In another thread:
It’s still nutritional information.
Genetically modified organisms not only have new genes, they have new proteins coded for by those genes, which is usually the point. Someone might have an allergic reaction to an introduced protein that they wouldn’t have to the non-GMO version of the product. Labeling GMO products as such can help us pinpoint these problems more readily.
Really, this is an obvious potential problem.
Well, your concerns may be modified or exacerbated.
Most people have concerns because of the introduction of foreign genes from one organism to another–a bacterial gene into a crop species, for example.
We are getting well beyond that with genome editing techniques like CRISPR. Now, you don’t need foreign genes per se, but you alter existing genes for desirable traits. Although, this may involve using foreign DNA sequences as guidelines.
If a company now tweaks an endogenous gene that is within the organism, is the protest the same?
EDIT: I’ll just add that most proteins are digested in your stomach, which makes me shake my head at the un-cooked veggie movement that advocates “natural plant enzymes”. I fail to see the need for me to use RUBISCO.
I just want to add to this what I think is another important point I made in the original thread. The list of ingredients isn’t just for “nutritional” purposes in the strict sense of nutrition. As I asked over there, what’s the nutritional value of disodium inosinate, potassium sorbate, sodium bisulfite, potassium benzoate, aspartame, hydrated silicon dioxide, food colorings, or water – all of which appear, by law, on various labels? It’s all been tested, vetted, and deemed safe, and most of the time nobody cares about that stuff, but people still have a right to know what’s in their food.
The disclosure of GMO content doesn’t imply it’s dangerous, it implies that there’s GMO content, period, take it for what it’s worth. You can research the literature, consult the FDA, obsess about if you want, ignore it all if you want, whatever. But the converse of GMO labeling is that GMO content is secret. It’s unknowable and may be hidden by the producers anywhere up the production chain. What’s the problem with having the most possible information, especially if it’s something that some people obviously care about?
Nutritional labels are for nutritional information.
If a particular variety of ingredient is nutritionally different, that is a good reason to put the information on the label, whether or not the different variety was created through genetic modification.
Most GMO ingredients are not nutritionally different, however. In these cases labeling them as GMO implies that there is a difference that does not exist. It is misinformation which is usually motivated by a naive anti-corporate political agenda, not an examination of the current state of agricultural technology and the evidence of the safety of GMO foods.
Nutritional labels on food are not a place to push a political agenda. They are for information about the nutritional content of the food.
I don’t have a definitive scientific answer to that. Does anyone? Can it be ruled out that endogenous processes can’t produce cellular mutations? I believe it’s known as endogenous carcinogenesis.
I would advocate relying on impartial agencies that are not politically motivated to provide such labeling guidelines. I’m not an anti-GMO nut by any stretch, but I’m a big fan of the public being informed, and of maximum disclosure by industries that have traditional vested interests in secrecy.
So I’ll ask you again what the “nutritional” value is of the ingredients I just listed in the preceding post.
And I’m amused by your opposition to food labeling and your attempt to characterize the kind of scientifically determined data that we get on food labels as “misinformation”. And best of all, didn’t someone advance some principle at some point – gee, I think it may even have been a conservative in one of those debates we tend to have on free speech – that the more information the public has, the better? Why does that suddenly not apply to food labeling? I was advocating for leveling the playing field in political discourse without censoring anyone, you are here advocating for outright “the public doesn’t need to know this” type of censorship – and ironically, in an area where some corporations have historically engaged in reprehensible secrecy and outright fraud to hide the true content of their products from the public. My, how a bit of ideology suddenly changes everything!
GMO labels just push fear and anti-science. There’s no other point to them.
Since you ask, aspartame produces four kilocalories of energy per gram when metabolized.
Labeling is not just for nutritional purposes.
GMO may not be “nutritionally different,” but they are indisputably different, literally at the most fundamental level possible for a food species.
In any case, how can a factual statement be misinformation? How can it, sans interpretation, be presumed to carry an agenda?
Right. Just like country-of-origin tags push racism and xenophobia, and can have no other purpose.
Tracking and labeling has a cost. Companies should be free to list additional information, but we should only require labeling when it addresses a valid concern. Many of our current labeling requirements already have little or no benefit. There is no point in listing many ingredients; e.g. it makes little difference what sort of leavening agent was used in my cookie so long as it’s safe, and so long as the sodium content (a valid health concern) is listed.
Who says what’s a valid concern? How can we even identify, or sort, potential concerns when relevant data isn’t available?
If you can point to any scientific evidence that GMO has a concern then I’ll listen.
