Monstano's modified wheat popped up in a field in Oregon....

[Silverguns6]

If I were not a prepper, this article wouldn't mean much to me at all.
Articles are all over the web right now about this, I first read about it earlier last week and now read an article which is much more scary.
Japan blocks US wheat after illegal Monstano GMO wheat discovered in an oregon farmers field.
I have been hearing about a complete agricultural demise for like 4 years now and I hav been hearing about a total economic melt down for atleast 7 years. WTF is going on?!!?!?!
I honestly don't know a whole lot about the Monsanto thing except it was a total shitstorm.
What really makes me preparanoid is that when you add alllll of the following together, if the sh*t is going to hit the fan it will hit the fan very soon.
-400.03ppm of carbon dioxide readings taken at the NOAAs Hawaii station in April (or march, I cannot recollect).
-Several major/devistating storms have struck the same state and same part of the US in less than 2 months and scientists predict many more and many which will be worse.
-The Monstano ordeal
-Wildfires becoming more and more intense and huge.
-Draughts and shorter harvest seasons
-Honey Bee population drastically declined
-Price of gas is rising again
-The treasury is printing more and more paper, devistating the value of our money
-Employment has yet to recover and job creation isn't happening

I am sure I am forgetting some stuff.

Regardless, wtf is the future holding for us????? Is "Doom and gloom" aproaching?
What thoughts do any of you have? Is it too late for the non-preppers to become preppers? Is this the sort of SHTF that is what we as preppers have been preaching?
People think we are all crazy, these same people thought that Glenn Beck (and others like him) weren't saying anything valid about the demise of Liberty and the Constitution, now with all these scandals and everything over the past 5 years...What Beck had said has been validated.
Is the Sh*t going to hit the fan?

Thoughts?
-Dave

 

[rudiewhitebwoy]

No Link?

 

[Twigg]

Thoughts?
-Dave

Buy it cheap and stack it deep.

 

[coastie]

Someday yes. Today? tomorrow? Maybe. People have been pointing to the signs of the end for eons. We are still here. Prepping is a lifestyle. Do it to the extent you can and get on with life. Agricultural demise has been predicted forever. If you are worried about the GMO then write your legislators demanding GMO labeling or outlawing it.

 

[Hiltonizer]

The threat of GMO's going loose in the biosphere is nothing new... but the Asian countries halting orders is. Could mean a significant price drop depending on your definition of significant. Might mean a buying opportunity for some.

If you really want to get your knickers in a twist, throw Monsanto into the Netflix search bar.

 

[Silverguns6]

No Link?

Sorry about that, there were many many different links that I got off of Bing and I didn't want to list all of them. Heres one on the discovery:
Unapproved genetically modified wheat from Monsanto found in Oregon field - The Washington Post

And one on Japans import blocking
Japan blocks U.S. wheat after Monsanto GMO strain found growing wild | The Raw Story

-Dave

 

[Silverguns6]

Someday yes. Today? tomorrow? Maybe. People have been pointing to the signs of the end for eons. We are still here. QUOTE]

We are still here, you are 100% correct lol. I could really care less about a label on a bag of flour, McDonalds doesn't make you healthier and even with the scary nutrition labels, millions of Americans still eat there very often. My seedbank is NGMO but I probably wouldn't care if they were GMO. Honestly, I think wheat which can withstand pesticides and be grown/harvested more often is a good thing. Like I said, I don't know much about this Monstano thing.
My concern is that any wide spread and major agricultural catastrophe (among other things) right now could lead to economic chaos, which would lead to civil unrest and WROL.
I am not sure how hard hitting across the board inflation is for us as consumers but many Americans are financially stressed or screwed as it is right now. We all need to eat, it the cost of food (stuff like dairy, produce, grains, cereals etc) rises overnight that will add more shit to the pile we are in. Gas prices are still high and many states saw a rise of $0.20 in two months this year.
I guess what I am saying is that tie everything together.
rapid Inflation + higher unemployment = less money is being spent by consumers.
When B&M stores start to see less money comming in this month than last month, eventually the businessess will have to reduce their amount of employees. This leads to loss of household income and then financial troubles + rising costs of everything = poverty. Our gov't is spending us into oblivion, printing more and more worthless paper money, taxing the hell out of us.. All of that and then some is stacking up against us and IMO there is no good outcome regardless of if the SHTF today or this time 10 years from now.
I know that all the stuff above isn't new, I also haven't seen anything like this in my lifetime and it does worry me.

