GMO, Monsanto, organic dreadlocked nonsense?

chaos · Mar 24, 2013

aychamo_aycono_sl said:
It's much more likely that people consuming diet sodas are on unhealthy trajectories and/or overestimate their caloric savings from consuming them and make up for it elsewhere (I'll have a Big Mac, fries, super-sized, oh, and a diet coke!) If I weren't on my iPad I could link tons of studies showing no difference in satiety, etc, in people who consume artificial versus real sweeteners.

The "link" between diet sodas and weight gain is correlation, not causation. The study that popularized that idea was an observational (weak) study by an over-zealous psychopath (she believes whole heartedly aspartame causes seizures, cancer, and everything bad, she told me in an email), who even in her paper had to admit its unlikely the diet sodas themselves are directly causing weight gain.

I've looked into it a bit before and wasn't able to find a ton of studies one way or another. There are a few studies showing some sort of issue with diet sodas, but each study has issues. I've never seen on that directly attributes weight gain to diet soda. Either way it seems one of those things that it is just better to do in moderation at the very least, more realistically cutting it out entirely would be a better move.

Gravel · Mar 24, 2013

Tuco_sl said:
Lithose you might be right about all of that but yeah, you're sounding overly dramatic. Maybe I'm just not educated but is it true that Monsanto makes some new strains of plants that are a small % better than their competitors and are requiring people to continue to buy seeds from them to protect their investment? It seems like that's a frail business model that'll crumble easily and I don't know why I should care.

Here's what I was talking about earlier; SCOTUS is ruling on it:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-...patent-claims/

What it boils down to is, Monsanto sells their GM soybeans to farmers. In doing so, the farmers sign a contract saying they won't replant any of the seeds, but they can sell the seeds. Farmers sold them to a crop elevator, where a farmer (the defendant) bought them. This farmer isn't subject to the contract between Monsanto and the farmers who bought Roundup Ready seeds. He planted those seeds, and used Roundup on them. Monsanto argues that it's a violation of...something, due to the fact that he used Roundup on his seeds knowing that they were mostly from Monsanto.

You can go either way in your view here for the lawsuit, but personally I think it's ridiculous that Monsanto can essentially say that they "own" the sperm of a living creature after it's reproduced.

Caliane · Mar 24, 2013

Dabamf_sl said:
I think a lot of the problem is that farms that op out of the Monsanto soybeans are getting some anyway through pollination from neighboring farms and are somehow expected to stop that. Also Monsanto is suing the shit out of anyone and everyone not using their seed. I got this from some hippie documentary so maybe they were interviewing farmers who tried to steal the seed and then told some sob story about how Monsanto is bullying them, I don't know.

It is a little weird though to buy a seed, plant it, and at the end of the harvest you somehow don't own the seed that remains. If they can genetically modify the seed to somehow be infertile, that's fine. But to say the farmer who buys seed and plants it doesn't have complete ownership of whatever comes out of it, that doesn't jive with my sense of property rights. It's just like Apple selling you an iPhone and saying you can't jailbreak it. The courts basically said "you bought it, so it's your property and you can do whatever you want." I think the same should apply to seed

no its like a movie company selling you a movie, then you making 40 copies.

Plants self replicate. through seed, which allows mutation. and that is BAD news. they do try to make them infertile if they can. we do not want super crops in the wild. all the more reason for very rigid controls.
plants can be cloned perfectly with just a knife. This give perfect unlimited reproduction. no genetic breakdown. this destroys copyright law as we know it, if we allow it to be done. so again, OF COURSE, its going to be illegal. if all you had to do was buy 1 plant from monsanto, and clone it 2000 times, then 2000 more from that 2000. 2 weeks later you have 40000 plants. and surprise. monsanto goes out of business, and no one is doing R&D on plant genetics, because every just steals it.

Hippies can cry about it ownership, but its like this for a reason.

chaos · Mar 24, 2013

I think you should take a step back and think about how silly that shit sounds.

BrutulTM · Mar 24, 2013

As someone in agriculture, the replies in this thread are very encouraging to me. People seem to be more educated than I expected. A couple small corrections.

1) Here's what the USDA defines as "organic" beef.

