What information does a GMO label provide that's of relevance. "It's genetically modified" is not an answer, as the existence of genetic modification alone is not anything a consumer needs to be concerned about, unlike calorie counts or whether something is Kosher. It's a "nice to have" label.
Never mind losing it, here's where you're missing the plot entirely. Except for the allergic, there is nothing in pork or shrimp or cheeseburgers or Leviticus-prohibited whatever that should be objectionable as food. These have been tested again and again by the same scientists who give GMO crops a clean bill of health.
Yet people object. They furthermore have every right to object, even though their objections are based on pre- and often anti-scientific mumblings, faiths and prejudices every bit as superstitious and shallow as those who prefer to eat foods modified only by cross-breeding.
The GMO label is therefore exactly analogous to the Kosher label, no matter how vociferously you insist on denying this. Furthermore, this has always been the point.
To deny this very simple fact outs you as either diabolical or (more likely) riddled with the ill-ease of cognitive dissonance.
Except for the allergic, there is nothing in pork or shrimp or cheeseburgers or Leviticus-prohibited whatever that should be objectionable as food. These have been tested again and again by the same scientists who give GMO crops a clean bill of health.
I don't disagree. However, the information is relevant in these situations, which is not the case for GMO. They object for relevant, clear, reasonable reasons.
The GMO label is therefore exactly analogous to the Kosher label, no matter how vociferously you insist on denying this. Furthermore, this has always been the point.
The Kosher label is because of religious dietary restrictions. What religious dietary situation exists for genetic modifications? Will we then label seedless watermelons?
I know it specifically means something. If we're going to say that one type of genetic modifications need labeling and others do not, what are we accomplishing?
However, the information is relevant in these situations, which is not the case for GMO.
No, no, no. The US Constitution has no religious test: based on this, the secular regulatory arm has no authority to consider one religious text and its prohibitions as carrying more weight than another.
What religious dietary situation exists for genetic modifications?
Should someone object to GMO because it's treyf, then unlabeled food is treyf, and they can move to label non-GMO (similar to the little circled U and K on rabbinically inspected and approved foods). The FDA has no authority to judge one religious tenet over the other.
Will we then label seedless watermelons?
You or I could grow seedless watermelons in our back yards without a zillion dollars in lab equipment and advanced degrees. These, as I noted elsewhere, are simply sterile mule melons, no jellyfish genome material required.
Oh, and to complete the total and complete failure of your cinderblock-ish argument, the last time I checked, seedless melons were labeled. It's a selling point, not having to spit seeds all over the picnic table!
No, no, no. The US Constitution has no religious test: based on this, the secular regulatory arm has no authority to consider one religious text and its prohibitions as carrying more weight than another.
And Kosher labeling is not required. Not should it be.
You or I could grow seedless watermelons in our back yards without a zillion dollars in lab equipment and advanced degrees.
Scary!
Oh, and to complete the total and complete failure of your cinderblock-ish argument, the last time I checked, seedless melons were labeled. It's a selling point, not having to spit seeds all over the picnic table!
They're not labeled as GMO. That's the point, nor should they be, nor should any GMO food.
And. . . . Jeff has left the building. The Logic Building, where the reasonable discuss things reasonably. Why is that?
Because Jeff has missed the necessary element of a patent. A patent, to be issued, must be on a form or variant that is not obvious to those in the arts. Growing sterile hybrids? Grafting? Been done for thousands of years. You and I could grow it, yes; but it would never be given patent protection. It is therefore not GMO, not in terms that have any relevance to the discussion of GMOs.
GMO = patented life forms.
Ah, but you know that. You're smart enough to know that. What you aren't smart enough to do is know when to quit trolling an argument with specious obfuscation. You get, apparently, so wrapped up in your Trolling Dance and hopping about like an electrocuted monkey that you make silly, silly statements that have no bearing whatsoever on the argument.
Once again, GMO = patented life forms. The modifications are unique enough both to science and to the patent office that they have been granted the patent protection that enables Monsanto and others to go tear-assing around the world making life very different and likely more and more miserable to those who actually grow the seed into food.
When you wish to discuss this, get back to us. Meanwhile, Troll Monkey, I leave you to your spastic Troll Monkey Dance.
I don't get your line of thought is all, and that you're coming up with some novel claims and then turning around and calling me a troll doesn't do much for your side of the argument at all.
There is nothing novel about pointing out that seedless watermelons are by definition not GMO because they cannot be patented. Sure, we can "modify" genes through cross-breeding; that is not in discussion here, however. Only modifications drastic enough to be considered new to the agricultural arts can be considered for patent protection, aka GMO.
Therefore, your mentioning something that can't be patented and claiming this is genetic modification is trolling, ie. bringing up irrelevant data points that do not in any way refer to the argument at hand in order to clutter the relevant discussion and scuttle discourse. It's the monkey dance, pure and simple.
