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FDA Signs Off On Genetically Modified Salmon Without Labeling (consumerist.com)
kheldan writes: Today, in a historic decision, the FDA approved the marketing of genetically-engineered salmon for sale to the general public, without any sort of labeling to indicate to consumers they've been genetically altered. According to the article: "Though the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) gives the FDA the authority to require mandatory labeling of foods if there is a material difference between a GE product and its conventional counterpart, the agency says it is not requiring labeling of these GE fish 'Because the data and information evaluated show that AquAdvantage Salmon is not materially different from other Atlantic salmon.' In this case, the GE salmon use an rDNA construct composed of the growth hormone gene from Chinook salmon under the control of a promoter from another type of fish called an 'ocean pout.' According to the FDA, this tweak to the DNA allows the salmon to grow to market size faster than non-GE farm-raised salmon."
I'm actually strongly in favor of using genetic manipulation to improve foods. But as long as the companies developing the technology continue to treat it as something to be concealed from consumers, how do they expect to win hearts and minds?
If the problem is the technology or process, why not just buy from small providers?
That way you know that either it is not so advanced that you can't understand it or you can know it is available to you to test?
The problem I understand is that a huge company can put it on sale to millions who are trained to not care.
Why not share it all and make it accessible?
It'll be the ones with three eyes.
I'd be a lot more sympathetic to the GMO labels cause if the anti-GMO people used science to promote their cause. But they don't instead they appeal the fear with their ignorant Frankenfood arguments.
There's a too many mouths too feed without science to improve sustainable agriculture. In this case the oceans are over-farmed, and if this helps lighten the load, I'm all for it.
With that said, GMO is a tool like selective breeding that can be used for good or bad. This sounds like a good used, where as Monsanto is a disgusting company that embodies all that's wrong with big agriculture. They have technology that could do great things but instead use it to sell more chemical that turn our precious farmland into barren wastelands.
Worse, there is another issue - the looking in the light scenario:
Cop comes across a guy on his knees under a lamp post. Goes over and asks him what he is doing. Guy says "looking for my car keys." Cop asks "Where exactly where you standing when you lost them. Guy points at a spot 20 ft away, in the dark. Cop says "What are you doing looking for them here?" Guy responds "No way I'll find them in the dark. Here, at least I got a chance.
If you label something, it gives support to the idea that it is important and something to consider. The government has no business doing that for GM foods which it has found to be harmless.
The point is that people use whatever information they can obtain to base their decisions on. If we tell them what is and what is not GM, some people will refuse to buy the GM, even if they are not sure the non-GM is better. Price differentials will create a situation where only the poor get GM food. It might even end up killing the GM industry.
A similar thing has already happened with things like gluten free. 90% of the people buying gluten free products have ZERO issues digesting gluten. They had one bad reaction to a product and some ill-informed superstitious fool told them it was gluten related. So now they avoid gluten. Yes, there are a few people with gluten issues If you don't have celiac disease or at least sensitivity to gluten, gluten is not only fine, it's probably good for you. It's a whole grain and most people don't get enough of that.
The GM people don't want to be pushed into a situation similar to the gluten people - where idiotic superstitious people avoid their product.
The US government is NOT there to help people be superstitious. You want something to be labelled? Prove a negative consequence.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Well, they are already fighting an uphill battle against all the GM naysayers. Maybe if they openly labeled GM food *and* then subsidized prices of goods to cut through the FUD and get to consumers, they might get some traction.
As it stands, I should expect to get something from GM food. The appeal for GM food producers includes better quality, easier to handle, and/or cheaper to produce. In turn, I should get better quality/cheaper food.
Ok so they grow faster. Does that mean they eat a proportional amount more in the same amount of time or are they less dense or less healthy then the original fish?
Well, given the Hitler^H^H^H^H^H^HTrump approach to labeling ... I'm kind of with the GMO industry on this one.
Who gives a damn about "hearts and minds"? Just hand over your money... Consumers are on their own and will have to avoid anything not labeled "GMO Free"
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Moby Dick was a salmon! If these escape, perhaps it will revive the whaling industry.
So maybe they should spend some of the money they're using on concealing GM foods' provenance on you know, marketing all the wonderful properties of GM foods to consumers?
Isn't that how consumer information is supposed to work?
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'm actually strongly in favor of using genetic manipulation to improve foods. But as long as the companies developing the technology continue to treat it as something to be concealed from consumers, how do they expect to win hearts and minds?
If any medical effect whatever from genetic modification were to show up in the fish, it would be labeled, just as we label for salt, sugar, and allergens.
Wow. Just what I want - nutjobs deciding what information to hide from me about things I eat. Is it because they know what's best for me? Is it because they will make more money tricking me into purchasing something I normally wouldn't? Or is it because they don't want to upset my feeble brain by causing critical thinking in it?
Treat me like a rational human that is capable of making choices that benefit me or I won't buy any of your stuff.
"If we tell them what is and what is not GM, some people will refuse to buy the GM, even if they are not sure the non-GM is better."
Well, some others will choose to buy the GM, even if they are not sure the GM is better. Stupidity works both ways, you know?
I was under the impression that all this fuss about "free market" required "perfectly informed parties", right?
"It might even end up killing the GM industry"
And favoring the GM industry might even end up killing the Organic Foods industry. Didn't know it was some kind of government mandate to favor a side of an industry against any other.
I'm actually strongly in favor of using genetic manipulation to improve foods. But as long as the companies developing the technology continue to treat it as something to be concealed from consumers, how do they expect to win hearts and minds?
I don't see what all the hoopla is about. We don't need GMO labeling when there's already a free, voluntary alternative: NON-GMO labeling. When I go to the store, I pretty much assume that any product I buy contains GMOs unless a product specifically says on the label that it doesn't contain GMOs. Crazy, I know. What the anti-GMO crowd is hoping to do is scare people who don't know and most likely don't care if food is GMO or not.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
The problem is that many people are not "rational humans".
They're working on making the label "non GMO" illegal to use.
The main way that anti-GMO advertisement sways people is the fear of the unknown. All that have to do is say "we don't know it is safe" and they win over any facts that can be brought up. Just look at the anti-vaxers. They have no real evidence that vaccines cause autism but they still sway many people. The main problem is that it is impossible to prove that GMO foods are completely save. The best we can come up with is that all studies show no harm. Proving a negative is very hard if not impossible.
You were not. Does the food that you purchase identify the conglomerate which entirely owns the folksy subsidiary whos name appears on the product? Does it identify the wage scale of the workers who gathered, made, and/or packaged it? Do your canned foods even say "lined with BPA?"
You never had that impression. You're merely dragging out a trope of long-disproven economic theory in an attempt to require that a food product include a politically-driven disclosure that the producer does not wish to use.
[Citation Needed]
Eveyone raising pigs NOT facing Mecca had better label them as such. So I'll know not to buy their products.
Have gnu, will travel.
A similar thing has already happened with things like gluten free. 90% of the people buying gluten free products have ZERO issues digesting gluten. They had one bad reaction to a product and some ill-informed superstitious fool told them it was gluten related. So now they avoid gluten. Yes, there are a few people with gluten issues If you don't have celiac disease or at least sensitivity to gluten, gluten is not only fine, it's probably good for you. It's a whole grain and most people don't get enough of that.
Was with you up until the last sentence. I've still never heard a reason for gluten free being popular among non-celiac sufferers, so for now I'm assuming it's wilful ignorance. However...
Gluten is the combination of two proteins which naturally occur in wheat and to a lesser extent a few other grains (rye, um, can't think of another one actually...) But there's just as much gluten available in highly refined bleached white flour as there is in whole grains. The parts that are removed to make whole grain flour into white flour contain no gluten at all. Oh, and since gluten is the majority of the protein in wheat, removing it leaves you with something which is almost pure carbs. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on which way the trend winds are blowing, I guess.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
Agree 100%. Why not just post the sequenced DNA online? Cheap DNA sequencing will be coming to consumers soon, anyway. Why not preemptively win some PR points? Give consumers something that non-GM food providers cannot easily provide.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Ah, but that would cut in to their *profits!*
The thing to remember here is of course these Salmon will be significantly cheaper to produce.
Will they be qualitatively different? of course! faster grown species are always noticeably different.
Their trick of course is they will market them as the original species, which they now are not. Just require them
to be marketed under a new name...
Oh, and if you think GM labeling will ever get anywhere in the US, good luck with that, it would cut in to profits.
The dream of the GM growers is lower production costs for the same selling prices, nothing more, nothing less.
The US government is NOT there to help people be superstitious. You want something to be labelled? Prove a negative consequence.
And yet, it becomes that much more difficult to prove something, if you don't have labels to begin with.
For example, if you want to prove that GM salmons, that grow up more quickly, will actually have accumulated less harmful mercury than other "older" non-modified salmons from the same area. In that case, you could expect the full cooperation and perhaps even some funding from the business who engineered the salmon.
However, now try to study the longterm health effects of GM salmons on real people. Can you survey people about what they eat? Probably not. If those people don't know what they're eating, then they can't really tell you what they ate. And while it may not be completely impossible to create a study where you could control for the fact that GM salmons aren't labeled, it does make it much more difficult to do so in the end.
> They spread lies and paranoid bull and can not be trusted.
Pot, meet kettle.
because it is relevant information for the customer. I'll wear a tinfoil hat but I don't want genetically modified food for now. I'll wait a couple decades and see what will popup to decide.
then subsidized prices of goods to cut through the FUD
That has worked so well on the vaccine front where people are literally dying because they believe the FUD. /sarcasm
Where will this subsidy money come from?
The FDA has set up a real world test of consumer willingness to accept GMO foods.
All farmed salmon can now be considered to be GMO, because no labeling is required.
If consumers care, all farmed salmon sales will fall. Industry will react accordingly.
Won't the issue then be: The FDA doesn't really give a crap about those who incorrectly label their food "Non-GMO"? What regulatory body enforces what "Non-GMO" means and what the punishment will be for mislabeling?
It's like encryption, what do you have to hide?
GM is a slur to an idea of healthy foods as opposed to running a profit.
The manufacturers are only concerned with doing this as cheaply as "humanly" possible. Why not expand the size of the breading grounds? In-fact, why not convert parts of the desert to do this?
I'm not interested in eating a new bread of fish that man has made for profit over health. I am also tired of looking at a products label to find ZERO ingredients. This too has to stop and takes me back to the encryption thing.
Label em I say and let the market decide.
Fixed that for you. As if it was ever any different in farming, light manufacturing, heavy manufacturing, or even services.
The price of a thing is not proportional to production costs. The price of a thing is established by a balance between supply and demand. If you as a producer can cut your costs, you still charge what the market will bear. The only thing that will drop what you charge is greater supply (e.g., others discovering how to produce more cheaply as well) or lesser demand (e.g., your cost-cutting lowers the quality of what is being produced).
You're not going to create a "new species" by inserting one gene and a promoter. As for the difference between phenotypes of the same species caused by this engineering -- so what? Just like differences in farm raised versus wild, frozen versus refrigerated versus fresh etc., none of which are required to be labeled, it's all sold under a name. Some names will have a reputation for good quality and some for being cheap. Put on your big boy pants and shop for this like you shop for every other food item in existence.
Asbestos was also once safe. And so was Talidomide. You are welcome to choose the GE salmon and save a buck. I want to go with the safer option even if it costs a little more. GE salmon farmers want to engage in unfair competition with regular farmers, even if they need to grease up the FDA. I will now pay double for wild salmon, while all farmers adopt GE, because bad labelling forces them to. Oh, and they can forget about ever exporting farmed salmon to Europe.
That is a good point, and in the age of smartphones, we should be able to solve this finally: require food to be labeled with a bar or QR code assigned by the FDA or USDA (whoever is the appropriate regulator), which will be used by independent information brokers and inspectors maintaining a database of all of the information about all of the items. The databases themselves should be curated for correctness, but no valid information should be disallowed. The appropriate regulator should make available inspection information on each product, indexed by the same codes.
With unlimited "packaging space" available, GM products, for instance, should be able to include why the product was GM'd and what benefits or harmful traits it is proven to express.
I suspect people will be more willing to buy genetically modified foods that are more nutritious than their "natural counterparts" and will probably also be happy to save money on foods that have been modified to have higher yields and be less costly to produce.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Just as long as it still tastes like salmon and not chicken, I'm good. Oh, keep the mutagens out also please.
They don't need to prove anything, just label their produce properly. There will always be demand for both GE and non-GE. Time will show if it is safe. Nobody expected mad cow disease either, you know.
"Does the food that you purchase identify the conglomerate which entirely owns the folksy subsidiary whos name appears on the product?"
No. Is that something good for me? Absolutly not. I'd be so much better served if it would be easier to know and track where the money comes from/to. Again, all this fuss about "free market" requires "perfectly informed parties".
"You never had that impression."
Oh, yes, certainly yes! I had so much that impression that I know for certain how far is our market from a free one. I'm not glad for the market to be even more opaque.
"You're merely dragging out a trope of long-disproven economic theory"
Which one? That it's better for me to make my decision in a properly informed fashion than not? When that came disproven?
"in an attempt to require that a food product include a politically-driven disclosure that the producer does not wish to use."
Disclosure, by its very definition, is not something that the producer wants at all. The consumer, on the other hand...
with java multicore ai . it's java on multicore.
They still can't mark them "wild caught" unless they are. I wonder- do they still get labeled as "Atlantic Salmon"?
[Citation]
What regulatory body enforces what "Non-GMO" means and what the punishment will be for mislabeling?
The FTC under the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act. The USDA regulates the meaning of the word "organic," so they might have authority to regulate "non-gmo" but I'm not entirely sure on that.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
> The problem is that the anti-GM people are not logical.
Doesn't matter. If you have to lie to them, you are in the wrong.
Also, this nation was founded in many ways on religion- even the Deists count to some degree- so we already live in a nation full of irrational people.
There's no law against it. And you certainly can't lie to people because they believe in the wrong sky monkey. So why because they want to avoid GM foods?
If you have to lie, you're in the wrong. It's just that simple.
> You want something to be labelled? Prove a negative consequence.
Man, this is such a fuckdiculous standard it is unreal. Especially because the guys who want to prove it safe have huge financial motivation, and anyone trying to prove the opposite just wants to eat food because they purchased a lifetime subscription to a digestive tract. Gods forbid they know what goes in there, right?
We can turn that same argument around and claim that the main way GMO manufacturers are swaying people is by concealing facts. Which of course they are, and anyone can verify that fact. Look at the hundred plus million dollars spent to not label products as GMO in just 2012-2013 (about 30 million in CA alone in 2012). Look at what the big players like Monsanto and Bayer pay for lobbying each year.
People want to believe that Genetically modified foods are going to be a savoir. The companies producing them sure don't show concern for anything but profits.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/food-industry-groups-sue-to-block-vermonts-gmos-labeling-law/
You can use the googles to find lots of others.
Frankensalmon causes autism, and kills honey bees! It's all a part of the Big Pharma/ Illuminati Master Plan
So you aren't a big fan of science, then?
Science has made many things better for us. Food included.
GM foods get labeled: "It's because they're dangerous."
GM foods don't get labeled: "It's because they have something to hide."
It doesn't matter which way it goes, people are always going to be distrustful of something they don't understand.
But also farmed salmon - they are apparently fed either special food or plain color to get reddish otherwise their meat would be without color and not-sellable.
"synthetic colourants canthaxanthin and astaxanthin to give farmed salmon flesh a pink hue" - from there: http://www.farmedanddangerous....
Maybe they put the coloration into the genes of the salmons to avoid the paint.
Pretty much bull all that stuff anyway. Grow your own food and you know what goes in minus general pollution.
Obstacles: Need TIME, a garden plot, pond or a cage for chicken (needs a permit in some communities) - saw some people having a chicken in a cage in their garage....
Life gets more complicated by the day....
If a warning label is required for each new bit of technology that tin foil hatted idiots fear in some way, there will be no room left on many packages for the required nutritional statement, weight statement, or ingredients list or the UPC code or even a vague description. A loaf of bread might require a wrapper the size of a 40 gallon garbage bag in twenty years.
Seriously, if every advance in food that someone claims, with not a shred of scientific evidence, is harmful required a warning label, most of the packaging would be those warnings.
Let the government define what is allowed in 'negative' statements and what they mean ('no gluten' or 'no pesticides' or 'no technology from 1950 to 2015'). Then prosecute the hell out of anyone who uses one of the labels without meeting the requirements. Then, require no warnings about anything that the FDA has determined is not harmful in typical quantities. Then, the small minority who care can shop for only those items with the specific 'does not contain' labels for ingredients they have superstitions about. (Somewhat analogous to 'Kosher' labelling - no manufacturer is required to put 'Not Kosher' on their product label just because some group of people believe that pork, for example, is somehow bad for your soul).
They don't need to prove anything, just label their produce properly.
It is labeled properly. There is no evidence whatsoever that it is unsafe, and there is no reason for the government to require it to be labeled. Hundreds of products specifically say they do not contain GMO, so any consumer that wants to avoid GMO products can do so. But they have no right to push their anti-science hysteria onto others.
the price differential is enough for GM food to survive... the function of this mandated ignorance is that we all share the same fate, whatever that might be
this is the theme of much government action in democracy - removing the freedom for some to make better decisions than others
from your point of view, this action serves to protect the 'superstitious' from themselves and the high prices they would pay for non-GM foods
I propose a new label: Frankenfish, with a picture of different kinds of animals sewn together.
Do you think consumers who are worried about GMOs have even the faintest clue what to do with a DNA sequence posted online? Wiki has some info about the changes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Honestly, genetic engineers, where's your sense of ADVENTURE! Why not engineer up a salmon the size of an elephant, with huge tentacles?! And what the fuck is up with the grapple? I was all psyched that someone had hacked up an ABOMINATION, but no, they just soak the goddamn things in grape flavor! So whenever you get done with that little salmon project, why don't you engineer up an apple the size of an elephant, with huge tentacles, that tastes like fucking grape, OK? Don't make me have to put my goggles on!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Does the food that you purchase identify the conglomerate which entirely owns the folksy subsidiary whos name appears on the product? Does it identify the wage scale of the workers who gathered, made, and/or packaged it? Do your canned foods even say "lined with BPA?"
You never had that impression. You're merely dragging out a trope of long-disproven economic theory in an attempt to require that a food product include a politically-driven disclosure that the producer does not wish to use.
You bring up a good point and it's impossible to include every thing that every person might want labelled. The best solution might be to just require truth in advertising. If a company thinks that it is good for sales to say that it is GM or is not GM then they should be able to label it as such so that if it matters to a consumer then they can look for the label. Then consumers can go after individual companies asking for labels like "GM free" or "BPA free" or "made in the USA". Don't require it but require it to be true if it's printed on the label. Something that I've considered for a while on the wage scale would be some sort of certifying agency that can certify companies to a certain depth. Something like "We only buy from companies paying more than $X and require everyone we purchase from to also only buy from companies paying more than $X" would give you a level 2 rating. If you only buy from companies with a level 2 rating then that would give you a level 3 rating, etc... Again, this shouldn't be something done by the government but something done by the manufacturer based on consumer demand.
Another interesting article talking a little less positive about this:
Quote: “No information was taken on the amount of drugs or other things that might have to be used to raise them".
Quote: The main change to the salmon caused them to produce more growth hormone, but tests used by the company couldn’t detect how much they were making, according to Hansen. “It was like using a radar gun that doesn’t detect speeds below 125 miles per hour, and from that concluding that there’s no evidence that cars and bicycles move at different speeds,”
Here's the link: http://www.webmd.com/food-reci...
That doesn't matter. At least in the United States, all people are treated as equal under the law (or, well, they're meant to be anyway). You can't discriminate against someone for showing what you consider to be irrational behavior.
Genetic modification is not some rinky dink little dime-a-dozen technology. It's huge. It has the potential to alter the entire face of the planet - every. single. living. thing. That is the kind of thing that needs to be VERY well understood before being unleashed upon the planet. But instead, humans set it upon the Earth for nothing more than oral pleasure.
They still can't mark them "wild caught" unless they are. I wonder- do they still get labeled as "Atlantic Salmon"?
Not only can they not market them as "wild caught" but presumably they also can't market them as "GM free" unless it is true. Also, presumably, other companies are still allowed to market their product as "GM free" so from this point on if you care about this you should just assume that anything not explicitly labelled as "GM free" is probably not "GM free" or inversely, if you want GM fish then look for companies that do label their fish as such.
If a fish were to escape or be otherwise introduced into other salmon population, the FDA says it would not matter because the AquAdvantage Salmon are reproductively sterile.
"Life finds a way"
Bisphenol in plastics was only banned recently, while scientists were bringing information about BPA more than one decade. Glyphosates.... Some countries banned Glyphosate (roundup), yet our FDA does not want to piss-off Monsanto. I bet that in ten years Roundup will be announced as cancerogenic, together with the Roundup resistant crops. There were also thalidomides, DDT, mercury based ointments, vaginal mesh, quaaludes, asbestos, Vioxx, and multiple other things where "highly informed officials", having "authority", have subsequently banned products due to real health concerns.
Long story short, FDA is not really good at balancing between corporate interests and their direct mandate (protect health). Let's not get started at the vaccination issues.The FDA problem is minor though.
The problem starts when some people within our own population feel entitled to opine about others and impose their own opinions on others on the pretense that other people are less educated. And such people insist that others follow their beliefs. GMO Salmon is one of them. Irrespective whether concerns are rational or irrational, people have a right to know everything there is to know about the products for one reason alone: if something goes wrong people will not be able to sue the government, and there is little point in litigating fish farm in Panama.
I will personally stop buying salmon.... for 30 years, just to be on the safe side.
So you aren't a big fan of science, then?
Science has made many things better for us. Food included.
Yeah, that partially hydrogenated vegetable oil worked out well for us, hasn't it? Don't eat Saturated fat! Instead eat this much healthier trans-fat! Oh wait, we were wrong, turns out that the trans-fat is much worse than the saturated fat. Our bad. But trust us on the rest of the stuff, we probably weren't wrong about that. Like the GMO food, we don't really understand what the body needs, but we're certain that GMO food is exactly what the body needs.
Won't the issue then be: The FDA doesn't really give a crap about those who incorrectly label their food "Non-GMO"? What regulatory body enforces what "Non-GMO" means and what the punishment will be for mislabeling?
Both the FDA and the FTC should be able to regulate and prosecute deceptive labelling and "Truth in Advertising"
Why do you care so much about labeling? You seem really really concerned with the amount of labeling things might get. Like it matters, at all. You're actually more scared of too many labels than you are of the potential consequences of directly modifying the generic code of living organisms. Why do you care so much how many labels are on a package? You sound like a stodgy old Englishman. "Hmph, back in my day we only had 14 labels on a package. None of this 15 label business. Rubbish I say."
You are blaming science when instead you should be blaming advertising.
Nope, anti GM people are much more logical than your generic name calling. In fact, i don't have any problem with genetically enlarged homegrown fish. It will only compete with wild fishing, which is already a business to die. Because if they don't stop, they will kill all the wild life with over-fishing. I don't fear of a trout growing monopoly.
On the other hand, Monsanto's tactics cause problems to all farmers, eventually, their market robbing will make them a monopoly. It isn't lie and not paranoid when it happens. I'm scared shitless of a Monsanto monopoly on crops.
About eating GM food, nope, it isn't terribly scary. But labeling food as GM should be mandatory. In case of the fish, it would actually be a positive signal for me.
Oh for Fs sake, you pretty much summaried exactly why the parents said we shouldn't listen to you people. Freaking no evidence, no cognitive thought, no explanation... just "it's big, I scared of it, I understood not... must keep away". Thanks, now let the grownups talk.
It is not labelled properly. The proper name for it is now Atlantic Salmon/Ocean Pout. Or perhaps Atlantic Salmon with Ocean Pout DNA. It is not hard to label it correctly. And it is not right to claim it is the same when it is not. If it is so much better and cheaper, people will buy it. The producers of this product should not be allowed to pretend it is the same fish when it is CLEARLY NOT the same fish. Just do an image search on AquAdvantage Salmon and you can see for yourself. It is not the same fish. The FDA is just doing what industry tells them. Again.
I see where you wanted to go, but I have to nitpick a bit.
The price of a thing is established by a balance between supply and demand.
I'm not sure where you live, but there are absolutely zero free markets on planet Earth. Over the last 40 years prices have moved further toward taking people for everything possible and giving the least possible. That is what monopolization and deregulation (legalizing bribery) has done. If you believe you live in a free market, you have never attempted to own a business. In fact you have no idea about the history of Microsoft, BP, Standard Oil, Chiquita, Dole, Monsanto, etc.. etc...
