Vermont gmo label law starts today

[IceSpear]

maybe we should label ANY FOODS with this "Deoxyribonucleic acid" i keep hearing about.

I wonder how many people in a poll would think foods that contain this scary sounding acid should be labeled.

[Taco Truck 🚚]

Evidence that the far left can be just as hysterical as the far right.

Calling printing three scientifically accurate letters on the side of a box "hysterical" is really stretching the definition of "hysterical" for the sake of Atlas moderate heroism.

I'm all for giving the consumer accurate information and letting them decide what they want to do with their money.

[IceSpear]

Evidence that the far left can be just as hysterical as the far right.

Calling printing three scientifically accurate letters on the side of a box "hysterical" is really stretching the definition of "hysterical" for the sake of Atlas moderate heroism.

I'm all for giving the consumer accurate information and letting them decide what they want to do with their money.

>implying "the average consumer" even knows what GMOs are
>implying it isn't blatant anti-scientific fearmongering

[This account no longer in use.]

It doesn't even have to be an obvious label. It can just be printed with the rest of the nutrition facts.

[Taco Truck 🚚]

Evidence that the far left can be just as hysterical as the far right.

Calling printing three scientifically accurate letters on the side of a box "hysterical" is really stretching the definition of "hysterical" for the sake of Atlas moderate heroism.

I'm all for giving the consumer accurate information and letting them decide what they want to do with their money.

>implying "the average consumer" even knows what GMOs are
>implying it isn't blatant anti-scientific fearmongering

Writing three small letters on the side of a box next to the Riboflavin content has got to be the world's worst fear mongering tactic.

If the only things printed on food packaging were things the average person had a thorough understanding of everything would be sold in solid white containers with just the word MILK or OATMEAL or MAC N' CHEESE stamped on it with bold letters.

What is with all these bizarre criteria for GMO labeling?  We don't have this weird stratospheric bar for aspirin nor salsa.

Chill out guys.  Breath.  Three letters.  Honestly.  If it bothers you that much turn the box 90ᣞ.  See?  Big bad label all gone now.

[IceSpear]

If the only things printed on food packaging were things the average person had a thorough understanding of everything would be sold in solid white containers with just the word MILK or OATMEAL or MAC N' CHEESE stamped on it with bold letters.

Whoa man...don't go overestimating the intelligence of the average American there...

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

But here's the problem you techno utopians ignore. What have the crops been modified for? They haven't been modified for salt resistance, they haven't been modified for drought resistance. They have been modified for pesticide resistance. So by buying these GMO crops not only do you get greater amount of pesticides into the body, you also support the greater use of larger quantities pesticide which cause greater amounts end up in nature.

I thought GMO crops were modified to use LESS pesticides?

Yes, some are modified toward that end, and others are modified to make the crop withstand pesticides better. 

Saying a product contains GMOs tells you very little about it.

[Indy Texas]

And now Vermonters' grocery selection has been cut in half.

Because it's cheaper for major producers to simply forget about the Vermont market.

This only works when big states do it. My car meets California emissions standards even though I didn't buy it in California, don't live in California now and have never driven it anywhere near California. Why? Because when you've got a market of 50M people, you can get corporations to do what you want to an extent. Vermont doesn't have that kind of leverage, and neither does any other state besides probably Texas (but they prefer to use their clout to make everyone else read school textbooks vetted by Christian fundamentalists).

[heatcharger]

And now Vermonters' grocery selection has been cut in half.

Because it's cheaper for major producers to simply forget about the Vermont market.

This only works when big states do it. My car meets California emissions standards even though I didn't buy it in California, don't live in California now and have never driven it anywhere near California. Why? Because when you've got a market of 50M people, you can get corporations to do what you want to an extent. Vermont doesn't have that kind of leverage, and neither does any other state besides probably Texas (but they prefer to use their clout to make everyone else read school textbooks vetted by Christian fundamentalists).

You make some good points about the limited influence of any individual state, but I highly doubt it's in any food suppliers' best interest to just ignore an entire state, no matter how small.

Anyways, based on my limited knowledge of this topic, I'm gonna say I'm pro-labeling, because it doesn't like all that much of a hassle. The label should just say which ingredients were genetically modified.  Frankly I think the label should be specific about what the intent of the modification was. I don't think it's "anti-science" for people to know what products contain ingredients that might have been exposed to more pesticides.

[ingemann]

But here's the problem you techno utopians ignore. What have the crops been modified for? They haven't been modified for salt resistance, they haven't been modified for drought resistance. They have been modified for pesticide resistance. So by buying these GMO crops not only do you get greater amount of pesticides into the body, you also support the greater use of larger quantities pesticide which cause greater amounts end up in nature.

I thought GMO crops were modified to use LESS pesticides?

Yes, some are modified toward that end

Pesticides doesn't work that way, and even if it did, the basic economy behind GMO crops doesn't work that way either.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

But here's the problem you techno utopians ignore. What have the crops been modified for? They haven't been modified for salt resistance, they haven't been modified for drought resistance. They have been modified for pesticide resistance. So by buying these GMO crops not only do you get greater amount of pesticides into the body, you also support the greater use of larger quantities pesticide which cause greater amounts end up in nature.

