>>7724644
There's no evidence that they're bad for health, and I don't really care if they are or not, but they certainly make monopolies in farming much simpler, and since companies like Dupont and Monsanto get huge government subsidies anyway, that's a pretty bad thing.

Basically GMOs allow companies to patent the genetic code of a given seed and extort third world farmers into buying their seeds again and again, by first selling them seeds on loan, and then forcing them into deeper and deeper debt because the GMO seeds are the only ones that have large enough yields to make significant headway in paying off the earlier debts.

Also, AFAIK, the only thing people are agitating for is labelling, which no one should be opposed to. A label like the one you posted could negatively impact sales because of its coded design, but a more neutral label will serve only to inform people about a pertinent aspect of the product they're buying. Dunno why you'd be opposed to that, besides just for the sake of being a contrarian.

Probably the worst thing is a continuation of what already occurs. Reduction of genetic diversity. There are also issues of GMO crops mixing with "organic" crops and this potentially ruining farmers who do not use GMO crops by forcing them to destroy their harvest.

>>7724662
Organic is a scam

>>7724672
Go on.

>>7724674
All food is organic. You cant make inorganic. O in gmo is organic.

>>7724657
>Also, AFAIK, the only thing people are agitating for is labelling, which no one should be opposed to. A label like the one you posted could negatively impact sales because of its coded design, but a more neutral label will serve only to inform people about a pertinent aspect of the product they're buying. Dunno why you'd be opposed to that, besides just for the sake of being a contrarian.

I used to be a member of the strongly-opposed-to-labeling camp, so I think I can explain. The thing is, if you believe that GMO crops aren't harmful at all, and have great potential for good, the whole GMO-labeling campaign seems like a predatory way to exploit consumer fears and ignorance. People are afraid of GMOs, and the government mandating labels legitimizes that fear. It would say to the public that the government takes GMO fears seriously, which means that such worries are probably actually serious and GMOs really are bad. The result? People choose to avoid GMO-labeled products based on ignorance and fear, and so those products are forced out of the market, and a technology with enormous potential to help is relegated to the same realm of "It's scary so we won't buy it" as nuclear power.

Staple crops genetically engineered for higher vitamin content could do a massive amount to feed the third world, and improve nutrition even in the first - but because of unfounded fears about GMO safety, they are refused. If we can't help eliminate that fear at home, what chance do we have at convincing the world they're safe?

Ultimately, I think you really do have to respect people's ability to make choices and get information, even if they're going to use it to make bad decisions. You cannot withhold information that the citizens of a democracy are asking to have, simply because you think they shouldn't need to know it.

>>7724678
...

I agree that the terminology chosen was retarded, but that's obviously not what we're talking about. We're talking about use of synthetic pesticides and herbicides. ie anything that isn't nicotine or some shit that hasn't been used for decades.

>>7724683
How does pesticide affect genes?

>>7724662
>There are also issues of GMO crops mixing with "organic" crops and this potentially ruining farmers who do not use GMO crops by forcing them to destroy their harvest.

Like what? Can you cite an example? As far as I can tell, this is either extremely rare or doesn't happen at all. I haven't been able to find a single verified instance where Monsanto has sued farmers for accidental contamination of their fields with GMO crops, and I've found several claims that it has never done so.

(Sources:
>http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top-five-myths-of-genetically-modified-seeds-busted
>http://www.osgata.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/OSGATA-v-Monsanto-MTD-Decision.pdf
>http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/23455/have-farmers-been-sued-because-monsanto-seeds-are-blowing-into-their-fields
)

>>7724687
Whether it affects gene expression or any kind of cell signalling, I don't know. I'm also not concerned with root system affinity / accumulation in soil and crops / degradation rate.

To remind you of the context:
>Organic is a scam
>Go on.
>All food is organic. You cant make inorganic. O in gmo is organic.

We should go back to "Go on."

>>7724687
The most common GMO crops are modified to be immune to certain pesticides or herbicides, so farmers can use them more freely and still get higher crop yields. This is where Monsanto gets its money from - the sale of "Roundup Ready" crops that are immune to its Roundup weed killer.

>>7724657
What if people wanted to put labels on food items saying they contain calories?
Not how many, not a number of recommended servings, just an indicator that says "yup, it's got calories".

Every crop is "genetically modified" in a roundabout way, we just select the most successful crops and discard the rest.

Most wild carrots are purple, but you only ever see orange carrots in supermarkets because they became popular and that's all anyone grows any more.

At what point do we stop labelling GMOs, when they take up 90% of the market share? 95%? 99%?

>>7724689
Not the poster, but it's not the big companies that would force them to destroy their crops, they would just have to.

If their whole business is "organic", then mixing with GMO means they can't label their shit as organic anymore.
They're also be running at higher costs because lolorganic so would be making a massive loss to sell to the general market without the organic label.

In fact they may not even be able to, since any sensible buyer would actually require their food to be reasonably cleaned, and not just have the dirt prayed away with green "alternatives".

GMOs can ruin organic crops, and I can't wait for them to destroy every organic farmer's business. Fucking snake-oil salesmen.

>>7724707
>If their whole business is "organic", then mixing with GMO means they can't label their shit as organic anymore.

