GMOs = The Smart Future of Food

I certainly agree. And anyone having watched the 'lead' issue of Cosmos should be suspicious of this particular tactic. If you missed this, I recommend hunting it down.I'm totally ignorant of the reasons why we are so sure GMO foods are safe, so I don't argue seriously that they are not. But I can tell you that Monsanto has indeed employed tactics in protecting their intellectual property rights have helped to give patents a bad name by ruining small farmers all over this planet. Exactly.

First, the issue is patent infringement and not copyright infringement. Sorry if that seems nit-picky, but muddled thinking about intellectual property rights is not productive.Secondly, the issue is not merely the few farmers who got sued, it is the lock in to Monsanto when you obey the law that creates the issue. It's wrong to say things are not blown out of proportions simply because most people don't get sued. After all, all you have to do to avoid suit is to either pay Monsanto or give up your crop. And some of the patent issue is unique to GMO foods.In other industries, once you license your patented product, you cannot use patent law to restrict how it is used by someone who pays the fee and obeys the rules. For example if you license a patent chip to me, you cannot use patent law to tell someone downstream that he cannot use it in TV sets. But patent law is interpreted differently for Monsanto. It is legal to save seed from your crop, but if you reuse it you owe Monsanto again. People have purchased collected seed legally harvested under Monsanto contracts, and the SC says that Monsanto can still control downstream uses. The difference is because Monsanto seeds replicate into new patentable products.This kind of lock-in seems harmless when crops are successful. You pay a huge fee to Monsanto, you get five times the productivity you would otherwise have gotten, and then you have more than enough money to pay Monsanto next year. But when the crops don't work out, you end up deep in a hole, and you cannot use your crop seed to try again. You must play with Monsanto or quit.There are plenty of horror stories about how this stuff works out for people in India and (in Iraq where the corps managed to force the country to recognize US patents, something no other country does). I'm curious to here your take on why the complaints those people make are all bogus.

That's an appropriate response to someone who is simply arguing BIG vs Little, but a comparison based on size is not appropriate if instead the real comparison is about the ethics displayed by Monsanto, a particular big company. Do I understand you to be saying that farmers are complaining that it is cost prohibitive to them to allow other people to label their food as non-GMO. That complaint does not seem much like something anyone ought to take seriously. What is your take on why we should care about the impact on one farmer caused by another farmer labeling his product? Why isn't this something we ought to let the free market sort out? That it does not justify even labeling is a tough sell for me. Are you really convinced that the GMO stance of labeling is correct? If so, then explaining that would help justify your stance, which currently I find to be remarkably oblivious. So please share the basis of 'your understanding'.

Monsanto gets to claim this because they've won all of the cases. But that is not what actually happened in Percy Schmeiser's case. Perry Schmeiser was never under any contractural obligation to pay Monsanto. He was sued purely on a patent infringement theory based on replanting his field after it had been accidentally contaminated with Roundup resistant corn.Despite your attempt to paint things otherwise, the seed harvesting aspect of this patent was quite controversial, although the issue is completely settled law now. But the fact that the issue is settled does not stop us from questioning whether the law is appropriate or from considering Monsanto to be the bad guy.

Does software make little baby softwares as part of it's functioning? That's really the difference. Yes we can copy software if we decide to, but we don't need to make copies other than those that are explicitly allowed by law, just to use the software. Perhaps that is something you should do before telling us that the anti-Monsanto stories are overblown. I'm willing to listen, but I'm not going to be convinced by stuff you find on Monsanto's web page. Uh no. Do some homework.Order 81, among other things required Iraq to become a fully function member of the WTO including adopting the IP laws and requirements. It also banned seed saving without requiring Iraqi patents to enforce the requirement.Consider the US's own history as a brand new country. Most of the stuff being printed in the US was copyrighted stuff that the US could print with impunity because they could ignore British copyrights. Over time, as US industry developed, the US adopted a more modern version of copyright to protect their own artists.That is the kind of natural growth is a process many developing countries go through. India decided based on it's own interests when it was time to allow pharmaceutical patents. It was at a time when their own industries need for protection and the benefit of being a WTO member outweigh the benefits from just copying stuff that is unprotected in their own country.And that's how things should have been left for Iraq. Instead, the deck was stacked for US Companies because they are the ones with the technology to protect regardless of whether it benefits Iraq. Spoils of war I guess.

That would be Monsanto's view, yes. And of course their right was vindicated in court. Yet before the court decision the idea that the offspring of protected plants was protectable by patent law rather than by the contractural arrangement that bound farmers who bought the seed was not settled law. And even now that it is settled, we can question whether that settlement was correct or in everyone's best interest.How would you feel if Samsung came to your house and confiscated your TV based on an agreement they had made with Walmart about some component in your television, a television you had purchased second hand from me?Well have no fear because patent law does not allow that. Samsung is stuck with chasing after Walmart not you. But that is not how things work for Monsanto and their seed.

