Skeptics and GMO Labeling

[Leftus]

This discussion is very much a parallel to the Creationist demand to "just teach the controversy." No. If GMOs are an issue for you, pay for GMO-free. Don't make the rest of us pay for irrational fears.

I think it's a bit closer to the anti-vaxxer, with the blind eye to the science and the "informed" canard from dubious sources. And given the amount of food the world has to produce, combined with the outputs of non-GMO foods, it's just as likely to kill.

 

[cosmicaug]

And given the amount of food the world has to produce, combined with the outputs of non-GMO foods, it's just as likely to kill.

Our regulatory frameworks need to be changed so that it is possible and practical to approve plants that are not substantially equivalent to a parent isogenic line (note that no one cares about substantial equivalence if a new variety is developed by means other than genetic engineering).

Eventually, we are going to run into situations were our engineered changes might actually make it so that changes to the plant, in general, are substantial and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. Some of these cases are going to involve innovations so potentially useful that it might be perverse not to take advantage of them.

In particular, I am thinking something like C4 rice where the final product will even have a modified microanatomy of vascular bundles (but it could apply to other things as well). Perhaps, though, when looking at the part we eat (the seeds), C4 rice will still be substantially equivalent? Even if it were so that C4 rice can be substantially equivalent, we need to be prepared for cases where substantial equivalence no longer applies (and, perhaps, cannot possibly apply, even in principle, due to the nature of the genetic modification).




Edited to add: When I write that "no one cares about substantial equivalence if a new variety is developed by means other than genetic engineering" I am not talking about some hypothetical thing. I would guess that most of our traditional breeding results in non-substantially equivalent changes. I doubt that a Granny Smith apple would be substantially equivalent to a Yellow Delicious, for example. However, if you want a more extreme case than that which would have to be considered substantially non-equivalent by even the most lax standards one could reasonably propose, we can look to rice and the differences between most varieties and the glutinous rice varieties since then have radically different starch type composition.

 

[Belz...]

If people refuse to buy something on the market for reasons you don't like, that isn't a good reason to hide the information.

As a member of said society I can object to their irrational fear-mongering on the basis that it may cause harm to that society.

 

[Belz...]

I am asking why Skeptics seem to have taken an odd stand on an industrial farm product that is apparently so unpopular that the only way to sell it is to hide it among desirable things.

Well there's your answer: the opposition to GMOs is irrational. Skeptics take a stand against making decisions based on irrational thoughts.

What's odd about it ?

 

[phunk]

I do realize I am debating people who openly advocate deception

Cost of living records show that Europe, which has had GMO labeling for 18 years, has overall lower food costs than the US. GMO labeling has resulted in no measurable increase in cost. That was never refuted.

The irony here is killing me.

 

[Belz...]

Labeling GMOs has not improved food costs in any measurable way in Europe. The entire argument for them, reduced costs, has not played out. The experiment has been done. We have the data. Labeling cannot be said to increase costs.

Putting extra information on labels and inspecting them costs nothing ?

If this becomes a large controversy an people want to see this on labels, then yes.

Power to ignorance !

So, how does that play out considering that GMOs have been labeled in Europe since 1997? Was that an evil conspiracy by organic farmers?

The world isn't one big village, you know.

A lot of people are fallign into tribal thinking in opposing GMO labeling.

Now, why would you start personalising this ?

Step 1: Company produces GMO product. Testing is done and no measurable harm is shown by using the GMO product. Questions persist about labeling GMOs.

Step 2: People make claims that GMO product is harmful and claim it should be banned.

Step 3: Skeptics see that the people claiming GMOs should be banned are making false claims and say as much. Skeptics become distrustful of people saying bad things about GMOs. Many people get into the "GMOs good, people who do not like GMOs bad" mindset.

Step 4: It becomes apparent that labeling GMOs amounts to a de facto ban on selling GMO products directly to consumers, although its use as animal feed is unaffected.

Step 5: As labeling GMOs appears to be a de facto ban and a victory for the anti-GMO crowd, Skeptics who are in the "Anti-GMO people are bad"camp react by trying to block this victory.

Wow, that's... really disconnected from reality.

