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On April 20 2009 21:37 Hawk wrote:Show nested quote +On April 17 2009 10:41 Trumpet wrote:Penn & Teller have a great episode of Bull Shit on this exact topic, the episode is called "Eat This!" or something similar. I think most the concern of gm foods is due to On April 17 2009 08:28 travis wrote:
how would you guys possibly know if there is "nothing wrong with gm foods" rofl
wait 20 years, then we MIGHT know that kind of irrational fear.  Yes, because it's real irrational to think that tinkering with the plants might be bad and result in some unfound disease down the road since there's been minimal studies done to it. Cuz, you know, the government has never let a product out that wasn't full researched.
We've been genetically modifying crops since the beginning of time. Only now we're getting better at it and we've developed new methods. Funny how people will cry foul over "synthetic" foods but don't think twice about ingesting some herbal supplement that has never been tested by the FDA. If GM didn't carry the stigma of being "artificial" or "non-organic", there wouldn't be half the fuss.
Even if GM crops have impacts on health, the benefits to crop yield FARRRR outweigh. I understand the concern with sustainable farming practices, but this has nothing to do with that. GM crops can be used in conjunction with organic farming. It's only excessive paranoia of anything "unnatural" that hinders its development.
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On April 20 2009 15:15 fight_or_flight wrote:Germany is banning the use of a genetically modified corn because they say it is damaging to the environment. Germany Bans Cultivation of GM Corn + Show Spoiler +
Germany has banned the cultivation of GM corn, claiming that MON 810 is dangerous for the environment. But that argument might not stand up in court and Berlin could face fines totalling millions of euros if American multinational Monsanto decides to challenge the prohibition on its seed.
The sowing season may be just around the corner, but this year German farmers will not be planting gentically modified crops: German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner announced Tuesday she was banning the cultivation of GM corn in Germany.
Greenpeace activists take a sample from a Monsanto test site near Borken in North Rhine-Westphalia: The GM crop MON 810 has been banned in Germany.
DPA
Greenpeace activists take a sample from a Monsanto test site near Borken in North Rhine-Westphalia: The GM crop MON 810 has been banned in Germany.
Under the new regulations, the cultivation of MON 810, a GM corn produced by the American biotech giant Monsanto, will be prohibited in Germany, as will the sale of its seed. Aigner told reporters Tuesday she had legitimate reasons to believe that MON 810 posed "a danger to the environment," a position which she said the Environment Ministry also supported. In taking the step, Aigner is taking advantage of a clause in EU law which allows individual countries to impose such bans.
"Contrary to assertions stating otherwise, my decision is not politically motivated," Aigner said, referring to reports that she had come under pressure to impose a ban from within her party, the conservative Bavaria-based Christian Social Union. She stressed that the ban should be understood as an "individual case" and not as a statement of principle regarding future policy relating to genetic engineering.
PHOTO GALLERY: GERMANY'S GM BATTLE
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Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (5 Photos)
Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND) both welcomed the ban. Greenpeace's genetic engineering expert, Stephanie Töwe, said the decision was long overdue, explaining that numerous scientific studies demonstrated that GM corn was a danger to the environment.
However the ban could prove costly for the German government. Experts in Aigner's ministry recently told SPIEGEL that it will be hard to prove conclusively that MON 810 damages the environment, which could enable Monsanto to win a court case opposing the ban and potentially expose the government to €6-7 million ($7.9-9.2 million) in damages.
RELATED SPIEGEL ONLINE LINKS
*
Genetically Modified Corn: German Lawmakers Mull a Frankenfood Ban (04/10/2009)
*
Fighting in the Field: Monsanto's Uphill Battle in Germany (03/05/2009)
*
Photo Gallery: Germany's GM Battle
Monsanto said Tuesday that it would look into the question of whether it would take legal proceedings as quickly as possible. Andreas Thierfelder, spokesman for Monsanto Germany, said the matter was very urgent as the planting season was just about to start.
Aigner has recently come under pressure from Bavaria to ban GM corn. Bavaria's Environment Minister Markus Söder wants to turn Germany into a "GM food-free zone." Environmental groups have long called for a ban on GM crops in Germany, arguing that they pose a danger to plants and animals.
However, supporters of genetic engineering argue that a ban could prompt research companies and institutes to pull up stakes and leave Germany. Wolfgang Herrmann, president of Munich's Technical University, has said that a prohibition risks precipitating "an exodus of researchers."
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The issue has exposed a split between Bavaria's CSU and its larger sister party, Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union. Katherina Reiche, deputy chairwoman of the CDU/CSU's parliamentary group, has complained of the "CSU's irresponsible, cheap propaganda," claiming that it could harm German industry. She argued that anti-GM sentiment was one reason a subsidiary of the German chemical giant Bayer decided to moved its facilities for genetic engineering from Potsdam, near Berlin, to Belgium.
