31 France’s top administrative court on Thursday threw out a government ban on US agro-chemicals giant Monsanto from growing a type of genetically modified corn.
A moratorium on MON810 corn — one of just two types of genetically altered food crops whose cultivation is approved by the European Union — has been in place in France since March 2012.
The Council of State court noted in a statement that the moratorium had little legal basis.
It pointed out that EU regulations say such a ban “can only be taken by a member state in case of an emergency or if a situation poses a major risk” to the health of people or animals, or to the environment.
As the largest producer of GMO plants, moving into medical marijuana may seem a logical next step for the agriculture giant. US labs already use strains of genetically modified cannabis for testing and research, and the growing demand for legally obtained medical marijuana is sure to spike in the near future. It looks like Monsanto is already ahead of the game due to their research into RNA interference.
The company is investing millions of dollars into this new technology dubbed “RNAi.” With RNAi, it is possible to manipulate everything from the color of the plant to making the plant indigestible to insects. With medical marijuana, RNAi could be used to create larger, more potent plants effectively cornering the market and exceeding the legal demand for the plant. In Canada, this scenario is one step closer to becoming reality due to new laws that will allow large-scale growers to distribute their plants via mail order. The genetically manipulated marijuana may reach consumers sooner than thought possible due to these changes.
Monsanto already distributes medical marijuana grown without RNAi, and has sold genetically altered marijuana for over a decade. Monsanto also contributed funds to state-run initiatives to legalize marijuana for medical use. While the company maintains that its products are safe for human consumption, it has been widely debated that this truly is the case. While moving into medical marijuana may be a winning move for Monsanto stockholders, it may also be a strong case of “buyer beware” for the end consumers of the product.
On Friday evening, August 24, 2012, an Agriculture Canada staffer wrote to her colleagues that the CFIA contacted her to inform her of an unspecified incident involving the experimental wheat. A flurry of emails followed over the weekend discussing whether seeds from the GMO wheat seeds “will survive in the goose poop."
Can evil Monsanto marijuana seed survive in the bowles of geese?
Farming Got Hip In Iran Some 12,000 Years Ago, Ancient Seeds Reveal by RHITU CHATTERJEE July 05, 201311:15 AM
"That was a fantastic feeling, when I first get these plant remains under the microscope," says Riehl, an archaeobotanist at the University of Tubingen.
She confirmed that the grains were indeed varieties of lentils, barley and peas. She also identified a range of nuts and grasses, and a kind of wheat called Emmer, known to be a commonly grown crop in later centuries throughout the Middle East.
But most of the grains Riehl looked at were pre-agricultural. "They were cultivating what we consider wild progenitors of modern crops," says Riehl.
In other words, 12,000 years ago, people were simply taking wild plants and growing them in fields. They hadn't started breeding crops yet, selecting varieties for yield and other desirable qualities.
"They were probably just trying to secure their everyday needs," says Riehl.
Now, Riehl's samples spanned a period of two thousand years. And in the younger samples, those about 10,000 years old, she did detect the first signs of domestication: The Emmer wheat from this period had tougher ears. "That's because of human selection," she says. Those tough ears, she explains, helped keep the grains from falling to the ground when they were ripe. It made harvesting a lot easier.
To date more than 98 million acres (39 hectares) of genetically modified crops have been grown worldwide. No evidence of human health problems associated specifically with the ingestion of these crops or resulting food products have been identified,,,
Nina Fedoroff, professor at Penn State University, recently offered a passionate defense of GMOs in a Scientific American article:
What are the facts? Monsanto and the other big ag-biotech companies have developed reliable, biologically insect-resistant and herbicide-tolerant commodity crops that benefit people, farmers and the environment, and are nutritionally identical to their non-GM counterparts. ... There's a mismatch between mythology and reality.
We’re not just talking about food though. GM cotton is a real success story. More than two-thirds of global cotton production is now GM-based, so it’s likely that the majority of you in this room are wearing clothes made from GM crops.
GM cotton provides farmers with in-built protection against pests which can otherwise halve yields. So the farmer benefits through insurance against losses and reduced input costs. There are environmental benefits through reduced insecticide use.
The impacts of this are profound, particularly in developing countries where cotton tends to be grown. India went from being a net importer of cotton to a major exporter within a decade of GM cotton being approved in 2002. It is estimated that there has been a 216-fold increase in GM cotton uptake in India from 2002 to 2012.
