Monsanto's Really needs to be STOPPED HELP

[Mountain]

Once again nothing to do with Monsanto and off topic...

A study by scientists from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks reported that in the Alaska forests, the bark beetle has affected 2 to 3 million acres of south central Alaska forest in the last decade. One of the most affected tree species is the highly commercially prized white spruce. Generally, all spruce trees greater than 10 centimeters are killed by the spruce bark beetle (Dendroctonus rufipennis). This is one of the largest cases of tree death ever experienced as a result from an insect outbreak in North America. Tree-ring studies near Fairbanks have been used to demonstrate that "recent warming in Alaska appears to have removed the environmental limitation [or all natural defenses] that prevented outbreaks of spruce budworm in the far north."

In the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska, the spruce tree beetle has already wiped out between 70-80% of the spruce trees. This translates into 2.3 million acres since 1992 and represents "the largest loss to insects ever recorded in North America." According to Ed Holsten, an entomologist with the U.S. Forest Service in Alaska, about two million acres were infested between 1920 and 1990, in contrast with three million acres in the 1990's alone. During 1996, one million trees were infested and subsequently killed.

Figure 5: Aerial view of the once lush forests of the
Kenai Peninsula, Alaska.

Scientists attribute the beetle outbreak in Alaska not only to the mismanagement of forests (where too many trees compete for sunlight and resources weakening individuals), but also to global warming. According to EPA: "the average temperature in Anchorage has increased 3.9 degrees Fahrenheit over the last century, and [it estimates] that by 2100, temperatures in Alaska could increase by five degrees in the spring, summer and fall and by ten degrees in the winter"

Warm winter cycles don't break the cycle of insects and this is what you get. Kenai Peninsula is a different world now.

Tree line is on the move in many areas of Alaska.

The changes in Kenai Peninsula trees might be due to the milder weather the peninsula, along with most of Alaska, has experienced since about 1977, when ocean-surface temperatures in the North Pacific warmed. Climatologists with the Alaska Climate Research Center report that the Homer area warmed 4.2 degrees Fahrenheit on average from 1949 to 2007.

This is basically what the long-term residents of Alaska were telling me...something is changing.

 

[grapeman]

Read up or stop trolling. I assume since you are such a scientist (with your business degree lol) that you know how to track down full text peer review literature.
http://www.ebr-journal.org/index.ph...articles/ebr/abs/2008/01/ebr0726/ebr0726.html

The beginning sentence.

"could threaten the environment if by their release they spread hazardous gene products." Then goes on to PROVE nothing.

See? If you think that contains any science than you are a moron. There is not science in that link whatsoever. I refer you to my statement about obama above.

WTF - do you children even know what science is?

 

[Thomkal Vwalaa]

The beginning sentence.

"could threaten the environment if by their release they spread hazardous gene products." Then goes on to PROVE nothing.

See? If you think that contains any science than you are a moron. There is not science in that link whatsoever. I refer you to my statement about obama above.

WTF - do you children even know what science is?

You either can't read, or prefer to troll. Either way, you are a moron. It's hilarious to hear some old looser with a business degree try to redefine science. Nice try, go back to school and get educated.

Here's the .pdf if you learn how to read miraculously.
http://www.scgmff.cz/GMO risk assessment.pdf

The point being that GMOs are not demonstrated to be safe. Learn this.

 

[Thomkal Vwalaa]

how about this craziness:

