this post was submitted on 26 May 2024
252 points (92.0% liked)

News

23014 readers
7 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Scientists have warned that a court decision to block the growing of the genetically modified (GM) crop Golden Rice in the Philippines could have catastrophic consequences. Tens of thousands of children could die in the wake of the ruling, they argue.

The Philippines had become the first country – in 2021 – to approve the commercial cultivation of Golden Rice, which was developed to combat vitamin A deficiency, a major cause of disability and death among children in many parts of the world.

But campaigns by Greenpeace and local farmers last month persuaded the country’s court of appeal to overturn that approval and to revoke this. The groups had argued that Golden Rice had not been shown to be safe and the claim was backed by the court, a decision that was hailed as “a monumental win” by Greenpeace.

Many scientists, however, say there is no evidence that Golden Rice is in any way dangerous. More to the point, they argue that it is a lifesaver.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Supermariofan67 119 points 5 months ago (3 children)

I'm highly skeptical of anti-GMO claims. Usually they come from the same family of pseudoscience as anti-nuclear and anti-vaccine

[–] [email protected] 49 points 5 months ago (1 children)

GMOs aren’t inherently bad but many crops are genetically modified to be resistant to glyphosate and other herbicides so they can douse the fields with the stuff.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Even in that case it's not the modified plant itself that's harmful but the remains of roundup left in it after being sprayed.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago

left in it? I wish. More like left everywhere

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Right. The genetic modification protects the crops from glyphosate, not you.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Eventually Monsanto will engineer all of us to be able to drink Roundup.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Imagine? We’d be able to write our name in the grass like we can in the snow.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Microplastics in fetuses, glyphosphate in our piss, and cancer rising in young people. The future is truly amazing.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 5 months ago (5 children)

There are very valid arguments against GMOs even if they're safe from a strictly scientific point of view. Those mainly pertain to control over seeds by corporations that will allow them to exploit poor farmers. This is happening to a huge extent in India where many farmers have committed suicide because of these practices.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Yep, exactly. I'm against Monsanto suing farmers for cross-pollination when the wind blows.

Seed patents are dumb. Once something has been planted it belongs to the ground now, if it spreads that's too bad for giant corpo.

EDIT: the link above is the the wrong case. I found this link which breaks things down better.. I'm still of the opinion that seed patents are dumb, and that if farmers harvest seeds from crops on their fields they should be allowed to replant them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You're link isn't even about the "cross pollination" situation (which was also done intentionally by the farmer) but about someone buying the seeds from a third party and then claiming that they are allowed to replant the seeds because they aren't bound by the licensing agreement.

We can argue whether or not this farmer should be allowed to replant the seeds in this case, but trying to paint it as if the seeds flew into his property and then he was sued for it is a disgusting misrepresentation of what actually. It was done very intentionally by the farmer. They aren't some innocent victim, but one who thought he could get the ip without paying for it. We're talking about capitalists fighting each other.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Thank you! Sorry I had gone done a rabbit hole and copied the wrong link. There's a lot of Monsanto lawsuits it turns out.

This was the one I was thinking of, but its not as readable. Also, it's not 100% whether it was solely because of the wind, although that's the claim. https://www.ielrc.org/content/n0407.htm

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeiser

If you don't want to read the link, it wasn't accidental. Some glyphosate resistant crop flew into his property. The farmer killed off all of the other crops with glyphosate and then harvested the seeds from the surviving plants, knowing they were Monsantos ip, and replanted them.

The farmer did not argue in court that it was accidental, but that because it was his private property and he had no agreement with Monsanto that he had the right to do this.

Again we can argue whether or not he had the right to do this. But this whole "poor farmer did nothing and got sued!" Is just straight up blatantly misleading anti GMO propaganda. I don't believe you are intentionally spreading it, but you are none-the-less.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Thank you. I wasn't aware that he was aware it was Monsanto's. I also know that farmers aren't automatically in the right (look at the dairy industry practices and political lobbying for instance). It's relieving to know that it wasn't the original seeds that resulted in the lawsuit, though I think I do lean towards the idea of once seeds are planted the plants and anything they produce belong to the one who planted them.

Do you have any more info about seed patents? I mean I understand it takes a lot of research to develop the pesticide-resistant crops (and also know that an organic label means nothing) but am having a really hard time reconciling the idea of needing a license to plant seeds that you harvested yourself.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

There are very valid arguments against GMOs

All “valid arguments against GMOs” are ultimately arguments against capitalistic profit-at-all-costs practises.

When you take the profit margin out of the process, there end up being no valid arguments against GMOs, as all such profit-free GMOs that end up moving to production are there purely to benefit humanity as a whole, and not to restrict said benefit to a rarefied group of obscenely wealthy people. It’s the GMOs with capitalistic roots which are problematic for capitalistic, Parasite-Class-greed related reasons.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

Yeah, that's basically what I said.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Your 'argument against GMOs' is an argument against seed patents, not GMOs. That's the same as saying there's an 'argument against insulin' because big companies own the patents and charge lots of money. The product is absolutely irrelevant to the conversation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That's not an argument against GMOs, just a specific kind of GMOs.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's an argument against commercial use of GMOs in agriculture by monopolistic megacorporations.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

It's an argument against seed patents and capitalism.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 5 months ago

Farmers by and large don't reuse seeds now, patenting seeds so they can't be reused is not limited to GMO, farmers are free to reuse seeds that are no longer patented, and farmers committing suicide in India has nothing to do with GMO specifically, but issue with farming in general.

These are all just made up anti GMO talking points only loosely related to GMO, if even at all.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

anti-GMO is anti- big corporations. and as a botanist, I can tell you the fears about genetic drift are real. and legally, people have gotten sued for having the wrong plants pop up on their land. It's less a science issue than it is a legal issue, but, it's also a science issue ...