Monsanto Protection Act Sneaks Through Senate

unless we farm from home off the grid. you could even trade your products with other homegrowers.:daisy:

 

It wouldn't be fair to JoanofSnarc if she returns to this thread and misses an opportunity to answer my post simply because of some one-liner posts--some of which are off topic--that have bumped it back a page. For instance, discussing the origins of the word "Monsanto."

So, in all fairness to JoanofSnarc:

Warring intellects? That's debatable. Unreadable? I don't think I was unclear. Sometimes people defend the indefensible by attempting to turn a debate into a war of attrition when all else fails. I was damned if I was going to allow her to tout her science background as a means to bolster her credibility. Neither would I allow her to occupy the last page of this thread with bullshit.

And to that end:
　
JoanofSnarc: "Given that, I thought it was more important to talk about, not how Monsanto et. al represents and tests their product (though their tests follow guidelines and standards set out by the FDA . . ."

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"Ultimately, it is the food producer who is responsible for assuring safety."
　
--US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
　
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"Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA’s job."
　
--Philip Angell, Monsanto’s director of corporate communications.
　
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"It is not foreseen that EFSA carry out such [safety] studies, as the onus is on the [GM industry] applicant to demonstrate the safety of the GM product in question."
　
--European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)
　
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JoanofSnarc: "One might get the impression from reading solely anti-gmo material that companies like Monsanto do their own crooked and biased testing and government regulatory agencies simply rubber stamp it and, tada!"

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"One thing that surprised us is that US regulators rely almost exclusively on information provided by the biotech crop developer, and those data are not published in journals or subjected to peer review... The picture that emerges from our study of US regulation of GM foods is a rubber-stamp ‘approval process’ designed to increase public confidence in, but not ensure the safety of, genetically engineered foods."

– David Schubert, professor and head, Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory, Salk Institute, commenting on a comprehensive peer-reviewed study of US government’s regulation of GMOs that he co-authored.

 

Storch, I'll not be responding to any of your comments, questions or jabs about my intellect or personality beyond the point where you refuse to engage in a civil and manageable discussion. Save your harrying for someone else.

If anyone is genuinely interested in looking at some of the scientific criticisms of the Seralini paper, then there is a good summary of them, along with the study data, here. Further, I posted a link to a review article early on in this thread that provides references to more than a hundred studies of gm foods (many of them independent studies) showing that, the foods tested are no more hazardous than the ones we currently eat on a regular basis.

As for the Sprague-Dawley rats, if you don't accept my comment about them being not appropriate for long term statistical extrapolations then you can go to the website of the company that breeds them and look at their assessment of their own animals and you can read that they're suitable for short term toxicology studies, not long term studies. Suit yourselves.

 

Something else to consider: There is already a massive, long term, natural, ongoing trial. Experimental animals bred by the millions in Europe and North America are fed quite different diets. European animals' diets are largely devoid of gm food, whereas North American research animals' diets contain at least 60% gm feed. This has been the case for more than 10 years. There has been no difference indicated in the over all health of research animals in Europe and NA. They are as predictably healthy as their non-gm food fed animals in Europe. If this was not the case, not only would scientists not be able to use these millions of unhealthy animals for research, but it would also render every single animal study done in the past 10 or more years invalid. It's simply absurd to think that thousands of scientists who work with these animals daily have simply failed to notice that they are suffering from cancers or toxin-related illnesses associated with their food consumption. There's your long term study. Of course there's always the possibility that thousands of scientists the world over are involved in a massive, multi-player conspiracy to cover up the disease of experimental animals in NA so as to help Monsanto poison the whole world - themselves, their families, friends and colleagues along with everyone else...

Some humor: (note the position of Monsanto conspiracy on the Venn diagram)



Some other food for though before I leave this thread permanently. I came across this tidbit regarding Greenpeace in my web browsing and though I think they've got a couple of facts wrong in a couple of places, I think they're right about the ethical position Greenpeace and the other anti-gmo activists have put themselves in. When that organization starts spending some of their $300 million revenue on providing real, alternatives to starving people instead of promoting misinformed platitudes from their well-fed, privileged pulpits, I might hold them in less disdain...but I'm not going to hold my breath on that.

The dark side of the anti-GMO movement

 

For those who want to believe the hype, conspiracy crap and scary, scientific misinformation about GM foods, I expect a person could drive a freight train of evidence, reason and ethical argument, full tilt, up your rectums and the freight still wouldn't make it past your blood-brain barrier. So have at it to your hearts content. I'm done wasting my time on this nonsense.