Vermont gmo label law starts today

[136or142]

The whole point of it is to cause the effect like we saw with the "This product causes cancer" initiative in California. There's no way to know which shipments go to which states, so they have to label all their products nationwide. I've said to my fellow Democrats who've jumped on this GMO bandwagon that if we're going to attack Republicans for ignoring 97% of scientists on climate change, then we ought to be consistent: 89% of scientists say that genetically-modified foods are safe to eat.

Where do you get your 89% figure from?

Most of the studies on the safety of GMOs have been done by the companies themselves.

From what I've heard and read, the alleged harms of GMOs have been greatly overstated, but so have the alleged benefits.

It seems to me a great deal of money has been spent for very little actual result.  Of course, that could change quickly, as frequently happens with scientific progress, but it's been over 20 years.

Anyway, this is one article from a peer reviewed journal that casts doubt on the scientific consensus regarding the safety of GMOs:

http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/92/art%253A10.1186%252Fs12302-014-0034-1.pdf?originUrl=http%3A%2F%2Flink.springer.com%2Farticle%2F10.1186%2Fs12302-014-0034-1&token2=exp=1467572585~acl=%2Fstatic%2Fpdf%2F92%2Fart%25253A10.1186%25252Fs12302-014-0034-1.pdf%3ForiginUrl%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Flink.springer.com%252Farticle%252F10.1186%252Fs12302-014-0034-1*~hmac=36cab6381d05882e4f824ae6b827df2c8f993794d041f5bee0bc38089d6cfb09

[136or142]

The burden of proof is on the people who want something to change. They want GMO foods labeled. Why?

Because of health risks? Research has indicated there are none. Because of ethical reasons? They haven't articulated any, and in fact GMOs have saved countless lives around the world.

The only answer there seems to be is "Because the idea of GMOs makes me feel icky" and that's not a reason to burden the products with something that is essentially designed to make them sell less.

That GMOs have 'saved countless lives around the world' is a lie put out by Monsanto and other large agricultural companies. You can probably count on one hand the number of lives saved by GMOs.

[136or142]

If a simpler solution is available, then choose that. The golden rice scenario is a good example: there is a problem (Vitamin A deficiency in the Thirld World) but it's worth investigating why that problem exists before throwing accusations back and forth to one another.

Golden Rice is actually an excellent example of the dishonesty of Monsanto and the other Agricultural companies.

They promised this more than 20 years ago now and I'm not aware if they actually ended up producing anything, they hadn't the last time I looked into this two or three years ago.

Golden Rice was clearly used as propaganda to guilt trip people who opposed GMOs for rational or irrational reasons:  "If you oppose GMOs you're putting hundreds of thousands of poor people to death."

That's about as cynical and sleazy as it gets.

The idea that Monsanto or the other companies would spend significant money researching GMOs to make more/healthier food for poor people around the world is laughable given that these poor people can't afford to buy GMO food in the first place.

There may be some ongoing research into GMOs crops that produce significantly more food, because that has the potential to lower the cost of food to the point where many poor people around the world can afford them, but my understanding is that GMO crops have not increased yields.

[136or142]

If a simpler solution is available, then choose that. The golden rice scenario is a good example: there is a problem (Vitamin A deficiency in the Thirld World) but it's worth investigating why that problem exists before throwing accusations back and forth to one another.

It is a simple and elegant solution. What is the problem?

The main question is, hy, given all the variety of breeding and selection methodes, is a small group chosen, based pretty much on no scientific criterion whatsoever, to be "scary and complicated", whereas many others - some of them equally easy to describe in apocalyptic mad scientist terms - are not?

In any case, I would really insist that none of these anti-GMO types in the future say a word about global warming or evolution (unless, of course, they are deniers). Scientific consensus is either to be respected or not.

B.S.  You're the one taking the word of the Agriculture Industry scientists and regarding them as honest at the same time as you're saying that the word of the scientists working for the fossil fuel companies in regards to global warming are well known lies.

You're the inconsistent one.

There is practically no independent research and absolutely no consensus in the academic scientific community that GMO foods are safe or unsafe.

[136or142]

If a simpler solution is available, then choose that. The golden rice scenario is a good example: there is a problem (Vitamin A deficiency in the Thirld World) but it's worth investigating why that problem exists before throwing accusations back and forth to one another.