Molecular control of transgene escape from genetically modified plants

Viktor Kuvshinova, b, , , Kimmo Koivub, Anne Kanervaa and Eija Pehua, b
aInstitute of Biotechnology, Helsinki Science Park, Viikinkaari 5, Helsinki University, SF-00014 Helsinki, Finland
bUniCrop Ltd, Helsinki Science Park, Viikinkaari 6, SF-00710 Helsinki, Finland
Received 8 September 2000; revised 23 October 2000; accepted 23 October 2000. Available online 2 February 2001.
Abstract
Potential risks of gene escape from transgenic crops through pollen and seed dispersal are being actively discussed and have slowed down full utilization of gene technology in crop improvement. To ban the transgene flow, barren zones and ‘terminator’ technology were developed as GMO risk management technologies in transgenic crops. Unfortunately, the technologies have not protected reliably the transgene migration to wild relatives. The present study offers a novel molecular technique to eliminate gene flow from transgenic plants to wild relatives by recoverable block of function (RBF). The RBF consists of a blocking sequence linked to the gene of interest and a recovering sequence, all in one transformable construct. The blocking sequence blocks a certain molecular or physiological function of the host plant. Action of the blocking sequence leads to the death of the host plant or to an alteration in its phenotype resulting in inability for sexual reproduction in nature. The recovering construct recovers the blocked function of the host plant. The recovering construct is regulated externally by a specific chemical or physical treatment of the plants and does not act under natural conditions. In nature, hybrids of the transgenic plants with its wild relatives carrying the RBF will die or be unable to reproduce because of the blocking construct action. A working model of RBF is described in this report as one example of the RBF concept. This RBF example is based on barnase (the blocking construct) and barstar (the recovering construct) gene expression in tobacco under sulfhydryl endopeptidase (SH-EP) and a heat shock (HS) promoter, respectively.

 

[Thomkal Vwalaa]

Hey grapey! Where's your research showing the safety of GMOs... hmmm? GTFO of here ya Troll.

The research (yeah, that's science lmao at you) indicates that the risk assements for GMOs are not sufficient.

'Early Tier Tests Insufficient for GMO Risk Assessment'

Summary posted by Meridian on 1/16/2007
Source: Nature Biotechnology
Author: n/a

The authors of two letters to the editor in this month's edition of Nature Biotechnology disagree about how to conduct ecological risk assessments (ERAs) of genetically modified (GM) crops. In an earlier article from Nature Biotechnology in January 2006, Romeis et al. had described a specific approach to GM ERAs, which emphasized reliance on early-tier laboratory tests. But in their letter to the editor, Lang et al. argue that toxicological early-tier laboratory tests (measuring, for example, the effect of Bt maize on monarch butterflies) will often be "overly simplistic" with respect to realistic exposure to hazardous agents and modulating environmental factors. Therefore, Lang et al. "strongly advocate" additional field or semi-field tests as part of ERAs of GM crops, "regardless" of early-tier laboratory results. In a reply to Lang et al., Romeis et al. argue that early tier laboratory tests can be designed to measure many the factors that concern Lang et al., such as cumulative effects over time. They also state that: "Lang et al. ignore the fact that all transgenic plants will be assessed as to their familiarity and substantial equivalence compared with their nontransformed [non-GM] near isolones and with commercial crop varieties before commercialization. This includes a detailed characterization of the plant under field conditions. On the basis of this detailed assessment, risk assessors will define the potential stressors that need to be addressed in the ERA." The letters to the editor are available online at the link below, with a paid subscription to Nature Biotechnology.

 

[Thomkal Vwalaa]

Hey grapetroll. Found another good one for you to read. Let me know if you need help with the big words... and unless you have your doctorate on this topic, it seems you are just ignorant and/or trolling.

http://www.ensser.org/uploads/media/1.2-Hilbeck-EN.pdf
Advancing the Understanding of Biosafety
Latest scientific findings,
policy responses and public participation
Lecture
Bt Crops - Controversies Around the Science
Necessary for Risk Assessment
Angelika Hilbeck
Session
Risk Assessment
An Appraisal of Current Approaches

Nagoya
7. - 9. October 2010
Bt Crops - Controversies Around the Science Necessary for Risk Assessment
Dr. Angelika Hilbeck
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Institute of Integrative Biology, Zürich, Switzerland
and GenØk Centre for Biosafety, Tromsø, Norway

Despite 15 years of industrial scale production of genetically modified (GM) crops at least in five
countries, no consensus on the applied environmental risk assessment (ERA) methodologies,
let alone agreed standardized testing procedures exist. But all regulations of GM organisms call
for some risk assessment to be carried out. Hence, I will provide a review of the current imple-
mentation of risk assessment in relation to GM crops and identify the most severe shortcomings
that we propose to alleviate with an alternative concept for ERA for GM plants.