MON 810 was approved for cultivation in Europe by the European Union in 1998 and is currently the only GM crop which can be grown in Germany. The plant produces a toxin to fight off a certain pest, the voracious larvae of the corn borer moth. The crop was due to be planted this year on a total area of around 3,600 hectares (8,896 acres) in Germany. The cultivation of MON 810 is already banned in five other EU member states, namely Austria, Hungary, Greece, France and Luxembourg.
dgs
this is ridiculous...how can Germany be sued for not buying a corporation's seeds? ===== This is all about how monsanto's corn feed for pigs has changed their DNA structure so they now carry the monsanto corn gene. As a result pig farmers now have to pay a license fee for each pig that carries their genes. Farmers also found that when feeding their pigs corn they would have all sorts of health problems including false pregnancies, spontaneous abortions and all sorts of things. At the end of part 4 into part 5 there is a pig farmer who discovered this when he stopped feeding his pigs this stuff the problems went away + Show Spoiler +http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-ouf_gmA5o If They claim they want a license from farmers who's pigs ate their feed, what happens to us if we eat something with that gene/dna in it? Do we need to pay a license fee as well? ===== More related corruption...brought to you by Aljazeera. + Show Spoiler +===== I get a sense of patenting and controlling our food supply, in addition to poisoning us. Anyone remember that company that knowingly shipped vaccines contaminated with aids? here it is...I remember reading about it http://www.naturalnews.com/News_000647_Bayer_vaccines_HIV.htmlthese companies don't care about your health. In fact they release hundreds millions of pounds of pharmaceutical waste into our drinking water, openly. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090419/ap_on_re_us/pharmawater_factoriesand the government doesn't do anything about it. Why should I trust them with my food?
What's wrong with patenting our food supply? Are you telling me that the same guy who argued against the federal reserve is saying that companies shouldn't have an incentive to invest in agricultural technology? It's not like patenting new technologies will make old farming methods and crops obsolete. But in the long run, we all benefit.
Patent abuse is nothing new. There's always going to be some asshole lawyer who decides it's a great idea to sue pigs. But seriously, there is no way society is ever going to have to pay licensing fees for having x genes. No. It's not going to happen. There will be laws passed. Common sense will check. Public outrage will check.
You're making some ridiculous leaps in logic. What is the connection between Bayer, pharmaceutical waste, and GM crops? What a load of bullshit fearmongering. For every example of mistakes some corporation has made, I can give you two examples of when corporate research has produced something of extraordinary benefit to man. The last two centuries is a testament to that.
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However the ban could prove costly for the German government. Experts in Aigner's ministry recently told SPIEGEL that it will be hard to prove conclusively that MON 810 damages the environment, which could enable Monsanto to win a court case opposing the ban and potentially expose the government to €6-7 million ($7.9-9.2 million) in damages.
Read highlighted part please. If something is hard to prove conclusively, it is undecided. Science is pretty conclusive
On April 16 2009 17:42 fight_or_flight wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2009 16:01 ahrara_ wrote:On April 16 2009 15:54 a-game wrote:On April 16 2009 15:38 ahrara_ wrote:
Do people honestly believe that because it's natural it's better for you? Are that fucking stupid? huh? of course natural food is better for you. i'm going to just assume that you didn't intend to word it this way... And on what series of peer-reviewed studies do you base this judgment? There is zero conclusive research indicating that non-organic foods have a statistically significant negative impact to health. They may have greater pesticide residue, but the impacts of that are minimal. I really hope no one here believes that buying "all-natural" herbal supplements is superior to "non-organic" medicine. That's the kind of ideological, baseless drivel I fucking loathe. Are you familiar with the way science works? It all comes down to funding, and those doing the funding are usually governments or large corporations. They have an interest in providing low cost and sometimes even unhealthy food. If evolution is correct, then naturally occurring chemicals have been taken into account already by our bodies because they occur in nature. Synthetic chemicals, in general, may not necessarily have been taken into account by our bodies. Concerning the OP, I will post a detailed response in favor of organic food but not right now.
More ridiculous fear mongering.
If science was as utterly corrupt as you argue, how is it that a few thousand rogue scientists got the idea into the media that humans are causing rapid and potentially catastrophic climate change? There are isolated instances of poorly conducted and clearly biased studies. That's why science depends on peer review. This allows those with no conflict of interest to review the work of those who do.
If evolution is correct, then naturally occurring chemicals have been taken into account already by our bodies because they occur in nature. Synthetic chemicals, in general, may not necessarily have been taken into account by our bodies.
Well then I hope you never have the misfortune to ingest anything foreign like penicillin.
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On April 17 2009 08:58 Jibba wrote:I'm actually going to agree with fight_or_flight here, at least on the first part. The studies aren't very good either way, but there are benefits to GM foods, as well as consequences. It's a consumer choice anyways. There are pretty good reasons to by local though, instead of from megafarms in Nebraska. What is ridiculous is Zambia turning down GM wheat when its people are starving during a drought, because of coercion by Greenpeace. Show nested quote +On April 16 2009 18:53 Polis wrote:
The reason why people starve are organizational, it is not becouse we can't produce enough.
There is definitely good reason to promote organic meat, even if mostly to give better conditions of living for farm animals. Another great post.
The bolded text is my point exactly.
