BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

Interesting that you bring up Canola. (Canada Low Acid). Canada genetically modified Rapeseed. They had to do this because rapeseed was known to cause neurological disorders. Canada claims they bred that out of the plant, but some studies still show that high exposure causes the same problems. Basically, if you can, avoid it.

As far as GM crops in general, I am not opposed to the concept of genetic manipulation, man has been doing it since they have been farming. It is the modern corporate incarnation that is bad. I agree, its all about money, not about food. The company that sells the corn seeds also sells the pesticides since the corn has no resistance to disease anymore, and they keep the politicians stuffed with cash so they can keep doing it.

Movies to watch,

Super Sized Me

Food, Inc.

Yeah, I am also not opposed to production of GM products, but I am opposed to the way that they (Monsanto's specifically) interfere with conventional and organic farming. I also think (and I said this in one of my letters) that in order to have a good economy, you need healthy people to spend money, and in order for people to be healthy, they need to make an informed decision when it comes to what they eat. This is why it's so important to label foods when they are GM, so that people can have some sort of control over what we're eating.

other links of interest:

Send a Message to Politicians

Hopefully, a sign of things to come

As a culinary student and prospective restaurateur, and just someone who likes food, I was absolutely outraged by [the de-regulation]. As in, listening to rage against the machine for the past 3 hours, haha.

Also, since corporations are people now, can we rule that Monsanto has antisocial personality disorder, what with their reckless disregard for the safety and well-being of those around them?

("Antisocial personality disorder is a psychiatric condition in which a person manipulates, exploits, or violates the rights of others. This behavior is often criminal")

Anyway, I need to let this go for a few hours and do some homework.

this is particularly distressing for organic dairy. organic alfalfa is essential to sustainable dairy farming, its a perienniel and you can take 6 cuttings of hay a year from it. the possibility of containimation threatens the very existence of organic dairy farms.

Well, that is a bummer because, as we have seen with corn throughout North America, pollen (which is now practically a flavor of intellectual property) is a very hard thing to contain. We already know how the corporations will behave to protect their property. What we don't know much about is how GMOs will play out in the various ecosystems they overlap with.

also, this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3m5lq9FHDo&NR=1&feature=fvwp

Okay, homework now, for real.

There's not going to be any consumer backlash, sorry. Americans will eat whatever the system tells them to eat, this "organic" trend will be no more of a blip than the generic labeling was in the '90's. The new American way is, grab whatever you can, and if you get enough to be fat and comfortable, you shut up and keep your head down.

Now, if you try and keep a mentally ill asshole from getting an automatic weapon, or allow two people of the same sex to marry and raise children, whoa, then there's outrage. A country of morons. Go Stillerz.

The issue, at its root, is that we treat food as a problem to be solved, rather than an element of culture. I tend to agree with Edmonds--aside from some consumers opting out of the system (read Joel Salatin about opting out), no one really cares, particularly about alfalfa. Consider that most people don't even understand that cows function best when eating grass (because that's how their bodies work), so why would anyone consider the potential ill-effects of mucking with alfalfa?

If stuff like this troubles you, then opt out. Find a small-scale farmer who you can get to know and trust, and support him/her. As I've said elsewhere here, buying your food directly from the person who produced it is a real treat.

why should genetically modified foods be considered inherently worse?

Didn't you hear? Science is evil. Vaccines were invented to give us autism, and global warming is a load of BS imagined up to hurt oil companies.

Another alternative, especially with easier-to-grow options is just doing urban farming yourself. Wherever I move next, I am going to be starting a WindowFarm to start growing small veggies year round.

To be honest, no one knows. We are allowing the corporations to proceed into areas without adequate science in place, with only their most sincere assurances that nothing bad can happen.

However, when seeds are genetically modified to work specifically with pesticides which, oh, by the way, are provided by the same corporation, and patented as well, you have a monopolized system.

And, when they buy Monsanto seeds, the farmers basically have a one year lease on the seeds, they own the product of those seeds, they cannot use seeds from that crop next year, they cannot sell or give away seeds from that crop, and the seeds and all future offspring are forever trackable thru DNA, and Monsanto owns the DNA forever. No problem?

And was implied earlier, the DNA from those seeds can travel to non GMO crops, so Monsanto potentially has a tag on any of that species anywhere on earth. No problem?

