The problem with the GMO debate is hysterical people keep making unscientific objections to the general concept of gene modifications instead of specific objections to actual problems.

Monsanto makes Roundup (glyphosate)-resistant crops. As far as anybody can tell the gene modifications have no inherently harmful effect on the resulting food. But then all the crops get sprayed with glyphosate and the food is contaminated with glyphosate.

Monsanto is also very aggressive about asserting ownership of the seeds that grow from the plants that grow from their seeds. If the neighboring farm plants Monsanto crops and the seeds blow into your farm, lawyers follow. It's basically an intimidation tactic; buy seeds from Monsanto or you may end up with them anyway, and then you're going to get sued.

So farmers buy the seeds, to such an extent that it's become a biodiversity problem. Their crops are becoming a monoculture. Think systemic risk like the housing crisis, but this time it's the food supply.

In other words, there are legitimate reasons to object, even if they aren't the ones most popularly aired. So people may want to know when they're buying GMO crops and potentially contributing to these problems. Even if some people start avoiding the GMO crops for other reasons with no rational basis, that still helps with the biodiversity problem. But whenever a bill comes around to label them, guess who shows up to lobby against it.

You're wrong at least 3 times in a single post.

Roundup doesn't contaminate plant products, because it's applied when the plant is still tiny. It does, however, contaminate rivers.

Farmers don't get sued by Monsanto because they accidentially get seed blown on their fields - that's practically legally impossible, given that Monsanto enforces its policies using licencing laws, not patent laws. If you disagree, please provide an example of such a lawsuit.

Monoculture is popular even without GMOs.

There are many things wrong with GMOs and surrounding industry, but what you list above are not problems, but lies.

> You're wrong at least 3 times in a single post.

No.

> Roundup doesn't contaminate plant products, because it's applied when the plant is still tiny.

Monsanto successfully lobbies EPA to raise levels of glyphosate allowed in food:

https://www.rt.com/usa/monsanto-glyphosate-roundup-epa-483/

Can you explain why they would bother to do that if it doesn't end up in food?

> It does, however, contaminate rivers.

It does also contaminate rivers.

> Farmers don't get sued by Monsanto because they accidentially get seed blown on their fields - that's practically legally impossible, given that Monsanto enforces its policies using licencing laws, not patent laws. If you disagree, please provide an example of such a lawsuit.

I see you're not familiar with the modern process of aggressive legal trolling.

It goes something like this: Some people sneak or lie their way onto your farm to check if your crops are an infringing variety and if they are (regardless of why or how) you get a settlement demand letter. If you pay the money and sign the NDA then it all goes away but nobody ever finds out because you can't talk about it.

If you don't then they file a lawsuit, which will end up costing you a huge pile of money to defend from even if you win, and all the pretrial legal processes get rolling and you start incurring big legal fees.

After they've stuck you with a big pile of legal fees and looked at all the discovery, if you haven't settled yet, then they decide whether their case actually has any merit. If it doesn't then they make the settlement offer very attractive so that you pay almost nothing but sign the NDA to make the legal fees stop accumulating. If you refuse that then they drag it out as long as they can and keep burying you in pretrial legal process hoping you'll change your mind, but if you don't then they ultimately drop the case before trial.

So the only cases anyone can point to of someone going to trial are the ones where Monsanto actually has a case. For example, there was a famous case in Canada where the farmer took it all the way to the Supreme Court and lost. In that case Monsanto had originally claimed patent infringement (note: not a licensing dispute) for the crops from seeds the farmer claimed had blown in from the neighbor's farm, but come to find out that after that the farmer harvested the seeds from those plants (allegedly on purpose) and planted the next year's crop with them. So by the time it went to trial Monsanto had dropped the claim for the original year's crops, even though they had made it during settlement negotiations, and the trial was only about the farmer purposely replanting the patented seeds.

> Monoculture is popular even without GMOs.

I'm trying to imagine what point you think you're making. Something is a problem, so making it worse is OK?

Monoculture occurs when one strain of a thing dominates the market, generally by out-competing all the others under currently prevailing market conditions. GMO crops are obviously specifically designed to do that. It's the same with intentional crossbreeding, but they're better at it so it's worse. Monsanto also claims the rights to seeds bred from their seeds, so farmers who plant Monsanto seeds have little incentive to experiment with creating new derivative varities because Monsanto will claim all of the profits from your work, so why bother?

Now suppose we label GMO crops. That won't actually remove them from the market because they still have the advantages the modified genes provide, but more people will refuse to buy them, increasing demand for non-GMO crops and inhibiting GMO crops from becoming a large supermajority.

The biodiversity within the non-GMO segment of the market will then tend to be larger than it is within the GMO segment because there will be different seed lines with different advantages and disadvantages, and you can't grab exactly the gene you want out of each of them to make seeds that have both advantages at the same time as easily as you can with GMO crops, so more different seeds will be able to carve out a market niche.

Thanks for the reply. I'm glad I have more arguments against Monstanto now.

Reading the Monsanto vs Schmeiser case, however, it seems pretty clear that Schmeiser infringed the patent (he intentionally used it without having the legal right to do so); we can argue (and probably agree) whether patenting of genes should be allowed or not, but assuming the patent is valid, Monstanto had morally won the case.

> assuming the patent is valid, Monstanto had morally won the case.

That was my point. The process is designed so that any case where that is not the predictable outcome will be settled and put under NDA so nobody can know about it. The process that results in that consequence is the despicable act, and is what causes the intimidation, because it allows them to claim having won every case etc.