GMO, Monsanto, organic dreadlocked nonsense?

fanaskin · Mar 25, 2013

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php...santo_in_India

"In 1998, the World Bank's structural adjustment policies forced India to open up its seed sector to global corporations like Cargill, Monsanto, and Syngenta.The global corporations changed the input economy overnight. Farm saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds which needed fertilizers and pesticides and could not be saved" Says Vandana Shiva, leader of the movement to oust Monsanto from India in her 2004 article The Suicide Economy Of Corporate Globalisation."As seed saving is prevented by patents as well as by the engineering of seeds with non-renewable traits, seed has to be bought for every planting season by poor peasants.A free resource available on farms became a commodity which farmers were forced to buy every year. This increases poverty and leads to indebtedness. As debts increase and become unpayable, farmers are compelled to sell kidneys or even commit suicide. More than 25,000 peasants in India have taken their lives since 1997 when the practice of seed saving was transformed under globalisation pressures and multinational seed corporations started to take control of the seed supply. Seed saving gives farmers life. Seed monopolies rob farmers of life"

----------

"The price difference is staggering: ?10 for 100 grams of GM seed, compared with less than ?10 for 1,000 times more traditional seeds. But GM salesmen and government officials had promised farmers that these were 'magic seeds' - with better crops that would be free from parasites and insects. Indeed, in a bid to promote the uptake of GM seeds,traditional varieties were banned from many government seed banks"

fanaskin · Mar 25, 2013

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ied-crops.html

Shankara, like millions of other Indian farmers, had been promised previously unheard of harvests and income if he switched from farming with traditional seeds to planting GM seeds instead.
Prince Charles

Distressed: Prince Charles has set up charity Bhumi Vardaan Foundation to address the plight of suicide farmers

Beguiled by the promise of future riches, he borrowed money in order to buy the GM seeds. But when the harvests failed, he was left with spiralling debts - and no income.

So Shankara became one of an estimated 125,000 farmers to take their own life as a result of the ruthless drive to use India as a testing ground for genetically modified crops.

Aychamo BanBan · Mar 25, 2013

Ah, such intelligent discourse until fanaskin shows up.

TheBeagle · Mar 25, 2013

What you linked says it OPENED UP its seed sector to Big Ag, it still doesn't say it FORCED the farmers to make the switch. It seems to me if the farmers don't like it then they should go back using old fashioned farm saved seeds, and i see no evidence that they aren't being allowed to do that. Seed saving is only prohibited on GMO crops, they can still go back to saving the 'heirloom', seeds with no patents on them.

fanaskin · Mar 25, 2013

1/2 of it is the "globalization is restructuring the world economy to grind people under corporate thumbs supported by central government banks that rake in interest every year on countries income taxes by promoting policies of deficit spending that increase borrowing money as debt against said central banks. they take the interest payments on the debt and use that money to crony capitalize the US (and the world) fortune 500 by CREATING markets to further monetize and monopolize anything they can imagine."

Caliane · Mar 25, 2013

If the GM crops promised and failed to produce a certain result, then that seems like a different legal issue. that has nothing to do with patenting a living thing. that has to do with fraud.
why did they fail? drought? problem with the seed?

If the GM seed is not superior to native, then there is no reason to swap. They swapped because it was superior, and paying for that makes sense.

Granted, you need buyers too. And the issue with driving down the price of well, everything.
Is any willing to buy non-gm cotton? does the now abundance of cotton drive down the price of both?
classic inflation probably raped them as it did to our agriculture too.

Farmer grows 10 tons of cotton/year with native seed. you go up to him and tell him hey, our seeds will allow you to grow 15 tons! and make 50% more profit. he says great! ok, so your seeds cost 30% more. still profit!
But everyone is growing 50% more now, except a few holdouts. total production is now up 50%. Supply is way up, demand hasn't changed...
Price per ton drops down 30%. Increased cost of seed, lower profit ratio on yield, farmer is now in fact making LESS then he did in the first place. the farmer that didn't switch to to the new seed at all, is now royally fucked even worse. has hes making less, and doesnt have the higher yield to at least help make up for it. assuming he can even find a buyer at all.

That is a modernization problem, not a legal one, nor a corporate one.

This is why we have corn subsidies here. Small farms would be absolutely fucked by superfarms if not for corn subsidies.

