Monsanto's Harvest of Fear 517
Cognitive Dissident writes "Intellectual property thuggery is not restricted to the IT and entertainment industries. The May 2008 edition of Vanity Fair carries a major feature article on the mafiaa-like tactics of Monsanto in its pursuit of total domination of various facets of agribusiness. First in GM seeds with its 'Roundup Ready' crops designed to sell more of its Roundup herbicide, and more recently in milk production with rBGH designed to squeeze more milk out of individual cows, Monsanto has been resorting to increasingly over-the-top tactics to prevent what it sees as infringement or misrepresentation of its biotechnology. As with other forms of IP tyranny, the point is not really to help the public but to consolidate corporate power. Quotes: 'Some compare Monsanto's hard-line approach to Microsoft's zealous efforts to protect its software from pirates. At least with Microsoft the buyer of a program can use it over and over again. But farmers who buy Monsanto's seeds can't even do that.' and '"I don't know of a company that chooses to sue its own customer base," says Joseph Mendelson, of the Center for Food Safety. "It's a very bizarre business strategy." But it's one that Monsanto manages to get away with, because increasingly it's the dominant vendor in town.' Sound familiar?"
Pure Evil (Score:5, Interesting)
How could I possibly make such "raving mad" statements?
Monsanto truly is among the most evil group of people this planet has ever seen. Truly. There is a lot that goes on this little twirling ball that gives me reason to lose hope and be fearful of the future, but not many more then this company and their actions.
These people are the REAL LIFE Umbrella Corporation from Resident Evil. I don't say that to add hyperbole to my post either. They ARE. This company is messing around with the very code of life itself. We're talking genetics here. The field as a whole has promise, great promise for us all, when the individuals in it pursue the knowledge in a responsible way. NOTHING the Monsanto corporation does could be considered responsible from a scientific or social viewpoint.
Remember the Monarch Butterflies? This company pursued research out in the open, without any environmental safeguards, and killed a large portion of the Monarch Butterfly population in recent years.
This same company pursues it's genetic research not in a "pursuit-of-knowledge-at-all-cost","we are benefiting humanity", and a "nothing-could-go-wrong" approach. It is motivated purely by the pursuit of profit at the expense of all else.
For those not aware, Monsanto has been avidly continuing to research ways to ensure that crops will die and not reproduce. As I said before, these people mess with the very code of life, and are deliberately researching ways to END IT . To modify an organism to die and remove it's ability to reproduce is an incredibly serious action. One cannot understate this fact. To even discuss doing so requires an enormous responsibility and dedication towards the preservation of life, all life. There has to be an incredible purpose to doing this. An example might be getting rid of Dengue Fever, or the elimination of Malaria, etc. The discussions surrounding it need to involve the entire scientific community, as the ramifications of such an act, the ethical and moral implications, NEED to be discussed.
To do it for Profit? How is that not evil? How is that different from the medical experiments at Auschwitz or any of the other Nazi Concentration camps?
Read "The calorie man": see where this could lead (Score:1, Interesting)
Anyway, it's about a not so far off future when fossile fuels are depleted and genetically engineered plants are cultivated both for food and energy. And this close future is a true IP hell with gigantic bio-engineering companies always on the wake for unlicensed use of their grains.
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Interesting)
Monsanto and others have been pursuing this type of policy for years. The farmers get caught because the yields really are better and can't compete as well if they don't buy the patented products. Although I think Monsanto ought to be able to profit from their research, the tactics they use are questionable at best. The trouble is that if congress ever does seriously consider patent reform, they'll do it in a half assed manner that compounds rather than solved the problems.
Re:This ain't a charity (Score:5, Interesting)
They were brought to these farmers fields outside of their control.
It would be like having a huge server farm with various flavors of Linux and then walking in one day and having Microsoft "pop" up out of nowhere. Microsoft then charges up the road with the BSA and sues you for IP theft.
