funny but informative cartoon
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...v=KGqQV6ObFCQ#!


If you don't like it do not comment.

Just how is a person going to decide without watching? If you can not take a negative response its probably best to not post on an open forum:shrug:

that was great!
makes me want to brake out my first season DVDs of Ren and Stempy

I saw a minute of it. Says its about gmo, but just a confused muddle of jumble. Pretty much as the poster says, believers only, no need for science or thought or facts.

Paul

I learned something. I knew about the Indian cotton farmers committing suicide, but didn't know about it stopping debt.

So, lets pretend you are a nurse.

I can make a 'funny and informative' cartoon about nursing.

You know nurses kill people, they inject poisons into people. Ha ha.

You know a lot of nurses make mistakes.

Much of what nurses do make people feel miserable, poking prodding forcing on bad thing or another. Lot of humorous situations can illustrate how mean these nurses are. Ha ha on those mean nurses.

In other countries a small portion of the population lives much longer than here in the USA, so nurses don't really do anything to prolong life. They only make people miserable, and put poison in people. Ha ha.

Last year some nurses threatened to go on strike, clearly these nurses don't care about people, they only want a paycheck. No Concern for people or health, just want to get rich off of sick people. Ha ha.

And so on, for 9 minutes.

Now if you are a nurse, then of course this video isn't for you, just keep your mouth shut, you have no opinion that is worth while.



How would all you in the medical field feel about such a humorous, informative cartoon? And everything I mentioned is, well, true. But does it paint an honest picture? Or am I twisting unrelated issues into an ugly, mean thing?

I've known nurses that sacrifice their own time and happiness to care for cancer victims beyond all hope, certainly pumping them full of poison and bothering the heck out of them, and collecting a small overtime payment. Not one iota of that is evil, ill willed, greedy, or mean.

But we can portray it that way if we want, if we don't care about anyone else.

Same with farming, agribusiness, feeding people around the world. If that's the direction you want to go, well you have that right.

I feel sorry for you, tho, if you choose to be that mean.

Ha ha, I guess.

Paul

Coming from someone who knows nothing about GMO, a rank newbie that is, I find this kind of scary. What do experienced growers think? Is this biased propaganda, or is it something to be concerned about?

I thought it was funny. Tongue in cheek. :D

GMO is nasty. Just my opinion, which I can express on this board.

Thank you.

Both.

Was just reading about this in BWH mag. Scary stuff!

I highly suggest you do your own research and not rely on the "it's not been proven unsafe" 3-4 around here. If you do, you will see the reason it's not been proven "unsafe". Lack of adequate testing which would remove all doubt. The limited amount of testing done on GMOs would lead anyone to believe it's something to stay away from - unless you are growing the crop for income. ;)

Even as a comedy, there are enough half-truths thrown in I suspect some will believe it.

It is always wise to be involved in and question how your world works.

Understanding what is happening with your food supplies is a good thing.

As a parody, I would find that cartoon funny, a caricature of the anti- movement.

As it's passed off by some as if it had any truth in it. Well that appears mean, uninformed, and just downright insulting really. As I tried to show by example in my nursing parallel.

Nonetheless, there are always concerns and stuff to watch out for and be informed about. I do not dismiss real concerns about our food supply from informed people.

What direction are we going with the whole idea of patented life forms, and licensed food stocks, especially when it gets to animal agriculture? These tho are legal and moral issues, not safety related. I too have serious reservations on these legal issues.

Gmo crops to date have been tested much more than some would pretend. Gmo allows using products and practices that by all available testing methods we possess, use less harmful practices and products to be used to produce the amounts of food this world needs.

That doesn't mean we should stop looking for better ways, or improve our testing and considerations of what directions to go.

Farming has not been the old couple in the picture holding a pitch fork, running 160 acres, hoeing the weeds, and milking 8 dairy cows since the 1950s. That does not produce much food per acre, and is not kind to the environment. We have proved that model is wrong-minded for many decades now.

Are gmo plants safe to consume?

They have been examined, tested, and used since the early 1990s, actually been tested and researched since the early 1980s. As a farmer, I've see the discussion and research on them for 30 plus years, to me this is an old issue been around forever, to you it must be something new, and something to wonder about.

To date, any negative problems that have been 'discovered' have come from rouge people that don't subject their reports to independent review or use methods so poor they are universally renounced.

