I’ll be getting to GMO vines; but, before I do, I need to introduce some basic concepts…
I now wish I had come in as an entitled kid, instead of choosing the peace path. If I had come in with a silver spoon stuck in high places, I’d be able to take that money and turn it around into more earth saving preservation efforts. Would I still have the same sensibilities… Yes, my heart tells me I would have; especially since I came into this world through entitled parents, in their own right. While they squandered what they had, I’ve always been more civic minded; so, I could have found ways to try to protect and preserve the earth.
Some in positions of power don’t even realize that they are exploiting the earth in order to amass great wealth, to the detriment of humanity. Instead, at the end of their lives, they’ll create art museums on the way out, to justify their poor decisions for what has happened to human beings and the planet. Case in point… If you can’t get anyone to hang their work in your museum, take up painting images of world leaders from Google images, and hang them in your own museum… George W. Bush’s legacy.
From capitalism, to industrialism, to technologism, to… what can we call this period of the real estate collapse and bank bailouts? Barbarism?
This isn’t a blanket statement, I know, but there is a trend around the one percent that surely (along with history) supports this thinking of barbarism. I’m not negatively impacted by what has happened, because I decided not to buy another house, only to become enslaved by the real owners. For that I’m grateful. I do feel for others, however, which brings me to GMO, because it’s part and parcel of the barbarism.
Proponents will tell you that it’s to have more food for the planet. While that sounds interesting enough, it’s proving to be a false statement.
From farmer Brian Scott on GMOAnswers.com:
I’m a corn and soybean farmer from Indiana with experience raising biotech crops. I like to say that transgenic traits don’t directly increase yield. Not yet, anyway. There are currently no traits that have the effect of saying, “Okay, corn plant. Your potential was 200 bu/A, but now, with this gene, it will be 225 bu/A.” Biotech doesn’t work that way.
The image and adjoining text on Mother Jones Website: Mammary tumors that developed in rats fed GMO corn and/or low levels of Roundup. Whether the feeding regimes can be said to have caused the tumors remains a matter of debate.
Yeah, right, nice try. It used to be what happened in Vegas stayed in Vegas. It’s a digital world, people, and we’re now under a huge, worldwide, electronic high-powered microscope.
Why is there a growing resistance to GMO anything, including grape vines? Because people have – and will always have – a right to know what’s in the food they are eating. And, the jury is still out.
Our children and grandchildren (and we, too) are now being experimented upon. My children ask me, “Why is there so much cancer in humans?” I’d rather have our government researchers spend less money on cancer research CURES, and more money on the cause and effect of GMO crops FOR CAUSING THE DISEASES, for instance. The FDA has approved that which they don’t know yet, whether or not it isn’t good for us, while independent studies have lab rats growing tumors under GMO studies. Leave it to the French to conduct the studies on (poor) rats exposed to low doses of both genetically modified corn and the widely used herbicide Roundup had negative health effects. [Tumors]
We need more long term research… And, with other nations rejecting GMO crops, like Japan, France, Australia, Germany, New Zealand, Austria, Hungary, Greece, Bulgaria, Luxembourg, Madeira, Switzeralnd, India, and Thailand, the world is beginning to take this one on, not only just enraged US citizens. It’s a global economy, and the US ag industry, which uses tons to biotechnology, may have to cool its jets on this one. It’s a world divided, for sure.
It has finally been exposed in the wine business
Let’s just say if it’s happening in France, you can almost bet that it’s quietly going on in the US, and – again – we’ll be told about it mañana.
French anti-GM protestors walk free after destroying vineyard
SUB TITLE on FRI: Fifty four activists who destroyed a field of genetically modified vines in eastern France in 2010 were acquitted by a court of appeal on Wednesday after the Judge declared that the state should never have allowed the plantation of such vines in an open area.
CONTINUING:
The judges ruled that ministerial authorisation to allow a government research body, INRA (National Institute for Agronomic Research), to test out the crops in an area which was surrounded by other vineyards was “illegal”.
