RE: The Minister of Agriculture & Agri-Food

[Omni]

1 minute ago, blueblood said:

And that's what farmers markets are for.  It's an example of the free market at work.  Some people want cheap mass produced food, some people want all natural food from old McDonald, and some people want certified organic and they can already make that choice.  It's redundant to label gmos when they have been consistently proven safe.  At the same time if people want to freely go to the farmers market and get their organic gmo free stuff they can fill their boots.

No, that's what grocery stores are for. They can shelf whatever they choose, organic, GMO, or the regular old stuff. Just let me know what stuff is what so I can choose.

[drummindiver]

7 minutes ago, Omni said:

Farmers go out of business because they can't get seeds unless they pay Monsanto.

100% false.

http://www.pgeconomics.co.uk/page/36/-gm-crop-use-continues-to-benefit-the-environment-and-farmers

[drummindiver]

20 minutes ago, Omni said:

Yeah, show us those "facts".

53 dead and 4000 serioysly ill from one incident of organics. 

Zero proven cases for gmos.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Germany_E._coli_O104:H4_outbreak

[?Impact]

4 hours ago, drummindiver said:

Zero proven cases for gmos.

While organics are labelled and GMOs are not, of course we can't tell if GMOs are causing issues because big Frankfood won't let us know when they are forcing their stuff down our throats. 

[drummindiver]

3 hours ago, ?Impact said:

While organics are labelled and GMOs are not, of course we can't tell if GMOs are causing issues because big Frankfood won't let us know when they are forcing their stuff down our throats. 

Pretty sure if an outbreak of gmos killed 53 people in one go you'd hear about it.

The reason organics are marked isn't because they have to. It's so they can charge extra for you to be playing roulette with your health.

[dialamah]

9 hours ago, drummindiver said:

100% false.

http://www.pgeconomics.co.uk/page/36/-gm-crop-use-continues-to-benefit-the-environment-and-farmers

That link talks about how good gm seeds are; it doesn't say that monsanto has never put farmers out of business.

[drummindiver]

12 minutes ago, dialamah said:

That link talks about how good gm seeds are; it doesn't say that monsanto has never put farmers out of business.

 

You do realize no farmer is obligated to buy gm seeds, let alone Monsanto gm seeds. They are quite able to buy conventional seeds. There are many, many seed companies.

Edited December 29, 2016 by drummindiver

[drummindiver]

13 minutes ago, dialamah said:

That link talks about how good gm seeds are; it doesn't say that monsanto has never put farmers out of business.

 

Monsanto sues about 8 farmers a year for breach of contract. 

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2016/01/04/gmo-patent-controversy-3-monsanto-sue-farmers-inadvertent-gmo-contamination/amp/

Edited December 29, 2016 by drummindiver

[dialamah]

6 minutes ago, drummindiver said:

 

You do realize no farmer is obligated to buy gm seeds, let alone Monsanto gm seeds. They are quite able to buy conventional seeds. There are many, many seed companies.

The story is that some farmer somewhere *accidentally* ended up with Monsanto seeds on his property, and Monsanto sued him out of business.    Is Monsanto the victim of it's own extremely poor PR, as this article claims, or is Monsanto the big-bad-corporate evildoer as this article claims?

[drummindiver]

13 minutes ago, dialamah said:

The story is that some farmer somewhere *accidentally* ended up with Monsanto seeds on his property, and Monsanto sued him out of business.    Is Monsanto the victim of it's own extremely poor PR, as this article claims, or is Monsanto the big-bad-corporate evildoer as this article claims?

This is the cade in question. Ad you say, "accidentslly" as 90% of the fields were illegally planted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeiser

[drummindiver]

17 minutes ago, dialamah said:

The story is that some farmer somewhere *accidentally* ended up with Monsanto seeds on his property, and Monsanto sued him out of business.    Is Monsanto the victim of it's own extremely poor PR, as this article claims, or is Monsanto the big-bad-corporate evildoer as this article claims?

zOrganics is a multi billion dollar industry. GMOS are cheaper and safer. That says it all. https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/seeds-evil-monsanto-and-genetic-engineering

[dialamah]

32 minutes ago, drummindiver said:

This is the cade in question. Ad you say, "accidentslly" as 90% of the fields were illegally planted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeiser

Interesting, though I note that the decision of the judges was not unanimous.

