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As you will see from the article in today’s La Nacion: [url=http://www.nacion.com/economia/agro/EE-UU-proyecto-moratoria-transgenicos_0_1490450959.html]EE. UU. pide cuentas por proyecto de ley de moratoria a transgénicos[/url], the ‘Chief Agricultural Negotiator’ Ambassador Darci Vetter – who will probably be taking a position with Monsanto in a few years – is “surprised” and “disappointed” to learn about Costa Rica’s desire to “impose a moratorium on cultivation of agricultural biotechnology products…”
What do you think?
Does Costa Rica not have the right to do so?
[img]https://www.welovecostarica.com/public/images/Screen Shot 2015-05-29 at 7.48.59 AM.png [/img]
[quote=”Scott”]
What do you think?
Does Costa Rica not have the right to do so?
[/quote]Of course Costa Rica has the right – a better question might be, is there a rationale for doing so. As with most bureaucracies, decisions are usually made without or despite a rationale. Looks like this would be no exception.
GMOs are a volatile topic. Despite the lack of evidence (that is, statistically valid double-blind experiments under real world conditions) that human health is at risk, a certain portion of the population has a knee-jerk reaction to those three letters.
It’s ironic that nearly everything we eat is a GMO. Would you want to eat the original tomato (first cultivated 14 centuries ago, not with several hundred varieties)? How about the original potato (first cultivated over 1o,ooo years ago, now with over 1000 varieties)? These are genetically modified from the original; the difference is the time involved, and the methods used. Do you eat meat? All domesticated animals, same thing.
Suppose you were to say “Ban GMOs, they are all potentially dangerous”? Absurd. Analogous to saying “Ban all people, they are all ignorant”, when in reality there is only a subset of humanity that is ignorant; they are not stupid, just somewhat lacking in rationale.Beware of Americanos bringing gifts. I’d rather not take the chance with “we are here to help you”, after all, we are the government. Give that trade rep a glass of roundup, and see if she drinks it.
Ahh paranoia.
I agree (again) with Pharg.
With the estimated population growth over the next few years, GMOs will probably turn out to be the only way to feed the world.
Anti-GMOs should start making decisions on who they are going to starve to death.
We’ll end up feeding the world and then causing all sorts of wicked other problems because of these genetically altered plants. You can’t alter the dna of plants and expect not to have some pretty awful results on the other side of the fence. I’m all for science but we’ve overconfident if we think we can play with plant dna at that level and not cause other problems. Cancer is caused by gene mutations. No, thanks, I won’t trust a multi-national corporation’s good intentions to mess with the dna of plants that I’m eating. GMO grain takes over other farms and offers ultimately no choice–it’s like a weed invading non gmo fields. They are trying to make a buck. We utilize insane amounts of water and grain, etc. resources to produce meat for the market. If people went to a primarily plant based died, we’d have more land and resources to eat more natural foods and plenty of land to grow food for the world. In the US we have a very heavy meat based diet, low on produce really and our colon cancer rates are ridiculous. I work in oncology and specialize in colorectal cancer. GMO grain is not the answer. We’ve screwed up our environment already with an abundance of pollutants–crap in our food and water and now we have to further a whole new branch of science called genomics to fix all of the crappy problems we’ve facilitated ourselves. Part of the beauty of Costa Rica is that it hasn’t succumbed to this. We don’t need Monsanto tampering with this pristine country.
Pharg, there is an enormous difference between physically splicing plant material and developing hybrid species and supporting Monsanto in developing a plant that can withstand a pesticide. These are two completely different approaches. Are you treating these two approaches as similiar?
[quote=”lillianwickram”]Pharg, there is an enormous difference between physically splicing plant material and developing hybrid species and supporting Monsanto in developing a plant that can withstand a pesticide. These are two completely different approaches. Are you treating these two approaches as similiar?[/quote]
It’s really not the issue of the technology or the methodology of developing hybrids or GMOs. You can debate that issue (safety and ethics) along with global warming for the rest of time. Instead it’s the TOTAL control multinational companies like Monsanto then place on everything related to GMOs.
