Over 80 percent of Americans support mandatory labels on foods containing DNA

[Taco Truck 🚚]

Hey, but GMO labeling isn't just playing off of fearmongering in an un-informed populace, right? This is admittedly strange though- don't people learn about DNA in high school? I know we did. There are also more gems of public ignorance:

These people are totally qualified to determine whether DNA is a risk to humans and to elect the government! Isn't democracy great!

There is no shortage of narcissists on the internet.

What we have learned from this exercise is most people in the country aren't 16 years old like you.  DNA's structure was only elucidated in the 1950s.  A fuller understanding of its role wasn't achieved until years later.  And it takes years after a discovery for it to finally trickle down into high school textbooks.  Even textbooks that are routinely used in medical schools are outdated.  It is cost and logistically prohibitive to updated textbooks every single year.  There are plenty of retirees who were never taught about DNA or at a minimum it was only briefly touched on.  I don't know for sure when the era of robust emphasized wide spread high school education about DNA began.

Further if you read the author's own statement...

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The average person will go their entire life without ever being asked a direct question about DNA.  When you grow up and you are 50 we'll see how you do with a pop quiz about high school calculus or chemistry.  The author goes on to say this...

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It's amazing that you took all that to mean "I'm smarter than everyone else and we should take away those people's right to vote."

And by the way who says you need to even know what DNA is to understand broad concepts of genetics?  You do realize there was tons of genetics research done before the discovery of the double helix?  I don't have to even know DNA exists to know identical twins look the same.  Gregor Mendel conducted his experiments over a century before the discovery of the double helix.

[Taco Truck 🚚]

The bid to label and ban GMO is akin to the creationists demanding that we teach creationism in our schools. The moronic stupidity on the Left is just as bad as on the extreme right. It's dangerous - possibly more dangerous - because if you restrict our food supply to non-GMO, we risk not being able to feed everyone. GMO IS one reason we're going to feed an expanding global population.

Chipotle banning GMO food to placate liberal Democrats who were perpetually frightened by anything that landed on their plates was retarded. Here's a hint - corn is genetically modified. And has been for thousands of years.

The scientific community has repeatedly said GMO and the like in our food is perfectly safe. It's like how they said aspartame is perfectly safe, and yet some deluded liberals scream that aspartame is dangerous. Yes, if you chug it down by the boatload.

Ah, another Republican that can't tell the difference between a fact and religious faith.  Here's a helpful key:

GMO=FACT
creationism=religious faith

Not surprising.  Republicans never want to put FACTS on food labels.  The last thing a Republican wants is an informed electorate or consumer.

GMO, DNA, and whatever buzz words people want to throw out are irrelevant.  This Republican game has been going on for decades.  The smoke screen isn't fooling anyone.

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http://articles.latimes.com/1990-03-08/news/mn-2914_1_food-labels

And anyone that says there are no issues with GMO crops is either completely stupid or knowingly pushing propaganda.

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http://news.yahoo.com/monsanto-admitting-guilt-zombie-gmo-wheat-settlement-210908016.html

[Taco Truck 🚚]

There is nothing inherently wrong with consuming GMO's (indeed most are so stringently tested - Hawaian Papya aside, and that was a very unusual case - they are significantly safer than "normal" foods). the interesting thing (beyond the exact need for GMO's which are often overstated by techno utopians  - much of the real issues of food is related to unsexy issues like logistics) is the environmental and social impacts which are mixed. Which raises the question why just GMO's? Farming is an incredibly environmentally and socially destructive act, "organic" or not. Should food labels also have I dunno, the water usage? Or the use of soluble fertilisers? Or the use of immigrant labour? Or the carbon and methane emissions? Or the land usage? Etc.

I'm not sure I would label GMO foods as "safer".  We literally have thousands of years worth of data on "natural" foods and GMO food is such a new field.  You see this in the pharmaceutical industry as well.  You can do a study with a drug on thousands of people but only find certain horrible side effects once it is approved and administered to tens of millions of people over the course of years.  Having said that I don't have any reason to believe the few modifications I've read about are poisons or in any way nutritionally unusual.

I do agree with the environmental concerns.  That's why I posted that information about the zombie wheat.  GMO is different from a lot of other environmental impacts from modern farming in that you could literally have one gene escape into the environment and devastate global farming.  For example a gene that resists herbicides.

And I do agree with your questioning the necessity of widespread GMO use.  Crop yields in the US this year have been very good.  Unlike some of the other guys who are posting in this thread I have a true genuine interest in this topic.  The farm reports have been crazy.

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The corn and soybean harvest is so large they are literally just dumping it outside in the parking lot and hoping they can get it inside somewhere before it is ruined.  The only other choice is selling it at a loss.  So yeah in an environment like that I think we have a little latitude to consider trimming GMO usage.

