Why GMO labeling is a good idea

Great Debates
121

There’s been a lot of controversy recently over the so-called “AquAdvantage” salmon, a genetically engineered salmon produced by Massachusetts-based AquaBounty that grows nearly twice as fast as normal salmon. There’s a lot that can be said about this on both sides, but I only want to touch on it in the context of this thread which is about GMO labeling.

By way of background, this particular fish was created by combining the growth hormone from the Chinook salmon with genes from the ocean pout, a type of eelpout that contains antifreeze proteins. The combination promotes cold resistance via the antifreeze gene and higher concentrations of growth hormone in the blood, leading to rapid growth of the salmon.

The scientific evidence appears to show that this fish is safe for human consumption. There are also concerns that this GM fish could escape into the wild and interbreed with natural wild salmon stocks – which would be catastrophic if it turned out that it wasn’t as safe as we thought – but AquaBounty has tried to allay those concerns by stating that all such genetically engineered fish will be sterile females and unable to reproduce even if they did escape.

So that’s the background. Some might be inclined to side with the kind of statement made in a report by the Royal Society of Canada on GM foods that if there are theoretical or empirical grounds for the possibility of risk to health or the environment, then even if the best data is unable to establish that risk exists, this does not satisfy the “precautionary principle” and is not a reason for failing to exercise regulatory restraint. But that’s not my point here. The question is about labeling.

This certainly refutes the kind of glib claims that were made upthread that GMO labeling doesn’t even mean anything, because there is no difference whatsoever between GM foods and foods produced any other way. What we’re dealing with here is not just something novel, it’s a genuinely new animal, one which does not exist in nature – an entire genetically engineered animal.

We label wild salmon vs. farmed salmon, is it not reasonable to believe that people have a right to know that they are eating this particular rapid-growth engineered salmon? At any rate, it appears that the FDA now thinks so, too.

122

I guess it all comes down to how much you need to know before you chow down.

“The chicken you are about to enjoy was raised organically on a local farm. His name was ‘Colin’, and he was very happy. Here is a picture of him…”

123

Actually, the linked article makes clear it was not the FDA’s choice, but rather a requirement of legislation passed in Congress with the help of Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. From your linked article:

“This is a huge step in our fight against ‘Frankenfish,’ " Murkowski said in a statement Friday, using the derisive nickname critics use to refer to the genetically altered fish. “I firmly believe that mandatory labeling guidelines must be put in place as soon as possible so consumers know what it is they are purchasing.”

Or rather (if you have a cynical turn of mind), government-mandated labeling will help scare consumers away from this salmon in favor of salmon caught by Alaska fishermen, who already reward Murkowski with donations.

124

I don’t really care what my salmon’s name was or if he had a happy life. I do, however, care to know if it’s a fundamentally different species. A species, say, that has twice the normal growth hormones, is filled with antifreeze proteins from the eelpout, and develops twice as fast as a normal fish. Because, you know, even if I had unshakeable supreme faith in the infallibility of the science asserting its absolute safety and nutritional equivalence, I might decide I don’t like it as much. Or I might have a difference of opinion with the FDA or Health Canada who, in fact, are not infallible and are making judgment calls, many of them politically influenced. And so I’d kind of like to know what I’m buying. That’s why we have “labels”.

Tsk, tsk … you wouldn’t want to be accused of using the “shill gambit”, would you? :wink:

I don’t like politicking like that, either, and that kind of politicking goes for both sides, sadly. And “frankenfish” is probably over the top. But, as you are wont to say when you argue against the shill gambit, it doesn’t mean that the shills are necessarily wrong. If this gives us more informative labeling in a situation where it seems justifiable, then I’m all for it. If people are averse to a GM creation like this, then the solution is to convince them that they shouldn’t be, not to hide the information!

125

That’s fine for you to be picky about what varieties of food you buy, but unless there are health concerns, the FDA doesn’t force labeling. The answer to that, for people who want to avoid certain types of food because of their (potentially valid) political concerns, is for the non-AquAdvantage salmon fisherman to choose to label their product.

126

Wouldn’t a salmon that grows twice as fast be better for eating because it would have less mercury, which collects in large fish due to how long they have to swim around for us to want to eat them?

127

C’mon. Lisa Murkowski is a politician obviously supporting a special interest group. She has nothing but FUD to offer.

The shill gambit on the other hand, has been extensively used against pro-GMO scientists in an attempt to label them as being in thrall to industry (when there is abundant research that is non-industry funded). It’s a tactic to get us to ignore well-conducted, relevant research. It also applies to attempts like yours to smear an entire website (the Genetic Literacy Project) and all of the professional authors of articles and research it presents, because you want us to think the investigative journalist running the GLP is a shill.

128

I am all for it too, as long as there is a significant nutritional difference.

A GMO label on a product implies that there* is* a significant nutritional difference between the product and it’s non-GMO counterpart.

Is there?

Because if not, then requiring labeling is just spamming food labels with misleading information for political purposes, and for the financial gain of the Whole Foods-Big Organic lobby.

