Battle Brewing Over Labeling of Genetically Modified Food

gollum123 writes with this excerpt from the NY Times: "For more than a decade, almost all processed foods in the United States — cereals, snack foods, salad dressings — have contained ingredients from plants whose DNA was manipulated in a laboratory. Regulators and many scientists say these pose no danger. But as Americans ask more pointed questions about what they are eating, popular suspicions about the health and environmental effects of biotechnology are fueling a movement to require that food from genetically modified crops be labeled, if not eliminated. The most closely watched labeling effort is a proposed ballot initiative in California that cleared a crucial hurdle this month, setting the stage for a probable November vote that could influence not just food packaging but the future of American agriculture. Tens of millions of dollars are expected to be spent on the election showdown. It pits consumer groups and the organic food industry, both of which support mandatory labeling, against more conventional farmers, agricultural biotechnology companies like Monsanto and many of the nation's best-known food brands like Kellogg's and Kraft."

Comments

Monsanto?

[fustakrakich]

I guess we all know how this will go down, considering what happened in France. The FDA will step in and overrule any vote

it's about time

[hguorbray]

see Food Inc and other documentaries about the pernicious effects of agribusiness

-I'm just sayin'

Re:it's about time

[phantomfive]

see Food Inc and other documentaries

Food Inc isn't a documentary. It's propaganda. I'm surprised you didn't realize this.

but all food is now GM

[sneakyimp]

While I applaud the notion, this all overlooks the fact that pollen from Monsanto's GM crops is wind- and insect-borne to even organic farms.

And what about scientists who say it is harmful?

Re:but all food is now GM

[LifesABeach]

And if your Orange tree is pollinated by one of Monsanto's Frankin Seeds, you get to pay for it. But does Monsanto pay the neighbor if one of Monsanto's Frankin trees is pollinated by a regular seed?

Re:but all food is now GM

[HomoErectusDied4U]

I agree, it's too late. For example, two out of five different local organic farmers' corn I purchased at the Madison (Wisconsin) Farmers' Market last year came up positive for B. thuringiensis toxin genes. This is not an isolated case; the peer-reviewed literature is replete with examples of transgenic introgression into 'natural' populations. If you want to read more about this, you can start with this nearly-decade old paper that's been cited hundreds of times: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14526376

Re:but all food is now GM

[Sebastopol]

don't worry about cross-pollenation with organic farms: monsanto will just sue the farm out of business if they detect Monsanto DNA in the crops, then buy the land and expand their business.

lol.

actually.... /cry/

Re:but all food is now GM

[ChromeAeonium]

And what about scientists who say it is harmful

Depends on whether they actually publish their results in a peer reviewed journal or not. I looked for that study in NIH and darnedest thing, couldn't find it. As far as I know, the Ermakova study was never actually published in a peer reviewed journal. If you want to case doubt on the safety of GE crops, you're going to have to do better than that. even Andrew Wakefield managed to get his study in NIH. And for that one study, here's a couple hundred more to look over. Fact is, GE crops have been extensively tested, and there is no convincing evidence whatsoever to suggest that currently used GE crops are harmful to human health.

Re:but all food is now GM

[bill_mcgonigle]

Unless you are willing to change your diet drastically, there is no way to avoid it.

Growing your own food is another good way to handle this. Seed producers are very protective of their varieties.

Re:but all food is now GM

[bill_mcgonigle]

Sure, you'd have to give up manufactured food. But that's not such a terrible idea anyway.

I'll be growing wheat next year - I still have to clear for it. Heck, I'd be doing that right now if I weren't resynchronizing databases. :(

I found a local miller with good prices. You can also just buy from a local like-minded farmer.

Re:but all food is now GM

[jedidiah]

I don't want to encourage the kind of monopoly that Monsanto represents. Even if Monsanto has salted everyone else's fields, I would still respond to a label that made it clear that the farmer that grew my food retained the right to save his own seeds.

This isn't just about the direct impacts of Monsanto franken-foods on my body or the environment. That's certainly important but it is by no means the end of the issue.

