Should Corn sold into shops be labelled as Genetically Modified Teosinte?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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I don't know about you but I don't trust the origin of such transformations of our food. God knows what else selective breeding can achieve. They could make Frankenfood and poison us with their wacky notions. This stuff needs information on it so we can feel safe and secure in our food .

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

#labelchihuahuas

[Frodo]

To what purpose besides feeding into people's hysteria about 'frankenfood' that we probably eat every day?  

There is such a thing as too much information.....      

[Ban my account ffs!]

I think the debate needs to go beyond just labeling GMOs.  There should be a difference between breeding or modifications that simply increase nutritional yield of the food and modifications that are meant to increase harvest yields.

[MurrayBannerman]

I don't understand how the party that claims to be so pro-science created this issue. The GMO's causing harm crowd is up their with vaccines causing autism crowd.

Well, they aren't causing a massive societial danger, so I guess the GMO people are better.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

That's evolution, not genetically modified.

[Ban my account ffs!]

That's evolution, not genetically modified.

No.  Its intentional genetic modification through controlled breeding.  Perhaps ironically, its more "intelligent design" than evolution.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

That's evolution, not genetically modified.

No.  Its intentional genetic modification through controlled breeding.  Perhaps ironically, its more "intelligent design" than evolution.

I think GM is supposed to mean gene splicing, not evolution with human input. Or are we going to say that dogs are genetically modified too?

[Ban my account ffs!]

That's evolution, not genetically modified.

No.  Its intentional genetic modification through controlled breeding.  Perhaps ironically, its more "intelligent design" than evolution.

I think GM is supposed to mean gene splicing, not evolution with human input. Or are we going to say that dogs are genetically modified too?

What is the difference then between gene splicing and selective breeding to take advantage of random gene mutations?

Are you saying if corn mutated to become resistant to pests but also greatly increased health threats to humans, that would be okay... But gene splicing to up vitamin a content in grains is horrible frankenscience?

I think youre playing into the very point gully was making by authoring this thread... That either we should stop freaking out about gmos or differentiate between positive and negative human impacts rather than "whether the corn got sugary through corn sex or in a science lab"

[Tetro Kornbluth]

That's evolution, not genetically modified.

No.  Its intentional genetic modification through controlled breeding.  Perhaps ironically, its more "intelligent design" than evolution.

I think GM is supposed to mean gene splicing, not evolution with human input. Or are we going to say that dogs are genetically modified too?

But that isn't what is meant by its folk usage.

[TJ in Oregon]

What is the difference then between gene splicing and selective breeding to take advantage of random gene mutations?

Are you saying if corn mutated to become resistant to pests but also greatly increased health threats to humans, that would be okay... But gene splicing to up vitamin a content in grains is horrible frankenscience?

I think youre playing into the very point gully was making by authoring this thread... That either we should stop freaking out about gmos or differentiate between positive and negative human impacts rather than "whether the corn got sugary through corn sex or in a science lab"

The difference is that gene splicing involves the genetic modification of an individual while selective breeding is an applied genetic shift toward a phenotype expressing DNA that was already contained in the total population of that organism to begin with.

I'm not saying we should label GMOs and think the whole movement is silly. But there is a large difference between gene splicing and selective breeding.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Every fruit and vegetable should come with a complete description of its journey from birth to the supermarket, compiled and written by a professional biographer. Doesn't the consumer deserve to know?

Although it is of course ridiculous to go that far, I don't think much harm can come from increased transparency over food.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Every fruit and vegetable should come with a complete description of its journey from birth to the supermarket, compiled and written by a professional biographer. Doesn't the consumer deserve to know?

Although it is of course ridiculous to go that far, I don't think much harm can come from increased transparency over food.

I hear that claim frequently from proponents of GMO labeling, almost always stated as if it were self-evident. I don't understand why it should be taken as obvious, and, even if it were, it would not be a particularly compelling rationale.

There is an argument to be made that labelling GM-crops demystifies the GM industry. Largely, the entire anti-GM movement (apart from "natural food" hucksters) is directly the fault of the stupidity and cravenness of the GM industry. People view GM crops in the abstract or through a fearful lens - sweetcorn with human ears or whatever - they do not make the connection with what is on their plate.

