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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

#111

Post by smsm42 »

jjm wrote: post #103
smsm42 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That is extreme. If there is an alternative organic I buy it. This is good enough for me and I also buy a lot from my local organic farmer. I don't have to go to the extremes you mention, at all. When I walk into a super market I just want choice. Do I choose 100% non gmo? Most likely not, but I will if I had a choice. Again, you might want to not associate that extremism with simple rational choice.

Do you have an idea where the seeds the farmer used came from? There the water came from? What is the chemical composition of the soil and which exactly chemicals in which quantities were put in it? Probably not. And it is never required to publish it. However, you require to publish data about using specific technology. Thus you single out this technology and stigmatize it, implying product using this technology is abnormal and substandard, and must be avoided. If the full knowledge was indeed important to you, you would solicit all the information above, but you do not. You want only information about specific technologies used, arbitrarily defined, for irrational reasons. It is fine, but the additional expense and regulatory hurdles you would impose on the producers because of this irrationality is not.

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

#112

Post by smsm42 »

genwin wrote: post #105
smsm42 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To "know" the future is bleak you have to be a prophet, since knowledge of the future is not available to mere humans, only assumptions about what might happen in the future. However, the fact that you claim something always happens and yet it never happened makes the claim a bit doubtful.

Yes, we can't know that something bad will happen when we jump off a cliff. If during the fall someone claims that something bad always happens at the bottom and yet it hasn't happened, the claim is doubtful.

We assume this always happens it because we observed many things falling off many cliffs. Though if you had a parachute concealed on you, our assumption about what would happen if you jump off a cliff would be proven wrong.

We never observed the thing that were predicted above, despite the claim that it always happens. We didn't even observe the "fall" you claim to be happening right now. No evidence for it exists except for repeated claims of impending doom, usually accompanied by sermons to repent and sacrifice to whatever favorite pseudo-deity the would be prophet happens to believe in. I have nothing against faith, but this particular faith wouldn't be my choice.

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

#113

Post by genwin »

smsm42 wrote: post #112
genwin wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we can't know that something bad will happen when we jump off a cliff. If during the fall someone claims that something bad always happens at the bottom and yet it hasn't happened, the claim is doubtful.

We assume this always happens it because we observed many things falling off many cliffs. Though if you had a parachute concealed on you, our assumption about what would happen if you jump off a cliff would be proven wrong. We never observed the thing that were predicted above, despite the claim that it always happens. We didn't even observe the "fall" you claim to be happening right now. No evidence for it exists ex…

Actually there is plenty of evidence of societies suffering greatly when they exceeded their resources, including modern ones like during the Rwandan genocide. We can also observe the current global fall, in terms of fast declining ocean fish stocks, fast depleting aquifers, and tons of other measurements. The book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is a layman's introduction, with references to extensive scientific evidence in its appendix. The relevance of the evidence is always debatable but to say there is none or that such failure hasn't been observed, or even that a fall cannot now be seen in progress, is false.

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

#114

Post by contingencies »

Curve-ball: Europe vs. USA.

Greater population density, greater decentralization of agricultural production, greater variety and cultural attachment to regional culinary preferences, greater (dare I say it) social concern.

Purely on the basis of these base environmental factors, GM monocultures in Europe were never a winning proposition.

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

#115

Post by X4 »

tptacek wrote: post #40
api wrote: post #2

I 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…

However, sueing a farmer, because he grows plants shows how Monsanto sickens our society.

Overuse of Antibiotics, Pesticides, Herbicides and Fungicides are the stuff that create our allergies and poison bees too. Birds eat those poisoned bees, I really don't know how far this goes down the rabbit hole, but I'm worried.

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

#116

Post by tptacek »

X4 wrote: post #115
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…

However, sueing a farmer, because he grows plants shows how Monsanto sickens our society. Overuse of Antibiotics, Pesticides, Herbicides and Fungicides are the stuff that create our allergies and poison bees too. Birds eat those poisoned bees, I really don't know how far this goes down the rabbit hole, but I'm worried.

I think I just explained how that is not in fact what Monsanto does.

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

#117

Post by [deleted] »

DanBC wrote: post #110
mpyne wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest this whole "debate" reminds me more of the popular antivax movement than anything else. I suppose I can understand Europe's arch-conservatism regarding food products after the thalidomide disaster, but I would certainly prefer to see actual evidence of harm from genetically-modified food, or even a plausible explanation of why a given GM food could cause injury and not just FUD FUD FUD.

You're correct that a lot of the anti-GMO side are spouting alarmist nonsense. But that doesn't matter. The reason we're careful about GMO technology is that there is a reasonable mechanism whereby harm may be the result. We thus require careful testing and good quality science before allowing these technologies. Unfortunately, politicians are often in the chain of "people granting permission", and many of them are s…

[deleted]

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

#118

Post by mpyne »

DanBC wrote: post #110
mpyne wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest this whole "debate" reminds me more of the popular antivax movement than anything else. I suppose I can understand Europe's arch-conservatism regarding food products after the thalidomide disaster, but I would certainly prefer to see actual evidence of harm from genetically-modified food, or even a plausible explanation of why a given GM food could cause injury and not just FUD FUD FUD.

You're correct that a lot of the anti-GMO side are spouting alarmist nonsense. But that doesn't matter. The reason we're careful about GMO technology is that there is a reasonable mechanism whereby harm may be the result. We thus require careful testing and good quality science before allowing these technologies. Unfortunately, politicians are often in the chain of "people granting permission", and many of them are s…

Well GM foods certainly seem to have a much more substantial body of evidence in support of their safety than thalidomide did. E.g. even since I was a kid seedless grapes have been available here in America, and in fact the history of farming is of farmers forcing evolution along faster to get the genetic modifications that they want to make it easier to grow food. They just didn't know that it was actually genetics they were forcing to be modified.

I think what it comes down to is that the human body is the descendant of billions of years of evolution to help survive the introduction of what could be quite poisonous foods without dying. We have large livers and kidneys for an eminently practical reason, and I simply don't see how a GM food can really be considered in general more hazardous on the balance than the kinds of things our ancestors had to eat because they had no clue if it was harmful or not.

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

#119

Post by stephengoodwin »

pvnick wrote: post #37
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.

Such a label does indicate danger to the uninformed masses, even if it's unfounded. I would say it falls under free speech. Let the market forces dictate the risks vs benefits. Once completely organic chicken breast becomes as unattainably expensive as beluga cavier I think you'll find nobody gives a shit how the cheap stuff is produced.

If only "market forces" worked like that...

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

#120

Post by genwin »

smsm42 wrote: post #70
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.

GMO labeling is as stupid as California prop 65 labeling, only more harmful. Every commercial food we eat is "genetically modified", it's how we manage to survive and feed 7 billion people - since the dawn of civilization, men found organisms useful to them and "genetically modified" them to be more useful. Trying to scare people off some methods of doing this would only lead to less productive agriculture and raisin…

Plant hybridization (or whatever the ancient method is called) is significantly different than modifying the genome of a plant to embed a pesticide. The former is much more in tune with natural evolution.
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