Tiny Vermont Brings Food Industry To Its Knees On GMO Labels (ap.org) 740
schwit1 writes: General Mills' announcement on Friday that it will start labeling products that contain genetically modified ingredients to comply with a Vermont law shows food companies might be throwing in the towel, even as they hold out hope Congress will find a national solution. Tiny Vermont is the first state to require such labeling, effective July 1. Its fellow New England states of Maine and Connecticut have passed laws that require such labeling if other nearby states put one into effect. The U.S. Senate voted 48-49 Wednesday against a bill that would have blocked such state laws. The food industry is holding out hope that Congress will prevent states from requiring such labeling. Some companies say they plan to follow Vermont's law, while others are considering pulling their products from the small state.
Why conceal it? (Score:4, Insightful)
If they're happy with it, if it has advantages they can sell the consumers, then they should sell it to consumers on its advantages.
Why would you try to conceal GMO products from the consumer? It's confirmation that the makers of GMO products have something to hide!
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:5, Funny)
I vote that any foods that are radioactive, even if just a little bit, be required to be labeled as radioactive and have a measure of how much radioactivity per serving. This seems to me more important than labeling GMO foods, but then maybe you don't mind eating radioactive food.
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:5, Interesting)
It maybe news to you, but food is sold on the assumption that it is non-radioactive.
Uh, no. Food is sold on the assumption that it is always radioactive. It isn't labeled as radioactive because every food item would have that label.
And I really am in favor of labeling all food with the measure of radioactivity per serving. It would be educational for paranoid idiots whose stupidity is harming my health.
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:5, Insightful)
You might be surprised to learn that "socialism" is not a dirty word in most of the first world. There are many political parties across the globe that use terms like "social" and "liberal" in their names with no shame... including Germany, the very nation depicted in your picture. I think it's entirely fair to say that American media bears at least some responsibility for that particular stigma's continued existence at home.
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Indeed, just like German media has been left wing since days of world war two in 1945, which their media somehow sold as a perception of defeat.
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According to the NSDAP it was a bit before that: the "stab-in-the-back" legend is pretty infamous and basically claimed the same thing: the first world war was actually going pretty well for Germany, apart from minor setbacks, and if only the left hadn't risen up in revolt against the emperor and the papers hadn't claimed defeat, they still could have managed to salvage the whole thing.
This legend works best on people who have no idea about the historical situation at the time.
It's also quite funny how army
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, the left wing media did us all a massive disservice demonizing a war that amounted to sending non-voluntary soldiers to a war meant to suppress a government that our government knew would most definitely win a democratic election (the reason that both the French and then US wouldn't allow elections in the country). In fact, we have a good sized record of disrupting legitimately elected governments because they we inconvenient for us. "Socialist" governments are most definitely not the only form of governance that has served to oppress people.
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Move to Venezuela for a year before you tell me how good socialism is.
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a little problem with your narrative. For decades now the US pharma companies almost exclusively concentrate on drugs that treat symptoms rather than underlying diseases. Every drug also has a laundry list of side effects for which you take other drugs to manage those. It is madness. On top of it, they are allowed to advertise their products. I have zero confidence in this industry actually producing anything beneficial other than profits.
The food industry is even worse. When I live in a totalitarian communist country a chocolate had cocoa butter, milk and sugar. Now that Nestle took over the factory, it has palm oil, high fructose corn syrup, lactose, milk powder and dozens of color and taste enhancers. How is this better?
Socialism might be dirty word, but it is the norm across the Western Europe and now with the fall of Soviet Union also across the Eastern part. Before there was a dictatorship of proletariat, authoritarian system that had nothing to do with socialism except for name.
And when it comes to Bernie Sanders, he could not run in any country in EU. You know why? He is a right wing nut. Yes, that is right. If his policies were proposed in any EU country, including UK, the people there would revolt against them. Because 10 days of paid vacation is simply inhuman. Only 12 weeks of maternity is barbarity. Nobody would stand for such right wing craziness. Even the Tories in UK are left of Sanders on social issues.
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:5, Insightful)
You clearly don't work in medicine, healthcare, the pharma industry, or even understand how drugs work. I also suspect that you've had very basic instruction in biology. I get tired of hearing "pharma companies only make drugs that address symptoms so they can keep selling you drugs." I think you are conflating "disease treatment" and "cure". Most drugs are disease treatments, since permanent cures are not possible (at this time) for the vast majority of diseases. But, e.g., there were recent market approvals of 3 actual cures for hepatitis C.
Drugs are developed to have a mechanism of action that directly addresses underlying disease. When it costs in excess of $1 billion and 10 years to bring a drug to market, you don't waste time on something that you have no idea how it works. Never mind that FDA and every other health regulatory agency in the world frowns upon pharma companies saying "we have no idea how it works, but it does, so just approve it." You make sure you are targeting the molecular and cellular causes of the disease. The drugs drastically reduce the severity of the disease. This manifests in a reduction in symptoms. The average person sees it as "the drugs only treat symptoms, I still have the disease", but what is actually happening is the drug is treating the disease and reducing its severity and a reduction or disappearance of symptoms is really just a side effect of treating the disease.
TL;DR: "Treatment" and "cure" are not the same, and "cure" is often not possible at this time. So should pharma companies not bother?
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:4, Funny)
He meant Herbert Humphrey.
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice illustration how word poisoning works. For you, "socialist" is a nasty word. For me, here in Europe, we have had a socialist party in our government for the better parts of the latter 20 century, and we have reached a prosperity level that most of the world, and I dare say including the US, envy us for. So someone calling himself "socialist" isn't that big a deal here.
I needn't hit books to see that. I need to open my window.
He would, by the way, be the absolute polar opposite of a "liberal" for the average European. Also due to our political history, where the liberals are usually found at the right edge of the political spectrum.
