Do you know that in our laboratories we have produced a cheese sandwich that can withstand an impact of 4,000 lbs per square inch? Safer food!
Exactly! No longer will food be damaged, crushed or squashed by the ignorance and stupidity of the driver! Whole picnics will be built to survive the most enormous forces! Snacks will be stronger than ever! An ordinary pot of salad cream, treated in our laboratories, has been subjected to the force of a 9,000 lb steam hammer every day for the last 6 years. And has it broken?
Er…
Yes, of course it has! But there are other things that haven’t!.. the safety straps for sardines for instance.
You may want to re-read the quote you pulled from me Azael.
“It is reasonable to assume that if genetically engineered food has a nutritional defect…”
I was not stating that all of them do, or even that any of them do.
But if they do, even if by accident, then you actually create a situation where the product is more marketable in the sense that it helps coerce brain-damage and makes it easier to market, or makes addiction in general easier to facilitate and spread accross the population. You’re going to suggest that individuals sitting on the other side of this will somehow develop a sudden sense of ethical acuity as the recipients of such a windfall? They already have the logical virus inserted into them to exploit these by the time they arrive to such position, so I don’t see how this changes anything.
Passing a law to label genetically engineered foods is fine, doesn’t bother me a bit.
What I do know about this though, is that it opens up a huge loophole for exploitation to create a damned if you do damned if you don’t situation.
If GM food is cheaper, and ‘accidentally’ less nutritious, then people will in general have less nutrition as a result of simply living on the food they can afford.
One group has an option, another group doesn’t.
The option being the brain damage incurred from hormonal imbalnce from the specified malnutrition.
This simply seeks to counter-intelligently re-enforce the percieved belief of superiority for those who are involved in such an enterprise as to create this stuff, by making the surrounding population dumber because they didn’t already have bundles of money in their pockets. (Again, this wouldn’t be an issue of painless suicide machines were existent; as the biological form would deselect itself before the pressure of abusing them as a resource became this high).
Being will begin to sub-consciously detect that this genetically engineered food is causing a selective problem, and will opt for the non GM food. THIS is where the loophole exists!!
The nest of both worlds is to save the money from the GM food, damage the brains of people consuming it to protect yourself AND make sure that they buy it by covering up it’s GM source and not needing to label it as such.
A perfect means to go about this would be to look like a villian corperation spending billions of dollars campaigning to make GM labelling unlawful! People will react, through their perceieved consent to make it necessarily lawful as a ‘consumer advocacy’ measure. Once the labels are forced into law, people have consented to the creation of this loophole without demanding the transparency which is actually being compromised. At this stage they have effectively chosen to remain slaves to a corperate funnel of informed consent violation.
The corperation that spent the billions to make themselves look bad, gains market security through having people focus on the ‘evil’ of it in an area where that ‘evil’ is not being exersized.
That’s how commodity is horded; misdirection.
As a resident of Oregon, I studied measure 27 pretty closely. While I voted for it, it was certainly more stringent than I would have liked. It required extensive documentation that I think would have filled the packaging on some foods.
It was obviously a thinly veiled attempt to kill the marketability of GM food. Not that I’m opposed to that but it just wasn’t an honest way of doing it. A simply “Contains GMO” would have worked for me. It’s opponents used the measure’s all inclusiveness to help defeat it.
As far as I’m concerned labeling GMO is a matter of truth in advertising. I would compare to requiring the listing of ingredients on food, not the nutritional requirements. That red food coloring might not be bad for me or change the nutritional content, but I still want to know if artificial colors or flavors have been added. The same goes with my food.
As far as I’m concerned genetically engineered tomatoes are artificial tomatoes. Just because I can’t taste the difference doesn’t mean I don’t want to know. Since it can be hard for a consumer to get this information, I don’t think it is unreasonable for people providing the product to be honest about what they’re selling.
Frankly I think a lot of people are missing out on a great marketing scheme. Using non-GMO could be the next “fat-free”.
How is it an artifical tomato? If it swims like a tomato, waddles like a tomato, and quacks like a tomato then it is a tomato. Your comment is just as valid as someone saying “If it isn’t made by a Japanese person then it just isn’t real sushi. I might not be able to taste the difference but I want to know.”
Did they use real cotton to make your underwear? Did you make sure that the cotton was GM free? Should they label cotton products so you can avoid GM cotton?
Odds are good that many of you have already had GM food and didn’t notice. Take a lot at foods with soy oil or beans on the ingredient list. Some of that soy was probably roundup ready.
It’s real easy to come up with a ridiculous example, but it also easy to come up with counter examples.
“If I can’t tell the difference between a cubic zirconia and a diamond why should I care which one I buy?”