This translates to an enhanced farm income from GM cotton of some $12.6 billion for Indian farmers, coupled with a 24 per cent increase in yield per acre and a 50 per cent gain in cotton profit among smallholders. Simultaneously, the quantity of insecticides used to control cotton bollworm reduced by 96 per cent from over 5,700 metric tonnes to as low as 222 metric tonnes of active ingredient in 2011.
In the longer term, research is underway into developing cereal crops that can ‘fix’ their own nitrogen. This could largely remove the need for farmers to apply chemical fertilisers. The environmental benefits of these kinds of crops are huge. Less spraying. Fewer chemicals going onto crops and the surrounding area. Fewer applications requiring less fuel. Less run off into our sensitive and vitally important water courses.
Human selection is just picking the best of natural selection, and one where humans and plants co-evolved. That's much different from inserting a fish gene in to corn plant.
Further, cultivating wild crops maintained genetic diversity. Now, thousands of square miles have one crop of all identical genes. Works great until it doesn't. Just ask the Irish who were all dependant on one strain of potato crop. Oooops.
It's just a matter of time, before genetic engineering inserts one beneficial trait and inadvertently causes a complete crop failure. OR, fungus, virus's, pests become immune to the genetic manipulation and results in a massive crop failure.
Not only are crops are risk for failure, but many studies show that there maybe be big risks to humans ingesting these GMO crops.
Finally, weeds are becoming resistant to glyphosate, causing big headaches for soy farmers. Also, the now resistant tarnished plant bug is infecting millions of acres of cotton.
Boomer, each of your protests have been debunked previously in earlier comments on this board.
I ask again, where is the hard proof of your projected disasters? Maybe's don't cut it on this board. Show me the result of the fish gene in the corn plant.
Eco rubbish propaganda.
"Great Irish Famine" redirects here. For the 1740–1741 famine, see Irish Famine (1740–1741).
Great Famine an Gorta Mór
Skibbereen 1847 by Cork artist James Mahony (1810–1879), commissioned by Illustrated London News, 1847 Country United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Location Ireland Period 1845–1852 Total deaths 1 million Observations Policy failure, potato blight, Corn Laws, British Anti-Popery Relief see below Impact on demographics Population fell by 20–25% due to mortality and emigration Consequences Permanent change in the country's demographic, political and cultural landscape Website List of memorials to the Great Famine Preceded by Irish Famine (1740–1741) Succeeded by Irish Famine, 1879 (An Gorta Beag) In Ireland, the Great Famine was a period of mass starvation, disease and emigration between 1845 and 1852.[1] It is also known, mostly outside Ireland, as the Irish Potato Famine.[2] In the Irish language it is called an Gorta Mór (IPA: [ənˠ ˈɡɔɾˠtˠə ˈmˠoːɾˠ], meaning "the Great Hunger")[fn 1] or an Drochshaol ([ənˠ ˈdˠɾɔxˌhiːlˠ], meaning "the bad life"). During the famine approximately 1 million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland,[3] causing the island's population to fall by between 20% and 25%.[4] The proximate cause of famine was a potato disease commonly known as potato blight.[5] Although blight ravaged potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s, the impact and human cost in Ireland—where one-third of the population was entirely dependent on the potato for food—was exacerbated by a host of political, ethnic, religious, social and economic factors which remain the subject of historical debate.[6][7] Wiki
The European Commission’s Chief Scientist Professor Anne Glover has recently said that “There is no substantiated case of any adverse impact on human health, animal health or environmental health”.
Weed resistance is also often highlighted as an environmental problem associated with GM crops but it’s something that occurs in conventional cropping too. It’s not a GM issue, it’s a crop management issue. Farmers of both types of crops can take steps to mitigate against this, through effective management of rotations.
Golden Rice was first created in 1999 by German professors Potrykus and Beyer and a not-for-profit independent research institute to help tackle vitamin A deficiency. It is the leading cause of irreversible blindness in children. The World Health Organisation estimates that this results in up to 500,000 children going blind a year – 250,000 of whom will lose their lives within a year. The problem is particularly severe in South East Asia.
None of the existing varieties of rice contains vitamin A. Golden Rice was only possible as a result of genetic engineering. We should all reflect on the fact that it is 15 years since it was developed and attempts to deploy it have been thwarted. This is despite the seeds being offered for free to those who need them most. In that time, more than seven million children gone blind or died.
French court lifts ban on growing Monsanto GMO corn
ReplyDeleteBy Agence France-Presse
Thursday, August 1, 2013 15:17 EDT
Topics: Administrative Court ♦ genetically modified corn ♦ giant monsanto
31
France’s top administrative court on Thursday threw out a government ban on US agro-chemicals giant Monsanto from growing a type of genetically modified corn.
