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Kalman posted:Well, for one thing, Monsanto doesn't really employ field workers. I cannot emphasize how much everything is a carcinogen. California has nicely demonstrated this by mandating that all carcinogens be labeled, including those that apparently abound in grocery stores.
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Dec 18, 2013 10:46
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Amarkov posted:I cannot emphasize how much everything is a carcinogen. California has nicely demonstrated this by mandating that all carcinogens be labeled, including those that apparently abound in grocery stores. It all depends on the dose.
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Dec 18, 2013 15:53
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Yea if your standard is just 'could it possibly in some universe cause cancer' everything's deadly, it's all about dose and poo poo. So yea I'm sure every field worker hired is 'exposed to carcinogens' in the same way that every time I wake up and go outside to get the paper I'm 'exposed to carcinogens', that doesn't mean the New York Times is trying to murder me though.
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Dec 18, 2013 16:04
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Tatum Girlparts posted:Yea if your standard is just 'could it possibly in some universe cause cancer' everything's deadly, it's all about dose and poo poo. So yea I'm sure every field worker hired is 'exposed to carcinogens' in the same way that every time I wake up and go outside to get the paper I'm 'exposed to carcinogens', that doesn't mean the New York Times is trying to murder me though. The car exhaust, however, is 
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Dec 18, 2013 18:59
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blowfish posted:It all depends on the dose. One side of this spectrum is death, the other is homeopathy
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Dec 19, 2013 15:24
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I have been following this thread for a while, and I find myself of a different opinion than when I had started. I used to go with the "well, if there's nothing wrong with it, why are they against labeling it?!" crowd in terms of GMO, and thought that organic growing was more sustainable; my view of nuclear plants was also very much of the environmental consensus variety. I am now seriously questioning all of these. More selfishly, I am now wondering whether overspending on organic food provides me with anything more than a placebo effect and a lighter wallet. Is there anywhere to start reading something serious about these issues? Let's say, starting with the latter: which types of organic/freerange/grassfed is actually helpful? I do like the free-range eggs better, and I know that's not what people have discussed in the thread, but I would like to have some information with which to make more intelligent decisions, and then start arguing with my friends, many of which are probably more of the Atomkraft: Nein Danke and No GMO persuasion.
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Dec 21, 2013 02:44
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I have been following this thread for a while, and I find myself of a different opinion than when I had started. I used to go with the "well, if there's nothing wrong with it, why are they against labeling it?!" crowd in terms of GMO, and thought that organic growing was more sustainable; my view of nuclear plants was also very much of the environmental consensus variety. I am now seriously questioning all of these. I think free-range and grass-fed are significantly different from organic farming, in that the animal welfare is an important part of both of those, so they are more a moral issue than a scientific one. If conventional farming is safe and sustainable (or if organic farming is less of either of these things), there's no reason really for organic farming, and that's a thing that can in principle be proven or disproven, even if convincing people of your findings is difficult to do. Whereas even if caged eggs were more sustainable (due to reduced land usage maybe), people might still feel that actually doing that would be morally wrong. I mean, there will be people out there that oppose GMOs morally on the basis of "playing god" or whatever, but I think safety and ecology are uppermost in people's minds in this debate, rather than morality of GMOs and pesticides themselves. Personally, I have no quarrel with GMOs as a concept, like nuclear power, and eat free-range eggs, for whatever that's worth.
