Support GMO foods

[tupac chopra]

I have done enough in this thread to ensure that nobody unsuspectingly gives any credence to your crazy claims;

I would prefer that people investigated for themselves how many long term studies have been done, and then on that basis judge whether we know that GMO's are safe with long term use.

 

[SimpleDon]

I present this with no comment, I believe that it is self-explanatory.[/misplaced optimism]

​

 

[SimpleDon]

And there is this,

Lee Rainie, Pew's director of science research, added that trust in scientists can be a big factor. On GMOs, for example, 67 percent of the public believe scientists don't fully understand the health risks. And on issues like climate and evolution, the public believes there to be more disagreement within the scientific community than there actually is, he said.

Then who do you trust? Apparently some anonymous blogger on the internet who shares the same opinion that you do.

 

[SimpleDon]

Also there can be some more complex reasoning behind the scientists' responses. They might be opposing fracking and off shore drilling simply because there is no reason to go to these extremes because we have more oil that is easier to pump than we can safely burn without damaging the climate. Which is probably true. You would have to develop different questions to explore the reasoning behind some of the apparent contradictions.

 

[tupac chopra]

One of the ironires about GMO foods is that on the one hand corporations (and their supporters) want to insist that something "novel" has been created but on the other hand they want to insist that it is substantially equivalent to the original food.

When it comes to making money GMO foods are different, but when it comes to making money, they are the same too.

 

[tupac chopra]

I present this with no comment, I believe that it is self-explanatory.[/misplaced optimism]

View attachment 2217​

Are you going to leave out scientists that work for Monsanto in your poll? If so then where do you stop?
Most of the world does not believe that scientists who work for profit seeking corporations conduct neutral scientific investigation. Even the American public understands this , though American scientists are understandably reticent to oppose those who feed them

In other words there is nothing "self evident" (a peculiarly American term) about your chart

 

[arkirk]

I present this with no comment, I believe that it is self-explanatory.[/misplaced optimism]

View attachment 2217​

The late Norman Cousins pointed out that professional science has always been co-opted by military and economic forces, often dictating the purpose of the research or development. Some of the people working in the GMO labs who call themselves scientists and pay $155 for professional membership are involved in these polls no doubt. Many of these so called scientists are actually engineers (especially in the chemical industry) and they are given the parameters of the results they are told to seek. There are large techno/legal organizations that call themselves Environmental Science that actually prepare reports that are favorable to their clients (usually chemical companies). I am including a snip from the AAAS bylaws that tells who may be a member...and presumably participate in this type of poll. Additionally, anybody who verbally agrees to their stated purpose may become a member. The organization also sports a long list of "patron" members who do the heavy financial lifting (and probably policy setting) for the organization. I would take this poll with a grain of salt.

 

[tupac chopra]

And there is this,

Lee Rainie, Pew's director of science research, added that trust in scientists can be a big factor. On GMOs, for example, 67 percent of the public believe scientists don't fully understand the health risks. And on issues like climate and evolution, the public believes there to be more disagreement within the scientific community than there actually is, he said.

Then who do you trust? Apparently some anonymous blogger on the internet who shares the same opinion that you do.

It depends how you frame the question. Why not go and get the original poll.
If a respondee to the poll has to choose between understand and not understand , yet, feels that scientists are compromised then maybe they just choose to answer "don't understand"

 

[tupac chopra]

delete

 

[Crazy Eddie]

There are many conspiracy-minded zealots in white society whose delusions about genetically-engineered foods have an unintended genocidal effect. They are trying to force labels on GMO foods through state ballot initiatives in the USA. They have already won in Europe. Coupled with their fear campaigns disconnected from reality, they are trying to push GMO foods out of the marketplace, with the effect of continuing the death trend of millions more people. Whenever you see their false, anti-scientific and anti-humanistic claims, I suggest you share this video. They need to be held accountable, and the misinformation needs to be corrected. Rational clear-thinking people have a moral responsibility.

I'm just going to point out, as others certainly have, that the "GMOs will eliminate world hunger" angle is nothing more than PR bullshit. GMOs are used to increase productivity in mature markets where an intact legal system can maintain controls on their cultivation and prevent those GMO strains from being misappropriated by local farmers; they are not and will never be used to feed the third world, because doing so creates the risk of those modified foods falling into the hands of poor farmers who will not pay royalties to Monsanto and do not have a government that will bother making them.

