"Organic Elite" Sell Out to Monsanto

[FilmGal]

Score yet another victory for large multi-national corporations: Does anyone other than Monsanto like genetically modified crops?

http://www.organicconsumers.org/arti...icle_22449.cfm

[KrisStatic]

I had to learn about this sort of stuff at my school (I'm a culinary student), it's horrifying to know what goes into the crops these days, glad I always got vegetables from my grandparents, they never needed to use modified seeds or weird chemicals to grow healthy crops, just some care and hard work.

[joethehoe]

I'd like to rail against GM crops but lets be pragmatic for a second, people want cheap out of season fruit and vegetables, therefore we have to be able to produce them out of season and in locations where we can transport them efficiently especially if we care about the environment, this is part of the reason we genetically modify crops, it allows us to grow crops out of season, get better yields and prevents us from having to use potentially environmentally damaging pesticides on them.

Unless people are willing to pay considerably more for their fruit and veg i'm afraid we're going to get used of the idea of GM crops. Also be aware most of the modern fruit and veg we eat today is a result of extensive genetic modification, if we hadn't genetically modified the bannana it would look like this:-



Give me the GM bannana any day..

[stressedout]

How about some tasty steroid injected livestock...mmmmm. I like me some tasty steaks and fried chicken but I'd probably cringe if I know what they were injecting into these animals I'm eating lol. No wonder I've been getting really angry lately and snapping on people and shit! It's all the damned roids in my food!

[stressedout]

No one ever even heard of man boobs before until KFC's started popping up in every neighborhood. That's some real tasty chicken though.

[FilmGal]

Originally Posted by joethehoe

I'd like to rail against GM crops but lets be pragmatic for a second, people want cheap out of season fruit and vegetables, therefore we have to be able to produce them out of season and in locations where we can transport them efficiently especially if we care about the environment, this is part of the reason we genetically modify crops, it allows us to grow crops out of season, get better yields and prevents us from having to use potentially environmentally damaging pesticides on them.

Unless people are willing to pay considerably more for their fruit and veg i'm afraid we're going to get used of the idea of GM crops. Also be aware most of the modern fruit and veg we eat today is a result of extensive genetic modification, if we hadn't genetically modified the bannana it would look like this:-



Give me the GM bannana any day..

There is a huge difference between selective breeding for desirable traits and splicing genes from one species into another. For starters, the newly introduced genes are forever switched "on", plus the cost differences for produce are vastly overstated - haven't you ever shopped for produce from a farmer's market? Apples do not cost $10/pound. And roundup ready means they can hose the plants down with roundup, a very toxic pesticide, in extremely high amounts without killing the genetically modified plant - that's not exactly pesticide free farming.

And these are all Monsanto's pro-GMO arguments and it's not like they don't have a financial interest in promoting GMOs. Not to mention a recent study showing Monsanto GMO corn caused organ failure in rats:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_420365.html

[joethehoe]

Originally Posted by FilmGal

There is a huge difference between selective breeding for desirable traits and splicing genes from one species into another. For starters, the newly introduced genes are forever switched "on", plus the cost differences for produce are vastly overstated - haven't you ever shopped for produce from a farmer's market? Apples do not cost $10/pound. And roundup ready means they can hose the plants down with roundup, a very toxic pesticide, in extremely high amounts without killing the genetically modified plant - that's not exactly pesticide free farming.

And these are all Monsanto's pro-GMO arguments and it's not like they don't have a financial interest in promoting GMOs. Not to mention a recent study showing Monsanto GMO corn caused organ failure in rats:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_420365.html

I'm not trying to defend Monsanto in paticular, i'm stating the GM in general isn't the evil its made out to be, the point you made about farmers markets doesn't work for me because most of the produce of farmers markets in my experience is local produce so they don't have costs associated with procurement and transporting exotic crops, obviously if we were having to cultivate Pineapples from Brazil we'd have to pay more for them than if we were able to genetically modify them and grow them in greenhouses in America or the UK.

As for pesticides, i agree its silly making plants resistant to pesticides, thats really a bit of sleight-of-hand by chemical companies though because we have created pest resistant crop.(http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...s-insects.html). On the whole i'll say that we have used GM for some stupid things (redder tomatoes etc) Obviously thats stupid especially as we know that genes interact and weird combinations of genes can have unexpected effects, on the other hand we have an expanding population and we need every tool at our disposal to produce affordable food.

[FilmGal]

Originally Posted by joethehoe

I i'm stating the GM in general isn't the evil its made out to be....

I think causing organ failure in test animals is pretty evil.

[sr113]

Originally Posted by FilmGal

There is a huge difference between selective breeding for desirable traits and splicing genes from one species into another. For starters, the newly introduced genes are forever switched "on", plus the cost differences for produce are vastly overstated - haven't you ever shopped for produce from a farmer's market? Apples do not cost $10/pound. And roundup ready means they can hose the plants down with roundup, a very toxic pesticide, in extremely high amounts without killing the genetically modified plant - that's not exactly pesticide free farming.

And these are all Monsanto's pro-GMO arguments and it's not like they don't have a financial interest in promoting GMOs. Not to mention a recent study showing Monsanto GMO corn caused organ failure in rats:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_420365.html

As someone who actually owns a farm, just for the record Roundup is an herbacide, not a pesticide. It's for killing weeds, not bugs. It's still nasty; it's still the main ingredient in agent orange, but if you've got weeds you need to spray up in an apple tree, you're seriously doing the whole farming thing really fucking wrong. Apples are actually coated with a wax to keep bugs out. Roundup is used on wheat, corn, soybeans, etc. Right now we are having to replant our entire hazelnut orchards, some that were planted by my great grandfather, due to a fungal blight that's killing off the trees. Our only solution is to plant genetically modified trees that are blight resistant. Since it takes 7 years to actually get a nut off of a freshly planted tree, it would take a century to cross pollinate to the point where we got a blight resistant tree. U of O did it in the lab in a little under a decade. Monsanto is evil as evil gets, but not all GMOs are bad.

[joethehoe]

Originally Posted by FilmGal

I think causing organ failure in test animals is pretty evil.

Yes, but lets be fair here, finding that one particular GM crop by one company causes organ failure in rats doesn't discredit GM in general. By that logic i could say that the fact that Avandia was proven to cause heart attacks in Humans discredits medicine.