Biotech Company To Patent Pigs 285
Anonymous Swine writes "Monsanto, a US based multinational biotech company, is causing a stir by its plan to patent pig-breeding techniques including the claim on animals born by the techniques. 'Agricultural experts are scrambling to assess how these patents might affect the market, while consumer activists warn that if the company is granted pig-related patents, on top of its tight rein on key feed and food crops, its control over agriculture could be unprecedented. "We're afraid that Monsanto and other big companies are getting control of the world's genetic resources," said Christoph Then, a patent expert with Greenpeace in Germany. The patent applications, filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization, are broad in scope, and are expected to take several years and numerous rewrites before approval.'"
patented bacon (Score:4, Funny)
It better taste good
Re:patented bacon (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:patented bacon (Score:5, Informative)
Could we ask them to develop a pig with an uncloven hoof? It would be interesting to see kosher bacon on the shelf.
It's already available. The text literally translates as "cloven hoof that trods the ground", so they raise pigs on slightly elevated wood floors - their hooves never touch the ground, so they're kosher.
Cue all the "a priest and a rabbi" jokes ...
Re:patented bacon (Score:4, Funny)
A priest, a rabbi, and a terrorist walk into a bar.
BOOM!
What? You were expecting a joke?
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A priest, a rabbi and a pastor walk into a bar. The bartender says, "What, is this some kind of joke?"
Re:patented bacon (Score:5, Funny)
Okay.
A Priest, a Rabbi, and a Shaman all walk into a bar, only there's no Rabbi and no Shaman, and it's my eighth birthday party, and the Priest is molesting me.
And the priest is my Dad and he's not really a priest.
Re:patented bacon (Score:5, Funny)
A priest and a rabbi are walking down the street and they see some little kids playing frisbee in a park.
The priest says "Hey, let's go screw those little kids."
The rabbi says "Out of what, the frisbee?"
(You did say "ALL")
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kosher bacon made from beef is pretty good.
Monsanto's motto... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Do only evil."
So far they're on track.
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At least they have balls. I mean, file a patent for the oldest concept humankind has?
I wish they die a horrible death, but only because it wasn't my idea.
Re:Monsanto's motto... (Score:5, Funny)
They patented prostitution?
Re:Monsanto's motto... (Score:5, Funny)
No, it went like this:
1. Invent sex
2. Invent money
3. start charging for 1
4. Profit.
Yes, they figured out ????
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Re:Monsanto's motto... (Score:5, Funny)
You mean 4000 BC. The Earth is only 6000 years old.
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But that means he patented death even before God thought of it. And that means he existed even before God created Adam. The ways of the Lord are surely incomprehensible.
Re:Monsanto's motto... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do only evil
Seriously? Creating new sources of food is evil? Patents last for a few years or a couple decades (at most). New sources of food will continue to pay dividends for generations.
Since exactly when are pigs a new source of food? I seem to remember enjoying bacon my entire life.
If they can come up with a genuinely new source of food, rather than retreading an old one and trying to claim they own it, I might say there's a case to be made.
Re:Monsanto's motto... (Score:5, Interesting)
Do only evil
Seriously? Creating new sources of food is evil? Patents last for a few years or a couple decades (at most). New sources of food will continue to pay dividends for generations.
A small taste of monsanto's evilness.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/67878/the-future-of-food [hulu.com]
They are not just trying to create new food sources, they are trying to become the ONLY food source.
They are playing god, and they lack any conscience.
Monstanto developed a seed that makes the plant infertile. That can cross contaminate other plants. The goal of this seed? To make it so farmers cannot use seed from the previous harvest and they have to buy more seeds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#.22Terminator.22_seed_controversy [wikipedia.org]
Monsanto is quite possibly the most evil company on the planet.
Re:Monsanto's motto... (Score:5, Informative)
"taste" of monsanto's evilness? LOL
How about injecting dairy cows with chemical crap to maximize production, at the expense of the animal's health and resulting in milk that belongs in a "bio-hazard" container as opposed to a milk jug?
See "The Corporation": http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379225 [imdb.com]
Not to mention Monsanto using their muscle to prevent investigative journalists from actually reporting on the story. This company gives me the creeps.
