Yeah, fuck them for blocking important technological advances like insect resistant crops and lifesaving Golden Rice! And fuck them for suing farmers for unknowingly having their crops cross pollinated, even though that never actually happened. Oh wait...what are we angry about again? You know, before you start damning folks to hell (it wouldn't be the first time I've gotten that one), maybe you should check to see that you're not being lied to and emotionally manipulated by people out to advance their own social, political, and economic agendas.

Well, I agree with that, but I think we're talking about very different bullshits. I'm talking about the fact that, if the field of plant improvement had not been set back by 15 years by activists using Monsanto as a generic boogeyman, we'd be awash in all sorts of beneficial crop traits. Instead, publicly funded GE crops stopped with the extremely successful Rainbow papaya. Bangladesh is just now getting Bt eggplant, and its about time (and just wait, when it inevitability makes it to India, there's going to be a shitstorm among idiot activists who've never stepped food in either a farm or a lab). Golden Rice still has yet to be released. Something is very wrong here, and this time it isn't the big corporation.

Yep, seems to be about that way. I've got some blue tomato seed that has no patents on it (Dancing With Smurfs, actual name), and no one makes a fuss about it. I don't see what their point is here. I was about to mod you up but since I actually work with plant breeding think I'll give my own 2 cents instead.

The claim in TFA about being worried about no more germplasm is totally ridiculous. With my blue tomatoes I've got a bunch of heirloom varieties of things (Blue Jade sweet corn, Dragon Tongue bean, Red Kuri squash, Giant Prague celeriac, Star of David okra, and lots more) that can in no way be patented. They are there, and as long as people keep propagating them they'll always be there, free to use. Furthermore, the patents on plants do expire; Honeycrisp apples used to be pateneted, but they're not anymore (by the way, that patent brought in tons of money to the program that developed it, allowing them to develop some other pretty amazing varieties). And Monsanto (because everyone brings up Monsanto) is not an exception here; their first Roundup Ready soybean goes off patent in a few months. That means this very year, farmers can, if they choose, save that variety and plant it for the 2015 crop. I really can't see the problem people have with these sorts of patents, isn't that how things are supposed to work? Develop, patent, recoup losses, then the invention falls to the public domain, and the profit is reinvested for new innovations (ex. SnowSweet apples and DroughtGard corn). Don't like patented plants? Fine, don't grow them, problem solved. And with the 'farmers sued for cross pollination' thing being a myth (no, accidental cross pollination is not the same as intentional selection any more than making a home movie is the same as recording a film in a theater and selling it), so I really don't get the Monsanto hate people are inevitably going to flame up with this. The vast majority of the reasons they are demonized for are nothing but lies, and yet somehow, Monsanto is still the bad guy here, not the weasels lying and being emotionally manipulative to make an extremely important technology look evil via guilt by proxy.

Additionally, I am envious of these guys if they have a program that has enough money to release things for free, although reading TFA it seems like they will be picking and choosing which is released for free and which is patented, indicating this is just a way to get some good publicity out of things that would otherwise be discarded. I work with a breeding project and you can bet whatever comes out of it will be patented, not because I'm out to get rich (we'd all go corporate if money was the prime concern) but because there is not enough funding for public agriculture research. You think we want to? We don't, but breeding programs need funding. That's a fact of life. Times are hard for funding, and sometimes it seems the only time the public stops long enough to pay attention is to demonize us for saying GMOs don't cause cancer, or autism, or whatever the hell the denialists and conspiracy theorists are prattling on about today. Maybe if everyone called up their local congresscritters and other politicians and demanded more funding for their land grant universities and public agriculture research that wouldn't be the case. Ever been to a corporate lab? Well I have, and it'd be great to have the equipment they can afford. But hey, go on attacking Monsanto and other private breeders for trying to support themselves (anyone think pluots just magically appeared? Someone spend a hell of a lot of time and effort developing those, nice to hear from the anti-plant patent crowd that they deserve to get screwed over for it), I'm sure hurting them will make all the actual problems magically disappear.

All that aside, its damned cool that they're working with quinoa breeding. It's about time we see a stronger focus on quinoa breeding. Now if only teff, amaranth, sorghum, millet, manoomin, fonio, chia, and Job's tears programs will follow...

seriously drop all mail incoming and outgoing to/from yahoo groups. Put them out of business instantly.

