Monsanto the GMO Kings

[Caleb]

So I think that we are getting to the crux of it, Ryan. What Kola and others are rebelling against is an agenda that is being pushed on us by people who have decided that this is what is best and we don't get a say in it.

The arguments for or against GMO as a process are therefore distractions. I prefer to focus on motive, because it is there that you will find the real reason for what is going on, as well as the real reason for the reaction against it.

[Caleb]

Incidentally, I don't think that the real motive is this benevolent desire to feed the world. It seems more likely that the real motive is a desire to control the world's food supply. Full spectrum dominance.

[ReverendRyan]

Once again, Norman Borlaug is the Greatest Man Ever to Walk the Earth, so before I head to the litter pickup, I'll leave you with his quote:

Some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things.

[John Edward Mercier]

First, when is the last time you ate something in its original, not selectively breed, format?
Second, how does one 'force' you to eat something you don't want?

Supplying something to the free market is not initiation of force, banning would be.

[Caleb]

Here is the woman that was on KPFK the other day, Dr. Vandana Shiva. I haven't investigated it enough to come to definitive conclusions, only to say that i liked her approach, focusing less on the technology itself, and more on the geopolitical reasons that the technology is being developed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandana_Shiva

[kola]

caleb said

Why should I wish to consume modified food? Was there something wrong with the original? If there is, don't eat it.

there is no current labeling (as far as I know) that seperate the GMO food.

if you read my post it even states the even some GMO is accpeted by the "oragnic" label.

there is no choice.

and once there is enough GMO planted it will ALL become GMO.

Look and see why thousands of people and hundreds of organizatuons around every country is fighting this tooth and nail. This isnt just a few hippies and kooks who disaprove.

There is no "choice". GMO is being put in our foods without us knowing...and it is filtrated into the government terminology and labeled "organic". (which by the way the FDA and USDA decided to take over the legal issues and set the organic ruling just for "our safety"). What they did was lower the quality, created a bastardized version of organic, generated money and forced the little guy out of business by putting these huge bearucratic demands of "organic farming".

Kola

[Dylboz]

well, your argument Kola is sort of based on lumping everything together under a collective banner (GMO Foods) and dismissing it wholesale, whereas I think J'rax is just saying he prefers to decide on a case by case basis.

My point is that it just isn't necessary. Whether it's harmful or not is another issue, but even before we get to that point there is the question of why on earth anybody would do it. Why should I wish to consume modified food? Was there something wrong with the original? If there is, don't eat it.

Because soon, it may be the only kind of food that can be grown on the amount of land available. Because commercial organic farming is actually worse for the environment, requiring more land, more machines, more fossil fuels and more water than intensive, modern farming with GMO seed stock. Because current crop varieties can't resist changes in climate, or exposure to pests without extensive toxic pesticide use, or get damaged too much by harvesting and packing equipment, or any number of reasons. I would suggest though that the best option is to try and return to homegrown and local produce, because buying frozen Chinese spinach just doesn't make any kind of sense. As for GMO foods, well, there are not any non-GMO foods in the sense that farmers have always selectively bred animals and plants for their desirable traits. This process allows them to select genes from different organisms for their desired traits, that's all. Whether those turnout to be desirable in practice or not is yet to be seen.

[John Edward Mercier]

That would make sense, if for the fact of the amount of area covered in the US by lawn.
Lawns generally have large amounts of water, fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide, and labor (both physical and mechanical) applied to them.
Homegrown would for the most part replace some of this lawn and more actively be labelled by many organic... in the sense that one would limit the inputs to only what was necessary and reduce the pesticide and herbicidal usage dramatically, if not completely.

[J’raxis 270145]

You preach to me about using logic and science and reasoning and research and then you turn around and base you sole opinion on the "innocent before proven guilty" phrase that is designed for civil and criminal laws.

My starting point is that something is not harmful until proven so. If someone is going to make an assertion that something is indeed harmful, the burden is on them to prove it—using logic, science, reasoning, and research.

"Innocent until proven guilty" is not only a phrase from the legal field, it's a good description for of a general liberty-minded way of looking at things: You don't assume guilt, but innocence. You don't assume malice, but good faith. And you don't assume harm, but safety. You take the position that doesn't obligate you to take action or make judgment against something. If you don't know something, you wait and see.

Does this begin to make sense?

[J’raxis 270145]

My take on this whole GMO thing is that it is basically being done so that people can copyright foods.

That's exactly what Monsanto is trying to do,* and what makes genetic modification attractive to such corporations. Kola posted the example of the farmers being sued for using Monsanto seeds "without permission." Monsanto has actually designed some crops to be infertile, too, so farmers have to buy new seeds every year.

GM can be used for other things, as I've been trying to tell Kola, but this sort of IP racket is what a lot of it's being used for.

* It's actually patent, not copyright, but whatever. It's all legal fiction and State-backed monopoly privilege.

[J’raxis 270145]

But then he does a 360 and says he uses his own creation called the "innocent before proven guilty" scientifiK method.

That was always my position; I just didn't spell it out in exactly those terms. Go back and look at my posts—I was always taking the position that GM is safe until you can show me otherwise. You've demonstrated that several instances of specific uses of GM are unsafe, and I will accept, that for those specific instances, you've shown me that they are.* You still have yet to show me GM as a whole is unsafe.


* A lot of the scientific articles you've posted could probably be shown to actually be inconclusive or outright false under proper scrutiny. But I'm not getting into actually examining the merits of all the claims; I'll leave that to Rev. Ryan, who seems to enjoy going after you from that angle.

[John Edward Mercier]

In a liberty-minded world,  a product/service could not be guilty or innocent. Simply individualistically desirable or not.

Monsanto use of sterile seed is not even a moral problem... as it is understood by contract for those purchasing this product to be sterile... neither force or fraud.
The argument against the farmer using cast away seed should not be a Monsanto matter as it was sold to someone else... and is thus no longer their property.

[kola]

My starting point is that something is not harmful until proven so. If someone is going to make an assertion that something is indeed harmful, the burden is on them to prove it—using logic, science, reasoning, and research.

"The Jraxi Method of Utter Nonsense and Quackery."

[J’raxis 270145]

Lol.

[Caleb]

That was always my position; I just didn't spell it out in exactly those terms. Go back and look at my posts—I was always taking the position that GM is safe until you can show me otherwise.

J'raxis you are drawing a line between individual cases of GM and Kola is not. He's pretty much labeling any food that has been artificially modified as harmful. By his own admission, even if a new line came out that no one had shown to be harmful, he would still find it strongly suspicious by virtue of its categorization. You are preferring to judge on an individual case basis.

I strongly doubt that your preference is to assume safety until proven otherwise. That would be a highly risky position. Imagine the same policy with regards to who you sleep with. A reasonable case by case strategy is to start from the position that you do not know, and use proper precautions. Does that make sense?