I understand. And I did not mean the remark quite that literally. The point is that the story is nuanced and you seem not to have found much that is not pro-Monsanto. Maybe that's just advocacy and it is my job to come up with the other stuff. Butt I did not really see you post any details of court cases, just a summary statement of the number of people Monsanto had sued, and a brief statement about the Canadian case that sounded like straight Monsanto PR. I would suggest getting a copy of the order and paying attention to the discussion you find online that actually references the order. My general impression is that the extreme pro order 81 side never provides any detailed discussion of the order.What ought to be obvious though, is that the people who say it is just about seed rights woefully understate the truth. And when people say it is beneficial, well yeah, strong intellectual property rights are beneficial for developed countries, and Iraq should aspire to be such a country. But they aren't there yet. Is that the issue to which I addressed my remark about homework? My recollection is that I told you to do homework on Order 81 and that you yourself acknowledged in a prior post that you needed to do homework on the situation of people in India. That impression seems to be confirmed on my re-reading of message 16.Look, I don't know the entire story about GMO stuff, and the story does not begin and end with Monsanto. But telling one sided stories about Monsanto is not all that persuasive to me anyway. It should not be necessary to do that. I look at this as a matter of free speech. I want to label stuff I grow in my backyards as no-GMO, no pesticide, 100% tested and free of hoof and mouth, and then I hear you complain that doing so makes things difficult for you. Why should I be all that concerned about your infrastructure when you don't give a hoot about my concerns or the concerns of people who want to buy my stuff instead of yours?ABE;In reviewing my message 16, I believe you are objecting to this: This remark was addressed comments you had made before you posted what you knew about suicides in India. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

So where was the comparison of Whole Foods and Monsanto. All I saw in your message was complaints about the unfairness of complaining about Monsanto being large and observing that Whole Foods was of similar size. Why should I assume Monsanto is correct? Isn't that what we are supposed to be debating? Have you pointed out something that Whole Foods has been deceitful about?

Did you watch this past weeks episode of Cosmos? Would it be fair to ask who is Clair Patterson and who is Dr. Kehoe in the GMO debate or would that be ridiculously prejudicial.Of course such aspersion casting would not be fair.Nobody wants to be cast as the Creation Scientist in a debate, but then nobody would want to be cast as BP in a debate about climate change either, or as DuPont in a debate about lead additives for gasoline. Calling the opposing side 'creationist' surely is placing more heat than light on the discussion here.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

My understanding is that you cannot commercially use a GMO free label. I would have to buy this stuff from the back of shady Freddy's truck. Am I incorrect?

The difference would be that "does contain genetically modified foods" is not supposed to be a negative, or at least that is what Monsanto and crew are telling us. Would you have the same problem with me labeling food "does not contain peanuts". Genetically modified organism already has a definition. We are not using yours. You are of course free to say what you will.Genetic engineering - Wikipedia

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Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification, is the direct manipulation of an organism's genome using biotechnology. New DNA may be inserted in the host genome by first isolating and copying the genetic material of interest using molecular cloning methods to generate a DNA sequence, or by synthesizing the DNA, and then inserting this construct into the host organism. Genes may be removed, or "knocked out", using a nuclease. Gene targeting is a different technique that uses homologous recombination to change an endogenous gene, and can be used to delete a gene, remove exons, add a gene, or introduce point mutations.

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An organism that is generated through genetic engineering is considered to be a genetically modified organism (GMO). The first GMOs were bacteria in 1973 and GM mice were generated in 1974. Insulin-producing bacteria were commercialized in 1982 and genetically modified food has been sold since 1994. Glofish, the first GMO designed as a pet, was first sold in the United States December in 2003.[1]

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Sigh. If your point is that GMO food is as safe as bananas, okay, opinion noted. But please at least look at the dictionary definition. You are asking questions you could have answered yourself in < 15 seconds using a C-64 on a slow network.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

They pretty much all do contain GMO. And it does not seem to be the people who make GMO free food that are complaining about having to label. The complaint is that earning the label would require too much effort and money because right now, they don't have to segregate.And for some people containing peanuts is a negative. Some people believe that it does matter. It may well be that they are wrong. If you have some insight into why it could not possibly matter, that insight would be really beneficial. On the other hand, if you don't believe it matters, why do you care if the food you buy must be presumed to be GMO? Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Yes those can be discussed as two different issues.But the original complaint was about the industry using heavy handed methods to prevent voluntary labeling. So when you take up the industry mantel you cannot avoid that.Secondly, the industry position that there can be no "non GMO" labeling is what has resulted in the push back in labeling GMO. The industry has brought that on themselves.

Corn sounds like a good answer. I can also note that Cheerios recently decided to put out a non-GMO product so I'm guessing oats is another answer. Good point. I did take some short cuts in expressing myself because I thought we'd put out some of this detail.Monsanto is against the labeling non-GMO food and is pretty aggressive in their efforts to lobbying for that position. The stated reason is that it would make things worse for their customers food industry which would then have to take measures to segregate non-GMO from GMO if they want to label.I think the real reason is that people are going to decide, rationally or irrationally, that they would prefer non-GMO food, exactly as you suggest. But don't we ordinarily allow the market place to sort that out? The answer to speech is more speech right?Except that ultimately Monsanto and their like loses if GMO loses. Farmers might end up spending a bit more during processing etc, but Monsanto gets the butt end of the deal. Yes. Your calling yourself Catholic Scientist stigmatizes me as a non mass attending Protestant. Please stop it.If I want non-GMO food, I don't appreciate someone elses efforts to stop me from getting it. Requiring GMO labeling is one thing, but not allowing someone else a non-GMO label is something else entirely.

Let me know when you decide to favor the first amendment We aren't yelling "movie" in a crowded firehouse here. Promoting GMO using public speech is exactly the way you are supposed to counter people promoting their own no-GMO food. I get it too. And their reasoning is all in Monsanto and Co.s interests as it should be. Maybe it will be in yours to, by some lucky accident.