basically just another person, going about life just like everyone else. Everyone likes different things and has different hobbies, just like Trekkies, Whovians, ect. This just so happens to be something we like.
So you're saying that it's ok to sue somebody for using a chemical that they would normally use on non-GM crops
Round-Up is an herbicide. Some GMOP crops are immune to it, so it would kill the non-GMO plants but not the GMO ones. If you get cross pollinated, grow out the seeds, spray them with Round-Up, then propagate those, you know exactly what you are doing.
If I recall correctly, awhile back PETA stepped into this and offered some prize for whoever could make commercially viable vat grown meat, and a bunch of PETA members flipped out. I'm not sure what exactly their reasonings were, but they didn't like it.
Of course there are also the people who think that any food that has even just come close to a lab is the devil.
And I guarantee those people will say vat grown causes everything from cancer to autism. If we don't watch out this will become the next frankenfood scare
Monsanto's first genetically engineered soy goes off patent next year. However, since conventionally bred crops are commonly patented, do you oppose conventional breeding as well?
and no more lawsuits against farmers who got cross-pollination from GMO crops
Good news, that never happened. No one has even been sued for cross pollination, although they have been sued for doing things like spraying Round-Up on seeds from cross pollinated plants to get the transgenic traits without paying for them. The difference is like the difference between finding a stray DVD on the ground and burning off a thousand copies.
Cheaper food for how long, until the company that has the GM patent has 50% of food production, 80%, 100%?
Something to watch out for for sure, but first off the seed companies like Monsanto already had a large market share prior to GE and control a large market share for non-GE crops, and furthermore there are quite a number of options besides them, like saving your own seed, or buying form other companies.
let alone the long term health and ecological impact that nobody knows.
Nice appeal to ignorance. By ecological impact do you mean this? Maybe we should stop using new technologies in fuel efficient cars because you can't prove that won't have a negative?
Nature wants bio-diversity, not the junk that GM is.
Biodiversity is the sum total of the genes in a population. Genetic engineering is inserting a single of a few genes into an organism, thus increasing that genetic complement. Either you know something no one else does, or you understand neither biodiversity nor genetic engineering and are just parroting tired anti-GE talking points. What decreases biodiversity are things like conventional breeding (I notice no one is against that for some reason) and consumer demand. Biodiversity is very important of course and we should all support it (really, you should buy biodiverse crops whenever possible to support that sort of thing) but its got bugger all to do with genetic engineering so stop using a worthy cause as an anti-science talking point.
I was unaware that the past 4000 years had to deal with climate change and a 7 billion person population and the land and water issues we now deal with. Fascinating.
And here's plenty more showing why it is no surprise that the Pusztai and Séralini papers turned out to be rubbish. Jeepers, citing them to claim GE crops are bad is like citing Andrew Wakefield to claim that vaccines are bad.
Except that didn't happen. Read the court documents; Schmeiser intentionally selected for the transgenic seed. It would be like finding a DVD of a Disney movie, saying 'If Dinsey didn't want me to copy this they shouldn't have left it laying around,' mass producing it, then acting surprised when you get taken to court and telling everyone you were just making your own home movies. The Schmeiser is one of the biggest anti-GE cannards out there.
90%+ of GMO food is either herbicide resistant or produces its own insecticide.
First off, all plants produce their own insecticides. Chemical defenses are how they evolved to compensate for not being able to swat at the things that want to eat them. So, if you are going to argue against doing GE like that, you are unknowingly arguing against the conventional breeding that alters those internal biocides to produce resistant varieties. That is very silly. And, especially in developing countries where they do not have access to pesticides, producing more food is exactly what it has done. Also, it has made better food. Less pest damage=less fungal infection-less mycotoxins.
Second, there is a reason why there is herbicide resistant crops. Weeds are bad, weed control is expensive and environmental damaging (read up on the tillage that GE crops have helped replace). I understand the ill will but it is misplaced.
It's focus is not producing more or better food.