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Dec 21, 2013 03:32
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Is there anywhere to start reading something serious about these issues? Let's say, starting with the latter: which types of organic/freerange/grassfed is actually helpful? I do like the free-range eggs better, and I know that's not what people have discussed in the thread, but I would like to have some information with which to make more intelligent decisions, and then start arguing with my friends, many of which are probably more of the Atomkraft: Nein Danke and No GMO persuasion. Maybe somebody has a better recommendation but from my perspective, there is no nice little approachable book like you find for the anti-GMO crowd. Please note, I am from a grains perspective, so I have limited ability to comfortably talk about anything to do with animals. The pro-literature is more-so in scientific journals and agronomic trials and they don't have the same narrative. Statements like "more parasitic mycorrhizal associations were encouraged in an organic system compared to the conventional control" do not grab audiences but it is from where I get my opinions. Sadly, a lot of these resources are not free to the public. Man, how wonderful it would be if all science was open-source. To put it bluntly, as an industry, we have lost. Our narrative is poo poo and all parties have little interest to get engaged. Farmers do not want to argue with urban "yuppies" on how to do their jobs; few scientists have the luxury or ability to be Carl Sagan of biotech and business has the power to not have to care. I wish I could point you to something nice but I got nothing that is suitably unbiased and also easy to read. There is a huge communication problem from the farm gate to the table and right now, there is no solution. I can't ask you to just trust me either, that would be just an appeal to authority and no authority is good enough here. All I got is that Organic is no magic bullet. E: To argue for the other side, the best impact for organic will not be found on the farm but in the city. Cities produce little to no food and has killed more good soil than probably anything modern agriculture has done. If the developed world is serious about organic production, food has to start coming from more than just the grocery store. Probably the only safe way to increase usable arable land enough to match conventional production. It is a good idea no matter what side of the debate you are on. Personally, I don't have a lawn. I have a vegetable patch. Hypha fucked around with this message at 11:03 on Dec 21, 2013 |
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Dec 21, 2013 10:39
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Hypha posted:Maybe somebody has a better recommendation but from my perspective, there is no nice little approachable book like you find for the anti-GMO crowd. Please note, I am from a grains perspective, so I have limited ability to comfortably talk about anything to do with animals. The pro-literature is more-so in scientific journals and agronomic trials and they don't have the same narrative. Statements like "more parasitic mycorrhizal associations were encouraged in an organic system compared to the conventional control" do not grab audiences but it is from where I get my opinions. Sadly, a lot of these resources are not free to the public. Man, how wonderful it would be if all science was open-source. Yeah, quite a few people around here are into urban agriculture; I haven't had the chance to have an apartment or house where I even have the possibility of doing anything about that myself, though. As for non-free sources, I have some access through my university, so if you have a couple of nice citations, I'll put them somewhere on the back burner for later perusal.
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Dec 21, 2013 21:01
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I recently saw this posted and am not sure how this will change the GMO debate nor do I know how credible the journal Organic Systems is. http://www.organic-systems.org/journal/81/8106.pdf
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Dec 22, 2013 18:51
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Baika posted:I recently saw this posted and am not sure how this will change the GMO debate nor do I know how credible the journal Organic Systems is. I cannot break this one down at this point but something stuck out to me in a quick reading. "Mycotoxin analyses (Midwest Laboratories Inc, Omaha, Nebraska, US) showed 2.08 ppb total aflatoxins and 3.0 ppm total fumonisins in a pooled sample of the GM feed and no aflatoxins and 1.2 ppm total fumonisins in a pooled sample of the non-GM feed. No other mycotoxins were detected. These levels are well below the USA and EU limits for mycotoxins in pig feed. In addition, according to common industry practice, a mycotoxin binding agent (200 mesh bentonite clay) was added to the diets of young pigs " So, mycotoxins are almost three times higher in the GM feed over the non-GM feed. Ok, that is within the EU and USA limits for pig feed but that does not excuse the variable, especially at 3 times for fumonisins and the presence or absence of aflatoxins. Those limits are within the parameters of agriculture, not science. If the mycotoxins concentrations were the other way around, then it would be interesting though still a experimental problem. Considering they are looking at something like stomach inflammation, this could have a huge impact on their study and probably skews their results against the GM feed.
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Dec 22, 2013 19:36
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Baika posted:I recently saw this posted and am not sure how this will change the GMO debate nor do I know how credible the journal Organic Systems is. As for their results, it's certainly more credible than the Séralini study, but I wonder if the outcome isn't an artifact of their data categorization. Stomach inflammation was apparently recorded as a placement of a given pig into one of four categories, nil, mild, moderate, or severe inflammation, with results of: code:edit: Doing the above, I get means of 1.589 and 1.778 for non-GM and GM feeding inflammation, with variances of .598 and 1.034. This implies a t-value of 1.248, meaningfully below the ~1.65 required for statistical significance at the 5% level even with a one-tailed t-distribution. (That is, the generous assumption, that we're testing specifically for GM-fed being worse than non-GM. Two-tailed, looking for any difference, would require 1.98). Basically, these results put a special emphasis on a pig being diagnosed with specifically severe inflammation, rather than stomach inflammation generally. Given that there doesn't appear to be a statistically significant increase in the general degree of inflammation, I suspect the results for having specifically severe inflammation are a false positive. This is further emphasized by the fact that they tested a whole bunch of different things - 18 different organ test categories and 17 different blood biochemistry tests. When you run 35 different tests on a group of pigs, talking about the 5% significance level becomes a bit deceptive, since at that point you would in fact expect almost two tests to go past that level just from chance alone. edit2: Apparently this t-test is bad statistics as well, since the assignment of values 0,1,2,3 is arbitrary and does not reflect actual numerical measurements from the study. This has someone who made the same mistake as me, but who also ran a more appropriate Wilcoxson test, finding a p of .208 for any difference between the groups. Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Dec 22, 2013 |
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Dec 22, 2013 19:45
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Baika posted:I recently saw this posted and am not sure how this will change the GMO debate nor do I know how credible the journal Organic Systems is. From: http://www.marklynas.org/2013/06/gmo-pigs-study-more-junk-science/ quote:This picture is even more stark in the data presented in Table 3. 15% of non-GM fed pigs had heart abnormalities, while only 6% of GM-fed pigs did so. Similarly, twice as many non-GM pigs as GM ones had liver problems. Why no headlines here? “Pigs fed non-GMO feed 100% more likely to develop heart and liver problems, study finds” – I can just see it in the Daily Mail. But of course negative results were not what Carman et al were looking for. The paper seems to be cherrypicking data that supports anything along the lines of "GMO BAD!!!!" without actually starting from specific hypothesis. Moreover, the paper authors are anti-GMO advocates specifically sponsored by organic farming organizations. So there are issues.
