Earlier quoted context omitted.
>didn't control the entire industry While this is obvious hyperbole, I agree with your general sentiment. In fact, GMOs, perhaps more-so than any other modern technology, have an unprecedented potential to save billions of lives. Golden Rice alone could save the lives of one million children every year. As a biochem major, GMOs are something I'm passionate about, and it really aggravates me when I see armchair scient…
I think the danger here is that Monsanto is a private company and is doing shady stuff. I'm from France and we have to take a course on that at one point in university. IIRC Monsanto launched several products without testing them and was later forced to stop selling them since they were tested dangerous for health. Seeing that they weren't really testing their products and using biased studies sometimes, Europe just…
Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe
71–80 of 128 posts
Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe
#72I really think there'd be less opposition to GMOs were it not for the fact that this one company -- a firm with a history of somewhat scummy and antagonistic behavior -- didn't control the entire industry.
That antagonistic behavior being what? I ask because there's a commonly-held belief about Monsanto that they, in effect, wait for the wind to blow IP-encumbered seeds onto fields and then sue the farmers who manage those fields for royalties. The reality is that Monsanto sues farmers when they take Roundup-Ready crops, plant them, and then use Roundup on those crops. You can't do that innocently; if you spray Roundup…
>If you just mean that patent enforcement is inherently scummy and antagonistic, well, I have no snappy response for that.
Well then finally we can all agree that Monsanto is detrimental to the development of GMOs. No one is claiming that Monsanto is "waiting for the wind to blow IP-encumbered seeds onto fields", so that might explain why you can't find any evidence of it.
What people do have a problem with, is a patent troll and a litigious one at that. That's what Monsanto is and there are plenty of cases to prove it:
http://www.nature.com/news/monsanto-may-lose-gm-soya-royalti...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Schmeiser#Schmeiser_v._Mo...
Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of people see opposition to GMOs as irrational, but I don't think it is. It's perfectly rational, especially if you don't really understand genetics (which most people don't... it's an esoteric subject). The reason it's rational is this: were GMOs to be found to be unhealthy, it would be a continuation of a well-established pattern. Nearly all food "innovations" of the last 100 years are unhealthy. - Trans-fats…
Absolutely. Cigarettes were good for health too. Pretty much anything that makes an industry is good for you, until it's not. I highly doubt that GMO is different.
GMO might be different, but people are going to err on the side of caution.
All the hype about how GMO will end hunger and nutritional deficiencies and such is part of the problem. I'd say at this point breathless hype is seen as a contrarian indicator.
Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with this statement is it is assuming that there are no health concerns.
+1 For me I just want choice (at the super-market). Choice to not choose GMO, until there is more than enough evidence and discussion around the topic. Maybe you feel there is enough evidence, but I want more. I do not want said firm to 'force' me into eating their product just yet. This is my due diligence on the one life I live.
Why not go full scale and demand choice of not using the fruits of scary science at all? Demand every store to carry the products made of wild plants and hunted down wild animals only, with no products of selection (aka "genetically modified") at all? Why would mega-corporations force you to eat modern wheat, whose yields and chemical composition was completely modified by the corporate puppetmasters and whose production requires to use herbicides, fungicides, pesticides, fertilizers and a variety of modern chemicals and technologies that very well might be accepted? Why not do the due diligence and eat the healthy diet that allowed our cavemen ancestors to live long and healthy lives? And if you can not feed 7 billion people with caveman technologies - too bad for them, you only have one life and you can't spend it worrying about such things.
Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
That antagonistic behavior being what? I ask because there's a commonly-held belief about Monsanto that they, in effect, wait for the wind to blow IP-encumbered seeds onto fields and then sue the farmers who manage those fields for royalties. The reality is that Monsanto sues farmers when they take Roundup-Ready crops, plant them, and then use Roundup on those crops. You can't do that innocently; if you spray Roundup…
>If you just mean that patent enforcement is inherently scummy and antagonistic, well, I have no snappy response for that. Well then finally we can all agree that Monsanto is detrimental to the development of GMOs. No one is claiming that Monsanto is "waiting for the wind to blow IP-encumbered seeds onto fields", so that might explain why you can't find any evidence of it. What people do have a problem with, is a pat…
What people are concerned about is basically "embrace, extend, extinguish" business practices applied to agriculture, with the result being a consolidation of ownership of the means of seed production into the hands of a small oligopoly of companies with interlocking patent agreements.
(Others have pointed out that no, Monsanto does not control the whole industry. But they are by far the dominant player.)
Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
>unprecedented potential to save billions of lives Potential, yes; but not with massive financial interests behind it. In a world where shiploads of wheat are held back in order to game the wheat market, things need to change before GMOs can cure 3rd world hunger. I've read that GMOs have to be bought anew for every season because the harvested crops can't be used as seeds. Is that actually true?
That shiploads are held back is actually a _great_ thing, maybe one of the best things capitalism does. Yes it means you get to pay more (in some cases a lot more) for your bread. It also means that farmers make more money and enable them to sell their wheat _now_ when they need the money and not after they have been foreclosed and it puts a price floor on the market for wheat, insuring that the crops we need to prev…
I agree that it's good for the sellers (farmers). But how is artificial scarcity and rising prices good against hunger? The argument about rotting crops is a bit weak, AFAIK crops can be stored quite well if kept dry.
Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I should also have been more precise. By food "innovations" I meant synthetic alterations in the composition of food itself such as the introduction of chemically altered oils, flavoring additives, preservatives, and similar. Borlaug changed the way food is grown, not its composition. I personally am not particularly afraid of GMO foods. I was pointing out the sociological and political reasons for opposition to them…
> Look into the history of health advice and you'll find the same pattern: something is said to be healthy and people are told to do it. Later it is found to be unhealthy, often dramatically so. Cigarettes and margarine / trans-fat are probably the clearest examples, but there are many others and many outside the realm of food. Bad cherry picking used only to promote your own point. What about the enormous amount of…
"Honestly, you're trying to smear the name of "experts" in general, without separating "health experts" (medical doctors, nutritionists, idiot laypeople who label themselves naturopaths, etc) from scientists. I feel like you're trying to find a way to ignore the entire science of nutrition because you got burned listening to a fad or because big tobacco ran roughshod over science six decades ago."
Absolutely. That's exactly what I'm doing. High-profile failures affect the perception of expertise, even across disciplines. The Harvard that credentialed the economists who said there was no housing bubble is the same Harvard that credentials the scientists who say GMO food is safe. The medical science that big tobacco ran roughshod over six decades ago hasn't changed substantially either-- the institutions and how those institutions are financed and run is largely the same.
People are simply not going to nod their heads to experts anymore. It's over, not just because of high-profile failures but because of the Internet. On the net anyone can appear as an expert. Anyone can look like they know what they're talking about.
How is science going to adapt to that? What I'd like to see is a solution to both problems: a more transparent, open, and engaging scientific process that both reduces the likelihood of major errors and frauds and more deeply engages the public.
Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Look into the history of health advice and you'll find the same pattern: something is said to be healthy and people are told to do it. Later it is found to be unhealthy, often dramatically so. Cigarettes and margarine / trans-fat are probably the clearest examples, but there are many others and many outside the realm of food. Bad cherry picking used only to promote your own point. What about the enormous amount of…
"Honestly, you're trying to smear the name of "experts" in general, without separating "health experts" (medical doctors, nutritionists, idiot laypeople who label themselves naturopaths, etc) from scientists. I feel like you're trying to find a way to ignore the entire science of nutrition because you got burned listening to a fad or because big tobacco ran roughshod over science six decades ago." Absolutely. That's…
Yeah, to each their own. You still sound extremely anti-science to me, so it's very clear we're going to have diametrically opposed opinions. Thanks for sharing!
Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Honestly, you're trying to smear the name of "experts" in general, without separating "health experts" (medical doctors, nutritionists, idiot laypeople who label themselves naturopaths, etc) from scientists. I feel like you're trying to find a way to ignore the entire science of nutrition because you got burned listening to a fad or because big tobacco ran roughshod over science six decades ago." Absolutely. That's…
Yeah, to each their own. You still sound extremely anti-science to me, so it's very clear we're going to have diametrically opposed opinions. Thanks for sharing!
I'm not anti-science. I'm not even anti-GMO, though I doubt they're some kind of panacea either.
You know... I have an apology I'd like to make. I'd like to apologize to all those marketing and sales people I slandered over my years as an engineer.
They were so irrational, said such ridiculous and inane things, made absurd and hyperbolic claims and chastised me for pointing out how unreasonable they were, insisted on framing things through awkward metaphors that bore little resemblance to underlying realities...
What they were trying to do was bang me over the head and get me to understand how actual human beings make decisions. They were trying to get me to pull my head out of technical realities (cough my ass cough) for a second and look instead at how things are perceived by people who are not experts.
Cause that's what I'm doing here. I am intentionally being hyperbolic and playing devils' advocate just a little because I want people to grasp why science and industry are mistrusted by so many in the general public. Most importantly, I want people to grasp that the people reaching these conclusions are not idiots. They're relying on methods of inductive reasoning that function on average very well in limited-knowledge scenarios. Evolution invented these methods of reasoning to keep us alive in situations where we have incomplete knowledge and are required to make important decisions.
I might draw different conclusions, but that's because I have a BS in biology and have created transgenic organisms in the lab before. That puts me in a tiny minority, probably less than a tiny fraction of 1% of the population.
I can either look at the rest 99.99% of humanity and the fact that the majority of them are suspicious of GMO food and say -- as most scientifically-minded skeptics do -- "man, those people are idiots." Now I've insulted them, which makes them even less likely to listen to me. Or I can say "hmm... why would so many otherwise intelligent people be afraid of something that is not likely to really be harmful to them?"
Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
>If you just mean that patent enforcement is inherently scummy and antagonistic, well, I have no snappy response for that. Well then finally we can all agree that Monsanto is detrimental to the development of GMOs. No one is claiming that Monsanto is "waiting for the wind to blow IP-encumbered seeds onto fields", so that might explain why you can't find any evidence of it. What people do have a problem with, is a pat…
What people are concerned about is basically "embrace, extend, extinguish" business practices applied to agriculture, with the result being a consolidation of ownership of the means of seed production into the hands of a small oligopoly of companies with interlocking patent agreements. (Others have pointed out that no, Monsanto does not control the whole industry. But they are by far the dominant player.)
That sounds bad. Is it what's happening in practice? I'd like to learn more about this. I certainly don't want to be knee-jerk in the opposite direction (that Monsanto is totally O.K.).