Also, any time you buy corn from a local farmer, hes probably lying to you about what it is. There are hundreds of kinds, but people only ask for like 3 over and over. butter and sugar? silver queen? yeah, totally thats what it is.

BrutulTM · Mar 25, 2013

Sounds like they need crop insurance in India.

Lithose · Mar 25, 2013

hodj_sl said:
Most of that was spent not on preserving or altering patent laws or whatever it is you're talking about.

Tell me something, how would you prove inaction? The thing is, BIO's lobby was something like 200+ people, and they are fucking good at getting a congressman's ear. (The disclosure act really doesn't cover everything, and what gets poured out can be very muddled as to it's purpose, everything goes through 3 lawyers hands before it's signed off as the official contract, and they can make pissing on your head sound like cooling rain.)

Most of that was spent on keeping the FDA from requiring to put labels on GMO products stating they contain GMOs. The rest was spent on getting new products accepted onto the marketplace.

Yes, new patents that expand their existing control over previously patented full products. Again, I'm not in agriculture, so I can only go off of what my friends have told me (Who do handle Food accounts) but essentially they play the same game as the tech industry..Which is what we discussed.

One of the problems here is that its hard to find good sources of news for this stuff because if you search Monsanto and Lobbying all you get are pages upon pages of NaturalNews.com stories, which is the Alex Jones of the GMO universe, but even they report that Monsanto's lobbying dollars are going towards preventing overregulation and labeling of GMO products, not towards patent laws.

The problem is you won't find anything but inference as to their goals. Unless you have your ear around the ground floor, the money that trickles into PAC's, or into "soft" lobbying power, is not ear marked with it's intended purpose--and the money that is given an agenda, can be dubious as to it's purpose, like for example, again, how do you "prove inaction".

Well, one way I could think to prove inaction is the deluge of patent cases choking our courts system with no update on our patent laws in the last 10 years.

Even the hippies aren't complaining about Monsanto's lobbying in regards to patent law. They're complaining that they are lobbying to prevent labeling of their products, to get more of their products accepted to market quicker, etc.

Hippies are usually pretty stupid people. They are angry about one of the greatest breakthroughs mankind has made since the modern age.

TheBeagle · Mar 25, 2013

Ya the delay in getting Golden Rice on the market and reducing Vitamin A deficiency in tens of millions of people rests squarely on the shoulders of the knee jerk, hippy retards.

hodj · Mar 25, 2013

fanaskin_sl said:
Yes I do I have a right to say hey the "law" is immoral when you are going to make the entire species dependent on their seed supply, this is too much power in one companies hands.

what it really is, is a base reaction of fear, that it's threatening the species.

you are white knighting a "too big to fail, in agriculture".
-------------

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vandan..._b_192419.html

The region in India with the highest level of farmers suicides is the Vidharbha region in Maharashtra -- 4000 suicides per year, 10 per day. This is also the region with the highest acreage of Monsanto's GMO Bt cotton. Monsanto's GM seeds create a suicide economy by transforming seed from a renewable resource to a non-renewable input which must be bought every year at high prices. Cotton seed used to cost Rs 7/kg. Bt-cotton seeds were sold at Rs 17,000/kg. Indigenous cotton varieties can be intercropped with food crops. Bt-cotton can only be grown as a monoculture. Indigenous cotton is rain fed. Bt-cotton needs irrigation. Indigenous varieties are pest resistant. Bt-cotton, even though promoted as resistant to the boll worm, has created new pests, and to control these new pests, farmers are using 13 times more pesticides then they were using prior to introduction of Bt-cotton. And finally, Monsanto sells its GMO seeds on fraudulent claims of yields of 1500/kg/year when farmers harvest 300-400 kg/year on an average. High costs and unreliable output make for a debt trap, and a suicide economy.

