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California Wants Genetically Modified Foods To Be Labelled
bbianca127 writes "In November, California will be voting on Proposition 37. The proposition would mandate putting labels on foods that have been genetically modified. While supporters of the proposition think that consumers deserve to know what they're eating, opponents call it 'anti-science' and have donated $25 million to defeating the measure. From the article: 'Unsurprisingly, the battle has gotten very expensive, very quickly. Agribusinesses and food manufacturers have donated a total of $13 million toward defeating the measure, bringing the total up to $25 million in the coffers of those proposing the proposition. In comparison, the organic farmers and environmentalists who support the proposition have managed to raise less than a tenth of that total amount.'"
Our economic evidence is backing up what our medical evidence has already shown to be perfectly clear
While the motivations for this may be unscientific, not telling people what they're eating doesn't really help either. People need to learn more about the science so there's less unknown for them to be afraid of.
and just jump straight to discussing which side has more money rather than which side has valid points?
The GMO makers tout their products as being so safe and great, such benefit to humanity. They should proudly label their products: Contains GMOs! What's to fear!?! This isn't anti-science but pro-science.
The agribusinesses are right, it is anti-science, and it is bullshit. In this case, the side with the truth also has the money. Imagine that.
Genes from animals? Genes from other plants? Genes inserted directly?
Where does 200+ years of cross breeding come in? Is that considered 'intelligent design' or genetic modification?
It isn't anti-science to know the ingredients, and their specifics, of what goes into the foods we eat. It is just the companies being concerned about giving away what could be harmful nutritional information. The lobbyists wail against it like children. This doesn't make any arguments against science.
So, this is what a totally free libertarian market looks like, huh? Big companies throwing temper tantrums at the very notion of consumer empowerment and scientists and government agents falling in line to soothe their wailing.
How about this? SIt down with the top food scientists in the United States, come up with every possible ingredient and fact about the contents of the food consumers should know, and then hire the top graphic designers to present this information in an organized and clear way.
Oh, what's that? You don't want to rustle Kraft and Dean Food's feathers? OK, forget it. Let's stick to our 1980s food labeling standards and continue eating anal glands with our vanilla wafer cookies in total blind ignorance.
Why proponents of GE are trying to stop (via outspending) those who promote informed consumer choice is beyond me. If GE really is beneficial then consumers will see the reduced prices of the food, notice the improvement in quality and associate those with GE. If GE turns out to be hazardous in some cases then an informed consumer is made responsible for their own decision (although, in the US this hardly seems to be a factor these days in lawsuits). What could possibly go wrong with labeling food?
...are required, so why not GMO labeling? It strikes me as the same thing. Why *wouldn't* you want to know exactly what is in the food you are eating?
What's more is that labeling GMO foods as such actually increases consumer access to information, which is one of the fundamental tenets of competition in the free market economy. The pseudo-conservative horde is always up in arms about labeling as being anti-free market when in fact the opposite is true.
All food has been genetically modified, we don't eat any wild foods anymore.
I would rather think businesses would want to label whether or not the produce had any 'patented' genetic modifications applied to them. People ought to be able to know whether or not it might not be legal for them to plant any of the seeds in the produce, after all, if they have not bought a license for the intellectual property in question.
(For the irony impaired, the above comment is intended to contain at 20% of the RDA of iron.)
It was defeated. I said it was fear-mongering. Why warn someone of something that you don't have any proof is a threat?
The other line I said, which I don't know if it as effective, but it amused me greatly:
"My great, great, great grandfather made his fortune by genetically altering flowers to have new colors, so this isn't as new as people think"
Perhaps, if this measure were enacted, many people who are fearful of such technology will see just how much of our food is modified from its natural state, while causing no harm to said people. As long as the label was neutral (instead of "warning! GMO detected! Has caused cancer *when ingested in extreme amounts by laboratory mice*), it could actually serve to inform the public, instead of scare them.
There will always be those who reject technological advancement. Let them have their information.
Pretty much everything in the food chain contains some GMO product. Of course tracking what and how much would be an administrative nightmare with no benefit to consumers. But the goal of the anti-GMO crowd is to scare people into pricing the products out of the market, it has nothing to do with public health.
Regardless of your stance on the health effects of GMOs, if would behoove us to look more closely at the business practices (specifically w.r.t. intellectual property) of the seed giants, i.e. Monsanto: patenting life, monopolizing the seed market, shaking down small farmers with patent infringement suits, and all so they can sell more Roundup, creating a monoculture of herbicides. It's the same corporate playbook we've seen countless times in the tech world.
We had herbicides before Roundup-ready GMOs. It ain't no huge innovation, aside from being a revenue win for Monsanto.
http://cenblog.org/cleantech-chemistry/2010/03/what-did-farmers-do-before-roundup/
On what do they spend all that raised money to change the outcome of the vote? Advertising? "...to defeating the measure." sounds more than just an advertising campaign.
Meh... they shouldn't be allowed to call them whatever they were originally...
Strawberries spliced with salmon? Sorry, that's not a strawberry anymore.