You're not going to create a "new species" by inserting one gene and a promoter.
I find it really odd that people have such selective memory and comprehension ability. When it suits people to call it a new species they do, but in this case people play dumb. How many birds have such a minor difference from a relative that you can't detect it without DNA but we call them different species? Oh, we have lots of those. Then there is this thing called the "Killer Bee". You may have heard of it, but then again... The original intent was to make farming honey very effective and efficient, safer and more profitable. That was not even genetic modification, but cross breeding which caused that one. Even though the intent was altruistic, look what happened?
You want to tell me that the Frankenfish is safe (sorry, I heard the "News" call it that and got a laugh) I'll agree. For now it's safe. We generally don't find out otherwise until decades later that things we did were harmful. That's the way progression works. You don't have to like it, but to deny reality is idiotic.
Just like differences in farm raised versus wild, frozen versus refrigerated versus fresh etc., none of which are required to be labeled, it's all sold under a name
Reductio ad absurdum, and a flat out lie. If I buy ice cream and it has peanuts in it, the label has to have peanuts included in the ingredient list (and in many cases a big ole warning label). If it does not, the manufacturer will be shut down and sued. If I purchase sausage and it's 20% pork 80% beef, it's labelled that way. See the previous. Nobody has said we need GM fish to label itself for anything other than what it is. It is not a Coho Salmon, it's a genetically modified Salmon. Give it a fancy name, like Bob's Salmon if you want. It should however be distinguished from the natural fish.
It is a fact that bad things happen, even with the best intent. Why the hell would anyone attempt to hide what this is? Why the hell would anyone not demand such labeling. Look, if you want to be the first guy eating that cool looking Mushroom we just found, more power to ya. I'd rather make sure you are not dead after a few meals before I try it.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Does anyone eat corn?
You might want to check out the history of corn, because it's been genetically engineered for centuries.
And, it's in a crap load of the food products you buy now - like that 1 dollar soda pop from Mc Donalds.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Labeling GM is important to you. Well I want the type of labor that was involved, what ethnic groups it was made of, how
much were they paid, did they have health insurance and benefits, what is the foods carbon foot, where was it grown, how much did the processing throw away, how many safety violations happened in the past year, what was the sample rate for defect testing, how old is the equipment, how far did this travel, is it a native species of my region, is it in season, it's consumer star rating, how long has it been on the market, and when is it in peak demand?
Believe it or not that is all actually more important to my purchasing decisions than if its GMO. Why can't I be provided this information?
The majority of that is a reaction to companies such as Monsanto who acted in a way to inspire that paranoia and confirm it in a few cases. Sadly the tool is blamed instead of the misuser of the tool so the entire thing is branded as dangerous and those in politics have listened for when it comes to publicly funded projects. That has killed off potentially world-changing projects such as vaccines delivered by banana (cheap production, long shelf life and delivered by eating a portion of the fruit). "Big Pharma" is not interested in anything other than tweaking what they have or playing on certain bets delivered to them via publicly funded research so they are not going to touch that.
It's been highjacked by the naturopaths and other frauds who are now mainstream. Don't knock it because it's actually rolling back some processed foods towards better options - for instance so many rice and corn based things have other stuff as a filler so are no longer as gluten free as a "home cooked" version would be. It may be trendy for most and hyped to the max but I find it a bit annoying that corn flakes have gluten in there in the first place by a bit of substitution with a filler to raise the profit margins - so bring on the gluten free versions of the stuff that normally wouldn't have it anyway.
File it with "nut free, dairy free" in most cases - it's just trendy so no need to get annoyed since there are far worse superstitions that naturopaths and other con-artists inflict.
BTW - I'm not one of the "gluten people" but I've noticed it a bit more because I have a friend who does have celiac disease and I do make gluten free stuff for her. It just means that when I make oat biscuits/cookies for me I do amaretto ones for her made out of crushed almonds.
I'd say prove an effective difference. I'm keen on ingredients being listed but very much doubt there's a need to list "GM salmon" instead of just "salmon".
The problem is that the anti-GM people are not logical.
Quit building strawmen, please. Also, you're assuming that every company and corporation on the planet that creates GMO foods (and now food animals) has people's best interests first and foremost, and not profit, and you're also assuming that they're utterly flawless and nigh-unto-omniscent when it comes to testing and checking the end product for safety. In the case of this salmon it might be safe, the FDA took 25 years to approve it, and that might be long enough to see if there are any bad effects from the gene splice, but many GMO foods are not tested for anywhere near as long and are therefore rushed to market -- and crops get cross-pollinated into the non-GMO crops whether anyone wants it to happen or not, so the proverbial genie is already out of the bottle for that, at least. These salmon are allegedly sterile, so even if they got out into open water they probably won't crossbreed with the wild variety, but life is tenacious and inventive and some of them, if they got out, might be fertile.. we'll see, now won't we?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Well that would be quite distinctive. :P But in Europe we'll have a more official indicator: the wrapper will state that it's a GMO breed of salmon.
It's required by law, in exactly the same way as all other ingredients have to be identified. We like to know what we eat. The choice of what is eaten here is made by the people doing the eating, not by those doing the production.
On the one hand... GMO foods can be used for good. There's no scientific proof (prove me wrong please) that GMO foodstuff leads to horrible things for either human physiology or the environment...
... GMO producers use IP and Copyright laws to protect their product and harass their competition. They use loose campaign finance laws to influence the political and legislative processes in their favor. If they were truly concerned about consumers, wouldn't they encourage copying? If they were truly concerned about their product, wouldn't they encourage transparency?
... the same direction as water, electricity, the internet and telephone service before it.
On the other
Take the good with the bad, imho. YES, research should continue, and so should testing on whether its good or bad. NO, foodstuff manufacturers are going to have to get away from calling their "stuff of life" intellectual property. When your product becomes what humans or the planet take(s) for a necessity, that necessity becomes a utility. This is where food is heading
And, seriously, nobody should utilize the campaign finance system to their economic advantage. It's anti-capitalist, anti-meritorious, and anti-competitive, and all of that is just amoral. The weakness of humans should not be tested just so you can make a buck, rather your own ingenuity.
The US government is also NOT there to dissuade people from being "superstitious". People can have their superstitions and religions, and the Gov't is supposed stay out of it. And you are talking out your ass about both gluten and GM foods. You fancy yourself to know all the answers, with your elitist view towards the other imbeciles in this democracy, and what they are worthy to know. Screw you. I don't need to know your opinion about whether wheat gluten is good for me or not. I want to know what is in my food, period. I want to know the ingredients. If the ingredients are Atlantic Salmon with Ocean Pout DNA, I would like to be told as much. It is supposed to be MY friggin' FDA, looking out for ME, not the food industry. But the officials making the decision are probably from the food industry, and soon to return, welcomed back with a six or seven figure salary (providing they played ball while at the FDA).
They still can't mark them "wild caught" unless they are. I wonder- do they still get labeled as "Atlantic Salmon"?
Not only can they not market them as "wild caught" but presumably they also can't market them as "GM free" unless it is true. Also, presumably, other companies are still allowed to market their product as "GM free" so from this point on if you care about this you should just assume that anything not explicitly labelled as "GM free" is probably not "GM free" or inversely, if you want GM fish then look for companies that do label their fish as such.
Better yet, catch it yourself. It's quite an enjoyable and delicious hobby.
> Better yet, catch it yourself. It's quite an enjoyable and delicious hobby.
Right, I'll be sure to catch myself a years worth of salmon during the brief period they are catchable here. I'm sure my job won't miss me for however many weeks that takes, if it's even possible. Clearly if I want wild caught fish, or fish that don't have lab tuned genes, I should have to be a subsistence hunter.
trying to prove to the so-called "thinking" anti-anti-gmo crowd that there are worries about such tactics, you'd think you were an atheist trying to convince a GD-god-convinced true-believer that there is no intial basis to believe in a god, therefore there probably is no god.
the anti-anti-gmo crowd is so GD vehement when the topic barely even comes up, they tackle it with the vehemence of a paid-shill astroturfed organization.
do you know -anyone- who would speak so vehemently (yes, "vehemently" is the word of the day), sensibly respond to the questions regarding GMO crops, as the ANTI-ANTI-GMO CROWD does, so constantly, so consistently?
they are the new religion... believe and it will come true. meanwhile, nevermind the eradication of a normal agricultural strategy than leaves mother nature in the circle. you try to outrun the rest of nature, it's bound to catch up to you, like current antibiotic science....
Actually he should be blaming economics.
But his point is valid. Science is agnostic. You can make a medicine or a poison. Science makes awful things with awful uses, good things with good uses, but mostly it makes things that can be used wisely or foolishly.
Sure, it's incorrect to blame science for the foolishness of fools. But at this point, I wonder if the anti-GM people don't have a point. All the research has turned into so far is another way to change the food supply en masse, while corporations fight for their right to not have to tell anyone what the fuck the food even is. When you see this happen again and again, the luddite view of trying to outright ban it (so as to remove the economic incentive) starts to have a lot of good reasoning behind it.
And no, there's probably nothing wrong with most GM foods. This fish thing will help feed the world- we can't sustain fishing with a growing population, we need badly to farm fish, and this is a solid solution. And I was down with that... right up until they fought to not have to mark their food. That means they have something to hide, it means that they are automatically in the wrong. I'm not a food scientist or a fish scientist or whatever, but I know naked deception and greed when it is presented so openly.
> there will be no room left on many packages for the required nutritional statement, weight statement, or ingredients list
I know that at least the nutritional info and ingredients lists faced huge pushback from corporations that wanted to keep lying about the foods. They pushed back on the transfat labels. They will do anything to prevent you knowing what is in your food. There is no moral defense for that. People have to eat.
> Wiki has some info about the changes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Nice, was looking for a link to the patch notes.
Because labeling like this drives up the cost of food for everyone and not just the people who are paranoid. Many people will not buy food with too many labels on them so the less expensive GMO foods will go away.
Sorry but I disagree. The only fact GMO producers are hiding is that GMO is in most foods. It is an irrelevant fact as GMOs have not been shown to cause harm and have higher yields which increase supply. The anti-GMO are trumpeting "fear the unknown" There is GMO in that food. They can't prove it is harmless. Don't eat it. "The GMO producers are saying don't fear the unknown. As far as science can tell, and many studies have been done, GMOs are not harmful so labeling them is not required. The positions are polar opposites.
Lets look at how an average person might look at a GMO label.
What's this new label? Contains GMO food. I have heard there is a lot of controversy about this but I don't really have time to do the research. Maybe I'll just be on the safe side and skip it.
> Better yet, catch it yourself. It's quite an enjoyable and delicious hobby.
Right, I'll be sure to catch myself a years worth of salmon during the brief period they are catchable here. I'm sure my job won't miss me for however many weeks that takes, if it's even possible. Clearly if I want wild caught fish, or fish that don't have lab tuned genes, I should have to be a subsistence hunter.
Having friends on the res works much better.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
East coast salmon PWNED by west coast salmon!
Doesn't matter. If you have to lie to them, you are in the wrong.
Nobody's lying to them. The label says salmon, and the package contains salmon. There's no lie there.
A lie would be if they labeled it as "GMO free" when it was not.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Ah, but that would cut in to their *profits!*
The thing to remember here is of course these Salmon will be significantly cheaper to produce.
Will they be qualitatively different? of course! faster grown species are always noticeably different.
Their trick of course is they will market them as the original species, which they now are not. Just require them
to be marketed under a new name...
A new name for faux salmon? May I suggest salmonella?
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
That's what I never understood about GMO claims of sterility (terminator gene, etc)... How can they be certain their genes breed true 100% of the time? Individual organisms undergo natural mutations /even/ if they are produced by a genetic engineering process.
They still can't mark them "wild caught" unless they are. I wonder- do they still get labeled as "Atlantic Salmon"?
Fast fact: In the US, Atlantic salmon is considered endangered so cannot be legally be "wild caught" and sold in the US, so nearly 100% of Atlantic Salmon sold in supermarkets in the US is farmed.
This particular GM is to help AquAdvantage increase production of Farmed Atlantic Salmon, and this ruling will basically mean that it will be labeled simply as Farmed Atlantic Salmon with country of origin listed as Canada or Panama.
Is this sarcasm? I'm not quite sure.
It's on the corporations to PROVE it is safe and it's on the government to vet that.
And beyond that, there is NO valid reason for lying to people about what they are eating.
The problem is that many people are not "rational humans".
Especially the ones who do all the grocery shopping. *ducks*
What's wrong is they get tarred by the same brush as whatever Monsanto is getting up to lately if they have the GM label - sucks even if they have nothing to hide.
The sort of thing I mean was Monsanto suing farmers adjacent to those with GM crops for "stealing" their product via cross pollonation by insects and wind.
They already retool labels regularly, touting "new and improved! Now with XK-29 for added freshness!" So if they do it for their own marketing purposes, they can do it to inform consumers.
No, I don't know if a specific GMO modification is beneficial to the human species and the global environment or not. Yes, some people are absolute party-line types about GMOs (for or against) just as they are about political parties. That's not a reason to avoid giving the rest of us some information.
[Citation] [lmgtfy.com]
Was that meant to be helpful, or misleading or a very subtle but clever statement about the GM debate?
The top two hits are in order: ...
FDA's new regulations won't allow non-GMO, GMO-free label
Huge Victory: USDA Introduces Official Non-GMO Label
The top hit is a 2001 article about something that never happened. The second hit is of course correct - there is even a seal.
It's truely amazing the non-GMO nutters have managed to keep that first hit at the top for 14 years. They must want it to be true so much they are linking to it, clicking on it, citing it like crazy.
As I said, it sums up the debate nicely. If that is what you were intending - well done.
GMOs have not been shown to cause harm and have higher yields which increase supply.
And with what do they increase the supply? If the soil in which the crop grows has the same level of trace minerals, an increased supply means a decreased mineral content for your GMO product. In some cases, industry documentation has perceived this as an advantage: you'll have to eat more to get your nutrients! You can increase the supply of soup forever if you just add water ... but it's not the same. I want to know how my food was grown to make my own determinations about nutrient content, and if I have to pay a little extra for that, I'm willing to choose that.
Hey look, its the 'science was wrong before' argument.
"They might".
They also might not care until there are enough complaints, and there is almost no way to tell if something labeled "Non-GMO" really is, and if there is no current law on it, doing so in seemingly good faith has no consequences. Plus, it is doubtful any government agency is going to go out and look for extra work. Don't hold your breath on the FTC doing anything.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
What regulatory body enforces what "Non-GMO" means and what the punishment will be for mislabeling?
The FTC under the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act. The USDA regulates the meaning of the word "organic," so they might have authority to regulate "non-gmo" but I'm not entirely sure on that.
The FDA's current guidance in this area is for companies to avoid a "non-GM" label unless the product can be guaranteed to not have components that were produced using any type of genetic modification *including hybridization or selective breeding*.
Instead the FDA recommends that companies use fully defensible statements like "not produced using bioengineering" or "not genetically engineered" to avoid potential future mislabeling consequences of a non-GM or GM-free product assertion, although they are not currently enforcing this recommendation today.
The HFCS in cola is just a combination of sugars (pure molecules). It's not a genetically modified organism.
Molecules are defined with atomic precision, whereas we define organisms mostly by wishful thinking and guesswork. Even the few tiny organisms for which we have fully sequenced genomes are a huge mystery to us with the sole exception of their genome. Just because we know an organism's genome doesn't mean that we understand how the organism works nor what effect it has on anything else.
So no, your optimistic belief in our state of knowledge and competence in manipulating life is premature.
"A lie would be if they labeled it as "GMO free" when it was not."
A lie of omission is still a lie.
I'm sorry you have the stupids. There is nothing wrong with genetically altered foods, we have been doing it for millennia.
If you only buy from companies with a level 2 rating then that would give you a level 3 rating, etc... Again, this shouldn't be something done by the government but something done by the manufacturer based on consumer demand.
There is a serious problem relying on some private entity or consortium. That is, there is nothing preventing another private entity from offering those same ratings.
You're bound to end up with a few in competition. Kellogg might want an equal or higher rating than Post, so they abandon the Food Producers Consortium and join (or start) the Fair Food Group. Smaller companies might have trouble with the dues and fees or with meeting certain standards (likely tailored to benefit the bigger players) and fall prey to less scrupulous agencies like the Fair Food Bureau.
Consumers, naturally, aren't very likely to understand the differences between the various accreditors, making the ratings useless.
You'd need something like the threat of regulation or a very small industry before you can maintain a functional, single, regulating entity. We have a few examples, of course, like the MPAA and ESRB though you'll note that despite the size in terms of dollars, those industries are rather small in terms of people and major or influential players. They're both also under the threat of regulation, which seems to have incentivized regulation to a large degree.
The much more massive food industry, in contrast, has little chance of self-regulating. We've tried, it turns out that they can't be trusted.
Required reading for internet skeptics
I'm not seeing a problem here. You give them the information and *they* make the choice about what *they* want to eat.
Hide the information, you're making the choice for them. I guess that's OK though because you're soooo much smarter than them. Or so your mom says when she brings your pizza down.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Ah... and suddenly The Invisible Hand doesn't help. Then we need Concealment.
Know what? Idiot.
The thing is, they don't treat it that way. It is one of many techniques used to modify the things we eat everyday. For example, there are tomatoes with Phytophthora resistance genes from wild species, and citrus altered with ionizing radiation, and apples selected from somatic mutations, and watermelons developed by altering the chromosome count.
The problem is, your average person doesn't know about those things, so when the anti-GMO folks make noise about genetic tampering with the food supply, and demand it be labeled, they can oh so conveniently neglect to leave out the past couple centuries of necessary background context. Of course, telling a part of the story, without telling all of it, is otherwise known as a lie of omission, and the anti-GE crowd is trying to pass that off as some form of transparency.
The problem with labeling GMOs is the same as the problem of labeling 'Evolution is just a theory.' It's technically true, but just leaving it at that without the proper context and education and knowing full well the assumption people will make, is a damned lie and everyone knows it. Same with genetic engineering. When I see my pears labeled as 'Grafted on quince' and my rice as 'Contains the sd-1 gene' and my sweet corn as 'Produced via doubled haploid hybridization' then I'll believe the people pushing for GMO labeling actually care about consumer education and aren't just being deceptive weasels trying to legislate their own unscientific ideology.
Blocking mandatory GMO labeling and banning voluntary non-GMO labeling are not even close to the same thing. Citation still needed.
A lie of omission is still a lie.
A "lie of omission" is when you try to mislead someone by omitting a fact. Nobody is trying to mislead anyone here. It is well-known that, unless labeled otherwise, any sort of food product may contain GM ingredients.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
When I go to the store, I pretty much assume that any product I buy contains GMOs unless a product specifically says on the label that it doesn't contain GMOs.
Actually, only a minority of the species in cultivation are genetically engineered. Corn (mostly field corn, but some sweet corn, and no popcorn), soy, canola, cotton, alfalfa, sugar beet, papaya (from Hawai'i only), summer squash, certain apples if you can find them (labeled as Arctic apples), and soon potatoes (labeled as Innate potatoes). In terms of processed produces, most things have some form of the above in them, however,
This is what gets me about the push for labeling. I just told anyone who wants to avoid GE crops what to either avoid, or buy non-GMO labeled alternatives of. If the anti-GMO movement really cared about consumer education, they'd actually, you know, educate. Instead they act as if these easily available facts (some of the anti-GMO websites have as much on them), because they're not being shoved in consumers' faces in big bold letters, are somehow hidden, therefore everyone is somehow being lied to. But you know, I've never seen a blueberry labeled as Vaccinium angustifolium, V. corymbosum, or V. ashei (three of the major blueberry species, and yes, the term blueberry does not refer to a single species), yet these people wouldn't call all blueberry farmers liars. You could write a book on the things that the average person doesn't know about crop science, but that you don't see all that slapped on the side of a box doesn't mean the information is being censored. It's a selective argument, and it only works because most people are not actively involved in agricultural science. I am. I want people to have more information, not less. But labeling GMOs, knowing full well that all that will do is scare people, is not informative, in fact, I would argue that it is deceptive to give someone just enough information to spread a misconception without telling the full story.
Me to . But I'm of the strong opinion that all modifications and studies on the modified food should be put into public domain .
Their trick of course is they will market them as the original species, which they now are not.
Unless you define a species as having zero biodiversity, they are still the same species. Adding a few genes does not make them a new species anymore than changing dog genes to make a dog smaller, larger, thinner, stockier, yellow, brown, or white with black spots makes them no longer a dog.
They have proved it. Over and over and over. You stupid motherfucker.
I guess that's OK though because you're soooo much smarter than them.
It is not that I am so much smarter but that the scientists that researched the subject for decades are so much more knowledgeable that the average shopper.
Or so your mom says when she brings your pizza down.
So you admit you don't have a leg to stand on. (That's what happens when you attack the person rather than the argument)
And with what do they increase the supply?
Instead of growing weeds we can not eat we grow food we can.
I have to pay a little extra for that, I'm willing to choose that.
It is nice that you have the extra money to do that. Many don't. You can still do that now by buying food labeled "GMO free".
It is not about retooling labels. It is about making lower cost foods no longer profitable and leaving only higher cost foods available.
That means they have something to hide, it means that they are automatically in the wrong.
And if they do label, it means there is something wrong with their product. This is a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
Speaking of labels, I've never seen it labeled that oranges are often grafted into Poncitrus trifoliata rootstocks. Does that mean that all orange growers are also hiding something, or do I first have to start a movement convincing people that grafting causes cancer before the orange farmers must either put a scarlet letter on their fruit or become also in the wrong?
The sort of thing I mean was Monsanto suing farmers adjacent to those with GM crops for "stealing" their product via cross pollonation by insects and wind.
That's not what happened though. The case you are likely referring to, the Schmeiser case, involved the guy intentionally selecting for and propagating GE crops after he was cross pollinated. It would be like if I threw a Star Wars DVD at you, and then you copied and mass produced it for financial gain, and when you get rightfully sued by Disney, you tell everyone you got sued because someone tossed a disk at you.
Kneejerk reactions like this show why the anti-GMO movement, after trying so hard to ban GE, now makes such a big stink over the labeling issue, despite no other genetic alteration technique facing the same scrutiny, and why producers aren't keen on having the labeling forced on them.
I am growing sick of tired of people wanting GMO labelled or touting Organic and some kind of magically safe food.
Labeling GMO tells you NOTHING. It is a completely worthless label. You have no idea what was changed, what impact it has, etc. The only usage of the label is to drive FEAR and I am tired of it.
Organic is not inherently safe either. Almost all deaths related to ecoli in lettuce or spinach have been from Organic produce. Organic also allows the usage of heavy metals to fight blight in potatoes. It also allows spraying Bt toxin on plants (and does so in huge quantities) where it runs off into the water and damages fish. Apparently Bt toxin is safe when you spray it on plants but when you engineer it in so it it still kills insects but very little runs off into the water so you don't harm so many fish that is somehow bad.
Worse you can use radiation and chemical mutagens for cross-breeding and for manipulation in a single plant since those methods are approved as Organic. Farmers have used these methods for quite a long time to get plants to cross breed, they just did not know how they worked until recently.These methods are far more unsafe than direct genetic manipulation.
In the end I see people ruled by fear and trying to cover it with pseudo science bullshit. It is getting so tiring to see it. You can't have a rational conversation since the VAST majority of people against GMO I have talked to have not based their decision on anything rational.
Maybe science is still too new. It is really only a few hundred years old and there are just not enough humans that understand and accept it yet. We are capable of doing so much better than we do now. We can make energy cleanly, produce enough food, not harm the environment that supports us, have air and water that are safe to breath and drink and none of that is going to happen because too many are controlled by FEAR and too many others in power have too much to gain with the current way things are run.
Sometimes I wish there was a way to abandon ship and just leave this planet. Find others that are tired of this stuff also and head off into space.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
Some posited that gluten-free diets help with autism symptoms. A recent study nixed that though. There's another position that seems to boil down to "gluten means 'glue' because it's sticky, therefore it clogs your arteries" or somesuch.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Nor is there any real evidence that it is safe. History is littered with food additives that were assumed to be safe because there was no evidence that they were unsafe, only to find out later, after those products were broadly distributed, that they were causing harm. The difference is that in the rest of the world, the governments protect people from that by demanding safety testing, whereas here, the FDA just adds them to the "generally recognized as safe" list and hopes for the best.