Step 1: Step 1: Company produces GMO product. Testing is done and no measurable harm is shown by using the GMO product. Questions persist about labeling GMOs.

Step 2: People make claims that GMO product is harmful and claim it should be banned.

Step 3: Skeptics say that those people are wrong, and that making policy based on ignorance and nonsense is bad.

 

[Belz...]

So, you do advocate tricking people into buying something they don't want by hiding it among things they do want without telling them? Yes?

Nobody's talking about tricking anyone. We're talking about government regulations that are _not_ necessary.

I support GMO labeling because it is a public concern and would affect what people buy.

I don't support public concerns based on ignorance.

I do realize I am debating people who openly advocate deception, which makes the debate somewhat tricky as I really can't take what people say as honest.

Now you're just playing games.

 

[Belz...]

For me it boils down to having sensible and meaningful labels. A generic "GMO" label makes zero scientific sense and is not informative in any way. In fact, it is effectively misleading because it implies there is some meaning behind the label. People will erroneously think there is a valid scientific/nutritional reason that it is labeled. Knowing that a food contains some unspecified GMO ingredient doesn't tell you ********, it's pure fear mongering.

Yes, and that is actually deceptive.

I'll even go further. It's racism based on a false religion, the religion of "all-natural." That, in itself, is very dangerous. Why? Because nature is out to kill you.

This.

 

[Dancing David]

Here is my five cents, I am not sure that there is any human reactions to these GMO foods precursors, we have BT corn and then a number of crops which are glyphosate resistant. Recently the are the 'no brown' Artic apples.

In the US most food product labels are allegedly about health concerns and this as far as I know would not apply to GMO foods made from GMO crops.

Now we do have 'natural' and 'organic' labeling as well, which would fall under different categories of certification, some government , some not.

Now as to requiring labeling of GMO containing foods, hmmm

If people ant to discuss that they would like teh labels fine.

A greater threat to all humans comes from other sources however, the feeding of antibiotics to farm animals to increase weight gain and allow for more overcrowding of animal stock.

This presents a much clearer danger as it is the leading cause of bacterial resistance to antibiotics. This is more bad, I feel that consuming GMO containing foods.

People are all upset about glyphosate, it is so much less toxic than your standard herbicides that it is funny people are all upset about it. 2,4-D is much more toxic and damaging to the environments

Now people being upset with the political machinations of agribusiness, that is very understandable, especially the whole 'you can't save seeds'.

 

[cosmicaug]

Question, for yog_sothoth.

Now that we have clear evidence of transgenic inserts from Rhizobium radiobacter (ha, I used the new name! --I still think of it as Agrobacterium tumefaciens, though) in sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas --yes, even the nice ones from your local organic farmer) and given the "public concern" about icky transfer of genetic information across species barriers, does our current lack of labeling indicating this fact suddenly become "hiding" of this fact and deception of the consumer?

 

[cosmicaug]

Another question for yog_sothoth:

When, in the case of one thing not being specifically mentioned in a label (among maybe thousands or more possible things that could be listed on a label), we want to determine if we are hiding that thing and thus deceiving the consumer, we are told by you that we are to determine this by considering whether the thing in question is a matter of "public concern"*. My question is, how do we determine what is public concern?

Correct me if I am wrong, but we know that you do not believe that any level of concern is enough to count as "public concern". For instance, if marplots is truly and very sincerely concerned about the use of pig excrement to grow agricultural produce, you have made it very clear that his concern alone should not count as "public concern". Not mentioning in the label that agricultural produce was produced using pig excrement is, according to your criteria, not the same thing as hiding it and deceiving the consumer because one needs to have "public concern" about an issue and it takes more than one person to qualify as "public concern". Again, correct me if I am wrong as I am reading in between the lines a little bit and I do not mean to be placing words into your mouth.

In fact, since, you have not intervened to say that you think that kosher labeling should be government mandated we know that, whatever the number of Jews who want to keep kosher is, the number of said Jews is a smaller number than the number required to meet the threshold for an issue to count as being of "public concern". However, you still have not told us what this threshold actually is. Is it 10%? 25%? Simple majority? More than that? A little bit less?

