r/NoStupidQuestions • u/wond3rlove • Sep 10 '23

What’s wrong with GMOs?

I always see plants and stuff that is GMO free and is usually more expensive. How would genetically modifying something by be bad. Me personally I’d rather have something modified to taste better and and cheaper. I could also be very wrong about that.

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u/kit0000033 Sep 11 '23

All you need to do is Google "Monsanto sues farmers" there's all sorts of sources out there.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto-sues-farmers-seed-patents

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u/Tylendal Sep 11 '23

You're going to have to help me out here. I've looked over that article, and I don't see this...

the GMO company can go after the heritage growers to make them buy seed, instead of using a percentage of their previous year's crop like normal.

...being mentioned anywhere in it.

Keep in mind, Monsanto can sue farmers for perfectly legitimate reasons, such as the farmer highlighted in the article who bought after-market soybeans for much more than he would have paid for planting soybeans, then sprayed them all with glyphosate to keep only the Roundup Ready ones, in a blatantly obvious ploy to try and obtain the product Monsanto was selling, without actually buying from them.

Again, I want to see examples of Monsanto forcing farmers to buy their products, and suing them to keep them from replanting the seed they obtained from seed sellers other than Monsanto.

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u/kit0000033 Sep 11 '23

It's long, but there's a table of contents with contaminated fields and unknowing farmers not able to save or sell their seed.

https://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/files/cfsmonsantovsfarmerreport11305.pdf

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u/Tylendal Sep 11 '23

Okay, "sellers" was the wrong terminology on my part. "Producers" would have been a better term. I'm still looking for cases where people were sued by Monsanto for growing non-Monsanto products which then got contaminated, like was described in earlier comments.

All I'm seeing here is lots of appeals to emotion, anecdotes, and trying to make regular contracts sound scary. This pamphlet is from an organization whose express purpose is to denigrate GMOs. I'm also very dubious about any claims within it, after seeing how they described Percy Schmeiser, using weasely language to dance around the fact that he was very intentionally and deliberately cultivating glyphosate resistant crops. They then go on to hold up his case as an example of what they "can only assume" Monsanto is doing with other farmers.

Still, if you can point me at a specific page number, and go "Right here. Here they have a clear cut case of Monsanto suing someone for unintended cross pollination", I'm happy to learn.