I'm sure this guy is an evil tool head but it's hard to defend raw milk. Seriously.
― Jeff, Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:11 (twelve years ago) link
I'm trying to be careful with what I post to this thread, because for whatever reason the anti-Monsanto sentiment is already at fever pitch right now; countless FB posts with a lot of false information (Monsanto owns Blackwater), old information or hyperbole (whole foods)
But cracking down on the Amish with armed raids for selling their own milk seems a little extreme?
― Milton Parker, Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:17 (twelve years ago) link
Actually I'll back down on this one a bit, reading up on the raw milk craze of the last ten years. I don't suspect these kinds of raids as base acts of removing the competition, but if they really are pulling guns on the Amish, that does seem like an overreaction
― Milton Parker, Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:37 (twelve years ago) link
True, agree. Just ask them nicely to hand it over.
― Jeff, Sunday, 5 February 2012 23:48 (twelve years ago) link
my 4-5 facebook friends who occasionally post about chemtrails are all about the Mansato hate right now
― Big Mr. Guess U.S.A. Champion (crüt), Thursday, 1 March 2012 08:03 (twelve years ago) link
also Monsanto
― Big Mr. Guess U.S.A. Champion (crüt), Thursday, 1 March 2012 08:05 (twelve years ago) link
Gus Mansanto
― I have one thing to say: "Roxanne Shanté" (Stevie D(eux)), Thursday, 1 March 2012 14:13 (twelve years ago) link
http://naturalsociety.com/monsanto-bee-collapse-buys-bee-research-firm/#ixzz1sUCsUIfh
Monsanto, the massive biotechnology company being blamed for contributing to the dwindling bee population, has bought up one of the leading bee collapse research organizations. Recently banned from Poland with one of the primary reasons being that the company’s genetically modified corn may be devastating the dying bee population, it is evident that Monsanto is under serious fire for their role in the downfall of the vital insects. It is therefore quite apparent why Monsanto bought one of the largest bee research firms on the planet.
― Milton Parker, Monday, 23 April 2012 21:57 (twelve years ago) link
The most recent Harvard study linked Bee Colony Collapse Disorder to imidacloprid - a pesticide. Not corn or corn syrup. The pesticide can be transmitted via corn syrup or pollen the report said. Nothing to do with genetically modified corn. This story got changed somewhat to "Pesticide-laden corn syrup lead to CCD" which not what the study demonstrated.
I don't know of a credible report that links CCD to genetically modified corn. Anyone?
― everything, Monday, 23 April 2012 22:37 (twelve years ago) link
By the way, when I said "this got changed somewhat" I mean some websites who report on environmental issues reported it that way and it got passed around Facebook etc like that.
― everything, Monday, 23 April 2012 22:39 (twelve years ago) link
what is the deal with the "Monsanto Protection Act"? Seeing this phrase on facebook, but
http://www.travelerstoday.com/articles/5497/20130327/monsanto-protection-act-snuck-through-passage-congress.htm
http://www.ibtimes.com/monsanto-protection-act-5-terriying-things-know-about-hr-933-provision-1156079#
SEC. 735. In the event that a determination of non-regulatedstatus made pursuant to section 411 of the Plant Protection Actis or has been invalidated or vacated, the Secretary of Agricultureshall, notwithstanding any other provision of law, upon requestby a farmer, grower, farm operator, or producer, immediately granttemporary permit(s) or temporary deregulation in part, subject tonecessary and appropriate conditions consistent with section 411(a)or 412(c) of the Plant Protection Act, which interim conditionsshall authorize the movement, introduction, continued cultivation,commercialization and other specifically enumerated activities andrequirements, including measures designed to mitigate or minimizepotential adverse environmental effects, if any, relevant to theSecretary’s evaluation of the petition for non-regulated status, whileensuring that growers or other users are able to move, plant,cultivate, introduce into commerce and carry out other authorizedactivities in a timely manner: Provided, That all such conditionsshall be applicable only for the interim period necessary for theSecretary to complete any required analyses or consultations relatedto the petition for non-regulated status: Provided further, Thatnothing in this section shall be construed as limiting the Secretary’sauthority under section 411, 412 and 414 of the Plant ProtectionAct.
― how's life, Wednesday, 27 March 2013 19:50 (eleven years ago) link
what are barack obama's flaws?
