The Devil Monsanto, or Combating Scientific Ignorance: CRISPR Responsibly!

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Trabisnikof: Dec 24, 2005

Tight Booty Shorts posted:

"EFSA identifies risks to bees from neonicotinoids"

http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/press/news/130116.htm

Ah yes, the other link I posted on this page. It is an assessment of risk not impact. Besides, this report doesn't talk about banning neonicotinoids at all:

Risk Assessment posted:

Exposure from pollen and nectar. Only uses on crops not attractive to honey bees were considered acceptable.
Exposure from dust. A risk to honey bees was indicated or could not be excluded, with some exceptions, such as use on sugar beet and crops planted in glasshouses, and for the use of some granules.
Exposure from guttation. The only risk assessment that could be completed was for maize treated with thiamethoxam. In this case, field studies show an acute effect on honey bees exposed to the substance through guttation fluid.

It is of course talking about 3 specific kinds of neonicotinoids and you're generalizing to them all as well.

# ? Oct 21, 2014 08:49

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# ? Jun 10, 2024 01:21

Absurd Alhazred: Mar 27, 2010; by Athanatos

Trabisnikof posted:

Ah yes, the other link I posted on this page. It is an assessment of risk not impact.

What is the distinction, exactly? I could guess but this isn't my field, and I'm curious.

# ? Oct 21, 2014 09:01

white sauce: Apr 29, 2012; by R. Guyovich

Trabisnikof posted:

Ah yes, the other link I posted on this page. It is an assessment of risk not impact. Besides, this report doesn't talk about banning neonicotinoids at all:

It is of course talking about 3 specific kinds of neonicotinoids and you're generalizing to them all as well.

Show where I'm generalizing, because in my other posts I was careful to say that there were dozens of neonics and that I understood that they had only banned a few.

Also, do you think the risk assessment conducted here should be ignored and we should continue using neonics?

# ? Oct 21, 2014 09:05

Trabisnikof: Dec 24, 2005

Absurd Alhazred posted:

What is the distinction, exactly? I could guess but this isn't my field, and I'm curious.

The EFSA risk assessment looks at ways that these 3 chemicals can make their way into the population of bees and other animals, it doesn't include an assessment of either potential or real world impacts on those populations. It is saying "there X% chance that if a crop was sprayed at Y time that Z bees will receive exposure to W levels of chemicals" versus what TBS wants it to say which is "spraying on X crops caused Z bee harm/death."

Tight Booty Shorts posted:

Also, do you think the risk assessment conducted here should be ignored and we should continue using neonics?

Well, I think the EFSA's chosen path of conducting more research and tightening methods is a great step. Just because something has a demonstrable risk pathway doesn't mean its the most pressing or impactful risk to bees or anything for that matter. As others have pointed out, removing neonicotinoids is insufficient to stop decline in bee populations so it might be counterproductive to focus efforts on removing a non-critical risk factor.

# ? Oct 21, 2014 09:31

QuarkJets: Sep 8, 2008

Canada and Australia use neonics, yet they don't have widespread CCD. Why is that, TBS?

Forbes posted:

It�s estimated that over the past five years, some 30 percent of bees in the United States have either disappeared or failed to survive to pollinate blossoms in the spring. That�s about 50% more than the rate expected. The problem is direr in some other countries. In Spain, recent data indicate a loss close to 80% of beehives. On the other hand, in Canada and Australia, there is no sign of Colony Collapse Disorder.

What may be causing the die-offs and why the dramatic disparities from one region to another? Scientists have a number of hypotheses but the activist community has coalesced around one explanation: They blame it on neonicotinoids, also known as neonics, which are the widest used class of insecticide ever.

�It�s time to ban dangerous neonicotinoid pesticides,� declares Mother Earth News. �Bees need help now! Time to up the ante,� declares the Pesticide Action Network announcing its suit against the Environmental Protection Agency. �EPA should cancel all uses of neonics where they can lead to harm for bees and other beneficial insects, and chemical manufacturers like Bayer and Syngenta that make neonics should use their resources to develop less harmful alternatives instead of defending the neonics,� writes Jennifer Sass of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Birds, bats and insects all pollinate flowering plants, but the most celebrated pollinator is the honeybee, and for good reason. United States commercial beekeepers take millions of bee hives on the road each year to pollinate blueberries and papaya, almonds and apples, and a cornucopia of other fruits, vegetables and nuts. Close to one third of our food supply is linked to pollination. Without the bee our diet would be less nutritious and less tasty. Bee die offs are a serious issue and need to be evaluated. But the question remains: are neonicotinoids the culprit?

Fingering neonics

Neonics are a new class of systemic pesticide popular in the US, Australia, Europe and elsewhere to help corn, soy, cotton and canola farmers. They were adopted over the past 20 years as a less toxic replacement of organophosphate pesticides, which are known to kill bees and wildlife, and have been linked to health problems in workers. By universal agreement, neonicotinoids are extremely effective. Applied to the soil, sprayed on the crop or used as a seed treatment, they eventually reach the pollen and nectar, which is ingested by insects, discouraging pests from wrecking havoc on crops. The seed treatment lowers the amount used 10 to 20 fold, decreasing the need for open spraying of the plant, a genuine sustainability benefit.