Corn spliced with caterpillar? Not corn.
Oh wait, it is. It's the only reason people pay a premium for the same product.
Act 1: FDA-or-somebody: "Umm, ADM, your 'xeno-bites' brand genetically engineered cowroach burgers have absolutely no track record of safety testing..."
ADM: "Shut up, four-eyes, and go kill jobs somewhere else. We'll let the consumer decide what they feel comfortable eating."
FDA-or-somebody: "Um, ok."
Act 2: California: "Hey, the consumers want to know what ingredients are in food, so that they can exercise free choice and let the market decide between "Ammoniabeef, Piney-Fresh" and "Soylent X"!"
ADM-or-somebody "Shut up, bureaucratic busybody, all our products are safe and legal and the consumers would just worry their little heads about it if we were to tell them. In fact, tell that dirty hippie down the street that he isn't allowed to use the phrases 'GMO free', 'less than .01% zergling by weight', or 'minimally teratogenic' in advertisements!"
This basic back-and-forth is what annoys me so much about this brand of spat: When the regulators show up, health and safety regulations based on research are treated as a bunch of ivory-tower paternalism. When the customers show up demanding the data that they actually need to make their own choices(since they are justifiably somewhat doubtful that benevolent regulators have their backs on this one), they get a paternalistic rebuff and assurance that the previously neutered regulators are totally all over this one...
There are arguments enough against having it merely one way or the other; but handing the customer the shit end of both worlds is just plain crass.
All have been "modified" by grafting or cloning... How evil...
It's about convincing the average consumer that there's something bad about GMO foods. In the absence of a health hazard (which the FDA has said does not exist), the labeling burden is on those who care about it. We do not have "Contains animal products!", "Non-kosher!" or "Non-halal!" labels on foods; vegans, or observant Jews or Muslims, look for foods labelled as meeting their guidelines. Likewise, people who want to avoid GMO foods can buy from producers that label their foods as GMO-free. What the Prop. 37 folks want is for the people who don't currently care about GMO one way or the other to see a label and think "Hmm, there's a label on this about it being genetically modified. That must mean it's something bad."
And by the way, why does the headline read "California Wants Genetically Modified Foods To Be Labelled"? Shouldn't that be "Organic Farmers and Environmentalists Want Genetically Modified Foods To Be Labelled"?
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
On Bill Maher's show: if GMO food truly is safe and beneficial (and it generally is if you remove Monsanto et al. from the equation), then the obvious solution is not to keep consumers from knowing what it is they're eating, but just the opposite--educate them on exactly what it is they're eating in a neutral, fact-based manner.
Rob
TFA states that "Agribusinesses and food manufacturers have donated a total of $13 million toward defeating the measure, bringing the total up to $25 million in the coffers of those proposing the proposition."
Apparently the list includes Coca-Cola, DuPont and Nestlé. Where can I get a list of all the businesses that don't want us to know what is in the food we eat and how it is made?
Knowing less means knowing MORE!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Have you seen what Americans eat these days? Holy shit, that wouldn't even pass as food 100 years ago! We eat such an unhealthy assortment of food as a daily staple, I think we ought to sort out our heart disease and diabetes problems before we spend our efforts scrutinizing GMOs. GMOs may be damaging our health, but it can't be as important as addressing the obvious and immediate issues we currently face.
If history is a guide. Big money will successfully kill this. Note, it's not big money itself that does this. It's the damn voters who fall for it. Fuck them
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The nasty truth is that actual living plants have so many mutations and gene crossings and chromosomes doublings that you should not think of extant plants as some pristine, perfect creation passed down from God (or Gaea). This is what the nuts in California are actually up in arms about : they believe that "naturally" occurring crops have to be superior to something that has had a few genes artificially spliced in.
Thing is, every crop humans grow for food already HAS been genetically modified, through centuries of selective breeding. In the case of ruby red grapefruit, the crop was developed by exposing the seeds to radiation and causing a LOT of mutations quite fast.
Modern genetic engineering is just a cleaner, and more accurate method. Rather than mixing genes up blindly, the scientists who perform it carefully insert desirable traits and test the outcomes. This can also lead to much safer, faster growing crops. Optimize the Krebs cycle for corn, and it will grow twice as fast. Allow crops to synthesize their own pesticides in the inedible parts of the plant, and humans stop inadvertently consuming pesticide in their diet. Make the crop resistant to pests, and you won't need as much pesticide. And so on.
Bill hr254 has died in committee for over a decade.
The sludge industry makes billions spreading you and your neighbors sh!t on farm fields....and they like to do it in secret, cause, well, you know - its disgusting/revolting/dangerous/creates superbugs/un-american/u pick the description.
In the end, u r eating the end of the line of a sewage treatment plant.
I wonder how much of our healthcare problems in this country are caused by using effluent, septage, or sewage in food production for people?
I think this is as big, or a bigger issue, than GMO.
If you think GMO is bad, stop eating cheese - most cheese consumed in USA comes from GMO organisims that are centrafuged to pick out the enzyme which causes milk to curdle.
