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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."
I guess we all know how this will go down, considering what happened in France. The FDA will step in and overrule any vote
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
see Food Inc and other documentaries about the pernicious effects of agribusiness
-I'm just sayin'
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?
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.
... 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.
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.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
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.