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Who's Afraid Of Gmo?


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​The Fire Power of Money is as true for Big Investers as it is about whole nations of consumers.

​People don't give a damn about technical, legislative or scientific details discussed in a few circles.

​If they know the product is a GMO = they will not buy it = company will reform or go bankrupt.

 

​Farming guy is right to defend its own interests, but I can tell him that if he sells GMO I will never buy his products.

​That's the problem, even if the spontaneous instincts of consumers in the Marketplace seem entirely stupid to you,

​it will prevail on the long run whatever happens !

 

And let me tell you right now, if you need to forbid people from accessing their fundamental right

of getting proper information about the products being sold to them, you're leaning to the dark side of the force...

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wasn't talking about denying consumers any rights. When you have a company profiting from claims about things that they won't allow the farmers to do, then they should be required to compensate their farmers the increased costs of production.  We once got a premium for our milk because of our refusal to use hormone injections to increase production, and to this day we are required to sign a legal document promising to not use it.  The difference is that now no processor will handle milk from farms using the hormone,with the end result being that we no longer get the premium.

 

Some farmers became certified organic with hopes of saving the family farm, but now with to push to force "organic" methods, the premium for the "organic" label is certain to fade.

 

I would be quite happy to give up all technology and milk only 20 cows and feed them nothing but grass crops, but I would have to get paid about 10 times as much for the milk as i currently do.

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I wasn't talking about denying consumers any rights. When you have a company profiting from claims about things that they won't allow the farmers to do, then they should be required to compensate their farmers the increased costs of production.  We once got a premium for our milk because of our refusal to use hormone injections to increase production, and to this day we are required to sign a legal document promising to not use it.  The difference is that now no processor will handle milk from farms using the hormone,with the end result being that we no longer get the premium.

 

Some farmers became certified organic with hopes of saving the family farm, but now with to push to force "organic" methods, the premium for the "organic" label is certain to fade.

 

I would be quite happy to give up all technology and milk only 20 cows and feed them nothing but grass crops, but I would have to get paid about 10 times as much for the milk as i currently do.

Tell you what, though.

 

Since we went back to traditional British early morning milk deliveries, in the old glass bottles, by traditional electric "milk float", I've noticed how much better it tastes than milk from the ubiquitous supermarket plastic cartons.

 

I wonder if there is not a premium to be had for local production that can be delivered in this way, on grounds of superior taste.  

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​The Fire Power of Money is as true for Big Investers as it is about whole nations of consumers.

​People don't give a damn about technical, legislative or scientific details discussed in a few circles.

​If they know the product is a GMO = they will not buy it = company will reform or go bankrupt.

Most people don't care.  Here in the US people will generally buy the cheapest Doritos, rather than the ones that meet a specific set of criteria.

 

Keep in mind that most people don't even know what they are getting.  During a survey about ten years back, 70% of respondents thought that organic tomatoes did not contain genes but GMO tomatoes do.

Edited by billvon
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"patent on seeds unique or not to GMOs is in no way a counter-argument. It just implies there are other companies on my boycott list."  Good.  I understand this to mean that this shows that your argument isn't against GMOs but rather against predatory practices of seed producers.  GMO seeds are a portion of this, but this isn't an argument against GMO.  I link your anti-monopoly stance to GMOs because it is a link you have made in your first complaint against GMOs.  "1) Monoply/patent on seeds, which I think is mainly bad in the poorer part of the world" This is a complaint that is not specific to GMOs.  Eliminating GMOs will not address this complaint.  If I misunderstood you, then I apologize, but I do not understand why this is an argument against GMOs.

 

"Unless all GMOs we make are sterile (which is not the case), then GMOs end up in Nature creating an irreversible change, this is scary. What if any of the scientific unfounded anti-GMO-claims (or other adverse things we did not think about) turn out to be true?"

 

New strains regardless of origin are not required to be sterile.  You have not shown why a new strain derived from GMO is necessarily more deserving of fear than conventional production.  Why do you suppose that GMOs should be required to be sterile when no such requirement is placed on other strains?  If you have no scientific argument against GMOs, then why don't you make the argument that I suspect you intend to make, that new strains should be robustly tested, an argument I might agree with, rather than using GMO as the boogeyman to falsely encompass all that you see wrong with modern agriculture.

