Should we genetically modify our food?

i watched an intresting show about the seed companies.. some pretty f***ed up stuff with the patents or whatever.. they were allowed to sue someone because a truck driving by his farm accidently pollinated his plants with their seeds.. and thus his crop became a violation of their patent.

Originally posted by Deadaim i watched an intresting show about the seed companies.. some pretty f***ed up stuff with the patents or whatever.. they were allowed to sue someone because a truck driving by his farm accidently pollinated his plants with their seeds.. and thus his crop became a violation of their patent.   this particular seed was genetically modified to keep bugs away

Yes, the company is called Monsanto.  Their copyright is on "round up ready soybeans," a combination of part of DNA from a round up resistant strain of bacteria injected into the soybean genome.  By modifying the organism in this way, the plant can be sprayed with the round up herbicide and not die. 

Unfortunately, farmers cannot save their seed, since they have to buy new Monsanto seed and more importantly a lease to use their intellectual property.  It is truly horrible that Monsanto employees will trespass on farmers land who don't grow Monsanto soybeans, but are adjacent to a crop of round up ready soybeans.  If the farmer's crop has been pollinated by roundup ready soybeans, the farmer is sued for intellectual property violation.  Most farmers settle out of court, virtually all that have gone to court against the Monsanto Lawyer team have lost.

While this is certainly one of the most tragic intellectual property violations b/c the farmers had no intent to violate Monsanto's intellectual property, intellectual property lawsuits are not  integrally tied into GMOs.  Fortunately, Monsanto's copyright is about to expire, allowing all farmers to use round up ready soybeans without paying for a lease from Monsanto.