The return of Quetzalcoatl: Amaranth fights back Monsanto

[Ban Kenobi]

Experimental GMOs should be allowed of course for research purposes.

As to why GMOs are a disaster, the evidence is overwhelming.

- Accidental cross-breeding
- Contamination to non-GMO fields
- Encouragement of herbicide abuse
- Strange vegetal illnesses popping up
- Legal bullying of farmers
- Corruption (to limit action against the preceding)

1. Why should I care about accidental cross-breeding?
1a. Contamination of non-GMO fields sounds like a special case of "accidental cross-breeding".
2. If herbicide abuse is a problem, regulate herbicides instead of banning all GMOs.
3. Why should I care about strange vegetal illnesses? Humans can't contract diseases from vegetables so I don't see how this matters.
4. Banning all GMOs isn't necessary to prevent legal bullying. Just amend the laws to protect farmers.
5. All corporations will hire lobbyists if they think there's a real possibility of legislative action against their products. That's not a good reason to ban something.

[N35t0r]

nono, let's ban oil companies, and major retail chains, and auto manufacturers, and drug companies, and....

[Fake Boris]

1. Why should I care about accidental cross-breeding?

The potential for ecological disruption is huge. It also makes farmers dependent on a perpetual cycle of technological variations of seeds and herbicides, held by a monopoly. This goes straight against the backbone of a sound economy, middle class owners. They end up being at the mercy of integrated solution vendors. This integration furthers corruption and information denial.

1a. Contamination of non-GMO fields sounds like a special case of "accidental cross-breeding".

By contamination, I do not mean genetic mutations, but simply, aggressive expansion of gmo crops in neighboring fields. Cultivating gmos means you are forcing your choices upon your neighbors.

The real danger comes with patent laws. Monsanto lawyers aggressively enforce their patents. Farmers who have never seeded any of their crops are sued for millions of dollars if a single gmo is found on their fields. Hundreds of family farms in the U.S. have been forced out of business from abusive lawsuits.

In the end, the only protection against this bullying is to buy Monsanto seeds. It's nothing more than a glorified pizzo.

2. If herbicide abuse is a problem, regulate herbicides instead of banning all GMOs.

Wishful thinking. Think about it. The main selling point of Roundup ready crops is its ability to sustain herbicides. Prohibition does not prevent alcoholics from drinking, does it?

3. Why should I care about strange vegetal illnesses? Humans can't contract diseases from vegetables so I don't see how this matters.

You should be concerned about the balance of ecosystems. The reasons are obvious.

4. Banning all GMOs isn't necessary to prevent legal bullying. Just amend the laws to protect farmers.

This would only happen if political financing were severely restricted, and yet, would be of limited use. The legislator is bound to lean on the side of big money. The only real solution in these cases is to tarry the source.

5. All corporations will hire lobbyists if they think there's a real possibility of legislative action against their products. That's not a good reason to ban something.

Past a certain point, it is.

[Fake Boris]

nono, let's ban oil companies, and major retail chains, and auto manufacturers, and drug companies, and....

A better comparison would be the tobacco industry. Or the Asbestos industry.

[Fake Boris]

The fundamental motives behind sound ecology are the same as the fundamental motives behind sound economics.

If you're concerned about the well being of people in general, stability is a greater good than productivity. That is to say, from the perspective of an individual and his family, a stable and secure revenue matters more than optimal productivity at the aggregate level.

The ultimate goal of economics should be just that, stability of industrial sectors. The same goes for ecology. We are rapidly nearing the saturation point of the pollution that can be handled by the ecosystems we derive our energy from. The consequences of saturation are more unpredictable, and more dangerous, than the consequences of limited growth. Countless civilizations marched to their doom by abusing the environment around them. Technology does not always follow the rate at which we destroy ecosystems. It is a perilous fallacy to believe otherwise.

[Ban Kenobi]

1. If a monopoly is the real problem, this sounds like an anti-trust issue, not a reason to ban GMOs. We didn't ban personal computers because people were relying on Microsoft.
2. If Roundup ready crops do encourage excessive use of herbicides why insist on banning all GMOs whether they have anything to do with herbicides or not? You could ban Roundup ready crops. You could put a tax on herbicides to discourage excessive use.
3. Ecosystems are constantly changing. I don't see any convincing reason why, for instance, a proliferation of plants in the wild that are resistant to Roundup is going to change the ecosystem for the worse. The whole point in GMOs is to give crops adaptations that are beneficial for agriculture, but which don't help plants survive in the wild. If they helped plants survive in the wild, it is unlikely that such adaptations would have not already developed through evolution.
4. Monsanto has a vested interest to bully farmers who accidentally end up with a GMO crop in their field and might fight legislative to stop this. However, Monsanto has a much greater interest in not having GMOs banned entirely. If it's legislatively possible to ban GMOs, it must also be possible to simply protect farmers from unfair lawsuits.
5. Why is the degree of opposition relevant? The more people call for something to be banned, the more corporations will fight to keep it legal. You're essentially arguing that any sufficiently vocal movement to ban something justifies its demands through its mere existence.