What makes it even harder for farmers is that there are no "logos" on the plants. Farmer Bob cannot walk through his fields and look down and say, "Awww Shit! Got Monsanto up and growing in the fields again. MA! Get the kids we got to pull them bastards up outa the ground before they get here".
How do you deal with intellectual property that has "legs"?
the pharmaceutical industry (Score:5, Interesting)
why?
see, in the field of morals and ethics, there is actually something more important than *gasp* profit. so your high holy moral indignation doesn't ring true, that anyone would not consider monsanto's search for profits a god-given right... how dare they!
its not like music. you can live without music. but you can't live without life saving drugs... and you can't live without food
so i agree with you that monsanto deserves some reward for its efforts. but don't you think there is a difference between a modest protection of a few years, versus a greedy ip grab supported by legions of lawyers that extends far beyond a logical concept of financial gain?
however, what is the motivation then to say make rice with vitamin a, or wheat that grows in the desert?
balance: you harness greed in order to serve mankind. you create ip to create incentive to reward companies. but that shit gets out of hand. it metastisizes, corporate greed takes on a life of its own, and then it deserves a smackdown, to remind it that it serves us, we don't serve it
progress in the fields of technology exists to serve mankind. human society created the legal framework so that corporations serve us through progress. but if corporations begin to think that the pursuit of the almighty buck eclipses all else, such as with the idiocy ip law has become, it deserves to be broken. and don't worry about it: legions of lawyers have proven to be ineffective against music hungry teenagers. how effective do you think they will be against literally hungry people?
Re: rBGH and more... (Score:3, Interesting)
So if anyone could explain to me what the problem is, I would highly appreciate it.
However, what bothers me most about Monsanto, is that they are killing the concept of genetically engineered crops (which is sure to become a necessity as the Earth's population grows), by doing exactly the kind of genetic engineering that is risky, dangerous, and epitomizes the idea of taking the easy way out.
They make you pay to remove their escaped plants f (Score:5, Interesting)
An important financial aspect that is very much overlooked with this Monasanto thug, is the thousands of dollars Monsanto expects famrers to pay when say a neighbouring field contaminates the fields of another farmer. Monsanto demands the contaminated farmer pay for the removal of these GM plants, even though the farmer is not at fault for these invading plants into his own land.
How is this for an equivalent example?: What company forceably installs it's software onto your computer network and then demands you pay to remove it form all areas of that same network or they will sue you. They don't even tell you were all portions of the software is located in your network but if they inspect, without warrant, and find any remaining portions they will sue you.
Re:This ain't a charity (Score:5, Interesting)
They also take a sort of "first one's free" approach to get people hooked. Through cheap rates or donated seed, they put whatever pressure or enticement or deceit they can to get people to the point where they no longer have stocks of unpatented seeds to grow. When that happens, you will see a gross change in policy because Monsanto will have patents on the food supply.
Aside from the ethics of patenting food, there are significant dangers to all of us. The spread of engineered crops removes the choice from the rest of us as we can no longer secure a "pure" alternative. Furthermore, Monsanto's aggresive pushing of its patented varieties brings about a homogenity of crops to a degree we've never seen before. Whilst the food supply is already more uniform than it used to be, the genetically identical crops being spread world wide by Monsanto go even further. Google for the Irish Potato Famine if you want a reminder of the dangers of putting all our eggs in one basket. Only in this scenario, it's world wide. And then there is the wider context to consider about what this technology actually offers us. For example, Monsanto's "Golden Rice" which is enriched with Vitamin A to help those who are deficient in it in the third world areas where they grow rice. The problem being that they are deficient only relatively recently since international agriculture business has forced them to only grow rice for commercial reasons. The Golden Rice looks like a good thing from a narrow perspective, consider the larger context and you realise it's comiong from the same root as what causes the problem in the first place. And all the issues about bio-diversity, establishment of monopoly, ethics of patenting food still stand.
Monsanto need to be stopped for all our sakes and I would love to do it.
