Yep. I see them blatantly lying about my field (plant science) all the time, sometimes even attacking research, and their efforts have helped set it back by at least a decade. I have a very hard time trusting them about anything else when they so readily disregard facts to drum up controversy.

No. Let's just say you have someone who you know lies, and lies often. The last thing the said was a blatant lie, the thing they said before that was also a lie. Now they make a new claim. Do you run out and put time and effort investigating the claim, or just assume that, given the history of falsehoods and deceit, this is also likely a lie. Greenpeace lies. A lot.

Now, you're right, what they say here could be truthful, they could very well be right, but I see no reason to assume this is anything but yet another hit piece in a long line of deception, and as such, I'm going to default to making the safe assumption that this is not true. It's a boy who cried wolf situation. I'm not going to evaluate every questionable claim biased and frequently unscientific organizations like Greenpeace make. If someone with an ounce of credibility supports these claims, then maybe this will be worth thinking about. In the meantime, it's just Greenpeace being Greenpeace.

Check out the Breadfruit Institute for a good group on that topic. Breadfruit is highly productive and can be grown in some of the poorest most food insecure regions on the globe.

That's close, but not entirely true. Some apple trees are triploid, like Gravenstein and Jonagold, but most are diploid, so not really polyploid. Apple seeds will grow just fine, but the reason they are grafted is because they are very heterozygous, and as such, any seedlings will not have the same genetic characteristics as the original parent apples, and in all likelihood will be inferior. When people breed apple trees, they can go through thousands of seedlings only to find one tree with superior fruit. By grafting, you keep the superior genetics of an exceptional fruit, like Honeycrisp. Most fruit crops are reproduced asexually in some way for this reason, with the exception of cantaloupe, watermelon, and papaya, which have much shorter lifespans, and as such are much easier to work with. Trees are also grafted because, by using mature plant material, the tree will come to bearing faster, and you can select rootstock that offers dwarfing and disease resistance traits, which are useful.

You are right that he was against grafting though, proclaiming that it was wicked, damaging, and against the will of God. Unfortunately, judging by the modern opposition to GMOs, humanity did not learn anything from his silliness. Today, we have opposition to the Arctic apples, which hopefully will be released soon, which have the relatively simple trait of non-browning. Anti-GMO people claim they are worried that GMO apples will cross pollinate other apples, despite the simple fact that apples are asexually propagated. That's right, these folks don't know the first, most basic things about apple biology, but damn it they're going to pound in their stupid point anyway no matter how wrong they are. Ridiculous.

Maybe they'll split the difference and go with Vader Did Nothing Wrong.

I can get wanting to protect something, but legally blocking something is just clinging to the past. I'll bet there used to be dozens of small buggy whip makers throughout France; too bad for them. It wasn't big business that killed them, it was technological progress. Now, if the people want to preserve the small shops, that's fine, they should shop at the small local shops. I sure do. I don't want to see video stores go extinct due to Netflix so I shop at mine, and I don't want to see book stores go away so I shop at my local bookstore. Just bought a book from them to start reading soon. But I'm not about to block anyone else from doing anything. The justification is understandable, but not sufficient. If the people of France really do not want free shipping, they can continue to shop at the small stores. If they do not, well, then I guess that shows what they really want.

Corporate issues have no bearing on this. Newspapers, radio stations, and television stations are also for profit entities but forcing them to remove articles or broadcasts is also censorship, or does their corporate nature make them fair game too? This is actively obfuscating public information to censor it.

So to you freedom is telling other people what they can and can't say and what public information they can and can't access because the truth could be abused? From where I'm standing it looks like you're trying to tell me that censorship is freedom, and it sounds more than a little Orwellian to me.

Yeah, I also noticed that. It surprised me how many Europeans were actually defending censorship. Are they surprised that censorship ends poorly?

Is Google actually being compensate for this though? Perhaps the EU should start their own Ministry to censor what people should just forget and cut out the middleman.

Called it, in case you check old comments and had any doubt this, like all GMOs, would also be targeted.

Wow, for a second there I thought you were going to cite something other than the infamous Schmeiser case where the guy knowingly and intentionally saved seed he knew was cross pollinated. Accidental cross pollination does not equal knowing reproduction. That's like saying you can get sued for home movies and citing someone who got in trouble for recording inside a theater. You left out the most critical detail.

Offhand I would speculate that, if forever reason, a farmer was trying to age seed to decrease the viability for whatever unknown reason they could simply check some records and find out if the numbers add up. It's an odd situation you've come up with, perhaps you could throw me a shred of something beyond blatant speculation.

Okay then, prove that it's happened once.

Like I said, if someone has a better idea than the current system, I'm listening. Or are you implying the commonly spread falsehood that people get sued for mere cross pollination?

Breeding is a type of genetic modification, one of many (yes, there are more than two). You just change more genes and in a generally less predictable way.

That's an ignorant argument though. It's like telling a doctor not to bandage a slit wrist because it doesn't fix the underlying problem. No one is saying these types of things should be permanent, they're just to keep people healthy until economic development can provide a better diet. Somehow I doubt the people this would help are going to play the nirvana fallacy. Your cost claim is ridiculous. It costs a lot less to make a GMO than to fix a shitload of socioeconomic and political problems. As for your corporate issue, this is developed by a university funded by a charity. Perhaps you should RFTA before making assumptions. You've just justified the GP's post.