2
Hazard Identification
Information on the GM plant’s biology, ecology and current spatio-temporal agronomic use and limitations of use is compiled. This includes comprehensive information on the molecular char-acterization of the GM plant, its introduced genetic material and tissue-specific expression of the Bt Crops - Controversies Around the Science Necessary for Risk Assessment
novel proteins. Information on the intended effect(s) include(s) data on the problem to be solved with the proposed GM plant, efficacy data of it demonstrating the ability to solve that problem, the severity of the problem, how widespread the problem is and who is mostly affected by it. To do that in an inclusive and transparent manner, scientists have developed a stakeholder proc- ess and tested it for the use in ERA of GM organisms (Hilbeck et al. 2004; Nelson & Banker 2007). Such a systematic process allows one to identify the main users of the GM plant, and to estimate the likely adoption rate and spread of the GMO after release. This in turn allows one todelineate the potential receiving environments and focus the analysis on those where the adop- tion is expected to be greatest with the assumption that potential adverse environmental effects will likely manifest where the GM crop is grown most frequently and is most widespread.

Their sources- for grapetroll to learn what science looks like

AGBIOS GM Database. 2009. MON-89Ø34-3 x DAS- Ø15Ø7-1 x MON-88Ø17-3 x DAS-591 (MON89034 x
TC1507 x MON88017 x DAS-59122-7)
http://www.agbios.com/dbase.php?action=ShowProd&data=MON89034+x+TC1507+x+MON88017+x+DAS-59122-7
Andow, D.A,. Lövei, G. & Arpaia, S. 2006. Ecological risk assessment for Bt crops. Nature Biotechnology 24: 749-
751. http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v24/n7/full/nbt0706-749.html
Andow, D.A., Hilbeck, A. & Nguyen Van Tuat (Eds.) 2008. Environmental Risk Assessment of Genetically Modi-
fied Organisms, Volume 4, Challenges and Opportunities with Bt Cotton in Vietnam. CABI Publishing, Walling-
ford, UK. http://www.gmoera.umn.edu/public/publications/books.html
Blackwood, C.B. & Buyer, J.S. 2004. Soil microbial communities associated with Bt and non-Bt corn in three soils.
Journal of Environmental Quality 33: 832–836.
http://ddr.nal.usda.gov/dspace/bitstream/10113/9123/1/IND43676450.pdf
EC. 2001. Directive 2001/18/EC of 12 March 2001 on the deliberate release into the environment of genetically
modified organisms and repealing Council Directive 90/220/EC, 17.4.2001, Official Journal of the European
Communities L 106/1-38. http://ec.europa.eu/food/food/biotechnology/gmo_intro_en.htm
EC. 2002. Commission Decision 2002/623/EC of 24 July 2002 establishing guidance notes supplementing Annex
II to Directive 2001/18/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the deliberate release into the
environment of genetically modified organisms and repealing Council Directive 90/220/EEC, 30.7.2002, Offi-
cial Journal of the European Communities L 200/22-33. http://************/3894rjx
EPA Environmental Protection Agency OPPTS 7501P. 2009. Pesticide Fact Sheet
http://www.agbios.com/docroot/decdocs/09-211-001.pdf

 

[Anti]

I can't believe it took 17 pages for someone to point out that Grape has offered 0 science to support his claim that GMO is safe, while deriding anyone who attempts to bring support because the authors of the work being cited used words like "possible", "may" and "might."

Grape - bring science or - pretty please - STFU. Isn't that your own credo? So... BRING SOME. You can call me a child when you are finished putting your money where your big, fat, flapping jaw is.

 

[Anti]

And in related news, just want to let everyone know that we will never be able to solve world hunger by creating more food. You see, people are MADE of food and creating more of it creates MORE people.

Just like deers in the woods, a surplus in food supply inevitably leads to an increase in the feeder population.

A+B=C

 

[grapeman]

You either can't read, or prefer to troll. Either way, you are a moron. It's hilarious to hear some old looser with a business degree try to redefine science. Nice try, go back to school and get educated.

Here's the .pdf if you learn how to read miraculously.
http://www.scgmff.cz/GMO risk assessment.pdf

The point being that GMOs are not demonstrated to be safe. Learn this.

Here is the conclusion from the paper you cited.