Basically the food industry is wasting money lobbying against "GM labeling". If more states pass the bills, and people realise that GM foods are in their everyday staples, the debate will take a much more reasonable tone than contemporary discourse. ("OMG u r so dumb and anti science lol!" "well ZOMG u must be shill for Monsanto!!!!!")

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Perhaps you're right - after all I am placing my guesswork entirely on conjecture. But I do think the food industries sheer effort against labelling is self-defeating. People are fearful about GMO's, to the extent of being used by spivs that exploit fear. So far, the debate have been terrible PR for food companies. From the perspective of the public, the debate is between shadowy financially imposing food companies and a bunch of underdog hippies.

I think all the money spent constantly attacking state GM labelling laws like some nationwide whack-a-mole and use it to educate the public on the issue. Better, they can pre-empt the government and start labelling products themselves avoiding the problems of bureaucratic jiggering and patchwork like local laws. Once people see that, like, basically everything they eat is labeled; they may start to calm down.

The more people inform themselves on GMO's, the more likely they are to have a more nuanced opinion on the issue. But the current strategy of saying "lol public are dumbs" is moronic and self-defeating. I sometimes wonder who is in charge of PR of these stupid companies anyway. If they don't, I have no sympathy whatsoever for the industry; and hope we can find a way to feed the planet without these cretins.

[Alcon]

Unfortunately, we've seen this with vaccines, and we'd see it with GMOs.  If you do a massive public campaign asserting something is safe, or doesn't cause cancer/autism/whatever, it makes people who were previously skeptical about it more paranoid.  Considering that this information is both useless to the consumer, and apparently counterproductive from a public education perspective, I don't think there's a good argument for labeling GMOs.  And "what's wrong with more information?" is a really weak one.  The problem is that, even if it was totally neutral, non-damaging information, requiring the information creates legal liability and demands on the supply chain...plus, like Аverroës Nix is saying, there's nearly an infinite number of permutations of information.  Why cherry-pick and disclose the one piece of information that is going to play into irrational fears?

This issue just drives me crazy.  Democrats can be so insane about it.

[The_Doctor]

No. GMO's are perfectly safe and are an extension of the breeding of plants. GMO has been going on for thousands of years. It's just more refined now. The corn we eat today wasn't always the corn stalk you see now. It was genetically manipulated to become that way.

This is the liberal version of the vaccine hysteria.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

This is the liberal version of the vaccine hysteria.

My neighbors back home are a Assemblies of God and deeply conservative and tended to serve organic food when I was at their house. I don't know their position on vaccines, and I wouldn't be surprised if some on the far left were scared of them as well. Types of fear transcend political boundaries.

[ingemann]

To what purpose besides feeding into people's hysteria about 'frankenfood' that we probably eat every day?  

There is such a thing as too much information.....      

Most (if not all) commercial GMO plants (animals is a different matter) are made with the purpose of increase their resistance toward pesticides (meaning more pesticides can be used, when usiong these crops), I personal think that people should be able to choose to limit the effect of their food on the environment.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

@Alcon

GMO companies don't have to prove to you or me - people who have actively sought information; and they certainty don't have to prove anything to rabid anti-GMO'ers who seek out absurd "facts" about transgenics. They need to prove to Joe Public what they are peddling is safe.

Your example of vaccines is a good one to prove my point actually. When vaccination programmes are announced without education or transparency - just a bunch of didactic men in white coats, they are fertile breeding ground for anti-vax conspironuts and shyster spivs. The public as a whole is not stupid, but it is susceptible to misinformation especially when Big Companies or Big Government is one of the parties. Public education and transparency about vaccines, yes, does not convince the fruitloops among us. They will always return to echo chambers to whine. But it has convinced the public as a whole that vaccines are good. That is the only escape for GMO's to escape the self-imposed mire they find themselves in.

I'm prepared to predict food companies will soon start providing the GM labels of their own volition.

[Alcon]

@Alcon

GMO companies don't have to prove to you or me - people who have actively sought information; and they certainty don't have to prove anything to rabid anti-GMO'ers who seek out absurd "facts" about transgenics. They need to prove to Joe Public what they are peddling is safe.

