Oh, the corporate conspiracy card, that didn't take long. My university has often been accused of being part of that conspiracy. We're not, and it is an easily verifiable matter of public record, but the lovely thing about a conspiracy is that everything that disproves it is just part of the conspiracy. It's great for when you want to make wild claims with bugger all to back them.

I'd say its more like those who trust science and those who think science is a corporate conspiracy (see anti-vaxxers for reference). Just because a corporation uses something does not make that thing corporate in nature. Companies that sell GPS devices use relativity, but no one would ever bring up those companies in a physics discussion, unlike when the topic of genetic engineering and the related manufactroversy comes up.

Yes, accusing researchers of all being in a plot to make money. I've never heard anyone do that before. By the way, did you know that vaccination and climate change are also plots to make money?

People will say GE crops are bad if they can cross pollinate, bad if they can survive in the wild, bad if they can't cross pollinate, and bad if they can't survive on their own. Yay double standards.

Except you're wrong. That was not protecting Monsanto, it was protecting farmers from having to destroy their crops (conditional on regulatory approval) in the event a lawsuit challenged the deregulation of an already planted crop, as happened in the case of glyphosate resistant sugar beets. Of course, the GMO denialists, for whom everything is about the Monsanto conspiracy, decided to give that a clever and misleading name, Monsanto Protection Act, because they know bugger about the agricultural issues it centered around. But I'm sure Monsanto is so big and bad that lying to make you're wrong point is totally justified.

Which has absolutely nothing to do with genetic engineering. HGT happens, indeed it does, it's how we get things like pea aphids with fungus genes and sea slugs with algae genes, but it happens at an extremely small rate, and there is nothing particularly exceptional about a transgene that makes is any more or less to be transferred in such manner. That is a completely nonsensical line of thought that somehow HGT implies we should not use genetically engineered crops.

In theory, yes, it is possible that an herbicide resistance gene could jump to a weed species. In practice, that's not really a concern. The selection of herbicide resistant weed mutants is a very real and very serious problem, but that is a problem older than genetic engineering, does not occur via horizontal gene transfer, is not a problem intrinstic to GE crops but rather is due to poor resistance management strategies and over reliance (which is not the same as over use) on one mode of action of herbicide, and let me remind you, it is a problem because it threatens the benefits that those herbicide resistant crops already provide. Anti-GMO groups would have you believe that herbicide resistant crops are without benefit while simultaneously saying that herbicide resistant weeds which lessen the benefits of herbicide tolerant GMOs are these world ending 'superweeds'. In other words, they're bad because they have no benefits at all and they're bad because their benefits are diminishing. Talk about having your cake and eating it too.

Plant scientist here. It absolutely is.

You're lying, You're not just ignorant, you're actively lying right now. Google the term 'GMO' and you will find tons of such claims very quickly. Hell, Jeffery Smith, one of the most notable anti-GMO activists, claims that GMOs promote AIDS. Acting as if the opposition is not claiming all sorts of bogus health scares is patently deceptive.

What IP problems? The fact that they receive a patent for a certain amount of years? You know, exactly like conventionally bred crops which have no such controversy. Yes, plenty of conventionally bred crops are patented so I guess you oppose conventional breeding too, otherwise you are being pretty selective in your logic. Patents that expire, like Monsanto's first GE soybean patent does in a few months? Or are you referring to the often claimed but completely false myth that Monsanto goes around suing small farmers if they get cross pollinated by GE pollen? Because if so, you don't have a leg to stand on. So tell me, what exactly is wrong with the IP issues surrounding GE crops, and what is your proposed fair alternative?

This right here is my big problem with the anti-GMO thing. You drop people who know bugger all about agriculture into a topic they don't understand and you get these sorts of misconceptions. Yes, some GE crops are resistant to certain herbicides (the other main type which you conveniently neglected to mention is insect resistant ones which require less insecticides). Sounds bad, I agree, but only because you have been dropped in the middle of a story you haven't been following from the beginning. Okay, you use more of one type of herbicide, like glyphosate or glufosinate, but you can use better weed management practices (like no till farming, which conserves soil nutrients and reduces runoff problems) and you use less of harsher herbicides like atrazine. I'd call that a win. Do you have abetter weed management solution?

