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| | | The company is motivated to suppress knowledge about those negative aspects, the company is motivated to suppress government attempts to regulate [..] the company is motivated to try to infiltrate government, to lobby government, | | | The company is motivated to suppress knowledge about those negative aspects, the company is motivated to suppress government attempts to regulate [..] the company is motivated to try to infiltrate government, to lobby government, |
| − | | The following is NOTES, not a completed response. | + | | Again, this is yet another conspiracy theory without even a shred of evidence backing it up. |
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| − | * This is just the same thing as the previous claims... Accusations of a large-scale conspiracy with no proof behind them.
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Revision as of 02:43, 29 July 2013
Seeds Of Death is a anti-GMO propaganda film produced by Gary Null, an AIDS denialist and conspiracy theorist. Both Gary Null and Richard Polonetsky wrote and directed the film, but Gary Null is the primary writer/director. The movie was released in December 2012. In May 2013, Gary Null posted the movie on his YouTube account. As of July 2013 it has nearly 250,000 views, making it almost as popular as the other major anti-GMO propaganda film on YouTube, "The World According To Monsanto", which has nearly 300,000 views (split between two videos and over a period of approximately four years).
Some notable people made appearances in this film, including:
This article is dedicated to listing and debunking the claims made, sometimes implicitly, in this movie. As the movie is approximately 80 minutes long (IMDB lists 90 minutes[1] but the YouTube version is 79:38), this article contains a great deal of content, and may be a bit difficult to navigate through. There is a dropdown navigation bar located directly below this paragraph that can be used to skip to any particular section of the movie. Timestamps are recorded following the conclusion of the transcribed claim, so if you're watching the movie as you read this keep that in mind.
Claims
| Claims of the movie
|
|
Analysis
|
0:40
| Every single independent study conducted on the impact of genetically modified food shows that it damages organs, it causes infertility, it causes immune system failure, it causes holes in the GI tract, it causes multiple organ system failure,
|
|
The first and most obvious problem with this claim is that every single independent study did not show those effects. Biofortified maintains a list of many independent studies[2], and a few examples from this list that do not support these claims include a study on transgenic papaya,[3] a study on RR soybeans,[4] and a two-year study on RR soybeans.[5] Since the producers of this video have not cited any scientific studies or even attempted to vaguely mention anything that even sounds like a study, I cannot address their claims directly, so instead I'll cite some general safety assessments. And since the video did not mention what type of plant these claims apply to I will assume they are referring to the transgenic process as a whole, in which case the above three studies directly refute their claims.
|
0:50
| The whole concept of genetically modified organisms is throwing a monkey wrench into the life on this planet.
|
|
One can argue that anything is "throwing a monkey wrench into the life on this planet". iPhones quite certainly aren't a natural concept, neither are roads. None of that matters though, because this is just a logical fallacy called the appeal to nature. Furthermore humans have been making huge changes to plants ever since agriculture started - maize being one of the biggest examples of a crop engineered solely for traits desired by humans.
|
1:06
| Monsanto is the company that told us PCBs were safe
|
|
The Monsanto of PCBs and the Monsanto of agriculture are two drastically different companies. There have been a lot of fuck-ups in history, that certainly was one, but I don't think this can be considered proof that every single thing they ever produce is tainted simply because of PCBs.
|
1:08
| They told us that Agent Orange was safe
|
|
Monsanto was given the formula by the US government. They did not claim that it was safe, and in fact in 1952 they warned the US Government that the Agent Orange they produced was contaminated by dioxin.[6] The government's response was to ignore this data. Furthermore Monsanto was neither the inventor nor only manufacturer of Agent Orange - the US Army created the formula, and the other companies producing Agent Orange were Diamond Shamrock, Dow, Hercules, T-H Agricultural & Nutrition Company, Thompson Chemicals, and Uniroyal.
Claiming that GMOs are unsafe because Monsanto manufactured Agent Orange is just as inane as claiming that ZipLock bags are unsafe since Dow manufactured Agent Orange, or that Krupps coffee makers are dangerous since the company used to make tanks. There are many more examples like this of companies with dubious pasts - Volkswagen was founded by Nazis, Mitsubishi's Zero fighters were used by the Japanese in WWII, IBM produced the tracking system that assisted the Nazis in the holocaust, both Siemens and Kodak used holocaust labor in production (Siemens supposably forced prisoners to build gas chambers that were later used to kill both the prisoners and their families), Bayer manufactured Zyklon B and helped out with Josef Mengele's inhumane experiments, Chase bank assisted the Nazis by freezing the accounts of Jews, and last but definitely not least, Germans killed millions of Jews.
None of this makes the companies' products bad. This doesn't mean that all Germans are terrible people, it doesn't mean that you should avoid using ZipLock bags. It doesn't mean that your Mitsubishi car is going to explode. It doesn't mean that your aspirin is secretly designed to murder you. Many companies and countries have a bad history, but it doesn't mean that it's impossible for a company or country to change.
|
1:08
| they told us that DDT was safe
|
|
Using DDT on farms was irresponsible. Using DDT to aid in malaria control efforts was not. DDT is in no way comparable to GMOs. There was little or no safety testing done on DDT, while in contrast there is an immense amount of testing done on GMOs. Once serious investigation into DDT happened, the danger was discovered, then immediately removed by banning the insecticide. As with Agent Orange, blaming solely Monsanto for this or attempting to call it equivalent isn't quite a rational comparison.
|
1:15
| And now they're in charge of telling us if their own genetically modified foods are safe
|
|
Using this as justification for insane claims about GMOs is ridiculous. Safety testing for these plants is extremely in-depth. Several government agencies review each new variety.[7] Monsanto (as well as their competitors) is required to conduct any studies that these agencies demand at their own expense, then turn over the results in full so that they can be evaluated. Modifying these results would be extremely difficult to pull off, especially when you consider the other biotech companies that are also required to perform tests - every single biotech company would have to be part of a massive conspiracy for this to become even slightly plausible. Furthermore this completely ignores how colleges, other companies, and research institutes have also been performing studies on these crops, studies whose results would ALSO need to be faked to keep up this illusion, studies whose results would have to be perfectly faked and kept in alignment with each other. This large of a cover-up would involve the entirety of several scientific fields! The sheer idiocy in implying that this this is even remotely plausible or even possible is incredible.
|
1:50
| There has not been sufficient animal/human/environmental health testing of these new transgenic fish
|
|
It would be nice if some actual proof was cited here.. A study.. Even some actual concerns beyond "I don't like how you've spent the past 22 years developing and testing these fish, therefore I demand more tests". In a way this is a form of moving the goalposts - the activists are just moving the goalposts as fast as possible so that they can keep the fish off of the market. The FDA has declared that the fish pose no environmental threat and it is very likely that they will be approved for human consumption soon.[8]
|
2:04
| Basically they've taken agriculture and built an industrial model which doesn't fit nature
|
|
Yet again the appeal to nature is abused! The process of plant breeding and even agriculture itself aren't "natural", so why are they singling out GM crops?
|
2:19
| If You have an organic corn crop which sits next to an genetically engineered field [...] your crop will be contaminated
|
|
The documentary fails to recognize that gene flow is a natural part of agriculture. No crop is ever 100% pure, which is why USDA Organic guidelines allow for a certain amount of inadvertent contamination.[9] Likewise in the EU, contamination of up to 1% is considered acceptable.[10] This gene flow works both ways - the conventional farmers are also having their crops contaminated with inferior organic plants, and organic farmers are also getting contaminated with the conventional farmer's plants, as well as other organic farms' plants. It's also not difficult to reduce contamination levels in the unlikely event that they are an actual problem for the farmer. Soybeans are one of the more popular transgenic crops, but their method of reproduction means that contamination is extremely low with only minor precautions.[11] While the same is not true for all transgenic crops, proper isolation techniques can still easily result in contamination levels of under 0.5% for corn.[12] Contamination isn't a new issue either - it's been a problem for farmers for a very long time. The only difference is that organic farmers may have to give up their premiums if they don't take extremely basic precautions against contamination that arealready recommended by USDA guidelines.[13]
|
2:47
| The pharma industry has no interest in having you well because they don't make any money if you're well. And the pharma industry is the biotech industry
|
|
This is basically just the good old pharma conspiracies... The proof for this particular conspiracy seems to be in the same place as for all the other ones - missing. Vaccines are manufactured by the pharma industry, come with tiny profit margins, and result in less sick people. If the pharma industry truly had no interest in having you well then why are they selling such effective products? Maybe they're focused on making money by selling effective products instead (which avoids the whole unpleasantness of having your product pulled from the market for deceptive advertising)? Nah, it's gotta be a conspiracy. As for the claims of the biotech industry being the pharma industry, the evidence for this is mixed. Some biotech companies have a presence in the pharma industry, some don't. But the primary company being blamed in this video is Monsanto, which is quite certainly not a pharma company. And having one company with both biotech and pharma divisions doesn't mean that there's some massive conspiracy to make people sick via their biotech division.
|
3:02
| The use of GM in agriculture is a risk that is simply not worth taking.
|
|
This claim would sound far more convincing if they had something factual to show off instead of some lies about the scientific research and some nutty claims about pharma and biotech.
