Genetic Literacy Project Infographic: Is labeling GMOs really about our “Right to Know”?

Genetic Literacy Project ^ | October 31, 2013 | Jon Entine

[EveningStar]

If one believes the backers of Washington State Initiative 522, Tuesday’s vote is simple commonsense: It’s about the “right to know” what’s in our food...

“To be clear the Just Label campaign is not an anti-GMO effort,” says Gary Hirshberg, founder of organic food maker Stonyfield Organic, and head of Just Label It...

But in less guarded moments, Hirshberg makes it clear that the labeling movement has nothing at all to do with science, information and discourse—it is exclusively an anti-GMO effort...

[E. Pluribus Unum]

And you are entitled to your opinion, Mr. Searle.

[count-your-change]

I’d like the “organic” foods to list what toxic chemical they contain so I’d know if they’re safe to eat. And I’d like a pony.

[count-your-change]

I’d like the “organic” foods to list what toxic chemical they contain so I’d know if they’re safe to eat. And I’d like a pony.

[angry elephant]

Yeah, I was in a government proposal meeting where almost all the business owners in the industry and in the meeting were women.

The speaker was so dumb as to say all the business owners should get their WMBE licenses.

Now, what good does it do to tell a bunch of women to get preferred treatment, if they all get it? Preferred from what?

Same dumb. Label all the GMO foods in the store. All the cereals, breads, chips, corn flour, tortilla shells, pastries and other items would be labeled GMO. So what good does that do if all are the same-same anyway with the added cost to label them?

Of course, we should not be eating these high loads of carbs all the time anyway. Just stay on the outer aisles most of the time, buy steroid free beef and chicken, not farmed fish - farmed is really bad for antibiotic load - whole milk and vegetables. Organic on some but if they have shells like bananas and avocados organic is kind of pointless.

Eat the GMO breads, chips and pastries for a treat. But basically they are all GMO.

[exDemMom]

You people say the same thing about msg, aspartame and splenda.

Well, when the scientific evidence supports the safety of these chemicals, there is no logical reason to avoid them. I know which choice I would make, if I had to choose between eating a GMO tomato that has been genetically altered for thousands of years, or eating a handful of non-GMO poison oak leaves. One of those will kill me, and it's probably not the GMO tomato.

[MD Expat in PA]

We have been “genetically engineering” food crops and live stock for as long as from the time we moved from being small and closely related family groups of nomadic hunter gatherers, living a hard scrabble, barely subsistence day to day existence, to becoming settled herders and farmers; which coincidentally coincided with population increases, longer life spans, less starvation due to famines, over all healthier populations and the rise of western culture and civilization. But you know that some people now advocate reverting back to the cave dweller-paleo diet and other such pseudo scientific nonsense. Right?

It is only when we started doing this very same “genetic engineering” that we’ve been doing for many thousands of years, more scientifically and under more controlled and more efficiently; and by the way with more predictable results and actually with more oversight and less likelihood of introducing harmful agents than ever before, that some started using the “scary” term, “Genetically Modified”, and so when some low information people with little understanding of biology and genetics and basic science and economics and egged on by all the usual suspects; the Green Peace, PETA, The Center for Science in the Public Interest (i.e. the Food Police*), the Nanny State Michael Bloomberg types who want to tell you what size soda you can drink and how much salt is too much, the anti-capitalist, population control, Gia Worshipping, Occupy Wall Street types and the marketing at some (and BTW, some very large and very profitable corporations with lots of money to spend on lobbying efforts) who sell overrated and overpriced “organic” foods, started calling GMO foods “Frankenfood” and scaring the well intentioned but gullible into the false belief that Genetically Modified = Poison.

Genetically modified corn before GMO:

If you read this very well written article about California’s failed Prop 37 which is very similar to the Washington State Initiative 522, it points out that these various state GMO labeling initiatives will not bring the consumers who are supporting them what they “think” it will and that it will actually cause more confusion and less information:

Yet even for shoppers wishing to single out GE foods, Proposition 37 doesn’t deliver what it promises. The wording of the initiative is, to be charitable, chaotic and confusing. Many of the foods that meet the initiative’s legal definition of “genetically engineered” are explicitly exempted from the labeling requirement, courtesy of special interests.

Cheeses made with a GE clotting agent? Beer and wine fermented with GE yeasts? Milk from cows injected with an engineered growth hormone? They’re all exempt. But corn or soybean oil from GE crops – which contain no DNA from the plants themselves – would be captured. Proposition 37 would leave consumers worse informed that they are now.

