The World According to Monsanto

[BUTCH1]

I found this well-researched documentary on YT, Damm, the kind of shit Monsanto has done to the worlds food supply-chain is off the chain, complete control of all the seed markets with their GMO product and if you resist somehow your fields "accidentally" wind up with GMO corn, soybeans then guess what? you have to PAY Monsanto royalties for next years seeds, even if they came from your own farm!, sure, go ahead and fight them in court, hope your pockets are deeper than the Grand canyon. Then the complete buy-out of the FDA in getting their product pushed through to market when THEY did the studies and handed the FDA the "cherry-picked" results. I for one am usually one of the last in conspiracy theory's, I have no tinfoil hat, but the person making this was highly praised and she was nominated for several awards for the book and this video, kinda long @1hr49min but I got drawn in and angered by this companies actions and what it has done to harm agriculture around the globe.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6_DbVdVo-k

 

[waggy]

I found this well-researched documentary on YT, Damm, the kind of shit Monsanto has done to the worlds food supply-chain is off the chain, complete control of all the seed markets with their GMO product and if you resist somehow your fields "accidentally" wind up with GMO corn, soybeans then guess what? you have to PAY Monsanto royalties for next years seeds, even if they came from your own farm!, sure, go ahead and fight them in court, hope your pockets are deeper than the Grand canyon. Then the complete buy-out of the FDA in getting their product pushed through to market when THEY did the studies and handed the FDA the "cherry-picked" results. I for one am usually one of the last in conspiracy theory's, I have no tinfoil hat, but the person making this was highly praised and she was nominated for several awards for the book and this video, kinda long @1hr49min but I got drawn in and angered by this companies actions and what it has done to harm agriculture around the globe.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6_DbVdVo-k

shit its worse then that. it is a trully evil company. they have done more to destroy the small family farm then anything in the US.

the shit they have done is to much to list.

 

[bbhaag]

It's been an issue for quite awhile. Monsanto has quietly become the major player when it comes to grain crop production. The hybrids they have produced over the last 10 years are very impressive. Crop rows are tighter and the yields per acre are staggering.

 

[AdamantC]

I have no tinfoil hat

Just tinfoil underwear.

These frothing Luddite wackos need to go back to their caves and starve to death in their own filth and stupidity.

 

[norseamd]

fuck monsanto

my uncle runs a seed business and he has his own brand of monsanto soybeans

more or less he is now investing in green technology especially ethenol or at least he quite into it for the last 10 years. not sure if he has gone into something else than ethenol yet because of the declining subsidies

he actually got non hodgekins lymphoma not that long ago

he said some shit about some additives they put in the gasoline down in the western midwest that causes massive medical shit

 

[Soundmanred]

I wish I was them too.

 

[HOSED]

God Bless Butch1, thanks for the excellent movie link. I am anxious to see the reviews for FED Up .. the movie and see if they have the guts to take on MonsterSanto. I did not coin that phrase but learned about the evil corporations via a radio show Sunday mornings at 11 AM est call the green hour http://900amwurd.com/index.php?page=weekly Personally I have much more concern about this issue than net neutrality.
The Trans Pacific Partnership also has a ban on GMO labeling http://www.nationofchange.org/trans-pacific-partnership-and-monsanto-1372074730
My question WHAT is the industry afraid of ...If GMO was a positive addition to the food chain they why not tout it on the label instead of working to avoid telling the truth.

 

[dr150]

OP. Thanks for sharing. That video is seriously depressing.

Cancer rates are soaring......no doubt due to increasing toxicity introduced into the food/environment by companies like Monsanto.

 

[Zstream]

I can't believe that dr150 or at least people need a proper viewpoint. It's known that the average global citizen is getting lazier, improper diet i.e., soda, beer, sugar, fats, etc.. Are just a sample of what's going wrong. To make things worse you have waste biproduct in China, India, Africa and even in Europe and the States.



To point blame at Monsanto is showing the true understanding of cancer. I forgot to mention that we're doing a much better job at identifying cancer as a whole compares to 100/50/25/10 years ago.

