https://youtube/watch?v=N6_DbVdVo-k Following an article that I posted about GMO foods I was advised to watch this documentary. Id actually seen it before though had forgotten about it, but this time I went through it and actually researched the claims. tl:dr at the bottom 0:27 roundup was forced to stop claiming that roundup was biodegradable news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8308903.stm 3:39 90% of GMOs grown on the planet are Monsanto crops. I cant find out where this often cited number comes from. 5:45 history of Monsanto. I understand the idea of looking at a companys history to see if theyve been shits in the past. But that has nothing to do with the science of GMOs. Their stuff with the PCBs was horrific. Truly insane. 11:00 PCB risks, EPA paper on them :epa.gov/osw/hazard/wastemin/minimize/factshts/pcb-fs.pdf 14:30 false advertising, already covered above. 5:20 Glysophate, the active ingredient in Round up has been found to be safe over dozens of tests. Id not normally link to wikipedia, but it has links to all the relevant studies, so itll save a lot of space. There are some concerns for issues with genetic damage but it is another component of Roundup that appears to cause this damage. What component is is not known at the moment as the recipe is protected. I dont know whether the dosage used in the experiments to cause the issue is one that humans are likely ever to come into contact as the study doesnt give a comparison. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate#Toxicity ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9464316 16:30 Roundup and cell division. I cant find concentrations for roundup in the soil/water etc for the planet. So I have no way of being able to tell whether the findings are for low doses as stated. 22:00 FDA, legal framework for deciding about safety of GMO foodstuffs. Its easy to see this from both sides. I can understand why people would want this viewed as an entirely new category with special laws defining it, but I can also see how it would be possible to use an existing framework of laws for food safety. 24:00 Generally reviewed as safe. Requires overwhelming peer reveived scientific consensus of safety. When the laws were drafted in the 90s this was not the case. Now however, that is exactly the case. toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/content/71/1/2.full forbes/sites/jonentine/2014/09/17/the-debate-about-gmo-safety-is-over-thanks-to-a-new-trillion-meal-study/ 27:00 Monsanto has more power to affect policy than other company. I find that hard to believe. There are huge number of incredibly powerful companies that use lobbying to get what they want. Some of them with far worse track records than Monsanto. Opensecrets has information on the lobbying spends of major corporations and interest groups. https://opensecrets.org/lobby/ 27:00 deregulation in favour of Monsanto made out to be some sort of conspiracy, despite the fact they had to wait 5 years to get it. Doesnt sound like a very effective conspiracy, almost sounds like the USDA did their due diligence doesnt it? Now Im not saying that Monsanto didnt use lobbying to get what they wanted, Im almost certain they did. Much in the same way that every other biotech company was also leaning on the government to get exactly the same thing to happen. You can disagree with the methods and the outcome all you want, but singling out one company, despite its size, when it simply part of a group seems wrong to me. And simply put, this is not a fault of Monsantos, its a fault with the current system of politics. A better political system would prevent that from happening. This is all moot now though as a couple of thousand studies have shown that current biotech foods are safe. Continuing on from the above we get into people associated with Monsanto getting into policy positions. This is something that is an issue across the board and is something that is a real problem around the world. Again, this is a problem with the current political situation. Weve seen what happens when bankers regulate bankers. Unfortunately, one of the problems we have is that we need experts in the relevant fields to be able to make these decisions, and they are almost always hired by the companies and gain experience in the fields relevant while working for them. Im not really sure I see a way around it to be honest. Though Im sure better minds than mine have. 33:00 Bovine Growth Hormone. Plenty of studies, including those done by Monsanto in 1997, linked rBGH to health problems in cows. Obviously this came about after their pretty terrible behaviour in covering up information that should have been released. 39:00 Milk from rBGH is unsafe. Studies either find the milk is safe or are inconclusive. I cant find any scientific information on pus in the milk, but as its pasteurised I would imagine anything dangerous would be killed, thats why we do that in the first place, to make it safer to drink. The issue with antibiotics as far as Im aware needs more research. Its quite possible that this is leading to antibiotic resistant bacteria, which is a serious issue. There are not very increased levels of IGF1 (see link). Increases in IGF1 are strongly linked to some cancers. cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/othercarcinogens/athome/recombinant-bovine-growth-hormone 40:00 rGBH banned in Canada. This is only true for milk cows, beef cattle are still shot with it. sustainabletable.org/797/rbgh 40:24 Monsanto attempt to bribe Health Canada. Im not surprised, but I am disappointed. Theres simply no need for companies to act like this. Its not like its just this company either. Disgraceful. 50:00 L tryptophan disaster. No one knows whether this was caused by the biotech work done or by the corners cut in the filtration process. And no one will ever know as the samples were destroyed. Unless the film is going to highlight something further along, this is the only case Ive heard of that might be attributable to biotech foods in the time they have been on the market. 52:00 Pusztais potato experiment. There is so much back and forth on this its insane. Simply put, all new food stuffs should be tested before they hit the market. If they are shown to be unsafe, or if there is a question, they shouldnt be on shelves. I cant seem to find whether these potatoes ever went to market in the end. Pusztai was suspended initially, not fired, and in my opinion quite rightly. You dont reveal information from an unfinished study to the media. You finish the study and get it peer reviewed, then you can talk to the media to your hearts content. I want to go into this a bit deeper, because this is really important. If I use biotech to alter a food and it turns out to be dangerous, that does not mean that the technology is flawed or dangerous, it means that in this particular case it was flawed or dangerous. That doesnt mean you ban it across the board. Thats a knee jerk reaction and it stifles technological creativity. We should be taking these on a case by case basis and only using the things that work. Obviously we need to make sure that this is done as impartially as possible and that political pressures from large companies have as little an impact as possible. But we shouldnt throw the baby out with the bath water here. 59:00 Its not in the companies interest to falsify scientific studies. Well thats patently (no pun intended) nonsense, of course it could be in their favour. 