Hilton, I'll check that out on Netflix now. I was going to start reading Glenn Beck's Control which I bought today, but movies are better than books (generational thing I guess haha)

-Dave

 

[Hiltonizer]

Someday yes. Today? tomorrow? Maybe. People have been pointing to the signs of the end for eons. We are still here. QUOTE]

We are still here, you are 100% correct lol. I could really care less about a label on a bag of flour, McDonalds doesn't make you healthier and even with the scary nutrition labels, millions of Americans still eat there very often. My seedbank is NGMO but I probably wouldn't care if they were GMO. Honestly, I think wheat which can withstand pesticides and be grown/harvested more often is a good thing. Like I said, I don't know much about this Monstano thing.
My concern is that any wide spread and major agricultural catastrophe (among other things) right now could lead to economic chaos, which would lead to civil unrest and WROL.
I am not sure how hard hitting across the board inflation is for us as consumers but many Americans are financially stressed or screwed as it is right now. We all need to eat, it the cost of food (stuff like dairy, produce, grains, cereals etc) rises overnight that will add more shit to the pile we are in. Gas prices are still high and many states saw a rise of $0.20 in two months this year.
I guess what I am saying is that tie everything together.
rapid Inflation + higher unemployment = less money is being spent by consumers.
When B&M stores start to see less money comming in this month than last month, eventually the businessess will have to reduce their amount of employees. This leads to loss of household income and then financial troubles + rising costs of everything = poverty. Our gov't is spending us into oblivion, printing more and more worthless paper money, taxing the hell out of us.. All of that and then some is stacking up against us and IMO there is no good outcome regardless of if the SHTF today or this time 10 years from now.
I know that all the stuff above isn't new, I also haven't seen anything like this in my lifetime and it does worry me.

Hilton, I'll check that out on Netflix now. I was going to start reading Glenn Beck's Control which I bought today, but movies are better than books (generational thing I guess haha)

-Dave

pro-tip, stay away from glenn beck unless you need a good chuckle or general entertainment via theblaze. He has less credibility than even Alex Jones.

 

[Coyote33]

I'm sorry, but what are "Monstano's modified wheat... and ... illegal Monstano GMO wheat ..."?

 

[Silverguns6]

pro-tip, stay away from glenn beck unless you need a good chuckle or general entertainment via theblaze. He has less credibility than even Alex Jones.

We will have to agree to disagree on that. I wouldn't give Alex Jones half a nanosecond of my time and hes #4 on my "Annoying & Crazy Morons who are Radio, Internet or TV stars" list. To give you an idea of it, Jesse Ventura is #5, Chelsea Handler is #3, Chris Matthews is #2 (tied with Piers Morgan).

The list changes often, if Jones keeps up his BS rants about O'Reilly, I may move him to #2.
-Dave

- - - Updated - - -

I'm sorry, but what are "Monstano's modified wheat... and ... illegal Monstano GMO wheat ..."?

Lol I'll save both of us some time and refer you to Google or Bing.

-Dave

 

[Coyote33]

Google's 1st link brought this:

Genetically modified wheat: marketing plants in North America abandoned.
... According to Monsanto, herbicide resistant wheat would lead to reductions in

Their 2nd link pointed at your post here.

I thought hybrid vegetables were good, more resistant to bugs, drought, etc.

 

[Kevin_NH]

I'm shocked that Monsanto...

...didn't sue the farmer for using their Roundup Ready(tm) wheat without a license.

