Interesting debate about banning GMOs in Hawaii

[BlueCross]

A rather longish article in which one guy searches for facts about GMOs.

I've already come down on the 'pro GMO' side before, and this article does nothing to dissuade me from that opinion.  In fact, it just reinforces my belief that many laws are passed from ignorance or fear, where scientific studies are just dismissed out of hand (“I don’t agree with the professor").

It rings of the same arguments that anti-global warming proponents use; "Some compare the hostility to G.M.O.s to the rejection of climate-change science, except with liberal opponents instead of conservative ones."

This leads to an even broader issue I have with democracy: majority rule does not always come to the correct conclusion (but we can argue that on a different thread).

*sigh...*

I wish I could read stuff in the news that would make me less of a cynic.

[TK]

I won't go in to the whole GMO foods debate, at least not now on little sleep while I don't have any sources to hand but I do have a major issue with the patents and copyrights the developers and suppliers use.  All seeds sold to farmers and produced from GMO crop are patented by the company that developed them and are supplied under restrictive licence, this means that farmers are not able to re-use seeds without permission and that farmers who do not use GMO seed but have farms next to a farmer who does use GMO are effectively guilty of theft because of wind blown seed.

GMO is a threat to competition, diversity and small scale specialist farming before you even begin to consider any health ramifications.  Revoke the perpetual rights a company has to the seed of GMO crop before I see GMO as anything other than a noxious monopolist tool used by corporations with little to no interest in developing a good product. 

[BlueCross]

"unfettered capitalism" at its worst. 

[Hoopy Frood]

My issues with GMO's are along the lines of TK.

I have no compunctions with genetic engineering. Mankind has been genetically engineering things since we first settled and formed civilizations. We domesticated animals. We domesticated plants. We bred both to benefit us. Just because we have the technology to do so through laboratories now doesn't make it bad.

However, I do think we have a tendency to release genetically engineered products to the general populace far faster than we should, without adequate trials to determine the full adverse effects that could occur.

But even worse, we allow evil behemoths like Monsanto to dictate the distribution of these things.

I'm a free-marketer at heart. But much of what we do is closer to corporate socialism than actual capitalism. It's Murphy's Golden rule, and Monsanto has all the gold to make the rules. They are one of the few truly evil corporations out there. They don't believe in free markets; they only believe in their market. In the end, society, while maybe not losing, will not benefit nearly as much as it could.