Neonics were phased in without incident in the 1990s. But an age-old problem in the bee world�a periodic and unpredictable dramatic rise in bee deaths in one region or another�reemerged in 2004. Bee death rates approached 60% in California Beekeepers called it the vampire mite scare because of its likely link to varroa mites�parasites that feed on the bodily fluids of bees.

The explanatory narrative began to change in 2006, when new waves of bee deaths were reported around the world. Anti-biotechnology activists blamed GMOs. �There are many reasons given to the decline in Bees, but one argument that matters most is the use of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) and �Terminator Seeds� that are presently being endorsed by governments and forcefully utilized as our primary agricultural needs of survival,� argued the anti-globalization group Global Research, in what amounted to a rhetorical and circumstantial argument. But as GMOs have gained favor with the science community, the focus of activist groups shifted and a new culprit was identified: neonicotinoids.

Over the past few months, CBS News, NPR and Dan Rather have run powerful segments and the popular media in general has cheerleaded a recent lawsuit spearheaded by the Center for Food Safety and other anti-chemical groups demanding that the Environmental Protection Agency ban the insecticide. In less than a month, the New York Times ran a front-page article and editorialized twice on the subject, dismissing what it called �manufacturers� bland assurances� about its safety and all but calling for a ban.

History raises questions about the almost exclusive focus on neonics to explain the regional bee crisis. Periodic occurrences resembling what has come to be known as bee Colony Collapse Disorder have been documented as far back as 1869. In the last half century, the domesticated honeybee population has declined by about 50 percent, with incidents common well before the introduction of neonics, which was hailed by environmentalists because of their comparatively modest environmental footprint. The term CCD was originally used to describe the phenomenon when worker bees suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. The term, with its alarmist ring, was co-opted by activists in the mid 2000s to describe a new development�mass bee deaths.

The research on bee colony deaths is dicey�and often political. The science based view of this issue took a sharp turn in January when the European Food Safety Authority issued three studies raising questions about the potential role of neonics in this latest wave of bee deaths. The studies did not link the pesticides to the collapse of whole bee colonies, but did raise enough issues to lead to a vote last month for a 2-year precautionary ban by the European Commission. The ban was blocked, temporarily, by Germany, Britain and seven other countries, citing evidence that neonics were not the sole or likely the primary culprit, their impact still unclear. The EC plans an appeal.

Last year, one study showed that bumblebees exposed to high doses of the neonic imidacloprid in the lab, then released to forage in the field, had sharply reduced colony growth rates and produced 85 percent fewer queens to found new colonies. In another study, more than 30 percent of free-ranging honeybees whose brains were doused with the neonic thiamethoxam�which is not the way bees encounter the chemical in the real world� got confused, failing to return to the hive.

Real world contradictions

The results were so dramatic�and so contradictory of real life experience of some beekeepers in Canada, Europe and Australia who use neonics and where many bee colonies are thriving�that the United Kingdom�s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) decided to reevaluate existing research. The agency pointed to the problem with much of the lab based data�it measures doses and application methods that farmers don�t use. �The risk to bee populations from neonics, as they are currently used, is low.� DEFRA concluded in March. �Laboratory-based studies demonstrating sub-lethal effects on bees from neonics did not replicate realistic conditions, but extreme scenarios.. � While this assessment cannot exclude rare effects of neonicotinoids on bees in the field, it suggests that effects on bees do not occur under normal circumstances. Consequently, it supports the view that the risk to bee populations from neonicotinoids, as they are currently used, is low,� the study concluded.

Farmers are almost universally opposed to even a temporary ban absent definitive real world research, calling it reckless. As they note, because of the ban on organophosphates, there are no real alternatives to neonics, which everyone agrees have been extremely effective. Insecticides are used for a reason: to kill pests and make our food safer to eat. Without neonics or a suitable replacement, farmers could face losses estimated by one industry study as $5.78 billion per year in Europe alone�and many multiples of that if a ban is instituted in the United States and other major agricultural economies, with the costs passed on to consumers.

Understandably alarmed at the economic implications to consumers and to their bottom lines, Syngenta and Bayer, the two primary manufacturers of the chemicals, have proposed a plan to accelerate bee health research. They�ve also proposed adding new flowering margins around fields to provide pesticide-free bee habitats and monitoring for the presence of neonics in crops.

Industry is concerned as to what they see as a �rush to judgment��and should a �temporary� ban is instituted it will be difficult to unring the precautionary bell regardless of what new evidence might show. They point to real world contradictions that suggest that pathogens, parasites and habitat loss, which has been the driver of CCD for more than a century before the introduction of insecticides, are the likely prime cause this time as well.

Canada, the UK and Australia all provide provocative real world case studies. Canola is grown commercially mostly on the prairies in Canada, the largest single producer of canola in the world with more than 50,000 canola producers and 16 million acres. It�s a nutritionally rich crop for bees. Some 80% of Canada�s honey crop is from canola, amounting to 50 million pounds per year of Grade No 1 white honey. Approximately 300,000 colonies harvest open pollinated canola.

Despite the fact that neonicotinoids are widely used in Canada to protect canola from pests, Canadian bee populations have been largely unaffected and produce around 50 million pounds of canola honey. A large-scale Ontario field study funded by Bayer appears to back up the real life evidence challenging the activist doomsday scenario. It found no difference in colony health between hives exposed to neonics and those that weren�t, in real life conditions. �The doses the bees are exposed to [in lab studies] are far above what a realistic field dose exposure would be,� says Dr. Cynthia Scott-Dupree, head of the Ontario study. Canadian canola farmers say they have had 10 years of large scale use of neonics on canola with no observed ill effect.

