Anti-GMO Activists Win Victory On Hawaiian Island 510
biobricks writes "New York Times reports on how the county council on the Big Island of Hawaii banned GMOs. 'Urged on by Margaret Wille, the ban’s sponsor, who spoke passionately of the need to “act before it’s too late,” the Council declined to form a task force to look into such questions before its November vote. But Mr. Ilagan, 27, sought answers on his own. In the process, he found himself, like so many public and business leaders worldwide, wrestling with a subject in which popular beliefs often do not reflect scientific evidence. At stake is how to grow healthful food most efficiently, at a time when a warming world and a growing population make that goal all the more urgent.'"
going after GMO is like banning screwdrivers (Score:5, Insightful)
in other words, going after GMO-the-technique is anti-progressive. one should instead go for (federal) regulation of GMO products. even indiscriminate labeling campaigns just naively suppress the technique, both good and bad usages.
ok, (having spoken my peace); on with the pitchforks and burning-brands!
Re:going after GMO is like banning screwdrivers (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you think it's more likely the GMO foods being sold to Hawaiians is of the "really noble" variety or the "eeevil profit driven corporation" variety?
Here's a protip for you: If there is transparency in the way GMO is used in food, it's likely in the former. If there's an effort to fight the simple labeling of such foods as being GMOs, then it's almost certainly the latter. People with noble goals don't usually try their best to hide what they're doing.
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Re:going after GMO is like banning screwdrivers (Score:5, Insightful)
That's horseshit. GMO is a very specific term, despite what some people would have you believe. It stands for Genetically Modified Organism. As in the product of taking genes from one organism and placing them directly into another organism. This is different from hybridization where you have to be able to create viable offspring by mating two organisms together selecting the ones that express what you're interested in.
Prior to about the '80s, they didn't exist at all. Conflating hybridization that takes many generations and may or may not yield a specific product with one where you can put completely unrelated and unpredictable genes in is completely wrong.
The problem here is that there's a massive conflict of interest with the scientists don't the research and the people responsible for safe guarding things. They still haven't introduced any way of keeping the genes from jumping species even though they still lack the ability to predict what the consequences of that are long term. I have no particular problem eating GMOs, I have a huge problem with them being permitted to propagate in an unchecked fashion.
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Re:going after GMO is like banning screwdrivers (Score:5, Interesting)
"that tomato strain was genetically modified, by plasmid insertion, -then- cross-pollinated with most other major strains. or... are you willing to say generation 1 of GMO is GMO whereas generation 3 isn't?"
Since there are no genetically modified tomatoes available commercially [wikipedia.org], GP is correct.
Further, even when the "Flavr-Savr" tomato was being produced experimentally, the claim that it used fish genes was actually a confusion between that and other research. So: no, your tomato is not GMO in the sense being discussed here, which is the insertion of foreign genes from other organisms.
Hawaii is a special case, and it is particularly sensitive to invasive organisms. It is perfectly reasonable for them to be extra-cautious at this time. They are in a particularly strong place from which to say, "If there is even a small chance it is bad, let's not do it."
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...That's kind of the point for most people advocating GMO labeling requirements. It's still possible to find non-GMO foods but without labels, it's much harder to find them.
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You're pointlessly playing with semantics. GMO is well understood to mean transgenic rather than crossbreeding techniques.
There are legitimate questions about the probability of GMO producing a harmful crop vs. traditional techniques.
I would support a scarlet M for Monsanto since they seem to be one of the bigger offenders.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Are you actually arguing for "ignorance is strength"? That less information in the market is better?
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Ignorance is not strength, but a fact taken out of context can be deceitful.
Re:going after GMO is like banning screwdrivers (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you really see no difference between the cross-breeding of closely-related plant species that would naturally cross-breed, selecting for positive traits vs. the direct genetic manipulation of the genome of a plant that could only happen in a laboratory, combining genes of organisms that could never otherwise cross-breed?
I'd love to see the natural way that potatoes would breed with jellyfish to get the genes to glow when they need to be watered.
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the first category error in this whole imbroglio is presuming that the word "natural" has any clear meaning.