Re:Monsanto's motto... (Score:5, Informative)
How about injecting dairy cows with chemical crap to maximize production, at the expense of the animal's health and resulting in milk that belongs in a "bio-hazard" container as opposed to a milk jug?
Meh, for that you can blame the US government. Neither, Canada, nor a good part of Europe, have approved those synthetic hormones you speak of for use in milk production. Pity your "regulators" don't actually regulate anything...
Re:Monsanto's motto... (Score:5, Insightful)
this is getting way out of hand (Score:2, Insightful)
pig breeding? (Score:4, Funny)
Time machine also patented (Score:5, Informative)
Did anyone else notice the 2005 date on the press release?
As far as I can tell, no patents have been granted from WO2004/003697 which seems to be the most likely application in question.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Figures. What do you call a principled lawyer? Unemployed.
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I think it's actually WO/2003/096799 [wipo.int]. That's the only one I could find that talked about breeding. It looks like they filed patent applications in the US, the EU, Australia, and Canada. The European application was abandoned, and the others are still pending (you can see them on the "National Phase" tab).
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Re:Time machine also patented (Score:5, Informative)
And Monsanto sold the swine business in 2007. http://stlouis.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2007/09/24/daily40.html [bizjournals.com]
patents and insanity (Score:3, Interesting)
"We're afraid that Monsanto and other big companies are getting control of the world's genetic resources," said Christoph Then, a patent expert with Greenpeace in Germany.
Isn't Greenpeace against GMO? Why do they care then? It's not like Monsanto suddenly owns all pigs ever born.....they can still keep using normal, everyday, unmodified pigs like they do now. In fact, they should be HAPPY, because Monsanto's patent protection will prevent other people from researching and developing GMO pigs based on these techniques. It gives me the feeling that Greenpeace just wants to protest anything. Kind of reminds me of the tea-party protesters, who mostly seemed like they were out there to have fun in the name of a protest.
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Re:patents and insanity (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with GMO crops, and more importantly, for anti-GMO people, is that they are simply better for the farmer. They can produce more for less work. Even when you take the licensing costs into account, it is more economical overall. Presumably, the anti-GMO people are against this push into new markets because it will do the same for pig farmers as it did for crop farmers. And that'll make it harder for anti-GMO people to continue their "organic" lifestyle.
After all, what could possibly go wrong?
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... because mono-cultures are SO much better than diversity ...
To the farmer they are, yes, because automating the tending of a crop that is all identical is much easier. If they could economically clone cattle and ensure they grow uniformly, they would because it would mean the slaughter floor could be completely automated.
... because they'll never abuse their monopoly license ...
They do indeed abuse their monopoly license.. but that is a measurable cost and it is in the monopolists interest to keep that cost at a level that their customer is willing to pay. So it really boils down to the choice: do you want to make less
Re:patents and insanity (Score:4, Insightful)
... because mono-cultures are SO much better than diversity ...
To the farmer they are, yes, because automating the tending of a crop that is all identical is much easier.
At least until this [slashdot.org] happens and then we have no more of whatever that crop was.
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Yeah, which is the ultimate danger of not actually having a bootstrapable food supply.
Imagine we could only get a computer running by copying the contents of RAM from one machine to another. You'd really fear power outages.
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... because mono-cultures are SO much better than diversity ...
To the farmer they are, yes, because automating the tending of a crop that is all identical is much easier. If they could economically clone cattle and ensure they grow uniformly, they would because it would mean the slaughter floor could be completely automated.
Until a disease slips through and wipes out the entire crop/herd in a single blow. Heck, non-GMO monoculture crops are a bad enough idea already. They do a horrible job of utilizing and restoring soil nutrients, requiring more and more fertilizers and support.
It's expensive and unsustainable.
Re:patents and insanity (Score:5, Interesting)
Farmers sprayed arsenic on their crops and fed their cows mashed up cow, pig and chicken carcasses to make them 5% more productive.
So probably best not to put *to* much stock in what "farmers" (huge agri-corps run by paid employees - old school farmers are thin and few in between these days) think is best, because it might just wind up killing you.
