Mon$anto vs. Mother Earth
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Okay, lets get back on topic, I'll try ignore the troll.
I may be a liberal but that does not mean everything Pres Obama does I agree with, like signing the protection bill....ugh! he promised he would push for labeling GMO's but did a 180.
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Yep, back to topic.
What we are really addressing here is the cumulative effects of Industrialisation, Globalisation, Market forces and Human nature.
The industrial development of farming made it possible to produce, not just more than the farmer could consume, but his local community as well. This surplus combined with ease of movement and reduced transport costs fuels globalisation. If you have more than you can use locally then ship it somewhere else and make a profit there. All well and good on a commercial level. But things can be taken to extremes. The old adage, Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, fits the commercial world as comfortably as it does the political.
The very basis of capitalism pushes us toward it. The small businessman is urged to plough his profits back into his business to make it grow. Same goes for large corporations. The larger the profit the more money and power you have to influence how you can grow your profits. And realistically a corporation has no built in moral compass, it can grow to be a monster or a saint. It is run by people, with all their faults and personal opinions, but it develops a life of it's own over time and tends to run itself, and is very much controlled by market forces.Human nature makes us all rather self centred, at least in the sense that we see the world around us from our own perspective. Generally speaking we want to feel secure, have enough to eat and be able to afford some luxuries. Pretty much all a caveman ever wanted too. A warm dry cave, a hunk of dead animal to eat and the possibility of some nice tasty honey if he made the effort of raiding a beehive.
But we live in an industrialised world where everything is there for the taking. Cheap food readily available. No need to think about what to hunt for, time is now available to put our considerable intellects to use on other things. Great thoughts will abound and someone else will bring us food.The problem with that is the food they are bringing isn't good. I'm not even going to touch on whether GMOs are good or bad,the rest of it is doing us enough damage. Over processed, sugar filled, tasteless crap. Chosen for it's pleasing colour and shape, or reformed into something it isn't. So many food products have been so heavily altered by selective breeding that they are almost nothing like the originals.
The descendent of the dinosaurs, the chicken, and the humble Tomato spring to mind. Lovely big red tomatoes bred for size and colour, oooops we forgot the taste and smell. The chicken you buy for next to nothing in the supermarket bred to grow so fast that it's body is unable to support it, never-mind, it's packed in with so many others it won't fall over. All sorts of chemicals and drugs forced into animals to produce the cheapest meat, then processed and more additives thrown in.My point here being, you get what you vote for. If you accept what is on offer then you have voted for it. Market forces are the polls of the system. If you build it they will come, if you buy it they will continue to produce it.
So, we need food, we gradually accept the changes the food industry make, that's human nature, we tend to believe what we are told and go along to get along. We increase the amount of sugar in our diets because the food industry wants to add it, because it makes it tasty and we want more of it. Accidental result, food industry happens to make more money.
It's simple, we buy it, they will produce it. Don't buy it they won't produce it.
Look at what you buy and try to buy the best within your budget, and by "the best" I don't mean the nicest looking. These days more and more healthy organic food is available. Often people say it's too expensive, but everyone I know who has moved away from cheap to better has found the benefits far outweigh any perceived increase in cost. To show it on a personal level, since I educated myself about better eating I have lost 40kg which has got my blood pressure back to healthy, my cholesterol is perfect and assorted other health issues have been fixed. So, not only do I not spend anything on corporate food, I nolonger pay anything to the pharmaceutical industry. If we all did it, then the corporations would have to follow. But it's a big "IF"There is no science in this, only common sense as I see it.
Eat smart, live longer, and change the world for the better one meal at a time.
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The article I posted addressed labeling GMOs and why it's irrelevant.
Maybe your views would be more convincing to people if you were to actually act like you believe what you say rather than just say what you believe.
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That's laughable. You sir, are a class-A troll.
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I assume your responses are indicative of what the left refers to " playing the ball".
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Sorry Frederick I have Ad blocking add ons enabled o my browser and can't see silly images on my mobile device.
Perhaps you have some thoughts you'd like to present. -
If you can't see the images, how do you know it's silly...?
I've already posted my thoughts together with questions to you...
You haven't replied to any of the the things I - and others - wrote previously...It's clear that your IQ is below average and sadly you can't even spell my name correct...
Aahhh well... Should have followed the advice...