Re:but all food is now GM

[Sebastopol]

Elbert Dallas Thomason

http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Monsanto-Beats-LA-Farmer.htm

Why would a mysterious agriculture department sprout up months after Monsanto threatens a local farmer and illegally takes samples of his crops?

http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-18563_162-4048288.html

Or going after the infrastructure that non-Monsanto farmers require to make a living:

http://www.gmwatch.org/gm-videos/6-must-see-videos/12161-monsanto-vs-seed-cleaner-moe-parr

Are you defending Monsanto, or just pointing out that the 400+ patent violation cases instigated by Monsanto that are in the judicial system (as of 1999) and are NOT public record don't count as "monsanto up and suing people"? We can't tell if they are cross-pollenation cases becasue they aren't public record due to uncertain influence of Monsanto at the local level:

http://grist.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/cfsmonsantovsfarmerreport1.13.05.pdf

I agree that contract violation is illegal (saving seed and all that). Have you stopped to consider why they sign these contracts that don't allow them to save seed, and force them to buy more each year at increasing prices? Jeez, I'd have to have a gun pointed to my head to sign something so ludicrous. /sarcasm

I also agree that it should be illegal to extort people into having no choice but to buy from Monsanto or go broke. Because I'm sure you can google, and I'm sure you can find limitless cases where Monsanto bullies and threatens farmers.

Re:but all food is now GM

[wisnoskij]

Not a bad idea, but a unrealistic goal to come about just because of GMO labelling.

Also I would suggest you look into other grains if you are doing this from a health perspective. Wheat really is the worst of the lot for you, participially the modern varieties. It is like any modern agriculture plants, it has been bred to increase some attributes at the expense of being a healthy food.

Re:but all food is now GM

[siddesu]

Bread needs only flour, salt and water. you can usually get the yeast and bacteria to raise it from your environment.

Re:but all food is now GM

[Hentes]

Which is why GM shouldn't be unregulated. It's possible to modify crops to evade contamination, but then there would be nobody to sue. I think most people would be ok with GM if it was bound by proper regulations.

Laughable

[earthwormgaz]

"More conventional"!? Which f*£king joker wrote that line? Nothing is more conventional than organic. Laughable.

Labelled = Banned

[Cassini2]

As far as the food industry is concerned, labelling is equivalent to banning genetically modified food.

As far as I am concerned, if they can't sell it for what it is, then they shouldn't be selling it.

Re:Labelled = Banned

[SomeJoel]

As far as the food industry is concerned, labelling is equivalent to banning genetically modified food.

As far as I am concerned, if they can't sell it for what it is, then they shouldn't be selling it.

That's not entirely true. Look at High Fructose Corn Syrup. It has been labelled as such (vs. real sugar) for a while, and there are technically alternatives, but all of the big name sodas (and a whole slew of other products) still use it. Even with its richly deserved bad publicity, it is still out there and being sold a lot.

Re:Labelled = Banned

[dgatwood]

The last time California made a labeling law, the soda vendors changed their formulation. I see no reason why the reaction to this proposal would be any different.

Besides, knowing California, the law will probably require a prominent label that says, "Warning: This product contains genetically modified food. Some genetically modified food is known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm."

Re:Labelled = Banned

[reve_etrange]

Norman Borlaug's work had nothing to do with genetically modified foods, and everything to do with scientific agricultural practices and productive and robust, but conventionally bred, cultivars.

Re:Labelled = Banned

[reve_etrange]

On this basis, nothing that the government or corporations do or plan should become public knowledge, because "the vast majority of the public are ignorant / misinformed on many issues."

Re:Labelled = Banned

[jedidiah]

...except everyone does label the theory of evolution what it is.

It's a theory. It's a SCIENTIFIC theory. That truthful disclosure doesn't hurt anything. Neither does disclosing a mountain of literature written on the subject by actual scientists over the last 150 or so years.

That's a level of scrutiny thay Monsanto is afraid of.

"Mutated" beats "engineered to allow increased pesticide use".

Re:Labelled = Banned

[ChromeAeonium]

(which exacerbates disease and lowers productivity in general)

Yes to the first, no to the second. It is pretty easy to understand why monoculture is bad from a disease management standpoint. It creates a great environment for a handful of pests to absolutely thrive. If a potato problem becomes big in an area where it is just nothing but potatoes, and especially if they are generically uniform, then it is like dropping a match in a tinderbox (like the Irish Potato Famine), however, if the potatoes are interspersed with other varieties of potatoes it decreases the chance of disease spread and if they are interspersed with other species it really hinders or even stops it. So yes, monoculture is bad in that respect. But lets not ignore the benefits of economies of scale either. Growing nothing but the same thing allows easier harvesting, planting, and management. There is a reason farmers are willing to use it, and it isn't because they loose yield. I'm a big fan of biodiversity myself, there are so many crop species that could offer so much benefit that we simply don't use it is ridiculous (though that's a rant for another time), but for its flaws monoculture does bring benefits. It is also worth noting that even in big fields of the same crop farmers aren't stupid. they sow different varieties, for example, late and early yielding soybeans to hedge against an early frost.

