Advertising a food as GMO free is banned for good reason. Labeling is supposed to be informative to the consumer, and alert them to nutritional information about the food which could impact their health--and GMO foods have decisively been shown to have no health impact.
If food manufacturers were free to advertise the absence of irrelevant nutrients, they would immediately begin barraging consumers with useless or harmful information--
"now free of pyridoxal phosphate!"
"no phylloquinone used in the production of this cereal!"
Should the average consume have to know that these are actually vitamin K and B6? Of course not, the nutrition facts are there to inform them, and the FDA makes sure it cannot be used just for branding purposes or to confuse the consumer. Since GMO food is unequivocally proven safe, the manufacturer will not be helping the consumer make an informed decision by advertising the absence.
The science is never done. I hate, HATE, hate when people treat science like we already have all of the answers.
> and GMO foods have decisively been shown to have no health impact.
No, the studies done thus far, with specific controls they've used and the ideas they've test for, haven't found anything. There is no such thing as decisive in science. The science could change tomorrow. What's harder to change is the laws we've put in place because of industry interests.
The United States has a long history of taking the side of big business. Even with food. Look at the food pyramid that I was taught as the "healthiest" way to eat when I went to school. Today things have changed and we've learned a lot of backstory on how much of what we learned during that period was based on industry lobbying and not science.
I don't want us to make the same mistake again. Genetic engineering is a very young science. It doesn't belong in our food yet. I'm not saying we should ban GMOs. But I think it's fair to label foods that have GMOs in them for those of us that don't want to take part in the giant human trial.
At one point we were all cool with asbestos in our homes, lead in our paint, chemicals in our water and doctors endorsed smoking. Stop pretending like this isn't a big gamble.
Actually, genetic engineering is one of the oldest sciences. There are more modern methods of genetic engineering, but the discipline itself is as old as civilization. Most of the foods we eat are not found in the wild. They were developed through genetic engineering.
For example, look at wild apples and apples found in the store. Better yet, actually taste them. They are hardly alike. In fact, none of the apple varieties we consume today were around just a few hundred years ago. They did not magically appear. They were developed through genetic engineering.
Genetic engineering is a very young science. It doesn't belong in our food yet. I'm not saying we should ban GMOs. But I think it's fair to label foods that have GMOs in them for those of us that don't want to take part in the giant human trial.
Electronic computing is a very young science. It doesn't belong in our homes yet. I'm not saying we should ban computers. But I think it's fair to label products that have computers in them for those of us that don't want to take part in the giant human trial.
Wireless telegraphy is a very young science. It doesn't belong in our air yet. I'm not saying we should ban wireless communication...
The electric car is a very young science. It doesn't belong on our roads yet...
At one point we were, as you pointed out, "all cool" with asbestos, lead paint, etc. Stop pretending like the inventions above aren't a big gamble!
etc., etc.
At this point, for all of the "young" inventions above, we have at least a decade and typically more of evidence showing either that the "young" inventions are not biologically harmful to human life, or are no more biologically harmful to human life than what they're replacing.
And the same is true of GMO food. The track record is solid, and the "wait and see" approach is essentially an infinitely-shifting goalpost (no matter how long we wait, and no matter how much data we get, it miraculously never seems to be quite long enough or quite enough data for those folks, and they impose standards of "safety" which would require essentially infinite time and data to comply with).
Thus the urge to label when the data does not support classifying GMO as a risk is essentially the urge to push people to give in to blind fear rather than evaluating available evidence, and encouraging reactions out of blind fear does not make good public policy.
Pretending for a moment you couldn't see without a label that these technologies are contained somewhere: What would be the problem of labeling a product as containing a computer? Or a "wireless telegraphy" machine?
If you want to make an informed decision you need information. And if someone starts to hide that information I get a bit suspicious.
If you want to make an informed decision you need information.
Except people who want labeling -- voluntary or otherwise -- of GMO have demonstrated already, beyond any possible doubt, that "informed decisions" are not their goal.
Besides, if you're really that scared, I've got some homeopathic pills you can buy. They are guaranteed to prevent any negative impact to your health from GMO foods.
The problem with labeling is that it implies it's relevant. How would you feel about adding a label to food that indicates the ethnicity of the person that packed it? Applying your logic, not putting it on there is just hiding information used to make an 'informed decision'.
Because whether or not something is produced using genetic engineering techniques does not explain whether its safe.
For example, I could genetically engineer corn to produce to tetrodoxin poison, and kill a bunch of people with it. Does that prove GMO food is unsafe? No, it proves tetrodoxin is dangerous.
GMO labelling initiatives set out to inflame and spread fear, because no one ever wants to try and label exactly what has been altered, deleted or added. They just want to stick a big "Genetically modified!" sticker on there because their interest group has their public polling data which they know will make consumers react negatively.
