Can We Trust Monsanto with Our Food?

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=can-we-trust-monsanto-with-our-food

by acheron • 13 years ago

31 82 13 years ago

kenster07• 13 years ago

I would hope that an article from "Scientific" American would cite "scientific" studies which back such claims. As it stands, this article is more bro-science than real science, and it's a damn shame.

qwatsi135793• 13 years ago

That article is in agreement with the National Academy of Sciences.

geuis• 13 years ago

This is an opinion piece. I'm not qualified to say whether the claims and counter claims made in the piece are accurate or not. But be aware, since it's an opinion piece there are no linked references or research in it to backup the claims it makes.

dreen2• 13 years ago

(disclaimer: im a farmer)

GM food isnt toxic but GM food company lawyers are. the article mentions being sued as a result of cross-pollination in the intro and never speaks of it again, but thats the real GM crop threat.

quadlock• 13 years ago

It speaks of it in the final paragraph, referring to it as popular mythology.

criley22• 13 years ago

Can you name any cases at all where farmers were sued for cross-polination claims? As a farmer in the industry, this shouldn't be hard, right?

There is one notable example where a farmer intentionally and willfully planted seeds that he knew were Monsantos, but I'm unaware of any pattern of litigation against farmers for the actual unintentional use of Monsanto seed.

ideonexus2• 13 years ago

The Organic Seed Growers brought a class action suit against Monsanto for unfairly suing farmers whose crops were cross-pollinated with GMOs. The case was thrown out of court when they failed to produce one example of this ever happening.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B83aJv4L7U-iYzYyMzQxOTktZjY5...

Before this case, I believed the "Food Inc." claims about Monsanto being lawsuit-happy. Now I'm angry that it really appears to be the organic farmers who are manipulating the public.

freehunter3• 13 years ago

This is one area where I commonly see farmers with this worry being told "yeah but that has never happened!"

We worry about a lot of things in computer science that has never happened and may never happen. There's common discussion several times a year on HN about the ethical rights of artificial intelligence or lab-grown brains. It's still important to worry about things that haven't happened and may never happen, if only to ensure that they really do never happen.

It's completely plausible that a company could sue over this farmer's fear. Just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean it won't happen, or that we shouldn't worry about it.

hga16• 13 years ago

I just spent some quality time with Google and couldn't find any such case.

The closest is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeis... but in that case the facts as found by the court of original jurisdiction were that the farmer selected for Roundup Ready plants that had been accidentally cross-pollinated (in exactly the same way I did this sort of thing with E. Coli in some molecular genetics research long ago), saved the seeds from those plants, and used them to plant 1,000 acres (4 km^2).

Per the judge per Wikipedia, "'none of the suggested sources [proposed by Schmeiser] could reasonably explain the concentration or extent of Roundup Ready canola of a commercial quality' ultimately present in Schmeiser's 1998 crop." Wikipedia also says in the summary "Regarding his 1998 crop, Schmeiser did not put forward any defence of accidental contamination."

They approached him to sign a license, the two parties couldn't come to an agreement, they took it to court.

I don't see this as a valid example of the claim. I also don't see what Monsanto could possibly hope to accomplish at net by suing good faith cross-pollination instances (yeah, they might scare more farmers into buying their seeds, but they'd get slapped down by things like that class action suit others have mentioned with failed due to standing, that is, no examples of this).

dreen2• 13 years ago

I never said anyone was sued for having their crops cross-pollinate. However, let me pose these three points about Monsanto to you:

1. They are known to be aggressive in courts.

2. They are simply promising not to sue for cross-pollination.

3. They have been caught lying before.

This last one is regarding a herbicide called Roundup, where Monsanto lied to European farmers about its toxicity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup_(herbicide)#Legal_cases). I used it and feel bad about it because I try to keep the surroundings healthy (I dont have any crops though). So if they say "Oh yeah its fine we're not gonna sue you don't worry" it makes me feel sceptical.

rubinelli• 13 years ago

If there was, we won't know for a long time, since gag clauses are extremely common in this kind of settlement.