Case in point, sodium benzoate is on the GRAS list, despite breaking down in the presence of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) into benzene, a known carcinogen. And several soft drink brands were pulled from the shelves for this very reason.
For another example, red dye #2 was legal for 70 years before a Russian study and a subsequent FDA follow-up both tied it to cancer risk.
The burden of proof should be on the food industry to show beyond reasonable doubt that all food additives, including genetic modifications, result in food that is sa
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Animals that are GM to grow faster will bioaccumulate less toxins before they are slaughtered, so it may actually be healthier than the non-GM version. Wild fish generally swim in far more polluted waters than what the farms use (because farms care about yields and disease.)
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
You must be joking. With all the paid holidays, vacations and numerous other ways to avoid work that Americans have (assuming you're American) it shouldn't be any problem at all for you to make time to go Fishing or any other activity.
What next, Americans demanding $30 an hour to flip Burgers and 5 Hour work weeks? Geez
But GM meat creates a problem: A(n) (American) corporation owns the food supply. So it can reduce supply to keep profit margins high. The advantage will be a lot less if other corporations create other supplies of quick-grown meat. Or, they can all keep prices as high as the market will bear.
I wouldn't assume that but it is certainly suspicious: There's nothing wrong with the meat (at the moment) and they're already trying to avoid responsibility. What's the point? If, far in the future, GM foods do become defective, no corporation can undo the 50 years worth of disease already foisted onto its customers. When dealing with an unknown cost, the cost of honesty is low because the cost of the truth is fixed.
In the "Rama" trilogy (AC Clarke), there are several sentences that I remember. One sentence mentions that a planet that embraced genetic engineering soon became extinct. In the 'Star trek' universe ('G' Roddenberry), WW 3 is fought over genetic engineering. Visionaries have assumed that genetic engineering will be bad. The reason may be the greed and deception built-in to the supply chain of most industries.
We can turn that same argument around and claim that the main way GMO manufacturers are swaying people is by concealing facts.
They're not concealing anything. That's opposing the mandating of something. There's a difference between hiding something extremely easy to find like the fact that corn, soy, cotton, canola, alfalfa, sugar beet, summer squash, papaya, apple, and potato have GE varieties and actively forcing someone to put a label on their product with just enough information to scare people, but no more than that. Oh bugger, did I accidentally just say that 'concealed' fact of what is GE? Darnedest thing, how hard was that?
People want to believe that Genetically modified foods are going to be a savoir. The companies producing them sure don't show concern for anything but profits.
People say the same things about pharmaceutical companies and vaccines. They're wrong, and for the same reasons you are. You are also implying that technology is a corporate thing. You are also wrong about that.
Is it also a lie when pork is not explicitly labeled as Haraam? Why or why not, when it is clearly true? Are pork producers also in the wrong for lying to Muslims by not labeling their bacon as something that anyone who actually cares would already know? Why or why not?
I suspect that genetically modifying livestock will lower the number of animals that need to be slaughtered. The meat per animal will go up, and they can be engineered to have improved immune systems; the mass culls of flocks suspected of infection with serious disease can go the way of the Dodo (pun intended).
As meat production goes up, price will go down, increasing consumption somewhat, but it will reach a limit; eventually we'll reach Peak Meat where people are too gorged on animal flesh to consume more (obesity epidemic notwithstanding), even if it's cheaper than human-edible grains.
I predict that animal size will gradually increase in order to improve efficiency. For example, there will eventually just be one giant 50-foot-tall chicken-zilla in America. She will be given a name, and slaughtered on television after a ritual involving nude chanting in a circle. I'll bring the body paint, absinthe, and wing sauce!
And how about some GM cows that don't produce so much methane. Or go a step further and make meat-sacks that have no legs or heads, and nutrients are pumped in and wastes are pumped out. I'm sure noone will have any kneejerk reactions to that idea, nosirree. I wonder how much of that will be allowed under Kosher/Halal.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Also, you're assuming that every company and corporation on the planet that creates GMO foods (and now food animals) has people's best interests first and foremost,
By that logic, every for-profit company is suspect, as are their products. That stance works equally well against electronics, clothing, cars, pocket knives, wine, and coffee, all produced by corporations
and you're also assuming that they're utterly flawless and nigh-unto-omniscent when it comes to testing and checking the end product for safety.
No, just that as far as anyone can tell they are, which is the absolute best that is humanly possible. I could make your vague, non-falsifiable argument against wifi, vaccinations, electric cars, cell phones, or any number of things. If you have an actual concern, voice it. Otherwise, you are just saying 'bad things might happen and you can't prove they won't' which describes most everything.
So? If people don't want to buy the food produced by genetical engineering and other cost-saving measures, why should they not be free to make that choice? The whole advertising industry is based on creating superstitions in order to make people pay more and the packages are crawling with images and ads that have nothing whatsoever to do with the product itself.
So if people decide they'd rather spend more money than buy genetically manufactured obese salmons, why should they not get that choice? We are talking about three words here in the ingredients. They still have most of the packaging they can plaster with happy hippo salmon depictions for those who'd rather base their purchasing decisions on that kind of input (and if it weren't a majority anyway, we'd not have the advertising industry we have).
I have to pay a little extra for that, I'm willing to choose that.
It is nice that you have the extra money to do that. Many don't. You can still do that now by buying food labeled "GMO free".
Reality check: GMO food is a rich country phenomenon. The GMO food produced in poor countries is mainly produced for export into rich countries, mostly for lifestock production. This production requires industrial means not available to local farmers, so it is produced by large corporations that buy up land and defend it and the means of production using the military and militia.
It's not a means for feeding the poor, but for making the life of the rich cheaper.
If I buy ice cream and it has peanuts in it, the label has to have peanuts included in the ingredient list
Yes, but those peanuts don't say that peanuts are allotetraploids, or say if they have genes from wild Arachis species in it, for example like the TxAG- 7 line's descendants do as a result of some complex and clever 'conventional breeding', and I don't see you demanding that they do so.
You picked a poor choice of example.
I guess you also would prefer for the accused to prove their innocence in the court instead of being not guilty until proven otherwise.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Doesn't matter. If you have to lie to them, you are in the wrong.
Nobody's lying to them. The label says salmon, and the package contains salmon. There's no lie there.
Genetically, "salmon" is not the whole story any more. I am not allowed to go into a women's bathroom even though the vast majority of my genes coincides with them.
They still can't mark them "wild caught" unless they are. I wonder- do they still get labeled as "Atlantic Salmon"?
Easy to mend. Just let them escape into a river and catch most of them there. It's really just a question of time, once the GMO salmons are unavoidable for economic reasons (like by not telling customers) for fish farms until the majority of them are GMO. And of course water exchanges of fish farms cannot be hermetically sealed from natural waters, let alone exchanges of eggs and whole animals through birds (lose some young fish in flight, and see what happens). And fish farms will be close to natural waters simply for economical reasons. And of course, they'll outbreed the natural species because of their faster life cycle.
And then fisherman catching the "wild" GMO salmons will get sued for patent infringement, like Monsanto does with people trying to regrow their crops from their own seeds after they have been infested with GMO crops.
if getting a few hundred dollars of new design and print screens would bankrupt a company, that company wasn't sticking around anyway
Someone should release massive quantities of GM fish into the wild. Then the "manipulated" organisms will be practically undistinguishable from the "natural" ones and the "manipulated" genes will freely admix to the "organic" ones. And all the superstitious orgonic idiots can go fuck themselves (only option if they want to keep their god given genes clean).
That still doesn't make the case that GE crops should be labeled.
No, innocent until proven guilty is a pretty good standard. Do you have evidence that GE crops are intrinsically dangerous? Because I have plenty of reason to think otherwise. Saying there might be some potential but as of yet unknown unknown is as compelling as warning me about the invisible pink unicorn.
Especially because the guys who want to prove it safe have huge financial motivation and anyone trying to prove the opposite just wants to eat food because they purchased a lifetime subscription to a digestive tract.
Really, you mean to say there isn't a multi-billion dollar organic industry out there, and plenty of professional activists staking their careers on making noise? And you mean to imply all those in academic positions who work with GE are part of some money making plot? That's bullshit and you know it.
There's quite a lot of DNA on github but I'm not sure if patches are welcome
Asbestos was also once safe. And so was Talidomide.
Saying 'science was wrong before' is a bad argument when creationists use it, bad when anti-vaxxers use it, and bad when GMO denialists use it.
GE salmon farmers want to engage in unfair competition with regular farmers, even if they need to grease up the FDA.
Yeah, that's why it took two and a half decades of testing, all that corruption fast tracking it. You are making things up. And what exactly do you mean by 'unfair competition?' You mean producing something rather than hitting hard the declining wild stocks? You know, if any other technology were being used, I'll bet everyone would be up in arms that some would spitefully choose to do more harm to the environment than adopt new technology, but suddenly when genetic engineering is involved, that's somehow okay and preferable.
I will now pay double for wild salmon,
And I'll choose the option with less environmental impact.
Oh, and they can forget about ever exporting farmed salmon to Europe.
Not exactly something for Europe to be proud of.
Ohhhh scary genetically modified. Like how all those science fiction stories warned us about.
You know those stories where something goes horably wrong and mutates into some monster or becomes poison as so to create conflict to make the plot interesting.
Stories where GMO Food offers bulk healthy food to the population to help feed the world using less resources, is kinda boring.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I hope soon there will be no way to distinguish GM from manipulation that doesn't count as GM. If we can craft a virus that alters a genome in exactly the same way that "direct manipulation of an organism's genome using biotechnology" (Wikipedia definition of GM) can, the stupid label becomes useless.
If I buy ice cream and it has peanuts in it, the label has to have peanuts included in the ingredient list
Yes, but those peanuts don't say that peanuts are allotetraploids, or say if they have genes from wild Arachis species in it, for example like the TxAG- 7 line's descendants do as a result of some complex and clever 'conventional breeding', and I don't see you demanding that they do so.
You picked a poor choice of example.
You may want to read up on what "reductio ad absurdum" actually means...
With GM labeling I get the choice to pay a minute amount more for a minute amount less risk, that's not an irrational decision. The fact that someone somewhere in the chain can make a lot of money from GM is completely and utterly irrelevant to me. People still buy the cheapest shit with GM labeling any way, it just allows a niche for people to avoid it ... but somehow only the rich and hobby farmers are allowed such niches, the poor shouldn't be allowed a choice since they aren't smart enough to make it.
No, innocent until proven guilty is a pretty good standard. Do you have evidence that GE crops are intrinsically dangerous? Because I have plenty of reason to think otherwise. Saying there might be some potential but as of yet unknown unknown is as compelling as warning me about the invisible pink unicorn.
Especially because the guys who want to prove it safe have huge financial motivation and anyone trying to prove the opposite just wants to eat food because they purchased a lifetime subscription to a digestive tract.
Really, you mean to say there isn't a multi-billion dollar organic industry out there, and plenty of professional activists staking their careers on making noise? And you mean to imply all those in academic positions who work with GE are part of some money making plot? That's bullshit and you know it.
That's your opinion and you have a right to it but 'innocent until proven guilty' does not apply to consumers buying food products. If I don't want to eat Broccoli, Tomatoes, etc... or GM crops for that matter I do not need to justify why I don't want to eat them to a judge and jury in a court of law. I just don't want to eat those products... period! What gives you and the GE industry the right to deprive people of the ability to read a label and make the choice not to eat what you are producing for whatever reason seems best to them? I understand your dilemma and the source of your anger, the GM industry wants to make GM food indistinguishable form the non-GM variety by preventing labelling of GM foods from becoming a legal requirement and here are organic food producers voluntarily labelling their foods non-GM and cutting into the GM industries profit margins. That must be frustrating, but calling organic food producers or people who don't want to eat GM foods names is not going to help you, it just makes you look embittered and angry.
You don't understand what a salmon hatchery is like, or how salmon farms work, or how/where salmon reproduce, or how they are caught.
As much as I hate to say anything good about Monsanto, from what I read they only have been going after people who purposefully acquired their product.
Who buys atlantic salmon anyway? And what is so scary about GMO? Bad taste, fearmongerer, and a luddite, sheesh...
Everything that can kill you was unknown at some point.
Just look at history. How many products have been banned because after a couple of decades they discovered it was bad for you?
The FDA should be conservative not permissive.
If there have been studies that show no adverse effect, then fine. Otherwise it should at the very least be labeled.
You can't effectively market the absence of a negative claim from the anti-GM hystericals "Absolutely doesn't cause cancer!" is not the sort of thing that will cause harmless salmon to fly off the shelves.
C17H21NO4
Non-sequitur. There's no salmon monopoly.
Reductio ad absurdum, yourself. I have dogs of various breeds, but they're not different species. There's far more than a single gene of difference there.
But it's not required to be. Go to your market and look at the sausage packages. Some will specify beef, pork, turkey, etc. and some will not. Particularly when you go to different styles of sausage (e.g., braunscweiger.)
And that is a spectacularly bad example since the package is not required to list the breed of cow or the breed of pig. All of which have a far larger number of genetic differences than this salmon. Yet, like the salmon, we've decided that the differences are inconsequential and therefore do no require them to be included on the food label.
The FDA tested this for 20 years. You're well past "a few meals" and into AGW-denier levels of anti-scientific crazy.
not the people. Hence they are derelict in their duties and should be dismissed (and preferably imprisoned.)
So maybe they should spend some of the money they're using on concealing GM foods' provenance on you know, marketing all the wonderful properties of GM foods to consumers?
Do you have any idea how much money has been spent making logical, data-driven arguments against the anti-vaxxers? A small bunch of people, triggered by the word "thimerosol" on vaccine labels and backed by a single, fraudulent paper from an investigator with serious conflict of interest, has done enormous damage to public health. Has killed children. And now it doesn't even matter whether thimerosol is in the vaccine - all vaccines contain unknown, untested dangers.
The boogey-man stories one can invent over "frankenfood" are unlimited and highly resistant to rational discussion.
Animals that are GM to grow faster will bioaccumulate less toxins before they are slaughtered, so it may actually be healthier than the non-GM version. Wild fish generally swim in far more polluted waters than what the farms use (because farms care about yields and disease.)
GMO exists exclusively to increase PROFIT. These companies could not care less if these changes will have long term consequences. Just look at the results of pumping livestock full of antibiotics. Now we are seeing resistances that did not exist 10 years ago, and there is no PROFIT in developing newer antibiotics.
No "warning label". Just a simple statement of fact. It doesn't even have to have the word, "GMO" on it. Just a little symbol like for Kosher food or Halal.
Consumers are paying the bill. Consumers pay every single penny of the money spent on GMO research. If they want to know where the food they are paying for comes from, they get to know.
You are welcome on my lawn.
And I've seen absolutely nothing that makes the case that information should be hidden from consumers. You know consumers, right? They're the ones who pay all the bills for GMOs and GMO research.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Of all the issues with GM Foods probably the most pointless is how its labelled! Eating GM Food isn't going to make you start expressing GM Genes just the same as eating beef doesn't make you grow horns. Far more important is have these GM Foods been accidentally released into the wild therefore further screwing over nature.
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Prove a negative consequence?
It's obvious you work for the GMO industry, probably a former tobacco lobbyist.
No, it's (by statue) the food's industry to prove that their product is safe.
GMOs should be treated with the same level of respect as any new drug
and require FDA approval.
It's just common sense.
CAP == 'beatnik', which I'm not :)
Don't you have some man assholes to pound?
So in other words, willful ignorance. Gotcha.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
The problem is that the anti-GM people are not logical. They spread lies and paranoid bull and can not be trusted.
Pro-GM person here, actually going to give up my beloved morning lox and cream cheese bagels because I can no longer trust a person is selling me what they are claiming to in regard to salmon.
Fuck you. I have a right to know what goes in my body.
How is it a free market to disguise the product.
There's another angle to this, namely simple honest labeling rules. An atlantic salmon has a certain taste and texture, and I'm not sure that if they GM its growth functions it will have the same taste and text. As a consumer, I want to know what I'm buying, not because I think GM is poison, but because I like to know the quality of the product, and the species of a fish is an important part of that. A turbot is a different fish from a halibut, and I would not like to be given a halibut if I ordered a turbot. From my perspective, a GM-turbot is not necessarily the same thing as a non-GM turbot since the "G" part is what defines a species.
(and no, I don't trust the FDA's "materially different" to sufficiently describe the taste, texture etc of a product)
Ink is cheap. Corp shill!
They are customers you parasitic dickhead.
So you like to dupe customers? How ethical.
It is my choice that i dont want to eat geneticaly modified organisms, its not fear, its not science, its not something that needs to be proved to me one way or another, its my choice. Hiding it from me takes away my choice.
Everyone is irrational about something. There's no reason to bring religion into a holy war about GMO.
http://news.slashdot.org/story...
Science has also caused terrible harm to the planet.
Nobody expected mad cow disease either, you know.
Actually, we sort of did and should have been taking preventative measures long before it actually became an issue (but hey... capitalism).
Scrapie is the equivalent in sheep and goats and there are references to it going back to the 1700s. Nobody knew the cause back then, but they knew it could be transmitted from an infected animal to a healthy one. We've seen other diseases transmitted from animals to humans (rabies is a great example), so it wouldn't take a genius to guess that BSE might be transmissible.
Creutzfeldtâ"Jakob Disease was first described in 1920, long before BSE was ever considered an issue, and there are earlier references to illnesses that were probably CJD (Creutzfeldt and Jakob wouldn't have been researching it if there weren't, after all). Cannibals in Papua New Guinea were found to have a severe problem with the disease in the 50s and experiments showed that it could be transmitted from from humans to chimpanzees. Transmission of CJD from transplanting animal corneas into humans had been observed by the 70s. Transmission from contaminated instruments and human growth hormone were also recorded before BSE was found to be transmissible to humans.
There was no single "Ah ha!" moment where we suddenly discovered the disease. We've seen signs of it for hundreds of years and there were plenty of indications that it could jump from one species to another. Anybody with half a clue would have been able to guess that BSE might be able to jump to humans, but that would affect profits so everyone remained willfully ignorant until it became a huge issue.
You analogy is very misleading - why?
Sticking to the facts is not good enough for you?
Prosecute? A corporation? Where have you been for the last 10-15 years? The laws are written for and by the corporations; why would they be held accountable for their actions?
If someone wants to market their products as GM-free and people want to buy products labeled GM-free then more power to them. There is obviously plenty of market for this type of labeling. But the onus should not be on those with GM foods to place labels which disparage their products.
I'm sort of sad that news for nerds has become Fodder for Conspiracy Theorists.
Genes aren't inherently harmful; only (possibly) the results. If the salmon don't start producing cyanide or psilocybin, then there's really nothing to worry about. It's not like all salmon share the same DNA anyway -- random mutations are constantly occurring. There's no reason to believe an engineered mutation is less safe.
how do they expect to win hearts and minds?
Get the government to threaten their competition so they don't face marketplace competition?
Fortunately *some* states have been nullifying the FDA on this one. Unfortunately they're fighting prohibited speech with compulsory speech. #fail
This is what happens when you make philosophically-inconsistent carve outs like "rights stop existing when money is involved". Those who fail to understand that attempts to impose control always create chaos may now enjoy their maybe-it's-frankenfish.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
... between tuna caught in nets or on lines, but I want to know about that too.
What's wrong with feeding on retarded salmon?
If you have to lie, you're in the wrong. It's just that simple.
"Like, I believe in biodynamics, man, and food that grows on the north side of a hill is like *totally* bad for you. Like, it's majorly not okay that food companies should lie to me about where the food is grown by not telling me on what side of a hill it's grown on. I think that the FDA should *totally* require that all food that's been grown on the north side of a hill be prominently labeled with that fact. The free market requires perfect information, man! Support mandatory "Contains North Slope Crops" labeling!" /s
OMGosh, this paid shill is getting testy. Well done!
Indeed, the second this shit hits the market with no label I will forgo Salmon all together. Mind you it is a staple in my diet. But whatever. I'm tired of the lies. I buy Hebrew National hot dogs, not because I'm Jewish, but because I know at very least the food gets more scrutiny.
Captcha: gruesome
Who the hell eats farm raised salmon? They swim in their own poop all day, and that is what their meat tastes like.
Yes, I sense the stench of MBA or Marketing on that dipshit. The stench of someone who has their tailpipe attached to their intake valve.
The same was true for DDT, agent orange, and thalidomide.
Failure to look for evidence doesn't mean it's safe, it means you have decided to assume it is safe, and then let people find out later if that is true.
It is equally anti-science to say "you have no evidence to the contrary therefore it is safe, neener neener".
The problem is that by the time we find out it's too damned late.
So if you want to buy the package which says "this product contains a GMO fish we we assume is safe,m but otherwise have no real evidence, then go right ahead. But I trust the companies making this stuff as much as I trust any other company -- I trust them to be greedy self serving assholes who want to maximize profits and not be particularly trustworthy in terms of product safety if they don't have to be.
This isn't anti-science hysteria, this is based on decades of seeing people rush in and say "oh gee, what could possibly go wrong" and then finding out later they should have done more study.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
They did show that the genetic modification resulted in food that is safe, to the satisfaction of the FDS.
I've said this before -- if you want labels to differentiate, then add a label to non-GMO food (and obviously, enforce truth-in-advertising laws on that). That's not something that a producer of GMO food can reasonably lobby to prevent.
To justify requiring somebody else to label something on their product, there should be some reason that this information is particularly more important than, say, the percentage of your hamburger that is composed of cattle who exhibited homosexual behaviour in the field. Which I am absolutely certain some crazy people would pay attention to if it was written on a label, and I'm also certain that all the producers would fight against this label because that's a total pain in the ass with no good purpose. If gay cattle are so safe, why aren't you proudly labelling them? Clearly you're hiding something. Like the fact that this is how GAY spreads.
The problem with modern genetic engineering isn't that it's creating Frankenstein-like creatures. It's that they're engineering out the flavor. Take a look at the Red Delicious apple. It looks great, transports well and has a long shelf life. Tastes like cardboard, though. And that is my experience with genetically engineered/modified foods. It isn't about taste, it's about making something that looks a lot like what consumers want, but is cheaper to make and lasts for months on the shelf.
That's the only reason I would never look at anything labelled as genetically modified. That's why in the USA they will never label anything as genetically modified.
When we've grown a few humans with similar growing differences as we've done to this salmon, I'll start thinking the salmon is okay. Until then, forget it.
I know that humankind knows less than there is to learn. We have no idea if this salmon is safe or not - we don't know what makes a wild salmon safe (or not). All we can do is check for things we know are bad, and we really don't know very many bad things compared to how many there are (we can't even count them, to be honest). The fact you and I disagree on this general point suggests also that we can't agree what's 'bad' and what's not. In other words, we've got a long way to go in this area before we're "pretty knowledgeable".
Until the salmon can tell us it feels okay, it's physically okay and that it's pretty happy with its lot in life, we honestly have no way to know if it's the same as a non-GM salmon. At least a human can tell us what it's thinking and feeling, and can be compared to other humans. Thus, we stand a chance of finding out if the GM-human really is the same as a non-GM human. Even this doesn't tell you everything, but I'm pretty sure nature has a way of adapting or rejecting things that are too par "out of spec", and so asking how things are seems like a reasonable first step in lieu of a more "star trek tricorder scan" sort of solution.
I don't care if my food is labeled as GM or not, as long as they instead put what was fed to my food and/or what is sprayed on my food. That roughly amounts to the same thing as labeling GM, but with the ability to apply actual science to it instead of fear.
Government says gmo are safe. Consider the source.
Chemical Companies say gmo are safe. Consider the Source.
Bill Nye reversing his opinion TWICE on gmo. Consider the Source.
None of the information we are allowed to view as citizens should be considered reliable.
Rather than wondering if you should trust the people who pay each other large sums of money to secure favorable outcomes,
CONSIDER THE SOURCE
And what is so scary about GMO? Bad taste, fearmongerer, and a luddite, sheesh...
That's the point. Nobody knows what's scary about GMO. There isn't enough data. At one time, radium was used to treat all sorts of ailments. It was only stopped later, when there was data to show that it was indeed harmful. Same can be said about hormone and antibiotic laced cattle. At one time, it was said to be safe, not there is data showing otherwise.
So, where is the data regarding GMO salmon show it is safe?
So you aren't a big fan of science, then?
Science has made many things better for us. Food included.
One would argue that science hasn't done anything for us. Now, people have used science to make many things better for us. Of course, people have used science to make many things worse, too.
Did you come to that conclusion in a scientific way, or are you being just as unscientific as you claim people with GMO concerns are?
.)?
