In the post on GMO foods, one of the lines is:
No one can seriously dispute the public’s right to know the GMO content of consumer products
The rest of the article is devoted to pointing out that there is no evidence of harm to humans.
So why spend millions to inform us of somewhat that has no effect on us? As far as I know, butterflies can’t read.
LINK TO COLUMN: What’s the latest on genetically modified foods? - The Straight Dope
I love the idea that people have no right to be told what crap they are eating. Shut up and Eat.
American food makers get away with very limited and confusing reporting on the packaging as it is — and when the EU mandates full reporting, so we know what we’re getting into, not infrequently they ban ingredients the Americans allow, and that they can’t even know are included.
I’m grateful.
So, are you disputing the right for us to know about something cuz, “no worries, it doesn’t hurt you”? Basically - if someone *says *it doesn’t hurt us, we should remain ignorant?
How do we know if something can hurt us if we don’t have the right to be fully informed?
However, to answer your question - you spend millions to make more. In this case, to counter the “bad press” of the No GMO activists. Bad PR hurts businesses, and if it is false, for no good reason. I recall hearing about something going on in Sri Lanka about how GMO’s were causing kidney failure.
So, GMO encourage herbicides. The herbicide acted as a chelating agent allowing you to absorb more heavy metals in the water. The heavy metals stress your kidneys and you got problems. I wasn’t aware of “Roundup-Ready Rice” but the core issue is the heavy metal in the water - that is what they need to addressed.
Whether it is closer to fixing misinformation or providing it is open to (some, little in my opinion) debate - what isn’t (as the column pointed out) is our right to know.
Ob link until an admin comes along:
What’s the latest on genetically modified foods
Personally, I’d rather know specifically what pesticides, fungicides, insecticides were used during cultivation of the food than GMO. No one clamors for those to be identified.
Food sellers are increasingly promoting their products as “non-GMO”, even when there are no GMO alternatives and it’s ludicrous to think there are (one entrepreneur is even offering “non-GMO” Himalayan rock salt).
With all these sellers voluntarily labeling their products non-GMO to attract the gullible, you can choose from a wide selection of foods in order to avoid the Evil DNA. And doing without processed foods adds an extra layer of “protection”.
So why do anti-GMOers keep pushing for mandatory labeling? The obvious reason is to stigmatize foods with genetically modified ingredients and force them off the market.
I do not want ignorant, fearful people taking away my choices, including the ability to drink orange juice and coffee made from genetically modified varieties which resist serious crop pathogens (there’s a real threat to the O.J. and coffee supply from these pests, and biotechnology may offer the only realistic way to keep them available).
Go buy your preferred stuff labeled “non-GMO”, “organic”, “sooper-healthy sooperfood” or whatever you want. But don’t manipulate the law to suit your ideology.
Sounds indisputable to me!
But seriously, you think no herbicides are used on conventionally-bred crops? Or that Roundup (used on some GM crops) is more dangerous than standard herbicides (it’s actually much less toxic)?
Which is incorrect.
First, the genetic code (i.e., how the nucleotides are translated into proteins) remains the same – e.g., a CAG nucleotide triplet still translates into Glutamine. While there have been some scientific experiments that change the genetic code no commercial GMO has such a modification. It would be technically hard to accomplish.
Second, assuming the Cecil meant to say something more along the lines of:
Then that would also be incorrect. For example the BT toxin is found in B. thuringiensis. It is totally natural.
IMHO, the wording should have been more along the lines of:
That gets much closer to the truth.
We seem to be on the same page, but just in case that wasn’t sarcasm - yes, the media splashes click-bait about how GMOs are killing people, but that isn’t really what is causing the problem.
I’m unaware that I said any such thing, but to address this I’ll point out the actual debate is two-fold. First, the overall health effects of Glyphosate which apparently the overall health effects are still being studied. Second, the amounts of herbicides used. Since herbicides by their very definition kill plants, there is a limit to how much you can dump on your field before you impact the crop itself. The point to the GMO is to have a higher tolerance, so you can kill more stuff you don’t want by dumping more Roundup on your field.