129

I would guess only if it requires less food per unit growth, or eats food with less mercury.

130

That’s a very simplistic and false assumption. The whole problem with foods and biological organisms is that there’s a staggering level of complexity that has traditionally been dealt with through centuries of experience and slowly evolving experiments with simple selective breeding that is completely lacking in super fast-paced modern advancements, especially with respect to GMOs. What if the particular genetic makeup of this fast-growing fish causes it to absorb a disproportionate quantity of harmful substances?

Just as a random example of the misleading falsehood of such a simplistic assumption that ignores all other variables, there have been and continue to be assertions that farmed salmon – like these strictly corralled genetically modified salmon – may contain significantly higher levels of PCBs than wild salmon.

Labeling in general isn’t only about nutrition – it’s about a complete list of relevant contents that may affect any variety of health concerns, some of which may be unpredictable reactions in small proportions of large populations or unanticipated long-term effects. There’s obviously a balance between those considerations and listing every possible product attribute, but the fact that the salmon you just bought is a whole new artificial freaking species never before seen in the waters of the earth is surely a fact worthy of note, except in the opinion of the massive industry seeking to flog them as natural, I suppose.

131

Can you name some health concerns that people could have? Scientifically determined through clinical testing? That’s what this thread is supposed to be about, right? Is there a risk of cancer? GM allergies? Something?

Do you not see that you are doing almost the exact same thing that anti-vaxers do and using very similar arguments to them, wolfpup? I’m asking seriously here. Your argument here reminds me almost exactly like one I’ve seen concerning mercury (thiomersal) in vaccines from a debate years ago.

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It not just that the tactics are similar - a number of prominent names and organizations in the anti-GMO movement are also involved in spreading antivax nonsense.

*"…anti-vaccine conspiracy theorising is seen right across the anti-GMO movement. For example, the most prominent GMO labelling campaign group, so-called ‘US Right to Know’ (which has harassed numerous public-sector biotechnology scientists with malicious FoIA requests), is funded to the tune of $234,000 by the Organic Consumers Association. OCA carries whole sections on its website opposing vaccinations. Here’s what it says in its Health Issues / Swine & Bird Flu section:

“It is important to know how to protect your children and yourself with homeopathic and natural alternatives to vaccines to build your natural immunity to the swine flu.”…

Tellingly, the Organic Consumers Association is also a member of the ‘Health Liberty coalition‘, which includes the National Vaccine Information Center (an anti-vaccination network), Consumers for Dental Choice (campaigning against mercury in dental fillings), Mercola.com, the Institute for Responsible Technology (another anti-GMO group led by Jeffrey Smith, a former dance instructor and yogic flyer) and the Flouride Action Network (opposing water fluoridation)…

Many of the leading lights in the anti-GMO scene are heavily invested in alternative health theories. The UK based activist Dr Mae Wan Ho, for example, combines her struggle against biotechnology with consistent promotion of the long-debunked autism-MMR theory advanced by Andrew Wakefield…A long article by Ho published in February claimes that Wakefield’s findings on MMR vaccine and autism have been “amply replicated worldwide” and other common anti-vaxxer talking points.

I could go on – Stephanie Seneff, a ‘Senior Research Scientist at MIT’ (a claim that has been challenged) has become celebrated in anti-GMO circles for promoting theories about glyphosate causing everything from cancer to Alzheimers…Seneff also believes vaccines cause all sorts of health problems. She writes:

“The aluminum in the Hepatitis B vaccine is a likely source of the association found between this vaccine and autism… The elderly are greatly encouraged to renew their flu shots every single year, and I think this is another major factor that is steadily increasing their risk to Alzheimer’s disease. About half of the flu vaccines administered contain mercury as a preservative, and mercury is probably the most toxic heavy metal known.”

The Global GMO-Free Coalition, which prominently features Vandana Shiva and OCA director Ronnie Cummins on its steering committee, also includes Sayer Ji, from GreenMedInfo, a website opposing virtually every aspect of modern healthcare and seeking to replace it with various herbal and ‘naturopathic’ alternatives. One recent article featured on the website claims that the AIDS pandemic was caused by the administration of oral polio vaccine, neatly combining two killer conspiracy theories into one."*

Yes, there are other prominent anti-GMO groups that don’t subscribe to antivax theories. Why aren’t they calling out other anti-GMOers that do? And shouldn’t having such cranks in the movement make them wonder about the solidity of their own beliefs?

133

Right. If my beef comes from ranches that were created by cutting down huge swaths of old-growth forests just so they could get me some cheap hamburger, that’s a valid environmental concern as well. But it’s not something the FDA should get involved in.

Now, I do suppose exactly what qualifies as “salmon” may fall under some sort of labelling regulation. But that has nothing to do with GMO directly–the guidelines should be the same if I used GMO techniques or if I had some sort of “accelerated evolution” machine.

And given that langoustino is able to be marketed as lobster, I think you have an uphill battle to say this shouldn’t be salmon.

