GMO Food Labelling - Classic or Dud?

less hot on ilxor than other places, I guess.

I say that if apples are routinely labeled as Gala, Jazz, Granny Smith, Pink Lady, Red Delicious, Macintosh, Roma, Winesap, and so on, in order for consumers to differentiate between these minimal variants and make an informed choice, even though there is no significant nutritional difference between a Jazz and Gala apple, then GMO foods should be labeled as GMO so that consumers can differentiate and make informed choices, even if there is no significant nutritional difference between a GMO and non-GMO foodstuff. Then the market will follow the consumer's preference, as it should.

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Shouldn't.

lack of thread popularity speaks well for ilx imo

well you would say that

i'm somewhere between "shouldn't" and "don't care". it seems extremely unlikely that genetically modified (a truly meaningless word if there ever was one) food is harmful to people. the potential good GM food can bring is tremendous.

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+safe+does+transgenic+food+need+to+be&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari

there are other threads on this topic, btw

whoops

http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v31/n9/full/nbt.2686.html

the potential good GM food can bring is tremendous.

To the best of my knowledge, GMO crops have not produced any significant increase in crop yields to date. I'd appreciate info to the contrary. If you were not thinking of that particular benefit, I'd be curious which tremendous good you were thinking of.

^^^

shit should be labelled. this issue is all about corporate control of what gets sold in grocery stores, not whether or not they are good for us.

for one thing, "genetic modification" of food has been done for thousands of years. over 70% of food on shelves right now is genetically modified, and it'd be higher if it weren't for this current fad. it's very safe to say that to feed the world's ever-growing population, genetic engineering of some sort needs to be used. it also can have specific benefits, as with the vitamin A enriched golden rice in the philippines and elsewhere that's going to prevent kids from going blind. the vaguely righteous crusade against big ag if successful is going to yield nothing but food that, according to the weight of the scientific evidence (all controlled by industry, maaaaan), is no safer, no more healthful, and more expensive than non-organic food. i'm not in favor of labeling when 1) it's going to mislead consumers, 2) there are no apparent health benefits, and 3) it's likely to lead to higher food prices for people whose budgets actually depend on the price of groceries, which i seriously doubt has much demographic overlap with anti-GMO activists.

I see you've read the memo, kev.

For the most part, that 70% of food on grocery shelves that you cite as already having been modified using recombinant DNA technology was modified not to prevent kids from going blind, but to make it simpler to control weeds by spraying fields with Roundup, which isn't exactly some miracle we should be showering with accolades. I will be the first to say that the possibilities of GMOs seem promising, but promises are very far from facts and are much easier to distort. Your enthusiasm seems to have entered that distortion field.

i haven't read the memo, i've read the scientific papers, you clueless hippie

OK. And all you have cited as the wonderous benefits of GMO is a single strain of rice with more vitamin A in it. But you do fortify your argument with invective, so I guess I have been shown my place.

I asked for any info you had that yields have increased with GMO. You cite none but simultaneously claim that "to feed the world's ever-growing population, genetic engineering of some sort needs to be used." That is purely a promise, unbacked by facts. It could be true, but not because you say it is. More facts, plz.

i don't give a fuck

is what i voted for, i mean

You know, I was thinking of calling that option "I don't give a fuck" and then I toned it down at the last minute. Thanks for helping to get that out there in the open crut.

Labels have all kinds of meaningless bullshit that consumers think they want on it. But telling me that a crop is "GMO" doesn't tell me anything. If there were studies showing that a *particular* kind of genetic modification had some potential health or environmental consequences, even if the science wasn't 100% conclusive, I could see a reason to label that. But this blanket idea that splicing a gene from one species into another is somehow inherently dangerous is ridiculous and childish and maddeningly ignorant. If people want their "GMO" labels, fine, but it's a meaningless label. Hence I voted for I don't care.