Born and raised on certified organic pasture
Never receive antibiotics
Never receive growth-promoting hormones
Are fed only certified organic grains and grasses
Must have unrestricted outdoor access

I'm not sure what "unrestricted" outdoor access means, but I assume it just means that they are not in barns that they are unable to leave, which is meaningless because aside from veal calves, I don't think anyone raises or fattens cattle indoors. Personally, I think that if you believe that pesticide residue that was eaten by a cow is going to somehow travel through the cow's digestive system and wind up in in your meat in at a level of concentration that will somehow effect your health then you are just nuts, but to each their own.

2) I don't believe that grass fed beef is "gamey" or would be rejected by a large number of consumers. I sell a small amount of grass fed beef direct to customers and people love it. The only complaint I have ever gotten is from one wacky housewife that complains that her hamburger is not lean enough if she can find a fleck of white anywhere in it, but she is crazy. Grass fed tastes great, but it requires a lot of acres per cow, and we would have to greatly reduce the amount of meat we eat if we wanted to be able to make grass-fed a majority of the beef produced in the US.

The organic/anti-GMO movement has decided that agricultural technology needs to be permanently frozen at the point it was in the 50's. Agriculture has made massive technological gains since then and those gains are crucial if we want to continue feeding a growing world population. A lot of people dislike Monsanto, and that includes a lot of farmers. It's not crazy, they are an aggressive, amoral company, but Monsanto != GMO and trying to have an entire technology banned out of dislike of a particular company doesn't make sense.

Leading Environmental Activist's Blunt Confession: I Was Completely Wrong To Oppose GMOs - Slate

GMO Opponents Are the Climate Skeptics of the Left - Slate

Check out the comments on the second article for some great examples of the author's point.

hodj · Mar 24, 2013

Lithose_sl said:
Individual from an economics perspective does not mean family farm. It means farms which compete with each other, rather than cooperating in a larger conglomerate. Part of the reason you get this competition is the ability for smaller companies to expend capital to carve out profits in markets where lower price points become possible.

None of this has existed since at least the 60s. There hasn't been competition for decades in our agriculture industry for the most part. The government has far too much money and involvement in it for real competition to occur. We subsidize crops such that it sets world wide prices for products. We drive down the cost of our corn and other staple crops, which makes South American and African products much less competitive on the world market, a big contributor to poverty in Africa and South America. Our government doesn't want it competitive. They want to control it. They (The US Federal Government) wants to export enormous amounts of crops abroad, and to control that market and its price fluctuations as much as possible and they do, we're one of the world's biggest food producers and exporters for this exact reason. Its also why we're the guys everyone comes asking for food aid from. Its really just flat out not preferable, and not ever going to happen, that US food should be controlled by small farmers, whatever definition of individual farmer you want to put on it.

If anything, we should be nationalizing the food industry, Monsanto and other companies are already practically subsidiaries of the US government, and fully automated food production organized by the state would probably be even more efficient than what we have now, which is so efficient we outproduce most of the rest of the planet when it comes to food.

hodj · Mar 24, 2013

Elurin_sl said:
Here's what I was talking about earlier; SCOTUS is ruling on it:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-...patent-claims/

What it boils down to is, Monsanto sells their GM soybeans to farmers. In doing so, the farmers sign a contract saying they won't replant any of the seeds, but they can sell the seeds. Farmers sold them to a crop elevator, where a farmer (the defendant) bought them. This farmer isn't subject to the contract between Monsanto and the farmers who bought Roundup Ready seeds. He planted those seeds, and used Roundup on them. Monsanto argues that it's a violation of...something, due to the fact that he used Roundup on his seeds knowing that they were mostly from Monsanto.

You can go either way in your view here for the lawsuit, but personally I think it's ridiculous that Monsanto can essentially say that they "own" the sperm of a living creature after it's reproduced.

Well, Justice Roberts has your answer for why it is that they should have some rights to that seed

"Why in the world would anybody spend any money to try to improve the seed if as soon as they sold the first one anybody could grow more and have as many of those seeds as they want?" Chief Justice John Roberts asked.

The issue is this

Bowman was a loyal Monsanto customer, purchasing the company's soybean seeds -- bred to survive exposure to Roundup pesticide -- every year and signing an agreement that prohibited him from planting second-generation seeds. However, for the off-season, Bowman purchased seeds from a crop elevator -- second-generation Monsanto seeds mixed up with "junk" seeds, primarily used for animal feed. He correctly assumed he'd be able to use those cheaper seeds with Roundup. Monsanto took Bowman to court in 2007 over the profits he made off of his Monsanto seeds in the off-season.