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... because mono-cultures are SO much better than diversity ...
No one said that. You did.
... because they'll never abuse their monopoly license ...
The RIAA does all the time. Does that reflect upon the artistic merit of a band? Monsanto abuses patents, what does that have to do with anything besides act as a red herring?
... because it's easy to keep GMOs from contaminating non-GMOs (crops/animals) ...
Not yet. That's the beauty of it, there's no reason why something can't be avoided. There are still bugs to work out, yes, and those present unique issues, but has there ever been a technology that was absolutely perfected from the get-go?
... because selective breeding is such a radical and new idea ...
And it may soon be archaic. We can do a lot more a lot faster.
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Perhaps you don't get this, but everything is what it is because of genetics. A Red Delicious apple is sweeter than a wild apple for one reason alone: genetics. You control that and we could massively increase what land is usable for farmland and can cut back on a shitload of resources. What could possibly go wrong if we use GMOs? Not as much as what could go wrong if we don't.
I'm glad that you picked Red Delicious apples as an example as it shows all that is wrong with todays commercial farming industry.
I
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I agree. Patents are evil. So is greed. If only we could devise a market system that abolishes both. Honestly, I am surprised no one thought of it like 150 years ago.
From each according to ones abilities and to each according to their needs.
Clueless insanity drives MindSpeak.... (Score:2, Insightful)
All of your arguments are valid and applicable to agriculture and Monsanto...but not effective when compared to patents on DNA, Genes, and genetics in an over-broad approach that Corp.s (and specifically, Monsanto) are trying to exploit, with grave consequences.
Just search google, wikipedia, or your favorite reference source for 'DNA patents", Genome patents', or 'Gene patents' for a scary look into our future.
You should be scared by the implications.
Do your own research, just keep an open mind.
Follow the t
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Seriously? Always?
They are more economical until they have locked in their market, and then they are considerably less economical. Which is obviously the point.
Re:patents and insanity (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the anti-GMO crowd is pretty simple in their thinking. They'll rave about organic crops that rely heavily on tillage techniques which promote oxidation of soil organic matter, breakdown of soil structure, and other adverse effects, but condemn GMOs like Round-Up Ready crops that enable zero-tillage systems that preserve soil organic matter, moisture, and structure.
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What pisses me off is that there is even a divide between 'organic' and GMOs. Organic is a cultivation method. GMOs are a type of plant. They're two entirely different things. And yet, there is this luddite philosophy that whatever is natural (whatever the hell natural is supposed to mean) is somehow better and more wholesome and holistic or whatever bullshit passes for sustainable practices today.
Re:patents and insanity (Score:4, Interesting)
So what you are saying is that it is better if the soil is only anaerobic? Perhaps like the neighborhood swamp that takes forever to break down organic matter to a point that other organisms can use it as well as pumping out lots of methane.
I can always tell when people are echoing talking points when they use a brand name instead of the proper name, glyphosate in this case.
Personally what I see happen when over treating crops with glyphosate is that glyphosate resistant plants flourish, partially due to the fact that the resistant plants such as horse tails can handle the anaerobic conditions that come about from having a hard compact soil.
Also note that glyphosate, especially when sold by Monsanto is fucking expensive.
Unintended consequences (Score:5, Interesting)
GMO is a scam, IMO (disclaimer in advance. I am a farmer, I admit bias against monsanto and their ilk, I effin hate the bastids for years now, so take what I write with a grain of salt). It leads to proprietary vendor lock in in spades, along with a host of other issues, health issues, environmental issues and economics, it isn't all rosy. And the issue with superweeds now is getting serious. In my own state, pig amaranth is taking over a lot of fields that were grown with GM cotton then sprayed. Except it doesn't work now, the amaranth is winning. It gets ten feet tall. Some guys just *give up*. Roundup ready crops are just crops designed to be able to withstand roundup or generic equivalent herbicide so they can spray MORE on the crop and more often and not damage the crop. It works-for awhile, that's the real bottom line "for awhile", and you get lots more herbicide residue on whatever you grow. and the stuff itself ain't cheap, over a hundred bucks a jug now and goes up all the time, even the generics keep going up.