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Dec 22, 2013 20:59
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(whoops, wrong thread)
NFX fucked around with this message at 13:53 on Dec 25, 2013 |
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Dec 25, 2013 13:41
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"What most of them didn’t report on is the absurdity – and the danger – of allowing companies to patent living organisms in the first place, and then use those patents to attempt to monopolize world seed and food production." http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_27105.cfm Maybe I should file a patent for air.
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Dec 25, 2013 13:59
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Speedibus-Rex posted:"What most of them didn’t report on is the absurdity – and the danger – of allowing companies to patent living organisms in the first place, and then use those patents to attempt to monopolize world seed and food production." Explain to me again why if someone designs an organism why there shouldn't be patent protection? Why is it so absurd?
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Dec 25, 2013 17:43
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Solkanar512 posted:Explain to me again why if someone designs an organism why there shouldn't be patent protection? Why is it so absurd? Because man you can't, like, own a seed man. I guess unless you custom design that seed to specific and unique levels...
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Dec 25, 2013 17:55
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Solkanar512 posted:Explain to me again why if someone designs an organism why there shouldn't be patent protection? Why is it so absurd? Yeah, why would monopolizing and further commercializing food staples ever be a problem?
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Dec 25, 2013 19:00
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LP97S posted:Yeah, why would monopolizing and further commercializing food staples ever be a problem? So to be clear if you make a seed you shouldn't own it? If you produce a product you don't own your labor if it's deemed to be a 'staple'?
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Dec 25, 2013 19:05
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LP97S posted:Yeah, why would monopolizing and further commercializing food staples ever be a problem? Don't put words into my mouth, I didn't say anything about monopolization. And what's this bullshit about "further commercialization"? How is food not already commercialized and how does specially changing a plant genome have anything to do with it? Quit spouting loaded language and have a real discussion.
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Dec 25, 2013 19:15
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There's food crises already all over the world due to the commercializing of food and people here are unironically saying that the next thing we need to do is reinforce that system with patents. If it was FAO or even WHO calling the shots about food research that would be great, instead it's the same publically traded shitheads who decades of work have lead to better seeds for use with their lovely pesticide, all at a higher mark up. There's a terrible structure with a rotten base that needs to be torn down and people in thread want to fix the base.
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Dec 25, 2013 19:34
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LP97S posted:There's food crises already all over the world due to the commercializing of food and people here are unironically saying that the next thing we need to do is reinforce that system with patents. If it was FAO or even WHO calling the shots about food research that would be great, instead it's the same publically traded shitheads who decades of work have lead to better seeds for use with their lovely pesticide, all at a higher mark up. Of course, existing crops can still be used and the problems that cause food crises actually have very little to do with what varietal of a specific crop is being grown so patents really are neither here nor there when it comes to food crises. I mean, seriously. Monsanto doesn't own a patent on corn. It owns a patent on a specific gene that can be used in corn so that you cons use glyphosate with the corn. If that's not an advantage, why does it affect food crises? And if it is an advantage, well, they did manage to do something no one else had done (and something that isn't that easy to do) so they probably should be rewarded for that.