1. Vandana Shiva is a reactionary and not a valid source of information on GMOs
2. Even if we take her correlation = causation fallacy based argument seriously, the fact is that India was supposed to go through 30 years of famine that was predicted to cost literally hundreds of millions of lives back in the 60s. The Green Revolution prevented that from occurring, and in the process saved hundreds of millions of people from starvation, not just in India, but around the globe and elsewhere in Asia proper. So EVEN IF farmers were killing themselves because of GMOs and not because of intense poverty in one of the most heavily populated nations on planet Earth, the fact is that GMOs have saved several orders of magnitudes more. But the fact is India has fewer suicides per capita than the US with four times the population total.
3. Farmer suicides in India linked to Bt cotton by Vandana Shiva in her never ending crusade to literally blame every single major modern ill on genetically modified crops and modern farming techniques have been studied and the claim discounted as false.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers...note-Gruere-25

GM crops
A report released by the International Food Policy Research Institute in October 2009 provided evidence that the introduction of Bt cotton was not a major factor in farmer suicides in India.[25] It argues that the suicides predate the introduction of the cotton in 2002 and has been fairly consistent since 1997.[25][26] Other studies also suggest the increase in farmer suicides is due to a combination of various socio-economic factors.[27] These include debt, the difficulty of farming semi-arid regions, poor agricultural income, absence of alternative income opportunities, the downturn in the urban economy forcing non-farmers into farming, and the absence of suitable counseling services.[27][28]

Link to the paper.

http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/f...pridp00808.pdf

Iannis_sl said:
Patenting a living organism is completely fucking absurd. Patenting a gene is shoes-on-tits ridiculous. I understand the need for legal fictions, but at some point you might as well patent fucking salt. If that's the answer I have to begin to question if our concept of legalities are even appropriate to the issue. It's also a highly suspicious moral question, but i'm willing to just let that dog lie. In my limited experience talking with people who are not completely ignorant (though hardly experts) things get really, really ugly if you explore that tangent.

Patenting a specific technique to derive that SPECIFIC organism is much less absurd -- you might even be inclined to find that a reasonable approach.

Patenting genes may or may not be absurd. The point is that as it stands, its the only reasonable way for a company to get back their ridiculous fuckloads of investment dollars on developing the technology, isolating the specific genes, and determining ways to insert them successfully into organisms. There's absolutely nothing ridiculous or absurd about that. I personally think patenting should be directed more towards the processes involved in isolation and insertion, rather than over the gene allele specifically, but that's just the way the whole thing works. No one is even remotely trying to change that.

Lithose_sl said:
Tell me something, how would you prove inaction? The thing is, BIO's lobby was something like 200+ people, and they are fucking good at getting a congressman's ear. (The disclosure act really doesn't cover everything, and what gets poured out can be very muddled as to it's purpose, everything goes through 3 lawyers hands before it's signed off as the official contract, and they can make pissing on your head sound like cooling rain.)

Its pretty hard to prove a negative, and generally pointless. You're essentially saying that since there isn't evidence of something, there must be guilt. I'm just not into that. I don't like the patent laws the way they are, I think they should be geared towards patenting the processes, rather than the products, but that's neither here nor there when it comes to this discussion. The issue is "Is Monsanto evil because they produce GMOs and work to ensure that their products come to market?"

The answer is "No, they're merely a self interested party working in collusion with the Government because the Government loves Big Ag."

Yes, new patents that expand their existing control over previously patented full products. Again, I'm not in agriculture, so I can only go off of what my friends have told me (Who do handle Food accounts) but essentially they play the same game as the tech industry..Which is what we discussed.

Tech industry are the only ones trying to get things changed, and mostly because change the patent laws benefit them more than anyone else financially.

The problem is you won't find anything but inference as to their goals.

Where you say inference, I read conjecture, personally.

Lithose · Mar 25, 2013

hodj_sl said:
Where you say inference, I read conjecture, personally.

No, it's inference. (Sorry my posts have been lean, normally I'm pretty open in work, but have been busy today.)Hereis a break down of not just above board, or "open channel" lobbying money, but also soft donations, like to PAC's and those filtered through employees. What you have to understand is that the way the disclosure act works, doesn't provide 100% transparency. What is disclosed is the official stance of the Congressman, plus expenditures toward that goal (And THAT is stringent, receipts in Washington are the most detailed in the world, lol). However, these guys get to sit in rooms with these government officials and point out exactly how much campaign donation money can be pushed through back channels (Which sounds worse than it is, but it's essentially campaign funds) for doing them small favors.

