I originally pasted this on my Facebook account in response to some friends who asked my opinion on Prop 37 (The GMO labeling law in California). Some people were looking to share it more easily so it has a more permanent home. Here is my original post:<\/p>\n
Caution, long post ahead.<\/p>\n
The argument for Prop 37 is that people just want to know if their food contains genetically modified ingredients. How can a label be bad?<\/p>\n
\u00a0It is just information.<\/p>\n
It seems a very measured thing to do.<\/p>\n
This is the exact same argument used by creationists when it comes to labeling a biology text book, reminding students that evolution is “just” a theory. It is just information, how can it be bad?<\/p>\n
I want people to know that their food is GM. I break out the numbers for people all the time. I’ve TA’ed classes that deal with this topic for several years now. I have no problem with people knowing this information. What I am against is a government mandated label. A mandated label does not merely communicate the presence\/absence of something. It indicates that something is in the special select class of things WORTHY of being labeled by the government.<\/p>\n
Go look at your pantry and read some labels. Contains peanuts. Contains salmon. Contains phenylalanine. Contains wheat. May have been manufactured on shared equipment with nuts. Those labels there because some people are endangered by those ingredients. They pose a very real risk to the sizable subset of the population who are allergic to them, and it made sense for the government to mandate labeling.<\/p>\n
We don’t have government mandated labels like “May have been handled by redheads and\/or atheists”. Why? It is just information. A portion of the populace (awful people in sheets I suspect) might like that information. But there is no good scientific reason to mandate this silly label.<\/p>\n
Take a crop that is a product of traditional plant breeding. An average plant has 30,000 genes. You can cross that plant using traditional breeding to a wild, poisonous relative in an effort to move in a disease resistance trait possessed by that wild relative. The genome of the offspring is 50% starting plant, 50% poisonous relative. Backcross one generation, 75% of the genome is your starting plant type, the next 87.5%, the next 93.7\u2026 etc. You can backcross for generations and that number gets smaller, but not zero, you still have some of that wild relative in there. That plant doesn’t go through the USDA, FDA and EPA to make sure it is safe. No labeling required!<\/p>\n
You can smash up a plant genome with gamma radiation (http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Atomic_gardening<\/a>) and introduce who-knows-what kind of changes in the genome (ever eaten Star Ruby Grapefruit?). No labeling required!<\/p>\n You specifically drop in one gene into a genome of 30,000 genes, and then put it through orders of magnitude more testing and regulatory approval at the USDA, the FDA and the EPA. The most rigorously tested foodstuffs civilization has ever known, and never a properly documented sneeze. THAT needs to be labeled. Bwhuh?<\/p>\n There is a another label that exists on much of your foodstuffs. Usually a little circle with a U or a K in the middle. That is the Kosher label. It is not mandated by the government. There are private, third party certifying agencies that handle that. Why? It is very important for some people to know that the time between adding water to flour and baking their cracker was less than 18 minutes. However, there is no scientific justification for mandating a label to that effect. Government leaves it to private third parties.<\/p>\n If someone wants to start up a third party certification for GM-free food products, I am all for it.<\/p>\n Are all GM crops equal? Absolutely not. A group inserted a Brazil nut storage protein into Soybean. A protein that was an allergen. Did this soy make it to market? Nope, it was a bad idea, and the system worked. Do I think that genes introduced into grape require more scrutiny (thanks to wild relatives and the risk of outcrossing) than say maize being grown in France (where there are absolutely no close wild relatives)? Sure. Do I think they both need to be treated in the same way? No. It makes no sense. Why should they be labeled the same way?<\/p>\n Anyway, that is why I am against Prop 37. I don’t even want to get into the exceptions, the loopholes, the opportunities for litigious abuse, and the parallels to the ineffective Prop. 65. Anyway, if you disagree, I am happy to have a discussion on the topic.<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I originally pasted this on my Facebook account in response to some friends who asked my opinion on Prop 37 (The GMO labeling law in California). Some people were looking to share it more easily so it has a more … Continue reading