A "conservative" here is more a centrist than a right wing nutjob. If you're looking for poisoned words in the political arena here, I guess you have to reach for "nationalist". That well has been utterly poisoned for good, I think. But I guess that's what starting the bloodiest war in the history of mankind would do.
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> and we have reached a prosperity level that most of the world, and I dare say including the US, envy us for.
Only because of liberal media propaganda...
Most Americans that actually get to see the European lifestyle don't consider it prosperous at all. Socialism in general and in it's European version distorts the value of labor and personal effort even in the working class.
Americans are free to make irresponsible choices that aren't available to Europeans.
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Hmmmm... Napoleon was only the, some say inevitable, aftermath of the rein of terror after the French Revolution. Which was in turn the reaction to the unfettered absolutism. Which in turn was what Louis XIV installed after the Fronde to eliminate the threat of an aristocracy revolt. Which was ... you get the idea.
There is rarely, if ever, a historic event that stands by itself, without influence or push from the past. True, nationalism was first "introduced" as a concept to the people during Napoleonic tim
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:4, Informative)
*some* left wing social economic policies. And true, they never would have gotten anywhere otherwise. However, after the Night of the Long Knives any lingering sympathies for left wing social economic policies was effectively purged from the party in a long and bloody night of murder.
The fact they used the name "socialist" because of the positive connotations at the time, is hardly unsurprising. What surprises me every time is that so many people who should have read Null-A, fail to appreciate the difference between the map and the territory, or the word and the thing itself, or the flag and the reality. Not aiming at GP btw, it's just a general observation that as soon as someone applies a label, everyone applies a world of meaning to it. But labels like "centrum", "democrat", "nationalist", "socialist" and "communist" have all been used by political parties that in reality implemented none of the policies associated with the label.
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Nope. Trump's wall is supposed to be taller and taller depending on how much Mexican government officials past and present protest or ridicules it.
You can likely look towards the great wall of China and the trump tower for insight.
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:5, Interesting)
just like how the Mongols bypassed the great wall of China
Minor historical quibble: It was the Manchurians, not the Mongols, that breached the wall by "bribing the guards", and they didn't just bribe a few sentries. They used a combination of bribes and threats to cause entire Han armies to defect to their side. In 1644, Manchuria had about 2% of the population of Ming Dynasty China, yet they were able to conquer all of China, and much more surrounding territory, including Tibet, Xinjiang, and much of southern Siberia. China the only empire that expanded, not by conquering, but by being conquered and then demographically swamping and absorbing their conquerors.
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:4, Insightful)
The lefi wing nutjobs are on campus, the right wing nutjobs are in Congress, governors chairs and state legislatures.
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:5, Insightful)
They aren't concealing anything. Food manufacturers already make it a point to label it non-GMO if it isn't, because they know that people who follow the food religion will prefer it, even if it means paying more. The same applies to kosher and halal labels.
Anyways, requiring a GMO label is intended for nothing else than to stigmatize. It is every bit as asinine as the California proposal a few years back to require cell phones have a radiation output level, which is retarded because cell phones emit all of zero sieverts, but some dumb fucks think it's a wonderful idea to have to put manufacturers in the position of making phones that emit less EM energy, and for no good reason whatsoever.
This is the same plan as those wanting GMO labeling, not to mention that fighting GMO food is dumb and even counterproductive from an environmental perspective.
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Why do you think it stigmatizes anything?
Everyone putting food on the shelf in that state will be required to do this as far as I understand, so _everyone_ is in the same boat.
This gives consumers the choice. If they want to buy more expensive non GMO options they will be able to make that decision.
The fear the companies have is that there will be non GMO products available at the same price they have been selling theirs at, and everyone will buy that instead.
If everyone is using the same base GMO ingredien
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Why do you think it stigmatizes anything?
Seriously? /facepalm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:5, Informative)
Why do you think it stigmatizes anything?
I can't imagine why. [geneticlit...roject.org] Where have you been for the past two decades? Have you really missed the controversy, fearmongering, lies, and generally unscientific bollocks that lead up to this? This push for labeling is not coming from plant & agricultural scientists, and for good reason. It is coming from people who already stigmatize GE crops and wish to do so further.
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Your argument boils down to: People don't think/believe/do what you want, therefore they should be denied their right to know.
I think it is you who is sick.
Too bad you can't handle freedom.
Re: Why conceal it? (Score:3, Informative)
They don't have that freedom because if they did they would say all their products cure cancer and give you a huge boner.
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Manufacturers are already required to display all sorts of things they would rather not, including caloric content, nutritional value if any, and actual ingredients used to assemble the product, some of which may resemble food. This is a step in the right direction and manufacturers who don't want the public to know what they're consuming can stand next to tobacco manufacturers who didn't want the public to know that tobacco products were lethal and lied to the public when questioned. In fact, the food manufacturers can probably thank the tobacco industry for this label now.
Captcha: Impostor. I'm not the real AC, I'm an impostor.
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Manufacturers are already required to display all sorts of things they would rather not, including caloric content, nutritional value if any, and actual ingredients used to assemble the product
And as soon as you can show that GMO food affects consumer health, like the caloric content does, then we should have a warning for GMO as well.
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Manufacturers are already required to display all sorts of things they would rather not, including caloric content, nutritional value if any, and actual ingredients used to assemble the product, some of which may resemble food.
Because those things are scientifically proven to be relevant to the health of the human being consuming it. Meanwhile, every single scientific agency and organization has concluded that there is no proven impact to human health from consuming GMOs [geneticlit...roject.org].
This is the left's Climate Change conspiracy, where the weight of scientific consensus isn't worth as much as your political loyalties.
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you high?
