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12 years ago
Why Does The Food Industry Want to Block GMO Label Laws?
An article appeared in Bloomberg Business Week on February 6th, 2014 that should have us nervous about the future of our food…and asking a lot of questions.
The Coalition for Safe Affordable Food includes twenty-nine members representing companies like PepsiCo, the world’s largest manufacturer of snack food and Monsanto, as well as the National Corn Growers Association, the National Restaurant Association and the American Beverage Association.
The goal of this organization?
It represents the interests of seed and packaged food companies, working to stop states from requiring labels on products containing genetically modified ingredients.
Not again, right? More whining from hippie, liberal, tree-huggers who want information on labels? You bet!
This new coalition of greed and profit said it will seek to fend off labeling initiatives like the ones already approved by voters…(and consumers) in Connecticut and Maine (albeit with caveats which currently prevent the laws from going into effect). They are urging Congress to work with them to pass legislation that will preempt any future laws like these.
According to the Grocery Manufacturers Association, federal legislation would give the FDA sole authority to determine whether GMO’s pose a threat to human health. To be clear, this junk food special interest group is asking that the FDA be the sole entity who determines whether GMO’s are safe for human consumption.
Are they kidding? With a track record like the FDA’s why does that make me more nervous than confident?
Labeling advocates say that including GMO’s on a food label is necessary so consumers who do not wish to consume them can avoid products that contain them, which is a reasonable request. Labeling advocates feel that GMO’s should be treated like any other ingredient and clearly labeled for the consumer to see. If I have the right to buy tomato sauce or soup without salt, why would I not have the same consumer rights when it comes to GMO’s?
What’s really going on here?
According to the Center for Food Safety, companies who oppose label laws “have failed to win over consumers who overwhelmingly Support the mandatory labeling of GMO’s and now they are trying to steal away consumer choice in Congress.”
Exactly! If you can’t sell us your carefully worded lies and deceit, conceal the truth instead.
The companies who comprise labeling opposition say these measures will drive up the cost of foods, create cumbersome state laws (don’t you just hate those ‘cumbersome laws’ that protect our safety?) and confuse customers by implying a risk they say is non-existent.
Now they are just messing with us. When we read nutrition labels, do you see warnings? Like on cigarettes? No? I don’t either. GMO’s would be listed right along with sugar, salt, colors, dyes and other ingredients in our food. I don’t imagine there would be a skull and crossbones on that particular ingredient. My experience of labels is that they are a laundry list of stuff, no judgment, no assessment of good or bad qualities. That judgment is left to the consumer. Do we want salt? Red dye #5? Saturated fat? High fructose corn syrup?
But what about the confusion they say it will create in the consumer? Nice try, but really, how many consumers buy food with ingredients they don’t understand? Lots and lots of them.
This new coalition will seek statutory requirements for the FDA to review the safety of all new GMO foods. Oh, I feel so much better now, knowing, according to Bloomberg Business Week, that “the FDA reviews currently are conducted at the discretion of biotechnology developers.”
The coalition also said it plans to educate the public about the safety of GMO’s. I wonder if they will use the tactics they used to defeat the label laws in California and Washington State. We see a lot of articles saying that the label laws were defeated in these states and they were. The implication from the opposition to labels would like us to believe that it was simply the will of the people. But those of us on the side of label laws know a different truth. They worked tirelessly and spent millions of dollars convincing consumers not in the know that putting GMO’s on labels would increase their food bills by hundreds of dollars.
With more than twenty states considering mandatory labeling of GM ingredients in food, these manufacturers of food and lies are getting a little nervous so they are digging in and trying to stamp out the will of the people with laws that represent only their interests, not the interests of the consumer.
In the meantime, companies like General Mills are beginning to take their own measures in response to consumer demands. They have announced that the original version of Cheerios will be labeled as free of GMO’s. Whether I think this is just a public relations move or not (I do…) because there are no GMO oats, it does tell us an important story. They see the writing on the wall and the light is beginning to dawn that consumers are worried about GMO’s and would prefer not to have them in food until we have more complete information.
Monsanto, for its part, has been stepping up their public relations efforts, sending their chief technology officer, Robert Fraley, to speak with Bloomberg Business Week. “We’re absolutely supportive of voluntary labeling,” Fraley said, praising the Cheerios change as a shining example. “That’s great. That’s the market at work; that’s companies exercising their decision on what will meet customer demand, and that’s exactly the way to do it.”
He goes on to say, however that those of us in favor of mandatory labeling are trying to put a negative connotation on GM technology and that Monsanto does not want to be in a position to deal with that on food labels.
Which begs the question I ponder on this volatile issue…
If GMO’s are safe for humans; if GMO’s result in more nutrient-dense foods; if GMO’s help farmers produce more food in a sustainable and efficient way; if GMO’s can allow for more food to be produced resulting in less world hunger then why would these companies, lobby groups and coalitions work so hard to prevent the consumer from knowing GMO’s are in their foods?
