@Wanderfound: let me expand then;
Follow the money, and look at who is spending to promote GMO, and the money spent by corporations on GMO research - it far outstrips the money spent in nonprofit GMO efforts. Even when federal money is spent GMO, the research inevitably ends up in the hands of corporate interests. The argument that we are only hampering nonprofit efforts to feed the world when we oppose GMO is a fig leaf that is easily disproven.
Conventional hybrids are already time locked; only the first gen is viable and optimal, and guess where you can only get it, and only then with a contract under which you promise not to seed scumm? Yup.
Bio-patents, especially the way the USPTO has given them out like candy, are bad. OTOH, limited bio-tech patents can promote R&D. What is promising is that GMO crops do not suffer the drawbacks of traditional hybrids, so when patents expire, seed scumning will be viable.
What we need are more open source GMO crops. A Manhattan project for agriculture, if you will. To win the war on hunger, we must use every tool to develop safe, healthy and viable crops for all locales.
Monsanto is drwarfed by “organic” agribusinesses. Big (hybrid) Organic is trying to strangle competitors using legislation as a stick.
Spending by pro-GMO groups far outstrips anti-GMO groups.
You mean anti-GMOs like Joseph Mercola? Not surprising that Monsanto has to spend a lot on lobbying whereas the cranks work for free.
http://sciencebasedmedicine.org/antivaccine-versus-anti-gmo-different-goals-same-methods/
Wait, I thought corporations have “moved on” and don’t need GMO. So why would they need to fight “cranks?” Are they just doing it in the interest of truth and justice? Thank goodness we have corporations to stand up for us!
Monsanto spent just 4.6 million on lobbying last year - while idiots like Mercola tried to force “consumer choice mandatory labelling” in EU and California. Mercola alone spent 1.1 million, while other cranks also contributed to organizing anti-GMO marches and campaigns.
But no, obviously Monsanto is Goliath and anti-GMOs are plucky little Daves.
Let’s be real, here. Anti-GMOs don’t care about science. (They’re often also anti-vax, anti-chemo nutjobs). And Monsanto exists only to fill the coffers of its shareholders. But letting anti-GMOs use their (anti-GMOer) hatred of science as an excuse to ban a competitor’s product… That’s stupid.
Are GMOs overall good or bad? As a technology, I’d argue it has overwhelmingly positive benefits. Arguing from within the context of biotech patents, banning GMOs will not fix patents (most are filed on evolutionary developed organisms and deep sea creatures). We’ve all seen the horrors organics can produce like the Lenape or even hemlock.
There are many legitimate reasons to be skeptical of GMO - many reasonable people in this thread have pointed those reasons out. It’s unfair for you to call them “nutjobs” or to throw them in with anti-vaxxers, anti-chemical, or to call them anti-science.
I am wary of GMO, and I am none of the things you accuse me of. And I’m not a nutjob. Calling me a nutjob is not “getting real” it’s an ad hominem attack based not on the arguments for or against GMO but on some hyperbolic classification of all people who are wary of GMO. It’s a specious argument.
Except that Joseph Mercola is a nutjob, as are other prominent “GMO Skeptics”.
Let’s take a tally of these objections, shall we?
GMOs are bad because scientists are playing God / "It’s not naaaaatural!!1"
And absolutely none of the plants and cattle we have today developed without human intervention. Potatoes were generally inedible until the Incans cultivated them. Carrots used to be tiny, brown little rooters. Corn had to be hand-developed by first nations folk, etc, etc. Appeals to nature fail because none of the food we eat exists in noninterventionist forms.
But GMOs are unsafe!
Sez who? The '79 study on just ten albino rats? The one that gas cherry-picked results that cannot be replicated? Like the Wakefield Vaccine paper?
Considering the random shit you eat, GMOs are no different than conventionally developed crops.
But patents!
Wildlife can be patented too. Is this an argument against wildlife or against over-broad patents granted by an understaffed USPTO?
But Monsanto!
Yeah, and Whole Foods is a charitable nonprofit. Whassat, Whole Foods is just another soulless corporation? Oh.
I hate science
I hate you, too.
See you soon, Space Cowboy
Why are you arguing with someone who’s not here? Like beating up on straw men?
Do not enter the orchard without backup!
… You know, I really liked the ending of Cowboy Bebop. Bang.
The arguments I tallied were all raised by anti-GMO folks, including some who posted here. I nay have taken some artistic liberties for humor’s sake. But I have not seen any arguments aside from those five. Care to contribute?
No, I’m good. I’ll leave you to keep name-calling and fighting straw men, since that’s what makes you feel good about yourself.
One of these things is not like the other.
Whatever makes you happy, dude.
“Consumer choice” labelling, combined with the massive FUD campaign by anti-vax and Big Organic, would result in a de-facto ban on products containing GMO crops (less people buy, stores refuse to stock, etc)
Exactly. The biggest problem with GMOs is they exist in the Rational/Industrial system and a small number of powerful corporations can force them down our throats against our will. Anyone who trusts our captured (corrupted) government regulatory system to determine what is and is not safe is playing a fool’s game.
The pro-GMO argument inevitably avoids system-wide analysis and assumes we understand everything better than we do. This video, for instance, glosses over most serious objections as if they were mere hysteria from an ignorant fringe.
Regardless, mandatory labeling is a MUST. All the free-marketers out there who believe GMOs are just dandy shouldn’t mind letting consumers decide for themselves if they want to consume manufactured food. People willing to put Coke and Spaghetti-Os into their bodies will probably choose GMOs, too.
So not an actual “ban” then. Just some customers choosing not to buy your product.
According to this logic, we should not have food labels at all.
Free market economics requires transparency. It also requires rationality. Neither of those things actually exist.
See I like the idea of crops purpose bred to filter the air and soil and sequester it away. The only downside is how to keep that plant from decomposing into the soil after. Maybe make it something you harvest to dispose of or sell for credit? Like you get federal funding per x amount of y plant matter? THe big drawback there is how to keep people from doing hat people will do; which is dupe the system to get more than they put in.
And I like the idea of open sourcing the genomes of differant useful crops.