I disagree about the Bullshit! episode, although they did touch on other issues besides GE crops. What Norman Borlaug actually said was that with only organic we couldn't feed the world, not without GE crops. We might be able to feed the world without them (some people would probably starve though), although as the global population rises water gets scarcer and fertilizer & energy prices rise and peak phosphorus draws closer and climate change rears its ugly head, feeding the world while being picky in which tools we use (including biotechnology, biodiversity, chemical inputs, and biological controls) to do so becomes an increasingly irrational and implausible notion.

Re:Labelled = Banned

[TubeSteak]

That's not entirely true. Look at High Fructose Corn Syrup. It has been labelled as such (vs. real sugar) for a while, and there are technically alternatives, but all of the big name sodas (and a whole slew of other products) still use it.

The USA structures its agricultural subsidies in favor of corn and its import tariffs against cane sugar.
That's why everything in the USA has HFCS and it's not pervasive anywhere else in the world (AFAIK).

If we 'normalized' our corn subsidies and removed our cane sugar tariffs, HFCS would dissappear from the American market.

Funny excuses they use

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny excuses they use to not label the franken-food as GMOed. "We don't want mandatory labeling because nobody can keep track of the ingredients." If you can't keep track of a dozen ingredients in your food products, how are you keeping track of all those genes and the interactions between them?

If they don't have anything to hide, then why not label it GMO? Hint - because nobody in their right mind would buy it, that's why.

Re:Funny excuses they use

[INowRegretThesePosts]

Rejecting Genetic Engineering because you don't like Monsanto is like rejecting computers because you don't like Microsoft.

Notme was here.

[muggs]

So, they want to patent the food but not admit it. Sounds like organized crime.

I don't care about the harm, it's about choice.

[VortexCortex]

If GM food is awesome, then why aren't they proud enough to slap a big 'ol label on it and say so? I mean, I buy "Sugar Free" and "Fat Free" stuff, they're proud of that... "New and Improved" has been the promotional battle cry since marketing began... So, what's so bad about informing the consumers? Consumers should have the choice: Some people might prefer it regardless of any real or perceived benefit or harm. Eg: I buy cage free eggs not because of better living conditions for birds, but because of the taste -- Tastes like Freedom! It's not like all the other eggs say: Unborn Chicken Slaves...

The point is: without a label, how can I exercise consumer choice? Put it another way: If the corn has DNA pesticide enough such that I don't have to fight off Texas sized mosquito swarms anymore, then I might just ONLY eat Deep Woods OFF(tm) brand Gene Boosted food.

Re:I don't care about the harm, it's about choice.

[SuperCharlie]

The FDA does not allow labeling something non-GMO
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/nongmolabel112205.cfm

Re:I don't care about the harm, it's about choice.

[omfgnosis]

Who cares whether it's been demonized or not, or whether the demonization is valid or not? GM food producers are not entitled to successful GM food sales, and they certainly don't have a right to obstruct informed consent to secure those sales, and GM food's commercial failure as a result of factual information is not a "problem".

It is labeled if you know what to look for

[ChromeAeonium]

It isn't all that hard to tell if the food you are eating contains genetically engineered ingredients. Corn, soy, cotton, canola, sugarbeet, alfalfa, summer squash, and papaya are the only crops that have been genetically engineered, Due to the way bulk amounts of commodity crops like corn and soy are processed, if something has them one of those ingredients in it and was produced in a country that uses GE crops (like the US, Canada, Argentina, or Brazil), and is not labeled otherwise, then it is a very safe bet that it is GE. This is not very hard to remember.