It is all about trade-off. So, if we want to inform the public, that is good, but let us do it fairly, without the FUD though. Many producers of regular crops also use a lot more insecticides. Why shouldn't they be required to disclose it as well?
Moreover, the public should be informed that the wheat and the rice they eat has nothing to do with what their ancestors ate. It has been modified in all sorts of crazy ways, sometimes use radiations to accelerate genetic mutations. Should we disclose this as well? Let us be fair: why not?
A better informed consumer is a great thing. FUD is something different.
I'll take GMOs if this means that farmers don't have to dump crazy quantities of insecticides on their field. But if I don't know which insecticide they used and how much they applied, how can I make an informed decision?
Considering that there are several European countries that have blanket bans on GMO crops, you might want to include them in your "Brainwashed people (especially Americans, due to their culture) can't be healed very easily." statement.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
The headline is ridiculous. Perhaps a majority of Californians want this. We will find that out in November (at least we will find out if a majority of the Californians who bother to vote want it).
However, the initiative process means anyone who gets enough signatures can get an initiative on the ballot. Anyone. That's why saying "California wants ... " is ludicrous. Both right-leaning and left-leaning initiatives, some loony and some thoughtful get on the ballot in California. Getting on the ballot in California means nothing. The proof is in the voting.
Sometimes there are diametrically opposed initiatives (e.g. a few years ago one would deregulate somewhat the power company, and another would increase it's level of regulation!). Does that mean California is cognitively dissonant? Perhaps, but not because of whatever initiatives are proposed, since they are proposed by different people.
Just by looking at the initiatives proposed in the last few years (e.g. some anti-immigrant, some pro-pot) you would think that all different kinds of people with all different kinds of ideas live here. Imagine that.
Does it matter if it were anti-science?
How can it be anti-science to put a truthful blurb on something which says what it is?
So you had a chat with California, and California told you what it wants, did it?
Interesting. Given all the controversy and disagreements between various Californians, it is a bit surprising that California has reached such a clear position before the referendum has been held. Does California not care about the opinions of Californians who are opposed to the labeling?
If California is so biased and does not wait for the conclusion of the democratic process, I wonder why Californians allow California to stay. Do the wants of California have any bearing on the matter?
Meg Whitman outspent Jerry Brown. Anecdotally, the spending may have backfired as it caused her to be seen as the "big money" candidate. If throwing money at a campaign always worked, we'd have had a President Steve Forbes too.
There is not one thing Monsanto and friends can say to change my mind about this. Let 'em spend themselves into oblivion.
Normally, I would agree, but I must disagree in this case. The vast majority of people in the U.S. are science-illiterate and easily swayed by sensational headlines (For example, last week slashdot posted a story on how the background radiation in Fukushima is less than that of Denver, yet people panic over radiation exposure in Japan, but not Colorado.). I worry that a similar backlash against GM crops could negatively affect the world's food supply.
While we can disparage crops that have been crafted to withstand copious amounts of insecticide, please keep in mind that there are 7 billion people on the planet, and all of them need to be fed. Much of the world depends upon the United States' agricultural output. GM helps boost this output. While the American consumer can withstand a few cents increase in cost due to decreased food supply, the same increase can trigger food riots in less fortunate countries. If the United States' agricultural output is enhanced by GM, then I'm all for it. I worry that shunning GM food in the US could hurt further investment/development.
I'd like to know where my computer's component parts came from. Not generally, I mean specifically. Which country, which mountain, which small town, whichever of those is applicable. What were the resulting processes from there on.
Simple labellling could save tens to hundreds of hours of lab work for smaller scale researchers. Sorting out which foods are GM and which are not would be a time consuming task some folks cannot budget into their research.
There is nothing wrong with knowing which foods you put into your body. Science cannot prove or disprove the safety of the food universally and ultimately that is the discrection of the consumer, not a board of marketing directors or GM researchers to determine. If I don't like GM I don't like science? Is that it? Are scientists going to use the anti-creationist mantra that questioning research findins is unscientific? Yea, and questioning your President is unpatriotic, right? Keeping information from me that are no doubt pertinent to my consumption preferences, THAT is anti-science.
And I'm saying this as a person who has full confidence that well researched GM foods are acceptible food sources! As a consumer, I reallly don't care if it's GM, I just care how expensive it is! :)
With the incestuous relationship of Monsanto and the FDA, an annual lobbying budget second only to Big Tobacco, it is likely they will continue purchasing the support of government officials as usual.
Why so many things can already be mis-labeled, i.e. MSG (Autolyzed Yeast Extract) and myriad other ingredients, but people are presumed without the right to know whether their dinner is bio-modified or not, makes no sense. If something is to be sold as food, all practically available information should be made available and transparent. What is entirely insane is the efforts of Monsanto to punish companies for labeling their own products as GMO Free. In most cases where GMO Free labels are used, a compulsory disclaimer of insignificance is placed below. Odd that such modifications would ever be made if no significant differences were achieved.