Personally, if I were stockpiling seeds to grow post-TEOTWAWKI, I would want herbicide-tolerant seeds and tons of Roundup in my preps. On the other hand, I'm one of the few people who know about the whole Monsanto-vs-freeloading-roundup-using-farmers lawsuit thing who doesn't see Monsanto as the bad guy in this drama.

 

[Bt74]

...didn't sue the farmer for using their Roundup Ready(tm) wheat without a license.

Personally, if I were stockpiling seeds to grow post-TEOTWAWKI, I would want herbicide-tolerant seeds and tons of Roundup in my preps. On the other hand, I'm one of the few people who know about the whole Monsanto-vs-freeloading-roundup-using-farmers lawsuit thing who doesn't see Monsanto as the bad guy in this drama.

No tinfoil hat for you!

 

[Nicole]

...didn't sue the farmer for using their Roundup Ready(tm) wheat without a license.

Personally, if I were stockpiling seeds to grow post-TEOTWAWKI, I would want herbicide-tolerant seeds and tons of Roundup in my preps. On the other hand, I'm one of the few people who know about the whole Monsanto-vs-freeloading-roundup-using-farmers lawsuit thing who doesn't see Monsanto as the bad guy in this drama.

Few, but not alone.

 

[dhawk69]

I'm one of the few people who know about the whole Monsanto-vs-freeloading-roundup-using-farmers lawsuit thing who doesn't see Monsanto as the bad guy in this drama.

Having one corporation, Monsanto, controlling the worlds crops is a BAD thing. He who controls the seeds, controls the food. Bad for everyone... Between them and their other corporations, they're pretty close to running all the seeds. I'm not sure how much research you've done into Monsanto, but they are not the good guys from my point of view. My wife comes to me daily with new news about them. It's really unbelievable...

 

[Kevin_NH]

I'm all for biodiversity and think farmers are being short-sighted by choosing to limit their crops to Monsanto glyphosate-tolerant crops. The only way Roundup-Ready soybeans out-compete other soybeans (wheat, alfalfa, corn, cotton, spring canola, sugarbeets ) is when the farmer blows away everything else by spraying roundup on his own field.

Having one corporation, Monsanto, controlling the worlds crops is a BAD thing. He who controls the seeds, controls the food. Bad for everyone... Between them and their other corporations, they're pretty close to running all the seeds. I'm not sure how much research you've done into Monsanto, but they are not the good guys from my point of view. My wife comes to me daily with new crap from them. It's really unbelievable...

Not saying Monsanto are good guys, just that the "Small farmer gets sued by big bad Monsanto just for saving seeds like daddy always done" meme is not an accurate characterization of the lawsuits.

 

[Hiltonizer]

"Small farmer gets sued by big bad Monsanto just for saving seeds like daddy always done" meme is not an accurate characterization of the lawsuits.

I don't think that's most peoples gripe with Monsanto, certainly isn't mine. To assume so is disingenuous.

There have been cases of multiple big ag firms, particularly Monsanto (ex. Monsanto vs Schmeiser) where they sued small farmers for patent infringement when their crops were cross-pollinated with Monsanto seed. These are not cases of farmers using product and not paying.

 

[n1zfg]

They've also effectively eliminated the seed cleaning business. One of the steps involved with holding back seed stock for the next planting season is to have that part of the harvest cleaned of the bits of plant material (etc) that the harvester didn't catch when extracting those soybeans.

The Monsanto legal trolls went after anyone selling that service (or owning that equipment), accusing them of engaging in the criminal activity of violating their patents by facilitating the re-use of their seeds. They didn't have to necessarily prove they were doing it. Simply accusing them of it and dragging them into court usually cost enough to drive them out of business.

 

[Kevin_NH]

I don't think that's most peoples gripe with Monsanto, certainly isn't mine. To assume so is disingenuous.

There have been cases of multiple big ag firms, particularly Monsanto (ex. Monsanto vs Schmeiser) where they sued small farmers for patent infringement when their crops were cross-pollinated with Monsanto seed. These are not cases of farmers using product and not paying.

Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser is exactly the mischaracterization I was referring to:

The courts at all three levels noted that the case of accidental contamination beyond the farmer's control was not under consideration but rather that Mr. Schmeiser's action of having identified, isolated and saved the Roundup-resistant seed placed the case in a different category.

The lawsuits aren't about "saving" seed that might contain the Monsanto gene, it's about Percy Schmeiser knowing he had fields "contaminated" with glyphosate-tolerant plants, and choosing to intentionally kill off all the non-glyphosate-tolerant strains in his crop by nuking the field with Roundup and replanting seeds from the survivors.

 

[Hiltonizer]

Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser is exactly the mischaracterization I was referring to:


The lawsuits aren't about "saving" seed that might contain the Monsanto gene, it's about Percy Schmeiser knowing he had fields "contaminated" with glyphosate-tolerant plants, and choosing to intentionally kill off all the non-glyphosate-tolerant strains in his crop by nuking the field with Roundup and replanting seeds from the survivors.

His property rights were violated. Regardless of whether or not he replanted GMO crop intentionally is irrelevant as he never agreed to the license. The logic that he shouldn't have replanted the seed would give Monsanto a case against any farmer who saves seed, regardless of whether they wanted to or even knew that they were doing so.

 

[Kevin_NH]

That's also covered on Wikipedia, in the sentence following the snippet I posted:

The courts at all three levels noted that the case of accidental contamination beyond the farmer's control was not under consideration but rather that Mr. Schmeiser's action of having identified, isolated and saved the Roundup-resistant seed placed the case in a different category. The appellate court also discussed a possible intermediate scenario, in which a farmer is aware of contamination of his crop by genetically modified seed, but tolerates its presence and takes no action to increase its abundance in his crop. The court held that whether such a case would constitute patent infringement remains an open question but that it was a question that did not need to be decided in the Schmeiser case.(Paragraph 57 of the Appeals Court Decision[6])

The ruling did increase the protection available to biotechnology companies in Canada, a situation which had been left open with the Harvard mouse decision, where it was determined that a "higher lifeform", such as an animal, or by extension a plant, cannot be patented. This put Canada at odds with the other G8 countries where the patent had been granted. In Monsanto vs. Schmeiser, it was determined that protection of a patented gene or cell extends to its presence in a whole plant, even while the plant itself, as a higher lifeform, cannot be patented. This majority view, based on the precedent of mechanical devices, was central to the Supreme Court's decision, and put the onus on the Canadian Parliament to make distinctions between machines and lifeforms as it saw fit.

In 2005, a "documentary theatre" production dramatizing the court battle, entitled Seeds, by Annabel Soutar, was staged in Montreal. The dialogue was derived entirely verbatim from various archival sources.

The case is widely cited or referenced by the anti-GM community in the context of a fear of a company claiming ownership of a farmer’s crop based on the inadvertent presence of GM pollen grain or seed. "The court record shows, however, that it was not just a few seeds from a passing truck, but that Mr Schmeiser was growing a crop of 95–98% pure Roundup Ready plants, a commercial level of purity far higher than one would expect from inadvertent or accidental presence. The judge could not account for how a few wayward seeds or pollen grains could come to dominate hundreds of acres without Mr Schmeiser’s active participation, saying ‘. . .none of the suggested sources could reasonably explain the concentration or extent of Roundup Ready canola of a commercial quality evident from the results of tests on Schmeiser’s crop’" - in other words, the original presence of Monsanto seed on his land in 1997 was indeed inadvertent, but the crop in 1998 was entirely purposeful.

I see many people suggesting Monsanto could bring suit against any farmer who saves seed, regardless of whether they wanted to or even knew a portion of their seed was glyphosate-tolerant. Yet all of the famous lawsuits involve farmers whose actions were "entirely purposeful".