There is nothing novel about pointing out that seedless watermelons are by definition not GMO because they cannot be patented.
Who else is expressing this point of view?
More to the point, when the patent expires, are they no longer GMOs? It's an amazingly weird argument.
Therefore, your mentioning something that can't be patented and claiming this is genetic modification is trolling, ie. bringing up irrelevant data points that do not in any way refer to the argument at hand in order to clutter the relevant discussion and scuttle discourse. It's the monkey dance, pure and simple.
So, by your definition, mentioning patents as being a defining characteristic of GMOs, with no support or reasoning behind it, is "trolling."
You're better off just engaging the argument as opposed to really poorly derailing it. It's one thing to have you go off on the corporate media nonsense, but it's another to make it personal while coming out of left field with something like this.
More to the point, when the patent expires, are they no longer GMOs?
Oh, for fuck's sake. Yes, Jeff, they remain genetically modified organisms, even after the patent protection expires. That's how they got the patent protection after all, by being unique life forms brought into existence well beyond what the in serendipitous parameters of random mutation would otherwise allow in nature.
As someone who's been married for a while, I highly recommend you never, ever use this twisted logic on your wife, at least not as long as you wish to stay married.
I have tried to be reasonable. You have refused. You are obstinately sticking to your delusion without considering anything anyone else has to say on the issue. "Onanism" comes to mind as a possible description.
But hey, don't get me wrong; I have nothing against masturbation, even mental masturbation. Just try doing it alone next time.
Oh, for fuck's sake. Yes, Jeff, they remain genetically modified organisms, even after the patent protection expires. That's how they got the patent protection after all, by being unique life forms brought into existence well beyond what the in serendipitous parameters of random mutation would otherwise allow in nature.
Do you see where I'm going with this yet? You're making a very strange distinction about GMOs that has no bearing or relevance to the real world. If what makes a GMO a GMO is, to use your words, "the necessary element of a patent," then the lack of a patent means what, exactly? If a genetically modified food is not patented, is it no longer a GMO?
I have tried to be reasonable. You have refused. You are obstinately sticking to your delusion without considering anything anyone else has to say on the issue. "Onanism" comes to mind as a possible description.
This is me considering it. You've made a rather absurd claim, so I'm drawing it out to figure out if it's me that has missed something or if it is you.
But hey, don't get me wrong; I have nothing against masturbation, even mental masturbation. Just try doing it alone next time.
That you have to resort to attacking me this much tells me a lot about the validity of your claim. The lack of any supporting evidence whatsoever even moreso.
I'll indulge with a quick primer. I hope you'll see the relevance, because I'm getting tired of your seemingly deliberate ignorance on this topic.
You're making a very strange distinction about GMOs that has no bearing or relevance to the real world.
No, I'm making the distinction about GMOs that has every bearing on the real world of patent protection. As someone who worked a few years in law firms, and much of that in a firm filing patents for patent protection consideration, I have a bit of first-hand knowledge about the process.
For a patent to be considered, it must be unique to those familiar with the arts (the industry that manufactures the product). So, if someone walks into a patent firm with a simple cross between species—stuff that was old hat in Mendel's day—the attorney preparing the filing would likely inform the client that this is too obvious to those in agriculture, and strongly suggest the patent wannabe save his or her money.
However, should a person walk into a patent office with a strain of corn that glowed green thanks to jellyfish DNA or whatever, that person would likely be a good candidate for a patent. Why? Simply because very few in the field can insert jellyfish DNA into corn. There are several processes that do this, but all are time and capital intensive.
Despite the talk about "gene splicing"—which makes the process sound so clean and neat, like splicing a length of new rope or wire into another—the actual process is literally hit-and-miss, and mostly miss. One fires stainless steel bullets coated with the desired genetic material with an air gun. A small percentage will survive the ballistic assault enough to sprout; a much smaller percentage of those that survive might bear offspring when mature; a very small percentage of those bear the desired genes; an even smaller percentage of those might have the genes within in a helpful and marketable manner.
So, your talk about seedless melons is specious. There is no special process to making seedless melons that has not, again, been known for thousands of years. There is therefore no reason to consider that the "genetic modification"—scare quotes inserted for emphasis, since the real term would be "crossing"—is sufficiently novel to those in the agricultural arts for granting a patent. Thus, trolling: crossing is not GMO as the term GMO is known to those in the industry.
And after the patent protection expires, the manner of their construction will remain a known fact, so they remain GMO.
Given this, your statement:
That you have to resort to attacking me this much tells me a lot about the validity of your claim.