|
3:32
| Any scientist that looks into the research or the lack of research on the safety of genetically engineered food comes to the conclusion that these foods should not be on the market and that they need another decade or two of research
|
|
Any scientists... Yes... That must be what these six hundred studies show, right?[14]
...hmm, looks like the scientific evidence doesn't support that claim. So where are all these scientists who think that this food needs a few more decades of research? Hiding under a rock?
|
4:03
| The FDA doesn't require a single safety study, they leave it to Monsanto
|
|
Responsibility for the safety and testing of genetically engineered foods is split between three federal agencies: The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal AND Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), the U.S.Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), AND the Department OF Health AND Human Services Food and Drug Administration(FDA).[15] Biotech companies are required to provide any safety studies that the FDA demands, done at the company’s expense, and they are required to turn over the raw data to the FDA for review. The process is lengthy and complicated.[16]
|
5:07
| Companies only care about money, health isn't a concern
|
|
Companies don't tend to make much money when they kill off their customers! I'm struggling to understand how this claim would ever make sense.
|
5:39
| <Revolving door, Michael Taylor, etc>
|
|
So where is this evidence of bias? Where is the proof for this broad governmental influence? Did someone forget to present it? When Taylor was formally accused of bias by an activist, the FDA refuted the activist's claims, and even the industry critics defended Taylor.[17] In general, Taylor's actions seem to be inconsistent with the accusations made in this movie. As for the remaining claims, if Monsanto truly ran the FDA, why would they have the FDA request expensive and time-consuming studies every time they submit a crop for approval? Why would they allow the government to ban GM crops from USDA Organic certified foods? Why would they ever let the FDA, USDA, or EPA ever delay the approval process, and why would they let it take so long? The sheer implausibility of the movie's claims is self destructive. Last but not least, experts in a particular field often work for the government - this isn't exactly unusual, most experts happen to have industry experience.
|
3:09
| In reality the overwhelming consensus among the scientists at the FDA were not only that GMOs were different, but that they were inherently dangerous. That they might create allergies, toxins, new diseases, and nutritional problems.
|
|
* As far as I can tell he is representing the opinions of a few FDA scientists as the opinions of all of them, and taking a few minor concerns brought up initially and pretending that the concerns were considered valid. It's important to note that every single one of those concerns were brought up, but that they were hypothetical, and were discarded when they were deemed unrealistic.
|
16:24
| Michael Taylor and the political appointees ignored the science, ignored the scientists, denied the existence of their concerns
|
|
Smith hasn't presented any proof of the FDA ignoring the science. The concerns voiced seem to have been dismissed for being unrealistic. At this stage the technology was new and such concerns initially were worth evaluation, but they were (rightfully) discarded after evaluating them for realism.
|
6:36
| Set forth a policy that allowed GMOs to be put on the market in a way that creates unprecedented risk for human beings and the environment
|
|
How the hell can you manage to turn the lengthy approval process that requires these crops to be approved by up to three federal agencies into "unprecedented risk"? Also see my comments on the general Michael Taylor accusations.
|
7:43
| The company is motivated to suppress knowledge about those negative aspects, the company is motivated to suppress government attempts to regulate [..] the company is motivated to try to infiltrate government, to lobby government,
|
|
Again, this is yet another conspiracy theory without even a shred of evidence backing it up.
|
8:14
| They have been effective at essentially stacking the agencies in their favor to the point that it's almost physically impossible to pass any type of federal regulations or legislation because the people who make those choices are essentially owned by Monsanto, works for Monsanto, "creeps" for Monsanto
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Considering the ridiculous approval process currently in use, I don't see how anyone can listen to this claim without laughing at the sheer hilarity of it. I don't know if it's worth trying to explain the process over and over again... Some people just aren't interested. It's probably worth reiterating that if Monsanto really had so much control, why would they allow the government to cost them so much money on safety assessments and delays?
|
9:05
| They say we don't have [the right to eat what we want], in fact we're going to force [genetically modified foods] on you
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- I have no clue how he arrived at this conclusion, considering how USDA organic and the non-gmo project exists...
|
9:33
| The FDA, and the EPA, who lead the charge for these new food safety bills - there's nothing in these bills to protect you, it's there to protect the genetic engineering industry, and unfortunately if we don't stop this, you won't see organic farmers
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- I don't even know what bill he's referring to.
- I have no clue why organic farmers are going to be affected
- I'm not sure if he just made everything up out of thin air or not.
- I am greatly impressed with how poorly done this video is.
|
9:40
| Not a single human being on earth gets up and says "boy, I can't wait to go to the supermarket and buy a GMO food".
|
|
So what? Nobody gets up and says "boy, I can't wait to go to the supermarket and buy a food that has been mutated by sodium azide (mutation breeding)" (or fertilized by cow shit, or grown by combining plants in ways that could never happen naturally... Why is this any different?
|
9:53
| They haven't been able to come up with one thing in this food that actually helps this consumer
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Perhaps if there wasn't such fierce opposition to the technology they'd be interested in investing in improvements that improve the food.
- (cite Bt mycotoxin paper)
- (mention Golden Rice)
|
10:10
| 85% of [GM crops] are designed so that you can soak them with weedkillers, toxic herbicides
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- I think it's time for a review of glyphosate/roundup's MDSS...
- ...and maybe time to point out what herbicides have been replaced...
|
10:26
| And who are the big companies that do this? [..] Monsanto, [...] DuPont, Dow Chemical, Syngenta, Bayer. What kind of companies are these? Chemical companies!
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- He forgot BASF
- DuPont is via Pioneer
- Chemical phobia? Oh please.
|
11:07
| [...] life form that is impossible to reproduce in nature because the reproductive organs don't match
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Mention natural HGT
- Mention triticale and hybrid crops, esp how triticale is marketed as natural
- Mention mutation breeding
|
11:18
| And as a result once this form is created there's a danger - it can cross pollinate, it can contaminate traditional crops
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Explain how contamination is both normal and low
- Explain how this isn't actually a danger unless you're paranoid about genetic purity
|
12:18
| Percy Schmeiser was a farmer in Canada who was contaminated by Monsanto's genetically modified seed. He realized that he had been contaminated because he used some of this herbicide to kill off the weeds around the utility poles on his property and saw some of the seed did not die from the application of glyphosate and thus must be genetically modified. Well he didn't do anything to purge his property of that and the seed would require taking your crop three years out of use before you could purge them of genetically modified organisms, so he decided that he didn't want to do that, so he saved his seed for planting the following year and Monsanto said "well you now knew that you had genetically modified seed, you saved it for planting a second year, that's infringement." And they sued him for patent infringement and went all the way up to the Canadian Supreme Court, and although they found that technically he did infringe their patent, they awarded Monsanto no damages.
|
|
Percy Schmeiser didn't just kill off weeds around his utility poles, after doing that he decided to spray Roundup on two 40-foot strips of his property, right next to the road. He testified in court that "by this means he sprayed a good three acres".[18] After doing so, he discovered that 60% of the sprayed plants were still alive, growing in clumps that were thickest near the road and thinner as one moved into the field. This is all court evidence, from the mouth of Schmeiser himself. Now this small section of the field was contaminated at 60%, but as he himself admits, the contamination decreased as he moved further into the field, so total contamination was at the absolute most 60% and most likely far lower in the harvested seed. Here's where the evidence breaks down. We know that Schmeiser harvested this field in 1997, put into a truck, tarped, and stored in a building for the winter. When planting time came, he planted this seed. The absolute highest theoretical contamination this seed could have had was 60%, yet when his fields were tested, it was discovered that hundreds of acres of his farm (1030 acres according to the court document) were contaminated at the absurdly high level of 95-98%, a level of purity that could only be obtained in this situation by spraying the fields with roundup (glyphosate). Schmeiser denied this claim in court, yet it remains the only plausible explanation for this level of purity (assuming that he didn't lie about taking the entire field's seeds to plant). Wesley Niebrugge, a farmer and employee of the Esso bulk dealership in Bruno, testified that Schmeiser's farm hand Carlyle Moritz told him that Schmeiser had sprayed his (1998) crop with roundup. There is no evidence to back up Schmeiser's claim that he did not spray roundup, and Monsanto provided evidence that Schmeiser had purchased 720 liters of roundup in 1998.[19] Schmeiser claims that the 720 liters were used solely for burn-down and to manage ditch weeds, but was unable to present any proof that he used the herbicides he claimed to use on his crop.
There is an alternate explanation for this level of purity - he could have only harvested seeds from the plants left standing in the sprayed areas in his 1997 field. However this seems less likely and Schmeiser claimed that he harvested seeds from the entire field. Since the court was never able to prove if he sprayed roundup or isolated seeds, these angles of investigation were dropped. Some people cite this as proof that Schmeiser never isolated seeds or sprayed roundup, but the courts never found actual evidence confirming Schmeiser's claims, and the issue of how the concentration increased so drastically has never been resolved.