Several countries like to protect their own farmers from international trade, and have created an artificial concern about gmo crops. Instead of telling their citizens taxes are high to protect local farmers, they use gmo as a crutch. They still import gmo products, just don't tell anyone. Brazil has a long history of not paying the extra cost of gmo crops, growing them, pretending they were not gmo, and exporting them to countries who pretended right along with them that there was no gmo in those crops..... Wink wink. It's all about politics, not any sort of study or health issue. It's politics and money....

As to testing, how much testing is good enough? As I learned on my high school math classes, we assume 2 plus 2 is always equal to 4, but we can't actually prove that every time to infinity.... So for those who ask for testing, how much testing will be enough testing? Apple cores contain cyanide if you crush the seeds, are apples safe, have we proven that? Would another 10 years prove that gmo is safe? Ashton Kushner emulated a fruit only diet while filming a movie, and had to be hospitalized. Are fruits, and fruit only diets safe? Can we prove that? How do we define safe? Are cars and transportation always safe? How are we defining this, what is it we want? We use cars, fight for our right to use cars, even tho they are not safe. Gmos pass all the credible tests, have been around for decades with no problems we can detect, and yet - that's not good enough. Is this an honest fear, or is there an agenda to put down science, relative risks?

So, if you are genuinely interested in the issue, its difficult to find good info. If you follow the links some of the folks put out here you,will see the sites and studies are rather 'out there' for quality and claims. More of a religion than a science.

On the other hand the science and tests are rather dry, obtuse, and buried in legal tomes, so hard to figure them out from a laymans view.

I don't know that we can ever prove something is 100% safe. We never have on anything ever before? A bucket of water is life giving and needed to survive. But it also can be used to drown a dozen people......

At this point in time, it would appear the current gmo crops give us more food with less bad issues that without the gmo in the big picture of everything. Of course we do not know everything and there never will be a 100% warranty of anything. Gmos allow use of less harmful pesticides, lower water and wind erosion, increase the yield per acre slightly. All of those are real, and positive gmo results so far. Feed and food prices are more stable and slightly lower as well. The negatives appear to be that it is difficult for some to travel into the unknown?

As we move forward it is good to question, to test, and to look for even better solutions. Big business and politics can mess up even the best ideas, and we always need to watch and question. That is good.

It is very hard to offer any middle ground on this issue, it has been polarized and politicized into a black and while issue, when in fact we really look for improvements and solutions that offer more good than bad over the old solutions in life. We live in a grey world, and need to move forward with best choices, we rarely have perfect options.

Many have lost touch with that concept on this issue.

Fortunately there are choices and options to raise your own, or buy foods that do not contain much if any gmo. Organic certification, and other labels allow you to choose what you feel is important to you.

Paul

Paul, find me one test that isn't owned by Monsanto....and maybe I'll believe the findings.
My very own son.....worked with a young lady that was doing her PhD thesis on some part of GMO's. I do not know what her exact research was. DS and she are both entomology students. Our son finished last week. Her results weren't to Monsanto's liking and they refused to allow her findings to be published. They were accepted by other scientific boards...but in the end, the agreement signed was that Monsanto owned the research and they denied it's publication. What this did to this young lady's schooling we won't go into. You can speak all you want about testing, and scientific mumbo jumbo. It isn't mumbo jumbo to those that actually know and look at all the points of the research. These are the people that check the science to see that the correct steps were taken, the points covered and where gaps might be in their conclusions. These are the people we should be relying on for research that is unbiased science because we are lay people and can't understand everything out there.

There are scientific publications that are well respected in the science world and those that are not. But why would they try if they don't get to publish what they find? If they don't sign up front that Monsanto owns their research they are not given the seeds to work with. This doesn't sound like a company that's so sure of their testing to me. And I believe myself to be fairly open minded about this subject. I think there are probably many, many things we eat, drink or breath every day that are more harmful than GMO's. But the companies that own them do nothing to help themselves be perceived as up front and honest.

Maybe they could spend a couple bucks down at the feed store and BUY some seeds to work with?

The cartoon was entertaining, but ABSOLUTELY true. Be afraid. be VERY afraid. Really.

I do realize we are on the brink of total global disaster, I've only been trying to put a good face on it these past years.

