Monsanto has to Accept Full Responsibility for Genetic Contamination

reply to post by StrangeBrew


Very interesting, I see the whole issue behind Monsanto scheme, total control of markets around the world for their manufactured seeds.

So actually like you said farmers become nothing more than slaves to yet another corrupted monopoly type of corporation.

Incredible how greed and power plays a role on the lives of people around the globe.

Capitalism the American way.

Originally posted by smirkley
But more to the point, Monsanto DOES in fact provide much higher yeilds in crops such as corn.

I have never seen weeds doing much in a corn field. The corn naturally kills weeds by depriving them of sunlight because of the thick growth. Any increase in productivity has got to be minimal and not worth the risk of GM crops contaminating the rest of the genetics. They are cross breeding naturally and what do you do if the suicide gene that does not let them reproduce gets bred into the rest of the gene pool?

reply to post by resistor

It isn't just the RR of Monsanto, it's the insertion of genes from other species into Sweet Corn bt to kill the corn earworm. This bt is leathel to bees. It is in every cell of each plant. Does it cause health problems? Nobody knows nor seems to care. It is the insertion of fish genes into Canola, Sunflower and other oil seed plants. It is the terminator gene that contaminates Heirloom seeds preventing viable seed production. It is certain herbicides sprayed by aerial sprayers drifting for miles. You cannot grow tomatoes after your land is sprayed with certain chemicals used on Rice. Land that used to produce tons of tomatoes per acre will not now produce enough for a lunch. It isn't just Monsanto, but DuPont, Bayer of Germany, Hercules Chemical and a host of other so called agri business. They are all busy buying up the various independent seed companys until there are only a few left struggling to survive. There are still a few heirloom seeds still available but most are being replaced by F1 Hybrids and you can't save seeds from these. The president of the U.S.A made a statement during his first term that the government wanted to know who had what seeds and what animals so that they could get the seeds and animals in case of emergency. Then we get the NAIS crap snuck in by the vet. dept. of the FDA

Originally posted by smirkley
But more to the point, Monsanto DOES in fact provide much higher yeilds in crops such as corn.

it does not, afaik and i would be delighted to see a real life application where yields are increased.

www.centerforfoodsafety.org...

+ in the last decade, cotton production has declined in the majority of countries that have adopted GM cotton like Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, South Africa and Australia, and significant drops in GM cotton production are forecasted in 2006 for South Africa and Mexico.

cotton for one, does not profit, it seems.

PS: whover said that soild 'can't be destroyed' well, it can be contaminated, eroded and sterilzed through poisons, both the sprayed and GM crop produced varieties. when that happens, plant material does not longer rot and has to be mechanically removed. dirt != soil.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by DocMoreau
Unfortunately, I doubt that much can be done about the heirloom seed lines that Monsanto has been able to get destroyed after their 'genetics' were found in farmers plots.
DocMoreau

Au contraire. We can all do what I and others are doing and plant a backyard garden using heirloom seeds. Not only will you get the best tasting, most nutritious produce possible, (if you don't kill your soil with chemicals ) you'll be preserving invaluable crops for an uncertain future. There are a good dozen vendors of heirloom seeds that come up with a quick search, and whole organizations dedicated to their preservation. If just 3% of households grow and save seed of heirloom crops, Monsanto and their ilk will never be able to monopolize our food.

My Jarvis Golden Prolific corn:

i just watched yesterday the movie made by ARTE a while ago. ARTE is a french/german channel and this link is linked to the german version.
dokukanal.blogspot.com...
some passages are also understandable for english speakers, because many are interviewed in english.
very interesting indeed is the end of the movie, and for those of you from america, also the part about the milk!!! (to be found in the middle)
in india very many crop farmers are comitting suicide because they cannot pay anymore the overpriced prices monsanto is dictating. and yes, nowadays it is only GM crop available there! this poor india is well overtaken by the british empire and brought down to its knees.
hopfully the indians and the mexicans, sue also against monsanto.
maybe one of you is able to inform them as fast as possible.