Schmeiser still argues that he was innocent - but claims that he never wanted RR seed - so why did he save, plant, and spray seed that he knew was contaminated? Since the courts found that he was completely knowledgeable about the RR canola's presence, wanted it to dominate the field, and had the "standby" option of using roundup on his crop, Monsanto won the lawsuit.
|
13:23
| Both in Canada and the United States, hundred of farmers have been totally bankrupted, lost their farms, lost them by Monsanto. So there's a real fear - now we call it the new fear culture amongst farmers where a corporation now, through the rights of patents on a gene have, uh, which is inserted into a seed to make it resistant to a chemical or whatever, is that they loose their rights to use their own seeds to plant. So it's total control eventually that farmers have to go back to a corporation like Monsanto each year to buy their seed because they're no longer allowed to use their own seed, so, as a victim, you basically have to pay for your losses, your damages, and so on. So farmers have become victims because they have done nothing wrong, because they were contaminated by a neighbor, by whatever means, by pollen flow, by seed blowing in the wind transportation and so on. It doesn't matter how it happens - if you're contaminated, it's over, and it's over.
|
|
At this point you should have read the rebuttal to the previous claim, and so you should know that Schmeiser's claims are full of shit. However, I will spell it out for you. First, there were a mere 145 lawsuits filed since 1997[20] - hardly "hundreds of farmers being totally bankrupted", especially considering how many of these cases resulted in small or no settlements (just like Schmeiser). Schmeiser claims that you cannot use your own seed if it is contaminated, and claims that Monsanto will sue for accidental contamination. This, to put it bluntly, is pure bullshit. It's such a high grade of bullshit that when the OSGATA preemptively sued Monsanto with this claim, their court case was thrown out TWICE for failing to present ANY evidence that supported their claims.[21] What's even funnier is that Monsanto has publically promised that they do not and will not sue people accidentally contaminated by their seed (and have claimed that they will pay for cleanup costs in the event that contamination occurs).[22]
|
14:00
| It's quite perverse, when it's their seed that is the new intern
|
|
Did a Goat write this? Contamination to a certain extent is a normal part of farming. This guy thinks that organic farmers have the right not to be contaminated by GMOs, but what about the poor conventional farmers, whose crops are being contaminated with those inferior organic seeds? This argument applies to both sides!
|
17:21
| <Arpad Pusztai affair>
|
|
Pusztai's study is extremely flawed. Even the best make mistakes, and in Pusztai's case, his mistakes were massive. First of all, instead of publishing the results in a scientific journal (which would require them to pass the peer review process first), Pusztai went ahead and discussed his findings on the news. His experiments weren't even completed when his interview was taped!
When the Royal Society[23] (and later Fedoroff and Brown) reviewed the study, they found a wide variety of issues. The major ones were that:
- There were no significant differences between the animals.
- Too few animals were used to allow statistical significance to be achieved.
- The diets were protein-deficient.
- Different rats were fed different diets.
- Some rats were fed raw potatoes, which are known to be toxic to rats, and can cause disturbances to gastrointestinal cells.
In addition, Dr Pusztai's two outside collaborators at the Scottish Crop Research Institute and the University of Durham have distanced themselves from his conclusions. John Gatehouse, at Durham, is understood to be privately furious at Dr Pusztai's failure "to consider the most elementary tenet of science - that before one reaches a conclusion about cause and effect, it is necessary to demonstrate that causality exists".[24]
The claim that the UK government made two phone calls and that this is the only reason Pusztai was fired demonstrates willful ignorance of how deeply flawed this study was and how Pusztai ignored the review process in favor of discussing unpublished research that hadn't been completed and hadn't been peer-reviewed. There's a wide variety of reasons to fire him, but since the other reasons are boring, the producers of this video decided to manufacture a controversy.
|
18:34
| Glyphosate destroys beneficial microorganisms in the soil, which normally provide nutrients to the plant, and it also promotes pathogenic organisms in the soil which then overrun the plant. So it creates weaker plants, stronger disease, and the disease does the killing.
|
|
These claims are mostly false. There is limited evidence indicating that glyphosate could have an effect on disease susceptibility, but there's no actual evidence demonstrating that this actually happens with RR crops.[25]
<need to expand further>
Furthermore, the preceding claim doesn't do a good job of explaining HOW glyphosate works. Glyphosate works by inhibiting the shikimate pathway via the EPSP enzyme. The glyphosate inhibits the enzyme, which causes the whole pathway to fail, making it impossible for the plant to product aromatic amino acids, killing the plant. Since mammals don't depend on a shikimate pathway to get their amino acids, the herbicide does not pose a direct threat via that vector.
|
19:16
| What do the livestock in the United States eat? They eat largely Roundup ready crops. Roundup ready soy, Roundup ready corn, cotton seed, canola mash, sugar beet pulp, and soon, alfalfa. So a huge percentage of their food intake is roundup ready crops. Roundup pulls the nutrients out of the crops and makes them unavailable, so now we have millions of livestock eating nutrient deficient food. [...] it's a perfect storm for [animal/plant/human] disease.
|
|
Don Huber's claims about nutrition/mineral uptake are of dubious quality and have been thoroughly debunked.[26]
|
19:48
| When 44 thousand secret FDA memos were made public from a lawsuit, about the subject of genetic engineering, the director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine made it absolutely clear that GMOs in animal feed had a unique danger. Toxins can bio-accumulate in animals and in their milk. And if there are toxins in genetically modified feed, we might have higher levels of those toxins in the meat, or in the milk, or in their products from those animals.
|
|
So a memo expressing that the CVM had concerns is considered to be hard scientific evidence? Surely Smith is joking, right? These types of letters are all over the place.
Notice how Smith never really showed the entire page? There's a reason for this. If you read the actual memo, you'll notice how the wording used is extremely vague. You can catch a sense of this in the snippets Smith shows, but it's quite obvious if you read the entire paper. This particular document is from two years before the approval of the first GM crop in the US - which explains the rather speculative tone and the reason for the letter.
|
20:51
| 95% of all the genetic modifications are done in order to allow the plants to survive more chemicals being sprayed onto them, and to allow the animals to survive more drugs put into them. And of course what happens is that when their genes are changed, our genes are changed by consuming them, just as the superweeds and the superbugs are genetically altered by consuming them - the bug eats the plant, it's genes change, the animal eats the plant, it's genes change, we eat the animal or the plant, our genes change. Our babies genes change, and the change is permanent.
|
|
The most recent data I was able to locate is from 2011,[27] and it states that herbicide tolerant crops accounted for 59% of the planted area, stacked (usually HT+Bt) crops accounted for a further 26%, and solely insect resistant varieties occupied an additional 15%. So the 95% claim is pure bullshit. At absolute best you could make a 85% claim, but even that's dubious because of the nature of stacked traits.
As for the claims about genetics being altered by consuming the GM plants -
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Should I even bother diving into the horribly long explanation of why the terms superweed and superbug are bad/misleading?
- I should definitely explain the absurdity in the claim that eating this causes our genes to change.
- Dat lack of scientific sources
- The babies claim... LOL
|
21:24
| They do not want you to know which products you're buying in the grocery store might contain genetically engineered ingredients. They say that that label would confuse consumers. They say there's no difference between genetically modified foods and non-GMO foods. Well that's absurd. That's what the word modified means. Genetically modified - it is modified, it is different, and it is in many ways a threat to the health of the people of our nation and people around the world
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- I can't control my laughter. No seriously. I thought nobody could top the previous lady, then the king of pseudoscience himself comes along... LOL
- Time to use those labeling resources!
- I guess I need to explain just exactly how substantial equivalence works... Then it's time for a little lesson on hybrids and mutated plants!
|
21:35
| There's been very little study on the health dangers
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
|
21:59
| There's enough evidence of harm to cause the American Academy of Environmental Medicine to say all doctors should prescribe non-GMO diets to everyone. They say that the animal feeding studies link GMOs to reproductive problems, immune system problems, accelerated aging, organ damage, gastrointestinal distress, Dysfunctional regulation of cholesterol and insulin, to name a few.
|
|
The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) is not recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties.[28] QuackWatch lists it as a questionable organization, citing their promotion of the dubious concepts of clinical ecology and multiple chemical sensitivity.[29] The AAEM opposes water fluoridation (and fluoride in general!),[30] opposes mercury-containing vaccines,[31] claims that WiFi is dangerous (seriously!),[32] considers EMF/RF exposure to be a major risk,[33] and opposes "smart meters".[34] When Science Based Medicine took a look at them they found that the AAEM is even more quackish when you dig deeper into the organization.[35]
Simply put, this is not a reputable organization. Its claims should be taken with a grain of salt at best.
|
24:00
| <Bovine Growth Hormone>
|
|
Many of those claims seem to be conspiracy theories. If misused, rBST could cause puss production, but it is not considered a normal side effect of use. There is no evidence that regulators were bribed, and the agency takeover claim is outright ridiculous. IGF is both safe, already found in milk, already found in the human body at extremely high concentrations, not present in increased levels in rBGH-treated milk, and not dangerous to your health. And since rBST increases the efficiency of milk production, it is considered environmentally friendly.[36]
|
24:29
| In the US, there's been recent evidence that articles been published that scientists who do any research on the possible effects that show negative results of genetically engineered crops are harassed, they are denied funds, the universities that depend on industry money are pressured to not allow this/to discourage this kind of research.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Textbook conspiracy
- Explain scientific review
- Explain how claiming this is insane
|
24:38
| Monsanto's own research shows that rats who were fed this Bt corn, they had signs of toxicity in the liver and kidneys.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Oh my god I think he actually cited Seralini. This is too good to be true.
|
24:53
| When genetically modified soybeans were fed to rodents, they saw changes in the testicles, changing from pink to blue, changes in the sperm cells, changes the uterus and ovaries, changes in the DNA functioning of the embryo offspring
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Don't bother, Academics Review probably has this one covered. The blue balls one has got to be one of the most hilarious ones I've seen so far.
|
26:13
| <the claim is that Epicyte, a biopharming company, produced a gene that could sterilize humans. Monsanto and DuPont purchased them. The implication is made that the epicyte gene was commercialized by including it in GM crops>
|
|
Why isn't everyone sterile right now? And what possible reason would an agriculture company have to sterilize all of their customers? Crazy conspiracy theories seem to be a dime a dozen in this video...
|
26:29
| We've seen smaller babies, a death rate that's five times that compared to controls, sterile babies, even babies with hair growing in their mouth. And this has been done by government scientists as well as independent scientists who are at the top of their field.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Emarkov for death rate, smaller, sterile. Surov for hair.
|
28:25
| <Seralini's 2012 study>
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Yay. Seralini!