 

[Hiltonizer]

That's also covered on Wikipedia, in the sentence following the snippet I posted:


I see many people suggesting Monsanto could bring suit against any farmer who saves seed, regardless of whether they wanted to or even knew a portion of their seed was glyphosate-tolerant. Yet all of the famous lawsuits involve farmers whose actions were "entirely purposeful".

That's one of the most concerning parts of the issue, though the court is more to blame than Monsanto in this particular case. Not considering the source of the round-up ready seed is dangerous. Features of the seed may have been patented by Monsanto, but it was not their seed and they have no rights to enforce a license that was never accepted.

 

[Nicole]

That's one of the most concerning parts of the issue, though the court is more to blame than Monsanto in this particular case. Not considering the source of the round-up ready seed is dangerous. Features of the seed may have been patented by Monsanto, but it was not their seed and they have no rights to enforce a license that was never accepted.

Respectfully, I believe you are missing the point.

Forget the license for a second. Monsanto has a patent. For 200 years, a patent has been a right to exclude anyone else from making, using, or selling the invention the US, or importing the invention into the US. The patent lasts for a limited amount of time - these days, 20 years from filing your application. After 20 years, your monopoly is over, and your idea becomes part of the public domain that anyone is free to use.

So if you go out to your garage and make a copy of a CrimsonTrace laser grip which is still covered by a patent, CT can come sue you. They may chose not to, but that was their invention and they have rights under the current system. By making and using it without their consent, you violated THEIR property rights.

Now, patent law also has something called "first sale exhaustion" of patent rights. So if I go buy a set of CT grips, CT gets their money. And while I can't go home and make a copy of those grips (that would be making the invention), I am free to sell the original set of grips to a 3rd party and CT is due no financial consideration. The law figured that once you bought a physical thing from the inventor, that example of the thing was yours do what you please with. That example is now your property, but the idea of the thing isn't.

Back to the Monsanto dust-up. What did they have a patent on? This:

Claim 1. A DNA molecule comprising a DNA sequence selected from the group consisting of:
a) a sequence with at least 85 percent sequence identity to any of SEQ ID NOs:
1-158 and 180-183;
b) a sequence comprising any of SEQ ID NOs: 1-158 and 180-183; and c) a fragment of any of SEQ ID NOs: 1-158 and 180-183, wherein the fragment has gene-regulatory activity;
wherein said sequence is operably linked to a heterologous transcribable polynucleotide molecule.

Claim 5. The DNA molecule of claim 1, wherein the heterologous transcribable polynucleotide molecule comprises a gene of agronomic interest.

Claim 6. The DNA molecule of claim 5, wherein the gene of agronomic interest confers herbicide tolerance in plants.

Claim 11. A transgenic plant, or part thereof, comprising the DNA molecule of claim 1.

Claim 12. A progeny plant of the transgenic plant of claim 11, or a part thereof, wherein the progeny plant or part thereof comprises said DNA molecule.

Claim 13. A transgenic seed, wherein the seed comprises the DNA molecule of claim 1.

In plain English - their invention is a piece of DNA with some certain specific sequences that the patent describes in great detail and specificity, a plant where you've stuck that DNA in it, the children of that first plant, and/or a seed having that DNA in it.

Where the seed came from and how one obtains it is utterly irrelevant - if you get a lab setup in your basement and made a plant that matches the description of those claims - you just made their invention and they can sue you. It is their invention no matter where it "comes" from - so long as it matches the description in their claims. The seed Bowman had in his fields most certainly WAS Monsanto's invention. They own the monopoly to ANYTHING that matches what is laid out in the claims of their patent. Same as if you were making copies of CT grips in your garage. Your knock-off may not say "CrimsonTrace" on them, but if they are a close enough copy, you just made CT's invention. Otherwise what on earth is the point of the patent?

The reason this went to the USC is because Bowman argued that he didn't make the invention, plants just make more plants all on their own and besides, someone bought the original seeds from Monsanto and therefore the first sale doctrine kicked in. Monsanto argued that self-replicating technologies were different - that every time you go through the cycle of seed to seed and plant again, you are "making the invention" and therefore their rights to the invention apply anew.