Do you REALLY need an explanation why it might not be in the consumer's interest, if not outright dangerous, if the manufacturer gets to state what he wants to say about the product and what he does not?
If so, just think back a few years and what we learned since about cheap Chinese child toys.
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:4, Insightful)
...so it's okay if manufacturers lie just a little bit?
I understand that you're taking this position from the perspective that GMOs are harmless. It's not like labeling foods that contain or may contain traces of peanuts, where a small population are demonstrably, deathly allergic to peanuts. Let me say that I agree that GMOs (at least so far) do not pose any health threats.
However, there are reasons beyond health and safety that people might choose one product over another... even irrational reasons. For a "free market" to work, consumers need to be informed. Therefore manufacturers lying consumers *in any capacity* then that is, in my opinion, an injustice to the general population: how are the people who do not want GMOs in their foods supposed to have their voices heard in the "free market" if they can't tell what foods contain GMOs?
Enough people care if their foods contain GMOs that they got laws passed to require labeling. In a properly democratic society, that means food should require labeling regardless of if it makes sense or not. And since there are no higher or existing laws that overrule or prevent this requirement, guess what? I think manufacturers should label their products.
=Smidge=
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:5, Insightful)
...so it's okay if manufacturers lie just a little bit?
No.
how are the people who do not want GMOs in their foods supposed to have their voices heard in the "free market" if they can't tell what foods contain GMOs?
That's quite obvious. Any producer is free to include a label that says "GMO free", and sell his products for a premium.
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite the opposite.
A free market according to its model requires one thing that does not exist in our reality: A consumer with total information available to him. And while this is impossible, we can still try our best to get to it as close as we possibly can. Because that's what the market model demands.
Only an informed consumer who knows every aspect of the product could possibly choose the "best" product. Only then could he even come close to having the function that the free market requires from him: Determine the product that fits his needs best, choose this product, reward the producer making it and punishing those who fail to do so.
This would be what a FREE MARKET requires and demands! Without this, there is no free market. Unfortunately, whenever someone start blaring "free market", the very last thing he has in mind is such a model market. What he has in mind is a dumb customer who will buy whatever shit you feed him. Either you then get to hear that a customer "could try to get that information on his own if he really wants to" or even the completely bogus shit that there is no need to inform that customer or that he has no right to any kind of information altogether.
That is bullshit. Because then he CANNOT perform his function in the free market system. The consumer does not only have the right to be informed, he MUST be informed, whether he likes it or not, to perform his elementary function in the system! And that's independent of any health hazards or whatever else you could think of. The question the free market asks is not whether it is good for someone, the question is whether he wants it.
So no, free market and labeling legislation are not contradicting. They're pretty much a requirement.
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Information Asymetry. [wikipedia.org]
Why you (and your 401K) care. [welkerswikinomics.com]
In short, voting with your dollars for a product whose contents you're forbidden to know is like voting in an election for a candidate behind door number three or taking what's behind the curtain. [wikipedia.org] Kinda like now. But I digress.
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Quite the opposite.
A free market according to its model requires one thing that does not exist in our reality: A consumer with total information available to him. And while this is impossible, we can still try our best to get to it as close as we possibly can. Because that's what the market model demands.
That is pretty much the ideal. Give the person all the information and let them make choices based on it.
Unfortunately it gets back to the great-great-great-however-many-greats-granparent post: Several large, well-funded activist groups have been pushing for labeling of the products plus some disinformation campaigns. Not in an attempt to educate people about the truth of GMO food, but in an attempt to get GMO products killed.
I'm all for complete labeling and consumer education, but it doesn't play nicely with disinformation and misinformation campaigns.
Too many people are uninformed or misinformed. This is not just "Roundup Ready" plants. Many in the "natural" movement have caused serious regressions, such as using far more harmful "natural" pesticides when we have alternatives that are tightly focused and less harmful overall. Yet they forget all of the modern fruits and veggies we eat today are the product of several millenna of cross-breeding, selective-breeding, and cultivation.
Many of those cultivation are dangerous for many reasons. It isn't just superficial things like carrots that are an unnatural orange rather than their natural deep purple. The world loves modern bananas without seeds but can no longer naturally reproduce. A few decades ago thanks to eliminating natural variance, a disease destroyed the world's banana population and a new strain needed to be cultivated. We crave seedless oranges that are so large they are dangerous to the trees and have so few seeds they are also requiring human intervention to reproduce, have less juice and less flavor and are prone to several diseases ... but they are popular because they have easy-to-remove peels and no seeds. Most of the world's avocados are all splices from a single tree, the genetic diversity has vanished in under a century, but it seems growers around the world turn down genetic diversity in favor of the single Hass tree's fruit. Wheat and corn once had long deep roots and low yield; today the plants have barely enough root structure to stand but the wheat plants produce far more wheat kernels, and ears of corn went from a single 25mm cob per plant to multiple cobs more than ten times the size, and now both of them are getting even less genetic diversity with Roundup Ready cultivations being the popular single survivor. Giant, bright-red tomatoes are more colorful and juicy than ever, and in the last 50 years cultivation has been for mass and color rather than flavor, and we are quickly losing genetic diversity.
Somehow GMO activists tend to not mind the changes giving bigger fruit or popular features over the past many thousand years. It is only the ones done in a chemical lab most activists seem concerned about.
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, we can't - its a balance. Giving consumers the ability to choose what they eat outweighs the 'freedom' the manufacturer has to display what they want.
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I think the problem here is that there is no credible scientific evidence showing gm foods are dangerous or different from organics or other foods. It is akin to forcing manufactures to put smiley or sad faces on the package if morons on the street think the people or animals making the food are happy or not.
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We've been eating GMO food for decades. Can you find one medical or lab report that implicates GMO food in a medical diagnosis or lab result?