Re:the pharmaceutical industry (Score:3, Interesting)
First, a disagreement. People can subsist without music but they should not have to do without culture--art and music are among things that make life worth living. This is a little like saying, yeah, you don't NEED tasty food to survive, so we're going to put really draconian restrictions on "flavor."
Second, an agreement...the thing to do is definately to harness the power of greed to serve everyone. I *WANT* to pay the copyright holders for the music and TV shows I like, but why don't they have any way for me to get at them? I circumvent their controls because their controls are unreasonable. Likewise with Monsanto corn...their controls are unreasonable and unenforceable. They need to find another business model instead of screwing people over.
Re:patent disregard of facts (Score:5, Interesting)
Throw in the old fashioned monopoly building of a megacorp, and you have viral licensing of life.
Step 1. Develop Roundup weed killer.
Step 2. Develop a seed that is resistant to roundup.
Step 3,4,5,6. Buy over 80% of seed companies so customers have almost no choice.
Step 7. Partner with large agri-businesses who buy up farms so they earn record profits while family farms can't stay profitable...
... I could keep going. Anyone who reads up on it, even if they're not at all into conspiracies, realizes this is wrong and leads to tight control of the world's food suply.
Re: rBGH and more... (Score:2, Interesting)
> hormone? It's not like a pesticide - it doesn't get concentrated up in the food chain. Hormones
> are species-specific, and their effects are strictly physiological.
Here in France we are just having a big trial about people who extracted growth hormone from human cadavers (if I understand correctly, this was the "normal" way to do this at that time), and injected them into children with growth problems : children grew, but several died from Creutzfeld-Jakob disease as the result...
If only we could let cows eat grass, chicken wheat, and communist babies !
(just joking)
uh... what? (Score:3, Interesting)
me: "there should be rational limitations on the ip legal framework"
you: "how dare you empty the cities and make us all live on farm collectives! communism is evil!!!eleventy"
whu?
kind of like:
me: "perhaps gays should be allowed to marry"
you: "why are you for bestial necrophilic pedophilia!"
como?!
its called hysteria, fear. you have it. please read what i actually said: ip law is not some ayn rand natural right. it was created by society, an artificial legal construct that allows ip holders to extract financial gain for their research or creativity. it makes sense for sicety to have LIMITS on this artificial construct it created
and then you blather on about slavery in response. what a spastic twit
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Interesting)
That said,
Re: rBGH and more... (Score:5, Interesting)
As for milk and rBGH it is not the BST that is the main concern but IGF-1, insulin growth factor-1. This is naturally occuring in the human and cow body. High levels of IGF1 has been linked to increased chances of certain types of cancer and mabye the increased chance of giving births to twins. Science has not shown in dietary intake of IGF-1 will increase this amount.
Injecting cows with rBGH may increases the amount of IGF-1 found in milk, some studies have shown an increase but all of the studies have shown that it amount falls within the normal amounts. There is no scientific test that can tell you if the milk you are drinking comes from rBBGH injected cows or not. FYI you would have to drink around 95 quarts of milk, any kind, to equal the amount IGF-1 the average human body produces in day.
Now the reason most countries have banned rBGH has not been IGF-1 but because of a udder infection called mastitis. While this is likly to effect all types of cows it can be more common in rBGH cows because they are milked more often. mastitis prevention is mainly done, in the US, by testing at the farms, testing at the plants and pasturization.
For the US that can work since we generally want to consider all milk and dairy products, (cheese, yogurt,etc) to be dead. We freeze and cool them if there is any type of life(mold) we will toss them. In other parts of the world that is not the case and mastitis can be a problem. FYI test to check for the presence of mastitis are cheap and can be purchased at various lifestock stores on even on the internet.
However with that all said, cows milk is probably one of the worst things you can drink as an adult, it is full of sugar and other things needed by children not adults. As an adult you are better off switching to goat milk or using cow milk just for the cream, cheeses or yogurts.
