Comment

Neil deGrasse Tyson Goes to Town on GMO Critics

26
EiMitch8/03/2014 10:24:09 am PDT

re: #25 Backwoods_Sleuth

Some philosophical: patenting GMO seed stocks and then suing farmers whose own non-GMO seeds are contaminated by cross pollination from GMO crops.

Thats not just “philosophical.” Its a corrupt legality that helped Monsanto monopolize corn production in the US. Other tools in their bag are:

- bloated litigation costs, making it impossible for the non-wealthy to fight any accusation of gene-patent theft,

- and transporting their corn harvests in uncovered trucks, allowing some kernels to fall out and next to roadside farms to grow, making it easier to accuse them of gene-patent theft.

Its a f***ed-up law in a f***ed-up legal system. Drastic reforms are needed to stop Monsanto from shaking-down farmers.

As for the overuse of pesticides, yeah, that ideally should be tightly regulated. In addition to making pests immune, obviously a big problem in itself, there is also the issue of runoff pollution. You’d think we’d want to not cause harm unnecessarily. That we wouldn’t want to put chemicals designed to kill things into the ecosystem way more often than we actually have to. But we’d be forgetting that we’re talking about Monsanto, the makers of Agent Orange.