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree actually that the anti-GMO arguments are pretty stupid. But people have the right to eat what they want to eat, be it non-GMO, organic, fair trade, kosher, vegan, ovo/lacto vegetarian, gluten free, paleo, soylent, or whatever the next diet fad that comes down the pipeline will be. And it's a dick move to try to talk, trick, or coerce people into eating something they don't want to eat. Yeah, some of proselytism by people about their diets can be obnoxious. But that's no reason to withhold information about their food in order to trick them into breaking said diet. And if you think the GMO-free ones are the worst, I suspect you've not encountered many vegans or paleos.
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I don't disagree; what I'm saying is that they have no right to legally mandate their personal dietary preferences. Notice how things like non-Kosher and Haram labels are not required by law. If, say, a Muslim demanded that non-Halal products had a Haram label on them because they were too lazy to learn about their own belief system, would you feel any sympathy for that person's 'right to know?' I certainty wouldn't knowingly do something like give such a person teriyaki chicken cooked with mirin and not
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't disagree; what I'm saying is that they have no right to legally mandate their personal dietary preferences.
If you were talking about an individual, sure I agree. But luckily we live in something still resembling a representative democracy, where individuals get to make all those arguments to their representatives, and those representatives get to vote on such things.
I don't see how asking a company to provide some information about ingredients is some sort of violation of any "fundamental right."
Notice how things like non-Kosher and Haram labels are not required by law. If, say, a Muslim demanded that non-Halal products had a Haram label on them because they were too lazy to learn about their own belief system, would you feel any sympathy for that person's 'right to know?'
If a single Muslim demanded that our food labeling system be changed, I probably wouldn't pay much attention. If a significant segment of the population cared and convinced a state legislature that such labeling would be helpful to many people, though, I wouldn't have a problem with such labeling on consumer goods.
This isn't about a "right to know." It's a question about whether states have ability to pass minor regulatory laws. They pass them all them, requiring all sorts of random crap. Yes, some of those regulations are probably unnecessary or even an abuse of power. I sincerely doubt that GMO labeling laws would come close to even the top 1000 of most egregious acts that state governments have mandated through regulation in the past year.
Yet for some reason this particular one causes everyone to get up in arms.
I certainty wouldn't knowingly do something like give such a person teriyaki chicken cooked with mirin and not tell them the food was cooked with alcohol, but still, they don't get to dictate regulations and mandate labels for something they could easily look up.
Again, you're talking about individuals. TFA is talking about the actions and decisions of a representative governmental body. Last time I checked, local and state governments can pass pretty much whatever laws they want to regulating whatever, as long as they don't violate any fundamental rights and aren't fundamentally abusive, arbitrary, or discriminatory. If you don't like such policies, lobby your representative or move to another state.
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Even if you think that GMO is the greatest thing since sliced bread, you pretty much have to accept the argument that most GMO is Monsanto-related, and that Monsanto is literally evil.
In the future we might call this argument "the strawman that broke the back of the green revolution". Since I live in a first world country, I don't have to worry about starving any time soon though.
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Where have you been for the past two decades? Have you really missed the controversy, fearmongering, lies, and generally unscientific bollocks that lead up to this?
Except that intelligent people also accuse the food industry of these things.
This push for labeling is not coming from plant & agricultural scientists, and for good reason.
Yeah, the good reason is that scientists are not politicians or legislators. Lots of people who are scientists support food labeling, of whatever things people want to know about the product. Why do you just assert that scientists are anti-information, anti-choice? That is insane.
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Lots of people who are scientists support food labeling, of whatever things people want to know about the product.
I happen to be one of the scientists you are referring to. I work in plant science, where my opinion on this is not uncommon. I'm not against information, far from it, I want more people to know about what it is we really do in my field. What I am against is selective reporting of information, leaving out critical details, to make a falsehood appear true. There is a big difference between that and actual education. Why do you accuse me of being anti-information and anti-choice for demanding labeled be complete, honest, and accurate information while saying exactly what a GMO is? [slashdot.org]
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Liar. Cross-breeding is NOT the same thing as GMO.
There is no way in hell any amount of cross-breeding a potato can make it pick up genes from a fucking fish to make it more cold-resistant.
Your deliberate misuse of "cross-breeding" labels you as a fraudster, a liar, a shill and human vermin. FUCK OFF poo-eater!
Re: Why conceal it? (Score:4, Insightful)
And they can't do that when the conditions they care about are hidden from them
Most of the conditions of the food is hidden from them. Why single out GMO as one of the required pieces of information ? Why not mandate accurate display of all pesticides and herbicides, or why not the additives that were added to the blend of rubber of the tires of the harvester ?
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyways, requiring a GMO label is intended for nothing else than to stigmatize. It is every bit as asinine as the California proposal a few years back to require cell phones have a radiation output level, which is retarded because cell phones emit all of zero sieverts, but some dumb fucks think it's a wonderful idea to have to put manufacturers in the position of making phones that emit less EM energy, and for no good reason whatsoever.
Regardless, if you'd rather pull the product than relabel it then you know in advance that your product can't survive with an accurate label. People are stupid, but tough - that's just the way the market is.
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Regardless, if you'd rather pull the product than relabel it then you know in advance that your product can't survive with an accurate label. People are stupid, but tough - that's just the way the market is.
The label isn't less accurate if it's omitted. Whether or not it's GMO is completely immaterial to the product. Another analogy is requiring mention of whether or not somebody died in a house prior to you selling it. Mentioning that fact will probably reduce its value, however if they never find out then there's no harm at all, and even if they do, there's still no harm, other than maybe it bothers the buyer's religious view, but nonetheless all 50 states in the US have laws preventing civil suits against p
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The label isn't less accurate if it's omitted. Whether or not it's GMO is completely immaterial to the product.