I am not anti GMO. But I am against its current implementation. Monsanto has destroyed many farmers, attempted such grotesque strategies as the Terminator Seed, litigated 1000s of hard-working farmers for nothing, and has at times been reckless with its technology. There are thousands of political reasons alone which should be ample cause for mandatory labeling, but voluntary labeling at the very least should be completely unhindered -- perhaps like Cruely Free, Dolphin Safe, etc.
The likeliness of every single instance of modified food proving itself safe after decades is low, and some margin of error seems inevitable. Food is also not an option for anyone -- it is totally essential and therefore a shared and public element. The very concept of privatizing food and obscuring its "nature" is asinine. Many supermarkets show the national origin of the product as they should, and consumers use this and similar data to make personal choices for which the interference of should be a crime. An informed public is the only public; anything else is a product. If consumers knew absolutely nothing of GMO and only of Monsanto's litigation history alone, that in itself would dissuade most consumers from touching their products. What are they afraid of? Choice? Well golly gee. I guess they'll just have to force themselves then, because as the meme goes, "We have a whole planet to feed". Next time someone pukes that meme, try asking them about their agricultural experience and just how far they think GMO really needs to go to meet that task. There is plenty of room for choice for many years to come. Assuming people can't make intelligent choices is dangerous behavior for a government, especially when it comes to basic needs. It is also a self-fulfilling, self-perpetuating expectation.
I've worked on a few farms and know very well what excellent production can be yielded without GMO. To even suggest that non-GMO agriculture has become obsolete is ludicrous. And until it is, label the damned products!
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
The "organic" growers will want testing of foods from the big companies to keep them honest. But, it could well be mandated for all producers.
If you say it's non-gmo, prove it. Regardless of the size of your operation.
With modern laboratory methods, we can detect tiny amounts of specific genetic material.
example: detecting Asian Carp DNA in the water of Lake Michigan. We haven't seen the carp, but we know that at least a few are there from the shed genetic material.
Imagine the consternation when much of the final product "organic" food also tests positive for detectable amounts of transfered BT genes or other GM material. Additions that could have blown in with pollen or from volunteer plants. You grind, mix and process many foods, so anything in it gets distributed. If your suppliers don't do a good job of vetting their sources, you're screwed.
Too bad if it was contamination. Go to court for remedy if you want. But, in the meantime it's not GMO free so pull off the labels or pull it from the shelves.
It's all in how the levels are set in the regulations and what part of the production cycle the testing is done at.
If you want GMO free, it doesn't matter how it gets in, so end product testing rather than the incoming materials is quite reasonable.
If it passes, big food should lobby for stringent levels and testing. Besides, for large companies, the expense can be spread of huge amounts of product shipped. For small organic producers, not so much. If it passes, this "big win" may be a devil in disguise for those that wanted it.
If GMO's are SO very safe, than the promoters who want to sell and market GMO crops should easily be able to schlep down to LLoyds of London and get a 100 trillion dollar bond. If they are so certain and can show it - as they all claim they can - then the bond should really be a pittance.
If they can't convince an insurer of the safety to get such a bond, then probably the public shouldn't trust them either.
So, that's my solution. You can sell any crop you want. Just go get that hundred trillion dollar bond. When you're wrong, the money will be in the bank to cover your loses and we'll be good.
If you can't get the bond, I guess you have some more research and proof to provide.
[And regulate the bond holder viciously, so they can't renege on their bond liability either.]
So nothing novel in there then. Therefore no patentability, it's just a natural thing like numbers.
The people just might get what they want, and they don't know enough to know what it is!
Quick, SuperPacs, to the CashMobile, we must fund our own Ballot Proposition.
This produce has been modified from its original version. It has been mutated to give school children early-onset puberty and destroy your digestive system"
It isn't [only] about eating food that is genetically modified, it is about how genetically modified food has the potential to destroy ecosystems. If someone is worried about GM plants out competing natural plants,and potentially letting an entire ant colony die (I am trying to be serious), it would make sense for them not to support them by buying elsewhere, and they can only do that when things are labeled.
+1 for labels, because you can only make use of logic when you know all the parameters.
Yes. For thier edification, life expectancies continue to increase pretty much everywhere in the world except for a few war-torn locales. I see no evidence our food is suddenly going to start to kill us. Lack of food, of course, kills many people.....just sayin. So slap a "may contain GMOs" label on everything, and get on with feeding people. It's a much more important problem.
And I want surgically modified Californians to be labeled.
Quack, quack.
Agribusinesses and food manufacturers have donated a total of $13 million toward defeating the measure, bringing the total up to $25 million in the coffers of those proposing the proposition
Uh, I think that should have been "opposing" the proposition. Monsanto would have been kind of annoyed if they accidentally gave all of that money to those proposing the proposition...
The whole fucking plan here is to get stupid people to avoid GMO food by putting big scary labels on it. It's FUD, and you know damn well that's what it is. Stop fucking pretending this is anything else.
Because for the life of me, I cannot determine if that counts controlled breeding programs.