I've never been persuaded by the anti-gmo hype, but I do think people should have a choice of knowing if a food contains gmos.   If there are ill-effects, its pretty hard to identify if you don't know what you are eating.  

I'm also not convinced that Monsanto is pure as the driven snow.   

[GostHacked]

15 hours ago, TimG said:

The are fighting a meaningless label that lumps a huge range of products together that have nothing to do with each other. They are fighting the irrational demonization of a valuable technology by a well funded groups of luddites. If they objected to making all strains of plants available with products then you could accuse them of hiding information. But simply objecting to the nonsensical GMO label does not mean a desire for secrecy. 

Then why even have names for the different varieties of apples?  Why not just call them all apples?

[drummindiver]

23 minutes ago, dialamah said:

Interesting, though I note that the decision of the judges was not unanimous.

I've never been persuaded by the anti-gmo hype, but I do think people should have a choice of knowing if a food contains gmos.   If there are ill-effects, its pretty hard to identify if you don't know what you are eating.  

I'm also not convinced that Monsanto is pure as the driven snow.   

Monsanto is not even a company anymore,  and when they were they were a mid sized corporation. 

[drummindiver]

24 minutes ago, dialamah said:

Interesting, though I note that the decision of the judges was not unanimous.

I've never been persuaded by the anti-gmo hype, but I do think people should have a choice of knowing if a food contains gmos.   If there are ill-effects, its pretty hard to identify if you don't know what you are eating.  

I'm also not convinced that Monsanto is pure as the driven snow.   

Monsanto is not even a company anymore,  and when they were they were a mide sized corporation. 

[drummindiver]

25 minutes ago, dialamah said:

Interesting, though I note that the decision of the judges was not unanimous.

I've never been persuaded by the anti-gmo hype, but I do think people should have a choice of knowing if a food contains gmos.   If there are ill-effects, its pretty hard to identify if you don't know what you eat.

Did you see the link I posted about trillion meals.  gmos are safe. Conventional foods killed 351,000 ppl in 2010 the last year i could find stats for. Let's put warning labels on all food then. Notice that many are attributed to organic growing methods and their related illnesses.

 

http://time.com/3768003/351000-people-die-of-food-poisoning-globally-every-year/

[dialamah]

10 minutes ago, drummindiver said:

Monsanto is not even a company anymore,  and when they were they were a mid sized corporation. 

Ummm .... http://www.monsanto.com/pages/default.aspx

Looks like a company to me.   

[drummindiver]

11 minutes ago, dialamah said:

Ummm .... http://www.monsanto.com/pages/default.aspx

Looks like a company to me.   

nope

http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/14/investing/monsanto-bayer-takeover-biggest-deal/

[drummindiver]

16 minutes ago, dialamah said:

Ummm .... http://www.monsanto.com/pages/default.aspx

Looks like a company to me.   

And the old fear they were taking over the world. Um no again.

http://tacit.livejournal.com/596800.html

[?Impact]

On 12/28/2016 at 5:29 PM, TimG said:

 GMO foods are chemically identical to non-GMO foods which means it makes no sense to mandate labels.

It seems when you actually study the matter, and stop hiding behind meaningless labels like substantial equivalency that there are indeed substantial differences. The GM industry has long made it difficult for independent study through legal means, circumvented testing, and pushed their marketing line. When detailed analysis is made however, GM foods are not the same. Pushing the story that there are no potential health affects is irresponsible.

 

Although NK603 had comparable nutritional and compositional profiles when originally accessed by the developer company upon registration of their product, our analysis at a detailed, in-depth molecular profiling level shows that NK603 grains, with or without Roundup spraying during cultivation, are not equivalent to isogenic non-transgenic control samples.