- Maybe I'll even expand a bit.
|
30:12
| When they allow animals to graze on the cotton plants after harvest in India, for years and years there was no problem. When they introduced Bt cotton, thousands of sheep died, buffalo died, goats died. [...] These animals were successfully grazing on non-Bt cotton for years, in one case, 13 buffalo grazed on Bt cotton for a single day, and within three days they were all dead. [claims that nobody wanted to do research] this NGO did their own research [...] within a month, all six Bt sheep died and the non-Bt sheep survived. But the research was dismissed because it wasn't a government agency or a university. So we have a situation where the evidence is there, but it's not being paid attention to. Because it's being drowned out by the big bucks, and the biotech industry, with their tobacco type science, and their distortion and denial of the facts. Unfortunately, Monsanto's lobbying power, and their financial wing(?), they are able to use corrupted corporate science, something that I call cigarette science, to get these law - uh - products slipped into our food stream.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- There's extensive info on the Bt-india-sheep case(s) out there somewhere, I can compile it later
- Address the claims of conspiracy with the lack of evidence and solid reasons for rebuttal and criticism
- Point out how tobacco science worked, then contrast it with the anti-GMO movement, with their "distortion and denial of the facts". Point out how the anti-GMO movement is a textbook clone of tobacco science, right down to the rejection of studies that disagreed with the companies. Point out how science never supported the tobacco industry but it supports GMOs.
- Point out independent, university studies
- Point out how corporate funding doesn't invalidate studies
- Point out opinions from various overseas governments, esp EFSA, how they agree with it
- Point out incredible irony by showing who funded major trash anti-GM studies
|
30:41
| The only human feeding study ever published on GMOs, showed that the gene that was inserted on the soybean transferred into the DNA of the bacteria living in our intestines, and continued to produce that protein. So if it happens to be an allergen, and you're allergic to it, you may be continuously triggered over and over again by the production of that allergen from within inside your own intestines.
|
|
This claim seems to be based off of the study "Assessing the Survival of Transgenic Plant DNA in the Human Gastrointestinal Tract", published in Nature Biotechnology.[37] It's quite a useful study, but not for the reasons Smith seems to be using it for. He claims that the study showed gene transfer - but neglected to mention some key facts about the design of the study. Do you know what an ileostomy is? "An ileostomy is a surgical opening constructed by bringing the end or loop of small intestine (the ileum) out onto the surface of the skin."[38] The reason you need to understand what this is is because the study Smith used was carried out in part on ileostomists. This is a very important thing to understand because the bowel system of ileostomists is not comparable to a normal human bowel system. The study found that both the non-transgenic and transgenic DNA was detectable in the ileostomists. Furthermore, when the study was done on people with normal bowel function, they discovered that their waste was free of transgenes - indicating that the large intestine destroys the transgenes. Despite Smith's claims about the transgene growing in the intestine, the study's results indicated that while a small level of gene transfer was detected in the ileostomists, the transfer had not occurred during their experiment, and did not increase during the experiment. Furthermore the concentration of the transgene was extremely low and only contained a fragment of the EPSPS gene - the full gene was never detected. In the humans with intact digestive systems, the researchers were unable to detect any of the transgene - preexisting or not - and this did not change during the experiment. The authors additionally stated that "Our results from coculture experiments with transformed bacteria and Caco-2 cells suggest that gene transfer from GM plants to the intestinal epithelium is unlikely to occur."
The authors concluded that:
- A small portion of the transgenes AND native genes survive the small intestine.
- Both the transgenes and native genes are fully degraded in the large intestine.
- There was some evidence of preexisting gene transfer in the ileostomists, but it represented a very small portion of the microbial population, and the complete transgene had not been transferred.
- It was highly unlikely for gene transfer to alter gastrointestinal function or pose a risk to human health.
So in summary, there is no evidence that humans with normal digestive systems are vulnerable to gene transfer, and some evidence that suggests very low rates of partial gene transfer may occur, but only in ileostomists. As such, unless you're an ileostomist, Smith's claims do not apply to you, and even if you are an ileostomist, there is no real reason to be worried.
|
32:15
| When we look at the quality of the nutrients in our soil, we see that that has become a victim of industrial agriculture, which destroys the microorganisms in the soil, and then puts in a few nutrients, as if that were enough to provide a healthy diet. [...] <Industrial agriculture> stripped away some of the health and nutrients that were vital to the people and to the livestock. The plants ability to absorb from the soil is restricted with GMO seeds and plants and that's why the nutritional value is going down and that has to be a very big concern and there's a very big concern that many of our foods that we eat, nutritional value contents have to be rechecked because it has changed, it alters the structure of a plant when you use, you put a GMO gene in a plant so you no longer have the same type of plant and you have changed the makeup.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Just link to Huber section?
- Point out how there's no proof?
- This claim is unusual since they don't really have any evidence on their side, but I can't think of anything off the top of my head that explicitly refutes this, with the exception of the general animal feeding studies (some focus on nutrition).
- They are mixing modern agriculture and GMOs together.. Hard to tell what they're complaining about now.
- Maybe use substantial equivalence rulings as evidence?
|
32:39
| Monsanto is the only company I know of that doesn't want you to know you're buying something that has their technology inside of it. Cellphones, computers, automobiles - everything else we purchase, clothing - is branded because everyone wants to know, they want consumers to know, that their product is inside whatever you're purchasing. But Monsanto wants that to be a secret.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Well no fucking shit, they don't even sell to consumers?
- Are there even any seed companies attempting to slap their name onto the seeds they produce?
- Ignorant bastards like this guy are the reason...
|
33:30
| If you go and purchase any of their bags of seed, and you look at the bag, there's a big huge box with a big stop sign, and when I first saw this I thought man, stop, this seed is dangerous, don't swallow it, wash your hands after you've touched it, now all those health warnings are lower down the bag in smaller font. If you look in the box where the stop sign is it actually says stop - these seeds are protected by the following patents, your use of these seeds must be in compliance with the license agreement, you may not save these seeds for replanting, bla bla bla bla bla. So they object to labeling of food that consumers buy, but they have no problem labeling their own product with all their patent numbers, so there's some things that they want the public to know, and other things that they don't.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Health warnings may apply to treated seed
- Consumers aren't about to go plant their food, consumers aren't supposed to be following technology usage agreements... It makes sense to label their seeds if the farmer needs to follow guidelines when using them, consumers don't have to follow said guidelines, so no need to label the finished product.
- Seed is usually FUMIGATED.
|
34:09
| Traditionally, the proponents of genetic engineering have stated there's relatively no risk or simply no difference between genetically engineered plants and products and conventionally raised products. Well new studies dispute this quite widely. There was a study from last year in the journal of reproductive toxicology that showed that over 93% of genetically engineered toxins were found in the blood of pregnant women and in 80% of the fetuses. So this potent crop toxin is being transferred into the population.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Use criticism from FSANZ
- Explain Bt, then show how organic farmers use it - is it a potent toxin or not?
|
34:18
| Genetically modified soybeans has as much as 7 times the amount of a known allergen compared to non GM when the two are cooked.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- I'm pretty sure academicsreview has info for this claim
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34:30
| With corn, there's a gene that's normally shut off in corn, but it's switched on accidentally in Monsanto's corn, and that gene produces a known allergen.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Explained recently, just rephrase and cite. Make sure to present the counter-evidence study. Should probably also ask the guys at biofortified for some HQ info on this subject.
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34:37
| There's also more herbicides used on these genetically modified herbicide tolerant crops, like roundup ready soy.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
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34:43
| The excessive herbicides might promote allergic type reactions.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Cite typical pesticide study, explain roundup and allergens.
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34:52
| Peer reviewed studies show that there's an association between heavy GMO consumption and serious health problems, including asthma, and food allergies.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Might need to find sources via Smith's site. Academicsreview again?
|
35:15
| There's also a damage to the pancreas and the production of enzymes that are used for digestion in mice that are fed GM soy. If we take longer to digest proteins, then that means eating genetically modified soy might cause us to be reactive to a wide variety of foods, not just GMO food.