You may not agree with the Court's decision - but think beyond Monsanto, who everyone loves to hate. There are companies right now working on biofuels and bioreactors - they go in and tweak the DNA of bacteria or algae and grow them in a factory - now you have bugs that efficiently pump out tons of insulin to give to diabetics, or that "eat" waste materials and "poop" something useful, like ethanol. These organisms are patented. If I manage to get my hands on some of them, is it okay for me to set up my own factory by just letting the organisms procreate? Or is that a violation of the inventors' temporary monopoly? The USC's decision in Bowman would say violation.

You may think that patents suck or that patenting transgenic organism suck (side note: It has long been okay to patent non-transgenic plants - there's a whole specialty in patent law just for that). You may disagree with the Court and think that repeatedly planting seed and specifically selecting for the RoundUp-resistant plants isn't "making" the invention. There are certainly valid arguments for those positions.

But under US law for the last couple of hundred years, you can't just run around making copies of someone else's patented invention. If CT sues me for making copies of their grips, despite the fact that I owned the plastic and the wires, it's not a "violation of my property rights," it's them enforcing their own property rights.

 

[Hiltonizer]

snip.

I think we're just arguing to different points. I understand the IP aspects, working for a biotech myself. The difference here is in the property rights. The farmers was producing his own seed long before Monsanto came along, and courtesy of current patent law he is no longer able to do that. His field was contaminated before he engaged in any "unlawful" activity. This is why the property rights trump patent rights.

That said, you're absolutely right... I abhor patent law. It's another government monster that needs to be turned into a relic for the history books.

 

[Kevin_NH]

By securing for limited Times to Inventors the exclusive Right to their discoveries

That said, you're absolutely right... I abhor patent law. It's another government monster that needs to be turned into a relic for the history books.

Eliminate patents entirely? This would bring it's own problems. If Monsanto were not able to patent their plant innovations and reap the profits for the 20-year term, how else to recoup the billions invested in agriculture research? Why would anybody invest in R&D when the first exemplar one you sold would also be the last?

Let's say we just take away patents on genes and living organisms. Without patent protection, biotech firms would have a strong incentive to develop their own protections in order to turn a profit, ranging from trade secrets to the infamous "terminator gene" (another false allegation against Monsanto that comes up often).


Bioengineering will almost certainly kill us all (likely in some horrible way we can't even imagine), but the human race is also doomed without it.

 

[Hiltonizer]

Eliminate patents entirely? This would bring it's own problems. If Monsanto were not able to patent their plant innovations and reap the profits for the 20-year term, how else to recoup the billions invested in agriculture research? Why would anybody invest in R&D when the first exemplar one you sold would also be the last?

Let's say we just take away patents on genes and living organisms. Without patent protection, biotech firms would have a strong incentive to develop their own protections in order to turn a profit, ranging from trade secrets to the infamous "terminator gene" (another false allegation against Monsanto that comes up often).


Bioengineering will almost certainly kill us all (likely in some horrible way we can't even imagine), but the human race is also doomed without it.

If you want to debate patent law, that's a whole other discussion. Those defending it are usually forced to make the same what-if apologies made for other government programs. A lot of companies still opt to not patent things in order to avoid disclosing trade secrets.

 

[Nicole]

I think we're just arguing to different points. I understand the IP aspects, working for a biotech myself. The difference here is in the property rights. The farmers was producing his own seed long before Monsanto came along, and courtesy of current patent law he is no longer able to do that. His field was contaminated before he engaged in any "unlawful" activity. This is why the property rights trump patent rights.

What? That's not quite what happened with Farmer Bowman. From the USC opinion:

Petitioner Bowman purchased Roundup Ready soybean seed for his first crop of each growing season from a company associated with Monsanto and followed the terms of the licensing agreement. But to reduce costs for his riskier late-season planting, Bowman purchased soybeans intended for consumption from a grain elevator; planted them; treated the plants with glyphosate, killing all plants without the Roundup Ready trait; harvested the resulting soybeans that contained that trait; and saved some of these harvested seeds to use in his late-season planting the next season. After discovering this practice, Monsanto sued Bowman for patent infringement.

