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

[Associate Justice PiT]

General populace is pretty uninformed, what else is new?

     True, and I remember the same point being made with a proposed ban on DHMO. The thing is, Simfan is right; most everyone who has gone to high school should know what DNA is.

[Associate Justice PiT]

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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.

[Associate Justice PiT]

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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.

[Associate Justice PiT]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

     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.

     You're not comparing like items, since it has been established that alcohol in general does contribute to birth defects. GMOs have not been established to be harmful in general. Nevermind that GMOs as a general label doesn't actually make sense. Saying "you're wrong" and repeating the same point isn't persuasive.

     I don't know your education. Fortunately, your education is not relevant. Appeal to authority is an amateurish mistake in argumentation. Appealing to one's own authority is an indicator of a certain lack of confidence in your own argument.

[Associate Justice PiT]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

     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.

You think it would be a good idea to not label GMO foods? I completely disagree, for the following simple reason. If you look at some of the old commercials put out by the cigarette companies, you'll see all kinds of claims being made. (Check out the one showing the brand smoked by most doctors, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnKLpO9qhOE). So what has changed? Well, we began seeing claims that smoking tobacco causes cancer, so we decided to do the science: the studies were run by looking at people that smoke vs. those that don't, results began to be compiled, and attitudes began to change. Ok, so fast forward to GMOs. Certain people are making one set of claims, others are making opposite claims. Which group is correct?  Well, to do the science like we did with cigarettes, you need to run studies on two groups of people, those that consume GMOs and those that don't. Then you look to see if correlations exist between diseases and consumption of GMO foods. But how can you do this when people don't know whether or not they've consumed foods with GMOs in them? Use of GMOs in our food system is so wide spread and so downplayed that it's going to be near impossible to get any clear answers on the subject, and I suspect that's by design.

     The way to get answers would be through controlled experiments. The effects GMO labelling would have on influencing consumer choices wouldn't make things any clearer. The people in the study certainly don't have to know what they're consuming, hence blind trials.