OK, so there are a lot of reasons to dislike and be opposed to Monsanto. First, the way they conduct their business appears to be deplorable: practices like surreptitiously "seeding" farms who don't use their product, then forcing those farms to buy their product because all of a sudden, what do you know, there are Monsanto crops growing there -- that reason alone is enough to make me want to see the company run out of business in a merciless and thorough fashion. Add to that their involvement on the wrong side of IP Law, and I have no issues with opposing them as a general principle.
But those don't seem to be the biggest objections to Monsanto. The biggest objection that I see is that they create genetically modified food. And I have to ask myself, so what? Why is that such a big deal? I'm hoping someone more familiar with the issue might be able to explain it to me, because to me it just sounds like the same kind of quackery that you hear from people who believe vaccines make children autistic.
What's mystifying to me is that "genetically altered food" is raised as a grave concern without any explanation (that I've seen, I need to be clear about that -- there may be explanation, it's a big Internet and I'm only one Death Ray) as to why this is bad other than "it's not natural." I can't bring myself to be terribly bothered by that, any more than I'm bothered by people "breeding" new kinds of flowers or working with stem cells to try to cure diseases. Much of science isn't "natural" in terms of "just sit back and let stuff happen."
Are there any health concerns about genetically modified foods? More specifically, are there any studies that give actual weight to health concerns? Is there any data showing that genetically modified foods are somehow worse for you than naturally grown foods?
I can see a lot of good reasons to try to scientifically engineer food. Increase yield sizes, make it more resistant to diseases or parasites, make it easier to grow in climates that are a little more hostile to them. I certainly don't consider these bad things. There are some other things Monsanto throws into the mix that have less social value and more "screw the customer business value" (one thing I read was a crop that is engineered to be sterile after planting, so farmer's can't use those plants to reseed, which is a shitty thing to do).
I haven't seen a lot of information about why genetically engineered food would be bad for you per se. I've seen people who are morally opposed to the idea, but the arguments I've seen aren't based on anything scientific. There might actually be scientific arguments out there, but what I've seen hasn't gone beyond "natural is good, gene splicing is scary."
So those of you who are more familiar with the entire Monsanto mess, could you point me to some resources about the scientific side of the argument? I'm already with you on the business side.