@HV- it's not so much that GM is considered worse, but that you can't put the genie back in the bottle so some people would rather see this experiment proceed with more caution and control due to posible implications for the food supply and ecology.

Food is basically never about the food. The last time it was would be thousands of years ago regardless of what you choose or opt into or out of.

It's not that Science Is Bad--it's that we're playing fast and loose with it. As others have pointed out, humans have been genetically modifying food for a long time. And sometimes bad things happen. But agri-business is just out for themselves, and not looking into cross-pollination issues, for example.

My bigger beef with agri-business isn't GM food, necessarily--it's that they do things like sell seeds that produce plants can't be replanted from their own seeds. Think about that for a second. For as long as humans have been farming, we've been able to do it in a way that is self-sufficient: you grow food, and part of that becomes the seed for next year's crop. Suddenly, seeds are intellectual property, and farmers have to buy those seeds every year.

Again, I'm not against science. And I'm not necessarily against responsible genetic manipulation. I am, however, against allowing massive corporations to worry only about their bottom line. Food is a pretty critical thing, right? I kinda care about how I fuel my body.

ok, dwillen, that's a little much.

HV, one of the issues that many people have with modern GMO foods is that when you monkey about with genes that modify a plant's resistance to [insert chemical or pest] and then induce a plant with those genes to grow on a massive scale, you've just altered the environment in a scale/manner that has never happened naturally (aside, perhaps from the sociological parallel of Europeans moving to the Western Hemisphere) - the consequences are not well understood. Most plants cross-polinate with others (which is why Celiacs can't eat oats [the celiacs I know won't eat certified GF oats either]) thereby spreading their genes to other plants in a totally uncontrolled manner.

So what happens when the roundup-ready corn cross polinates with the weeds that roundup was normally used to kill, or the weeds otherwise become roundup-resistant on their own? Original problem comes back, so now we've got to come up with another way to kill off the weeds without killing off the corn.

The problems it may cause are poorly understood, the solutions it poses are temporary at best. Long term, the big winners are the chemical companies and AgriBusiness - not the farmers, not the plants, not the eaters.

At least that's my problem with it. I love the heck outta science, I think it's frigging awesome and as a tool has incredible potential to do both enormous good and catastrophic evil. It's the people who use the tool that determine the outcome. And currently? Those people suck.

check out April Davila's experiment on living a month without monsanto: http://www.aprildavila.com/nonsanto.html

Patents actually don't last forever.

To expand on bjanaczek's post --

You could also consider growing some of your own food using the Mittleider method. I've used it the last couple of years. The results are pretty spectacular.

It adapts to something as small as a grow-box just several feet long -- something like a large box planter you see on people's porches. Since many of the people on this board are city residents with limited space, if you have a porch or an area with sun exposure, it should work.

You can grow a lot of food with it in a small space, something that's important if your space is limited as it typically is in the city.

http://foodforeveryone.org/

Mittleider is not completely organic in its original form -- you do need some commercial fertilizer at the beginning. But there are both organic and hydroponic versions of it.

http://www.howtoorganicgarden.com/

http://www.hydroponics-at-home.com/hydroponics-grow-box.html

One other nice thing about the method is that while some time goes into the preparation to plant, once everything is in and growing, maintenance and weeding (and I really HATE to weed) is pretty minimal.

my girlfriend (and me when I bike up there) work on an organic veggie farm that has started taking orders for next seasons CSA... these people are really good at what they do, are the veggie suppliers for legume in regent square, and would love to have your business!

pm me or cantact them for more info:

http://www.whocooksforyoufarm.com/csa/

my girlfriend (and me when I bike up there) work on an organic veggie farm that has started taking orders for next seasons CSA... these people are really good at what they do, are the veggie suppliers for legume in regent square, and would love to have your business!

pm me or cantact them for more info:

http://www.whocooksforyoufarm.com/csa/

The past three posts have put my anger into constructive words better than I ever could. (Note: there have been 5 or 6 new posts between when I typed this and when I hit "post")

It just makes me wonder: We know that this strain of alfalfa can be sprayed with roundup (an herbicide which kills any plant it touches) and not die. While there may be farmers who still try not to spray the actual product with roundup, most will be looking at the bottom line: it's quicker to just spray it all, and time=money, therfore, its cheaper to distribute alfalfa which has been sprayed with herbicide. this is turned into cattle feed, which then is absorbed into the hide, meat, and milk of the animal, and eventually into us. Roundup isn't something that can be washed off of the grass, or killed with cooking. it's there.