I thought GMO crops were modified to use LESS pesticides?

Yes, some are modified toward that end

Pesticides doesn't work that way, and even if it did, the basic economy behind GMO crops doesn't work that way either.

It doesn't have anything to do with how pesticides work.  It has to do with crops that are resistant to pests without the use of pesticides.  How would that not be economical?

[Higgs]

And now Vermonters' grocery selection has been cut in half.

Because it's cheaper for major producers to simply forget about the Vermont market.

This only works when big states do it. My car meets California emissions standards even though I didn't buy it in California, don't live in California now and have never driven it anywhere near California. Why? Because when you've got a market of 50M people, you can get corporations to do what you want to an extent. Vermont doesn't have that kind of leverage, and neither does any other state besides probably Texas (but they prefer to use their clout to make everyone else read school textbooks vetted by Christian fundamentalists).

You make some good points about the limited influence of any individual state, but I highly doubt it's in any food suppliers' best interest to just ignore an entire state, no matter how small.

Anyways, based on my limited knowledge of this topic, I'm gonna say I'm pro-labeling, because it doesn't like all that much of a hassle. The label should just say which ingredients were genetically modified.  Frankly I think the label should be specific about what the intent of the modification was. I don't think it's "anti-science" for people to know what products contain ingredients that might have been exposed to more pesticides.

If the label doesn't explain the intent of the modification, then what exactly is the point of said label? The consumer really isn't learning anything useful just by reading GMO on the box.

Edit: nvm, read your post wrong.

[Taco Truck 🚚]

If the only things printed on food packaging were things the average person had a thorough understanding of everything would be sold in solid white containers with just the word MILK or OATMEAL or MAC N' CHEESE stamped on it with bold letters.

Whoa man...don't go overestimating the intelligence of the average American there...

Knowledge and intelligence aren't the same thing.  The average American doesn't have a four year college degree.  I doubt even amongst those that do they have taken a sufficient amount of biochemistry to discuss in depth most of what is on those labels.  But I suspect you know that and were just trying to discredit me with a strawman attack.

Saying a product contains GMOs tells you very little about it.

But it certainly gives you a lot more information than saying nothing at all.

If the label doesn't explain the intent of the modification, then what exactly is the point of said label?

Same point as all the other labels in life that don't tell you the intent of one ingredient or another.

[136or142]

The whole point of it is to cause the effect like we saw with the "This product causes cancer" initiative in California. There's no way to know which shipments go to which states, so they have to label all their products nationwide. I've said to my fellow Democrats who've jumped on this GMO bandwagon that if we're going to attack Republicans for ignoring 97% of scientists on climate change, then we ought to be consistent: 89% of scientists say that genetically-modified foods are safe to eat.

Where do you get your 89% figure from?

Most of the studies on the safety of GMOs have been done by the companies themselves.

From what I've heard and read, the alleged harms of GMOs have been greatly overstated, but so have the alleged benefits.

It seems to me a great deal of money has been spent for very little actual result.  Of course, that could change quickly, as frequently happens with scientific progress, but it's been over 20 years.

Anyway, this is one article from a peer reviewed journal that casts doubt on the scientific consensus regarding the safety of GMOs:

http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/92/art%253A10.1186%252Fs12302-014-0034-1.pdf?originUrl=http%3A%2F%2Flink.springer.com%2Farticle%2F10.1186%2Fs12302-014-0034-1&token2=exp=1467572585~acl=%2Fstatic%2Fpdf%2F92%2Fart%25253A10.1186%25252Fs12302-014-0034-1.pdf%3ForiginUrl%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Flink.springer.com%252Farticle%252F10.1186%252Fs12302-014-0034-1*~hmac=36cab6381d05882e4f824ae6b827df2c8f993794d041f5bee0bc38089d6cfb09

[Mr. Reactionary]

This is similar to the scare over irradiated meat. Scientists since the 1960's have agreed that it is safe to use low-level radiation to kill all the microbes in food to increase the shelf life. The food doesn't retain any radioactivity; it's not different than food preserved in other ways. But when you are required to sell your normal hamburger as "irradiated hamburger", no one is going to buy it. The public sees a word similar to radiation and they are going to think that the meat contains radiation, even though it doesn't.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I mean the best argument for labeling is actually pro-GMO. At present, GMO's are mysterious and a lot of people oppose them without knowing they themselves are eating them. Perhaps if they were labeled people would say, hey, we've been eating this stuff all the time and I haven't turned into frog; and therefore the hysteria would die down.

In short the industry has a perception problem (even if the public's attitude is wholly unscientific). Labeling would probably be less damaging (and more profitable in the long run) for the industry than lobbying against these laws, because that creates the perception that they are hiding something fishy. Most studies into risk perception heuristics suggest that people are far more likely to be fearful of something they have no perceived knowledge or control of than something they believe they do - people immediately assume withheld information is suspicious.

In fact (although this may limit the available space on the package) I wouldn't mind a description in small print of the intentions of the particular modification. i.e. "This Papaya was genetically modified to promote resistance to PRSV. This transgenic modification has been cleared as safe by the DoA."