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Dec 25, 2013 19:41
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LP97S posted:There's food crises already all over the world due to the commercializing of food and people here are unironically saying that the next thing we need to do is reinforce that system with patents. If it was FAO or even WHO calling the shots about food research that would be great, instead it's the same publically traded shitheads who decades of work have lead to better seeds for use with their lovely pesticide, all at a higher mark up. Do you know what patents are? You can't patent 'rice' but you can patent a specific seed.
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Dec 25, 2013 19:45
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LP97S posted:There's food crises already all over the world due to the commercializing of food and people here are unironically saying that the next thing we need to do is reinforce that system with patents. If it was FAO or even WHO calling the shots about food research that would be great, instead it's the same publically traded shitheads who decades of work have lead to better seeds for use with their lovely pesticide, all at a higher mark up.
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Dec 25, 2013 19:46
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Using satire to get a point across. http://media.mtvnservices.com/embed/mgid:cms:video:thedailyshow.com:429029
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Dec 25, 2013 20:19
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But again, no one will ever own 'rice', that's not how things work, you own a product you put labor into, how is this wrong?
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Dec 25, 2013 20:36
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Plant patents long predate GMO and modern agribusiness anyway. Really the best case you can make is that existing patent law gets weird when you patent a product whose primary function is to produce perfect copies of itself. That said, I was a lot more against the whole idea of plant patents back when I first heard the stories about innocent farmers getting in trouble for harmless or unknowing violations, before I saw the detailed stories of how much was careful scams, theory-crafting about technologies not even in use, or else violation of safety/environmental regulations separate from the patents themselves.
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Dec 25, 2013 20:45
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Tatum Girlparts posted:Do you know what patents are? You can't patent 'rice' but you can patent a specific seed. I understand that but when the vast majority of the market is being controlled by a handful of entities that do nothing but sell their own patented crops with restrictive contracts it's basically the same thing. Kalman posted:I mean, seriously. Monsanto doesn't own a patent on corn. It owns a patent on a specific gene that can be used in corn so that you cons use glyphosate with the corn. If that's not an advantage, why does it affect food crises? And if it is an advantage, well, they did manage to do something no one else had done (and something that isn't that easy to do) so they probably should be rewarded for that. That kind of thinking has been leading to waste and problems in almost every field. Rent-A-Cop posted:Food crises have much more to do with international trade than they do with IP law. Europe and the US are massively protectionist in the agricultural markets and love to dump huge amounts of practically free food aid on developing countries which tends to drive local growers out of business. They do this both because it is seen as charitable and because it allows them to support domestic producers for various economic, political or strategic reasons. I understand this but Monsanto isn't just a passive victim in all of this. They're pushing their bullshit products onto markets and funneling it all back to themselves at the expense of the world. They're riding the high of unequal trade and profiteering off of death if you will allow some dramatics. This is the future if all that is done about GMO is mock the scientific bullshit that the Green party blindly follows but continue the neoliberal loving of the world.
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Dec 25, 2013 20:57
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Tatum Girlparts posted:But again, no one will ever own 'rice', that's not how things work, you own a product you put labor into, how is this wrong? Trying to protect something you put labor into is not "wrong". However, just like anything else, legislation can be misused to conceal not-so-honorable intentions.
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Dec 25, 2013 21:02
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LP97S posted:I understand this but Monsanto isn't just a passive victim in all of this. They're pushing their bullshit products onto markets and funneling it all back to themselves at the expense of the world. They're riding the high of unequal trade and profiteering off of death if you will allow some dramatics. This is the future if all that is done about GMO is mock the scientific bullshit that the Green party blindly follows but continue the neoliberal loving of the world.
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Dec 25, 2013 21:04
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Speedibus-Rex posted:Trying to protect something you put labor into is not "wrong". You don't get to legislate on assumption though.
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Dec 25, 2013 21:06
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Yeah, corporations are evil. What does that have to do with GMO? They're just as evil with their non-GMO products and so is pretty much everyone else in agriculture because corporations are almost by definition evil. Monsanto is loving up the market with GMO's. They already hosed up the world with hybrid marketing, hosed up with pesticide, what the hell is the deal with giving it a third try seems to be the general notion. I have no issues with GMO, all of my posts in this thread have been about how both left and right sources are scared with pseudo-science crap and how plenty of people shouldn't be trusted because it's all about money. Food insecurity could be eliminated overnight if it wasn't for privatized interests in it and if it was recognized as a human right. Monsanto, along with Cargill and other agro-chemical companies, don't want that so in conclusion they can go gently caress themselves, GMO or not.
