yup, once you've seen one, you ignore the rest...
Posted on 10/20/2013 5:39:55 PM PDT by djf
Initiative 522 in Washington state gets voted on in the general election in November.
It would require MOST items sold in supermarkets to plainly label "May contain GMO products".
Opposition has been fierce, as it was in California when a similar initiative was proposed - and lost out.
The anti-disclosure people set up a PAC to front the advertising campaign, and refused to say who was what, so a lawsuit was filed.
The PAC lost the suit - and was forced to tell who had contributed what.
So here you go, folks - These are the businesses who don't want you to know what is in your food, and the amounts contributed:
PepsiCo, Inc. – $1,620,899
Nestle USA Inc. – $1,052,743
The Coca-Cola Company – $1,047,332
General Mills Inc. – $598,819
ConAgra Foods – $285,281
Campbell Soup Company – $265,140
The Hershey Company – $248,305
The J.M. Smucker Company – $241,091
Kellogg Company – $221,852
Mondelez Global LLC – $144,895
Flowers Foods Inc. – $141,288
Abbott Nutrition – $127,459
Pinnacle Foods Group LLC – $120,846
Dean Foods Company – $120,245
McCormick & Company Inc – $102,208
Land O’Lakes, Inc. – $99,803
Cargill Inc. – $98,601
The Hillshire Brands Company – $97,398
Bunge North America, Inc. – $94,993
Bimbo Bakeries USA – $94,693
Del Monte Foods Company – $86,576
Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc. – $55,313
Hormel Foods Corporation – $52,908
Bumble Bee Foods LLC – $36,073
Welch Foods, Inc. $28,859
Shearer’s Foods, Inc. $25,251
Rich Products Corporation – $24,049
Clement Pappas & Company Inc. – $21,043
Sunny Delight Beverages Company – $21,043
Bush Brothers & Company – $16,233
Knouse Foods Cooperative Inc. – $14,429
The Clorox Company – $12,024
Bruce Foods Corporation – $3,006
Moody Dunbar Inc. – $1,804
Now 522 may be flawed. But in my mind, it's a start and can be fine-tuned. One of the anti commercials calls it "pointless..."
It's "pointless" that you know what's in your food? POINTLESS????
HOW DARE THEY SAY THAT!!!
Anyways, just my 2 cents...
Who cares if the food has a GMO in it? Most everything would would.
It is a incredibly good technology.
Many people might called that a “useless” regulation... but NO ONE who has a peanut allergy would say that.
You are right, it is very cheap to put that label on and solves NOTHING.
But like many conservatives and liberals, the answer to any problem is more laws and regulations.
You know there ARE other options besides passing laws. Can you think of them?
yup, once you've seen one, you ignore the rest...
If the law required food producers to actually perform genetic sequencing on each ingredient to find GM inserts, including cases where some wind-pollinated crop picks up the new genes through the air, and report on that, it may be a good law. As of now there is no way other than whole-genome sequencing to determine if your ingredients contain foreign snips.
But as it stands, it’s paperwork and labeling with no requirement to show that your food does or does not contain GMO. If I’m not sure, I put “may contain” on my jar, just like the peanut labels say now (or “processed in a facility that may also process peanut, treenut, shellfish, milk or soybeans”).
A paper law lawyer-driven with no real concrete benefit.
And we still import lots of gamma-irradiated food with no labels.
That did not happen.
Foods that do contain peanut products/derivatives say so on the label, the majority of foods are unaffected in the process.
For foods that DO contain peanut products/derivatives, the consumer is free to try to find a non-peanut alternative.
I don’t see that as being some sort of great burden/problem for manufacturers.
The same is true of phenylalanine. Foods containing it or it’s derivatives say so. And that is because there is a somewhat rare genetic disorder called PKU, and for people with PKU, even tiny amounts of phenylalanine will either kill them outright or make them spend the rest of their lives staring at the wall and drooling.
Is that a “useless” regulation?
Not if you have PKU. (phenylketylnuria)
I Believe I read that the Washington Farmer’s Association is against it too.
It’s pretty easy to know if you have added peanut or Pa to your product. How do you assure that the stuff you buy does not have GMO in it?
For instance, how would you check your peanut flour to assure that the peanuts were not genetically modified?
