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Tiny Vermont Brings Food Industry To Its Knees On GMO Labels (ap.org)
schwit1 writes: General Mills' announcement on Friday that it will start labeling products that contain genetically modified ingredients to comply with a Vermont law shows food companies might be throwing in the towel, even as they hold out hope Congress will find a national solution. Tiny Vermont is the first state to require such labeling, effective July 1. Its fellow New England states of Maine and Connecticut have passed laws that require such labeling if other nearby states put one into effect. The U.S. Senate voted 48-49 Wednesday against a bill that would have blocked such state laws. The food industry is holding out hope that Congress will prevent states from requiring such labeling. Some companies say they plan to follow Vermont's law, while others are considering pulling their products from the small state.
Selective breeding is a lot more predictable than directly twiddling genes. There are a lot of unforeseen side-effects.
Because facts without context are deceptive. Evolution is 'just' a theory, agree with me? So why not label that on textbooks? Hey, it's a fact, you don't want to hide facts do you? The thing is, your average person has no idea what genetic engineering really is or what it means. Giving people one small detail, without telling the complete story, without explaining the details, knowing full well that years of misinformation are going to result in them thinking something that is not so, is not informative. It is a lie of omission, plain and simple. These laws are forcing lies because no one stopped to ask people who actually know the science behind the crops what they thing.
And don't try to tell me that it is being hidden; that's another intellectually lazy excuse. A quick Google search tells you what is and is not GE, and how. Corn, soy, cotton, canola, papaya, summer squash, sugar beet, alfalfa, and soon apple and potato, with traits like insect resistance (Cry and Vip genes), herbicide tolerance (C4 EPSPS and bar genes), virus resistance (PRSV-CP and WMV-CP genes), drought tolerance (CspB), and soon consumer oriented traits. Yeah, it isn't on the label, but neither is any of the other things we do to crops that you don't know about. I've never seen head of lettuce as containing the Nr gene for aphid resistance bred in from the wild species Lactuca serriola. I've never seen a product containing watermelon labeled as containing an artificially produced polyploid, as seedless watermelons are. I've never seen an apple labeled as being a bud sport, a somatic mutant derived form a chance shoot, as many apples in stores are. I've enver seen citrus labeled as having been developed through radiation induced mutagenesis, yet that happens. I've never seen corn be labeled as having been produced via doubled haploid hybridization, yet that is also a thing. I could go on but you get the point. Every plant in the grocery store has a story. Genetic engineering is just one part of that.
Now, what you are asking is why food producers don't want to single out one part of a much larger story, one that has been stigmatized by years of scientifically baseless fearmongering, knowing that your average person is completely ignorant of the history and present science of crops and agriculture, and slap a label on that doesn't actually tell you anything meaningful (genetically modified how and why? Label doesn't say). Be real here, they have a very good reason for it. This push for labeling is just the GMO denialists' response to being completely wrong about the safety and benefits of genetic engineering. They lost on the facts, now they're trying to make it look like genetic engineering needs labels, because if they're so safe why hide it? Of course, these same people then point to Europe and say 'if they're so safe why do they need labels?'
I'll believe this is about honesty and transparency whenever the anti-GMO crowd demands that non-GMO corn be labeled as having higher mycotoxin levels. I'm not holding my breath for that though.
They want to conceal it because they have genetic modifications they want to make that increase profitability, not things that benefit the consumer.
E.G They make it heavier / larger by having it absorb more water. Nutritional value either remains the same or decreases, but you pay more.
How does this benefit you? It doesn't. You pay more for something that has more water in it. Doesn't have more calories or anything.
Why do you think it stigmatizes anything?
I can't imagine why. Where have you been for the past two decades? Have you really missed the controversy, fearmongering, lies, and generally unscientific bollocks that lead up to this? This push for labeling is not coming from plant & agricultural scientists, and for good reason. It is coming from people who already stigmatize GE crops and wish to do so further.
We have monocultures without GMO.
To which I explicitly stipulated in my comment. GMO property rights have demonstrably caused farmers problems. Those problems may have been brought on more by the farmers than the GMOs, but they have certainly occurred. In addition to those problems, I also anticipate problems in the future. As we cede power to massive agro/chemical corporations, they will inevitably take advantage. This is borne out by all of human history.
Here is an example of an IP right causing a problem for farmers:
http://www.monsanto.com/newsvi...
They don't have that freedom because if they did they would say all their products cure cancer and give you a huge boner.
Yes, you can blame the Round-Up Ready crops, because that isn't applied to non-GMO crops. It would kill them. On the GMO crop, they spray it over the whole field. You really can't separate the problem, because that is the only time that it is being frequently applied broadly like that.