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Dec 25, 2013 21:14
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LP97S posted:There's food crises already all over the world due to the commercializing of food and people here are unironically saying that the next thing we need to do is reinforce that system with patents. If it was FAO or even WHO calling the shots about food research that would be great, instead it's the same publically traded shitheads who decades of work have lead to better seeds for use with their lovely pesticide, all at a higher mark up. We grow more food than is consumed (by anyone/thing) and that's not due to commercialization of food.
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Dec 25, 2013 21:33
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I'm sure you have solid proof that Monsanto is 'loving up the market' with GMOs?
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Dec 25, 2013 22:06
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LP97S posted:Monsanto is loving up the market with GMO's. They already hosed up the world with hybrid marketing, hosed up with pesticide, what the hell is the deal with giving it a third try seems to be the general notion. I have no issues with GMO, all of my posts in this thread have been about how both left and right sources are scared with pseudo-science crap and how plenty of people shouldn't be trusted because it's all about money. Food insecurity could be eliminated overnight if it wasn't for privatized interests in it and if it was recognized as a human right. Monsanto, along with Cargill and other agro-chemical companies, don't want that so in conclusion they can go gently caress themselves, GMO or not. Um I'm pretty sure that there isn't a "end world hunger" switch in a closet somewhere that Big Monsanto is hiding from the world. Because, you know, the political, logistic, and economic issues associated with this are kinda complicated.
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Dec 25, 2013 22:45
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Tatum Girlparts posted:I'm sure you have solid proof that Monsanto is 'loving up the market' with GMOs? It's a company that's based on making money by dominating market with products, why would GMO be any different for them? Slanderer posted:Um I'm pretty sure that there isn't a "end world hunger" switch in a closet somewhere that Big Monsanto is hiding from the world. Because, you know, the political, logistic, and economic issues associated with this are kinda complicated. Where did I say Monsanto was the ones keeping it back, they're looters and accomplices.
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Dec 25, 2013 23:06
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It seems clear to me that the ethical issue is: "will the world be better off with patent protection for gene sequences or without them?" On one hand, companies have an incentive to share discoveries in the form of a temporary monopoly. On the other hand, allowing companies to patent and lock away key building blocks of genetic code could greatly slow progress in creating high-impact genetic crops. It doesn't seem like a question with an obvious answer, software patents have done a lot of harm in the form of the latter concern, and genes seem kind of similar to that, moreso than a particular design of a physical invention. The question of Monsanto being evil seems like a silly distraction at best, to me it seems prudent to talk about the fundamental issue without that.
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Dec 25, 2013 23:11
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Jeffrey posted:It seems clear to me that the ethical issue is: "will the world be better off with patent protection for gene sequences or without them?" On one hand, companies have an incentive to share discoveries in the form of a temporary monopoly. On the other hand, allowing companies to patent and lock away key building blocks of genetic code could greatly slow progress in creating high-impact genetic crops. It doesn't seem like a question with an obvious answer, software patents have done a lot of harm in the form of the latter concern, and genes seem kind of similar to that, moreso than a particular design of a physical invention. You managed to sum up better what I was trying to say in my terrible, ineffectual posting. I was trying to get accross the latter with the notion of patenting GMO's would only go the route of most privatized agribusiness in general, better profits while maintaining a system that is inherently terrible for the purpose of feeding people. The problem is that I'm terrible at posting and doing it on Christmas loving day of all things just makes it worse.
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Dec 25, 2013 23:18
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LP97S posted:It's a company that's based on making money by dominating market with products, why would GMO be any different for them? Ok, so they do what pretty much any other company does, capitalism bad, etc. Do you have anything to say about what Monsanto is doing that other companies in the field are not? All I'm really getting here from you is "Raaaarrr! Monsanto bad!" with a bunch of extremely vague opprobrium, please add some substance.
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Dec 25, 2013 23:23
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AVeryLargeRadish posted:Ok, so they do what pretty much any other company does, capitalism bad, etc. Do you have anything to say about what Monsanto is doing that other companies in the field are not? All I'm really getting here from you is "Raaaarrr! Monsanto bad!" with a bunch of extremely vague opprobrium, please add some substance. Monsanto is the main target because they're monopolizing the distribution of seeds with buy outs and licensing and I'm sorry that apparently this thread is only about GMO being bad from some loving green party platform instead of dealing with the biggest name in loving over food distribution. I guess liberalism wins again, Merry Christmas.
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Dec 25, 2013 23:51
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