The problem with mandatory labeling in many. While it is easy to claim 'right to know' the reality is a bit fuzzier if you take the time to think about it. First, we should not require regulations based on who screams the loudest, or based on simple wants. Millions of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, vegans, ect. have dietary restrictions, but rather than demand that food processors cater to them, they go through the market, create demand for food labeled kosher or halal or vegan, and buy that food, or simply do their homework, for example, calling to find out if the gelatin in a product came from pigs, or if the 'natural flavors' of a product were animal based. There is nothing wrong with them doing their thing, but they do not try to impose their beliefs on others either.

the second problem I have with it is that it is inconsistent and uninformative. If I say I modified my computer, what does that tell you? Nothing. If I say something is genetically engineered, what does that tell you? Does it tell you how it was changed or what gene was inserted? Nope. Furthermore, there are many ways that we alter the genetics of crops. Selective breeding, hybridization of inbred lines, marker assisted breeding, wide crossing & embryo rescue, somaclonal variation, bud sport selection, mutagenesis, induced polyploidy. There's also ways that modify the plant without affecting the genetics (grafting and tissue culture) and a host inputs that are applied to plants that you could inquire about (including insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, fertilizers, and various plant growth regulators). To single out one thing is very inconsistent.

So, where is the 'right to know' if something was produced with mutagenesis, or to know if rice has the sd-1 gene or a tomato has the Ph3 gene, or to know if something was treated with a synthetic plant growth regulator to thin the fruit? Fact is there are too many things to possible be listed that you could know, so only important thing (like ingredients and allergens) are labeled. You want something else labeled? that's fine, do what the Jews, Muslims, and vegans do and create a free market demand for it (rmember, there is the organic label, and certification from the Non-GMO Project), but if you can't create enough market demand, don't go to the government demanding special treatment. Could you imagine the torches and pitchforks if a Muslim group said that they could not be bothered to read the Quran and find out what was Halal and Haram so they demanded mandaotry labeling?

What this whole thing really reminds me of is the 'Evolution is only a theory' stickers you see people push for in textbooks. Sure, it is true, evolution is 'only' a theory, just like a 'Contains GMOs' sticker would be true, but you know damn well that the purpose of such stickers is to case doubt on legitimate science by preying on the general public's misunderstandings and ignorance for political or ideological reasons, not to educate.

Re:It is labeled if you know what to look for

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with the situation now is that the FDA has banned producers from labeling their food as GMO-free. Even if a consumer wants to buy GMO-free food, they have no way of knowing because producers aren't allowed to tell them their products are GMO-free. You liken this situation to the specific dietary restrictions of muslims or jews or vegans etc. Well all those groups are allowed to identify products in the supermarket that are labelled as kosher, halal or vegan. This is absolutely not the case with GMO food.

Re:It is labeled if you know what to look for

[ChromeAeonium]

Picking corn to use as an example to complain about genetic alterations, now there's an irony. Do you know how many mutations and genetic alterations are in modern corn varieties (and that's completely ignoring genetic engineering), let alone all the transposons hopping around in there? If I've got, for example, a Country Gentleman sweet corn, a Golden Bantam sweet corn, a Blue Jade sweet corn, and a Ruby Queen sweet corn, just by looking at them you can tell they are obviously genetically different. Is only one corn? By your logic, we shouldn't call anything corn anymore. And why should only changes made by genetic engineering count and not everything else I listed?

Do you know what you get when you add a gene to corn? Corn. It is still corn. It isn't a new species, just a new variety.

Re:It is labeled if you know what to look for

[Ichijo]

if you can't create enough market demand, don't go to the government demanding special treatment.

Actually, there's a very good market-based reason to go to the government for labelling: the free market works better when consumers have information.

Re:It is labeled if you know what to look for

[jo_ham]

So that would be every single variety of corn since the Egyptian times then. We have been genetically modifying plants and animals for thousands of years.

I take it my dairy cow can't be called a cow because that's "false advertising" and "fraud" because it's not a natural animal? Dairy cattle did not evolve naturally.

Nor did many species of high-yield corn - they were selectively grown to accentuate wanted features.

Re:It is labeled if you know what to look for

[jo_ham]

Ah, I see. Nomenclature trumps all eh?

Would it make you feel better if they named it "Lovely Corn Five", "Great Corn Sideways"?

You seem to be fixated on the names. Let me guess, you didn't buy rape seed oil but you do buy canola oil, right?

Re:It is labeled if you know what to look for

[ChromeAeonium]

No one disagrees that information is good, but the question still remains, why single out one thing and ignore the rest, and furthermore, if the information is freely available, relatively easily accessible, and non-essential, why should it be labeled instead by law of being left to consumers to seek it out or not?

Re:It is labeled if you know what to look for

[TubeSteak]

Do you know what you get when you add a gene to corn? Corn.

You get corn + a foreign gene.
Trying to conflate GMO corn and heirloom/hybrid varieties is either dishonest or ignorant.

