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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThis REALLY pisses me off: Americans Are Too Stupid For GMO Labeling, Congressional Panel Says
!!!"Scientific Ignorance"? An anti GMO conspiranoid talks about Scientific ignorance!!!!
I, the consumer, need to be protected from myself and my presumed ignorance of the wonderful products that benevolent corporate interests have created for me to put inside my body.
[div class="excerpt"]Americans Are Too Stupid For GMO Labeling, Congressional Panel Says
WASHINGTON -- It's pretty rare that members of Congress and all the witnesses they've called will declare out loud that Americans are just too ignorant to be given a piece of information, but that was a key conclusion of a session of the House Agriculture Committee this week.
The issue was genetically modified organisms, or GMOs as they're often known in the food industry. And members of the subcommittee on Horticulture, Research, Biotechnology, and Foreign Agriculture, as well as their four experts, agreed that the genetic engineering of food crops has been a thorough success responsible for feeding the hungry, improving nutrition and reducing the use of pesticides.
People who oppose GMOs or want them labeled so that consumers can know what they're eating are alarmists who thrive on fear and ignorance, the panel agreed. Labeling GMO foods would only stoke those fears, and harm a beneficial thing, so it should not be allowed, the lawmakers and witnesses agreed.
"I really worry that labeling does more harm than good, that it leads too many people away from it and it diminishes the market for GMOs that are the solution to a lot of the problems we face," said David Just, a professor at Cornell University and co-director of the Cornell Center for Behavioral Economics in Child Nutrition Programs.
grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, more:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/10/gmo-labels-congress_n_5576255.html
redqueen
(115,103 posts)BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)So can we say this is officially a talking point now?
Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)they may have point.
*sigh*
Duppers
(28,117 posts)Air, I need air.
Gormy Cuss
(30,884 posts)Last edited Fri Jul 11, 2014, 12:52 PM - Edit history (1)
Corporate citizens first, stupid human citizens last.
hint: labeling isn't the problem. It's your inability to persuade consumers that GMOs are beneficial. That's not a statement against or for GMOs, that's a marketing fact.
PowerToThePeople
(9,610 posts)in order to save money, Corporate "citizens" will cast votes on behalf of all employees human-resources.
Then, we will not even be on the list of priorities.
GeorgeGist
(25,318 posts)dickthegrouch
(3,172 posts)I'd love to see their reaction when they just cause hilarity and derision in the audience. The difficulty as I see it is they are not subject to any dissent and they continue to believe their own BS.
Oilwellian
(12,647 posts)pisses me off as well:
The idea of the bill brought Ben and Jerry's co-founder Jerry Greenfield to Capitol Hill Thursday to push back, along with Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), who backs labeling.
Greenfield told HuffPost that labeling is a simple, inexpensive matter of letting people know what's in their food, and letting them decide what they want to support and eat.
"This idea that consumers will be scared away -- the label will be a very simple thing, a few words on a container saying something like 'may be produced with genetic engineering.' It's not scary," Greenfield said.
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)Have you read some of the anti-science dreck that gets posted even here, where we are supposedly more enlightened than the average person?
Sid
MohRokTah
(15,429 posts)There are many reasons to decide not to consume GMO food.
My gut tells me I shouldn't, and as everybody knows, MAdison Avenue exists exclusively to get us to make purchases based upon gut feelings.
So what's wrong with labeling GMO food? If GMO food was so wonderful, they;d have 48 point fonts screaming it to the world.
Archae
(46,312 posts)Even though the Huffington Post has more woo on it than most other "news" sources.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Huffington_Post
jeff47
(26,549 posts)(Not directed at the OP, but at a much larger group of Americans)
Stupid part 1:
These are GMOs: http://www.wired.com/2014/07/kraig-spider-silk-production/
They're silkworms that were modified to spin spider silk instead of "regular" silk.
GMO does not mean plant. It does not mean plant developed by Monsanto. It does not mean plant developed by Monsanto to resist RoundUp.
GMO is a broad term. If you object to Monsanto's "RoundUp Ready" crops, you do not object to GMOs, you object to Monsanto's "RoundUp Ready" crops.
Why is the difference important? Because if you want to actually feed everyone on the planet without using up all of our topsoil and pumping our aquifers dry, we're going to need GMOs. Not Monsanto's "RoundUp Ready" crops, but GMO crops that have been modified for drought tolerance and higher yield with less fertilizer.
Stupid part 2:
Where do those objections come from? Shitty science like this? http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5226677
The guy sells books, articles and speeches about the evils of GMOs. To help with his primary business, he did a study with incomplete controls to cite in his books, articles and speeches. Then he paid for a journal to publish it. It's not science, but it keeps the checks coming in.
Nobody's been able to show that GMO crops are actually dangerous. "But Monsanto won't give us seeds for study!!!" So what? You can buy the food from your friendly neighborhood farmer.....but that would mean you'd actually have to do a study, will likely find no correlation, and then people will stop paying you to talk about the dangers of GMOs.
Stupid part 3:
What happens when you eat a GMO crop? It gets broken down into it's component chemicals, and then you absorb those chemicals. Let's take Monsanto's "RoundUp Ready" crops as an example - we're gonna start with as evil as possible.
What makes them RoundUp Ready? Some proteins are slightly different. RoundUp attacks the original form of these proteins, so the crop is immune to RoundUp.
What happens when you eat that protein? The same thing that happens when you eat any other protein. Your stomach and intestines break down the protein into amino acids, and then you absorb the amino acids. Since the proteins are no longer assembled, they can't do anything in your body.