 

[Axulus]

There are many conspiracy-minded zealots in white society whose delusions about genetically-engineered foods have an unintended genocidal effect. They are trying to force labels on GMO foods through state ballot initiatives in the USA. They have already won in Europe. Coupled with their fear campaigns disconnected from reality, they are trying to push GMO foods out of the marketplace, with the effect of continuing the death trend of millions more people. Whenever you see their false, anti-scientific and anti-humanistic claims, I suggest you share this video. They need to be held accountable, and the misinformation needs to be corrected. Rational clear-thinking people have a moral responsibility.

I'm just going to point out, as others certainly have, that the "GMOs will eliminate world hunger" angle is nothing more than PR bullshit. GMOs are used to increase productivity in mature markets where an intact legal system can maintain controls on their cultivation and prevent those GMO strains from being misappropriated by local farmers; they are not and will never be used to feed the third world, because doing so creates the risk of those modified foods falling into the hands of poor farmers who will not pay royalties to Monsanto and do not have a government that will bother making them.

Do you consider Brazil and China to be mature markets?

Also, patents don't last forever. RR GMO soybeans are currently off patent. Some universities are researching GMO seeds. Monstanto doesn't have a monopoly on the GMO world like you falsely believe.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I'm just going to point out, as others certainly have, that the "GMOs will eliminate world hunger" angle is nothing more than PR bullshit. GMOs are used to increase productivity in mature markets where an intact legal system can maintain controls on their cultivation and prevent those GMO strains from being misappropriated by local farmers; they are not and will never be used to feed the third world, because doing so creates the risk of those modified foods falling into the hands of poor farmers who will not pay royalties to Monsanto and do not have a government that will bother making them.

Do you consider Brazil and China to be mature markets?

Yes.

Is there a specific reason I shouldn't?

Also, patents don't last forever. RR GMO soybeans are currently off patent.

RR GMO Soybeans are not being used -- or even touted -- as a solution to world hunger, hence they are primarily being cultivated as export crops in South American countries simply because they are easier to grow in large quantities with smaller overhead. They are, if anything, a boon to the farming economies of poorer countries and a profit booster to farmers. But since selling those products to consumers remains far more profitable than donating them to starving children in Africa, those same farmers will continue to do the former.

Good example, too.

Monstanto doesn't have a monopoly on the GMO world like you falsely believe.

Not that I ever claimed it did, but Monsanto is the major driver of the "support GMOs unless you want the children to starve!" angle. They are also the least likely to actually support that agenda when pressed to do so.

 

[Toni]

Regardless of the merits or lack of merits of GMOs, can anyone explain why I should be compelled to consume them if I don't wish to? Or if I wish to minimize the extent to which I consume GMOs?

 

[tupac chopra]

Regardless of the merits or lack of merits of GMOs, can anyone explain why I should be compelled to consume them if I don't wish to? Or if I wish to minimize the extent to which I consume GMOs?

AS far as I can tell from the OP, if you don't give up your right to know what you are eating you are essentially committing genocide!
Shame on you

 

[Jarhyn]

You are not so compelled. You have an entire supermarket, by your own admission, at which you can buy non-GMO foods.

But if your question is 'why can't I guarantee there is no biological creep between GMO and non GMO genes', the answer is 'fuck you, you don't get to demand that the world be shittier because you have an irrational bug up your ass' just like you can't demand to not have to touch anything a homosexual has touched, and just like you can't demand to be free from having to see women, or any other such irrational and unreasonable thing.

 

[ApostateAbe]

I'm just going to point out, as others certainly have, that the "GMOs will eliminate world hunger" angle is nothing more than PR bullshit. GMOs are used to increase productivity in mature markets where an intact legal system can maintain controls on their cultivation and prevent those GMO strains from being misappropriated by local farmers; they are not and will never be used to feed the third world, because doing so creates the risk of those modified foods falling into the hands of poor farmers who will not pay royalties to Monsanto and do not have a government that will bother making them.

It is PR. It is PR and it is probable. Millions of lives would be saved if they were to eat golden rice instead of white rice. This is not mere speculation. This is fact. And nobody would be charged royalties, because golden rice is not Monsanto or Dupont. It is the Rockefeller Foundation. Golden rice would be provided freely. But Golden Rice is opposed by the same people who oppose Monsanto because they don't know the difference. Vaccines were developed by the first world. If the 19th-century anti-vaxxers had won, they would have deprived vaccines, not just from the first world, but from the whole world. You should be ashamed of yourself, but you are human, and you won't be.