Britain�s rapeseed crop, which is similar to canola but has a high acid content and is generally produced for animal feed, has not experienced serious bee losses either. The DEFRA study noted that oilseed rape (OSR) �requires insect pollinators to support its productivity. The fact that OSR treated with neonicotinoids has been a productive crop for over a decade in the UK is itself evidence that pollinator populations, including bees, are not being reduced by the presence of neonicotinoids.�

Varroa mites: The real culprit?

Australia presents the most striking dilemma for those isolating their attacks on neonics. On a per crop basis, it is one of the world�s heaviest users of the pesticide�and has among the healthiest bee colonies in the world. Government records indicate there has not been even one adverse experience report from either the public or beekeepers concerning the use of neonics. The other thing they don�t see in Australia�but we do see everywhere else in the world where CCD is claimed�is the Varroa mite, the culprit in the 2005/06 bee death march.

While not deadly in themselves, these parasites act as a vector, attaching to honeybees and appearing to be �both a disseminator and activator of a number of bee viruses,� according to a report on honeybee disease in Europe by the Food and Environment Research Agency. In countries experiencing bee decline, varroa is a feared and growing presence among beekeepers�even or especially if neonicotinoids are absent. For example, in upland areas of Switzerland where the pesticide is not used, bee colony populations are under significant pressure from the mites; and in France, declines in the bee population in mountainous areas (where neonics are uncommon) are similar to those in agricultural areas (where neonics are widely used).

At one point in Dan Rather�s report, the President of the California Beekeepers Association, John Miller, opens a hive and picks out a bee with a red dot on its back. �That�s a varroa mite,� he explains. �That is Satan incarnate. That is the central challenge of beekeeping globally.� The spreading problem of disease itself is compounded by the desperate efforts of beekeepers to extinguish the mites and other pests by dousing their hives with miticides and antibiotics, which would increase if there were no approved and effective pesticides. As Miller says, �You can imagine how hard it is to kill a bug on a bug. It�s the hardest thing I�ve ever had to do.�

Bee deaths are not to be taken lightly. But the technology-intensive agricultural industry certainly provides an easy target for those who want to �do something yesterday,� without any regard to balancing costs and benefits and regardless of the long-term consequences. As the British Bee Keeper Association recently warned, rushing to ban neonics, when the evidence remains contradictory, could well do more damage than good, as other pesticides, some known to be more harmful to bees, would of necessity be reintroduced. The EPA is now addressing the issue, sending a research team to California where more than 1.6 million hives are needed every spring. Let science�and scientists�do their work.

To summarize:

France -- CCD present in regions where neonics are not used at all

UK -- CCD present in regions where neonics are not used at all, and CCD is absent in some regions where neonics are used

Australia -- Massive amounts of neonic usage in addition to other pesticides, being one of the world's heaviest pesticide users on a per crop basis, yet they have no CCD

Canada -- 10 years of large scale neonic usage, no CCD

The evidence is clear. If neonics caused CCD, then there would be CCD in Canada and Australia. There's no CCD in Canada or Australia.

TBS, you have a study demonstrating that neonic usage could negatively impact bees if used in a very specific way, with no effort made to prove that real-world usage is actually impacting bees. If we ban neonics based on that kind of reasoning, then we should also ban water from being applied to our crops given how easy it is to gently caress up a bee hive with a hose. Worse yet, banning neonics causes farmers to resort to pesticides that are even more toxic to bees

QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 09:42 on Oct 21, 2014

# ? Oct 21, 2014 09:35

white sauce: Apr 29, 2012; by R. Guyovich

QuarkJets posted:

Canada and Australia use neonics, yet they don't have widespread CCD. Why is that, TBS?

Wow, maybe CCD is caused by many things? As I've said many times before. I suppose you think you know better than the European Food Safety Administration

# ? Oct 21, 2014 10:12

Trabisnikof: Dec 24, 2005

Tight Booty Shorts posted:

Wow, maybe CCD is caused by many things? As I've said many times before. I suppose you think you know better than the European Food Safety Administration

What did the EFSA say that contradicts this? You yourself have said EFSA doesn't say much about CCD.

QuarkJets posted:

Canada and Australia use neonics, yet they don't have widespread CCD. Why is that, TBS?

# ? Oct 21, 2014 10:18

white sauce: Apr 29, 2012; by R. Guyovich

Where are your sources for these claims? There seems to be scientists who are still conducting experiments to prove all this et you guys seems to have everything figured out. The science seems far from settled to me.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ? Oct 21, 2014 14:30

Laphroaig: Feb 6, 2004; Drinking Smoke; Dinosaur Gum

Tight Booty Shorts posted:

Where are your sources for these claims? There seems to be scientists who are still conducting experiments to prove all this et you guys seems to have everything figured out. The science seems far from settled to me.

I agree, the science of CCD is not settled.

However, it is probable that CCD is not caused by the use of the pesticides that were banned for use in various European countries, as their use was continued in other countries (like Canada) that have not suffered from CCD, and CCD has continued in the various European countries that have banned the use of the pesticides in question. The sources for these statements have been posted in the thread.

