215 Partial Foods
Inevitably, once the GMO discussion has moved past the safety of genetic engineering and the rhetoric about environmental concern, “I just don’t like Monsanto or their business practices” is the last stand for anti-GMO attitudes.
I was going to write a post addressing the various rumors about why Monsanto is evil, which amounts to little more than an ad hominem attack against genetic engineering in general. However, I am on a ten hour roadtrip back to Colorado with my understandably fussy infant daughter and I’m having trouble finding good internet sources on a mobile hot-spot with one signal bar on my least-favorite-stretch-of-highway-in-the-world, Kansas.
And anyways, this guy on Quora just did a much better job of replying with his post; “Is Monsanto evil?”
Or you can listen to Skeptics Guide To The Universe explore the common anti-Monsanto complaints:
In any case, when the foundation of an argument is that corporations can’t be trusted – the question has to cut both ways. Who stands to gain the most from GMO-labelling laws? Their marketing is doing a good job:
I just don't trust giant evil corporations.
ROB
Hypothetically, two corporations are the same size. Which is more evil - one reducing crop-losses for farmers, or one that charges three times as much for the same produce?
KATE
I like shopping at whole foods.
ROB
Who doesn't? The starbucks is so easy to find behind the giant homeopathy aisle!
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The problem with a lot of this is that the pro-GMO folks are trying to use logic to win an emotional argument with anti-GMO. You aren’t going to win. You just piss them off and fight you harder. It’s a perception issue I like to call the “Frankenstein effect.” When you say genetic engineering, most people think mad scientist tinkering with the building blocks of life (i.e. Dr. Frankenstein). Once people think of mad scientist, it’s a short hop to evil, and you reach the conclusion that all genetic engineering, and anyone who sponsors it (a.k.a Monsanto) is evil. You will never convince someone otherwise with facts.
That was an interesting read about Monsanto. Granted, I am not going to just take the word of just one author – but that article is making me rethink my opinion of the company and I will likely be doing some research of my own. Assuming I confirm even half of what they said, Monsanto isn’t nearly the boogeyman they’ve appeared to be.
For me, there has yet to be any claim of Monsanto being evil that has panned out as true once I researched it. I’ve heard dozens of claims and they were all debunked with the simplest of research.
People who are anti ANYTHING can be just goofy. Sometimes I start feeling anti-religion, but then I remember that churches, synagogues and mosques donate oodles of money to feed the hungry and house the homeless, and that it’s the MINORITY of religious people who are scary about their religion. So, really, I’m anti-extremism (except in sports, extreme sports are awesome). So, as for people who are anti-GMO? Pish, they should go live as Amish.
I’d say I’m anti-extrimist, too, but that extends to GMOs. Humans have been tampering with the genes of other species since the beginning of agriculture (and, if domestic dogs are indication, even before then). Now that we have the technology to perform this tampering directly…well, it can be used for good as often as not. In either case, the use of recombinant DNA is a new field of science that’s still largely in its infancy, and since it’s something that can affect our food supply, it’s something we should be rightly concerned about its safe use. Wanting safeguards and regulatory oversight is hardly something worthy of “they should go live as Amish.”
But, then, computer science is a field of study that’s of the same approximate age, and our lives are similarly affected by the application of its technology, and computers (I’m guessing, from experience) don’t suffer the same level of scrutiny, and certainly not the same taboos. You can’t win ’em all.
Some sports you might be interested in then:
Shockfighting, MMA with tasers
Powerbocking (parkour with springs)
Extreme pillowfighting
Armored Combat League (Full contact medieval combat)
I don’t think living as Amish would help, since the Amish use GMOs too. 😛
http://www.biofortified.org/2013/10/amish-gmos/
The funny thing about Organic VS GMO is that, for some reason, people manage to sell organic food – which has always been around – to be more expensive than GMO food – which has a ton of new technological effort behind them.
You would think it is supposed to be the other way around.
Anyway, we have to figure out a way to cut through all this scaremongering and looking into the technology intelligently. And with the world’s growing population, GMO may soon be our only way to feed all those people, so it is worth looking into.
That said, I still don’t like Mosanto, as a company, not as the face for GMO. I really don’t like their policies of no replant, no research, and requiring farmer paying a “technology fee” when using their seeds.
Organic is more expensive than GMO because all of that huge technological effort behind the GMOs? It’s intended to make crops cheaper, not better. Pesticides are expensive, as is land.
Which adds to the debate, of course. After all, you only have to look as far as the local McBurgery’s to see just how great cheap food is for people.
Monsanto makes a convenient villain for most of these groups, whether or not it has anything to do with their “reason.” Farmers were buying patented seeds, using pesticides, and practicing monoculture long before GMO’s or Monsanto came on the scene. In fact, “organic” does not mean “pesticide free,”, although that’s the implication that organic marketing would like you to believe. A good example of the “fear factor” getting out of control is that two somewhat recent announcements created a great deal of hysteria by anti-GMO groups. The Simplot “Innate” potato, and the Arctic Apple. Neither one of them uses “foreign genes” they use a method called “gene silencing,” which simply turns off certain genes. If that happened “naturally,” or I’d just blasted seeds with radiation or mutagens to achieve the same purpose, they wouldn’t need any of the regulatory approvals.
