Monsanto's 'Seed Police' Terrorize American Farmers
Monsanto's Cruel, and Dangerous, Monopolization on American Farming (2008)
Vanity Fair exposes how Monsanto uses a shadowy network of private investigators to enforce its seed patents, threatening farmers, store owners, and co-ops with lawsuits. The company's aggressive tactics—surveillance, infiltration, and intimidation—have earned it comparisons to the Gestapo and Mafia. Critics argue that by patenting genetically modified seeds and forbidding farmers from saving them, Monsanto is monopolizing the global food supply.
Monsanto is big. You can't win. We will get you. You will pay.
- tptacek
These stories have all basically been debunked. Monsanto did sue farmers. But they did so in cases where they had evidence that those farmers were not only planting IP-encumbered seeds, but also spraying them with Roundup. You can't do that accidentally: if your seeds aren't genetically modified, Roundup kills your crop.
- SlightlyLeftPad
Where does Monsanto stand now? It’s been many years since HackerNews was AstroTurfed by them.
- nativeit
This brings back some memories. I was an admin for “Millions Against Monsanto”, a group on the still-nascent Facebook. I ultimately left because the org was overtaken by conspiracy theorists who couldn’t stop yelling about aspartame and antivax nonsense long enough to focus on the very real, and very alarming, actions of Monsanto. At this point in time it was still not considered “normal” to patent biological materials. I’m a bit more pragmatic, since I’ve grown past my college idealism, but I still don’t believe seeds should be considered patentable.
- internet_points
Speaking of poison, does washing fruit and vegs help? Or is it like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-second_rule
- 21asdffdsa12
Look at life, or its systemic counterpart capitalism. Look at that attempt at an exponential. In that curve is all the cruelties, all the danger, all the colonialism, by eating other curves, all the failure because physics is linear on a sphere in the sun.
Everytime somebody tries to emotionalize any discourse around any of these topics, look at the defining curve and think for yourself - "yeah, thats life, still preferable to death." - then go and solve that problem, or go an be absolved from that problem. Any vital system is expansive, the trees colonialize the grass by throwing shade. Equality - and thus peace can only be reached by having a equality of arms, by copying working mechanisms.