[edit on 7/7/2008 by rxnnxs]

the video on page 2 is not working anymore.. hmm.
and if google is deleting a video for copyright issues, it is saying so. in this case, they did not.

another interesting thing the film mentions is, that again.. donald rumsfeld has close relations to mansanto (as he has in nutra sweet..) and that especially for monsanto former president george bush enabled those gene-manipulators to go through registrations very easy - because they do not use additives but changed the genes themselfes. therefore, not much study has to be done to get such bad messing around with our nature IS LEGAL for those NGOs.

[edit on 7/7/2008 by rxnnxs]

reply to post by resistor


Oh Resistor, I understand what you are saying. I try to grow as much as my own, heirloom, organic produce each year, and supplement that with selections from the local farmer's market or Natural Food Store. I have not eaten 'box-store' vegetables by my choice in six years, but I won't refuse a meal by a friend who may have bought their veggies there. When I eat out, I try not to support companies that support GMO based products.

I guess what I was alluding to, is that it is my understanding that at least in the Percy Schmeiser case, he was planting an heirloom variety that his great grandparents started. They had been selecting the best seed for over 80 years. Its traits we perfectly acclimated to the soil and micro climate of his farm. Maybe I am confusing his case with another Canola/Rapeseed case from Saskatchewan.

Also, if a blight were to occur to the Monsanto lines, I imagine we would need to do 24 hour security of our own heirloom gardens to prevent theft. I imagine that a blight to the GMO lines would cause a massive famine, similar to what happened in Ireland with the Potatoes. It is my understanding that although there are thousands of Potato varieties in the Andes, the people of Ireland were only growing two species of cultivars, and when the blight struck them, their staple starch (which had only been introduced to Europe less than two hundred years prior) vanished from the food supply almost overnight. I have read articles stating that even though the Famine happened nearly 300 years ago, Ireland's population is still not at Pre Famine levels.

Maybe that the kicker. Maybe that is the real reason that Monsanto pushed so hard to eliminate the seed stocks that were not representative of their patents. So that they can orchestrate a worldwide famine at the time of their choosing. I imagine that if scientists are in labs genetically manipulating plants around the world, they are probably manipulating fungus blights as well.

I could go into my own experiences with Genetic Engineering when I worked as a teen intern in the late 80s, but this thread is about Monsanto accepting responsibility, not me. I will say that the realizations I have had since that time have weighed heavily on my heart, and are a personal demon of sorts. I was so excited back then to be doing something so cool and cutting edge, that my naiveté clouded my actions. I just wonder where those seeds went that I created.

These days, I have serious issues with anyone who cannot see how Genetic Engineering of our foodstuffs is one of the gravest experiments against mankind in the history of the world. Supporters of GMO must be either naive themselves, complete idiots, or have an agenda against mankind. Anyone who thinks it is a good idea must have dollar signs clouding their vision, and not the best interests of mankind.

Thats my opinion at least...
DocMoreau

P.S. To the people who say that GMOs are higher producers, I laugh at you. How can a uniform seedlot that is grown in different climates and sub climates out produce plants hand selected over generations to grow specifically in that specific locale? You are telling me that a plant that was grown in Kansas, and then has a gene making it resistant to round-up, is going to grow better in Nebraska, or even Russia, than the plants that have been growing there for years? You truly don't understand plants.

I leave you with this:

The new study confirms earlier research at the University of Nebraska, which found that another Monsanto GM soya produced 6 per cent less than its closest conventional relative, and 11 per cent less than the best non-GM soya available.

The Nebraska study suggested that two factors are at work. First, it takes time to modify a plant and, while this is being done, better conventional ones are being developed. This is acknowledged even by the fervently pro-GM US Department of Agriculture, which has admitted that the time lag could lead to a “decrease” in yields.

But the fact that GM crops did worse than their near-identical non-GM counterparts suggest that a second factor is also at work, and that the very process of modification depresses productivity. The new Kansas study both confirms this and suggests how it is happening.

A similar situation seems to have happened with GM cotton in the US, where the total US crop declined even as GM technology took over. (See graphic above.)