The EFSA's standpoint for or against the use of certain pesticides has nothing to do with the above point, which stands on its own.

That being said, what claims are you talking about? No claims are being made.

Laphroaig fucked around with this message at 15:34 on Oct 22, 2014

# ? Oct 21, 2014 16:12

thathonkey: Jul 17, 2012

Yall are still engaging TBS? Shame on this thread.

# ? Oct 21, 2014 16:41

AVeryLargeRadish: Aug 19, 2011; I LITERALLY DON'T KNOW HOW TO NOT BE A WEIRD SEXUAL CREEP ABOUT PREPUBESCENT ANIME GIRLS, READ ALL ABOUT IT HERE!!!

thathonkey posted:

Yall are still engaging TBS? Shame on this thread.

Ehhh, they're doing it for any observers, not to change TBS's mind. TBS has shown that they are pretty much impervious to logic on this issue long ago but someone might read the refutations of his faulty logic and become better educated on these issues.

# ? Oct 21, 2014 18:47

Slanderer: May 6, 2007

Guys, should I be concerned about nectarines?????

# ? Oct 21, 2014 19:06

Obdicut: May 15, 2012; "What election?"

Slanderer posted:

Guys, should I be concerned about nectarines?????

I've never trusted 'em.

# ? Oct 21, 2014 19:39

QuarkJets: Sep 8, 2008

Tight Booty Shorts posted:

Wow, maybe CCD is caused by many things? As I've said many times before. I suppose you think you know better than the European Food Safety Administration

Caused by many things that do not include neonics, a point that you are reluctant to relent on.

I don't think that I know better, but I am trusting the countless scientists who have stated that the study upon which the EFSA is basing their findings was deeply flawed. Did you bother to read the article or any of the sources to which it linked?

Also: your logical fallacy today is appeal to authority. The EFSA is not the end-all of CCD expertise (in fact, they're not even a bee-studying organization), stating that they disagree with me is both obvious and worthless as an argument.

QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Oct 21, 2014

# ? Oct 21, 2014 21:32

archangelwar: Oct 28, 2004; Teaching Moments

Do you give equal weight to the FDA or USDA as you do the EFSA?

# ? Oct 22, 2014 04:49

Absurd Alhazred: Mar 27, 2010; by Athanatos

Slanderer posted:

Guys, should I be concerned about nectarines?????

They're deadly delicious.

# ? Oct 22, 2014 05:12

Axxslinger: Jun 9, 2004; somethingawful account

FuriousxGeorge posted:

I think a big message one should get from this thread is that their evil is not unique. The bad things they do are not unique to GMO farming, or mega-corp farming, or anything else. The Devil Monsanto is not The Great Satan. They are doing what agribusiness does, for the good and the bad.

This is from a bit back but I have read the thread and have seen the same message a few times. I don't see why the ubiquity of bad behavior gets a single perp off the hook. If you think that large-scale agro-industry is a net negative for society and the biosphere, and is one of the main contributors to the mass extinction event that we are currently experiencing, then acting against the largest agro-industrial corporation in the world seems to be a decent strategy.

The majority of this thread is defending GM crops, which admittedly is a more nuanced issue than many gm-haters believe, but there are other reasons to dislike big agro-business that many of you are familiar with: complete lack of water conservation re: waste and pollution, needless and/or harmful subsidies perpetuated by industry-funded lobbying, animal welfare issues, soil loss, marine dead zones and eutrophication, centralized processing which spreads contamination, lack of government and media oversight, loss of publicly owned and developed seed varieties...

Some simply dislike Monsanto on the more general grounds that it is a near-monopoly. This is usually considered a bad thing for any market. There is also the bioethics of patenting a gene or whole GM organisms and subsequently owning every progeny of that organism, hybrid or purebred, that a lot of people find philosophically wrong. I guess many disagree on this issue, but i suppose that's what democracy is for, and I think it is a valid ethical quandry that we should debate rather than a crackpot scare tactic reasonable folks can simply ignore.

These issues may be characteristic of all big agriculture, and a few of them characteristic of both big and small agriculture as generally practiced today. Monsanto is not the only actor in these systems, but it is the biggest, on the plants side anyway. I don't see why, then, that -- presuming you wish to change the global system of food production -- working against their efforts to ignore or perpetuate the negatives I listed above is logically invalid just because "they are not the only ones doing it."

# ? Oct 31, 2014 14:41

Deteriorata: Feb 6, 2005

Axxslinger posted:

This is from a bit back but I have read the thread and have seen the same message a few times. I don't see why the ubiquity of bad behavior gets a single perp off the hook. If you think that large-scale agro-industry is a net negative for society and the biosphere, and is one of the main contributors to the mass extinction event that we are currently experiencing, then acting against the largest agro-industrial corporation in the world seems to be a decent strategy.

The majority of this thread is defending GM crops, which admittedly is a more nuanced issue than many gm-haters believe, but there are other reasons to dislike big agro-business that many of you are familiar with: complete lack of water conservation re: waste and pollution, needless and/or harmful subsidies perpetuated by industry-funded lobbying, animal welfare issues, soil loss, marine dead zones and eutrophication, centralized processing which spreads contamination, lack of government and media oversight, loss of publicly owned and developed seed varieties...

