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Comment by rhcom2 | Hacker News Reader

There are no doubt groups against all GMOs but Monsanto definitely deserves some credit for linking GMOs with awful business and ethical practices.

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What specifically?

that whole suing farmers for patent infringement for using seeds from their own fields that were contaminated by the neighbor's Monsanto plants thing sticks out for me.

I think the case you're referring to is Monsanto Canada Inc v Schmeiser. It often gets misreported that Schmeiser was sued simply for his field having been contaminated from his neighbor. The reality is that while Schmeiser's field did have some cross pollination of his neighbor's Roundup Ready canola, he intentionally applied Roundup thereby killing off his own non-RR plants. He then kept the remaining pure RR canola and replanted it on a much larger scale.

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

The reality is that the seeds were on his land, and they're seeds. It seems wrong that to sue someone for that in the first place, and then furthermore to win the case just seems wrong. The fact that he used Roundup to get the right seeds isn't this gotcha that changes public opinion. As children, before we're taught economics, we learn farmers plant seeds to grow corn to feed us. Suing the farmer for planting seeds hurts this very basic role we learned as kids. Of course the world is more complicated than the world we learned of at seven, but this is a farmer planting seeds.

That bit in India also sounds horrible.

>It seems wrong that to sue someone for that in the first place, and then furthermore to win the case just seems wrong.

That's a lot of 'seems' that ignores that last hundred years or so modern farming and the case law around seed patents that has existed since the 30s.

> As children, before we're taught economics, we learn farmers plant seeds to grow corn to feed us. Suing the farmer for planting seeds hurts this very basic role we learned as kids.

Generally anytime someone's argument is based around an appeal to emotions, you can be they aren't dealing with reality and logical thinking. Doubly so when you're talking about planting corn when discussing a case about canola.

This reads like you're a lawyer for Monsanto, as if a massive organization sueing an individual farmer over such meaningless drivel should be considered acceptable practice.

Yeah I'm always surprised when anyone that's actually bothered to read the details of the case comes off thinking Monsanto is the bad guy in this situation. They irrationally hate Monsanto so much that they are willing to pretend that no amount of crime against them is wrong, it's bizarre. I think a lot of it is due to being ignorant to the last hundred years or so of how modern farming works. A lot of the complaints I hear about them have no basis in reality at all. I'm not a fan of the company but really they are no more evil than any company that I am a fan of.

Monsanto engineered several crops to create their own insecticides with genes from bacillus thuringiensis (BT). BT corn was approved by regulators for corn not intended for human consumption.

In practice it became impossible to keep BT corn out of the food supply. With corn as a staple crop and the international trade in corn everyone on the planet became a test case.

There was controversy on the impact of corn pollen on non-target species, including monarchs and lady-birds/lady bugs and bees. Follow-up studies didn’t show significant impact in quantities likely to be encountered in the field.

All GMs have risk of pollen drift and the risk of gene spread. Farmers growing non-BT corn for export may have their crops rejected in some markets if contaminated. Corn cross pollinates with a genetic ancestor of corn in South America which is considered a weed because it can cause domestic corn kernels to not develop properly. There is some risk of gene transfer and creating a “super” weed.

https://ejbpc.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41938-018-0...

https://ohioline.osu.edu/factsheet/agf-153

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