Monsanto gives up fight for GM plants in Europe

[Big Blue Sky]

Ok fuck this, What if we grow our own food,this should be the most healthy thing to do.

Bullshit again. There are so many reasons why this is wrong. Here are a few:

1) Most people don't have access to their own (plantable) land.
2) Even if some people do have access to land they can grow crops in, there is no telling whether that land is safe to grow stuff in.
3) People tend to have other jobs, not leaving much time to grow their own food.
4) This only really works for vegetarians...unless you are suggesting people start looking after / slaughtering their own cows, sheep, pigs, etc.
5) Farmers are just better at this kind of stuff than everyone else. They are more experienced; they know what they are doing. They will produce a much better crop that any non-farmer could ever hope to.

I know I know,but if everyone would grow food instead of lawns it would be much better,I don't mean that we should product all food for our selves but a little won't hurt. Also if we would grow our own food we would not throw everything away like we do now.

[pocaracas]

I think the problem here is economics.
If monsanto's seeds are that good, every single farmer will want to buy them... And monsanto makes them in such a way that farmers will have to buy the seeds every year. It is, after all, a business.
Farmer buys, tests out, sees that they're good, repeats ad nauseum.

And the damned seeds are patented, so that no other company can come up with equally resistant seeds.
This opens the road to a monopoly on seeds....leading to very, very, very little genetic diversity. And we all know that can't be good on the long run.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's a double edged sword. I think that grass is a useless crop as well - however, the way we centralize our food production system does increase it's efficiency. It's also much easier to test food for pathogens. -If- everyone followed the rules and knew what they were doing, "growing their own" would be nice. It won't work for grains or taters (low yield/ high area crops) but things like mixed veggie are pretty easy to handle in a small space.

Other companies -could- come up with equally resilient seed (or even better) but being an "innovator" has it;s perks. The way in which Monsanto licensed its seed was a pretty good move too (think microsoft). DuPont actually did try to levy anti-trust charges against them a few years back. Didn't stick.

[Something completely different]

P.S: here are the links one "real media" and the other conspiracy one.
http://rt.com/news/monsanto-rats-tumor-france-531/

Yeah, News with Putins aproval......

Sounds legit.

The Russian goverment has always had a problem with GMO`s, because Russia is the worlds largest corn producer and will natualy try to keep it that way. Which also means being negative about foreign companies which could outweigh Russian production.

So Russian state controled media will certainly be unbiased on this.

http://www.naturalnews.com/037249_GMO_st...amage.html

Also try: GlennBeckOrgasm.cum

[Big Blue Sky]

P.S: here are the links one "real media" and the other conspiracy one.
http://rt.com/news/monsanto-rats-tumor-france-531/

Yeah, News with Putins aproval......

Sounds legit.

The Russian goverment has always had a problem with GMO`s, because Russia is the worlds largest corn producer and will natualy try to keep it that way. Which also means being negative about foreign companies which could outweigh Russian production.

So Russian state controled media will certainly be unbiased on this.

http://www.naturalnews.com/037249_GMO_st...amage.html

Also try: GlennBeckOrgasm.cum

http://www.policymic.com/articles/15889/...attention_

French made this research,lets see what you can say now.

More: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art...1512005637

[Something completely different]

Ag has a negative impact on the environment, period. I can't think of any other singular endeavor that has had a greater impact on the environment, in fact. It's pretty serious business. So why not take it seriously, and make the best use of those resources - get the most out of our wholesale (and unfortunately necessary) destruction of the landscape?

Only because other productionmessures also had a negative impact on the enviorment this does not mean that we should allow new production messures to piss on the enviorment aswell.

Need I remind you that envirormental protection is a child of the 1970s and 1980s which has only recently established itself in politics during the late 1990s and is still rejected by people who run your country.

GMO crops are the -only- crops that anyone has taken any steps to contain.......and "super-pests", for example, are bred on any farm where broad spectrum pesticide regimens are used (this includes conventionals and organics). If you want to contain the damage, and protect balance(however the hell you're going to measure it), GMO is the tool for that.

Of course it is the only crop we have attempted to contain - because it is the only crop which should be contained.
Other than the fact that the crop displaces other crops I think it is worth mentoning that the used pesticides are constantly "improved" by adding more toxins to prevent the adaption of plants to that toxin - which in the end requires more pesticides to be sprayed - which in the end causes more damage to the enviorment.

A farm - is not a closed bubble which doesnt interact with the surrounding enviorment. Pesticides will drain into groundwater and will be spread further into the ecological system aswell.

[Tiberius]

That ignores the fact that geneticaly supirior crops would displace the less supirior crops and therefor have a more damaging effect on the surrounding ecosystem than cowshit.

Have you got any evidence to actually back this up?

Like I mentioned before.....

And you ignored before.

Fuck you. I haven't ignored any of your points.