Some simply dislike Monsanto on the more general grounds that it is a near-monopoly. This is usually considered a bad thing for any market. There is also the bioethics of patenting a gene or whole GM organisms and subsequently owning every progeny of that organism, hybrid or purebred, that a lot of people find philosophically wrong. I guess many disagree on this issue, but i suppose that's what democracy is for, and I think it is a valid ethical quandry that we should debate rather than a crackpot scare tactic reasonable folks can simply ignore.

These issues may be characteristic of all big agriculture, and a few of them characteristic of both big and small agriculture as generally practiced today. Monsanto is not the only actor in these systems, but it is the biggest, on the plants side anyway. I don't see why, then, that -- presuming you wish to change the global system of food production -- working against their efforts to ignore or perpetuate the negatives I listed above is logically invalid just because "they are not the only ones doing it."

If you are successful and manage to curtail Monsanto's hegemony in these issues, somebody else will step up to pick up the slack. Absolutely nothing will change.

If you dislike what Monsanto is doing, change the system so that Monsanto and others can make more money doing other things. Otherwise you're just raging at the symptom without treating the problem.

# ? Oct 31, 2014 15:54

Technogeek: Sep 9, 2002; by FactsAreUseless

Axxslinger posted:

Some simply dislike Monsanto on the more general grounds that it is a near-monopoly. This is usually considered a bad thing for any market. There is also the bioethics of patenting a gene or whole GM organisms and subsequently owning every progeny of that organism, hybrid or purebred, that a lot of people find philosophically wrong. I guess many disagree on this issue, but i suppose that's what democracy is for, and I think it is a valid ethical quandry that we should debate rather than a crackpot scare tactic reasonable folks can simply ignore.

Roughly two-thirds of the market for GM crops (based on 2012 numbers), although certainly dominant, falls somewhat short of "near-monopoly" in my view; and as "gene patents" (as they would apply in this discussion) have been a thing in US law since at least 1930, conflating GMOs with the latter strikes me as rather disingenuous.

As far as large-scale agroindustry goes, I'll grant that it has more than its share of problems, but many of them are actually at minimum significant mitigated by the usage of GMO crops. Hell, even pesticide resistance can be helpful there: being able to metaphorically blanket a field with glyphosate, for example, both reduces usage of more toxic pesticides and makes no-tillage farming much more logistically feasible.

# ? Oct 31, 2014 16:03

QuarkJets: Sep 8, 2008

Axxslinger posted:

There is also the bioethics of patenting a gene or whole GM organisms and subsequently owning every progeny of that organism, hybrid or purebred, that a lot of people find philosophically wrong.***

Plant patents are not unique to GMOs, they've been around for nearly 100 years. And unlike copyrights, patents do expire in a relatively short timeframe; about 20 years for plant patents, a far cry from owning "every progeny of that organism"

# ? Oct 31, 2014 19:49

Bates: Jun 15, 2006

QuarkJets posted:

Plant patents are not unique to GMOs, they've been around for nearly 100 years. And unlike copyrights, patents do expire in a relatively short timeframe; about 20 years for plant patents, a far cry from owning "every progeny of that organism"

The US patents for Roundup Ready seeds are actually expiring this year.

# ? Oct 31, 2014 21:07

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Huh. It occurs to me that there may be something of a twisted incentive issue with regards to plant patent expiration and herbicide resistance. The latter is a fairly serious concern that we should wish to slow as much as possible, and theoretically GM seed companies like Monsanto would have a significant interest in working to prevent it as well, since Roundup and Roundup-resistant crops become largely worthless if there's widespread resistance among weeds as well. But with patent expiration taken into consideration, they actually would have reason to want, or at least not care about, such resistance to emerge - no competitor can benefit from their research if the herbicide-tolerant crop is useless by the time their patent ends.

Probably not a major concern, really, but it's still a thought.

# ? Oct 31, 2014 21:19

my kinda ape: Sep 15, 2008; Everything's gonna be A-OK; Oven Wrangler

They've developed new and improved roundup ready genes that they'll still have patents for and I'm sure they'd very much like to have a chemical that makes them useful.

# ? Oct 31, 2014 21:43

Kalman: Jan 17, 2010

ghetto wormhole posted:

They've developed new and improved roundup ready genes that they'll still have patents for and I'm sure they'd very much like to have a chemical that makes them useful.

Pretty sure that 2014 is when the improved ones expire as well, unless they developed a whole new glyphosate resistance gene (which I think might have been newsworthy.)

Also, how dare they hope to recoup money for their development of a useful agricultural tool.

# ? Oct 31, 2014 23:04

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Well this is the very reason why they all develop hundreds, sometimes thousands of different seedlines across all crop seeds they sell. It's not like any of the seed companies only has 4 varieties of seeds to buy for a given crop, take a look in one of their catalogs and particularly prominent crops may get up to hundreds of seed varieties available across the corporations, "organic", "conventional" and "GM" offerings.

There's also that for example with RR genes expiring, Monsanto's the one that sells the most of herbicides similar enough to Roundup proper for an RR modified crop to be safely used with. Some other seed company starts rolling out RR crop seeds, the farmer would likely still buy Roundup from Monsanto.

Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Oct 31, 2014

# ? Oct 31, 2014 23:11

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

Do we know how the gene patent works, with regard to the different crops? Is it separate patents on RR soybeans, RR corn, et cetera, or is it a single patent on the gene sequence that's inserted into each?

