clear linear information is a very nice way to improve people's behavior
From cigarette warnings, to food nutritional/ingredient labels, to modern fights by big Ag against having to label genetically modified food and food stuffs. It’s funny watching their lobbiest argue against gmo labels, it goes something like “it would be damaging to us to have to label our products with gmo labels, because consumers would largely stop buying our products, and there is no science to back gmo products dangerous. We need to continue studying.” My thought is who cares if science says gmos are harmful, if consumers would want to know so they could avoid a product, as admitted by the lobbiest, shouldn’t be entitled to know?
So yes, it's like not produced by a modern CNC, but with a traditional sledgehammer.
Do people care if they are eating a cow that has been bred for generations to grow faster and have more fat? Is that really the same as genetically modifiying corn so it won’t die when drowned with weed killers and pesticides that are still present on the foods consumers eat?
The difference between your examples is not the genetic modification technique applied, but the result that was achieved. Maybe it would be simpler to just label the precise breed that was used, so consumers can check for themselves which properties they want to avoid.
I also think you are blurring the lines between breeding and gmo (ie turning genes on and off) which as a practical matter, what we are talking about is turning off genes in crops, so farmers can you drown their crops and pesticides.
It’s definately one thing to suggest any given consumer can make demands/regulations, but a fair reading and we are talking about an issue that the industry themselves admits large segments want to know so they can make informed buy choices.
Of course I'm fine with companies adding labels voluntarily, as long as thy are correct: "kosher", "non-GMO", "ethically sourced", "cage-free", all the way to "does not contain nuclear waste".
No, whereas everyone saying mandating labeling is an authoritarian government act and they would rather live in freedom where companies don’t need to label, I say if people organize and want to pass laws mandating labeling of x, they should be able to do that...but when that Law doesn’t get passed because a special interest spends hundreds of millions lobbying and lining pockets of politicians and uses the same arguement was every other special interest (ie gun lobby, tobacco lobby, sugar lobby, big ag lobby) its a shame.
For the record I never once sided with gmo labeling or not, only agreed with OP that labeling drives consumer behavior, and if people want labeling they should get it. It’s everyone else who attacked me as an authoritarian for taking the side of consumer who want labeling...which I subsequently suggested is ironic that people who would take the sides of big corporations and allow them to operate as they wish over what people want is the opposite of freedom and is in fact authoritarian.
It's one thing to say you can't lie on a label, that's fraud, but it's wrong to mandate what should be on a label and what words they must use. The GMO moniker is a smear intended to take advantage of consumer ignorance to scare them away from perfectly good food. There's no real evidence against GMO, it's just fear mongering. Most of our food is not natural and hasn't been for a very very long time.
> if consumers would want to know so they could avoid a product, as admitted by the lobbiest, shouldn’t be entitled to know?
They can already know now, by looking for companies voluntarily labeling their products non-GMO. There's more than one way to reach that goal, one requires forced compliance and the other allows freedom; the freedom approach is better. Forcing your competitors to label their products as GMO to take advantage of the irrational fear and superstition of the public is just plain evil.
It's funny watching people like you pretend you're being the good guy when you're really the bad guy trying to make everyone else behave the way you want them to rather than simply choosing to do business with the people who are the way you want them to be.
Here's an idea for you and everyone who thinks like you; worry about your own behavior and stop trying to tell everyone else how they should behave. You're not forced to buy their products, if you don't like their labels, take your business elsewhere. That's how things work in a free country.
To say if you want to enter food and food stuffs into the stream of commerce you need to include nutritional information and ingredients, is that really authoritarian?
I personally like consumer rights and don’t pretend there is a level playing field between consumers and corporations. I think it’s a common sense approach to the reality companies put nasty shit in food from preservatives to various types of sugars that consumers base buying decisions on and it’s not authoritarian to require those disclosures...at least you know where we have a quasi democratic process in the form of a constitutional republic.
It’s like saying it’s authoritarian to require doctors to inform patients about their options. How dare these authoritarians dictate how doctors practice medicine.