The court pronounced that there was “a clear failure to appreciate the inherent risks” of such an experiment in an unconfined space and criticised the lack of a “real study” about the impact of the GM vines.
I’m loving my French roots more and more… Call us rude for feeling that Americans are crude… I believe we are crude.
Let’s review “crude”
crude
kro͞od/
adjective
adjective: crude; comparative adjective: cruder; superlative adjective: crudest
1.
in a natural or raw state; not yet processed or refined.
Being proud that we’re the Wild West, no holds barred, shoot ’em up, bang ’em up, rah, rah, rah… It’s going to be our demise, unless some very important, intelligent people begin to act like adults, here.
We have a right to know if it’s GMO, then… We’ll vote with our pocketbooks. We still have freewill.
And, hey, Mr. Monsanto-grape-growing-investor-guy, who’s already told me once you’d never come back to my Website again, but then couldn’t help yourself the second time… Don’t bother to post how nuts I am, again… You’re equally nuts to be investing your oil money in this one. Go back to Texas, where you belong.
Jo, you do realize that the editors of Food and Chemical Toxicology took the unprecedented step of retracting the Seralini article, right?
http://www.nature.com/news/study-linking-gm-maize-to-rat-tumours-is-retracted-1.14268
That there were so many flaws in it and its “methodology” that it is as if it were never published. Much like the Andrew Wakefield paper on vaccines and autism, which was similarly retracted?
That your breathless, incoherent Mother Jones article is entirely dated and wildly incorrect, having been superceded by all sorts of events in the meantime?
You really should check the facts before you put these assertions out there, as they’re still not correct or supported by any valid study, no matter how much you would like them to be.
The jury isn’t out. The science is settled. You and your side just refuse to look at it, and instead rely on absolute gibberish nonsense from people like Stephanie Seneff that can only get “published” in pay-to-play vanity journals and a horribly flawed paper by Seralini that was so egregiously bad that the journal retracted it. Just because something agrees with your priors doesn’t make it correct — confirmation bias is something we all have to deal with, but a little skepticism is completely warranted here, because the luddites haven’t even proposed a plausible mechanism of harm from GMOs as a category.
So no, there’s ZERO evidence of any issues. All you have are luddite terrorists who have no respect for other people’s property, and the shameful French refusal to enforce the law. But that’s what you expect from a country with a long and shameful history of luddites and Anti-Semitism.
Independent Egyptian scientists have found that Monsanto’s GMO Bt toxic corn is NOT substantially equivalent to its NON GMO parent. While Monsanto claims there is no evidence of toxicity in their voluntary safety assessments, these independent scientists will tell you otherwise. By the 91st day of their studies, they found evidence of kidney, liver & intestinal toxicity, as well as male infertility.
http://www.academia.edu/3138607/Morphological_and_Biochemical_Changes_in_Male_Rats_Fed_on_Genetically_Modified_Corn_Ajeeb_YG_
http://www.academia.edu/3405345/Histopathological_Changes_in_Some_Organs_of_Male_Rats_Fed_on_Genetically_Modified_Corn_Ajeeb_YG_
Independent scientists have told us about it — while this one data point in a minor journal certainly merits further investigation, it’s hardly conclusive, and again, is against the overwhelming weight of evidence to the contrary. I’d treat this the same way I’d treat a paper purporting to prove that there’s a planet between Mercury and the Sun.
But Jo, here you’re yet again falling into the same problem that you did in uncritically citing the incoherent Seneff paper — this isn’t a real journal, despite its name (deliberately chosen, it seems, to play on the authority of the real peer-reviewed American Journal of Science.), which appeared out of nowhere in 2005. As with the “Entropy” vanity press that published Seneff’s nonsense, this too is another pay-to-play vanity journal — not the sort of field-specific independent peer-reviewed journal with standards (like Food and Chemical Toxicology) that would actually decide what to publish or not.
So it’s funny that you tout allegedly “independent” scientists when there’s very little that’s reputable or “independent” about where they’re publishing their “study”.
