does being healthy really minimise the effects of the menopause?

Good job we don't eat people really.
I don't think the good health care has gone on for enough generations to destroy the gene pool. And it is still the case that for much of humanity, natural selection is pretty brutal, weeding out those with congenital health problems, weak immune systems etc.

'Pretty much everything has been improved by animal or plant breeding' ...except Homo Sapiens.

At one time 'humans' were subject to the law of natural selection. But with the advent of good health care, medicine, unlimited supply of food and so on (at least in the developed world) I wonder just how much the gene pool is weakened?

So nobody in the food industry should ever try to develop a new or improved product with a view to making money out of it?
There is very little that we eat that is in a natural state durhamjen. Pretty much everything has been improved by animal or plant breeding or developed by food technologists.

People are making money out of food already - some of it obscene amounts from selling us rubbish.

They are not patenting or restricting anything that exists already. No-one will starve because they don't have access to food. Retailers can sell anything they like. Buyers can buy anything they like.

What they patent is their right to receive a payment if anyone uses what they have created for the first few years of its production. That happens with any other product which has been designed by someone and made by someone else.

Should they invest time and money finding better crosses out of their own pocket? There would not be many new varieties appearing if that were the case.There are not many philanthropic hobby plant breeders about any more, they went extinct when gentlemen clergymen with time to spare became a rare species.

Why shouldn't someone make money out of cloning (or grafting or whatever) a new variety of apple? You speak as if making a living from something imginative or experimental is wrong, jend.

Loopy, it's actually six pages, not three posts.

What I am saying is why do it in the first place unless you want to make more money out of it than a normal apple grower.
Why patent any crop food?
That's why I do not buy Pink Lady apples.

Sorry, that was for durhamjen - too many similar letters in your username.

They could not patent all seed, only something that they had created or hybridised themselves, and the patent would only last for a set number of years. Other growers can produce it under licence. If they have spent a lot of money experimenting and then on producing and marketing a new product, it is only reasonable that they recoup that money.

Once the patent runs out, everyone is free to produce the seed or whatever.

Who would take the trouble to investigate new and useful crosses if others could then make the profit from mass producing them at once?

Granjura I found apple (fruit) patents by searching for extra trigger words than just apple and patent - I had met the same computer patents.

OP probably as bemused as me!
Menopause to apples in three posts?

They have bred a delicious and attractive apple. They can protect their work (the genome and the name) by patenting the variety. The apple can only be propagated by cloning (such as taking cuttings/grafts) so they are saying it is our creation and nobody can make illegal copies and sell them, making lots of money out of something we have worked hard to produce.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with that is there?

sumofus.org/campaigns/monsantos-round-up-is-killing-off-the-monarch-butterflies/

Just for you, soon.

I have just remembered what The Beatles called their company! It was Apple Corp. see? Apple (core)

Good eh?

I think that patents are essential.
But not for food.
What say if all seed was patented?
By more or less the same company?
[It is called Monsanto, and durhamjen can say more about this, as her and myself were on a thread about this recently].

When did New York first get called The Big Apple? Didn't one or more of the Beatles own a company called that too?

Apple, "the computer giant", had a patent row with the Beatles over their Apple device (the apple with a chunk out of it on Apple computers).

A google search for "Apple patents" will be about the computer company Apple, not about the fruit.

It's not a patent for all apples, soon, only for a particular apple that didn"t exist before someone bred it from existing varieties. Why shouldn't the person or company that did the work of breeding it have a patent? I don't see it as any different from any inventor having a patent on his or her invention. I'd want any invention of mine to be patented or anyone could copy it and reap the benefits of my invention.

I've just done a search on apple patents, and it's all about computers!

Pink Lady is not in fact the only apple to be patented. There seem to be dozens - maybe hundreds, including Honeycrisp, Gala and Empire.

www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/11/10/358530280/want-to-grow-these-apples-youll-have-to-join-the-club

It shouldnt be allowed.
No company should be allowed patents for food.

In a way the patentees did invent the Pink Lady apple. They have plant breeders rights over it, probably after a lot of expense and effort breeding it. Existing varietes are unlikely to be patented, No-one is going to get a patent on a Cox's Orange Pippin or a Bramley.

"Plant breeders' rights (PBR), also known as plant variety rights (PVR), are rights granted to the breeder of a new variety of plant that give the breeder exclusive control over the propagating material (including seed, cuttings, divisions, tissue culture) and harvested material (cut flowers, fruit, foliage) of a new variety for a number of years.

With these rights, the breeder can choose to become the exclusive marketer of the variety, or to license the variety to others. In order to qualify for these exclusive rights, a variety must be new, distinct, uniform and stable.

I accept studies that are done on rats to be applicable to rats, not humans. What is discovered by experiments on rats is not directly relevant to humans until studies have been done on humans too. That's what I meant.

I don't understand what you mean by "only the apple that's been patented", jen.

There is information here. I notice its other name is Cripps Pink.

I know we are not rats, but the scientific studies that most people, like you, seem to accept are those performed on animals first, then humans.
I therefore thought that you would accept a food tested on animals in scientific experiments. Obviously I was wrong.
What would you accept to be a viable experiment?