fnordfnordfnord• 13 years ago

There is one notable example where a farmer intentionally and willfully planted seeds that he knew were Monsantos

The seeds weren't Monsanto's seed. They were harvested crops. It would be more fair to say that Bowman probably knew or had reason to suspect that a large portion of those "junk" seeds were likely descendant of Monsanto's patented herbicide resistant seed, and that he had probably signed a contract previously in which he agreed not to save seeds from his harvest for further planting.

zsombor4• 13 years ago

Until our fears of GM are blown out of proportion, only a few giga corporations can afford the effort of developing new GM products. That considerable investment ends up being defended by an army of suits. I hope this will eventually change and the current players will suffer the fate IBM had 30 years ago. There are already students breeding new aquarium pets for example at much lower cost.

WiseWeasel2• 13 years ago

Terribly written opinion piece; the author apparently forgot to kill all the strawmen they erected, let alone provide any kind of serious treatment of the issue. Despite the author's attempts to shroud it in a veil of balanced reporting, this article is unworthy of discussion on HN.

zsombor4• 13 years ago

The author is a scientist working in the domain and not in employ of Monsanto or any other major GM market player today. She wrote 3 books on the subject, with extensive footnotes and references.

If anything this a summary treating the subject at the level of depth that can be expected of a short article. Not reporting but a summary, please read her books & papers if you are actually open to those details you request.

zzzeek3• 13 years ago

This very brief article doesn't really cover much at all, only covering that we generally know that a GMO food won't kill you if you eat it. While there are a minority of individuals who needlessly worry about this, this isn't really the issue. It certainly does not address the key issue of whether or not Monsanto should be leading the field.

The real concerns involve sustainable agricultural concerns such as pesticide resistance or overuse, gene contamination, and freedom of research, and specifically if Monsanto the company has really shown themselves to be the most responsible steward to retain near-monopolistic control over the execution of these sensitive practices, as well as a vast proportion of the world's seed supply.

For lots of in-depth discussion on these issues, I recommend this series by the Union of Concerned Scientists: http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-... Articles specific to Monsanto are here: http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-... http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-... http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-...

Disclaimer: I am not a farmer, or a scientist, or someone who knows anything at all. I am merely pointing out that this article says nearly nothing useful, and referring to a series of articles by a reputable, if not opinionated, organization of experienced scientists and researchers.

splawn2• 13 years ago

I agree with you. Also, I want to point out that your list of real concerns would still be valid in absence of GMO tech.

moens7• 13 years ago

Also, while reading these, take the time to watch "Kingdom of Men" again to get a feel for what the real issue actually looks like. Living organisms appear (IMO, and subtly in other research) to be able to detect code base tampering, and reject it. How do they reject it? Infertility.

I am a farmer and it is difficult as hell to create a non-GMO farm (non-GMO contaminated mulch and compost, non-GMO animal feeds, non-GMO source animals, non-GMO seed). The OP is correct in all points about Monsanto's power over seed production, but misses what SciAm (and almost everyone else) misses:

Genetic material is code being used in a production environment!

As such it needs to be protected. Code contamination (forks) need to be registered publicly and isolated with extreme prejudice from the production environment. We didn't write the code, and as far as I am concerned, I feel that Monsanto as a policy maker (by default or by lobbing) and any of the most advanced geneticists are script kiddies on a Galactic scale. We will get to adequate understanding it time, but that time is not now. Who gives a fk if you or your grandmother can live a longer or more pain-free life if the result is a global genetic seg-fault? I don't.

My answer is to set up my own isolated farm, as free of GM as I can make it. As I see it, existing organisms do have a genetic conversation (via viruses and other single cell organisms) and will resist and correct some amount of genetic contamination. Honestly I have my doubts that even this will work, but its the most I can do.

Food for thought.

jeena2• 13 years ago

I'm not sure I follow, you say "Genetic material is code being used in a production environment!" as far as I understand it we have been researching for decades and haven't found real problems, at least not more then with older alternatives like radiation and chemicals to speed up the production of genetic changes.

It confuses me that people are ok with, like the article calls it, the shotgun approach (radiation, chemicals) but not with the surgeon approach (using a scalpel and replacing only the genes we want to), I honestly don't understand why.

