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Comment by robwwilliams | Hacker News Reader

Assume this is a joke, right? Have to add the ;-) even for nominally bright people.

It's a joke, but I do have questions in general about "Certified Non-GMO" versus "Modern day bananas, corn and tomatoes look nothing like they did 400 years ago". There are some types of genetic modifications that are considered "natural" and "OK" and somehow there are others that are "artificial" and "scary", but damned if I know which are which.

To play devil's advocate to myself and possibly answer my own question: I imagine there are ecological effects of GMO (some of your corn SHOULD get killed by insects). Not to mention the fact that GMO seeds are probably mostly sold by god-awful Monsanto.

Maybe someone with an agricultural background would have an easier time researching this, but:

"mostly" Monsanto? Or is that just an older, famous example? Lots of companies sell seeds in mass quantities -- are you saying none of them sell GMO seeds?

That's why I said probably. I just know Monsanto is famous for their "copyright" seeds that are genetically modified and you're not allowed to keep the next generation of seeds.

They're famous for lots of bullshit they didn't actually do. It's part of the demonization process.

In this case, Monsanto never sold "terminator" seeds. They (and many others) sold hybrid seeds, which don't breed true, and so are functionally equivalent to that. Hybrid seeds have been around since the 1930s, if not earlier.

In any case, they can get the same effect by contract. You were not allowed to replant Roundup Ready soybeans, and they sued (and won against) farmers who broke the contract to do that.

Thanks, that did have the odor of the urban rumor that someone "read this somewhere on the internet" and is now repeating one more time. Although he did admit his lack of sourcing.

They even won against farmers who signed no contract.

They won against a farmer who deliberately sprayed a field with herbicide to concentrate traces of the herbicide resistance gene that had drifted in. This was properly ruled to be deliberate violation of the patent. Nothing wrong with this.

Except the notion of patenting genes that infect natural seeds farmers must plant for next year's crop.

If the courts cannot see the distinction between farmers and plants violating patents, then the Congress may amend the law to oblige them to see it.

“No GMO” labeling isn’t because of any of those issues though; it’s just marketing to Green Meme people, upper class Whole Foods shoppers who are big into naturalistic fallacies.

There are two “no GMO” markets: the one you mentioned, and a much smaller market of people who object to GMO for pesticide resistance instead of GMO for disease resistance.

I don’t avoid GMO foods, but I do think our current scheme incentivizes finding the strongest poison and correcting the plant to resist it, without concern for how that poison affects the rest of the environment. I would much rather we engineer the plant to resist the disease directly, but it’s harder to double dip on profits (RoundUp and RoundUp Ready) in that scheme.

casual slander of people who can choose their food? The Organic Standard of the USDA is one of the great achievements of the modern times, along with the US Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, establishment of the EPA and the Endangered Species Act. Organic foods standard was the work of thousands of people, companies and academics over a decade+. Small farmers have a chance to compete in niche markets as a relief from crushing food commodity pricing.

personal spite is misplaced, and ignorant actually.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_certification

nah, the whole ";)" "/s" "/j" nonsense can go yeet itself off a cliff. i absolutely hate that stuff.

Yoink that back.

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