Yes, some people are satisfied with 2 sentences on wiki and others want to see the underlying code (I will let you guess which group is being more scientific).
Most stockholders do not read financial statements, most OSS users do no read source code, and most citizens do no read through laws. Can you "scientifically" prove these things being open to the public have no significant utility (2 sentences from wiki will not do. .
Maybe there would be more progress in this debate if you spent less time insulting the intelligence of the "other side" and more time thinking of intelligent things to contribute to the debate?
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
No,
GM foods get labeled: "sure, I'll give it a shot since I haven't heard any legit horror stories around it"
GM foods don't get labeled: "they absolutely are trying to hide some ill-effects"
FTFY. People have the right to know what they are eating for the same exact reason they had the right to know things as seemingly trivial as what type of insulation is in the walls of their home. Right now we see no ill effects from it so it's great, just like asbestos was - but if we have no way of tracking whether it causes harm once it has been in use enough to have any reliable data on the matter you might as well just assume it's poison from the start because that becomes the most valid theory you're ever going to get on the matter.
Actually he should be blaming economics.
Actually, economics just describes what happens. Like science, it is agnostic. If you want to blame somebody, blame the people running businesses that put their personal gain above the health of other people. Its really all about greed.
I'm sure that the overwhelming majority of GM foods are safe. Most of it is essentially just speeding along what we already do with controlled selection and evolution.
However, as things get more advanced, we're going to be changing major properties of our food. What happens if that change you made to make an apple both tastier and with twice as many vitamins also increased the cyanide in the seeds by a factor of 500 at the same time? What happens when you start adding turtle genes to a tomato?
We know the foods we eat are safe because we've been eating more or less the exact thing for at least decades, if not centuries. We know they're safe. When things start changing too fast, you're predictably going to encounter an unpredictable problem (a Black Swan event).
As sure as I am that 99.99% of GM foods are perfectly healthy (not counting the man-made toxins that are then added on the outside), I'm sure that we will one day have a new thalidomide.
On top of that, there are still lots of reasons I would like to see the labels. Patent issues, pesticides used on GM vs organic foods, etc. I only buy non-GMO probably 5-10% of the time, in areas where it makes sense to me to do so, but I would still like the option.
I think that's actually a fantastic idea, as long as the government agency responsible for truth in labeling actually has teeth. Otherwise we'll just continue living the situation where all companies lie 100% of the time, get caught 1% of the time, and in those cases get an actual punishment 0% of the time (other than a slap on the wrist).
That means they have something to hide, it means that they are automatically in the wrong.
And if they do label, it means there is something wrong with their product. This is a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
Speaking of labels, I've never seen it labeled that oranges are often grafted into Poncitrus trifoliata rootstocks. Does that mean that all orange growers are also hiding something, or do I first have to start a movement convincing people that grafting causes cancer before the orange farmers must either put a scarlet letter on their fruit or become also in the wrong?
Labeling doesn't mean there is something wrong with their product. All it means is that the consumer knows what they are actually buying. As for oranges, your argument is a misdirect. An orange grown from a orange tree that has been grafted onto the rootstock of another plant is genetically no different than an orange grown for an orange tree that has its own roots. We don't eat the roots, nor is the DNA from the roots passed on to the fruit.
However, with GMO products, the same cannot be said, at least in most cases. The argument for these salmon are that everything in the GMO version comes from another salmon, so it really is "natural." Of course, they could have just crossbred those features, and probably tried, but something wasn't as good as the original salmon, so they went to engineering the features.
The problem with this approach is just because the parts are natural, doesn't mean the results are natural. Aspartame used to advertise that everything in it was found in bananas and milk. That is true. However, the human body behaves differently when eating a banana and drinking a glass of milk versus using the artificial sweetener..
Just because something is engineered from naturally occurring "parts," doesn't mean it is safe for consumption. It also doesn't mean that its not safe, either. We should just let the data speak for itself. I would assume that the FDA has reviewed the data and determined it is safe. Why, at a time when they are wanting food labels to have even more data so that consumers can be better informed, they chose to not have these salmon labeled accurately seems to be more about politics than public safety.
After all, if the United States truly believes in capitalism, shouldn't the product be accurately labeled and let the consumer decide? Isn't that how supply and demand is supposed to work?
If you believe that then why not label the products and let the consumers know what they are buying?
Which "science" has been that? You've made Dr. Science very upset.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Where is the data that proves long-term exposure to Snapdragon processors doesn't cause cancer? Sure, we've been around other CPUs, but Snapdragons are different! You don't have any proof? Clearly we should all be very careful when buying cell phones.
"Activate the FUD shields, full front Mr. Sulu."
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
As opposed to corporate psychopaths deciding what information to hide from you about things you eat?
Food Industry Corporations can only just barely be trusted with conventional processes. Yet somehow the GM guys are going to get free passes? How is anyone expected to believe these companies aren't screwing that up too, ignoring inconvenient side effects, or (my personal suspicion) just plain selling snake oil. We can all expect to be called luddies for being skeptical of the motivations of the very same people who screwed the public over with chemical technology for decades. Suddenly it's no longer industries job to make their case, it's the customers job to find a flaw.
Oh I forgot. Genetic modification is "teh shiny". Carry on then Space Cadets.
Listen, I'm a real engineer and I'm a real farmer. I'm a logical guy. I don't want to purchase GM products for my family or my farm. Please label the food appropriately so that I can avoid GM products. Thank you.
...but mostly it makes things that can be used wisely or foolishly.
"This is Dan Quigley for Science in the News, I'm here in downtown Slashdot and the air is thick with FUD. I'm talking torrential downpour, with a chance of irony!"
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
It's mixed salmon. The salmon has a protein present in another type of salmon. In practical terms, it's like you squeezed and filtered the juices of one salmon, and poured it over another.
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No real arguments here up until you blew it at the end. "Prove a negative consequence." No. Prove that nothing else harmful is being introduced. "Materially different?" That's the source of a lot of the commotion. Detail to the public exactly what the differences are, and allow the effects of those to be analyzed independently. Ideally the FDA would be doing that, but we all know they don't in practice operate independently of producers and FDA researchers are not allowed to freely speak of their findings. If people could trust the FDA a lot of the noise would go away, but we've learned not to trust that agency due to all the interference in years past.
How much of a faggot to you have to be to come out with some bullshit like this? You're seriously pretending that Monsanto and the rest of GM doesn't have lobbiests too? That university academics don't have close relationships and funding links to industry -- in 2015? You expect people here to buy your "innocent until guilty" analogy when it's the Industries job to prove itself safe, both to the regulator and ultimately to the end customers? You want to compare "unknown unknown" to "pink unicorns" in the context of the food industry?! The food industry? Fucking plebs know not to trust the food industry.
You're a faggot. And this is beyond bullshit? This is shilling.
> Better yet, catch it yourself. It's quite an enjoyable and delicious hobby.
Right, I'll be sure to catch myself a years worth of salmon during the brief period they are catchable here. I'm sure my job won't miss me for however many weeks that takes, if it's even possible. Clearly if I want wild caught fish, or fish that don't have lab tuned genes, I should have to be a subsistence hunter.
I don't think he offered as something you had to do.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Sorry but I disagree.
My primary statement was regarding how much money these companies spend to hide what they do, and you disagree with facts. Not only do you disagree with facts, you do so on a red herring argument. Wow!
Lets look at how an average person might look at a GMO label.
When we look at a label like "Organic" the "average" person takes it very well and pays more for those products. If the product is positive the advertising will be perceived that way.
You demonstrate the irrational fallacy pretty well, but I'm not convinced that you can back your position or counter mine in a rational way.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I've heard legit horror stories about wifi and smart meters, better ban those.
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Yeah, but for those of us who do have gluten sensitivity, it’s damn helpful that there is all this excess supply of GF foods, making it cheaper and more more plentiful for us. My wife has hashimoto’s and celiac and reacts very badly to trace amounts of gluten. And we can tell when our kids have been exposed, because the ADHD and other behavioral problems go through the roof. According to genetic analysis, I have genes corelated with gluten sensitivity, and although my case it may instead be a FODMAP problem, that still means I have to avoid wheat, and my concentration and energy have been steadily improving since this dietary change.
From what I’ve been told by dieticians and MDs is that a LOT of people have at least some mild sensitivity to either gluten or FODMAPs. Most of the time, it’s under the radar and therefore not worth making this microoptimization. But when other health problems get involved, we look to fix lots of little things that are dragging us down. For example, I have urticaria (a generalized itch). It turns out that although my histamine levels are high, my IgE levels are normal, which means I’m getting histamine from something else. Nevertheless, I’m getting immunotherapy to reduce the histamines that ARE produced by IgE reactions, because although it doesn’t fix the real problem (probably some gut flora thing), it HELPS.
"They might".
You don't seem to like this phrase. And yet you added nothing to the conversation except your own preconceived notions. Disappointing.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
*including hybridization or selective breeding*.
lol this is basically saying, "don't use it at all."
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
And what is so scary about GMO? Bad taste, fearmongerer, and a luddite, sheesh...
That's the point. Nobody knows what's scary about GMO. There isn't enough data. At one time, radium was used to treat all sorts of ailments. It was only stopped later, when there was data to show that it was indeed harmful. Same can be said about hormone and antibiotic laced cattle. At one time, it was said to be safe, not there is data showing otherwise.
So, where is the data regarding GMO salmon show it is safe?
Or any hybrid food for that matter. Or plant splicing, like done on tomatoes or fruit trees. Its a scary world.
Your radium/antibiotic/hormone argument has some flaws as compared to genetically modified food.
Radium was known to be poisonous pretty quickly, the biggest issues were companies that weren't responsibly handling it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... . Even more recently , in Lock Haven, PA, there were irresponsible people making uncontrolled releases http://www.yardbird.com/reform...
The hormones and antibiotics are also added substances - and have a clear path of possible problems, just like the estrogen mimics in some plastics. There is known possible side effects right from the first introduction of those substances.
Now this genetic splicing you fear. One of the first indications that it isn't going to be a problem is that it doesn't kill the fish. They survive, they grow. Any addition that might be toxic to people will have to be both not toxic to the salmon, but also very subtle.
Now this in no way means that GM fish can be produced that are not toxic. All manner of animals produce toxic elements, and if a fish could be engineered to contain that, it would become toxic. I am no geneticist, but I suspect that is incredibly difficult, as you would first have to genetically modify the fish to be unaffected by the toxin before adding the ability to produce the toxin. But in the meantime, unless one of the fish is toxic in the natural state, I'm happy to consume it.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
By that logic, every for-profit company is suspect, as are their products. That stance works equally well against electronics, clothing, cars, pocket knives, wine, and coffee, all produced by corporations
Yes, that's 100% accurate. Now, to be fair about it: Most all companies and corporations understand that providing a quality product with intrinsic value that performs as advertised, while still making a profit, is the best, most reliable path to success, and if there is a problem with something, they'll handle it. But you have to admit, even in the last month we've seen at least one large corporation getting caught lying to us (Volkswagen). Go back several more months and you'll find at least one more that's been covering up flaws in their products that actually got people killed (General Motors). Since I have a day job and don't have time to sit here for a couple hours doing research to provide more examples of companies who were caught being jerks at the expense of others, those are the two quick examples that come to mind, but if you're really looking for the truth of the matter I'm sure you'll find the time to go looking for them yourself, but other examples, every year, are out there. Please note again: I am saying here in this comment that reputable companies produce safe, effective products that provide value for the consumer of said products, and that are produced in good faith with the best of intentions, and the aforementioned 'good' companies will (more often than not) fix problems or provide remedies if things are otherwise. But for issues like food safety, it's difficult to be too careful, especially when the effects may not manifest for decades.
If you have an actual concern, voice it. Otherwise, you are just saying 'bad things might happen and you can't prove they won't' which describes most everything.
The problem with that is: most of us don't have the education to be employed as genetic engineers, so how are we supposed to know? Saying 'don't worry be happy' is just as bad as saying 'the sky is falling!', and like too many people I attempt to have conversations with on the Internet, you're assuming a binary choice in this matter: Either 'worry about everything' or 'worry about nothing', when there are infinite shades of grey between the two: I am advocating a reasonable degree of caution, especially where people's long-term health and lives are at stake. Now, that being said, I will repeat myself from the original comment: In the case of this GE salmon, it's probably going to be as safe as the FDA thinks it is, because they spent 25 years vetting the gods-be-damned fish before approving it for sale to the public and therefore had enough time to observe the effects of the tampering they did to the fishs' genes.
Finally, I'd like to point out something that applies to you, to me, and to most other people: Neither you or I are genetic engineers, or if you are, then please arrange to provide your real name, proof of your applicable degree(s), and (preferably) any published work(s) on the subject, as credentials qualifying you to comment as an expert on the subject; otherwise it's 'your opinon' and 'my opinon' and as such they are of equal value here.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I demand that the vaccination history of every person at the company that produced my food be on the packaging.
This has a far greater chance of impacting my health than GM-labelling.
What do the producers have to gain from hiding this information?
It's great that you have no problem being a guinea pig for Monsanto. That's your right.
Personally, I have read many studies indicating that GMOs are deadly, and I would choose not to eat them if given the choice.
I have nothing against your ill informed decision to allow your body to be a petri dish for frankenfoods. Nothing at all. It's your choice. Why do you have a problem with letting ME have a choice? Because that's what this is about: freedom of choice.
No. The "well-known fact" that you cited is (should be) the exception, not the rule.
I'm in favor of labeling because of this:
"allows the salmon to grow to market size faster than non-GE farm-raised salmon."
So they save money producing GE salmon, I want to see a cheaper salmon in the market that tastes the same but costs less.
i thought we're supposed to believe in and trust the market and let people decide for themselves? that's what libertarians keep telling me. so why then do the same people keep insisting on forcing people to make decisions in the market without informant? the market cant function properly if people lack information.
The problem with that is that in most cases there is no wonderful property that would appeal to the consumer. As in this case, the GM lets the fish grow faster and bigger. So other than bigger Salmon steaks what exactly is the advertising angle?
It's meat, it has the same nutrients and nutritional values as no GM Salmon, only the farmers can produce more and bigger fish in less time.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
they claimed nutrition and ingredients labels were also politically driven.
they felt we should just buy there products, and they were under no obligation to tell us what is in them.
stuff that.
its not merely trope. the market DOES require informed parties, even if some situations like healthcare have extenuating circumstances that make it nigh impossible for one of the actors to make a completely rational decision. this is not one of those situations.
they can label it and let the market have its way with them, and if they wish to change peoples minds they can go through the effort of persuading them, rather than doing an end run around it by hiding the information from consumers.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
No. The science swayed me. If you look at any non-industry funded studies, almost all show serious health risks of consuming these organisms that, for whatever reason, nature chose not to make on her own.
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/04/08/10-scientific-studies-proving-gmos-can-be-harmful-to-human-health/
innocent until proven guilty is a pretty good standard
in a court of law , not in regards to what you put into your body.
innocent until proven guilty, when applied to the food industry, would wait until AFTER someone poisons or sickens someone, instead of working to prevent from happening in the first place.
we know this, because its exactly how it was run until the public had had enough, and we created the FDA (or rather its forerunner), and began requiring food producers to follow various safety/cleanliness protocols.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Nobody is trying to mislead anyone here
really?
they don't want to label it because they fear consumers may be hesitant to purchase it, hurting their profits, so their solution is to keep consumers ignorant and prevent them from even knowing whether it is or isn't... ...but that's not trying to mislead someone by omitting a piece of information that may influence a consumers decision?
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Five years of study and testing. It's fish meat. No special chemical compounds or extra nutrients are produced. The FDA and the developers spent five years testing these fish. They are fish, they grow up faster and they get bigger, nothing more. You don't absorb their DNA you digest it. It's not an additive, it doesn't produce extra nutrients like Golden Rice, it isn't immune to chemicals like round-up, it doesn't produce a toxin to keep pests away. It's a fish that grows faster and bigger.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Good advice. The FDA also released 2 Draft Guidance For Industry documents at the same time aimed at establishing voluntary labels for GM status. One for salmon and the other for plant derived products. http://www.fda.gov/Food/Guidan... http://www.fda.gov/Food/Guidan...
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
The label I see most often is 'line caught' which implies wild fish. But I expect it also describes a good way to pull a fish out of a fish-farm's pool.
Buy Salmon that is labeled GE / GMO free.
Factually incorrect. There have been boatloads of research into the safety of various GMO products. The hippies have been pouring over the studies for a long long time trying and trying to find anything they can use. They have failed. That is the best evidence possible.
On a basic economic-theory level, competition depends on the consumer being able to make a well-informed choice. Therefore, any attempt to hide information from the consumer is anti-competitive. IMO, it's also immoral. In other words, there is always a reason for the government to require it to be labeled because everything should be labeled by default!
Therefore, if you want to justify failing to label GMOs, you need an actual compelling reason why restricting that information is in the overriding public interest. (And neither "it hasn't been proven to be unsafe" nor even "we've proven it to be safe" are compelling reasons. Even if it's safe, what justifies withholding the information? Nothing!)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
No. No one is hiding anything. Assume EVERYTHING you eat that is not labled GMO-Free is GMO in some way shape or form. If you want to be paranoid that's your own purview. If you want food that is organic look for the organic label. If you want kosher look for the kosher label, If you want GMO-Free look for the GMO-Free label. The government is not in the business of enforcing your religious standards.
Your argument only holds if all of the things the FDA approves not harmful. Unfortunately they have proved to be completely incapable of identifying products that are dangerous (reference 90% of drugs that have been released for the last... forever) if there is a giant company behind them urging them to approve it.
If someone feels that any ingredient is something they don't want to eat, they should at least be given the information to make that choice. This is regardless to the fact if the ingredient is not actually bad for them. Hiding the fact that they are doing this only proves that they're doing something wrong. If they weren't doing anything wrong, they wouldn't have to hide it... isn't that the logic that we're supposed to use now?
And if they do label, it means there is something wrong with their product.
I know that is why when I see the California Real Cheese logo on something in the supermarket I just take it off the shelves and throw it into the garbage.
It really is a benefit that clear warnings like that exist on products.
Imagine for a minute that certain drinks with no added salt / sugar were forced to have a label (WARNING: Conatains electrolytes). Or perhaps some like (Contains Di-hydrogen monoxide). How many ignorant people would change their buying patterns based on that? What benefit would this provide for your average consumer?
That's the issue here. Today the anti-GMO argument is "Well, if there's nothing wrong with GMOs, then why don't you label them?" If labeling is enforced, then 10 years from now the anti-GMO movement will be saying "Oh yeah, well if there's nothing bad about GMOs, why are they forced to label them?"
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
"If we tell them what is and what is not GM, some people will refuse to buy the GM, even if they are not sure the non-GM is better."
Well, some others will choose to buy the GM, even if they are not sure the GM is better. Stupidity works both ways, you know?
I was under the impression that all this fuss about "free market" required "perfectly informed parties", right?
"It might even end up killing the GM industry"
And favoring the GM industry might even end up killing the Organic Foods industry. Didn't know it was some kind of government mandate to favor a side of an industry against any other.
The issue is government mandates. Government should have real science behind reasons for labelling (or banning.)
For that matter, a company voluntarily labeling "GMO-free" may be satisfying illogical consumer demand, but that is a scam.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Just starve then
You must not have any product marketing experience. If my product is labeled differently from yours, from a marketing perspective (which is based on the psychology of people when they are buying things) one is better than the other. Back before the USDA Certified Organic program existed marketers were putting the word "organic" on everything because it didn't mean anything legally (so they weren't lying) and it increased the perceived value of a product (thus increasing sales volumes or sales price). Marketing team are always looking for the next buzzword, as well as looking for the next term to avoid because they have the opposite effect on perceived value. Natural is another term that doesn't have a legal definition and so is getting slapped on everything despite meaning precisely nothing.
Due to all of the fear mongering about GM products by Big Organic et al., labeling your product as GM means to most consumers that it is unsafe. Nothing is stopping anyone from labeling their product as containing GM, and the FDA released 2 guidances to industry at the same time as the GM salmon announcement to address voluntary GM free labeling.
http://www.fda.gov/Food/Guidan...
http://www.fda.gov/Food/Guidan...
The difference between these salmon, and the newly revised food labeling rules come down to justification. Mandatory labeling requires justification. It is the government compelling speech, and that power cannot be abused on a whim. "I'd simply like to know" is too low of a bar, and that is the only really valid reason I've seen put forward in support of a GM-status label. With the nutritional labels, on the other hand, there is definitive health and nutrition concern being addressed. Public health and safety is a sufficiently high bar, and that is the basis for the nutritional guide labeling revisions recently pushed out.
The FDA is a food safety organization that is part of the federal government. They can oversee voluntary labeling plans to ensure that they are accurate and safe, but they cannot impose new labeling requirements based on a popular vote. That is why they are proposing new rules to address the desire of a subset of consumers to know the GM status of their food. Furthermore, they must (by law) consider the cost/benefit of any new regulation. There is a cost associated with labeling, and it is higher than most realize. Since there is no health and safety benefit to GM labeling, the cost/benefit is entirely one sided. If you want to voluntarily increase the cost of your product to cover certifications and labels, they can support you, but they cannot force your competitors to do the same without a good reason, which in this case there isn't.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
More sensible to control people population control vs making more food. Less strain on Earth.
Good for you. IF someone wants to be a anti-gmo SJW they are free to pay more for food labeled GMO free. Thats fine and fair.
What they should do is voluntarily label with something like "made with UltraSalmon (R) technology" to turn the negative into a buzzword. That's how technology companies do it...
Let us apply the same standard to everything; why even have elections? Most folks are ill-informed and will not make the right choice anyway. Let us let a bunch of smart people make all the decisions. Think of how much money we can save!
If you label something, it gives support to the idea that it is important and something to consider. The government has no business doing that for GM foods which it has found to be harmless.
Except it hasn't found them to be harmless, it merely assumes that they are. There are no long term study requirements for genetic modification. If you can briefly show it's not immediately toxic then it's assumed to be as safe as non-modified food. That might be true, but then again it might not, look at how we originally thought radioactivity and DDT were pretty trivial and later they turned out not to be. The zealots who think GM food is the devil are certainly off base, but that doesn't mean that it's being treated with an appropriate amount of care. The problem is that the subject has become so polarized that you can't even discuss rational safeguards without being considered "anti-science".
But GM meat creates a problem: A(n) (American) corporation owns the food supply. So it can reduce supply to keep profit margins high. The advantage will be a lot less if other corporations create other supplies of quick-grown meat. Or, they can all keep prices as high as the market will bear.
They still must compete against other farm raised salmon, much of which is located in the continental US, which is not the case for these fish. They have no ability to increase market prices, only to push them down due to their (presumably) lower cost of production. They were handed a patent for fish they already own, not all of the salmon in the US. In fact, the current approval only authorizes them to use 2 manufacturing sites. One in Canada for the breeding animals, and one in Latin America (Panama I think).
I wouldn't assume that but it is certainly suspicious: There's nothing wrong with the meat (at the moment) and they're already trying to avoid responsibility. What's the point? If, far in the future, GM foods do become defective, no corporation can undo the 50 years worth of disease already foisted onto its customers. When dealing with an unknown cost, the cost of honesty is low because the cost of the truth is fixed.
Complete mischaracterization. We are not looking at no risk (not approved) vs risk (approved), but at 2 scenarios that both pose their own risks. Someone could incubate Salmon eggs with radioactive isotopes today to try and create a new strain of salmon and the FDA would not need to be notified at all. That salmon could be marketed tomorrow. The risk of the current breeding programs are equivalent to the risks posed by this new GM salmon. And since the risks are the same, the relative increase in risk is unchanged.
In the "Rama" trilogy (AC Clarke), there are several sentences that I remember. One sentence mentions that a planet that embraced genetic engineering soon became extinct. In the 'Star trek' universe ('G' Roddenberry), WW 3 is fought over genetic engineering. Visionaries have assumed that genetic engineering will be bad. The reason may be the greed and deception built-in to the supply chain of most industries.
Are you seriously throwing up science fiction as an argument? In the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy series there is a cautionary tale about a consumerist society collapsing because of their obsession with designer shoes, and they eventually evolved into birds so that they wouldn't have to set foot on the ground again. So. Fucking. What. does the HHGG book mean we should ban all designer shoes because we ,might get carried away and cause civilization to collapse based on the imaginings of a beloved fiction author?
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
No, but a QR code on the package could easily link to a site displaying all of that extra information, and yes there are times when I'd want to see it.
