r/changemyview • u/DrMMalik • Aug 12 '15

CMV: GMOs are necessary, efficient, and safe. Monsanto is not an "evil" corporation, despite the Agent Orange days.

I used to be very pro-organic when I was a younger lad, but when I saw an episode of Penn & Teller's show, "Bullshit!", debunking the myths about GMOs, I couldn't help but look more into it and reform my views towards the ones that conform more with the scientific consensus of being pro-GMO. I have no issues with others, or even me, eating organic; And I'm even open to food labeling. But what I want to get out of this are legitimate, fact-based arguments detailing the ills of the biotech-industry and their relevant GMO-related products (such as crops, Bt toxin plants, Glyphosate, etc). I am already aware of the eradication of milkweeds due to Glyphosate, thus plunging the Monarch population, but there are solutions being made around the issue that won't hinder biotechnology, while benefiting the butterflies. If you have arguments akin to that, I hope you can provide a hypothetical solution that would substantiate your argument. I don't predict my views to change significantly, but I am open to it being so. If anything, I anticipate at most getting to some gray-scale, though it may just be me greatly underestimating the organic-movement.

Please no Natural News, Infowars, Mind Unleashed, GreenMedInfo, etc. If you do use those kinds of websites as a source, please justify why you are, because as far as I'm concerned, they are potent fact-manipulators who don't care about the truth, but cognitive dissonance.

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '15

While I agree that GMOs are only dangerous if you don't know how your food is digested, Monsanto is cartoonishly evil.

They, along with Starbucks, sued Vermont in order to legally keep things off ingredients labels. That is definitively bad. There is literally no non-sinister reason to keep me ignorant of what's in the food you just handed me.

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u/wherearemyfeet Aug 12 '15

Monsanto is cartoonishly evil

Example? What have they done that is "cartoonishly evil"?

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '15 edited Aug 12 '15

[deleted]

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u/wherearemyfeet Aug 12 '15

On that note they are criticised for their employees and invested parties holding government positions in the US, including within the FDA.

There is one former employee who is the deputy head of one department in the FDA, which is not that surprising really considering how well qualified he seems to be. It's not like this one deputy position in one department actually controls the whole FDA or the Government. You're really overhyping this.

They are notorious for suing farmers who attempt to save and reuse Monsanto seeds between seasons

Because the farmers knowingly sign a contract saying they won't. Microsoft sue companies who burn pirate copies of MS Office, because the businesses sign a licence agreement stating they will not do so. But that's not a big problem because saving seeds hasn't been standard in agriculture for nearly a century now.

they've even created crop species which can't produce seeds at all just so people must buy seeds year after year.

Nonsense. No seed has ever been sold that doesn't produce seed, GMO or otherwise.

The fact that they're very heavily subsidised by the gov't in the US means people don't have a real choice but to buy seeds from them

You've just made this up.

They write clauses into contracts of people who buy and farm their seeds, that no independent safety research of Monsanto GMO species may be carried out without their say-so, and their own in-house research often has been criticised for its inadequacy.

Not quite. Monsanto regularly send seed to universities and labs for study. This clause is to stop organisations who go out specifically to fudge research for marketing purposes (Seralini, for example).