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Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

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Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#81

Post by tptacek »

sigzero wrote: post #42
tptacek wrote: post #40

Earlier 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…

I thought there was pretty much a whole movie (Food Inc) documenting that very thing (i.e. cross contamination). Please don't try and say that the hatred going towards Monsanto isn't deserved because it most assuredly is. http://www.damemagazine.com/2013/04/03/monsanto-six-truths-a...

There are a lot of things I like about Food Inc. I can geek out a bit on seasonal and local food. I have a local butcher I work with for most of the protein we cook and he sources his product from a small set of farms within driving distance of here. I have ethical problems with battery farming, both because of animal cruelty issues but more importantly for pragmatic reasons like environmental externalities and antibiotic abuse. I cook, a lot. I'm very sympathetic to Food Inc's viewpoint.

But the Monsanto stuff is a highly technical issue, and neither Michael Pollan nor Eric Schlosser appear to have much expertise in them. There is a lot of GMO FUD. I would not assume that none of it leaked into the movie.

Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#82

Post by api »

smsm42 wrote: post #74
jjm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+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 produc…

Changing the subject.

The subject is conservatism. A conservative is not someone who rejects all of a thing, but someone who is skeptical and suspicious of new things.

As a result of many past issues with novel food products, people have become increasingly conservative about food. That doesn't mean that they reject all industrial or scientific agriculture, but they're likely to be suspicious of things that haven't been around for more than one or two generations. They're quick to reject novel changes in the food supply and very slow to accept them.

Along with having been burned in the past, I can think of another reason why this might be rational. The cost function is weighted heavily on the conservative side. It feels like something that could be modeled well with game theory.

The cost of food conservatism is likely a small increase in the amount of money paid for food. This is a very small cost for most first-worlders, where food is so available that obesity is a health crisis. The benefit is that the risks, if any, are well-known and are known to be tiny.

The cost of food liberalism, by contrast, is an unknown chance of getting cancer, heart disease, diabetes, allergic reactions and inflammatory disorders, etc. The unknown chance is probably very small, but many of those health effects have astronomically high costs that possibly include death or permanent disability. But the benefits are small to nonexistent, especially for your typical first-worlder who as I mentioned is drowning in food.

The same calculus underlies decisions to take out insurance policies on unlikely events such as floods or tornadoes. Statistically you'll probably be better off not buying insurance -- otherwise how would it be that the insurance company could make money? But you'd rather trade the risk of losing everything you own and having no recourse for a small amount of money that you're not going to miss.

Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#83

Post by glhaynes »

smsm42 wrote: post #67
genwin wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. See "The GM genocide: Thousands of Indian farmers are committing suicide after using genetically modified crops" at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1082559/The-GM-genoc...

This article commits journalistic fraud - it attributes the fact that crops failed due to pests (which can happen to any crop, GM or not) solely to the fact that the crops were GM, and making a false impression that suicides were caused not by crop failures but by the fact that the crops were GM. They imply that "after" means "because", and that's the fraud. Of course, even GM crops can not protect from all causes of…

The whole thing is complicated (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers_suicides_in_India) and the Daily Mail has a history of being an awful source.

Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#84

Post by brent_noorda »

smsm42 wrote: post #68
genwin wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

api's comment in this thread sums up the rationale behind the public's opposition: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5800001 People don't need to become experts on any particular food innovation to have a very good chance of serving their best interests in opposing it. The people have been continuously misled about health risks. If GMO saves a million children it will next need to save ten million children, and th…

>>> If GMO saves a million children it will next need to save ten million children Are you advocating population control by starving off the poor?

I think genwin's point is that we humans behave very stupidly whenever we find an innovation that allows for exponentially more of anything. We behave as if that massive growth will continue forever, and it never does, and usually leads to a crash worse than the solution. So if a new invention allows us to feed all 7 billion of us comfortably, instead of just feeding 7 billion of us comfortably we'll instead create 10 billion, 20 billion, 100 billion of us, up to whatever point the innovation no longer feeds us all comfortably, and then it crashes, and then instead of a billion people dying off we now have 90 billion people dying off. Where I think genwin is wrong is in blaming culture or religion. Instead I think we're just stupid that way.

Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#85

Post by api »

jrs99 wrote: post #66
stephengoodwin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue that I have is that Monsanto and other food companies fight very hard against GMO labeling. That's a big red flag to me.