But let's pretend that isn't the case in order to make them as dangerous as possible. Even in that case, the proteins can't do anything in your body, because they are used in photosynthesis in the plant. They have to be in a particular structure inside a plant to work. You don't have chloroplasts.
And no, you can't "catch" the modification. First, the genes are inserted physically - they coat a gold nanoparticle with DNA, and then shoot that at plant cells. The ones where the nanoparticle ends up in the right place get grown into full plants. Since they're not shooting gold nanoparticles at you, the DNA can't end up in your cells.
Very early on viruses were used to insert genes, but that turned out to be much harder to do than physical insertion. Even if they still used viruses, you can't catch a plant virus. Just like a plant can't catch influenza. Your cells are too different.
Second, when you eat the DNA, it is decomposed into nucleotides (A, T, C, and G from high school biology) and then absorbed. It isn't going to be in a functional DNA molecule inside your body.
Third, the genes rely on other plant genes to do anything. As a result, even if points 1 and 2 were false, it still can't do anything inside your body.
Stupid part 4:
"You're just a paid Monsanto shill!!"
No, I think science is important whether you're talking about climate change or GMOs.
The fact that this dumbass wants to believe Earth and Mars are the same temperature doesn't make it so. Wanting to believe GMOs are dangerous does not make it so.
"It's new so it's scary" isn't an argument to ban something. You have to show harm. We've been able to show harm from RoundUp, so RoundUp should go. Which would lead to "RoundUp Ready" crops leaving the market, since they no longer have a point. But that is not all GMOs.
"But if we show harm it'll be too late! The GMO will have escaped and turned into a giant that crushes Tokyo!"
The reason people are asking to show harm instead of safety is because there is no mechanism for harm. The few mechanisms that were proposed were dealt with years ago - for example, moving away from viruses for gene insertion.
Even the weeds that are becoming immune to RoundUp aren't a harm. Well, not to anyone other than Monsanto. Immune weeds means their RoundUp business dies out. And not dousing fields with RoundUp would be better anyway.
Vague threats about "unknowns" are great for duping people into supporting illegal wars. Don't let them dupe you into trashing science.
"But Europe banned GMOs!!!"
Yes, they bought in to the "it's new so it's scary" argument. We don't need to follow their stupidity. Just like we don't need to ban headscarves on drivers licenses.
TheKentuckian
(25,023 posts)which you wish to ban because you think I'm too stupid to choose correctly which is none of your business. This is not like vaccines or global warming which impacts other folk's ability to make choices. This is personal, if I eat unmodified foods it doesn't mean you cannot but rather we both decide what we put into our bodies.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)Remember the part about depleting topsoil and pumping our aquifers dry? Kinda affects other people.
Further, the reason you don't want to eat them is fear of what you don't understand coupled with rejection of science. Why do antivaxxers object to vaccines? Fear of what they don't understand coupled with rejection of science.
MohRokTah
(15,429 posts)You must since you do not want people making choices based upon gut instincts, which is what all advertising is entirely dependent upon.
I do not consume GMO food. There is no clue what consuming GMO food will do over a 20 or 30 year period because there has been no studies.
Admittedly, the risk is low, but the simplest way to mitigate that admittedly low risk is to simply not consume GMO food.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)We've been creating custom hybrids for centuries.
"But these are different!!!!!"
Not in any meaningful way.
The risk of an adverse reaction to a vaccine is low, but the simplest way to mitigate that admittedly low risk is to simply not get vaccinated against anything.
MohRokTah
(15,429 posts)Hybrids are not genetically modified organisms, and they never have been. Lies to the contrary are just that, lies.
And I can prove your lie is a lie because you cannot tell me what organism from outside the genus in a hybrid selective breeding program is genetic material introduced, BECAUSE IT DOESN'T HAPPEN!
On top of that, the vast majority of genetic modification utilizes genetic material from outside the modified organism's Order, Phylum, and more often than not the organism's kingdom.
Genetic modification requires genetic material to be introduced that could NEVER be introduced from selective breeding.
And the comparison to vaccines is like comparing apples to bicycles.
TheKentuckian
(25,023 posts)My reasons either way are mine and if you don't like it then fucking tough, my body and my money.
You eat what you want, I'm not trying to stop you. In fact, I'm happy for you to know you are getting what you want because I believe that is your choice.
This attitude drives and earns distrust, anyone who would take such a position is up to no good and is trying to get over.
There is no basis to give you the right here and the arrogance is profound. No, you eat all of you like but force feeding people shot they don't want is pretty hard core authoritarianism that deserves whatever push it draws. What a fucking bully! To Hell with that.
MohRokTah
(15,429 posts)Some idiots want consumers to make uninformed purchasing decisions.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)because they are new, and thus scary.
We've been creating custom plants for centuries. GMOs are just the latest ones. But our science education sucks so badly in this country that people have turned these plants into demons out of a Luddite reflex.
MohRokTah
(15,429 posts)You demonstrate that you want to control the purchasing decisions of people because they don't make those decisions under the same protocols you use to make purchasing decisions.
That's pretty fucked up and fascist right there.
If GMO food is so wonderful, labeling the products will win in the market place.
What you want is the marketplace to never know. You want to literally force these products down people's throats.
Samantha
(9,314 posts)shined a bright light on their own ignorance.
Sam
Rex
(65,616 posts)IT'S WHAT PLANTS CRAVE.