You never *really* get rid of all the weeds, you just fast track selective breed resistant weeds (or insect pests if it is insecticide, like with their BT modded corn). Even the crops themselves turn into weeds, they are having a hard time controlling their GM supercanola, it will spread to other fields and being resistant to herbicides...I think you get the picture.
Our farmers are by and large stuck in the 70s by mindset, swallowed all that rah rah rah corporate PR bullshit, now are stuck because they don't know any better and can't avoid it and will NOT admit they got suckered bad.
You think microsoft has vendor lockin...computer OS or some "office suite" is WAY down the list of humanly important *things*. Be concerned, be very concerned over food and availability going into the future is all I can say. They already have had several screwups, one of them one of these days is going to be the czar bomba screwup and will lead to mass famine sometime. I don't know what it will be, but I can about guarantee it will happen. That's my prediction.
We have climate indicators, and we have health of the crop and insect indicators, and the status of our honeybees now is a good indicator or canary in the coal mine if you will. Superweeds, honeybees croaking off, vendor lockin, loss of biodiversity..you have to look at the whole picture.
And it isn't so much that the tech is just evil, I don't believe that, it's that the tech is near completely uncontrolled despite so called regulations and studies and they have no idea whatsoever what the long term consequences will be and there's more than a little hanky panky going on with the studies. Think about all the past big corporate screwups, the really bad stuff, and they all have two things in common: 1) the corporations themselves always maintained until the last second there wasn't any problem and if there was they were just innocent bystanders, and 2) they always manage to trot out their posse of tame private scientists and academic scientists to "back them up" until it was so obvious they had to 'fess ip, pay up and admit wrong doing. That's just normal corporate policy taken as a general rule of thumb (same with governments, never admit they were wrong, even in the face of overwhelming evidence). Just the nature of the beast. Your default should be, be a skeptic to corporate and governmental PR and spin.
Extrapolate at your leisure, but I am not convinced at all they are the best way forward at this point. They are very profitable for monsanto and a few others, at this time, but that's it. It's bankrupting smaller farmers all over the world and leading to a global hegemony on seeds and food. Do we *really* want that to happen, do we really want to lose natural biodiversity and to keep putting millions of the poorest even further into the poorhouse? And, more importantly than that, something that impacts everyone, think of this: we have no "food insurance" or backup planet either once they
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And the issue with superweeds now is getting serious. In my own state, pig amaranth is taking over a lot of fields that were grown with GM cotton then sprayed.
I hear a lot about Roundup and resistant strains. Why is that problem exclusive to Roundup? That couldn't happen with other sprays?
We have climate indicators, and we have health of the crop and insect indicators, and the status of our honeybees now is a good indicator or canary in the coal mine if you will. Superweeds, honeybees croaking off, vendor lockin, loss of biodiversity..you have to look at the whole picture.
No, you need to look at each individual phenomenon. Don't say 'GMOs are bad' then list a whole bunch of random problems that aren't connected.
they have no idea whatsoever what the long term consequences will be
Without omnipotence, that is indeed hard to predict. How do you solve such a problem? Halting progress indefinitly isn't a reasonable answer. Combustion engines caused global warming. Should we have halted the automobile for the pas
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I have no problem with experimentation, but we're talking about a system that has functioned for millenia, and you want wholesale conversion after a few decades of testing?
In terms of our crops, we should have century-long pilot programs where we evaluate the long-term evolutionary results of our meddling. The current method allows no room for failure.
I know that's hard for people to swallow in an age when we expect evolution to take off at the speed of light, but we should be wary of outright replacing a f
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http [cfr.org]
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Re:patents and insanity (Score:5, Informative)
It's not like Monsanto suddenly owns all pigs ever born.....they can still keep using normal, everyday, unmodified pigs like they do now.