Comic guy’s misleading here. No specification as to which corp is the one using GMOs and which uses pesticides.
And if you try to say “It’s obvious which is which”, that’s just another attempt at misleading.
um i remember on the daily show they talked about monsanto sueing the farmers but most of the times the farmers settled out of court, they interviewed a farmer and asked him why did you settle, why not go to court on this and he said that it was made clear to him that if he lost the suit he would lose everything, his land, the farm equipment and all his money
he said i cant afford that kind of chance, this isnt just my farm, its my father and my grandfathers farm too. the risk of losing is just too great
if the case was settled out of court there would be no record of the case itself
in many cases when there is a settlement the person signs a paper the says they may not talk about the case or settlement.
has any one here seen the movie the world according to monsanto its good
There has never been a single case of Monsanto suing due to accidental contamination. All of the lawsuits they’ve filed have been against farmers that have very specifically and obviously grown Monsanto seeds without having paid for them. One of the obvious examples is when the farmers use Roundup on their crops as a herbicide. If they weren’t RR crops, Roundup would kill them, so the farmers know exactly what they are doing. The Percy Schmeiser case is the perfect example of this.
While I’m generally pretty anti-corporate, Monsanto is certainly one of the nicer ones. I think the core concern, which we probably should NOT be dismissing, is that of copyrighting something as important as food. Certainly, the ability has existed to do it before, but not as firmly as with GMOs… and not in the disastrous copyright law climate we have today. Seriously, did you hear about the big Toshiba/Nintendo suit regarding the Nintendo 3DS camera? Toshiba pushed for it to be tried in the U.S. because corporate copyright holders are horrifyingly empowered here, and they could get their billion dollars on incredibly shaky grounds. Perhaps it’s a bit unrealistic to assume science would move nearly as fast without the promise of ludicrous profits and power over your creations; but it would be nice if we had more protections and freedom for the ability to grow food. That said, Monsanto namedropping is not doing anyone any favors. They’re pretty low on the list of horribleness, just a face arbitrarily chosen for looking REALLY PUNCHABLE.
Obligatory nice thing to say: Monsanto jumped right on that humanitarian license for golden rice (http://whqlibdoc.who.int/bulletin/2000/Number%2010/78%2810%29news.pdf) and then DIDN’T spend a fortune bragging about it.
It’s not copyright law, it’s patent law. Two different things. Copyrights are for much longer periods of time than patents, and crop seeds can be patented, but not copyrighted.
I misspoke. I really did mean patent law, but I was looking at PVR laws right before typing and apparently defaulted to the word copyright.
While I am not familiar with the particular case you mentioned, I would like to point out that “patent trolls” are a huge problem in the electronics and IT industries in the US, but almost non-existent in the science world. That may be starting to change, though obtaining and enforcing dubious patents in the biological sciences is harder than in technology. I am not sure exactly why.
In the prescription drug industry, which is the area I am most familiar with, patents have actually been growing weaker in recent decades as evidenced by the increasing rate of successful patent challenges by generic drug manufacturers seeking to gain early market entry and the 6-month patent exclusivity afforded following a successful patent challenge under the Hatch-Waxman act. To clarify, the Hatch-Waxman Act allows the generic manufacturer that challenged the patent becomes the only generic manufacturer that can sell its generic version of that drug for 6 months, allowing for prices only slightly below the branded prices and therefore enormous profits relative to the cost of developing a generic drug.
Just to clarify how that act actually is used in practice – the original stake holder pays a generic company to file and not make the product thus maintaining their high margin on that product and the generic gets money for nothing.
I have heard of but not been able to corroborate some other corporate tactics that include shell companies and musical filings but knowing how Prenda and its sibling have behaved I would not be at all surprised.
I worked for GNC. We were taught to proudly tell customers that our products are “GMO free”. Nobody there, especially the manager, were able to put together a rational coherent argument for what exactly GMO’s are. Obviously they’re full of chemicals? Meanwhile, they’d happily sell customers tiger balm. Just the level of hypocrisy and stupidity in that store is astounding. I did learn some good facts about whey, etc., but at least half the store is built on stupid pseoduscience.
I know I am late to this GMO party, but I want to add some of my thoughts
First, GMOs are not inherently bad.
GM is a tool, and just like any other tool it can be used for good or be misused to the determent of all. I liken it to nuclear power, we have seen some good things come from it… and some bad things as well. But nuclear power in and of itself is neither good or evil.
I love GMOs and the promise they hold for us as a civilization, but caution and clear thinking must be used when using a tool this powerful. The natural environment is an extremely complex system and I think it is a foolhardy assumption to assume we can change things at will and not affect other things.
Yes there are simple examples that you can use to say it’s ok to do X or to change Y because you could get the same thing through breeding the plants, but the above statement still stands, we need to be careful with such a powerful tool.
Second, Monsanto is a company like any other, they have done very bad things AND some very good things. My fear is with any company given powerful tools to make money… sometimes money comes before good judgment. That is a statement that I apply to ALL companies.
In the end the full story on GMOs promises and pitfalls is complicated and can not be summed up with either “GMOs are evil” OR “GMOs are great and can not cause, directly or indirectly, any problems whatsoever”.