Re:going after GMO is like banning screwdrivers (Score:5, Insightful)
However, the next category error is assuming that just because a changed organism doesn't kill people outright that it's actually safe for long-term consumption and safe for other organisms in the environment.
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I'd love to see the natural way that potatoes would breed with jellyfish to get the genes to glow when they need to be watered.
Right, and can you tell me where they're in the food chain, and where we consume them? I'll wait, I wouldn't want you to look like more of a ass then you've already made of yourself.
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Cross-breeding is very different from shot-gun insertion of genes from entirely separate species. Go educate yourself.
Funny, I thought science was all about experimentation and finding out "how things worked" and much like I said above, can you tell me where said "entirely separate species" are spliced in and included in the food chain. Such as oh...let's go with jellyfish and potatoes?
Perhaps the only person that needs to go out and educate themselves is you.
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New plant varieties can be and are patented REGARDLESS of how they are developed. If you develop a new strain of something with unique characteristics you get a patent on it. This is nothing new for GMO versions.
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I am against patenting plants and genes period
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Going after GMO is like attempting to halt an experiment with no control being run on all of us. There. FTFY.
Re:going after GMO is like banning screwdrivers (Score:5, Insightful)
A better analogy comes from the artificial "trans fat" fiasco. Here's this new kind of fat created by "scientific processes" that is touted by many authorities to be superior to the natural fats that people had been consuming for centuries. In the 1960s, it was pushed heavily as a way to prevent heart disease. A few decades later, it was discovered to actually increase the incidence of heart disease and we're in the process of slowly removing it from our food supplies.
GMO is even less tested than artificial trans fats were (they were around for nearly half a century before being heavily pushed by government and industry). Maybe some of them will turn out to be just fine, and possibly repleat with benefits, but others may be harmful to both the environment as well as the people and animals who consume them. There just hasn't been enough testing to demonstrate that mixing genes from here with genes from over there, as well as creating new sequences out of whole-cloth, has no unintended consequences.
I don't think it's too much to allow people to have labeling to then be able to make informed choices about whether they want to be a part of this huge un-controlled human trial.
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Wrong. As the AC above points out, there are hundreds of studies on GE crops, and no plausible mechanism as to why they would be inherently dangerous. Quit spreading misinformation.
Exactly. Which is why there shouldn't be any issue in labelling GMO.
Labeling is at this point about as justified as mandatory labels for religious dietary choices
And companies happily label meat as "halal" meat. I don't see an issue there. My country even has "vegetarian" labels, mandatory by law. Vegetarian has many definitions,but the one used in my country is the relevant one for the popular religions. Labeling is information, not poison. No one minds these labels - producers, retailers, consumers. Only people who want to suppress information would resist labels.
It singles out one particular aspect of agriculture without justification (ever heard anyone demand any other crop improvement method be labeled? That's because the organic industry isn't selling alternatives to them
No. Harvest of drip irrigated crop
OTOH... (Score:3)
An island is in a rather unique position regarding GMOs. Once they're let in, there's no turning back. Where's the harm in keeping a naturally isolated island free from them, at the very least until the long term science is real?
Unless, of course, you're simply looking for cheaper Kona coffee due to increased yields.
Re:going after GMO is like banning screwdrivers (Score:4, Informative)
I have no problem with people choosing to eat GMO crops. I would personally rather set the seeds in the sun and let UV light cause faster differentiation for my crop selective breeding program than have patented seeds, and thus have far better diversity than the pesticide resistant monoculture of GMO. The strive for absolute maximum yield is as horrid as the strive for absolute maximum security or absolute maximum progress. These moronic absolutist drives marginalize proper cautions and acceptable risk and lead to bad and/or uninformed decisions about the food we'll eat, what protections are actually needed, and the lifestyles we live.