There is some discussion that grain and dairy free diets help with autism and schizophrenia and other psychiatric problems. I have no idea whether or not this is valid; the evidence I read years back was out of a British study in the 1970s. I have no idea as to the accuracy. Maybe the biggest thing for cases like this is to try it and see if there's a positive outcome, but without more testing you cannot say if it is gluten, or something else. From a pragmatic perspective, it doesn't matter. My wife has celiac disease and has been gluten free for more than 3 decades. It has helped her enormously. I do agree though, that 'gluten free' is the current new food fad. (It helps with weight loss? I don't think so!)
No, innocent until proven guilty is a pretty good standard.
For people involved in the justice system yes, because we prefer than the guilty go free than the innocent be punished. For potentially toxic substances, it's the other way around, guilty until proven innocent.
Nobody's lying to them. The label says salmon, and the package contains salmon.
Except it doesn't, it contains a Salmon/Ocean Pout hybrid. Sure, it's mostly Salmon and if they want to label it that way I'm ok with that, but calling it 100% Salmon is false advertising.
By that logic, every for-profit company is suspect, as are their products.
Indeed, how long has it taken you to come to that realization? Our system is built on self-interest, and they aren't optimizing for what is best for me, but rather what brings them the most dollars. I'm totally fine with that, but it means I take anything they say, do or produce with a grain of salt.
Me neither. Looks like we've all eaten GMO crops OMGZ.
Give me a fucking break.
What is "proper" is defined in-part by the government. Since labeling is a form of compelled speech there are limits on the circumstances in which the government can mandate a label, as well as limitations on the information that they can require be put on the label. Public health and safety are the justifications for the ingredients list, nutrient composition labels, and allergneicity statements. However, since there is no public health and safety difference between GM and non-GM salmon (if there had been a difference, the salmon would not have been approved in the first place), they cannot force AquAdvantage or their customer to label the GM status of their salmon.
However, what they can do is *enable* voluntary labeling of GM status. That is why they released 2 draft guidance documents to address how companies can legally label their plant and salmon products as GM-free.
http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocumentsRegulatoryInformation/ucm469802.htm
http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocumentsRegulatoryInformation/ucm059098.htm
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Correct. It is fraud to complain there is something wrong with it, and hence for government to mandate fraud.
Other, illogical concerns are not the government's perogative to force on people.
Religious issues aside, should government mandate kosher or not kosher labeling because some folks are concerned with that? Halal? No elves killed while making these cookies?
People concerned with GMO can search out products free of it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
After 30 years and multiple class action lawsuits, yes.
If you label something, it gives support to the idea that it is important and something to consider. The government has no business doing that for GM foods which it has found to be harmless.
Let's start a list of all the things that the government has deemed to be harmless, that we now know is far from the case.
So GMOs are just for increased profits for the producer?
OK.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I think that's actually a fantastic idea, as long as the government agency responsible for truth in labeling actually has teeth. Otherwise we'll just continue living the situation where all companies lie 100% of the time, get caught 1% of the time, and in those cases get an actual punishment 0% of the time (other than a slap on the wrist).
If it's a third party certifying agency then the government agency wouldn't have to have teeth but rather the certifying agency could actually sue a company if they used their trademark without permission.
You must be joking. With all the paid holidays, vacations and numerous other ways to avoid work that Americans have (assuming you're American) it shouldn't be any problem at all for you to make time to go Fishing or any other activity
Strong Trolling, I applaud you.
So you aren't a big fan of science, then?
Science has made many things better for us. Food included.
Sure, it's also had a few bumps an bruises along the way. Remember trans fats and radium toothpaste?
Trade negotiations are mostly about banning "GMO-free" labelling.
"The agency(FDA) warned the dairy industry in 1994 that it could not use “Hormone Free” labeling on milk from cows that are not given engineered hormones, because all milk contains some hormones."
"It has sent a flurry of enforcement letters to food makers, including B&G Foods, which was told it could not use the phrase “GMO-free” on its Polaner All Fruit strawberry spread label because GMO refers to genetically modified organisms and strawberries are produce, not organisms.
"It told the maker of Spectrum Canola Oil that it could not use a label that included a red circle with a line through it and the words “GMO,” saying the symbol suggested that there was something wrong with genetically engineered food."
There is actually a pretty small amount of wild salmon available to buy as most of it comes from farms whether or not it is a GMO. Perhaps the easiest solution would to require labels for if the fish was caught in the wild or farmed? http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04...
Right, I'll be sure to catch myself a years worth of salmon during the brief period they are catchable here. I'm sure my job won't miss me for however many weeks that takes, if it's even possible.
Wow. How much salmon do you eat?
My primary statement was regarding how much money these companies spend to hide
I saw your primary argument that they were hiding something relevant which is what I was disagreeing with.
When we look at a label like "Organic" the "average" person takes it very well and pays more for those products.
I would be against a labelling of "Chemical pesticides used in production" which is what actually means when the "organic" label is not present. "Organic" is a feature. Why are non-organic products not labelled that way?
http://news.slashdot.org/story...
innocent until proven guilty is hilarious
cui bono or suffer the consequences of not paying attention
Some companies will label their food as such. Consumers who express an interest can then purchase those products. I still don't see why this needs to be an industry-wide mandate though.
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
You could make that case to mandate all kinds of irrelevant information be included on product labels. If the GMO product is nutritionally identical to the non-GMO, the only reason to differentiate them via labeling would be to suggest that there is a substantive difference between the two products, which is false.
Now you could certainly make that case for, for example, a crop that was modified to be pesticide resistant. The fact that the product may contain traces of a pesticide is relevant information.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
That's actually the key here. If you truly believe GMOs are harmless, then the only reason to bring them to market is because they are better than natural organisms. Maybe they're more sustainable because they grow faster, maybe they're fatter which makes them tastier, maybe they're better for the environment, etc.
So if you truly support GMOs in the market, you must believe they are superior. If that's true, then the GMO label should be a badge of honor. Something you want on your food - because it indicates superiority over natural foods.
Not wanting your GMOs to be disclosed to the consumer indicates either:
- You actually believe your products are inferior, and you don't want customers to know about it.
- You've done a stunningly bad job of PR. And what's needed to turn your fortunes around is to educate the public, not government regulations allowing you to trick people into eating something something that's not what they think it is.
I'm sort of sad that news for nerds has become Fodder for Conspiracy Theorists.
Genes aren't inherently harmful; only (possibly) the results. If the salmon don't start producing cyanide or psilocybin, then there's really nothing to worry about. It's not like all salmon share the same DNA anyway -- random mutations are constantly occurring. There's no reason to believe an engineered mutation is less safe.
You assume all mutations are perfectly safe, do you?
Just because something is labeled does not mean it is somehow worse than the non-labeled version. If I go to the store and purchase steak that is labeled hormone free or grass fed, I am not being told that the product is inferior. Granted, those aren't FDA mandated labels. But, even then, a lot of FDA mandated labeling is neutral. If I am told how many carbs or how much fiber my cereal has, it is neutral, because all other cereals have those ingredients.
It is just informational for the benefit of the consumer, so they know what they are purchasing, so they can make informed decisions about the food they eat. The same is true, or should be, with GMO products. Whether harmful or not, as a consumer, I should know where my food comes from. I'm told if I am buying fortified milk or enriched wheat. Why should I not be told if the food I am purchasing is genetically fortified or enriched?
Assuming the products are indeed safe (and I have no reason to suspect otherwise), shouldn't they be labeled like everything else and those companies wanting to produce them educate the population? After all, if they have nothing to hide with GMO, then why hide that it is GMO?
This is already the case for drugs in many countries.
They have to be identified by a serial number linked to their place and date of manufacture. The serial number can then be scanned during transport and at destination to trace where they end up. There is a global standard (the GTIN) every pharmaceutical company, globally, will have to conform to by 2017 - however people in the industry (I are one) know that not all of them will possibly have conformed by that date considering the amount of work to be done. This will help to trace back products in case of a recall and avoid losses to companies in case of a mistake. It will also helps in detecting counterfeit or stolen drugs. Counterfeit drugs are an enormous problem in China and India, and it is reaching sizable proportions in western countries too.
Something similar could be devised for foodstuff. Counterfeits also exist in foods - meat and fish, for instance, are frequently mislabelled as being something more expensive, and costly spices like saffron are very often cut with foreign colored fibers to increase their weight. Recalls in case of contamination also regularly happen in the food industry. Information about what if any GMO was included in manufactured foods, as well as the provenance of ingredients could also be included in databanks. I already have a couple cases in mind of incidents in which this would have been of tremendous help in reducing damages from a contaminated ingredient.
This system is not only beneficial for the customers, it can also be of help to companies by making a contamination or counterfeit situations less costly for them.
You don't science very well, do you? The oranges are genetically different. That you don't think they are genetically different means we can discount any opinion you have on the subject. Stick to non-science and leave the science to the scientists unless you actually plan on taking the time to overcome your ignorance.
The GM people don't want to be pushed into a situation similar to the gluten people - where idiotic superstitious people avoid their product
Examine what you are doing. You are arguing against everyone (that includes you) having more information available on their food because... they might waste time and energy avoiding things which may well prove to be harmless? Do you realize that not disclosing this information will convince large numbers of people that GMOs are in fact harmful to health, or that there is something else wrong with GMOs, something worth hiding? I wonder, if we had skipped this streisand-effect phase and mandated GMO labeling years ago, would anyone really care about it today? Maybe a few hardcore skeptics and Infowars fans, who would almost certainly be growing/canning/cooking all their own food already.
At the very least, I think you should have to turn in your nerd card for arguing against having more information available. I am baffled by how common this sentiment is on Slashdot; things sure have changed from the STEM-friendly hobbyist/DIY Slashdot I remember from the early 2000s, full of people who sought out and argued over the most trivial pieces of information.
There's a real strong-state, government-is-your-father-eternal attitude in that quoted section above that isn't warranted at all. The idea that government's proper role is to make the final call on what the people have a right to know; after all, they're just stupid superstitious plebs who would misunderstand or misapply the information, anyway. It's not like we're talking about something where there's an argument to be made that widespread knowledge could be trouble - like detailed plans and specifications on how to build thermonuclear devices (is that still officially classified material in the US?) - we're just talking about more descriptive labeling for food here.
First, this is a democratic republic, not some dictatorship. The people's wishes, even if they are silly or stupid, are supposed to be driving government, not the other way around. Yes, yes, pure democracy is capricious, and our government has checks and balances, though ever since Wickard v. Filburn inverted the commerce clause, I can't think of any that apply to this situation as the law is currently interpreted.
Second, you neglected to explain how labeling for GMOs would harm anyone in any way. The US isn't Africa during a drought, it's not like we have some shortage of farm capacity in the US that necessitates improved yields from GMOs... heck, we have so much excess capacity we can afford to screw around with organic farming's low yields. I guess it could harm the bottom line of food companies looking to pay off their R&D costs; though I'm pretty sure protecting corporate profits isn't a duty of government, and besides, if demand for GMOs fell, food companies would start selling more GMO-free foods to meet the changing market demand. I guess it could make GMOs harder to find for individuals seeking them out, though I'm not sure why exactly someone would do that (are there advantages? I haven't looked into it, myself), or why the onus should be on those avoiding GMOs to make GMOs more available for others.
Third... I see a lot of room for improvement in food labeling standards besides GMOs. Nutrition facts were a good start, but I'd like to see it made accurate to 0.1 g, not just to the nearest 1 g like now (would save diabetics a lot of grief from improperly gauging their sugar intake). While we're at it, let's also start using the actual chemical names of more of the ingredients instead of vague claims like "natural flavors". And if I'm buying produce, I'd like to see a box showing the levels of cadmium, lead, benzene, etc. in the soil - if I can get a report updated once per year on how many ppm of lead, arsenic, and various other nasties I'm getting in my tap water each year, why can't I find this same information for the food I eat? It's not like any of thos
I'm not categorically opposed to GMO food. However, I also know that just because we don't see a problem immediately does not mean there is a problem. There is a difference between cross-pollinating an apple to produce a different variant than to replacing specific genes. The fact that the cross-pollination takes hold, means that this could have occurred naturally, so we are just mimicking the natural process. On the other splicing the gene from one species of plant (or animal) to another, that could not otherwise occur in nature, "could" be problematic. It doesn't have to be, but without adequate research how does one know? And if adequate research has been completed and the results show it is harmless, then why not label it as such?
Of course, there will be some people who won't choose said product out of fear or ignorance. That is still their choice. However, we don't hide the contents of other products because people might object. When you go to get a vaccination, you are told what is in the vaccine. Yes there are people opposed to vaccinations, but not telling them what is in it won't change that and those who don't take the extreme anti-vaccination approach have the right to know.
If the government says we have the right to know what is in the vaccines that are injected into our arms, all the way down to the cell culture that created the vaccine, then why don't we have the right to know what or how the food we put in our mouths is made?
On a side note, the argument that the fish survive so it is okay is not a good one. First, it is to the best of our knowledge that they survive. Second, and more importantly, survival doesn't equate to no harm. Many people alive today survive even though they have some form of birth effect from some medication their mother took while pregnant -- often because we didn't know the side effects at the time. Survival, by itself, means just that, it survived, it doesn't equate to it being harmless (or harmful). There are many deformed frogs in Europe from all of the estrogen in the water. They, too, have survived and even reproduced. That doesn't mean the estrogen isn't a problem.
I am not actually arguing against GMO products. I am only questioning why the FDA would not have the products labeled? If they are afraid that the population won't accept the products and it will hurt big business, then big business should spend money to educate the public on the products. It's ironic that Monsanto has to tell the farmer that the corn they are buying is GMO and the farmer has to tell the wholesaler, but by the time it makes it to the consumer, we are told that we don't need to know.
It's not the FDAs job to protect the manufacturer. It is their job to protect the consumer. It is difficult to accept an argument that keeping the consumer in the dark about how their food is produced is beneficial to the consumer.
Idiot. If the price gets too high we'll just use non-GMO products. Also, citing fiction as factual makes you look stupid. In the Rama trilogy there's a giant metal tube floating in space that we humans then interlope on. I suppose you'll want us to plan on that eventuality too? Nitwit.
No, that's how the FDA does it right now.
So, if i buy apple, it does not matter if it is from California, Uganda, or Chernobyl? No point of marketing the "good" properties of healthy radiation, LOL.
"You want something to be labelled? Prove a negative consequence."
So there must be a negative consequence for any label to exist? What is the negative consequence that existed to necessitate the need for "Net Wt" on a bag of chips? Surely consumers could just bring their own scale to the store with them.
"A loaf of bread might require a wrapper the size of a 40 gallon garbage bag in twenty years."
Right, or just a normal package with a QR code that encodes all the ingredients, etc..
FUD rejected.
That's because they're not required to. I presume most of the population would be shocked to find out that 99% of the stuff they buy at the supermarket comes from approximately 12 companies. All of them recognizable.
Companies behind the brands.
(That image was created as part of an Oxfam report, Behind the Brands).
Just like they proved that brominated vegetable oil is safe.
Almost everything that you've ever eaten is genetically modified in one form or another. Additionally, science doesn't work that way. Nothing, ever, is proven safe. There is nothing safe on this planet and there never will be. The only solution is for you to kill your family and then yourself. You've already contaminated the family so they'll need to die along with you. An afterlife remains unproven, so there's no safety in that.
Give me an example of a company that will voluntarily label their food as GMO.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If there is no "substantive difference" between the two products, then how the hell are they awarded patents on them?
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'm actually strongly in favor of using genetic manipulation to improve foods. But as long as the companies developing the technology continue to treat it as something to be concealed from consumers, how do they expect to win hearts and minds?
Agreed.
I'm not particularly anti-GMO, but my general approach is to boycott any foods where they take the freedom of choice away from me & my family.
We'd already stopped eating corn & soy. In response to the FDA decision, my wife has told me she won't eat salmon anymore either. (Never liked it myself.)
Ironically, food companies need to stop shoving their product down our throats! :-)
You might want to scratch DDT off the list unless you're also going to put water on the list. DDT is quite safe when used appropriately. It's even safe to use as a fertilizer but we don't want persistent fertilizers of any kind (for a whole host of reasons) so it is not recommended or legally allowed for that. DDT is fine, otherwise. The science and book have both been thoroughly (but quietly) discredited. Even the WHO has changed their stance on it. See your favorite search engine for more details.
You're an idiot to trust the food corporations. It's almost like you're defending them, like they're your heroes. Like they've done a single solitary thing to make the planet better. Does the world NEED genetically-modified salmon? No. It's just another way for selfish dickholes like you to exploit the planet for the sole benefit of a small handful of humans. If you're don't see the need for caution with GM tech, then you're a fool.
Either you have a very low bar for what constitutes "legit" or you're making shit up.
>Nobody expected mad cow disease either, you know.
Kuru has been around for centuries. Yet somehow there were people who thought it worked differently for cows.
If I were old enough I would have seen it coming. I only didn't because the crisis happened before I turned teenager.
I honestly have a hard time believing that people didn't see this coming. I think it was just cheap people being idiots.
The "warning label will be too big" argument is completely bogus. Food manufacturers must be mandated to provide complete component lists and ingredient sources via a barcode and public database on the Internet. Then consumers can optionally at any time of their choosing use smart phones/barcode readers to choose what they want to buy prior to or after purchase. Will consumers share their "opinions" of both good and bad food components with others? Hell, yes! And like open source software everyone sharing info about and consuming or choosing not to consume "open source food" products will be better for it. The fact that this hasn't occurred puts the "big lie" to all myths about "rational consumers" who can make their own choices about their food purchases. You cannot make rational choices if you don't have the ability to obtain the necessary information. Large food manufacturers may be causing their own continued decline by attempting to hide GMO etc. As rational consumers are left only with the option to not buy foods from the "big food conglomerates" if they want to avoid what they fear. This is already happening. I recently visited father's MD with my father for his checkup. In the doctor's reception area was a warning about GMO foods and all the brands and corporations to not buy unlabeled GMO food from.
Facebook is billions of individual "Skinner Boxes." And if you use it you are the pigeon!
You say safer, but I don't think that word means what you think it means. Hemlock isn't GMO, but it sure as hell isn't safe for you to eat.
But hey, go ahead and be wrong. I don't care, it's not my problem if you don't understand what safe actually means.
Then why there is "farm raised" and "wild" salmon? And why the "farm raised" salmon is with color added? WTF "color added" means?
WHY, WHY they put this soo insignificant information just to confuse me!!!
The package doesn't say who handled it - what if it was handled by Jews? I have a right to know if my food was handled by Jews. If you don't mind eating food handled by Jews, that's your choice, but you can't lie to me and conceal the truth about my Jew-touched fish.
So, in order to help me perform my ignorant and discriminatory biases, I want the government to force every food company at gunpoint to label each product that was touched by Jews.
*including hybridization or selective breeding*.
lol this is basically saying, "don't use it at all."
Generally, the FDA is saying if you attempt to use the non-GM label on something, we aren't going to do anything proactively because there is currently no regulation on the use of that term, but if your customers complain to us about deceptive or misleading labeling, you have been warned.
In their guidance, they give an example for a type of product that might be able to use a non-GM labeling without FDA objection: a food that is derived from a plant that has not been subject to any form of selective breeding might be berries collected from wild plant or open-pollination (non-selective) heirloom varieties.
Right now, I think this guidance is being ignored by the corn and soy industries and they are heavily lobbying for the FDA to adopt the USDA terminology for GMOs to accommodate the current labeling practice (kind of how the "organic" industry lobbied the USDA to codify existing "organic" practices).
For completeness, the FDA strongly warns producers against a "GM-free" label as in the absence of specific regulation for this moniker (which presumably would be some number slightly greater than zero to allow for practical production considerations), this would imply zero and that is likely to be nearly impossible to verify and therefore on the face misleading/deceptive, except potentially a situation on single ingredient products that are individually genetically tested (which is kind of impractical).
That's your opinion
No, it's not, and you did not answer the question.
If I don't want to eat Broccoli, Tomatoes, etc... or GM crops for that matter I do not need to justify why I don't want to eat them to a judge and jury in a court of law.
I never said anything of the sort. You have every right to not eat them. Just like Jews have every right to eat Orlah fruit and Muslims have every right to avoid gelatin. You are confusing a right you have with an obligation for society to cater to your belief system. And you know, I would never dream of insulting a Muslim, Jew, Hindu, ect. for holding to a dietary restriction that I myself do not hold. I would never call them names for that. But then again, they're not trying to pass off their dogma as science and attempting to craft legislation favoring their belief system, are they?
Unless someone is forcing you to eat corn, soy, canola, cottonseed, sugar beet, alfalfa, summer squash, and certain papayas, apples, and potatoes (the GE species), you have no leg to stand on, as I have just told you exactly what to look for if you wish to avoid GE crops. It isn't that hard.
If I'm not mistaken (and I'm not a patent lawyer) the patent is on the genetic engineering process, not the end-product.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
The information isn't hidden. Corn, soy, cotton, canola, sugar beet, alfalfa, summer squash, papaya, apple, potato...those are the species you need to remember. Saying that the information is hidden is like saying that because bacon is not labeled as Haraam that Islamic dietary guidelines are hidden. PErhaps if you are too lazy to learn about your own beliefs they are hidden, or maybe if you have a fearmongering ax to grind you'll call them that, but how can something I explained in a single line ever be considered hidden?
And furthermore, I've seen just as much case indicating that we should label if something was produced via hybridization, inbreeding, grafting, somaclonal variation, bud sport selection, mutagenesis, wide crossing/embryo rescue, grafting, tissue culture, or any of the other things I could demand. Where's my label indicating if a bean come from a high aerenchyma line, or the label saying if my sweet corn was from a high maysin line, or my labeling indicating if my tomato has genes from Solanum pimpinellifolium, or my label indicating that my Vitis vinifera was grafted on V. labrusca? Can you give a rational reasoning as to why only one thing, which just so happens to have public controversy, should be singled out?
That is a misconception. Plenty of non-GE crops are patented. The plant patent system is older by far than genetic engineering. Honeycrisp apple, for example, is non-GE, and until a few years ago was under patent by the University of Minnesota, who developed it and used the patent royalties to fund further research (hence why it was patented at all). That they are different in one way does not mean they are not substantially equivalent.
Wow. I suspect that's the most irresponsible thing I've ever read.
Both capitalism and science require information sharing in order to function. Consumers must be fully informed in order for the market to efficiently allocate resources, and science requires data in order to perform analysis.
You're saying that a company's desire to maximize profits justifies blockading information from consumers - so that scientists cannot possibly identify populations that *have* and *have not* chosen to consume specific goods, and so that consumers cannot possibly exercise informed freedom of choice - because you don't like the choices other people might possibly make. You're literally trying to justify this anti-science and anti-market viewpoint by positing that certain industries have a right to make a profit no matter what that does to the system as a whole.
Wow. Just wow. It's like the American Dream just died and you're kicking its corpse. You want to destroy the marketplace and remove freedom of choice all in one go... because you think everybody but you is stupid and can't be trusted with information.
(For the record I'm pro-GMO, pro-market, pro-science, pro-capitalism and pro-labeling.)
How do we know the pork or salmon doesn't contain unicorn meat? Why are they lying to us by not labeling the product "does not contain unicorn meat"?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
The label I see most often is 'line caught' which implies wild fish. But I expect it also describes a good way to pull a fish out of a fish-farm's pool.
FWIW, there is a small amount of "wild" Atlantic salmon available in the US (~0.5%) so it's *possible* to buy wild Atlantic salmon (I think the *annual* catch limit is 7 Atlantic salmon), but I suspect you are seeing wild or line-caught *ALASKAN* salmon, not Atlantic salmon which is nearly always farmed because of its endangered species status in nearly all the traditional fishery locations prevents large scale commercial fishing.
By that logic, every for-profit company is suspect, as are their products. That stance works equally well against electronics, clothing, cars, pocket knives, wine, and coffee, all produced by corporations
That's because it's true.
Corporate motives are always suspect. They have no other concern than making money as has been demonstrated over and over and over.
Earlier you quoted someone out of context to imply that "science was wrong". The reality is that the scientific evaluation of novel items is merely biased. The corporations that pay for the research are looking for benefits first and foremost. Safety testing is only important to the extent that it is necessary for approvals. This has been demonstrated repeatedly.
Corporations often take a "Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil" approach to hazards as can be seen with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTBE_controversy . The hazards of adding MTBE to gasoline were entirely predictable. Perhaps you should be a little more skeptical of corporations bearing 'gifts'.
Is that part of the recipe, or just one cook's take on the dish?
Suborbital [spaceflight] is the special olympics of spaceflight. - Rei
> Or any hybrid food for that matter. Or plant splicing, like done on tomatoes or fruit trees. Its a scary world.
