Reply #28: What profits?

[bunyip]

Businesspeople in any industry are paranoid about a supplier establishing a monopoly and screwing them. As an example, Ford will not purchase more than 20% of any part from the one supplier. Monsanto invested big in this technology, as part of a hair-brained scheme to monopolize the world's supply of grain. They bought up all their big competitors and tried to sell their modified, terminator-locked seeds to Western agribusiness giants. No one fell for this obvious scam. Monsanto's remaining small competitors grew into large competitors. Greenpeace and other fringe groups started yammering. Monsanto failed. Their competitors laughed at them. Their share price sagged. $7,000,000,000 later, they got out of the game and focused on other things they can make.

Illiterate, suspicious, deeply conservative Third World farmers are even less likely to abandon control of their seed stock than wealthy Westerners. The new players are trying to give it away, and still no one wants Terminator seeds.

They are free to sell them, and we are free not to buy. The UK is backpedalling on their populist blanket ban in favor of testing and regulation. Let them.

GM crops have been in use for 10,000 years. The modification process is totally unregulated in most countries, and relies on cosmic rays and other mutagens randomly attacking plant DNA, which is then artificially selected by farmers. This is where traditional varieties come from. Biologists found they can speed the process up by irradiating seeds to cause more mutations, and then DNA technology allowed controlled changes with predicable results to be made. This has led to simple, plant-based manufacture of vaccines and to more nutritious crops. These crops are state-regulated and extensively tested, unlike the genetically-modified but unregulated traditional varieties. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_engineering


"Terminator Technology" is to Greenpeace et al what the "War on Terror" is to Bush. It attracts attention, keeps the masses scared, and facilitates spending their money to promote a regressive Return To Year Zero agenda they would otherwise run from.