And: The organic industry boasts that certified foods cannot contain GE ingredients, and various food companies and activist groups have created websites, pocket guides, and even smart phone apps that direct purchasers to GE-free products. With all this information freely available, consumers already have what they need to choose.

Why then are Proposition 37 supporters so adamant about singling out genetic engineering? It’s simple: Labeling only GE foods would stigmatize those products, raise the costs of making them, discourage the use of the technology and encourage money-seeking lawsuits for inconsequential violations. In fact, the initiative seems to have been drafted with these very goals in mind.

Ironically, Proposition 37 would also impose huge costs on producers who try to avoid GE. Those committed to using GE ingredients can slap a “Genetically Engineered” label on their products and be done. But producers who want to sell non-GE foods must bear the costs of tracing the source of every ingredient they use and getting sworn guarantees that they “are not knowingly or intentionally” engineered.

That’s right. You want to buy certified non- GMO foods? I hope you are prepared and like paying even more for them than you do now.

And in passing these initiatives, it will also be a huge boon to - guess who? The trial lawyers:

A single slip-up – for example, in the form of a missing link in the paper trail — could result in criminal prosecution or a private lawsuit filed by anyone who has ever bought a “mislabeled” product in a grocery store, food stand, or farmer’s market. The initiative is a trial lawyer’s dream, which is not surprising given that it was written by a trial lawyer who has spent his career suing small food producers in California.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2012/10/08/genetically-engineered-in-california-a-food-label-we-dont-need/

And of course, like all government regulations under the guise of “it’s for your own good”, it raises taxes and grows government, will stifle innovation, competition and will make it more difficult and prohibitively expensive for small and mid-sized farmers and food producers and manufacturers to compete or stay in business. Not to mention that it will cost more for consumers, whether they want to buy certified non-GMO or decide they really don’t care and want to buy GMO products at the checkout and all with no real benefit either way to their health and wellbeing as GMO foods are no more or less dangerous, are no more or less nutritious than non GMO foods.

http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2013/10/30/washington-academy-sciences-gmo-labeling-will-raise-prices

Trade issues will be one of the ways mandatory labeling will raise prices of both genetically modified foods and non-modified foods, the study noted.

“The lack of uniform standards, known as harmonization, and the potential for discrimination of policies among states and across countries and their agreements makes mandatory labeling of GM products a trade issue. Mandatory labeling, especially at a state versus federal level, is likely to affect trade and impose higher costs on firms producing and selling products in Washington. These costs are likely to be passed on to the consumer resulting in higher food prices. Importantly, these costs will be borne by firms and consumers for both GM and non-GM foods as labeling foods as non-GM will require oversight costs,” the study concluded.

And the entire concept of mandatory GMO food labeling is flawed:

Although advocates of GE labeling lean on the claim consumers have a right to know what’s in the food they eat, merely stating on a label that a product contains genetically modified ingredients doesn’t tell consumers what they’re eating, Conko said.

“GE is a process, it’s not a thing that’s in the food,” Conko stressed. “Nor is it the only breeding process that could give rise to a potentially material change in the safety or nutrition of a food. In fact, there are several breeding methods that scientists know to be far more risky than genetic engineering, but labeling advocates apparently aren’t interested in letting consumers know when those methods have been used.”

Now imagine going to your local grocery store to buy a box of Barilla pasta and a jar of Barilla pasta sauce and a package of Johnsonville Italian sausage. Let’s say the wheat in the pasta was grown in Kansas but the semolina was grown in Italy and if it contained any egg products, let’s say they were produced in Maryland. Now the garlic in your pasta sauce was grown in Michigan except when they sometimes purchased the garlic from India and then there are the tomatoes, the basil, the olive oil all sourced from many different states or countries in the pasta sauce and then there is beef and pork and all the spices and binders and corn syrup that went into making the sausage….etc.

Now think about what is involved with complying with all the various “GMO” labeling requirements that each and every ingredient would have to be certified as to being GMO or non-GMO. Sounds good doesn’t it?

But now think about each and every state having different labeling requirements and different standards as to what has to be reported as GMO and Non-GMO. Then think about the beef and pork and the eggs and the requirement for all those farmers, small and medium and large, having to certify that every food that each and every animal consumed from birth to slaughter, every single grain of corn; every soy and alphalfa product was either GMO or completely Non-GMO.