Not even close. GMO is more "useful". That's why there are so many ninnies like you participating as willing dupes in the Monsanto propaganda campaign. If it were otherwise, then companies like Monsanto simply wouldn't bother. They would have no motive.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Never mind GMOs. We already have a dearth of food diversity as it is. Much of what is available is driven by the concerns of large industrial interests. The value of the food itself is secondary. We already have the problem of cost cutting by industry driving the crapulence of food.
A lot of the stuff that industry wants to genetically tinker with is already on my shit list anyways.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
"Reasonable" has nothing to do with it.
In Pennsylvania the big dairies tried to make it illegal to use a "no BGH" label on milk, regardless of whether such a label was accurate or not.
Similarly, the so-called "DARK act" (stupid name) would allow genetically engineered organisms to be marketed with "all natural" labels, in order to defeat negative labeling.
It seems to me that this whole thing smells like a clever attempt by certain corporate powers to undermine a hundred years of consumer information law. They probably don't really care about GMOs so much as they care about regulatory capture.
They want to go back to the caveat emptor era. This is just a skirmish in that ongoing war. They've already crushed the USDA, after all, now they are going after the FDA.
Some California cheese variants are vile. I appreciate knowing where my cheese is coming from so I know to avoid those varieties that Californians tend to screw up.
If you have any business selling it then you have no business hiding ANYTHING. You should proudly display your country and state of origin and anything that's gone into the product.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
And it's this misuse of the patent system that is one of my biggest gripes. Honeycrisp apples do not make the case against patenting "substantially equivalent" organisms any less compelling.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If that were true, then farmers couldn't be sued for using GMO seeds.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Whining about philosophical points made in fiction is simply attempting to shoot the messenger and discount a good idea because you can insult the source.
The problem with technology (as opposed to "but science" ) is what people do with it. There's a huge gulf in the trustworthiness between a monk, a university professors, and a large chemical company.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
An orange grown from a orange tree that has been grafted onto the rootstock of another plant is genetically no different than an orange grown for an orange tree that has its own roots.
Irrelevant. I just want to know what I'm buying. I want to know if I'm buying an unnatural Franken-orange. Why are you supporting keeping that hidden from me?
See what I did there? You're partially right, but not entirely, about the genetics, by the way. While actual gene transfer from rootstock to scion shoot is, as far as I know, restricted to to point of tissue contact (although that does indeed happen), grafting has been shown to alter gene expression. Why or why not is that sufficient for labeling? And that's just one example of many I could use. Take bud sports for example, like Gale Gala and Autumn Gala, both naturally occurring somatic mutants of the original Gala apple. Not labeled, and even if they were, the average person has no idea what a bud sport is.
That's why posing this as a "science" issue is retarded. It really shows the hubris of scientists and is an easy way to gloss over various issues that fall outside of the narrow focus of industry shills.
Calling it "science" makes it sound benign and neutral when it's really a technology issue. Suddenly a cabal of technologists that would be skeptical in their own arena swallow the "but science" rhetoric hook line and sinker without the usual skepticism.
Imagine your own PHB in charge of this stuff.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
That's not a complete list now, is it?
Maybe you should scroll back to the top of the page and read the headline again.
Yes. Because the people who are paying the bills want it. Now, you may believe that the great unwashed masses shouldn't be allowed to have that information, or aren't smart enough to process that information, or need to be protected from that bit of information, or just can't handle the truth, but that's not your call to make because they are paying for it. They pay every penny of the cost of research, the cost of marketing, the cost of growing, the cost of harvesting, the cost of distribution and every damn thing right up to the cost of the minimum wage cashier in the checkout line at the grocery store. And that, my friend, means they get to know what they demand to know.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Nope. The big problem is the poster boy for this technology uses it to abuse farmers and sell more pesticide. The problem for Monsanto and friends is that they don't have a good sales pitch. If they're honest and tell the general public what their genetic meddling does, then people will be TURNED OFF.
The big money is not in improving nutrition or even taste but making staples cheaper for snack companies.
A big chunk of the GMO "benefit" is making high fructose corn syrup cheaper.
Monsanto really doesn't have a good sales pitch.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Well, I suppose if developing something that makes the world a better place and funding further research by patenting it, eventually allowing to to fall into the public domain as it has, is what you consider an 'abuse of the system', then it looks to me like you're probably just dead set on hammering home an indefensible point.
NON GMO food must be labeled that it is NOT non-pesticide, NOT healthier, NOT a better example of the breed, and NOT in any real control by any legislative body, so NOT regulated. Would the non GMO food producers like that? GET IT YET?
> The boogey-man stories one can invent over "frankenfood" are unlimited and highly resistant to rational discussion.
So fucking what?
It's not like we're talking a public health crisis here. This is only about corporate profits. If Monsanto takes a bath on this, then we just use a different source of corn or salmon. There will be no great tragedy. We will continue to leave massive amounts of crops unharvested. We will continue to waste still more to prop up commodities prices. Then grocers and consumers will toss yet more of it.
GMO products are entirely optional in the strongest possible way.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Right, because they've never overridden the scientists or been unduly influenced by industry.
Because the people who are paying the bills want it.
Argumentum ad populum. You still haven't exaplined why it its good idea, just that a lot of people want it (when you word the question a specific way that it), no doubt due to years of fearmongering. Fortunately, we live in a republic, not a direct democracy. Do you really want to claim that doing otherwise, especially when it comes to regulations, is a good idea?
In other words, we need to have deformed babies or our national bird facing extinction before companies have to tell consumers what they are being sold.
That's such moronic BULLSHIT.
The buyer has the right to know what they are buying. That's the only way that a free market can work. You're clearly against the free market.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
And favoring the GM industry might even end up killing the Organic Foods industry. Didn't know it was some kind of government mandate to favor a side of an industry against any other.
Do you not see the logical contradiction of that sentence? If the organic industry cannot exist without undue burden being placed on genetic engineering (not true at all by the way), then the government must place that burden because to do otherwise would be to favor those who use biotechnology? Then you say the government shouldn't be favoring industries?
It has the potential to alter the entire face of the planet - every. single. living. thing.
And here's a demonstration of the fear-mongering sky-is-falling anti-GMO attitude.
But instead, humans set it upon the Earth for nothing more than oral pleasure.
Yes, I suppose you could call being able to feed the growing number of people on a planet that isn't getting bigger "oral pleasure", but when you put it that way you only make yourself look arrogant, ignorant, and sociopathic.
This is FARM RAISED SALMON. If you are that picky about your salmon you aren't going to buy artificially grown salmon anyway, you're going to stick with fresh caught.
Second, we eat DNA and RNA EVERY DAY. From all kinds of things. We DIGEST DNA and RNA. Stomach acid does a pretty good job of denaturing things like that. You aren't going to start growing gills just because you ate some fish DNA. Your cells aren't going to suck in the RNA and start turning you into the Jolly Green Giant with scales.
Third, "There are multiple physical barriers to prevent AquAdvantage fish or their eggs from slipping out through these farms' plumbing systems." (I'd provide a link to that quote, but it's already linked to in the summary and if you didn't read it there I doubt you're going to read it now.)
Fourth, even if some do escape, "it would not matter because the AquAdvantage Salmon are reproductively sterile." You know what sterile means, don't you? If YOU are, it means even if you ever do find a girlfriend you couldn't get her pregnant. Same for the fish. They cannot reproduce in the wild. If 1000 do ever manage the "Great Escape" by having Hiltz and Willie dig a tunnel out, that will be 1000 fish out an entire ocean that MIGHT get caught and poison you. But only you, because this RNA was designed specifically to kill you and only you.
Having the FDA force the company to put a warning label on this product only feeds the kind of ignorant fear that you have shown here. Even people who don't really care will see a warning label and wonder if there isn't something wrong if there needs to be a warning label on it. They see warning labels on cigarettes and alcohol that threaten all kinds of bad things for using those products, and they hear "you can die if you take this drug" on drug ads. They will buy cigs and drugs because they are addicted or need the medicinal effects (of the latter), but they won't buy the fish. Why should they? There's a warning that it is bad for them, and right next to it in the grocer's freezer is a box of fish with no warning. And yet, people like you can prove nothing wrong or dangerous about the product. You can only spout heaps of ignorant hyperbole about it effecting the whole planet.
Now, California has done a lot to help desensitize the public to government-mandated warning labels, what with their "known to the State of California" cancer labels on just about everything, so the chilling effect on sales will be lessened a bit, but only a bit.
Think about it, if I offered you two candy bars and one had a government warning label about the dangers of consuming it, and the other did not (and they were the same candy bar, differing only in the labelling) which one would YOU take?
Yes, there is. Religion is an irrational thing. There are many others, but by cutting directly to the one that everyone universally understands does NOT mean "you sacrifice your human rights by subscribing to this brand of irrationality", I am demonstrating that the idea of "if people are irrational they become animals, lie to them and herd them" is inherently immoral. I could go a longer route and call out a great deal of other irrationalities, but that is less succinct. Religion is the best example- I don't gain the power to mistreat you because you are irrational in your beliefs.
Because there is a substantive difference in the _production_method_. Just like you can patent a continuous oven, even if the bread it produces is the same as with a batch oven.
Already one of the worst in the world for paid time off, and you want to move down on the list?
Learn to love Alaska
No "warning label". Just a simple statement of fact. It doesn't even have to have the word, "GMO" on it.
"GMO" isn't a word. It's an acronym. And if the government requires special labeling on a product, it's a warning label.
Consumers are paying the bill. Consumers pay every single penny of the money spent on GMO research.
Wrong. Taxpayers spend money on GMO research, too, without ever necessarily buying any of the products that come from that research.
If they want to know where the food they are paying for comes from, they get to know.
Nobody is saying they cannot know. If the company they buy things from doesn't label GMO products to their satisfaction, they, as consumers, are free to find a company that does. That's the marketplace of ideas. But forcing a manufacturer to put a warning label on a product THAT IS ALREADY ARTIFICIALLY PRODUCED is just stupid.
See subject & this (my ware's been verified safe by 1 of the best) http://slashdot.org/comments.p... & this (60++ reputable sources say it's safe too) http://slashdot.org/comments.p... + this (false positives filtering done by my sources for hosts data AND my program too vs. your "MITM" bullshit) http://slashdot.org/comments.p... & lastly this (your lies on AD+DNS I never once said - show us where I did scumbag & YOUR SCREWUPS ON ADMIN PRIVELEGE USE IN MY PROGRAM) http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
* You fucking worm...
(Why'd you run from those, hmmm?)
APK
P.S.=> I am going to annihilate you publicly for those you reprehensible piece of fucking lying malicious libelous trolling trash - & YES I EMAILED Mr. Steven Burn of MalwareBytes today to make a statement that he has indeed seen my code & checked it for safety prior to hosting AND RECOMMENDING IT you disgusting piece of fucking trolling mentally retarded aspie crap... apk
If you're worried, just buy wild salmon. This will be farmed. You'll pay through the nose, but you'll get natural salmon.
But, even then, a lot of FDA mandated labeling is neutral. If I am told how many carbs or how much fiber my cereal has, it is neutral, because all other cereals have those ingredients.
Not true. There are plenty of products on the store shelves with labels like "Fat Free", "No Added Sugar", "12g of Fiber". These are being used to target a subset of customer that may not include you, but it is intended to communicate something about the value of the product to those customers motivated by these labels.
For example, the label "Natural" implies that their competitors products are somehow unnatural. That is how the "Organic" label started out. In order to bring clarity to the consumer space the USDA instituted the National Organic Program which defined what practices and ingredients could be used and remain eligible for the organic label. These kinds of certifications cost money, and they wouldn't spend the additional money if people weren't willing to pay a much larger premium for products bearing the label.
Whether harmful or not, as a consumer, I should know where my food comes from.
You have EVERY RIGHT to ask, but unless there is a valid health/safety reason the vendor has EVERY RIGHT not to tell you. I'd like to know the exact recipe for Coca-Cola Classic. Right down to the mg. Doesn't mean the Coca-Cola company has to tell me, or that I can use the FDA to force them to release that information without good cause. Same goes for GM foods. You can choose to only buy products where companies disclose on their labels the GM status of all ingredients, but that is as far as your rights go unless there is a valid health/safety reason for you to know.
Assuming the products are indeed safe (and I have no reason to suspect otherwise), shouldn't they be labeled like everything else and those companies wanting to produce them educate the population? After all, if they have nothing to hide with GMO, then why hide that it is GMO?
Lets unpack this a little. First you are correct that the products are safe. Otherwise the FDA wouldn't have approved them (that is their job after all).
Second, you are approaching the labeling discussion from the "Why Not", when in fact the FDA must approach it from the other side, as in "Why Should They". As I pointed out above, there is a cost associated with labelling (supply chain segregation, verification testing, certifications, inventory management and demand projections, etc.). These costs may seem trivial from the outside, but as someone who's been involved in this stuff at work I can assure you that they are anything but trivial. Under the law, if the FDA is going to institute a new policy they need to conduct an economic analysis to determine the cost of their new policy and the benefits. Mandatory labelling of GM status has NO MEANINGFUL UPSIDE, and as all cost. Voluntary labelling on the other hand requires does not require this economic analysis, and can be supported through user fees (those seeking to get the label pay for the federal expenses associated with overseeing the label).
Now from the consumer side, it is perfectly reasonable to request that AquAdvantage label all of its GM salmon, and based on the unprecedented levels of transparency the company has demonstrated thus far, it is entirely possible that they will. I, for one, would like to buy their salmon to support them and say a big "FUCK YOU" to the anti-science fear mongers out there (plus I like salmon!). However, that is a MARKETING decision, not a SAFETY or REGULATORY decision. As someone who has had direct dealing with the FDA, it is very important to make sure they don't put my products at a disadvantage by trying to make marketing decisions for me. That is my job not theirs, and in my experience they are not very qualified to make those types of decisions.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
> Is it also a lie when pork is not explicitly labeled as Haraam?
No. The producer DOES have to say that it is pork. If you have an external structure on top of that- avoiding pork because you are a Muslim, because you are Jewish, because you have that weird ass allergy to to a certain carbohydrate only found in meat, or because you believe pigs are tiny divine princesses- you have boiled down your religious belief or medical need to a specific thing- pork.
It would be bullshit if they could put pork in something and not say it, though.
GM salmon is different than non GM salmon. Wild caught salmon is different than farmed salmon. You should have to label what something objectively is, and that's what most labeling laws do. This is a fight to be able to put the GM salmon next to the non-GM salmon, and not tell anyone that yours is different.
An orange grown from a orange tree that has been grafted onto the rootstock of another plant is genetically no different than an orange grown for an orange tree that has its own roots.
Irrelevant. I just want to know what I'm buying. I want to know if I'm buying an unnatural Franken-orange. Why are you supporting keeping that hidden from me?
See what I did there? You're partially right, but not entirely, about the genetics, by the way. While actual gene transfer from rootstock to scion shoot is, as far as I know, restricted to to point of tissue contact (although that does indeed happen), grafting has been shown to alter gene expression. Why or why not is that sufficient for labeling? And that's just one example of many I could use. Take bud sports for example, like Gale Gala and Autumn Gala, both naturally occurring somatic mutants of the original Gala apple. Not labeled, and even if they were, the average person has no idea what a bud sport is.
Orange trees are almost universally grafted. However, they are grafted onto -- orange roots and stems. It is my understanding that almost all oranges are hybrids because most orange trees are infertile. So, I guess you could be arguing that oranges that are grafted onto orange tree root stock should be labeled as such compared to oranges not grafted as such, but then again, the non-grafted ones don't exist, so all berries that we call oranges are grafted! However, I am not an expert on oranges, so maybe somebody else can chime in.
As for the apples, you mention. The fact that they are already differentiated as to type. Now, if they were all sold as plain Gala apples, that might be different. Then there are honey crisp apples that are relatively pricey because they are hand pollinated (or something like that). However, that information is readily available. It's not as if there are naturally occurring honey crisp apples and manipulated ones.
With the GMO salmon, however, there is no way to tell what type of salmon you are getting other than wild caught or farm raised. Obviously, the wild caught is not GMO, unless somebody starts releasing them, but the farm raised is still called salmon regardless of natural or modified. Now, if all GMO salmon were called some specific name, so there were differentiation as with apples, then it wouldn't be a problem.
We already do this with other livestock. So, what is so special about salmon to treat it differently?
Failure to look for evidence doesn't mean it's safe, it means you have decided to assume it is safe, and then let people find out later if that is true.
To determine if this "new" fish is safe, we have to do just a few things. Here's the questions we need to ask:
1. Is it safe to eat the DNA in the fish? We've eaten fish DNA for millennia, from both atlantic and chinook salmon. We digest DNA, so it never shows up as DNA past the stomach. Answer: yes, it is safe.
2. Is it safe to eat the "promoter" from the pout? Well, it comes from pout, and it is safe to eat pout, so the answer is almost certainly a resounding YES to this one. And since the promoter needs to be present only in miniscule amounts, it is not like we have a concentrated source and need to worry about exceeding the LD50, even were there one to worry about.
3. What is the effect of the rDNA/promoter? It causes growth of the existing fish. It makes more of the same fish faster. Is it safe to eat atlantic salmon now? Yes. What is the danger from eating the same fish that is known to be safe? Nothing.
So, what danger do you fear from this fish? It looks different? Maybe so, I don't know. It has different stuff in it? Well, not really. We eat DNA every day. We don't turn into cabbages just because we eat cabbage, so I hazard to guess that we won't turn into atlantic salmon, chinook salmon, or pout by eating this fish. It causes the fish to grow faster, creating more of the same thing that the fish already had so it can feed more people. Is that dangerous? I think not.
Can you point to ANY danger? Or just say "we don't know, look at DDT -- an artificial chemical that we never ate before -- and how bad that turned out!"
This isn't anti-science hysteria,
Yes, it is. You're ignoring millennia of science that shows that eating DNA and atlantic salmon is not a problem.
By lying
Simples.
Let me finish your thinking process: ONE FOOD, ONE CORPORATION, ONE FURER.
Idiot.
Go and google what freedom means. Freedom as a free, not freedom as a GMO. Stupid twisted demented GMO sucker.
You are labeled as an IDIOT: It's because you are an IDIOT.
You are not labeled as an IDIOT: It;s because you are hiding that you are in fact, you know, an IDIOT.
Here, fixed it for you.
>A "lie of omission" is when you try to mislead someone by omitting a fact.
Like the fact that your product is GM?
Your mental gymnastics are cute, but you're only fooling yourself, shill.
If the soil in which the crop grows has the same level of trace minerals, an increased supply means a decreased mineral content for your GMO product.
I sense an opportunity for a patent on a new product here. We could develop something that contained the minerals and compounds necessary to put back into the soil what the food we grow there takes out, and if the food grows faster we can just put more of this new magical stuff on the ground!
I'm not sure what I'll call my new product, but I'm off to the patent lawyer's office to start the paperwork. Don't any of you guys steal my idea, ok?
I want to know how my food was grown to make my own determinations about nutrient content,
To make your own determination about nutrient content, you'll need a rather large laboratory and spend a lot of time running those tests. You might not realize that just knowing how your food was grown doesn't tell you what nutrients it contains. Perhaps you should just look at the already mandatory product labels which tell you about the nutrients?
And of course, nobody is stopping the company from telling you more information. Tell them you want to know, maybe they'll put warning labels on their fish so you can help scare others away from buying it.
I agree 100%
Consumer awareness is the paramount issue here and as long as a consumer is asking for information, then it should be legally required. I have personally been struggling for years with the FDA with similar requirements. I have always been concerned that fruits and vegetables harvested during full moons is potentially more dangerous if consumed in excess.
I have yet to come up with conclusive evidence of how the lunar cycle affects produce harvests, but neither have the deniers decidedly refuted the theory. In fact, "scientists" whom I have asked about the theory have explicitly stated that my request to prove a negative condition is a logical impossibility. This only serves as evidence to me that we will never be able to be certain about our produce health.
The only reasonable conclusion is that it should be left up to informed consumers. If it is true that the lunar phase has no effect on the food, then food manufactures should have no reason to avoid this labeling proposal. Please join me in the fight and sign the petition.
Spooooon!!!!!
Bullcrap. This isn't about feeding people, it's about profits. Nobody on the planet needs to eat salmon. Nobody. If cheap food was the goal, we could do that. The world grows enough food to feed everybody, everywhere. No, this is about two things: 1) Feeding humans' food addiction, and 2) Feeding humans' money addiction.
When we look at a label like "Organic" the "average" person takes it very well and pays more for those products.
Actually, the average person doesn't want to pay more for specialty products, and generally cannot afford the premium price that "organic" tends to sell for. That's why the "organic" section of most grocery stores is so much smaller than the regular section. One of the stores I shop at, the "organic" aisle is just one quarter of one aisle -- half of one side. Were the average consumer choosing organic over non, that section would be most of the store.
I am just merely stating that human beings are irrational by their very nature and that there is no example necessary. Once you identify a particular person or group's irrationality you can easily use it to manipulate them. For some it is GMO, others it is religion.
If they're honest and tell the general public what their genetic meddling does, then people will be TURNED OFF.
Their "genetic meddling" makes the crop resistant to a specific pesticide. If you have any information on it doing anything else then post it. Otherwise you are just spreading FUD.
The big money is not in improving nutrition or even taste but making staples cheaper for snack companies.
It also makes anything made with corn or soybeans cheaper. For example, US beef is finished with corn.
Markets are free to the extent that buyers are informed and that advantages to sellers are evenly/fairly distributed. True, buyers are rarely "perfectly informed" but that doesn't disprove any economic theory.
Does the food that you purchase identify the conglomerate which entirely owns the folksy subsidiary whos name appears on the product?
No. Is that something good for me? Absolutly not.
Why isn't it good for you to know that the conglomerate in charge of the "folksy" brand has had multiple issues with worker safety, product recalls, or is just a greedy bastard? I'm going to bet that were the "Momma Jason's Creamed Corn" you love to feed your family actually produced by a subsidiary of Monsanto (Monsatan?) you'd find that information good to know.
Disclosure, by its very definition, is not something that the producer wants at all.
Then it is really great that there are all those government laws mandating the "non-GMO" and "organic" and "gluten free" labels I see companies using to disclose their non-GMO, organic, and gluten free products. I find it especially great that there is a law that says that dried seaweed has to have a "gluten free" label on it; otherwise people would be too stupid to know that seaweed, not being a grain product, naturally has no gluten to start with.
Mad cow disease is a good example of how what you eat can look and taste well and be approved by the FDA, yet kill you long term in the most unexpected way. As far as mad cow being predicted beforehand -- there is plenty of research out there indicating potential problems woth GM, yet it is being brushed off, because money talks.
Gov't mandates for labeling have to be based on proven risk though, otherwise regulators are literally just guessing what is a risk and what isn't and/or they would be forced to have warning labels almost everything produced. The "better safe than sorry" excuse doesn't really work here, because excessive labeling can counter-intuitively harm the public for many reasons. Here are a few that come to mind:
1) People get overwhelmed with seeing labels and they miss or outright ignore warning labels for actual proven risks, which increases public health risk
2) Labeling requirements can stifle development of new technologies and science that can have very real public health benefits
3) It costs more money to regulate and produce goods that gets passed on to the consumer. A little extra cost may not matter much for unnecessary/luxury products, but for basic foods, medicines, etc. higher cost can be big public health issue.
4) In our global economy, other exporting countries might not bother complying with onerous labeling requirements and just not offer their products, which ties into #2 and #3 above.
5) When gov't public health policies are not based on science it makes it much harder to change policies and act quickly when there is a scientific consensus. Or another way to think of it... anti-science policies dilutes all of science, which can hurt everyone (see also: anti-vaxxers).
I'm not against mandating labeling of products when it's based on science and proven public health risk, but the anti-GMO folks aren't there yet. Unfortunately, sometimes it's impossible to identify a risk particularly long-term risks until something used for a while. So, while there are awful examples like DDT, agent orange, asbestos, hormone therapies, etc. the important thing is that gov't has the ability to step in and stop them when the risk was proven (see point #5 above).
The best solution might be to just require truth in advertising. If a company thinks that it is good for sales to say that it is GM or is not GM then they should be able to label it as such so that if it matters to a consumer then they can look for the label. Then consumers can go after individual companies asking for labels like "GM free" or "BPA free" or "made in the USA". Don't require it but require it to be true if it's printed on the label.
You mean like the Federal Trade Commission already does? And producers are already free to label? Other than the legal limitations on labeling as "organic", lobbied into existence by the strict organic growers to try to keep less strict people from using the term, that is.