Yeah, right...if one of the Monsanto boars gets loose, all the pig farmers in the area will get sued on the theory that the Monsanto pig impregnated all of their sows and they now owe Monsanto royalties on all the progeny. Just look at their history of suing farmers whose crops were contaminated by pollen from nearby Monsanto-licensed fields of the same crops. For the full saga of one such case which the farmer had to take all the way to the Canadian Supreme Court, see http://www.percyschmeiser.com/conflict.htm [percyschmeiser.com]. Mr. Schmeiser's fight, along with Monsanto's other dirty tactics, is also covered in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto [wikipedia.org]
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In the second place, farms are kind of big, so a male cow (or pig) would have a moderately long trot to even find another cow, eve
Re:patents and insanity (Score:4, Funny)
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It isn't a theoretical issue, just ask Percy Schmeiser [wikipedia.org].
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In fact, the courts at all three levels noted that the case of accidental contamination beyond the farmer's control was not under consideration but rather that Mr. Schmeiser's action of having identified, isolated and saved the Roundup-resistant seed placed the case in a different category.
He knew something was up with that seed, if he hadn't helped spread it around his field, he wouldn't have had any legal trouble. I can't say I particularly like Monsanto, nor do I like our current patent system, but Mr. Schmeiser doesn't come off as an innocent victim in this case.
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It's kind of miserable for Mr. Schmeiser, and Monsanto does have some questionable legal tactics, but it's worth noting that the patent system is working just as intended: it encouraged Monsanto to invent new things, give them profit for a while, and eventually that new knowledge will be released into the public domain. Whether you like that new k
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"put their teeny tiny custom dna in the water supply"
"Also keep in mind, logic, common sense"
Maybe you should heed your own advice :)
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Where's my flying car? (Score:2, Flamebait)
And still I have to wait for the future. Better method for breeding pigs? How about making bacon (and pork chops and all the other piggy goodness!) without breeding? Where's that cholesterol free bacon we were promised?
I keep waiting for the militant vegans to give up ignoring the problem (which is all abstinence does) and move to economically crush their enemies - that's what boycotting is supposedly for after all, not that it works. Buy meat from organic farms that treat animals with the respect they
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Shouldn't biotech companies be making vat grown meat by now?
Remember the sci-fi story "Chicken Little"? - vat-grown chicken - NOBODY gets a drumstick!
How about crossing a chicken with an octopus - 8 wings, no feet, great for "Wings Night".
Or cross it with a starfish. Want more - just cut 'em up and throw them back in the vat ...
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Obviously, that strategy only works if there were enough vegans to make a dent in the demand. Vegans have already boycotted all meat, and do try to get others to do the same. PETA is already promoting meat that grows in vats.
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BTW: Here's your flying car.... [terrafugia.com]
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Indeed. I'd actually like all food to be grown in vats.. preferably vats that are small and portable and installable in your own home.. powered by your home fusion generator.
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SOYLENT GREEN! It's made out of people! It's people...
Genetic Patents (Score:4, Interesting)
Someone has to stop these stupid genetic patents. Patents and copyrights are both way out of hand these days. Software patents, now this. I've heard of companies attempting to patent viruses and such (the kind they use to get DNA into other organisms), but a pig? I think patent law has a clause saying you can't patent a living organism (when did genes become "inventions"?). Recently though, big pharma and biotech companies like Monsanto has been lobbying to let this shit happen.
There was a movie that touched on this The Corporation [wikipedia.org]. It's a Canadian movie and I think Monsanto is mentioned in there more than once.
I sincerely don't know how these companies get away with it. Giving them the same rights as people legally was a bad idea. Don't the people working at Monsanto realize how twisted this shit is?
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If Michael Moore were given a license to kill he'd just suicide bomb Mt. Rushmore.
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Plant patents have existed for years, and what are they if not genetic patents, albeit in a less technical format? The Honeycrisp apple is patented for example. I fail to see what is inherently wrong with patenting a line of genetically modified organisms or an artificially developed gene so long as the patent is reasonable.
2005 Greenpeace Article (Score:2)
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/monsanto-pig-patent-111 [greenpeace.org]
Unprecedented control (Score:5, Informative)
FTFS: "its control over agriculture could be unprecedented"
It already is. It holds 70-100% of the genetically modified seed market, and is the largest producer of non-GMO seed, not to mention a major player in Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) and of course pesticides and herbicides.
That's not including the lawsuits against farmers who's plants are fertilized by Monsanto crop due to airborne pollen.