Wait a min, Clorox is GMO? No wonder my clothes look retarded.
Free Trader Communists are the biggest opponents of GMO labeling.
If the GMO stuff is so good...they would not fight labeling. Heck, if my product is good...I would want to label it
The same Free Trader Communists also fought labeling on non-GMO imports, from places like Communist China and Latin America.
Most of these companies spend big money on advertising, so there is no financial excuse not to label
We do not know what the long term results of eating Frankenfoods will be. Some think the explosion of obesity is due to playing around with foods. Sure, some is due to overeating, but in the 60's we ate Wonder bread, mashed potatoes with butter, fatty pork chops fried in oil, chocolate cake with buttercream icing, whole milk, and hardly anybody was fat.
The newer gene-sequencing stuff is amazing.
You can put a sample in and have the whole genome mapped in like ten hours.
If you hear about a crime on tv and they say something like “Authorities won’t have the DNA testing back for three weeks...” they are BS’ing you blue right in the face!
PCC and Whole Foods are for 522. They already charge too much for most folks to shop there regularly.
If they want more labeling on their spendy stuff, they should insist that their suppliers label their stuff.
Leave the struggling working families alone. I will maybe once a year go to these elitist stores for specific items but not he place to fill up a family grocery cart.
Also, ALL WHEAT has been genetically modified for 60 years, which is a major product in all the breads, cereals, muffins, granola, all the stuff that the health nuts live on.
I’m very familiar with gene sequencing. It’s very expensive on two scales, the capital investment, and the cost-per-sample.
An FBI-type STR identity check can cost $100, but whole-genome sequencing is very expensive. It’s expensive to reun the sequence, and takes a lot of computer muscle to turn the raw data into a sequence. The Whitehead Institute in Massachusetts was a pioneer in whole genome sequencing.
I’m involved in a project that uses DNA sequences to identify counterfeits. It uses whole-genome sequencing as part of setting up the anti-pirate code, which is then verified using simple qPCR. Some of the project looks at plant sequences to see if a farmer is using hybrid seeds without a license, and it costs!
I agree 100%!!!
Manufacturers had NO PROBLEM putting new print on their labels like “Heart Healthy” or “Cholesterol Free” or “Low Fat” if they thought those labels would boost their sales.
And the new scam, well, I call it a scam, now everything has to be “Gluten Free”
How did this initiative fail in CA? You’d figure it would be a shoe in there.
Will this pass in WA?
Well, you obviously know far more than me about the topic.
And I am sure you would agree that the technology is advancing enormously - almost on a daily basis.
I am familiar with PCR and thought about buying a kit, but then I couldn’t figure out what to do with like a gallon of my DNA!!
;-)
I think it has a chance - maybe a good chance of passing in Washington.
The biggest hurdle to the initiative process here is the court challenges that they have to get by in order to get on the ballot. There are very specific requirements and rulings that can effect whether or not an initiative is eligible.
From what I have read, GMO products do not have any known adverse effects on folks like some other products (peanuts, wheat, etc.). And like others have said, it is one thing to know that you manufactured your products with ingredients like peanuts, wheat, etc. It is a whole nother thing to know if the peanuts, wheat, etc. were helped along with GMOs.
I think that the problem of fear of GMO food can be handled at teh private level.
Have you heard of Mrs Gooch’s supermarkets? They got bought up by Whole Foods. But in the beginning, they’d guarantee certain things about the stuff they sold. No artificial colors, flavors, unless it was labeled as such. They’d run gas chromatography tests on each lot of produce and POST THE RESULTS! at the food bin! They did lots of stuff like that and they passed the costs on. Naturally the food was more expensive because they paid for test labs to run tests on things. They were moderately successful, imo, but never really took off. Paying 50% more for a kiwi because you know the pesticide level was only attractive to a limited set.
So for GMO food, a company can pay for genetic testing of all ingredients, certify each production lot, post the results online tied to a QR code on the package, and pass the costs on to the consumer. So GMO food will be available to anyone who wants it, with no laws involved. You could have an entire grocery store chain based on the concept, like Gooch’s, and all those who fear GMO, irradiated, pesticide residue, and anything else would be satisfied. Without a government forcing stuff on us.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.