Your views on GM?

brianthebard

I was just curious to see what sort of opinions farmers here have about gm crops and monsanto, the company behind them. What do you know about monsanto? Does their near constant litigation, often against farmers, scare you in any way? Do you think that GM offers a valuable alternative to old crops, and if so why? Is their copyrighting of various plants and seeds immoral, or justified? Any other opinions on this topic would be appreciated.

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

http://www.monsanto.com/

taram

I think GM is a wonderful tool. I love it, I've eaten it, I've created it in labs, I'm 100% behind it. At the same time, I am against Monsanto and the like, they're patenting overlord techniques and bully boy tactics make the scientist in me angry. So in answer to your questions:

I know Monsanto are the devil :P The last green revolution was spurred on by universities and public services to better crop yields for the sake of human kind and science, to learn and improve. This revolution is patented, a trade secret and the science is shamefully dealt with by business men for businesses, not the common or scientific good, stamped with a big 'Monsanto' on it.

GM = better? I think it really depends on the crop and the environmental conditions. Drought resistant wheat in Africa, vitamin A "golden" rice in China, maybe flooding resistant crops in Ireland , all fantastic ideas. GM has the potential to cut out a lot of pointless, expensive and genetically degrading crossbreeding, and to reduce our reliance on a lot of chemical treatments.

If I got a new crop cross in the morning and it was the best yield with best disease resistance in Ireland, I'd make a fortune off breeders rights. That's fantastic, and well justified. Monstanto doesn't just keep the types of plants they create, they keep even individual gene sequences. Cross crop rights is a form of intellectual rights, gene sequences is patenting life! I'm completly against that, especially if I wanted to do research on it, I'd have to pay and arm and a leg to use it. I agree protecting the product is a crucial and savvy business thing to do, but I disagree with their heavy handed tactics and lack of scientific openess.

Sorry if this is rambling, haven't slept in 2 days...going on 3

The_Conductor

From the perspective of end-marketing of produce, its commercial suicide to try to sell GM crops in the Irish (or indeed EU) market. Personally I believe the Frankenstein crops that the media keep harping on about are largely scaremongering- but unfortunately its the type of scaremongering that sticks in the minds of Mr. and Mrs. Shopper when they go looking at their fruit and veg, or meat (or at the labels of any processed products). The only way to sell Boston hotdogs on the EU market was by removing the "Contains GM Maize" from the label- which is why the Yanks keep trying to have EU labelling laws overturned at the WTO and elsewhere.

If the food is of as high a quality, easier to produce, more readily available, and sold without delibertly hiding its origins- go for it. Unfortunately no-one will touch it with a bargepole.

Time to educate the media?

brianthebard

Given how poor legislation on labelling is already, why give manufactuers a chance to mess around with gm in the way they mess around with words like "Irish smoked salmon"? Also you didn't address the monsanto copyrighting issue, at the very least don't you think this needs to be overturned somehow before gm crops can be used globally? Otherwise we have farmers all over the world even more beholden to a monopoly chemicals company than they already are. Finally I think the jury is still out on whether gm is harmless or not. So far the majority of modification has been to create roundup resistant crops-we already know that too much pesticides on the surface of food can be bad for you, why should we believe that adding them to the very nature of a food be any better?

MCMLXXXIII

I saw this "documentary" once called "The Future of Food."

The only reason I put quotes around documentary is because it is only one-sided. However, it gives the story from the farmers' points of view, and makes Monsanto seem like it's going to bring down the world. Either way it is interesting.

I prefer foods that are unaltered, but by now it's really hard to avoid.

The_Conductor

Well- personally, while I believe that companies have a reasonable expectation for a return on their scientific research, that certain research areas should be considered "public good research" and the fruits of that research made available free of charge to all. There is actually a precedent for this in the legislation of several countries, and the USDA itself has sponsored joint research with research institutions under this heading.

I think Monsanto are incredibly mercantile and by rights, had they sat down and thought things through logically, should have realised that patenting gene sequences for staple foods is repugnant to most of the world (never mind genetically engineering crops so you could spray them with Roundup and other chemicals, purely as a convenience).

There are some very good research programmes continually introducing new cross breeds of crops- without introducing roundup resistance or other attributes that consumers might have issues with. Plants hybridise naturally in the wild the whole time- they can be helped along in the laboratory- but patenting the outcomes and imposing your will on other researchers and on consumers is something that needs to be seriously addressed.

Re: labelling- yes, there are big problems there. "Irish Smoked Salmon" aside, there has to be an equilibrium between what is a reasonable effort to accurately label a product without obsfusciating the origins of its ingredients, and the cost associated with information overload (and increased costs of production) for the end consumer.

Should the US be allowed to bully the EU as a trade tactic into accepting products that are so badly labelled that no-one has any real idea what they contain, at the same time, diluting the good will consumers have towards manufacturers who do make that effort to accurately portray their products to consumers? It would be a race to the bottom, and definitely not in anyone's interests (other than the mass producers who have no intention of telling you what they are stuffing down your throats).

In the current global market- consumers remember the scares- think of all the petfood that was withdrawn in March/April 07 because the corn in it was tainted with Melanin to artificially increase its apparent protein content. The babyfood in China and Hongkong which has killed 4 kids (to date) and has over 6000 hospitalised.