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|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
|
35:37
| The real risks and the real concerns of these threats to the food supply are validated, and there is, the GE crops are the predominant crops, and they have contaminated the rest of the food supply. Then the genie's out of the bottle, and it's maybe physically impossible to turn the situation around.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Point out how there's nothing wrong with these crops
- Point out the same thing happens with every other type of crop
- Then point out how StarLink saw such an amazingly successful recall
|
35:52
| There has been no long term research on the concept and consequences of what this genetic modification does not just to us but to the environment.
|
|
...there has also been no long term research on cell phones. Because of the null hypothesis, this isn't proof of anything, especially due to the sheer amount of research conducted on GM crops. The whole definition of the term "long term" is also a bit slippery, since nobody ever tries to define it and any studies contradicting their claims get ignored. But since Seralini's 2012 study is frequently cited as a "long term" study, we'll assume any other study of around that duration should be considered long term, in which case a certain literature review of long term and multigenerational studies might be considered a little inconvienent to these claims...[39]
|
36:17
| Right now from all the research that's showing up that says this has a very negative and profound effect on destroying the environment in which we live. So therefore I find it senseless that the government would support and condone genetically modified foods without even having the basic research to understand the liabilities involved in these monster organisms, and putting them into our world.
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|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Three government agencies - guess which one handles environmental impact?
- But oh no, we'll just move the goalposts to request long term studies
- Who cares about those pesky hybrids and mutated foods! GMO is the only danger, right guys?
- Monster organisms... lol
|
36:33
| The commence agency in Europe and in countries in South America and in Asia is much more sophisticated in terms of its understanding of science and the importance of independent peer-reviewed science that isn't contaminated or corrupted by corporate influence.
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|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Yep, that explains why the EFSA ruthlessly debunks every scrap of bullshit that comes their way, and has stated numerous times that GM foods are safe.
- Regional restrictions? Those couldn't possibly be because of politics, no?
- Hurr durr corporate science is bad when it's the other side but not when it's our side.
|
36:58
| Here in the United States, the birthplace, the bedrock of the free market system and democracy, we are having our rights corrupted by corporate influence, the major impact that Monsanto has is their ability to get their products approved with minimal scientific oversight and minimal review of these products for human health testing is really an abomination.
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|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- ...haven't we already been over then whole Monsanto/approval process and how it makes no sense for a Monsanto-controlled government to make applying such a painful process?
- Point out the usual bullshit excuse of muh human tests
|
37:05
| The entire scientific foundation underneath genetically modified organisms is false.
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|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Funny. Dr Lipton's PHD is in biology (cite source). I suppose he thinks that biology is false? How about gene transfer, also false? The absurdity of these claims is just ridiculous.
- At any rate, Lipton seems to think that genes and DNA can be manipulated by a person's belief, and works for a college of chiropractor practices... He's not exactly in a good position to be making claims as absurd as this one.
|
38:17
| Organisms are not genetically determined. When we understand that we recognize that the only way to create crops that will humanity is to understand nature herself, and learn to live in harmony with it, and this is a completely different approach than humans have had for the last couple hundred years, where we always thought "oh human's job was to control and dominate nature". In that process, we are now leading the world into the sixth mass extinction of life on this planet. Five times in the history of this planet life essentially got wiped out and started all over again. The five previous mass extinctions were attributed to things like comets or asteroids hitting the earth and destroying the environment. We are now, deep into the sixth mass extinction of life on this planet. We are loosing species of organisms faster than even in the previous five mass extinctions. But the source of the problem is much closer to home than a comet or an asteroid. Science has recognized that it's human behavior, that is undermining the web of life. Rather than trying to control nature our mission is actually how to live in harmony with nature.
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|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Hmm, I wonder what happened in the last couple hundred years... Science perhaps? Where crazy superstitious beliefs were discarded?
- Dat appeal to nature/naturalistic fallacy.
- Oh man, he's a doomsayer.
- How the fuck do you loose species faster than instant extinction?
- ...and biotech represents an amazing way to fix part of the problem, but this idiot would rather have you eat your environmentally unfriendly "organic" food so that you can feel good while remaining ignorant and ironically contributing even more to the planet's issues.
|
39:10
| The FDA, which treats the American people as slaves, knows that if people knew the truth, about how healing their foods can be, and how dangerous the processed foods really are with all their chemical contaminants and their genetic modification - if people knew the truth, they would demand food freedom. They would demand access to healing herbal therapies and healing dietary supplements. They would demand that the FDA back down from it's intimidation campaigns that have been leveled against producers of dietary supplements and herbal remedies and raw dairy products and so on. The people would demand that if they knew, and that is why they are kept ignorant. Under this campaign of disinformation currently being waged by the FDA.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Good old boy mikey the scam ranger is looking for a way to avoid having to put that pesky FDA labels on his "miracle cancer cure".
- I think it's time to bring up Gary's little brush with death and dietary supplements...
- Oh yes, time to cite some of those inconvenient facts about raw milk...
- I love how he's managed to demonize an amazing consumer product safety program.
- DA TROOF!!!
|
40:12
| I've been vigorous in my opposition of these strategies that these large corporations use to use their influence for their benefit. And as a result of that my positionings I am criticized by their own local networks - the skeptic networks and so on. And also their ability because they are so politically connected to use the federal regulatory agencies to come after me personally to file claims against and statements against my company and also to criticize me such that it can be viewed in most of the traditional media to skew the information the truth of what we're saying. They twist the tables so that it looks like we're the bad guys when actually nothing could be further from the truth - we're just seeking to help people understand what the true reality is and give them the tools to make that distinction and give them the right to know.
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|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- No shit.. Mercola is using the same scams as Mikey the scam ranger! "National health advocate" my ass! He's got what now, two formal warnings from the FDA for making bullshit claims?
- Ah Mercola... Poor guy. All that criticism from us evil skeptics.
- So back to the notes... I think it's time for a review of just who Mercola is. As well as some of his, err, interesting claims on his site. Wakefield here I come! I should also mention his, err, interesting FDA warnings. Time to "twist those tables" with some hard evidence! Time for some reality shock!
|
40:49
| In the early 2000s Monsanto and the biotech industry vilified a scientist for his linking of Bt corn to a decrease in Monarch populations. Two years ago another research paper came out confirming that yes, Monsanto's Bt corn and their Bt cotton products were actually reducing the habitat of Monarch butterflies. Monarch butterflies are the canary in the coal mine on the prairies and in the midwest of the major impacts, the negative environmental impacts that these products are having.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Are they trying to blame this on Monsanto too? Dear god. At least I have papers for this one. Gotta figure out who the fuck wrote a 2010 paper though. I'm pretty sure the only evidence in regards to habitat was about RR, not Bt.
|
42:10
| The large scale cultivation of GMO crops can harm biodiversity in a number of different ways. One is that in the case where the crop is engineered to be tolerant to a herbicide, such as roundup, or glyphosate, then the application of high doses of these weed killers destroys upon which other organisms normally would be consuming. So the insect population is reduced, and then there isn't the insect population upon which the birds are also consuming, so there could be a knock-on effect on the biodiversity within the fields where herbicide tolerant crops are being grown. And indeed, large scale field trials sponsored by the UK government several years ago now did indeed find that in fields were growing herbicide tolerant sugar beets and canola, that the biodiversity in this field was markedly reduced.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- So.. He's arguing against using any herbicide for any reason?
- By this logic every thing humans make is unnatural because it destroys things that other organisms depend on.
- The fatal flaw is that the field of crops is not natural in the first place... Any insects living off of it are living on surplus...
|
42:52
| There is a lot of information now on bee colony collapse and it's now linked to certain of the chemicals that are sold by certain of the major companies, so there's a lot of concern and now about the bees dying and now we'll loose a major insect that pollinates our plants and so that also has become a big concern. But it's all related and all goes back to the massive increase of new types of more powerful chemicals, more toxic chemicals, then we ever ever had before, and that's why we have many of our traditional(?) insects are being killed by these new types of chemicals.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Oh for fuck's sake. CCD and neonicotinoids. I thought this video was about GMOs. There was a good Forbes article on this I can use as a resource...
|
43:26
| GM caries novel health and environmental risks, which we are now beginning to measure in terms of environmental impact and also outcomes. In feeding trials - controlled feeding trials - the animals - then I feel that the use of GM in agriculture is a risk that is simply not worth taking. GM doesn't address root causes of problems in agriculture. At best it is a symptomatic coverup.
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|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- ...I think I'll come back to this later.
|
43:34
| No genetically modified crop can grow unless it's attached to some type of pesticide
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- BLATANT lie, IGNORES Bt, IGNORES Rainbow Payapa, IGNORES other applications (golden rice being the prime example), COMPLETELY IGNORANT.
|
43:55
| Those pesticides, more and more, are in these plants, they may have killed the weeds, they may have killed the insects, but the product is still on the plants, and if it's washed off, then it's in the water, it gets into the lakes, it gets into the oceans, everywhere.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Finally, a use for my calculations of glyphosate/roundup intake! Yes!
- And I can cite the MDSS again!
|
43:57
| And it's toxic, it causes cancer
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
|
44:00
| also it causes endocrine disruption
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- What paper was this claim from? Investigate.
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44:21
| They don't even want to label that this is genetically modified [...] of course they don't want to label it, because people won't want it
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- ...time for the fucking labeling debate... AGAIN. AGAIN. FUCKING AGAIN.
|
44:48
| We have thousands of different varieties of any different food crop you can mention. And by simply dipping in to this already existing reservoir, or varieties of crops, resurrecting old crop varieties which have been displaced, could readily meet our food need without having to resort to the risky procedures associated with GM.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Crop varieties are abandoned for a reason!