For example, they use it on Giant Knotweed around here, but they have to use a hand sprayer and spray individual plants.
And there currently is an epidemic of resistant weeds in GMO fields. Maybe you don't read enough ag news to know about it? And the GMO farmers are getting really whiny, because they thought science cured weeds. LOL And they are really resistant to the idea of going back to old weed control methods. "The sky is falling, the sky is falling." The sky isn't falling, but if the weeds come back they should switch back to normal seed because the GMO plants are less robust. (the resistance has a metabolic cost)
They were nationalist, but with left wing social economic policies. That's pretty common among populist parties. A lot of people get confused because they're trying to map a complex set of opinions and policies onto a 1-dimensional left-right spectrum.
Kosher and especially Halal diets make men grow beards and women cover their hair or even whole body.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
*some* left wing social economic policies. And true, they never would have gotten anywhere otherwise. However, after the Night of the Long Knives any lingering sympathies for left wing social economic policies was effectively purged from the party in a long and bloody night of murder.
The fact they used the name "socialist" because of the positive connotations at the time, is hardly unsurprising. What surprises me every time is that so many people who should have read Null-A, fail to appreciate the difference between the map and the territory, or the word and the thing itself, or the flag and the reality. Not aiming at GP btw, it's just a general observation that as soon as someone applies a label, everyone applies a world of meaning to it. But labels like "centrum", "democrat", "nationalist", "socialist" and "communist" have all been used by political parties that in reality implemented none of the policies associated with the label.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Yeah, the left wing media did us all a massive disservice demonizing a war that amounted to sending non-voluntary soldiers to a war meant to suppress a government that our government knew would most definitely win a democratic election (the reason that both the French and then US wouldn't allow elections in the country). In fact, we have a good sized record of disrupting legitimately elected governments because they we inconvenient for us. "Socialist" governments are most definitely not the only form of governance that has served to oppress people.
Yeah, better to allow Communism to take over/survive like it did in North Korea. You may want to read the "Long Telegram" and the reasons for containment:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Article#The_Long_Telegram
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_F._Kennan
The Paris Peace Accords allowed for the existence for a North and South Vietnam, but the North were planning to invade. Nixon (a general bastard, but not in all maters--he did create the EPA after all), said the US would defend its ally, but a Democratic-controlled Congress (though with good amount Republican support) passed a law forbidding helping the South, and so when the Accord was broken and Saigon fell, the US couldn't help:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case–Church_Amendment
It should be noted that while messy, the US military did not lose a signal major engagement during its involvement in Vietnam. They did lose the propaganda war though.
I'm no fan of propping up dictators, but as someone whose family came from Poland, I'm no fan of Communism either.
That's the way Monsanto portrayed it. Fact is, the judgment against the farmer was reduced by the Canadian Supreme Court to $1 because he didn't do anything to take advantage of the Monsanto seed. He didn't use Round-Up on his crops - he couldn't afford to use it on his fields. He only used it in ditches surrounding his farm to prevent weeds from encroaching into his fields. So there was zero benefit to him going "out of his way to gather the seeds from his neighbor's crops and use them in preference to other seeds." He had no motive for behaving as Monsanto claimed he did. (Incidentally, the resistant seed came from canola in one of these ditches - what he thought was his canola. It was theorized that it was instead blown there from a neighboring farm, or seed which had fallen off a truck driving down the intervening road. He did not gather the seeds from his neighbor as you portray.)
The Canadian Supreme Court let the ruling against the farmer stand however because they believed Monsanto's argument that its Round-Up Ready resistance could not be spread by pollination, and so the farmer "ought to have known" that any canola which survived being sprayed with Round-Up was their patented seed. This was later shown to be false as they've found the GMO portions of Round-Up Ready resistance in wild plants.
But the damage was done, and the reason there haven't been recent cases of Monsanto going after farmers is because they've mostly thrown in the towel and just pay Monsanto if they suspect they've got Round-Up Ready crops in their field even if they never knowingly planted it. Which is Monsanto's real goal here - charging rent for the privilege of farming.
In terms of IP law, this combined with the dismissal of organic farms' opposition is a terrible precedent because it decouples risk from reward. If Monsanto's seed finds its way onto your farm and you benefit from it, Monsanto profits from it. If Monsanto's seed finds it way onto your farm and you are harmed by it, Monsanto is not liable for it. It cannot work that way. Either you are allowed to release a product and profit from it but are liable for the harm it causes, or you are not allowed to release it.