Unfortunately, due to the massive over regulation, in the past only profitable GE crops were able to get through the regulatory hurdles, but the desire is there. Keep in mind that Golden Rice, which should be saving millions of lives, has been held up for so long not due to lack of interest by scientists or by companies but thanks to pro-starvation groups like Greenpeace. Or consider the Enviropig...it would have had benefit only to the environment, so the project was canceled because of anti-GE sentiment (which I guess was more important than the environment). If we want to see this technology be used to its fullest we need to ignore those who oppose religiously. There's plenty of good ones out there, they just can't be legally used.
I was unaware that any company had a monopoly of species. I assume you mean to imply Monsanto has a monopoly. What happened to Syngenta, Bayer, BASF, DuPont, and Dow?
Furthermore, you are provably wrong. The Rainbow papaya is pretty free in terms of IP restrictions, yet it is still opposed.
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.
This is true. One is mixing thousands of genes randomly. The other is inserting a single well characterized gene. It is a good thing artificial selection is older because it would never be allowed if it were invented today. The funny thing is that we have had breeding produce bad results, like the lenape potato, which brought in toxic genes when trying to breed a pest resistant potato. Could you just imagine the shitstorm that would result of GE produced a toxic crop? Of course, then when you try to use genetic engineering to bring in just the genes you want and avoid the toxic genes, the University of Ghent tried to with their cisgenic potato research, your research gets destroyed by illogical unthinking science hating thugs.
Also, consider the following: Lets say you cross two lines of tomato to get a bigger tomato. That's some distance. Now you cross a cultivated potato with a wild potato for pest resistance. That's more distance. Now you cross an apple with another Malus species to bring in disease resistance. That's more distance. Now you insert a gene from a bacteria into corn. That's further difference. Yes, they are all different, but there is a gradient.
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.
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.
Scientists owned by Monsanto claim Europe must surrender to Monsanto or starve.
Why is is that when someone tries to argue against something like vaccines or evolution or climate change using some sort of conspiracy it is inane but when you apply the same logic to genetic engineering it is insightful?
It's just time to go back to more natural high yield seed with no patents.
Ah, the appeal to nature.
Put it in the ground, feed it,water it, it comes up, flowers, fruits, just like Monsanto.
Hybridize it, tissue culture it, select beneficial mutants after blasting material with radiation, double the chromosome levels of male gamates, till the shit out of the soil because no one invented herbicide resistant crops and watch as your soil fertility naturally washes away, spray more pesticides produced in a chemical plant that is somehow natural and wholesome because people are afraid of Bt crops, ect.
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.
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).
The increased monopolization and mono-culture of agriculture created by companies like Monsanto
Monsanto creates the monoculture? That problem has been going on since the dawn of agriculture. If anything, I would suspect that their breeders know as well as anyone the dangers of genetic uniformity and I highly doubt Monsanto wants their products to fail. Their investment in things like Svalbard demonstrate that. Furthermore, there are plenty of lines of many major crops to choose from. Take your pick, there's tons of suppliers.
In my personal opinion the main driver of monoculture is people. Look around. See many people going out of their way to buy crops like amaranth, malanga, mâche, cassabanana, pili nut, or cactus apple? Because I don't. Maybe if people did more to create a demand for true biodiversity we would see more of it. Put blame where it is due; to do otherwise is to do a disservice towards achieving a solution. We are the problem, and the agricultural industries are only reacting to our poor decisions. Do you think anyone is going to invest in something like Job's tears or salicornia or ulluco or Japanese raisin tree if they think it is going to be an economic loss?
A great many of the foods I buy are from a limited number of lines
Which is true even of non-patented crops. You are blaming the wrong thing.
Which means they can sue their customers' customers for patent infringement and they have.
No, they sue farmers who intentionally propagate patented material, not just random farmers. Big difference. If you don't want to get sued, don't do that.