Now imagine that companies like Barilla and Johnsonville who sell their products nationally having to comply with all those various state labeling requirements and ensuring that each and every provider of every single ingredient, each and every grower of each and every ingredient in the US and or abroad, was compliant with all these various state requirements and making sure that all these provider were compliant with each and every state regulation and either segregating and separately labeling all their products sold in various states where they sell and or ensuring that all their national or multi-state distributors are also segregating or insured or having a separate labeling that includes each and every standard for national distribution lest they face fines or lawsuits. Imaging buying a box of pasta that was ¼ devoted to containing the actual pasta and that ¾ of that box would be devoted to all the labeling requirements and that a jar of pasta would come with a 32 page pamphlet (and as if you really had the time and inclination to read all that fine print and decipher it all?) Do any of you for one minute seriously think that this will not drive up food prices?

Of course we could skip all these various state GMO food labeling requirements in favor of one single Federal standard….that would be ++ good and so much better for consumers just like Obamacare…/sarcasm

*

http://www.consumerfreedom.com/issues/food-police/

Know your enemy. (Hint - they are the ones pushing for more government control, the end of free choice and individual liberty and interference with the free market of ideas and innovation) :)

Right now and without any legislation, if you want to purchase and consume GMO free products, you can do this right now and without further legislation and a further burden and cost to any producers and other consumers. You can go to your local Whole Foods or Wegmans or to your local grocery store with a fine selection of certified organic products or find a small local organic grocer or an organic farmer or you can skip the middle man and just grow your own. This choice is already in your hands. Why should I have to pay more just to make your choice, the choice you already have “supposedly” easier and more expensive, just for you?

This is not IMO a conservative position in any sense of the word “conservative” if you think that I should have to be subject to higher prices and less options and to more government regulations just because you don’t like the choices I make and think somehow that I should be subject to funding through taxation and onerous regulations just to support and enforce your personal choices on everyone else with no real benefit, you really fail big time on what the term “conservative” means.

[angry elephant]

You are Exactly right and I am very disappointed in those on this forum who have expressed very socialist views asking for more government control over the actions of others and a bizarre quest for more nannyness. I thought all of us here had mastered riding through life without training wheels.

[driftdiver]

“Scientific evidence” supports global warming

[driftdiver]

So you would r ess strict my freedo. To know what is in my food?

[exDemMom]

Thank you, MD Expat, for this long and well-thought post.

Right now and without any legislation, if you want to purchase and consume GMO free products, you can do this right now and without further legislation and a further burden and cost to any producers and other consumers. You can go to your local Whole Foods or Wegmans or to your local grocery store with a fine selection of certified organic products or find a small local organic grocer or an organic farmer or you can skip the middle man and just grow your own. This choice is already in your hands. Why should I have to pay more just to make your choice, the choice you already have “supposedly” easier and more expensive, just for you?

Technically speaking, there is not a single agricultural product that is not genetically modified. Whether you look at poultry and livestock, produce, or grains, not a single food item produced by human agriculture is the same as the original organism that humans found in the wild. There is no such thing as a wild cow--the original animal was an auroch, a now-extinct animal that was larger and more aggressive than the group of closely related genetically modified organisms that we call "cattle."

Tomatoes are another great example--they have been grown and genetically modified for millenia, for such a long period of time that we do not even know what the original unmodified organism was. There are over 7,000 varieties of genetically modified tomatoes.

Last, I will bring up a couple kinds of familiar fruit that are genetically modified to the point where they cannot exist without constant human intervention. These are bananas and navel oranges, which not only are modified, but contain their DNA in the triploid state--which means they have 3, not 2, copies of every chromosome. Triploid organisms do not exist naturally and cannot survive in the wild. I'm sure other human-created triploids exist--those are just the only ones that come quickly to mind.

This is not IMO a conservative position in any sense of the word “conservative” if you think that I should have to be subject to higher prices and less options and to more government regulations just because you don’t like the choices I make and think somehow that I should be subject to funding through taxation and onerous regulations just to support and enforce your personal choices on everyone else with no real benefit, you really fail big time on what the term “conservative” means.

This is an excellent point. I was raised by a food worshiper, who has been obsessed with "natural" and "pure" food since the "organic food" movement had a huge growth spurt in the late 1960s. This movement has never been a conservative movement; its ideals have always been extreme left. The basis of the "organic food" movement has never been scientific; it is religious, involving Gaia worship and a lot of magical thinking--which are not typical elements of conservatism. In fact, I find it puzzling that supposed conservatives would fall so completely for what is really another (thinly-disguised) approach to trying to destroy modern life and impose socialist dictatorial utopia on everyone.

As I have pointed out in previous posts, anyone who wants to eat "pure" and "natural" food that has never been modified by humans is free to go out into the wilderness and pick or hunt their own food. There are plenty of edible plants, and any book store will sell illustrated guides to help with identifying them. Many wild animals are edible--with Thanksgiving coming up, you can even hunt your own, non-GMO, turkey for the holiday. I wouldn't suggest hunting wild pigs, though, since they are descendants of domesticated genetically modified pigs that the settlers brought from Europe and Asia.

[Tax-chick]

When the Obama Economy *really* kicks in, and we’re burning our fence palings to make kudzu soup, we can look back on this kerfluffle and laugh.

[exDemMom]

“Scientific evidence” supports global warming

"Global warming" isn't even in the same ballpark as biological science. Also, the words "global warming" are thrown into a lot of scientific publications where they do not belong, because their presence will make a politician more likely to approve funding for the research.

Biological scientists must run controlled experiments to test specific hypotheses, and continually adjust the hypotheses as they reveal new facts with the experiments. In contrast, the "global warming" hypothesis is promoted on the basis of predictions (which are not science) and observation (which is highly subjective and not controlled at all).

So you would r ess strict my freedo. To know what is in my food?

Here, let me make it easy on you. Your food contains carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, potassium, and many other chemicals in small amounts. Perhaps not so coincidentally, you are made of the exact same chemicals.

Now that you know, do you feel more free?

[lupie]

If you want to buy non GMO foods, buy certified Organic and pay the price premium.

Canola oil is GMO. You can buy "certified organic" canola oil. Buying organic then doesn't mean it is free of GMO.

[driftdiver]

To compare 2000 years of selective breeding to what is happening now in the labs of food companies intellectually and scientifically dishonest.

The comparison to globull warming is exactly accurate. “scientists” and global corporations pushing their agenda at the expense of everyone else.

GMO wont reduce the cost of food since the cost of food on the shelf is primarily processing and transportation. GMO won’t cure starvation as lack of available food isn’t the cause of that crisis.

So you are a liar who is pushing your agenda and willing to restrict other peoples freedoms in order to do it.

[artichokegrower]

All insulin for diabetics is derived from a genetically engineered bacteria. Used to use yeast but bacteria is more productive. Ever hear of Genetech. That’s where they made their money. Don’t make insulin from pig pancreases anymore. It’s called progress.

[Yollopoliuhqui]

Posters on this thread seem to be blind to the issue of MONOPOLIST seed stock control via patents on GMO seeds rammed down our throats by quasi fascist “too big to fail” Monsanto et al. We need to heed Limbaugh and stop being low information voters on this and a number of other issues. This is a glaring case where we would do well to grab our yarbles and read the data presented by the enemy, yah, I mean Mother Jones, Rolling Stone & Co.

Conservatives rubber stamp Wall St. and the “deregulation” of American finance via the overthrow of the Glass Steagall bank separation law, we rubber stamp Big Pharma even though they fight like demons to keep the over the counter raw materials for cheap and easy meth cooking from being made prescription, we rubber stamp Big agriculture and the near monopolization of food distribution chains. Interestingly we NO LONGER rubber stamp rogue law enforcement, military adventurism, industrial raw sewage dumping into watersheds, the CIA and NSA, unregulated banking, globalist cartels, etc. These were all liberal only causes a while back.

Let’s put our brains in first gear, do some math and simply start looking at the data regardless of its source or our ideological predisposition. If we can get this nation onto an OPEN SOURCE data/intel awareness, analysis and implementation basis, half of our problems would disappear overnight. We absolutely need to stop the knee jerk demonizing of every notion that our Eastern Libersal Establishment/banker ideological puppeteers tell us to demonize and LET THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

[Valpal1]

If it isn’t certified organic and contains soy or corn it is most probably GMO corn or soy. You can avoid it by eating only certified organic.

[Valpal1]

Actually they do track food borne illness and while there are hundreds of deaths attributed to contaminated organic foods, there are zero deaths attributed to GMO.

[driftdiver]

They track food born illness but GMO is not broken out.

yet another lie from GMO proponents.

[Valpal1]

Patents last 20 years, that’s it. Then they are open source.

The first GMO patents will be expiring in 2014, it is ridiculous to think that the patent system which works just fine for electronics and other technology is somehow going to wreck agriculture.