Security cost to protect crops from vandals: "six figure" bill".
Security cost to protect the public food supply from contamination of the gene pool: zero.
Their priorities are backward.

Perfectly put bystander!!

Where are the MOB (McKinney's Obama Bashers) and the TRDs (Tricky Republican Devils) on this issue?

I hear that wastewater security has won the contract to protect the soilent green crops....

If we could just focus Al Qaida energies against genetically modified foods instead of against people, the world would be a better place.

Green Party promotes organic foods, and certainly doesn't support the concept of GMOs.

Where is Obama on this issue? And how do his defenders justify that position?

The same 'scientists' that support GMOs used to support the cigarette industry. We have the best science money can buy. And the GMO potato was shown by an EU scientist not to have the same nutritional value as a regular potatoe. (You say potato, I say potatoe).

The corporate elite will kill us one way or another, and make us pay as we are dying. So many ways: send us off to war, not provide affordable universal health care, destroy our food source, pollute our planet. All this while foolish earthlings go along as dutiful consumers to ensure corporate profit. Don't upset the apple cart.

Support third party, don't support the status quo and the corporate elite.

Why is the democratic party leadership on the wrong side on each significant issue?

Grow you own food if you can and save the seeds. It is the only way to stay alive

gmo foods - can you say eugenics

among the sickest ideas ever offered by the american killing machine

congrats to those who destroy them

well done

I posted this on another article before I read this one.

'I have a perfect solution. Genetically modified farmers. Slip a few ant genes into the human genome and they will labor till they die worn out. They won't even want wages. The ant/farmers could all serve one corporation- call it BIG BROTHER.'

I can only add that ant/farmers would protect their crops too.

Wait wait... this articles presumes that the big GMO companies aren't themselves 'vandalizing' the god/evolutionary given genetic codes of food? Paaaleeeeze...

What's all the flap about GM foods? It seems to me that having a drought & bug resistant crop of corn, potatoes, etc would be a GOOD thing. I know there's a problem with the likes of Monsanto patenting the seed, but what's wrong with the food itself?

bumifl
trouble is the farmer are not allowed to keep the seeds so the company controls who gets seeds what they plant how much and the cost. Also some types of GM crops have no seeds so even more control over our food. It is warfare on a planet level as GM crops can infect non GM crops. That is why I posted before , remove your lawn and put in your own garden if you can. If not talk to the building owners and put in roof top gardens. Keep the seeds for next season

What's wrong with it is this: it is an engineered mutant, and there is no way to stop the spread of the pollen from infecting natural crops. Man tries to engineer GM best he can to get the highest yield in each fruit/vegetable.... but as we know... the things that man builds are never perfect. Sometimes there are serious problems and safety concerns with these fresh off the drawing board GM foods. Usually- they are hardly even tested on actual human beings before being released into the market.

But that's only the smaller of the problems.

The bigger problem is that GM foods are engineered to make them more robust... less prone to failure... more indestructible. That means that they pretty much can categorically outgrow and overwhelm the original un-genetically modified crops which are usually adjacently located.

Why's this a problem you ask if they are engineered to produce a better yield anyway? Well back to the imperfection of man's creations... do you want a GM wheat crop to replace, pollute, and contaminate the natural non GM crop... when there is the potential that a few years down the road the scientists realize that they made a drastic mistake in the GM crop... (like maybe it triggers some sort of cancer... or maybe it doesn't produce an essential vitamin any longer)... but now it's too late to remove it from the food supply because the birds and the bees have spread that GM pollen to nearly all the non-GM crops... making them GM by accident and exposure? Thereby eradicating natural wheat which has evolved for thousands of years? Leaving you with your crop of cancer wheat?

The third problem, as Hollow point stated, is that these mega companies like Monsanto which are up to their eye balls in Genetically Modified crap... have connivingly copyrighted their GM food designs. First- they still have to use 99% of the existing vegetable DNA even though they only change a small fraction of it to make it Genetically Modified. They should not have the right to copyright food in this fashion. Second, because the bees naturally handle the pollination of all plants- there is no way to stop the spread of GM pollen. So eventually organic crops will get contaminated AND Monsanto will have the right now to go sue those small organic farmers because they are growing the 'copyrighted' version of Monsanto's product... which polluted the natural crop in the first place!!

>>Second, because the bees naturally handle the pollination of all plants- there is no way to stop the spread of GM pollen.<<

Bees do NOT polenate all plants, only some. Corn and grains, which are the most common GE crops that I have seen referenced so far, pollinate by wind.

Thanks for that clarification. So wind pollination by GM crops will eventually contaminate natural crops down wind, which means eventually, everywhere.

The one issue with GMOs is when you start cross-breeding different species, you are also bringing in new possible diseases that the new GMO 'food' will not have the natural ability to defend itself against. Most diseases have limited interspecies capability and GMOs will break down that natural barrier.

Also, our food is becoming a monoculture, one type of tomato, one type of corn, so when a blight comes it will knock out a greater percentage of food than otherwise. Nature's strength is its diversity, and that is what GMOs and corporate agriculture take away.

I wonder if that new seed back that is buried in the Artic ice, does it contain GMO seeds or natural seeds? It is paid for in part by Monsanto. It seems that they are banking on some kind of food disaster as their current business practice isn't very altruistic.

And don't even mention how inhumane our meat industry is. They don't care about animals, they don't care about us. That is why we should start caring about ourselves, support organic diverse small farming. It will save your life in the end.