[Mr. Smith]

Maybe the success of this law will mean this'll actually pass in California this time.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Regardless, foods have nutritional info and ingredients printed on them already. Would the anti-labeling crowd want those labels taken off as well?

Major difference being that the labeling of nutritional info and ingredients is necessary to help people monitor their calorie intake, what vitamins they're getting, etc.  It's also to deter people with allergies from ingesting potentially harmful products.

I think the best argument against mandatory GMO labeling is cost control; that mandating farmers segregate and re-organize their crops so as to know which food to label is an expensive, unnecessary, time-consuming burden that will be passed on to the consumer in the form of higher price.

The obvious fix to that would be to label every product: "This product may or may not contain GMOs."  But that kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it.

[ag]

Why would anyone oppose this? Even if you're pro-GMO, people have a right to know what they're eating.

The counterargument is very obvious. What is "GMO"? What makes some product "GMO"? It is not a property of a product, but of a method (more specifically, a collection of somewhat related methods) used in originally designing it. It is not even about genetic manipulation - some of the more radical genetic manipulation, which has been used for many decades now, is not coming under it, if I get it right. You can deliberately poison or irradiate a tomato plant, hoping to cause mutations in an undirected way, and then select for a useful trait, if any such trait emerges - that does not require labeling. You are welcome using hybridization techniques to produce plant monsters, impossible in nature (in fact, for centuries this is exactly what has been done, and almost all the plants we eat are exactly such monsters) - that is fine.  What is requiring labeling is deliberately introducing a particular mutation using certain fairly precise techniques - for know scientific reason known to anyone.

I completely fail to see why certain techniques of genetic manipulation and selection should be announced, while others shold not. This distinction is not based on any scientific evidence or reasoning whatsoever. If your position is that "the public has the right to know," I would then insist that the entire history of breeding of every cultivar should be made public. Of course, that would imply that buying a tomato you would have to take home a book of a few hundred pages of serious scientific reading. Perhaps, there is something to be said in favor of this. But, as long as farmers are not required to provide such information for breeding history in general, I can hardly see the argument for arbitrarily selecting certain breeding techniques and insisting on puting lables of this nature.

This is no different from puting a label on a car saying "designed using a computer": I mean, when computers were first introduced (quite recently, in historic terms) an argument could be made that not verifying every single calculation by hand might produce life-threatening errors. GMO labeling is exactly what this would have been: it is not about content of a product, but about using - an arbitrarily chosen - technology in design.

Of course, the main purpose of labeling is not the "right to know". Its main purpose, of course, is scaring people with anti-scientific conspiracy claims. In this sense, GMO labeling is exactly akin to the disclaimers some school districts insist on puting into biology books about evolution being "a theory". It is a most definitely correct statement by itself (so is gravity, for that matter), but it is designed to raise suspicions that something is not right, that it might not be true, that God may have created everything 6,000 years ago. Well, same here. GMO products are still legal, and GMO labeling is, by itself, not claiming they are any less safe than anything else. However, it is a reminder that their safety is "just a theory".

[ag]

Evidence that the far left can be just as hysterical as the far right.

Calling printing three scientifically inaccurate letters on the side of a box "hysterical" is not really stretching the definition of "hysterical" for the sake of Atlas moderate heroism.

I'm all for giving the consumer accurate information and letting them decide what they want to do with their money.

Fixed your post. Letters "GMO"have pretty much no scientific meaning, and putting them on the products is designed with the explicit purpose of causing unmotivate hysteria among the people.

If you want to give consumers "accurate information" of this sort, you should insist on telling consumers all the details of genetic manipulation done by humans to every cultivar and any breed. Of course, that would mean providing each and every tomato with a thick technical appendix - much of which would sound to the populace in general extremely scary. We pretty much do not eat anything (other than some fish) that has not been genetically manipulated into unnatural monsters. Many of those manipulation techniques are extremely invasive. But you insist on arbitrarily defining a few of them into a class that has to be labeled. Why exactly?

[ag]

Regardless, foods have nutritional info and ingredients printed on them already. Would the anti-labeling crowd want those labels taken off as well?

There is a difference. This labeling is not about the content or nutritional info, but about technologies used in design. Same outcome achieved by different meansd is not labelable. Would you insist that tomatos should be labeled if computers were used in calculating the correct temperature for the hothouse?

[ag]

Evidence that the far left can be just as hysterical as the far right.

And just as anti-scientific.

[ag]

maybe we should label ANY FOODS with this "Deoxyribonucleic acid" i keep hearing about.

I will most solemnly insist on it. Also, proportions of guanine and cytosine should be disclosed in red.

[ag]

yet we don't mandate pesticide disclosure on the label.

Well you should.

My point is that VT won't pass that as it's well-established practice. Even though the science says that there's little threat from the vast majority of GMOs, they'd rather go after the new technology, than the known concern from the older tech.

"We don't do this good thing, therefore we shouldn't do that other good thing either."

Great rationale.

So, you support puting the disclosures into biology books saying that "evolution is just a theory"?

[ag]

yet we don't mandate pesticide disclosure on the label.

Well you should.

What else would you like to put in?