but as we both agree, whatever peoples motives that doesnt make gmo intrinsically bad/poison.money isn't intrinsically bad but lots of evil is done for money and lots of good. a bit like the arguement guns dont kill people poeple kill people

I'm with blobbles and Campo: idea of patenting GMO is really a bad idea. Xiefei's post is one reason why; another is the whole idea of private ownership of Nature, period. Sitting Bull had a nice comment in relation to what seemed to him the ridiculous idea of owning the land - I wouldn't go quite so far, but ownership is an idea on a sliding scale, not an absolute one-point alternative to either collective responsibility and control or to complete lack of any respect for private rights. If Mother Nature really were a god/person she'd be shaking her head in disbelief and despondency.
As for Monsanto, they suck, and you can put that down to a personal insult and attack from me on them.

I purposefully did not state whether GMO is overall bad or overall good - it is neither in terms of the affects it could have on a whole range of systems (food/economic/social). The reason is because you have to treat each GMO individually, assess it individually and examine its affects.

Unfortunately the main organisations that are involved in producing GMO's on a mass scale though are the very companies that show absolutely zero ethics. And THAT should scare you. Because eventually you may be subject to the very ethical missteps that so many others have suffered under. Why? Because you eat food.

There are clear reasons why the companies do not wish their GMO crops to be investigated by scientists outside their control. And this again should scare you. These go beyond the threat of industrial espionage.

So yes, you cannot paint it in broad brush strokes, but as I stated, I believe that we should be precautionary about their introduction i.e. the precautionary principle should apply. That means we need to thoroughly investigate each and every crop before they are planted on a mass scale, have decade long experiments with multi generational crops analysing the soil/inputs/outputs/cross breeding etc etc. Then the research needs to be made public, needs to be independently analysed and if found to be better by enhancing the crop, reducing inputs and enhancing the human and environmental systems, it can be prototyped somewhere in a real world environment before full scale introduction.

Do you think Monsanto does any of this? Clearly they do not, which is why many countries have GMO moratoriums, they just do not know what effect GMO's will have on their systems due to a lack of information, hence they disallow them, hence people start thinking simplistically "GMO bad".

The countries who are approached to implement GMO crops often have little to no legal framework for them to be tested/trialled/released under. And with little information provided by the companies who apply (except of course glowing endorsements), they are right to be suspicious and to enact moratoriums.

@neddy: please stop asking the same thing over and over. Want peer-reviewed articles? Use google or baidu. It literally takes one second and if you have these sorts of questions, you can find out for yourself instead of egging people on. Now to directly contradict what I just wrote, here is a starting place:
www.gmofreepa.org/[...]

@blobbles. Sure Monsanto sales and legal people are dicks. Same for Nestle promoting formula over breastfeeding. I'm glad NGOs educate farmers differently. But no one points a rifle and line up farmers to buy Monsanto seeds. Even after some farmers get the unpleasant checkup raid and are caught hiding seeds, they still go out and buy GMO seeds. Farmers like yield, cause it means more money. If a non GMO variety can out yield GMO and the farmer also gets to keep germinating seeds, then no amount of Monsanto lies would make them buy their seeds.

Monetary profit is about short-term thinking.

So I guess farmers don't have a right to increase their incomes.

@blobbles. I don't think mosquitoes have any living rights. I think we should extinct those flying disease needles. And any animal that needs to eat them just better learn to eat something else.

Alex: my thought was about profits generally - but I don't want to go picking on farmers as long as Monsanto is making big ones.

But then there are the agro-businesses that have virtually erased what we usually think of as 'farming', especially in the U.S., and the supply-chains that supply the likes of McDonald's, supermarkets, etc.

@Alien. Sorry, I took it in context of farmers. I'm all for Monsanto bashing, but sometimes the implications of Monsanto determines all makes farmers look like helpless slaves or mental incompetents. They are neither. They are trying to find ways to increase their incomes, and many times that means choosing to grow GMO of their own volition.