# ? Oct 31, 2014 23:14

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Strudel Man posted:

Do we know how the gene patent works, with regard to the different crops? Is it separate patents on RR soybeans, RR corn, et cetera, or is it a single patent on the gene sequence that's inserted into each?

Most of it is straight up under plant patent laws, which have been around for far longer and thus are stronger worldwide. And in those cases, modifying both say corn and canola in the same way generates two new plant patents. I would expect that Monsanto would have filed for plant patents on each thing at the same time as any separate gene patents they may have done.

Just for reference, here are the countries signed on to the "International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants" which means they accept plant patents from other signatories:

So a plant patent will hold in all of them, even if they may not accept isolated gene patents. (for example the US no longer accepts patents on naturally occurring genes)

# ? Oct 31, 2014 23:20

Kalman: Jan 17, 2010

Most of monsanto's recent patents are actually straight utility patents, though they may have plant patent backups for some.

The patents vary in terms of what they claim. For example, one of the patents at issue in the recent Monsanto SCOTUS case was directed to a specific chimeric gene after implantation in plant cells. (Patent is 5352605 if you're curious.)

# ? Oct 31, 2014 23:26

Axxslinger: Jun 9, 2004; somethingawful account

Deteriorata posted:

If you dislike what Monsanto is doing, change the system so that Monsanto and others can make more money doing other things. Otherwise you're just raging at the symptom without treating the problem.

I'm not sure what you mean by this...no one would, for example, propose legislation that only requires Monsanto to follow a certain regulation and let any other company that comes along to do the exact same thing. At least, I hope not because, yes, that would be pointless.

Also,

Technogeek posted:

Roughly two-thirds of the market for GM crops (based on 2012 numbers), although certainly dominant, falls somewhat short of "near-monopoly" in my view; and as "gene patents" (as they would apply in this discussion) have been a thing in US law since at least 1930, conflating GMOs with the latter strikes me as rather disingenuous.

As far as large-scale agroindustry goes, I'll grant that it has more than its share of problems, but many of them are actually at minimum significant mitigated by the usage of GMO crops. Hell, even pesticide resistance can be helpful there: being able to metaphorically blanket a field with glyphosate, for example, both reduces usage of more toxic pesticides and makes no-tillage farming much more logistically feasible.

I'd sure say two-thirds is alarmingly high...I believe the Time-Warner + Comcast merger would result in 'TimeCast' controlling ~40% share in the ISP/cable market, and that is certainly making some nervous. And in terms of which industry should we be extra prudent about, food vs. internet, I'm going with food.

There is a lot of argument and case law about whether plants and other products of nature should be patentable at all. Plants got their own patent law in the 30's which only protected asexual reproduction of cultivated varieties, not seedlings, as well as still allowing farmers to save and propagate seed from patented crop plants they purchased. This was expanded in 1970 as your link says, to include sexually derived plants. Eventually plants and other biological "inventions" were given good ol' regular utility patents but the notion that plants and other "products of nature" should be patentable at all has been debated for a long time, and I think the debate is a good one to have.

The main reason that I am dubious of patent protection extending beyond the particular seeds you buy is much more of the slippery slope/hypothetical bent than any current clear and present danger. While most gmo's now have a hard time going feral, this does not mean that all cannot -- this has happened with wheat on the west coast -- or that all future gm plants will not. This is a big concern in the forestry industry where GM trees are being developed, and where "domesticated" varieties of trees can go feral and cross with wildtypes more easily than with food crops for a number of reasons.

But forget the GMO thing -- Yeah, there is more monsanto hate nowadays than, say, dupont hate or tyson foods hate, and I suppose that is unfair, insofar as I can feel sorry for a multi-billion dollar corporation that knowingly marketing toxic PCBs, advertised false scientific claims, and dumped mercury into a drinking water supply. I can't see how the fact that other companies also lie and pollute makes going after or distrusting Monsanto invalid.

# ? Nov 1, 2014 06:44

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Axxslinger posted:

I'd sure say two-thirds is alarmingly high...I believe the Time-Warner + Comcast merger would result in 'TimeCast' controlling ~40% share in the ISP/cable market, and that is certainly making some nervous.

Making idiots nervous, sure. 99% of Americans live somewhere with a residential cable monopoly. Your monopoly provider changing does not affect you.

Axxslinger posted:

But forget the GMO thing -- Yeah, there is more monsanto hate nowadays than, say, dupont hate or tyson foods hate, and I suppose that is unfair, insofar as I can feel sorry for a multi-billion dollar corporation that knowingly marketing toxic PCBs, advertised false scientific claims, and dumped mercury into a drinking water supply. I can't see how the fact that other companies also lie and pollute makes going after or distrusting Monsanto invalid.

You still haven't said what should be distrusted about them.

# ? Nov 1, 2014 07:12

my kinda ape: Sep 15, 2008; Everything's gonna be A-OK; Oven Wrangler

Kalman posted:

Pretty sure that 2014 is when the improved ones expire as well, unless they developed a whole new glyphosate resistance gene (which I think might have been newsworthy.)

Also, how dare they hope to recoup money for their development of a useful agricultural tool.

