I don’t know what his deal is but no. On the other hand, if he really does know what he is talking about, he would appear to be just another dishonest, anti-GMO ideologue. This article addresses most of the points mentioned on his TEDx talk.
The other elephant in the room is the tradition of national panic over trace amounts of contamination. For example Japans recent ban on American wheat over a couple plants found in a field. Of course, Japan did this while radiation from Fukashima rains down on the suburbs of Tokyo, so they were happy to make a big deal over wheat.
Ballot issues like prop 38 did not fill in the blanks about how billions of dollars will be spent to enforce these rules, what exactly they are going to do, or how they fit into the tradition of national waves of panic.
1 Like
You are reacting to a preconceived stereotype living in your head rather to what I’m saying. I know there are a lot of people out there for whom this whole GMO thing is a moot point for, because they simply can’t afford it. I personally know a lot of people in this situation- I’m not insensitive to them, and my post wasn’t directed at them, as I tried to make clear.
I’m talking about the other huge chunk of the population, the “middle class” (such as it is these days) many of whom use the same argument you did. First, they look at their bank account and decide they can’t afford it. Second, they look at the people supporting this way of life and observe that they’re all affluent liberals- either young yuppie double-income parents, or crunchy eco-types who never wear socks. Both groups can afford to think that way because they’re not poor. I get it. There’s a lot of people who fit the stereotype, and, for better or worse, they are the ones driving the movement.
But, so what? Once you get over that, you realize that thank God SOMEone is driving the movement or we’d really have no good options about one of the most essential parts of living- our diet. The farmers who grow this food aren’t hipster yuppies, they’re genuine “My family has been doing this for generations” folks who realize the industrial system, rather than saving the world, is actually fucking it up terribly in the long run. Their crazy eco-liberal practices are actually centuries old, and they’re grateful to have the young and affluent supporting their families, even if they don’t watch the same movies or read the same books.
So whether or not you can truly afford to eat this way, I have no idea. But your point of view is one shared by an awful lot of people who CAN afford to eat that way if they rearrange their budget. That’s point #1. And point #2 is that regardless of who can or can’t afford it in 2013, in the long run, we all are going to HAVE to figure out how to eat that way because eventually the current system you’re praising is going to, quite literally, run out of gas. The amount of fossil fuel needed to run a modern farm is gigantic- and every time the price of oil rises, the illusion that this food can be produced cheaply becomes more eroded. At some point, it won’t matter what you think of my opinion, because it will have become reality.
1 Like
So, well-meaning 14-year old girl full of anti-gmo propaganda debates loudmouth, asshole TV host. Very nice I’d like to see this bright 14-year debate an actual scientist.
1 Like
The anti-GMO activists are increasingly overlapping with the Agenda 21, chemtrails, anti-vaxxer crowd. Some of them are now starting to claim that GMOs cause autism.
1 Like
Welcome to BB Bernie, and congrats on your first post!
Again you’re asking one group of people why a different group of people are doing something. You want to find out why pirates and farmers are using something, ask them, then you have your answer. Then you can look at there answer and compare it to GMO critics reasons for being critical. See how that works?
2 Likes
And we don’t know how a lifetime of eating food with these changes will affect the people.
1 Like
He distracts the audience, or attempts to, by making it about her character and belief instead of her campaign goals.
Perhaps we should be eventually concerned about her belief that GMOs are bad and that she’s anti-GMO, I personally know little about GMOs, but that’s not the point though - her campaign or her activism is on the message that things should be labeled (which I agree to, tentatively, because I know little about GMOs and don’t know how it would be done) and that there should be independent testing from parties that wouldn’t benefit from approval (which I strongly agree with).
And all he does is try to paint her as a conservative, anti-progress little girl with her head in the wrong place.
No, that’s not cool. Those are cheap tricks and low blows. And it annoys me when people do that.
She’s a smart, logical and cool-headed girl. I think it would have helped her if she just acknowledged that some things are things she hasn’t considered or that it’s not the point - but I still get nervous in front of a camera after doing this for years. So, hey, I applaud her, she kicked ass.
2 Likes
Critiques of modern agriculture can stand quite soundly on their own feet w/o resting on anti-GMO FUD.
A mandatory labelling scheme will impose insane costs on farmers and consumers (i.e. people who eat food) w/o any meaningful benefit.
Actually, food prices in the US are unusually cheap. Percentage of household budget spent on food (and in the case of other countries, that’s mostly groceries brought home to cook, not eating out, fast food or otherwise) is much higher in any first world country than in the US. We have a bizarre expectation that our nutrition should be as cheap as possible. It’s not a given…it’s a cultural expectation.
2 Likes
I can’t see how that’s an argument for raising food prices in exchange for no meaningful benefit.
Are you really criticizing people about FUD then spreading your own?
Food already has to have ingredient lists, nutritional information and other things on it but the moment you print ‘GMO’ (or something similar) in it the manufacturing cost are going to be ‘insane’, really?
2 Likes
what you have to understand is that kevin o’leary is all about the money - 100% all the time. if they found evidence that gmo’s are linked to cancer, he’d still argue that they may save lives, or maybe that smoking is linked to cancer but people still smoke.
that is kevin o’leary. he is canadian donald trump, though maybe more intelligent and successful than trump.
3 Likes
Well, these are sort of separate issues and sort-of not. Having trudged through this extremely long exchange, I still don’t really see the argument for NOT labeling. I mean, it’s pretty simple. Between our government’s shoddy history and agri-business’ shoddy history, I don’t know why anyone would trust anything they have to say. I don’t care if GMO’s are actually perfectly healthy in the long run- until I can be sure of that, I want to avoid them as much as possible. Do we really need to dig into recent history and point out everything the FDA and the food industry told us was harmless that turned out to be far from harmless? It’s like having a friend who’s constantly raping you and then saying “hey, let’s go take a walk in the woods over there. I swear I won’t rape you tonight.” Even if he doesn’t rape me tonight, why the hell would I take that chance?
Yet that’s what we do every time when it comes to this kind of thing. I’m not against developing and testing GMO’s any more than that 14 year old girl is. Do it. Test it- for many years, not just a few months. I don’t want to be the lab rat and then find out how fucked my kids are in 20 years because of it. I trust nature’s “trial and error” method that has gone on for millions of years more than I trust Monsanto’s “trial and error” method. Adding the words “contains GMO’s” on a label is not going to impose insane costs on anyone- it will simply be one more thing for American consumers to ignore at the checkout isle, but for the few of us that care about that sort of thing, not to mention the majority of other countries, it will be extremely helpful.
2 Likes
It was a response to your statement that another poster couldn’t possible know what poverty is because people living in poverty in the US cannot afford to pay more for food. The relative weight of food costs in a household budget in the US is much lower than in other countries, so it is not a given that poor people cannot afford more expensive food. It’s a question of assumptions and priorities, which are often culturally based.
1 Like
Yes. Corn and soy are fungible commodity crops. Requiring field-to-shelf tracking - this is what you’d need to get any sort of verifiable labelling scheme - would fundamentally reorganize the entire distribution chain and impose enormous, ongoing costs.
1 Like
It would be nice if we could scratch up another $20 billion for food safety and maybe save the lives of several thousand people who die from contaminated food in the US every year, none of whom were killed by GMOs. But it would be silly to go looking for risk where none’s been found while ignoring real contamination that actually sickens nearly 100,000 American a year.
1 Like
So FUD, got it.
Nice to see that your record of not engaging in substance has suffered no blemishes.