Monsanto said yesterday that it was surprised by the extent of the decline found by the Kansas study, but not by the fact that the yields had dropped. It said that the soya had not been engineered to increase yields, and that it was now developing one that would.

Critics doubt whether the company will achieve this, saying that it requires more complex modification. And Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington - and who was one of the first to predict the current food crisis - said that the physiology of plants was now reaching the limits of the productivity that could be achieved.

A former champion crop grower himself, he drew the comparison with human runners. Since Roger Bannister ran the first four-minute mile more than 50 years ago, the best time has improved only modestly . “Despite all the advances in training, no one contemplates a three-minute mile.”

www.commondreams.org...

Originally posted by starcraft
FYI...you can't "kill" soil....LOL. You can destroy soil structure, through mismanagement, but chemicals have nothing to do with it.

True, you can't "kill" the soil itself (generally), but you can "kill" all the beneficial components of soil ie: microfauna and mesofauna such as, Amoeba's, bacteria, beetles, protozoa, nematodes, earth woms, fungus', mites...and other organic compounds. Chemicals "kill" these beneficial components and therefore "kill" the soil. So, chemicals do have something to do with it.

To all the Monsanto shills posting in this thread, you are promoting a horrible corporation that must be stopped immediately. I say SUE THEM INTO BANKRUPTCY because of what I feel that they are trying to do to the public at large! I don't want them having a monopoly over my foods, and I really dont want them tampering with my foods with GENETIC MODIFICATION. KEEP FRANKENFOODS OFF THE SHELF, especially if you value your life and health. I should, as a consumer have the right to choose what to put in my body and what I DEEM to be harmful, not the FDA or GOVERNMENT who has all the CORPORATIONS in their back pocket telling them what to do against us...

I feel I should be PROTECTED from all the bastardized GM foods that Monsanto puts out. I dont trust them and I never will, and if you are intelligent, you wont either...Lets kill the giant...

reply to post by amazed


Again...a very broad generalization, and is not really true for products applied in modern times. The enviro-whacko movement has done of great job of scaring the ignorant zealots. The EPA has done a fairly decent job of getting these products out of the environment. Mercury based products for example are no longer available. Organophosphate insecticides are gone too. Of course, they're still available in other countries, but, here in the big, bad, nasty, polluting USA with all our nasty big corporations that are only in it for the money and profits, the corrupt, taking money-under-the table EPA has banned them.

FYI....glyphosate( Tradename: Roundup)...when applied to the soil surface, is immediately broken down into CO2 and water. Real nasty stuff there. If it doesn't come into contact with a leaf surface, it is basically rendered inert immediately. The same can be said for numerous other plant protectants and soil products. Wow, that was easy money...as I am paid to say all this fictional stuff. LOL

Originally posted by forsakenwayfarer

Originally posted by TheWayISeeIt
reply to post by starcraft

 

For an indepth look at Monsanto PLEASE watch the documentary below; it was aired in France a couple of months ago, was posted on YourTube and Google vid, started to go viral and was then PULLED for 2 1/2 months before slowly being reintroduced in 10 minute segments recently. I implore anyone who cares at all about this issue to take the time to see this.

Or because a company just asked them to. It's easier and cheaper just to pull a video than to deal with lawyers. MONEY decides these things, not lofty debates on whether something is true or not.
Even Google does not "pull" videos for no reason. There must have been in the best case, copyright infringement, or in the worst case slander and libel.

Going with the track record of enviro-activists, I would place my bets firmly in the bold category.

Originally posted by marg6043
reply to post by StrangeBrew

 

Very interesting, I see the whole issue behind Monsanto scheme, total control of markets around the world for their manufactured seeds.

I have been building up my own ark of "safe seeds" and heirloom seeds. Perhaps one of my children will be a sort of Juanita Appleseed replanting safe food across North America.

Some day citizens in Canada and the USA will realize that all GMO fields need to be torched. I suspect it will come as part of the great uprising that I can sniff on the breeze like rain.

[edit on 7/7/08 by Pellevoisin]

Originally posted by DocMoreau

Maybe that the kicker. Maybe that is the real reason that Monsanto pushed so hard to eliminate the seed stocks that were not representative of their patents. So that they can orchestrate a worldwide famine at the time of their choosing.