 

[norseamd]

I can't believe that dr150 or at least people need a proper viewpoint. It's known that the average global citizen is getting lazier, improper diet i.e., soda, beer, sugar, fats, etc.. Are just a sample of what's going wrong. To make things worse you have waste biproduct in China, India, Africa and even in Europe and the States. To point blame at Monsanto is showing the true understanding of cancer. I forgot to mention that we're doing a much better job at identifying cancer as a whole compares to 100/50/25/10 years ago.

the rates of concer in undeveloped countries are lower

so we trade cancer for getting rid of infectious diseases

monsanto is not the only company that contributes to cancer but they do quite a lot of shit

 

[Iron Woode]

Myth: Monsanto sues farmers when GM seed is accidentally in their fields.

Fact: Monsanto has never sued a farmer when trace amounts of our patented seeds or traits were present in the farmer’s field as an accident or as a result of inadvertent means.

 

[lxskllr]

Proprietary food is bad. Monsanto can fuck themselves with a combine AFAIC.

 

[ThatsABigOne]

Thank you for the link, butch. Defi itely on my list to watch later today.

I find it disgusting that my university allows Monsanto to hold job hiring meetings. When I was walking by their table, I picked up 5 of their pens that contained seeds for birch trees. Broke pens apart and burned the inside remnants because fuck them.

 

[Kaido]

An estimated 125,000 (125k) Indian farmers have committed suicide as a result of GM seeds:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...suicide-using-genetically-modified-crops.html

But of course, Monsanto has all kinds of fancy studies that say it's not their fault:

http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/pages/india-farmer-suicides.aspx

Hail Hydra!

 

[LegendKiller]

the rates of concer in undeveloped countries are lower

so we trade cancer for getting rid of infectious diseases

monsanto is not the only company that contributes to cancer but they do quite a lot of shit

Yeah, because diagnosis of cancer is so great in undeveloped countries. That and voluntary cancer vectors (such as smoking) aren't as prevalent.

 

[Brainonska511]

Yet another thread filled with utter ignorance.

 

[cKGunslinger]

It's a pretty-amateurish documentary - at least film-wise.

"If I type-in 'Monsanto falsified scientific studies', I get 174,000 hits." That ain't exactly journalism, lady.

There's a lot of good research in the film, it appears, but I think you weaken your arguments when you throw in useless things like that.

 

[crashtestdummy]

This thread has me depressed, but not because of Monsanto. The sheer amount of ignorance and FUD around genetic engineering displayed here is mildly horrifying. I won't comment on Mansanto's business practices, but I will dispel some of the scientific misinformation being thrown about regarding genetic engineering.

First off, we've been genetically modifying food for 10,000 years. The difference is that now we use a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer. Take wheat. The wild progenitors of modern bread wheat are diploidic, meaning that they carry two copies of their genome, much the way we do. These varieties of wheat don't produce enough gluten to rise and make nice bread, though. The only way our ancestors were able to get bread to rise was through hybrids containing the full genomes of both predecessors, making them tetraploidic (four copies of a genome). More modern (i.e. last thousand years) varieties are hexaploidic. Thus, in the pursuit of a more useful crop, we have tripled the genetic content of wheat. When you compare that to the movement of a single gene, it's insane to think that what we're doing now is "playing God" and what we were doing before was "natural".

A lot of environmental activists complain about the use of pesticides, forgetting that their use has saved the lives of a billion people. Now, use of long acting pesticides like DDT have real negative consequences that cannot be ignored, and we should do what we can to reduce their use as long as we can maintain our food supply. Bacillus thuringiensis (or Bt) is a bacteria that produces a toxin that only seems to affect pests. It's actually quite remarkable, as how the toxin is metabolized determines whether it is toxic. Bt is also a wide approved "organic" pesticide, and is considered incredibly safe both for humans and for the ecosystem. Bt corn, rather than requiring the spraying of bacteria on the plants, simply introduces the gene responsible for the toxin to the corn itself. It's use has led to an incredible drop in pesticide use on corn in the US. To me, this is an incredible environmental victory, and one that really can't be ignored when talking about Monsanto.