 

The links you provided for medical experimentation in Africa contain no instance of GMOs.  Why is this pertinent to the question of whether or not we should be afraid of GMOs?  Why should I not conclude that you are intentionally spreading FUD?

Edited by JMJones0424
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"Here in the US people will generally buy the cheapest Doritos, rather than the ones that meet a specific set of criteria."

 

​loool Yeah I know man "The American Dream" ENJOY my friend ! But if you're one of the few smart guys you'll also get rich more easily... :money: 

 

"I wonder if there is not a premium to be had for local production that can be delivered in this way, on grounds of superior taste."

 

That's when you have to change entirely your mindset as a farmer and get in the shoes of a very practical diplomate.

In the country side "community" have made the difference between life & death since EVER.

There are plenty businesses, weekly markets & public services that are begging to fall prey to a good deal (price/taste/freshness).

The "worship" of chemistry can't compete with culture ! But it can seem so if we collectively convince ourselves to believe it.

If you want to succeed in "organic" farming, you need to first get "organic" in your way to deal with people !

As a farmer, do people know you & what you're doing in the nearest cities around your exploitation ?

 

Because if it's not the case, and if you don't like that idea of getting together with others, you'll need the most dense & effective

concentration of capital that mankind ever mastered : CHEMISTRY.

Hey look, in this case other people who don't know or care about you ('cause they live very far away) will influence prices downward

because your marchandise is "faceless" for them. The teachers of your village school that saw your children grow up would pay you much more...

 

Farming guy, Joel Salatin is your friend lol :

 

 

There's my hero ! Thank God for Common Sense...

 

 

 

 

 

 

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HempGraphene Did you mean to have a point or was it simply your wish to post a stream of consciousness that is only tangentially related to the topic?

I think I get the gist of what he is saying, although he could have been more concise.  I was just reading a letter to the editor in Hoards Dairyman along the same lines, about commodification of dairy products.  We all ship our milk to a processor who gets milk from a whole lot of farms over a huge area, so that while each farm might have unique milk that might have unique value that could be marketed in a niche market, it all gets blended together and it's just milk.  We are missing out on the opportunity to sell to our neighbors, most of whom have no idea how their food is produced.  We have to sell the story of our farm and not just our milk to capitalize on that market.  The idea does appeal to me, and I recently gave that advice to a young person who wants to farm.

 

We would have no need of gmo crops or government subsidies if we could sell directly to the consumer.

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I think I get the gist of what he is saying, although he could have been more concise.  I was just reading a letter to the editor in Hoards Dairyman along the same lines, about commodification of dairy products.  We all ship our milk to a processor who gets milk from a whole lot of farms over a huge area, so that while each farm might have unique milk that might have unique value that could be marketed in a niche market, it all gets blended together and it's just milk.  We are missing out on the opportunity to sell to our neighbors, most of whom have no idea how their food is produced.  We have to sell the story of our farm and not just our milk to capitalize on that market.  The idea does appeal to me, and I recently gave that advice to a young person who wants to farm.

 

We would have no need of gmo crops or government subsidies if we could sell directly to the consumer.

Well, perhaps if you were to get together with some like-minded neighbouring farmers you could find a way to give it a try.

 

In the UK, ever since I was a child, milk has been traditionally delivered daily to the doorstep, in the early hours of each morning by virtually silent electric milk "float", in glass bottles with foil caps. The empties are rinsed by the householder and put back on the doorstep for recollection as the full bottles are delivered. In the old days you had a plastic dial that you left outside displaying the number of bottles wanted that day. Nowadays of course you place your order for each day on-line, which enables the service to operate on the basis of 3-4 times/week rather than daily, which is fine now that we all have fridges. 

 

It's a bit more costly of course, but the milk does not taste of plastic! It's actually quite a noticeable improvement, even for someone like me that only uses milk on cereal, in my tea, and for cooking.

 

I imagine this will work in villages and small towns but obviously if you have a very rural community, spread out with huge distance between customers, then it would not be feasible.   

Edited by exchemist
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​You see guys, that's the problem of our modern era.

 

​A whole bunch of technocrats in Brussels parcticing intellectual masturbation all day long & never listening to the central dudes in Agriculture : FARMERS.

​YES people, there are certain things that are VERY real & VERY pertinent and that are not scientific but practical and deeply rooted in human history.

​If you spend all day long looking at a computer screen, it will sound dumb to you. But the guys who actually work on the farms & fields will hear it loud and clear !