There are places in the world where people starve due to regional conflict and instability, and this kind of suffering gets the most attention, but the majority of those suffering from malnutrition are simply poor. Reduced food prices had reduced global malnutrition rates by about 10% over the last decade, but the returns are diminishing. We need things like GM which have little environmental impact but improve yields to maintain this trend.
edit: sorry for the quadruple post, but this was the best way to keep things organized and respond to the people i wanted to respond to.
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On April 20 2009 15:15 fight_or_flight wrote:Germany is banning the use of a genetically modified corn because they say it is damaging to the environment. Germany Bans Cultivation of GM Corn + Show Spoiler +
Germany has banned the cultivation of GM corn, claiming that MON 810 is dangerous for the environment. But that argument might not stand up in court and Berlin could face fines totalling millions of euros if American multinational Monsanto decides to challenge the prohibition on its seed.
The sowing season may be just around the corner, but this year German farmers will not be planting gentically modified crops: German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner announced Tuesday she was banning the cultivation of GM corn in Germany.
Greenpeace activists take a sample from a Monsanto test site near Borken in North Rhine-Westphalia: The GM crop MON 810 has been banned in Germany.
DPA
Greenpeace activists take a sample from a Monsanto test site near Borken in North Rhine-Westphalia: The GM crop MON 810 has been banned in Germany.
Under the new regulations, the cultivation of MON 810, a GM corn produced by the American biotech giant Monsanto, will be prohibited in Germany, as will the sale of its seed. Aigner told reporters Tuesday she had legitimate reasons to believe that MON 810 posed "a danger to the environment," a position which she said the Environment Ministry also supported. In taking the step, Aigner is taking advantage of a clause in EU law which allows individual countries to impose such bans.
"Contrary to assertions stating otherwise, my decision is not politically motivated," Aigner said, referring to reports that she had come under pressure to impose a ban from within her party, the conservative Bavaria-based Christian Social Union. She stressed that the ban should be understood as an "individual case" and not as a statement of principle regarding future policy relating to genetic engineering.
PHOTO GALLERY: GERMANY'S GM BATTLE
*
*
*
Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (5 Photos)
Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND) both welcomed the ban. Greenpeace's genetic engineering expert, Stephanie Töwe, said the decision was long overdue, explaining that numerous scientific studies demonstrated that GM corn was a danger to the environment.
However the ban could prove costly for the German government. Experts in Aigner's ministry recently told SPIEGEL that it will be hard to prove conclusively that MON 810 damages the environment, which could enable Monsanto to win a court case opposing the ban and potentially expose the government to €6-7 million ($7.9-9.2 million) in damages.
RELATED SPIEGEL ONLINE LINKS
*
Genetically Modified Corn: German Lawmakers Mull a Frankenfood Ban (04/10/2009)
*
Fighting in the Field: Monsanto's Uphill Battle in Germany (03/05/2009)
*
Photo Gallery: Germany's GM Battle
Monsanto said Tuesday that it would look into the question of whether it would take legal proceedings as quickly as possible. Andreas Thierfelder, spokesman for Monsanto Germany, said the matter was very urgent as the planting season was just about to start.
Aigner has recently come under pressure from Bavaria to ban GM corn. Bavaria's Environment Minister Markus Söder wants to turn Germany into a "GM food-free zone." Environmental groups have long called for a ban on GM crops in Germany, arguing that they pose a danger to plants and animals.
However, supporters of genetic engineering argue that a ban could prompt research companies and institutes to pull up stakes and leave Germany. Wolfgang Herrmann, president of Munich's Technical University, has said that a prohibition risks precipitating "an exodus of researchers."
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The issue has exposed a split between Bavaria's CSU and its larger sister party, Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union. Katherina Reiche, deputy chairwoman of the CDU/CSU's parliamentary group, has complained of the "CSU's irresponsible, cheap propaganda," claiming that it could harm German industry. She argued that anti-GM sentiment was one reason a subsidiary of the German chemical giant Bayer decided to moved its facilities for genetic engineering from Potsdam, near Berlin, to Belgium.
MON 810 was approved for cultivation in Europe by the European Union in 1998 and is currently the only GM crop which can be grown in Germany. The plant produces a toxin to fight off a certain pest, the voracious larvae of the corn borer moth. The crop was due to be planted this year on a total area of around 3,600 hectares (8,896 acres) in Germany. The cultivation of MON 810 is already banned in five other EU member states, namely Austria, Hungary, Greece, France and Luxembourg.
dgs
===== This is all about how monsanto's corn feed for pigs has changed their DNA structure so they now carry the monsanto corn gene. As a result pig farmers now have to pay a license fee for each pig that carries their genes. Farmers also found that when feeding their pigs corn they would have all sorts of health problems including false pregnancies, spontaneous abortions and all sorts of things. At the end of part 4 into part 5 there is a pig farmer who discovered this when he stopped feeding his pigs this stuff the problems went away + Show Spoiler +If They claim they want a license from farmers who's pigs ate their feed, what happens to us if we eat something with that gene/dna in it? Do we need to pay a license fee as well? ===== More related corruption...brought to you by Aljazeera. + Show Spoiler +===== I get a sense of patenting and controlling our food supply, in addition to poisoning us. Anyone remember that company that knowingly shipped vaccines contaminated with aids? here it is...I remember reading about it http://www.naturalnews.com/News_000647_Bayer_vaccines_HIV.htmlthese companies don't care about your health. In fact they release hundreds millions of pounds of pharmaceutical waste into our drinking water, openly. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090419/ap_on_re_us/pharmawater_factoriesand the government doesn't do anything about it. Why should I trust them with my food?
are you trolling when you write this or is your understanding of international business actually this limited? Do you know the difference between banning a product and not buying it? Do you believe that the German government buys corn seeds and distributes them to farmers?