- Show off the fancy schmancy yield graphs
- Should I even address the risky claim? It's beating a dead horse at this point...to a pulp...
|
45:14
| and they're going to have to come back to you every year to get them [herbicide]
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Roundup isn't even patented! WTF!
- Monsanto's technology usage agreement explicitly specifies that generic herbicides can be used.
|
45:30
| Once you start applying herbicides on this scale your farmland is so devastated that to convert to organic for example is economically difficult
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- True, but not because your farmland is "devastated" - it's because USDA organic guidelines would require leaving that land fallow or devoid of synthetic herbicides (among other things) for seven years.
|
45:35
| The most comprehensive analysis of GMOs shows that they actually reduce yield.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
|
45:40
| Sustainable technologies can increase yield by an average of 79%
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
|
45:59
| What Bt corn does, and Bt soy does, and what roundup ready does, is it decreases labor. It's labor saving. As if we need less farmers in this country. And we have a limited planet. So more people farming is the key to higher yields, not chemicals.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- LABOR INTENSIVE IS GOOD?
- FUCK.
- BRB, STARTING AN ORGANIC FARM.
- WHILE WE'RE AT IT, BURN ALL THE COMPUTERS. MORE PEOPLE USING TYPEWRITERS WILL RESULT IN BETTER CONTENT. OR SOMETHING.
- INNOVATION IS BAD, RIGHT GUYS?
|
46:02
| GMOs are stealing the money away from these more appropriate technologies
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Cars are stealing the money away from horses!
- Wait, wtf!?!
|
46:21
| We have more food per person than any time in human history. We have enough food growing to feed 11.3 billion people. What we don't have is the ability for people to access that food. And so it's not a silver bullet of increased yield that the biotech industry tries to sell us.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Thanks to the fucking GREEN REVOLUTION and BIOTECH. NO FUCKING THANKS TO ORGANIC FARMS.
- Distribution is the problem.
- More food = cheaper prices
- But wait, capitalism is bad guys!
- Let's just gloss over the other uses for GM food.. Golden rice and regionally tailored crops comes to mind!
|
46:33
| The IAASTD report proved that organic and sustainable agriculture had the same and higher yields than conventional chemical intensive genetically engineered crops.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
|
46:45
| These herbicides are actually having a major impact in killing the beneficial soil microorganisms in the soil, which actually not only add to the yield gains, but also the nutritional value of these plants.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Just link to the Huber section... No need to reinvent the wheel. But I'd better do a damn good job on that section...
|
47:38
| Cotton production has increased in this country because of acreage, not because of Bt technology. Rice and beet increased in India because of irrigation acreage. Land and water account for it, not the seed and the chemicals. In fact, the seed and chemicals have created a scarcity. First, the new seeds had to be grown as [???] so you have less food. Today, we're importing [???] from Canada, from the United States, very vital to a vegetarian diet. We're not growing [???] because of our monocultureshave no place for [???]s. [???]s give you free protein. [???]s give you free nitrogen fixate. All of that was wiped out. All seeds. [???]. [???]. The water use of this so-called revolution was ten times more [???] to equal the [???] farming systems.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Could not figure out what she was saying at several points - need transcription help.
- Pesticide use studies.
- Cotton has a lot of evidence for yield, far more than any other crop.
- Water use claim should be fairly easy to disprove. It's interesting to see how she claims the sole reason is irrigation, then claims water use is up. I'm not quite sure which point she's trying to make.
|
48:25
| One huge problem with the GMOs is that they have completely blown out conventional breeding in our land grant colleges. In this country we only have 10% of the vegetable seeds that were available to our forebears a hundred years ago. Our seedstock is going down the toilet and we can't even use our land grant colleges to breed in a standard way because there's no money for it and that is a huge huge huge threat to the future of agriculture, to loose the skill of breeding standard, which is in fact what all that food you see on the - on your grocery shelves, all those vegetables came from thousands of years of farmers sharing their seeds.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- But... Improved seeds... And there aren't any GMO veggies on the market... I.. What... Consolidation and improvement.. You.. Err..
- Horse, meet car. Car, meet horse. Prepare for the mass protests against horse breeding going down the toilet.
- Breeding is still extremely heavily used both outside of and inside biotech... lol
- JUST IN TIME! I CAN USE MY HUGE LIST OF PATENTED VEGGIES!! FUCK YES!
|
48:50
| As a result of the loss of beneficial soil microorganisms not only have the yields gone down but there's been a dramatic increase in the rise of crop diseases, which are impacting corn and soybeans in the US. We're sacrificing our soil just because it's an easier way to farm. And trying to convince ourselves that it's more economical but it's not.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Link to section
- Disease should be covered by the existing Huber data, discuss matter with Tribe/Biofortified, find better evidence
|
49:33
| I've seen neighbors who've been doing this stuff for a lot of years and they can't get rid of these weeds now, these weeds are getting resistant to the glyphosate herbicide so farmers are upping rates, then all of a sudden it's not doing it anymore so you have to switch herbicides, so now the soil is just more and more full of poison, so there's going to be more sickness in that field, it's going to be more susceptible to diseases, insects, it won't make it through drought periods as long. The same crops side by side right across from each other, the natural plants are going to mate more over time. And you have a soil that you can continue to poison, nature's going to win!
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- PGEconomics paper has useful info, but I can just show off Kniss's evidence. Really this is one of the more amusing claims usually made.
- Discuss how stacked herbicides practically eliminate the issue
- Do I really need to cite the huber section again? Sickness, LOL!
- This guy is pulling claims directly out of his ass.
- Aw yiss... That biofortified Bt cotton image is going to be soooo useful now!
- Appeal to nature? Maybe?
|
49:42
| In 2006 Cornell University released a study on soil degradation that stated by the year 2050 that 30% of the land that's already cultivated will be unfarmable.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Oh man. Degradation. I need to confirm, but this study just might be the poster boy for no-till.
|
50:39
| Now the thing about roundup, and glyphosate is that it stays in the soil for months or years, and it continues to cause the reduction of available nutrients and the promotion of these diseases. And so, people like Doctor Huber, Dr. Don Huber from Purdue University, have identified more than forty plant diseases that are on the rise in the US, because of the overuse of roundup, and other glyphosate based herbicides. Now it pulls these nutrients out of the food supply for months or years. According to Reuters in 2007 there was about a hundred and eighty million pounds of glyphosate herbicide used in the United States. Now that's one of many many years. Hundreds of millions of pounds. Which means hundreds of millions of pounds of nutrients have been tied up and taken out of the food supply.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Didn't I have some incredibly ironic evidence somewhere showing the exact opposite? Something about how farmers were unhappy with how it didn't stick around long enough? Maybe in archive or saved.
- ...yet again, Huber needs another link. And maybe some original debunking? MAYBE??!?!?!
- The details don't matter, but genetically modified crops are not the only thing that uses glyphosate, and glyphosate is sold to consumers too.
|
50:53
| When we have a company like Monsanto, that says "I don't care what nature says - I'll create the crops that I want", and we look at what happens, we see another step, another process in our own demise.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Appeal to fucking nature!
- My sarcasm is rusty, but it could use a good polishing...
|
51:05
| This is a very powerful enemy, a classic David vs Goliath, a challenge. And the only way we can ever approach, the only possibility of ever winning this thing is if we work together as a community.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
|
51:20
| The whole concept of genetically modified organisms is throwing a monkey wrench in the life on this planet. And until we change that, we are headed downhill, at a rapid rate of speed, towards our own extinction.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Typical appeal to nature, plus didn't I address this one already?
- Plus dat fearmongering
|
51:59
| Nature, God if you like, does not permit [transgenics]. You cannot take the gene of a bacteria and put it into a pig, or people, or anything like that, or vice versa.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Oh the cruel bitter irony. This is too fucking good to be true. I mean seriously? Ten seconds on Google would have told him otherwise. Holy fucking shit.
|
53:39
| There's a genetically modified salmon that was created by Canadian researchers, that was tested up in Canada. They put these frankenfish into tanks, and they fed them sufficient food and there was no problem. When they reduced the amount of food, the frankenfish freaked. They started killing and eating their neighbors. So what happens if the FDA approves these frankenfish, and let's say they escape into the ocean. I don't know what's worse - the extinction of natural salmon, or the roaming of these frankenfish going around and killing and attacking other species, and changing the whole ecosystem balance. They both have a mating advantage because they're larger, but they a survival disadvantage, and it's that combination that should a male transgenic fish escape into the wild, cause the rapid collapse and extinction of both transgenic and wild fish. In as little as 50 generations.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- I'm seriously going to contact AquaBounty and ask for a statement.
- And I got one! I'll roll it into the article later. Good stuff. All claims can be addressed fully.
|
53:57
| Scientists take genes from one species, and force it into the DNA of other species. Now the process itself creates massive collateral damage in the plant or animal. But they don't test for those changes and the side effects before they introduce, say, the crop into our food supply.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- err... Might need to investigate Monsanto production techniques.
