Posted on 04/03/2013 8:47:43 AM PDT by Sir Napsalot
The past week has seen a tsunami of stories about the so-called “Monsanto Protection Act,” more accurately known as Section 735 of HR 933. It’s a tiny provision attached to a massive agricultural spending bill signed into law by President Obama last week.
According to detractors, Section 735 is the “most dangerous food act ever” and a “terrifying piece of policy.” Why? Because, among other claims, it purportedly allows biotech companies to sell seeds that can cause serious consumer health problems. Here is how Gawker frames it:
"Section 735 effectively shields large biotech companies, like Monsanto, from the federal courts in case something is found to be harmful in their genetically-modified seeds. Because of Section 735, federal courts would be powerless to stop Monsanto from selling their product"
Just as shocking, activists claim, the provision was secretly written by Monsanto, stealthily inserted into the bill in the dead of night by its Congressional backroom lackeys and then placed on the desk of President Barack Obama, who is so in hock to biotech special interests that he sold out the public and signed the bill, rider intact, therefore undermining American democracy. No kidding. That’s the way even mainstream bloggers and news outlets discuss this legislation. “Monsanto teams up with Congress to shred the Constitution,” shrieked one Huffington Post headline. Hundreds of thousands of angry anti-GMO protestors have signed online petitions expressing their outrage.
Let’s separate the facts from the fury.
(Be sure to read the rest from the original article)
(Excerpt) Read more at geneticliteracyproject.org ...
Apparently, you know as little about Mercola as you do about aspartame and Monsanto. Are you currently occupying Monsanto?
Should Monsanto own a crop just because their pollen blew into the field? Lots of people are cautious of the Frankenstein seed.
Monsanto is one company that probably should be occupied, but no, I’m not doing the job.
And you doubt the article that clearly states that aspartame has the highest rate of complaints to the FDA and why the bureaucrat’s explanation on Snopes is disinformation?
Are you a Monsanto lackey?
The story was originally made up by a farmer who purchased soybeans he knew to have been “Round-Up Ready” from the local elevator and planted them, thinking he had avoided paying the license fee.
The larger issue with Monsanto is what their genetically modified seeds, specifically in corn, are doing to worldwide bee populations.
From what I’ve read, their corn seeds, which produce a built-in insecticide, are known to cause CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder), which causes entire colonies of bees to either die or vanish. Populations are down by nearly 50 percent in some parts of the world.
I’m not a huge environmentalist, but I’ve read that four bites out of every six bites of food you put in your mouth were pollenated by bees at some point in the food cycle.
And we also keep bees. Full disclosure.
Genetically modified seeds don’t contain a herbicide. They have a genetic trait added, or removed, which renders a particular type of herbicide less effective on them.
Ah, letting the other anti-capitalists express your ideology for you, huh?
And you doubt the article that clearly states that aspartame has the highest rate of complaints to the FDA and why the bureaucrat’s explanation on Snopes is disinformation?
If you had any clue as to what aspartame is made from, you'd realize what a ridiculous statement that is. You'd also understand why Mercola is well known as an internet charlatan. But you don't have a a any idea what it is you're afraid of, only that you read it on the internet so it must be true.
Are you a Monsanto lackey?
No, I'm a capitalist who likes it when American companies are the best in their industry. I'm also a guy who happens to understand enough about food science to know that your fear of Monsanto is based on ignorance and emotion. That fact makes you a potential lackey for anyone, or any organization, with an agenda. Keep up the good work. The world needs Luddites too.
Figure (solely for the sake of this calculation, so make up any odds you want) the odds of pollen from the tassels in one field landing on the silk of a corn plant in another field.
There is one silk per kernel, about 150,000 kernels per pound of corn, 56 pounds of corn per acre, the average corn yield in the US is something in the range of 150 bushels per acre and in my part of the country the average corn field is maybe 80 acres.
It is not possible for all of the kernels in one field to have been pollinated by pollen from the tassels in a neighboring or more distant field.
When seed corn is raised, the tassels of the plants sought to be pollinated are removed (or otherwise made not to produce pollen) and the pollen from the variety the corn is to be crossed with is artificially dusted onto the silk. It's a labor intensive, expensive proposition.
In a village in India's poorest state, Bihar, farmers are growing world record amounts of rice – with no GM, and no herbicide. Is this one solution to world food shortages?
Using absolutely no machines, a farmer has produced 22.4 tons of rice on a single hectare, about 2½ acres, of land.
The real fact is that Indian rice yields are about 1/2 the world average, while US rice yields are almost twice the world average. Oh, and my family has enough to eat.
… – grown an astonishing 22.4 tonnes of rice on one hectare of land. This was a world record and with rice the staple food of more than half the world's population of seven billion, big news.
... Sumant Kumar has outproduced—by a full two tons!—the Chinese agricultural scientist called the “father of rice”, who’d previously held the record for rice output.. It puts to shame anything produced by World Bank funded scientists of the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. No genetically modified crops, for all their claims, have come close.
Swell. I personally farm about 100 times as much land as this guy’s whole family; have time for a job in town, don’t have to stack manure to dry on my window sills, was able to put my kids through parochial schools, through college and post-graduate schools. But if this guy is your model, go for it.
Do you think the rice they are using in this project hasn't been genetically modified in some way over time? Are you sure the rice they're using isn't a relative of one of the many high yield rice strains Norman Borlaug developed back in the 60s'?
You do realize that the work Borlaug did to create rice that was more disease resistant, and that produced greater yields, was genetically modified, right?
Of interest to gardeners & preppers?
That's true, but is a non sequitur because Colonel_Flagg was addressing the genetically engineered introduction of insecticidal factors into some crops.
They don’t contain an insecticide either. Although my point would be less confusing were I to learn to read a little better.
I went to your source to see what they had to say about aspartame. They quote the clown Doctor of Alchemy who has the website you referred to. Surprise!!!
It turns out to be one of those companies selling quack medicine. Of course quacks don’t want the public to buy thoroughly tested and scientifically researched products, they want to sell their own snake oil.
I don’t rely 100% on Snopes (politically left) that is why I also included Truth or Fiction.com.
I found two articles that have relevancy to honey bees (and CCD esp)
Honey Bees: Bt corn Not Likely the Causal Agent for Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)
and more recently
Genetically Engineered Crops in the Real World – Bt Corn, Insecticide Use, and Honey Bees
At least according to both articles, the expressed insecticidal toxin in Bt corns is not the cause. The 2nd article blamed the seed treatment.
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