Re:It is labeled if you know what to look for

[ukemike]

The problem with mandatory labeling in many. While it is easy to claim 'right to know' the reality is a bit fuzzier if you take the time to think about it. First, we should not require regulations based on who screams the loudest, or based on simple wants. Millions of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, vegans, ect. have dietary restrictions, but rather than demand that food processors cater to them, they go through the market, create demand for food labeled kosher or halal or vegan, and buy that food, or simply do their homework, for example, calling to find out if the gelatin in a product came from pigs, or if the 'natural flavors' of a product were animal based. There is nothing wrong with them doing their thing, but they do not try to impose their beliefs on others either.

Actually people who care about the purity of their food did just this. "Organic" was the term used to describe foods that were grown under certain rather strict conditions. This was going quite well and a thriving and growing market segment was catering to people who wanted "organic" food. Then at the behest of major agribusiness the US Government stepped in with legislation that redefined "organic" to be something that was substantially less strict and then made it illegal for associations to use different definitions of "organic."

Now in the case of GM foods, it is illegal for a food to be labeled as non-GMO food. So your exhortations to copy the Kosher/Halal approach is a bit ironic considering that we have been banned from doing so! This free market nonsense is absurd. The free market is supposed to depend on an informed buying public. We want to be informed.

Could you imagine the torches and pitchforks if a Muslim group said that they could not be bothered to read the Quran and find out what was Halal and Haram so they demanded mandaotry labeling?

Could you imagine the outrage that would be generated if the government banned the labeling of food as kosher or halal? You argue that there are way too many types of genetic manipulation for us commoners to be able to know the difference. On one hand this makes the case for labeling and strict regulation even MORE OBVIOUS. There should not be a presumption of safety, genetic tinkerers should bear the burden of proof before their crops are sold to the public or released into the ecosystem. Also your argument is a bit misleading, the GMO crops that are most available on the market today fall basically into two categories. Roundup-resistant crops and crops which produce their own pesticides. Roundup-resistant means that astonishing quantities of Roundup were used on the crop to kill weeds. Roundup which was touted as safe by your agribusiness "scientists" is turning out to be pretty bad for us. Roundup is teratogenic, and endocrine disruptor, and causes genetic damage. The second common type is even scarier since we know that you can't wash the pesticides off of these, they are inside!

I usually fall on the science side of arguments (evolution, climate change, etc.) but there are currently two areas of science that have been totally corrupted by money and corporate influence: Pharmacology, and agricultural biology. Anyone who follows this story knows that new GMO crops are invented all the time and the FDA rubberstamps them because the FDA is a captured agency. It's staffed with a revolving door of Monsanto and ADM employees. There is no way that the kind of large scale long-term studies have been done to validate the safety of GMO crops. So I call a hearty BS on your vilifying concerned people as being anti-science. Shame on you for resulting to name-calling.

Re:It is labeled if you know what to look for

[ukemike]

Tell me then, where can I freely, and relatively easily find food products that do not contain genetically UNmodified corn or soy? Have you ever called up General Mills to ask them about the corn that was used in a particular box of cereal? Seriously?

Your statement that this information is "non-essential" is strange. Why would knowing if our food has been soaked in Roundup be non-essential? Roundup ready crops have been modified to be resistant to the broad-spectrum herbicide Roundup. They were created basically for the purpose of selling more of Monsanto's best selling herbicide. Roundup is toxic, it is an endocrine disruptor, and it damages DNA. In addition is has a profound negative ecological impact. You also ask "why single out one thing and ignore the rest?" Well because direct manipulation of genetic code is very new, very radical, only sparsely tested, and has become unavoidably widespread in very short time. Each of those criteria is worthy of making an exception and forcing monoplistic predatory corporations to disclose what they are feeding to the public. Oh and this is not an individual issue, it is societal. When some of these crops turn out to be really bad, all of society will have to bear the medical costs.

Re:It is labeled if you know what to look for

[roman_mir]

Oh, btw, Roundup probably kills bees and government probably covers it up.

You mean "Corn Sugar"?

[Anonymous Coward]

It has been labelled as such (vs. real sugar) for a while

Except they're not happy with that.

Heath effects is a red herring

[subreality]

... So please stop lending credence to it. The real concern is creating a crop monoculture engineered to meet Monsanto's short term needs (eg to sell roundup-ready seeds every year, then selling the roundup, etc), and not the long-term needs of society or even just farmers.

