Sign Petition to stop GMO Alfalfa from entering circulation - Page 16

Why doesn't monsanto sue the bees and wind for cross pollination? lol

I'm sure that was an unbiased discussion.

What happens is that once the GMO crosses it doesn't go away.  The farmer who has their seed invaded (for lack of a better word) by the GMO crop can not sell their crop as non gmo, non organic.  In addition, Monsanto has claimed in court that that farmer, by planting the seeds of the crops that are crossed, are violating patent laws and are planting that crop illegally.  Which is a load of bull.  So, essentially monsanto convinces several farmers in various places in an area to grow their crop, on the basis that it is easier, cheaper, more productive, more disease resistant, and garners you a larger check.  (I'll address the inaccuracy of this in a minute) So, then they go in in the fall and demand to test the crops of the farmers who did not choose to plant their seed, find that it has crossed, and essentially put them out of business.

  And where did you get the "facts" that you're stating?

The inaccuracies:  cheaper, easier, productive, disease resistant, blah blah.  The problem with this, that monsanto does not care about and most farmers either don't think to take into consideration or just don't care (I said most, so don't snap my head off if you are not one of these farmers)is that this is very very energy intensive.  You save in that you don't put so much of your own physical energy into it, but you waste so much more in fossil fuels and highly sophisticated machinery, etc.  In addition, by planting those crops, such as the ones that are roundup resistant, you can lay down an intensive blanket of roundup to kill every plant in the field(s) and for quite aways around the field(s) which also kills the insects and the birds and the small mammals and etc.  It also affects the field(s) of the farmer who has planted near yours which if they don't have roundup ready gmo crops means that their crops suffer.  Oh yeah, its a great system  

Not true.  It actually takes less fossil fuel.  Less trips over the field for tillage of weeds= less fossil fuel used.  If sprayed correctly  there is very little drift from round-up.  It does not kill insects ( I wish it did) nor birds or small mammals

And before anyone bring up the whole "well you can't feed the world with rotational, organic, natural planting practices" arguement I'd have to say, "why do we have to feed the world?"  We have people starving here in our own country and we are shipping food to other countries?  Why?  If it is so cheap to produce and is so healthy for you, why do we have people going hungry?  Why can't those people afford the food grown here in the US?  I'd rather plant an acre vegetable garden, and have enough food for myself and two or three of my neighbors, and call it good.

I agree, we shouldn't be trying to feed the whole world.....we also should worry about the homeless people here and those who can't afford healthcare, etc.  The United States has had the "save the world" mentality since long before GM crops came about so I don't think that has any bearing.

As for this quote:

"Since 1997, we have only filed suit against farmers 145 times in the United States. This may sound like a lot, but when you consider that we sell seed to more than 250,000 American farmers a year, its really a small number. Of these, weve proceeded through trial with only eleven farmers. All elevan cases were found in Monsantos favor."

This sounds not so bad, but it does not cover settlements made before trial, does not cover Canada or other countries and does not say anything about farms that did not go to trial and what became of their situation (especially if Monsanto quietly admitted fault). This only is clear on what is already public knowledge.

Katy; I understand where you are comming from.  It is personal to you; it affects your family and way of life.  I respect your opinion.  I read the articles that you linked.  I'm going to quote a part from one and then tell a story.

"There is no need for, or value in testing the safety of GM foods in humans. So long as the introduced protein is determined safe, food from GM crops determined to be substantially equivalent is not expected to pose any health risks. Further, it is impossible to design a long-term safety test in humans, which would require, for example, intake of large amounts of a particular GM product over a very large portion of the human life span. There is simply no practical way to learn anything via human studies of whole foods. This is why no existing food--conventional or GM--or food ingredient/additive has been subjected to this type of testing."  This is just a tiny part of the whole article.  Be sure to read the whole thing so as not to take this out of context.  This is from the second link you provided and it scares me.  To me it means that Monsanto can't test humans quickly, so that means we will have to see what happens in the future.  Scary to me.

Now my story.  My mother had a miscarrage before me and one after me.  I am her only child.  In her desperation to save her baby (me) she had a drug given to her that was a 'miracle' of the times; the late 1950's.  It was called DES.  It was only later that the problems associated with the drug and the daughters of the mothers that took it were discovered.  It was taken off the market before her last miscarrage.
Here's a link that talkes about the problems: www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/daughters-exposed-to-des

I won't bore you with my health issues from this drug, but I will tell you that I am missing some fairly critical parts because of it.  On one hand you might say that if natural selection had been able to work properly, I most likely would not be here.  I guess we'll never know about that one for sure. 

So as I'm sure you can understand, messing around with the natural selection process is personal to me, too.  The more I learn, the more I don't like 'engineering' with my food or medicines...