The european market is significantly bigger than US one (380m people) but manages to have much better labeling standards.
> if the last scandal you have found is dated back to 2013, that only confirms my point.
Words fail me at your reasoning. How closely do you think I follow foreign food purity issues?
If you claim on the label that your product is 52% tuna it can be (and frequently is) randomly tested and if it's not tuna, or 52% you can be open to prosecution.
By the sounds of the US system you're probably eating horse regularly, but no one ever tests to establish this.
In the case of the UK, austerity has resulted in Trading Standards being stretched to breaking point or beyond as funding has sunk way below actual need. Presumably the Tories will soon point to this as proof that a state owned system cannot work so let's privatise it.
Brexit leaves me deeply concerned the UK will resemble the US more.
[1] http://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/19/fda-approves-genetically-modi...
We're not all a bunch of anti-science luddites, you know.
(It's often GMO in the sense "let's take a bunch of seeds, expose them to radiation and carcinogens, and experiment with whatever comes out.)
In some countries (e.g. mine), these rights are not called "patent" but are not substantially different from what they are where the name is patent.
You can maybe get a patent for the process, but can you get a patent for the resulting lifeform or its individual genes? My understanding is that you can not, but if that's wrong I'd love to be corrected.
I agree that gene patents and whether to use GMO manufacturing are two different issues, but given that all of the GMO companies seem to be grabbing patents on their products, not buying GMO products seems like a good way to not support these practices. Especially since we already have GMO labeling in some places, whereas patent-information markings are very unlikely to ever be implemented.
Yes, you can get a patent. There are even organisations that aspire to patent organic plant variants that obviously aren't GMO. [0]
>given that all of the GMO companies seem to be grabbing patents on their products
No, not all are. First of all, not all developers of GMO technology are even companies - they may be universities or government agencies, for instance [1]. The widespread and misguided opposition to GMO technology works to the benefit for large companies (like Monsanto), though, because they have the resources to hire enough lawyers to manage the process where it matters.
Secondly, there's nothing "grabbing" about filing for patents or equivalent IPRs for plant variants; it's what you need to do to protect your variant even when you plan to release it into public domain (so that a malicious party would not claim them).
[0] https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/08/07/challengin...
There are other reasonable motivations for labeling GMO, ie. political and environmental (not all environmental reasons are "GMO is frankenstein food").
Moreover, the GMO scaremongering will last, as any other fad, for a limited amount of time. The part of public who rejects GMO for shallow (no) reasons, will quickly forget and move one to be scared of something else.
Mandatory labeling gives the impression that it's relevant information. Whether your food is GMO is totally without consequence. I don't see why the government should burden and mislead the rest of us so you can more easily wage your political campaign from the comfort of your local Whole Foods.
I'd actually be fine with mandatory labeling if it said something like "GMO. Totally harmless but the food hipsters wouldn't shut up until we forced everyone to read this stupid label."
Eg http://www.livescience.com/47931-msg-not-safe-for-everyone.h...
Copying from Wikipedia:
>"Excitotoxicity is the pathological process by which nerve cells are damaged or killed by excessive stimulation by neurotransmitters such as glutamate and similar substances." //
Is excitotoxicity of glutamates a myth, it must be if the claim that 'MSG is completely harmless' is true.
And some people have an allergy to water. I think GP meant "harmless" as referring to general population. There are always people who are allergic or otherwise harmed by things that are harmless to the 99.99% of humanity. Additional labeling might be justified if their number grows beyond a rounding error. And that still doesn't change the fact that unless you're the confirmed rare case for which X is harmful, you have no reason to fear it or to believe (and spread) misconceptions about it.
The side issue is objective truth here. So, you're telling me that no one has ever been harmed by consuming normal quantities of MSG? That's what "proven harmless" means.
It only requires one study to show some link between MSG and negative health effects to make it rational to seek that information, something like this http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27312658 maybe, suggesting neuronal destruction (using mice as a model). It's not proof.