Re:Heath effects is a red herring

[ChromeAeonium]

First, genetic engineering is a way of improving a plant. A monoculture is growing all the same thing. these are entirely different concepts. Trying to link the two only makes it look like you don't know the definition of either.

Second, how are Monsanto's seeds wrong? sure, the make Monsanto a profit, but there's nothing wrong with that. The insect resistant ones have feared pretty well, reducing pesticides and even benefiting farms that don't grow them. The herbicide tolerant ones have, for all their ill will, been environmentally positive, having reduced the need for tillage to control weeds (tillage degrades the soil quality and promotes fertilizer runoff into water systems), reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and replaced harsher herbicides.

Monsanto? Is that why anti-GE groups are protesting the publicly funded Rothamsted GE wheat trial in the UK? Is that why they complain about the Rainbow papaya, Arctic apples, Golden Rice, and BioCassava, or why groups destroyed the GE grapes in French, GE wheat in Australia, GE potatoes in the Netherlands, and GE wheat in the UK? It might be true for you, but that is minority thought. You can not play that card while the vast majority of the protest against GE crops is also applied to those that have nothing to do with Monsanto.

Re:Heath effects is a red herring

[subreality]

The GE seeds themselves aren't the problem. Monoculture is, and Monsanto's business model encourages it: Sell Farmer-A roundup-ready seeds that perform 20% better than generic seeds when used with copious amounts of roundup; now Farmer-B is being competed out of business, so HE has to buy the special seeds; repeat until everyone everywhere is hooked and anyone who tries to quit goes out of business.

End result: everyone is dependent on Monsanto; roundup contaminates everything; we get roundup-ready weeds; farmers operating with 20% better production but now paying more than 20% of their take to Monsanto; and the natural genetic diversity of the crop is lost because we optimized for one trait that will only benefit us for a few years. No one wins except Monsanto.

By analogy, look at how Microsoft Office is designed compared to LibreOffice. With MS office, someone upgrades, and so now YOU have to upgrade to be compatible. With LibreOffice, it imports everything as each new file format comes out, and they support old formats forever. The reason: Microsoft's incentive is to keep you dependent on them; LibreOffice's incentive is to make software that works great and solves your needs.

I'm picking on Monsanto and their Roundup-Ready line, but as you point out, they're one of many. They're just the big one in the US.

Isn't everything GMO though?

[hsmith]

If you selectively breed crops or animals for food - breeding to extend specific traits you find desirable, how is it not the same?

Granted, it takes longer to produce the outcome you want through breeding traditionally - but you still get the same outcome in the end.

Why is "natural" GMO acceptable and this not?

Re:Isn't everything GMO though?

[Galestar]

Why is "natural" GMO acceptable and this not?

1. There are many things they are doing that is not even close to possible via selective breeding.
2. Selective breeding occurs over time, any negative effects (health, environmental) appear gradually (over generations) and can be tracked, studied and mitigated.

Re:Isn't everything GMO though?

[SuperCharlie]

The issue is that they take traits that certain plants would never be able to acquire and splice them in with no idea about the long term effects on the environment or ecosystem. Selectively picking the reddest roses is not what they are doing. It is more like bolting frog legs on watermelons.

Re:Glow in the dark corn...

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

How dare individuals presume to obstruct Monsato's right to maximise monopoly corporate profits?

The right to maximise shareholder value is a founding principal of this nation, and trumps any petty indulgence a person might have about selecting what they ingest.

Capitalism defeated Communism, you know. That's why it's more important than the Bill of Rights that you pinkos cling to.

Re:Lebel everything genetically modified

[SuperCharlie]

This would be great. It would create a niche market for items without the "may include.." label which would eventually cause the big guys to come up with the gmo free products that people want.

Re:Left-wingers being anti-science is not new

[reve_etrange]

Climate deniers are left-wing? Are you, per chance, synesthetic?

Clarification Between GMO and Hybrids

[IonOtter]

I'm seeing people in here saying that tomatoes are GMO because they're in the same family as Nightshade.

Not correct. Here's how it works...

Hybrid: Pollen from plant A is daubed on the stamen of plant B, yielding a hybrid. Both the parents and the offspring are the same Genus and species, such as Snap peas, or Pisum sativum. You can hybridize them into many varieties, with different characteristics, such as time to maturity, mildew resistance or sugar content.