No, but a QR code on the package could easily link to a site displaying all of that extra information,
I'm poor and don't have a cellphone. Or I do have one but cannot afford a data plan that allows such extravagant use of data. Why do you want to discriminate against poor people? Or I'm old and cannot afford ... now you discriminate against old people.
Or I'm smart enough to know the huge potential for abuse and hacking based on random use of QR codes. It would be trivial for someone to paste a new QR code over the labels on a bunch of products and get viruses onto all kinds of smart devices of dumb people.
You shouldn't need to be a digital "have" to go shopping and not buy poisons for your family.
nt.
It was a simile. My mistake; I should have dropped the part up to "like" and just made it a metaphor; better imagery, more powerful argument, persuades people more effectively.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Only to fascists, which are not rational either. In fact, no human being is "rational", and you really wouldn't want it either.
Tell us: What would be the rational solution to humans destroying their own environment and health?
Except it doesn't, it contains a Salmon/Ocean Pout hybrid.
No, it doesn't. It contains Atlantic Salmon that has one gene from Chinook pasted in, and a promoter from pout to activate that gene. Current labeling laws would call that "Atlantic Salmon", just as "Orange Juice" is still sold as "Orange Juice" even though it isn't 100% what comes out of an orange when crushed in a big machine.
Now you're going to point to the label requirement that forces manufacturers to put on "reconstituted from concentrated orange juice" when that's how it's made. The difference is, there is no "reconstituted" involved. It's the fish, right off the farm.
but calling it 100% Salmon is false advertising
It is 100% salmon. And if this truly were the issue, it would be the FTC getting involved, not the FDA.
Monsanto provably don't want to "prove it safe", but sell as much as possible while they can:
Phil Angell, Monsanto’s Director of Corporate Communications, quoted in the New York Times, October 25, 1998 said: “Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring safety is the FDA’s job.”
And yet, as another GMO enthusiast stated above, GMOs don't have benefit to consumers, they only benefit the companies that own them. You're OK with this corporate welfare?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Can you trust Monsanto? Phil Angell, Monsanto’s Director of Corporate Communications, quoted in the New York Times, October 25, 1998 said: “Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring safety is the FDA’s job.”
Hiding something was my argument, and you can not counter the fact that this is occurring on a massive scale (hundreds of millions of dollars in the US alone). Moving the goal post to a different red herring still does not make you correct.
Organic started being labelled because companies performing genetic modification failed to label, and pay tens of millions of dollars every to NOT label. If "GMO" was great they should be able to charge extra for the name. Of course you establish an additional red herring by claiming a label that was never mentioned, never discussed, and has no relation to genetic modification.
I was correct, you can not rationally back your position. I smell a troll, or a person too handicapped to realize their irrationality.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
if the difference is only in the "production method" then why are farmers sued for using GMO seeds without a license?
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'm not talking about GMOs as a political issue. I'm talking about it as a consumer issue.
And yes, regardless of whether we're a republic or democracy, consumers still control the economy when it comes to consumer products. It has nothing to do with the form of government, it has to do with the economic reality.
You are welcome on my lawn.
When people stop advertising science, that'll work, but for now, they are the same, with people doing science for profit.
Learn to love Alaska
In California we have whole stores dedicated to Organic. That you don't have something like this does not mean it does not exist. Just as important, Organic is not higher priced because of a "label" as much as the way normal markets work. Organic farmers are not the massive conglomerates with huge distribution channels and shared resources, so of course they are going to cost more.
Does the label have some influence in cost, sure it does. Lipton brand tea costs more than no-name generic tea also, so this is not something abnormal in the market. Does it have everything to do with price? Hell no. Do some homework on how massive some of these agriculture companies are, how much money they spend on preservatives to get their products to market before they rot, how much food coloring they use to make their food better looking than nature can make it, etc.. etc...
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Examine what you are doing. You are arguing against everyone (that includes you) having more information available on their food because...
Examine what you are doing here. You are twisting an argument against mandatory warning labels on a farm-raised GMO fish that has entirely FISH modifications (a Chinook gene in an Atlantic salmon body) into a prohibition on labeling anything "GMO".
There is no prohibition on a company putting "uses GMO" on their label. It would quickly become meaningless since almost everything we eat is GMO -- especially grains and other commercially farmed crops. Cows, pigs, corn, wheat, rice, all modified to be more productive and grow faster. You can assume that unless a product has a "no GMO" label (also voluntary) you are eating something that has GMO components. So, in fact, the lack of a "no GMO" label is the information you are seeking to have mandated by the FDA.
why can't I find this same information for the food I eat?
Because paying for the lab tests on every crop would make the price skyrocket. And that's what you'd have to do to know for sure the levels of lead or Cd in the carrots you just bought. This batch came from Fred's farm, next week they came from Bob's. Different soil, different Cd levels. And God forbid Bob has an old septic system on one corner of his property that nobody knows about but is leaking Cd into the ground, so that the carrots from one end of his field (the one that is tested) are Cd-free but the ones at the other end are heavy with it.
Your tap water comes through one system, and even then you don't know day to day what is in it. You can placate yourself into thinking you know what's in your water with a once-a-year test, but that test only tells you that the municipal water system doesn't have a systemic issue with bad pipes or leeching of stuff into the water supply, not that today's water is safe for you to drink. In fact, since they didn't test the water coming out YOUR specific tap, you don't know for sure that there isn't a lead pipe somewhere in the system and your lead levels are too high.
Actually, I consider it to be a lot like "free range" or "cage free" eggs. Sure, the eggs are based mostly on what the chicken eats, which is independent on where it walks or how much room it is, but that's not what the consumer is paying more for. They are paying for the humane treatment.
It's a matter of the value of life. For me, I love animals, I love nature. I also eat meat. I understand that the animals we don't like disappear, and those that we do get bred massively. We are playing God already deciding what animals live and what don't, and by supporting the meat industry, I'm supporting the lives and existence of these creatures.
TFS states that they are breeding fish which will have shorter life spans. We are already depriving the creature of life in the end, but such is inevitable. We protect them from predators etc for a period of time, in exchange we eat them in the end. So how far can they take it? And these fish aren't isolated to these fish-farms, some will get out and breed with other fish. Now you've polluted the gene pool and salmon all over the world are dieing early -- what was once a "feature" is now a global catastrophe.
Organic started being labelled because companies performing genetic modification failed to label
Considering that organic food labeling started in 1973 and the first GMO crop was approved in 1994 you statement is false. Organic was originally concerned with pesticides and not GMO.
Of course you establish an additional red herring by claiming a label that was never mentioned, never discussed, and has no relation to genetic modification.
You brought up the organic label not me. Voluntarily labelling something "organic" is very different than requiring something to be labelled "contains GMO". I am stating the latter is closer to requiring all non-organics to be labelled "produces with pesticides".
However, they are grafted onto -- orange roots and stems.
Well, not quite. Poncitrus is a different genus, and is quite different from a true citrus. Poncitrus is often used as a rootstock because it is quite hardy...in fact, Poncitrus can even survive frosts down to USDA zone 6a. Unfortunately, they taste like crap, and despite attempts no one has been able to produce a palatable citrange (a Citrus x Poncitrus hybrid). This leaves them as a novelty for northern gardeners (yep, even if you live in a place with cold winters, you too can grow an orange, just don't use it for anything except marmalade...also they're thorny monsters) and as a rootstock for commercial oranges.
Not all citrus are infertile. It is true that the common orange, Citrus × sinensis, is a hybrid of C. maxima and C. reticulata, but it is not a recent hybrid, and it is a fertile hybrid. Some of them are infertile (sometimes this is the result of being treated with mutation inducing radiation, also unlabeled), but that's not really why they are grafted. Most fruit crops (with a few exceptions like papaya, watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew, and some of the less commonly cultivated fruits like golden berry and kiwano, which all have short lifecycles) are propagated asexually, either through cuttings (like blueberries, figs, gooseberry, dragonfruit, and kiwis) or offshoots (like blackberries, bananas, and strawberries), but very commonly for larger woody tree fruit (and nuts) through grafting. This is done to get genetically identical crops. The thing with long generation crops like most fruits is that, unlike vegetables and grains, it would take many decades more than a breeder is going to live to get a tree that produces true to seed (in most cases, peaches kind of sort of do it). So if you plant a seed from an orange, apple, pear, mango, lychee, ect. you will get a plant, but just like the offspring of a person is always going to be different, the fruit quality will vary, and usually not for the better. This is the main purpose for grafting, although it is also used to speed the time to first harvest, and to impart specific traits to the crop, for example, dwarfing rootstocks are often used in apples, table grapes (Vitis vinifera) are often grafted onto fox grape (V. labrusca) for phylloxera resistance, and pears are sometimes grafted onto quince (an under appreciated fruit in a related genus) for dwarfing.
Now, if they were all sold as plain Gala apples, that might be different.
They are though. You are confusing bud sports with varieties. Bud sports are like varieties of varieties, so there's the original Gala, but there's also mutants that pop up every now and again, emerging from a single bud, hence the name. You've been eating those bud sports your whole life and probably never even realized it. Even notice color variation between two of the 'same' type of apples from different farms? That's not just environmental differences you're seeing there. A lot of things go unlabeled at the store. You never see blueberries labeled as Vaccinium angustifolium, V. corymbosum, or V. ashei, the three most common species of blueberry. You never see if a squash is the Daisey variety, or the Daisy variety (to commercial varieties of yellow crookneck). You never see that a tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) has for example the Ph-3 gene from S. pimpinellifolium for late blight resistance. I've never seen a watermelon juice containing produce state if the watermelons came from a diploid watermelon with the natural two copies of each chromosome or the triploid varieties, with a chemically induced additional set of chromosomes (made by doubling the natural two to four with a chemical like colchicine or oryzalin and then crossing a two with a four to get a seedless three chomosome containing watermelon plant that so many are fond of). There's an entire world of crop science that your average shopper doesn't know about and takes completely for granted as the browse t
And these fish aren't isolated to these fish-farms, some will get out and breed with other fish.
The salmon approved by the FDA can only be produced where there is no way for them to get out and breed with wild fish.
Under the approval, AquAdvantage Salmon are subject to stringent conditions to prevent the possibility of escape into the wild. The salmon cannot be raised in ocean net pens: instead, the approval allows for them to be grown only at two specific land-based facilities: one in Canada, where the breeding stock are kept, and Panama, where the fish for market will be grown out using eggs from the Canada facility.
I'm poor and don't have a cellphone.
Then you're too poor to worry about this issue, buy the cheapest thing on the shelf. FYI, if you're that poor, consider applying for a subsidized phone.
Before we label GMOs, I want sulfites labeled. I have a friend who's seriously allergic to them, and to avoid sending her to the hospital we have to make sure what foods have sulfites and what don't. Typically, we read the entire list of ingredients on the product label, and sometimes guess at what it means.
Sulfites are a health hazard to my friend, and there's lots of people like her. I want that labeled before we mandate a label for something that doesn't affect whether or not the food is healthy.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
just as "Orange Juice" is still sold as "Orange Juice" even though it isn't 100% what comes out of an orange when crushed in a big machine.
If it had 1% Paypaya juice in it then labeling it 100% Orange Juice would be false advertising.
It is 100% salmon.
Not while it has Ocean Pout in it. It's the same kind of thing for other food labeling, it would need a disclaimer along the lines of "Contains less than 1% of the following: Ocean Pout".
How do you know what the people who are paying the bills want? Some do, obviously, but how many? Is it more or less than the number of people with friends or close relatives with sulfite issues? Other allergens and such that aren't currently required to be labeled? I buy food, and I'd love to be able to see if there are or aren't sulfites, and we're talking medical issues rather than prejudice here.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
DDT is still very benign in its effects on people, and we used it because it was fatal to some critters. It was restricted because it appeared to be seriously harming birds.
Was Agent Orange tested by the FDA and found to be fit for human consumption, or at least human dousing? I really don't think so.
Thalidomide is why we have strict testing requirements on drugs. We're dealing with GMOs being found safe by the post-Thalidomide FDA.
I'm sure the FDA looked at this fish, and did studies to find if there would be any problems. They might conceivably have missed something, but there is good evidence that it's harmless. More harmless than some stuff found in food that isn't required to be labeled and which can cause real medical problems.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
And yet, as another GMO enthusiast stated above, GMOs don't have benefit to consumers, they only benefit the companies that own them.
Wrong again. Availability of food to feed people is a benefit to those people. Lower costs are also a benefit.
How big do you want the mandatory labels to be? If we mandate labeling GMO foods, and all ingredients or trace products that have an actual known deleterious effect to certain people, which I consider more important, will we be able to buy a loaf of bread whose wrapper is not completely nutrition information?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Excuse me, but I missed the bill dissolving the FDA. We had problems before the FDA, yes. Then we created the FDA. If we can't trust the FDA when it says something is safe, why the heck pay money for it?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Actually, the "gluten-free" craze and advertisements have served a useful purpose: they have made it easier for my friend suffering from celiac disease to shop.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
So you believe food prices have gone down thanks to GMOs?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Note the date and time. David Thornley wants food to be truthfully labeled. I'm glad that you have evolved on this issue.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If only there was some way to get a handle on peoples' preferences:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07...
You are welcome on my lawn.
More like using a videocam to record your neighbor's TV, and using the recording for your personal pleasure, and being sued into the ground for playing the recording at a dinner party.
Learn to love Alaska
Cross bred isn't GMO. Cross grafted isn't GMO either.
Learn to love Alaska
The problem is that the anti-GM people are not logical.
You sound like a bigot. Anyone who doesn't want GM must be irrational. Or maybe those who don't want GM know that GM includes making plants more resistant to pesticides, so more pesticides can be used on them, meaning some GM food may be worse for you. So you want to be able to know whether it's GM so you can decide if you do or don't want to consume it. There are direct health consequences to some of the GM.
Also monoculture lead to the Irish potato blight and associated famine. Maybe you can't avoid all monoculture, but just want to rebel quietly by rejecting the GMO part of monoculture.
Maybe you just hate Monsanto.
Who are you to say that *every* reason someone may choose to reject GM proves that they are illogical? Seems the only illogical one here is you. You are rejecting a true label because you have the irrational fear of anti-GM people. Why should we support your superstition?
Learn to love Alaska
Nobody is trying to keep that hidden. If an orange is not the product of genetic engineering, the manufacturer can put a label on it appropriately. That way, intelligent people can ignore the label and idiots can buy food only with that label. Everybody should be happy.
I'm much more concerned about sulfites in food, since I have a friend who's got real problems (like "go to the hospital" problems) with them. If nobody's required to put a "CONTAINS SULFITES" on food (you can't necessarily tell from the currently required label), why should they be required to put "GMO" or "NOT BLESSED BY PRIEST OF CTHULHU" labels on?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You have too much faith in corporations. You are telling me that if they made 999 safe products and 1 unsafe one, they'd destroy the 1 unsafe, but profitable product? Or would they release the 999 first, then when someone demands they test the 1,000th product, some A/C pipes up "They've already been shown safe, you idiot" we don't test the one the corporation knows to be unsafe? How is that reasonable? If you trust GMO, that means you blindly trust Monsanto to *never* do the wrong thing. I don't have that much faith in Monsanto.
Learn to love Alaska
What harm to the consumer happens when the consumer has more information? If there's no harm to the consumer to have more information, then your stance is the one that doesn't make sense. Label it and let people choose, even if they choose poorly, it's still their choice.
Learn to love Alaska
So you are against "country of origin" labels as well? After all, they only identify the means it came to be, and have no useful data about the item itself.
And since when is an ingredient list or origin tag a "warning". The only person here asserting that GMOs need a warning, but you are against using that warning is you. The rest of us are talking about labels, not warnings.
Learn to love Alaska
So then lets drop the country of origin labels on everything when we identify whether it is GMO. That should be an even trade.
Learn to love Alaska
However, GGP was attempting to say GMO was bad because of what some characters said in science fiction stories, not using them as illustrations. In Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", the protagonist says "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch" (usually used as the acronym "TANSTAFFL"). Now that's certainly a philosophical opinion, and can be argued about. Saying that it's true because $REASONS is fine, saying it's true because the character said so is inane.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
GMOs have not been shown to cause harm
Cigarettes still have never been proven to cause harm. There are correlations drawn, but a correlation, despite being a huge neon sign pointing at the cause, isn't proof. The pro-GMO nuts are as much or more anti-science as the anti-GMO crowd. The anti-GMO crowd aren't necessarily saying they know it's bad, just that they want it identified. Nothing more. Not registered, not banned, not even with a warning. Just labeled. If it's safe, why object to a simple, plain label?
Learn to love Alaska
They have a different objective. COOL has a protectionist objective (but USA).
Cigarettes still have never been proven to cause harm.
Sorry but theCDC disagrees.
not even with a warning. Just labeled.
That is the crux of the issue. To many people a label is a warning. If you want to be completely transparent all food should be labelled "may contain mercury" as there is mercury everywhere but in such minute quantities that it does not matter. It's not a warning it is just a label.
8 u 8
> Or any hybrid food for that matter. Or plant splicing, like done on tomatoes or fruit trees. Its a scary world.
Not even close. GMO is more "useful". That's why there are so many ninnies like you participating as willing dupes in the Monsanto propaganda campaign. If it were otherwise, then companies like Monsanto simply wouldn't bother. They would have no motive.
Ummm, spare me the "ninnies" comments. Truce? Or are you in the liberal version of the Fox News bubble?
Because trying to equate Monsanto's herbicide resistance malfeasance and my supposed usefulness to that program is perhaps less then insightful when you make it the equivalent of producing a fish that grows faster. herbicide resistance as part of the genetic makeup in plants is a lost cause in a crop because all it does is make the pest plants stronger. Which is already happening in roundup ready seeds. It's a dumbass lost cause.
http://www.usnews.com/news/art...
Fact is, we aren't supposed to be consuming herbicides like that.
We aren't supposed to be using utensils made of bisphenol A, or many other nasty-ass modern things.
Now you want to see interesting weed control?
http://loe.org/shows/segments.... The only resistance that can be gained against blasting is a thicker weed. What's more instead of the walnut shells they used as the original grit, they will be blasting with organic fertilizers. Two factors for th eprice of one
But on to your assessment that I am completely off, that hybrids are nothing like genetic manipulation.
You need to affirm that you are saying that hybrids or cross breeds are genetically identical to the plants they were bred with. Could you do that?
Because if they are not genetically identical across all the varieties that we hybridized or crossbred, then that is exactly genetic manipulation, and you are only facing a truth that is inconvenient for your worldview. Can we chat about crossbreeding as safe and GM as dangerous? The Lenape potato.
The Lenape Potato, a conventionally crossbred potato. A fine looking speciman that looked like it was going to take over the potato chip world for a while, had one slight problem. It was toxic.
http://boingboing.net/2013/03/...
Many scientists, based on this truth, are saying that the crossbred pant, which to you seems acceptable, should be held to the same standards as GM. Perhaps a new field for deniers?
howeever setting all that aside, I am willing to put my money where my mouth is, and eat only GM salmon for the rest of my life that have been produced this way.
Do you have the strength of your conviction to eat one meal of conventionally crossbred Lenape Potatoes in return? It's even vegan, so no problem there. Sounds like a fair test to me.
Really, please don't. I may be a useful ninnie, but I don't want anyone to come to harm. I'll still eat those salmon. I'll bet they are yummmmmy.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I understand your dilemma and the source of your anger, the GM industry wants to make GM food indistinguishable form the non-GM variety by preventing labelling of GM foods from becoming a legal requirement and here are organic food producers voluntarily labelling their foods non-GM and cutting into the GM industries profit margins
Point of clarification here: GM companies make their money from selling seeds and complementary chemicals for those seeds. See Monsanto and Round-up Ready ____ seeds. The choice of whether or not to use GM crops is decided by food companies. Food companies are the ones whose profit margins will be impacted by the labeling, not GM companies. Oh, and don't kid yourself in thinking less human consumption will make a significant dent in the GM companies profits - most of their profit for corn/soybean is in animal feed. Try changing that and you'll see the price of your meat skyrocket.
Note: I am not "for" or "against" organic or GM - be intelligent about the purchases you make. I did want to clarify this misconception. Carry on.
I agree. Fads come and go. This one is more useful than most.
I want to go with the safer option even if it costs a little more.
Is there a study showing one option was safer vs. the other? I ask this sincerely, I'd like to see a comprehensive study on safety of consumption of salmon across various farmers, not just "GE" vs. "non-GE".
If the consumer does not have this knowledge then it can't be, by definition, a free market.
Then you didn't read it.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
This. Cross breeding and cross grafting are natural processes that we mechanically help along or encourage. If the traits in GMO food would occur naturally we wouldn't need labs and gene manipulation to create them. That is what we want labeled.
All the obfuscation and comparison to natural methods is just to make the twerps feel superior in calling everyone else anti science.
I'm very pro science. I'm not especially anti GMO but I do not trust these corporations to identify and mitigate risks because American businesses collectively have an abhorrent track record of such things unless forced.
For all you smug idiots who just like trying to pin labels on people while you avoid labeling food, try this: go dig up some magazines from the 1950s. Look at all the ads for things that turned out to be disasters. (Lead gasoline additives maybe? Better living through chemistry?) Then tell me why we're somehow immune to that now.
A lot of caution is indicated when dealing with ecosystems. You'd think we'd be a bit less arrogant about that now.
From the point of view of consuming the fish, which is what the FDA is interested in, there is no substantive difference. The fact that there is slight DNA difference does not make the fish dangerous to eat. The patentable difference is in the biology used to get to the end result. Sy foe example there was a chemical process that could make pure sodium chloride. The process could be patentable. Would that sodium chloride, which is exactly the same as the sodium chloride mined from the ground, need to be labelled?
And what about the corn and soy? How can a company sue a farmer who plants a seed from a supposedly sterile plant which has no substantive difference from a non GMO plant? It's not just "the process" then, is it?
You are welcome on my lawn.
What happens when genetically engineered salmon breed with normal salmon. Is that possible, and are the offspring viable, or do they die out?
Then why do most countries have the same requirements, when it's a USA specific protectionist requirement?
Learn to love Alaska
Sorry but theCDC disagrees
The CDC is publishing the surgeon general's opinion as fact. Also, it falls on the side of whether there's scientific proof (there isn't), or evidence beyond some arbitrary standard (there is, according to the CDC and SG).
The plural of evidence isn't proof (well, it is in court, but not in science).
That is the crux of the issue. To many people a label is a warning.
So you object to people knowing a useful piece of information because someone might get confused by it? Protect the dumb people from themselves. Usually warnings are there to protect dumb people from themselves, like the "do not touch spinning blades with fingers" warnings on lawn mowers, but this time it's the "protect people from themselves trying to legislate against labels so people don't get confused by too much information.
I'd prefer people be free to make a choice, even if it's the wrong one, rather than making them all slaves to my opinion of what they should think and do.
Learn to love Alaska
Everyone thought thalidomide was sare except the FDA, who refused to approve it in the US. Turns out they were on to something.
I guess you have never heard of Golden Rice.
They do have a choice. Buy unlabeled food or food labelled as "GMO free".
More than the USA is protectionist.
Your wrong. Grafting leads to gene transfer just like biotechnology. Try Googling grafting spand gene teansfer or Here's one of hundreds of studies to document it: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19407205 .
How can a company sue a farmer who plants a seed from a supposedly sterile plant
You have fallen for the . No GMO plant produces sterile seeds. Under the license that every farmer who buys Monsanto GMO seeds signs they are not allowed to plant the next crop by saving the seeds.
That's why I said "supposedly" sterile.
Of course they're not sterile. And yet Monsanto has gone after farmers who plant seeds from their plants. Thus, the abuse of intellectual property laws.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Why do you imagine the most stupid and useless label? "Contains GMO food" ? How idiotic.
Why shouldn't they name the exact strain with its identifier? One organism can have multiple GMO strains, you know. Actually infinite. A link to tests FDA conducted specifically for that strain could either be on the packaging or searchable using basic Google skills.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
It won't be long and the USDA will regulate the meaning of the word "GMO" and "non-GMO" in packaging and advertising.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Label is not conviction.
Some GMO strains can be better for health than non GMO counterparts. Why shouldn't the consumer know the strain?
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Organic started being labelled because companies performing genetic modification failed to label,
No, organic started being labeled because organic growers realized they could charge a premium price to meet the demand of scared consumers who think that "non-organic" means "poison", or even just "treated with poison". It has everything to do with ungrounded fears of the consumer, just not the fear of GMOs.
and pay tens of millions of dollars every to NOT label.