Blahah3• 13 years ago

All of the concerns you raise are with the agricultural system in general, not with GM crops. There are some valid points in the OP, but poorly articulated and unsupported. Not a helpful contribution to the discourse.

zzzeek3• 13 years ago

I did not in fact refer to these concerns as specific to GMO (though the UOCS series places it under "genetic engineering"). I'm a lot more concerned about Monsanto's monopolistic role within the global food supply as a whole rather than GMO specifically.

ideonexus2• 13 years ago

GMO crops hold incredible potential to feed a world population that continues to grow by leaps and bounds. It has the power to do that with reduced pesticide use, taking pressures off of endangered species, and by bringing crops to parts of the world where they will not grow. There is ZERO evidence that GMO crops have any detrimental health effects, and as hackers we have to stand up to this anti-science nonsense[1].

As for Monsanto. After the Organic Seed Growers brought a class-action suit against the company for unjustly suing innocent farmers whose crops were inadvertently cross-pollinated, I found it incredibly damning that the judge had to throw the case out because the organic farmers could not produce one single example of this ever happening[2]. Nevertheless, this case being dismissed for lack of a victim has actually been used as more proof of Monsanto's control over all branches and departments of government by the tin-foil hat brigade.

[1] http://ideonexus.com/2011/12/05/gmo-foods-and-the-promise-a-...

[2] https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B83aJv4L7U-iYzYyMzQxOTktZjY5...

hkolek• 13 years ago

a world population that continues to grow by leaps and bounds

not so much: http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#growthrate

stefantalpalaru2• 13 years ago

as hackers we have to stand up to this anti-science nonsense

As hackers we have to question everything instead of being true believers (in science or anything else).

hga16• 13 years ago

As hackers we have to apply heuristics as to what to seriously question or we'll go bonkers, not to mention be seriously unproductive.

splawn2• 13 years ago

Perhaps its a semantic thing, but isn't questioning everything instead of being a true believer the basis of science?

forgottenpaswrd• 13 years ago

I believed Scientific American was a scientific magazine.

Instead I find this as a shill article complete void of data or any other information whatsoever. It seems like a paid placement article for me.

In science "you don't trust anything", you make experiments and get data.

Personally I am fine with GMO provided 1 thing: You label your food as GMO, and then if people decide they want to be guinea pigs of new developments with their own money so be it.

But they don't want letting people to choose. In the US you can't choose. As the article says "hey, it is making Monsanto lots of money so it is very good".

qwatsi135793• 13 years ago

You can assume that all food has GMOs unless it's labeled as organic. Is that not sufficient?

kazagistar3• 13 years ago

It means it costs producers a lot of money to not be labeled as GMO, making GMO default. That seems silly. I really don't see the problem with labeling GMO foods.

maratd3• 13 years ago

Instead I find this as a shill article complete void of data or any other information whatsoever.

I don't see any data in your comment either. Shall we classify it as a shill as well?

It's pretty clear that the article has a single argument. We have been genetically modifying foods for thousands of years and there is no fundamental difference between what we're doing now and what we did before, other than the tools we're using to do it.

How can you provide data for that?

You label your food as GMO ... In the US you can't choose

WholeFoods is advertising all over their paper bags that they will begin doing this. That said, everything consumed by human beings in the last few thousand years is GMO. Especially our livestock, which has been forced down an evolutionary path that is not sustainable in nature in the slightest. If we become extinct for whatever reason, you will not find chickens and cows roaming about. They will be gone and they will be gone very quickly.

pigscantfly• 13 years ago

I think that some breeds of cow, at least, would be able to survive a human extinction event. You would see rapid adaptation in the population, though, so maybe we could rephrase your observation to: "If we become extinct for whatever reason, you will not find recognizable chickens and cows roaming about."

malyk2• 13 years ago

That said, everything consumed by human beings in the last few thousand years is GMO.