I would rather eat food that wasn't grown with pesticides or herbicides sprayed on them even if it is more expensive and the ecosystem reclaims a bit of the crop -- I consider it the cost of doing business with nature, renting her land. The "cheaper" poisoned crop is just hiding the cost elsewhere in the environment and my body. No one should get to dictate what my acceptable risk is worth in either extreme -- They do not have my best interest in mind. I need information to make informed decisions. All of my food I get from my local farmers market or grow myself; I have been to the farms whence my food comes. I can make two pizzas with all organic ingredients: yeast from the air, vegetables from my garden, oils from local olives, salt from the sea, cheeses made locally, and flour I ground myself -- all in the same amount of time it takes for you to get pizza delivered. The fresh taste is phenomenal, and better for you (less fats, salts and preservatives).
I would love to be able to maintain my food preference while shopping at a supermarket, but thanks to the GMO lobby I can't. The GMO lobbyists prevent me from making an informed choice by lobbying against labeling of GMO food -- Or even preventing those that label their products as non-GMO. This is as terrible as the state telling me I don't need to know what the NSA is doing because it's good for me. Fuck that shit. I want choice. GMO companies are actively anti-choice. I'm anti-GMO company, being anti-GMO food is an unfortunate but necessary outgrowth of their anti-informed consumer stance.
I also don't take any drugs that haven't been on the market for more than 10 years because I've seen that longer term testing is frequently needed. I buy the latest computing technology because I don't put that buggy crap in my body. If it were a medical device going inside me, I'd want the source code, and I'd want years of testing to work out the bugs, some assurances that the shit doesn't have a trivial exploit vector. I fight against all this "it's good for you just trust us" information disparity bullshit in our current culture, not just with GMO crops.
GMO isn't the only way to do business. If it didn't exist and neither did pesticides, guess what? The economy would adjust the cost and price of food. Hey, here's a thought: Competition is good. GMO companies are anti-competitive. Yes you can pay engineers to invent things and call that progress, but you also miss out on the natural progresses achieved through good old mutation and selection if you seek to exclude the natural methods of crop growing -- Which GMO companies and lobbies do. Anti-competition is bad for crops for the same reason normalizing the methods of production is bad for business: Mono-cultures are "anti-progressive", you idiot. Get this through your fool head: They don't want what's best for us, they want what's best for them at any cost to us; They'll deffer as much of that cost to us and the environment as they can get away with. You shouldn't trust them by default. Where's your scientific skepticism? My standard of proof is higher and you call me anti-progressive? THAT's anti-progressive, moron.
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Re:Plenty of evidence worldwide for GMO harm (Score:5, Insightful)
So a better analogy for GMOs might not be with screwdrivers, but with concentration camps and gas chambers, which by themselves did no harm.
That is a horribe analogy. A better analogy would be comparing GMOs to Hydrogen Cyanide. GMOs can be used poorly, just like hydrogen cyanide can be used in gas chambers. But both are used for good far more than for evil.
Actually, even mine is a bad analogy. An even better one would be comparing genetically modifying foods with chemical synthesis in general. Both are simply scientific techniques. We can use genetics to change the color of food, make it resistant to pesticides, or create deadly bacteria. Just like we can use chemical synthesis to create table salt, carbonic acid, or hydrogen cyanide.
Re:Plenty of evidence worldwide for GMO harm (Score:5, Insightful)
In the GMO discussion, people love to bicker over bullshit like allergies, tumors, "noble" causes, etc. People do not talk as much about the insidious influence of profit motive over one's ethics. Or sensitive nonlinear dependencies between crops and adjacent ecosystems. What happens when the pests can't eat? Will our bird population leave or die out? I have heard some talk about how big aggro funds a lot of the GMO research which influences opinions. In my reckoning, this is even more direct and troublesome than big oil funding environmental studies.
Additionally, policymakers -- like those in Hawaii amply illustrated by this article -- have no knowledge of what is going on. Regulators (does a GMO seed need FDA approval to be planted? How do we insure crop isolation?) don't know anything either and can hardly make effective regulations. People also ignore that disaster scenarios, which might be EXTREMELY unlikely, must nevertheless be contemplated because when you have a disaster HELLO IT'S A FUCKING DISASTER DUMMIES.
I for one don't buy the argument that the world needs more food to support a growing population. There are more than enough people in the world. I for one would rather see fewer suburbs, shack villages, and shanty towns, and more wilderness in the world. While I question the wisdom of Hawaii's move, I treasure the idea that Hawaii might remain pure, pristine, and full of naive hippies.