At issue is whether Monsanto's patents apply second-generation seeds and subsequent generations. The implications for the court's ruling could extend beyond soybean fields to other "self-replicating" technologies like stem cells and nanotechnology. A new interpretation of patent law could potentially also have implications for industries where patented products are resold, such as the auto industry.

Which is why there should be laws that after a number of generations, the patent expires. But by any logical estimation, two generations should never be remotely close to enough successive generations to reach patent expiration. That's basically two seasons. The company would go bankrupt.

And to further make my point about how all that is happening and has happened with Monsanto has explicit US government backing

That's why outside groups filed nearly two dozen amicus briefs with the Supreme Court in the case of Bowman v. Monsanto, with most in support of Monsanto.Monsanto's backers include groups like the Biotechnology Industry Organization, the U.S. government, and the Software Alliance, which represents like Apple and IBM.On Bowman's side are groups such as the National Family Farm Coalition and the Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association.

The Feds like these laws. A lot. They aren't looking to change them.

More from that article

Arguing that extending patent law this far would be too sweeping, Bowman's attorney argued that contract law would be the appropriate way to protect self-replicating technologies. Justice Elena Kagan, however, said "that answer is purely insufficient in this kind of a case, because all that has to happen is that one seed escapes the web of these contracts, and that seed, because it can self-replicate in the way that it can, essentially makes all the contracts worthless."

Monsanto's lawyer, Seth Waxman, compared the case of Monsanto's seed to another live technology that can replicate itself -- vaccines.

"When Schering-Plough or Bristol-Myers develops a vaccine and sells some of it to CVS so I can go in and get injected, they haven't lost all of their patent rights in that vaccine," he said. "CVS can't turn around and become a competitor."

The Supreme Court also heard the U.S. government's argument in favor of protecting Monsanto's patent protections.

Arguing for the government, attorney Melissa Arbus Sherry compared self-replicating seeds to software. "If you think of software, for example, there are plenty of other products where one reasonable use is to make more," she said. "I can purchase software; one reasonable use would be to make a dozen other copies to give to my friends or sell on eBay. It's a reasonable use, but it's an infringing one."

Monsanto's lobbying has nothing to do with the government's stance on this. The government would take this stance anyway. They see it as protecting US intellectual copyrights from illegal competition. Remember, every time Monsanto gets a big pay out from a farmer, the government gets a nice hefty tax portion out as well.

Gravel · Mar 24, 2013

Caliane_sl said:
no its like a movie company selling you a movie, then you making 40 copies.

Plants self replicate. through seed, which allows mutation. and that is BAD news. they do try to make them infertile if they can. we do not want super crops in the wild. all the more reason for very rigid controls.
plants can be cloned perfectly with just a knife. This give perfect unlimited reproduction. no genetic breakdown. this destroys copyright law as we know it, if we allow it to be done. so again, OF COURSE, its going to be illegal. if all you had to do was buy 1 plant from monsanto, and clone it 2000 times, then 2000 more from that 2000. 2 weeks later you have 40000 plants. and surprise. monsanto goes out of business, and no one is doing R&D on plant genetics, because every just steals it.

Hippies can cry about it ownership, but its like this for a reason.

Except Monsanto shit is just normal plants, resistant to Round Up. So long as there's a need for pesticides, there will be customers for Monsanto.

Plus, why does Monsanto get to patent the work of thousands (or millions) of other farmers who genetically modified those crops to bring them to where they are now?

Edit: And in response to above by hodj, I fully understand that this is within the law. It even makes sense. But I think it's bullshit and patent law stifles innovation. To argue that the fucking mega corporation that is Monsanto would go bankrupt due to this is ridiculous. Your tax argument is on point. Which shows you that it's even more likely bullshit. The government isn't looking out for us, they're looking out for the companies so that they can keep sucking on that sweet chemical company teat.

BrutulTM · Mar 24, 2013

How is it a viable business to do research to come up with better seeds if you only get to sell them once? The second that one farmer raises a crop from your seed there is no need for anyone to buy it from you ever again.

chaos · Mar 24, 2013

BrutulTM_sl said:
The organic/anti-GMO movement has decided that agricultural technology needs to be permanently frozen at the point it was in the 50's. Agriculture has made massive technological gains since then and those gains are crucial if we want to continue feeding a growing world population. A lot of people dislike Monsanto, and that includes a lot of farmers. It's not crazy, they are an aggressive, amoral company, but Monsanto != GMO and trying to have an entire technology banned out of dislike of a particular company doesn't make sense.