This is why 10 million dollars went not toward direct lobbying, but specifically toward key members that sit on oversight councils. THESE are the people that have influence over key figures in the department of commerce that control how patents are done (As well as other councils which control subsidies, and things like pesticide approval.)...I'll try to track down specific lobbying campaigns later, the BIO industry is actually pretty decent at releasing yearlies with their lobbying efforts (Beyond simply pushing their contracts out under the sunshine law). But a lot of this you'd really only hear from insiders--because even official lobbying contracts, as said, go through big PR departments, on both sides. If the goal is to maintain patent law on bean X, by approving new patent on Y factor of Bean X, that's going to be labeled in the contract in such a way to make it good for the companies image--in cases where you don't have counter lobbies from in market competition (But instead have some NGO, poorly funded, do gooder), you rarely get a good break down of the core purpose of the contract(Because only a competitive market force is going to have the funds to really dissect a lobbies goals.)

And yes, maybe I'm biased because the tech industry and the financials are grossly worse than other markets (Hearing how someone in finance spins a default counter-party as an "economy" saver, rather than the dirty bomb they are is absolutely wild. But these lobbyist have convinced congressmen time and time again to not reign in derivative markets--even though you won't find direct lobbying efforts labeled as such.)--and these are the only two I have experience with. However, I seriously doubt that...In my experience, where there is money, people play the same game. And part of that, for any industry with big bucks, is to remove careful oversight from government agencies and push the bulk of the regulatory effects of government into the courts--because this is an area where resources and expertise will give them a far, far bigger advantage (Especially considering most judges are absolute fossils when it comes to new techs--in fact, a lot of Engineering/Chem/Bio undergrads are in huge demand now when combined with a law degree, because of what a booming industry patent law is.)

OneofOne · Mar 25, 2013

hodj_sl said:
There's absolutely nothing ridiculous or absurd about that. I personally think patenting should be directed more towards the processes involved in isolation and insertion, rather than over the gene allele specifically, but that's just the way the whole thing works. No one is even remotely trying to change that.

Except the you know, the people taking the case before the Supreme Court next month re: human genes. As it is now, due to some fucked up wording/ignorant ass judge regarding a past case, the Patent Office allows patents on gene expressions that are uncommon EVEN IF NATURALLY OCCURRING. About 20% of the genes in the human body are patented - that is pants on head retarded, and fortunately some countries (like our neighbors to the north) refuse to recognize gene patents. Yes I agree that processes and procedures are what needs protecting, not shit already existing in nature that no human "created".

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articl...e%20Court.aspx

Lithose · Mar 25, 2013

OneofOne_sl said:
Except the you know, the people taking the case before the Supreme Court next month re: human genes. As it is now, due to some fucked up wording/ignorant ass judge regarding a past case, the Patent Office allows patents on gene expressions that are uncommon EVEN IF NATURALLY OCCURRING. About 20% of the genes in the human body are patented - that is pants on head retarded, and fortunately some countries (like our neighbors to the north) refuse to recognize gene patents. Yes I agree that processes and procedures are what needs protecting, not shit already existing in nature that no human "created".

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articl...e%20Court.aspx

The fact is this all needs a specific agency to oversee this. The patent office needs the same kinds of systems the FDA has for pharmaceutical patents. This kind of thing is only going to get worse as technology becomes more complex--I mean, I KNOW people who work at the patent office, they are bright lawyers doing their time while they wait to jump ship to the private sector. But they are lawyers and clerks--they don't know how to fucking program, or what chromosome does what. And they are being asked to essentially create policy based on their decision to patent....Crazy shit.

hodj · Mar 25, 2013

Why is it pants on head retarded? That's a conclusion that requires some justification. We patent viruses, we patent bacteria, for vaccines and retrovirals and blah blah blah. If you're going to have a medical technology that involves, for instance, the potential of inserting or removing a gene from the human genome, possible application I can think of right off the top of my head, removing the third gene in trisomy patients, such as with trisomy 21 that leads to Down Syndrome, there has to be patenting and whatnot involved for proper regulation. You don't just want anyone untrained inserting or removing genes from your fetuses genome with no oversight. Patenting is registering, and thus allowing to be regulated in the open, legal market, a product you had a hand in developing in some form or fashion with the Federal Government.

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

A patent (/'p?t?nt/ or /'pe?t?nt/) is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time, in exchange for the public disclosure of the invention.

