Latest Biotech BS: ‘The First Biotechnology was Beer Making’
Monsanto wants you to think of biotech as a fun and frolicsome advancement benefiting society, or at least that’s the latest pronouncement in a propaganda piece issued by a mainstream magazine obviously desperate to paint a pretty face on the corpse that is becoming GMO support.
As the public learns of the World Health Organization’s proclamation that not just glyphosate, but three other herbicides made by the biotech industry are cancer-causing, biotech has little more than a rainy day parade’s participants cheerleading for their next product.
The NY Times is one of those soggy pom-pom holders, with this little nugget:
“The earliest known practitioners of biotechnology — Babylonians who added a variety of yeast fungus to grain about 5,000 years ago — produced beer and helped make civilization fun.”
Maybe they listened to Hilary Clinton’s advice, that Biotech should just become ‘re-branded.’ You know, make GMOs sexy again so that public would hush hush and eat the Bt toxic corn, or estrogen-mimicking GM soy. Biotech just needed a Winston and Salem cover girl to sell their latest bamboozle, but this one about the beer really takes the GMO cake.
Related: GMOs in Your Beer and Wine?
I’m not sure where you can get off calling the addition of yeast to NON GMO grain that has already been harvested biotechnology – but let’s go with that.
If we accepted this line of reasoning from one of Monsanto and Syngenta’s obvious beneficiaries, then that would mean that adding salt and pepper to non GMO food was ‘biotechnology’ or that the freezing of milk and sugar to make ice-cream is also ‘biotechnology.’
Just because you add one substance to another post haste doesn’t mean that you’ve achieved some biological, DNA-altering wonder – because you haven’t altered any DNA, and you certainly aren’t extracting bacteria DNA and inserting it into corn.
The NY Times must assume that since most Americans don’t know too much about GMOs, that comparing GMOs to Babylonian brew will help to sway public opinion. It’s kind of like Monsanto telling us that glyphosate would create pest-free corn rows shining in the sun.
The accuracy of this article may be judged, perhaps, by the illustration: it shows DNA with a left-handed screw-thread.
No such chemical exists in this particular universe.
Elsewhere in Multiverse, mileage may vary.
-dlj.
(PS, The professed inability to see the difference between engineering with yeast, a living, biological actor, and the addition of chemicals like salt and curcumin to affect taste is fey, but odd. . Is the writer that stupid? Or does she think we are that stupid, which would be even stupider of her?
-d.)
Do NYT and Monsanto think we’re so stupid as to not know the difference between putting natural ingredients together to make beer vs. extracting DNA from one species, putting it in a different species, and adding large dollop of toleration to carcinogenic Roundup for ‘added appeal’? – Monsanto is desperately trying to greenwash its pathogenic GMOs, just like BP is desperately trying to greenwash its Gulf ecocide. It’s the nature of the corporatist-fascist beast to do that. Neither one cares if their operations kill you.
Adding Roundup “for added appeal”? What is that supposed to be all about?
I don’t think Monsanto has ever proposed adding Roundup to any food. Nor have I seen it proposed added to anything else for that reason. Sounds like something that might turn up in cult propaganda, seems to me…
-dlj.
Re “added appeal”: You’re obviously sarcasm-impaired.
Ca. 99% of Monsanto’s GMO ‘crops’ are genetically engineered (I’d say “genetically mutilated”) to withstand and not die from repeated spraying with Roundup, which contains the known carcinogen glyphosate. The GMO ‘crops’ absorb the Roundup systemically. Thus, whoever eats the GMO ‘plant’ eats the poison.
Ask your owners to give you new propagandoids. The ones you have aren’t working.
…and you’re another anti-science ignoramus who writes his scripts by looking in the mirror and describing himself.
-dlj.
Lol. I notice that you said nothing about Monsanto’s monstrous and pathogenic creations, the main topic of my posts. But since you’ve chosen name-calling, I’ll note that you’re a sexist who assumes that whoever posts on the internet is male. Moreover, you’re insular and foreign-language-impaired, or you would’ve noticed that my name means “female gypsy.”
As I said, ask your owners to give you new propagandoids. I’ll be happy to point out their shortcomings too. Chuckle.
Not interested in Monsanto one way or the other: I’ve stuck to the objective errors people have been posting here.
Roma, I confess, is not among my 24 tourist-level languages or the four I actually speak, but I’d be happy to have you as a coach. It intimidates me just as much as Cantonese does, and for the same reason: as a living language used by people of several different enthicities it is both highly varied and fest evolving. Are you on Skype?
-dlj.
Wrong again. It’s a transliteration from Russian.
Pity that (though there are many Russian “Gypsies,” so who knew?)
It’s a few items down my list, getting my Russian up from tourist to genuine, so I’ll think of you again in a few years.
Not sooner, though. Don’t worry.
Back to your auto-drivel.
-dlj.