And how do we actually know how many people have a concern so that we may determine whether your threshold is met? Do we have to do polling? If so, who does the polling and who vets it? As I pointed out earlier, designing questionnaires can be tricky and doing it badly is a good way to bias a poll.

What if the issue is complex? For instance, in this case, what is a GMO?

I just read an interview where the article writer was claiming the milk you pour in your coffee is GMO. They could only be referring to milk from cows treated with rBST (very difficult to find on store shelves, by the way --I have yet to find anything other than milk proclaiming not to be from such cows when I have looked for it) but if that is so, they must be considering cows treated by rBST to be GMOs (which would make every modern insulin user a GMO).

I often see members of the "concerned public" defining what a GMO is as being the result of the unnatural insertion by scientists of bits of DNA from one organism into an unrelated organism.

I read some sort of a peculiar, ignorance based "ick factor" as the overriding "public concern" in such definitions. For instance, I have seen it be told that some crops have human genes in them as if it were, per se, a bad thing. I am not sure how common that belief is but certainly the notion of animal genes in crop plants seems to be very widely believed (the example of a tomato with fish DNA is often given) and is often cited as a cause for concern. None of this is true. While there is no rational reason, per se, for putting special effort into avoiding the insertion of animal genetic sequences into a crop plant, big agrobiotech will not currently do it because they fear provoking an irrational "public concern", as you call it. But again, we need to set aside what is rational and what is not because, as you point out, all that matters is whether there is some "public concern" and whether the information that the concern is based on is correct and whether it can be scientifically supported is not important.

So if the "public concern" is really about the "ick factor", as I call it, what happens when genetic engineering does not involve the integration of a foreign sequence? How do I know if there exists in the public enough concern about this kind of genetic engineering to meet your threshold for "public concern"?

It should not trigger an ick factor, since there are no foreign sequences inserted. But maybe I am wrong and it's not about the ick factor but about Monsanto hate? But wait, that can't be so because these people don't seem to care if it's Monsanto related (there are traits out there that are not created by Monsanto and they hate those too --heck, they even hate ringspot virus resistant papaya and Golden Rice!). Or maybe they hate Monsanto but they just don't know that there are other players out there. Or maybe it's half ick factor and half Monsanto hate.

I just don't know how to handle this. Maybe it is not hiding information if the modification involves expressing a foreign construct but is not made by Monsanto (ick factor alone is not enough to meet your "public concern" threshold) or if the modification is made by Monsanto but does not involve the expression of a foreign gene construct (Monsanto hate alone is not enough to meet your "public concern" threshold) and maybe it is hiding information if it is a Monsanto trait involving the expression of a foreign gene. Which actually, could lead to the peculiar situation that, if a lot of the "public concern" is Monsanto hate driven, it might not count as hiding information and deceiving consumers if the trait in question is a Syngenta or Bayer trait?

It's all really confusing. I really don't know how to handle figuring out if not mentioning a particular thing about a food on the label is "hiding" information and being deceitful.

I think that this notion of yours that not mentioning one thing on a food label (out of thousands of possible things) constitutes deceptive hiding of information if there is "public concern" is not as straight forward as you seem to think it is.




* Thus, if it becomes a fad to be concerned about the presence or lack of midichlorians in our food it would be deceptive not to indicate that our hypothetical food product is midichlorian free and if I know that my hypothetical product contains thallium salts it is not deceptive to not mention it in the label if there's no "public concern" regarding the presence of thallium salts in foodstuffs (though I might have to reveal this for reasons other than ethical reasons such as pesky government regulations).

 

[yog_sothoth]

Another question for yog_sothoth:

When, in the case of one thing not being specifically mentioned in a label (among maybe thousands or more possible things that could be listed on a label), we want to determine if we are hiding that thing and thus deceiving the consumer, we are told by you that we are to determine this by considering whether the thing in question is a matter of "public concern"*. My question is, how do we determine what is public concern?

In most of the industrialized world, GMO labeling is the norm. In practice, when consumers have a choice between GMO or non GMO labeled food, they choose the non-GMO labeled food to the point where GMOs are primarily used as animal feed. Labeling winds up being cheap as very few wind up being printed.