To me, there is no difference if it happens in a 1980s test tube or a 1780s greenhouse... To me, there is not such thing as "genetically unmodified" food anymore.
As a California resident, I probably could have guested that some stupid "prop" like this would pop up. Shocking, California wasting ungodly amounts of money it doesn't have to institute ridiculous social ideas just to fart out some propaganda. If any place in the world thinks that it's majority has the right to force-feed social bullshit down the throats of everyone, it's California. I swear, I'm going to dance around wearing only plastic bags, smoking within ten feet of [anything] and eating a happy meal, maybe while juggling some gigantic genetically engineered tomatoes. Stop wasting my money.
It's about what's costly. The last thing any company wants is to be required to create a second tier/class of product, food in this case, that requires separate handling, processing, packing, labeling and/or distribution.
The only thing Monsanto currently has to do is sell the promise of reduced cost to the farmer. If the Bill passes, it the reduced cost of production will be more than offset by the increased cost of handling and marketing what amounts to a new product.
I hope the Bill passes. That way, if they want their Frankenfood to be accepted as the same product, they'll have to prove that it is, BEFORE it hits the market. I'm no fan of increasing the toxicity of corn, even if it does decrease the amount of pesticide that's required to grow it because it forces me to eat it whether or not I want to.
As it is, I can't even wash the pesticides from most produce anymore because of the way it's handled by the middle men who may wash it before they wax it and gas it. My only recourse is to peal the outer layer if I want to be sure not to ingest the toxic components of production.
There's no reason I should have to eat bio-engineered, genetically produced pesticides or support their egregious manipulation of the courts in prosecuting organic farmers for not buying their Roundup-Ready DNA.
The world should not become Monsanto's Oyst®!
All food will be labelled, then? Since 'genetically modified food' refers to -ALL- food products grown with agriculture.
I live in California, and there are legally mandated warnings like this all over the place -- so many of them that it's impossible to take them seriously.
"WARNING: This area contains a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm."
You get this in places like hotel rooms and gas stations. What am I going to do, stop putting gas in my car or stop staying in hotels?
It's also applied in totally inconsistent ways. Some companies that sell herbal medicines have to put the warning on their product, which sort of makes sense, because any carcinogenic effect is an effect regardless of whether the product is "natural." But in other cases (chocolate, vinegar), the courts have ruled that other "natural" products don't have to have the warnings because they're natural.
There are some possible sane, logical reasons to be concerned about the political and economic effects of GMOs (concern about patents, inability of farmers to use seed from their own crops, reduction of genetic variability, harm to neighboring fields from spraying roundup on GM roundup-resistant fields, ...), but there are no sane, logical reasons to be worried about health effects of eating them -- not on a population basis, and certainly not on an individual basis. Therefore I think it's great that Californians are bestowing upon themselves yet another set of warnings. The proliferation of warnings ensures that people will pay even less attention to them than they do now, and that's exactly the right result, since they should be paying zero attention to them in the first place.
Eating is actually a fairly dangerous activity, because we do a lot of it, and even a low probability of harm becomes significant when it's repeated by every individual many, many times. But we don't want to know about the high risk of harm from eating "natural" foods (salmonella, carcinogens in barbecued meat, ...). We only want to know about the (zero) risk of harm from eating "unnatural" GM foods, because that seems scarier.
Same deal with people being afraid their kids will get kidnapped by a stranger when they should be worried about them getting run over by someone talking on their cell phone. The first risk is nearly zero, but it's unusual, so we're more scared of it.
Same deal with people thinking the Fukushima nuclear accident (with zero deaths) is really horrible, while the tsunami (18,000 deaths) isn't a big deal. The rational reaction would be to improve early warning systems for tsunamis, but because nuclear stuff is unusual, we're more scared of it.
Find free books.
I fear that this initiative will result in less genetic engineering, due to Luddism.
Genetic engineering can greatly increase crop yields and this is good for everyone.
You're hiding something. It's the only impression you can give, whether it's true or not. Consumers are entitled to choice. I am entitled to choice. It is unconscionable that the FDA didn't mandate this kind of disclosure long before now. If the industry thinks my choice is 'uneducated,' then make your case and educate me. But I don't consume this stuff by choice because history tells me that some corporations would feed me lead-wrapped mercury if the guys who made the profits would be safely dead before I found out it was bad for me. So let me make the choice.
I want milk from cows treated with rBST, but I can't find it anywhere anymore. You can say it's about labeling, but in practice it amounts to a de facto ban.
If the proponents of GM food win this one, there is still another approach: provide an opt-in certification for labelling non-GM foods. Like organic foods, if companies decide that customers are swayed by this label, then more might opt-in.
My main beef with GM foods, is the amount of testing and the attitudes of companies like Monsanto when it comes to control of food variety and persecution of farmers who end up being contaminated by Monsanto pollen.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
If it were GMO, Monsanto et al. would be suing them into bankruptcy.
I work for a south-eastern agricultural university. We do research in controlling the spread of GM DNA, and based on what we've found, the situation is more or less hopeless.