134

Don’t you tire of these ongoing innuendos trying to equate to anti-vaxers the legitimate concerns by the credible scientific organizations I already cited in the other thread, like the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of Canada? Does that not suggest that you really have nothing further of substance to say?

It’s a non-issue for the FDA because it’s exactly the same cow.

Emphasis mine. I agree with the part I bolded. Because both GM and some imaginary “accelerated evolution machine” (which in this example is arguably the same thing) are capable of producing new species or subspecies variants that we don’t know enough about. I love mushrooms but if someone gave me a bunch of wild mushrooms they had just picked at random in the woods I don’t think I’d eat them, even though they are clearly some species of mushroom.

It’s my view that a fish that grows twice as fast as a natural one because it has way more growth hormones in its blood as well as antifreeze proteins from a different species is sufficiently distinct that it warrants specific labeling, as much as its promoters may wish to hide those facts. They may argue that extensive scientific testing has shown it to be safe, to which my response is, right, and that’s why you’re allowed to sell it. Now slap a proper label on it and go.

As far as I can tell the facts appear to defeat your argument:
In March 2006, Long John Silver’s garnered controversy by offering a product they called “Buttered Lobster Bites,” with advertising that they include “langostino lobster”. The Federal Trade Commission ultimately launched an investigation into deceptive advertising practices by the chain, because Food and Drug Administration regulations require that anyone marketing langostino as lobster must place the qualifier “langostino” adjacent to the word “lobster,” and Long John Silver’s not only failed to do this, but ran a television commercial making use of an American lobster in a manner that the Commission concluded was contributing to the misperception that the product was American lobster. Upon being contacted by the Commission, Long John Silver promptly terminated the television commercial campaigns, revised its website, and committed both to prominently placing the word “langostino” adjacent to the term “lobster” in all future advertising, and to revising its existing in-store materials accordingly within eight weeks …

135

Doesn’t it bother you that leading figures in the anti-GMO movement are also antivax, and don’t get called out by other anti-GMOers?
Aren’t you tired of flogging statements by just two organizations that do not support your innuendos?

These statement reflect ignorance about basic biology. The GM salmon is no more a “new species” than cultivated corn varieties are a different species from wild Zea mays (teosinte).

Teosinte, which looks wildly different from modern corn, differs from it by about five genes. The GM salmon has one gene from a different salmon species and a promoter DNA segment from another fish, so its DNA has been “tampered” with far less than modern field or sweet corn (which are still considered Zea mays.)*

*You can open a vegetable seed catalog and read about all the various genes that have been manipulated to create various types of sweet corn.
**some plant geneticists divide modern varieties of corn into subspecies, but they’re all still Zea mays, not separate “artificial freaking species”.

136

Where, exactly, are you drawing the line between modification to a species, a species and category?

There are already multiple species of salmon, so even if we accept this as a new species, it’s still salmon. Otherwise hybrid striped sea bass are in trouble too.

137

These statements reflect ignorance of (or willfully ignoring) the scientific assessment of the relative risks of fundamentally different types of genetic modification.*

Specifically, the fact that simple selection and interbreeding are not the same as genetically engineered transfer of DNA, particularly from distantly related species.

  • Legend for the linked chart: Relative likelihood of unintended genetic effects associated with various methods of plant genetic modification.
    Source: National Academy of Sciences, Safety of Genetically Engineered Foods: Approaches to Assessing Unintended Health Effects (2004)

The context here is labeling. As such, there is no real downside in resolving any such ambiguities – if indeed this example could possibly be called ambiguous – by erring on the side of conservative prudence and maximum information available to the public. As in your failed langostino example, for instance, where both the FTC and FDA ruled that the distinction from lobster must be on labels and advertising.

138

I sincerely do not understand what is the problem, one of the issues I pointed before was that risks are looked at already and there was testing done to deal with that risk, incidentally the FDA did approve of the Salmon but eventually did stop it not because of the science, but because of politics, congress passed a law that will require labeling guidelines and the fish is on hold until then.

As pointed before, yes, there was already prudence applied; the issue here is about labeling. And as I pointed before: I agree on it with a very important caveat: The labels should also include the levels of safety and testing already made, and to make it clear too about the levels of alteration that took place in the food in the past, the point should be in the end to demonstrate how silly the ridiculous levels that the risks of the technology have been pumped up by the ones that oppose the use of GMOs

139

Dear goalpost-mover: This does not change the reality that single gene transfer does not equate to making “a whole new artificial freaking species”.

That is nonsense, signifying a lack of knowledge of basic science. Not surprising, given how you define science in general.

140

Fifteen years here has not disabused you of that notion? :wink:

Considering how poorly regulated farmers’ markets are, you could grow the most egregious frankenfood in hydroponic vats of “chemicals” and call it organic with nobody being any the wiser. You’d have to make up some bullshit story about your special farm hidden away in a secret valley to explain why yours looks so much better than everybody else’s. Maybe smear some dirt or manure on it for effect.