Genetically Modified Organism: Genetic material is extracted from organism A and artificially implanted/replaced into the genetic material of organism B. Neither organism are even close to each other, such as adding the genes for luciferase in jellyfish to tobacco plants to track calcium uptake.

The name for corn is Zea mays. The name for StarLink(TM) is StarLink(TM), because it is an entirely new species that has not been classified under the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants, by the International Botanical Congress.

So.

Daubing pollen on plants is good. Daubing jellyfish on plants doesn't work. Splicing jellyfish into plants is a Bad Thing.

Why not create a reverse label?

[Opportunist]

So you cannot force labels on the manipulated foods? Ok, then why not invent a "gene-manipulation free food" label and only grant it to "clean" food? Along with promotion, this can prove to be even more effective since you get to set the standards and make sure that nobody slips past.

Re:Why not create a reverse label?

[ukemike]

So you cannot force labels on the manipulated foods? Ok, then why not invent a "gene-manipulation free food" label and only grant it to "clean" food? Along with promotion, this can prove to be even more effective since you get to set the standards and make sure that nobody slips past.

Great idea, but that is currently illegal, thanks to the fact that Monsanto basically owns the FDA.

Oh please

[INowRegretThesePosts]

Based on my regular reading of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, I think there's a better a argument that the right-wing is anti-science. Read Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science. Creationism, anyone? Stem cell research?

You may disagree that human embryos have a right to life, but to label pro-life people as "anti-science" is utterly dishonest.
Saying that they are "anti-science" because they oppose the effects (human embryo death) of one specific type of research is like saying that I am anti-science because I oppose the research of Josef Mengele.

I don't even want to enter into the underlying subject matter (right to life of human embryos) here. I just want the debate to stay adult, instead of being dominated by name-calling.

Shame on you.

Re:Oh please

[nbauman]

I feel pretty comfortable calling Leon Kass anti-science, because of the arguments he presented against stem cell research on the President's Council on Bioethics (President Bush, that is). He argued for the "logic of disgust," which was that he could oppose something just because he personally was disgusted by it. Kass also violated the scientific ethos of free and open discussion, by refusing to discuss his ideas in an open forum.

Bush also kicked 2 distinguished scientists off the Presidential Commission, just because they didn't come to the conclusions he wanted. http://chronicle.com/article/Nobel-Laureate-in-Medicine/48714/ One of them was Elizabeth Blackburn, who later won a Nobel prize in medicine for her work on telomeres. That's like firing the referee because he didn't give you the calls you wanted, or firing your doctor because you don't like his prognosis. Blackburn was pretty outspoken in denouncing the Bush administration.

Blackburn didn't simply object to the conservative opposition to stem cell research; she objected to the way they did it, by packing a scientific advisory committee and getting rid of the dissenters who disagreed with him. That's not the method of science. Why bother to have a scientific panel if you're going to hand-pick them to give you the results you wanted in the first place?

Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter did a lot of things that scientists criticized, and lots of Democrats have a tendency to compromise their principles, but GW Bush was something else. There were editorials in the usually nonpartisan Science magazine about how the Bush Administration's ignorance and defiance of science was unprecedented. It's not often that scientists criticize the people that give them funding. Read Elizabeth Blackburn's articles.

Re:Glow in the dark corn...

[LordLucless]

Capitalism defeated Communism, you know.

Cool, then lets operate on capitalistic principles. You know, the ones that assume an informed consumer

Yes it does

[INowRegretThesePosts]

See
http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/foodnut/09371.html

Re:Glow in the dark corn...

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I don't think you read the article.

contaminated "thieves"?

[harvey the nerd]

Monsanto citing biologically contaminated farms adjacent to GMO farms, as "infringers", is akin to Tokyo Electric calling nucleotide contaminated houses, receivers of stolen property, and extorting payments from the victims !

Re:Glow in the dark corn...

[GLMDesigns]

The issue is not as simple as people are making it. We have a complicated regulatory labeling structure that makes little sense. I want to see labeling on all food products. What I don't want to see is a politically organized witch-hunt against "others" they have a disagreement with. How do we define what is genetically modified? What is the cut-off point? This conversation needs to be had but the rediculous argument GM foods are baaaddddd. Organic is good. Needs to stop. (Organic is usually good but what does it mean to be labelled organic?

Re:Glow in the dark corn...

[fustakrakich]

If you want to see unfettered capitalistic principles, go to Somalia, or join up with your local drug (or any other contraband) cartel