Once the GM DNA is out there, it is out there, and it spreads whether you want it to or not. Germination vectors are quite mobile and can travel for miles and miles, so even with the mandated buffer space between GM and non-GM crops, it is impossible to prevent the spread of GM DNA.
We are working on a paper now that will basically conclude with 95% confidence that non-GM DNA will be extinct in food crops by 2050 - worldwide.
What exactly is the difference between GMO and the "natural" plants and animals? These people realize we selectively bred *all* of our essential food (plant and animal) species over long periods of time, right? They're nothing like nature intended, we made them this way. GMO is just doing it faster. The chicken, beef, goat, corn, wheat, carrots, broccoli, etc... ANYTHING you're likely to find in a supermarket, never existed in anything like its current form in unaltered nature. We cultivated and bred them, and they became optimal feedstock for us as we became agricultural and grew in population. Even what you'd think of as game animals (go kill a deer in the wild for food!) were (in some cases, unintentionally) selectively bred into today's game animals from far less optimal "natural" stock.
And from the other end of this argument, good luck defining "organic" food in any sensible or sane way. Anything you can consume beneficially is by definition organic. Organic chemistry is organic. Modified DNA is organic. Ok, so you're redefining the word organic to mean something else? What? Chickens that were raised on a beautiful spacious farm, given pet names, individual groomers, and an acre of roaming land per bird? Fed on real earthworms? Just so you can cut off it's head and eat it? WTF is the point of that? You're still killing it for food, and it's brain is far too small to know the difference in lifestyle. Not to mention "organic" farming and ranching doesn't scale. If you mandated that all food on the planet were raised to your "organic" standards, 3/4 of the world's human population would need to immediately starve to death to make up the food gap from the loss of food industrialization. And those several billion people definition do feel the difference between surviving on food and starving to death in agony.
Another labeling requirement, especially only in one state, is an expensive proposition for several reasons. It implies substantial compliance costs in machinery to get the 0.5% non-GMO level (or no one compiles and it means nothing) and it creates an opportunity for senseless tort that quibbles over precise compliance.
There is no law preventing labeling now. Non-GMO producers can label their product now, but they don't, because it's not worth the cost of doing so. For that matter, "organic" already implies non-GMO. It implies more than that, but the purists are not completely out of luck.
Several people have argued "the consumer has a right to know regardless of the science". Well, maybe, but it has to have some limit when we are talking about mandated labeling. Should we label whether or not the water came from Hetch Hetchy (which some environmentalists want to remove as a reservoir)? Shouldn't consumers know the water that grew their food came from an environmentally sensitive (according to some) water shed? There isn't enough room on the label for all of this information, nor is it cheap to actually discern it.
Living in California, I think of the carcinogen warnings that were mandated by a proposition some years. They are in most buildings. There is no reference to the amount of carcinogen, the type, or the risk level. It's just a blanket statement. Everyone ignores it because it means nothing. That was not an exercise in informing the consumer, but it did help the bar association.
Basically, all it says is that any commercial food producer (note: farmers cultivating 1 acre of land, or producing $5000 worth of crops, are exempt/have no labelling requirements!) must put a label saying CONTAINS GMO INGREDIENTS / MAY CONTAIN GMO INGREDIENTS on retail food (IIRC, there's an exception for restaurants), unless every person involved in producing it has signed of that it doesn't have GMO ingredients, or they have tested all the ingredients.
Until ~2020, there's an exception that means you could use could use cornstarch that you know came from GMO crops, and still not label anything--because cornstarch is a minor ingredient.
Now, there's absolutely no distinction provided between Roundup Ready, Liberty Link, and Bt corn.
For those who have less background knowledge, Bt corn uses a gene from Bacillus thuringiensis--which has been used as an organic insecticide (organic as in "registered / used for organically-grown crops") for over half a century, and causes no problems for humans. Most seed companies have some Bt strains.
Roundup Ready is what Monsanto's been suing everybody over. It offers resistance to glyphosate, a _relatively_ mild herbicide (the conventional alternatives are far more toxic to man, and less effective on weeds).
Liberty Link is a different herbicide-resistance trait, developed by other companies (Bayer Crop Science, with some work by Pioneer). It confers resistance to glufosinate, which is listed as "Toxic to vascular plants" (read: just about any plant) and has several restrictions (including no application to wetlands).
Are there reasons someone might avoid any of them?
Yes.
Do those reasons apply equally to all of the traits?
Absolutely not!
The only reason one would want to avoid them all is that "Somebody tampered with something!"
Now, is that a scientifically sound criteria for making an informed decision?
I doubt it.
If all the information that's provided is that, are we promoting making an informed decision?
The claim is laughable.
Now, it's probably going to make 5 c. difference for the casual shopper...because most of the companies will just add "May contain ingredients from genetically modified organisms" to the labels.
The concerned shopper will probably spend at least 10-20% more, due to restricted selections.
And the average farmer will either spend several hours more taking care of paperwork, or get paid 95% of what he used to...which could mean half the income, thanks to operating overhead.