"In risk assessment of GMOs, the first step is to identify
hazards from transgene products expressed by the GMO.
This paper tackles the problem, in this first step, of how to
identify transgene products that could be hazardous even
in the context of contained use. Only part of the problem is covered here: the context of human genes cloned
in viral vectors that are considered as safe. To address the
problem in a more comprehensive way other situations
should also be considered: e.g. replicating viral vectors,
such as Vaccinia, but also the more recently developed
replication competent Adenovirus vectors, prokaryotic
and eukaryotic microorganisms, plants and animals, and
donor sequences derived from non-mammalian sources.
It is still very likely that broad issues can be tackled using
the approach we have outlined: (1) identifying the main
scenarios whereby workers and/or the environment may
be exposed; (2) identifying which classes of gene products could cause potential adverse effects through those
main scenarios; (3) corroborating the actual occurrence
of the potential adverse effects through searches of the
available literature, with a focus on overexpression as a
trigger.
It can be foreseen that besides helping with risk assessment, this approach will also identify major gaps in
the available data, the baseline information that is a prerequisite for scientific risk assessment. This positive contribution to risk assessment in general could spark off new areas of useful risk assessment research, i.e. research focused on gathering information that is useful for risk assessment (‘need-to-know’), rather than data that are interesting (‘nice-toknow’), but that are not helpful for the
main questions of risk assessment.
In the practice of risk management, this means that
identification of a gene product as a PHGP based on a
hazard scenario alone may lead to enhanced biosafety
measures only on the basis of the precautionary approach.
Risk assessors should generally be able to consider gene
products of human provenance as harmless in principle, until they have been defined as (potentially) harmful through good scientific argumentation, following the
three steps mentioned above. Finally, the use of extrinsically inducible promoters, or promoters that have a
(combination of) distinct tissue and temporal specificity,
should be considered as a major hazard mitigating factor.
The identification of hazardous gene products in the
risk assessment of the contained use of GMO applications can be divided into two stages. In the first stage, it
is checked whether the gene product(s) of the GMO fits
one of the conceptual scenarios, or whether another scenario could be devised that could lead to an adverse effect. Based on current considerations, the following gene
products are seen as PHGPs: products of dominant alleles
that have a role in hereditary diseases and disorders, gene
products and sequences involved in genome rearrangement, products that are seen as toxins or that have toxic or
allergenic properties, products involved in immunomodulation and in general products with an endocrine function,
products involved in apoptosis or oncogenesis. The list is
not intended to be comprehensive; the risk assessment of
new GMOs may lead to other conceptual scenarios. This type of scenarios that predict adverse effects
typically invokes the precautionary principle, and consequent allocation of the GMO to a higher biosafety class
(see Annex IV of EU (1998) for a description of containment measures in different biosafety classes). We recommend, however, that if the first stage of hazard identification leads to the conclusion that a gene product expressed
by a GMO is a PHGP, this conclusion is checked further
in a second stage of hazard identification. The examples
presented in this study show that the use of high quality
databases, complemented by bioinformatic approaches
and expert opinions, can be useful to test whether the conjectural hazards can be corroborated by facts and demonstrated hazards. Although different gene products should
be tested on a case-by-case basis, the results shown do not
provide very much support for the current hazard scenarios. In fact, the only firm general conclusion that could be
drawn is that overexpression, or in general misexpression,
may lead to adverse effects. As science progresses, the
information in the databases will keep growing, and the
usefulness of bioinformatics for risk assessment may also be expected to increase. Risk assessors should actively
follow these developments and apply the newly gained
