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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.
If they're happy with it, if it has advantages they can sell the consumers, then they should sell it to consumers on its advantages.
Why would you try to conceal GMO products from the consumer? It's confirmation that the makers of GMO products have something to hide!
while a free market economy is much better at allocating scarce resources than any other method(especially government controlled or regulated economy), for a truly free market to work , there should be full information and perfect competition, impossible conditions.
it doesn't help that in real world people who are most vocal for free capitalism tend to be the same who are against full information disclosure. i am willing to bet that those who voted against this labeling were such 'supporters' of 'free market capitalism'.
But what does Minuscule Rhode Island have to say about this? When will Petite Delaware speak up?
Selective breeding is a lot more predictable than directly twiddling genes. There are a lot of unforeseen side-effects.
[citation needed]
Bill Nye would disagree with you. Specifically, here is a quote from when he changed his mind about GMO's:
"The thing is, genetically modified food has no effect on us. That is to say, there is no difference between it and organically raised food. This is scientifically provable. It’s certainly provable to my satisfaction, and that’s the most straightforward thing about it, to see if it’s still nutritious and see if it has any allergic effect, and it absolutely does not. In fact, in general, all of these foods are more nutritious."
Source: http://ecowatch.com/2015/07/14...
There's further details in his recent book Undeniable about why there aren't "unforeseen side-effects" from GMO foods. I think anyone with doubts or curiosity about the subject (and evolution in general) should read it.
Snarf This.
Of course it's anti-science. Science is about formulating a hypothesis and conducting experiments to prove or disprove it. An anti-GMO stance is about forming a hypothesis and forcing everyone else in the world to validate it by fiat. No experimentation in sight.
Tiny Vermont?
If it's small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there's no problem. I guarantee.
A lot of people opposing these laws do so because these laws are promoting ignorance and stupidity. In no way or form is a free market intended to affect societal change, so who the fuck cares if it does so? In fact, if one were to use a free market to enact such a change, these anti-science groups should petition the producers directly to label their products. They should organize boycotts and similar free-market actions. Forcing an action through legislation is the precise opposite of a free market.
Subverting a market to promote one's pet cause is not, in fact, promoting a free market.
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)
This statement is completely wrong and that is what makes me sad about this whole debate. People make decisions that they are not qualified to make.
Selective breeding is MUCH less predictable than direct gene editing. With gene editing I know exactly what I am inserting and where it goes and like a computer program I also know what it does.
With selective breeding you are selecting for visible traits and not for the DNA. Selective breeding of tomatoes to make them solid red also dramatically cut their nutrition content. The tomatoes that where red with a little green on the top where healthier for us but selective breeding eliminated healthy parts along with selecting for solid red.
The same has been done with corn and many other foods we eat.
If you want to make a plant more drought resistant then directly add the gene for it, Don't try to selectively breed for it since you will get a lot of other changes to the plant also.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
As A Vermonter I love to see these stories. VT is increasingly a playground for the rich and those subsumed with WLG* to support the cause du jour.
Hate fracking? Vermont BANNED it in a very public legislative effort. (Even though Vermont will never have fracking due to geologic conditions in the state.) But of course the Illuminati who run the state strongly support a new, natural gas pipeline that will transport fracked NG to the most "sustainable" of towns.
Hate litter? We are all becoming professional garbage managers due to legislatively micro-managed trash laws. (Meanwhile, Keurig/Green Mountain Coffee STILL dumps millions of plastic, unrecyclable single-use K-cups into the environment.
The local "food co-op" broadcasts BUY LOCAL then sells grossly overpriced Yuppie-chow imported from California.
I can go on but you get the point. Do as I say - not as I do.
*White Liberal Guilt
Do you have any evidence that GMO is dangerous to those who consume them? I believe there's plenty of evidence that heart surgeons with a vague idea of anatomy are dangerous.
Your comparison is so absurd that there really are no words for it.