PS - plant a few fruit trees.

It is interesting that GMO trials are decreasing in the U.K. while the are flourishing in the U.S.

Is not surprising that such "Frankenstein" s0-called food products are made in a country that relishes R & D with germ and biological warfare, tactical nuclear weaponry, giantd agribusiness that cares little of the quality of its food stuffs and a FDA that refuses to label their "Franken" foods because they claim the public already is adequately protected.

Sort of goes hand in hand with U.S. geopolitics and how itd views itself in the world.

it would certainly help if everyone explained this to others and all refuse to buy such so called non food. horizontal gene transfer should be enough to scare anyone away from this diabolical technology.
at least we have the green party opposing it.

If you eat at a fast food restaurant, you are likely supporting GMO food, as well as the inhumane treatment of animals. While I respect vegetarians I am not one (yet?). I do try to at least eat food that is humanely treated. I used to love KFC (no accounting for taste buds) but I haven't eaten there in at least 3-4 years.

If you buy cheap food, ie- cheap chicken, beef, vegatables, you know that someone or something was treated unjustly just to get on your table cheaply.

Spend your money in what you believe. Unfortunately, corporate interests in the organic market will bring down those standards, but not if we don't let them.

And what is Obama's main concern? Increasing our military presence in Afghanistan. Makes perfect sense. When you support a corporate candidate, corporations will be protected.

It is all connected. Support the status quo which is slowly bringing about our demise, and it will occur even sooner. Don't support the status quo, support third party candidates. Ask your candidate what their position is on GMOs.

buminfl

GM crops are harmful to human health and the environment. How good is food with a built in pesticide in it?

There are no drought resistant GM crops on the market anywhere in the world yet. There are non-GM crops tolerant to dry condition on the market around the world though.

In addition, organic farming without GM crops preserves soil moisture content is is much more efficient for drought conditions. Plus the market for organic produce is growing at 30-40% per year while the more consumers find out about GM crops the they reject them.

It is increasingly confirmed that corporate industrial 'consumimfication'of agriculture results in a 'green desert'. Soil integrity is toxified, biodiversity is lost, and people are displaced (fenced out) both on the mirco and macro levels.
What is being 'protected' is a theory, an idea of accumulation of the right to an idea. If the resources being applied to this delusion, the delusion of one idea being a utopian panacea, clearly profoundly flawed, were applied directly to needs in the world, there would be no needs in the world. Kudos to the photographer who captured the image.

"You are what you eat"...
And (although this may well-be the first-time, in my entire-life, that I quoted from 'scripture'!), even the first-section of the oldest-chapter of the oldest-Myth I'm familiar with [and which, supposedly, is the 'foundation' of Western Law/society] places repeated-emphasis upon the importance of 'fruit bearing like-fruit' -- as in (but hardly limited-to) the following:
Genesis
1:12 "And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good."
1:29 "And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat."
1:30 "And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so."
2:9 "And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil."

Our body-chemistry adapted over thousands of generations to certain 'foods' and constituents. It goes almost without-saying that a high-RISK is associated with any/all genetic-alterations of our consumptive food-base -- especially when those 'frankenfoods' can&will spread (mono-culturally, or non-deliberately) into the world's food-chain.
Yes -- hybridization and/or molecular-'dabbling' can/could/perhaps-'did' produce a "profitable and desirable Crop". But if the 'downside' results in unknown crop-vulnerability or worse (as in 'fruit of he poisoned-tree'), we will have entrusted our Fate/Future in entirely the Wrong-Hands [entities, whose primary-directive/'God' is merely: "Profit"].
We may, after-all, end up "Reaping what we Sow"...
I think it's a 'good thing' Buffet/Monsanto/others built that 'seed-vault' in Norway (shame it's near a fault-line!). More should be constructed, imho. However, more Regulation/Testing should be pushed, worldwide, into exploring/weighing the long-range consequences for any 'food innovations'. Given typical "Corporate nature/Culture", and corporate track-records re: "the Public Welfare" [if/when Profit rears its ugly-head], I'd say that 'regulation' is a forgotten Necessity...

GMO is a two-edged sword -- with as much potential-Consequences as our other 'plaything', the fissile "Nuclear Genie".

In my home state of Oregon a concerned housewife organized a campaign to put a measure on the 2004 ballot creating a requirement that all genetically modified foods sold in all retail outlets be labeled as such. She was able to garner the 100,000 legal signatures for GMO labeling and it was duly written into the ballot for voters.

There were limited funds for ads on TV so the two which were produced in advocacy for labeling had a tough time when the National and Oregon State Grange partnered with Monsanto to oppose the ballot measure.

The measure went down after 11 million dollars of corporate media propaganda deluged the state.

So what's new? Nothing. Now, however, there is a greater than ever HOSTILITY towards the big corporate monoliths and the neo-con, backward, buffoons in the Grange organization. Numbers are growing among aware and disgusted Oregonians.

So spend your 6,7, or whatever figure funds for "security" 'till it busts you Monsanto and Like corps.
Sympathy for your cause is diminishing rapidly.

I find it somewhat ironic that they're spending this much on security. Why do they need to spend that much in the first place? BECAUSE THEY KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING IS WRONG AND THE PEOPLE WILL FIGHT BACK. Then, they will want to punish the people who did exactly what they expected them to do.

I guess they'll stop poisoning us when we are all dead!