[Taco Truck 🚚]

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Scare tactics. The scientific community has repeatedly said that GMO foods are healthy and safe to eat.

Not too good with English either I see.  "Safer" does not mean the same as "safe".  Two things can be "safe".  That doesn't necessarily mean one is "safer" than the other.  Vocabulary, man.  Learn it.

GMO are in fact probably going to end up being essential to deal with a growing global population and there is no way around that fact.

Now who is practicing scare tactics?  There is more than enough food on the planet right now to feed everyone with huge swaths of the planet GMO free.  As Crabcake told you if you bothered to read and comprehend the thread the main problem is logistics.  The food is in one place being wasted and the starving people with no money are in another.

You can peddle the scheme that GMO are somehow unsafe, that we should be cautious, but the scientific community as a whole, the vast majority of scientists say it's perfectly fine to eat GMO.

You really don't understand English do you?  Crabcake and I never said there was a problem eating GMO food.  We spoke of the environmental hazards.

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http://www.nature.com/news/genetically-modified-crops-pass-benefits-to-weeds-1.13517

Educate yourself son and quit drinking ADM Koolaid.

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http://www.cnbc.com/id/100893540

[Taco Truck 🚚]

1. If both are safe to eat, produce, and consume, why does the adjective "safer" matter?

I'm not the one who originally used the word "safer".  While I agree with a lot of what Crabcake is saying I took exception to that one point.  I did not think it was factually correct.  And it is an important point.  There is only so much testing one can do in the experimental phase.  There simply is no substitute for testing something out on billions of people for thousands of years.  That has nothing to do with GMO.  It's a basic commonly understood concept in the pharmaceutical industry.  No one who works in the pharmaceutical industry would even argue about that.  And we see this problem time and time again amongst the lay public.  When a drug is pulled after it has been approved people assume incompetence or a conspiracy.  And that simply is not the case most of the time.  It's just understood that all that testing is actually limited vs just giving the medicine to millions of people for years.  But again lay people always get tripped up on that point.

2. With a population of 10 billion people projected by 2050, we could probably feed everyone with dealing with our food spoilage problems.  But we could also handle the increased population by using GMO to handle that food load. I say that if we can use GMO to feed the world's population, that's a great idea.

You are just posting unsubstantiated assertions.  Ever since grad school when I learned the stunning fact that we actually have plenty of food on the planet I've seen one professional after another echo that sentiment.  And the vast majority of those statements had nothing to do with GMO.  In fact I'm sure quite a few of those people are 100% comfortable with GMO crops.  I did not post that fact to win some stupid internet forum GMO war.  I posted it to educate people that this idea there is a food shortage is complete baloney.  We don't need to grow more food.  We could actually get by with dramatically less food if we just managed it properly.

And furthermore instead of doing crazy gene splicing how about some birth control?  Seems to me you are just back solving into EVERYONE NEEDS GMO!

3. You don't read my links either do you? One of the links cited an Italian study...

And you didn't read my link to Nature.  You are keep cherrypicking and making it sound like every scientist is on board with your viewpoint.  Nature is a far more prestigious and far more cited journal than anything you linked to and bam right there scientists concerned about the environmental impact of GMO crops.  But you just ignore that data point.  I am well aware of studies that have found GMOs to be "safe".  And at the same time I have found studies of GMOs that raise concerns.  Here's the issue if GMOs as safe then we have nothing to worry about.  Even if some places ban them and we fight about it for decades in the end everything will be fine and we wouldn't have lost much in the grand scheme of things.  But lets look at the scenario where there is an issue and we just ignore it as you propose.  Even if there is a 1% chance of a herbicide resistant gene jumping to a wild planet the results could be catastrophic.  At no time have I suggested banning all GMO crops as you hysterically keep implying.  I've just said we must proceed with caution and push back against all these people telling us to look the other way and just assume everything is fine.

I would point out that to date, as the earlier article I linked to demonstrated, the scientific community seems to indicate that GMO is safe to grow.

Yeah you linked to some googled article and ignored a quote from Nature.  Hardly what I would call the makings of a global scientific consensus.  Hey man it is clear I have a much more robust science background than all you guys combined.  Trust me there are plenty of misconceptions and hyperbolic statements on both sides of this issue.  Anyone that says GMO's are totally safe or we should ban all GMOs is wrong.  Science is just more nuanced than usual nonsensical partisan bickering that pervades this forum.  There is a middle ground.

[Taco Truck 🚚]

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     This is probably the most cogent reason to not label GMOs. There is a lot of kneejerk opposition and general fear over what they are and what they do. We need to sort this all out and arrive at a real consensus on GMOs before we give the information to a segment of the population that is simply not equipped to handle it in a well-informed fashion.

By your logic until we definitively determine a safe drinking limit during pregnancy, assuming there is one, we should remove all these labels...