I feel like 80% of the people concerned about GMOs don't understand reproduction

Here is a helpful primer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6honxJ2uzwo

it's not like there are an abundance of bulletproof randomized trials on crop yields with GM food. part of this is because they would be tricky to conduct, but the other reason is that their benefits are just so obvious: farmers would not be genetically engineering their crops if they didn't improve their yields. they do this to ward off viruses and other threats to their "traditional" crops -- cf the ringspot virus and the papaya in hawaii. another reason is that anti-GMO activists, when they're not busy destroying crops meant to save children's lives, spend their time putting up legal obstacles to the studies

india has seen its cotton yields improve markedly since the introduction of Bt cotton, while reducing its use of pesticides and seeing the number of acute pesticide poisonings decline -- http://www.pnas.org/content/109/29/11652.full

these are just a few, well-publicized examples, but the truth is that the majority of genetic engineering is done via traditional cross-breeding, the way it's been done for centuries, feeding people to little fanfare. there's no basis for assuming transgenic food is more dangerous than traditional cisgenic genetically engineered food

this is still one of the best articles i've read in the popular media about the absurdity of the GMO battle, and i'd encourage everyone to read it - http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/us/on-hawaii-a-lonely-quest-for-facts-about-gmos.html?_r=0

The ringspot virus story definitely qualifies as a GMO success, although the modification is not specific to increasing yield, but rather allows the resumption of a monoculture pattern that was harmed by a common bane of monocultures: disease.

farmers would not be genetically engineering their crops if they didn't improve their yields.

Oh yes they would. The Roundup resistant strains are designed solely to reduce costs, not increase yields. Nor is it certain that reduced cost for a producer results in lower prices for consumers. Cost reductions have a habit of being pocketed as profit. Good for producers, but neutral for consumers.

Those legal obstacles may seem pointless to you, but they may end up doing a favor to pro-GMO forces, by vetting the procedures for testing and releasing new organisms, making them more transparent and rigorous, and consequently removing most of the doubts that arise in the public. Believe it or not, regulation of an industry often leads to better practices and increased public trust.

I'd read the NYT article, but it is behind a wall.

but the truth is that the majority of genetic engineering is done via traditional cross-breeding, the way it's been done for centuries, feeding people to little fanfare.

The other truth is that no one seems to be objecting to that methodology. It is tried and proven and uncontroversial.

In a perfect world perhaps it would be possible to claim that transgenic technology is a revolutionary new thing that utterly changes the world, while simultaneously claiming that it absolutely nothing new or different than what we've always done. But this world is imperfect and a skeptic might view those claims as incompatible.

meaningless bullshit that consumers think they want

I'm curious if there is any difference between wanting something and thinking you want something?

you want to eat. you think you want to eat ice cream.

I still don't see a difference. Perhaps you think I should not want to eat ice cream, but that does not change whether I want to.

Aimless, it is perfectly natural that you think you want to eat ice cream. Who doesn't think they want to eat ice cream?

I'm just unpacking who exactly is doing the thinking and who is doing the wanting. Hurting may judge that consumers ought not to want whatever meaningless bullshit he was referring to, but that sentence reads a bit differently if you phrase it:

"Labels have all kinds of meaningless bullshit that consumers want on it."

I'm kinda surprised that you don't understand the idiomatic construction of "think they want." stop being a pedant

stop being a pedant analyzing the rhetoric of persuasion

there's no difference, and you're eliding the point that it's meaningless bullshit

But you have failed to say what is meaningless bullshit. Brand names? Slogans? Colorful illustrations of "serving suggestions"? I agree these are meaningless bullshit, but I can't recall the groundswell of consumer sentiment demanding that these be on labels.

It is meaningless bullshit that "GMO" is a meaningful category of food.

I don't understand your examples at all, they seem completely irrelevant.

Brand names are actually useful information fwiw. Like "I like the way the x brand tastes, I don't like the way the y brand tastes, the z brand made me feel sick last time."