A moratorium on MON810 corn — one of just two types of genetically altered food crops whose cultivation is approved by the European Union — has been in place in France since March 2012.
The Council of State court noted in a statement that the moratorium had little legal basis.
It pointed out that EU regulations say such a ban “can only be taken by a member state in case of an emergency or if a situation poses a major risk” to the health of people or animals, or to the environment.
Monsanto and the Medical Marijuana War
ReplyDeleteAs the largest producer of GMO plants, moving into medical marijuana may seem a logical next step for the agriculture giant. US labs already use strains of genetically modified cannabis for testing and research, and the growing demand for legally obtained medical marijuana is sure to spike in the near future. It looks like Monsanto is already ahead of the game due to their research into RNA interference.
The company is investing millions of dollars into this new technology dubbed “RNAi.” With RNAi, it is possible to manipulate everything from the color of the plant to making the plant indigestible to insects. With medical marijuana, RNAi could be used to create larger, more potent plants effectively cornering the market and exceeding the legal demand for the plant. In Canada, this scenario is one step closer to becoming reality due to new laws that will allow large-scale growers to distribute their plants via mail order. The genetically manipulated marijuana may reach consumers sooner than thought possible due to these changes.
Monsanto already distributes medical marijuana grown without RNAi, and has sold genetically altered marijuana for over a decade. Monsanto also contributed funds to state-run initiatives to legalize marijuana for medical use. While the company maintains that its products are safe for human consumption, it has been widely debated that this truly is the case. While moving into medical marijuana may be a winning move for Monsanto stockholders, it may also be a strong case of “buyer beware” for the end consumers of the product.
Careful Max you may be smokin an EVIL Monsanto joint.
DeleteOn Friday evening, August 24, 2012, an Agriculture Canada staffer wrote to her colleagues that the CFIA contacted her to inform her of an unspecified incident involving the experimental wheat. A flurry of emails followed over the weekend discussing whether seeds from the GMO wheat seeds “will survive in the goose poop."
ReplyDeleteCan evil Monsanto marijuana seed survive in the bowles of geese?
Farming Got Hip In Iran Some 12,000 Years Ago, Ancient Seeds Reveal
ReplyDeleteby RHITU CHATTERJEE
July 05, 201311:15 AM
"That was a fantastic feeling, when I first get these plant remains under the microscope," says Riehl, an archaeobotanist at the University of Tubingen.
She confirmed that the grains were indeed varieties of lentils, barley and peas. She also identified a range of nuts and grasses, and a kind of wheat called Emmer, known to be a commonly grown crop in later centuries throughout the Middle East.
But most of the grains Riehl looked at were pre-agricultural. "They were cultivating what we consider wild progenitors of modern crops," says Riehl.
In other words, 12,000 years ago, people were simply taking wild plants and growing them in fields. They hadn't started breeding crops yet, selecting varieties for yield and other desirable qualities.
"They were probably just trying to secure their everyday needs," says Riehl.
Now, Riehl's samples spanned a period of two thousand years. And in the younger samples, those about 10,000 years old, she did detect the first signs of domestication: The Emmer wheat from this period had tougher ears. "That's because of human selection," she says. Those tough ears, she explains, helped keep the grains from falling to the ground when they were ripe. It made harvesting a lot easier.
To date more than 98 million acres (39 hectares) of genetically modified crops have been grown worldwide. No evidence of human health problems associated specifically with the ingestion of these crops or resulting food products have been identified,,,
ReplyDeleteNina Fedoroff, professor at Penn State University, recently offered a passionate defense of GMOs in a Scientific American article:
ReplyDeleteWhat are the facts? Monsanto and the other big ag-biotech companies have developed reliable, biologically insect-resistant and herbicide-tolerant commodity crops that benefit people, farmers and the environment, and are nutritionally identical to their non-GM counterparts. ... There's a mismatch between mythology and reality.
We’re not just talking about food though. GM cotton is a real success story. More than two-thirds of global cotton production is now GM-based, so it’s likely that the majority of you in this room are wearing clothes made from GM crops.
ReplyDeleteGM cotton provides farmers with in-built protection against pests which can otherwise halve yields. So the farmer benefits through insurance against losses and reduced input costs. There are environmental benefits through reduced insecticide use.
The impacts of this are profound, particularly in developing countries where cotton tends to be grown. India went from being a net importer of cotton to a major exporter within a decade of GM cotton being approved in 2002. It is estimated that there has been a 216-fold increase in GM cotton uptake in India from 2002 to 2012.