[The Mad Monk]

Why would a corporation that has spent billions on developing a product inform you about its harmful properties?

Do you understand what a corporation is, and to whom lie its obligations?

It's like you've never seen a pharmaceutical commercial.

[Imran Siddiqui]

http://grist.org/food/what-i-learned-from-six-months-of-gmo-research-none-of-it-matters/

The anthropologist Glenn Davis Stone has pointed out that each side of the debate has agreed to talk about GMOs as if “GMOs” are a single entity up for approval or rejection. This makes zero sense. Pro-GMO partisans, for example, often lump all the different GM plants together as a universal good that we must accept if we want to avoid starvation. The logic here is Malthusian: We are outgrowing our food supply, and the productivity gains of the Green Revolution are falling off, so we need something to save us. That thing, according to this line of thought, is genetic engineering. Set aside the problems with the Malthusian argument for a moment. We still have to ask: What type of GMOs? Are we talking about rice engineered to feed the poor in Indonesia, or soy engineered to feed pigs in a country suffering from calorie surpluses? Those two plants don’t belong in the same argument.

Anti-GMO partisans also frequently treat GMOs as a monolithic entity, and that’s not any more logical. If you care about the environment it would make sense to support the responsible use of insect-resistant GMOs to help farmers move beyond chemical agriculture. It’s hard to argue with scientists like Bruce Tabashnik when they present evidence that insect-resistant plants have helped the environment in the places they’ve been used fastidiously. Thoughtful greens might, at the same time, oppose herbicide-tolerant GMOs until we can figure out a better solution than just spraying more. Again, the different forms of GMOs don’t belong in the same argument.

But in the past, greens — including me — have intuitively opposed all GMOs. Because those insect-resistant crops are part of an industrial complex that we dislike, it’s hard to get excited about the fact that they reduce insecticide applications. We oppose GMOs because we oppose the unsustainable agricultural system they serve.

I soured to this argument after realizing that it shares the same reasoning used by those opposed to contraception and sex ed. The argument supposes that you can throttle back an institution you dislike (monoculture, premarital sex) by denying it the technologies that reduce its risks (Bt corn, condoms). But, just as teens are going to keep having sex, our unsustainable food system is going to keep on chugging along whether we allow the use of mitigating technology or not. I think it makes sense to support the GMO uses that give us small environmental improvements. Insisting on abstinence-only farming is a non-starter.

If GMOs aren’t a monolithic entity, the stakes in this fight fall even further. It’s harder to get worked up about an issue when it’s a mixed bag of good and bad.

This is actually the end of a 29 part series, done by a pro-organic person who looked at multiple sides in this debate and concluded that he was worked up over much of nothing - his articles have pissed off both sides mostly because he argues for, as stated above, something other than an 'all or nothing' approach.

[Ban Kenobi]

He might also annoy the "pro-GMO partisans" by attributing a ridiculous strawman to them and then stealing some of their arguments.

[Imran Siddiqui]

If it makes you feel any better, he got far, far, far more hate mail from anti-GMO folk who thought he was a shill for Monsanto .

[Hauldren Collider]

He annoys both sides because even though he supports the correct side, he's an idiot and his arguments are (partially) nonsense. So the anti-GMO people hate him for disagreeing, and the GMO people hate him for making them look dumb by association.

[Ben Kenobi]

It's like you've never seen a pharmaceutical commercial.

He lives in Quebec. Do they even have medicine over there?

[Fake Boris]

He might also annoy the "pro-GMO partisans" by attributing a ridiculous strawman to them and then stealing some of their arguments.

What strawman?

[Sava]

Monsanto, as an entity, is a giant *******. And likely, most everyone who works for them is an *******.

But the anti-GMO crusaders so often overstate and misstate inherent risks to making use of GMO's... that I really can't be arsed to get on board with them.

That being said, there's plenty of reasons why Monsanto should get a giant kick in the nuts from the government (or anyone else for that matter)... the least of which could probably be their normal business practices... the harassment and intimidation of certain individuals, farmers.

No sane, informed person would support Monsanto in any way. They are scum of the Earth.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

the only 5 * thread

I wander if it is worth reading?