Trade openness is one of the strongest predictor of peace [1] (also see: Better Angels of our Nature [2]).

Free trade would also be an economic boon to Europe and the U.S. A study by the Bertelsmann Foundation together with the Munich-based Center for Economic Studies found that "if the United States and the European Union are able to come together on a far-reaching free trade agreement, Germany would be one of the greatest beneficiaries. Fully 181,000 new jobs could be expected and per-capita income would spike by 4.68 percent." GDP/capita could rise "by 13.4 percent in the US and by 9.7 percent in the UK. More than a million new jobs would result in America. That number would be 400,000 in Britain." [3]

The benefits of free trade are one of the points economists have found consensus on.

[1] http://www.yale.edu/leitner/resources/docs/HORJune09.pdf "Trade Does Promote Peace: New Simultaneous Estimates of the Reciprocal Effects of Trade and Conflict" (Hegre, O'Neal, & Russett, 2009)

[2] http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/014312... The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker

[3] http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/study-on-trans-...

Who's that "Germany" Bertelsmann is talking about. The government? The people? Maybe just Bertelsmann and their buddies?

Those 181k new jobs: Will they be propped up with social welfare like many of those "newly generated jobs" in Germany of the last years (Hartz-4 Aufstocker)?

Which part of the work force benefits from the 4.68% income spike - those in the millions-of-euros range (who can easily pull up the medium income because they're so remote from the median)? Or those earning 370€/month (and then will receive a fabulous 387€, leading to no more money in the wallet since most of it came from social welfare anyway)?

If you want to make a point, please don't try to prove it with Bertelsmann "research", most of that is 100% politics.

Stop asking questions and just read the studies. If you have evidence just state it.

Argument by aggressive questioning is not an effective convincer.

bullsh*t , like the benefits of europe when we have 26 million + people out of work, fool me twice ... EU is not working , for the people at least ...

I don't normally downvote comments I read here, but c'mon man. First of all, your comment was off-topic. Second of all, at least with the GM food, yours is a knee-jerk reaction unsupported by science. GM food has the potential to save billions (with a B) of lives, starting with Golden Rice.

The biggest problem with GM is it puts the world's food production into the hands of a select few multinational companies.

Companies like Monsanto have already shown they are prepared to fight hard to keep control their GM monopolies:

http://www.dailyfinance.com/on/monsanto-gmo-roundup-ready-se...

Oh yes that monsanto case that gets trotted out every freaking time this comes up.

The poor farmer didn't know he was using roundup ready seeds...and yet somehow also decided to use roundup on his crops anyway!

Except he did know that he was using roundup ready seeds, and thought he was exploiting a loophole.

Turns out he was wrong: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowman_v._Monsanto_Co.#Backgrou...

This is absolutely not a case of big evilco going against the little guy.

So? That's not a good reason to restrict life-saving technologies.

The number one thing GMOing is used for is to make seeds resistant to pesticide. So now what Roundup/Monsanto farmers do is spread pesticide over the land, far and wide.

The myth is that GMO technology lets us produce high yield crops and mix a caterpillars with bananas to get Butterbananas. But the truth is GMO just lets us engineer soybeans to survive Roundup, and then spray, baby, spray.

The end effect of GMO is a stimulus for the pesticide industry, and negative externalities on the environment. That needs to be balanced with whatever crop yields GMO achieves, and it should be understood the crop yields are higher primarily because the bugs are dead, not because we have new super-plants that produce more food per plant.

There is a distinction between positions here:

"Being genetically modified always makes the foods inherently unsafe"

vs

"Being genetically modified cannot make the foods inherently unsafe"

Both are wholly incorrect positions to take, and the question is often posed as a false dichotomy between these two options. Attention to mechanism and importantly, to incentive, is going to be essential in any future detente we arrive at... and we will arrive at one, because genetic engineering is only going to get more useful.

Categorical prohibition of 'The Monsanto Roundup Ready Gene' and a temporary moratorium on growing GMOs until a resilient process for tradeoff consideration is created would be a much more reasonable process. Personally, I'm in favor of the state establishing high-value labelling requirements, and allowing alternatives. "Made with FDA Certified Pasturized Milk" vs "Made with Uncertified Raw Milk" is one we would appreciate in the US, where the highly nationalized agribusiness sector does not approve of giving us such choices.

"Certified Safe Local-Grown GMO" vs "Certified Safe Import-Only GMO" vs "Uncertified GMO" vs no label for natural organisms seems a perfectly fine way of doing things to me.