This translates to an enhanced farm income from GM cotton of some $12.6 billion for Indian farmers, coupled with a 24 per cent increase in yield per acre and a 50 per cent gain in cotton profit among smallholders. Simultaneously, the quantity of insecticides used to control cotton bollworm reduced by 96 per cent from over 5,700 metric tonnes to as low as 222 metric tonnes of active ingredient in 2011.
In the longer term, research is underway into developing cereal crops that can ‘fix’ their own nitrogen. This could largely remove the need for farmers to apply chemical fertilisers. The environmental benefits of these kinds of crops are huge. Less spraying. Fewer chemicals going onto crops and the surrounding area. Fewer applications requiring less fuel. Less run off into our sensitive and vitally important water courses.
ReplyDeleteHuman selection is just picking the best of natural selection, and one where humans and plants co-evolved. That's much different from inserting a fish gene in to corn plant.
ReplyDeleteFurther, cultivating wild crops maintained genetic diversity. Now, thousands of square miles have one crop of all identical genes. Works great until it doesn't. Just ask the Irish who were all dependant on one strain of potato crop. Oooops.
It's just a matter of time, before genetic engineering inserts one beneficial trait and inadvertently causes a complete crop failure. OR, fungus, virus's, pests become immune to the genetic manipulation and results in a massive crop failure.
Not only are crops are risk for failure, but many studies show that there maybe be big risks to humans ingesting these GMO crops.
Finally, weeds are becoming resistant to glyphosate, causing big headaches for soy farmers. Also, the now resistant tarnished plant bug is infecting millions of acres of cotton.
Nicely said.
DeleteBoomer, each of your protests have been debunked previously in earlier comments on this board.
DeleteI ask again, where is the hard proof of your projected disasters? Maybe's don't cut it on this board. Show me the result of the fish gene in the corn plant.
Eco rubbish propaganda.
"Great Irish Famine" redirects here. For the 1740–1741 famine, see Irish Famine (1740–1741).
Great Famine
an Gorta Mór
Skibbereen 1847 by Cork artist James Mahony (1810–1879), commissioned by Illustrated London News, 1847
Country United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Location Ireland
Period 1845–1852
Total deaths 1 million
Observations Policy failure, potato blight, Corn Laws, British Anti-Popery
Relief see below
Impact on demographics Population fell by 20–25% due to mortality and emigration
Consequences Permanent change in the country's demographic, political and cultural landscape
Website List of memorials to the Great Famine
Preceded by Irish Famine (1740–1741)
Succeeded by Irish Famine, 1879 (An Gorta Beag)
In Ireland, the Great Famine was a period of mass starvation, disease and emigration between 1845 and 1852.[1] It is also known, mostly outside Ireland, as the Irish Potato Famine.[2] In the Irish language it is called an Gorta Mór (IPA: [ənˠ ˈɡɔɾˠtˠə ˈmˠoːɾˠ], meaning "the Great Hunger")[fn 1] or an Drochshaol ([ənˠ ˈdˠɾɔxˌhiːlˠ], meaning "the bad life").
During the famine approximately 1 million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland,[3] causing the island's population to fall by between 20% and 25%.[4] The proximate cause of famine was a potato disease commonly known as potato blight.[5] Although blight ravaged potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s, the impact and human cost in Ireland—where one-third of the population was entirely dependent on the potato for food—was exacerbated by a host of political, ethnic, religious, social and economic factors which remain the subject of historical debate.[6][7]
Wiki
The European Commission’s Chief Scientist Professor Anne Glover has recently said that “There is no substantiated case of any adverse impact on human health, animal health or environmental health”.
DeleteWeed resistance is also often highlighted as an environmental problem associated with GM crops but it’s something that occurs in conventional cropping too. It’s not a GM issue, it’s a crop management issue. Farmers of both types of crops can take steps to mitigate against this, through effective management of rotations.
Golden Rice was first created in 1999 by German professors Potrykus and Beyer and a not-for-profit independent research institute to help tackle vitamin A deficiency. It is the leading cause of irreversible blindness in children. The World Health Organisation estimates that this results in up to 500,000 children going blind a year – 250,000 of whom will lose their lives within a year. The problem is particularly severe in South East Asia.
DeleteNone of the existing varieties of rice contains vitamin A. Golden Rice was only possible as a result of genetic engineering. We should all reflect on the fact that it is 15 years since it was developed and attempts to deploy it have been thwarted. This is despite the seeds being offered for free to those who need them most. In that time, more than seven million children gone blind or died.