If it was my product and this particular ingredient did all that biotech companies claim they do…my product would proudly claim it contained GMO’s.
However, the companies who develop GMO’s and the companies who put them in their food will do just about anything to keep this ingredient off consumers’ radar screens.
If that doesn’t make us question the safety, sustainability and viability of the world of bio-tech food, then I don’t know what will.
As consumers we have the right to know what is in our food. We have the right to demand truth in labeling. Perhaps these coalitions and manufacturers are worried…worried they will lose their customer base when we all learn the truth about GMO’s. As consumers, we wield tremendous power. We decide which products become runaway hits and which ones languish on shelves.
So they would rather we were just kept in the dark about the whole thing so we continue to blindly buy and perhaps…if they can keep us from seeing the truth, we won’t connect the loss of our collective health with their foodlike substances.
Just sayin.’
Image Source: Christina Pirello
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GM "food" tastes bad
My point is straightforward and readily verifiable by anyone: GM "food" tastes like crap. GM corn has no smell, and either a foul flavor, or is insipid. There is no incentive to eat it. GM soy has a nasty taste which permeates any food cooked with soybean oil, as many are. Compare yourself; taste the GM variety alongside the real/organic/non-GMO-verified food. Do the same test with any dairy product, also–milk, cottage cheese or sour cream. Organic tastes delicious, the pseudo-food is repugnant. The agribusiness industry keeps propagandizing the notion that GM "food" is equivalent to its real counterparts, but a simple taste test belies their claim.
Because of the dishonest propaganda from folks such as this author. Because the method already exists to avoid g.e. foods by purchasing nonmo or organic. Because there is no factual basis for requesting this. And finally because the real goal is not food safety. It is to ban g.e. foods. A horribly short sighted view considering the newer generation will have products that will improve nutrition.
Please explain to me, when one of Glyphosate\’s method of action is to act as a chelator. That means it grabs a hold of vital nutrients that the weeds need to be healthy. They become weakened and then the pathogens in the soil attack the plant and they die. Then the animals and humans eat the GE foods, which have soaked up the glyphosate (in increasing quantities to combat the superweeds) and then we aren\’t able to used essential nutrients and we become sick. Look at the rates of disease climbing and tell me there isn\’t a correlation.
Because it\’s easy to fool people like Eric Bj. with advertising and propaganda. Eric is the kind of consumer tobacco companies would have historically loved. DON\’T ASK QUESTIONS, just trust us and keep buying this stuff because we\’ve got a few doctors and scientists on the payroll that say it\’s safe. Not everyone can afford to buy organic. When you delegate a task like growing food to someone else AND YOU PAY THEM, only a fool would say that you don\’t have the right to information about the product they have produced for you. The big companies don\’t like consumers asking for information or otherwise exercising their freedom and liberty because it slows the growth of the profits in this case. Remember, all this GMO food is patented and it can not be reproduced without a license. So, unlike various types of food that could be purchased once and re-grown many times if you keep the seeds, GMOs do not allow for that. Furthermore, the patented genes easily cross polinate with other foods, which then become subject to the massive frivolous lawsuits these GMO companies put farmers through every year. We\’ll see if someday every farmer has no choice to pay a GMO license fee because the proverbial well of other food species has been impregnated with GMO genes forever. Once that happens, what are the chances the price goes up when they own the entire food chain? WANT TO RAISE FOOD PRICES? Buy GMO and eventually, everything will get much more expensive and you won\’t be able to wash the pesticide off of your food because the plant has been genetically modified to create the pesticide internally and externally and those same foods will be fed to the cattle (which is already the case), so, expect pesticides to accumulate even more in the meat. But, I\’m sure none of this will happen because ignorance is bliss and thinking takes time and effort – let\’s all just take the easy explanations we are handed……
GMOs have never been proven safe for human consumption, at the very least we should have the right to know if the food is GMO. GMOs are genetically engineered to produce pesticide (such as Bt corn) or to be roundup ready which means they can survive repeated applications of herbicide. People are unknowingly eating these poisons everyday because they are in so many food products and not labeled. The poisons don\’t wash off, think of the children! Label GMOs!
Dee, did you know that you may have exposed yourself to the BT protein when swimming, eating organic produce, or gardening. The bacteria used in g.e. corn is found in soils, and water. It is used by organic growers. It only is effective against animals with alkaline digestive tracts. We have acidic digestive tracts. Hence our problems with acid reflux. There hae been no safety issues found with g.e. containing foods that are not also issues with conventional agriculture. There already s 2systems for choosing non g.e. foods. non gmo and organic. Use them if you care for the children.