Putrescine and cadaverine have been reported as potentiators of the effects of histamine, and both have been implicated in the formation of carcinogenic nitrosamines with nitrite in meat products.

The most pronounced metabolome differences between NK603 and its isogenic counterpart consisted of an increase in polyamines including N-acetyl-cadaverine (2.9-fold), N-acetylputrescine (1.8-fold), putrescine (2.7-fold) and cadaverine (28-fold), which depending on context can be either protective or a cause of toxicity.

 

[TimG]

58 minutes ago, ?Impact said:

It seems when you actually study the matter, and stop hiding behind meaningless labels like substantial equivalency that there are indeed substantial differences.

There are obviously some differences between plants of different strains or, for that matter, different samples grown in different environments. Do you have any evidence that the differences you claim exists in this one anecdote are significant when compared to the differences between plants altered with non-GMO techniques? And even if this particular study has merit it only applies to one strain of one plant. Applying a generic GMO label makes no sense because it treats all GMO strains as equal when they clearly are not. That is why the only regulation that would give you the information that you claim to want is one that publishes all strains of plants used online. Putting a GMO label on products is just scare mongering designed to appeal to people who are ignorant of science.

Edited January 2, 2017 by TimG

[?Impact]

10 minutes ago, TimG said:

 Putting a GMO label on products is just scare mongering designed to appeal to people who are ignorant of science.

No, it appeals to people who want to be informed and not have giant chemical companies dictate what they eat because it fills their pocketbooks. You made the claim that GMO are the same as non-GMO and here is a study that proves it is not. Yes, it is a study of only one plant, mind you it is one of the most widely used GMO plants and the same strain of bacteria they spliced into that plant they use in many others including the second most widely used one soybeans. This proves that GMO plants need to be studied more and the automatic exemption that George Bush Sr. gave to them is wrong. We want information, and not the vested interests doing everything to hide it from us.

[TimG]

Just now, ?Impact said:

No, it appeals to people who want to be informed...

Repeating things that are not true does not make them true. The GMO label is too broad and covers too many plants with completely different histories and compositions. It provides no useful information to people who want to know what is in their food. It is a label that panders to scientific ignorance by grouping a bunch of unrelated plants by the technique used to create them. It encourages people to make completely irrational decisions.

As for your conspiracy theories: GMO plants have been the most studied of any plant. For decades, ideologically driven activists have been desperately looking for any scientific evidence that would support their pre-determined views. They have found next to nothing. That said, if one tries hard enough eventually something will be found but the question I have: where is the evidence that these differences are significant compared to the differences between different strains of non-GMO plants?

[?Impact]

10 minutes ago, TimG said:

GMO plants have been the most studied of any plant.

Look at the legal and social trouble Monsanto has generated towards anyone that tried to study any of their GMO plants. They launched lawsuits, they attacked viciously on social media, they had people fired through their connections, they did everything to make studying GMO plants impossible. It will be no different with Bayer at the helm, they are about the one company in the world that has a worse reputation than Monsanto. 

No, GMO plants have not been the most studied. If you want to present facts, then substantiate them and stop making up bogus arguments.

[TimG]

12 minutes ago, ?Impact said:

No, GMO plants have not been the most studied. If you want to present facts, then substantiate them and stop making up bogus arguments.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gmoanswers/2015/12/21/how-are-gmos-regulated/#4e07684134b7D

Show me studies of non-GMO plants even approach the level of scrutiny that GMO plants have to go though to get approval.

You won't find them because non-GMOs are simply assumed to be the baseline. 

The EU has been trying to find excuses to ban GMOs for decades and has largely failed because the scientific justifications do not exist.
The EU has been more than willing to fund ideologically driven scientists looking for excuses to ban them.

At the end of the day your concerns about GMOs are no different than a Muslim's concern about non-Halal food.
It is a religious position but you don't want to admit that so you look for pseudo-scientific justifications. 

 

Edited January 2, 2017 by TimG