Hi, what's this referring to, specifically? "The problem is also Monsanto and Bayer making plants that literally cause cancer if you touch the leaves."
Monsanto made seeds terms RoundUp Ready, which are immune to industrial strength RoundUp, by putting the immunity directly into the leaves of plants themselves (from the seed). RoundUp is dangerous business: it uses (among others) a chemical called glyphosate which is increasingly being found to cause cancer and are already banned from Europe (though not Mexico or the US). Which is a human rights violation, particularly as Monsanto and Bayer have both known about it and not stopped selling it. And have been trying to dissuade the EPA and other science groups from looking into it.
Here is an article on them putting the ability to survive their pesticides in the seeds and what it does to plants not treated to survive it: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-01/a-soybean-killing-pesticide-spreads-across-america-s-farm-belt
Here is an article on glyphosate which is included in RoundUp is the cancer causing chemical: “Monsanto’s GMO Herbicide Doubles Cancer Risk” http://www.ewg.org/agmag/2015/10/monsanto-s-gmo-herbicide-doubles-cancer-risk
And another: https://gmo-awareness.com/resources/glyphosate/
And a third: http://www.ecowatch.com/15-health-problems-linked-to-monsantos-roundup-1882002128.html
They should just stop selling RoundUp and pay the people affected around the world damages: https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/ngos-sue-monsanto-eus-food-safety-watchdog-over-allegedly-distorting-scientific-data-on-carcinogenic-effects-of-pesticide.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/335327
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-pesticides-monsanto-idUSTRE81C0VQ20120213
Which is what many a more decent company has done and would do. (The entire Business and Human Rights site documents various companies responses to lawsuits, and there is a very big difference between Unilever’s response and Monsanto’s.
There are also Bt plants, where the bacteria pesticide is put into the seed itself. This is actually reasonably safe to eat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_thuringiensis
However, Monsanto has also been working on plants that produce RoundUp from the seeds themselves, which are called Plant-incorporated protectants (PIPs). http://npic.orst.edu/reg/pip.html (Basically making sure that consumers don’t feel any ill effects but the people who work with the plants do, so only those who handle the leaves get the full weight of the pesticides.) Given the fact that RoundUp is heavily linked to cancer in people who have to work with it, this would be very bad.
While they probably will not be able to do it with RoundUp itself, given the entire chemical in RoundUp was banned in Europe and that there is a movement to ban it in the US (which will now have to wait until after 2020), and that Argentina and India both want to ban it, they still want to embed more serious pesticides than Bt into their plants. And given what RoundUp does, this is not a good idea.
Plus, they are still moving to make plants resistant to more types of herbicide and pesticide, without actually accounting for the herbicides and pesticides being deadly and not very effective at producing more crops (Time-series analyses between Western Europe (where bans exist on pesticides and herbicide - e.g. https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/germany-ngos-file-complaint-against-bayer-for-mislabeling-of-hazardous-pesticide-products-sold-in-india) and the US have shown no significant gain in US crop production: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/business/gmo-promise-falls-short.html?_r=0).
And any of these options would still mean that the workers who actually have to work with the plants would be affected. https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/argentina-state-agency-to-inspect-seeds-taking-over-verification-process-from-monsanto-following-farmers%E2%80%99-protests
I also feel that the science on how to embed pesticides at such a high toxicity into the plant leaves from the seed could so easily be turned to chemical weapons that it shouldn’t be allowed. (Chemical weapons being on the list of war crimes). Given that pesticides were used this way once, and given that this is one of the many reasons why certain pesticides were banned in the 1970s. Plus, Monsanto is being sued given how much like those chemical weapons RoundUp and other pesticides are: http://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2016/10/14/la-multinationale-monsanto-traduite-devant-un-tribunal-international-citoyen_5013629_3244.html#H7DbZSiR8gPt4qrk.99
This is a bad company, and the problem is not only capitalism but the science (and way of controlling what science becomes available to the public versus what science they are trying to discount) behind RoundUp (and other glyphosate), RoundUp Ready Seeds, Hts in general, in addition to suggestions that they should embed pesticides stronger than Bts directly into the plants while trying not to stop the use of glyphosates.
