No pic of the dude in the chemical suit and respirator whilst claiming these foods are perfectly healthy?
No pic of the dude in the chemical suit and respirator whilst claiming these foods are perfectly healthy?
Alright, this thread has become a bit exhaustive. I will address a few items and call it quits for now:
Plant patents: I have been studying horticultural sciences at school for a few years now. I have a lot of respect for researchers, plant breeders, and the whole field of biotechnology. According to this page, plant patents have been available since the 1930's, well before transgenic plants. Developing perennial tree fruit crops through traditional breeding can require decades of selection, and in my opinion, the variety creator should be allowed the benefits of patent protection to provide incentive for investing in plant breeding efforts.
Monsanto: I do not support Monsanto's workers tresspassing onto farmland without consent, or using any other illegal means to intimidate and/or uphold its patents.
GMOs: They are another tool available for use. Do we know the long-term impact of GMO products? Unfortunately, no; GMOs do not yet allow us to see into the future. However, we have had problems with plant diseases, weed competition, and insect pests since the dawn of agriculture. As the density and scope of our food production increases, and our availability of arable land decreases, we must continue to develop high-yielding crops that make the most of what we have, so that we do not have to intrude upon our few natural areas of high biodiversity. GMOs can be part of an integrated pest management strategy, but there are no silver bullets.
Javelin wrote: Frankly, they scare the living beejeebus out of me. It really doesn't seem that far-fetched that an "oopsie" in the modifications would lead to the extinction of whole populations of crops anymore. It's like reading a bad sci-fi from the 50's/60's, but it's actually happening.
If I grew up in the early 1900's, early commercial flights would scare the hell out of me. Can you believe, trusting these unproven hunks of metal hurtling through the sky, more than 10,000 feet above the ground?
spitfirebill wrote: I have heard of some of the lawsuits against the farmers by Monsanto. I believe in each of those cases, the farmers signed an agreement when they buy the Monsanto seeds that they will return any unused seed and will not save seed from the crop they grow to plant the next year. I have never heard of a farmer being sued because the Monsanto pollen fertilized his non-Monsanto crop. Can anybody produce a source where this happened? Seems to me Monsanto could be sued because their seed contaminated a farmers Heirloom crop. There are other seed companies out there. I have not heard of them being so vicious.
There are a few dozen documentary movies that cite exact cases. Whether or not they are true isn't known to me, but try these movies:
Food Inc.
Food Matters
Food Fight
Farmageddon
Ingredients
The Future of Food
There are a few hundred on Netflix alone.
curtis73 wrote:spitfirebill wrote: I have heard of some of the lawsuits against the farmers by Monsanto. I believe in each of those cases, the farmers signed an agreement when they buy the Monsanto seeds that they will return any unused seed and will not save seed from the crop they grow to plant the next year. I have never heard of a farmer being sued because the Monsanto pollen fertilized his non-Monsanto crop. Can anybody produce a source where this happened? Seems to me Monsanto could be sued because their seed contaminated a farmers Heirloom crop. There are other seed companies out there. I have not heard of them being so vicious.There are a few dozen documentary movies that cite exact cases. Whether or not they are true isn't known to me, but try these movies: Food Inc. Food Matters Food Fight Farmageddon Ingredients The Future of Food There are a few hundred on Netflix alone.
Add to that the film David vs Monsanto
IMHO, the company really shot themselves in the foot. Monsanto's heavy handed legal tactics caused independent family famers (normally fairly conservative folk) to be on the same side of the fence as the whole foods tofu smoothy crowd and the tree huggers.
I spent a few hours last night Googling Monsanto suing farmers. What they have done to farmers is probably going to pale to what they are going to do. It does appear they have backed off the pressure a bit since 2008 after they came under a DOJ investigation for antitrust violations. The current administration quietly dropped. A state investigation was also dropped. The unwritten reason, whihc both entites refuse to explain, is because of Monsanto's lobbying and connection with the federal government. It is incredible. Monsanto spent three times the money lobbying as did ADM. Remember them?
Monsanto has stated they will not sue farmers in 2014 for planting the Roundup Resistant Gen 1 beans which comes off patent at theat time. They are bringing out Gen 2 soybeans. Eventually they will force all farmers to purchase seed from somewhere and not plant seed they grew the year before (unless they pay a royalty).
I figured a lot of farmers tht got sued and lost just had bad lawyers, but Monsanto sued Dupont and won. I suspect Dupont had some good lawyering.
Yeah, we humans have been tinkering with selective breeding for many centuries.
I figured that Monsanto would cherry pick the lawsuits so that page didn't impress me a whole lot.
My gripe with them is they cannot tell for sure whether a farmer accidentally picked up their proprietary pollen through natural means (what are they gonna do, legislate bees and the wind?) or through devious means.
At some point, they are going to wind up owning the majority of farmland in this country and THAT scares me.
I don't even know what y'all are talking about. SHould I?
Bobzilla wrote: I don't even know what y'all are talking about. SHould I?
