On Saturday, February 7, 2015 at 9:28:59 AM UTC-5, Mayayana wrote:
| No one is forcing farmers to buy anything. If you want to use
| Monsanto products you can use them. If not, you can buy your
| seed from anyone else, non-GMO, etc.
|
A distorted view of "capitalism" is always the last
refuge of the ostrich. Essentially the argument is:
"No one's forcing anybody to *buy* the snake oil.
Can I go back to sleep now?"
Apparently you spend a lot of time sleeping, because you're
incapable of making cogent points and staying informed. What
exactly is the distorted view of capitalism here? There are
GMO seeds available. There are none GMO seeds available, farmers
are free to choose which they want to use. Monsanto develops
GMO seeds and sells them for a profit. Other seed producers
develop hybrids by other means and similarly protect them,
prohibit others from using them without license. They invest
time and money, research, they want to get a return on and
protect their investment. All that is very much a part of normal
capitalism and free markets.
| As long as labeling of foods made from those products includes that info
so
| consumers can make their own decisions, that's great.
|
Labeling would be nice, but it's more complicated
than that. Monsanto has sued farmers to force use
of their Roundup Ready seed.
If true, *that* would be a distorted capitalism.
Please show us the case where Monsanto forced farmers
to use their see. I'm betting you can't or that it's
grossly distorted, ie there was some pre-existing contract,
etc.
At this point, much of
the corn and soy grown in the US is RR. One has to
assume that any corn meal products are RR corn.
(Though I read recently that it may not be widespread
in corn sold fresh as corn on the cob.)
PBS documentary including info about Monsanto lawsuits:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food%2C_Inc.
The World According to Monsanto:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6_DbVdVo-k
Monsanto has sued in two different ways:
1) Trying to force use of their seed by suing farmers who
don't use it, claiming those farmers are infringing their
patent by "allowing" their crop to be infected with RR
pollen.
So, show us the cases where Monsanto has sued farmers to
force them to use their product. I'm betting it's a lie.
And show us the cases where Monsanto claimed that farmers
were infringing where the crops were only contaminated by
pollen from a nearby farm using Monsanto seed.
Waiting......
2) Suing anyone who uses RR progeny. There was a recent
case about that. A farmer bought some soy from a grain
elevator to do an off-season planting, figuring that some
of the soy would be RR and some of that would sprout,
allowing him to heavily use RR on his crop. The court
agreed with Monsanto's claim that it's illegal to attempt
growing plants from seeds that come from RR stock!
Of course they did. It's essential to protecting Monsanto's
investment in developing the seed. Again, you're pretending
that this is unique to GMO. It's not. Try taking some
grass seed developed at Rutgers without GMO, still under protection,
then cultivating it, using the seed for commercial purposes.
The same thing will happen.
If the public doesn't become focussed on the problem
of patented life forms there will be a great deal of
difficulty controlling GMO at all, simply because there
will be so much money to be made by patenting plants
and animals. This is just getting started, yet already it's
hard to buy non-RR processed foods that contain soy or
corn.
You're asleep again. Patenting life forms isn't something new.
It's been going on a very long time. The Haas avocado is a good
example. That was developed and the tree patented back in the
30's. I suppose Mr. Haas, who developed it, should have given
it to the world for free? He patented it, sold it, protected
it and obviously it had nothing to do with GMO. Any other myths
I need to demolish this morning? Good grief.