Senate easily invokes cloture on GMO label bill; final vote next

[proverbialwisdom]

Source: Food Safety News

After being showered with handful of paper money thrown over the gallery rail by a single protestor, the U.S. Senate invoked cloture on a GMO-labeling bill by a 65-32 vote Wednesday, meaning that the compromise proposal for a federal law on how grocery products will be labeled when they do and don’t contain genetically modified organisms is set for a final vote.

Cloture is the Senate procedure for breaking attempts to delay or filibuster action on a bill. It provides for up to 30 more hours of debate before the matter is brought to an up-or-down vote.

In this case, it means that the Senate will vote, as early as this week, on S. 764, a compromise rolled out June 23 by U.S. Sens. Pat Roberts, R-KS, and Debbie Stabenow, D-MI, who are the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, respectively.

The bill would require food companies to use either a USDA-created symbol or an electronic code to indicate whether genetically modified ingredients are included in a product.


Read more: http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2016/07/senate-easily-invokes-cloture-on-gmo-label-bill-final-vote-next/

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Related: http://commondreams.org/news/2016/07/06/activists-expose-monsantos-senate-lackeys-minutes-dark-act-vote

[bananas]

1. I wonder how much market research went into those barcodes.

The reason the GMO industry is so against labelling is because they did consumer marketing tests and found that products labelled GMO have to be priced significantly less for people to choose them over unlabelled products or products labelled GMO-free.

[Scientific]

2. We little people don't really want or need to know what's in the rations industry serves up

We and our families will all be better off if we remain ignorant, in the dark, and trust Multinational Industrial GMO-Chemical Corporations.

So roll over, go to sleep, and know that Monsanto will, um, take care of you by ramping up GMO production and adding generous side orders of glyphosate* to your food, you wine, your beer, and your tampons.



* The herbicide glyphosate is part of the profiteering system of most corporately patented (and now eternally obscure) GMO crops, over 80%

[Locrian]

3. careful

The "what do you hate science" brigade will show up any time now.....

[PatSeg]

9. I think I can hear them coming..........

Sounds like a far off stampede!

[cpwm17]

4. Virtually everything you eat has been genetically modified by man in some way.

In your own words: what is it about GMO's that make that method of genetic modification any more dangerous than any other method or process of genetic change?

[bemildred]

5. I like to know where my "non-GMO" food comes from too.

The way nature modifies things is a lot different from the way we do it, much more "intelligent", and the applied selection criteria quite different, and most of all until you expose the result to biological processes in the natural environment, you don't really know what they will do, and once you do that, you WILL lose control of them BECAUSE nature has her own methods of moving genes, which we are learning about as we go.

[Igel]

6. We "little people" will gladly pay more

for gluten-free sugar. And want their NaCl labelled gluten free if it is.

Neither sucrose nor table salt contain gluten. Nor does meat, vegetables, or even corn meal. But people want to be told that their corn meal or table salt is like non-fat milk--all the naturally occurring gluten's been removed.

When presented with two products, identical ingredients and nutritional information but one is labelled "healthy," we prefer it and pay more. The little people like advertising claims more than they like the ever-so-difficult high-school science.

People have said they prefer the DNA-free water when given a choice between "water" and water specifically labeled "DNA free." No, they didn't think DNA had been added to the plain water. They just didn't know what the hell DNA was.

42% of us believe in creationism.

A quarter believe the Sun orbits the Earth.

People don't know science. They're distrustful of everything. Except being protected from their ignorance.

People don't think. You can ask them if they prefer gluten-free sugar, and they'll say yes. Then you can ask them what gluten is found in. They'll say wheat. You can ask them if the sugar they have in front of them contains wheat. They'll say no, sugar doesn't contain wheat. Does sugar contain gluten? No, they'll say. So, you ask, do you prefer the sugar labelled gluten-free or the plain sugar. And they'll say the gluten-free.

[Stonepounder]

7. But I do know that dihydrogen-oxide is fatal if you breath it.

And I know that I really don't want pink slime in my McDonald's hamburger, and I don't want lead in my drinking water, or in my gasoline. I really don't want neonicotinoids sprayed on my plants. I would like to be able to make a choice as an informed consumer.

And many people are distrustful because they have seen what happens when they do trust. And not all 'people' don't know science. Some of us do and we want information available. I know that I don't have celiac disease, so I don't need to worry about whether my food is gluten free or not. So don't tell me that it makes no difference whether food is labeled with ingredients or not, or whether it has been 'genetically modified' or not, or whether it is high or low in carbs. Grant me the respect to let me make my own decisions about what I buy, whether you agree with them or not.

[cpwm17]

8. You have a right to buy foods that are labeled as GMO free if you are in to that stuff.

It is not the responsibility of the US government to promote junk science.

[bemildred]

11. It is the responsibility of the government to follow the public's will in these things.

Lest we throw them out.

[PatSeg]

13. It is the government's

responsibility to insure that we know what is in our food. Corporations fought labeling food ingredients many years ago and they lost.

[cpwm17]

14. GMO's aren't ingredients, nor are food modifications made by genetic modifications

fundamentally different than foods modified by any other method, including nature.

No food modification method is labeled, as its only purpose would be to confuse and scare the customer in order to increase the market share of more expensive "organic" foods.

If you want to buy the more expensive GMO free foods, then go ahead. I don't want the misleading labels that are promoted by the anti-science con-artist crowd to be required on our foods, as that will inevitably increase the cost for food for everyone.

[PatSeg]

10. Just because some people

don't know what gluten or DNA is, doesn't mean that I don't have the right to know what is in my food. Other people's ignorance should not dictate what I can and cannot know.

[Texano78704]

12. Will it actually tell you anything?

The bill would require food companies to use either a USDA-created symbol or an electronic code to indicate whether genetically modified ingredients are included in a product.

Sugar from GMO sugar beets is still sugar. A label telling me a "GMO" ingredient was used (like sugar) is worthless.

[Javaman]

15. What Are The Risks?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/harvest/viewpoints/risks.html

viewpoints: just how radical is this new technology?
Critics of biotechnology say nature is incredibly complex and that GM technology is introducing a new genre of environmental and health questions. They argue that introducing foreign genes from distant species (e.g., a gene from a fish into a strawberry) increases the risk of allergenicity. Also, the risk of new toxins must be considered. And they point to lab research which has revealed possible unintended consequences of GMOs.

When you introduce a genetically modified organism into the environment, it's not like introducing a chemical product, or even a nuclear product. Remember, [genetically modified] products are alive. So they're inherently more unpredictable in terms of what they'll do once they're out into the environment. Secondly, GMOs reproduce. Chemical products don't do that.

Third, they can mutate. Fourth, they can migrate and proliferate over wide regions. And fifth, you cannot easily recall them to the laboratory or clean them up. So when we're dealing with genetically modified organisms, we're dealing with a whole new genre of environmental and health questions, totally different than when we introduce chemical or even nuclear products into the environment. ...

Those very small bits [of DNA inserted into genetically modified organisms] can change in qualitative ways that GMO when it's introduced. Let's say you take a human growth hormone gene and place it into a salmon. That's just one gene. But if the salmon gets out into the marine ecosystem and it's growing twice as fast and twice as big, it can destabilize millions of years of relationships in the oceans. So one gene can be very, very powerful. ...

more at link...