Well at least I now have a citation available the next time someone asks why we should teach science to children.
Well, one thing I’ll say is there was a “Wow” factor about telomerases. These are enzymes involved in how many times a cell can replicate itself from its “shoelaces, so to speak”.
Modern media grabbed on this as a “Fountain of Youth”.
Ya know what other type of cell lives forever? Yeah, the cancer cell.
Just to address this one point, let’s take a typical product that uses it, my fave, Coke Zero, which dutifully lists aspertame.
This works out to … hold your breath for the fattening revelation – one-third of a calorie (the customary health metric, equal to a kcal) per can of Coke. To put this in perspective, this is so tiny that it could have 14 times that amount and still qualify for a zero-calorie designation under FDA CFR Title 21.
I might invite you to suggest the nutritional value some of the other frightening ingredients I listed, like water, but the question was really addressed to Hank Beecher who specifically claimed that food labeling information was all nutritional. I’m also particularly interested in his ability to justify labeling censorship in the context of all the conservative caterwauling about free speech and the value of maximum public information. This is especially interesting in light of the historical reticence of food companies (any commercial enterprises, really) to reveal anything they didn’t absolutely have to.
As long as every single species of corn is recognized as a GMO I am OK with requiring a GMO label. I laughed my ass off last year when there was a stand at our local farmers market advertising non-GMO sweet corn. We did not have stuff like this when I was a kid and I had relatives who were farmers in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. If this is non GMO; then where the hell did this stuff come from? Complete crap.
Same goes for tomatoes, apples, broccoli and carrots. Hell, if we are honest with ourselves we should recognize every single piece of produce in our grocery stores as genetically modified as none of these strains existed 50 or 100 years ago. Do you remember apples from the 1970’s? They sucked! Almost as bad as tomatoes suck today! People who are freaked out about GMO’s are complete idiots in my opinion; they have no sense of history or science.
Cite? His post on this thread said nothing of the sort, it was concerned with their purpose, he made no such claim of perfect design of their current contents.
There is, or can be, a bit more of a difference between plant varieties that have been modified by selective breeding vs those which have been modified by insertion of genes from another order, phylum or kingdom.
In particular, if these genes code for proteins that will be present in the finished foodstuff, there might be a reason to label the end product, because there might be potential for people to be allergic to the new protein (and there might otherwise be no reason for them to expect to find it in that category of food).
IMO, that should be handled on a case-by-case basis - i.e. no need for blanket labelling of GMO, but lets say (hypothetically) that we have a strain of GMO rice that was engineered for pesticide resistance by insertion of genes from, say, a species of shrimp. IF that engineering results in the end product containing proteins that prove to be allergens (and are not normally present in rice), then there is a case for that GMO to be flagged for labelling.
Every protein is an allergen, therefore you are mandating labelling virtually all GMOs.
All non-GM crops also contain allergens, and the amounts and types of those allergens vary by variety. Do you also support mandatory labelling of the exact variety of all plant and animal products in food? If not, why not?
A great many pesticides and fertilisers also have known health effects, especially those used by organic producers. Do you also recommend mandating the labelling of all products used on all ingredients in foodstuffs? If not, why not?
This is where it gets silly. If we accept the clear scientific consensus, then GM foods are harmless. In contrast organic fertilisers kill thousands of people each year.
Doesn’t that logically mean that we should be labelling all fertilisers used in the supply chain before worrying about GM products?
And if this isn’t strictly a health or nutrition concern, then why is GM so high up the list? Plenty of people want to know if Moslem handled their food, or if the product profits an atheist. If we are pandering to irrational fears in our labelling laws, why nit list that information as well?
Apple cultivars vary a lot naturally, as do tomato varieties. Apple quality has probably gone up in your local stores because of shipping technology, and because the industry is presumably growing more apples that aren’t the Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, & Jonathans I always saw as a kid.
Supermarket tomato quality has gone down because of technology. We now eat more tomatoes, and we eat them year-round. So we eat a lot of hothouse tomatoes grown in dubious soil of varieties chosen for their ability to stay fresh-looking when shipped. Heirloom tomatoes are still good.
None of this has anything to do with GMO’s in the sense the OP refers to. The normal course of genetic engineering through selective breeding and grafting isn’t at issue.
“GMO” refers to sci-fi stuff like using viruses to add genes to corn so the corn produces pesticides naturally. That invents new varieties that can be very different from existing varieties. Labeling those helps us identify unanticipated consequences.
Refusing to even label them isn’t “science.” It’s intentional hiding of information for fear of the public discovering a problem after produce is shipped to market. And it is tantamount to fraud.