The cite in question. I only joined to debate the “need to know” argument in the OP, don’t really want to be typecast as a defender of either side in this discussion.
So what shouldn’t be labeled when it comes to food? I mean, as a Muslim man, I’d like to know if my food was touched by the infidels. We should put package labels on all food that is non-Halal, and on all food that was not produced by a company hiring exclusively Muslims. And I’d also like for the food to list a full list of all pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizer supplements that went into the products in the food. Sure, it may not be harmful, but the more you know! Also, it would be good to know the names of each person who handled the food before it hit the shelves. You know, for safety’s sake.
Come on, people, this “we deserve to know” angle is asinine. There’s all manner of innocuous, harmless pieces of information you could receive about a product. None of it matters in the slightest, and there’s no reason to waste money on explaining it. If GMOs are harmless, then we have no business demanding to be informed where they are unless we want to be consistent and demand countless other factoids on the label which are of absolutely no use to anyone! It’s neo-ludditism at its worst.
Of course, the above listed conditions lack the additional information we have about GMO labeling laws - pro-Muslim groups aren’t out to drive non-halal foods off the market. Anti-GMO activists, however, are very clearly using these labeling laws as a stepping stone towards laws to ban GMOs. The goal is to make GMOs seem dangerous in the public eye (“if they weren’t dangerous, why would they need a label?”), and either push for boycotting or legal pressure towards a ban. This is why I am against labeling laws. We don’t need to give people yet another stupid reason to believe that GMOs are dangerous, and they are transparently designed as a way to try to push GMOs off the market. It’s really kind of like demanding “non-organic” labeling - that everything that isn’t organic should be labeled. No, that’s really dumb. Just label the organic/non-GMO stuff voluntarily.
Like, to pull an obvious analogy, vaccine manufacturers are basically mandated to list all of the possible side-effects of the vaccine - even ones that are so rare that they can just barely be established to exist at all. These side-effects are meaningless to the average person. There’s no sensible conclusion you can draw from them. The only thing that the consumer gets from it is fear - fear that their child might get encephalitis or some other obscenely rare side-effect from the vaccine. In fact, you see shitstirrers like NaturalNews argue all the time that you should just “look at the package insert”. See where I’m going with this? Wouldn’t we all be better off without the package insert on vaccines?
While they’re at it, they can market it as gluten-free, trans-fat-free, and all natural. I suspect they can’t use “Organic”, since there’s absolutely no damn carbon in salt at all, but I’m sure they’d try if they could.
All marketing is a lie, even if it’s 100% factual.
Also: asbestos-free.
Need to know?
What if the need to know can lead to confusion, or drowns out more serious information? If GMO products have no health effects, what exactly does warning people that the product might contain GMO products actually mean?
The hope is that mandatory GMO labeling will scare people away from GMO products. If you see two cans of peas, and one has a GMO warning on the label and the other doesn’t, which would you buy? If people stop buying GMO products, then farmers will be forced to grow non-GMO products. This will make the whole GMO industry unprofitable and thus relieve us from this scourge.
California passed via Initiative and Referenda process a bill that requires all places of business that contain or sell cancer causing chemicals to print a warning on their front entrance that states the building contains or sells cancer causing chemicals – even if the chemical is down to the part per billionth. The legislature refused to pass a similar bill because it would simply cause confusion. Oh, you’re thinking, those legislators must be in the pocket of Big Cancer! Good thing California has an I&R process!
The result is that practically every single commercial establishment has a warning on their door telling you that the premises you’re about to enter contains or sells cancer causing chemicals with a list of dozens of possible chemicals. After all, wood is treated with formaldehyde, and at one part per billion, that’s enough to trigger a warning. (Maybe pot stores are excepted because there’s absolutely no possibility that inhaling smoke from burning plants deep into your lungs could be harmful at all!).
The likelihood is that 99% of the food sold in this country will contain the warning (Mountain Dew will probably be the sole product that won’t have this warning.) People will ignore it, and it’ll just become another 27th Amendment – something that was pushed with great fanfare as a cure for all social evils, forced through via questionable means, and in the end, does absolutely nothing.