>It's funny watching people like you pretend you're being the good guy when you're really the bad guy trying to make everyone else behave the way you want them to rather than simply choosing to do business with the people who are the way you want them to be.
Did I say I was good and anyone else was bad. Did I say I wanted to know about gmo’s personally? I just asked a question shouldn’t consumers be able to organize and pass laws requiring disclosures? Pretty sure that’s what a free country is...not the right to sell unlabeled snake oil if they want.
Absolutely. Do I like them, sure, and I'd happily avoid any product that didn't provide them willingly.
> To say if you want to enter food and food stuffs into the stream of commerce you need to include nutritional information and ingredients, is that really authoritarian?
Yes, it is, by definition. Forcing a vendor to do anything is authoritarian; the question is is it justified. Forcing someone not to lie, yea that's justified because lying is fraud. Forcing them to add something to a label, that's just authoritarian. Let the market kill them for being stupid. If the market wants nutrition labels they'll do it voluntarily or their competition will.
> I personally like consumer rights and don’t pretend there is a level playing field between consumers and corporations. I think it’s a common sense approach to the reality companies put nasty shit in food from preservatives to various types of sugars that consumers base buying decisions on and it’s not authoritarian to require those disclosures...at least you know where we have a quasi democratic process in the form of a constitutional republic.
It is authoritarian by definition; though it may be justified authoritarianism in response to bad actors in the market. Not all authoritarianism is unjustified, markets do fail. However, nutrition information being forced on all isn't remotely the same as forcing only some to label something GMO as if that status has any scientific validity whatsoever. The non-GMO movement is superstition and ignorance, not science. Superstition should not be forced onto vendors.
> It’s like saying it’s authoritarian to require doctors to inform patients about their options.
It is. You seem to not know what that word means. If the government makes you do something, it is by definition authoritarian.
> How dare these authoritarians dictate how doctors practice medicine.
Yes actually, you should be very concerned when government decides it knows better than doctors about how to treat patients. But you'll note the legal requirement on this actually refers back to the doctors norms, they're only required to inform patients of things that a reasonable doctor would inform them of.
> Did I say I was good and anyone else was bad.
I didn't say you said it; I said watching you pretend to be, that means that's how your coming off to me. That's my opinion of your behavior.
It would also add cost to track the supply chain sufficiently to make the labels accurate and it would reduce the space available for other more useful labels.
Again like the food industry fight against nutritional labels and ingredient lists/disclosures.
Labels inform consumer choices and food industry does not want that. It’s that simple.
Sure it costs money to add labels...so what? If you don’t want to dish out the added costs don’t use gmos. Seems to me most companies love spending money on labels and do so voluntarily all the time (organic, heart healthy, nut free, fat free/low fat, source of vitamin...) they just don’t like disclosing things that people don’t want and that’s when the cost arguement comes into play.
As admitted by the lobbiest people don’t want gmos so the industry doesn’t want to have to label them. I’d recommend watching the televised congressional hearings.
> Sure it costs money to add labels...so what? If you don’t want to dish out the added costs don’t use gmos.
There is also an added expense to not using GMOs, so this would make food more expensive for everyone. More expensive food would hurt consumers whether or not they care about GMOs. This is a bad thing.
> As admitted by the lobbiest people don’t want gmos so the industry doesn’t want to have to label them. I’d recommend watching the televised congressional hearings.
Consider for a moment that I'm right and that GMO labeling would be bad for both consumers and producers. How would industry lobbyists act differently than they do now? Would it be any different from how they act now?
That is false. Most people who want them labeled want to know because the amounts of pesticides and weed killers used on gmos.
There are studies on the amounts of pesticides and weed killers on the foods you buy.
>There is also an added expense to not using GMOs, so this would make food more expensive for everyone.
That’s disengenious. First your argued about label cost now you moved the goal posts to costs of not using gmos. If they want to keep using gmos they can.
And people who don’t care can keep buying the cheaper gmo food.
