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President signs GMO labeling bill

radcen said:
I say 'Good!'. People have a basic human right to know what they're ingesting. Whether they make good or bad choices is on them.
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Everything we eat is GMO. Even if it isn't GMO, it's actually GMO. The whole hoo-haa over it is ridiculous, and it's completely safe.

Food has been bred and cultivated over millennia. Almost everything we eat, down to organic vegetables, corn, wheat etc, is GMO of some form or another. If they actually enforced this they would have to put a label on every single item in the grocery store.
 
Nilly said:
Everything we eat is GMO. Even if it isn't GMO, it's actually GMO. The whole hoo-haa over it is ridiculous.

Food has been bred and cultivated over millennia. Almost everything we eat, down to organic vegetables, corn, wheat etc, is GMO of some form or another. If they actually enforced this they would have to put a label on every single item in the grocery store.
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Equating breeding with GMO production is laughably ignorant. See my post above and tell us how many of those terms you understand.
 
ModerateGOP said:
I'm not against "labeling" per se and I quite like the QR code idea, because it can fit more information. However, putting a big fat GMO sticker on everything is just going to lead people to pro-GMO labeling sites that are full of fear-mongering and not much else. Through my research on this subject I have not been able to find that many truly unbiased sources on the topic. Maybe a few articles here and there.
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It doesn't need to be on the front like a skull & crossbones. It can be in the ingredients list on the back, i.e.: "water, gmo grain, sugar, <and so on>, just as long as it's labeled.
 
radcen said:
It doesn't need to be on the front like a skull & crossbones. It can be in the ingredients list on the back, i.e.: "water, gmo grain, sugar, <and so on>, just as long as it's labeled.
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I mean, if it were Pirate Endorsed, I may be more tempted to buy it.

heheh
 
ecofarm said:
Equating breeding with GMO production is laughably ignorant. See my post above and tell us how many of those terms you understand.
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Different methods, same end result.
 
I don't have a problem with it. The anti-GMO thing is silly, but hey some people care a lot about it and I'm not against giving consumers more information.

Anyone want to explain the "it'll raise prices," nonsense though? Highly doubt a bit of ink is going to cause prices to suddenly sky rocket.
 
radcen said:
It doesn't need to be on the front like a skull & crossbones. It can be in the ingredients list on the back, i.e.: "water, gmo grain, sugar, <and so on>, just as long as it's labeled.
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I've seen it done both ways. What's your point?
 
Mr Person said:
Labels should reveal things that are scientifically relevant to the contents of the package. GMO foods have been proven perfectly safe to eat; the only real debate is on whether there's a point in using them when they don't seem to meaningfully impact crop yields (similarly, debates on the volume and types of fertilizers and other chemicals used on GMO and non-GMO crops respectively). People will irrationally respond to "GMO" labels by not buying the foods because it's bad for them, but that's only because they don't actually know the truth. It's one of the instances where more information actually distorts markets, rather than makes them more efficient (as is usually the case).

This is somewhat similar to responding to anti-vaxxers by requiring doctors to distribute pamphlets to patients stating that vaccines contain mercury and listing why mercury is bad to ingest. Factually true, but irrelevant, because vaccines do not cause autism (or other problems) via mercury.
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PirateMk1 said:
So why is it when you break a fluorescent bulb that has mercury in it that you technically have to call a hazmat team to do the clean up, if mercury was harmless in small doses.
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That's seriously going to be your "gotcha"?

"Small doses" isn't a measurement. The precise dose matters.

1. You don't even bother to compare the amount of mercury in certain vaccines to the mercury in various lightbulbs.

2. You haven't considered whether the law you cite might be crowd-pleasing but illogical

3. You haven't considered the possibility that the law you cite is aimed at the aggregate effect of mercury building up in groundwater in aggregate considering the average frequency of breaks one might expect across a populace, and therefore you also did not try to compare how that potential level of exposure compares to exposure from vaccines.

Etc etc etc.






Please don't tell me you're an anti-vaxxer. Their claims have been repeatedly disproven.
 
radcen said:
Your point is "ignorance is bliss"?

That's all I can conclude.
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Nope. Only that everyone and their donkey knows that there are GMOs in almost everything we buy to eat. This is even more the case with articles pre prepared in any way. In other words we will be paying to know, what we know already, if we are interested at all. I realize that ideology on the left want it, but it is only negative for the poor that have no real choice anyway.
 
ModerateGOP said:
Nutrition labels are fine. I have to read them myself, because I am allergic to a very specific ingredient in baking goods and salad dressing. But a label that says GMO, is just silly in my opinion. It's not very specific...
BTW, this has nothing to do with my politics, because I don't like Mike Pence either :2wave:
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Labelling requirements for foods are not limited to nutritional standards. There are laws which regulate the wording on packages such as "home made", "organic", "cage free", etc
 
Nilly said:
Different methods, same end result.
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Not same result. Never before did breeding include mating jellyfish, bacteria and antibiotic, herbicide resistance, insecticide production and other genes with a plant. The top 3 GMO purposes are: nitrogen fixation (not necessarily bad for the environment), insecticide production and herbicide resistance. All of these splices come with antibiotic resistance.

The production process and impact on ecology are also entirely beyond anything before.