Regarding cancer, allergies and other concerns: there is absolutely no evidence that GMO foods have anything to do with them. Suggesting that an over increase in cancer rates and the increase of use of genetic engineering are causally related is akin to arguing that a lack of pirates causes global warming. The number one reason for an increase in cancer rates is that we're now all living long enough to get cancer. We've gotten so good at dealing with infectious disease, and we've greatly reduced mortality due to heart conditions, but you're still going to die of something, so now it's cancer. There is absolutely zero evidence that genetic engineering of foods has anything to do with it. In terms of allergies, while it is theoretically possible that whatever protein is being introduced by the genetic modification, no one has ever reported such an allergy. It seems silly to freak out over something that has never appeared in over 20 years of feeding billions of people.

So this was a bit of a rant. There's a lot more I can say here (such as other GMOs that are benficially for both our health and the environment, such as golden rice), but I'll leave it at that for the moment.

 

[surfsatwerk]

This thread has me depressed, but not because of Monsanto. The sheer amount of ignorance and FUD around genetic engineering displayed here is mildly horrifying. I won't comment on Mansanto's business practices, but I will dispel some of the scientific misinformation being thrown about regarding genetic engineering.

First off, we've been genetically modifying food for 10,000 years. The difference is that now we use a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer. Take wheat. The wild progenitors of modern bread wheat are diploidic, meaning that they carry two copies of their genome, much the way we do. These varieties of wheat don't produce enough gluten to rise and make nice bread, though. The only way our ancestors were able to get bread to rise was through hybrids containing the full genomes of both predecessors, making them tetraploidic (four copies of a genome). More modern (i.e. last thousand years) varieties are hexaploidic. Thus, in the pursuit of a more useful crop, we have tripled the genetic content of wheat. When you compare that to the movement of a single gene, it's insane to think that what we're doing now is "playing God" and what we were doing before was "natural".

A lot of environmental activists complain about the use of pesticides, forgetting that their use has saved the lives of a billion people. Now, use of long acting pesticides like DDT have real negative consequences that cannot be ignored, and we should do what we can to reduce their use as long as we can maintain our food supply. Bacillus thuringiensis (or Bt) is a bacteria that produces a toxin that only seems to affect pests. It's actually quite remarkable, as how the toxin is metabolized determines whether it is toxic. Bt is also a wide approved "organic" pesticide, and is considered incredibly safe both for humans and for the ecosystem. Bt corn, rather than requiring the spraying of bacteria on the plants, simply introduces the gene responsible for the toxin to the corn itself. It's use has led to an incredible drop in pesticide use on corn in the US. To me, this is an incredible environmental victory, and one that really can't be ignored when talking about Monsanto.

Regarding cancer, allergies and other concerns: there is absolutely no evidence that GMO foods have anything to do with them. Suggesting that an over increase in cancer rates and the increase of use of genetic engineering are causally related is akin to arguing that a lack of pirates causes global warming. The number one reason for an increase in cancer rates is that we're now all living long enough to get cancer. We've gotten so good at dealing with infectious disease, and we've greatly reduced mortality due to heart conditions, but you're still going to die of something, so now it's cancer. There is absolutely zero evidence that genetic engineering of foods has anything to do with it. In terms of allergies, while it is theoretically possible that whatever protein is being introduced by the genetic modification, no one has ever reported such an allergy. It seems silly to freak out over something that has never appeared in over 20 years of feeding billions of people.

So this was a bit of a rant. There's a lot more I can say here (such as other GMOs that are benficially for both our health and the environment, such as golden rice), but I'll leave it at that for the moment.

You fight the good.

 

[BUTCH1]

It's a pretty-amateurish documentary - at least film-wise.

"If I type-in 'Monsanto falsified scientific studies', I get 174,000 hits." That ain't exactly journalism, lady.

There's a lot of good research in the film, it appears, but I think you weaken your arguments when you throw in useless things like that.

