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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
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.
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
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?
Nope. The labels are about informed choice.
I have the right to know if what I'm buying with my money is the result of a combination of genes that have undergone thousands of years of 'safety testing' known as evolution, or something concocted in a lab by people who don't even understand fully the basics of what they're doing, but whose employers are in a rush to make a quick buck while they have the patent; something, which is only 'tested' against the interpretation of the safety rules of the said employers for a year or two.
I also used to be a huge proponent of GMO labeling before listening to Bill Nye explain why it's both redundant and pointless and should be embraced instead. Every-thing we eat is literally some variant of GMO, we've been making GMO foods since we've been cultivating crops and domesticating animals. Nothing we eat today is not GMO unless we go berry picking deep in the forest. I know it's simpler to think many of the foods we eat today were cultivated/domesticated 10,000's of years ago, and it's true. However we've been continually modifying everything we eat, every year, non stop, since then. The corn we eat today is nothing like the native plant we first cultivated, and also different than the corn we ate 100 years ago. So the idea of the food we eat having been safety tested for "thousands of years" doesn't really strictly hold up.
Also finding out how freaking awesome their genetics lab work was amazingly impressive. They can test and sequence genomes for plants in hours with specialized machinery instead of weeks like it used to take. Transcend 100s of generations of a plant in a matter of weeks, selecting from among the throng the best candidates for perpetuation. When they're happy with the genetic results they then cultivate them to ensure expectations meet reality. 100's of geneticists do this for 3-4 years before handing it over to the FDA which reviews it for another 3 years. There is no going "back to the old ways" on this where you sprinkle pollen on the stamen by hand and wait for it to grow before selecting. We're waaaay past that. We can improve the new GMO process but there's ZERO chance we're going back to the old ways.
If anything it's scary-amazing to know how effective it is and where this will take our world in the next 100 years. We're now able to do in weeks what takes mother nature centuries. We can make plants resistant to bugs, pests, reduce the water they intake, make them more nutritious, give them a longer shelf life, reduce or eliminate natural toxins that many plants have, grow faster. This is really literally super food. Being anti GMO is nearly as bad as being anti-vaccination.