from the GMO-==-Genetically-Modified-Organism dept.
U.S. senators have reached a deal that would require food companies to disclose which products contain genetically modified ingredients, although not necessarily directly. The plan would allow a variety of different ways to make the disclosure, including a text statement, QR code, phone number, or URL:
Just a week before a Vermont law kicks in requiring labels on food containing genetically modified ingredients, U.S. Senate agriculture leaders announced a deal Thursday that takes the power out of states' hands — and sets a mandatory national system for GM disclosures on food products.
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, unveiled the plan that had been negotiated for weeks with U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Michigan. Senate Democrats from farm country called it a win for consumers and families, while Roberts said it would end "denigrating biotechnology and causing confusion in the marketplace" brought on by Vermont's state law.
But it was clearly an uneasy compromise, with critics of the plan making for strange bedfellows on opposite ends of the political spectrum. Both Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Democrat who supports his state's mandatory law, and the American Farm Bureau Federation, which wants a voluntary GMO labeling standard, announced their opposition to the Roberts-Stabenow deal.
For those who may not already be aware, a GMO is a Genetically Modified Organism.
(Score: 3, Informative) by CoolHand on Friday June 24 2016, @12:27PM
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 24 2016, @02:00PM
Absolutely. No food should be allowed to be sold without an accompanying booklet listing the entire sequenced genome of every single ingredient. We need to know exactly what we're putting into our bodies.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by curunir_wolf on Friday June 24 2016, @02:45PM
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday June 24 2016, @04:46PM
What did they do to Chipotle?
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Friday June 24 2016, @06:01PM
I don't know if this is what the parent post is referring to but this double-plus-good "Center for Consumer Freedom" organization is running amusingly stupid attack ads on them. [nypost.com]
I think they're basically a fast-food lobby, which make the "you'll get fat" claim that much more laughable.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday June 24 2016, @09:38PM
Thanks, I didn't know about them. The group was formed "to fight bans on smoking in restaurants and bars." Previously, they ran ads that said:
"Americans have been force-fed a steady diet of obesity myths by the 'food police,' trial lawyers, and even our own government." -- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/12/business/yourmoney/striking-back-at-the-food-police.html [nytimes.com]
They've campaigned against the Humane Society:
http://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/news/taking-on-the-popular-dr-evil-targets-humane-socie/ncsyJ/ [mypalmbeachpost.com]
Etc.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Consumer_Freedom [wikipedia.org]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 24 2016, @03:21PM
Pity we don't have halal labelling. I like to know where my money is going.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 24 2016, @04:00PM
I don't give a squishy shit.
If people won't buy one thing, I'll grow something else. If the market is being tilted in the direction of what I grow, great. If not, I change.
This applies to many factors, not just GMOs. If the market decides that nothing beats the great taste of organic, free range, cruelty free, antibiotic free triffids, then I'll get some goggles and grow triffids.
GMOs help for a lot of things, but I have not seen a single thing that they supposedly do in mass production (i.e. not spidergoat silk) that can't be achieved by altering farming practices. Problem with soil salinity? Change your crops or change your hydrology or both. And so on. Fill in the blanks yourselves.
This is not a farming apocalypse. The media seems to greatly overstate the degree to which we care, or the degree to which companies like Monsanto hold our leashes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 24 2016, @05:22PM
Thank you for the information, though I wonder if most farmers are as flexible. Your point about the media goes to show just how far corporate control has spread. Reminds me of the bacon and maple syrup emergency shortages that were reported, my suspicion is that it was an attempt at viral marketing news for a quick sales boost. Sadly these tactics go unheard of unless someone gets their hands on definitive proof. General trends are not accepted as truth, and get blown away by Occam's razor. While a good logical tool, the razor can sometimes make a harmful cut...
I'm not saying such media tactics are what occurred since I have no proof. Just a sneaking suspicion based on trends.
Oh, and props for the triffid reference :)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 24 2016, @08:22PM
As an organic goat farmer and bee keeper I do give a squishy shit. I don't want to lose my hives to toxic shit being blown in or worry about how much round up my goats and chickens are eating or that all of us are drinking. Labeling GMOs gives consumers the choice to vote with their pocketbooks against farming practices that are too short sighted.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 25 2016, @03:32AM
That's a problem with the people around you, not the choices of consumers.
Mind you, the bugs seem to adapt on a quick enough cycle that the benefits of GMOs only seem to last a decade or so, so the extra price doesn't seem worth it.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Friday June 24 2016, @05:33PM
pat roberts really needs to shut the fuck up about "the marketplace" because all the "great" ideas he shares with his buddies about how the market works have been put in place in kansas and if you didn't know, kansas is now a financial disaster area.
food companies are making food as addictive as possible and while GMOs could be a boon for the world, i find it more likely they will be used to make foods less healthy and more addictive. just think, vegetables that have a dash of sugar in them because that's exactly where this shit is going. they are killing us with sugar and i don't want to willful enable them to corrupt natural foods, so i would like to know which raw foods have been tampered with.