And most people in the anti/label-GMO movement know this an acknowledge that to be the case and love that. What they DON'T love is the intentional irradiation/gene gun/cross species GM techniques that have been employed in the last 30ish years. On an evolutionary scale there hasn't been enough time to determine if modern GM crops (specifically the cross species variety) are deleterious or not. That's where the concern lies.

zsombor4• 13 years ago

Would you expect the same labeling be placed on all varieties obtained by induced random mutations?

Or even better would you require all food items to have their genes completely sequenced? Have them certified by independent organizations that the sequences are identical to what you had 5 years ago? Have it done on all apples for example, as it is possible that one particular flower suffered a mutation thanks to random cosmic rays?

Would expect not. The very act of labeling suggests the produce to be inferior. Instead of choice it merely perpetuates the unscientific view.

Blahah3• 13 years ago

Crop engineer here (the humanitarian kind, not the for-profit kind). Dammit Nina Federoff, that's one poorly written article. All the facts she states are true, but her thesis (that the myths are disproven by GM crops' increasing market share) is stupid.

If anyone wants to ask any GM crop technical questions, or wants any references, I'll do my best.

nissimk• 13 years ago

What's more dangerous: manipulating genetics of crops or spraying roundup onto the food crops?

Isn't the most common genetic modification the one that makes the plants immune to roundup?

Wikipedia seems to say that glyphosate is harmless to humans in small doses, but the talk page references the combination of glyphosate and TN-20 which is included in roundup and this link is about the human toxicity of that combination: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23099315

jivatmanx2• 13 years ago

Humans began genetically modifying plants to provide food more than 10,000 years ago.

There's a difference between selecting and breeding specific plants in your corn crop, or crossing corn with a slightly different variety of corn, and crossing corn with a fish, ginkgo tree, or bacteria.

7rurl• 13 years ago

They are different in degree and method, but fundamentally they are the same thing. In the end they are both humans causing the genes of a good crop to change over time. Direct genetic engineering is going to be faster, but the end results could still be the same as indirect breeding and hybrids.

jivatmanx2• 13 years ago

A species, the lowest taxonomic classification on the tree of life, is defined by the ability to crossbreed. [0]

Previously, any crossbreeding between plants, by necessity had to belong to the same species. Since this is the lowest taxonomic classification, the vast majority of the genome was shared.

Now, a plant can be crossed with any other species on the tree of life. That's a significant difference.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species

tokenadult• 13 years ago

I see several comments are decrying this interesting commentary article from Scientific American for not providing detailed citations for such basic facts as

"Humans began genetically modifying plants to provide food more than 10,000 years ago."

(This has been well understood ever since the Young Earth Creationism view of the age of the earth was set aside.)

"For the past hundred years or so plant breeders have used radiation and chemicals to speed up the production of genetic changes. This was a genetic shotgun, producing lots of bad changes and a very, very occasional good one."

(One example of this that is very familiar to me is the variety of sweet, pink-fleshed grapefruit grown in Texas, which was developed by irradiating grapefruit seeds.)

"Most early alarms about new technologies fade away as research accumulates without turning up evidence of deleterious effects. This should be happening now because scientists have amassed more than three decades of research on GM biosafety, none of which has surfaced credible evidence that modifying plants by molecular techniques is dangerous. Instead, the anti-GM storm has intensified."

If someone wants to disagree with this aspect of the article, the thing to do would be to cite evidence that there is any danger to GMO technology. As I type this, no one commenting in this thread has yet done so.

"Insect-resistant GM corn also decreases human and animal exposure to mycotoxins, highly toxic and carcinogenic compounds made by fungi. The fungi that produce mycotoxins follow insects into plants; insect-resistant plants have no insect holes for fungi to enter and therefore no mycotoxins."

This is a fact new to me that I learned from the article kindly submitted here. All living things are in biological competition, and most living things are toxic, by natural selection, to some or many of the other living things that might eat them. GMO technology allows human eaters to enjoy safer food.

"Farmers don't have to buy Monsanto seed, nor is anyone preventing them from saving and replanting any seed they want, except for patented seed they've signed an agreement not to save and plant. Farmers buy seeds from Monsanto and other ag-biotech companies because their costs decrease and their profits increase. If they didn't, farmers wouldn't buy them again."