Re:Plenty of evidence worldwide for GMO harm (Score:5, Insightful)
I have heard some talk about how big aggro funds a lot of the GMO research which influences opinions.
Go to your local university. The vast majority of scientists in relevant areas support the use of GE. You should not find it surprising when the people who cry Monsanto conspiracy at every inconvenient fact also accuse research of being part of the conspiracy.
I for one don't buy the argument that the world needs more food to support a growing population.
Well, you're wrong. The population is not only growing, but it is also demanding more than just rice, corn, and wheat. Also, there is less land, encroaching urbanization, more demand for water, evolving pests and diseases, and climate change. We need all the technology we can to face that.
While I question the wisdom of Hawaii's move, I treasure the idea that Hawaii might remain pure, pristine, and full of naive hippies.
I'd like two of those three.
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Until a large portion of the world starts performing population control, our opinions about the harm of growing populations is not relevant to topics related to feeding more people. As long as we as a society let people have as many kids as they want, and do not wish to punish children for the sins of their parents, we need to find ways of feeding all of these people.
How do you figure that concern over population growth is not relevant to feeding people? I smell in this statement some kind of ethical concept which needs to be more clearly elucidated. I'm willing to accept that it's a Machiavellian notion, but if you don't feed people, they find it harder to reproduce.
Like I said, once society is ready to start performing population control on a global scale, then we no longer have to worry about feeding growing population. I did not talk about the morality of population control, just that as long as we both let people have the freedom to reproduce and do not condone letting people starve, it is irrelevant what our opinions on growing population are when talking about finding ways of feeding them.
More accurate headline (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's make this headline more accurate and honest, okay?
These has never been a single reputable study by anyone anywhere that has shown GMO anything to be unhealthy. GMO products have been made for decades and have been intensely studies by people with a vested interest in keeping them out. This range of scientific lunacy is in the same camp as wifi causes cancer and vaccination scaremongering.
Let's get real, this has jack to do with GMO and everything to do with eco naive that get their talking points from greenpeace and protectionism from those countries that haven't started making their own GMO foods yet. Once other countries start making their own versions of GMO foods all of the objections to GMO foods will vanish overnight from everyone that isn't an eco-naive twit.
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Ever hear of weeds evolving?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/business/energy-environment/04weed.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1& [nytimes.com]
Re:More accurate headline (Score:5, Funny)
Read the fine article (Score:4, Interesting)
You could have read the fine article, which nicely mentions "overuse of pesticides". The current reason to use GMO is raised pesticide/herbicide resistance, which naturally means that farmers are encouraged to go overkill with Roundup and co. to kill of everything else in the area. AFAIK it has also been shown that the poisons used accumulate within the plants, sadly the only health study on that point I know of has been unreliable (the lab animals used hat a naturally high chancer rate).
So while GMOs may not be responsible for the harm done to humans, the pesticides/herbicides sold as part of the package - the only reason GMOs are currently used - are responsible for killing of local plants and insects. It might be overly broad, but it is based on reality and facts.
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Remember. The major proponents of GMO crops are not really seed companies. They aren't farmers or agronomists. They are herbicide companies that want to sell more herbicide.
More likely than not, a GMO crop is just a pretense to put more poison in your food.
Re:Read the fine article (Score:4, Insightful)
You could have read the fine article, which nicely mentions "overuse of pesticides". The current reason to use GMO is raised pesticide/herbicide resistance,
It is also worth noting that the Hawaiian islands have one of the most unique and fragile ecosystems in the world due to the isolation of being in the center of the pacific ocean. There are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of species unique to the islands and many of them have gone extinct since man showed up, especially western man.
We've already lost hundreds of unique bird species due to the misguided introduction of mongooses to hunt rats -- rats are nocturnal, mongooses are diurnal so that didn't work, instead the mongooses raided indigenous birds' nests which had evolved in the absence of such predators so they had no protection.
Hawaii's got a sad history of this sort of thing and, for one reason or another, the GMO corps have made Hawaii one of their most popular testing grounds. It is no surprise that many of these "hippies" are paranoid.