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Some people are skeptical about buying transgenic food, because we do not know what effects they have on us, yet.
It is like when cigarettes were so popular a few years ago. All the beautiful and successful models were portrait smoking in advertising, some years go by and we find out it gives lung cancer! Who would have ever thought a little smoke could have such adverse effects?
Perhaps transgenic food is good for us, perhaps it is not and you will grow a third arm, or become impotent in a few year. Who knows?
What I find more bothering, is that farmers are only planting transgenic food because it is cheaper.
They are killing the variety, too; In Brazil there used to be 500 types of corns back in 1950, now there is only 5 which are not sterile and can only be purchased from the US.
On top of making cheap ass food full of insecticides, they suck at it, cuz there soon will be a shortage of food in the developed world.
I heard rumors, that when the US has a surplus of wheat they burn it too keep prices high, instead of using it to help diminish hunger. Its all business, and profits lol
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=8727363351199539209&ei=BODsSbaWKo6YrQLQubTxDQ&q=future of food&hl=en
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On April 21 2009 05:55 Leath wrote:Some people are skeptical about buying transgenic food, because we do not know what effects they have on us, yet. It is like when cigarettes were so popular a few years ago. All the beautiful and successful models were portrait smoking in advertising, some years go by and we find out it gives lung cancer! Who would have ever thought a little smoke could have such adverse effects? Perhaps transgenic food is good for us, perhaps it is not and you will grow a third arm, or become impotent in a few year. Who knows? What I find more bothering, is that farmers are only planting transgenic food because it is cheaper. They are killing the variety, too; In Brazil there used to be 500 types of corns back in 1950, now there is only 5 which are not sterile and can only be purchased from the US. On top of making cheap ass food full of insecticides, they suck at it, cuz there soon will be a shortage of food in the developed world. I heard rumors, that when the US has a surplus of wheat they burn it too keep prices high, instead of using it to help diminish hunger. Its all business, and profits lol http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=8727363351199539209&ei=BODsSbaWKo6YrQLQubTxDQ&q=future of food&hl=en
I'll grant that GM foods should be treated like drugs to an extent, and should be thoroughly tested before they are mass produced. I don't know how this process could be implemented, but I don't think it's an unreasonable idea.
It is, however, stupid as hell to lump all "GM foods" into the same category and argue that if one breed has been found to have adverse impacts, then all GM foods are equally bad.
Biodiversity in agriculture is valuable, but it is not mutually exclusive with GM crops. There are researchers that maintain different species of crops in order to preserve biodiversity. If the need for another species arises, these reserves can be called upon to restore diversity.
Your claim that GM crops don't yield as much is just a flat out lie.
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On April 21 2009 04:24 ahrara_ wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 20 2009 15:15 fight_or_flight wrote:Germany is banning the use of a genetically modified corn because they say it is damaging to the environment. Germany Bans Cultivation of GM Corn + Show Spoiler +
Germany has banned the cultivation of GM corn, claiming that MON 810 is dangerous for the environment. But that argument might not stand up in court and Berlin could face fines totalling millions of euros if American multinational Monsanto decides to challenge the prohibition on its seed.
The sowing season may be just around the corner, but this year German farmers will not be planting gentically modified crops: German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner announced Tuesday she was banning the cultivation of GM corn in Germany.
Greenpeace activists take a sample from a Monsanto test site near Borken in North Rhine-Westphalia: The GM crop MON 810 has been banned in Germany.
DPA
Greenpeace activists take a sample from a Monsanto test site near Borken in North Rhine-Westphalia: The GM crop MON 810 has been banned in Germany.
Under the new regulations, the cultivation of MON 810, a GM corn produced by the American biotech giant Monsanto, will be prohibited in Germany, as will the sale of its seed. Aigner told reporters Tuesday she had legitimate reasons to believe that MON 810 posed "a danger to the environment," a position which she said the Environment Ministry also supported. In taking the step, Aigner is taking advantage of a clause in EU law which allows individual countries to impose such bans.
"Contrary to assertions stating otherwise, my decision is not politically motivated," Aigner said, referring to reports that she had come under pressure to impose a ban from within her party, the conservative Bavaria-based Christian Social Union. She stressed that the ban should be understood as an "individual case" and not as a statement of principle regarding future policy relating to genetic engineering.
PHOTO GALLERY: GERMANY'S GM BATTLE
*
*
*
Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (5 Photos)
Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND) both welcomed the ban. Greenpeace's genetic engineering expert, Stephanie Töwe, said the decision was long overdue, explaining that numerous scientific studies demonstrated that GM corn was a danger to the environment.