knowledge.
In order to draw a conclusion from data retrieved
from databases, it is important to consider extensively
the significance of the retrieved data by discussing the
choice of database and search strategy. This is particularly important if the absence of data is used as an argument (e.g. ‘there are no indications for toxicity of the
gene product’). The absence of data can only be an argument if it can be made plausible that data, if they exist, would have been found by the search strategy, which
should therefore be described in detail. The significance
of the retrieved data for physiological conditions should
be taken into account, e.g. the data on effects of a purified gene product administered at non-physiologically
high concentrations are not necessarily relevant for the
effect of the gene product expressed from a viral vector
under relatively normal physiological conditions. As an
example, a search of the Medline literature database for
‘interleukin* and toxi*’ yields more than 5000 hits, but
further evaluation quickly shows that the more meaningful hits describe observed toxicity of interleukins administered as purified protein, at unphysiologically high concentrations.
It should also be taken into consideration that
databases like OMIM include information only on those
genes for which functions have been shown empirically.
This covers only some of the genes that are predicted,
e.g. from the sequence of the human genome. Several
systems have been developed to help manage and display genomic sequences and their annotation, e.g. the
Ensembl web site
3
(Hubbard et al., 2005, Stalker et al.,
2004) and JIGSAW (Allen and Salzberg, 2005), but really
reliable prediction is not achieved by any system. Consequently, when genes predicted by bioinformatics analysis
are tested empirically in GMOs to evaluate the function of their products, the risk assessment of these applications would have to rely on bioinformatic data, which in
terms of the precautionary approach confers a high degree of scientific uncertainty.
The next step in risk assessment is to decide how
likely it is that the potential hazards identified would actually lead to a hazardous situation, that could, based on the
precautionary approach, require an increased biosafety
level. For instance, the use of gene banks containing large
numbers of different genes (e.g. complete genomic libraries or complete cDNA libraries) cloned in a viral
vector, leading to the production of a PHGP in only a
small proportion of the GMOs, is usually not seen as
an especially hazardous situation; the biosafety class of
activities with such a gene bank is determined by the
biosafety characteristics of the vectors alone. Only in the case where the gene bank has already been enriched
for genes encoding PHGPs by some screening operation,
leading to a high proportion of vectors containing these
genes, would the presence of PHGPs be taken into consideration to determine the necessary biosafety level.
The question as to what level of expression of a PHGP
would require increased physical containment could be
tackled on the basis of familiarity. The CMV promoter
has been used to drive the expression of a large number
of transgenes, which in no case has led to reports of unexpected deleterious effects. This level of expression could
therefore be regarded as safe, and overexpression could
be operationally defined as an expression level that is at
least one order of magnitude higher than the expression
of one gene copy under the regime of the CMV promoter.
Finally, the decision as to whether the expression of a
PHGP may lead to adverse effects will also depend on the
duration of the expression. Use of an adenoviral vector
will lead to potentially very high though temporary expression, while lentiviral vectors may lead to much more
prolonged though lower expression levels.
When the identification of a potentially hazardous
gene product is performed with a high standard of scientific rigor, it may lead to clear conclusions. But even if
it does not lead to conclusions, it will lead to clear indications as to why the conclusions cannot (yet) be reached,
and what information is necessary. We would therefore
recommend that the second stage of hazard identification
described above is indeed executed in all cases where indications for a PHGP are found, and that collaborative efforts are made by regulators and researchers to set criteria
for the standards of scientific rigor, and for discriminating between ‘need-to-know’ and ‘nice-to-know’ research
questions."

