That’s simply not true. It’s a blatantly false statement.
If only cigarettes had labeling you might have a point. If people entirely stopped buying cigarettes as soon as they came out with warning labels you might have another point.
But here in reality, all foodstuffs, medicines and topical preparations carry mandatory labels, because it’s a fundamental principle of market capitalism that the customer must be as close to perfectly informed as possible. Otherwise, the famous “invisible hand” does not act in human scale; which is why a well-regulated marketplace must sanction false advertising, misrepresentation and fraud.
Any argument against labeling is an argument in favor of restricting the flow of information in order to maximize corporate profits. Which is how you sort 'em out - if GMO proponents are against labeling, they aren’t in favor of good science, good economics, or good politics, they just want to feather the corporate nests. They are shills or (worse yet) True Believers. And that is why they are scary!
I don’t want to stop GMO research or production. But further enriching amoral plutocrats by purposely subverting the basic economic and social principals of informed choice has nothing to do with science or social good, it’s just unethical market manipulation. Put GMOs on the labels just like salt, calories and vitamins; a lie by omission is still a lie.
One of Hoffer’s major themes is that True Believers are outsiders and, in his words, “misfits” (although that can be their fault or society’s). But you could have gotten that by reading the wikipedia page you linked to even if you skipped the book.
I’ll save you the trouble of trying for a snappy comeback by pointing out that people who profit from a revolutions are “opportunists” not True Believers.
It seems to me that GMO proponents who oppose labeling are misfits and outsiders, and an incredibly tiny part of the population. I’ve never met one on the street, although they are loudly present in the halls of government.
Edit: Dude, if you think I am a source of “snappy comeback” I am both flattered and surprised.
Nutrition labels are mandatory because there are real health reasons for people to avoid highly caloric and salty foods. People are right in being scared off from food high in either. But there isn’t a similar reason for GMO labeling. The push for forced GMO labeling is no more about “informed consumerism” than the similar campaign to force labeling of biology textbooks containing mention of evolution is. The point is to instill fear and doubt in the populace that isn’t supported by science. While yes, corporations, whether agribusiness or publishers, have a stake in both issues, that isn’t the only reason to oppose these measures – and that’s why the vast majority of scientists such as myself that have no financial stake in either textbooks or GMO technology oppose the forced labeling of either.
There are quite a lot of fairly condescending comments here characterizing people who are concerned about GMOs as “anti-science” and that opposition to Golden Rice is some kind of perfect example that proves this point. I won’t deny that maybe there are some people who fit that description, but knowing many life-long activists who are in this for the long haul I can say that is certainly not the majority.
For those of you who have simple accepted the “fact” that increasing beta-carotene in rice to unnatural levels is a good idea, you should realize you are taking a decidedly unscientific view. Not even questioning that premise was the first unscientific thing you did. The second was not looking into it.
Beta-carotene, for instance, seems to increase lung cancer rates in people whose lungs have been compromised by tobacco or asbestos. Shouldn’t we study things a bit more before launching this out into the world in an irretrieveable fashion? link to pubmed abstract
There is so much we still have to learn we need to proceed humbly and judiciously, instead of with the arrogance and hubris that so often accompany both “big bad” corporate ventures as well as philanthropic “do-gooder” ones.
Oh, of course, of course, the levels of beta carotene present, say in carrots, are just completely natural, no doubt about it. And, of course, all our crops are natural, none of them has been selected for thousands of years.
BAN CARROTS!
Now, seriously, those doses are ten times higher than the doses people get from diet. See? More FUD.
You know what’s hubris? To be well fed, in a cozy chair, saying that others should not do research to solve the problems of those who are suffering and poorly nourished. Get humble and start studying more. The dose of beta carotene delivered by a serving of golden rice is about 1.53 mg. But, why would you bother and search for the facts when you can just come and start yelling CANCER, CANCER, CANCER!!!
A serving of 100 grams of carrots will give you 8 mg of beta carotene. Time to ban carrots.
I love how the cautionary principle is always advocated as an argument against things people don’t like. Can you imagine if we treated the introduction of every Apple product in the same way as we would treat the introduction of a GM apple?
We currently have this illogical double-standard when it comes to crop development: breeding and mutagenesis are treated as okay, with very modest regulatory hurdles to jump before going to market. Targeted introduction or deletions of DNA, on the other hand, are treated as this terrible danger that must be carefully guarded against via a decades-long process of field trials and lab tests.
