Monsanto gives up fight for GM plants in Europe

[Tiberius]

If that is true, what do you suggest about farmers depending on one company for services? A farmer who buys a crop from monsanto has to constantly rebuy the pesticides and the feriliser from that same company because the plant only responds to these. This dependency can ruin the farmer when the company choses to rise prices.

I've already covered that. Opening up GMO foods does not mean Monsanto is the only player in the game. Other GMO companies can and will arise if the market is open enough. There is already a research lab in the UK looking into GMOs.

As for the dependency, I call bullshit on it. The farmer isn't forced into the relationship; he does it out of choice. Secondly, there is nothing stopping a farmer from going back to non-GMO foods if someone tries to screw him over on price.

---

which means that I accuse you of having no moral principles and not of being a racist. Meaning that you have no problems to engage with the worst scum as long as it pays off for you!

The fact remains that you wrote "I am not a racist, but" and then suggested I liked to have drinks with members of the SS. Sorry Germans, but anyone, especially a German, should know how that comes across. I find your excuse very hard to believe.

Wrong, I mocked you for considering that it alright to gain profit or any kind of personal good from engaging with racists. And that you are therefor an opportunist.

The problem with your excuse here is that I didn't ever suggest anything about gaining profit or personal good from engaging with racists. That was something of your own invention.

I'd be an opportunist if I hung out with racists because they gave me good deals and I didn't care about their racism. That's not why I would hang out with racists. I'd hang out with them if they were my friends who were otherwise decent people, and if I had the chance to try and change their views.

[Minimalist]

More corporate criminals. Let's not only pick on Monsanto in the US.

They all suck.

http://action.sumofus.org/a/nestle-water...ub=fwd&t=2

Nestlé's Chairman and former CEO once infamously declared that "access to water should not be a public right." And now his company is putting into practice its belief that every resource should be commodified and sold off. Nestlé is sucking up water from a Canadian watershed during drought conditions -- to bottle and sell it off.

Nestlé has won a permit to drain an Ontario aquifer whenever it likes. Meanwhile, the surrounding communities which rely on the aquifer have by-laws to restrict their access to their own water during dry conditions in the summer. This just isn’t right, and Maude Barlow, the Council of Canadians, and Ecojustice are fighting back against Nestlé and the Ontario government office that handed out its permit. It shouldn’t take a legal proceeding to force Nestlé to do the right thing. Let’s tell Nestlé that a community’s access to its own water supply is more important than any company's profits.

[Something completely different]

I've already covered that. Opening up GMO foods does not mean Monsanto is the only player in the game. Other GMO companies can and will arise if the market is open enough. There is already a research lab in the UK looking into GMOs.

As for the dependency, I call bullshit on it. The farmer isn't forced into the relationship; he does it out of choice. Secondly, there is nothing stopping a farmer from going back to non-GMO foods if someone tries to screw him over on price.

I will not reply to that. I`ll admit that I am still biased towards you. Cause I am boiling in rage at YOU!

I thought I had calmed when I returned, but I didnt. Maybe in a few more months.

The fact remains that I wrote "I am not a racist, but" and then suggested I liked to have drinks with members of the SS. Sorry Germans, but anyone, especially a German, should know how that comes across. I find your excuse very hard to believe.

That is your interpretation. Having a drink with the SS is not like going to kill Jews with the SS. Alot of people had "drinks" with the SS. Including the top industrial magnates of the country who seemed to have no problem with having slave labor work in their factories aslong as it made them a profit.
Considering that you thought it alright to gain a profit with a modern day slave state - the comparison was appropriate.

I grew up near a concentration camp which "leant" slave workers to a local quarry, chemstry company and construction buisness. - those people who owned those buisnesses were here refered to as

"Die mit der SS ein paar Bierchen tranken"

"Those who had a few drinks with the SS"

So you can keep the "especialy a german" nonsence to yourself!

The problem with your excuse here is that I didn't ever suggest anything about gaining profit or personal good from engaging with racists. That was something of your own invention.