Yes, yes you should. This is probably the single biggest / highest impact issue in the US today.
In reply to Bobzilla:
They are talking about an obvious patent troll that has deep pockets and the other side of the arguement is bitching about genetically enhanced crops like it something completely new....
I'll update from my previous post, has anyone bothered to look into genetically altered potatoes actually being healthier for you......oh, and it was something like 99% of all potatoes are your "GMO" kind.....
In reply to yamaha:
Please stop getting hung up on the use of "GMO". Yes, we all realize that humans have been mucking about with selective breeding and stuff like that for centuries. You're not telling us anything we don't know. It's commonly accepted that nowadays GMO specifically refers to plants that were engineered in a lab with new DNA bits strewn in (usually using parts of a virus). When we say we are against GMO, it's the bad sci-fi plotline virus lab ones, not the old farmer's "gee I keep planting this potato because it's tastier" one. 
In reply to yamaha:
While I have some concerns about the health implications of GMOs, that's nothing compared to the dangers of the reliance on a single strain (or very few strains), and on having a company effectively own the rights to food. The scariest part of the actual GMO stuff to me is the crops which cannot be replanted for a second crop. It's one thing to offer a contract which legally binds the farmer to not replant, but when you get wind-blown cross-pollination of plants which have the "terminator" genetic info and will not regrow... That's just not a scenario to which I can say "it'll be all right, and if it does wipe out the heirloom stuff, I'm sure Monsanto will find something for us to eat..."
The health concerns and the ownership/viability concerns are two distinct things, and dismissing anybody who has any concerns about GMOs for any reason as cowering Luddites is, I think, not reasonable.
My two cents, anyhow...
In reply to ransom:
I will ask this question, do any of you who are NOT in the agricultural business, realize exactly how many varieties of corn, soybeans, wheat, potatoes, etc exist?
Each year when we order seed, we usually plant Pioneer Soybeans and Seed Consultants Inc or Great Lakes corn, there are usually over 50 varieties to choose from for each. It was intentionally done that way to prevent a mass wipeout of a crop.
I wish I could find the testing results on the potatoes that actually helped heal the stomach linings of animals they were fed to, but unfortunately there isn't a filter on google searches to get rid of all the trash/hate talk about them.
The obvious patent trolling is definitely a cause for there to be unrest with, I agree with that......its retarded they're allowed to get away with it.
ransom wrote: It's one thing to offer a contract which legally binds the farmer to not replant, but when you get wind-blown cross-pollination of plants which have the "terminator" genetic info and will not regrow...
I'm not sure the terminator gene thing is for real. If it was, the farmer that took his case to the Supreme Court could not have grown the patented seeds for several years as he did. He also knew he was growing Round Up resistant beans. His case was lost long before he ever got to court, although the court hasn't actually ruled yet.
Some hybrids, like corn, cannot be replanted, because they are hybrids and the yield will drop way off. You simply would not want to.
BTW, there was an old soybean variety that was named Ransom.
In reply to yamaha:
That's a good point. I do wonder how many varieties there are (or were) in total (I would have guessed a number much larger than 50), and how similar the commercial strains are. In any case, it is absolutely a fair point that they haven't whittled us down to a true monoculture.
In reply to spitfirebill:
Also a good point. It's clear that if it is for real, it's certainly not universally applied. The Schmeiser (sp?) case you point demonstrates that clearly. I would like to find a clear answer about whether this exists for any crop.
There's a bit of humor there; if any significant portion of our fears are founded, it's the newer varieties which would have better fit the name "Ransom"... 
ransom wrote: In reply to yamaha: That's a good point. I do wonder how many varieties there are (or were) in total (I would have guessed a number much larger than 50), and how similar the commercial strains are. In any case, it is absolutely a fair point that they haven't whittled us down to a true monoculture.
Note that he said about 50 from each. So we're at 150. And that is just from the 3 he mentioned.
In reply to mtn:
I suppose I should point out that they seem to revolve varieties in and out to prevent insects/weeds from building any tolerance....most varieties come and go within 5 years, which leads to a guessing game as to what you think you want. Most are divided into a maturity scale(how long the plant grows, pollenates, and takes to dry out), and there are several other options. We generally split varieties when planting to 6 rows of one and 6 rows of the other(White planter with 2 bulk tanks)
Seed Consultants as a brand, is normally older varieties of Pioneer that they either didn't like or didn't think could do well, but they've always yielded well for us. We have cleaned and had germination checked of soybeans before, but it was literally too much of a PITA to even bother with.
Okay, just found the following about the "Monsanto Protection Act":
http://badskeptic.com/?p=123
Summarize: it doesn't protect Monsanto. It protects farmers from having crops destroyed in the event that a bureaucrat screws something up and makes it illegal to plant a crop that was planted legally before things went screwy. This would most likely come to play in the situation of farmers planting GE crops, most likely bred by Monsanto, that people are fighting about.
In reply to Beer Baron:
That actually makes sense...........cue the name calling of Baron a Corporationalist....
You'll need to log in to post.