― THIZZ VAN LEER @_@ (lpz), Thursday, 28 March 2013 04:47 (eleven years ago) link
he's so perfect that he intimidates everyone else
― your holiness, we have an official energy drink (Z S), Thursday, 28 March 2013 23:20 (eleven years ago) link
it's possible that he cares TOO much. also, sometimes he may be a little too good at doing things, which can discourage those around him who feel that they cannot "keep up". sometimes, arguably, he works too hard - again, intimidating his co-workers.
― your holiness, we have an official energy drink (Z S), Thursday, 28 March 2013 23:22 (eleven years ago) link
I can't form a rational opinion about this issue because I find the anti-GMO crowd to be obscenely obnoxious
― Heyman (crüt), Thursday, 28 March 2013 23:36 (eleven years ago) link
yeah there's something about the GMO panic crowd that seems just like two notches more sane than the anti-vaccine crowd (and there's obvious overlap) and that prejudices me. I'm mistrustful of monsanto, but I also feel kind of like "Ok, make a case for me WHY it would be dangerous to take a gene from one species and put it in a different species." Like "we don't know all the potential effects" isn't a good enough argument. I have no fucking idea what will happen if I mix my dish soap with some tomato juice, baking soda and pepto bismol and put it in the microwave for 30 seconds, but that doesn't mean I have a good reason to believe it would be dangerous.
― i've a cozy little flat in what is known as old man hat (Hurting 2), Friday, 29 March 2013 00:54 (eleven years ago) link
p sure that the reason monsanto is bad has more to do with hugeness.
big farming:gmo panic::big pharma:vaccine panic
― well if it isn't old 11 cameras simon (gbx), Friday, 29 March 2013 00:55 (eleven years ago) link
yeah I am on board with the antitrust and IP concerns, but the "Monsanto Protection Act" seems to be more about food safety fears that don't strike me as warranted.
I found this:
http://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2013/03/28/monsanto-protection-act-anti-gmo-conspiracy-theorists-lose-it-over-minor-deregulation/
very sorry for linking to anything called "skeptical libertarian" but it's the first site I've found that actually gets into the details of what the legislation actually does, and their analysis mostly sounds convincing
― i've a cozy little flat in what is known as old man hat (Hurting 2), Friday, 29 March 2013 01:05 (eleven years ago) link
― Heyman (crüt), Thursday, March 28, 2013 11:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
otm, otm for everything tbh
― mister borges (darraghmac), Friday, 29 March 2013 01:08 (eleven years ago) link
just wanted to belatedly respond to the above post
― everything, Monday, April 23, 2012 10:37 PM (11 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
If it wasn't clear, I was not trying to link CCD directly to genetically modified corn. Of course, use of imidacloprid has increased dramatically with the global marketing of Monsanto's Roundup + Roundup Ready GMO product chain over the last ~15 years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/science/earth/soaring-bee-deaths-in-2012-sound-alarm-on-malady.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
The European Union has proposed to ban their use on crops frequented by bees. Some researchers have concluded that neonicotinoids caused extensive die-offs in Germany and France.
Neonicotinoids are hardly the beekeepers’ only concern. Herbicide use has grown as farmers have adopted crop varieties, from corn to sunflowers, that are genetically modified to survive spraying with weedkillers. Experts say some fungicides have been laced with regulators that keep insects from maturing, a problem some beekeepers have reported.
Eric Mussen, an apiculturist at the University of California, Davis, said analysts had documented about 150 chemical residues in pollen and wax gathered from beehives.
“Where do you start?” Dr. Mussen said. “When you have all these chemicals at a sublethal level, how do they react with each other? What are the consequences?”
Experts say nobody knows. But Mr. Adee, who said he had long scorned environmentalists’ hand-wringing about such issues, said he was starting to wonder whether they had a point.
Of the “environmentalist” label, Mr. Adee said: “I would have been insulted if you had called me that a few years ago. But what you would have called extreme — a light comes on, and you think, ‘These guys really have something. Maybe they were just ahead of the bell curve.’”
― Milton Parker, Friday, 29 March 2013 18:28 (eleven years ago) link
Of course, use of imidacloprid has increased dramatically with the global marketing of Monsanto's Roundup + Roundup Ready GMO product chain over the last ~15 years.
I had to read a few articles to double-check, but you're talking about a seed treatment as a pesticide and a seed product that has resistance to a herbicide. The two may have both become popular in the same timeframe, but they're not otherwise related?
