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US House Committee Approves Anti-GMO Labeling Law
An anonymous reader writes: The House Agriculture Committee approved a measure banning mandatory GMO labeling as well as local efforts to regulate genetically engineered crops. The decision is a major victory for U.S. food companies and other opponents of labeling genetically modified foods. "This... legislation will ensure that Americans have accurate, consistent information about their food rather than a 50 state patchwork of labeling laws that will only prove costly and confusing for consumers, farmers and food manufacturers," said Pamela Bailey, CEO of the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), said in a statement.
..your friends at Monsanto Corporation.
Our Business Is Life Itself.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
other opponents of labeling genetically modified foods
Now who the hell considers themselves an opponent of labeling GMO foods unless they have a financial stake in it? Is there anyone walking down the street who has nothing to do with the food industry and considers themselves an opponent of labeling GMO foods?
This... legislation will ensure that Americans have accurate, consistent information about their food
So a law that requires that GMO foods are labeled as GMO foods would be a barrier to accurate, consistent information? Someone wrote that quote without even bothering to check what the issue was, didn't they?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Labeling laws like this convey no real information to the consumer. They just add a word to the food item that many people interpret as frightening, a word that has literally zero impact on the safety or sustainability of the food item. This is definitely a win for people everywhere in the US.
Exactly. GMO labeling laws are analogous to labeling table salt as "NOTICE: HAS CHEMICALS!".
I think we should have mandatory labeling on anything that contains DNA, just to be safe.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
"Genetically modified", all food is genetically modified. Humans have domesticated, modified by selection, hybridation and other means, all the food since the beginnings of agriculture. Labelling this or that is therefore simply a lie, because all should be labelled, then.
Seriously, EVERYTHING YOU EAT is GMO.
The vast majority was done by selective breeding and grafting, a very small amount by directly fiddling with the genes.
There is not a single crop that hasn't been modified by humans in some way.
The USDA seems to disagree with you.
Putin just states that GMOs will be forbidden in Russia. This is not even a joke:
http://sustainablepulse.com/20...
We will now be witness to a very large controlled experiment.
I have all ready arranged an explanation for you guys when Russia shows lower rates of disease X and scientists proclaim the "Russia Paradox":
1. There is better disease reporting in the west.
2. Russian statistics are doctored by corrupt officials.
3. Moderate vodka consumption has health benefits.
The big thing you have to remember about this is that traits are not one-to-one with genes. One gene can affect many different traits and one trait can be affected by many different genes. When you genetically engineer an organism, you run the risk of creating or altering traits you never intended. This can and has lead to problems like feed corn that's toxic to the cattle and pigs it was intended for.
Selecting breeding and genetic engineering are not the same thing. I'm not anti-gmo, but to suggest that putting Salmon genes in Tomato plants is the same as just selecting between different offspring is incorrect.
You have this backwards. If companies are going to introduce new products into our food supply, the burden of proof should be on them to prove that there aren't any negative health consequences.
Is it harder to show proof of absence? You bet your ass. And given the ramifications involved, it should be.
Look, I'm not an anti-gmo crusader. I think it has a lot of promise to more efficiently feed a growing world. But, like any technology, it can be used both responsibly and irresponsibly, and the private sector doesn't have a great track record of putting public health ahead of profits.
You stereotypers are all the same...
False dichotomy. There are a lot of ways to speed up the process other than GMO. Irradiation is still widely used in countries that don't allow GMO. If changing 1 gene makes you uncomfortable, then using mutagens to RANDOMLY change thousands of them in unknown was should scare this shit out of you.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Transgenics may not be the same thing as hybridization, but it is a process that can also occur naturally. The claim that "hybridization mimics nature, while transgenics is purely human engineering" is another lie.
So instead of a controlled change of genetics, you give it a dose of radiation to allow a random genetic mutations.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This GMO stuff isn't like selective breeding, it is putting genes from a different species into a plant...like splicing DNA out of a frog into a stalk of wheat.
Why is the food industry so "afraid" of letting the consumer make an informed decision on what they want to put in their bodies?
The food industry hasn't put this much effort and money behind anti-consumer legislation since the food nutrition labeling act (you know, the Nutrition Guides on the back of products) a few decades ago.
What are they afraid of people knowing???
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The problem, it seems to me, is not that the GMO's are safe or unsafe. It's that any trust authority has been completely destroyed by money. The FDA/EPA/USDA are funded by Congress and Congress appears to be corrupt. So anything that branches off of them appears to be corrupt. How are we supposed to believe anything from any of these people with such an appearance of corruption. It's a big money game and sometimes the money coincides with the larger public interest but more often it seems not to. So I believe in what I saw my 80 year old mother eat, who does not have diabetes, does not have heart disease, is not and never has been overweight and still has all her marbles. She ate real food that generations of people ate before her that didn't skip steps or have spider genes inserted in it. She might have accidentally eaten a spider and then ate some corn, but she never ate spidercorn.