We WANT these things brought into the public purview, for regulatory, taxation, and other reasons. Patents are not some magic evil thing that makes corporations above the law. They exist for protection of the public as much as for the protection of the rights of the patent holder, and so patenting a gene or a technology or technique which influences them is perfectly reasonable, and really, preferable.

OneofOne · Mar 25, 2013

I don't think you are fully understanding what has taken place. People are identifying particular genes, patenting them, and then saying that if anyone, for any reason, wants to do anything with that preexisting gene, they have to pay the patent holder. Take the case coming up for instance. Two genes heavily linked to breast cancer were identified. Not only did they patent the test to see if you have these genes (I have no issue with that) they patented the genes themselves - so no one can do research on them without ponying up some cash. Keep in mind they didn't change the genes and patent the new creation, they simply found something already there, and now they own it. I really don't think you are understanding this, based on your comments.

Xequecal · Mar 25, 2013

I used to work for Monsanto. They have a very, let's say, unique working environment that's basically the mirror universe version of a university research lab. I don't know if I would call them evil, but terms like "ruthless", "predatory", and "ambitious" certainly apply. Whether or not you think that makes them evil depends on whether or not you think corporations should act like this.

hodj · Mar 25, 2013

OneofOne_sl said:
I don't think you are fully understanding what has taken place. People are identifying particular genes, patenting them, and then saying that if anyone, for any reason, wants to do anything with that preexisting gene, they have to pay the patent holder. Take the case coming up for instance. Two genes heavily linked to breast cancer were identified. Not only did they patent the test to see if you have these genes (I have no issue with that) they patented the genes themselves - so no one can do research on them without ponying up some cash. Keep in mind they didn't change the genes and patent the new creation, they simply found something already there, and now they own it. I really don't think you are understanding this, based on your comments.

My wife is a biotechnology major I'm perfectly aware of what's happening, it doesn't bother me one bit. It takes many hundreds of millions of dollars, and many tens of millions of man hours to perfect this technology and it is perfectly reasonable that these companies would want to make that investment back. Genetic research costs money. This is an intractable fact of scientific research. These companies have zero interest in doing this research for free, and that is because if they did, they would go bankrupt, and many millions will suffer. Just because someone isolated something that already exists in nature doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't be patentable. In fact, almost every major medicine is the result of isolating already existing natural components into forms useful to human beings.

Your entire premise is based on your lack of understanding, not mine. I'm profoundly aware of the implications involved.

chaos · Mar 25, 2013

Are those the only two options: free or what we have now? That seems unlikely. Patenting a human gene is a hell of a lot different than patenting some compound you isolated from a plant.

Lithose · Mar 25, 2013

hodj_sl said:
In fact, almost every major medicine is the result of isolating already existing natural componentsinto forms useful to human beings.

Doesn't that negate just about everything else you said? I'll be the first to admit my understand is iffy here--but he's saying they didn't manipulate it at all. They simply discovered it's existence. What you're saying is that Alexander Fleming (Discovered Penicillin) should have been able to patent the chemical, and then use it to control the later patent that was used to mass produce it. Do you have any idea the fucking decades that would have set medical science back to have that kind of absurd "discovery" based patent system?

Seriously, lets cut the bullshit. I'm not trying to trap you here, I'm trying to learn.Justifyplacing a patent on something you have no part in creating or refining (Because again, they didn't manipulate this gene for human use--they discovered it and said no one else can manipulate it.). Just do that for me, make a case, because I honestly can't see one (The money should be generated from, as you said, learning to manipulate and refine the discovery.)

Gravel · Mar 25, 2013

hodj_sl said:
My wife is a biotechnology major I'm perfectly aware of what's happening, it doesn't bother me one bit.

Well shit, if your wife is a biotech major, I don't know why we're even bothering with this discussion. I'll respectfully withdraw.

I do have a question though, is she a major or does she have her degree?

GMO, Monsanto, organic dreadlocked nonsense?

Well known agitator

Well known agitator

JunkiesNetwork Donor

Well known agitator

Avatar of War Slayer

Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.

Buzzfeed Editor

JunkiesNetwork Donor

Vox Populi Jihadi

Buzzfeed Editor

Silver Baronet of the Realm

Buzzfeed Editor

Vox Populi Jihadi

Silver Baronet of the Realm

Trump's Staff

Vox Populi Jihadi

Buzzfeed Editor

Buzzfeed Editor

Mr. Poopybutthole