Here is the Clip

It's twenty six minutes long, I'd recommend skipping the first ten or so minutes where they mostly talk about fad diets and diet pills unless you have the time. The crux of their messege is in the second two-thirds.

Here is my response to the clip

Why does it matter what they say? They are comedians, but admittedly thay are also known as skeptics as well.

The term organic is over-hyped and people project all kinds of idealism into it. In reality, organic is merely a market niche, another facet of our INDUSTRIAL agriculture system. Even worse, the roots of the organic movement lie in far-right wing ideologies.

Given the amazing corruption shown by the raw $gurus$, some skepticism is a very good thing.

Did you watch the video? Skepticism is a good thing, unfortunately Penn & Teller only use their skepticism selectively (completely convinced that GM crops are the answer to all our problems simply because the government says they are).

The title of their show sums up their own material: BULLSHIT

I think there is very strong evidence that raw vegetables are the most anti-cancer protective foods, period. They ought to be shouting that from the rooftops.

RE: gm foods, in theory, genetic modification is intended to increase crop yields and pesticide resistance so that there will be fewer hungry people, so I can see why some people are for it. In practice, well, such things never work out as they are planned.

Well we all know that we could drastically cut or end world hunger if people stopped eating meat too, then no one would need to eat chemically and genetically altered crap.
I wouldn't pay them any attention. Big business makes large profits out of sacrifacing the health of consumers, perhaps they have stock in a large company that produces GM Foods, or maybe it's just publicity crap.
I will have to have a look at the video when I get home from work.

The problem is not a lack of food it is a lack of land access.

As greenman says, it has nothing to do with lack of food. Even the land access is minor issue, it has to do with people being denied food. Correct me if I'll wrong, but I believe there hasn't been a major "natural" famine for a long time (100s of years?). All reason famines where caused by people/governments/countries selling off food they had produced to make money to buy guns and fund wars.

The GMO foods are a really dirty f****ng trick which if any country falls for will put them perminently in the GMO corps pockets (for ever). There are serveral different ways this scam works, one my least favourite goes like this: A country (probably at war) has a partial crop failure, their goverment sells of the remain food to fund wars, the people start dying of hunger. Along comes Mr GMO-corp to save the day and donates enough grain to feel the people of this country. By the power of GMO they can provide enough food... right? Well, there is some small print with this 'donation', the small print says "this grain is pattented, if you grow it, you must pay royalties - so this grain is for eating only". But once the grains are handed out to the hungry, some people plant them. They cross pollinate with native grains, causing all the plants to have the pattented genetic structure. Also, the GMO grain does better than their native grains and starts to grow wild, out grow and take over normal crops. Back comes that nice kind Mr GMO-corp and says, "oh, you've been growing our GMO, I'm affriad you owe us a lot of money". Since the original agreement was to not grow, their is a special extra high cost, which the country can't afford. They can't get rid of the GMO grains because they are resistant to pesticides, even if they could, the pattented genetic structure is now in other plants, any farms growing plants with pattented genetic structures are automatically owned by My GMO-corp (regardless of how the pattented genetic structure got in there).

This is happening in the US and Canada as well.

Very bad.
Ian.

Wow. Ignorant but "compassionate" vegans openly hating GMO crops, which have the potential to improve nutrition and reduce starvation. For example, golden rice: rice altered to produce beta-carotene, has the potential in some 3rd world countries to reduce blindness cause by vitamin A deficiency. I guess their compassion doesn't extend to the residents of the 3rd world.

As for GMO genes going crazy, that's a very low-risk scenario. In the long run, genes must pass the test of evolutionary fitness to become widespread. That's very rare, especially for GMO crops that are grown with lots of fertilizers. Ordinary hybrids fare poorly in the evolutionary test; it's unlikely GMO will do any better.

It would not surprise me if this post will cause an avalanche of hate from the compassionate, organic folks here. This is not a troll. Instead, please do some research before joining the latest anti-technology luddite hate campaign.

longtimeraw, check out the news, what Ian says has actually happened in Canada, a year or so ago - a farmer was sued because the crop he was growing had become contaminated from a nearby GM crop!

Rob

--
Rob Hull - Funky Raw
My blog: [www.rawrob.com]

Wow, I'm an ignorant hating anti-technology luddite who does no research?
How come there is so much negative @#$%& on message board? Really? I want to know ? It's getting very annoying, seems everybody wants to hate everybody else and call them names. Did all the nice, informed, clever people go somewhere else?

So, 3rd world country don't have any crops they can grow that contain beta-carotene? They don't have, say, peppers? or Lettuce? Kale? Turnips? Spinach? Carrots?

Hmmmm, what do we have here, oh look it's about GM crops, and OH! looks like they have contaminated other crops, wow, I was told by somebody who thinks he's knows his stuff that this was a VERY LOW-RISK SCENARIO. I guess they are WRONG:
[today.reuters.com]

Oh gosh, another one (as mentioned by Funky Rob), a Canadian farmer sued by Monsanto because his field was containinated by GMO genes:
[www.savethepinebush.org]

Ok, I'm not going to dig out any more links, I've better things to do (like get back into a good mood), but if you do some research, you'll find that GMO-corp behavior in 3rd world countries is far worse than in north america. Regardless of how much GMO crops may help us (even with more research into their control and safety), without an over haul of interlectual property laws GMO-corps are using to blackmail people with, we can not permit it. We don't have the option to stop GMOs later down the line once they have contaminated all other crops.

Well, thanks for helping to make this board suck a little more, please feel free to continue sharing your uninformed views with us.

Ian.