However the ban could prove costly for the German government. Experts in Aigner's ministry recently told SPIEGEL that it will be hard to prove conclusively that MON 810 damages the environment, which could enable Monsanto to win a court case opposing the ban and potentially expose the government to €6-7 million ($7.9-9.2 million) in damages.
RELATED SPIEGEL ONLINE LINKS
*
Genetically Modified Corn: German Lawmakers Mull a Frankenfood Ban (04/10/2009)
*
Fighting in the Field: Monsanto's Uphill Battle in Germany (03/05/2009)
*
Photo Gallery: Germany's GM Battle
Monsanto said Tuesday that it would look into the question of whether it would take legal proceedings as quickly as possible. Andreas Thierfelder, spokesman for Monsanto Germany, said the matter was very urgent as the planting season was just about to start.
Aigner has recently come under pressure from Bavaria to ban GM corn. Bavaria's Environment Minister Markus Söder wants to turn Germany into a "GM food-free zone." Environmental groups have long called for a ban on GM crops in Germany, arguing that they pose a danger to plants and animals.
However, supporters of genetic engineering argue that a ban could prompt research companies and institutes to pull up stakes and leave Germany. Wolfgang Herrmann, president of Munich's Technical University, has said that a prohibition risks precipitating "an exodus of researchers."
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The issue has exposed a split between Bavaria's CSU and its larger sister party, Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union. Katherina Reiche, deputy chairwoman of the CDU/CSU's parliamentary group, has complained of the "CSU's irresponsible, cheap propaganda," claiming that it could harm German industry. She argued that anti-GM sentiment was one reason a subsidiary of the German chemical giant Bayer decided to moved its facilities for genetic engineering from Potsdam, near Berlin, to Belgium.
MON 810 was approved for cultivation in Europe by the European Union in 1998 and is currently the only GM crop which can be grown in Germany. The plant produces a toxin to fight off a certain pest, the voracious larvae of the corn borer moth. The crop was due to be planted this year on a total area of around 3,600 hectares (8,896 acres) in Germany. The cultivation of MON 810 is already banned in five other EU member states, namely Austria, Hungary, Greece, France and Luxembourg.
dgs
this is ridiculous...how can Germany be sued for not buying a corporation's seeds? ===== This is all about how monsanto's corn feed for pigs has changed their DNA structure so they now carry the monsanto corn gene. As a result pig farmers now have to pay a license fee for each pig that carries their genes. Farmers also found that when feeding their pigs corn they would have all sorts of health problems including false pregnancies, spontaneous abortions and all sorts of things. At the end of part 4 into part 5 there is a pig farmer who discovered this when he stopped feeding his pigs this stuff the problems went away + Show Spoiler +If They claim they want a license from farmers who's pigs ate their feed, what happens to us if we eat something with that gene/dna in it? Do we need to pay a license fee as well? ===== More related corruption...brought to you by Aljazeera. + Show Spoiler +===== I get a sense of patenting and controlling our food supply, in addition to poisoning us. Anyone remember that company that knowingly shipped vaccines contaminated with aids? here it is...I remember reading about it http://www.naturalnews.com/News_000647_Bayer_vaccines_HIV.htmlthese companies don't care about your health. In fact they release hundreds millions of pounds of pharmaceutical waste into our drinking water, openly. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090419/ap_on_re_us/pharmawater_factoriesand the government doesn't do anything about it. Why should I trust them with my food? What's wrong with patenting our food supply? Are you telling me that the same guy who argued against the federal reserve is saying that companies shouldn't have an incentive to invest in agricultural technology? It's not like patenting new technologies will make old farming methods and crops obsolete. But in the long run, we all benefit. Patent abuse is nothing new. There's always going to be some asshole lawyer who decides it's a great idea to sue pigs. But seriously, there is no way society is ever going to have to pay licensing fees for having x genes. No. It's not going to happen. There will be laws passed. Common sense will check. Public outrage will check. You're making some ridiculous leaps in logic. What is the connection between Bayer, pharmaceutical waste, and GM crops? What a load of bullshit fearmongering. For every example of mistakes some corporation has made, I can give you two examples of when corporate research has produced something of extraordinary benefit to man. The last two centuries is a testament to that.
uhhh no. What the poster was sayin there was that a company sold corn to farmers. That corn influenced the DNA of the pigs offspring to have this specific marker gene. So now farmers have to pay for each piglet(?) that is born, the farmers have to pay the company because the pigs have the marker. So even if the farmers stop usin the company's corn, they still have to pay the company for having pigs with the genetic marker.
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On April 21 2009 09:09 ahrara_ wrote:
Biodiversity in agriculture is valuable, but it is not mutually exclusive with GM crops. There are researchers that maintain different species of crops in order to preserve biodiversity. If the need for another species arises, these reserves can be called upon to restore diversity.
While it's true that researchers are preserving biodiversity by storing different species of crops, the rate at which land is being cleared for agriculture is greater than the rate which scientists are preserving biodiversity. I don't think that we really have enough of an understanding of ecological balance and the role of biodiversity (biosphere 2 anyone?) to say that we should be wiping out all these natural species without documenting/studying them. The trade off here really is more food now while killing biodiversity versus more biodiversity now while having less food. Is there really that much of a shortage of food to warrant the pace at which we are planting new crops? As somebody else pointed out, it's much more of a distribution problem than it is a production problem. Plus there's the fact that the EU, US and Japan subsidize all their farmers and artificially inflate prices/create market inefficiencies. Personally, I'd rather preserve a little more biodiversity now at the expense of tossing more money at an inefficient market until the distribution problem is resolved.
