Marine Scout

<P align=center>FrankenFoods Bring Out the Monster in Your Children!!<P align=center>Please watch video at end of post<P align=center>----------------------------------------------<H2>Company of the Year</H2><H1>The Planet Versus Monsanto</H1><P align=left><CITE>Robert Langreth and Matthew Herper</CITE>, <SPAN class=date>12.31.09, 04:40 PM EST
<SPAN class=date>Forbes Magazine dated January 18, 2010 <H2 class=storyDek>Monsanto's first round of attackers said its seeds were evil. Now the charge is that Monsanto's seeds are too good.</H2><P class=storyDek><P xmlns:lxslt="http://xml.apache.org/xslt">Monsanto biochemist Roy Fuchs takes fish oil pills every morning in hopes of warding off heart disease. He'd much rather get his omega-3 fatty acids in a granola bar or cup of yogurt. But it is tricky to add omega-3s to food products without adding unwanted flavors. After a while on the shelf, omega-3-enriched products can smell and taste like old fish, he says.

Fuchs hopes that the new genetically engineered soybeans <SPAN class=tickerlinx>Monsanto ( MON - news - people ) is working on will solve this problem. The soybeans contain two new genes to make a tasteless oil that is converted inside the body into the form of omega-3 thought to be good for the heart. In a 157-patient study presented at a cardiology conference in November, those volunteers who had high triglycerides saw their levels drop 26% after eating 15 grams of the oil daily for three months.<DIV id=controlsbox><H4>Wouldn't that be a wonderful product to have for sale? Stops heart disease--and protects the environment, too. People could get their nutritional supplements without depleting fish stocks.</H4></DIV>

Monsanto needs crowd-pleasers like this to get past its image problems. In economic terms, the company is a winner. It has created many billions of dollars of value for the world with seeds genetically engineered to ward off insects or make a crop immune to herbicides: Witness the vast numbers of farmers who prefer its seeds to competing products, and the resulting $44 billion market value of the company. In its fiscal 2009 Monsanto sold $7.3 billion of seeds and seed genes, versus $4 billion for second-place <SPAN class=tickerlinx>DuPont ( DD - news - people ) and its Pioneer Hi-Bred unit. Monsanto, of St. Louis, netted $2.1 billion on revenue of $11.7 billion for fiscal 2009 (ended Aug. 31). Its sales have increased at an annualized 18% clip over five years; its annualized return on capital in the period has been 12%. Those accomplishments earn it the designation as FORBES' Company of the Year.

But economic achievement is not the same thing as public adulation. Over most of the time that Monsanto has been working to make humanity better fed, it has been the object of vicious criticism. In the first round of attacks the company was portrayed as the Satan of agriculture for daring to modify the genes in corn and soybeans. That people have been selecting plant genes for 5,000 years was no defense; Monsanto's gene-splicing threatened the world with ecological catastrophe. Genetically modified crops were the subject of legislation outlawing them and numerous protests in Europe and elsewhere in which biotech crops were ripped from the ground. In 2002 Zambia, during a famine, rejected a cargo of donated corn because it might have been tainted with the offending seeds.<P align=left>Over time the protests have mellowed, and the legal impediments to GM are gradually falling. It didn't make sense for a hungry planet to reject tools to increase the productivity of farmers. Much of Europe, while still forbidding the planting of GM crops, permits the importation of foods made from them.<P align=center>-----------------------------------------------<P align=left>Marine Scout: Now doesn't it make a lot of sense to prevent the planting of GM crops, but its OK to sell the crap, I mean crop to the people to eat!!! Have you ever wondered why the little girls are menstrating as early as 8 years orare bigger than their moms by 13? Well now you know. And what happens to the DNA that is coming from rats and insects when it enters your body? They want you to believe that they are digested in the stomach, but they can't prove it just yet!! Bon Appetit!!<P align=left>check it out ==&gt; <P align=left>

jim t

I'm not sure the article or the video give much reason to distrust GM foods except fear.

There are some good articles and websites that weigh the pros and cons...

Here's one:

<U>http://www.rag.org.au/baa/pros+cons.htm</U>

And another with a long list of articles worth sifting through:

http://curtrosengren.typepad.com/sus...cally-mod.html

While I have no doubt GM foods is the future, I hope we proceed cautiously and err to the safe side.

Jim

__________________
Always buy rope with cash...

Marine Scout

If we wait until "they" tell us of the dangers in consuming GM foods, avoiding the consequences of intaking genetic materal that was never intended to be in the human body could be disasterous, sort of like the H1N1 vaccines. When corporations are consistently choosing profits over people (aspartame, H1N1 vaccine etc.) it seems wise to be distrustful and cautious!!

BBshot

WELL SAID....