If you want to be cautious, be consistent. Demand the same trials and the same labelling approaches for all the technologies we now use to produce new crop plants. Demand that every new genetic change be carefully assessed, rather than simply one type.
I’ve had my say on labelling over at the most recent GM-related post, but here is something to chew on courtesy of the folks at biofortified:
PS: I feel compelled to ask - how are you envisioning the labelling process working? A big ‘may contain GM’ sticker? If so, then your arguments about increased information ring rather hollow. Or are you intending to include relevant information on the gene introduced, the process used and the regulatory bodies which have signed off on the product?
Artificial selection which works by the same principles as natural selection, is not the same as injecting genes from one species into the nucleus of another not closely related species (meaning not the same species or even genus, or in the case of some GMOs, the same Kingdom).
Sorry to get you so riled up! Maybe consider switching to decaf.
Just one more point: malnutrition in poor countries is overwhelmingly a result of social and economic inequities, both between and within nations, not the lack of any specific technology. The cause points to the solution. In many of the poor rice-growing areas of the world people are victimized by the commodification of rice and the cartel-like results of world capital keeping the price for the crop artificially low (as one example, US government subsidies driving prices down below cost of production). As a result many of these poor communities plant the crop over their entire land desperately trying to make more income, rather than retaining a piece for home food production - from which they would get much more Vitamin A than they would from Golden Rice.
And despite your funny ad hominem, rather than being fat on my cozy chair these are communities I have visited and know people living this life. Perhaps you do too - unlike you I won’t make assumptions about you.
So go after the genes, not the technology.
As it stands now, any GM product (including golden rice, which is about as feel-good a project as it is possible to imagine) gets demonised based on the fact that it is GM.
If you want to have a discussion about how expressing bt cry proteins in one plant is somehow worse than organic farmers spraying it on top of another, then go for it. We can all have another long, stupid argument about how ‘foreign’ DNA is supposed to be magically worse than the mass of bacterial and viral insertions that are already a part of every plant’s genome. Or how a foreign gene coding for an enzyme along a useful pathway is somehow a problem and a native gene coding for a toxin is not.
Don’t pretend, however, that the process used to introduce a gene is somehow the determinant factor for whether it is good, safe, natural (whatever that means) or whatever. It only makes you look disingenuous.
As for decaf, OSGuido can probably tell you that any true biologist lives off coffee. To do anything else is an insult to our noble heritage of late-night cramming, all-day marking and weekends spent in laboratories.
I am not saying that it is causing anything. Where do you see that? Please pick apart my arguments, but you don’t have to insert things I did not actually say.
Anyway, the fact that social/economic factors are the prime cause of these sorts of malnourishment is not being debated, at least not by me. I feel, however, that golden rice is a much better, more sustainable alternative to the sorts of exploitative food aid programs that would be used in its place.
We can’t solve the world’s hunger by GM alone - technology isn’t magic after all. But we can rationally use the tools we have to make things better.
Not causing, a cause. As in ‘anti-GM’ rather than ‘anti whatever-gene-is-actually-a-problem’. The anti-GM movement, by its very name, is arguing against an entire technology irrespective of the uses it could be put to.
I honestly do not see what insult you’re referring to. But anyway yes I agree with your statement.
I don’t think this will change your mind but maybe at least you can consider that people on the opposite side are not unthinking: GM is a new techonology. Like many new technologies we do not always know sufficiently about it at first and only learn of risks later. Life involves risks and if we applied the Precautionary Principle across the board nothing new would ever be allowed onto the market. The most significant difference between GMOs and other technologies is that it cannot be “recalled”. Once it is out there it is self-replicating. Apple products do not self-replicate (at least not yet - maybe they are working on it!).
Except isn’t one of the most-used arguments against GM the idea that it could be used to make non-reproducing plants (the much-abused ‘terminator’ seeds that never made it to market)?
Of course caution is required when rolling out a new product or technology. Which is why we should be having deep public debates over the specific gene constructs being tested. But as it stands now we’re not doing that. Instead we’re talking about slapping labels on every food product under the sun (on what amounts to the one-drop principle) to warn us against ‘GMOs’. As if every gene is the same.
We currently treat every GM plant as a new and dangerous product, irrespective of what it does or how it does it. And this is one of the prime reasons why Monsanto and co are thriving while government-funded crop research is slowly dying - the regulatory hurdles necessitate deep pockets and an aggressive approach to dealing with potential IP infringement.