The claim that GMO has been responsible for gains in modern food production are most likely false and are more likely the result of traditional breeding techniques:

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/27/study_monsanto_gmo_food_clai...

Yes, it is. If significant numbers of people become dependent upon a single point of failure then whoever controls that gains an incredible degree of power. You have to have some plan for how you're going to spread your risk pool around in that regard or you're just creating a population of slaves.

> Companies like Monsanto have already shown they are prepared to fight hard to keep control their GM monopolies:

An analogy: If Microsoft sues someone for selling unlicensed copies of MS PowerPoint, can they be construed to be fighting hard to keep control of their presentation software monopoly?

The big difference is the former is just some crappy software, while the latter is about control of the world's food supply.

Given the choice of a world fed on GMO seeds, controlled by multi-nationals, rammed down our throats by governments with their own secret agendas, or the good old fashion natural seeds, I'll take the later any day.

Fine, then don't buy them. But don't be a hypocrite and restrict their access from others who may be too poor to buy organic.

> Fine, then don't buy them

If they have a monopoly you no longer have that choice.

The 'big four' biotech seed companies—Monsanto, DuPont/Pioneer Hi-Bred, Syngenta and Dow AgroSciences own 80% of the US corn market and 70% of the soybean business.

They are looking to achieve similar results in the rest of thw world.

The US government went after Microsoft because it was seen as a monopoly in the PC market.

Why doesn't the US government step in to stop this GOM monopoly?

The US government has always realized that monopolies can come to be "naturally" (that is, through normal market forces) in an industry. The US government over goes after a monopolist when they attempt to enter or influence a different market by exploiting their monopoly.

The US government didn't go against Standard Oil because they owned 90% of the refineries in the US, they went after Standard Oil because Standard Oil was using their 90% oil refinery market share to control the rail shipping industry.

The US government didn't go against Microsoft because they owned 90% of the PC operating system market, they went after Microsoft because Microsoft was using their 90% operating system market to control the web browser market (along with some other sub-computer markets).

Why isn't the US government going against Monsanto (for instance?) Because they aren't trying to gain control of another industry outside agriculture (or better lobbyists, take your pick).

Give us all a break.

It's so easy to make that choice when you and your family aren't literally starving to death.

Why is this simple piece of logic so difficult for anti-GMO extremists to understand? These technologies literally have the potential, without even being hyperbolic, to save Billions of lives. And these clowns are worried about the providers making an extra buck.

There arent billions of starving people around. Those who do starve, do so not because of a lack of food, but because those who have excess of it would rather destroy it than sell it below market price. GMO wont do jack against an artificial constructed scarcity.

> Why is this simple piece of logic so difficult for anti-GMO extremists to understand? These technologies literally have the potential, without even being hyperbolic, to save Billions of lives.

Any description of technology "saving" lives is hyperbolic. Technology can extend lives, or make more lives possible to start, but we haven't yet found any technologies that will actually save lives.

... what are you talking about?

Are you arguing the semantics of "save"? Bullet proof vests save lives... Polio vaccines save lives...

Or is that just "extending": "He was suppose to die with a bullet to the chest, so by stopping it, we extended his life"

> to save Billions of lives

But not in Europe.

The expanded analogy, can Microsoft create a virus that installs MS PowerPoint then sue those who purposefully don't install an antivirus in the hopes of catching MS Powerpoint.

What's your source for this claim against Monsanto? Usually when a farmer claims something like this, it turns out they're as guilty as a 3 dollar bill.

The problem is not allowing or disallowing GM food, but the strict labeling requirements in the EU. If there's GM involved it must be labeled accordingly. Unrelated to if oppposing GM food is a "knee-jerk" reaction or not, the labeling requirement is a good thing, as it gives the consumer the choice which type of food he prefers. The trade agreement would weaken those labeling requirements, which is the main source for concerns here.

We certainly don't need to save millions of lives in the EU with Golden Rice.

It is just a fact that most European countries are in strong opposition to genetically modified food. I wouldn't eat that either, and I do not even want it to be sold here.

It's not supported by science either. You would need at least 100 years to study the effect of GM foods on the long-term well-being of people.

Well, worst case, it helps to solve our overpopulation problem. /s

AFAIK we have laws against this kind of food in EU, but the free trade agreement will give us e.g. Apple, Microsoft, Dell and other products without having to pay a high fee every time it goes through customs. Same goes for European products being sold in the US. It is expected to lead to BNP growth of around 1% in the EU region.

