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Re: Food for thought
I'm disappointed in you, Duane. Smearing opponents for "dishonest" arguing does not make your position right.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Organic zealots have got their undies in a bunch once again. This time their
bete-noire is a nascent genetic engineering process called TPS, or
Technology Protection System, but which they have labeled "terminator seed,"
apparently commemorating that great organic sage, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
(His catch phrase, "I'll be back," is an homage to recycling, but you
probably already knew that.)
Rights to the TPS technology belong to a small southern seed company that
specializes in cotton, but the organic cultists have taken aim at Monsanto.
This is partly because Monsanto is negotiating to buy the patent, but mainly
because they are myopic marksmen and Monsanto is a bigger target.
"SMALL SOUTHERN SEED COMPANY?" Delta Pine and Land was the 9th largest seed company in the world before Monsanto bought them out.
Let me set the scene. An agribusiness invests a million bucks in R&D to
create a plant variety that will provide some benefit to the farmer and the
consumer. After throwing all that money at a product, they would like to
make some money from it, first to recoup the development costs, second to
store up some cash to pay for future research, and third to pass on some
profit to the stockholders. This is called capitalism, and as Martha Stewart
will tell you, it's a good thing.
LET ME CORRECT this scene..."an agribusiness" did not invest a million bucks in R&D to develop Terminator technology, it was a joint effort by the USDA (your tax dollars at work) and Delta Pine and Land. I don't know how much they spent, but they did obtain a patent.
But organic gardeners think that they have a natural right (well, of course
it would have to be a Natural right) to steal the seed. They call it
"saving" seed rather than stealing it, but euphemisms aside, it's still
taking something without the consent of the guy that worked to produce it.
TRUE.
TPS causes the treated crop to set sterile seeds so that the
back-to-the-Earth bunch cannot use them the following season, and this has
made them apoplectic. They have started a screeching campaign, and Organic
Gardening magazine has been on it like brown on rice.
Their first argument is brazen. They proclaim that taking the seed that
someone else has developed is their right. They don't explain just how this
right is derived, though, or why a company should bother to improve a seed
strain without compensation. Why complicate the issue.
Maybe someone can explain this to me. If these people are already saving
their own seed of their own favorite varieties, what's the problem? They
wouldn't use the new seed anyway, would they? So they wouldn't be affected
by it, right?
Their first argument, while not compelling, is at least honest. Their second
is not. They hint darkly that the "terminator" gene will escape and
annihilate the entire world's food crops. That would be serious. If it were
true.
HOW MUCH DO LOADED words like "screeching," "brazen," "hint darkly," contribute to reasoned discourse? It is not "darkly hinting" to expect that the pollen from a Terminator crop to cross with pollen from a landrace crop, contaminating the latter so that the farmer will not have viable seed. It is not your nemesis, "Organic gardening," that is most strongly opposed to this technology, it's the Third World, where farmers cannot afford to buy new seed each year. They have also found -- mirabile dictu -- that when they save their best seeds year after year they become acclimated and become land races.
Confronted with the reasoning that sterile seeds cannot multiply and take
over the world, they mumble something vague about pollen. There is a grain
of truth in it, but only a grain.
IF an organic gardener has land right next to a modern, progressive farmer
using TPS seed, and IF he happens to be growing exactly the same crop there,
and IF some pollen crosses over, then it MAY cause a FEW plants to produce
sterile seeds. So what? Even organically grown plants randomly produce
sterile seeds. And since the sterility gene will prevent any affected plant
from reproducing, it stops right there. This isn't Attack of the Killer
Tomatoes, folks.
IN VIEW OF MONSANTO'S legal policy of suing anyone who has a crop that has crossed with one of their GM crops, all or in part, they're in the business of putting farmers out of business. Cargill did it in India, many of the farmers committing suicide as a result of their own seed being too old for viability after accepting Cargill's "experimental" seeds for a few years and not being able to buy new seeds. Cargill picked up many, many hectares of land for very little money.
Plant breeders have as much right to protect their product from piracy as do
video producers. And just as videos have thingies that make your illegally
copied tape of Babe fade in and out (at least that's what I'm told happens),
seed companies have a right to protect their product from theft. If organic
gardeners don't like it, for whatever feeble reason, they don't have to buy
it. That's the way the market system works. But they have no right to force
their extreme views on everyone else.
Duane, one of the northeastern states has passed a law against this prediliction on Monsanto's part of filing suit against people its pollen has defiled, I don't recall whether it's New Hampshire or Vermont, but everyone else is just flat out vulnerable. I'm sorry to use caps, but your e-mail program prohibits breaks in the vertical line indicating my insertions into your post. Margaret L
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