Wrong. There are at minimum economic ramifications to purchasing GMOs that I would like to avoid. In addition, I note that none of the chucklefucks claiming that breeding and GMO are the same thing actually have any credentials in this area. They're all armchair dickheads. GMO lets us achieve goals we can't achieve with selective breeding, and therefore it is substantively different. Claiming that it's the same as selective breeding is at best a lie, or potentially just being a colossal idiot.
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If we use your reasoning, then we should label any non-kosher food as treif and any non-halal food as haram. Yet nobody actually does that. Instead they simply label it if it meets the demands of those religions. There are two dead simple ways you can avoid GMO food with present labeling:
- Buy organic
- Buy GMO free
Food manufacturers prominently label both of these terms. Both of them are a waste of time (and in the case of organic, a waste of money) but don't let that stop you if you find that your god gets
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Regardless, if you'd rather pull the product than relabel it then you know in advance that your product can't survive with an accurate label.
How do you think it would affect sales if organic products had to 'accurately' say that they were grown in 400-700 nm radiation?
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:4, Interesting)
If all products grown in light had to be labeled that they were grown in "radiation" then why would you even be talking about organics? That would still be a different part of the label.
If there is demand for products grown only with light in the 400-500nm range, then it would make sense to add it to the standardized labels. Presumably nobody cares.
Nobody is asking you or anybody to agree if you should care about that part of the label. The purpose is because people want the information, not because it is believed to be "different." In the same way that one brand might command a different price than another that you consider the same. Maybe one has a nicer logo. That is a difference in the product. Just like having the country of origin. Maybe you don't believe there is any difference in a product if it came from one side of a political line, or the other. But people want the information, so it is on the label.
Saying we shouldn't be allowed to have the information because we might make illogical purchasing decisions is like trying to ban logos because people might irrationally prefer one logo to the other.
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Regardless, if you'd rather pull the product than relabel it then you know in advance that your product can't survive with an accurate label.
It certainly doesn't advertise confidence in the product safety when they make clear that they'd rather not even sell it than tell you what it is.
People who read labels already know that there are a lot of products with strange ingredients.
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm conflicted over this. I agree that the label is intended to stigmatize. But I can't quite see that we shouldn't have them. The people who want the label to be there want it because it's scary sounding and they hope it will dissuade people from buying food that contains GMOs. And those people want to undermine the GMO food industry for a lot of stupid, superstitious, bullshit reasons.
But I do have objections to GMO food. My objections revolve mainly around two things: intellectual property rights and monocultures. I don't think it's a good strategy for our species for corporations to "own" and "license" the right to plant certain seeds. Also, agricultural monocultures can open us up to harm when some plant pest, pathogen, or disease latches on to the monoculture and potentially causes crop failure because our crops are all genetically identical. (The latter problem is possible without GMOs, but is enhanced by GMOs.)
The labels are factual, but when people are dissuaded from buying GMO foods because of the label, they're just buying in to a superstition that GMOs are bad. The people advocating for labels are doing it for the wrong reasons, but I do think we need to put some real thought into how we incorporate GMO foods into our food supply. I'd just rather we did it for the right reasons, because the way we're going now, we're having the wrong conversations about the dangers of GMOs.
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you want research and development to be done on seeds that have been engineered to get all or part of their nitrogen from the air? It is a major area of research to make nitrogen fixing plants and it would HEAVILY cut the usage of fertilizers and that would have a HUGE environmental benefit.
If it takes decades to get it to work right and billions of dollars but you can't license the technology you realize we won't get that tech right?
Would it be better for us as a species if the seed company was able to make and license those seeds and tell them at a price where the farmer pays more for the seed that a regular seed but less for fertilizer so in the end the farmer pays less than they do now? The environment is helped and the farmer is better off than before and the research gets done.
There is lots of effort in trying to make the food healthier and better for the environment. All of that would go away if you can't own and license the seeds for at least a limited time. The problem is that this effort takes many billions of dollars and large teams of scientists to do the work. Government is not funding this research on anything other than a trivial scale. If you ever want to see this actually get used then allowing a corp to temporarily own their work and charge for it is the only way.
Monocultures are a huge problem but they are not a GMO problem. Organic and GMO are both grown as monocultures.
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:5, Informative)
We have monocultures without GMO.
To which I explicitly stipulated in my comment. GMO property rights have demonstrably caused farmers problems. Those problems may have been brought on more by the farmers than the GMOs, but they have certainly occurred. In addition to those problems, I also anticipate problems in the future. As we cede power to massive agro/chemical corporations, they will inevitably take advantage. This is borne out by all of human history.
Here is an example of an IP right causing a problem for farmers:
http://www.monsanto.com/newsvi... [monsanto.com]
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What is worse is that farmers can be sued for producing their own seeds, from non-GMO crops, but they get contaminated due to bees bringing in pollen from nearby fields with GMO crops. As a result the patented genes end up as contamination in what should have been non-GMO crops, and in the end everything under the sun is owned by Monsanto et.al. It goes further than Monsanto customers trying to save seeds to grow next season. The saddest part here is that Monsanto has sued, and won judgements against, those
Re: Why conceal it? (Score:5, Informative)
That's the way Monsanto portrayed it. Fact is, the judgment against the farmer was reduced by the Canadian Supreme Court to $1 because he didn't do anything to take advantage of the Monsanto seed. He didn't use Round-Up on his crops - he couldn't afford to use it on his fields. He only used it in ditches surrounding his farm to prevent weeds from encroaching into his fields. So there was zero benefit to him going "out of his way to gather the seeds from his neighbor's crops and use them in preference to other seeds." He had no motive for behaving as Monsanto claimed he did. (Incidentally, the resistant seed came from canola in one of these ditches - what he thought was his canola. It was theorized that it was instead blown there from a neighboring farm, or seed which had fallen off a truck driving down the intervening road. He did not gather the seeds from his neighbor as you portray.)