To equate the two is the depth of ignorance, knowing absolutely nothing about the subject.
 
joG said:
Nope. Only that everyone and their donkey knows that there are GMOs in almost everything we buy to eat.
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What you and your donkey "knows" is a fiction.

GE foods are only in a small portion of the foods we eat.

It's ironic that the pro-GE crowd constantly whines about how unscientific the anti-GE crowd is while demonstrating their ignorance of the subject
 
ludin said:
All I can say is that there will be a lot of hungry people out there not buying GMO products because almost all produce and other products are GMO.

Are GMOs safe? Yes. The case against them is full of fraud, lies, and errors.

The only people that are up in arms are people like greenpeace.
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Most foods are not GE. GE foods are only in a small portion of the foods we eat.

It's ironic that the pro-GE crowd constantly whines about how unscientific the anti-GE crowd is while demonstrating their ignorance of the subject
 
ecofarm said:
Not same result. Never before did breeding include mating jellyfish, bacteria and antibiotic, herbicide resistance, insecticide production and other genes with a plant. The top 3 GMO purposes are: nitrogen fixation (not necessarily bad for the environment), insecticide production and herbicide resistance. All of these splices come with antibiotic resistance.

The production process and impact on ecology are also entirely beyond anything before.

To equate the two is the depth of ignorance, knowing absolutely nothing about the subject.
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You mentioned Superweeds before. The very same resistance to insecticides and herbicides that were 'GMO'd' into corn and wheat are now starting to naturally occur in weeds, which are also beginning to resist the insecticides and herbicides. Nature's coming up with the same solutions we are, just delayed.

Some people just have an irrational fear of the 'unnatural'.

sangha said:
If it produces the same results, it's not needed.

Or even useful
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It's faster, can be driven by us, and we learn from it.
 
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Nilly said:
You mentioned Superweeds before. The very same resistance to insecticides and herbicides that were 'GMO'd' into corn and wheat are now starting to naturally occur in weeds, which are also beginning to resist the insecticides and herbicides. Nature's coming up with the same solutions we are, just delayed.
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Ridiculous. Before the introduction of glyphosate resistance genes, no plants or weeds had such genes. Before the introduction of BT production genes, one could only harvest the biocide from BT. Your position is fantasy world.

Some people just have an irrational fear of the 'unnatural'.
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Some people spew crap from a laughably ignorant position.
 
sangha said:
What you and your donkey "knows" is a fiction.

GE foods are only in a small portion of the foods we eat.

It's ironic that the pro-GE crowd constantly whines about how unscientific the anti-GE crowd is while demonstrating their ignorance of the subject
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Maybe it's a small portion of what YOU eat, but 75% of any processed food will contain corn, which is virtually certain to contain GMO, and a bunch more probably have soy, which is all GMO these days.

So labeling will go on virtually everything, for no apparent reason, except to increase the anxiety level of people who are ignorant on what GMO is.
 
joG said:
Nope. Only that everyone and their donkey knows that there are GMOs in almost everything we buy to eat. This is even more the case with articles pre prepared in any way. In other words we will be paying to know, what we know already, if we are interested at all. I realize that ideology on the left want it, but it is only negative for the poor that have no real choice anyway.
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I did some quick internet reading just now and one can find a supposedly credible source for whichever side they want regarding cost, so that's not a certainty by any means. Estimates ranged from $2.30/yr to $125/yr, and even zero in costs passed to the consumer ("price stickiness"). Plus, as I already mentioned, labels are changed constantly for the most superficial of reasons, and prices remain the same, so it can't cost too much.
 
Threegoofs said:
Maybe it's a small portion of what YOU eat, but 75% of any processed food will contain corn, which is virtually certain to contain GMO, and a bunch more probably have soy, which is all GMO these days.

So labeling will go on virtually everything, for no apparent reason, except to increase the anxiety level of people who are ignorant on what GMO is.
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Maybe we'll learn something about the outrageous state of corn subsidies in the process.
 
ecofarm said:
Ridiculous. Before the introduction of glyphosate resistance genes, no plants or weeds had such genes. Before the introduction of BT production genes, one could only harvest the biocide from BT. Your position is fantasy world.



Some people spew crap from a laughably ignorant position.
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The number of reported new cases of herbicide-resistant weeds has actually slightly decreased after the introduction of GMOs. Out of the 24 known glyphosate-resistant species, 13 were actually first documented in non-GMOs. As such, "superweeds" are a problem related to herbicide use and not directly to GMO use.

sangha said:
Selective breeding is just as fast and can be driven by us
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Nowhere near as effective, which is why GMO's are popular in the first place.
 
ModerateGOP said:
Yes, but no one actually attempts to find out if Cage free actually means cage free.

Cage-free eggs doesn't mean what you think it means, website reports | NOLA.com
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Irrelevant. Let's review what you said
Nutrition labels are fine. I have to read them myself, because I am allergic to a very specific ingredient in baking goods and salad dressing. But a label that says GMO, is just silly in my opinion. It's not very specific..
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You complained that a GMO label is "not very specific". The labels I listed (along with others) are also not very specific.

Whether or not people understand what the terms means is another issue that you did not mention in the post I responded to. IOW, once I pointed out that your argument had no merit, you moved the goalposts from "not nutritional" to "not very specific"
 
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