All the harder to see the good reason when it's negotiated in secret. (Unless you are a favored lobbyist.)

What's wrong with any of those things? None of those things are harmful.

Expecting downvotes for this: I strongly suspect that hormones in meat make Americans bigger. I am from Europe. I have met many Americans both of whose parents were born in my country. They don't look like us. My perception is that on average they are significantly bigger, and are both taller and broader than is normal in my country. I don't know if this has health implications, but I would rather not eat meat which contains growth hormones.

Well you will get downvotes if you don't actually provide any evidence beyond "he looks funny". The whole beef hormone controvosy is complete bullshit; the EU has lost cases against the US & Canada in the WTO twice now, both times for lack of scientific evidence behind their decision. The ban happened when Europe was wrestling with mad cow disease, which in no small part influenced the populance against the scientific method with regards to food saftey. This, along with the fact that MEP's had recently been elected for the first time, made the decision almost entirely populist. The EU has _never_ justified the ban scientifically.

I don't have evidence that hormones in beef affect humans. Do you have evidence that they don't? Personally I would rather not eat it without such evidence.

I just quickly googled and found this on the website of the American Public Health Association: "By contrast, the US government position is that hormone residues in beef from adult cattle pose no threat to human health. This assumption of safety, however, has remained untested by long-term epidemiologic studies and instead relies on dated research concerning the ability of estrogen (estradiol) to mutate genes. This policy fails to reflect more recent research that hormones and hormonally active chemicals may exert their toxicity instead via epigenetic changes.12,23"

Source: http://www.apha.org/advocacy/policy/policysearch/default.htm...

Do you carry a cell phone? Because a lot of people believe that carrying and using cell phones over long periods of time will cause cancer due to the long term exposure to electromagnetic radiation. There is no evidence that this is the case, however, nobody has proven that they DON'T. And not enough time has passed to really know the long term effects.

You're probably right, American teenagers are hitting puberty earlier too and growth hormones in milk and beef were the main suspects.

But also: When women have a large pool of potential mates to chose from they usually select the healthier larger males. In the USA we all speak the same language, use the same currency, can move to whatever city we want and that gives women a much larger selection of big males to mate with. While in European countries, there are language barriers, cultural barriers, and smaller populations per country. Although the population of europe is 700+ million, the population tends to stay in it's home country and intermarry with it's own kind to an extent. Meaning once all the big males in a country are married and taken, the women there start mating with medium & smaller men. That's my theory at least. American culture is also very extreme-masculine, homophobic, scared of looking weak, and obsessed with dominant macho males. It might have to do with white men's fear of strong dominating black men which are the majority in many physical sports and are over-represented in violent crimes and present in high-crime neighborhoods. So maybe it's a security thing.

http://metro.co.uk/2007/02/01/dutch-are-the-worlds-tallest-i...

I'm under the impression you're from Ireland judging by your username. Kids and adolescents that are well fed tend to grow more than those that aren't, and portion size in the US tends to be substantially greater than elsewhere, especially Europe. Also, there seems to be a greater focus on working out for aesthetic reasons in the US. All of this is, however, does appear to be changing, and moving more toward an American norm. You may also be suffering from confirmation bias! Or, you're right and something in American food is affecting growth rates, but there doesn't appear to be a lot of evidence to support this notion.

This phenomenon has been studied, but is currently thought to be because of lifestyle differences. See "The Health Toll of Immigration": http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/health/the-health-toll-of-...

Americans have been 'larger' for some time. We had trouble with AK47s after WW2, for example, because they were too small for the comparatively larger American soldiers to wield comfortably.

I don't think it's any more complicated than the fact that we eat more food for all of our lives.

I'm not a doctor, so i wouldn't claim your theory is impossible. But we americans have a horrible diet, and we eat tons of food. I can't say much about height, but breadth comes from 1300 calorie fast food lunches.

Hormones and antibiotics, perhaps. Chinese raised in America do not look the same as Chinese raised in China. They tend to be bigger, thicker, taller, and with a different skin tone. Go figure.

You're not serious, are you? Cows are fed corn feed to bulk them for slaughter weight sooner. If the cow ended up not being slaughtered it would end up dying due to disease. Antibiotics keep it alive in order to get it to our plates. The whole american food industry is ...ked. I dread the day we start producing GMO'd rice. - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1112115/

All cows that aren't slaughtered end up dying from disease or old age. Antibiotics prevent the spread of disease and aren't harmful in and of themselves, but their overuse can lead to resistant bacteria. And I'm not sure why you'd have a problem with genetically modified rice if it would increase the food supply safely. ll of these things have been relatively well studied and there appears to be no evidence to support any indication that this these practices are harmful to humans.