Those soybeans came from prior harvests of other local farmers. And because most of those farmers also used Roundup Ready seed, Bowman could anticipate that many of the purchased soybeans would contain Monsanto’s patented technology. When he applied a glyphosate-based herbicide to his fields, he confirmed that this was so; a significant proportion of the new plants survived the treatment, and produced in their turn a new crop of soybeans with the Roundup Ready trait. Bowman saved seed from that crop to use in his late-season planting the next year—and then the next, and the next, until he had harvested eight crops in that way. Each year, that is, he planted saved seed from the year before (sometimes adding more soybeans bought from the grain elevator), sprayed his fields with glyphosate to kill weeds (and any non-resistant plants), and produced a new crop of glyphosate-resistant—i.e., Roundup Ready—soybeans.

Bowman conceded that he knew of no other farmer who planted soybeans bought from a grain elevator.

Bowman's fields didn't get contaminated. He bought seeds that he knew were not intended for consumption, and were certain to include patented RoundupReady seeds, planted them, and then SPECIFICALLY SELECTED for the Roundup Ready plants.

This case wasn't about farmers practicing the traditional saving of their own seeds and Bowman's fields weren't "contaminated." It's about someone finding a way to get their hands on patented seeds and then actively trying to propagate the patented seeds to the exclusion of everything else.

His field was contaminated before he engaged in any "unlawful" activity.

That is just not true. Bowman got his seeds from an unusual source - he doesn't know of a single other farmer who gets planting seed that way. And then he hit his fields with Roundup, killing anything that wasn't Roundup-resistant. This is not some organic farmer whose fields got "contaminated" and never had any idea there were Monsanto seeds in their field until the day that Monsanto's lawyers showed up on their doorstep.

*with the typical caveat, particularly in light of your expressed opinion on patents, that one can certainly think that the entire concept of patents is wrong. I'll side with Kevin on that one though. But given that patents are part of the legal system and are their own type of property rights, Monsanto is working with the current rules of the property rights game.*

 

[Scarecrow]

The lawsuits aren't about "saving" seed that might contain the Monsanto gene, it's about Percy Schmeiser knowing he had fields "contaminated" with glyphosate-tolerant plants, and choosing to intentionally kill off all the non-glyphosate-tolerant strains in his crop by nuking the field with Roundup and replanting seeds from the survivors.

So, if I nuked my garden with Round-up and one of the plants managed to survive for ANY reason, and I propagated it, Monsanto could sue me for patent infringement? ...and here, I thought I was just trying to improve my plants genetic lineage, much like we used to do to make plants resistant to pests. Monsanto can get bent; I don't want their product and I don't want their license, if they want to protect their patent(patenting DNA... what HAS this world come to?), then they have to ensure that their seed cannot cross-pollinate into neighboring fields. It is not the job of the neighbors to ensure your shit doesn't leave your field, that is your job; ESPECIALLY if you have something in your field that is worth a lot of money and has a tendency to spread on it's own.

Edit: Missed that there was a second page... if Bowman was doing the whole grain elevator thing, I suppose I can see where the patent thing comes from; my issue is that the scenario I painted above is not exactly far off the mark. If I bought a bag of soybean seed and planted them, Monsanto could conceivably come after me for patent infringement because my crop could contain their modified stuff. Thanks to the law that protects them from having to label their product, how would I know if that bag had GMO seed?

 

[dhawk69]

Next, if not already, it's going to be patents on genetically mutated cloned cattle and other farm animals. Tastey viddles...

 

[Scarecrow]

Next, if not already, it's going to be patents on genetically mutated cloned cattle and other farm animals. Tastey viddles...

Clone me a pig that is 40%+ bacon, I'll buy a herd. Same goes for a chicken with 6 or more legs.