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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: 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.