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Comment by OMFGscience | Hacker News Reader

The issue is that there's no scientific reason to be opposed to GMOs. They're perfectly safe to eat and not worse for the environment. The organic lobby has successfully demonized GMOs to the general population, and now they want to have them labeled to scare people away from eating them. Do you really think we should be legally requiring the labeling of something that doesn't actually matter, in response to a successful marketing campaign by the competition?

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"They're perfectly safe to eat and not worse for the environment"

Absolutely not. It _completely_ depends on the organism in question. An organism is a complex chemical reaction, nothing like human engineered artifacts. You simply cannot declare _all_ GM organisms to be safe, in all contexts, ever. One has to take them on a case-by-case basis. Some GM organisms are perfectly safe (in certain contexts), others can be harmful.

I didn't. But there's no evidence that any approved GMOs are harmful in any way.

the way you wrote it, that's what it sounds like, thanks for the clarification

Safe or not, I do not want to buy or support GMO food because I know there's probably a patent behind the seeds that can screw over farmers (and by proxy everyone else).

The farmers know well enough what they are buying when they buy single season crops.

It's been the norm ever since the green revolution (modern hybrids often don't breed true http://www.foodrenegade.com/hybrid-seeds-vs-gmos/ ).

They are making an economic decision when they buy and plant any crop, and they are good at making it (it's a low margin business).

I want all food that was packaged on Friday the 13th to be explicitly labeled as FRIDAY THE 13TH FOOD because I have an irrational fear of superstitious dates. I demand the government require all food manufacturers to comply with this labeling regime.

There's nothing specific to GMOs that makes them patentable. Hybrid seeds can be patented, irradiated seeds can be patented, both of which are allowed to be labeled as organic.

Conventional cultivars are widely patented too.

> probably a patent

Then you want labeling about patents, not "genetic modification".

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