Do I really need to repeat myself. You could simply state that you chose to ignore that supirior crops decimate the other crops in the surrounding ecosystem.

Again, evidence please.

Have you ever been on the countryside?

I grew up in the countryside.

What was your intention to prove with that statement? Because it doesnt show anything, if at all it underlines my point that farmers will take influence on the surrounding ecosystems.

My intention with the statement was to point out the limitations of a farmer's influence on the local ecosystems. They do not extend to cities. A farmer switching crops does not have any noticeable effect on life in cities, as far as I am aware. If you have any evidence to back up your assertion that it does, present it.

You simply seem utterly disconected with the world, like in your previous statement.

Well, I'm not. You seem utterly disconnected with facts if you think I'm a dentist's son, or that sons of dentists are somehow less connected with the world.

alot - does not mean all. And most aid - is free - that`s the very concept of aid.

Now you are twisting your own words. Let's look at what you said:

the point of food aid - just like with any aid - is that it is given to the needing for free

You didn't say "a lot". You said "any", which in this context is a synonym for "all".

And do it without monsanto or washing food in chlorine or through destroying local farmers and the ecosystem.

I still don't think you've given any evidence that they do this.

more food = less value = end of buisness for small farmers

That is how business works I'm afraid. More food for less cost is a good deal for consumers. If small businesses can't keep up with the demand, they go under.

But you write as if it was.

I really don't. I just don't see the knock-on effect on the local ecology as big a deal as you do. I also think your ideas about the knock-on effects are entirely out of proportion. Like I said before, if it really was as prominent as you think it is, then every time a field is left fallow, we would see massive amounts of negative changes in the surrounding ecosystem. We don't.

They also grow faster.

...and this is a bad thing how?

they also grow faster, which is intended to create more harvests.

Right, and who performs the harvests? Oh yes, the farmer. A farmer is not going to change his harvesting habits just because some Monsanto seeds get in his crop. A farmer performs a harvest when the crop is ready; not a small subset of the crop. Indeed, if he notices the Monsanto crop early on, he might be able to get rid of them before they are ready.

explain.

The point of regulation isn't that you create laws saying "you can't do this" and hoping people follow them. The point of regulation is you have government agencies doing checks to make sure the laws are followed.

And negatively influence local ecology.

You've still yet to prove this, but even if you did, it doesn't make them "low quality".

And it was.

You're still debating me, so clearly you must understand my point about debates despite your assertion that this one is pointless.

Nope.

"What if" arguments are useless arguments which deserve nothing else but to be flushed down the toilet.

Only facts count in a debate.

And not your dystopic fantasy future, the existance of which depends on a if which is a word whos meaning seems to have been forgotten.

I posed a scenario for you. It wasn't supposed to be an argument. I wanted to know what you thought of the situation, and it is a very important situation in regard to this debate.

You claim that the EU is great because it listens to what people want, rather than lobbyists. Whilst I agree that some of the time, that is great, other times it is not. When what people want is dictated by lies and delusions, following through with legislation that gives them what they want is actually a bad thing.

[The Grand Nudger]

200 rats -modified- to be tumor prone where fed -modified- maize (lol.....maize) and also given a nice pesticide kicker in their drinking water. 20 of the 200 where the "control" group, no standard deviation in toxicity was referenced, and still...the rats in the group that were fed the largest dose of both the modified maize and the poisonous water....wait for it....

-outperformed-

those that were fed the smaller doses- or no dose.

Yep, sounds legit.

(that's an old study, made the rounds awhile back-it was good grist for the mill but it was, sadly, a quack piece designed to be referenced but not looked into)

[CapnAwesome]

Does anybody on here know if Western Europe can actually feed itself? I know that most European countries are massive food importers. It's fine to take some moral (although for the life of me I fail to see the moral angle against genetically modified food) position when you can just import the same food from the US (the worlds largest food exporter, also by far the largest supplier of food aid for the world. The US provided 100,000,000 tons of emergency food AID in 2011 and the rest of the world provided about the same) I don't how people can feel so high and mighty about this anti-technological position when it's how most of the world is fed.

Links for food aid stats:
http://www.wfp.org/fais/reports/quantiti.../0/order/0
http://foodaid.org/

[The Grand Nudger]

Therein lies the rub. If the EU lags behind in ag biotech the situation is worsened. Their ag dollar is worth less and less as the gains in other biotech friendly places increase by volume. So they'll be growing less food, with fewer sources for "approved" imports - at a higher price due to inefficiency, waste, and availability. The situation could be reversed - but being a net importer means that you can't afford to sell your productivity - so countries that leverage biotech - even in this regard- will have the upper hand in being able to devote some productive land (and this precisely because of biotech advantages) to niche markets - like "approved" foods.

Think china, with it's factory organics. They feed themselves with GM, and then devote some of that now free land to pumping out overpriced luxury goods to credulous or captive consumers.