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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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.