 

​PS: And please don't try to smoke Graphene made out of carbonized Hemp fibers, it's for ELECTRONICS...

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First of, remember I said in my first post in this thread that I used to be super-against GMO, but when asked to prove my points it turned out that most were resulting from pseudo-science. This implies that my critic might be more from personal dislike, I admit this.

 

"patent on seeds unique or not to GMOs is in no way a counter-argument. It just implies there are other companies on my boycott list."  Good.  I understand this to mean that this shows that your argument isn't against GMOs but rather against predatory practices of seed producers.  GMO seeds are a portion of this, but this isn't an argument against GMO.  I link your anti-monopoly stance to GMOs because it is a link you have made in your first complaint against GMOs.  "1) Monoply/patent on seeds, which I think is mainly bad in the poorer part of the world" This is a complaint that is not specific to GMOs.  Eliminating GMOs will not address this complaint.  If I misunderstood you, then I apologize, but I do not understand why this is an argument against GMOs.

True that, it is not GMO specific complaint.

 

New strains regardless of origin are not required to be sterile.  You have not shown why a new strain derived from GMO is necessarily more deserving of fear than conventional production.

This actually seems a scientific counter-argument
http://www.glyphosate.news/2016-06-27-study-shows-honeybees-are-starving-because-of-roundup.html
 

since wiki says The_Journal_of_Experimental_Biology where this study was published is a scientific peer-reviewed journal

I said seems scientific because anyway you have other biologists saying:

http://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/what-relationship-between-pesticides-gmos-and-decline-bee-populations



2 things wrt the links just posted:
1) You can say this is not a (potential) argument against GMOs as such but an argument against the use of Round-up, so only against these round-up-ready seeds. OR the second link shows more than GMOs it is the use of herbicides in general, reducing the number of pollinating plants which influences bee-population numbers; but then round-up is worse because it kills everything so the reduction of other pollinators is higher than in other herbicides.
2) I see the above links a bit like the argument used against climate-change deniers: "there might be a possibility that we are wrong, but if we are not then the consequences are sooo big that we should not gamble on it"

 

 


The links you provided for medical experimentation in Africa contain no instance of GMOs.  Why is this pertinent to the question of whether or not we should be afraid of GMOs?  Why should I not conclude that you are intentionally spreading FUD?


I think this part you just do not want get, just google GMO Africa...the links were in reply to your earlier comment that seemed I take it from nowhere that the west used developing countries as guinea pigs. I agree it is not pertinent to whether we should be afraid of GMOs, it is more a conscience thing (but if you are in the US then this does not arise, since you have GMO everywhere too).

Btw I assumed, not knowing, that FUD stood for some equivalent of bullshit, so I went to check and I take you mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt?
To this I just there is no intention whatsoever, I just saw an interesting thread and voiced what I think. Sorry to diappoint, but I do not have an agenda...

 

 


that new strains should be robustly tested, an argument I might agree with, rather than using GMO as the boogeyman to falsely encompass all that you see wrong with modern agriculture.


Because I got into this issue via GMO and since the mutations in the genes in GMOs are easier to be bigger (I doubt with the other ways of making strains it would be easy to get roundup-resistance or the gene from arctic fish for strawberries to resist cold more), so bigger change in genes--> bigger fear. Scientific reason for "bigger change-->bigger fear", not really but I admit I have it.
 





 
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Because I got into this issue via GMO and since the mutations in the genes in GMOs are easier to be bigger (I doubt with the other ways of making strains it would be easy to get roundup-resistance or the gene from arctic fish for strawberries to resist cold more), so bigger change in genes--> bigger fear. Scientific reason for "bigger change-->bigger fear", not really but I admit I have it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weeds have been proven to by quite genetically adaptable.  http://cropwatch.unl.edu/multiple-herbicide-resistant-weeds-and-challenges-ahead   We used to grow corn for silage, and I can remember that the last several years, we always had a lot of lambsquarter growing with the corn despite using herbicides.  We didn't fuss about it much because lambsquarter is high in protein and didn't seem to have that big of an effect on yields.

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"Here in the US people will generally buy the cheapest Doritos, rather than the ones that meet a specific set of criteria."

​loool Yeah I know man "The American Dream" ENJOY my friend ! But if you're one of the few smart guys you'll also get rich more easily... 

My new product - GMO-free water.  Now with no genes at all!

