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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?
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.
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.
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.
"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?"
There is NO WAY they are even worse than current farm-rised ones. They are simply awful.
The problem is that many people are not "rational humans".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?!
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...
> 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.
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.
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).
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...
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.
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.
You are blaming science when instead you should be blaming advertising.
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.
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!
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
I think the best they can do is splice in some sea bass and make them ill tempered.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
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.
They have proved it. Over and over and over. You stupid motherfucker.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.