- the general claim is blatantly false though due to safety studies
- and of course mutation breeding, hybrids, cross species breeding, etc is all far more random... Where's the oversight and safety testing on that?
|
56:06
| When the GM gene is introduced into the plant, the genetic engineer has no control over where the GM gene integrates or splices into the DNA of a plant. And the effect of this is that the GM transformation process, as a whole, actually is very disruptive on the DNA structure and function of the organism. And as a result, very unpredictable and potentially hazardous outcomes. Because if you disturb the balance of gene function - remember, the gene function is controlling the function and the biochemistry of the organism - if you disrupt the balance of gene function, you disrupt the biochemistry, and if you disrupt the biochemistry, you run the risks of creating novel toxins, novel allergies. As well as a disturbance to nutritional value. These types of outcomes resulting from the disruptive effect of the GM transformation process, have been observed, are observable, and they're genuine.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- http://academicsreview.org/reviewed-content/genetic-roulette/section-2/2-3-gene-expression/
- Plus the usual stuff about mutation, hybrids, etc.
- And I guess the toxin/allergen papers?
- Might as well throw in the explanation of probability on allergies/toxins
- And I should try to get some other people to comment just for good measure.. Tribe, ethidum...
- And maybe time to review the literature on nutrition?
- Lenape potatoes and that toxic celery are also good examples to cite.
|
57:47
| When we eat food - when micro RNA from the food is picked up by the digestive system and not broken down, the micro RNA is taken into our own body intact, and now what they found is that the micro RNA from food ends up in our own cells like in our liver and other cells in our body. And these micro RNA still have the same function. They change our genetics and they change our readout of our genome. And the significance is profound. It says that when you eat genetically modified foods, we are eating a new class of micro RNAs that have never really been in the world before. And yet, these micro RNAs are picked up by our biology, and they adjust our own genetics. So in the sense the old story "we are what we eat" actually now has a biochemical foundation. And now all of a sudden it says that if that's true, then why would you risk your life eating a genetically modified food containing micro RNAs that can totally distort our own biology and cause great problems in our lives.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- And now all of a sudden it says that if that's true, then why would you risk your life EATING CHICKEN? WHO KNOWS WHAT YOU COULD TURN INTO! A CHICKEN-GMO-HUMAN HYBRID? ALL THAT DANGEROUS MICRO RNA IN CHICKEN WILL MAKE YOU GROW FEATHERS AND WINGS AND A GIZZARD!
- I already know what to use for this one (archive->fearmongering). Easy. Not to mention the whole hilarity of how this would mean that eating chicken should turn me into a chicken.
|
59:05
| [...] the bacteria in our gut that are required for our survival - we need these bacteria - the bacteria also pick up the genetic engineered genes. And we modify the gut bacteria. Why is that relevant - well we need the gut bacteria for survival, but the gut bacteria change our genetics, information from the bacteria is picked up by the digestive cells, and adjusts the digestive system cells to be compatible with the bacteria and with the gut. There is a dialog and a communication. If you alter the genetics of the gut bacteria, by definition, you completely alter the development and genetics of our own cells.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Already addressed. Suckers.
|
59:55
| Way back in the 70s they developed this grand vision of being able to splice in high yield and drought resistant and pest resistance and they dreamt of patenting those genes and having proprietary ownership of these genes and during the 80s, that indeed came about from a number of court decisions they believe they could make billions of dollars from these proprietary gene transfers and to make food do certain things, to make crops do certain things. When the evidence came out that there were fundamental in the genetics they just did not want to know - didn't want to do the research into these issues of food safety, and they went ahead with their development yet they weren't doing the basic research.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Seralini? Not on my fucking article!
- ...do I even need to cite the ridiculous amount of "basic research" conducted by these companies?
|
60:15
| You see GMOs are the product of an infant science. And now we are feeding that product to the entire population. And it's known to create unpredicted side effects. And no one is testing to see if the rise in all these diseases since GMOs were introduced in the mid 90s is caused or promoted by these GMOs.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Diseases? Rise? GMOs? Looks like somebody flunked statistics. I hereby claim that cell phones are the reason.
|
60:50
| If Monsanto's patent on a gene - if that gene gets into any, and I'll use the term, higher life forms, so what does that mean? Birds, bees, animals, and the question I have to ask - what about human life? If they - if Monsanto's patented gene gets into you, gets into me, does that say they own me, they own you? These are all questions that they - that the courts and the governments will have to address. How far does the patents on genes - on life - go?
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- The sheer absurdity of this... I give up. Someone can write this section.
|
60:03
| There have been over 140 lawsuits filed by Monsanto against farmers, including against those farmers who wanted nothing to do with Monsanto's genetically modified seed.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Oh no it's like 14 a year! Stop the presses! Out of like 250k customers! Omg!
- OSGATA case means that their claim of "wanted nothing to do with" is BULLSHIT.
|
61:53
| When you ask Monsanto whether genetically modified seed is natural they have two answers. Yes and no. And it depends on which side of Washington DC you're talking to. If they're at the FDA, or the USDA, they say that genetically modified seed is absolutely no different than natural food, doesn't need to be tested, doesn't need to be labeled, the public doesn't need to know if their food has been genetically modified because it's no different. Then when they're on the other side of Washington DC at the patent office, the patent office is saying "well you don't deserve a patent because your seed is no different from natural food" they say "oh no it's not, it's completely different, we've invented something brand-new, it's radically different and it's so inventive we deserve not just one patent, we deserve an entire portfolio of dozens and dozens of patents.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- This video fails to make the distinction between equivalence on a safety/nutritional standpoint and equivalence on a functional or genetic level. You can take two breeds of grapefruit and put them side-by-side, then claim that they're the same from a safety/nutritional standpoint, but you can turn around and patent them because they're different on a functional or genetic level, and this is exactly what plant growers have been doing for a very, very long time.
|
62:10
| The United States is the only country in the world and still is that allowed genetically modified organisms or any organisms to be patented. Up until then, living organisms, all their products, could not be patented.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
|
63:25
| In the European Union where labeling is required, there is almost no genetically engineered food on store shelves and restaurants, there's almost none of it planted.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- The EU situation is quite amusing and only shows that the organic farmers are pushing for labeling because it'll bolster their sales.
|
63:31
| Today more than fifty countries around the world allow labeling of genetically engineered food
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- The US allows labeling, the USDA organic program is even a federally funded voluntary labeling standard.
|
63:46
| <list of countries that enforce labeling is shown>
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Appeal to the masses, logical fallacy. May not deserve own section.
|
64:01
| The FDA has received over a million comments from citizens demanding labeling of GMOs. Ninety percent of Americans agree. So why no labeling? I'll give you one reason - the influence and the corruption of the political process by Monsanto.
|
|
This is an exceedingly poor justification for mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods.
Furthermore, it is already possible for consumers to obtain non-genetically-engineered foods. Any product with the USDA Organic label cannot contain genetically engineered food, and the independent Non GMO Project certifies products as GM-free.
Thus not only does the consumer already have an easy way of accessing foods that meet any possible personal preference, the existing process is completely voluntary and has resulted in a wide variety of products being sold that meet these requirements. Labeling the products that do not comply makes little sense, and making that labeling mandatory has no reasonable justification.
The FDA has taken a science-based stance on the matter. Claiming that there's some grand conspiracy makes little sense. Monsanto is not the only biotech company out there, and as evidenced by Prop37 lobbying, both the pro and anti labeling sides are backed by large companies with deep pockets. Even then, there is no actual proof that Monsanto "corrupted" the process, especially when there's quite a bit of justification for NOT labeling.
|
64:36
| If you have a organic corn crop that sits next to a genetically engineered corn field, and it happens to tassel at the same time and it happens to be downwind, you're going to get your crop contaminated. In fact even the seed stocks are becoming contaminated. I should have the right to be a conventional farmer, you should have the right to be an organic farmer, but if you have GMO farmers you no longer can have an organic farmer, you can no longer be a conventional farmer, you'll become a GMO farmer whether you like it or not.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Gene flow is normal, they're the ones growing the premium product, it's their job to isolate it, I don't see organic farmers complaining about gene flow from other organic farms! And I don't see conventional farmers whining about the organic farm's gene flow! (should I link to previous iteration?)
|
64:50
| An expert on air pollution calculated how far corn pollen can travel in 24 hours which is the maximum time it can remain viable to cross pollinate. It could travel under certain weather conditions, over 500 miles.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- I've got data to cite here. Contamination rates in particular. 500 miles is nice and sensationalist, but it's horribly unrealistic.
|
65:56
| We have increasing numbers of retarded and autistic and genetically damaged people among us. We have increasing numbers of lethal allergies, potentially lethal allergies, that coincide with the introduction of genetically modified food. We have increasing amounts of autoimmune problems, we have increasing amounts of pretty much everything. The pharmaceutical industry has no interest in having you well because they don't make any money if you're well. And the pharmaceutical industry IS the biotech industry, and it is the agrochemical industry
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Back to the good old autism gambit, are we?
- Oooh, genetically damaged, that's a new one!
- Snarky C != C images in 3...2...1...
- Usual allergen papers...
- Allergies: Now 100% more lethal!
- Can I blame this one on cell phones?
- Looks like the vaccine gambit ran dry... Time for the GMO gambit!
- I don't know what it is, it sounds scary, let's throw it in the list! "Pretty much everything" my ass.
- TEH BIG PHARMAZ!111!!! IT'S ALL A CONSPIRACY!