Your example of vaccines is a good one to prove my point actually. When vaccination programmes are announced without education or transparency - just a bunch of didactic men in white coats, they are fertile breeding ground for anti-vax conspironuts and shyster spivs. The public as a whole is not stupid, but it is susceptible to misinformation especially when Big Companies or Big Government is one of the parties. Public education and transparency about vaccines, yes, does not convince the fruitloops among us. They will always return to echo chambers to whine. But it has convinced the public as a whole that vaccines are good. That is the only escape for GMO's to escape the self-imposed mire they find themselves in.

I'm prepared to predict food companies will soon start providing the GM labels of their own volition.

That doesn't really address my point, though.  The number of Westerners who errantly believe GMOs are either unsafe, or that the evidence is unclear, vastly outweighs the number who know it's safe.  Simply labeling a food as "GMO" is not going to increase confidence, because it's not going to change the rate of those opinions.  If anything, having something commonly regarded as suspect labeled -- even voluntarily -- will probably make people assume it is, in fact, suspect.

You point out that increasing awareness about vaccines has helped decrease vaccine skepticism.  Mostly agreed.  The problem is that this is because vaccines have special, positive messaging -- "vaccinate your children and they won't die of diseases."  It's this, not telling people that vaccines are safe, that has helped push people toward belief in vaccines.  In fact, if you tell people that evidence shows vaccines aren't unsafe, they become more suspicious of vaccines, because you remind them that vaccine risk claims exist.  This isn't my intuition.  We have research that substantiates this.

There simply is no positive messaging analogue with GMOs.  When it comes to irrationally risk-averse people, there's no countervailing risk we can freak them out with.  "It's safe" doesn't work with vaccines, so I doubt it will work with GMOs.  I might be wrong, but I see no reason to believe I am.

[Alcon]

To what purpose besides feeding into people's hysteria about 'frankenfood' that we probably eat every day?  

There is such a thing as too much information.....      

Most (if not all) commercial GMO plants (animals is a different matter) are made with the purpose of increase their resistance toward pesticides (meaning more pesticides can be used, when usiong these crops), I personal think that people should be able to choose to limit the effect of their food on the environment.

That seems like a pretty contested claim to me.  Unfortunately, herbicide/pesticide tracking was terminated under the Bush presidency, so we just have some estimates, which vary from a slight decrease in use to a marked increase.  On top of that, there seems to be some debate about whether the chemicals we're using are less harsh than before.  I don't really know much here, although I sense on-balance, I'd guess there's an increase in the use of harsh chemicals, but it seems almost entirely fueled by the use of a subset of GMOs (Round-up Ready).

But how do you want to handle this?  You want to label all GMOs because a subset of them correlate with higher environmental use of herbicide/pesticide?  You don't want to limit the labeling to those GMOs, or label in a way that doesn't imply that genetic modification is intrinsically an issue, as opposed to herbicide/pesticide use?  Especially considering we already have a label regimen (organic certification) explicitly to guarantee non-use of pesticide/herbicide, and voluntary labeling is always an option, this seems both unnecessary and unnecessarily sloppy.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Unfortunately, we've seen this with vaccines, and we'd see it with GMOs.  If you do a massive public campaign asserting something is safe, or doesn't cause cancer/autism/whatever, it makes people who were previously skeptical about it more paranoid.  Considering that this information is both useless to the consumer, and apparently counterproductive from a public education perspective, I don't think there's a good argument for labeling GMOs.  And "what's wrong with more information?" is a really weak one.  The problem is that, even if it was totally neutral, non-damaging information, requiring the information creates legal liability and demands on the supply chain...plus, like Аverroës Nix is saying, there's nearly an infinite number of permutations of information.  Why cherry-pick and disclose the one piece of information that is going to play into irrational fears?

This issue just drives me crazy.  Democrats can be so insane about it.

     When Eisenhower was faced with the problem of McCarthy, he was deeply concerned with the effect that McCarthy had on the minds of the public. He understood that McCarthy fed off of attention. Confronting him publicly would be useless, and possibly counterproductive. As such, President Eisenhower declined to acknowledge the Senator's efforts.

     Sometimes, it is better to ignore a problem. Acknowledging it only lends validity to an idea that has none.