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Almost all of the damage to the Hawaiian ecosystems can be traced to two species. Rats and Humans.
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Overuse of pesticides is a problem irrespective of GMO, but GMO is designed to reduce the problem. I think it would not hurt to educate yourself a bit to understand why GMO crops are designed to be herbicide resistant. The goal is to reduce overall pesticide use by a) making the crop naturally more resistant to disease and pests and b) to reduce the use of herbicides by making it resistant to one herbicide that, in theory, all other plants are not resistant to. Thus instead of spraying a crop with multip
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I'm sure there are many who are concerned about the long-term effects of GMO crops on the viability of non-GMO crops (cross-pollination between fields, economic factors, strong-arming by companies that produce GMO seed, etc.), but I am more concerned with the primary usage of GMO, at least in North America - herbicide resistance. With ordinary seed you might still use herbicides to control weeds, but overall you can't use much because you'll kill your crop. Use a GMO seed that is engineered to not be suscep
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These has never been a single reputable study by anyone anywhere that has shown GMO anything to be unhealthy.
Just down that path yesterday. [slashdot.org]
have been intensely studies by people with a vested interest in keeping them out.
OK, lets see all these studies. Note in the thread linked to above the one citation of ~2000 such studies turned out to be a dude.
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These has never been a single reputable study by anyone anywhere that has shown GMO anything to be unhealthy.
I know very little about the topic, but a short search shows that at least someone published anti-GMO results and lost about 36 years worth of a career as a result. See Arpad Pusztai [wikipedia.org].
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Notice the word 'reputable'.
From the Wikipedia article:
"The Royal Society of Medicine declared that the study is flawed in many aspects of design, execution and analysisâ(TM) and that no conclusions should be drawn from it."
Here is the BBC report:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/464416.stm [bbc.co.uk]
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Re:More accurate headline (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, GMO's may be totally healthy, but the real issue is who controls the GMO market. It's definitely not healthy if only few companies control the food chain. The companies are even happy to restrict the reuse of the seeds. This is unnatural, but of course natural in terms of making profit. Also the aim to create food for only human use (GMO crops that repel everything else) will have an impact on biodiversity. Diversity is the natural mechanism to cope with the changing conditions, and the lack of diversity will polarize the eco-system, which would as a whole weaken.
Once it becomes possible to create nutrition in closed production plants the fields can be freed to be at their natural state. Artificially produced food is in the end as natural as GMO.
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For instance w have seen long studies that show, in general. vitamins do no good and should not be allowed to make health claims. Big Business does not like this so the science is bad. We know that raising animals as we do is bad for the environment, atmosphere, lakes, rivers, etc, but Agribusiness does not like this so science is bad. We know that using antibiot
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In reality we have few long term studies of non GMO effects on humans also.
False equivalency. We have millions of years of evolution.
Cue: Selective breeding is the same as GMO.
Response: No amount of selective breeding will transfer genes between incompatible species.
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These has never been a single reputable study by anyone anywhere that has shown GMO anything to be unhealthy.
Just curious, who is doing these studies and not funded by Monsanto?
Studies cost a lot of money, and usually no one but the manufacturer is willing to shell out for them. Which is why we spent decades being told that cigarettes aren't bad for you (nay, they're actually good for you!), and still get medicines that aren't pulled off the market until years after the manufacturer-funded studies show that they are harmful.
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I advocate proper labeling so that I can determine whether or not such an allergy might be a problem. There are a number of foods and food additives that the industry doesn't want you to know about because you might turn your back on them.
That's corporate profits being held in higher esteem than the health of individuals.
That's just what happens when you declare corporations to be people and actual humans to some sort of underclass.
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> No you don't you advocate for mislabeling GMO crops that are proven to be perfectly safe.
No. You're just a lying sack of shit and a corporate toadie.
In no universe does full disclosure equal "mislabeling". It might be ugly but that's your problem not mine. As a buyer, I have a right to know what I'm buying. That's a pretty well settled idea that goes back to around Magna Carta.