As experience has shown that consumers, if the label is visible, avoid the GMOs, labeling becomes a de facto ban on GMO consumer products. This is why producers of GMOs fight labeling as hard as they do. Not labeling the products is basically the only way to get people to buy them.

Imagine offering to sell someone a GMO ear of corn and a non-GMO ear of corn. The person asks "So, what is the difference?" You reply "This one was bred to be good to eat, and this one was engineered to be resistant to herbicides and it has a pesticide through the plant that you can't wash off. Nobody has shown to date that the pesticides or extra herbicide residue are harmful, so don't worry." The consumer, a bit put off by the industrial nature of the GMO and that the genetic modifications do the consumer no good (unless they were planning on spraying the corn with an herbicide or they have a lot of insects in their home) chooses the less industrial product, mostly out of the "ick" factor.

You react by mixing the GMO corn in with the non-GMO corn and leave the consumer with no way to tell the difference. For some reason I cannot fathom. When the consumer asks why you would do such a thing, you reply, what? "I know better than you you so just buy the damn corn and shut up"?

Even if the aversion to the GMO is purely an "ick" factor, it is still one reason why people make consumer choices. Not labeling the GMOs is purely for the benefit of the food producers, not the end consumer.

As a basic principle I am concerned with the consumers more than fractionally improved corn yields, especially considering the massive subsidies given to corn growers in the US.

As I side note, I get to try to explain to Europeans why we routinely feed American children an industrial farm product that they would hesitate to feed to a pig. (I am not kidding about that, BTW.)

 

[Darwin123]

I have seen an odd trend of otherwise sensible skeptics strongly advocating that GMO foods should not be labeled. I find this really bizarre.

I do have to state that I am not against GMOs and that I am not advocating health claims made by "organic" foods. I just think that one should not deal with a public relations issue by hiding information from consumers.

Even if the GMO food is safe, agricultural practices associated with GMOs could be dangerous. Some GMO plants that are engineered to be resistant to herbicides. So the farmer can use more pesticide to kill weeds. The weeds will evolve to be more resistant to herbicides. At some point, the concentration of herbicides will be very dangerous to human.


I think a label telling us how much herbicide was used to grow a certain plant would be far more useful than a GMO label. However, I do see why some rational people can be nervous about GMOs.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Every single scientist within a rounding error says X.

General population says both X and Y.

Therefore we have to "Teach the controversy."

Yeah where have I heard this before?

 

[cosmicaug]

Every single scientist within a rounding error says X.

General population says both X and Y.

Therefore we have to "Teach the controversy."

Yeah where have I heard this before?

Sheboygan? Was it in Sheboygan?

 

[cosmicaug]

My question is, how do we determine what is public concern?

I feel I need to note that you really did not answer my question. Saying that in "most of the industrialized world, GMO labeling is the norm" does not answer the question I posed (it answers questions such as, for example, "Is GMO labeling the norm in most of the industrialized world?" which is not what I asked). My question was, how do we determine what is a "public concern" so that we determine (according to you) what information we need to put on the label.

Like, for instance, is a genetic modification arrived through genetic engineering that does not involve the introduction of a foreign sequence something that should count as being of "public concern"? I am less interested in your opinion (which might be an answer of "yes" or "no" to my example question) and more interested in knowing how we would arrive at that determination (which might lead to the answering of the broader question I posed).

In most of the industrialized world, GMO labeling is the norm. In practice, when consumers have a choice between GMO or non GMO labeled food, they choose the non-GMO labeled food to the point where GMOs are primarily used as animal feed. Labeling winds up being cheap as very few wind up being printed.

In this country, consumers have a choice between food that mostly is extremely likely to have GMO ingredients or food that is labeled, in various ways, to indicate that it has no GMO ingredients (a fact that I have yet to see you in any way acknowledge) and most of us choose the former rather than the latter. So, in general, when we know (because, as I have pointed out, the information is there because we have a voluntary labeling system in place), we don't choose non-GMO and we pay more attention to price and quality instead.

As for the sweet corn, what I find annoying is finding various insect larvae crawling out of my ear of corn. I consider the BT trait in sweet corn a feature, not a bug, precisely because it avoids that scenario (and it does so while minimizing spraying of insecticide). As for herbicide residue, I have no idea why you think it would involve eating more of that. I think you are thinking that that comes as a natural consequence of using a RR trait but I am not even certain that there are any sweet corn varieties that incorporate that as a stack (the BT trait in sweet corn became available only a few years ago and before that there wasn't even any transgenic sweet corn available).