This isn't actually true. According to the official USDA regulations, genetic modifications is an excluded *method*, and there's no maximum tolerance level - meaning that *unintentional* contamination with GMO crops will not disqualify you from "organic" status, especially if you can show that reasonable precautions were taken to prevent it.

>http://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/OrganicGMOPolicy.pdf

>Issue: Is the inadvertent presence of GMOs in organic seeds a violation of the NOP
regulations? Can organic producers use seeds that contain the inadvertent presence of GMOs?

>Reply: 7 CFR § 205.105 of the NOP regulations prohibits the use of GMOs as excluded methods
in organic production and handling. The use of excluded methods, such as planting genetically
modified seeds, would require a specific intent, and would render any product ineligible for
organic certification.

>However, the inadvertent presence of GMOs in organic seeds does not
constitute a use because there was no intent on the part of the certified operation to use excluded
methods. The presence of detectable GMO residues alone in an organic seed does not constitute
a violation of the NOP regulations.

>>7724689
from a source within your source:

>[...]Back in 1999, Monsanto sued a Canadian canola farmer, Percy Schmeiser, for growing the company's Roundup-tolerant canola without paying any royalty or "technology fee." Schmeiser had never bought seeds from Monsanto, so those canola plants clearly came from somewhere else. But where?

>Canola pollen can move for miles, carried by insects or the wind. Schmeiser testified that this must have been the cause, or GMO canola might have blown into his field from a passing truck. Monsanto said that this was implausible, because their tests showed that about 95 percent of Schmeiser's canola contained Monsanto's Roundup resistance gene, and it's impossible to get such high levels through stray pollen or scattered seeds. However, there's lots of confusion about these tests. Other samples, tested by other people, showed lower concentrations of Roundup resistance — but still over 50 percent of the crop.
>[...] As an experiment, he'd actually sprayed Roundup on about three acres of the field that was closest to a neighbor's Roundup Ready canola. Many plants survived the spraying, showing that they contained Monsanto's resistance gene — and when Schmeiser's hired hand harvested the field, months later, he kept seed from that part of the field and used it for planting the next year.

>This convinced the judge that Schmeiser intentionally planted Roundup Ready canola.


>It's certainly true that Monsanto has been going after farmers whom the company suspects of using GMO seeds without paying royalties. And there are plenty of cases — including Schmeiser's — in which the company has overreached, engaged in raw intimidation, and made accusations that turned out not to be backed up by evidence.But as far as I can tell, Monsanto has never sued anybody over trace amounts of GMOs that were introduced into fields simply through cross-pollination.

>>7724730

>Other samples, tested by other people, showed lower concentrations of Roundup resistance — but still over 50 percent.

>As an experiment, he'd actually sprayed Roundup on about three acres of the field that was closest to a neighbor's Roundup Ready canola. Many plants survived the spraying, showing that they contained Monsanto's resistance gene — and when Schmeiser's hired hand harvested the field, months later, he kept seed from that part of the field and used it for planting the next year.

>This convinced the judge that Schmeiser intentionally planted Roundup Ready canola.

That sure sounds like it'd convince me, too. And just so you know:

>And there are plenty of cases — including Schmeiser's — in which the company has overreached, engaged in raw intimidation, and made accusations that turned out not to be backed up by evidence.

I did, in fact, read this sentence before I linked that source, and had read a few articles on that case. I was saying I hadn't found a *specific* case where this has occurred where it didn't turn out that the contamination was likely intentional. (I guess I forgot to specify myself well enough - I meant that I hadn't found any instances where Monsanto won the case despite the contamination being plausibly accidental. This really isn't the same thing I typed, and I apologize for not double-checking my post.)

As far as I can tell, Monsanto's made less than 150 such suits in the last 18 years, and it is legally prohibited from making such suits if the contamination is less than 1%. I didn't say Monsanto doesn't act like enormous dicks to farmers - megacorporations with well-paid legal teams are inherently intimidating, and the nature of modern patent protection essentially mandates that you act evil to small harmless underdogs. (If you don't, then clearly you must not really want your patent badly enough to protect it, and you will likely lose it.) But I didn't find any specific examples.

>>7724674
Most of the organic market is based on a single lie, organic food is better for you which is false. GMOs and pesticides have no intrinsic correlation with health benefits, the same with hormones. There are secondary consequences that can be an issue but never for the environment which we should be cautious off but you are not going to get cancer because you ate an apple with GMOs

>>7724680
>unfounded fears about GMO safety

you 're like those cartoon characters from the Simpsons that defend everything wrong in the world.


>and a technology with enormous potential to help is relegated to the same realm of "It's scary so we won't buy it" as nuclear power.


case and point.

>>7724644
It's the same thing as smoking bans. People are afraid of something and want to find a source they can specifically identify and blame.

>>7724755
>organic food is better for you which is false.
You've never looked at the toxicological reports on these compounds and correlated it with studies showing soil accumulation and uptake by root systems etc, have you?

>>7724672

this

>>7724657
>No one should be opposed to
Blabbing inherently carries with it an implication that it is bad. If it weren't then why would they label it? Why would they use scary words like "genetically modified", ect ect. People are stupid and easily frightened. I can easily see why any company would be opposed to it.

>>7725409
Says the uneducated idiot who watches and believes the simpsons to be representational of reality and probably believes all nuclear power plants are run by "Mr.Burns"