― ☠ ☃ ☠ (mh), Friday, 29 March 2013 18:39 (eleven years ago) link
Hurting 2, that article you linked referred to "GMO expert Gregory Conko." Google tells me that Conko is better known as a right-wing thinktank guy who writes predictable articles
Gregory Conko is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC.Henry I. Miller, a physician and fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, was the founding director of the FDA's Office of Biotechnology.
― curmudgeon, Friday, 29 March 2013 18:53 (eleven years ago) link
they became popular in the same timeframe because they are being marketed by Monsanto as an integrated line of products
Roundup = their herbicide, patented in the 70'sRoundup Ready = their line of GM seeds which somehow does not die when you spray Roundup on it, 1996
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate#Monsanto.27s_Roundup
if a company is good at making poison, and at making food, why not combine those two into one irresistible product?
― Milton Parker, Friday, 29 March 2013 18:57 (eleven years ago) link
Milton, imidacloprid is an insecticide and Roundup (glyphosate) is an herbicide
― ☠ ☃ ☠ (mh), Friday, 29 March 2013 18:58 (eleven years ago) link
apologies for my conflation, I hear your point clearly now. Admittedly a bit emotional after reading that ny times article.
imidacloprid is apparently not Monsanto, it is Bayer?
― Milton Parker, Friday, 29 March 2013 19:11 (eleven years ago) link
that changes everything. I love asprin.
mon petit santo
― buzza, Friday, 29 March 2013 19:13 (eleven years ago) link
x-post
so we have the published anti-GMO cliches on one side and the conservative thinktank and libertarian ones on the other...
― curmudgeon, Saturday, 30 March 2013 18:51 (eleven years ago) link
ah dammit didn't think of searching for a thread with this title
― quite strangly im attracted to the lass (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 30 March 2013 18:54 (eleven years ago) link
When it became law that corporations could patent organisms, we saw one of the most breathtaking power grabs ever devised. The difficulty with putting all this power to fuck with the foundations of life on earth into the hands of mega corporations is that mega corporations are greedy, short-sighted, profit-driven entitities which will predictably act to fuck over everyone on earth if it will enrich their corporate officers and shareholders and bury the competition. If the Chief Executive Lizard of Monsanto (or Bayer) could with impugnity become the new Pharoah, it would not blink twice before it reached for that crown and scepter.
― Aimless, Saturday, 30 March 2013 19:01 (eleven years ago) link
http://www.monsanto.com/investors/Pages/stock-performance.aspx
― Milton Parker, Saturday, 30 March 2013 19:42 (eleven years ago) link
Yeah this "Monsanto Protection Act" thing I'm like 90% sure after reading it that it's pretty minor. It basically prevents federal courts from IMMEDIATELY, during an interim period, halting the use/planting/sale of GMO foods in the event of some kind of adverse finding. But federal courts are not typically the avenue by which food safety is regulated anyway -- in fact as far as I can tell the only reason this provision even exists is that certain GMO foods have been given a special regulated status that other foods don't have, so the provision only comes into play if a regulatory body decides to deregulate them and then a court tries to stop them from doing that.
In any case, this certainly does not in any way "protect Monsanto from litigation" as some people are claiming.
― i've a cozy little flat in what is known as old man hat (Hurting 2), Monday, 1 April 2013 16:04 (eleven years ago) link
Like, farmers can still sue Monsanto, individual consumers can still sue Monsanto, the Government can still sue Monsanto.
― i've a cozy little flat in what is known as old man hat (Hurting 2), Monday, 1 April 2013 16:05 (eleven years ago) link
but I also feel kind of like "Ok, make a case for me WHY it would be dangerous to take a gene from one species and put it in a different species." Like "we don't know all the potential effects" isn't a good enough argument.
fyi we have been cross-breeding for over 100 years, which is a form of genetic modification, except with traditional cross-breeding you introduce all of the traits/genes of one plant into another instead of just the aspects that you want (whereas w/ science lab-y genetic modification you can isolate just the traits/genes that you want to introduce into the new strain); in a lot of ways sciencey genetic modification can be *safer* than traditional cross-breeding, which the anti-GMO crowd seems to have v little qualms with. Like, at this point, iirc virtually everything has been genetically modified at some point due to cross-breeding.
All that is from my friend who is pursuing a PhD in genetics at Yale.
― Room 227 (Stevie D(eux)), Thursday, 4 April 2013 14:36 (eleven years ago) link
The difficulty with comparing traditional cross-breeding with genetic modification is that there is no traditional way to cross-breed cats with jellyfish, or corn with sequoias. Traditional cross-breeding is a method whereby humans select modifications that were theoretically possible without human intervention. This is not true of direct genetic modification as it is practised in the lab.