Telling the truth runs into the "Bismark" problem that you may not want to know how the sausage is made. That's not an issue of
Re:More accurate headline (Score:4, Interesting)
Very likely, yes. Do you want to go back to a world before penicilin?
Weeds will keep evolving to beat whatever you throw at them: If they didn't, they would be extinct. If anything, we should invest more in genetic research, so taht we can have a bigger advantage over weeds and diseases. Feel free to regulate their application of said technology though, just like we could regulate antibiotic use on farm animals.
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Your point about weeds evolving also ignores one problem: Is it a good thing that the weed becomes extinct? Suppose that has a ripple effect on some other species? No species lives in a vacuum. Extinct
Penalties (Score:5, Insightful)
Field tests to study new G.M.O. crops would also be prohibited. Penalties would be $1,000 per day.
What a joke.
That's a rounding error to a multinational corporation.
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These must be women-hating Republicans (Score:2)
Women have the RIGHT to choose to eat GMOs if they want and I stand against this right-wing Republican War on Women since they insist on telling women what to do with their bodies!
GMOs=evil business (Score:3)
The other thing with most GMOs is that they (the main commercial ones) are aimed at things that on the surface I don't care about such as herbicide resistance. I suspect that people would have a whole lot more buy in if the GMOs made the food healthier, tastier, have a longer shelf life (Bananas that don't turn brown in 3 seconds) etc.
But it seems the main beneficiaries of GMOs are big agribusiness and only big agribusiness. So when people reject GMOs they don't personally feel like they are losing much. One might argue that they are losing if the food costs a bit more but the reality is that the savings at the consumer end is actually quite minimal. (In theory a pest resistant crop might have fewer pesticides/herbicides which is a gain but hard for the average consumer to know as big agribusiness has fought all public disclosures of chemical levels in food.)
So looking at the science in most people's heads they might be thinking, "Hey this GMO only has one study in 100 that says it is bad. But what benefit do I have even taking that tiny risk? Whereas the agribusiness people won't eat this crap if it is toxic but they stand to make a fortune selling it."
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Or in the case of Hawaii, papaya.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papaya_ringspot_virus [wikipedia.org]
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In theory a pest resistant crop might have fewer pesticides/herbicides
And in reality, more pesticides are used [reuters.com] on pesticide-resistant crops. FTA:
"Resistant weeds have become a major problem for many farmers reliant on GE crops, and are now driving up the volume of herbicide needed each year by about 25 percent," Benbrook said.
Monsanto officials had no immediate comment.
Authority (Score:5, Interesting)
According to this [wikipedia.org] regulating GMO's is a federal responsibility. Will the ban and/or fines even hold up in court?
United States regulatory policy is governed by the Coordinated Framework for Regulation of Biotechnology This regulatory policy framework that was developed under the Presidency of Ronald Reagan to ensure safety of the public and to ensure the continuing development of the fledgling biotechnology industry without overly burdensome regulation.The policy as it developed had three tenets: "(1) U.S. policy would focus on the product of genetic modification (GM) techniques, not the process itself, (2) only regulation grounded in verifiable scientific risks would be tolerated, and (3) GM products are on a continuum with existing products and, therefore, existing statutes are sufficient to review the products."
I am pretty sure that a ban with no scientific review or investigation would fail tenet #2.
release of gmo seeds? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:victory against science (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:victory against science (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't equate pseudoscience-believing hippies with Republicans.
I'm from Hawaii (specifically the Big Island), and that state (and county) is dominated by Democrats who are very, very far from being creationist Republicans. Heck, even our Republicans are more liberal than a lot of mainland Democrats. So yeah - totally pseudoscience hippies. We have a saying (due to our macadamia nut orchards) that we send our nuts (macadamia) to the mainland and they send their nuts (california hippies) to us.
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We have a saying (due to our macadamia nut orchards) that we send our nuts (macadamia) to the mainland and they send their nuts (california hippies) to us.
In Oregon they call that "being californicated".
