Finally. FINALLY. My ulcer grows every time I hear someone quote that list of evil things Monsanto does. Even though yes, they are evil.
Yea, they’re evil enough with the pesticides, and the hostile takeover of farms. We don’t need to make the genetic engineering they’re doing, which is actually good work, to also be thrown under the bus
I would agree if they didn’t use their non-sterile plants to take over small farms around their huge ones by suing for theft when farmers used part of the previous crop that had been pollinated with the Monsanto GM pollen. They didn’t buy that genome so it was stolen… Fucking wankers.
Monsanto doesn’t even exist anymore. It was bought out by the totally not evil company Bayer a while back.
Of course Bayer has suffered quite a bit of indigestion over gobling up that morsel over the years.
GMO skepticism or not, Monsanto is one of the most evil companies in the world and a perfect example of what makes the profit motive such an inefficient organizer of production and distribution
Isn’t one argument against GMO that they could spread and outcompete other crops? In that case a terminator gene would even be a good thing?
That’s exactly why the original terminator gene was a joint USDA-ARS /delta-pine effort. The USDA-ARS was looking for ways to prevent GMO species from escaping and causing issues.
You know the shit that actually happened. For example -
Creeping Bentgrass
https://www.opb.org/news/article/gmo-grass-oregon-creeping-bent-scotts-monsanto/
Wheat -
https://www.nature.com/articles/499262a
Corn/teosinte
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167880918301075
This sounds like the back of a Crichton novel, and I want to read it
They make more money suing farmers for accidentally growing patented crops from natural seed dispersal mechanisms.
They make their money from royalty payments for GMO traits. It’s up to 3x more profit than they get off the seed alone.
Don’t we already have enough real shit to worry about tho?
This hard, sugarless, unripe tomato sure is red though
Source that research was banned since the 90s? All I’m aware of is that they aren’t available commercially and sale and field testing of terminator seeds has been banned since the 00s.
Yeah, except the vast majority of seeds are infertile, meaning they can’t be replanted, means the “good ol boys” can’t survive.
Where the fuck do people come up with this shit?
No the “vast majority” of crops are not infertile. They are hybrids. Farmers buy the seeds because of a genetic phenomenon called heterosis AKA hybrid vigor. It takes expertise and a shit ton of money to make hybrid seed. If growers could get the same performance from saving their own seeds only an absolute dumbfuck would buy seeds from a seed company.
Now there are a few species that hybrids can only be made by taking advantage of mutants that have male sterility genes. The resulting hybrids are still fertile (produce viable female gametes) but need an outside source of pollen. Examples: onions, sunflowers and carrots.
The only “sterile” seed sold is seedless watermelon aka triploid seed. Seedless watermelons are only sold because the market demands it thanks to a push by the USDA after being created in Japan pre-WW2. The margins on seedless watermelon seed are often 40-50% less than hybrid diploid seed. And don’t get me started on the research cost - 14-15 generations for a new female line versus 7-8 for seeded types.
Most hybrids do not produce fertile seeds. You can test it out if you want but it doesn’t work. I used to work for a seed company. Beyond that, without fertilizer the soil itself is dead in the vast majority of farming land.
Stop your bullshit.
Not only are they fertile, it is standard protocol to purchase competitors hybrid F1 seed and produce F2 seed in most species (except corn). Eventually plant breeders create inbreds (self-pollinating for 6+ generation’s). These inbreds are the used to make new F1 hybrids. In Europe this is referred to as “plant breeders rights”.
In corn they have to get a little bit more creative. Corn breeders have to keep distinct genetically distant breeding pools to maintain heterosis in their the resulting hybrids. They pull traits from a competitors hybrid utilizing backcross breeding into their breeding pools.
