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[Kurdel]

There is no known mechanism by which different configurations of genes being ingested could cause harm. We've comsumed GMO's for decades as well, no evidence about negative health issues.

I always wonder why people believe this.

I think it's because they feel a sense of security "knowing" what is inside their food, and subtle gene changes make them feel like they can't understand every change, so they think the details aren't known by anyone (or is hidden).

 

[AbsolutBro]

I think the way the seeds "self destruct" after 1 crop can be considered somewhat scummy. On the other hand is selling those seeds simply their business and it might also prevent GMO from spreading uncontrollaby

Most non-GMO hybrid plants do this. It is not anything specific to GMOs. The only plants guaranteed to produce viable seeds are heirloom plants, which are usually less hardy and resistant to disease. (My two favorite tomato varieties, Brandywine and Mr. Stripey are both heirloom.)

There is still a huge market for heirloom plants, btw. So it's not like anyone is forced to buy from Monsanto; there are other varieties of plants available. Seed Savers Exchange is a repository of heirloom plant varieties available to anyone. I keep meaning to join them.

 

[marrec]

I kind of abandoned the thread after asking that initial question but Opiate kind of laid it down in my absence anyway.

Monsanto has a lot of scuttlebutt swirling around it that people do very little research on. The lawsuits that you hear about aren't proven with sources or links and people rarely get on google and look it up for themselves so it's understandable that they'd get this vague impression that Monsanto as a company was some kind of super-evil group of eco-terrorists.

As others have said, that's far from the case. They're a company in the sense that they protect the intellectual property and develop their product for future uses. There has, in fact, only 9 of the lawsuits that Monsanto has filed against farmers have gone to trial and of those 9 all have ruled in favor of Monsanto.

Conspiracy theorists will believe that this is because of tampering, or they hid the evidence, or maybe the juries in those cases were just sheep too dumb to see they're mortgaging their future to evil overlords.

But the reality is that Monsanto has provable reasons to protect their products from knowing unlawful use just as any company would and GMO foods, despite all the studies, haven't shown to be any more harmful than otherwise.

 

[Opiate]

Most non-GMO hybrid plants do this. It is not anything specific to GMOs. The only plants guaranteed to produce viable seeds are heirloom plants, which are usually less hardy and resistant to disease. (My two favorite tomato varieties, Brandywine and Mr. Stripey are both heirloom.)

There is still a huge market for heirloom plants, btw. So it's not like anyone is forced to buy from Monsanto; there are other varieties of plants available. Seed Savers Exchange is a repository of heirloom plant varieties available to anyone. I keep meaning to join them.

He may be referring to terminator seeds, which were something investigated by Monsanto (and other biotech firms) but never commercialized. Let me repeat that: terminator seeds are and were never sold to the public.

I really think the parallel to global warming skeptics is very apt here. Please don't take this as an offense if you are a particularly liberal person; I am myself quite liberal. I think it may offer a chance to understand those who you don't normally agree with, and give you some empathy.

I've had lengthy (and I mean lengthy) conversations with global warming skeptics, and they offer the same sort of evidence; all vague, unsubstantiated claims of corruption amongst climate scientists and fraud by the government. When you systematically explain why these claims are false or wrong, they often resort back to "Well, I just don't trust the government to handle things like this, and I think regulation can be burdensome and cause more problems than it solves."

Just as many conservatives have a gut distrust of government intervention, many liberals exhibit this same sort of gut distrust of large corporations. I think this "gut feeling" can sometimes override sense, and produce vague, wishy-washy hatred for something that isn't really founded on good reason.

I'm not trying to convince you to abandon liberalism here -- far from it. I'm only trying to show a thought process that everyone falls prey to at some point; our higher order beliefs are often based fundamentally on our "gut feelings." You strip away bad arguments and find, at its base, that the person just doesn't like a huge company patenting food, or just doesn't like the government regulating free trade, or just doesn't like being forced to inject themselves with vaccines, and so forth. The gut feeling leads, and then we form arguments around that gut feeling.

 

[Nivash]

Most non-GMO hybrid plants do this. It is not anything specific to GMOs. The only plants guaranteed to produce viable seeds are heirloom plants, which are usually less hardy and resistant to disease. (My two favorite tomato varieties, Brandywine and Mr. Stripey are both heirloom.)