What more do we expect from a company which was one of the main manufacturers of Agent Orange?

By the way, I grow my own vegetables in the summer in a little garden in my back yard. I shop at the farmers' market. I buy organic stuff at the co-op. I vote with my dollars.

For everyone who thinks that GM crops are the death of the human race, please explain how you aim to resolve the problem of feeding the ever increasing world population using exclusively non-GM crops.

On a related not, thank goodness the courts rejected a corporate patent claim on the "breast cancer gene" last year. If that had succeeded, one corporation would actually "own" one particular DNA sequence in every human on earth, would control all science and research involving that DNA. Think about that, if you the giveaways involving mineral rights and railroad rights in the previous centuries were problematic, corporations want to own the human body, and will do so if allowed. No problem.

Another mess of misconceptions best discussed over a nice malted beverage.

there are too many people. that's not a problem that I want to even pretend to solve. I know for sure though that I'd rather support fewer people on a globally sustainable diet than more people on enhanced cereal grains.

IF companies like Monsanto really cared about world hunger and overpopulation, they couldn't sell seed to developing nations that are useless after one growing season.

Companies like Monsanto hire many, many scientists like myself. They create tons of highly-skilled jobs , and produce a product. To pay their highly-skilled workforce, and return money to their investors, they must rely on patent protection, much the same way any other industry does.

I am not here to defend Monsanto in particular, but the idea that companies should invest billions of dollars to develop and produce a product like GM seeds and not make any money off it because it is the "right thing to do" is sort of silly.

One day Monsanto chemicals and seeds will be off patent, and third world countries will be able to grow and use them without a problem. They benefit from the same research, just at a later time.

Bear in mind, there's a difference between "genetic modification" and "Monsanto". Corporate greed does not mean that the tools they use to enrich themselves are inherently evil, just that the corporate entity is behaving exactly as it is designed to do.

It's important to separate the science from those who make unethical use of it.

[edited to add:] I mean, those who *may* make unethical use of it. I don't claim any in-depth knowledge of any misdeeds.

well they can and they do because yeilds are higher and traditional crops are displaced and they become locked into a system. however, despite increased global grain production, the population continues to rise beyond what can be met, and more significantly food is not distributed evenly so perhaps more people suffer from food insecurity than did prior to Monsanto and the Green Revolution.

eta: this was in response to RF

You can make money while actually helping people. Monsanto isn't doing that.

My restaurant won't be for-profit, and all proceeds will go to the local schools in my hometown. Right now, I'm in talks with farms local to that area to make sure that when I open, I won't be buying any Monsanto products from them.

"...corporations want to own the human body, and will do so if allowed."

Details may vary, but that's the bottom line.

"...just that the corporate entity is behaving exactly as it is designed to do."

And it is the job of the government (i.e. by the people, for the people, which allows the corporation to exist as such) to regulate and ensure that corporations behave in the public interest. Which the people continue to allow to erode rapidly. And back to "a country of morons".

we've seen the shortcomings of big industrial monoculture approaches, so I disagree with continuing to export that idea as the only salvation to 3rd world contries. It has nothing to do with Monsanto being evil or the duration of the patents. It's a problem (food shortages) that I believe was attempted to be solved in a very shortsighted way (worse off than without the "solving")

thanks for all the quick and informative answers, folks. i hadn't really thought about this sort of thing before.

my question came from the idea that the food is actually about the food, and the many claims of anti-gm folks regarding the food itself are often so fanciful that it's hard to take any of them seriously.

i wasn't thinking about the ecology of food production, really. i expect i'll look more into that.

there are too many people.

that's a pretty powerful claim, don't you think?

Bear in mind, there's a difference between "genetic modification" and "Monsanto". Corporate greed does not mean that the tools they use to enrich themselves are inherently evil, just that the corporate entity is behaving exactly as it is designed to do.

it's like: axe-murderers and chainsaw massacrers are forever making the lumberjack's hard more difficult.