Yea, that looks amateurish because the amount of Google hits on anything is irrelevant to the content of those hits so it was her bad including that fact. What's not disputable though is Monsanto's FDA connections and how they got both Bush's and Clinton and Obama to have their administration's fall in line with what they wanted. It's F-e'd up that they consider GMO seeds a new, "patentable" technology then on the consumer side they flip things and get their way with GMO foods not having to be labeled as such. Even Monsanto's CEO admitted they don't have any long-term studies to determine what GMO does to a human body. The best European scientist's in the field were given a nice chunk of $$ and a staff of 30 to test GMO potatoes, the potatoes had many negative effects in a well done study, when they released the report Tony Blair was pissed, he cut any future funding and the people involved with it were fired and tried to make look as inept idiots. Bottom line is most of us are eating this food and the traditional family farm system which fed Americans just fine for hundreds of years has been dismantled, we are eating crops that have been sprayed with "Roundup" because killing any weed growth means less labor and higher yields but IMPO that's a fucked-up way to increase production..

 

[BUTCH1]

This thread has me depressed, but not because of Monsanto. The sheer amount of ignorance and FUD around genetic engineering displayed here is mildly horrifying. I won't comment on Mansanto's business practices, but I will dispel some of the scientific misinformation being thrown about regarding genetic engineering.

First off, we've been genetically modifying food for 10,000 years. The difference is that now we use a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer. Take wheat. The wild progenitors of modern bread wheat are diploidic, meaning that they carry two copies of their genome, much the way we do. These varieties of wheat don't produce enough gluten to rise and make nice bread, though. The only way our ancestors were able to get bread to rise was through hybrids containing the full genomes of both predecessors, making them tetraploidic (four copies of a genome). More modern (i.e. last thousand years) varieties are hexaploidic. Thus, in the pursuit of a more useful crop, we have tripled the genetic content of wheat. When you compare that to the movement of a single gene, it's insane to think that what we're doing now is "playing God" and what we were doing before was "natural".

A lot of environmental activists complain about the use of pesticides, forgetting that their use has saved the lives of a billion people. Now, use of long acting pesticides like DDT have real negative consequences that cannot be ignored, and we should do what we can to reduce their use as long as we can maintain our food supply. Bacillus thuringiensis (or Bt) is a bacteria that produces a toxin that only seems to affect pests. It's actually quite remarkable, as how the toxin is metabolized determines whether it is toxic. Bt is also a wide approved "organic" pesticide, and is considered incredibly safe both for humans and for the ecosystem. Bt corn, rather than requiring the spraying of bacteria on the plants, simply introduces the gene responsible for the toxin to the corn itself. It's use has led to an incredible drop in pesticide use on corn in the US. To me, this is an incredible environmental victory, and one that really can't be ignored when talking about Monsanto.

Regarding cancer, allergies and other concerns: there is absolutely no evidence that GMO foods have anything to do with them. Suggesting that an over increase in cancer rates and the increase of use of genetic engineering are causally related is akin to arguing that a lack of pirates causes global warming. The number one reason for an increase in cancer rates is that we're now all living long enough to get cancer. We've gotten so good at dealing with infectious disease, and we've greatly reduced mortality due to heart conditions, but you're still going to die of something, so now it's cancer. There is absolutely zero evidence that genetic engineering of foods has anything to do with it. In terms of allergies, while it is theoretically possible that whatever protein is being introduced by the genetic modification, no one has ever reported such an allergy. It seems silly to freak out over something that has never appeared in over 20 years of feeding billions of people.

So this was a bit of a rant. There's a lot more I can say here (such as other GMOs that are benficially for both our health and the environment, such as golden rice), but I'll leave it at that for the moment.

It's true that mankind has been altering agriculture for thousands of years but the BIG difference is wheat with a better genetic profile was pollinated with plain wheat and you now have a "hybrid" but it was still all-wheat, what Monsanto (and others) doing is altering the genetic profile by inserting DNA from a completely different organism, they accidentally found the gene for the "Roundup-ready" soybeans when they were using Roundup on some slime that they found and were going to eradicate, when they found out this particular slime could not be killed by Roundup it's gene was "spliced" into the soybean's DNA and "Roundup-ready" soybeans were invented. IMPO I'm not saying these "roundup-ready" soybeans cause cancer but we are now going down a road that's irreversible since the "Roundup-ready" soybean will pollinate regular soybeans it would now be close to impossible to eradicate the Monsanto creation from the world and there would be not enough regular soybean seed to start over again. It just really boils down to common sense, until carefully controlled (and independent) studies were completed no genetically-altered creation should have been allowed to be used in agriculture, period. Also form the link you provided about pesticides/herbicides...."Three long-term cohort studies now suggest that certain chemical pesticides can interfere with brain development in young children. And some experts suspect that a class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids are at least partly responsible for the recent collapse in bee populations (though this is still disputed).