There is still a huge market for heirloom plants, btw. So it's not like anyone is forced to buy from Monsanto; there are other varieties of plants available. Seed Savers Exchange is a repository of heirloom plant varieties available to anyone. I keep meaning to join them.

It's particularly ridiculous because it's so obviously untrue: if Monsanto actually used Terminator Genes then those cases of farmers who are supposedly being sued because Monsanto plants spread from neighboring farms would be impossible. And yet anti-GMO advocates have no issue using both talking points simultaneously. It's cognitive dissonance at its finest. Well unless they are under the impression that the seeds "blew over" somehow when the neighbors planted them, but that would require them to be completely ignorant of modern planting methods. Coming to think of it, that might be true as well for some of them.

 

[AbsolutBro]

He may be referring to terminator seeds, which were something investigated by Monsanto (and other biotech firms) but never commercialized. Let me repeat that: terminator seeds are and were never sold to the public.

I assumed that was what he meant: crops whose seeds could not be used to plant a next generation of crop. Many hybrid plants are functionally sterile; I could save seeds from my Golden Jubilee hybrid, but they will most likely be sterile. If the strain is not, the resultant seeds will not necessarily be Golden Jubilee; the resultant plant could be either one of the parent strains.

My point is that sterile crops are not inherent to the big bad Monsanto-esque GMO Frankenstein's monster plant that people immediately associate them with. A large percentage of the produce that people buy every day is from sterile hybrid plants. And yet no one cares, or even knows.

 

[Foggy]

I can't recall which documentary I had seen and where, but I do remember Monsanto being shown as incredibly aggressive toward farmers and doing their corporate best to squeeze them out of the business if they didn't use their seeds. Then when a farm did partner with them and Monsanto jacked up the price of their seeds, farmers tried to use some of their own and they got sued into oblivion. Of course I have the haziest of memories so you all can take that for what it's worth.

Spoiler

I'll gladly trust scientists who trust GMO, so I have no particular skin in the game.

 

[BertramCooper]

I really think the parallel to global warming skeptics is very apt here. Please don't take this as an offense if you are a particularly liberal person; I am myself quite liberal. I think it may offer a chance to understand those who you don't normally agree with, and give you some empathy.

Thankfully, the key difference between the two issues is that the Democratic Party has largely resisted embracing anti-GMO hysteria, while the GOP has wholeheartedly embraced global warming skepticism.

Yet another chink in the "both parties are the same" argument.

 

[Opiate]

Thankfully, the key difference between the two issues is that the Democratic Party has largely resisted embracing anti-GMO hysteria, while the GOP has wholeheartedly embraced global warming skepticism.

Yet another chink in the "both parties are the same" argument.

I definitely agree, and I am also averse to that false equivalence.

Again, not trying to suggest "both are equally bad." I'm only trying to help people gain some empathy: everyone lets their gut feelings lead their arguments sometimes. Recognizing this can both help you to understand your own thought processes but also humanize those you disagree with; it doesn't make them right, it just makes their failures more understandable.

 

[prelude514]

Nice to see GAF even has a Monsanto defense force.

Before you ask, no. Do your own research.

 

[AbsolutBro]

Nice to see GAF even has a Monsanto defense force.

Before you ask, no. Do your own research.

All the research keeps coming up "Monsanto isn't the devil".

 

[Nivash]

Nice to see GAF even has a Monsanto defense force.

Before you ask, no. Do your own research.

I don't care any more for Monsanto than I do for Coca Cola or Exxon Mobile. They are all major companies providing products people want and they all do shitty things from time to time. I think they all deserve criticism for those.

However, I do care about liberals - among whom I count myself - attacking Monsanto using lies and conspiracy theories, because it hurts our credibility, and I do care in general about people attacking GMO using anti-scientific arguments because GMO has tremendous potential and might even be critical in feeding the world this century.

And before you ask, yes, I've done my own research. What I found was - as Opiate put it - a movement that's in a lot of ways very similar to climate change deniers.

 

[maruchan]

What a stupid argument. People in the ej movement, are not against gmo,s and their health benefits. They are clearly agains their political agenda, that hurts indigenous communities , and farmers.

http://www.alt.no-patents-on-seeds.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=93&Itemid=56

As long as they keep pirating dna sequences and suing farmers, fuck them. and their terminator gene.