My honest opinion is that these genetic engineering programs are pointless
I disagree. Sure, there is the issue of running the Red Queen's race here, same as with every other trait related to a biotic factor that we manipulate in plants (for example, the resistance breakdown of late blight resistance genes in tomato, or how hessian flies are overcoming defenses in wheat, both of which were conventionally bred), but my hope would be that better agricultural practices will enable the traits to stay relevant and promote long term sustainability. For example, the use of cover crops, crop rotation/crop diversity, and resistances to herbicides of multiple modes of action, when used in combination, can go a good way to preventing the emergence of resistant weeds. Genetic engineering, or rather biological improvements (since I don't really see how evolutions is going to care if selection pressure is applied via a conventionally bred trait of GE one) is one tool of many, and should be treated as such and used in conjunction with complementary techniques (though unfortunately that can be the case as Bt resistant rootworms and glyphosate resistant pigweed demonstrate). Of course, for something like, say, DroughtGard corn, abiotic factors won't evolve, nor will evolutionary issues apply to GE crops with consumer traits such as Golden Rice or the Arctic apples.
Additionally, I agree 100% with the your other comment about monoculture being a threat to human survival, in fact I take it a step further and argue the we need more species level diversity. I could sit hear and rattle off a few hundred plant species that could be widely cultivated crop species if humanity made the effort...things like teff, safou, oca, chaya, jujube, quinoa, yellowhorn, sago, New Zealand spinach, yacón, goumi, and many many more..., each of which would bring its own contributions to global agriculture. Yet so very few people seem to really care about promoting them. I often find myself as frustrated by people's apathy towards biodiversity as I do their ignorance about biotechnology.
Shall we grant ownership of asteroids, planets and other celestial objects to the astronomer who discovers them?
Its a massive straw man to act as if patents for discoveries and patents for inventions are one and the same.
What if the changed gene has deadly side-effects?
What if a new patented battery is emitting some sort of deadly radiation? What if a new patented material is diffusing some sort of toxin? What if a new patented vaccine causes autism?
The corporations want the government to assure them their profits, but they don't want to take the risk
You didn't even read what you linked t, did you? That act was to prevent farmers from being forced to destroy GE crops they already bought, not to protect the corporations that sold them. Apparently being anti-farmer is okay as long as the farmers are growing things anti-GMO sentiment disagrees with.
Maybe we should not grant genetic patents at all?
As i said, some of my favorite plants are the result of patents. Maybe you should explain how we would get beneficial things like Honey Crisp apples, Flavor Queen pluots, and glyphosate tolerant soybeans if someone else can simply propagate the plant and undercut the develop, leaving them with the bill, without patents. And might I add that the patents on the first two things I mentioned have already expired and the patent on the third will expire next year...what is wrong with developing something, getting temporary control, recovering the development cost and making a profit to enable future R&D, and the the patent expiring. Explain, exactly, where that system is broken.
Citation needed, in the form of a primary source please. Are you talking about the small number of lawsuits they have filed against people knowingly and intentionally propagating patented material? Because that's totally different. Plenty of small farms do indeed use GE crops, Monsanto's and other copmpany's, just fine. It is the extreme minority who gets sued, and when it happens it is with reason. I'd love to see someone show me a case where that is not the case, but all people ever seem to be able to do is dredge up cases like the Schmeiser case and the Bowman case where the person being sued was very clearly in the wrong. You are spreading blatant misinformation.
So big players are using GM to push small farms out of existence.
That makes as much sense as saying that restaurant supply companies want to drive small restaurants out of business. Monsanto is not in the business of direct farming any more than John Deere is. you are misunderstanding the supply chain.
Slashdot Mirror
Assuming fandom equals obsession is rather absurd, don't you think? No one is saying obsession is bad, but jumping from MLP fandom straight to obsession, as if trying to imply they are somehow more linked than other obsessions and baselines, is pretty silly. Sure, there are obsessive bronies. There are also sports nuts, crazed foodies, people who played video games to death, animal hoarders, and all sorts of other obsessions out there. The obsessive minority does not define the baseline.