There are other, lesser-known impacts as well. Australia's wheat farmers are now dealing with one of the worst weed infestations in the world — an issue caused in part by overuse of herbicides, which led to resistant weeds. And some 300,000 people kill themselves each year by ingesting pesticides, largely in Asia. That's one third of the world's suicides.

And those are just the effects scientists know about. A notable paper from Heinz-R. Köhler and Rita Triebskorn points out that researchers still don't understand the full impact of many chemicals on broader ecosystems. "Although we often know a pesticide′s mode of action in the target species," they write, "we still largely do not understand the full impact of unintended side effects on wildlife."

 

[norseamd]

This thread has me depressed, but not because of Monsanto. The sheer amount of ignorance and FUD around genetic engineering displayed here is mildly horrifying. I won't comment on Mansanto's business practices, but I will dispel some of the scientific misinformation being thrown about regarding genetic engineering. First off, we've been genetically modifying food for 10,000 years. The difference is that now we use a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer. Take wheat. The wild progenitors of modern bread wheat are diploidic, meaning that they carry two copies of their genome, much the way we do. These varieties of wheat don't produce enough gluten to rise and make nice bread, though. The only way our ancestors were able to get bread to rise was through hybrids containing the full genomes of both predecessors, making them tetraploidic (four copies of a genome). More modern (i.e. last thousand years) varieties are hexaploidic. Thus, in the pursuit of a more useful crop, we have tripled the genetic content of wheat. When you compare that to the movement of a single gene, it's insane to think that what we're doing now is "playing God" and what we were doing before was "natural". A lot of environmental activists complain about the use of pesticides, forgetting that their use has saved the lives of a billion people. Now, use of long acting pesticides like DDT have real negative consequences that cannot be ignored, and we should do what we can to reduce their use as long as we can maintain our food supply. Bacillus thuringiensis (or Bt) is a bacteria that produces a toxin that only seems to affect pests. It's actually quite remarkable, as how the toxin is metabolized determines whether it is toxic. Bt is also a wide approved "organic" pesticide, and is considered incredibly safe both for humans and for the ecosystem. Bt corn, rather than requiring the spraying of bacteria on the plants, simply introduces the gene responsible for the toxin to the corn itself. It's use has led to an incredible drop in pesticide use on corn in the US. To me, this is an incredible environmental victory, and one that really can't be ignored when talking about Monsanto. Regarding cancer, allergies and other concerns: there is absolutely no evidence that GMO foods have anything to do with them. Suggesting that an over increase in cancer rates and the increase of use of genetic engineering are causally related is akin to arguing that a lack of pirates causes global warming. The number one reason for an increase in cancer rates is that we're now all living long enough to get cancer. We've gotten so good at dealing with infectious disease, and we've greatly reduced mortality due to heart conditions, but you're still going to die of something, so now it's cancer. There is absolutely zero evidence that genetic engineering of foods has anything to do with it. In terms of allergies, while it is theoretically possible that whatever protein is being introduced by the genetic modification, no one has ever reported such an allergy. It seems silly to freak out over something that has never appeared in over 20 years of feeding billions of people. So this was a bit of a rant. There's a lot more I can say here (such as other GMOs that are benficially for both our health and the environment, such as golden rice), but I'll leave it at that for the moment.

there is nothing wrong with gmo on a theoritical level

one problem is that the bacterium they use to insert genes into plants causes plant tumours

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrobacterium_tumefaciens

 

[halik]

Myth: Monsanto sues farmers when GM seed is accidentally in their fields.

Fact: Monsanto has never sued a farmer when trace amounts of our patented seeds or traits were present in the farmer’s field as an accident or as a result of inadvertent means.