Most of my uncles and cousins are farmers. The quoted statement is true. Farmers buy products if the products offer a good safety and effectiveness profile for sustainable farming. Agricultural products that don't work don't get a lot of repeat business from farmers. The people who are still farmers in the United States feed the entire country they live in and have enough surplus production to feed much of the rest of the world. Farmers in other countries have also enjoyed increased productivity as a result of agricultural research and free enterprise in agricultural products. The whole developed world is seeing rising life expectancies and reduced disease burdens at all ages,

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-w...

so whatever is new about agricultural practices in the developed world seems to working well so far.

zzzeek3• 13 years ago

The whole developed world is seeing rising life expectancies and reduced disease burdens at all ages

the article is about Monsanto. Are you postulating we have Monsanto to thank for increasing life expectancies and decreasing disease worldwide? That would need some serious evidence wouldn't it ?

maratd3• 13 years ago

the article is about Monsanto.

The title is about Monsanto. The article is not.

WiseWeasel2• 13 years ago

It's ridiculous to say that because we've been using genetic modification techniques for three decades without catastrophe, GMOs are safe. GMOs encompass a large and expanding range of techniques and implementations, and it's never too late for someone to screw up and give the entire field a black eye.

The question I have is largely of containment, given the potential delay between the time a GMO product is introduced to the market, and the signs of health problems appearing. If by the time a serious problem is discovered, the genetic material in question has spread to the entire gene pool for that species, then it becomes extremely difficult to address. If the unwanted presence of a modified gene prevents farmers from labeling their product organic, or exporting to certain countries, as was recently the case with Oregon wheat farmers and Japan, then it's currently having some very real consequences for people which shouldn't be dismissed.

I'm all for progress; I'd just rather let others be guinea pigs when possible, and always keep an exit strategy.

hga16• 13 years ago

One of the reasons we relaxed the strict methods that were adopted in the '70s was that we realized genetic material moved around all the time, Nature, in moens's delightful formulation, is a script-kiddie to end all script-kiddies.

zsombor4• 13 years ago

Actually what the article says is that we have been using genetic modifications since the dawn of agriculture. Four hundred years ago carrots were not orange, broccoli did not exist. Countless varieties were produced using aggressive methods inducing mutations as well as selection by humans over the accidental mutations.

None of these new breeds were subjected to the same rigorous standards of verification and safety as the produce labeled as 'GMO' today. Worse all new varieties produced with the same forced shuffling are similarly not tested with the same standards as GMOs are.

There have yet to been someone poisoned by 'GMO' varieties whilst there are plenty of such accidents in case of 'classic' breeding. A very good book on this subject is "Mendel in the Kitchen: A Scientist's View of Genetically Modified Food", that by no accident was written by a scientist and not an activist.

malyk2• 13 years ago

I'm scientifically minded. I've loved science all my life. I'm decently well versed in many areas of science. GMO crops concern me because there is so much that we don't know about their effects and we don't really have an exit strategy if it turns out that they are, in fact, dangerous.

From my point of view we don't have enough data to be able to make a determination one way or another, so the only logical way forward is to be cautious. At the very least that means labeling whether or not our food contains food that was genetically engineered in the modern sense (gene-gun or irradiation, primarily).

The evidence we do have about modern GM crops is almost completely provided by the industry itself. In my opinion, there is enough circumstantial evidence from studies done by third parties, even if those studies aren't perfectly executed, to be wary of unleashing GM foods onto the global population. We shouldn't be so cavalier when we are dealing with the foundations of life. We don't fully understand the genome and we require food to eat. Those two facts should be enough for us to tread very carefully down this path. Let's do the science (beyond animal feeding studies). Let's find out. But in the meantime, assuming that everything is above-board from the very people who are going to benefit from the introduction and adoption of GM crops seems irrational when the potential harm is so great.

AsymetricCom• 13 years ago

"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."

Whoa boy, there goes any credibility that article had. To be fair, at least they are upfront about where they're coming from.. This article probably tells us more about SA than MON.

Can We Trust Monsanto with Our Food?

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