In short, the vast majority of industrial farmers in the Corn Belt rely heavily on Monsanto, and those that don't are sued by Monsanto.
Re:Unprecedented control (Score:4, Interesting)
Even that pales in comparison to the back door government dealings that have landed multitudes of Monsanto employees and board members squarely in government position that control the very laws they are petitioning for. Do a simple google search, the numbers are astounding to the point of obscenity.
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It already is. It holds 70-100% of the genetically modified seed market, and is the largest producer of non-GMO seed, not to mention a major player in Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) and of course pesticides and herbicides.
And if they get their way [overlawyered.com], soon enough that will be 100% of the crops you eat; produced from GMO seed with the "terminator" gene [nd.edu], fertilized with a synthetic fertilizer, and inundated with synthetic pesticides which destroy soil diversity and in fact make it impossible to grow healthy food.
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soon enough that will be 100% of the crops you eat; produced from GMO seed
And, why is that bad? Oh, GMOs weigh more than a duck and are therefore bad, right? Newsflash: All food you eat has been selected for certain traits. Those traits are the results of genes. The methodology is different but it really isn't that horribly different in that all either is really doing is changing genes, and there is nothing wrong with that. Sure, there is the chance that a novel trait may turn out to have a negative effect, but that happens with all technology. For example, do you really, r
Re:Unprecedented control (Score:4, Informative)
That thing that they pledged in 99 to never pursue, and then went ahead and bought a company in 2007 whose sole marketable product was that very thing, yeah, that.
Nice handy side effect of the terminator genes "helping" accidental genetic spread - means your farmer now has to buy orders of magnitude more seed. From you. (Realize that in many staple crops, Monsanto supplies between 70% and 100% of the commercially available seed). I think it's far more likely that "helping accidental genetic spread" is a side effect of "developing revenue maximization genetic technologies".
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And, why is that bad? Oh, GMOs weigh more than a duck and are therefore bad, right? Newsflash: All food you eat has been selected for certain traits.
I've discussed this subject exhaustively with people smarter than you, so here goes: While it is true that nature is capable of transferring genes from one organism to another even across Kingdoms with retroviruses, in practice this almost never happens and when it does, the resulting organism doesn't get cloned out hundreds of times and planted in a monoculture, and protected. While in theory humans can work "faster" than nature (to produce a specific result) the results are unpredictable.
However, the mark
A history of evil (Score:5, Insightful)
God help you if one of their seeds blows onto your property and one of their pigs eat it.
Best line in the article (Score:5, Funny)
The practices Monsanto wants to patent basically involve identifying genes that result in desirable traits in swine, breeding animals to achieve those traits and using a specialized device to inseminate sows deeply in a way that uses less sperm than is typically required.
Umm I think nature invented that device a long time ago....
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Monsanto is dangerous (Score:5, Insightful)
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Same thing could be said for Greenpeace.
Patent pig-breeding? (Score:2)
Pigs have prior art (Score:2)
Pigs have been breeding just fine well before Monsanto existed.
It does lead to funny mental images of a pack of lawyers running around the farm yelling "Stop Fucking or we'll sue!"
Do they fly??? (Score:2)
No, they don't fly...unless you strap *enough* rocket-motors to them, and successfully ignite them at the proper time.
Yes, let's "IP approve" something that has been happening for eons....and more importantly, patent it!!!!
The whole concept of "IP", will be mankind's fall from prominence. It is our greatest weakness, and will be exploited in the future to our downfall!
Base anything on something imaginary, and it will crumble on you! Why be surprised, except for stupidity?
So... (Score:2)
not that i necessarily believe monsanto, but... (Score:4, Informative)
from http://www.monsanto.com/monsanto_today/for_the_record/pig_patent.asp [monsanto.com]
In 2007, Monsanto sold Monsanto Choice Genetics to Newsham Genetics LC of West Des Moines, Iowa. The transaction was completed in November 2007, and Monsanto is no longer in the swine breeding business.