Precisely so. That is exactly what is afoot, and worse. Food is the latest weapon of war and control on Planet Earth, and Monsanto aims to be the Enforcer.

Originally posted by starcraft
reply to post by amazed

 

Again...a very broad generalization, and is not really true for products applied in modern times. The enviro-whacko movement has done of great job of scaring the ignorant zealots. The EPA has done a fairly decent job of getting these products out of the environment. Mercury based products for example are no longer available. Organophosphate insecticides are gone too. Of course, they're still available in other countries, but, here in the big, bad, nasty, polluting USA with all our nasty big corporations that are only in it for the money and profits, the corrupt, taking money-under-the table EPA has banned them.

FYI....glyphosate( Tradename: Roundup)...when applied to the soil surface, is immediately broken down into CO2 and water. Real nasty stuff there. If it doesn't come into contact with a leaf surface, it is basically rendered inert immediately. The same can be said for numerous other plant protectants and soil products. Wow, that was easy money...as I am paid to say all this fictional stuff. LOL

I agree that some people are irrationally worried about chemicals. But, then, people are also irrationally trusting of corporations. While humans can always find ways to do things for money -- the downside of being TOO friendly to corporations on their interests is so far beyond over indulging "enviro-zealots" I cannot imagine the huge threat. Right now, the FDA is hunting down Jalapeno Peppers, because they cannot find what is causing an outbreak of food poisoning. They were looking at other herbs before this. The REAL STORY, is that we are accepting too much junk that doesn't get tested because someone makes a few more pennies per ton, and that we don't have enough inspectors to isolate outbreaks.

I hear a lot of grandiose assurances from CorpFarm advocates. There is a lot of benefits -- short-term, to all this genetic manipulation and wonder chemicals. But RR and Terminator genes are migrating from crops into other farms and even into plants near the farms. Song birds are getting killed from pesticide genes in wild plants -- after we were all assured that there was no vector for these genes to migrate. Kids are having more food allergies, and the company making the allergy medications and treatments is Monsanto. That's almost as much conflict of interest as Carylse selling weapons, and Haliburton mercenaries, and owning companies that repair war damage like KBR.

The big problem, is that we have lost faith in our government, because corporations are allowed to bribe them. Monsato and ADM have sucked all the profits out of farming. The reflexive "I DISTRUST ANY BIG COMPANY" sentiment that I see on ATS is only going to grow, because the press is so corporate, it reports very little about real problems, and then we get platitudes of people explaining why we don't need food labeling for GM foods. Authority figures keep saying "trust me" and then getting caught with huge graft and corruption. Then asking for more rights for corporations to patent and have trade secrets.

I shop at Trader Joes. Most of their stuff is organic, and somehow 60% is imported for less than I pay for the tasteless junk at a regular super market. How much is the middle-man marking up? One big agro-consortium owns both the seeds, the distribution, and the oversight -- what is the worst that can go wrong?

Round-up by itself may be safe. But the RR genes coupled with the thousand other modifications made every year, with the lack of transparency and oversight, with the profit-only motivations, and the centralization and destruction of local farmers,... a scenario for disaster.

Originally posted by ZindoDoone
I find Monsanto's case to be bordering on moronic. How can a farmer be sued for cross polinating of plants??? Just how is any farmer going to stop bees and animals from dragging polen into the fields they live in? How does Monsanto expect to stop they're product from doing the same to other strains of the same crop? Mosanto has done some amazing things to make farming easier and more productive, but this is ludicrous. They are ignoring the very nature they presume to advance!


Zindo

I'm guessing this is more along the lines of Monsanto accusing farmers of stealing seeds or making "unlicensed reproductions." Basically, they have the system working in law where THEY own a patent on the life form.But this may not help all those other farmers out -- because they weren't doing their best to keep out RR plants. They were probably planting them.