An appeal to nature followed by an appeal to ignorance. I hope that's all I need to say about that. You could just as easily make the same claim about vaccines, wifi, fluoride, or damn near anything, and be just as wrong and for the same reasons. Also, you neglect to mention the very careful regulations these things already go through. How about you provide a good reason to suspect GE crops of being potentially intrinsically dangerous, rather than just saying that because I can't all-knowingly prove a negative that your point therefore has merit.

I hope I've demonstrated why the anti-GMO nonsense is exactly like the anti-vaccine nonsense.

The corporate conspiracy card doesn't make sense when anti-vaxxers use it, and it doesn't hold water here either. There is plenty of evidence demonstrating the safety and benefits of genetically engineered crops which have been published by independent sources. That the GMO denialists choose to ignore that or act as if big bad Monsanto somehow controls every single thing that goes against their ideology is their own self-made problem.

You shouldn't make assumptions. I work in plant breeding, an area where patents are very controversial, with an active anti-agriculture movement who often claims that there should be no patents on the plants people like me work hard to develop, and that people like me should work for free or not at all. I've got some nifty new things right now I hope get patented in due time. I've dealt with real anti-IP sentiment, I've defended patents and copyright in general at length, and I fully agree that those who say there should be no IP of any kind are just looking to get stuff, and are deluding themselves when they say everyone can simply stop paying for movies, games, programs, ect. and the creaters will still, somehow, get a return on their creative investment.

But that's not that this is about. The copyright system as it stands now is broken, and badly. I fully realize that creators should get control of their works for a time, but this 70 years after you die stuff...how is copyright on the works of someone who has been dead for half a century fostering the arts? I get that if someone dies their next of kin should be supported and all, I'm certainty not saying IP should be automatically terminated at death, but lets face it, that's not what's going on here is it?

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman? Try the Lion King and Pulp Fiction. Works from 1994 should be in public domain. Twenty years sounds fair to me. Intellectual property is supposed to protect works, giving an ability and incentive to produce new works, not act as a perpetual revenue stream for whatever entity owns the rights to older books, music, games, and film. This life of the universe plus a month nonsense is completely counter to what IP should be.

Could be that's why they're doing this, so that the next time someone starts talking about River Crabs they can more easily do something about it, though if so I'm not sure what's stopping them already.

Says the one who isn't hungry.

I don't think you know what I mean when I say hybrid. I mean the offspring of two separate, inbred lines. Sure, wheat for instance is a hybrid between species, but modern day corn lines are hybrids of a different sort, between lines. Seed doesn't go bad after a year (most species anyway) but if you have a variety of genotype AB, and it produces pollen with either the A or B gene and eggs with either the A or B gene, a simple Punnett square will show you the offspring will be either AA or AB or BB, and in a 1:2:1 ratio. If AB is the best, that's a problem for you now that half your seed is no longer of that genotype, and if that same thing is happening in many traits, then its a real bugger.

Heterosis and the genetics behind it are what they are and they favor hybrid seed, with annual repurchasing. This isn't Big Ag mantra, it is a simple fact of genetics.

Yes, that exactly. The Union of Concerned Scientists is, as usual, misleading. When we see hessian flies overcome conventionally bred resistances in wheat, where are the cries of superpest? When we see phytophthora overcome conventionally bred resistances in tomato, where are the activists saying that conventional breeding is flawed? Nowhere, and rightfully so, because saying that biotic factors can adapt, and therefore you should do nothing against them, is completely mind bogglingly daft. It's called resistance breakdown, it happens, its been around a lot longer than GMOs have, and as for herbicide tolerant weeds, the first of those showed up decades prior to the introduction of GE crops. And yet, when this very same thing occurs and GMOs are involved, suddenly all there are cries of superpest and superweed (horribly misleading terms) and people saying that basic facts of agriculture prove it worthless.

What I like most is how they try to have their cake and eat it too. GMOs have no benefits, but simultaneously, pests and weeds might adapt and take those benefits away. And the thing is, unless you actually know what you're looking at (which describes most people who work outside of agriculture), the cognitive dissonance is easy to miss and the whole thing sounds pretty convincing, but if you do understand, it is frustratingly biased.