Get sued for talking bad about them (Score:5, Interesting)
Some reporters at fox news found strong evidence that the Monsanto BGH hormone to make cow's produce more milk was pushed through too quickly. They tried to report on it, Monsanto threatened to sue. Fox pulled the report before the air and set about having their reporters change the story. Finally the reporters were told to lie outright, they refused. Hilarity followed with the courts ruling that corporate media has no legal obligation to tell the truth.
There has been ongoing lawsuit coverage [foxbghsuit.com] and other related issues.
Monsanto reminds me of the Ag firm in the Clooney movie Michael Clayton .
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Pure Evil (Score:5, Interesting)
And of course corn pollen conveniently stays on corn plants, and never blows through the air to land milkweed.
Does it do so often enough to present a hazard to monarchs? I don't know. But your contention that it "doesn't even make ecological sense" is unwarranted.
A "safety" protocol that threatens to wipe out neighboring crops. Here I am growing organic corn, saving seed, doing things the wholesome old-fashioned way, when a bunch of Terminator pollen blows from your field across mine. Next season all those seeds I saved, don't sprout.
Yeah, that's safety.
GM crops should simply not be grown in the open air. You want to grow 'em, fine, so long as you manage to keep the pollen contained under biohazard protocols in a greenhouse
Completely different. Selective breeding does not introduce new information into a species' genome.
And I'll note that all that selective breeding took place without patents.
The mendacity of Monsanto, et. al. is evident from their differing stories about how unique GM crops are. When safety concerns come up, it's "hey, this is just corn! Nothing special, shouldn't even be specially labeled. We produced it by means not significantly different than the selective breeding used for all of history."
But when it's time to apply for patents, it's "this is our invention! Nothing like it has ever existed before! It it so unique and precious that the federal government should use force to prevent anyone else from using it without our permission!"
Great idea. Best way to do that is to let developing nations grow native crops for local consumption. The solution to hunger requires food sovereignty [foodfirst.org], not patented GM crops of questionable safety grown for the profit of agribusiness giants.
Re:Why deny rBST usage? (Score:1, Interesting)
You have any, you know, like sources for that? Certainly seems counter-intuitive to me, considering rBST is not the naturally occurring form of "bovine somatotropin" (hence the r in front of rBST, you know, recombinant), but rather an engineered one?
Also, why exactly is Monsanto the only one licensed to manufacture and sell rBST in the US?
You know, there has also been reports that rBST containing milk may have an effect on early puberty in females as well as menstrual problems.
Certainly seems like caution and much more research is needed to me.
Not everything should be profitable (Score:3, Interesting)
Society determines what is reasonable for a party to profit off, and what is not reasonable. For example, society determined it should be illegal for people to "negotiate" additional profit into the price of ice when the power goes out for an extended period of time.
Farmers have always paid once for crop seed. That's the way the transaction worked since the beginning of time. Monsanto and other agribusiness giants are trying to change the terms of the business. Well... sorry. We're happy with the terms of business exactly as it was for thousands of years. If Monsanto isn't happy with the way the business of selling seeds was done for thousands of years, Monsanto needs to find another business. We're more than capable of funding U. S. Government research on crops at Universities, etc that has no patent issues that will be available to all.
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Interesting)
As to the case of suing over labeling I have to disagree with your statement
I used to be a huge fan of the Organic Foods movement because it meant that farmers received more money for their goods. I have never read a reputable article that shows organic to be any healthier for the consumer or the environment, but until recently farmers were getting screwed when they sold their goods so I thought it was a good idea because it was essentially those with too much money that were paying the Organic Tax. The problem is that now people are convinced that it is superior to normally produced food and people who cannot afford the extra money are forced to purchase organic either out of fear, lack of options, or peer pressure (applied by not only friends but half of the talking heads on TV)
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Interesting)
The guy who buys Monsanto's seeds and signs a no reseeding contract gave up some of his rights in the contract. He didn't give up his neighbor's rights, as those aren't his rights to give up.
The farmers who don't buy patented GM seeds aren't trespassing onto the land of those who do and stealing pollen. The wind (yes, wind -- corn is self-pollinating or wind-pollinated as often as pollinated by bees) or bees do that naturally. The unnatural pollen many farmers consider dangerous crud actually invades non-GM farms and perverts their botanically hybridized crops. For that, should Monsanto be the plaintiff or the defendant?
