so ridicule my anecdote and then dive to the lowest common denominator with learn how to cook, and give your anecdote ..hahahaha My grandfather was a world class chef..top in the world in his field for 45 years till they asked him to retire from competition. i have a trophy of his where they actually created a perfect image bust of him in gold plate and attached it to a wooden trophy. you talk to me of food..ha! He was the head pastry chef for the Ritz Carleton till he was 86 years old. he taught me a few things as a kid and i watched him when in me mum's kitchen.. I can duplicate his roast filet Mignon and gravy to a perfection.. The fact is thus…pad wan…food no longer is the same as it was a mere 40 years ago. you cannot buy food that was purchased when i was a kid. it tastes blander and has no aroma like it did when i was a kid…anyone my age will attest to this. bogus chefs mask rotten food with herbs and spices.. you are asking for similar in your anecdotal post.
So, your argument is that Monsanto knows what's best for every single one of us to eat? Because of Monsanto's patent push, they refuse to disclose what they've done and there is no regulation or testing of these products. There is nothing illogical or unprecedented about at least having people know what they're eating. How else could we possibly know whether there are health issues with various of these foods? We know of MANY issues with natural foods. Why is it so hard to believe that there could possibly be issues with Frankenfoods? We definitely saw "mongering" here in WA when we proposed labeling our food, so we (and scientists and medical professionals) could know what we're eating - so that we have a free market choice. Just the portion of the corporate movement that was improperly reported was over $10M! And, yes, the purpose of gene modification by Monsanto has been to develop food crops that can withstand higher doses of Monsanto herbicides. That's just a fact.
You do know that everything Monsanto does is reviewed and approved by the government? If you can accept this, then you can't have a problem with Monsanto...your problem is with your government...
Monsanto is taking part in a number of offensive activities. If you had asked whether there are people upset with Monsanto, I would have said that was absolutely true. Yes, if people decide not to buy GMO food, they will pay more. Free market systems work when people have choice. This is a case where corporations want to prevent choice - to force us to eat their product whether we want to or not. Now, the product MIGHT be safe, but suggesting we should have no choice is not how our system works. Monsanto has done genetic modification to make their strains impervious to their herbicides. Their argument is that you get higher yield, because you can spray the crops with higher doses of poison, thus reducing competition from weed species. For Monsanto, this ties farmers to their products and allows them to sell volumes of herbicide that would otherwise kill the crops they would be sprayed on! Monsanto has sued farmers for using seed from their crops. They have also sued farmers whose fields have been polluted by Monsanto pollen.. So, your "sterile" comment doesn't apply in those cases, for sure. We are getting more labeling of non-GMO products. But, even with the ubiquity of GMO products it's perfectly legitimate to ask that we know which products contain that kind of material. We require our food products to state what kinds of dye are used to make food products attractive. It's totally reasonable to know which products have been created in the corporate labs of chemical companies.
Our government reviews the synopses of some of the tests performed by the bio-chemical companies. Sorry - there is NO value added by the government doing that. It makes no more sense than having the government review the results of some of the tests performed by cigarette companies - the point being that this process is known to be worthless even in cases where the product is dangerously and obviously unhealthy.. Yes - we could go the regulation route. We could have required regimes of testing before products are released. We do that with new drugs, as one example. That would be good, but we can't even get labeling legislation right now. Do you really think we can get useful federal review? All that is being asked for here is to label the products, and even just that got WA and CA double digit millions being spent in opposition - opposition to just knowing which foods have these products. In Europe, the direction is to simply ban this stuff. Pitching labeling + free market as too draconian is ridiculous and unAmerican.
I'm not sure I understand your position here. Are you saying that the tobacco companies could be trusted to carefully test the long-term side-effects of their product before selling it, and to reject cigarettes as a product when they prove unhealthy? Are you seriously suggesting that when Monsanto inserts a gene into a crop to increase resistance to fungus or insects, they can be trusted to test it to make sure that remains healthy and nutritious as a result? My reading is that Monsanto is interested in profits, not public health. Or are you saying that the government is incompetent to do such tests? Or that the government is corrupt and is bribed to rubber-stamp unhealthy products? Or maybe I have it backwards, and you think government should perform more tests than they do?
It's the government's job to protect Americans...from terrorists to weird fruit and fish...no excuses. In this regards, we should not care about a Monsanto or any other supposed evil company because the government is chartered to do this. Again, your government makes decisions about cigarette companies and drugs and all other consumable items. If we don't like the decisions then it's a government problem...or we just need to accept the majority rule. I don't think anything the government does is great but government is all we have between us and all of these issues. If you can get 50 million Americans to boycott cigarettes or corn or whatever is bothering you, then maybe you can force something directly. But short of this our only hope is a higher performing government. See...this is the problem when we demand that government always protect us. Reality says that government won't always to a good job at this. Seems like every week we have an e coli or salmonella outbreak with a common food item. If you know that government can only provide 5% review, then this tells us that buyer beware is the real solution...or just take our chances...
No, I'm saying that having the government review the synopses of corporate studies does nothing. Our government reviewed the studies of tobacco companies, and how well did THAT work? And, that's all that our feds are doing in the case of GMO food. Monsanto has injected genetic material to make crops be able to better resist large quantities of its own herbicides. And, yes, that is purely for profit. I'm sure they don't want to be caught killing anyone, but there is no reason to trust Monsanto with the health of Americans without at least letting us know when we eat their for-proft experiments. Even if we managed to get the feds to be interested in testing GMO food I would want us to know when we're eating it. Our free market capitalism works when we have full knowledge, and that's our first line of defense.