― Aimless, Thursday, 4 April 2013 15:38 (eleven years ago) link
If a jellyfish cat is wrong then I don't want to be right.
― Jeff, Thursday, 4 April 2013 15:39 (eleven years ago) link
― Aimless, Thursday, April 4, 2013 11:38 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
that's true, it's just that assuming that that = more likely to be dangerous seems like subscribing to some kind of Intelligent Design/frankenstein's monster/don't tamper with mother nature fallacy, as though nature had somehow put the jellyfish genes on this shelf and the corn jeans on this shelf because they should never be mixed. Again "we don't know what will happen" isn't a convincing argument to me -- why SHOULD something happen?
― --808 542137 (Hurting 2), Thursday, 4 April 2013 16:18 (eleven years ago) link
it's pretty obv to me that jellyfish corn should happen immediately
― relentless technosexuality (DJP), Thursday, 4 April 2013 16:46 (eleven years ago) link
this has been going on for a while now guys
http://images.wikia.com/capcomdatabase/images/9/97/CatDog_by_deadPxl.jpg
― k3vin k., Thursday, 4 April 2013 16:49 (eleven years ago) link
I agree that there is a chance that splicing genetic material from a jellyfish into a cat might result in a cat which is in some way superior for human purposes than could be achieved in any other way. This opens amazing possibilities. Where I start to have misgivings is when these exotic modifications are injected into the food supply by profit-driven corporations.
The profit motive is wholly driven by the desire for personal benefit. As Adam Smith noticed, this drive can be harnessed for public good. But he never made the mistake of thinking that the profit motive never results in public harm. He understood that strong laws and regulations must place limits around individual selfishness and canalize it into safe boundaries.
Most of the bitching and moaning I hear about how the public are idiots who don't understand how wonderful genetic modification is comes from interested parties with a profit motive. Your friend the PhD in genetics is an interested party just like any of us.
What I mostly hear the public demanding are extremely strong safeguards against unwanted side effects from sloppy, selfish, shortsighted or malicious use of genetic modification. Very few people are saying this new science must be strangled in its crib and buried at midnight with a stake through its heart. We, the public, get that this is powerful stuff. We're convinced. It was the scientists who convinced us. We've seen powerful new technologies unleashed with no regard for their consequences. This science strikes at the very core of life. That's heavy stuff in the hands of mere humans. We want to be protected from its potential excesses.
That position is extremely reasonable even if it makes genetic scientists gnaw at their fingers in exasperation. We don't exist for their pleasure. Fuck 'em. I want to go slow on this shit.
― Aimless, Thursday, 4 April 2013 16:55 (eleven years ago) link
jellyfish corn tho
― 乒乓, Thursday, 4 April 2013 16:57 (eleven years ago) link
it's sweet, nutritious, and stings the fuck out of your face
― relentless technosexuality (DJP), Thursday, 4 April 2013 16:59 (eleven years ago) link
lol at aimless deploying the interested party line the right's been using in their anti-science tirades for years. huger lol at his deploying their 'fuck scientists' line also.
― balls, Thursday, 4 April 2013 17:01 (eleven years ago) link
'of course scientists say global warming is occurring! that's how they get grant money!'
― balls, Thursday, 4 April 2013 17:02 (eleven years ago) link
most current PhD students are being driven by intellectual curiosity moreso than profit motive, given that research assistants don't make that much money
― relentless technosexuality (DJP), Thursday, 4 April 2013 17:02 (eleven years ago) link
"a cat which is in some way superior for human purposes"
trying to figure out what those may be. liek it could glow in the dark?
― s.clover, Thursday, 4 April 2013 17:04 (eleven years ago) link
"this corn has a real bite to it!"
― s.clover, Thursday, 4 April 2013 17:05 (eleven years ago) link
all decisions should be made by uninterested parties with no stake in the outcome btw. leads to v. thoughtful discussions.
― s.clover, Thursday, 4 April 2013 17:06 (eleven years ago) link
seriously dumbest anti-science thing i've read on ilx since josh in chicago argued that non-native species of mosquitos shouldn't be eradicated thru non-pesticide means cuz of 'nature'.
― balls, Thursday, 4 April 2013 17:06 (eleven years ago) link
it's fine, when mankind wipes itself from the face of this planet, nature will continue
― 乒乓, Thursday, 4 April 2013 17:07 (eleven years ago) link