Oh, and a word regarding traditional hybridization: Not the same thing at all -- because it's not like farmers, historically, were somehow incorporating insect DNA into their crops, which, I believe, is what was done with GMO tomatoes.
You were doing OK till then. Actually, the genes for plants and animals are full of DNA for viruses and bacterial that were incorporated into the host DNA.
There was an article in the New Yorker a few years ago that explained how segments of viral DNA were incorporated into the human genome. Once they sequenced the human genome, they could search for viral sequences, and they found a lot. There are lots of DNA viruses that incorporate themselves into human DNA. That's why it's so hard to get rid of herpesviruses and HIV. Usually they target somatic cells, but during human evolution they regularly find their way to the germ line.
Labeling laws like this convey no real information to the consumer.
Yes it does. It informs the consumer whether the food contains GMO or not. And some consumers care about this and wish to be informed.
They just add a word to the food item that many people interpret as frightening, a word that has literally zero impact on the safety or sustainability of the food item.
So if the consumers are put off by GMO then the solution is to hide the fact? People of Asian and Jewish religion are put off by products containing pork. Maybe you could argue that pork is perfectly safe and they are over reacting. So should we just hide the fact that some food contains pork because we know better than they do that pork is safe?
This is definitely a win for people everywhere in the US.
How is hiding information that people may care about a "win" for people?
There's nothing you could eat that has ever done that. Unless you're a cannibal.
When you genetically engineer an organism, you run the risk of creating or altering traits you never intended.
Correct, but this is true of all genetic alterations, including conventional breeding: known examples include toxic potatoes and celery.
This can and has lead to problems like feed corn that's toxic to the cattle and pigs it was intended for.
Citation needed. I believe you are referring to a case where GE corn was contaminated with fungal mycotoxins, and as the corn was GE, anti-GMO groups claimed it was the GE aspect that made them sterile, not the well known toxic agents that happened to also be in there (which they conveniently neglected to mention).
If we take your argument, we should label conventional breeding, with known cases of harm, not GE crops, with zero instances of harm (beyond baseless accusation anyway). Of course, that's a bit silly, yeah?
It doesn't make any difference how many right wing propaganda sources you quote since they are all incorrect. When you (or they) state flatly "no GMO food that ever makes it to your plate ever has genes from one organism transplanted to another" it not even close to the truth. A simple Wikipedia search is all that it takes to get the facts.
All the cursing and name calling in you rant makes you appear unhinged and delusional. Given that you are spouting lies as well it's obvious that a rational reader would ignore everything you say.
This makes me wonder. Perhaps your family history is unique, but as far as the rest of humanity is concerned Bacillus thuringiensis is not an organism found normally living with other bacteria in our gut. If your assertion is true then maybe you do have Bt genes or are a host to that organism. If so, when did you find out about the moth/butterfly lineage in your family tree. Please share with us the story about how you ancestors interbreed with insects.
Note: In case my response was too well written for you to understand, I will restate it in terms more suited to your limited capabilities: I called you a damn liar, said that anyone with sense should ignore you, and someone in your family tree was a bug fucker. Is that simple enough for you?
Why is Snark Required?
Then I will pick up the torch.
Every GMO sold in the U.S. has undergone extensive pre-market safety testing. What specifically about this process do you feel to be deficient. Especially in light of the fact that many other tools, such as random mutagenesis via radiation, do not require any pre-market testing depite having actually made people sick (unlike any GMO in the last 20 years).
I have no problem with putting well-tested GMO products in the supermarket. I have a problem with a multibillion dollar corporation bribing my Congresspeople so that they will be able to hide the fact that the products are engineered.
I don't understand the problem with simply specifying what they are selling?
And as a consumer, regardless of if you are for or against the creation, use and spread of genetically modified organisms, why would you ever not want your food labeled with what it is?
For instance, where I live, food is usually labeled with where it has been produced and where it's been packaged. Since I think needlessly long transports of goods are idiotic, I tend to buy as locally produced and handled meat and vegetables as possible, even if it sometimes is a bit more expensive due to my country's high cost of labor and strict regulations on how you are allowed to treat your animals and what pesticides you allowed to use.
If the food hadn't been labeled, I wouldn't have the freedom of choosing where I want my food produced and packaged.
Same thing with actively genemanipulated food. If it isn't labeled, I am not free to choose if I want to buy "naturally" breed products or if I want to buy genetically modified products. That freedom is dependent on the producers informing me of what they're selling me.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
Yes, there are some legitimate problems with GMOs, but they are legal issues, not health or environmental ones, and no one is talking about the alternative: More fertilizer, more water, more land use, more fuel to get less food.
Regardless of this, why shouldn't food be labeled with that it is?
If you want to buy genetically modified products since they're less environmentally straining, or for other reasons like higher nutrient values or such, you must have labels to be able to make this choice.
If want to stay away from genetically modified products due to being afraid of potential harm, or other reasons, you must also have labels to be able to make this choice.
What your choice or reasons are is irrelevant to the question of labeling food. Without relevant labeling, you have no freedom to choose what you eat.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)