Topic: Monsanto Propaganda???

[OliveOil]

http://www.monsanto.co.uk/news/ukshowlib.phtml?uid=5871

[honeybee]

After spreading manure all day and then reading this, i wonder why my head hurts  ::)  :-X

[saddad]

From the people who brought us agent orange... I wouldn't believe anything they told us... Terminator technology!
 >:(

[Slug_killer]

Sheep ? Pigs ?, No definitely Bull !

How many years has the human/animal race been on this planet?
How many years have we relied on GM crops to sustain the human race ?

If organically crops are the death of us, how did we ever survive the Middle Ages with plague and pestilence, and what about the experimentation of the Victorians ?

Monsanto are the producers of RoundUp, and (just co-incidentally)  of RoundUp Ready technologies (ie herbicide tolerant (HT) products - such as GM Maize that is tolerant of RoundUp).

GM Maize is widely used in South America, from where the UK gets many beef products, and GM maize is also shipped to this country for animal feed -

If E.coli 0157 and Cryptosporidiosis, etc pass straight through a cows stomachs, don't you think HT products will too -  Strange that the report doesn't mention that !





Don't think they'd be biased in any way, would you?

[jennym]

If organically crops are the death of us, how did we ever survive the Middle Ages with plague and pestilence, and what about the experimentation of the Victorians ?

Obviously Monsanto are a commercial organisation, and like all business want to make a profit. I'm in no way willy nilly supporting GM technology or in any way supporting the terminator gene technology. And some pesticides are downright dangerous in my opinion.
However, must respond to the above statement. The answer to it is, that most people just DIDN'T survive. Well, not as long as we do, anyway. The average lifespan in the middle ages is quoted at between 30 and 40 years.
And as for insecticides - give this some thought: In 2005, reported deaths from malaria, carried by the mosquito totalled 1.2 million. The most recently available statistics show over 400 million cases were reported, with some people still suffering badly. If you had the choice of living in a mosquito ridden environment and risking your family, or using pesticides to kill the mosquitoes, what would you do?
Fungicides also have a bad press. What's the solution to the likes of this problem? http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=3071. In the first century, many folk died from the effects of the ergot fungus.
All I do know is that I don't have the answer, and that there are many good people in commercial organisations as well as goverment funded organisations working very hard to attempt to stop the misery caused by death, disease and starvation.

[Robert_Brenchley]

High death rates back then were largely due to lack of sanitation, clean water and effective medicine. 19 Century technology was enough to make an enormous difference; no connection there with Monsanto's operations.

One effective solution to many crop diesases is the maintenance of locally developed varieties, which tend, inevitably, to be resistant to the local diseases and pests. Many of these have disappeared before the flood of commercial varieties, which have been developed by the likes of Monsanto. The new high-yielding varieties developed in the 1960's and later give a higher yield at the cost of needing large quantities of fertiliser and pesticide, and often lacking disease resistance.

[caroline7758]

I see it was written back in 2001. Doesn't seem to have caught on! ;D