Hacker News Reader

Comment by EStudley | Hacker News Reader

People don't want GMOs because they've been force-fed propaganda by the anti-GMO crowd.. go ahead and place GMO labels on everything, and see how many people still oppose it when they find their favorite food with a GMO label on it.

View on HN

As a consumer, I deserve to know the truth about what is in the food that I purchase and feed to my family. If putting a GMO label on the food that has it, leads consumers to still purchase that, it's their right to do that. My question to you is, what harm is there in that label?

A label on your food isn't necessarily the truth. If you want want the truth, you really have to take that responsibility for yourself. The government is not good at labeling organic food[0], and there is no reason to believe they'll get GMO labeling right, since the same issues are involved.

[0] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_certification#Issues

I am skeptical of nutrition labels, so what you're saying isn't lost on me. However, much like putting the nutrition labels (or ingredient lists for that matter) on food, GMO labeling is a starting point.

Misleading labeling (like there is with organics) is worse than no labeling. What you end up with is a product of questionable quality that is more expensive than it should be because someone has to pay the inspectors.

Exactly, maybe it will change people's mind and they will accept it more, or it could be just the opposite and people would boycott lots of products. But until there is a label, it's difficult to know. At least with a label, we will see instantly if GMOs are making economic sense.

>propaganda by the anti-GMO crowd

Is this a well-funded crowd, full of large corporate support? What do they have to gain with their 'propaganda' exactly?

No, it's a collective of small companies who profit off the stupidity and false-validation of anti-GMO "activists". Every time a anti-GMOer googles "Why GMOs are bad" and clicks the first link someone who is pushing that propaganda gets paid.

Hm. I don't think you understand how Google's paid SE placement works (i.e. Google gets paid by the so-called propagandists to place those links).

Just FYI, I used to do research where I spliced genes for a certain enzyme into yeast in order to study the enzymatic mechanism, so I'm not exactly uninformed.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/10/gmo-labels-congress...

Sad, but true.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com