- When did Monsanto start selling aspirin?
|
66:02
| Thousands of doctors are now prescribing non-GMO diets to every patient.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Thousands of doctors prescribed no immunizations. You probably know how well that went. Wait a second... I thought doctors = big pharma = evil? Then doesn't that mean non-GMO = big pharma = evil? OMG WAKE UP SHEEPLE!
|
66:22
| In fact the American Academy of Environmental Medicine urges all doctors to do so. They evaluated the animal feeding studies and said that there is a causal relationship between GM feed and disorders, and they urged the government to put a moratorium in place on GMOs, and of course they're for labeling.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Just link it to the previous section... Trash organization...
|
66:37
| My(?) God we are one of the sickest of the major countries in the world, and we're also becoming the dumbest of the major countries in the world, and the significance about that is what a coincidence, this is the motivation of our government, and this is exactly where we are
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Yes my dear, you are a shining example of the issue at play. Idiots spouting their brain-dead views to an audience of other idiots.
|
67:05
| A country like the United States has 20% of its GDP spent on healthcare costs on trying to cure chronic disease. We're giving vaccines in(?) children, we're giving all these other drugs, bad food, bad pesticides, hormones, everything getting into the system. In animals and people. This is going to drive countries bankrupt.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Other drugs? Time to review Gary Null's brush with death.
- Bad food? Poor poor organic. So many ridiculous accidents.
- Bad pesticides? Time to review the toxicity of copper sulfate.
|
67:22
| We're talking about people whose lives are either terminated through preventable diseases which were not prevented, through the toxification of their bodies, by toxic food.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- wat. seriously wat. maybe doesn't deserve a claim.
|
68:08
| Total population of the world is about seven billion now. The same thing by 2050 the population will grow to approximately 9 billion. And these companies and the governments all over the world are saying that the amount of food in the world will have to be increased to twice the amount. The biotech industry is promising to feed the world with crops that'll have higher yields, even though it's not the amount of food right now that's the critical issue. It's access to the food, and access to the food is largely an economic issue. There's no shortage of food. This is purely due to corruption. Because corrupt people, people who [???] power won't let poor people have their share.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Link to previous section, highlight how more food is always a good thing, highlight localized farming and how it can overcome trade issues by generating local surpluses. Also no food system will ever be 100% efficient.
|
68:28
| Since GMOs were introduced there has been a dramatic increase in infertility in the United States. But there's significant evidence both in laboratory animal feeding studies as well as livestock experience to point a finger at roundup ready crops as a potential cause.
|
|
The main thing to take away from this is that correlation does not equal causation.
A good example of how correlation does not equal causation
As for the laboratory studies, I can't think of any supporting his claims... And of course he doesn't cite anything.. Even more annoyingly, he doesn't explicitly specify if the infertility is caused by RR crops or by glyphosate. However, Glyphosate's safety seems fairly well established,[40] and the evidence for RR crops causing infertility is outright missing.[41]
|
68:51
| The newest information that I just published a week ago showed that these toxins in the food have actually been associated with an increase in [???] obesity [???] this is found in salmon and rats, and there are other suggestions that they produce long term imbalances in fertility rates, in hormonal levels, and immune function. And in the ability to digest foods.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
|
69:33
| The agricultural and chemical companies don't want to label GMOs. What these corporations say is that labeling GMOs will increase our food bills. What I say is that they're so concerned about our bills, then they need to focus on a bigger price tag, and that's our healthcare costs, and we're not just talking about the costs of medications here. How about the cost of missed work, and lost productivity. When parents have to rush their child to the emergency room, or to a doctor's office. And for the children, how about the missed school, and summer camp? We're talking about an emotional and societal cost, played out, over and over again, hundreds of thousands and millions of times over.
|
|
So basically, these people took the previous claim (GMO causes "Pretty much everything"), and decided that it's true. Once again there's an absence of evidence here, but this particular activist seems to believe that without GMOs, society would be a utopia, free of disease... I guess she's forgetting all those pesky medical issues that have been around for far more than two decades... I don't know what to say to this level of insanity. These people literally believe that minor genetic modifications to a plant cause every single illness on the face of the earth.
|
69:45
| These companies, that are promising us to have abundant food and bring prosperity are lying, and the governments are with them.
|
|
Yet again, another conspiracy theory... The evidence, as always, is missing. I don't see who these people are trying to fool.
|
70:21
| I think if you really want to know the true story about what corporations are doing to/in our society, the various harms and dangers that they present, you can't rely on mainstream media. You have to go deeper and you have to go further. That's going to be a very important piece in us moving forward, the fact that we do have the/those sources of investigation that are not beholden to corporate, corporate media, and that we do have a mechanism in the internet for disseminating them broadly.
|
|
So basically, these people want you to believe that their media is so much better than "mainstream" media. Let's face it: A lot of media sucks. But this isn't a good reason to choose even shittier media, aka "alternate" media. Media with a history of unquestionably accepting even the shadiest studies, then reprinting them for the ad views... Media with a history of just plain making shit up when they can't find something in their favor... It's also worth pointing out that the organic industry funds many of these so-called "independent" sources that churn out propaganda - like Jeffrey Smith, who makes quite a few appearances in this video.
|
70:52
| We have this sort of common enemy that has allowed the profession - the healthcare professionals, and the journalists, and the variety of individuals and media sources so wouldn't think would be lying, and typically many of us have [???] certain issues but we're all working together to realize that this is a very powerful enemy, a classic David vs Goliath challenge, and there's the only way we have any approach, any possibility of ever winning this thing is if we work together as a [community/group?].
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Does this deserve a section? David vs Goliath.. lol
|
71:21
| So what you see is Monsanto genetically contaminating crops, monopolizing seed and destroying biodiversity, turning farmers into serfs through this indebtedness, corrupting government, undermining law and [the] regulatory process, and worst of all polluting scientific knowledge. Polluting genetically, polluting politically, [...] and they're even stealing our minds.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Contamination was addressed earlier, no?
- How the fuck is that a monopoly?
- Destroying biodiversity? Yeah, as if hybrids didn't already do that.
- Serfs? Wat.
- Government corruption seems to be more conspiracy than fact
- Undermining law? When?
- Damn knowledge being polluted with quality research! Fuck them, right?
- Minds? Wat.
|
71:47
| Through the food we eat, through the television and programming and the news media [that] we see, that information alone constitutes what you might call the [???] information. That negative information about the world is causing us to become sick. The food we eat exacerbates that same problem. We are living in a situation where we must take back our own power.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Worthy of a claim section or not? Weird shit, not really relevant, all points already addressed.
|
72:11
| They can surround the Congress, they can surround the Congressional offices back in their district, they can surround the Monsantos and the city groups and that's what they've gotta realize, that's the first stage. Because people showing up and massing together with agendas and with good artwork and signs and music scares the hell out of these politicians and their corporate masters.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- massing together with agendas - damn right! Oh wait...
- Those drum circles man... Scary music.
|
72:35
| Americans have a right to know if their food is genetically engineered. It's time for labeling, it's time for people to know how their food is being produced.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Not by a long shot. Might as well either link or reiterate labeling issue.
|
72:53
| It is completely pro-capitalist to have things labeled. That's how you know what you're getting. And the consumer over and over and over again says "they want to know". They want to know, they want the choice. Producers are freaked out because the choice is not going to be for them.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Since when was this about capitalism?
- What does capitalism have to do with this?
- Mandatory, government-enforced labels are the exact opposite of "pro-capitalist".
- Nobody gives a shit about if you want to know, I want to know if my tomato was picked by Mexicans, it doesn't mean I should get a label that says that.
- It's pretty ironic, him mentioning choice... USDA Organic and Non-GMO project labels are the very definition of choice.
- I'd say producers are freaked out because in order to avoid consumer backlash the only viable move is going non-GM. Which is fucking ridiculous.
|
73:09
| By stopping, by eradicating GMOs you'll also then stop less chemical use.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- Slip of the tongue much? For once he's accurate, unintentionally so but still accurate... See: Bt/insecticide, RR/herbicide, etc.
|
73:41
| Grow heirloom foods without any chemicals
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- THE CHEMICALS! OH MY GOD THE FOODS ARE MADE OF CHEMICALS!
|
74:02
| It's very important to be an organic farmer for the future of our children and for the future of our grandchildren and even ourselves and the food that we eat.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- NEED TO ID VOICE, I CAN'T DECIDE IF I'M HEARING THIS RIGHT, IT'S TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE.
|
76:25
| For ten thousand years humans grew crops without chemicals. It's time that we get mandatory labeling, it's time we cut down the biotech bullies to size, and then now, let's have that discussion again about chemical agriculture versus organic or traditional agriculture. The overwhelming majority of the public wants us to produce food and to raise animals in the natural healthy humane way, in a way that doesn't destroy the environment, public health, and the climate. And we're going to get to that point but it's going to require as I often put it the food fight of our lives.
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- For X thousand years humans did Y without Z. It's time that we get mandatory labeling of Z, it's time we cut down the Z bullies to size, and then now, let's have that discussion again about Z versus (not Z).
- Dat appeal to nature
- What's natural about corn?
- But... Biotech is that way... fuck...
|
78:38
| <cringeworthy rap>
|
|
The following is NOTES, not a completed response.
- OH MY GOD THIS IS ACTUALLY OVER FUCK YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
|
Conclusion
Conclusion will go here. I think I'll write it after writing the other stuff.
External links