You average brony is basically just another person, going about life just like everyone else. Everyone likes different things and has different hobbies, just like Trekkies, Whovians, ect. This just so happens to be something we like.
The Fund is currently raising donations to endow a permanent animation scholarship at CalArts
The Klingon Language Institute also has a scholarship so fandom born scholarships are not unheard off.
So you're saying that it's ok to sue somebody for using a chemical that they would normally use on non-GM crops
Round-Up is an herbicide. Some GMOP crops are immune to it, so it would kill the non-GMO plants but not the GMO ones. If you get cross pollinated, grow out the seeds, spray them with Round-Up, then propagate those, you know exactly what you are doing.
If I recall correctly, awhile back PETA stepped into this and offered some prize for whoever could make commercially viable vat grown meat, and a bunch of PETA members flipped out. I'm not sure what exactly their reasonings were, but they didn't like it.
Of course there are also the people who think that any food that has even just come close to a lab is the devil.
And I guarantee those people will say vat grown causes everything from cancer to autism. If we don't watch out this will become the next frankenfood scare
Unless and until we get unpatented GMO crops
Monsanto's first genetically engineered soy goes off patent next year. However, since conventionally bred crops are commonly patented, do you oppose conventional breeding as well?
and no more lawsuits against farmers who got cross-pollination from GMO crops
Good news, that never happened. No one has even been sued for cross pollination, although they have been sued for doing things like spraying Round-Up on seeds from cross pollinated plants to get the transgenic traits without paying for them. The difference is like the difference between finding a stray DVD on the ground and burning off a thousand copies.
Criteria met.
Cheaper food for how long, until the company that has the GM patent has 50% of food production, 80%, 100%?
Something to watch out for for sure, but first off the seed companies like Monsanto already had a large market share prior to GE and control a large market share for non-GE crops, and furthermore there are quite a number of options besides them, like saving your own seed, or buying form other companies.
let alone the long term health and ecological impact that nobody knows.
Nice appeal to ignorance. By ecological impact do you mean this? Maybe we should stop using new technologies in fuel efficient cars because you can't prove that won't have a negative?
Nature wants bio-diversity, not the junk that GM is.
Biodiversity is the sum total of the genes in a population. Genetic engineering is inserting a single of a few genes into an organism, thus increasing that genetic complement. Either you know something no one else does, or you understand neither biodiversity nor genetic engineering and are just parroting tired anti-GE talking points. What decreases biodiversity are things like conventional breeding (I notice no one is against that for some reason) and consumer demand. Biodiversity is very important of course and we should all support it (really, you should buy biodiverse crops whenever possible to support that sort of thing) but its got bugger all to do with genetic engineering so stop using a worthy cause as an anti-science talking point.
Science is not a conspiracy.
I was unaware that the past 4000 years had to deal with climate change and a 7 billion person population and the land and water issues we now deal with. Fascinating.
And here's plenty more showing why it is no surprise that the Pusztai and Séralini papers turned out to be rubbish. Jeepers, citing them to claim GE crops are bad is like citing Andrew Wakefield to claim that vaccines are bad.
Except that didn't happen. Read the court documents; Schmeiser intentionally selected for the transgenic seed. It would be like finding a DVD of a Disney movie, saying 'If Dinsey didn't want me to copy this they shouldn't have left it laying around,' mass producing it, then acting surprised when you get taken to court and telling everyone you were just making your own home movies. The Schmeiser is one of the biggest anti-GE cannards out there.
And these people, and these people, and these people, and these people, and these people, and all the other farmers who willingly buy them. But yeah, other than them, who needs crop improvement techniques?
90%+ of GMO food is either herbicide resistant or produces its own insecticide.
First off, all plants produce their own insecticides. Chemical defenses are how they evolved to compensate for not being able to swat at the things that want to eat them. So, if you are going to argue against doing GE like that, you are unknowingly arguing against the conventional breeding that alters those internal biocides to produce resistant varieties. That is very silly. And, especially in developing countries where they do not have access to pesticides, producing more food is exactly what it has done. Also, it has made better food. Less pest damage=less fungal infection-less mycotoxins.
