Sara

these aren't even GM as far as I can tell. Plant patents are in practice very similar to software patents. You can certainly argue there are problems with the patent system but nobody gets in an uproar when Adobe sues a business for pirating Photoshop.

I see what you're saying, it's not clear if these are GMO potatoes in this article, but they do list on their Lays potato chips that they contain GMOs. As to your other point, as far as I can tell people don't eat PDFs so I'm not sure it's a good comparison?

I think the label is referring to the corn in the vegetable oil (possibly the canola but I'm not sure if GM canola is actually on the market). The second part I guess is more philosophical but growing up on a farm I just see food as an industry like any other.

Growing up Indigenous, I definitely do NOT.

This doesn't have anything to do with trademarking foods, no need to derail. Especially if you're not a farmer or an agriculture scientist.

Sara - You said we only have one reason to fret over GMOs. But we have several.

I deleted my last tweet because it was bitchy, I just woke up. Sorry! But really, the science doesn’t support many of the reasons people fret over GMOs and glyphosate (which are two different issues being conflated here) but I understand that Ag has left an info vacuum about it.

I’ll tell u what happens: we Eat The Corporations

I'd argue there's also issues re: cross-pollination of native plants/non-GMO heirlooms as well as concerns with the effect altered staple crops may have on immune systems and the intestinal biome that coevolved with them, but yeah, capitalism is 99% of what's wrong with GMOs

Yeah, definitely can agree about the issues re: cross-pollination of native plants or farmed crops (that then get sued for growing trademarked or patented plants). Capitalism is trash.

And cross pollination with native plants is, if an issue, an issue with all crops, not just protected varieties.

GMOs at least have the advantage of knowing what the few introduced genes are. Conventional breeding practices have hybrids raised from entirely unnatural pairings, with poorly detailed genetic backgrounds. You don’t actually know what you’re introducing into a new environment.

Right. The counterpoint to that is most hybrids are from different landraces of the same already-consumed crop, or at least closely-related species. With GMOs you can get genes from different genuses: bacterial genes in Bt corn, eel poult genes in salmon.

This is true, and the most serious instances of agriculture and habitat destruction have come from ill advised importation of species, diseases and hybrids into non-native environments (eg. The spread of Myxomatosis or Dutch elm disease)

The chestnut blight was a natural disaster of epic proportions. Truly probably the worst in North America.