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On April 21 2009 10:15 Faronel wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2009 04:24 ahrara_ wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 20 2009 15:15 fight_or_flight wrote:Germany is banning the use of a genetically modified corn because they say it is damaging to the environment. Germany Bans Cultivation of GM Corn + Show Spoiler +
Germany has banned the cultivation of GM corn, claiming that MON 810 is dangerous for the environment. But that argument might not stand up in court and Berlin could face fines totalling millions of euros if American multinational Monsanto decides to challenge the prohibition on its seed.
The sowing season may be just around the corner, but this year German farmers will not be planting gentically modified crops: German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner announced Tuesday she was banning the cultivation of GM corn in Germany.
Greenpeace activists take a sample from a Monsanto test site near Borken in North Rhine-Westphalia: The GM crop MON 810 has been banned in Germany.
DPA
Greenpeace activists take a sample from a Monsanto test site near Borken in North Rhine-Westphalia: The GM crop MON 810 has been banned in Germany.
Under the new regulations, the cultivation of MON 810, a GM corn produced by the American biotech giant Monsanto, will be prohibited in Germany, as will the sale of its seed. Aigner told reporters Tuesday she had legitimate reasons to believe that MON 810 posed "a danger to the environment," a position which she said the Environment Ministry also supported. In taking the step, Aigner is taking advantage of a clause in EU law which allows individual countries to impose such bans.
"Contrary to assertions stating otherwise, my decision is not politically motivated," Aigner said, referring to reports that she had come under pressure to impose a ban from within her party, the conservative Bavaria-based Christian Social Union. She stressed that the ban should be understood as an "individual case" and not as a statement of principle regarding future policy relating to genetic engineering.
PHOTO GALLERY: GERMANY'S GM BATTLE
*
*
*
Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (5 Photos)
Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND) both welcomed the ban. Greenpeace's genetic engineering expert, Stephanie Töwe, said the decision was long overdue, explaining that numerous scientific studies demonstrated that GM corn was a danger to the environment.
However the ban could prove costly for the German government. Experts in Aigner's ministry recently told SPIEGEL that it will be hard to prove conclusively that MON 810 damages the environment, which could enable Monsanto to win a court case opposing the ban and potentially expose the government to €6-7 million ($7.9-9.2 million) in damages.
RELATED SPIEGEL ONLINE LINKS
*
Genetically Modified Corn: German Lawmakers Mull a Frankenfood Ban (04/10/2009)
*
Fighting in the Field: Monsanto's Uphill Battle in Germany (03/05/2009)
*
Photo Gallery: Germany's GM Battle
Monsanto said Tuesday that it would look into the question of whether it would take legal proceedings as quickly as possible. Andreas Thierfelder, spokesman for Monsanto Germany, said the matter was very urgent as the planting season was just about to start.
Aigner has recently come under pressure from Bavaria to ban GM corn. Bavaria's Environment Minister Markus Söder wants to turn Germany into a "GM food-free zone." Environmental groups have long called for a ban on GM crops in Germany, arguing that they pose a danger to plants and animals.
However, supporters of genetic engineering argue that a ban could prompt research companies and institutes to pull up stakes and leave Germany. Wolfgang Herrmann, president of Munich's Technical University, has said that a prohibition risks precipitating "an exodus of researchers."
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The issue has exposed a split between Bavaria's CSU and its larger sister party, Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union. Katherina Reiche, deputy chairwoman of the CDU/CSU's parliamentary group, has complained of the "CSU's irresponsible, cheap propaganda," claiming that it could harm German industry. She argued that anti-GM sentiment was one reason a subsidiary of the German chemical giant Bayer decided to moved its facilities for genetic engineering from Potsdam, near Berlin, to Belgium.
MON 810 was approved for cultivation in Europe by the European Union in 1998 and is currently the only GM crop which can be grown in Germany. The plant produces a toxin to fight off a certain pest, the voracious larvae of the corn borer moth. The crop was due to be planted this year on a total area of around 3,600 hectares (8,896 acres) in Germany. The cultivation of MON 810 is already banned in five other EU member states, namely Austria, Hungary, Greece, France and Luxembourg.