A lot of the pseudo-science out there has, in a sense, adapted to having common knowledge applied. Take vaccines for example. A class might teach how they work, discuss the history of how they have stopped many diseases, but what is one to do when presented with the latest anti-vaccine goal-shifted argument, like the 'too many too soon' line? When you have people who will continuously invent new arguments as their basic premise is yet again demonstrated to be false, it is best to teach people the basics of pseudoscience along with science, so that the former can be spotted for what it is. The same applies for a slew of other common nonsenses, which could be used as case studies. I suspect giving clear case studies may be particularly beneficial. My personal anecdote, I was raised to believe in young earth creationism, and it was the realization that I was being expected to commit the same kinds of errors as homeopaths & other woo-woos that helped me to realize that what I had been taught was wrong in a great many ways.

I have personally witnessed a user break out the little tab in a usb jack by repeatedly trying to force the plug in backwards. Twice. The same user.

They inserted a gene for a version of the EPSP synthase enzyme (the enzyme that produces aromatic amino acids, and the target of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Round-Up) from Agrobacterium, as well as a gene from petunia that moves the enzyme to the chloroplast where it is needed. That way when you spray Round-Up, it binds to and deactivates the native plant version of EPSP synthase, but the bacterial one, which is different at the binding site of the glyphosate, still functions, thus creating an herbicide tolerant plant.

Maybe large overgrown teosinte plants that can't even survive in the wild aren't normal and sea slugs with algae genes are. Normal isn't always what you think.

That would be a reasonable criticism, if it were at all true that Monsanto goes around suing people willy-nilly. They don't. That's a myth fabricated by the anti-GMO movement to discredit genetic engineering via guilt by association. There is not a single case, not one, of Monsanto suing a farmer for being cross pollinated. Every single time, they knew damned well that they were violating the law. What you are doing would be like looking at a guy selling bootleg copies of Frozen and declaring that Disney made home videos illegal. It is dishonest and false.

Monopoly? Tell that to Syngenta, Dow, and Pioneer. This does not look like a monopoly to me.

They patent plants, so what? Breeders (aka the people ensuring you have an abundant and tasty food supply, you're welcome) been doing for decades. You know those nice, sweet, HoneyCrisp apples that everyone loves? Thank plant patents for supporting the program that developed it.

You're not even trying to avoid the ad populum there are you. More countries have laws against homosexuality than genetic engineering, but that doesn't make it right. By the way, they have laws against genetic engineering, not Monsanto. If this is about one single company, why do you think a, for example, GMO papaya developed by the University of Hawai'i (aka not Monsanto) would be just as illegal as a Syngenta corn, while a non-GMO tomato by Monsanto would be legal...and somehow this is about the company? Nope, it is populism combined with fearmongering combined with trade protectionism, and no one cares if science gets thrown under the bus. Stop defending it. There's no defense for it.

Now you're just fishing for an emotional response, and you're wrong to boot. The government developed it. Companies such as Monsanto and Dow produced it (during the Cold War, I might add). They actually warned the government about impurities. The government didn't care. And even if you were right, it still doesn't matter. You might as well stop buying Ford cars because their founder was antisemitic or stop buying Volkswagen because of their Nazi ties. You're using what's called the genetic fallacy.

In short, you are wrong. Monsanto is not the bogeyman they are made out to be. They are only the target of so many false accusations because a giant shadow overlord buying off all the independent scientists and manipulating all the data is absolutely essential to maintain the anti-GMO conspiracy. If there were no Monsanto, it would be necessary for the anti-GMO movement to create it.

You are wrong, promoting a bullshit conspiracy theory, and you didn't even spell Monsanto right either time.

OTP FTW

Hey now, just because what you've got is smaller doesn't make you any less of an organism. It's not the size that counts, its how you use it.

That's silly. You're free to create a market demand so that you are the one paying for it though, but don't drag the rest of us into it.

Considering the rate of adoption among farmers, maybe you should reconsider your take on that one. Reduced insecticide use, better weed management, no-till promotion, saving the Hawaiian papaya industry, and higher yield are all proven and well documented benefits.

The silliness of both situations was kind of the point. I know the difference between theory the scientific term and theory the common vernacular. You can be intentionally misleading with accurate terms, just like misuse of food labeling can be misleading even if accurate.

If pharmaceuticals and GMOs were in any way comparable, you might have a point. However, they are not.

There is about the GE crops Whole Foods is always on about. If I say "Everyone deserves to know to think for themselves! Just put a label the [blank] on the [blakn]!' is the missing work evolution/textbooks, or GMOs/foods? They're both part of unscientific, regressive movements. Neither is the main driver, but they're both moving in bad directions.

I'd love to know the causative mechanism behind this. I mean, its complicated, but I'm guessing your reaction is either do to factors not directly involving the organic growing methods, or its psychological.