Posted on 06/02/2013 4:04:14 AM PDT by Kaslin
Sen. Barbara Boxer says she is co-sponsoring the Genetically Engineered Food Right-to-Know Act in part because, with 26 states trying to pass legislation requiring said labeling, it makes more sense to have a uniform federal law. California's junior Democratic senator has a point. It's probably better for the folks who keep affordable food on American tables to have one big gun pointed at their collective head than 26 guns.
Except that most of these guns aren't loaded, including the big gun. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., introduced a farm bill provision, which was designed to protect states that require labeling for genetically engineered food or genetically modified organisms from lawsuits from big food and big chemical. The Senate voted on it last week. And it tanked, 71-27.
Sanders argued that "an overwhelming majority of Americans favor GMO labeling." I don't think so, not when health-conscious Californians rejected, if narrowly, Proposition 37, a GMO labeling ballot measure, last year. Boxer now stands as the rare senator who wants to make the Food and Drug Administration require labeling that her own voters rejected.
The pro-label lobby credits the industry's spending $44 million to defeat the measure. But money isn't everything in California politics. Just ask Gov. Meg Whitman.
I think Californians rejected the measure because they're sick of living in a State of Too Much Information. Since voters approved Proposition 65, the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, Californians have been bombarded with warning signs for 774 different chemicals. There are signs in hotels, in cars, at the gas station, all over supermarkets.
"It's like highlighting everything in a textbook," said Ken DeVore, California legislative director of the National Federation of Independent Business. "Nothing's highlighted when everything's highlighted."
For Boxer's part, she started with no co-sponsors. The Hill reports she now has more than 30 co-sponsors in the House and Senate. The FDA is considering approval for genetically modified salmon eggs for human consumption -- and that has delivered the support of two Alaska Republicans.
Though the overwhelming vote against the Sanders measure foreshadows defeat for Boxer's bill this year, she cannot lose for losing. Her argument sounds reasonable. As she noted in a press release, "Americans have the right to know what is in the food they eat so they can make the best choices for their families." Her bill wouldn't make packagers put a skull and crossbones on the label, she says -- just more information.
The problem is that Boxer's push to mandate labels for all GMO foods, unless they are exempted, is a recipe for information overload. "We see calls for mandatory labeling as a means to misinform consumers," countered Cathleen Enright, executive vice president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, "at the least to misinform, at the most to scare" consumers by suggesting that modified foods are "unsafe or different."
To the contrary, modified is the norm. Humans have been modifying plants for millenniums. About 70 to 80 percent of processed foods are made with genetically engineered ingredients.
If the measure ever did become law, it would be a bonanza for lobbyists and lawmakers as industry groups bow and scrape before federal dignitaries to win exemptions for their goods. Boxer's bill, the San Francisco Chronicle's Stacy Finz reported, would exempt meat and dairy that is, though not modified, fed engineered grain. Proposition 37 would have exempted alcohol; Boxer's bill would not. Imagine the scramble to win indulgences for restaurant meals, dairy and drink.
If the public really has a right to know, there should be a warning label on all such measures that reads, simply: Shakedown.
DAMN that’s an ugly woman. Her face is so stretched, presumably from “lifts,” that it almost appears to have surgery seal on it, the “wrap” that they use to cover the skin around an incision site like during knee replacement surgery.
Then there's BARLEY ~ it has a particularly powerful peptide that triggers celiac response and yet FDA and USDA and the label laws let folks call it MALT.
The most recent product labeling exercise now has restaurants telling us how many calories there are in our hamburgers but neglecting to indicate the carbohydrate content of anything ~ there's no health value in knowing calories without knowing carbs!
Which gets down to this ~ the labels are no longer meaningful and do not address the needs of people with REAL problems. They continue to be misleading.
Aren’t all plants genetically modified? What is the problem again with eating genetically modified food?
Yes...to a degree or more.
Of course what is being forgotten in all this fear mongering is without genetically modified grown food.... food would be much more expensive..and lot's and lot's of people would be malnutritioned...
So a super tomato is essentially still .. a tomato.
Now, if they're splicing in genes from a pig's brain to produce a watermelon and sell the resulting seeds to Kenya ... perhaps there is reason to ban all this genetic engineering thing.
Personally, I don't really care because I grow a lot of my food and what I don't grow is generally unadulterated (milk from the neighbor's farm .. you ain't had coffee untill you dollop that cream from the top in ... , a lot of rice, water from my well ... etc.)
Bump
Plants have always been hybridized. The big worry with the current GMO issue is that you have a few seed makers using the federal government and the international trade organizations to control the market....in effect....big government socialism. The WTO, NAFTA, are not in favor of labeling
Also...the latest batch of seeds are not so much hybridized seeds...but chemically created seeds. Corn made w nicotinoids? I thought I quit smoking
However....I would not trust Barbara Boxer on this....and doubt any GMO labeling will happen. Boxer is a huge Statist Globalist and she gets a lot of campaign $ from the same folks that do not want GMO labeling
This labeling thing is the clash of big government statism between those who want to control what is fed to us
i much prefer water from the tap coming from a system that’s thoroughly killed off all the protazoans. The mid-atlantic has some of the more interesting plasmids ~ the meat eating kind! Gotta’ be dead!
I have no idea, but I do know most companies use rigorous testing in consumable goods to protect themselves from lawsuits and litigation...
Wheat has been GM for a long time....
“Sen. Barbara Boxer says she is co-sponsoring the Genetically Engineered Food Right-to-Know Act in part because, with 26 states trying to pass legislation requiring said labeling, it makes more sense to have a uniform federal law.”
Progressivism in a ‘nut’-shell... To hell with States’ Rights. To hell with individual responsibility. Just more, more, more, and more big gubmint meddling where they have NO mandate, and NO Constitutional authority.
It’s time to take back the country.
The California girl is looking rather crone ish
My wisdom is the result of spliced owl genes
No worries, Monsanto will figure out the recipe for Soylent green soon, once all the bees are gone.
Thierry Vrain is a former research scientist for Agriculture Canada, where his job was to address public groups and reassure them that GM crops and food were safe. Here is what he recently wrote:
“There are no long-term feeding studies performed in these countries [US and Canada] to demonstrate the claims that engineered corn and soya are safe. All we have are scientific studies out of Europe and Russia, showing that rats fed engineered food die prematurely.
These studies show that proteins produced by engineered plants are different than what they should be. Inserting a gene in a genome using this technology can and does result in damaged proteins. The scientific literature is full of studies showing that engineered corn and soya contain toxic or allergenic proteins.
… I refute the claims of the biotechnology companies that their engineered crops yield more, that they require less pesticide applications, that they have no impact on the environment and of course that they are safe to eat.”The Food Revolution Network May 11, 2013
I am really surprised so many FReepers believe the government bureaucrats when they say, "Trust me"
And you can smoke a pack of cigaretts without developing cancer. Low dose of radiation does no harm.
But we know the long term, cumulative effects. No long term studies have been showing GMO safety. It is a huge gamble, and I don't trust the government.
How do you know what you are eatimg?
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