dgs
this is ridiculous...how can Germany be sued for not buying a corporation's seeds? ===== This is all about how monsanto's corn feed for pigs has changed their DNA structure so they now carry the monsanto corn gene. As a result pig farmers now have to pay a license fee for each pig that carries their genes. Farmers also found that when feeding their pigs corn they would have all sorts of health problems including false pregnancies, spontaneous abortions and all sorts of things. At the end of part 4 into part 5 there is a pig farmer who discovered this when he stopped feeding his pigs this stuff the problems went away + Show Spoiler +If They claim they want a license from farmers who's pigs ate their feed, what happens to us if we eat something with that gene/dna in it? Do we need to pay a license fee as well? ===== More related corruption...brought to you by Aljazeera. + Show Spoiler +===== I get a sense of patenting and controlling our food supply, in addition to poisoning us. Anyone remember that company that knowingly shipped vaccines contaminated with aids? here it is...I remember reading about it http://www.naturalnews.com/News_000647_Bayer_vaccines_HIV.htmlthese companies don't care about your health. In fact they release hundreds millions of pounds of pharmaceutical waste into our drinking water, openly. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090419/ap_on_re_us/pharmawater_factoriesand the government doesn't do anything about it. Why should I trust them with my food? What's wrong with patenting our food supply? Are you telling me that the same guy who argued against the federal reserve is saying that companies shouldn't have an incentive to invest in agricultural technology? It's not like patenting new technologies will make old farming methods and crops obsolete. But in the long run, we all benefit. Patent abuse is nothing new. There's always going to be some asshole lawyer who decides it's a great idea to sue pigs. But seriously, there is no way society is ever going to have to pay licensing fees for having x genes. No. It's not going to happen. There will be laws passed. Common sense will check. Public outrage will check. You're making some ridiculous leaps in logic. What is the connection between Bayer, pharmaceutical waste, and GM crops? What a load of bullshit fearmongering. For every example of mistakes some corporation has made, I can give you two examples of when corporate research has produced something of extraordinary benefit to man. The last two centuries is a testament to that. uhhh no. What the poster was sayin there was that a company sold corn to farmers. That corn influenced the DNA of the pigs offspring to have this specific marker gene. So now farmers have to pay for each piglet(?) that is born, the farmers have to pay the company because the pigs have the marker. So even if the farmers stop usin the company's corn, they still have to pay the company for having pigs with the genetic marker.
Well his point still stands though. This is a perfect example of patent abuse gone too far and the public being outraged about it. Common sense is trumping corporate patent powers and the EU is already going through a lot of motions about it. It's not a really big problem because everybody wins. Monsanto has already made big bucks on their product (incentive for more development), and when they overextended themselves, government kicks in and stops them. The world has better corn technology, Monsanto is richer, and the EU politicians can garner more votes by saying they did something good.
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On April 21 2009 04:24 ahrara_ wrote:
You're making some ridiculous leaps in logic. What is the connection between Bayer, pharmaceutical waste, and GM crops? What a load of bullshit fearmongering. For every example of mistakes some corporation has made, I can give you two examples of when corporate research has produced something of extraordinary benefit to man. The last two centuries is a testament to that.
As I said in my post before I posted all these articles, I am not necessarily prove that all GM food is bad or prove anything, so there are no leaps in logic. I'm simply painting a picture that there are valid reasons not to trust companies and the government to protect your body. The connection between Bayer and pharmaceutical waste is that these companies can do what they want regardless of health consequences. Call it fearmongering, skepticism, or cautiousness, but I want proof the stuff they do to food is healthy, not assuming its healthy since it hasn't been "proven" unhealthy. We aren't limited to GM food in this debate. Preservatives, pesticides, hydrogenated oil, all that crap they put in food that isn't organic.
On April 21 2009 04:31 ahrara_ wrote:Show nested quote +
However the ban could prove costly for the German government. Experts in Aigner's ministry recently told SPIEGEL that it will be hard to prove conclusively that MON 810 damages the environment, which could enable Monsanto to win a court case opposing the ban and potentially expose the government to €6-7 million ($7.9-9.2 million) in damages.
Read highlighted part please. If something is hard to prove conclusively, it is undecided. Science is pretty conclusive Show nested quote +On April 16 2009 17:42 fight_or_flight wrote:On April 16 2009 16:01 ahrara_ wrote:On April 16 2009 15:54 a-game wrote:On April 16 2009 15:38 ahrara_ wrote:
Do people honestly believe that because it's natural it's better for you? Are that fucking stupid? huh? of course natural food is better for you. i'm going to just assume that you didn't intend to word it this way... And on what series of peer-reviewed studies do you base this judgment? There is zero conclusive research indicating that non-organic foods have a statistically significant negative impact to health. They may have greater pesticide residue, but the impacts of that are minimal. I really hope no one here believes that buying "all-natural" herbal supplements is superior to "non-organic" medicine. That's the kind of ideological, baseless drivel I fucking loathe. Are you familiar with the way science works? It all comes down to funding, and those doing the funding are usually governments or large corporations. They have an interest in providing low cost and sometimes even unhealthy food. If evolution is correct, then naturally occurring chemicals have been taken into account already by our bodies because they occur in nature. Synthetic chemicals, in general, may not necessarily have been taken into account by our bodies. Concerning the OP, I will post a detailed response in favor of organic food but not right now. More ridiculous fear mongering. If science was as utterly corrupt as you argue, how is it that a few thousand rogue scientists got the idea into the media that humans are causing rapid and potentially catastrophic climate change? There are isolated instances of poorly conducted and clearly biased studies. That's why science depends on peer review. This allows those with no conflict of interest to review the work of those who do. Show nested quote +If evolution is correct, then naturally occurring chemicals have been taken into account already by our bodies because they occur in nature. Synthetic chemicals, in general, may not necessarily have been taken into account by our bodies. Well then I hope you never have the misfortune to ingest anything foreign like penicillin.