>>GMO labelling is of no value though.
Because whether or not something is produced using genetic engineering techniques does not explain whether its safe.
Ah, now here's the thing. If you don't know whether it's safe or not which side do you error on? For me and my family, all I know is that my family has no particular history of health problems eating mostly "organic" in that I'm the first generation born in America and the rest of them grew up in Nigeria eating food from plants & farm animals raised with centuries-old tribal techniques. Not saying this was 100% of their diet, but certainly a great deal more natural than USA. I have a relative who doesn't need their diabetes medicine when in Nigeria to control blood sugar level. I'm guessing it's because in Nigeria 97% of the food isn't loaded with HFCS and other sweeteners.
I have no idea wether GMOs are safe, but I'm not interested in being the experiment for it. GMO labeling should be allowed. Or at the very, very least I should be able to go online to see the GMO status of a brand of food product.
GMO labeling should be allowed. Or at the very, very least I should be able to go online to see the GMO status of a brand of food product.
Another part of this is probably from the core belief I hold; that human beings messing around with mother-nature is generally hubris and risky. I do respect the fact that many, many amazing things have come out of medial science but I treat it all with caution rather than just whatever-the-scientists-say-must-be-right. Then I watch something like "Food Inc."[1] and become just a bit more skeptical of foods enhanced by science via processing, GMO, pesticides, whatever. I want my food grown with plain ol' water & sunshine & animal feces fertilizer... at least for now.
And this entire line of reasoning is based on the naturalistic-fallacy.
Nature is out to kill you. The harmonious balance of an ecosystem is a brutal stalemate in an endless war, and this is why you definitely shouldn't eat the berries you find in the forest without knowing what they are (nor eat fish from the ocean if you don't know what they are etc. etc.)
Moreover, your entire spiel on GMO is powered by a completely unrelated area of food manufacture and preparation which has much more to do with the negative health outcomes people have from food. Do you demand labels indicating what type of processing has been done on every package? Or would that be surprisingly unhelpful without more detail?
Funny you mention Nigeria, a country scrambling to work out a proper biosafety framework and educate farmers [1] so that they can feed a population that is #40 on the hunger index [2], with nearly a tenth undernourished [3]. With the current life expectancy of ~50 years [4], there's a ways to go for Nigerians to see any negative health effects from GMOs among the noise of malnutrition and stunted growth, if there is any to be found (and we've been trying for a while now).
But that's not the thing. The argument is that labeling something "GMO" gives NO information about whether it's safe. You cannot use this label to err on the side of safety, because the same argument can be used for food labeled as "GMO-free": this also gives NO information about its safety. What side would you err on in this case?
Just look at this: organic, gluten free, wheat free, whole grain, nature's path, happy panda!
Yet the nutritional info shows 2g protein, 2g fiber, 3.5g fat, 7g sugar (almost 2 teaspoons!) per 30g serving. Also no vitamins. Not much nutrition there.
Imagine dropping 2 teaspoons of sugar into a child's glass of milk. You wouldn't do that, would you?
> Advertising a food as GMO free is banned for good reason.
Well, except that it isn't banned (plenty of foods are advertised as GMO free [1]), and if it was, the reason you state would be bunk.
> and GMO foods have decisively been shown to have no health impact.
No, they haven't, though regulatory approval of individual GMOs for food use does require a number of steps intended to minimize the risk of health impacts.
> Since GMO food is unequivocally proven safe
Nothing is "unequivocally proven safe", and newly-engineered foods (whether actual traditional breeding methods, or the advanced modern techniques that are called traditional breeding rather than GM, or actual GMOs) are most emphatically not "unequivocally proven" safe before being introduced, though GMOs (and pretty much only GMOs) actually have to have some evidence that certain particular source of risk are addressed.
> Advertising a food as GMO free is banned for good reason. Labeling is supposed to be informative to the consumer, and alert them to nutritional information about the food which could impact their health--and GMO foods have decisively been shown to have no health impact.
Ummm so enforce the labelling of foods as containing GMOs. Hence the absence of a label is an indication that foods contain no GM ingredients. I don't think mandatory labelling is undue administrative burden, the only reason manufacturers would object is because it would affect people's purchasing choices, which is the point.
If food manufacturers were free to advertise the absence of irrelevant nutrients, they would immediately begin barraging consumers with useless or harmful information--
"now free of pyridoxal phosphate!" "no phylloquinone used in the production of this cereal!"
Should the average consume have to know that these are actually vitamin K and B6? Of course not, the nutrition facts are there to inform them, and the FDA makes sure it cannot be used just for branding purposes or to confuse the consumer. Since GMO food is unequivocally proven safe, the manufacturer will not be helping the consumer make an informed decision by advertising the absence.