Ah, OK, thanks. That makes sense to me. I'm aware that Monsanto's profit from making their crops resistant to megadoses of Roundup is very short term, since too many plants (most especially pigweed) are inadvertently being bred to also resist Roundup. And how the human metabolism reacts over time to food crops with that resistance isn't particularly important to Monsanto, and probably hasn't even been looked at. Of course, simply knowing that some of the ingredients in my ravioli might have been genetically modified to resist Roundup doesn't tell me a whole lot. I suppose I could avoid such foods with that knowledge, but I'd be avoiding them with just as much ignorance as consuming them. I think someone should probably test for side-effects of these foods other than Roundup resistance. Especially since non-GM foods are becoming hard to find worldwide.
See what? I'm advocating that food be labeled so that we can make up our own minds. And, boycotts are not the issue, either. The profit motive is strong enough in most cases. Corn growers will grow regular corn if people prefer that to Monsanto corn. We just need labeling. At that point, we are all able to be informed consumers. We can learn about safety concerns and decide what products to buy. I do believe it would be good to have analysis of our food supply independent of the suppliers. But, with labeling, science can at least have a chance at tracking sources of problems. It sounds like you're so fixating on ensuring the government NOT protect us that you're ready to ignore the most simple laws that will let us protect ourselves!
Ideally, we'd have testing somewhat like drug testing. After all, the plan is to feed everyone this stuff - a far larger number than the number of sick people who take any specific drug. But, with labeling we at least have a chance to track what happens, along with a way for individuals to react to anything that does get discovered.
Absolutely false, New GMO crops undergo extensive public safety testing under FDA, EPA, and USDA oversight, in most cases those studies are conducted by third party researchers who are directly accountable to two or more of those three agencies as well as the biotech provider, whos standards far exceed those of the federal agencies. Results from both in house and outsourced studies are submitted to the agencies for review (Just like pharmaceuticals) and approval to determine substantial equivalence to their conventional counterpart. Substantial equivalence means that the products must be comparable to the conventional counterpart and fall within the ranges established by that conventional counterpart for content such as fat, protein, amino acids, vitamins, minerals and starch. Furthermore, each and every new gmo crop human consumption extensive assays against databases of known allergens. None, absolutely none of this testing is required for non-gmo crops. Zero, Zip, Zilch, Nada. I'm ok with labeling if it will shut the uninformed idiots up but a GMO label is not going to tell you whether there are health issues with the product. What in the world would lead you to believe it would? Who is saying there could not possibly be issues? Not me. What Im saying is that the testing you claim does not exist is broad and extensive and heavily over-sighted and regulated to a degree far beyond natural products. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/collideascape/2013/05/30/why-gmo-myths-are-so-appealing-and-powerful/ Do ya like facts? Me too... Here's some. http://epa.gov/oppfead1/cb/csb_page/updates/2011/sales-usage06-07.html
The neccessity is that only the corporations have the money to fund research for mass producing food. If the common man can mass produce their crops that is fine, but stealing patents from the corporations who spend a lot of money to do so is unethical and criminal. Food is becoming a scarcity in the world, and the North American genetic technology from the corporations will solve that.
Food is already labeled and you do nothing about it? You can find 'corn' ingredients literally in thousands of food items, all of it from Monsanto, yet you keep buying? Cigarettes have told everyone how dangerous they are for decades now yet tens of millions still smoke. Your comment about informed consumers is a joke...people are so stupid to demand that government tell them what to do so that they don't need to read labels and/or understand food production...yet when government fails because it only does 5% monitoring then people cry like babies for more labeling as if all of a sudden they are going to start reading and researching...it's a joke!
Try using these metaphors with any but another human being... Willful space travel is another qualitative difference. Cooking, for crying out loud! You know how to cook. In my opinion, the measure of an idea is it's effect on the condition of man. If an idea results in a continual increase in the population of man, then it is a good idea. Anthropogenic genetic modification ought to be measured by the same standard. If it can be proven that a particular GMO will result in a reduction in human population, then it should be discarded, and vice-versa. This is creativity. This is a qualitiative difference in human activity with respect to any other known organism, and it should be embraced, in my opinion.
I just hope someone knows what they are doing with this GMO stuff. What are the checks and balances in the GMO process that ensure some group of people looking for a profit don't screw humanity over? Scientists make mistakes; we must be wary.
I hope so, but we got scientists making grass that gives off cyanide gas, they got gas additives only used in California in Midwest drinking water, and Viagra in penguins systems in Antarctica. Time to step it up.
It sounded familiar. Tifton 85, the grass on which these cattle were fed is NOT a genetically modified crop. Some grasses and sudans can spontaneously produce cyanide gas under certain environmental conditions, resulting in Prussic Acid poisoning. My grandparents lost a dairy herd to the poisoning in 1950. Here's some more information. http://beef.osu.edu/library/prussic.html
Thanks, I may have been misled in environmental geology. For some reason, I was under the impression that this grass poisoning was a result of human activity.
I won't BS you, Tifton 85 is the product of human manipulation/breeding and so forth, but the occurrence of Prussic Acid poisoning is a natural phenomenon brought on mostly by environmental stresses upon certain species of grasses.