Leading Environmental Activist's Blunt Confession: I Was Completely Wrong To Oppose GMOs - Slate

GMO Opponents Are the Climate Skeptics of the Left - Slate

Check out the comments on the second article for some great examples of the author's point.

I am skeptical of GMO foods and with absolutely no sound reasoning. It is just weird the idea of directly fucking with the DNA of something I am going to eat and feed to my family. Even though I know that isn't so different than the entire history of agriculture. But this patent/Monsanto shit is just some next level super-villainry. I likely eat GMO foods every day and don't really think about it, so whatever.

hodj · Mar 24, 2013

Elurin_sl said:
But I think it's bullshit and patent law stifles innovation.

Hard to stifle innovation when the Department of Agriculture is literally handing out billions of dollars a year in research grants for this stuff, s'all I'm sayin.

chaos · Mar 24, 2013

BrutulTM_sl said:
How is it a viable business to do research to come up with better seeds if you only get to sell them once? The second that one farmer raises a crop from your seed there is no need for anyone to buy it from you ever again.

That could be said of breeding a specific kind of animal or plant without GMO technology, and people would find the idea that you have to pay me royalties for every puppy you have from a dog you buy from me pretty laughable. Not only that but pollination isn't something that humans control and holding neighboring farms financially liable for having X crop on their lands due to natural migration of the crop, that shit is insane.

Lithose · Mar 24, 2013

hodj_sl said:
None of this has existed since at least the 60s. There hasn't been competition for decades in our agriculture industry for the most part. The government has far too much money and involvement in it for real competition to occur. We subsidize crops such that it sets world wide prices for products. We drive down the cost of our corn and other staple crops, which makes South American and African products much less competitive on the world market, a big contributor to poverty in Africa and South America. Our government doesn't want it competitive. They want to control it. They (The US Federal Government) wants to export enormous amounts of crops abroad, and to control that market and its price fluctuations as much as possible and they do, we're one of the world's biggest food producers and exporters for this exact reason. Its also why we're the guys everyone comes asking for food aid from. Its really just flat out not preferable, and not ever going to happen, that US food should be controlled by small farmers, whatever definition of individual farmer you want to put on it.

If anything, we should be nationalizing the food industry, Monsanto and other companies are already practically subsidiaries of the US government, and fully automated food production organized by the state would probably be even more efficient than what we have now, which is so efficient we outproduce most of the rest of the planet when it comes to food.

I agree--that's what I was talking about when I said a lot of issues (Constantly government interference). My contention is that the money ultimately flows to a few private hands who have essentially made themselves the power brokers for government capital. If we're going to have market based profits, then we need market competition. Otherwise we get situations like we have now, where profits contribute to gross inequalities, which have ripples in many other markets.

I agree about nationalization--if we the government considered this a "public good" (Common good), then nationalize it. This "partial" interference which essentially lines pockets of a few who play middle men ends up creating tons of problems.

hodj · Mar 24, 2013

If you spent decades of your life specifically selecting and breeding two breeds of dogs into a new breed, and it represented literally years of your efforts and large portions of your income, should you not be able to garner a profit from that investment? Especially if your breed becomes very popular and starts making a lot of money? Like the labradoodle, for instance, or a good example, I have a cairne and a west highland white terrier. Both breeds were developed by individuals over the course of a lifetime of selective breeding back in the 1800s. Very popular breeds of medium sized dogs. Toto from the Wizard of Oz was a cairne terrier.

I'm not really seeing a difference. Personally I think one should be able to profit from that. I'm not sure how patent laws treat something like selectively breeding a new species, but I bet you could get that patented if you had the documentation to prove it. I'll look into it.

Its the same principle.

added: this post was directed at Chaos

added: To Lithose: Agree, just recognize that by putting it all in the hands of the government, even fewer hands will have real power over it, and real capacity to profit from it. Ostesibly our government works in our interests, but its rarely that simple. A small group of people will still find ways to profit from it massively.

BrutulTM · Mar 24, 2013

chaos_sl said:
That could be said of breeding a specific kind of animal or plant without GMO technology, and people would find the idea that you have to pay me royalties for every puppy you have from a dog you buy from me pretty laughable. Not only that but pollination isn't something that humans control and holding neighboring farms financially liable for having X crop on their lands due to natural migration of the crop, that shit is insane.