59:19 counting hits for a search doesnt mean anything. 1:00:00 Dioxin. Truly horrific behaviour on the part of Monsanto. 1:08:00 Patents. This is a big bit I would imagine and is one that used to get me very angry, I have been reading about this quite a bit today. The lawsuits filed by Monsanto have gone to court 11 times. Almost always the farmers agree to pay the same as everyone else who uses their seeds. Monsanto sells to about 250,000 farms in America and in the last 20 years they have sued about 145 of them. They have certainly over stepped the line sometimes, but they are hardly as over the top as they are often made out to be. This came as a big surprise to me. Way too many links for me to list them all, but the wikipedia article has nearly 30 you can follow for more info. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#As_plaintiff Theyre not great, and dont apologise when they make a mistake, but they arent suing thousands of people as I regularly see in articles around this issue. Im generally speaking against patents and copyright. I do however understand why it exists and why it useful. Biotech crops have a 20 year patent life. RR soy actually runs out this year, which is why theyve invented 2.0. This means that as of this year it will be legal for farmers to keep the seeds they use from their RR crops without any fear of legal repercussions. 1:14:00 Monsanto monopoly. Monsanto own 23% of international seed companies. A huge amount, make no mistake, but hardly a monopoly which is defined as the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service. So yeah, they have a ways to go yet. gmwatch.org/component/content/article/10558-the-worlds-top-ten-seed-companies-who-owns-nature 1:17:00 bt cotton and disease. Focus on the ill plant in the front and have a background totally full of healthy plants. Brilliant study into just about every aspect of bt cotton farming in India by an independent source. Covers everything I think. Its quite likely bt cotton is oversold and that more advice should be given to buyers, but it is undeniably helping people. vib.be/en/about-vib/plant-biotech-news/Documents/BackgroundReport_BT_Cotton.pdf 1:17:50 I did a quick google search and found a number of companies selling both normal and transgenic seeds. Obviously not every farmer is going to have access to google to find them, so this will be largely location dependent, but to say they have no option is simply not true. 1:18:00 bt cotton 4 times as expensive as normal cotton. This film came out in 2008, but in 2006 the Indian government had introduced a law ensuring that the price on GM seeds was capped to avoid this kind of price gouging affecting smallhold farmers. This used to be a problem, but to say it still is disingenuous. Also, a poor harvest for any farmer can mean bankruptcy, the job is not a great one in that regard. agbioforum.org/v12n2/v12n2a03-sadashivappa.htm 1:18:38 Indian farmers commit suicide over BT cotton harvests. This has been widely debunked, the pdf I posted above has plenty of information on it. There a huge number of reasons people commit suicide. Heres another study delving into it showing that this is a problem for all farmers in India. macroscan/anl/mar08/pdf/Farmers_Suicides.pdf Its very easy to just point to one thing and say that is the problem, but these are complicated issues and demonising one thing means we easily miss the larger picture of what is happening. Im not saying that bt cotton has no part to play, it obviously has some part, but I would contend that it is nowhere near the only one or even a major one from what these studies say. 1:21:38 Id have been interested to see how many of them would be growing any type of cotton the following year. Growing a cash crop will always leave you at the mercy of the market. That is the way the market works, for better or worse. One of the problems with cash crops is that when everyone grows them they glut the market driving down the price. 1:26:00 Mexican corn contaminated by GMO corn. There was a lot of shit that went on with this, but new studies confirm it: gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/10719-new-study-confirms-gm-contamination-of-mexican-corn 1:32:00 Damage to plants from gmo cross pollination. I cant find any information that states that cross pollination causes abnormal growth in non gmo species. And I can only find one article even talking about it and part of the article from another farmer states that this can happen as genes express differently in some crops. Which is what I would expect as its unlikely youll get a 100% perfect crop every year. https://tworowtimes/news/local/are-genetically-modified-organisms-infecting-six-nations-crops/ 1:34:00 Monsanto is forcing contamination to expand its empire. Totally speculative. There is zero evidence for that. Cross pollination is something that happens and is how plants breed. It can be minimised and if its causing the damage related earlier then it needs to be done well. But simply because it is happening you cant blame Monsanto. Apart from anything else theyre not the only company that creates GMO plants. Its specious and does nothing to answer real issues surrounding GMO cross pollination. 1:41:00 Deforestation and expulsion of small farmers. This is not Monsantos fault. They dont make those kinds of decisions. Straight after that, monocrops are not limited to GMOs. They are used in non GMOs as well. Monocrop is a farming style and has nothing to do with genetic tinkering. GMO cross pollination can only effect the same species. So there is no reason why you cant grow GMO tomatoes in the same plot as non GMO carrots, for instance. 1:45:18 70% of farms in Paraguay owned by 2% of population. Again, this has nothing to do with Monsanto. tl:dr So, to sum up. Monsanto is pretty shitty corporation. They have lied, threatened and intimidated people all over the world. They have been proved to have harmed a lot of people by doing this. They are also accused of doing things that they havent done or that they couldnt do. The reason I watched this film was because I was interested in GMO foods. Everything I have read has shown that GMO foods are safe to eat. They need to be tested every time a new one is made to ensure that this continues to be the case. I really did not ever expect to be arguing on the side of a company like Monsanto. I guess thats what happens when you actually research claims. I sincerely wish a company that was better behaved was doing the work they are on GMOs. So, to finish. Monsanto bad. GMO ok.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Nov 2014 20:39:27 +0000
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