Well if anything global warming is in the interest of governnments, etc, because it is more control and allows anything to be taxed, but that is a different debate.
Maybe I'm just cynical, but I don't trust peer reviewed science to be in my best interests. I don't have any religious or fundamental reasons to reject artificial foods, I just don't think that (1) scientists really understand the human body and especially long term effects, and (2) even if they did, I don't think non-biased research would reliably be used.
On April 21 2009 05:10 daz wrote:
are you trolling when you write this or is your understanding of international business actually this limited? Do you know the difference between banning a product and not buying it? Do you believe that the German government buys corn seeds and distributes them to farmers?
Yea, I totally wasn't thinking....they still have the right to limit things based on if they think they are healthy or not, but I agree a ban isn't the same as what I was initially thinking.
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Here is a good example of unexpected consequences.
Irradiated Foods Cause Severe Neurological Damage
+ Show Spoiler +In a study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) report on cats developing severe neurological symptoms due to a degradation of myelin, the fatty insulator of nerve fibers called axons. Because myelin facilitates the conduction of nerve signals, when it is lost or damaged there can be impairment of sensation, movement, thinking and other functions, depending on what particular nerves are affected. This loss of myelin is found in several disorders of the central nervous system in humans -- the best known being multiple sclerosis (MS).
So what caused the cats to develop neurological problems? Although the researchers' statement to the media practically buries the fact, a close read shows the animals were fine until fed irradiated food. What's more, when they were taken off the irradiated diet, the animals' nervous systems began healing.
The new study took place when the researchers were faced with reports of a mysterious illness in pregnant cats. A commercial company had been testing various diets on the animals to see how the food impacted growth and development in the felines. The food used, it turns out, had been irradiated. Irradiation, which is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for many human as well as animal foods, involves exposing foods briefly to a radiant energy source such as gamma rays or electron beams in order to kill bacteria.
Some of the cats eating the irradiated cat food exhibited very severe neurological symptoms, including movement disorders, vision loss and even paralysis. "After being on the diet for three to four months, the pregnant cats started to develop progressive neurological disease," said Ian Duncan, a professor of medical sciences at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine and an authority on demyelinating diseases, in a statement to the media.
The sick cats were shown to have widely distributed the very severe demyelization of the central nervous system. Their neurological symptoms were very much like those seen in people with MS and other demyelization disorders. When the felines were taken off the irradiated foods, they began to recover slowly. However, according to Dr. Duncan, the restored myelin sheaths were no longer as thick as normal myelin sheaths.
The finding is important, the scientists concluded in their study, because it shows the central nervous system retains the ability to reestablish myelin -- so strategies that could be developed to spur the growth of new myelin sheaths anywhere nerves themselves are preserved could be a possible therapy for treating a host of severe neurological diseases in humans. "The key thing is that it absolutely confirms the notion that remyelinating strategies are clinically important," Duncan stated.
Curiously, although the scientists' related their findings to possible human applications, they were quick to dismiss a possible connection between people, irradiated food and health risk. "We think it is extremely unlikely that (irradiated food) could become a human health problem," Duncan explained in the media statement. "We think it is species specific."
However, not everyone agrees irradiated food is fine for humans or animals. According to the Center for Food Safety, studies have shown irradiation produces volatile toxic chemicals such as benzene and toluene, which are known or suspected to cause cancer and birth defects. A 2001 study found an association between colon tumors and 2-alkylcyclobutanones (2-ACB's), a new chemical compound detected only in foods that have been irradiated.
Who would have thought irradiating food screws up your nervous system? Don't they want to start irradiating fruit and stuff to kill bacteria?
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Curiously, although the scientists' related their findings to possible human applications, they were quick to dismiss a possible connection between people, irradiated food and health risk. "We think it is extremely unlikely that (irradiated food) could become a human health problem," Duncan explained in the media statement. "We think it is species specific."
Let's think about this.
The scientist who conducted the experiment and who, it is probably safe to assume, is much more knowledgable about irradiation and human health than the author of the above article from "preventdisease.com", explicitly stated that this is species specific. To back up his claim about the impact of irradiation, the author of the article then cites a single 2001 study. This is not how science works.
People who are not scientists cannot interpret science. Just like people who don't understand broodwar shouldn't post advice in the strategy section or record some inane youtube commentary. What is intuitively obvious rarely is. It is fuck all absolutely retarded to say "I don't trust scientists" because you think they may be too biased and then claim that some health nut with no specialized training in the field is somehow more credible. Don't back out of this fightorflight, because that is exactly what you're implying -- that what this article says should be taken for face value.
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United States47024 Posts
I'd be more inclined to buy organic food if it weren't just a meaningless label tacked on to draw in idiotic customers half the time. The last time I was at a supermarket that sold "organic" vegetables, the fine print by the tomatoes said that x chemical (forget the name) was added to give them the deep red color. How is adding the chemical itself any better than using growth hormones to generate the same effect?
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You should really watch the docu called "The Future Of Food' before you make such hasty opinions on being Pro/Con on GM crops. I'm actually seeding it right now on PTP
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EPT