Penn & Teller - whichever the big fat one is - he's a pompous, self-promoting ignoramus. That guy is a shouter and not exactly prone to serious research and thorough analysis. Kinda like Rush Limbaugh.

Oh yes, the solution to the nutrient-deficient diets based around white rice is to use biotechnology to create a new form of bright orange rice; not, perhaps to find new ways of growing/cultivating the land to grow plant foods that are naturally high in nessecary nutrients. Being compassionate doesn't mean the ends justify the means. Genetically modified crops are about as much of a humanitarian cause as anti-depressants are; i.e. circumventing a problem to make people dependant upon a few rich corporations instead of actually solving the problem.

The overweight comedian was quite angry, while Juliano and his friends all had smiles. Would you rather be happy and full of bullshit, or be unhappy, angry, and right?

GE agriculture is an ongoing experiment and WE are the guinea pigs. This practice is NOT BY ANY STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION THE SOLUTION TO WORLD HUNGER!

It's about monopoly over the food chain... THESE FOODS ARE SO WEAK THEY CANNOT BE GROWN WITHOUT CHEMICALS... TERMENATOR SEEDS AND CHEMICAL COMPANIES KEEP THE FARMER DOWN. ITS THE MOST RIDICULUOS PRACTICES EVER!

---------------------------------------------------

YOU COULD FEED 100 VEGETARIANS WITH THE AMOUNT OF LAND REQUIRED TO FEED ONE MEAT EATER! OUR FOOD INDUSTRY IS DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR MILLIONS OF HUNGRY PEOPLE.

EDUCATION IS NEEDED. OUR TECHNOLOGY IS NOT BEING USED EFFICIENTLY. AND SO MANY PEOPLE ARE DOOPED BY CORPORATE RULE.

Bryan are you saying you agree with Penn and Teller? Just to clarify.

I would rather be happy.

when I first saw that video, I wasn't raw-vegan, and now that I saw it again, and I saw Juliano in it, it made me smile

I just watched this, hahah everybody has their side to tell, but its fun to notice how aggressive they are being, P&T because well, they feel threatened by the reality that eggs are "chicken menstruation" and they defend themselves with obvious disdain and mockery..snarfing up eggs and bacon as if to say, " I LIKE MEAT!!!"

My sister does that when she comes to visit with my mother, she will say out loud " I want MEAT, I love it!! when she is around me, because only around me , showing me that she is not like me, she is a "meat eater" and that comes with responsibilty..





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/13/2006 03:10AM by coconutcream.

snort... chuckle
well... coconut cream
yeah, maybe you ought to do the same to them

and go around with kale juice and broccoli salad going " i jes LUVVVV eating
all this dirt produce ..."

and mmmm.. ain't this apple ze besssssssssttttttttt!!!!!!!

why not?

and to "longtimeraw"

r u sure u aren't
longtime...somethin' else?

fill in the blank....

NNNNNNarz, thanks for the link. I believe we do need to be informed.

Sodoffsocks, you are so right! GMO is for Monsanto, not starving people!

Longtimeraw, this is not a "hate" message. The simple fact is that the starving people speil that comes from the GMO companies is just part of a very organized and robust PR campaign.

Golden rice is the poster child of the PR campaign; but the money spent on GMO would be better spent for irrigation and other means of providing better growing environments for a variety of vegetables and fruits. That would help prevent ALL deficiencies, not just vitamin A deficiency.

People can google "Iraq, Monsanto, genetically engineered". Check out info on "Rule 81". That's the rule that Paul Bremer made (as administer of the Coalition Provisional Athority) that prohibits Iraqi farmers from saving seeds from their crops to replant. All Iraqi farmers must now buy seeds each year from "licensed, authorized, U.S. distributors" - and that means GMO seeds exclusively - or face fines, penalties, and/or jail time. Not only do the GMO companies hold the patents on their own GMO seeds, but they have also bought up patents on many indigenous varieties of seeds as well, so that they have legal standing in preventing farmers from saving or planting their own seeds.

I don't understand complaints about organically grown food. It's a good thing not to use chemicals for growing our food, whether it's Dole that's doing it, or whether it's a small farmer, or whether it's the backyard gardener. In fact, growing organically often gives small farmers an edge over industrialized agriculture - which is one reason why the ag giants are doing their best to try to smear it. When I was growing up, a person could still cup their hands into just about any creek or river and drink the water. One very big reason a person can't do that anymore in most places at least in the US is because of the contamination from chemical agriculture.

I also don't understand the statement that the roots of the organic movement lie in far right-wing ideologies. (I don't believe Rodale is a right-wing ideologue) Even if the statement were true (which it's not), why would it mean growing organically was a bad thing? Right wing people sometimes love their families and pet their dogs. Does that mean loving our families and petting our dogs is a bad thing?

The human race has grown food organically for at least 8000 years. Growing CHEMICALLY is a (radical) movement, not growing ORGANICALLY. It's believed that food was cultivated (ORGANICALLY) since at least 6700 BC in the area once known as Mesopotamia, and now called IRAQ. Chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides have only been around for maybe 70 years. Think of it - almost 9000 years of organic farming (that we know of)! And now, after 70 years of chemicals, we can't drink our water. Is that good? Is that progress? Call me a Luddite, but it seems the human brain should be able to think up something better.

We now have the potential for using science to help us improve our ORGANIC farming techniques, and that is what many organic farmers are doing today. It can't be done though without consumer support.

Best wishes, -Ally



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/13/2006 08:26AM by Ally.

Looks like the raw food lifestyle might be moving from stage 2-3...

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

Thanks for the link Narz.