[quote=”VictoriaLST”]Ahh paranoia.
I agree (again) with Pharg.
With the estimated population growth over the next few years, GMOs will probably turn out to be the only way to feed the world.
Anti-GMOs should start making decisions on who they are going to starve to death.[/quote]
Don’t think for a moment that those decisions haven’t all ready been made Vicky! At this point it’s all about market share, resources, and control. The Chinese influence in CR is growing and it’s NOT because they’re wonderful people looking to help out a third world country. This letter and the underlying issue is nothing more than the US looking to secure more control for a company like Monsanto in a country still able to produce food that, at some point, will become a weapon of control and compliance.
Funny how the letter makes no mention of GMOs being completely safe and environmentally friendly. Only mentions increased production and profit! Good old Uncle Sam appealing to one’s greed to get his way! 😀
I am no GMO expert but [url= http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/06/02/monsanto-challenge.aspx? ]I do respect Dr. Mercola’s opinions on this[/url] and other health related subjects.
Would love to hear your opinion pharg:
“Further highlighting the lack of consensus, a statement signed by 300 scientists, researchers, physicians, and scholars was published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Sciences Europe on January 24, unequivocally asserting that there is no scientific consensus on the safety of GMOs….
There are in fact a large number of scientists who say there’s no evidence demonstrating that GE foods are safe, and contrary to industry claims, a number of independent studies have raised serious health concerns…
A 2012 nutritional analysis of GE versus non-GE corn also found significant differences in nutritional content, which refutes claims that GE foods are nutritionally equivalent to conventional foods. Non-GE corn contained 437 times more calcium, 56 times more magnesium, and 7 times more manganese than GE corn. GE corn was also found to contain 13 ppm of glyphosate, a pesticide recently classified as a Class 2A probable human carcinogen, while none was detected in the non-GE corn.”
[quote=”sweikert925″]I have to say that it amuses me to be taking up arms on the side of the big bad capitalists while some of the usual hard right members of WLCR are on the side of the governments (which they frequently go out of their way to express their hatred of).
However.
While it is POSSIBLE that some tinkering at the genetic level of plants can produce unwanted side effects it isn’t a foregone conclusion that it will. Corporations like Monsanto are not in business to produce wholesome food for the world to eat. They are in business to make money. (Did some of you just now notice that?) Yes, it is possible that they will tinker with things in a way that fattens their bottom line without giving customers any real benefit, but that’s a feature of all capitalist enterprises. ALL capitalist enterprises have profits as their #1 goal, and anything else second.
As I stated before when this subject arose, corporations that poison their customers are rare because that is not a profitable business model. As I also pointed out, some of the same people who are up in arms about GMOs seem not to have noticed (or maybe just don’t care) that some of that non-GMO food is already laced with cancer-causing ingredients. And that is something about which there IS a scientific consensus. (How come that doesn’t concern you?) [url=http://www.freshfruitportal.com/2011/12/06/costa-ricas-pesticide-use-is-too-high-claim-scientists/]Pesticide use in Costa Rica is among the highest in the world.[/url]
Some of those same wonderful fresh fruits and vegetables you are eager to buy at the feria may well be dripping with pesticide.
I guess this may be the start or a realization for some of you that sometimes governments can be the good guys and sometimes private enterprises can be the bad guys.[/quote]
I’m not sure what the politicians in CR are thinking. Is it safety concerns over the possible effects of GMOs or the total control that companies like Monsanto exercise over food production once farmers begin using their products.
Seeing how the politicians in CR are giving away the place to the Chinese with little concern for the health and well being of the population, environment, or the economy I’m not very confident they really have a clue what they’re doing. This whole GMO issue might just be a feel good exercise in legislative conduct that none of them have a reasonably educated clue as to why they support or oppose it!!!!