If it was old-fashioned breeding techniques, no problem. If scientists used a virus to splice genes to/from an organism, I want to know. That technique has not been proven to be completely accurate or side-effect free.
One of the healthiest vegetable oils, Canola Oil, is a product of genetic modification to remove a potential toxin, making it safe for humans to consume. Most of the characteristics were obtained by "conventional" genetic modification, similar to that used to create, for example, a seedless fruit variety.
However since Monsanto introduced the Gene-Spliced variety in the late 1990's, ("Roundup Ready Canola") that form has come to dominate the available crops in Canada and the USA. Also, the Monsanto variety has found it's way into the storage lots of the non-licensed seed stock. The result is the GMO Canola is virtually the only form available today in food grade Canola Oil (although it is worth noting that at least 87% is by grower's choice of the Monsanto seed, not seed stock contamination).
To avoid the GMO variety is to abandon the use of Canola altogether.
Canola pushes both all the "Heart Smart" buttons, and all the "GMO/non-GMO" buttons.
Because food manufacturers have largely embraced Canola as an input in processed foods, essentially everything from all the middle aisles in a North American supermarket contains GMO Canola. In other words, almost all the products in the supermarket in Vermont will have to be labeled as containing GMO ingredients.
The alternative is to use a less healthy vegetable oil, and that might include Hydrogenated varieties containing unhealthy Trans Fats, and earn the right to apply the NON-GMO label.
Vermont resident here. Best argument I heard against the labelling requirement was that it's TMI. Similar to the arguments about packaging being "recycled content" or "recyclable", or "made in USA", the opponents make the case that every additional disclosure requirement obfuscates ingredient and nutrition information, or dolphin-safe etc. If Vermont required companies put the number of women employed as a percentage of labor, or minority representation on company board of directors, or employee-owned stock, etc. etc., SOMEONE will always be in favor of "disclosing" it on the label. But there's a legitimate concern that the net effect is "noise". Consumers engage in a form of "moral licensing", giving more weight to "recyclable" than "carbs". T
here is a social cost to obfuscation and "Too Much Information" on labels.
Many in Vermont have a legitimate purpose in branding the state as more natural and organic because it's basically impossible to operate factory farming here. But while legitimate, it's also legitimate to argue Vermont's concerns are basically protectionism against milk and cheese made more cheaply in Ohio. My concerns over GMO has to do with monoculture and unintended consequences of reduced genetic diversity, and eventual loss of rights to plant your own seeds. And I feel strongly about it. But trying to make other people who are less educated, who think GMO is a health concern, share my agenda is a "poster child" technique which will produce fewer returns the more information is packed onto a label. If we put every "true" thing on a label, people will be deluged and stop reading labels. And THAT is the tactic I hope food labels don't embrace - EULA Agreement scale labels that provide so much "information" that the consumers are lost in politics, packaging, nutrition, ingredients, weight, volume, etc.
Gently reply
... except for salt. I guess salt has never been genetically modified compared to (say) 1000 to 5000 years ago, perhaps because it doesn't contain any genes.
Everything else -- arguably including wild game -- has been modified by humans manipulating its genes, most often by the tried and true method of waiting for "nature" to cause a mutation and then selectively breeding to stabilize it in a domesticated population.
So General Foods etc should retaliate by simply labelling all food products as having been modified relative to their "natural" state prior to the existence of mankind. Then consumers will get bored looking at the label (and possibly might be educated about the meaning of "GMO" relative to the biological human universe). End of problem.
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Once FoxNews gets into the news space all other news sources cease to exist.
If we use your reasoning, then we should label any non-kosher food as treif and any non-halal food as haram. Yet nobody actually does that. Instead they simply label it if it meets the demands of those religions. There are two dead simple ways you can avoid GMO food with present labeling:
- Buy organic
- Buy GMO free
Food manufacturers prominently label both of these terms. Both of them are a waste of time (and in the case of organic, a waste of money) but don't let that stop you if you find that your god gets angry at you for eating GMO crop.