I'm more skittish of GMO's more for the corporatism aspect. With the growing population and effects of climate change some day making it more difficult to grow organic crops, GMO crops may some day be feeding the majority of the planet. And those crops are proprietary. You'd either have your ass sued to oblivion if you try to grow it yourself, or they're specifically designed to make it impossible to. So then there'd be an oligarchy with a near monopoly on the world's food supply.

Likewise. I actually think it's pretty damn cool we can genetically modify a tomato to grow in inhospitable conditions. I just don't want Monsanto to be the only company growing them.

That's a problem completely aside from genetic engineering. I don't want one douchebag farmer to control Amarillo hops, but one does, and they're as "natural" as any other.

I know. That's why I said I think genetic engineering is cool, but monopolies and mega-corps aren't.

Really the issue is that plant/gene patents are a thing at all.

Here's the thing I don't get: When a patent expires, anyone can supposedly make more of it. I recall hearing that a lot of these companies aren't keen on "generic" RoundUp-Ready seed being out there, and there were accusations that Monsanto wasn't exactly being forthcoming with the methods needed to create the seeds that weren't under patent.

Can't someone just harvest seed from a crop when the patent expires, or does that run afoul of some other law? I don't think they're putting "terminator genes" in these things, so... yes? No?

A normal patent requires the filer to reveal what would be needed to replicated the invention, but a plant patent doesn't require seeds or other reproductive material. I'm not sure about genetic patents, but the cynic in me doubts it's better.

http://geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/12/regulatory-hurdles-may-blunt-future-of-open-source-gmo-crops-as-patent-expires-for-gmo-soybeans/#link

People grow cannabis illegally and get away with it. Maybe we'll have black market veggies in the near future.

this. thank you for saying this, that's it in a nutshell. i'd like GMO's to be labeled, not because the science scares me, but because i dont trust those fuckers.

I'm rather surprised nobody has looked at the thumbnail image and said, "nice crop."

None of us are that clever.

I think it shows everyone's a lot healthier and more mentally stable than I am, honestly.

There was an image floating around about GMO corn and squirrels that always made me laugh:

It sets off my bullshit detector to no end, since if animals could tell what was "bad" for them, poisons wouldn't work, and I've caught squirrels trying to eat the plastic welcome mat on my porch.

This just shows that labeling GMOs will scare off consumers.

Why did squirrels only eat the part facing the camera?

They're the camwhores of the animal kingdom.

Unfortunately, faith is not susceptible to facts.

Golden Rice please.

GMOs are here to stay whether people are scared of them or not.

For what it's worth-
Bill Nye the Science Guy, formerly a GMO alarmist, has changed his mind.

I also hate how the term "GMO" is used for anything anyone wants to claim is somehow a mad science experiment where unknown factors are being introduced into the food supply, resulting in bananas with gills that give you cancer or what have you.

I had a rather heated argument with someone at a party where they were upset that a new GMO was coming out: an apple that wouldn't brown, which of course meant it was "frankenfood" and would do god-knows-what to your insides. It took over 10 minutes and the use of a smartphone to show them that all that was being done was the removal of a gene that produced a protein which caused apples to brown. Their last gasp was to claim that apple trees should be grown naturally, period let me note that they apparently weren't aware that all commercial apple trees were grafts. That is, if you want the same apple you got from tree X, you had to graft a branch of it onto an existing sapling root of another fruit tree, as the seeds wouldn't give you the same kind of apple the parent tree produced.