I don’t know why you’re complaining about being compared to the anti-vaxxers, because this whole “independent scientists agree with us, and the vast majority of the scientific establishment is bought and paid for” conspiracy theory is right out of their playbook.
I’ll continue to look and see what happens to this “paper”, but its only slightly more credible than a 9/11 Conspiracy Theory blog.
I’ll still await your edits to your original post, which in the interests of intellectual honesty, should clearly indicate that the paper was retracted for massive and systematic flaws — not the least of which was the deliberate use of a strain of rats that was specifically bred to develop all sorts of tumors at a very high rate. Some control group!
Hell’s going to have to freeze over.
There are two side to every story. I’ve never made a penny from chemical companies by defending them, and I’m not going to start now.
Nobody’s asking you to defend chemical companies.
The ask was to edit your original post to indicate that the paper you cite (including the misleading picture) had since been retracted for massive and systematic flaws. That’s not “defending chemical companies” — it’s admitting that in trying to attack them, something with which you claim to have scored a big hit was, at best, a blank — if it didn’t backfire entirely.
There are two sides to what 2+2 equals? There are two sides to whether vaccines cause autism?
Clearly, there two sides to whether there are two sides to every story!
You stated it. I question why they retracted… Strong arming is a possibility, and no one is going to reveal that. so, let the two sides exist and let people make their own decisions, as we both have.
Strong-arming isn’t a realistic possibility. That’s the whole point of publishing in peer-reviewed journals — they’re independent and credible, and there are multiple layers of review and multiple constituencies to prevent that. Unlike the pay-for-play vanity journals that publish the “studies” purporting to show harm from GMOs.
There are 2 sides here, and one believes that 2+2=5. They’re not equivalent, and they’re not even close to equally valid.
Again, you wonder why the anti-GMO luddites are associated with the anti-vaxxers? You share the same cherry-picking approach to science, which is utterly devoid of rigor or scientific analysis. This is why neither you nor anybody on your side has ever been able to posit any sort of mechanism of harm that’s common to all GMO products — because you don’t understand what’s going on, and thus conflate a methodology with particular outcomes.
Well, no — you guys are actually worse than the anti-vaxxers, as even their absurd position was based on the Andrew Wakefield paper published in the Lancet, which is one of the preeminent medical journals. And they at least had the silly ideas about “mercury poisoning” from thimerosal and “immune system overload” from “too many vaccines” — which is utterly wrong, and woefully ill-informed on many levels, but it’s at least a theory that posits some conceivable mechanism of action. So the anti-vaxxer nuts at least could point to something in a valid peer reviewed journal for a while, no matter how horribly flawed it was.
(Though it must be pointed out that the Wakefield paper was also withdrawn from publication, though many more years after the fact. Do you question why that was retracted as well? Was strongarming a possibility? I guess we’ll never know!)
People are certainly entitled to their make their own decisions, and to have their own opinions. But they’re not entitled to their own facts.
“If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it.” — Norman Braksick, president of Asgrow Seed Co., a subsidiary of Monsanto, quoted in the Kansas City Star, March 7, 1994
“Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA’s job.” — Phil Angell, Monsanto’s director of corporate communications, quoted in the New York Times, October 25, 1998
And your point?
The whole purpose of FDA labeling is to have to indicate danger or a material difference. There is *none*, and there’s not even any remotely reliable evidence for any, let alone a consensus. Your desire to know that it’s GMO is as irrelevant to the final product as whether it was produced by a wide-species cross, or even less whether the variety was produced by deliberate mutation from megadoses of radiation.
Now *a particular result* of modification (whether “GMO” or “traditional”) may produce a change that would need to be labeled. But that’s not the *method* of modification, which is what you are demanding be labeled, without any reference to any results of that change (or even whether such changes are expressed anywhere in the food being consumed!). Yet again, by erroneously conflating the process and particular results (whether actual or potential), your side just underscores that it has no idea what’s actually going on, or what “GMO” entails.