Don't feed the troll...!! -
Because Frederick my browser informs me that is has blocked an image
and there was nothing else in your post -
@mics_54 said:
Because Frederick my browser informs me that is has blocked an image
and there was nothing else in your postSo... Where did you get the information that it was a silly image...?
From the Some Funny Pics I'm aware that you're usually able to see images in posts...
But all of a sudden...
P.S. You misspelled my name again... I know it can be difficult, but it's F-R-E-D-E-R-I-K...
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Fred I Just started using my Android device to follow this forum.
Sent from my Milestone X2 using Tapatalk 2
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Seriously all of this over labeling???
Sent from my Milestone X2 using Tapatalk 2
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Yes indeed I am.
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The guy who helped start the anti-GMO movement is now sorry he did. Mark Lynas, who, by his own admission, “helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s,” publicly apologized in January for years of “ripping up GM crops.” In a speech at the Oxford Farming Conference, Lynas openly defended the technology as a way to feed the earth’s growing population without devastating the environment.When explaining what changed his mind, his answer was simple: “I discovered science.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/mar/09/mark-lynas-truth-treachery-gm
GREAT article! Good reading.
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You seem very happy with yours!
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I am not sure that I believe that all genetic modification is necessarily bad. We have been genetically manipulating plants forever, our methodology has been selecting the traits we desire in plants that exhibit those traits, and developing and securing the seeds from these strains "organically". Placing our bias on natural selection.
I can see how the genetic modification of plants under certain circumstances could be quite beneficial, particularly in disease control.
But with Monsanto, their protectionist posture, and their history of litigation, has me believing that their motives are not working towards better plant species as such, but in obtaining control and profit.
Lets take labeling for example.
What could possibly be harmful about requiring genetically modified foods to be labeled as such?
I believe that they fully understand that many people would not purchase these products, seriously affecting the bottom line.
What is good about labeling? Simply, choice. A lot of folks take label reading seriously, trying to promote good health in the minefield of manufactured foods. If in fact there is nothing unhealthy about GM foods, then, fine, label them.
My real worries about Monsanto are more centered around Genetic Use Restriction Technology, GURT. It is also referred to as terminator seed. This, and its use of "Roundup ready" crops.
I keep hearing references to Monsanto's work in biodiversity.
Somehow I just can't see how taking a seed, which would normally be the mechanism by which the plant would reproduce, and manipulating it's genetic structure so that it can't, has anything to do with biodiversity. It seems to me to be about control.
And Roundup Ready crops. Manipulating a seeds genetics to not be affected by glyphosate, which just happens to kill virtually every other plant species in the field, that's sustainably biodiverse monoculture right? Does it increase yield? Absolutely. At what cost?
Particularly to the soil.
And those weed species. Weeds are so labelled because they are said to deter crop production. But to the soil, weeds can often be beneficial. There are plants that fix nitrogen, and plants that use nitrogen. They are also indicators of the soil itself. If you see horsetail in an area, there is surely a high silica content in the soil.
But who cares right?
I do.
I don't care if Monsanto continues working in the genetic modification of plants.
I do care that we have given them the right to sue me, if by natural pollination process, you know where the bee with pollen from their tomato lands on my heirloom variety, and I end up with the genetics of their seed. I don't want their seed.
And I don't want to eat food that contains genetically modified components.
Give me the choice not to, and you the choice to. How does that sound? -
Quite reasonable, as far as I'm concerned.
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I think the GMO question is a tough one. I majored in Biology and had a lot of molecular and genetic studies and still I feel the issues would require a lot more study than I have so far to form a good opinion. Maybe it's an open ended process. Like nuclear power--I was for a long time all anti-nuke and I still think it has not been worked out well enough-- or we are not mature enough for it. Like nuclear energy, we are moving into more powerful arenas with gene manipulation that are far beyond breeding and grafting. Great potential for good and bad, and reason to think before we leap. By all means keep the science going. Unlike some I am not for crushing knowledge just because I don't agree with some of it's potential uses.
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Why prop 37 (GMO labeling) is bad legislation.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/11/02/who-will-cover-the-costs-of-californias-prop-37/
and here
http://www.science20.com/caution_pondering_scientist_ahead/confessions_organicmunching_genetic_engineer_no_prop_37_written-95993
Who is harmed by prop 37 the most?unreasonable litigation and other common myths
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top-five-myths-of-genetically-modified-seeds-busted?source=science20.comWhy are organic growers exempt from the GMO labeling?
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