Since a Greenpeace publicity announcement in 2005, rumors have continued to circulate among activists and on the internet that Monsanto is trying to patent pig genes. When Monsanto owned the business, the company performed research work for a patent application related to a specific gene marker for a pig trait, but not for the trait itself, and also a patent application for a unique set of breeding processes, including an artificial insemination method. Monsanto never filed a patent application for a pig gene.
Thereâ(TM)s been some rather wild speculation that these patent applications would prohibit pig farmers from breeding lines of pigs to which they had always freely bred. This isnâ(TM)t true. Any claims issued from these patent applications would apply to only animals and their offspring which had been bred using marker technology covered by patent claims.
In any case, the sale to Newsham Genetics included any and all swine-related patents, patent applications, and all other intellectual property. Weâ(TM)re out of the pig business.
The Next Move (Score:5, Informative)
Monsanto patented some corn strains. The patent covered any corn found to have their patented genome. They planted it, it grew and pollinated. The pollen drifted into nearby fields and pollinated the crops there. Monsanto got some of the resulting corn, tested it, found their genome, and sued the farmers for theft of intellectual property. I don't know if they finally won or not, but at the time they prevented the farmers from farming until it was resolved causing loss of income, as well as proving themselves to be willing to use the high cost of defending one's self in order to keep from losing. And that was in the US, just prior to them releasing the same strains in third world countries. The strain they distributed had the trait of not producing viable seed. They wanted all the farmers to have to buy seed every year rather than grow their own, and they feared cross pollination would produce a viable strain overriding the nonviability genes.
Patents run out in 20 years (Score:2)
Patents run out in 20 years. What's the problem? We had food before any Monsanto patent. For a lot longer than 20 years.
I think I understand though. Some company might make some money by inventing something that helps people. That's a problem for anti-corporate haters. They'd rather companies not invent and people not be helped. If just one company can be denied a profit, all the damage to human potential and standards of living is worthwhile!
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Monsanto is an evil, evil company. One needs only to scratch the surface of a google search on the company to come to this conclusion.
The way they have perverted the natural process of pollination - a process by which nobody has any real control - and turned it into a way to force farmers out of business and create a monopoly market is nothing short of evil.
The way they force third world countries to continue buying their products by selling them plants which create infertile seeds, rather than allowing the
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Except none of these arguments matter because patents run out in 20 years.
And they only have "control" when you give it to them in exchange for a benefit. If it's not a good deal, don't buy it.
I don't mindlessly buy into your groupthink. "If you disagree, then you're stupid" tends to be an argument typical of those who promote ideas that are false.
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Agent Orange, Round up, Aspertame (and the associated FDA/Reagan tap dancing act that got it unbanned), Bovine Growth Hormone (and all of the associated information suppression via media pressure and lawsuits), and we have the whole terminator gene lawsuit business...
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make some money by inventing something that helps people
I'm OK with people making money off a good invention that indeed brings the world forward.
However, the only people Monsanto helps is their executives and shareholders, and if you do some research you'll find that the methods by which they do so appear to put Microsoft and the RIAA very much in the shade. The mess in the finance industry (and thus globally) because they were left uncontrolled: no money for people to go round. Now do this to teh food i
Bow down to your Monsanto Overlords!!! (Score:2)
Do you like:
1) Bacon
2) Ham
3) Pork chops
4) Pork roasts
5) Any pork product
6)many vegetables,
If answer is yes to any of the above, BOW DOWN TO YOUR MONSANTO MASTERS!
Don't like that?
Then fight back, it is happening currently.
DNA, Genetics, and Genes all need to be exempt from patent law!
Or, reap what you sow!
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So, all pigs are equal... (Score:2)
but Monsanto's are more equal than others?
I think that what they're saying :-)
(just wait until they try to apply this to designer babies...)
Re:STFU Enviro-nazi's (Score:5, Insightful)
"Best" is relative here. Having a single company control agricultural output in the way that Monsanto does, free markets or no, is a damned dangerous thing. This is about the core structural support of civilization. Fuck with the food supply, and bad things can happen.
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Fuck with the food supply, and bad things can happen.
Umm.. fail to innovate farming and we all die.
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Innovation in the agriculture industry is fine. This has nothing whatsoever to do with innovation. Quite the opposite.