You can always count on the Republican back solving machine to arrive at one conclusion... "less information for consumers is better."  I will give you points though for not complaining about the high cost of printing ink.  I personally never understood how people could say that with a straight face.

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I have a hard time believing this, considering that every state that's had a vote on GMO labeling (And for the record, I'm not one of those anti-GMO crusaders) has voted against labeling in landslides.

That's because you are an intelligent thinking human being with no agenda.  The OP is a bizarre vehicle for its author to show the forum that he is more intelligent than 80% of the population and he should control their votes.  Simfan34's analysis is the exact opposite of the study's author's...

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http://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2015/1/19/dna-labels

[Taco Truck 🚚]

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     This is probably the most cogent reason to not label GMOs. There is a lot of kneejerk opposition and general fear over what they are and what they do. We need to sort this all out and arrive at a real consensus on GMOs before we give the information to a segment of the population that is simply not equipped to handle it in a well-informed fashion.

By your logic until we definitively determine a safe drinking limit during pregnancy, assuming there is one, we should remove all these labels...



You can always count on the Republican back solving machine to arrive at one conclusion... "less information for consumers is better."  I will give you points though for not complaining about the high cost of printing ink.  I personally never understood how people could say that with a straight face.

     Alcohol of any sort is known to cause problems during pregnancy. It's hardly clear that all (or even most) GMOs have deleterious effects. "This contains GMOs" is not useful information to give someone, whereas "this contains alcohol" is. If you had an argument, you wouldn't need ad hominems to make your point.

You are wrong and contradicting yourself.  No lower limit for alcohol consumption during pregnancy was universally established when those labels were introduced.  Last time I discussed the issue with obstetricians at an academic medical center there was still a debate.  So by your logic we should remove the label because hey we don't know whether one beer is okay.

And it is your ill informed opinion that a GMO label is not useful.  You don't know my education.

[Taco Truck 🚚]

Your own article doesn’t even signify what health risks this “zombie wheat” caused.

You don't seem to understand something can pose no threat when ingested and still wreck the environment and the economy.  Did you read the quote?  The farmers are suing Monsanto because of the economic damage they caused.

And you like a lot of lay people have a naive Hollywood kind of view of how disasters happen.  As someone who has studied some disaster prevention and management let me tell you most catastrophes are caused by little mundane things that the average person ignores.  It is only in retrospect that the average person goes whoa okay I guess that thing I ignored was God's warning shot across my bow.

The zombie wheat incident illustrated a couple of things.  First of all all that testing in a certain sense is worthless.  Why?  Because zombie wheat demonstrated seeds can circumnavigate the testing and approval process and end up surreptitiously on private property.  The second thing it demonstrated is all the control that Monsanto tells us they have is no guarantee.

Basically it is like Monsanto had the working ICBMs, centrifuges, and uranium mining equipment.  All they need to do is find some uranium... and they are actively prospecting.  So you would look at Monsanto and say nothing to see here?  Or would you call the IAEA and say let's chat with these guys?  So you see all that but you would rather wait for a mushroom cloud before even doing something as simple as writing three letters on food packaging?  I wish Republicans showed that kind of restraint with Iraq.  You guys have a very weird sense of what people should worry about and take action on.

Unfortunately I got a front row seat to a natural disaster that evolved into a man made disaster.  There was a structure with a completely mind blowingly dumb design flaw.  I had been in and around the structure more times than I can count.  I never realized it harbored this particular design flaw.  Well after disaster struck and the design flaw crippled various facilities and probably cost hundreds of millions of dollars I became aware of it.  I was dumbstruck.  And what was weird was even after the disaster the design flaw was mentioned almost casually.  Well I ranted about it to anyone who would listen.  My family probably got sick of me talking about it.

Well fast forward a few years later.  The Fukushima disaster occurs.  I get a call from a relative.  They tell me the reactor melted down and there were multiple hydrogen explosions because of the design flaw you kept ranting about all those years ago.  I just said, "They never learn."  Actually I didn't say that.  I ranted even more.  Can't believe the design flaw was demonstrated in grand fashion and some jerk running a nuclear power plant on a coastline on the ring of fire just shrugged.  WTF?!  God gives you a nice clean shot across the bow demonstrating for you a flaw in your design or process and all he gets in response is a smart ass on the interwebs.  Trust me seeing a package of food in the grocery store with three extra letters on the packaging is not the worst thing that can happen in this scenario... not even close.

[Taco Truck 🚚]

And you like a lot of lay people have a naive Hollywood kind of view of how disasters happen.  As someone who has studied some disaster prevention and management let me tell you most catastrophes are caused by little mundane things that the average person ignores.  It is only in retrospect that the average person goes whoa okay I guess that thing I ignored was God's warning shot across my bow.