But anyway you sound like the cigarette industry...labels would hurt business and consumers, yeah that’s right from their playbook. Nutrition labels and ingredients hurt consumers right from big ag’s Playbook.
I get it, any mandate on businesses, even if consumers want it, is wrong in your mind.
Edit: can you give a single example of labels that are bad for consumers? Cigarette warnings? Peanut allergy labels? Medication warning labels? Nutritional labels? Ingredient lists?
So why aren't they asking for pesticide and weed killer labeling? This is not specific to GMOs and is not something that will apply universally to GMOs going forward.
> That’s disengenious. First your argued about label cost now you moved the goal posts to costs of not using gmos.
I didn't move the goal posts. You conceded the point that labeling increases the price of GMOs. I was responding to your argument that you can save that extra cost by not using GMOs by pointing out that this is even more expensive. GMO labeling will increase the price of food.
> I get it, any mandate on businesses, even if consumers want it, is wrong in your mind.
How did you get that? It's not true. I believe that many mandates are helpful. I'm in favor of current mandated nutrition labels on food.
> can you give a single example of labels that are bad for consumers?
Labels that are misleading are bad for consumers. Homeopathic medicine has labels that indicate it has ingredients that don't exist in the pills and labels that indicate effectiveness for conditions it has not been demonstrated to treat. This hurts consumers.
Food often has misleading non-mandated labels like saying an unhealthy snack is fat free to imply that it is healthy.
California's Prop 65 mandates labeling any thing or place that contain a known carcinogen. This results in labels everywhere with no indication as to level of risk. These labels are completely unhelpful and only train consumers to ignore warnings about carcinogens.
Some states have mandated labels on biology textbooks stating that evolution is just a theory. This is a misleading statement designed to trick people into believing falsehoods.
Again, I'm not against all labeling. I'm just against labeling that misleads consumers. We need GMOs to make food cheaper and more nutritious and increase yields. GMO labeling is just a scare tactic to get people to buy more expensive products, and it comes at the expense of disadvantaged people and the environment.
Yes again one of the arguments from the cigarette industry.
Again in a free country the people are free to organize things as they see fit. And from a practical perspective I think you can understand why cigarettes have a more general warning rather than lists some measurement of all the know carcinogens which isn’t going to mean anything to your average consumer.
But again you are moving the goal posts because you’re now saying the labels are good, but they can be improved. That’s different than earlier positions of mandatory labels are authoritarian. but honestly listing measurements of carcinogens and expecting consumers to have an inherient understanding of those levels vis a vis scientific studies is ridiculous.
And to say gmo labels are a scare tactic that comes at a disadvantage to the environment is misinformed. Gmo based big ag is terrrible for farm land, and has already resulted in new mutations in weeds and pests that no longer respond to traditional pesticides and weed killers and are recking crops, not to mention damage to soil because gmo farms over utilize pesticides and weed killer chemicals compared to say organic farms or farms that do proper crop rotations.
Not sure how you can even say gmo labeling misleads consumers, since there are no studies on that and it’s never been done. All I know about it is consumers want it and lobbiests are blocking it on behalf of the gmo industry.
Prop 65 isn't about cigarette labeling. This labels anything in California that contains any amount of any known carcinogen. When I walk into a local shopping center, there is a sign saying that the place contains known carcinogens. This label is applied all over places and products across the state, regardless of whether there's a real danger. These labels are bad. They could be improved, but they're currently bad.
> That’s different than earlier positions of mandatory labels are authoritarian.
That is not and has never been my position. My position is that labels which have the effect of misinforming people are bad. I don't care who requires them. I am in favor of mandatory labels that have a net positive effect.
> Not sure how you can even say gmo labeling misleads consumers, since there are no studies on that and it’s never been done.
That's a fair point. We should have studies before mandating these labels so we can know whether they tend to mislead people.
> All I know about it is consumers want it and lobbiests are blocking it on behalf of the gmo industry.
You could say the same thing about labels on textbooks saying evolution is just a theory. There are lobbyists on both sides of this argument, and there are consumers that don't want it. Popular things are not always right, and lobbyists are not always wrong.