If Monsanto is so concerned about their unnatural crops cross-pollinating other corn and beans, then they should GM it to keep it from doing that. It's not the fault of people trying to avoid it that the wind blows.
That's like running over a kid in a crosswalk while the walk sign is lit and suing the kid for being there because he dented your car. The kid's doing what he's supposed to do, you're infringing on his space, and then you blame him. That's what Monsanto is doing.
What I've learned (Score:5, Interesting)
I heard a lot about the things Monsanto was doing, and growing up on a small farm(well under 2k acres) I was pretty upset. The next time I was back home to talk with my dad I asked him what he thought of the nasty things they did. He usually doesn't hesitate to criticize big entities that are hurting farmers like himself, so I expected an ear full. Much to my surprise the earful I got was about all the people protesting against companies like Monsanto on the grounds of them hurting small farmers. He reminded me that if farmers couldn't make more money with Monsanto's seeds they wouldn't use them. My mind immediately started forming all the usual rebuttals like massive input costs and price control and stopped when I remembered that guys farming small farms are just as smart as me. It reminded me the reason I brought the whole thing up with my dad was to get a more informed opinion. Intelligent farmers, with excellent business skills and a more complete understanding of the economics of farming make decisions that are good for their bottom line. For better or worse, Monsanto's round-up ready varieties are a very profitable product for farmers, large and small alike. There are other reasons to criticize Monsanto, but crushing small farms isn't one of them.
Re:Sigh (Score:2, Interesting)
That's like running over a kid in a crosswalk while the walk sign is lit and suing the kid for being there because he dented your car. The kid's doing what he's supposed to do, you're infringing on his space, and then you blame him. That's what Monsanto is doing.
This would be like Monsanto researching, patenting, and producing self-replicating shape-shifter robots, many of which sneak into factories and slip into the output pile and form themselves into near-exact copies of the factories' output, destroying one widget for each widget they copy. Then, the factory owners, who often retain some of the output for e.g. spare parts, notice they actually have self-replicating robots among their widgets. They discover the capabilities and then use their reproductive capabilities to make widgets, which they then sell for profit.
Relevant similaries captured by my analogy:
-Monsanto has spent a lot of its resources on developing something genuinely useful, which it patents.
-Through carelessness and intentional spreading, these units trespass onto others' property and modify their output, which also regularly gets good and bad invaders.
-The factory owners normally exploit natural phenomena that affect their processes.
-Monanto's units replace those property owners' normal output, but with better functionality.
-Those property owners notice the better functionality, and that it clearly could not have come from anything they did, and exploit its greater functionality and reproductive capability to make more of them.
Inferences from analogy:
-Monsanto should compensate others for their loss of normal spare parts. (I said they should replace lost normal seed.)
-Monsanto should be forced to use better containment protocols.
-Factory owners (farmers) should not be allowed to use reproductive capabilities of Monsanto's self-replicators, as that would infringe on a well-deserved patent.
Re:Sigh (Score:3, Interesting)
Or if you resell the seed.
At a glance that seems fair, unless you are a corn seed producer who lives in corn country (you must) and one of your neighbors happens to plant Monsanto seed (hence potentially contaminating your seed crop).
The case I heard about (on CBC) some of the outlying crop of a seed farmer was "infected". Monsato claimed he could not sell the seed as it was IP infringement. How is this fair or right? This farmer would normally sell all his seed off however many 100 acres he had. He can't exactly control cross pollination. And even if he could, why should he have to spend the expense of trying to control pollen?
The best analogy I can think of is Microsoft coming along and inserting their copyrighted code into an open source project, then suing that project. Worse, it's like a virus they created that inserts the infringing code without any manual intervention. Only issue is that removing the infected portion from a living crop is a lot more costly than removing lines of code from a project.