 

[portlandatheist]

In most of the industrialized world, GMO labeling is the norm.

So is the prohibition of gay marriage. What's your point? Also, this is the norm:

and this is not the norm:

In practice, when consumers have a choice between GMO or non GMO labeled food, they choose the non-GMO labeled food to the point where GMOs are primarily used as animal feed. Labeling winds up being cheap as very few wind up being printed.

As experience has shown that consumers, if the label is visible, avoid the GMOs, labeling becomes a de facto ban on GMO consumer products. This is why producers of GMOs fight labeling as hard as they do. Not labeling the products is basically the only way to get people to buy them.

Imagine offering to sell someone a GMO ear of corn and a non-GMO ear of corn. The person asks "So, what is the difference?" You reply "This one was bred to be good to eat, and this one was engineered to be resistant to herbicides and it has a pesticide through the plant that you can't wash off. Nobody has shown to date that the pesticides or extra herbicide residue are harmful, so don't worry." The consumer, a bit put off by the industrial nature of the GMO and that the genetic modifications do the consumer no good (unless they were planning on spraying the corn with an herbicide or they have a lot of insects in their home) chooses the less industrial product, mostly out of the "ick" factor.

You react by mixing the GMO corn in with the non-GMO corn and leave the consumer with no way to tell the difference. For some reason I cannot fathom. When the consumer asks why you would do such a thing, you reply, what? "I know better than you you so just buy the damn corn and shut up"?

Even if the aversion to the GMO is purely an "ick" factor, it is still one reason why people make consumer choices. Not labeling the GMOs is purely for the benefit of the food producers, not the end consumer.

As a basic principle I am concerned with the consumers more than fractionally improved corn yields, especially considering the massive subsidies given to corn growers in the US.

Right. At the end of the day, the agenda of the "right to know" movement is more about vegetable prohibition than it is a label. They want to dictate what other people can and cannot grow or eat. Shame on them.

As I side note, I get to try to explain to Europeans why we routinely feed American children an industrial farm product that they would hesitate to feed to a pig. (I am not kidding about that, BTW.)

Or you could just refer them to what their own public health organizations and scientific bodies have to say about the topic. It may be a widespread sentiment in Europe, but it is still nonsense superstition and general luddism which I don't really have a problem with but I do have a problem when people try to impose their superstitions and luddism on other people which is exactly what the GMO labelers are attempting to do.

 

[JoeMorgue]

As I side note, I get to try to explain to Europeans why we routinely feed American children an industrial farm product that they would hesitate to feed to a pig. (I am not kidding about that, BTW.)

Yep that's us Americans. Just eating slop. Unlike the cultured Europeans.

 

[yog_sothoth]

BTW, how many people here knew before this thread that GMOs are routinely labeled throughout the industrialized world, with the notable exceptions of the US and Canada?

GMO labeling is not some weird novel concept that is impossible to implement or wildly expensive. It is relatively simple and effective. Brazil does it, China does it, Europe does it, but for some magic reason it is just tooo hard for the US to pull off? What handicap do we labor under that prevents us from being as organized as the other countries? Does GMO labeling skill track with soccer skill or something? If that is the case we will never catch up with Brazil, but we can at least try.

 

[ThunderChunky]

BTW, how many people here knew before this thread that GMOs are routinely labeled throughout the industrialized world, with the notable exceptions of the US and Canada?

GMO labeling is not some weird novel concept that is impossible to implement or wildly expensive. It is relatively simple and effective. Brazil does it, China does it, Europe does it, but for some magic reason it is just tooo hard for the US to pull off? What handicap do we labor under that prevents us from being as organized as the other countries? Does GMO labeling skill track with soccer skill or something? If that is the case we will never catch up with Brazil, but we can at least try.

Of course we knew, we've had numerous discussion on the topic in this very forum. You are the one that has shown to be grossly misinformed. It's not a matter of it being "simple" (which it's not), it's a matter of it being unscientific and nonsensical.