The Canadian Supreme Court let the ruling against the farmer stand however because they believed Monsanto's argument that its Round-Up Ready resistance could not be spread by pollination, and so the farmer "ought to have known" [lexum.com] that any canola which survived being sprayed with Round-Up was their patented seed. This was later shown to be false [slashdot.org] as they've found the GMO portions of Round-Up Ready resistance in wild plants.
But the damage was done, and the reason there haven't been recent cases of Monsanto going after farmers is because they've mostly thrown in the towel and just pay Monsanto if they suspect they've got Round-Up Ready crops in their field even if they never knowingly planted it. Which is Monsanto's real goal here - charging rent for the privilege of farming.
In terms of IP law, this combined with the dismissal of organic farms' opposition [wikipedia.org] is a terrible precedent because it decouples risk from reward. If Monsanto's seed finds its way onto your farm and you benefit from it, Monsanto profits from it. If Monsanto's seed finds it way onto your farm and you are harmed by it, Monsanto is not liable for it. It cannot work that way. Either you are allowed to release a product and profit from it but are liable for the harm it causes, or you are not allowed to release it.
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:4, Funny)
The concept some seem to be in favor of where information is withheld because they believe others are incapable of making informed decisions or otherwise fear a negative unjustified reaction strikes me as a particularly tyrannical and unsustainable position.
I would like to know if any bees that were used to pollinate the crops in a product (including feed for animal products) were near cell phone towers during their pupal stage. Do you think we should require that on the label ? If not, your position is particularly tyrannical.
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:5, Informative)
Because facts without context are deceptive. Evolution is 'just' a theory, agree with me? So why not label that on textbooks? Hey, it's a fact, you don't want to hide facts do you? The thing is, your average person has no idea what genetic engineering really is or what it means. Giving people one small detail, without telling the complete story, without explaining the details, knowing full well that years of misinformation are going to result in them thinking something that is not so, is not informative. It is a lie of omission, plain and simple. These laws are forcing lies because no one stopped to ask people who actually know the science behind the crops what they thing.
And don't try to tell me that it is being hidden; that's another intellectually lazy excuse. A quick Google search tells you what is and is not GE, and how. Corn, soy, cotton, canola, papaya, summer squash, sugar beet, alfalfa, and soon apple and potato, with traits like insect resistance (Cry and Vip genes), herbicide tolerance (C4 EPSPS and bar genes), virus resistance (PRSV-CP and WMV-CP genes), drought tolerance (CspB), and soon consumer oriented traits. Yeah, it isn't on the label, but neither is any of the other things we do to crops that you don't know about. I've never seen head of lettuce as containing the Nr gene for aphid resistance bred in from the wild species Lactuca serriola. I've never seen a product containing watermelon labeled as containing an artificially produced polyploid, as seedless watermelons are. I've never seen an apple labeled as being a bud sport, a somatic mutant derived form a chance shoot, as many apples in stores are. I've enver seen citrus labeled as having been developed through radiation induced mutagenesis, yet that happens. I've never seen corn be labeled as having been produced via doubled haploid hybridization, yet that is also a thing. I could go on but you get the point. Every plant in the grocery store has a story. Genetic engineering is just one part of that.
Now, what you are asking is why food producers don't want to single out one part of a much larger story, one that has been stigmatized by years of scientifically baseless fearmongering, knowing that your average person is completely ignorant of the history and present science of crops and agriculture, and slap a label on that doesn't actually tell you anything meaningful (genetically modified how and why? Label doesn't say). Be real here, they have a very good reason for it. This push for labeling is just the GMO denialists' response to being completely wrong about the safety and benefits of genetic engineering. They lost on the facts, now they're trying to make it look like genetic engineering needs labels, because if they're so safe why hide it? Of course, these same people then point to Europe and say 'if they're so safe why do they need labels?'
I'll believe this is about honesty and transparency whenever the anti-GMO crowd demands that non-GMO corn be labeled as having higher mycotoxin levels. [nih.gov] I'm not holding my breath for that though.
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This cartoon [imgur.com] tells why we shouldn't mandate labeling of them.
*No* dangers have been found. None. And these foods (well, the GMO plants that went into them) are among the most heavily tested on the planet.
Even the nutritional characteristics are the same -- and if they weren't, the FDA would require labeling, because then it would actually be different.
This labeling makes even *less* sense than the Prop 65 warnings in California -- at least there, the chemicals in question really have been found to cause c
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't believe the dangers of GMOs are from a health standpoint.
The main danger of GMOs is the social effect on small farmers being forced out of the business by companies like Monsanto. This is a real problem that affects farmers in many many countries where IP law is being used to bully the small guy into paying the big multi-national or go out of business.
But again its not so much the technologies, but the legal framework around it that is causing this problem.
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You do realize that Monsanto is not a farming company, yes? They're an ag supply company. They want small farmers to go out of business the same way restaurant supply companies want restaurants to go out of business. What gain would Monsanto have from having less customers?
Re:Why conceal it? (Score:4, Informative)
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Why bully people for not mentioning something irrelevant?
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Why would you try to conceal GMO products from the consumer? It's confirmation that the makers of GMO products have something to hide!
I'll bite. Because consumers are in general stupid masses that instantly fear what they don't understand and then will research using some form of confirmation bias to suddenly stop buying a product because it contains something that regulatory bodies have classed as "safe".