But I'm totally against this kind of Government-for-profit concept in law. Farmers are doing work, producing food for consumers. Monsanto got some money selling some seeds. The deal is done. If I make other plants from that seed --- Monsanto should have no claim. Hey, if a company can design a plant without the benefit of the 99.00% of prior "art" in the process, then I think they have an argument. But patents should be based on the "greater good" there is no damn RIGHT TO PROFIT, and who would decide it anyway? Right now, that right to profit gets decided in the courts and government -- which are getting bought up by the corporations who are profiting the most -- thus guaranteeing stronger rights for Monsanto in the future and less rights for the small farmer. It isn't that Monsanto is evil (they probably are) it's just that the Framers of our Constitution, were very worried about ANY business that could become so powerful it could control the government. Which is what has happened to the US. We have been a plutocracy since at least Reagan.

As a matter of law in Canada, the USA, and Mexico (as well as the UK, Australia, EnZed, and South Africa), we need to BAN the patenting of any and all life-forms or genetic structures.

An outright ban. It is necessary. It must happen. It must happen now.

[edit on 7/7/08 by Pellevoisin]

Originally posted by resistor

Au contraire. We can all do what I and others are doing and plant a backyard garden using heirloom seeds.

Vraiment! It should be a basic matter of commitment for everyone who decries the NWO and all of these related crimes to pull up their lawns and plant heirloom crops. They, their families, and friends will learn so much about what it really means to be part of the living and growing on Planet Earth.

I strongly recommend finding which heirloom corn varieties grow in your area. If you are in the Southwestern USA for example the Native Americans have preserved all sorts of ancient seed stocks that grow in that environment without having to build your own private water tower in order to keep things irrigated.

reply to post by starcraft


I find it curious that you try to divert the thread to the chemical component of monsanto's industry and don't talk about the genetic component. What's your opinion there? Genetics, friend or foe?

I for one agree with DocMoreau, genetics is a crime against mankind and a threat to our foodchain. Are you going to play devil's advocate on this one too?

reply to post by Zepherian


Genetics, friend or foe? I can only speak to plant genetics, and of course, the advances in plant genetics in the last 20 yrs is astounding! In my lifetime alone, corn yields have doubled on the same acreage. Genes are inserted to make plants resistant to corn borers, rootworms and a host of other pests. How come folks aren't touting the benefits of reduced pesticide usage on these modified plants?

Remember, these are VERY technical procedures. Gene splicing is very complicated to even comprehend to a layman. Just because you don't understand the mechanisms or the procedures or the ramifications, doesn't mean you condemn the unknown.

Advancements in plant genetics has led to decreased pesticide applications, reduced fertilization, better utilization of water resources and bottom line: more food being produced on a finite resource...arable land.

Verdict?...FRIEND....in a VERY big way.

reply to post by starcraft


You are a bit arrogant and make unfounded assumptions as to what can or cannot be understood. I beg to differ, genetics is very easy to understand, it's simple code reprogramming on a biological data matrix.

If anything, from what I have seen, the people who don't understand what they're doing are the ones rewriting the code.

And you go on about corn yields doubleing, but could you elaborate where, when and in relation to what? Could you also link to independent nutritional data? Toxicity levels? Because I would rather have half a yield of good corn, than double the yield of unhealty crap. And can you see how I would rather not have a corporation own a suicide gene present in my foodsource? Can you understand the concepts of food independence and nutritional freedom?

And drop the argument of intelectual authority please, that will get you nowhere with me and with a lot of other people on these boards and indeed in the real world. If anything it makes more more skeptical of your posts, because I've had enough contact with highly educated people to know the majority of them are basically well read morons and intelectual peons of someone else's ideas.

Edit on arable land: The US currently, even with rumoured food shortages still only uses a fraction of the available arable land, and you don't have to be a bookworm to realise this, a simple tour around google earth shows it. This is one of the reasons I have never bought the overpopulation meme, because we have very inefective agriculture on a global level, yet still manage to usually have food surplus. Where we fail is in economics and logistics, because we are ruled by selfish, sociopathic, elitist parasites. Arable land is indeed finite, but we currently have more of it than we need, it is not the problem.

[edit on 7-7-2008 by Zepherian]