But as long as you've let the cat out of the bag, might as well admit it now.

:)

Paul

Our feed store does not sell that type of seed, i.e. for planting in small patches.

The seed companies that sell GMO (as far as I know from farmers here) sell through local distributors to farmers. It is sold in large amounts. There are documents that must be signed when you buy your seed, too, about your intended use.

That is true. The licenses and agreements are very similar to those that come with software - if you are using Microsoft or apple or android based system to read this, you agreed to a very similar type of license. You can look back and see the many pages of stuff you agreed to..

If you haven't signed those agreements for seed, you may go to the elevator or feed dealer and buy feed grains. They will have the traits, and be what the critters or we ourselves are eating. You could run tests on that. Certainly, it may be difficult to find a university that would go along with this (be above the licencing agreements) but I'd think the possibility is out there to do so?

Paul

That was adorable. Thanks for posting the link.

This is what I was thinking. A box of corn flakes or sack of feed at the feed store should provide one with plenty of product for testing. I have yet to be asked to sign any "agreement" to purchase foods or grains.

I wish someone would make a cartoon about gun ownership in the same way...you know...they could cover things like...

God commands not to kill, but I have my gun so I can kill anything that moves (cause god created guns too)
I need a gun to protect me from the government cause they will come and get me one day (soon). The government is corrupt. But don't let anyone say a bad word about our troops, cause they are the best things in the world (and also run by our government).
.......there is so much material to work with :)

i saw one posted here on HT yesterday.... "Gun control works" was the thread title. It was a bit more factual than this one though. It at least named the various governments through history that had disarmed their citizens prior to the mass slaughter of their people by the government.

We bought organic nonGMO seed once and had to sign an agreement to sell any seed back to the dealer and not use the produced grain as seed. We fed it out and don't deal with them any more, but its not just Monsanto trying to control seed sales. Their objective was/is to be the only organic OP field crop seed dealer around.

You can buy the seeds to PLANT, but you cannot buy the seeds to perform research with. Monsanto will sue the pants off a person who attempts to publish research that they have NOT REVIEWED.

I don't know why people can't understand this, it is in all the documents that Monsanto puts out regarding research. They OWN all research, even student research and it must be approved by Monsanto before they will allow publication.

Doesn't matter who peer reviews it, what mag it is published in, etc. Monsanto owns the research plain and simple and buying seeds to do research with will get one in a pile of legal trouble.

So in order to do research a student has to sign an agreement that Monsanto owns the research. If the research is reviewed by Monsanto and they do not want it published, it will not be published. Plain and simple. The student in question should have chosen another avenue to take in her research on GMO and chosen another company to work with, but as I understand it, all have similiar agreements but Monsanto is the biggest so gets the most press.

One doesn't simply buy seeds to do research and then publish..if you do, better have a lawyer in the family.

Much of the food we consume actually comes from specialty grains. Donno if corn flakes come from regular field corn, or perhaps the white corn? Likewise a lot of soy products come from specialty food-grade soybeans. These are different and kept seperate from the 'common' corn and soybeans used for livestock feed. They keep manure, bugs, and mold away from these food-grade grains. And often these food-grade crops are not actually gmo.

I realize no one understands this, including those who say people should know where their food comes from....

So, I'm not sure the cornflakes would for sure contain gmo corn....

Livestock feed is where the gmo grains go mostly......

--->Paul

1. Buy feed, not seed. The traits pass through to the crop you grow, so any feed you buy will likely be 90% gmo kernals.

You don't sign any agreement to buy feed.
You don't sign any agreement to buy a chemist's test set.
Patents on some seed expires in 2014/2015 in Candad and USA, so can't get you on that pretty soon.

2. If this is such an important issue and so dire, do the research, prove how horrible things are, and lawyers will not save any GMO company... Public opinion would crush them, no law or piece of paper would save them.

_IF_ there was actually anything to the anti- claims.

Do good, real, research. By real scientists. With real research looking for answers, not a pre conceived result.

paul

Reply
 

RR patent on soys already expired in Canada.

The food type of soybeans are most all like that as well. In general the soybean products you see in a store come from special soybeans grown on a few acres, not the common grain soybeans grown on millions of acres. (Regular soybeans get processed into meal which is high in protien for livestock feed, and oil which is used for cooking and industrial specialty oils and inks.) Food type have clear hilum and other properties to make an eatable soybean.