(note: numbers are a vaguely informed guesstimate)
~A senior majoring in Crops at CSU Chico, and one-time intern at Pioneer, where I worked on evaluating drought tolerance of several new varieties.
"MAY CONTAIN INGREDIENTS FROM GMOS"
That's all the proposition wants labelled.
So no, it's not informing anyone.
1) Food producers mark practically everything as GM. Whether it is or isn't.
2) California buyers panic.
3) Producers release small amounts of non-GM food onto the market labeled as non-GM. With prices set by false scarcity.
4) ?????
5 Profit!
Have gnu, will travel.
how else do you explain "informing" the electorate that less information is better?
I guess California has got a lot of labeling to do, then. It's not like anything we eat today isn't genetically modified, or hasn't been for a couple thousand years...
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
Oh, you want science?, then how about all the data about how GMO's are horrifying? The many, many different ways, it could single-handedly destroy huge portions of our food supply; that making food grow faster, doesn't make it more nutritious, exascerbating major problems in the food supply, while minimizing minor ones; that a third of the world's food supply is now in the hands of a single company, (Monsanto). There are plenty of documentaries probably covering a hundred others.
Also, they find it odd that people want to know their tomatoes are actually TOMATOES, rather then part virus, fungus, fish, monkey, or whatever else they feel like splicing into it, (which is done with Retroviruses).
Captcha: Monkeys
You all speak of the consumer's right to "make an informed choice" but you forget that almost all consumers are uninformed.
My freedom includes the right not to have my right to consume better, genetically-modified food (as backed by actual science) ruined by the paranoia of a propaganda-fueled public.
Please explain to me why I should trust Joe Blow Consumer and his paranoid ability to ruin the market viability of my preferred product, because "his friends say it is bad" over the opinions of actual scientists.
I'm waiting.
The right to offend is central to the right to free speech.
I personally would enjoy this GMO sticker movement pulverized into the ground by whatever evil, underhanded, corporate fatcat methods are necessary to do so. Probably less than 5% of people in the US know what the terms "gene" and "genetic modification" and "organism" truly mean, while possibly 80% of the rest have reached some sort of confident misunderstanding. Understand this: MOST PEOPLE WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND WHAT A GMO IS. It is IMPOSSIBLE to force educate everyone in the US with the 1-2 years of university level biology to gain even the semblance of knowledge required to understand what 'G' 'M' 'O' entails, along with the whole protein and DNA thing... hell all of molecular biology. In the brains of most people, GMO has strong associations with the "things to avoid because they are unnatural and wrong like same-sex marriage" bundle. Putting this sticker on every food item will serve no purpose other than to reduce the amount of funding reaching biological research. Those saying that "people have the right to know what they are eating" and "we get nutrition facts, why not GMO sticker?" are full of it. A "GMO" sticker provides no benefit to those few who even know what a GMO is (will it also the name the vector used? the source genome used? pblast alignments with similarly translated proteins of various species? known protein interactions, conformations, metabolic pathways?). Society wouldn't get anything but OONGA BOONGA scared from some extra worthless "UNNATURAL ABOMINATION - This product wasn't on the Ark!! " sticker everyone has to peel off before eating.
However, I would actually prefer if the corporations published even the most shallow genetic details of their product on an easily accessible website to allow qualified judgement from those in the general public who for whatever reason do not trust the corporation they are purchasing from.
The same thing that makes GMOs patentable whereas you can't patent "the potato".
Since GM crops are the norm, instead label NON GM foods as being "GM free". No way that agribusiness can complain about that.
Yeah, and if hybrid seed is so great, why not label it? And if food produced via tissue culture is so great, why not label it? And if food produced via induced polyploidy is so great, why not label it? And if food produced via somaclonal variation or mutagenesis is so great, why not label it? And if food produced via doubled haploid hybridization is so great, why not label it? And if Haram food won't send you to hell, why not label it?
Yes, to all.
Whenever there are options in producing something that ends up indistinguishable to consumer's naked eye, consumer should be informed which options were chosen. If there is one default, "mainstream", way of doing something, then perhaps we can argue that it is what consumer expects and label only the products which differ.
this is what a totally free libertarian market looks like
We are talking about the largest, most expensive, most powerful government in human history, with the most complex system of laws ever conceived. If you think this is libertarianism, then you either incredibly misinformed, or deliberately building an empty strawman.
Reduce the size of government to 1/10 what it is today, measured both in revenue and power over the people, and then we'll start talking about whether we can call it libertarianism. Yes, 1/10 the size. THAT is what libertarianism looks like, and it looks NOTHING like what we have today.
Why does *everything* always have to come down to whomever has the most money, wins?
I'm a pure capitalist, through and through, but when is this ultimate greed going to stop? Does capitalism really have to mean "fuck everyone else"?
Colour me confused, but wouldn't it be more "anti-science" NOT to put the GM labels on food to educate people about the food they eat?
Maybe they are just saying they think the majority of plebs in the USA are anti-science to begin with.