Yet you call me a moron. The entire paper you quoted tries to set forth a proper metod of risk assessment for future research. You fucking idiot!

You fucking children with google don't even understand what you are throwing up as proof of your fear. LOL
Find another cause because it if obvious you do not understand this cause whatsoever.

 

[Anti]

Grape - bring science or - pretty please - STFU. Isn't that your own credo?

Still waiting on you to drop some science on us, Grape. Not holding my breath, because I've actually debated you three or four times now, and you never offer anything beyond petty insults and know-it-all posturing.

 

[Thomkal Vwalaa]

Yet you call me a moron. The entire paper you quoted tries to set forth a proper metod of risk assessment for future research.

YUP, because GMOs are not even close to proven safe. Which is my point, but you are too busy being an ignorant troll to see. You also fail to provide anything near science to back up your stance.

Still waiting on you to drop some science on us, Grape. Not holding my breath, because I've actually debated you three or four times now, and you never offer anything beyond petty insults and know-it-all posturing.

YUP, being an old ignorant troll is his MO

 

[dagnabit]

Molecular control of transgene escape from genetically modified plants

Viktor Kuvshinova, b, , , Kimmo Koivub, Anne Kanervaa and Eija Pehua, b
aInstitute of Biotechnology, Helsinki Science Park, Viikinkaari 5, Helsinki University, SF-00014 Helsinki, Finland
bUniCrop Ltd, Helsinki Science Park, Viikinkaari 6, SF-00710 Helsinki, Finland
Received 8 September 2000; revised 23 October 2000; accepted 23 October 2000. Available online 2 February 2001.
Abstract
Potential risks of gene escape from transgenic crops through pollen and seed dispersal are being actively discussed and have slowed down full utilization of gene technology in crop improvement. To ban the transgene flow, barren zones and ‘terminator’ technology were developed as GMO risk management technologies in transgenic crops. Unfortunately, the technologies have not protected reliably the transgene migration to wild relatives. The present study offers a novel molecular technique to eliminate gene flow from transgenic plants to wild relatives by recoverable block of function (RBF). The RBF consists of a blocking sequence linked to the gene of interest and a recovering sequence, all in one transformable construct. The blocking sequence blocks a certain molecular or physiological function of the host plant. Action of the blocking sequence leads to the death of the host plant or to an alteration in its phenotype resulting in inability for sexual reproduction in nature. The recovering construct recovers the blocked function of the host plant. The recovering construct is regulated externally by a specific chemical or physical treatment of the plants and does not act under natural conditions. In nature, hybrids of the transgenic plants with its wild relatives carrying the RBF will die or be unable to reproduce because of the blocking construct action. A working model of RBF is described in this report as one example of the RBF concept. This RBF example is based on barnase (the blocking construct) and barstar (the recovering construct) gene expression in tobacco under sulfhydryl endopeptidase (SH-EP) and a heat shock (HS) promoter, respectively.

hmmmm
not so much a danger of GMO here..
what i do see is a possible practical application of a specific target (RBF) for large scale either
A:large scale industrial hemp
or
B:large scale outdoor sensimelia.
using the non reproductive properties to manipulate entire crops reproductive cycles...

 

[GreenintheThumb]

And in related news, just want to let everyone know that we will never be able to solve world hunger by creating more food. You see, people are MADE of food and creating more of it creates MORE people.

Just like deers in the woods, a surplus in food supply inevitably leads to an increase in the feeder population.

A+B=C

wut?

We'll never solve the world hunger problem by creating more food? Better start offing each other instead of growing those GM crops. After all, what about the butterflies guise? Who would have thought that the insecticide corn would kill insects? Totally not safe guise.

 

[Vash]

It should be GMS(Genetically Modified Shit). You know, Grapeman reminds me of the people who eat the mainstream media "shit" that's fed to us, then argue the point with people who know better. There's enough info on YOUTUBE about the bullshit that Monsanto spews, it's ridiculous. That's where the REAL truth is. All this so-called "science" that you speak of is merely a concoction of chemicals injected into the food to make it nutritionless. As far as living longer now, yeah, we create drugs to keep the dead walking.
Hold on to your heirloom seeds because the powers that be will be trying to control them if you don't be careful.

 

[Anti]

For the last 10,000 years or so we've increased our food production to feed an expanding population. For the last 10,000 years or so, the human population of this planet has grown at an exponential rate. We are the only species on the planet capable of controlling its environment and food surplus the way we do, but this does not make us different from any other living organism.

An increase in food results in increased population, requiring increase in food production, triggering increased population.

On topic:

The reason I am a'feared of Monsanto is less a fear of GMO plants (which like a gun or a flame can be good, bad or ineffectual depending on the circumstance) and is because if Monsanto's roundup ready pollen finds its way into MY yard and breeds with MY natural plants... suddenly monsanto has a right to sue me for patent infringement. I feel this is a dangerous and unsettling development. Ownership of plant species and any potential crosses? In perpetuity?


http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/26/eveningnews/main4048288.shtml

David Runyon and his wife Dawn put a lifetime of work into their 900-acre Indiana farm, and almost lost it all over a seed they say they never planted.

"I don't believe any company has the right to come into someone's home and threaten their livelihood," Dawn said, "to bring them into such physical turmoil as this company did to us."

The Runyons charge bio-tech giant Monsanto sent investigators to their home unannounced, demanded years of farming records, and later threatened to sue them for patent infringement. The Runyons say an anonymous tip led Monsanto to suspect that genetically modified soybeans were growing on their property.