(Score: 1) by Type44Q on Friday June 24 2016, @06:45PM
and while GMOs could be a boon for the world
The only way that'll happen is if there's truth to the rumors that GMO'd foods are designed to reduce fertility...
(Score: 1) by JBanister on Friday June 24 2016, @09:05PM
You need to think about these sentences. When I read your words about making "food" addictive and I think about the definition of "food," it looks like you're a poster child for the GMO people calling the anti-GMO people idiots.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 24 2016, @06:41PM
Sounds like a useless plan. A QR code that no human can ready and could take you to who knows where. A phone number that can make you sit through an hour of phone menus and holds until the operator pretends to not know what you're talking about. A URL which will likely just be the company's main site and they you'll have to shift through their horrible UIs to find the data completely buried, likely behind a bunch of "join our newsletters" pop-ups with no noticeable way to close them except subscribing. They'll probably try to get you to make an account too so you (they) can track what you're buying and give you the nutrition info for only the items you've added.
Labels are supposed to help you identify things while you're looking at them. The proposed plan is near completely useless.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday June 24 2016, @10:58PM
What is GMO? Pretty much every damn thing we eat has been engineered by humans. You don't think cows could exist as a natural animal do you?
So the bitchin' isn't about eating organisms produced through selective breeding. We have been producing hybrid plants for a long time too, so the objection isn't to those. We have even been making unnatural animals like mules for some time. The objections seem to be mostly contained to gene splicing. Is it because it is new? Or controlled by 'evil agribusiness' interests? Because they are patented? Or do the protesters even know any of this and are just flogging an issue to generate media attention because that is what they do?
Seriously, these are mostly the same guys that will answer "of course" when asked if products containing DNA should be labeled. Or fall like clockwork to the DHMO scare. They are militantly ignorant.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday June 25 2016, @12:11AM
These protesters you write about don't sound progressive to me. They sound conservative. Did you actually meet these people?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by urza9814 on Saturday June 25 2016, @02:11AM
Personally, my biggest concern is the "round-up ready" and bt-corn crap. Golden Rice would be great...although it seems to have failed as we saw here recently...
But if they can manage to engineer food to be healthier, that would be great. Personally, I'd love a good Soylent Potato. If I could just eat various forms of potato all day I'd be quite happy. But that's not what they're doing. Instead, they're making plants designed to be toxic. Or plants designed to be directly sprayed with toxins. Or plants simply designed to increase seed sales.
Add to that the fact that there have been numerous instances of new experimental strains that have not been approved for sale that have been found growing in fields hundreds of miles from the test plots, and even occasionally found in the food supply itself...even shipped to other countries...that just sounds a bit too risky for me.
Sure, we're doing what we've always done. But we're doing it much faster, we're doing it in ways that are far more novel, and we're doing it across the entire globe all at once. There have been toxic food products created before GMOs -- the Lenape potato for example. Fortunately these seems to have been mostly mild in toxicity and limited geographically. With GMOs, you get more dramatic change, which may mean more chance for greater toxicity. Especially if toxicity is the exact trait they're trying to introduce. GMOs also spread rapidly -- many are designed to be incapable of reproducing, so every farmer in the world who plants them has to buy the "new and improved" variety next year. And as I mentioned, even if a toxic plant isn't approved for sale (which isn't impossible -- those Lenape potatoes were) there's plenty of cases of unapproved strains that got out there anyway.
But I don't want a label that just says "CONTAINS GMOs". That's a slight improvement, but not very significant. I want a label that tells me if that's a GMO designed to emit toxins, or a GMO designed to grow faster, or a GMO designed to produce additional nutrients, or whatever else. The first I'd like to avoid; the second I don't care much either way; and the third I might even want to buy more of.
But lawmakers continually insisting that I have no right to know what I'm eating has been what angers me the most. And this seems to be more of that...overruling a state law requiring real labels with one that allows those labels to be near impossible for the average consumer to read.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday June 25 2016, @02:25AM
All that plus a patent on food is gross. I'm sure that doesn't need explanation here.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Subsentient on Friday June 24 2016, @11:55PM
I don't care what I put in my body from a health standpoint. Never have, probably never will.
I'd prefer to see a mandatory label for "Not vegetarian", "Vegetarian" and "Vegan". As well as a list of what's in these "natural flavors".
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti