Support GMO foods

[Loren Pechtel]

1) It depends on what genes were inserted. This certainly helps people: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice

2) Having more food for less cost is a benefit to people.

So many problems and potential issues with golden rice it's hard to know where to start.
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php/articles/gm-reports/15024

Start somewhere else. I didn't read all the stuff there, I saw enough to know it's crap.

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Sadly many have listened to the lies spread by morons.
One example is that they have found they need to use more and more round-up and that weeds and bugs are developing resistance to these products.
Clearly you have a very short term view and if something works in some way for a year or two then it's time to start celebrating.

It's always an ongoing war. You have the same problems GMO or not.

 

[Toni]

You are incorrect: many who oppose GMOs do so out of environmental concerns. In fact, while GMOs have been around for about 15 years, that is too short a time span to be certain there are no long term ill effects.

Oh, I see. And these environmental concerns can be alleviated by labelling, can they?

A call for labelling cannot be rationally motivated by environmental concerns, unless you agree that it is just an underhanded way to ban something that you are unable to ban on legitimate grounds.

What is the policy regarding GMOs in Australia ?

What difference does that make to anything? Our government bans same-sex marriage. They also ban selling rancid food. Their policies are not consistently based in reason or science; some are good, some are bad.

While I hope my opinion might influence government policy (at least to some extent), the reverse is not, and should not, be true - I don't use government policy as an input when forming an opinion. ('Oh, I was going to support an increase in income tax, but apparently the government's policy is to reduce it, so I shall change my mind', said no-one ever).

Personally I prefer to support practices that I consider to be environmentally sound and to avoid supporting practices that I consider to be questionable. Not only that but I am well aware of food additives which we were all assured were safe a d even healthier--but which were later demonstrated to be harmful. I read labels of the small portion of food which I purchase already processed. To the extent possible I buy locally produced food but confess that I am inconsistent owing to my fondness of tropical fruit.

I asked about Australia's policies because I don't know much about them.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Long before GMOs we had hybrid seeds. The hybrids are superior--but while they are not sterile they do not breed true, thus you have to buy new seed next year anyway. This isn't any evil on their part, it's the very nature of hybrids--you can't make a hybrid that breeds true.

This is incorrect. If hybrids could not breed true, there would be no new varieties of plants developed, ever. In fact, I can go to any garden supply store and purchase seeds from plants which were developed, often over many generations of breeding, hybridization, cross pollination, etc. Depending on the process and the plant, they will breed true.

You can breed from a hybrid and perhaps develop something down the road that's stable.

That doesn't change the fact that hybrids are not stable by their very nature.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If it's relevant to you than you can pay for it. Every grocery store I go to has tons of non-GMO foods. No one is stopping you from buying it.

But selecting non-GMO food requires that the food is labeled as to whether or not it is GMO. Or else you grow your own or buy only from farmers who can certify that they use no GMO seeds.

I put this in exactly the same category as being able to choose whether to purchase milk or chicken or eggs produced without hormones or antibiotics. It is my preference to do so and apparently enough people feel the same because even in my small city, the local grocer stocks foods which are specifically labeled as being produced without added hormones or antibiotics.

I'm fine if some or most people don't find GMO products to be an issue, but personally, I prefer to know and to be free to make the choice myself. As far as the US being full of poorly educated sheep who don't understand what GMOs are, this is not an issue confined only to the US. In fact, the EU has some of the most stringent regulations with regards to GMOs in the world. I think the US should follow their lead.

Note that none of us are objecting to manufacturers labeling their products as no-GMO (that is, so long as they are telling the truth about what's in their products), we are objecting to requiring manufacturers to track whether products contain GMOs or not.

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There are many conspiracy-minded zealots in white society whose delusions about genetically-engineered foods have an unintended genocidal effect. They are trying to force labels on GMO foods through state ballot initiatives in the USA.

I might support the foods, but there's no way I'm going to support them if they aren't clearly labeled.

If they are trying to sneak their foods into the diets of people who don't want to eat that, then they are evil.

They should be proud of what they're doing. "Yes, this is modified. Notice that it is cheaper and better than the unmodified stuff right next to it?"

I'm thinking the dispute over GMOs would already be over if people had seen each other buying GMO-labeled packages with no ill effects for all this time.

Nobody's trying to sneak them in. If you care, look for the stuff labeled non-GMO. If, as most people, you don't care, you don't need to look.

 

[bilby]

Oh, I see. And these environmental concerns can be alleviated by labelling, can they?

A call for labelling cannot be rationally motivated by environmental concerns, unless you agree that it is just an underhanded way to ban something that you are unable to ban on legitimate grounds.

What is the policy regarding GMOs in Australia ?

What difference does that make to anything? Our government bans same-sex marriage. They also ban selling rancid food. Their policies are not consistently based in reason or science; some are good, some are bad.

While I hope my opinion might influence government policy (at least to some extent), the reverse is not, and should not, be true - I don't use government policy as an input when forming an opinion. ('Oh, I was going to support an increase in income tax, but apparently the government's policy is to reduce it, so I shall change my mind', said no-one ever).

Personally I prefer to support practices that I consider to be environmentally sound and to avoid supporting practices that I consider to be questionable. Not only that but I am well aware of food additives which we were all assured were safe a d even healthier--but which were later demonstrated to be harmful. I read labels of the small portion of food which I purchase already processed. To the extent possible I buy locally produced food but confess that I am inconsistent owing to my fondness of tropical fruit.

I asked about Australia's policies because I don't know much about them.

I have edited my earlier response to include a link to the FSANZ webpage that has this information. It is at http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/consumer/gmfood/labelling/Pages/default.aspx.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Actually it does indicate the cost is negligible. Most of his analysis is irrelevant since he is talking about tracing every different GMO seed. But the bin costs are fixed costs which can be spread out over many bushels.

He was only examining the costs he would incur, not the costs down the supply chain--and even his own costs aren't negligible even if you only separate GMO from non-GMO.

 

[Axulus]

laughing dog, the consumers who find the GMO information relevant are exactly the ones that shop for the "GMO-free" and "Organic" product varieties. So what purpose does the labeling requirement serve? Also, how are you distinguishing relevant information from irrelevant information?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Every scientific society and medical society has concluded such and released statements supporting such. The scientific consensus is as strong on this issue as it is on global warming. Are you a global warming denier? If not, why are you a GMO safety denier?

I am a person who wants long term studies done on GMO foods.
Do you want long term studies done or do you assume they aren't needed?

And where are the long term studies on the food you eat now? It's almost all genetically modified without anything like the controls imposed on GMOs. Breeding a new variety of anything is genetic modification, just in a very hit-or-miss fashion.

 

[arkirk]

Can somebody tell me if they like eating Roundup? Why else would it be a benefit to genetically engineer "Roundup ready" (resistant to Roundup) GMO crops if we were also getting a little roundup in our diets. Back to the drawing boards...genetically engineer humans that are resistant to corporate bullshit! When roundup and other toxic petrochemicals become so prevalent in fields where food is grown, it is a certainty those who eat that food are being exposed to these chemicals. It should be a right to know what chemicals you are eating.

FYI non-stick surfaces on cookware yield chemicals that are detectable in the blood of people who eat food prepared on them. These chemicals are not naturally occurring in the human body...just saying....do these people really care what is in your body...HELL NO!

Almost every crop, GMO or not, organic or not, uses a chemical pesticide to prevent their crops from being devoured by insects. You wouldn't want to drink any of those pesticides straight from a cup, Round-up or not, organic or not. With a forced GMO label, it won't serve the ends that you may expect from a little extra knowledge. It will be misleading. You will be led to think that the non-GMO products are safer than the GMO products, and it is absolutely not true.

The intent is to make a GMO that is resistant to herbicide. Now, the plant can be drenched in the shit and not show any signs. It is strictly for the convenience and cost cutting of the grower...not the eater . We really do not have a clue. I can agree with you that we DON'T KNOW IF A GIVEN GMO IS UNSAFE. WE REALLY DON'T KNOW IT IS SAFE. AND WITHOUT LABELING WE WON'T KNOW IF IT IS AT ALL...MAYBE TILL IT IS TOO LATE.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If GMO foods are so obviously superior (as they may well be) then why do we need to bend labelling regulations on their behalf?

Requiring that the source of food is tracked has a cost, yes, but it's a cost that's applied to a great many foods in the EU. The reason for this is basic hygiene and food safety - the only thing stopping your beef burgars being produced from horse meat is the ability of the supplier to demonstrate exactly where the food has come from. The only way of showing that your wheat is not diseased or contaminated is to demonstrate where it came from. This is a basic requirement. Why bend the rules only for GMO vs non-GMO foods? Why have GMO produces asked the WTO to make requiring such labelling illegal?

Similarly, if GMO foods are better, they're going to do better in the marketplace, yes? Customers can see what a product consists of and decide for themselves. Why try to fix a free market? There seems to be something very strange about people campaigning against accurate labelling and consumer choice. If you're required to declare what county (sic) your cheese comes from, why is declaring what your cheese or flour is made from so much of a problem?

Except the supplier does *NOT* normally demonstrate where they have come from. Like products are routinely mixed to simplify logistics.

Look at what happened when they tried to track cows because of mad cow. Last I heard the tracking wasn't anything like 100%.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I find it fascinating that so-called market advocates and pro-competition are adamantly against one of the basic foundations of market efficiency: informed consumers.

We are informed. If the package doesn't say "non-GMO" then we know it may contain GMO materials. What more do we need to know?

What we don't want is to pay the extra logistics costs for something that has no value to us. Let the people who want non-GMO pay the costs of tracking their non-GMO products. Food labeling is about pushing those logistics costs off onto the rest of us.

Moreover, cost increases of any size are not automatically pushed through to consumers. The eventual price increase depends on the relative slopes of the supply and demand curves which, in turn, depend on a multitude of factors. It is both naive and misleading to assume that 100% of an expected cost increase to be passed onto consumers.

A cost that applies to every producer is basically 100% pushed through no matter how many times the left denies it.

 

[Jarhyn]

Almost every crop, GMO or not, organic or not, uses a chemical pesticide to prevent their crops from being devoured by insects. You wouldn't want to drink any of those pesticides straight from a cup, Round-up or not, organic or not. With a forced GMO label, it won't serve the ends that you may expect from a little extra knowledge. It will be misleading. You will be led to think that the non-GMO products are safer than the GMO products, and it is absolutely not true.

The intent is to make a GMO that is resistant to herbicide. Now, the plant can be drenched in the shit and not show any signs. It is strictly for the convenience and cost cutting of the grower...not the eater . We really do not have a clue. I can agree with you that we DON'T KNOW IF A GIVEN GMO IS UNSAFE. WE REALLY DON'T KNOW IT IS SAFE. AND WITHOUT LABELING WE WON'T KNOW IF IT IS AT ALL...MAYBE TILL IT IS TOO LATE.

Labeling won't answer that question. It cannot answer that question. There is too much noise and very little signal. All it will do is promote hysteria and the assumption without evidence that they are dangerous, and likewise bias any research.

The only way to answer those questions is to continue on as we are and do real double-blind longitudinal research. Forced Labeling will lead to an opposite effect from what you propose.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I prefer my food to be tasty and free of known poisons.

The dose makes the poison. There is nothing that is toxic in a sufficiently small quantity. There is nothing that isn't toxic in a sufficiently large quantity.

 

[bilby]

Almost every crop, GMO or not, organic or not, uses a chemical pesticide to prevent their crops from being devoured by insects. You wouldn't want to drink any of those pesticides straight from a cup, Round-up or not, organic or not. With a forced GMO label, it won't serve the ends that you may expect from a little extra knowledge. It will be misleading. You will be led to think that the non-GMO products are safer than the GMO products, and it is absolutely not true.

The intent is to make a GMO that is resistant to herbicide. Now, the plant can be drenched in the shit and not show any signs treated at a different point in the growing cycle, so instead of nuking the weeds with lots of really toxic shit, then growing crops, now farmers can use small amounts of herbicides that are less persistent and less toxic to humans instead. It is strictly for the convenience and cost cutting of the grower...not the eater but has a side effect of reducing the amount and toxicity of any herbicide residue on the harvested crops, so it benefits the eater too. WeThose opposing GMOs really do not have a clue. I can agree with you that we DON'T KNOW IF A GIVEN GMO IS UNSAFE. WE REALLY DON'T KNOW IT IS SAFE IT HAS BEEN TESTED AND NOT ONE RISK HAS BEEN FOUND. AND WITHOUT LABELLING WE WON'T KNOW IF IT IS AT ALL...MAYBE TILL IT IS TOO LATE. BECAUSE IT IS INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM THE NON-GMO VARIETY

FIFY.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The proper response to ignorance is education not hiding relevant information.

The proper response to dangerous food ingredients is to ban their use, not to label them as dangerous.

Prove that RR Maize is dangerous, and the FDA won't mandate a label saying "Warning, this food contains RR Maize and may cause your toddler to explode"; They will simply ban it from being used at all.

Labelling is for hazards that only threaten a specific and identified minority - such as allergy sufferers - who need to be warned of something that is harmless to the general population.

Peanuts are harmless, except to the minority of people who are allergic to peanuts.

By all means, if you can identify a minority of people who are susceptible to harm from a specific GMO, then label products containing that GMO - but if you can't, then labelling is a red herring. Either a given GMO is universally harmful, and should be banned; or it is harmless, and no additional labelling is needed; or it is harmful only to an identified minority, in which case, you must be able to point to the human characteristic that renders a given GMO dangerous for that minority.

A food label that says 'May contain peanuts' is useful. A food label that says 'May contain plant or animal products' is not - because it is too broad to help anyone avoid a particular risk. A food label that says 'Toxic - do not eat' is pointless, because food that can reasonably be labelled in that way shouldn't be labelled - it should be banned.

GMOs are clearly not generally toxic (or most of the US population would be sick or dead). So the only reason they might need to be labelled is if there is an identifiable minority who can be harmed by them.

Please feel free to identify that minority, or STFU about labelling.

The use of WMD to demolish your opponent's arguments isn't fair! Back off!

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I have no idea what that means.

It is the difference between claiming you are not liable for yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater because the information 'fire' merely described a fire depicted in the film. The communication implies data beyond its mere content. In a similar way, mandated necessary labels such as 'this contains GMOs' transmits 'GMOs are dangerous' even if the text doesn't say that outright. It is assumed because of external contexts. This additional data that is communicated due to context is called 'exformation', because it is not 'in'formation.

Come on, Kirk, Fire!

 

[ronburgundy]

IF Hoover could make more profit by doing that and get away with it, then they would do it, so it would be a rational fear.
The more probable danger is not from psychopaths seeking to harm for the fun of it, but normal people who are not trying to harm but to profit, and they just care more about profit than any harm to others their profit seeking happens to cause.
It isn't that we have "no way of knowing" the intentions of the corporate decision makers. We in fact have every way of knowing based upon a mountain of evidence that those decision makers have a selfish disregard for public safety in a single-minded pursuit of ever increasing profits. And this motive has led them to do things that have caused harm, and will do so again in the future.
If there are ways GM corps can profit off of types of GMOs that also happen to be harmful, then we know that they will likely pursue such GMOs, not because they are harmful but merely without regard for such harm.
More specifically, we know that DuPont controls most of the pesticide market and the GMO crop market. Thus we know it is in their direct profit interests to use GM tech in ways that increase the use of pesticides that we know are environmentally dangerous.

Is there plausible speculation that would lead us to suspect that there can be a profit motive behind the sale of products that would harm public health? That would be an essential point. For the same reason Hoover would have no plausible interest in selling vacuum cleaners that stab people, Dupont and Monsanto have no interest in selling seeds that would harm public health.

You're not getting it. It has nothing to do with them wanting to or having an interest in harming people or with harming people as being a motivator.
It is simply a matter of not having a strong enough motive to deliberately reduce their own profits by spending $ to make sure their actions and products do not cause harm, and refusing to engage in actions that may cause harm, no matter how profitable.
Their defining and sole interest is in increasing their own profits. Their are many ways of making profits that can cause harm to people. In fact, there are likely more ways to profit by harming people than by helping them. When your business involves food production, poison use, and agricultural practices that can have massive long term environmental impacts then you are highly likely to stumble upon profitable actions that have harmful impact without even trying. Which means you have to put great effort into trying to actively avoid such actions, and sacrifice the profits you could otherwise gain.
Profit has to not be your top priority, public safety must trump it. Since profit is the top and really only priority of DuPont, they are guaranteed not to give public safety sufficient consideration, unless the public actively forces them to. To believe any thing else is to deny the most basic facts of corporate economics and human behavior.

Finally, I gave you a specific example of an immensely profitable GMO product that happens to cause harm that DuPont has strong interest in creating. Pesticide resistant crops are guaranteed to increase use of pesticides and the use of stronger and more environmentally dangerous pesticides. That is DuPonts primary motive in creating such resistance, because they sell 60% of agricultural pesticides. The damage that pesticides can do to crops themselves creates a kind of natural check on the amount of pesticides they use. Making the crops themselves resistant to pesticide damage is only of interest to farmer or DuPont because it allows farmers to use more and stronger pesticides.

 

[Axulus]

Is there plausible speculation that would lead us to suspect that there can be a profit motive behind the sale of products that would harm public health? That would be an essential point. For the same reason Hoover would have no plausible interest in selling vacuum cleaners that stab people, Dupont and Monsanto have no interest in selling seeds that would harm public health.

You're not getting it. It has nothing to do with them wanting to or having an interest in harming people or with harming people as being a motivator.
It is simply a matter of not having a strong enough motive to deliberately reduce their own profits by spending $ to make sure their actions and products do not cause harm, and refusing to engage in actions that may cause harm, no matter how profitable.
Their defining and sole interest is in increasing their own profits. Their are many ways of making profits that can cause harm to people. In fact, there are likely more ways to profit by harming people than by helping them. When your business involves food production, poison use, and agricultural practices that can have massive long term environmental impacts then you are highly likely to stumble upon profitable actions that have harmful impact without even trying. Which means you have to put great effort into trying to actively avoid such actions, and sacrifice the profits you could otherwise gain.
Profit has to not be your top priority, public safety must trump it. Since profit is the top and really only priority of DuPont, they are guaranteed not to give public safety sufficient consideration, unless the public actively forces them to. To believe any thing else is to deny the most basic facts of corporate economics and human behavior.

Finally, I gave you a specific example of an immensely profitable GMO product that happens to cause harm that DuPont has strong interest in creating. Pesticide resistant crops are guaranteed to increase use of pesticides and the use of stronger and more environmentally dangerous pesticides. That is DuPonts primary motive in creating such resistance, because they sell 60% of agricultural pesticides. The damage that pesticides can do to crops themselves creates a kind of natural check on the amount of pesticides they use. Making the crops themselves resistant to pesticide damage is only of interest to farmer or DuPont because it allows farmers to use more and stronger pesticides.

How do you figure they don't have a strong enough motive to spend necessary funds to make sure their actions do not harm people?

1. A harmful product will no longer sell, meaning the R&D and other investment that went into it is useless
2. There will be a major hit to reputation, many customers will stop buying your other products
3. Class action lawsuits: expensive attorney fees, settlement payments in line with the amount of harm caused, etc.

Please elaborate how you determined that these factors are insufficient.

In regards to environmentally dangerous pesticide use, that needs to be kept in check like all pollutants. There needs to be regulation/taxes/fines to make creating environmental damage costly. The problem is therefore more a failure of pollution regulation than anything else.

Finally, glyphosate resistance is a counter example to "Pesticide resistant crops are guaranteed to increase use of pesticides and the use of stronger and more environmentally dangerous pesticides". Glyphosate is a more environmentally friendly pesticide and safer for humans, compared to pesticides used before the introduction of glyphosate resistant GMO seeds. This is not to say that glyphosate causes no environmental damage, but rather less so than other previous viable options. Not much of a guarantee if the most famous GMO seed variety already falsifies your hypothesis.

 

[laughing dog]

We are informed. If the package doesn't say "non-GMO" then we know it may contain GMO materials. What more do we need to know?

You don't know that. You conclude that based on a number of assumptions. With voluntary labeling, the lack of a label may simply mean a lack of effort.

What we don't want is to pay the extra logistics costs for something that has no value to us. Let the people who want non-GMO pay the costs of tracking their non-GMO products. Food labeling is about pushing those logistics costs off onto the rest of us.

That is simply untrue as a number of posts in this thread indicate.

Moreover, cost increases of any size are not automatically pushed through to consumers. The eventual price increase depends on the relative slopes of the supply and demand curves which, in turn, depend on a multitude of factors. It is both naive and misleading to assume that 100% of an expected cost increase to be passed onto consumers.

A cost that applies to every producer is basically 100% pushed through no matter how many times the left denies it.

I didn't realize until right now that entire mainstream economics profession was part of "the left". I linked the Wiki article on  Tax_incidence - it is applicable to any cost increase.

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Actually it does indicate the cost is negligible. Most of his analysis is irrelevant since he is talking about tracing every different GMO seed. But the bin costs are fixed costs which can be spread out over many bushels.

He was only examining the costs he would incur, not the costs down the supply chain--and even his own costs aren't negligible even if you only separate GMO from non-GMO.

Your responses examine your imagined straw men, not the actual content of the posts to which you respond.

 

[laughing dog]

Labelling is not simply about danger, so your entire response is pointless. Since your entire argument is based on that false premise, your advice is more hilariously ironic.

Apparently it is in this case - almost all the people clamouring for GMOs to be labelled are also saying that they are not safe.

If you understand that GMOs are perfectly safe, then that's something you should, perhaps, have made more explicit; But given that you understand this, why are you pushing for labelling?

I take it, from your response, that you do understand that GMOs are perfectly safe?

I am not pushing for anything nor do I understand that GMOs are perfectly safe. Nor do I care if GMOs are safe (nothing is really perfectly safe). I am simply expressing disbelief that labeling is costly. And I am applying the dictum that labelling in general is a good idea since it provides more relevant information to consumers.

The motivations of the anti-GMOers is not really relevant in my view. They believe GMOs are unsafe or immoral or whatever. Consumers should have easy access to information relevant to them in order that they can make legal purchasing decisions that they feel are in their best interests.

 

[Axulus]

Apparently it is in this case - almost all the people clamouring for GMOs to be labelled are also saying that they are not safe.

If you understand that GMOs are perfectly safe, then that's something you should, perhaps, have made more explicit; But given that you understand this, why are you pushing for labelling?

I take it, from your response, that you do understand that GMOs are perfectly safe?

I am not pushing for anything nor do I understand that GMOs are perfectly safe. Nor do I care if GMOs are safe (nothing is really perfectly safe). I am simply expressing disbelief that labeling is costly. And I am applying the dictum that labelling in general is a good idea since it provides more relevant information to consumers.

The motivations of the anti-GMOers is not really relevant in my view. They believe GMOs are unsafe or immoral or whatever. Consumers should have easy access to information relevant to them in order that they can make legal purchasing decisions that they feel are in their best interests.

And how is the lack of mandatory label preventing anti-GMOers from making legal purchasing decisions to buy "GMO-free" or "Organic" products that they feel are in their best interests?