The zombie wheat incident illustrated a couple of things.  First of all all that testing in a certain sense is worthless.  Why?  Because zombie wheat demonstrated seeds can circumnavigate the testing and approval process and end up surreptitiously on private property.  The second thing it demonstrated is all the control that Monsanto tells us they have is no guarantee.

You're using incredibly flowery language to say that a supply chain error occurred.  Nothing in the testing process of GMOs somehow protects against supply chain errors. You're acting like this was some unknown and catastrophic secondary consequence of the technology that somehow requires more than the usual remedies for civil issues, and I have no idea why.

Uhh...  Did you even read the post you quoted?  The whole point of my post was people are naive when they think most disasters are caused by big complicated high tech faults.  You are agreeing with me, genius.

And the second point I made is even once these simple faults are demonstrated in much smaller scale disasters history is littered with the wreckage of idiots that did not head those warnings... like Monsanto.  After the zombie wheat incident did they immediately coordinate with regulaters to implement a process improvement program... or did they deny the event happened?  If you chose choice B then congratulations you have at least half a brain.

Also an interesting point is no one in this thread is suggesting banning GMOs.  The only fanatical hair on fire lunatics are on the don't touch muh GMO side.  Everyone else is saying lets consider writing three letters on the side of the box and use a little bit of common sense restraint in using this new and potential dangerous discovery.  I mean do you really think it is crazy to say maybe the majority of Americans who are overweight or obese should think about eating less vs churning out more GMO mutations at a break neck speed to create high fructose corn syrup for Big Gulps?  Is that really a radical position?

I mean a poster on this forum honestly said we should suppress information from the average American because they can't handle it.

This is probably the most cogent reason to not label GMOs. There is a lot of kneejerk opposition and general fear over what they are and what they do. We need to sort this all out and arrive at a real consensus on GMOs before we give the information to a segment of the population that is simply not equipped to handle it in a well-informed fashion.

How Orwellian is that?  And worst of all if those nanny state apologists bothered to read what the author they were quoting wrote he debunked that insane notion.  Some of the proGMO fanatics on this forum have lost the plot.  Seriously printing three letters on a box, a bit more government oversight, and a more robust discussion of how much crap we cram in our fat pie holes is not a crazy suggestion.  Take a chill pill folks.



Can't live without muh GMO!!!  Gobal food shortage indeed!

[Taco Truck 🚚]

Then i discovered that seperating and monitoring GMO from non-GMO food sources is a significant expense.

Oh, brother.  I was hoping this ridiculous thread wouldn't bring up the "ink costs to much" argument.

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[Taco Truck 🚚]

I think in medicine you expect evidence or at least a plausible hypothesis.  There is no evidence that GMOs are the least bit unhealthy.  There's no plausible hypothesis as to how they would be unhealthy.  Thus, there's no reason to label them.

It's like when you're trying to get a drug approved by the FDA.  You have to show a "mechanism of action," how this chemical compound will interact with some part of a disease or a person's body to create the desired result.  Nobody has even offered a guess as to the mechanism for how GMOs could pose a risk.

The fact is, your digestive system doesn't interact with your food at the level of genes.  You're eating it, not having sex with it.  Genes are one level removed from the digestive process.  You need to be talking about, what is in the food, not what is in the food's genes.

And Zombie wheat?

[Taco Truck 🚚]

Then i discovered that seperating and monitoring GMO from non-GMO food sources is a significant expense.

Oh, brother.  I was hoping this ridiculous thread wouldn't bring up the "ink costs to much" argument.

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Re-read my thread. Discovering the expense was vastly more than the ink to print labels is what convinced me GMO labeling is a bad idea.

Read peer reviewed research... no it doesn't.

[Taco Truck 🚚]

Then i discovered that seperating and monitoring GMO from non-GMO food sources is a significant expense.

Oh, brother.  I was hoping this ridiculous thread wouldn't bring up the "ink costs to much" argument.

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Re-read my thread. Discovering the expense was vastly more than the ink to print labels is what convinced me GMO labeling is a bad idea.

Read peer reviewed research... no it doesn't.

Two points: First, 5-20% is a substanial price upgrade. Ben & Jerry is an odd company that can afford to absorb such a hike and have a customer base that would punish them worse for GMO use. Most companies , and certainly most consumers, can't adapt to such an increase.

Second , you are mixing apples and oranges. The ability of indivdual companies to adopt solely non-GMO sources of ingrediants fro wholesale organic suppliers who serve a relatively niche sector of the food economy is light years from the whole agricultural sector of the entire economy, but domestically produced and imported , having to separate and monitor non cross "contamination" of GMO vs non-GMO crops and agricultural byproducts.

even if one thinks a 5-20% increase isn't substantial (though it is), the costs here don't warrant labeling over a "threat" that literally 99+% of peer reviewed studies say is at most theoretical, if not phantasmal.

Okay this doesn't seem to be getting through to you.  I will try again...

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I simply don't know how it can be made any clearer.