Companies like Monsanto would just make lots of subsidiaries with different, harmless-sounding names. You'd have to look up all of the names in an online database in order to know if they belonged to a "bad guy" or not. Few consumers would go to that amount of effort.
I can not comprehend how this is not a standard across the globe yet.
I am also a linux sysadmin and oppose software patents. The biotech industry is at the forefront of lobbing for more intellectual property rights. http://www.bio.org/articles/unleashing-promise-biotechnology I oppose lifeform patents so if corporations dabble in genetic engineering they are on their own. No public subsidies should go to biotech (and yes patents are a subsidy)
Why not make an alliance/certification program that puts a label on food that is NOT GMO? Make it cheap and affordable for farmers.
I personally buy 99% organic (100% vegan, 80%+ raw) because I believe it is good for me. People should have the right to know what they eat. Anyone trying to take this right away should be punished, sued, bankrupted as a company. Not less.
Here is the summary:
"Requires labeling on raw or processed food offered for sale to consumers if made from plants or animals with genetic material changed in specified ways. Prohibits labeling or advertising such food as “natural.” Exempts foods that are: certified organic; unintentionally produced with genetically engineered material; made from animals fed or injected with genetically engineered material but not genetically engineered themselves; processed with or containing only small amounts of genetically engineered ingredients; administered for treatment of medical conditions; sold for immediate consumption such as in a restaurant; or alcoholic beverages."
Odd that it's not in the linked article. It seems strange to me that someone would write a piece about the ballot measure without actually summarizing what it says, or even *linking* to a summary.
A discussion of prop 37 can be found on ballotpedia and on the CA Secretary of State's voter information website. What should be clear is that much of what we're talking about here (e.g. labeling of accidentally contaminated crops, mandatory testing for genetic alterations) has no bearing on the actual proposal.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
nobody makes a buck from the introduction of the alien species.
Unless you have something to hide.
Of course, in this case, whichever side has more cash will win, but in a perfect world it would be based on facts and logic and not raw money.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
* Gene transfers do naturally happen. But transgenic DNA is much more likely to do so (which is actually required for some genetic engineering techniques to be used, and an unintended consequence of other techniques) to the point it is considered instable. Genetic engineering also uses promoters with the capacity to awake dormant genes, with the result that those promoters are now present in about every living organism, from humans to bacterias.
* Those points increases mutations in every contaminated host. Which means troubles ranging from infertility to cancer, along with the rise of new infectious diseases.
* Not only that but the inserted genes can be toxic: there are reported cases of intestinal bacterias in humans producing insecticides after a contamination by GMO.
* 80% of GMO used today are designed to be resistant to specific herbicides like RoundUp, this is the very business model of those plants. As a result, use of herbicides in the USA has been multiplied by 15 since the use of GMO. Which is likely to have health and environmental consequences, something already asserted with bees.
* Some other GMO produce antibiotics and pesticides, which results in more and more bacterias and insects being resistant to those products. Some bacterias that could be easily eradicated twenty years ago are more and more often troublesome, with possibly serious complications. How antibiotics are used today in agriculture is scandalous.
* On the other side the economical benefits of existing GMO are very questionable and sometimes detrimental, especially with the rise of resistant predators for plants. And we still have to see the long-promised commercial products that would use less water, less naturients or grow on sterile soils.
So, what do you think is a proper scientific attitude in this matter? To document yourself and question what you think may be true, or to boldly claim that being anti-GMO is being anti-science because you heard some Monsanto-hired expert claim this on Fox?
Now there are three unrelated questions to be answered:
* Are the available GMO products good?
* Are the current genetic engineering techniques good?
* Is the GMO concept good?
I do not have the answers, although I have intuitions. But only the last one is a matter of beliefs (including anti-science stands) and not of scientific facts.
Now it is important to note that it is very hard for independent researchers to get funds to study the social, economical, environmental and medical consequences of GMO. While, on the other side, Monsanto & al produce a considerable scientific noise, spend a lot of money into advertising and commercial actions, and have strong political supports.
It is true that labeling GMO foods would mess up the data for biotech science: Since these chemical companies haven't conducted any health studies or tests on their GMO foods, this is how they want to do it - - - by sneaking it in and waiting for results (and in the meantime making billions $$). Following suit, just like the tobacco companies - - - we are the consenting guinea pigs. Look how long it took for cigarette labels!
Slowly reports are coming in from independent organizations that show GMOs and other nightmares, such as bovine growth hormones, antibiotics and tight cages used on animals are creating ill health - - - in humans and animals.
Would anyone in their right mind really want a chemical company securing and producing our food? We need intelligent farmers producing the food! And intelligent people demanding healthy food.
If you don't care about your health or the health of animals, plants or the environment ...... then GMO's are for you! You are the market for their profit!
Regarding stupidity, even the gods themselves contend in vain! GMO should stand for Give Me Organic!
Monsanto needs us for their experiment.
Monsanto needs to control the food market so that we'll all bow down to them in the future.
Down with Monsatan!