I'm pro GMO, in general. It's ruined the flavor of my food and moncultures are setting us up for failure. Neither of these things are the actual fault of GMO, but just people being greedy and and shortsighted. I think why GMO gets such a bad wrap is pretty much why other myths can take hold in liberals: Their distrust of corporations and their vivid imagination. I purposely singled out liberals, as they seem to be the biggest proponents of anti-GMO legislation and labeling, and because I see parallels between that and the two other major things liberals tend to believe even though science doesn't back them up (ie Nuclear power should be banned, and the a lesser extent the cross-political antivaxxer myths). If you look at these myths what is underlying them is a fear of corporations (Monsanto wants to turn us into zombies/The corporations running nuclear power plants don't care about our safety/Big Pharma wants us to stay sick) and then an overblown sense of doom that stems from those feelings.
The media is at fault too. You don't hear about the GMO crop that doesn't have spider DNA. On the other hand, you usually don't hear about Monsanto's questionable practises (bullying farmers who's crops get pollinated by theirs for example) either. Which isn't a fault in GMO so much as Monsanto being assholes.
Do you have citations about any of that? There is a lot of misinformation spread about Monsanto, plenty of claims not even close to what actually happened in the real law suits, and made up law suits that never happened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeiser is the notable case. Monsanto has somehow never lost a case, but this defendant was deemed not liable. Monsanto will happily remove entire crops affected by their stuff... but that's removing and destroying entire crops. That's not a small thing to a farmer. And if you don't and don't pay them a licence fee, then they are quite happy to follow through with litigation.
Did you even read about that case? That person deliberately collected the seeds which had the round-up ready gene in them. The courts at all three levels noted that the case of accidental contamination beyond the farmer's control was not under consideration but rather that Mr. Schmeiser's action of having identified, isolated and saved the Roundup-resistant seed placed the case in a different category.
The evidence showed that the level of Roundup Ready canola in Mr. Schmeiser's 1998 fields was 95-98%
I did read it, yes. I find that the notion that farmers can no longer choose to keep seed for the next crop -- like they used to for millennia-- to be ridiculous. They can't do that now, because it's now wrong to. Because if they do, the seed has genes they're not allowed to have without a license.
To me it sounds like the issue is with capitalism, not GMOs :-P From a scientific perspective though, you don't want to save the seeds anyway. They are created from two plant strains and as such benefit from hybrid vigor, which means they'll produce more seeds than later generations will. This isn't GMO specific, non-engineered crops also use this same technique.