Monsanto rightfully believes that if GMO products are labeled, and there is one single instance of a GMO product killing a person (even from some kind of rare allergy), then the market will fall since GMOs will be able to be avoided by consumers. GMOs can have a staggering amount of benefits to this world. But to say that they are safe across the board is extremely dishonest. We simply can't see all the long-term con…

What would have happened had GMO food been introduced with labels in the beginning that indicated that it was GMO, how it was modified, and the benefits?

I wouldn't be surprised if there'd be much less opposition to it. If you're opposed to labeling now, it looks like you're trying to cover something up or sneak something past the public.

I just realized... maybe the problem isn't that the Monsanto PR machine is deceiving everyone about GMO food. Maybe the problem is that Monsanto sucks at PR, bad. They certainly suck at modern PR. The kind of PR-firm tactics that they use to try to explain themselves to the public come off as smarmy and disingenuous to anyone under 40.

Rule #1 of modern PR: if you assume that your audience are idiots, they will realize this instantly and assume that you are a lying sack of you-know-what. I know I can smell a talking-down-to-me PR flack writeup a mile away, and stuff like that makes me feel like I'm eight years old and my gym teacher is telling me this is what people do when they love each other.

Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#86

Post by genwin »

smsm42 wrote: post #68
genwin wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

api's comment in this thread sums up the rationale behind the public's opposition: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5800001 People don't need to become experts on any particular food innovation to have a very good chance of serving their best interests in opposing it. The people have been continuously misled about health risks. If GMO saves a million children it will next need to save ten million children, and th…

>>> If GMO saves a million children it will next need to save ten million children Are you advocating population control by starving off the poor?

No, I'm advocating not making the problem worse while ignoring its root cause.

Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#87

Post by genwin »

brent_noorda wrote: post #84
smsm42 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> If GMO saves a million children it will next need to save ten million children Are you advocating population control by starving off the poor?

I think genwin's point is that we humans behave very stupidly whenever we find an innovation that allows for exponentially more of anything. We behave as if that massive growth will continue forever, and it never does, and usually leads to a crash worse than the solution. So if a new invention allows us to feed all 7 billion of us comfortably, instead of just feeding 7 billion of us comfortably we'll instead create 1…

Yep.

> Instead I think we're just stupid that way.

That's culture and religion. Both could change to promote smarter sustainability.

Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#88

Post by smsm42 »

glhaynes wrote: post #83
smsm42 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article commits journalistic fraud - it attributes the fact that crops failed due to pests (which can happen to any crop, GM or not) solely to the fact that the crops were GM, and making a false impression that suicides were caused not by crop failures but by the fact that the crops were GM. They imply that "after" means "because", and that's the fraud. Of course, even GM crops can not protect from all causes of…

The whole thing is complicated ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers_suicides_in_India ) and the Daily Mail has a history of being an awful source.

I agree, it is complicated. That's why it is shameful for Daily Mail to take a complicated story and rewrite it as a single-cause case against GM.

Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#89

Post by smsm42 »

genwin wrote: post #86
smsm42 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> If GMO saves a million children it will next need to save ten million children Are you advocating population control by starving off the poor?

No, I'm advocating not making the problem worse while ignoring its root cause.

It's not the choice here. Monsanto can not reform Indian or Chinese society into something else. The choice here is either we have better crops and people do not starve, or we do not have them and people starve. You say "people do not starve" is a bad choice. To me it looks like advocating starving off people as the means for population control.

Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#90

Post by genwin »

smsm42 wrote: post #67
genwin wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. See "The GM genocide: Thousands of Indian farmers are committing suicide after using genetically modified crops" at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1082559/The-GM-genoc...

This article commits journalistic fraud - it attributes the fact that crops failed due to pests (which can happen to any crop, GM or not) solely to the fact that the crops were GM, and making a false impression that suicides were caused not by crop failures but by the fact that the crops were GM. They imply that "after" means "because", and that's the fraud. Of course, even GM crops can not protect from all causes of…

The way I read the article, it's mainly pricing of the GM product that led indirectly to their despair. They could've handled the crop failure with the cheaper non-GM seeds.

It's analogous to US students getting into a pickle by accepting large student loans and then finding no jobs in their field. But if they don't take the risk they may lose to those who took the risk. They'd almost all be better off if the student loans weren't available.

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