 

[SimpleDon]

It is interesting. We seem to be split between the anti-corporation people who don't trust anyone who is trying to make a profit and the anti-government ones who believe that government is evil and they don't trust anyone who is not trying to make a profit.

Both sides depend on small grains of truth magnified out of proportion to support their respective case.

Yes, the very core of capitalism, its driving force, that it rewards innovation and risk taking, means that there has to be something to limit capitalism's excesses. Yes, the drive to make profits can get out of hand. Yes, left on their own corporations will innovate and risk take themselves into areas that are seriously harmful to society and the people in it.

But we do have something to limit capitalism's excesses. It is the thing that was devised to limit the harmful excesses of individual behavior, the government. In fact, regulating the economy along with providing security from both internal and external threats are the two main reasons that governments exist.

From the very first tribal leader even the most primitive form of government has regulated, there is that evil word again, the economy, even if it was only to vouch for an individual's reliability in a trade or to decide how to divide the available food. Along the way it was discovered that there were things that governments could do better than the economy could. Things that helped the economy, for example, infrastructure and education.

Governments grew as the economies grew. Governments got more complex as economies got more complex. But the opposites were also true. The governments helped the economy to grow and to become more complex, government regulation of the economy allowed the growth of the economy and its ever increasing complexity, without which our economic system, capitalism, would have self-destructed, like so many other economic and government systems have.

And yes, governments can regulate the economy to excess. Yes, governments can take too much of the economy's rewards for themselves. Yes, governments can be evil. These are not reasons to abandon government. These are reasons to try to improve government.

The secret to the success of the relationship between the economy and the government is balance and moderation. Boring, right? No one is going to man the ramparts under the banner of "moderation." Unfortunately, balance and moderation don't sell well in the twitter world of today when ideas are ignored if they can't be expressed in 140 characters or less. Like "corporations are evil" or that "governments are evil" do.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Nice "bait and switch".
GMO foods only introduce risks. They don't give any benefit.

Like the morons promote GMO's when GMO's don't give any benefits

1) It depends on what genes were inserted. This certainly helps people: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice

2) Having more food for less cost is a benefit to people.

That benefit to humans costs other species dearly. My beef with GMOs isn't along the lines of woo but rather that species are selective in their native environments as to what they can eat. Remove or alter that food and they starve in the midst of apparent abundance. If they don't starve outright they aren't able to reproduce because the insects on which they ultimately raise their young - birds - are absent.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Who is lying to consumers and how?

Well, if the reason for getting rid of labels is that we know that customers won't buy a product that they know is made from GMOs, then how is making such a label illegal anything other than, if not a lie, a deliberate attempt to mislead?

If labels come off, I for one will never purchase another processed product. Removing labels might be the best thing that could ever happen to the food supply if enough people did the same thing. We know labels mean squat on supplements. There are plenty of cases where it's the same with standard food products.

 

[Toni]

You are not so compelled. You have an entire supermarket, by your own admission, at which you can buy non-GMO foods.

But if your question is 'why can't I guarantee there is no biological creep between GMO and non GMO genes', the answer is 'fuck you, you don't get to demand that the world be shittier because you have an irrational bug up your ass' just like you can't demand to not have to touch anything a homosexual has touched, and just like you can't demand to be free from having to see women, or any other such irrational and unreasonable thing.

Thank you for your kind sentiments but you are vastly confused.

It is quite reasonable to assume that GMO genes are in fact being spread into other crops and into mom-target species. It is not a far reach at all to believe that there will be unintended consequences. And it is rational to be concerned that there is potential for those consequences to be delirious for at least some humans and for the environment.

Please let us not be confused about Monsantos motives, which are corporate profit.

Please let us not forget that big business has a long history of promoting the beneficial and sometimes 'beneficial' aspects of their products while sweeping valid concerns under the rug.

Look at Nestlé's promotion of formula for babies, first in the 'modern' west and then in developing nations.

If we are truly concerned about saving lives and promoting better health in developing countries, we would be working a lot harder at promoting access to reliable sources of clean water. We certainly would be doing more to prevent armed conflicts and political instability. I suspect Monsanto hasn't found a way to make a profit on those initiatives.