“If it shines like gold and it doesn’t rust then it might as well be gold”, etc…
It’s artificial because it was made by artificial means. People care about this, and want to know. I think that a better written measure that wasn’t heavily outspent by Monsanto would have passed easily.
All the more reason that labeling should be required. We should know what we’re eating. Maybe you don’t care but others do.
If people care whether or not they are eating genetically engineered food, and they don’t know that’s what they are buying, then those who don’t label it are engaging in a deceptive business practice. Many people could care less about the differences between a cubic zirconia and a diamond (myself included), but if you walk into a Zales you expect to buy a diamond.Most people don’t expect to have fish genes in their strawberries, and they assume that’s not what they are buying.
If there’s nothing different about GMO, and nobody really cares what they eat, then why is Monsanto so afraid of labeling?
Monsanto is in a catch-22: either people do care and they’re engaging in a deceptive business practice, or they don’t in which case their opposition seems unfounded.
I think a more valid analogy is “natural” diamonds and “synthetic” diamonds. If it is nearly pure carbon, in the correct crystal structure, it is a diamond, regardless of whether it was mined or made. Qualitatively, they are identical (at least, to any reasonable level), so why should a distinction be made?
Pearls are different. Natural pearls and cultured pearls do not look the same. They are qualitatively different, thus labeling them would help prevent spurious merchants from fooling their clients.
Those of us who consider GM foods the same qualitatively as non-GM foods feel that labels are unnecessarily biased against GM products. Monsanto is worried because there is a sizable segment of the population that is “irrationally” afraid of GM foods merely because the words ‘genetically modified’ sound ominous.
It doesn’t matter why the distinction is made, simply that people do make it.
Israel has strict regulations that require labeling of non-kosher foods. I can’t tell the difference between kosher and non-kosher and I don’t care, but when a majority (or a significant minority) of people care, then it’s important. They should be informed on what they’re getting.
What’s so ominous or biased about genetically modified? It sounds like a value neutral statement to me. Nobody’s talking about labeling it “Frankenfood”. It’s simply a truthful representation of the product.
If people aren’t educated enough to know the risks of GMO (or lack thereof) then they should be given the choice to opt out of taking potential risks. Who knows, maybe it’s not a risk to them, maybe they just consider it “unnatural” and don’t want to eat it regardless of the evidence. But they do care and they don’t always know what they’re buying.
If GMO has a bad image, that’s Monsanto’s problem. We have a right to know.
It’s not a value neutral statement if uninformed people are made uneasy by it. You may consider it value neutral, but many others won’t.
If being non-GMO was such a wonderful thing, a thing that so many people care about, where are the “Contains no Genetically Modified Products” labels? There is nobody stopping producers from making those claims…
I suppose a company could comply by putting a notice on every single food product they sell, saying, May contain GM foods. That would be easy. Of course, it wouldn’t do anybody any good. But, then, GM labeling doesn’t do any good for anyone, regardless.
As I said, if they are uninformed then should be able to opt out and consume GMO foods when they have become informed and assured themselves that there is no risk.
Once again, it may not pose any risks but non-GMO could still be a consumer preference. You might consider it irrational, but you shouldn’t make that decision for them.
Yes exactly. outside of Organically Grown labels I’m not certain that GMO-free really means GMO free.
If you go to the right stores it’s easy to find foods that contain GMO-free labels. However these foods are often also Organic which means that the price differential is higher than it needs to be.
It’s easy to understand why many manufacturers don’t provide the labels GMO-free labels, many of their foods have GMO ingredients. They feel that they have more of a profit to make by fooling the consumer than telling the truth.
Why should the burden be on the people who are providing the traditional, normal foods that most people think that they are buying? The burden of labeling should fall on those who are providing the unexpected and new ingredients.
I think the rational, verifiable argument has been made already: there is nothing substantially different about genetically modified foods, therefore nothing to be gained by labelling them.
I’m aware of that argument, I’m saying that it is a consumer preference regardless of the risks.
Substantial nutritional deviation is not the only standard by which to judge. By saying there is nothing to be gained, you are ignoring other people’s concerns. When manufacturers sell people unlabeled GMO foods they are essentially making the decision for the consumer.
The very fact that people wouldn’t buy similarly priced GMO demonstrates why it should by labeled.
Plenty of other countries have already banned or required the labeling of GMO products. It’s clear that many people care whether or not their food is GMO.
The truth is the truth. Can you think of a “value neutral” way of describing the origin of these foods?
People will have their apprehensions and opinions no matter what. I can’t think of a clearer way to describe them.
I don’t really know what a glyceride is or if it has any potential health risks, but if I don’t want it in my food, at least I can easily look to see if it’s there before I buy it. The same goes with GMO. People care but they don’t know when their buying it.