I don’t know what you’re talking about. US labeling requirements are, if anything, broader than those in the EU. It’s a royal PITA for importers. Moreover, the information the labels have in common is, for the most part, pretty much the same and presented in pretty much the same way.
That cuts both ways. For example, you can’t get Irn-Bru in the US (well, you can, but it’s a special export version).
There are a lot of things I might want to know about a food product. Was it grown in the US? Where precisely in the US? How about where it was packaged? What standards of care were given to the animals? How about the farm workers, and the workers in the factory where it was packaged? Are they unionized? How much are they paid? How big are the farms, and are they family-owned? Does the company donate to any charities I might approve or disapprove of? So many questions-- Do I have a legal right to answers to all of them, and must those answers be given on the label of the product?
Nailed it.
The same people who buy bottled water and cholesterol-free peanut butter and cruelty-free orange juice and gluten-free cinnamon will buy “non-GMO!” foods.
People are afraid of things they can’t spell, and companies are delighted by that fact and hasten to exploit it.
Regards,
Shodan
For some reason, Shadon’s comment scares me.
I look at the problem linguistically. “No one can seriously dispute the public’s right…” is true because, if you try to dispute a perceived right, you just draw attention to it. Rather, if you ignore the perceived right, then you’re more likely to win in the end.
A more technical view: “GMO” is far too broad. Labeling should be required when specific genetic modifications become sufficiently suspected of causing harm. Otherwise, there’s no gain other than to assume that anything not labeled “non-GMO” is, in fact, GMO. (And if we’re looking at the macro problem of monoculture and monopolies, well, labeling has never been shown to be effective at addressing such things, though some people may feel proud of themselves for not, e.g., shopping at Wal Mart.)
Finally, if I were to complain about this article, I’d say that “additional farm revenue…due to reduced costs” is nonsensical because costs have nothing to do with revenue. If Cecil wanted to say that there were additional farm profits due to reduced costs, that would make sense. Or additional farm revenue, likely increasing profits due to reduced costs, that would also make sense.
Labelling something as “containing GMOs” tells you nothing about what specific GM trait is in the product.
Each GM trait codes for a different protein or set of proteins. There are at least 30 different GM traits that produce the Bt toxin, for example, and each one is a different gene. If it turns out that the CRY9C Bt trait is a potential allergen, a “contains GMOs” labels will not tell you if the CRY9C protein is present in the food.
If we seriously want GMO labelling laws, they had better be for specific trait variants that have been demonstrated to cause issues, and not a vague blanket statement.
Yeah, I just noticed that too.
Is Unca Cece slipping?
I sometimes buy bottled water. Not because it’s better, but simply for the convenience package. But often I just refill a bottle and carry my own.
I understand your point, but one comment about gluten. Gluten is used as a food additive in some surprising places, as a food thickener, emulsifier, or just as a protein source.
This page shows a list including various food additives like MSG, modified food starch, vegetable protein, non-dairy creamer, caramel coloring, soy sauce, bouillon cubes, canned soups, chocolate, cold cuts, any basted or flavored meats or sauces, and medicines and vitamin supplements.
Here’s a shortened list from diabetes.org.
Here’s a gluten-free eating guide from NYU Langone Medical Center.
Ice cream, yogurt, cheese sauces, mayonnaise, soups and broths, and meat marinades.
Processed foods containing meat sauces and gravies are highly suspect.
So there is a reason for some products that you would think should have no reason to have gluten in them to, in fact, contain gluten. While I cannot conceive of a reason to add gluten to cinnamon, it is just on the side of conceivable that it is used in some spice mixes as a stabilizer or moisture clumping preventative.
Now that doesn’t mean that everything labeled “gluten-free” has a legitimate risk of containing gluten, and certainly there are plenty of people shopping gluten-free that don’t actually have celiac’s disease or food sensitivities to gluten. Still, just because that label is on something that normally isn’t made with wheat doesn’t mean it is ridiculous.