That is sort of a blanket statement. I can't imagine any large company in this day that doesn't have a philanthropic branch dedicated to "helping people".

Indeed, as evil as Monsanto probably is, they do help people every so often:

http://www.monsanto.com/ourcommitments/Pages/default.aspx

http://www.monsantofund.org/pdf/mon_fund_08-09_report.pdf

And it is the job of the government (i.e. by the people, for the people, which allows the corporation to exist as such) to regulate and ensure that corporations behave in the public interest. Which the people continue to allow to erode rapidly.

Heh. Paging Mencken...

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard."

yeah it is, but I say it because, regardless of what we as a people eat, there isn't enough for everyone. Also, I don't believe in decreasing the quality of the food supply to support a larger population. I certainly don't want to see people suffer, but I think MORE suffering results from a food supply where people are dependant on cheap food rations.

"...corporations want to own the human body, and will do so if allowed."

Details may vary, but that's the bottom line.

"...just that the corporate entity is behaving exactly as it is designed to do."

And it is the job of the government (i.e. by the people, for the people, which allows the corporation to exist as such) to regulate and ensure that corporations behave in the public interest. Which the people continue to allow to erode rapidly. And back to "a country of morons".

why should corporations be expected to act in the public's interest? is not our entire economic system based on the idea that they will act in their own interests?

this sort of reminds me of the "big business is evil" shouts of the 90s. it was all very hand-wavy then, and so it is now. we have a few examples at the extreme end, but there is no consolidated interest called "big business" against which we might battle.

we as a culture have accepted as useful the corporate idea. what has changed since then that we should cast it away completely?

I certainly don't want to see people suffer, but I think MORE suffering results from a food supply where people are dependant on cheap food rations.

I think it's a question of the long view versus the immediate. For us, we are fortunate enough to live in a culture of such affluence that we can take the long view. I suspect that the answer to "would you rather have more food now and more suffering later?" would be very different from someone who has starvation staring their family in the face.

This is not intended to be a knock on anyone here...just an observation that it's a lot easier to say no to 'more' when you already have 'plenty'.

reddan, just to be clear I'm not suggesting we cut off anyone from Monsanto crops cold turkey, or even at all. I think the problem was approached the wrong way from the beginning and perhaps different approaches should be more seriously considered.

My intent was certainly not to throw a blanket of corporations as evil. The corporation is a valuable and indespensible societal and economic entity. However as assemblages of individuals, I believe they carry equal potential to do harm as they do good. And our society increasingly allows the fox to guard the henhouse.

We enjoyed a brief window of "balance" between corporations and the public interest that began with Theodore Roosevelt, and has been chipped away at since. But that balance went completely down the toilet with the recent "Citizens United" ruling from the Supreme Court. We the people are now not all that dissimilar from chickens in a factory farm, the elite humor the public and keep them around for their ability to produce income. So be happy.

a good book I recommend is "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver. One family's quest to live solely on locally-produced food. Very well-written, accessible and informative.

RE books: Anything by Michael Pollan

anyone on twitter who wants to keep up with this:

#FF @SlowFoodUSA @foodfirstorg @food_democracy @FightBigFood @FairFoodFight @OrganicConsumer @michaelpollan

I think the problem was approached the wrong way from the beginning and perhaps different approaches should be more seriously considered.

Agree wholeheartedly. Unsustainable growth sucks.

RE: literature:

Mother Earth News is a half-decent magazine for DIY food production and sustainable living. (I miss their older editorial style, when they included plans for things like your own forge, arc welder, and crossbow, but the softer focus they have today is still quite informative.)

k, I'd also like to point out that the 'enough food for people' issue is one of DISTRIBUTION, not yield. At least not in yield that *must* be increased via Monsanto products. Yield can be increased any manner of ways, most of which have been around for a few hundred years or more.

I'm not making a statement as to the acceptableness or sustainability of our current population numbers in any manner other than feeding them - that IS possible, with the right logistics, education, and effort.

Simply because the human race hasn't solved that problem doesn't mean it can't be solved with the tools at hand. It usually means it can't be profited from.

I agree with you, ejwme, mostly. lol, I almost used all caps for the word "distributed" in one of my relpies above. Distribution is definitely the biggest shortcoming that has resulted from the Monsanto solution.