For example, from the Wikipedia article on "Glutamate flavoring":
>"At a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in 1990, the delegates had a split opinion on the issues related to neurotoxic effects from excitotoxic amino acids found in some additives such as monosodium glutamate."
If neuroscience experts don't have consensus, that would be a reason to avoid "additives such as MSG", no?
I still think that if we're going to do this democracy thing that people who want "no MSG" labels ['no free glutamate' would probably be more useful] should get them regardless of my view of their scientific basis.
Personally MSG doesn't really bother me, I don't like the "enhanced" taste with foods that are rich in it but a little seems fine. I do get headache and bloatedness after having the UK version of Chinese Restaurant food, seemingly more so than with other food types, but I'm pretty sure that's just over-eating [perhaps the enhanced flavour encourages it?].
As was smoking, and sugar, and thalidomide. What about what we don't know yet?
The idea with this is that you put much more information available:
http://www.marklynas.org/2016/07/time-compromise-gmo-labelli...
"People" is sure of that... and so what? Food with additives sell. Have a walk in the street and observe what's the volume of organic (I'm using "additive-free-as-possible" for comparison purposes) food sold against "regular" one.
Talking at home about good intentions, irrational fears and so on translates little to purchasing habits. I actually heard only two people in my life talking about MSG, and only one is the "food hipster" who doesn't buy.
Of course, cases like associating skulls and crossbones with microwave ovens are an entirely different story.
> so you can more easily wage your political campaign from the comfort of your local Whole Foods.
I'm not sure if you're intentionally disingenuous here; the supermarket (generalizing, purchasing of goods) is actually the least comfortable place where to wage political campaigns, because it's the place where one puts the money where the mouth is if he really believes in his ideas, and doing so is expen$ive.
> Totally harmless but the food hipsters wouldn't shut up until we forced everyone to read this stupid label.
Let me make sure I understand you correctly. In the jar of yogurt I have in front of me, whose main readable are is ~250 cm², an OGM writing would take an estimated 0.8 cm² (it would necessarily follow the typical guidelines of mandatory warnings), and it would also be in a part which has no immediate visibility. I therefore exclude that as "forcing everyone to read". I also extremely rarely see advertisements in the supermarkets with warnings - this would cannibalize a part of their own offer.
Can you explain who and how would exactly "force" the public to read such warnings?
Note that of course some food would, for marketing purposes, shovel "GMO free" in shiny colours. That's advertisement, it's not government-regulated mandatory warning.
It doesn't matter if you think how people choose their food is not sensible, what matters for GMO labeling is whether you think they should be allowed to choose.
Don't know what you mean by DHMO in this context, are you trying to make a joke about water? FWIW we have labeling for food dosed with water, eg bacon, such labeling is perfectly proper.
And DHMO in this context means the GMO fear makes about as much sense as DHMO fear. People are afraid because it sounds "chemically".
But not allowing be to have the data to make a choice because a certain undefined cadre of society considers that choice to be irrational seems exceedingly likely to have a chilling effect.
So now you can't label your goods as phthalate-free because someone somewhere decided, perhaps with the help of a plastics manufacturer (yes I'm cynical), that "there's no rational reason to avoid them"?
This prevents people from being more conservative with risk than the authority who decides we're not allowed to have that information; yes it also means people can make a decision that you wouldn't but we all have the information available.
If GMOs have nothing to offer, why would the consumer want them, harmful or not?
Except they won't be, because "organic" doesn't involve less pesticides - it often involves more pesticides but of a more "natural" flavour. It may have started from the desire of some consumers to buy food that's made locally and with a more pre-industrial feel to it (because they believe it's healthier), but now it's just a way to milk people who have strong opinions about food.
In the EU (as we still are in the UK for the moment) this http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/organic/eu-policy/eu-legisla... is the situation with food labelled "Organic". It's certainly not about being pre-industrial, it's about being sustainable and cautious with natural resources and health.