Can simply be reversed. I honestly don't know how well versed you are about the GMO production, patent and patent enforcement process, but you're a smart guy in most matters, so I assumed you would be aware of the distinction—the legal distinction, as opposed to simply the semantic and rhetorical distinctions you have employed—between simple breeding methods and full-on laboratory gene fucking-with. Why would I provide "supporting evidence" for a topic so easily researched? What am I, a kindergarten teacher?
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2014-07-31 01:44 am (UTC)Never mind losing it, here's where you're missing the plot entirely. Except for the allergic, there is nothing in pork or shrimp or cheeseburgers or Leviticus-prohibited whatever that should be objectionable as food. These have been tested again and again by the same scientists who give GMO crops a clean bill of health.
Yet people object. They furthermore have every right to object, even though their objections are based on pre- and often anti-scientific mumblings, faiths and prejudices every bit as superstitious and shallow as those who prefer to eat foods modified only by cross-breeding.
The GMO label is therefore exactly analogous to the Kosher label, no matter how vociferously you insist on denying this. Furthermore, this has always been the point.
To deny this very simple fact outs you as either diabolical or (more likely) riddled with the ill-ease of cognitive dissonance.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-31 11:47 am (UTC)I don't disagree. However, the information is relevant in these situations, which is not the case for GMO. They object for relevant, clear, reasonable reasons.
The GMO label is therefore exactly analogous to the Kosher label, no matter how vociferously you insist on denying this. Furthermore, this has always been the point.
The Kosher label is because of religious dietary restrictions. What religious dietary situation exists for genetic modifications? Will we then label seedless watermelons?
no subject
Date: 2014-07-31 07:13 pm (UTC)You mean beyond the fact that they're called seedless watermelons and not watermelons?
no subject
Date: 2014-07-31 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-31 07:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-31 07:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-31 07:58 pm (UTC)Plants are made by manipulating cuttings and selective breeding aren't GMO.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-31 08:11 pm (UTC)Oh, so seedless watermelon is not created by genetically modifying existing watermelon?
no subject
Date: 2014-07-31 09:01 pm (UTC)Plant cuttings aren't GMO
no subject
Date: 2014-07-31 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-31 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-31 09:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-31 09:33 pm (UTC)GMO means something very particular.
Using plant cuttings and selective breeding to create a particular type of plant is does not count as a GMO crop.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-31 09:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2014-07-31 10:50 pm (UTC)No, no, no. The US Constitution has no religious test: based on this, the secular regulatory arm has no authority to consider one religious text and its prohibitions as carrying more weight than another.
What religious dietary situation exists for genetic modifications?
Should someone object to GMO because it's treyf, then unlabeled food is treyf, and they can move to label non-GMO (similar to the little circled U and K on rabbinically inspected and approved foods). The FDA has no authority to judge one religious tenet over the other.
Will we then label seedless watermelons?
You or I could grow seedless watermelons in our back yards without a zillion dollars in lab equipment and advanced degrees. These, as I noted elsewhere, are simply sterile mule melons, no jellyfish genome material required.
Oh, and to complete the total and complete failure of your cinderblock-ish argument, the last time I checked, seedless melons were labeled. It's a selling point, not having to spit seeds all over the picnic table!
no subject
Date: 2014-08-01 11:29 am (UTC)And Kosher labeling is not required. Not should it be.
You or I could grow seedless watermelons in our back yards without a zillion dollars in lab equipment and advanced degrees.
Scary!
Oh, and to complete the total and complete failure of your cinderblock-ish argument, the last time I checked, seedless melons were labeled. It's a selling point, not having to spit seeds all over the picnic table!
They're not labeled as GMO. That's the point, nor should they be, nor should any GMO food.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-01 10:03 pm (UTC)Because Jeff has missed the necessary element of a patent. A patent, to be issued, must be on a form or variant that is not obvious to those in the arts. Growing sterile hybrids? Grafting? Been done for thousands of years. You and I could grow it, yes; but it would never be given patent protection. It is therefore not GMO, not in terms that have any relevance to the discussion of GMOs.
GMO = patented life forms.
Ah, but you know that. You're smart enough to know that. What you aren't smart enough to do is know when to quit trolling an argument with specious obfuscation. You get, apparently, so wrapped up in your Trolling Dance and hopping about like an electrocuted monkey that you make silly, silly statements that have no bearing whatsoever on the argument.
Once again, GMO = patented life forms. The modifications are unique enough both to science and to the patent office that they have been granted the patent protection that enables Monsanto and others to go tear-assing around the world making life very different and likely more and more miserable to those who actually grow the seed into food.
When you wish to discuss this, get back to us. Meanwhile, Troll Monkey, I leave you to your spastic Troll Monkey Dance.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-01 10:05 pm (UTC)This is an entirely novel argument to me regarding labeling, that it involves a patent.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-02 06:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-03 05:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-03 05:34 pm (UTC)Therefore, your mentioning something that can't be patented and claiming this is genetic modification is trolling, ie. bringing up irrelevant data points that do not in any way refer to the argument at hand in order to clutter the relevant discussion and scuttle discourse. It's the monkey dance, pure and simple.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-03 05:40 pm (UTC)Who else is expressing this point of view?