This, If i remember correctly that guy got sued because in the past he used monsanto licensed seeds and one year he just decided to replant the previous year licensed stuff, rathe than buying from monsanto again.

 

[halik]

This thread has me depressed, but not because of Monsanto. The sheer amount of ignorance and FUD around genetic engineering displayed here is mildly horrifying. I won't comment on Mansanto's business practices, but I will dispel some of the scientific misinformation being thrown about regarding genetic engineering.

First off, we've been genetically modifying food for 10,000 years. The difference is that now we use a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer. Take wheat. The wild progenitors of modern bread wheat are diploidic, meaning that they carry two copies of their genome, much the way we do. These varieties of wheat don't produce enough gluten to rise and make nice bread, though. The only way our ancestors were able to get bread to rise was through hybrids containing the full genomes of both predecessors, making them tetraploidic (four copies of a genome). More modern (i.e. last thousand years) varieties are hexaploidic. Thus, in the pursuit of a more useful crop, we have tripled the genetic content of wheat. When you compare that to the movement of a single gene, it's insane to think that what we're doing now is "playing God" and what we were doing before was "natural".

A lot of environmental activists complain about the use of pesticides, forgetting that their use has saved the lives of a billion people. Now, use of long acting pesticides like DDT have real negative consequences that cannot be ignored, and we should do what we can to reduce their use as long as we can maintain our food supply. Bacillus thuringiensis (or Bt) is a bacteria that produces a toxin that only seems to affect pests. It's actually quite remarkable, as how the toxin is metabolized determines whether it is toxic. Bt is also a wide approved "organic" pesticide, and is considered incredibly safe both for humans and for the ecosystem. Bt corn, rather than requiring the spraying of bacteria on the plants, simply introduces the gene responsible for the toxin to the corn itself. It's use has led to an incredible drop in pesticide use on corn in the US. To me, this is an incredible environmental victory, and one that really can't be ignored when talking about Monsanto.

Regarding cancer, allergies and other concerns: there is absolutely no evidence that GMO foods have anything to do with them. Suggesting that an over increase in cancer rates and the increase of use of genetic engineering are causally related is akin to arguing that a lack of pirates causes global warming. The number one reason for an increase in cancer rates is that we're now all living long enough to get cancer. We've gotten so good at dealing with infectious disease, and we've greatly reduced mortality due to heart conditions, but you're still going to die of something, so now it's cancer. There is absolutely zero evidence that genetic engineering of foods has anything to do with it. In terms of allergies, while it is theoretically possible that whatever protein is being introduced by the genetic modification, no one has ever reported such an allergy. It seems silly to freak out over something that has never appeared in over 20 years of feeding billions of people.

So this was a bit of a rant. There's a lot more I can say here (such as other GMOs that are benficially for both our health and the environment, such as golden rice), but I'll leave it at that for the moment.

Golf clap. You must be a member of the skeptic society.

 

[destrekor]

there is nothing wrong with gmo on a theoritical level

one problem is that the bacterium they use to insert genes into plants causes plant tumours

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrobacterium_tumefaciens

And?

Plant tumors and humans tumors are very different. Our cellular structure, energy mechanisms, and well, everything about us is entirely different, other than the basic concepts (DNA, cellular-based structure, a need for energy and "respiration").

I'm against reckless genetic engineering just as much as the next reasonable guy, but genetic modification has worked some wonders for us.

There's a necessary balance to be maintained, of course, and how a company like Monsanto goes about their business can be bad for us, but there is so much potential good that we must continue investigating possibilities.

We wouldn't even have modern corn (Maize) if it wasn't for what is essentially genetic engineering. Entire plant species cross-bred, selected for mutations, bred some more, seeds sold, more mutations, more selections, and all of a sudden you get plants with multiple massive ears of corn where otherwise you might have gotten a few inedible seeds per plant (or none at all - a few different types of grasses were likely involved over the generations).

Within nature, genetics are constantly getting screwed with, and plants and/or other life made to incorporate new "code" utilizing bacteria, viruses, and bacteriophages (bacteria viruses).