"I wasn't using their products, but yet they were pounding on my door demanding information, demanding records," Dave said. "It was just plain harassment is what they were doing."

Today, Monsanto's patented "Round-up Ready" soy commands the lion's share of the genetically-modified soybean seed market, its genetic code manipulated to withstand the company's popular weed killer.

But the promise of fewer weeds and greater production comes with a hefty fee. Farmers must sign an iron-clad agreement not to re-plant the harvested seed, or face serious legal consequences - up to $3 million in damages.

"It's about protecting the patent, defending the patents, so farmers have the protection and can use these technologies over time," said Monsanto spokeswoman Tami Craig Schilling.

The Runyons say they signed no agreements, and if they were contaminated with the genetically modified seed, it blew over from a neighboring farm.

"Pollination occurs, wind drift occurs. There's just no way to keep their products from landing in our fields," David said.

"What Monsanto is doing across the country is often, and according to farmers, trespassing even, on their land, examining their crops and trying to find some of their patented crops," said Andrew Kimbrell, with the Center For Food Safety. "And if they do, they sue those farmers for their entire crop."

In fact, in Feb. 2005 the Runyons received a letter from Monsanto, citing "an agreement" with the Indiana Department of Agriculture giving it the right to come on their land and test for seed contamination.

Only one problem: The Indiana Department of Agriculture didn't exist until two months after that letter was sent. What does that say to you?

"I'm not aware of the specific situation in Indiana," Schilling said.

"I'm just talking in general terms," said Keteyian. "Would Monsanto lie, deceive, intimidate, harass American farmers to protect its patents?"

"With farmers as customers I would say that is not our policy by any means."

74-year-old Mo Parr is a seed cleaner; he is hired by farmers to separate debris from the seed to be replanted. Monsanto sued him claiming he was "aiding and abetting" farmers, helping them to violate the patent.

"There's no way that I could be held responsible," Parr said. "There's no way that I could look at a soy bean and tell you if it's Round-up Ready."

 

[Happy 7]

oil for your fire...

Horizontal Gene Transfer – The Hidden Hazards of Genetic Engineering
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/horizontal.php

 

[Mountain]

For the last 10,000 years or so, the human population of this planet has grown at an exponential rate.

Not from what I understand. Exponential population growth only very recently...mainly tied to 'cheap' available energy and everything that goes along with that. Looking at these charts do you see a problem coming up?

Monsanto and genetic engineering ain't gonna solve this one! Anybody into technical analysis knows what's next...SHORT THE POPULATION GROWTH MARKET! Hey maybe that'll be the next Wall Street derivative after Credit Default Swaps?

 

[Thomkal Vwalaa]

Not from what I understand. Exponential population growth only very recently...mainly tied to 'cheap' available energy and everything that goes along with that. Looking at these charts do you see a problem coming up?

Monsanto and genetic engineering ain't gonna solve this one!

To be fair, the first graph should look like that. That's a geologic time scale.

I want to see SCIENCE that indicates GMO crops can provide more for less over the long term. As I understand, GMO crops require more inputs, and re-buying seeds, crippling the poor people tricked into thinking GMOs are the answer over the long term. Heritage varieties are the answer, that's nothing new. But really that has to come hand in hand with global wealth redistribution.

 

[Mountain]

To be fair, the first graph should look like that. That's a geologic time scale.

...and where is the 10,000 year ago mark and when does exponential growth really begin? Dramatic growth does not happen until well after 1 AD. Exponential growth shows up better in the second graph. Not trying to bust balls...just show a different perspective.

I pulled this from the Monsanto thread I created...

DNA fragments from genetically modified plants are increasingly found in animal tissue such as milk, inner organs and muscles. Most recently, in April 2010, scientists from Italy reported DNA sequences stemming from genetically engineered soy in milk from goats.

For years now, it has been known that in general, DNA from plants is not completely degraded in the gut, and can be found in inner organs, the blood stream and even in the offspring of mice.

"Recent publications could lend support to those stakeholders in favor of labeling products such as meat, milk and eggs derived from animals fed with genetically engineered plants," says Christoph Then from Testbiotech

 

[Thomkal Vwalaa]

Dramatic growth does not happen until well after 1 AD.

So we agree. Jesus is to blame...