Re:victory against science (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't call it pseudoscience
From the hippie side of things, yes, it is. These are the same people who think that eating an "alkalizing" diet and drinking "alkalized water" is a necessity for being healthy and ridding the body of "toxins." It's pseudoscience because they have BS "science" that "proves" it. For example, there are papers by people with fake phd's that say eating protein means your pee is more acidic, which means your body is toxic. Anyone who remembers high school biology should know why that's BS (and why the "Westernmost Institution for Gaia Science" is not an accredited institution), but they believe it because they've smoked away their high school memories.
Interestingly, at least on Maui, I can't necessarily speak for the Big Island but I'm going to assume parallels, it wasn't the hippies that got the anti-GMO ball rolling, although they're the ones taking off with it. The initial ball-rollers were the taro farmers, and for entirely different (and IMO legitimate) reasons. There are a lot of small independent family (actually a family, not just a big conglomerate owned by a family) taro farmers. With taro (it's like a big potato), much of the planting is done by cutting of the top of the corm (the potato part) and replanting it. They saw what Monsanto was doing with not allowing corn farmers to save seed, and were concerned that if the taro market went to GMO the same thing would happen with taro, where farmers would be entirely dependent on Monsanto and pretty much unable to resist or remain independent.
Re:victory against science (Score:5, Informative)
These are the same people who think that eating an "alkalizing" diet and drinking "alkalized water"
That's an overly broad and unfair characterization. Everyone seems to be ignoring that companies are not required to prove with sufficient rigor that GMO crops are adequately safe.
The FDA requires new pharmaceuticals to undergo years of testing. In contrast, GMO crops are assumed to be safe because they 'closely approximate' their originating crop. That's a foolish assumption.
Re:victory against science (Score:4, Funny)
People of ALL political beliefs here in the UK don't want GMO crops
Are you saying that all people in the UK are pseudoscience believers? That's not very nice to say.
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Ok, then explain the thugs who tried to destroy the GE wheat trial at Rothamsted [bbc.co.uk], or the ones who did destroy the GE potatoes at the University of Leeds. [timeshighe...tion.co.uk]
The anti-Monsanto is just a convenient attempt to justify anti-science bullshit (and even that card is factually weak). That's why there's opposition to Golden Rice, the Rainbow papaya, The Arctic apple, and every other non-Monsanto GMO. If it was just about Monsanto, that wouldn't happen, but it does.
Re:victory against science (Score:4, Insightful)
Hell, who am I kidding, they'll come running to us anyways, and we'll give them aid packages anyways. They always do, and we always do.
Re:victory against science (Score:5, Insightful)
The tests that show a link between certain GMO and cancers is "pure BS"?
Yes, actually, it was BS, if you're talking about this one [wikipedia.org]. Which is why the study was retracted.
Re:victory against science (Score:5, Insightful)
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According to it, that bogus study was the very study cited by the anti-GMO hippies in the Hawaii vote.
That's so depressing.
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There are many people who don't think that this study was bogus.
There are also people who think the moon landing was faked.
I've looked into it, and whether there was something 'suspicious' or not, the paper was seriously deficient.
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Get an understanding of science, then we'll talk. Otherwise I'm just wasting my time and you're being an idiot.
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You mean like people who keep claiming that "evolution is just a theory", and that trickle-down economics work?
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I would say that creationists and climate change deniers are both associated with republicans the same way anti-GMOs are associated with democrats. But I'd say that creationists and climate change deniers are far, far more dangerous than anti-GMO morons.
Re:victory against science (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the creationists hurt ... who exactly?
The creationists are actively trying to increase scientific illiteracy among American children - that's their entire reason for existence. In the short term, this doesn't really hurt anyone; in the long term, it would lead to the US being far less economically competitive, and more dependent on other nations for new scientific advances, especially medical technology. That has a very real impact on people's lives.
Re:victory against science (Score:5, Informative)
I just thought of the other analogy: the Soviet Union, for all of its many unredeemable flaws, did manage to rack up some impressive scientific accomplishments. But not in biology or agriculture, because its leaders made a conscious choice to embrace Lysenko's pseudo-science and demonize genetics. The result was to set back progress by decades, because an entire generation was trained to be scientifically ignorant in that particular field. Russia still produces some excellent mathematicians and physicists, but it's never recovered in biology and medicine.