Second, there is a reason why there is herbicide resistant crops. Weeds are bad, weed control is expensive and environmental damaging (read up on the tillage that GE crops have helped replace). I understand the ill will but it is misplaced.
It's focus is not producing more or better food.
Unfortunately, due to the massive over regulation, in the past only profitable GE crops were able to get through the regulatory hurdles, but the desire is there. Keep in mind that Golden Rice, which should be saving millions of lives, has been held up for so long not due to lack of interest by scientists or by companies but thanks to pro-starvation groups like Greenpeace. Or consider the Enviropig...it would have had benefit only to the environment, so the project was canceled because of anti-GE sentiment (which I guess was more important than the environment). If we want to see this technology be used to its fullest we need to ignore those who oppose religiously. There's plenty of good ones out there, they just can't be legally used.
I was unaware that any company had a monopoly of species. I assume you mean to imply Monsanto has a monopoly. What happened to Syngenta, Bayer, BASF, DuPont, and Dow?
Furthermore, you are provably wrong. The Rainbow papaya is pretty free in terms of IP restrictions, yet it is still opposed.
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.
This is true. One is mixing thousands of genes randomly. The other is inserting a single well characterized gene. It is a good thing artificial selection is older because it would never be allowed if it were invented today. The funny thing is that we have had breeding produce bad results, like the lenape potato, which brought in toxic genes when trying to breed a pest resistant potato. Could you just imagine the shitstorm that would result of GE produced a toxic crop? Of course, then when you try to use genetic engineering to bring in just the genes you want and avoid the toxic genes, the University of Ghent tried to with their cisgenic potato research, your research gets destroyed by illogical unthinking science hating thugs.
Also, consider the following: Lets say you cross two lines of tomato to get a bigger tomato. That's some distance. Now you cross a cultivated potato with a wild potato for pest resistance. That's more distance. Now you cross an apple with another Malus species to bring in disease resistance. That's more distance. Now you insert a gene from a bacteria into corn. That's further difference. Yes, they are all different, but there is a gradient.
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.
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.
Scientists owned by Monsanto claim Europe must surrender to Monsanto or starve.
Why is is that when someone tries to argue against something like vaccines or evolution or climate change using some sort of conspiracy it is inane but when you apply the same logic to genetic engineering it is insightful?
It's just time to go back to more natural high yield seed with no patents.
Ah, the appeal to nature.
Put it in the ground, feed it ,water it, it comes up, flowers, fruits, just like Monsanto.
Hybridize it, tissue culture it, select beneficial mutants after blasting material with radiation, double the chromosome levels of male gamates, till the shit out of the soil because no one invented herbicide resistant crops and watch as your soil fertility naturally washes away, spray more pesticides produced in a chemical plant that is somehow natural and wholesome because people are afraid of Bt crops, ect.
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.
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).
The increased monopolization and mono-culture of agriculture created by companies like Monsanto
Monsanto creates the monoculture? That problem has been going on since the dawn of agriculture. If anything, I would suspect that their breeders know as well as anyone the dangers of genetic uniformity and I highly doubt Monsanto wants their products to fail. Their investment in things like Svalbard demonstrate that. Furthermore, there are plenty of lines of many major crops to choose from. Take your pick, there's tons of suppliers.
In my personal opinion the main driver of monoculture is people. Look around. See many people going out of their way to buy crops like amaranth, malanga, mâche, cassabanana, pili nut, or cactus apple? Because I don't. Maybe if people did more to create a demand for true biodiversity we would see more of it. Put blame where it is due; to do otherwise is to do a disservice towards achieving a solution. We are the problem, and the agricultural industries are only reacting to our poor decisions. Do you think anyone is going to invest in something like Job's tears or salicornia or ulluco or Japanese raisin tree if they think it is going to be an economic loss?