You need look no further than anti-vaxxers to see that writing complicated things on packaging does not help keep people "informed". Likewise I imagine that the sale of water will suddenly plummet if producers are forced to list every ch
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Yup, and as a long-time Vermonter I can say that Vermont is not generally a place that is run with idiocy and hype. Its a place where money has little part in politics and people get what they want. Like one of the most livable places on Earth, and one that is leading the way into the future environmentally, socially, etc. It has a fair number of issues too, but here we have a very classic example of how government FOR THE PEOPLE works, vs how government FOR THE BANKS works. Well, heck, even the US Senate i
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Actually Democrats are the worst offenders in this department:
http://www.politico.com/magazi... [politico.com]
truly free markets require full information (Score:5, Interesting)
while a free market economy is much better at allocating scarce resources than any other method(especially government controlled or regulated economy), for a truly free market to work , there should be full information and perfect competition, impossible conditions.
it doesn't help that in real world people who are most vocal for free capitalism tend to be the same who are against full information disclosure. i am willing to bet that those who voted against this labeling were such 'supporters' of 'free market capitalism'.
Re:truly free markets require full information (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny how nobody who ever says that then supports the idea of labelling foods "This food picked by Mexican immigrants", even though that's information that some people would certainly like to use in their purchase decisions.
No packaging can disclose every bit of information about the product, and the government picking and choosing what information the company is forced to provide, for political reasons, is not free market. (And make no mistake, "some pressure groups hate GMOs and want the government to force companies to label them" is "political reasons".)
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It's funny how nobody who ever says that then supports the idea of labelling foods "This food picked by Mexican immigrants", even though that's information that some people would certainly like to use in their purchase decisions.
I believe produce has to be labelled with its country of origin, in the US at least.
Although if you're talking about food grown in the US... then you should probably just assume it's all picked by Mexican immigrants.
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It's probably fairly safe to say that food picked by Mexican immigrants was not grown in Mexico.
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People have a fundamental right to know what they are putting in their body.
People are too stupid to understand what they are putting in their body. The more information you provide the more fodder you give the doubters who don't understand what scary sounding chemical names are.
Actually this is good. We should require the chemical composition of everything to be published on every label. Then we can get rid of all the stupid people who decide to never consume any dihydrogen monoxide, or sodium chloride (OMG a highly reactive metal, and something used to kill bacteria on my swimmin
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There are costs associated with deciding which information should be fully available and then providing it. Would you like to know the person's name that picked your food, processed, drove it to the store, and then put it on the shelf? Perhaps each item should be fully labeled, and all steps of production attributed to the individuals responsible? This may seem extreme, but it helps illustrate a point.
How about if 72% of the time the corn used in my delicious CHEETOS is genetically modified, 16% is not, and
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Man, the preview totally screwed up my order list HTML formatting and made me think I needed to add numbers... Thanks slashdot.
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Do you have any actual evidence, or you're just saying people that you don't like are people that you don't like? I'm aware that the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club, but come on, offer something better.
How about a rule that says, "this food was harvested by American citizens", or did we suddenly move past full information and into something that you don't want to disclose? Two can play this game.
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Incorrect. A free market means buyers and sellers are free to act as they so choose. A regulated free market is one where some things are mandated, such as ingredients and nutrition, however, optional things, such as vegan, Halal, and Kosher labels are voluntary and subject to market demand. Why for example should a papaya have to say that it is genetically engineered, but not if it is orlah? They're both exactly as relevant to the fruit's nutrition.
Mandating labels without a justification for the publi
Miniscule Rhode Island (Score:2, Funny)
But what does Minuscule Rhode Island have to say about this? When will Petite Delaware speak up?
Tiny Vermon? (Score:3)
Tiny Vermont?
If it's small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there's no problem. I guarantee.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
How Was Organism Modified (Score:4, Interesting)
Non-GMO Vegetable Oils less healthy than GMO (Score:3)
One of the healthiest vegetable oils, Canola Oil, is a product of genetic modification to remove a potential toxin, making it safe for humans to consume. Most of the characteristics were obtained by "conventional" genetic modification, similar to that used to create, for example, a seedless fruit variety.
However since Monsanto introduced the Gene-Spliced variety in the late 1990's, ("Roundup Ready Canola") that form has come to dominate the available crops in Canada and the USA. Also, the Monsanto variety has found it's way into the storage lots of the non-licensed seed stock. The result is the GMO Canola is virtually the only form available today in food grade Canola Oil (although it is worth noting that at least 87% is by grower's choice of the Monsanto seed, not seed stock contamination).
To avoid the GMO variety is to abandon the use of Canola altogether.
Canola pushes both all the "Heart Smart" buttons, and all the "GMO/non-GMO" buttons.
Because food manufacturers have largely embraced Canola as an input in processed foods, essentially everything from all the middle aisles in a North American supermarket contains GMO Canola. In other words, almost all the products in the supermarket in Vermont will have to be labeled as containing GMO ingredients.
The alternative is to use a less healthy vegetable oil, and that might include Hydrogenated varieties containing unhealthy Trans Fats, and earn the right to apply the NON-GMO label.
TMI is a Tax on Bandwidth, Cost of Obfuscation (Score:5, Interesting)
Vermont resident here. Best argument I heard against the labelling requirement was that it's TMI. Similar to the arguments about packaging being "recycled content" or "recyclable", or "made in USA", the opponents make the case that every additional disclosure requirement obfuscates ingredient and nutrition information, or dolphin-safe etc. If Vermont required companies put the number of women employed as a percentage of labor, or minority representation on company board of directors, or employee-owned stock, etc. etc., SOMEONE will always be in favor of "disclosing" it on the label. But there's a legitimate concern that the net effect is "noise". Consumers engage in a form of "moral licensing", giving more weight to "recyclable" than "carbs". T
here is a social cost to obfuscation and "Too Much Information" on labels.