There are so many people that take a fearful view without evidence, but such fears are scientifically unfounded.

Also, movies and TV aren't necessarily great sources of information. They're entertainment first and foremost, and to put it charitably, not always especially factually accurate.

> no evidence to support any indication that this these practices are harmful to human

You haven't heard of BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or Mad Cow Disease)?

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/bse/

The likely cause of that disease was farmers feeding cows other cows (in the form of meal).

Lots of strange stuff happens in the name of making a profit.

It's well known why you shouldn't feed a species to itself; they will be susceptible to the same pathogens, and the pathogens will accumulate from one generation to the next.

Why are you making the leap from this to unrelated practices?

That practice was legal in the US up until 2009 and while that one is now gone, there are plenty of other whacky practices used in its place.

As a replacement the next wacky idea was to feed cows with chicken manure mixed in hay.

The only problem is cows can still be fed to chickens and the cows then eat the chicken crap, so exactly has changed?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-greger-md/mad-cow-dise...

Where am I meant to make the logical leap to "this is a bad thing"? Keeping a cow healthy prior to it being slaughtered seems like a good thing, as far as I can tell, and I don't know of any great evils coming from corn feed, other than the increased land and water cost. The use of antibiotics is something I have my own concerns on, but I fail to see what it has to do with GMO rice and feeding cows corn.

Ah, but they sound harmful!

They don't taste good.

What doesn't "taste good"? Almost all modern food is Genetically Modified at some level, all meat has hormones as well so not sure specifically what constitues tasting good with that.

Are you saying hormones make things taste bad? Have you blind A-B tested that assumption? Same for "GM" food? Also what exactly is constituted as GM? Is Corn a GM food or still "natural" because we just used selective pressure and chose what populations of maize was able to continue to the next iteration?

To be honest the Sturm und Drang over GM foods while seeminly well meaning seems to belie similarities to the climate change deniers. If humans do it it somehow is implicitly bad, but almost all modern food isn't "natural", assuming we define natural as without impact from humanity. (yes the link is tenuous, but its similar to zombie stories being tales of human hubris gone awry, and alien invasions being worries of the unknown. GM being our hubris, climate change being fear of the unknown or inability to be able to control our future)

If the arguments against GM for example are against terminator genes, sure valid, but even if those genes spread, I doubt they'll get selected for too long in the wild.

In addition, without the option of GM foods, how does everyone propose we feed an ever increasing population of humans without impacting the environment any more than we already have? I personally foresee insects and other alternative protein sources as an inevitability. What is being proposed as alternatives that will scale to the sizes we need? I'm honestly curious here despite how the tone of my post might come off but anti GM foods in general strikes me as the same strain of anti-science as anti-climate change. Sure be conservative with changes, but most GM is pretty mundane.

This is a pure anecdotal data point, but as someone who travels a lot: American meat is bland. I don't know if it is hormones, climate, food stock, herding conditions, or what, but it's definitely true in my experience.

It's not only about GM food, but about the taste of food in general. I come from a small country where the food is not produced by huge farms, but by the people in their tiny or small farms. The lack of money and technologies makes them use the same technologies like 100 years ago (except tractors). The downside is that they depend on weather, and the crop per hectare is not so big like in highly agriculture-industrialized countries. But the food tastes very different. Now I live in a huge country, where the small farmers won't be able to produce all the food that is needed and it took me a year to get used to the taste of the local vegetables and meat. I don't know and I don't care if GM is bad or good for my health, the same about hormones in meat. I just want my food to taste good.

An anti-GMO comment is the top comment on a story about US spying? This place is starting to veer into Alex Jones territory.

I may not be able to speak for anybody else but I find the GMO debate has many parties with multiple (even conflicting) goals. Personally the primary opposition I have with GMO is the very murky patent environment. It's no secret that Monsanto engages in patent warfare and manipulates legal systems across the world to stamp out competition.

GMO foods can bring about a revolution to the world because it's an interesting intersection between engineering and biology.

> Personally the primary opposition I have with GMO is the very murky patent environment. It's no secret that Monsanto engages in patent warfare and manipulates legal systems across the world to stamp out competition.

I just don't see what that has to do with GMO. Your beef is with the IP system. It's like saying software sucks because software companies abuse the patent system.