[ingemann]

To what purpose besides feeding into people's hysteria about 'frankenfood' that we probably eat every day?  

There is such a thing as too much information.....      

Most (if not all) commercial GMO plants (animals is a different matter) are made with the purpose of increase their resistance toward pesticides (meaning more pesticides can be used, when usiong these crops), I personal think that people should be able to choose to limit the effect of their food on the environment.

That seems like a pretty contested claim to me.  Unfortunately, herbicide/pesticide tracking was terminated under the Bush presidency, so we just have some estimates, which vary from a slight decrease in use to a marked increase.  On top of that, there seems to be some debate about whether the chemicals we're using are less harsh than before.  I don't really know much here, although I sense on-balance, I'd guess there's an increase in the use of harsh chemicals, but it seems almost entirely fueled by the use of a subset of GMOs (Round-up Ready).

But how do you want to handle this?  You want to label all GMOs because a subset of them correlate with higher environmental use of herbicide/pesticide?  You don't want to limit the labeling to those GMOs, or label in a way that doesn't imply that genetic modification is intrinsically an issue, as opposed to herbicide/pesticide use?  Especially considering we already have a label regimen (organic certification) explicitly to guarantee non-use of pesticide/herbicide, and voluntary labeling is always an option, this seems both unnecessary and unnecessarily sloppy.

I would prefer that the government handled it, but as your example with Bush administration show we can neither expect or hope that would happen, which is why I'm fine with hysterical anti-GMO activists doing their best with labelling and sabotaging it in other ways.

Here's the truth GMO can be useful, but we really don't need it to feed ourselves, no matter what techo utopians among us thinks, so if the government is unwilling or unable to regulate it, well I'm all for activists doing their best to bring it all down.

[Alcon]

To what purpose besides feeding into people's hysteria about 'frankenfood' that we probably eat every day?  

There is such a thing as too much information.....      

Most (if not all) commercial GMO plants (animals is a different matter) are made with the purpose of increase their resistance toward pesticides (meaning more pesticides can be used, when usiong these crops), I personal think that people should be able to choose to limit the effect of their food on the environment.

That seems like a pretty contested claim to me.  Unfortunately, herbicide/pesticide tracking was terminated under the Bush presidency, so we just have some estimates, which vary from a slight decrease in use to a marked increase.  On top of that, there seems to be some debate about whether the chemicals we're using are less harsh than before.  I don't really know much here, although I sense on-balance, I'd guess there's an increase in the use of harsh chemicals, but it seems almost entirely fueled by the use of a subset of GMOs (Round-up Ready).

But how do you want to handle this?  You want to label all GMOs because a subset of them correlate with higher environmental use of herbicide/pesticide?  You don't want to limit the labeling to those GMOs, or label in a way that doesn't imply that genetic modification is intrinsically an issue, as opposed to herbicide/pesticide use?  Especially considering we already have a label regimen (organic certification) explicitly to guarantee non-use of pesticide/herbicide, and voluntary labeling is always an option, this seems both unnecessary and unnecessarily sloppy.

I would prefer that the government handled it, but as your example with Bush administration show we can neither expect or hope that would happen, which is why I'm fine with hysterical anti-GMO activists doing their best with labelling and sabotaging it in other ways.

Here's the truth GMO can be useful, but we really don't need it to feed ourselves, no matter what techo utopians among us thinks, so if the government is unwilling or unable to regulate it, well I'm all for activists doing their best to bring it all down.

You didn't really respond to what I said, dude.  I asked you why you want to label GMOs for simply correlating with bad things, instead of focusing on the bad things themselves, and asked why you think it's a good idea to exploit irrational fears of GMOs to attack an issue (pesticides/herbicides) that's not even relevant to all GMOs.  I pointed out an optional labeling regime already exists for this purpose (organic certification), too.  You just repeated your basic opinion without addressing any of these concerns.

You're also shifting the burden for no particular reason.  So what if "we really don't need [GMOs] to feed ourselves"?  Why is the test absolute necessity?  If it has more use than it does harm, it's a good thing, even if it's not absolutely necessary.

[Storebought]

Someone with more experience in plant biology than I have should explain the difference between artificial selection and genetic engineering.