Many in Vermont have a legitimate purpose in branding the state as more natural and organic because it's basically impossible to operate factory farming here. But while legitimate, it's also legitimate to argue Vermont's concerns are basically protectionism against milk and cheese made more cheaply in Ohio. My concerns over GMO has to do with monoculture and unintended consequences of reduced genetic diversity, and eventual loss of rights to plant your own seeds. And I feel strongly about it. But trying to make other people who are less educated, who think GMO is a health concern, share my agenda is a "poster child" technique which will produce fewer returns the more information is packed onto a label. If we put every "true" thing on a label, people will be deluged and stop reading labels. And THAT is the tactic I hope food labels don't embrace - EULA Agreement scale labels that provide so much "information" that the consumers are lost in politics, packaging, nutrition, ingredients, weight, volume, etc.
Right, so now they have to label all food... (Score:4, Interesting)
... except for salt. I guess salt has never been genetically modified compared to (say) 1000 to 5000 years ago, perhaps because it doesn't contain any genes.
Everything else -- arguably including wild game -- has been modified by humans manipulating its genes, most often by the tried and true method of waiting for "nature" to cause a mutation and then selectively breeding to stabilize it in a domesticated population.
So General Foods etc should retaliate by simply labelling all food products as having been modified relative to their "natural" state prior to the existence of mankind. Then consumers will get bored looking at the label (and possibly might be educated about the meaning of "GMO" relative to the biological human universe). End of problem.
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Selective breeding is a lot more predictable than directly twiddling genes. There are a lot of unforeseen side-effects.
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Selective breeding is a lot more predictable than directly twiddling genes. There are a lot of unforeseen side-effects.
Such as?
As we've seen with antibiotic resistance, expect Round-Up resistant weeds for starters.
In fact, it seems to already be a problem, with over 61 million acres [farmindustrynews.com] as of 2012.
Health-wise, GMOs seem to have proven themselves pretty safe - not the worse thing in our diets.
But not sure what most of them are really for. Leaving out Golden Rice [wikipedia.org], which is awesome, there isn't a food shortage that GMOs are trying to solve, there's a huge amount of wasted food [nationalgeographic.com]:
Re:Corn and other grains (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, you can blame the Round-Up Ready crops, because that isn't applied to non-GMO crops. It would kill them. On the GMO crop, they spray it over the whole field. You really can't separate the problem, because that is the only time that it is being frequently applied broadly like that.
For example, they use it on Giant Knotweed around here, but they have to use a hand sprayer and spray individual plants.
And there currently is an epidemic of resistant weeds in GMO fields. Maybe you don't read enough ag news to know about it? And the GMO farmers are getting really whiny, because they thought science cured weeds. LOL And they are really resistant to the idea of going back to old weed control methods. "The sky is falling, the sky is falling." The sky isn't falling, but if the weeds come back they should switch back to normal seed because the GMO plants are less robust. (the resistance has a metabolic cost)
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Selective breeding is a lot more predictable than directly twiddling genes. There are a lot of unforeseen side-effects.
[citation needed]
Bill Nye would disagree with you. Specifically, here is a quote from when he changed his mind about GMO's:
"The thing is, genetically modified food has no effect on us. That is to say, there is no difference between it and organically raised food. This is scientifically provable. It’s certainly provable to my satisfaction, and that’s the most straightforward thing about it, to see if it’s still nutritious and see if it has any allergic effect, and it absolutely does not. In fact, in general, all of these foods are more nutritious."
Source: http://ecowatch.com/2015/07/14... [ecowatch.com]
There's further details in his recent book Undeniable about why there aren't "unforeseen side-effects" from GMO foods. I think anyone with doubts or curiosity about the subject (and evolution in general) should read it.
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Scientist changes his mind on a subject.
Scientist, without any sense of irony, writes book titled Undeniable, thus pulling up the stairs behind him. /facepalm
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I like Bill Nye... but he's an engineer, not a scientist.
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Selective breeding is a lot more predictable than directly twiddling genes.
Not really. Selective breeding can end up with some really bizarre things, and has given us poisonous potatoes.
GMOs get a lot more testing before they make it to your dinner table, as well.
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This statement is completely wrong and that is what makes me sad about this whole debate. People make decisions that they are not qualified to make.
Selective breeding is MUCH less predictable than direct gene editing. With gene editing I know exactly what I am inserting and where it goes and like a computer program I also know what it does.
With selective breeding you are selecting for visible traits and not for the DNA. Selective breeding of tomatoes to make them solid red also dramatically cut their nutrit
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Goes further than that. Domesticated animals? Pretty much all fruit (especially bananas)? We have, as a species, genetically modified nearly everything we consume to make it more appealing or effective. Probably should just put the warning label at the front of the store.
Pro-science (Score:2)
Whether ingredients in food are GMO (or not) is a data point.
Its strange a scientist would want to want people to have access to _less_ data rather than more.
Let people can form their own judgements here.
Re:Anti science (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course it's anti-science. Science is about formulating a hypothesis and conducting experiments to prove or disprove it. An anti-GMO stance is about forming a hypothesis and forcing everyone else in the world to validate it by fiat. No experimentation in sight.
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A lot of people opposing these laws do so because these laws are promoting ignorance and stupidity. In no way or form is a free market intended to affect societal change, so who the fuck cares if it does so? In fact, if one were to use a free market to enact such a change, these anti-science groups should petition the producers directly to label their products. They should organize boycotts and similar free-market actions. Forcing an action through legislation is the precise opposite of a free market.
Su
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Do you have any evidence that GMO is dangerous to those who consume them? I believe there's plenty of evidence that heart surgeons with a vague idea of anatomy are dangerous.
Your comparison is so absurd that there really are no words for it.