So as I’ve shown ad nauseam with the entirely parallel case of Vermont’s unconstitutional attempt to have similar labeling for rBST dairy in the 1990s, a law purporting to require labeling food with an indication without any scientifically-supported basis for a difference in its safety or nutritional value is simply not permitted. Your suspicions, fears, or desires to know are simply irrelevant to constitutionally permissible labeling requirements. It’s just as improper to require “union picked” or “non-union picked” labeling for wine as it is to require “GMO labeling”, because in both cases there is the same complete lack of scientific basis for requiring any differences to be indicated.
Rather, any mandatory labeling of “contains GMOs” (as opposed to voluntary “GMO-free” labeling) is unconstitutional compelled speech in violation of the First Amendment. The people you buy from already are doing “GMO-free” labeling on their own. That’s as it should be.
Any you trust the FDA? For me, that’s like say, “We’re going in to eliminate weapons of mass destruction.”
http://omicsonline.org/open-access/detection-of-glyphosate-residues-in-animals-and-humans-2161-0525.1000210.pdf
STUDY: Detection of Glyphosate Residues in Animals and Humans. CHRONICALLY ILL HUMANS HAD SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER GLYPHOSATE RESIDUES IN URINE THAN HEALTHY HUMANS. The presence of glyphosate residues in both humans and animals could haul the entire population towards numerous health hazards. Presence of glyphosate in urine and its accumulation in animal tissues is alarming even at low concentrations. Studying the impact of glyphosate residues on health is warranted and the global regulations for the use of glyphosate may have to be re-evaluated.
Glyphosate FDA approved…
Then why do you want mandatory GMO-labeling? Where do you expect that the regulations and administration of such labeling would come from? Yet another reason why mandatory “GMO” labeling is such a terrible idea, as opposed to voluntary private sector “GMO-free” labeling.
No, I don’t trust the FDA — but the problem is that they’re far too risk averse, not that they’re too risky.
They get in trouble when bad things slip through, not when people don’t get drugs approved in doses high enough to be effective or sunscreen formulations (that we’ve been waiting on for 12 years!), or the hated GMO Aquaadvantage Salmon (submitted in 1996, STILL no final approval almost 18 years later despite no issues at any point). It’s classic case of the Seen and the Unseen, and displays exactly the type of initiative that one would expect from a bureaucracy.
And I fail to see any point about Glyphosate. Not only is it not GMO in any way (it is an herbicide, after all), but you’re falling prey to the same elementary error about causation and correlation — the same way that organic food correlates with autism. http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/ScreenHunter_04-Jan.-07-23.11.jpg
While this one correlative (not causative) study is a suggestive data point (and it would be much more compelling if it were actually published in something other than a bottom-tier open-access journal), it yet again is against the OVERWHELMING scientific consensus to the contrary — that the trace doses of glyphosate that people actually encounter from eating foods treated with glyphosate are unlikely to cause harm.
http://www.biofortified.org/2013/10/glyphosate-toxic/
Again, you complain about being compared to global warming skeptics. So why is that less-supported scientific consensus on the extent of anthropogenic global warming predictions conclusive, while the much stronger scientific consensus on actual harm of GMOs and glyphosate not?
Given your previously-stated certitude on global warming and the environment, you really can’t have it both ways here. So is is a scientific consensus determinative or not?
As an interesting exercise, why not try to compare the rate of harm from glyphosate to the rate of harm of e. coli from organic farming? Even though the actual numbers of glyphosate are much higher, the number of people who have been hospitalized due to “safe” organic farming is distressingly high. (But that’s to be expected from using raw e. coli-infested unprocessed animal feces as fertilizer all over food). Either way, the actual number of cases of harm from glyphosate is ZERO.
In our food: a recent study found that Glyphosate residues in the main foods of the Western diet – sugar, wheat, and genetically modified corn and soy – inhibit critical enzymes in mammals [which] manifests slowly over time, as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body. Source: http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/4/1416
Regarding this: “Again, you complain about being compared to global warming skeptics.” I personally have never complained about this. You have me confused with someone else. I’m not a skeptic.