What? You don't have to pay money not to label organic or GMO products. The only limit on labeling here is the laws that have been passed about ORGANIC labels, because some producers saw the increased profits from calling their non-strict-organic stuff "organic", so the strict organic people paid their legislators for a law. But that's not a law mandating a warning label like this fish GMO thing would be, it's a law defining "organic" so it becomes an issue for the FTC.
If "GMO" was great they should be able to charge extra for the name.
In a sane and rational world, they could. But it's not a significantly different product so GMO would not be a big selling point. It's an issue of production of the food and what that costs versus what the food tastes like. It's enough that a farmer can produce more food using the same resources and that increases supply.
But we don't live in a sane and rational world. We live in a world with people who are scared to death of the boogeyman of GMO products and no amount of science or reason will convince them. Here's the perfect example: a FISH that is still a FISH except it has a gene from a FISH that makes it grow faster. That's all. It's still a FISH. They didn't put an insecticide gene into it, or a resistance to herbicides, or anything non-FISH. It's not grown outdoors, and even if it does escape it is sterile and cannot reproduce. And yet we have people in this discussion claiming that this FISH will change the. entire. world. What idiotic nonsense.
Of course you establish an additional red herring by claiming a label that was never mentioned, never discussed, and has no relation to genetic modification.
Did you miss the entire point of TFA, that the FDA approved a food product and DID NOT REQUIRE IT TO BE LABELED? Sounds like a label that was mentioned, discussed, and has something to do with the fact that this FISH has been "genetically modified" to me.
But please, let's bring up DDT (an artificial chemical never properly tested), or thalidomide (ditto on pregnant women), instead of talking about a food product that has been eaten by millions of people for thousands of years without deleterious effects. If you can name one person who has been harmed by eating the DNA of a FISH, please produce the evidence. Grown gills or a fin or two? I don't know of one. Do you?
So you object to people knowing a useful piece of information because someone might get confused by it?
Nobody has said that. You're confusing "mandatory warning labels for things people are scared of but nobody can prove cause any harm" (this situation) with "prohibiting labeling of foods as containing GMOs" (which nobody is proposing.) The FDA approved a product without mandating a label. They didn't approve the product and prohibit a label.
But may I point out the direct parallel of advertising of prescription drugs to the consumer? Many people in this group staunchly believe that such ads must be banned because ... it will confuse people and might cause them to ask their doctor about something. Hmmm.
I'd prefer people be free to make a choice, even if it's the wrong one,
They are. If they want to buy GMO-free foods, look for the "no GMO" label. Otherwise, you have to assume whatever you are buying has been made with genetically modified ingredients. Given the scary boogeyman of "GMO" and the ability of producers to charge more for "non GMO" food, any producer that does make GMO-free food would be labeling it that way.
Then you're too poor to worry about this issue,
Thanks, you've just proven my point. You think I'm too poor to care about feeding poison to my family. Why should GMO/etc information be hidden behind a technical hurdle I cannot leap, if GMO/etc are such life threatening things? If they aren't an issue, why should there be mandatory warning information behind a QR code, or mandatory QR code to start with?
FYI, if you're that poor, consider applying for a subsidized phone.
Right. I forgot. The government is the solution to every problem.
You're confusing "mandatory warning labels for things people are scared of but nobody can prove cause any harm" (this situation)
Who, other than the pro-GMO group has been calling for warning labels? The pro-GMO love to call them warning labels, then attack the general idea of warning over something "safe".
Learn to love Alaska
You sound like a bigot. Anyone who doesn't want GM must be irrational.
He didn't say that. There is a difference between people who just choose not to eat GM food and those who go out of their way to deliberately spread the misinformation about GMO foods causing birth defects like thalidomide did, or killing all the birds like DDT.
Or maybe those who don't want GM know that GM includes making plants more resistant to pesticides, so more pesticides can be used on them, meaning some GM food may be worse for you.
The same hysteria about pesticide-resistant GMO foods is showing up here in a discussion about a FISH having a FISH gene, so no, the issue is not just fear of increased pesticides.
So you want to be able to know whether it's GM so you can decide if you do or don't want to consume it.
You already can. If it ain't got a "no GMO" label, it gots GMO in it.
Who are you to say that *every* reason someone may choose to reject GM proves that they are illogical?
He's someone who didn't say that.
You are rejecting a true label
We're rejecting a mandated label intended to scare people about a product that has no even hypothetical dangers attached to it. If the company wants to put "GMO" on their label, they can. Nobody is stopping them. Talk to the company.
and there is almost no way to tell if something labeled "Non-GMO" really is,
If the difference between a GMO and non-GMO food product is undetectable, then what exactly is the issue with GMO food, again?
The truth is, people are ALREADY suing food producers over claims of "natural" and "non-GMO" (here, and here.) It must be possible to detect, and there are enough rabid anti-GMO and anti-corporate people to fund all the testing that anyone could desire.
Don't hold your breath on the FTC doing anything.
Huh? Truth in advertising laws are their jurisdiction, and they've gone after businesses before. You can even look online for enforcement actions.
The FDA's current guidance in this area is for companies to avoid a "non-GM" label unless the product can be guaranteed to not have components that were produced using any type of genetic modification *including hybridization or selective breeding*.
Well, yeah, because hybridization and selective breeding are two longstanding means of genetic manipulation. "You call it corn, we call it maize" means more than just what color your corn is, it's a genetically different food.
And the FDA's guidance is for the good of the companies they are recommending this to. You don't want to have to waste money on defending a lawsuit because you claimed "no GMO" and you might have accidentally gotten some GMO corn into something you made. Like Chipotle, which is under the gun in part because they claimed no GMO and they're selling soda pop made with corn syrup that might have come from a GMO source. They cannot control what Coke or Pepsi uses, so they cannot safely claim "no GMO", just like Fritos cannot fully control the farms that it buys corn from.
Avoiding GMO is a fear-based action, so if you want to be fear-free, you have to assume the worst about everything unless there are grounds to believe otherwise. "Non-GMO" labels are such a grounds. Your only safe course of action is to never buy anything without that label.
That, among other reasons, is why "GMO" is a stupid label. Exact strain identifier on the other hand is much more useful, and differentiates between varied GMO strains of the same species.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Who, other than the pro-GMO group has been calling for warning labels?
That you think pro-GMO people have called for warning labels on GMO food products tells me you have no clue what this discussion is about.
This entire discussion, from TFA on down, has been about the FDA NOT MANDATING A WARNING LABEL on a GMO product. It's the anti-GMO people who think such a mandate is appropriate, not the pro-GMO "group".
The pro-GMO love to call them warning labels,
Because that is what they would be.
then attack the general idea of warning over something "safe".
Of course. You don't need warning labels on something that isn't harmful. Why would you think you do? "Warning, this chocolate candy bar contains chocolate" is a meaningless warning. "Warning, this chocolate bar was produced on equipment that may have been in contact with peanuts or peanut products" is not, since there are known dangers to people with peanut allergies, and it is not obvious that a chocolate bar would have peanut bits.
But when you talk about farm-raised salmon, you are already talking about something that wasn't grown naturally. Then add in the fact that it had a FISH gene grafted in (into a FISH) to make it grow faster, and there is NO even hypothetical mechanism for harm to humans from consuming it. Requiring a warning label would serve only one purpose -- to help the anti-GMO zealots scare more people and push the company that would DARE to produce the fish out of business through lack of sales.
On a side note, what the hell is wrong with /. today? It keeps logging me out when I try to preview a posting. I have to copy what I've written, log back in -- which takes me to a useless page for me to enter all my deets instead of back to the article I'm replying to. Then I have to go back to the original full discussion to find what I want to reply to again. This is asinine.
He didn't say that. There is a difference between people who just choose not to eat GM food and those who go out of their way to deliberately spread the misinformation about GMO foods causing birth defects like thalidomide did, or killing all the birds like DDT.
Nobody said that. Someone said that those were two "safe" things. Are you saying that they were considered unsafe at the time they were used? DDT is still considered safe, just for targeted indoor, not widespread outdoor usage.
He's someone who didn't say that.
Ah rich. I didn't say anything about DDT or thalidomide, yet you use someone else's words against me. But I do the same and you become a hypocrite.
We're rejecting a mandated label intended to scare people
The label is intended to inform. Like the "made in" labels, or the ingredients labels. Ban those too, we wouldn't want to know what we are eating or where it's from. That you are scared of GMOs and would rather not know doesn't affect others who want to know, but aren't afraid of them.
Why do you want to prevent the truth from being known? Why do you hate the truth?
Learn to love Alaska
That you think pro-GMO people have called for warning labels on GMO food products tells me you have no clue what this discussion is about.
You have no idea how to read. You can't point to anyone that's not a pro-GMO nut calling for warning labels. If you could, you would have, yet again proving me right, but continuing to argue on principle. Only the pro-GMO nuts call for warnings. Then they attack the idea of a "warning" on something safe.
Lies and FUD are all the pro-GMO side has to offer. Logic and science are on the side of the GMO-labels.
Just a label, like the "made in" or ingredients and nutrition on food is not a big deal and informs the consumer.
The only want the pro-GMO nuts make it is by lying to people and covering up the truth. If that weren't the case, why are all the pro-GMO nuts so fanatical about labels? Truth hating fearmongers who worship Monsanto.
Learn to love Alaska
First, they were never even "supposedly" sterile so saying even that is false.
Second, you need to know a little more about intellectual property law before you decide what is abuse. Every time patented seeds are sold the buyer is given a license to produce one crop from the seeds. Much like any licensee is allowed to produce a licensed product for a limited time. Any subsequent plantings produces unlicensed copies of the product and therefore are against the patent.
If any GMO seed producer allowed farmers to save seeds and plant them next year they would never recoup the millions of dollars that went in to creating the seeds in the first place. They would only be able to sell their seeds for one season and then copies would be sold by seed savers for lower costs.
You've just answered your own question. If there is no difference, there is no truth in advertising issue, sot he FTC won't do anything. Whether there is a difference or not, I really can't say and I don't avoid GMO myself, and not preachy about GMO.
My concern is the the fact that some people ARE concerned, and simply have the right to know if itis GMO or not. The controversy and lack of long term science means people have the right to choose, but can only do so if they have information. Technically, that is what the FTC should be fore, but they tend to be spineless when it comes to stuff like this.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
"This is already the case for drugs in many countries [...] They have to be identified by a serial number linked to their place and date of manufacture [...] people in the industry (I are one) [...] This will help to trace back products in case of a recall and avoid losses to companies in case of a mistake. It will also helps in detecting counterfeit or stolen drugs."
Since you are in the industry, tell us the whole story: main concern is not tracking for health purposes; it's not even counterfeits. It is brown market.
Some days ago there was a story about who people in USA pay for prescription drugs quite a bit more than basically everywhere else (and first world countries in general more than third world countries). Tracking is in the best interest of big pharma because it protects it's business: they don't want drugs they sell in India at a heavy discount to appear in the USA market.
I know that at least the nutritional info and ingredients lists faced huge pushback from corporations that wanted to keep lying about the foods.
They faced pushback from corporations who:
- didn't want to go through the exercise paperwork of specifically analysing everything.
- didn't want to modify their food packaging further reducing their marketable space.
- didn't want to face the huge backlash of the scientifically illiterate complaining they should use less dihydrogenmonoxide in their food because they heard it was a chemical.
The food contents didn't change, and they didn't lie about it either. I'm not going to tell you my name, that doesn't mean I'm lying to you. What corporations did was the natural reaction of not just corporations, but any person who doesn't want to spend their own money to go out and buy a rope for the express purpose of giving it to clueless idiots which will use it to try and hang you.
The actual number of nefarious cases here is very close to zero.
Oh and where do you draw the line? Should each slice of bread be delivered with a 10 page chemical analysis?
If there is no "substantive difference" between the two products, then how the hell are they awarded patents on them?
That is quite easily explained by the quality of the patent system. It is reactively easy to get a patent on something, even something you didn't invent providing you draw the picture in the right way and write the appropriate unreadable crap under it.
After all how did Dyson get a patent on the blade-less fan in the USA? It was invented by Toshiba 20 years earlier. Note how I said "in the USA" because every other country threw out his patent application.
Just go with the easy one and point how how many products had radon in them to help promote inner glow.
You're placing inherent trust in someone everytime you buy something from them. You don't want to eat something you don't know, buy it from them.
I hope you enjoy your non-GMO apples, the ones that are coated in a small layer of wax to help keep them fresh during transport, or your non-GMO oranges which in many countries have orange dye added to them to make them more orange.
You've been putting the unknown in your mouth for years, you still are every day. You just happen to have jumped on a bandwagon because it's the latest scientifically illiterate hate of the day.
You're right! It's definitely not science!
You're right! It's definitely not science.
The problem is that many people are not "rational humans".
So? The companies have no qualms exploiting that through advertising, so if some hipsters decide they don't want to help the genetical food manipulation industry conquer the world, why shouldn't they be allowed to make that choice?
Or are the consumers supposed to base their decisions only on factors not related to the actual wares they are purchasing?
I'm one of those US people. I'll have you know that I only make $100 an hour and I get no paid time off and no vacation time. I often have to work 20 hours a week and some times on the weekend.
This is not about normal being better or more healthy than GMO, this is rampant greed pure and simple. If they were forced to label GMO AquAdvantage salmon that grows twice as fast (thereby reducing its cost of production) they would be obligated by market forces to lower the price. Instead, if they pay off the FDA to not require any labeling and thus price their product the same as normal salmon, they can double their profits.
In 2001, the FDA ruled against "GMO-Free" labeling, even threatening legal action against companies using it. Their explanation? That no producer could guarantee their source plants didn't have GMOs in them.
It wasn't until 2013 that the FDA even allowed GMO-Free labeling - on meat and eggs only - to indicate whether the animal had not been FED genetically altered feed crops. Yes, the same crops the FDA said couldn't be proven GMO free.
So not it remains to be seen if there will be a similar push-back against wild-caught fish being labeled as non-GMO to distinguish itself from a product intentionally modified, but not required to disclose that fact.
I'm actually strongly in favor of using genetic manipulation to improve foods. But as long as the companies developing the technology continue to treat it as something to be concealed from consumers, how do they expect to win hearts and minds?
I don't see what all the hoopla is about. We don't need GMO labeling when there's already a free, voluntary alternative: NON-GMO labeling.
Except that it's pretty hard to guarantee a non-GMO label when all of your ingredients don't need to label whether they contain GMO. So since there is nothing like "all GMO" food guaranteeing that all ingredients are GMO-modified (I mean, if everything is GMO-modified you must not retain any original gene and then there won't be a similarity to unlabelled food anyway), and since consequently the presence of at least one GMO-modified ingredient determines the labelling of the end product, it makes much more sense to label the presence rather than the absence of GMO modifications in order to be able to determine the state of derived products.
Actually these salmon are not capable of reproduction so if they do get loose there is some protection. As for being unwilling to eat them you are all either ignorant or hypocritical as most of what you eat today including stiff you grow at home is genetically modified in some way. You may not like it but the world would be starving (even more than we are) if we didn't work to improve yields and improve resistance to drought and other conditions.
If you don't have celiac disease or at least sensitivity to gluten, gluten is not only fine, it's probably good for you. It's a whole grain and most people don't get enough of that.
Gluten has nothing to do with "whole grain" it is simply the protein in some grains such as wheat. White flour from wheat is not whole grain but contains gluten.
You don't need need whole grain at all. It is a bunch of simple carbs and some fiber an nothing for nutrition. Grains are great at adding to the waist line in any form. Get your fiber from eating something with a little more nutrition like whole fruit.
Gmo is not a additive, genius. Fish meat is fish meat.
No, you are wrong. Everyone knew thalidomide, DDT and agent Orange were capable of causing problems. But they were so good at their stated purposes that people used them in unsuitable situations.
You can't prove something is 100% safe. All you can do is test something to the best of your ability. That is exactly how science works.
But consistent witht he shitty attitude people here have which gives industry the right to do anything it wants.
In every other civilized country you have a right to know whats int he food you buy. America is just plain fuckin' stupid.
People don't generally eat their cellphones.
You FEED superstition and suspicious with 100% justification by lack of transparency and by lying.
Basically your claim is: "People are irrational but waahh it's too hard to argue with them or convince them to be rational about the situation so let's lie about it instead".
If you can't see the moral fallacy if this, you are either a sociopath or too lazy to be a scientist or policy maker.
Mostly done by the industry and by an agency that has repeatedly failed to regulate that industry. The very same organization that is saying that these foods are safe also approved all those fun food additives that are believed to cause cancer and other issues. They're the same folks who were talking about allowing a rebranding of high fructose corn syrup as something else (I forget what, maybe corn sugar) to let the industry hide from consumer backlash over excessive fructose consumption that has been linked to diabetes and heart disease. And the list goes on and on. If we can't trust the FDA—and I maintain that we cannot—then we also can't trust its testing.
And even if we can trust its testing, the harsh reality is that although we know roughly what spliced genes will do in the first generation, under typical circumstances, we can't be certain how these changes could affect naturally suppressed genes over the course of hundreds of generations of breeding, variable environmental conditions, etc. Given enough unrestricted genetic modification, there's a nonzero chance that a previously safe plant or animal could spontaneously stop being so, without warning. Now to be fair, there's a nonzero chance of that happening without genetic modification, but my gut says that the chance is greater in a newly created genetic hybrid than in an organism that evolved over millions of years to be suited to its environment without any of those latent genes getting turned on throughout all of known history.
For those reasons, I feel that people who wish to minimize their exposure to genetically modified foods should have a legal right to know whether a given food product is likely to contain genetically modified foods, even if the additional risk posed by those foods is extremely low, in much the same way that they have the right to know whether pesticide was used, whether the milk was pasteurized, etc. The fact that it is impossible to say with absolute certainty that foods don't contain any genetically modified organisms is mostly irrelevant, because the risk of GMO foods is likely to be extremely small to begin with, so I think the FDA is being disingenuous when they use that excuse to block product labeling. Besides, there's a tiny possibility of pesticide blowing in from the next field and contaminating an organic crop, but the FDA doesn't ban farmers from calling their crops organic. So the FDA is treating this subject differently from other similar issues. That alone is reason to doubt whether they are truly functioning as an independent organization in this regard, or merely bowing to political pressure from big agribusiness.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
"One of the first indications that it isn't going to be a problem is that it doesn't kill the fish."
That's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard, no offense. Just because it doesn't kill the fish doesn't mean anything. MTBE didn't kill the fish either. You have no idea what consequences these salmon could have for the global ecosystem if they are released into the wild.
If GM food is so safe and wonderful, why don't companies want to label their food as such to show how proud they are of their superfood? There's a reason they want to hide it.
This genetic modification involves adding genes that produce additional fish growth hormones. If they added growth hormones to the meat after they killed the fish, that would be an additive. How is modifying the organism to produce that same chemical somehow magically different?
More to the point, how certain are we that fish growth hormones have no effect on human biology? Twenty years ago, nobody would have thought twice about plant estrogen, bovine growth hormone, antibiotics in meat, etc. What will we know twenty years from now that we don't know today, and how certain are we that none of those genetic changes will turn out to be a mistake?
The whole point of requiring labeling for genetically modified foods is to ensure that if someone buys atlantic salmon, he or she gets atlantic salmon, not chinook salmon. Whether it matters in this particular case—whether there's a noticeable difference between the health benefits of chinook salmon and atlantic salmon—is largely immaterial. As soon as you allow genetically modified organisms to be sold without labeling, you can't put that genie back in the bottle, and other companies are going to expect similar treatment. Sooner or later, one of those changes is going to make a material difference in terms of how healthy the food is, and nobody will have any way to know that they're not really getting what they paid for.
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i'm against GMfoods , not telling people adds injury to insult ! altho foodproducers have for millenia used a more natural way to GM plants ,and animals it was done more slowly giving people the chance to adapt ( evolve ) with it . now there is no real way for normal people to SEE if nutrients , in food are there , the only thing this does is help corporations . as in some countries noone is responsible as to crimes corps commit , a rediculus low fine is the worst criminal corporations face . while everyone else would face years in jail ! the time of Chicken Little approches .
the power of men in charge of words over men in charge of machines surpasses all wondering S WEIL
Obviously, there is no conclusive research proving that GMO is harmful, or it would not be peddled to us so aggressively. There are, however, a few caveats:
1. The side effects could take decades to develop
2. Side effects cannot be linked to GMO. Let's say people are dying of cancer, but since GMO is not labelled it is hard to collect relevant statistics.
3. Since GMO is linked to corporate profits, the corporations can cut financing to public GMO research via bribe err...lobbying. They do forbid export of GMO to Europe, maybe the Europeans found something?
Not a problem, put web site address on the packaging and by law maintain a web site with full details, no secrets or lies. Here's a hint, don't give one shit want you want, if it any way denies me choice based upon the truth. If I don't want to choose a product for any reason what so ever, that is my choice and not someone else's. Part of that choice is choosing a government that does not join fuck head corporations in lying to the public for profit.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
In Gluten - Free the product is labeled as such and people are buying the products by choice. So your point is that the consumers should NOT have a right to know that their food has been willfully altered in a lab( without years of research to verify the safety of the product) so they too can make a conscious choice of whether they want to put this untested alteration into their body. All hail fascism!
"The fact that the cross-pollination takes hold, means that this could have occurred naturally, so we are just mimicking the natural process. On the other splicing the gene from one species of plant (or animal) to another, that could not otherwise occur in nature"....
Wrong. Please go back to school. GMO's are built by mimicking existing "natural" gene splicing processes, usually by mimicking the virus carrier method we observed in nature.
"The fact that the cross-pollination takes hold, means that this could have occurred naturally, so we are just mimicking the natural process. On the other splicing the gene from one species of plant (or animal) to another, that could not otherwise occur in nature"....
Wrong. Please go back to school. GMO's are built by mimicking existing "natural" gene splicing processes, usually by mimicking the virus carrier method we observed in nature.
To manufacture a virus to insert a specific gene sequence into a specific species at a specific location is not a natural occurrence. Oh, it might use the same technique as a virus, probably why you chose the word "mimicking," but that doesn't mean it would have occurred naturally. Occurring in nature means that it could occur without human intervention.
Now, if you are saying that they found a naturally occurring virus that just happen to effect both species of fish involved and selects exactly the rich DNA sequence and transplants it into the other,well that is amazing indeed. I have no doubt that viri have played a role in evolution, but all of those viri occurred without human intervention. Put differently, if we have to manufacture the virus in question, then by definition, this could not have occurred in nature.
Broken glass is not Hemlock, but does not make Hemlock safe. We can play this game forever.
What is "proper" is defined in-part by the government.
And the guberment is supposed to act on behalf of people, and many, many people want it labelled.
Public health and safety are the justifications for the ingredients list
Shirts labelled "cotton" is not because of a safety concern, but to let people know what they are buying.
they cannot force AquAdvantage or their customer to label the GM status of their salmon.
Yes they can
However, what they can do is *enable* voluntary labeling of GM status.
You mean the one they are trying to prohibit?
Have you priced corn oil lately?
Sure, black people handling my food might be safe, but why not label it?
While I am in general supportive of anything that has scientific grounding, as in empirical data for support, I also grew up in the modern world of scientific manipulation of data.
Eg 1: Exxon just admitted that they hid their own evidence of global warming that they discovered in the 70s/80s. Now, I want to know who did the testing on the salmon, what were they testing for and what safeguards are in place to keep gene jumping into the wild (not hocus-pocus jumping genes, but a simple escape of fish into the wild and cross-breeding with wild salmon creating a fish that has genetic problems that allow it to become an invasive species.
Eg 2: The tobacco companies knew about the correlation between cigarette smoking and cancer, as well as knowing that the manipulation of cigarette recipes (all the extra crap they began to put into cigarettes when they added filters) would probably increase that correlation effect (as in give more people a chance of cancer). Yet they battled that knowledge, using their head start to recognize their risk and game how to beat the "crazy, unscientific fools" who kept insisting that correlation was possible causation and therefore still a major risk. 20 years and more stupid greed driving people into their graves, just to make more money off cigarettes.
I work in a research university, and have tremendous respect for the work we do. BUT, the researchers I know are the most skeptical people I know, they are skeptical of their results as well as others. They are especially skeptical of research for and about something that already has commercial force behind it. While I don't speak for them, what I hear is that the original GM research was brought to market too quickly (in order to be first, of course) and that once there was a market behind it, it became suspect and unreliable.
Subversion of spatial scale luxury decoration ideas.