It's called Roundup Ready 2 and it's supposed to be higher yielding. The patent for that expires in like 15 years. Here's a handy FAQ relating to soybeans http://www.soybeans.com/faq.aspx

# ? Nov 1, 2014 07:30

Deteriorata: Feb 6, 2005

Axxslinger posted:

I'm not sure what you mean by this...no one would, for example, propose legislation that only requires Monsanto to follow a certain regulation and let any other company that comes along to do the exact same thing. At least, I hope not because, yes, that would be pointless.

What I mean is that Monsanto is just a company out to make money. That's what companies do. Bitching about Monsanto is lazy and easy, a way of displaying your ideology for all the world to see without actually doing anything. If Monsanto ceased to exist, nothing would change as other companies would simply expand into the void Monsanto would leave. Then you'd be mad at somebody else just as pointlessly.

Changing the system, the regulatory environment in which Monsanto and other companies operate, would effect actual change. That, however, is hard. It is complicated, frustrating, slow and requires years of patient dedication to see any result. That's why few, if any, do it.

Protesting against Monsanto is just a lazy man's out. If people actually cared, they wouldn't waste their time on ineffectual protests, they'd roll up their sleeves and get involved in politics and change some laws and regulations so that all corporations, Monsanto and everyone else, have to do things differently to make money.

That's what I mean by that quote. What Monsanto and the other biotech companies do is a symptom, the result of what the laws and regulations say they can do. Shaking your fist at Monsanto is a meaningless symbolic gesture. If you actually cared you'd get involved and get busy.

# ? Nov 1, 2014 07:36

Kalman: Jan 17, 2010

ghetto wormhole posted:

It's called Roundup Ready 2 and it's supposed to be higher yielding. The patent for that expires in like 15 years. Here's a handy FAQ relating to soybeans http://www.soybeans.com/faq.aspx

Right, but those patents won't affect RR1 plants. Sure, you won't be able to save seed on new plants but that's fine, the old ones which everyone currently uses will be open.

# ? Nov 1, 2014 10:44

Solkanar512: Dec 28, 2006; by the sex ghost

Kalman posted:

Also, how dare they hope to recoup money for their development of a useful agricultural tool.

Yeah, I never see anyone protest Jackson and Perkins for developing new types of roses.

Deteriorata posted:

Protesting against Monsanto is just a lazy man's out. If people actually cared, they wouldn't waste their time on ineffectual protests, they'd roll up their sleeves and get involved in politics and change some laws and regulations so that all corporations, Monsanto and everyone else, have to do things differently to make money.

Not to mention all the folks who are mad about the direction of GMO research never want to go out and set up their own laboratories and field stations or at the very least support efforts in public research.

# ? Nov 1, 2014 15:09

my kinda ape: Sep 15, 2008; Everything's gonna be A-OK; Oven Wrangler

Kalman posted:

Right, but those patents won't affect RR1 plants. Sure, you won't be able to save seed on new plants but that's fine, the old ones which everyone currently uses will be open.

Well yeah but my point was Monsanto still has a vested interest in preventing widespread resistance to Roundup. Not to mention they'll still be selling varieties using the RR1 gene that are protected for other reasons. In reference to this:

Strudel Man posted:

Huh. It occurs to me that there may be something of a twisted incentive issue with regards to plant patent expiration and herbicide resistance. The latter is a fairly serious concern that we should wish to slow as much as possible, and theoretically GM seed companies like Monsanto would have a significant interest in working to prevent it as well, since Roundup and Roundup-resistant crops become largely worthless if there's widespread resistance among weeds as well. But with patent expiration taken into consideration, they actually would have reason to want, or at least not care about, such resistance to emerge - no competitor can benefit from their research if the herbicide-tolerant crop is useless by the time their patent ends.

Probably not a major concern, really, but it's still a thought.

# ? Nov 1, 2014 16:58

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Kalman posted:

Right, but those patents won't affect RR1 plants. Sure, you won't be able to save seed on new plants but that's fine, the old ones which everyone currently uses will be open.

Nah you probably won't be, since Monsanto and other seed companies almost always sell seeds under contracts that specify what you may use the seeds for, even if a patent expires. Of course, certain farming companies with access to talented lawyers may have been able to negotiate their contracts otherwise, but I wouldn't expect much deviation for most of them.

# ? Nov 1, 2014 17:39

Kalman: Jan 17, 2010

Nintendo Kid posted:

Nah you probably won't be, since Monsanto and other seed companies almost always sell seeds under contracts that specify what you may use the seeds for, even if a patent expires. Of course, certain farming companies with access to talented lawyers may have been able to negotiate their contracts otherwise, but I wouldn't expect much deviation for most of them.

The contracts limit their use of purchased seeds. They don't limit spraying a field on the border of your neighbors farm with Roundup and saving seeds from the plants that survive. All it takes is one seed company (or farmer) to do what Bowman did to generate their own seed base and those contracts don't matter in the slightest.

E: or, you know, Syngenta developing their own variant which will be pretty trivial for them at this point. At which point Monsanto can't extract monopoly rents anyway.

# ? Nov 2, 2014 01:03

FuriousxGeorge: Aug 8, 2007; We've been the best team all year.

They're just finding out.