A great many of the foods I buy are from a limited number of lines
Which is true even of non-patented crops. You are blaming the wrong thing.
Which means they can sue their customers' customers for patent infringement and they have.
No, they sue farmers who intentionally propagate patented material, not just random farmers. Big difference. If you don't want to get sued, don't do that.
My honest opinion is that these genetic engineering programs are pointless
I disagree. Sure, there is the issue of running the Red Queen's race here, same as with every other trait related to a biotic factor that we manipulate in plants (for example, the resistance breakdown of late blight resistance genes in tomato, or how hessian flies are overcoming defenses in wheat, both of which were conventionally bred), but my hope would be that better agricultural practices will enable the traits to stay relevant and promote long term sustainability. For example, the use of cover crops, crop rotation/crop diversity, and resistances to herbicides of multiple modes of action, when used in combination, can go a good way to preventing the emergence of resistant weeds. Genetic engineering, or rather biological improvements (since I don't really see how evolutions is going to care if selection pressure is applied via a conventionally bred trait of GE one) is one tool of many, and should be treated as such and used in conjunction with complementary techniques (though unfortunately that can be the case as Bt resistant rootworms and glyphosate resistant pigweed demonstrate). Of course, for something like, say, DroughtGard corn, abiotic factors won't evolve, nor will evolutionary issues apply to GE crops with consumer traits such as Golden Rice or the Arctic apples.
Additionally, I agree 100% with the your other comment about monoculture being a threat to human survival, in fact I take it a step further and argue the we need more species level diversity. I could sit hear and rattle off a few hundred plant species that could be widely cultivated crop species if humanity made the effort...things like teff, safou, oca, chaya, jujube, quinoa, yellowhorn, sago, New Zealand spinach, yacón, goumi, and many many more..., each of which would bring its own contributions to global agriculture. Yet so very few people seem to really care about promoting them. I often find myself as frustrated by people's apathy towards biodiversity as I do their ignorance about biotechnology.
Shall we grant ownership of asteroids, planets and other celestial objects to the astronomer who discovers them?
Its a massive straw man to act as if patents for discoveries and patents for inventions are one and the same.
What if the changed gene has deadly side-effects?
What if a new patented battery is emitting some sort of deadly radiation? What if a new patented material is diffusing some sort of toxin? What if a new patented vaccine causes autism?
The corporations want the government to assure them their profits, but they don't want to take the risk
You didn't even read what you linked t, did you? That act was to prevent farmers from being forced to destroy GE crops they already bought, not to protect the corporations that sold them. Apparently being anti-farmer is okay as long as the farmers are growing things anti-GMO sentiment disagrees with.
Maybe we should not grant genetic patents at all?
As i said, some of my favorite plants are the result of patents. Maybe you should explain how we would get beneficial things like Honey Crisp apples, Flavor Queen pluots, and glyphosate tolerant soybeans if someone else can simply propagate the plant and undercut the develop, leaving them with the bill, without patents. And might I add that the patents on the first two things I mentioned have already expired and the patent on the third will expire next year...what is wrong with developing something, getting temporary control, recovering the development cost and making a profit to enable future R&D, and the the patent expiring. Explain, exactly, where that system is broken.
Citation needed, in the form of a primary source please. Are you talking about the small number of lawsuits they have filed against people knowingly and intentionally propagating patented material? Because that's totally different. Plenty of small farms do indeed use GE crops, Monsanto's and other copmpany's, just fine. It is the extreme minority who gets sued, and when it happens it is with reason. I'd love to see someone show me a case where that is not the case, but all people ever seem to be able to do is dredge up cases like the Schmeiser case and the Bowman case where the person being sued was very clearly in the wrong. You are spreading blatant misinformation.
So big players are using GM to push small farms out of existence.
That makes as much sense as saying that restaurant supply companies want to drive small restaurants out of business. Monsanto is not in the business of direct farming any more than John Deere is. you are misunderstanding the supply chain.