If Monsanto is successful in these cases, then what is to stop them from getting greedy and subsidizing farming neighbors of "natural" seed producers. Heck, they could go as far as tossing some seed onto the bordering areas or the farm to make sure their crops are "infected" so they can start another profitable lawsuit.
Re:Sigh (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sigh (Score:3, Interesting)
I doubt they needed *those specific seeds* for a full replanting.
Do you know of a method for extracting only one type of seed from the harvest? DO you know how the farmer is supposed to know by looking at the harvested corn which corn seeds are contaminated by Monsanto? You probably don't and neither do the farmers. I live in a city that is still heavy in agriculture. I work with many farmers, and though I work with computers for them, they give me an earful about what is happening. Monsanto has sued farmers whose crops have been contaminated by Monsanto seeds. Some of the farmers around here have had to get out of those markets, as they can not afford the risk or insurance of defending against a potential Monsanto attack. It has also ruined some fields that were growing *natural* crops, as the cross pollination corrupted the seeds of the natural crops.
So, all things aside, there is plenty of fiscal damage going on to many others, but not Monsanto. They are not being held liable for the damages they have caused.
InnerWeb
Re:Pure Evil (Score:3, Interesting)
You can say what you want to about me in regards to my passion and the use of violence. That is fair comment. I stick to that statement for many reasons, and I perfectly understand how freethinking individuals would be offended and concerned by it. The seriousness of my comments, coupled with the severity of my recommendations, guaranteed my troll modification which is most likely fair. That being said, it does not make what I said factually incorrect or any less insightful into the activities of Monsanto.
As for my passionate hatred of modern food science getting in the way of the "facts", that is a little off.
I never indicated that I hated modern food science. I specifically said that genetic engineering of food holds great promise for us all. It could possibly provide solutions to benefit humanity. I am not opposed to that.
What I am opposed to, which is in no way limited to just the field of genetic engineering of food crops, is "bad" science. You will not change my beliefs, which is shared by countless others (perhaps millions at this point), that Monsanto conducts it's research in a reckless fashion. They seemingly have no regard for the possibilities of their research "leaving the lab".
I have a problem with anyone that believes that they can conduct genetic research in anything but sealed laboratory conditions. Furthermore, when experimenting with ways to ensure that "life" cannot propagate, how can it NOT be prudent to do so in controlled conditions? Especially with plants. From what I have read before they have used retro-viruses to introduce new genetic material, in completely open and uncontrolled conditions. We are talking about conditions in which genetic material can spread out in the open. Granted, I am not in the biotech industry, but this would seem to be an area for concern, and individuals much more educated and informed them myself have written about just this fact.
So I am not opposed to the field of research itself, but the manner in which Monsanto is conducting it's research.
I also wrote about Dengue Fever and Malaria. I did not actually indicate whether or not I support that. I empathize with the families and the children that have suffered such horrible losses. I only believe that research should be conducted to determine the ecological ramifications of the project. The scientific community as a whole is weighing in on that, and they must decide based on the evidence if proceeding with their plans to sterilize the mosquitoes is wise. They are at least discussing it.
Monsanto researched, and it is continuing to do so, ways to ensure that their "products" cannot survive in the wild. This is not a safety measure. This is a DIRECT method of protecting intellectual property rights. As I stated before, their pursuit of this "knowledge" has been reckless with no thoughts given to anything but the profit margins of their company. It is this that makes them "evil" and a threat to all life on Earth. Now, I know that you want to say that is a little overboard. "All life on Earth" is just histrionics. Do you really understand, completely, how genetic engineering works? Do you think THEY do? What about the recent post of sound waves destroying rockets? That was a situation in where a completely unexpected variable "popped" up out of nowhere. Those engineers now have to deal with that and figure out how to move forward and account for this new data. Where are the hidden pitfalls in Monsanto's research? What might "pop up" in the future? Will it make a difference that their research is conducted with practically no safety and their products are so widely spread across the planet? Try looking into the history of the company and their other products and see if that has happened to them before, and what they did concerning it.