Hard to not see it differently when a constant defender of every kind of free market interaction defends the trade with a brutal regime on grounds of which no one had ever heard before.

I'd be an opportunist if I hung out with racists because they gave me good deals and I didn't care about their racism.

Wrong. And a silly excuse. Even if you cared, it wouldnt change the fact that you decided to deal with them. Hence - make a profit with them - let them make a profit - legitimise them as businesspartners - give them more confidence of being socialy acceptable

That's not why I would hang out with racists. I'd hang out with them if they were my friends who were otherwise decent people, and if I had the chance to try and change their views.

And what would you tell your colored friends? And how long would you persist with something? - also for 10 years?

---

That's an anti-trust issue, to be sure...but only where anti-trust laws exist. A farmer -could- buy his seed from someone else, there are competitors (their main pesticide is off-patent now so it's a non-issue) - but Monsanto's seed is very well engineered, it is demonstrably superior and so farmers -choose- to continue buying it and planting it to increase their net. If Monsanto raises their prices to a point where a producer would net more with another product that's what they'll plant - if they figure the difference is worth it.

That's how this is done. Think of agricultural producers as short term investment specialists, because that's what they are.

But a farmer cannot use a different pesticide or fertilizer after already buing the crop. So what if monsanto decides to raise prices of the fertilizer and pestisides after selling the crop? - if the farmer doesnt buy it he loses his harvest.

Ever heard of the 18th century Glasgow tobacco traiders?

Because it would free up your capital and your productive land (which can then be used to generate more capital). If somebody can do something cheaper and better than you, you let them do that and focus on something else (while leveraging their ability an products) to maximize your own efforts.

Yet that would kick regional farmers and their products out of buisness, because producing in the US and exporting to EU is cheaper than producing in the EU. Other than that, it would create European dependency for food towards the US.

[Big Blue Sky]

Another conspiracy theory for my friend Tiberius: http://www.trueactivist.com/what-exactly...e-labeled/

[The Grand Nudger]

It's gonna take more than "I refute" to do any damage to numbers JC.

Any allergenic proteins in GE and not traditionally modified crops would be fairly easy to identify. Can definitely happen. I would certainly hope that engineered corn and soy contained toxic proteins - since that's what they're often engineered specifically for.

[Jackalope]

Stating that there are "toxins" in this or that, without data, without context, is fairly useless. In sufficient quantity, water is toxic, yet it's absolutely critical for survival. I'm more interested in answering the question "are they hazardous?".

What that image represents is both an appeal to emotion and appeal to authority. Less have something with a little meat on the bones, please.

I'm personally open to whatever conclusion is supported by research. So far, we haven't seen much of that.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's a failure in principle, to be honest. Nothing becomes allergenic or toxic by simple virtue of it having been modified.

One very useful application of genetic engineering would be to "modify out'" allergenic compounds in traditionally bred crops.......and this is already being looked into. My daughter can;t eat peas because of an enzyme that they produce - but she loves the taste (it's unnerving), and they're pretty damned nutritious. Wouldn't it be lovely if she could have her peas without my having a heart attack? Genetic engineering to the rescue!

[pocaracas]

yeah... I'd think that the modified crops, at worst, would be harder to digest, more difficult to boil or grind and, ultimately, just not taste as well.
If they have allergens, then it's because they already had them before the modification.

[The Grand Nudger]

yeah... I'd think that the modified crops, at worst, would be harder to digest, more difficult to boil or grind and, ultimately, just not taste as well.

Not by simple virtue of their being modified they wouldn't be. All of those things would have to be a specific effect of a specific modification. One of them is, well, a matter of taste.

If they have allergens, then it's because they already had them before the modification.

It's entirely possible that nucleotide insertion (or any other measure - including selective breeding) would reactivate toxin or allergen producing pathways that lay dormant in a given variety. Thankfully the people who produce them check for this sort of thing (as part of the process to see whether or not the engineering attempt was successful). This works in the reverse as well. Some very popular foods are exceedingly toxic - and have been modified to be less so.