We need to know that our food is nutritious, secure and available. Delibertly hiding whats in products, or what the products really are, does not establish a good precedent.

taram

brianthebard wrote: »

Given how poor legislation on labelling is already, why give manufactuers a chance to mess around with gm in the way they mess around with words like "Irish smoked salmon"? Also you didn't address the monsanto copyrighting issue, at the very least don't you think this needs to be overturned somehow before gm crops can be used globally? Otherwise we have farmers all over the world even more beholden to a monopoly chemicals company than they already are. Finally I think the jury is still out on whether gm is harmless or not. So far the majority of modification has been to create roundup resistant crops-we already know that too much pesticides on the surface of food can be bad for you, why should we believe that adding them to the very nature of a food be any better?

I disagree. The majority of sold altered seed has been for roundup resistance, and that's because it makes Monsanto a tidy packet. The majority of plant types that are altered have been to introduce traits already found in plants to improve them. Roundup isn't added to the food, only the gene for resistance which does occur naturally, just not in the particular cash crop they want to sell in partnership with their chemical.

Personally I think if the EU decided in the morning to allow GM to be sold freely, only some plants that are hard/expensive to grow/affected badly by disease without chemicals would be affected. A small, small chunk of the market. Monsanto can't muscle in on what they don't own, and while they've got their fingers in all the pies in the US, they're unlikely to have modified seed for say Kerr Pink potato, resistant to our strain of potato blight.

brianthebard

taram wrote: »

I disagree. The majority of sold altered seed has been for roundup resistance, and that's because it makes Monsanto a tidy packet. The majority of plant types that are altered have been to introduce traits already found in plants to improve them. Roundup isn't added to the food, only the gene for resistance which does occur naturally, just not in the particular cash crop they want to sell in partnership with their chemical.

I didn't say it was.

Personally I think if the EU decided in the morning to allow GM to be sold freely, only some plants that are hard/expensive to grow/affected badly by disease without chemicals would be affected. A small, small chunk of the market. Monsanto can't muscle in on what they don't own, and while they've got their fingers in all the pies in the US, they're unlikely to have modified seed for say Kerr Pink potato, resistant to our strain of potato blight.

You'd be surprised just how many patents they have, maybe they don't have pinks, but they have an awful lot of non modified crops as well. And I think if EU did allow this they would go into overtime production of patented crops.

brianthebard

smccarrick wrote: »

Well- personally, while I believe that companies have a reasonable expectation for a return on their scientific research, that certain research areas should be considered "public good research" and the fruits of that research made available free of charge to all. There is actually a precedent for this in the legislation of several countries, and the USDA itself has sponsored joint research with research institutions under this heading.

I think Monsanto are incredibly mercantile and by rights, had they sat down and thought things through logically, should have realised that patenting gene sequences for staple foods is repugnant to most of the world (never mind genetically engineering crops so you could spray them with Roundup and other chemicals, purely as a convenience).

I cannot believe that a multinational company as a whole did not realise at some point that they were attempting to royally **** over the majority of the globes population, and must conclude that they realise the consequences and don’t care.

There are some very good research programmes continually introducing new cross breeds of crops- without introducing roundup resistance or other attributes that consumers might have issues with. Plants hybridise naturally in the wild the whole time- they can be helped along in the laboratory- but patenting the outcomes and imposing your will on other researchers and on consumers is something that needs to be seriously addressed.

Re: labelling- yes, there are big problems there. "Irish Smoked Salmon" aside, there has to be an equilibrium between what is a reasonable effort to accurately label a product without obsfusciating the origins of its ingredients, and the cost associated with information overload (and increased costs of production) for the end consumer.

Well labelling has a long way to go yet before it can be seen as credible. Only allowing ‘Irish’ to appear on products grown in Ireland, and not simply packaged here would be a start, and cost nothing. Many things need clear definitions-what is a superfood really for instance? I also think you are being overly sympathetic to the companies, they can absorb these costs if the alternative is losing custom-look at the way McDonalds dropped the super size after that movie. Companies will spend as little as possible to make as much profit as possible, and its up to consumers and governments and other bodies to ensure the basic level provided is good enough.

Should the US be allowed to bully the EU as a trade tactic into accepting products that are so badly labelled that no-one has any real idea what they contain, at the same time, diluting the good will consumers have towards manufacturers who do make that effort to accurately portray their products to consumers? It would be a race to the bottom, and definitely not in anyone's interests (other than the mass producers who have no intention of telling you what they are stuffing down your throats).

Agree completely.

In the current global market- consumers remember the scares- think of all the petfood that was withdrawn in March/April 07 because the corn in it was tainted with Melanin to artificially increase its apparent protein content. The babyfood in China and Hongkong which has killed 4 kids (to date) and has over 6000 hospitalised.

We need to know that our food is nutritious, secure and available. Delibertly hiding whats in products, or what the products really are, does not establish a good precedent.

agree again. When there are so many problems that can occur with ‘natural’ non gm food, doesn’t it make sense to clean up that aspect of agribusiness before moving onto something newer and more risky? There are so many things that need to be addressed, and many ways production could be increased, quality could be improved, that gm seems like the easy short term answer that will come back to bite us in the collective ass.