You didn't answer the question.

iannis · Mar 24, 2013

As much of a looming problem as this is, and it is a looming problem with no ready solution, it's going to be a bigger problem when we start doing it with animals. And we will start doing this with animals. Lithose is right about that. This really is some pretty important stuff. It's not just a legal question but it's damn near a moral question. Property rights are that fundamental and the potential for true change regarding this particular class of property is that great.

There are entire strains of beans that can be irrigated directly with salt water. That's a big deal. Who owns that, and is allowed to sell/distribute that, is a big deal in the way that who owns the oil is a big deal.

Gravel · Mar 24, 2013

BrutulTM_sl said:
How is it a viable business to do research to come up with better seeds if you only get to sell them once? The second that one farmer raises a crop from your seed there is no need for anyone to buy it from you ever again.

Once again, because Monsanto is a chemical company. They make money from their pesticide. The more of their seed that gets out, the better. Are they making less money from seeds? Sure. But they're not going to go under because they no longer own the exclusive rights to a plant.

What happens when a company starts doing genetic modifications on people? Do they own you now? If you reproduce, do they now own your children? I know you're going to say, "that's ridiculous," but is it? They've already got the patent on a GENE! They didn't make the fucking gene.

chaos · Mar 24, 2013

hodj_sl said:
If you spent decades of your life specifically selecting and breeding two breeds of dogs into a new breed, and it represented literally years of your efforts and large portions of your income, should you not be able to garner a profit from that investment? Especially if your breed becomes very popular and starts making a lot of money? Like the labradoodle, for instance, or a good example, I have a cairne and a west highland white terrier. Both breeds were developed by individuals over the course of a lifetime of selective breeding back in the 1800s. Very popular breeds of medium sized dogs. Toto from the Wizard of Oz was a cairne terrier.

I'm not really seeing a difference. Personally I think one should be able to profit from that. I'm not sure how patent laws treat something like selectively breeding a new species, but I bet you could get that patented if you had the documentation to prove it. I'll look into it.

Its the same principle.

added: this post was directed at Chaos

I do not. Sure, you should be able to garner a profit. You do not own every successive generation of that living thing, whatever it is. Or you should not.

Brutul, I don't know. I don't know how much it costs to develop these new species or how much return they could expect off selling more traditionally. If they are unable to make money then that sounds like an issue the industry should be forced to overcome, but instead the government is offering them a pretty remarkable form of protection.

hodj · Mar 24, 2013

chaos_sl said:
I do not. Sure, you should be able to garner a profit. You do not own every successive generation of that living thing, whatever it is. Or you should not.

Well I don't totally disagree with you. Definitely eternal ownership of every successive generation shouldn't be a thing, but its not now. But more than two should be, I'd argue.

Probably 20. 20 good years, 20 good crop cycles, should be enough, in my opinion. Its a good, fair limit. Company gets 20 years to make back its investment, that's pretty standard for stuff like patent law, but past that then they should lose rights to it. There are ways to judge the number of successive generations based on the changes in the genome from recombination during reproduction so measuring the limit shouldn't be a complicated or difficult or inhibiting factor.

Tuco · Mar 25, 2013

Iannis_sl said:
As much of a looming problem as this is, and it is a looming problem with no ready solution, it's going to be a bigger problem when we start doing it with animals. And we will start doing this with animals. Lithose is right about that. This really is some pretty important stuff. It's not just a legal question but it's damn near a moral question. Property rights are that fundamental and the potential for true change regarding this particular class of property is that great.

There are entire strains of beans that can be irrigated directly with salt water. That's a big deal. Who owns that, and is allowed to sell/distribute that, is a big deal in the way that who owns the oil is a big deal.

okay fine, I see what you mean, Lithose, about this being a huge legal deal for our generation.

I think it'll be solved naturally in that any attempts by entities to secure rights to widely popular replicating products is just a temporary measure to retrieve profits until an inevitable inability to contain the information. I'm no agricultural expert but if a corporation produces an incredible new strain of produce in the US, its free adoption world-wide will be done with or without their consent.

Additionally, the tangential issues (Breeding animals, 3d printers etc) are even more impossible to contain the information of because the organizations that would utilize them are smaller than farms.

And finally, the proliferation of genetic modification technology will increase the amount of competition for the market making it much harder to control.

Basically, even though it's a huge issue I don't think it matters what any corporations or lawmakers do over the next N decades, you can't stop information from flowing.

GMO, Monsanto, organic dreadlocked nonsense?

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