(Another contemporary example would be Hitler's opposition to much of physics research as being "too Jewish", and his own support for less rigorous science, but it was ultimately his anti-Semitism that caused the most damage to Germany's scientific community, rather than his embrace of pseudoscience.)
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Re:victory against science (Score:4, Interesting)
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Besides making yourself a target for anti-religious bigots, what harm of any kind comes from professing and supporting creationism?
Meanwhile, anti-GMO pseudoscience supports malnutrition and some of the diseases and deaths caused by malnutrition. And anti-vaccination pseudoscience leads to children dying of preventable diseases.
Which one matters to you depends on what type of person you are.
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I have zero problem with GMO foods as a general matter. "GMO" means as much to me as the word "chemicals"; it's devoid of substantive meaning.
That said, anti-GMO activists are not supporting malnutrition. We don't need GMOs to solve food shortages. We have more than enough food. It's a distribution problem, and where solving distribution is intractable existing agricultural methods can be used. Africa, for example, had more than enough food in the 1960s and 1970s; it wasn't until Western agribusiness put al
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I have zero problem with GMO foods as a general matter. "GMO" means as much to me as the word "chemicals"; it's devoid of substantive meaning.
It means the same thing as "evil spirits" used to mean.
Re: victory against science (Score:4, Insightful)
Anti-GMO activists have done things like destroy golden rice fields. Golden rice is currently just about the best bet for combatting vitamin A deficiency. It certainly seems like these rich yuppies prefer that brown people be malnourished to having GMO foods even tried.
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If growing healthy food is going to done more efficiently, it's going to have require higher crop yields while requiring less oil-based fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. Growing crops that have a temporary resistance to pests that quickly adapt through natural evolution isn't the way forward.
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If growing healthy food is going to done more efficiently, it's going to have require higher crop yields while requiring less oil-based fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. Growing crops that have a temporary resistance to pests that quickly adapt through natural evolution isn't the way forward.
I'm pretty certain that the way of the future is going to be full factory farming, as in large scale growing of gunk in covered facilities. Then converting it into pretend meats and veggies. It's not all gross. We alreay can hydroponically grow greens that fit the definition of organic.
Even though there is a lot of land, much of the best land is being covered by housing developments as farmers find they can make enough money to retire just by selling to developers. And since we keep finding clever ways to
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Really? There is a lot of evidence that shows our GMOs are not good. Monsanto and Dupont based GMOs lack a lot of testing. It doesn't appear to be affecting our health now, but the long term effects could be bad. Plus, the PATENTS! It's not about science, it's about freedom of seed! Banning GMOs is an important first step to getting rid of life-patent laws. Seeds should be part of the public trust. If they become public again, I'd have no problem with GMOs that were open to people looking at them and doing
Re:victory against science (Score:5, Informative)
Plus, the PATENTS! It's not about science, it's about freedom of seed! Banning GMOs is an important first step to getting rid of life-patent laws. Seeds should be part of the public trust. If they become public again, I'd have no problem with GMOs that were open to people looking at them and doing real research on them
If you'd read the article, or paid any attention at all to the subject, you'd know that many GMOs are unencumbered by IP laws and/or were always intended to be given away. This includes both golden rice (which was specifically intended for the third world - developed nations don't really have endemic vitamin A deficiency) and virus-resistant papayas, which Hawaii currently grows. Banning them does nothing at all to advance the cause of open science.
Wrong again (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wrong again (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/261179.php
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Artificial trans-fats, also pushed by many of the same players as GMO today, on the other hand, are another story.
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/high-blood-cholesterol/in-depth/trans-fat/ART-20046114 [mayoclinic.org]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AReHTIVuCbA [youtube.com]
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"Roundup Ready"
GMO seeds are a pretense to get farmers to buy MORE Roundup. It's not just a baseline level of chemical abuse that may have been present 30 or 40 years ago but an ESCALATION above and beyond what was done before.
GMO -> more chemicals sprayed on your food.
Plus GMO crops contaminate everything. They're like an untrained dog that shits in everyone's yard. Except patents allow for the dog's owner to take your house.