@HV: Your points about corporations are true, but the issue here is that thanks to MASSIVE gub'mint subsidies, both farmers and consumers are very much beholden to agri-business' interests. If what I've read (and heard) is to be believed, the FDA is making harder for small-scale farmers to exist.

Add to the reading list anything by Joel Salatin. Yes, he is a wacky libertarian (and a Christian, to boot!), but he has very much been on the front lines of small farming for a long time. Oh, and Wendell Berry, too.

I agree with ejwme's comment about the problem of distribution. Consider that we burn hectares of corn thanks to ethanol subsidies.

Also, I don't believe in decreasing the quality of the food supply to support a larger population.

has this happened? is norman borlaug's grain any less nutritious than what it replaced?

is norman borlaug's grain any less nutritious than what it replaced?

My understanding is that nutrition is unaffected, but other factors (the aforementioned Roundup resistance being conveyed to weeds, for example) should be taken into account. Quality isn't just "does it fill my belly?", but also "can I rely on my kids being able to grow equivalent quantities of food?".

Again, it goes back to context. In the States, IMO, there is no bloody need to further enhance yield. Elsewhere in the world may be a different story...

Yes there is a need to enhance yield. We need more farmland to build more exurbs on. And then we need more corn to make ethanol to replace the oil we burned driving to get there.

Even Vikings farmed (from the interweb): " There was a shortage of land to farm, and this might have been a problem that forced the Vikings to attack neighboring tribes for more land. Because of this shortage of land, Viking farms were small. Soil was poor, and needed a great deal of care. The Vikings main crop was onions, leeks, peas, and cabbage."

The Vikings main crop was onions, leeks, peas, and cabbage.

Geez. No wonder they preferred to go raiding.

"Helga?!? Screw the cabbage broth! I'm going to England for mutton and mead."

The case of Percy Schmeiser is an interesting one. The situation is not hopeless. I think the technology is important to explore, but industry is bad at regulating itself and there might be other ways to fund scientific research. There are also a lot of really important things to explore in science that may not lead directly to a profit. Humans have been culturing cells for a long time (yogurt) and hybridizing crops for a long time, too. Genetic modification via inter-species mashups is pretty new and a lot of scientists (though not all) have questions about what it means for the future of (food, life forms, etc). Meanwhile, it is tragic and cruel to deny people the ability to cultivate land and save/exchange seeds themselves & to allow industry to completely screw over something as life-sustaining and basic as water. Right now the GMO seeds might be increasing crop yields but they're also reintroducing debt peonage. People are fighting back though. There are one or more lawsuits regarding the patents on the BRAC1 and BRAC2 genes, for example.

I think there can be different models for funding the important work of scientists, and different ways of testing and regulating it as well.

Also, I don't believe in decreasing the quality of the food supply to support a larger population.

has this happened? is norman borlaug's grain any less nutritious than what it replaced?

sorry, I don't know how to make quotes in italics- regarding quality of the food supply, no the new grains wouldn't be less nutritious. In may cases they have tried to enhance the nutrition of the GM grains. However, the new grains may replace other food items that used to be traditionally in the diet. Filling more people's bellies with more grains is not an adequate substitute for hunger/nutrition/local food supply. So, making more and more of the wold relient on a handful of grains is in itself a decrease in the quality of the food supply.

There might be other ways of funding science that is not profitable, but it isn't happening. Not much support in this political climate for additional science funding at the taxpayer expense. NSF and NIH funding has been rather stagnant for years, and what funding there is gets channeled into universities who produce more and more scientists, who then have nowhere to work when they get spit out the other side of the academia production line.

@dwillen: similar case in the arts (my field)

go into defense! the government is willing to spend tankers full of dollars on things for which they provide the only market.

i better watch what i say, though. don't want to endanger my employment!

say what you want about GM crops, but my right to eat organic dairy crops is threatened by monsanto (because orangic food cannot be GM).

furthermore, i think in the near future that GM food products are a technological dead end. sure, they can crank out single gene transfer round-up ready anything. but what happened to high hopes of drought resistence or anything more complex? where are the GM wonder crops? the truth is they have hit a technical brick wall in the further pursuit of genetic technology. while some breakthroughs like gene mapping will be extremely useful, this only serves to make traditional plant breeding that much more efficient and superior.