More to the point, when the patent expires, are they no longer GMOs? It's an amazingly weird argument.
Therefore, your mentioning something that can't be patented and claiming this is genetic modification is trolling, ie. bringing up irrelevant data points that do not in any way refer to the argument at hand in order to clutter the relevant discussion and scuttle discourse. It's the monkey dance, pure and simple.
So, by your definition, mentioning patents as being a defining characteristic of GMOs, with no support or reasoning behind it, is "trolling."
You're better off just engaging the argument as opposed to really poorly derailing it. It's one thing to have you go off on the corporate media nonsense, but it's another to make it personal while coming out of left field with something like this.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-04 07:55 pm (UTC)Oh, for fuck's sake. Yes, Jeff, they remain genetically modified organisms, even after the patent protection expires. That's how they got the patent protection after all, by being unique life forms brought into existence well beyond what the in serendipitous parameters of random mutation would otherwise allow in nature.
As someone who's been married for a while, I highly recommend you never, ever use this twisted logic on your wife, at least not as long as you wish to stay married.
I have tried to be reasonable. You have refused. You are obstinately sticking to your delusion without considering anything anyone else has to say on the issue. "Onanism" comes to mind as a possible description.
But hey, don't get me wrong; I have nothing against masturbation, even mental masturbation. Just try doing it alone next time.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-04 07:58 pm (UTC)Do you see where I'm going with this yet? You're making a very strange distinction about GMOs that has no bearing or relevance to the real world. If what makes a GMO a GMO is, to use your words, "the necessary element of a patent," then the lack of a patent means what, exactly? If a genetically modified food is not patented, is it no longer a GMO?
I have tried to be reasonable. You have refused. You are obstinately sticking to your delusion without considering anything anyone else has to say on the issue. "Onanism" comes to mind as a possible description.
This is me considering it. You've made a rather absurd claim, so I'm drawing it out to figure out if it's me that has missed something or if it is you.
But hey, don't get me wrong; I have nothing against masturbation, even mental masturbation. Just try doing it alone next time.
That you have to resort to attacking me this much tells me a lot about the validity of your claim. The lack of any supporting evidence whatsoever even moreso.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-06 04:03 am (UTC)You're making a very strange distinction about GMOs that has no bearing or relevance to the real world.
No, I'm making the distinction about GMOs that has every bearing on the real world of patent protection. As someone who worked a few years in law firms, and much of that in a firm filing patents for patent protection consideration, I have a bit of first-hand knowledge about the process.
For a patent to be considered, it must be unique to those familiar with the arts (the industry that manufactures the product). So, if someone walks into a patent firm with a simple cross between species—stuff that was old hat in Mendel's day—the attorney preparing the filing would likely inform the client that this is too obvious to those in agriculture, and strongly suggest the patent wannabe save his or her money.
However, should a person walk into a patent office with a strain of corn that glowed green thanks to jellyfish DNA or whatever, that person would likely be a good candidate for a patent. Why? Simply because very few in the field can insert jellyfish DNA into corn. There are several processes that do this, but all are time and capital intensive.
Despite the talk about "gene splicing"—which makes the process sound so clean and neat, like splicing a length of new rope or wire into another—the actual process is literally hit-and-miss, and mostly miss. One fires stainless steel bullets coated with the desired genetic material with an air gun. A small percentage will survive the ballistic assault enough to sprout; a much smaller percentage of those that survive might bear offspring when mature; a very small percentage of those bear the desired genes; an even smaller percentage of those might have the genes within in a helpful and marketable manner.
So, your talk about seedless melons is specious. There is no special process to making seedless melons that has not, again, been known for thousands of years. There is therefore no reason to consider that the "genetic modification"—scare quotes inserted for emphasis, since the real term would be "crossing"—is sufficiently novel to those in the agricultural arts for granting a patent. Thus, trolling: crossing is not GMO as the term GMO is known to those in the industry.
And after the patent protection expires, the manner of their construction will remain a known fact, so they remain GMO.
Given this, your statement:
That you have to resort to attacking me this much tells me a lot about the validity of your claim.
Can simply be reversed. I honestly don't know how well versed you are about the GMO production, patent and patent enforcement process, but you're a smart guy in most matters, so I assumed you would be aware of the distinction—the legal distinction, as opposed to simply the semantic and rhetorical distinctions you have employed—between simple breeding methods and full-on laboratory gene fucking-with. Why would I provide "supporting evidence" for a topic so easily researched? What am I, a kindergarten teacher?
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