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​Wanna hear good ones mates ??? What about selling :

 

​- Kosher Salt to Jews (yeah...sodium chloride)

​- Halal Vinegar to Muslims (exclusive proprietary recipe with 0% alcohol)

​- Vitamin B12 to vegans (meat is the only source of it !!! xD)

- Whey Protein to cancer patients (sorry that one's just aweful...)

​- Soy milk to Hindus (adding value to soybean export through sacred cow fanaticism)

 

​Okay all made up bullshit, but some claims made by GMO companies are also quite hilarious...

​Hey don't get me wrong I'm a big fan of dark humor !

 

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Sanctus- your critique of GMOs may be, as you have described, coming from a point of personal dislike.  This is precisely the approach I meant to argue against when I disagreed with your critique.  You listed a few complaints about GMOs, and I countered with the fact that exactly none of you complaints were specific to GMOs, but rather that they were complaints that could easily be justified against particular instances of modern agriculture regardless of the source.

 

The crash of honeybee populations is an issue that must be addressed.  If crop management that includes GMOs leads to a decline in pollinators, then this is most certainly an issue that must be addressed.  There is ample evidence that neonicotinoids and other popular "organic" means of pest control are suspect in the decline of pollinators. However, this is an issue that likely results from the use of herbicides and pesticides, not specifically from the fact that the crop grown is a GMO.  I can and do say that this isn't an argument against GMOs because the use of a pesticide is not necessarily linked to the planting of a GMO.  If we determine that a particular pest management strategy if not beneficial, then we should legislate against it.  The fact that the crop targeted for protection is a GMO is not and should not be relevant.

 

You make the claim that resistance to GMO is comparable to resistance to AGW.  I do not accept this claim.  GMO is a technology that can more easily produce new agricultural viable strains.  AGW denial is the refusal to accept all evidence that the increase in CO2 levels is caused by humans and that this increase will cause significant changes in our climate.  GMO denial is the assertion that any organism produced by the direct human manipulation of genetics is bad.  This is a simply false assertion.

 

What part do I not want to get?  You are falsely tying a technology to a reprehensible history of experimentation by the first world on the third world.  I have not denied that such a thing took place.  I will absolutely decry further attempts to do the same.  None of this has any bearing whatsoever on GMOs, though, and this is why I specifically charge you with spreading FUD.  You now know what FUD is.  You have no excuse.

 

"Because I got into this issue via GMO and since the mutations in the genes in GMOs are easier to be bigger (I doubt with the other ways of making strains it would be easy to get roundup-resistance or the gene from arctic fish for strawberries to resist cold more), so bigger change in genes--> bigger fear. Scientific reason for "bigger change-->bigger fear", not really but I admit I have it."

 

What do you mean when you claim that the mutations in the genes in GMOs are easier to be bigger?  I suspect that instead of bigger, you mean more targeted, as there is no reason to believe that the mutation that allows for glyphosate resistance is bigger, whatever that is supposed to mean, but it is a more directed mutation than either of the previous methods of selecting beneficial traits from thousands of individuals or using radiation to induce mutation and selecting the most beneficial phenotypes that arise.  Your fear strikes me as ignorance.  Instead of ignorant fear, I would argue that we should be arguing for responsible genetic manipulation.  GMOs are but one method among many in which humans have altered the plants and animals in our environment.  It is possible that a specific GMO is objectively bad for the environment,  It is also possible that another specific GMO is good.  The method of production of the organism isn't what I would suggest should be feared.  In fact, when one fears the method, then one risks losing the moral standing through which to claim that a particular organism is either beneficial or harmful if it is used en masse.

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​Wanna hear good ones mates ??? What about selling :

 

​- Kosher Salt to Jews (yeah...sodium chloride)

​- Halal Vinegar to Muslims (exclusive proprietary recipe with 0% alcohol)

​- Vitamin B12 to vegans (meat is the only source of it !!! xD)

- Whey Protein to cancer patients (sorry that one's just aweful...)

​- Soy milk to Hindus (adding value to soybean export through sacred cow fanaticism)

 

​Okay all made up bullshit, but some claims made by GMO companies are also quite hilarious...

​Hey don't get me wrong I'm a big fan of dark humor !

You continue to provide a good example of why fear of technology is bad.  As such, your responses aren't entirely worthless, though they are both ignorant and annoying.

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