I mean if you want to talk about things that are actually MANDATED to be on labels, it's mostly stuff like ingredients and nutritional information, most of which is certainly not meaningless.

The "we don't know if it's safe; crossbreeding has been done for hundreds of years" argument especially irks me. No one as actually put forward a coherent theory for why it *wouldn't* be safe, like why the process of splicing a gene from one species into another would per se be less safe than crossbreeding.

meaningless bullshit that consumers think they want

I'm curious if there is any difference between wanting something and thinking you want something?

― Aimless, Tuesday, June 3, 2014 1:57 PM (48 minutes ago)

i see the drive to reflexively label GM food as part of a trend, seen most clearly in the case of pro-lifers and mandatory ultrasound/etc bills, where ideologues pass pseudoscientifically-based bills to further their agenda under the guise of wanting to increase information available to the patient/consumer. and similar to the case of bills that mandate ultrasounds for women seeking abortions, the actual scientific community has spoken on this issue and has concluded that it's unnecessary. the abortion laws are subject to challenge on the grounds that they're arbitrary, and the law most recently passed in vermont contains language that attributes adverse health outcomes (though vaguely) to GM food, a claim not strongly supported by the scientific evidence.

(NB the AMA is in favor of making mandatory safety tests for new GM foods before bringing them to market. i think this is reasonable if probably unnecessary)

but i mean this is the difference between the FDA or the AMA and like, legislatures. the former are concerned with science and are generally not held to popular account. if there's no reason to be concerned about the safety of GM food, they're not going to support labeling just because a bunch of people who understand the issue less than they do want it. legislatures are designed to carry out the will of the people. if the people's will is "well if the SCIENTISTS aren't going to do anything, i guess we'll have to do it ourselves", well who's going to stop them?

For those who are opposed to mandatory labeling (and I have no strong feelings about it at all, I don't really care), how do you feel about the laws in some states prohibiting labeling of food as "non-GMO?"

I'd read the NYT article, but it is behind a wall.

― Aimless, Tuesday, June 3, 2014 12:40 PM (2 hours ago)

google the headline

i feel strongly that anti-"intervention" movements like this are misguided, dangerous, and irresponsible and i am against "gmo" as a designation, still want more transparency about corporate production of food re: ownership and the like, would support something like an "open source" designation.

how do you feel about the laws in some states prohibiting labeling of food as "non-GMO?"

I think it's ridiculous to prohibit it. Food producers should be able to label their food anything that isn't outright misleading. They can put "blessed by a sorcerer" on it for all I care as long as it's literally true.

Possibly also a first amendment violation to prohibit it for that matter.

thank god companies are people

my friend

woah-oh-oh
oh your corporation is a person
my friend

killer tofu

They can put "blessed by a sorcerer" on it for all I care as long as it's literally true.

how could this be literally true

I mean in the crudest sense, like a person holding himself forth as a sorcerer did his wavy wand thing over top of it

that is a highly unsatisfactory example

yeah, that's ridiculous. sorcerers don't bless things, clerics do.

Ok maybe a better example would be something like "CITRIC ACID FREE"

clerics turn undead too so they could be used on KFC labels

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

welp, re-run it

https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/t1.0-9/10451065_10203762083913552_2634266539162494832_n.jpg

http://www.businessinsider.com/neil-degrasse-tyson-believes-in-gmos-2014-7

I hate how the debate all centers around the healthiness (which is the least of my issues with GMOs) cuz Tyson's right on that count. The bigger issue is corporations copyrighting the food supply, copyrighting genetic sequences. horrible, horrible legal precedent.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122441/corn-wars

I hate how the debate all centers around the healthiness (which is the least of my issues with GMOs) cuz Tyson's right on that count. The bigger issue is corporations copyrighting the food supply, copyrighting genetic sequences. horrible, horrible legal precedent.

― Οὖτις, Thursday, July 31, 2014 3:57 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

patenting, actually