The state of Iowa has developed several of these food types, and collects a royalty, and has a license just like Monsanto, and patents on the seeds just like Monsanto, on these food type soybeans. They are non gmo soybeans, but are 'locked up' in the same type of licencing, patents, not allowed to save seed, etc. these seeds were developed with taxpayer money, but.... All locked up.

So most of the soy products coming from organic sources will have the very same license deals, patents, and not allowed to save seed as the regular soybeans.

Paul

To do a proper study on the effects of, or differences between, etc. GMO vs conventional, the scientist would need to start with a known entity (i.e. a randomized sample of 100% GMO seed bagged and tagged as the farmer would be planting), not some random feed that has an unknown GMO content.

The "grab bag" feed study wouldn't prove or disprove anything except maybe the germination rate of the grain purchased from a specific location.

Just want to quote a couple of posters on HT:
"Monsanto is the devil".

Find out what variety th farmer grew and go out and pick a few bushels, let it dry and then buy a few bushels of non-GMO. Now you can run your test.
But what are you testing? You want to feed a couple hundred rats? Then what? What is it you are looking to show? Different varieties of GMO and different varieties of non-GMO have different protien levels, different mineral levels, different amounts of starch, different amounts of oils. How do you compare GMO to non-GMO when there are also differences within differing varieties of non-GMO? Aflatoxin has been a problem in some corn this year. How do you make your sample even with the other. Do you raise two generations of rats of should you raise 200 generations? Do you feed each set nothing but corn or do you give the rats 5% corn to replicate human diet?
If I held the patents to a process that had cost me millions and some hack job propagandist with a degree wanted to destroy my product with a slanted so called study, I'd tell them where to go.
Do I think Monsanto gives one wit about me? Heck no. But I'm convinced that they will protect themselves from costly lawsuits by insuring their products won't hurt me. That is just business sense.

By the way, it was only a cartoon. Your food isn't being irriadated behind a lead shield and the nutrients aren't lost. GMO reduces insecticide use, not increase it.

Yea you could set up the study with grain purchased from the farmer, but the farmer wouldn't sell to you if he knew what you were doing, lest he be sued by Monsanto. Then of course if the study did prove or even suggest anything anti-GMO, that's an easy "source of error" for the pro-GMO folks to point to. ("we don't know how the farmer grew his product, soil conditions, etc etc

200 generations sounds great. More would be better.

If it's an objective study, you're not "looking to show" anything. Let the data speak for itself.

Obviously you would want to control for different mineral levels, etc by using different varieties.

I don't know about the diet ratios... would have to defer on that one. 5% sounds low for corn intake for an American human though (corn is in darn near everything processed, not to mention fed to pretty much all livestock).

Sooooo.... Its beginning to look to me like there has been no independent studies done regarding any hazards of GMO crops. If that is indeed the case.... by what evidence can ANY claims be made that GMO crops are or may cause problems? Sounds to me like a lot of unfounded hoopla and hysterics, or as someone once stated.... much ado about nothing.

The tobacco company thought they could get us to think that forver too

It is likely there will never be independent study performed on any GMO product as long as there are patents protected by law and as along as the people who own the patents refuse to allow any independent research to be published.

I do think that the government who allows this product to be utilized should mandate that independent testing be performed regardless of who owns the patents and those results should be published so that people can make an informed decision regarding the merits or hazards of GMO foods.

It is no wonder there is so much controversy over GMO, it is similiar to what happened to the tobacco industry. For years the Tobacco folks said smoking wasn't harmful, tobacco was fine, etc. and it is was only when independent research was performed and studies were done by those not controlled by tobacco that the real truth came out. Smoking tobacco products will shorten lifespans and kills lung function. Note I did not say kills people..I said lung function. Because I know smokers who have lived to be 96..lol..but whats to say they would not have lived to be 100 if they had not smoked. Same with GMO. I figure if there is such a smokescreen by the industries who produce the product - there might be a small closet fire somewhere. :soap:

"When two sides of an issue seem equal - figure out who's working for free."

And whats to say those people might not have lived as long as they did had they NOT smoked? Same with GMO? Since no one has had the opportunity to study.... how do we know that GMOs wont extend our lifespan by 30 years? or 50?