They should of got Vandana Shiva,
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0896085554/?tag=neogaf0e-20

 

[AbsolutBro]

What a stupid argument. People in the ej movement, are not against gmo,s and their health benefits. They are clearly agains their political agenda, that hurts indigenous communities , and farmers.

http://www.alt.no-patents-on-seeds.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=93&Itemid=56

As long as they keep pirating dna sequences and suing farmers, fuck them. and their terminator gene.

This stuff, right here? This is why people are so afraid of GMOs. Bullshit propaganda and blatant ignorance.

 

[maruchan]

This stuff, right here? This is why people are so afraid of GMOs. Bullshit propaganda and blatant ignorance.

That is not bullshit propaganda. Claiming ignorance, is the weakest retort, to such a complex issue. If you think what monsanto and dupoint does is propaganda. Then i can help you.

Ignorance is not knowing between a gm(genetically modified), and GE(genetically Engineered)

Have you read any books by Vanada Shiva, or david harvey.

 

[AbsolutBro]

That is not bullshit propaganda. Claiming ignorance, is the weakest retort, to such a complex issue. If you think what monsanto and dupoint does is propaganda. Then i can help you.

Ignorance is not knowing between a gm(genetically modified), and GE(genetically Engineered)

Have you read any books by Vanada Shiva, or david harvey.

True or false: The terminator gene was put into seeds by Monsanto to force farmers to purchase new seed every year.

 

[mclem]

Aren't terminator genes what you get from a biker to wear immediately after you've travelled back in time?

 

[Stet]

That is not bullshit propaganda. Claiming ignorance, is the weakest retort, to such a complex issue. If you think what monsanto and dupoint does is propaganda. Then i can help you.

Ignorance is not knowing between a gm(genetically modified), and GE(genetically Engineered)

Have you read any books by Vanada Shiva, or david harvey.

no we read books by scientists.

 

[Opiate]

That is not bullshit propaganda. Claiming ignorance, is the weakest retort, to such a complex issue. If you think what monsanto and dupoint does is propaganda. Then i can help you.

The url for the website is literally "nopatentsonseeds.org." It is clearly ideologically driven.

It doesn't mean their ideology is wrong, mind you; maybe there shouldn't be patents on seeds. Maybe there is a better method to finance genetic modification of organisms. That's a different discussion to have. Here, I'm just highlighting that this is directly in line with my argument: people are often motivated first by a "gut feeling" (in this case, an ideological distrust of large companies and a hatred for companies owning patents on genetic variants) and build their argument around that "gut feeling." This is more colloquially referred to as "motivated reasoning."

The URL you listed could not be a better example of motivated reasoning. It is, again, quite similar to someone linking to a URL called "stopgovernmentintervention.org" as evidence against climate change. Those are people who ideologically oppose government intervention and are thus strongly predisposed to believe any argument which refutes global warming.

Ignorance is not knowing between a gm(genetically modified), and GE(genetically Engineered)

Have you read any books by Vanada Shiva, or david harvey.

I have read a book (she has written dozens) by Vanada Shiva, and I know who David Harvey is.

Again, Shiva is a highly motivated source here (for those who don't know, she's a farmer's rights advocate in India who strongly opposes GMOs).

 

[Nivash]

That is not bullshit propaganda. Claiming ignorance, is the weakest retort, to such a complex issue. If you think what monsanto and dupoint does is propaganda. Then i can help you.

Ignorance is not knowing between a gm(genetically modified), and GE(genetically Engineered)

Have you read any books by Vanada Shiva, or david harvey.

There is no difference between GE and GMO. They both refer to the same thing: using biotech to directly manipulate the genome of an organism as opposed to doing it indirectly through controlled breeding. As for Vandana Shiva, any scientific credibility she might have ever had was tossed out the window when she started to bandy about the myth that Monsanto caused farmer suicides in India.

 

[CornBurrito]

Nice to see GAF even has a Monsanto defense force.

Before you ask, no. Do your own research.

Having done my own research, the allegations against them always seemed to be false or overblown.

 

[marrec]

Nice to see GAF even has a Monsanto defense force.

Before you ask, no. Do your own research.

I've done extensive research on the matter and it's shown that Monsanto are clearly not the evil company that's portrayed in the Netflix documentary you clearly watched.

 

[Rentahamster]

Thanks for the video. Only caught a little so far, but will watch the whole thing later.