This is like giving something with one hand and potentially removing the benefit with the other hand. I think we need to devise non pesticide ways of protecting food that doesn’t involve genetically altering foods. There are phytonutrients in foods that aren’t even nearly understood by scientists yet, nutrients that provide benefits that we don’t understand. For example, there’s a study (irony coming) called The China Study that was sponsored by a University in China co-sponsored by Vanderbilt in TN that followed approximately 4700 women who had breast cancer, followed these women for several years and tracked her habits, and what they found was that women who ate an abundance of cruciferous vegetables (cauliflower, bok choy, broccoli) had a signficantly reduced likelihood of having a cancer recurrence. There are phytonutrients in these foods that aren’t understood yet. How do we know that gmo foods aren’t engineering these benefits right out of our food? Just plain calories doesn’t equal nutrition. Companies would rather manufacture chemicals that they can sell than to work with the natural environment to devise ways of protecting foods from pests.
[quote=”sweikert925″]
Far be it from me to ascribe saintliness to agribusiness executives, but you and others who express concerns about GMOs seem to think that those scientists who work for companies like Monsanto have a specific goal to harm us. They don’t. (At least I don’t think they do. Do you?)…[/quote]We don’t have to look back too far in time to have an answer to your question: In 1954, Philip Morris announced that if the company had any thought or knowledge that in any way they were selling a product harmful to consumers, that they would stop business immediately. Senior scientists and executives at tobacco companies, however, knew about the potential cancer risk of smoking as early as the 1940s, and most accepted the fact that smoking caused cancer by the late 1950s.
[quote=”sweikert925″]…and of course no one knew about that until just now when you let the secret out.
Yes, the tobacco companies lied. But their lies were exposed well before the 1965 Surgeon General report came out. The AMA published articles from doctors warning against the dangers of smoking as far back as the 1920s. And that was before the governments of the world took much notice of public health dangers. My own grandfather died of throat cancer in the late 1930s – and his doctor was quite explicit in linking that with his lifelong pipe smoking. Are you under the impression that no doctors connected the dots between their lung, throat and mouth cancer patients and the smoking habits of those patients before 1965?
The idea that harmful GMOs would go undetected for decades with all the research going on now is laughable – and that is partly due to the very experience we had with tobacco companies that you refer to. No one will completely trust corporations to tell the truth about the safety of their products again. We have entire organizations – both public and private – that are dedicated to nothing else but testing the safety of the products that are sold to us. That wasn’t nearly as true in the 1940s and 1950s.
Could harmful food manipulation go undetected for that long these days? It’s possible – but VERY unlikely.
Why does everyone on the anti-GMO bandwagon simply assume that something really bad will result from genetic modification?
Have none of you recently popped a pill into your mouth? Did you think Lipitor grows on bushes, Celebrex is harvested from the Celebrex tree and that Phillips Milk of Magnesia comes from a special breed of cow? Every molecule of medication that people consume comes from tinkering in labs by scientists. Why do you assume Monsanto is any more careless with the research they do than the research conducted by Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, AstraZeneca, and Bristol-Myers Squibb?
[/quote]Short and sweet: tobacco companies and their scientists lied in the name of PROFITS. Many of us are highly suspicious that Monsanto, its ilk and their scientists (even our government officials, who are rewarded by their lobbyists)are doing the same regarding GMOs. If we’re playing a game of “Who Do You Trust”, many of us would rather be on the side of caution … where you, it appears, is in the running to be the poster boy for GMOs. As it used to be said, “different strokes for different folks” … LOL.
Agree about the total control and monopolies are an issue that is still real and IMPORTANT even if GMOs should by and large turn out to be a real boon and reasonably safe (not judging on that either way).
If there ever was an argument for GMOs, particularly for economic reasons in Ticolandia, this is it:
http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/49351
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemileia_vastatrixI wonder what the Costa Rica economy would look like without bananas and coffee.
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