Axxslinger posted:

This is from a bit back but I have read the thread and have seen the same message a few times. I don't see why the ubiquity of bad behavior gets a single perp off the hook. If you think that large-scale agro-industry is a net negative for society and the biosphere, and is one of the main contributors to the mass extinction event that we are currently experiencing, then acting against the largest agro-industrial corporation in the world seems to be a decent strategy.

The majority of this thread is defending GM crops, which admittedly is a more nuanced issue than many gm-haters believe, but there are other reasons to dislike big agro-business that many of you are familiar with: complete lack of water conservation re: waste and pollution, needless and/or harmful subsidies perpetuated by industry-funded lobbying, animal welfare issues, soil loss, marine dead zones and eutrophication, centralized processing which spreads contamination, lack of government and media oversight, loss of publicly owned and developed seed varieties...

Some simply dislike Monsanto on the more general grounds that it is a near-monopoly. This is usually considered a bad thing for any market. There is also the bioethics of patenting a gene or whole GM organisms and subsequently owning every progeny of that organism, hybrid or purebred, that a lot of people find philosophically wrong. I guess many disagree on this issue, but i suppose that's what democracy is for, and I think it is a valid ethical quandry that we should debate rather than a crackpot scare tactic reasonable folks can simply ignore.

These issues may be characteristic of all big agriculture, and a few of them characteristic of both big and small agriculture as generally practiced today. Monsanto is not the only actor in these systems, but it is the biggest, on the plants side anyway. I don't see why, then, that -- presuming you wish to change the global system of food production -- working against their efforts to ignore or perpetuate the negatives I listed above is logically invalid just because "they are not the only ones doing it."

I hear ya. I'm not trying to imply you do what I'm about to say here, just explain what I'm thinking of when I said what I did there.

The main activism the visible anti-GM movement seems to be engaged in right now is lobbying for label laws. I feel like when they are speaking freely to a sympathetic crowd, the reason they give is that GM food is dangerous or at least potentially dangerous. When they speak to a less sympathetic crowd they know the argument that GM food is dangerous will be ripped apart and they back off into "Monsanto is an evil corporation!" and they have the right to be informed consumers and boycott them mode. So, maybe they are evil and maybe they aren't, but when I say not uniquely evil I mean not evil enough that we need to mandate laws to warn people that a product contains ingredients that used a production method Monsanto also uses, because that is completely insane and makes no god drat sense.

# ? Nov 2, 2014 02:24

QuarkJets: Sep 8, 2008

ghetto wormhole posted:

Well yeah but my point was Monsanto still has a vested interest in preventing widespread resistance to Roundup. Not to mention they'll still be selling varieties using the RR1 gene that are protected for other reasons. In reference to this:

It's also worth noting that farmers have been purchasing seeds for far longer than GMOs have even been around. There's no reason to believe that Monsanto won't continue selling the same seeds even after those patents expire

# ? Nov 2, 2014 03:21

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# ? Jun 10, 2024 01:21

Axxslinger: Jun 9, 2004; somethingawful account

Nintendo Kid posted:

Making idiots nervous, sure. 99% of Americans live somewhere with a residential cable monopoly. Your monopoly provider changing does not affect you.

You still haven't said what should be distrusted about them.

It's a complete tangent, but anyway:
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-real-problem-with-the-comcast-merger
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/02/27/competition-will-not-survive-the-comcast-time-warner-merger/

The three examples of Monsanto breaking laws and poisoning communities and the environment I listed are good enough for me. If that doesn't alarm you, then there might be some neurotoxin in your water affecting your judgement.

Deteriorata posted:

Changing the system, the regulatory environment in which Monsanto and other companies operate, would effect actual change. That, however, is hard. It is complicated, frustrating, slow and requires years of patient dedication to see any result. That's why few, if any, do it.

That's what I mean by that quote. What Monsanto and the other biotech companies do is a symptom, the result of what the laws and regulations say they can do. Shaking your fist at Monsanto is a meaningless symbolic gesture. If you actually cared you'd get involved and get busy.

Every movement or cause has its hangers-on and fools. However, there are people out there legitimately trying to affect change (and this includes protesting), maybe you have no experience with them because they specifically avoid posting pseudo-science image macros on their facebook feeds. You seem very quick to paint all, or maybe just me, in the wannabe group who is doing nothing and "just" complaining, while simultaneously complaining yourself that all GMOs are painted with the "unnatural = evil" brush. Come to think of it, should a company that knowingly dumps mercury into a drinking supply not be "complained" about? Do people hurt by such actions and then "complain" about it similarly disgust you? And the company that did the dumping gets your support?

Additionally, the bad behavior of corporate or monied interests is not only a symptom of a given regulatory environment because the process by which they are regulated is largely manipulated and controlled by the interests themselves, via lobbying etc. This is largely, though of course not wholly, the reason that affecting actual change is so hard, complicated, frustrating, slow, and requires years of patient dedication.

FuriousxGeorge posted:

The main activism the visible anti-GM movement seems to be engaged in right now is lobbying for label laws.

This is unfortunate. There are so many way worse things that, if you are a treehugger like me, that you ought to be spending your time fighting against, and so many way better things that you should be fighting for, even within the realm of GMOs. However, it is also unfortunate that if you do want to take your dollar out of the industrial ag machine, for whatever reason, in many places it is quite difficult to find alternatives.

# ? Nov 3, 2014 05:40

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > The Devil Monsanto, or Combating Scientific Ignorance: CRISPR Responsibly!

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