It is a simple and elegant solution. What is the problem?

The main question is, hy, given all the variety of breeding and selection methodes, is a small group chosen, based pretty much on no scientific criterion whatsoever, to be "scary and complicated", whereas many others - some of them equally easy to describe in apocalyptic mad scientist terms - are not?

In any case, I would really insist that none of these anti-GMO types in the future say a word about global warming or evolution (unless, of course, they are deniers). Scientific consensus is either to be respected or not.

B.S.  You're the one taking the word of the Agriculture Industry scientists and regarding them as honest at the same time as you're saying that the word of the scientists working for the fossil fuel companies in regards to global warming are well known lies.

You're the inconsistent one.

There is practically no independent research and absolutely no consensus in the academic scientific community that GMO foods are safe or unsafe.

1. I do not dispute global warming: I take scientific consensus for what it is. I am quite consistent there. I just do not want you to be talking about it. It is an opinion of you, not of the scientific evidence.

2. 110 Nobel prize winners, including 41 winner in Medicine and 35 winners in Chemistry have just signed this:

http://supportprecisionagriculture.org/view-signatures_rjr.html

Would they do it if there were no consensus?

The scientific consensus, as I understand it, is that the very question of safety/lack thereoff of "GMO" is meaningless. You can talk about particular products - exactly in the same way you can talk about particular products that are not classified as "GMO". If you want to argue that a particular cultivar of soy is somehow bad, be my guest. If you want to argue that Monsanto is doing something nasty - sure, present your arguments. But using "GMO" as a scare word is no different from any pseudo-scientific nonsense, like the Stalinist denunciation of genetics itself, or Creationist bullshoot about evolution.

I'm not trying to talk about GMOs as harmful or otherwise, I've already written that I didn't think there was much evidence to their alleged harm or to their alleged benefits, but:

1.GMO may be meant by some as a scare word, but it's also a short-hand in much the same way that 'carbon' is a short-hand for carbon-dioxide or even all GHGs.

2.I think you're the one playing games with the terms, as clearly those who oppose GMOs are referring to hybridization that does not occur naturally but that requires (artificially) taking a gene from one organism and placing it in other.  I don't know if there is anything wrong with this, but I think you need to move very carefully when doing genetic modification that doesn't occur naturally.  There certainly needs to be more oversight of this and it shouldn't be just left to the companies.

3.It especially shouldn't be left to these companies, when, like Monsanto, the largest company to engage in genetic modification of food, they've been shown to be dishonest, like using this 'golden rice' that has gone nowhere for over twenty years in order to to guilt-trip opponents of GMOs.  As is normal with any for-profit corporation, their first concern is not safe use of science, but making a profit.

4.There are how many thousands of scientists in medicine or chemistry?  Just because these scientists have Nobel Prizes I don't think proves there is a scientific consensus.

I've previously linked to a recent article from a European Journal showing there was no consensus in the academic scientific community, and here is a website:
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/list.php

I don't know how credible it is, but they do list over 800 scientists opposed to GMOs, or some aspect of GMO research.

[136or142]

yet we don't mandate pesticide disclosure on the label.

Well you should.

My point is that VT won't pass that as it's well-established practice. Even though the science says that there's little threat from the vast majority of GMOs, they'd rather go after the new technology, than the known concern from the older tech.

"We don't do this good thing, therefore we shouldn't do that other good thing either."

Great rationale.

Catering to anti-science paranoids is not a good thing.

Bingo. GMOs sound scary and this is nothing but pointing justifiable anger at Monsanto (a legitimately sketchy company) I'm the direction of its product rather than its business practices.

I think this is a distinction without a difference.  Its sketchy business practices are in support of its products.  I don't quite know how you can argue if you don't trust Monsanto how you can believe that GMOs are safe when the research backing that largely comes from Monsanto scientists.

I'm also not specifically anti-GMO. I've written several times here that I think the evidence of both the alleged harm and the alleged benefits or GMOs are pretty thin.  

This just strikes me, when it comes to GMO use in food, as a lot of money spent to produce very little of benefit to consumers or to society.  

I think it's pretty clear the real reason Monsanto and other large agricultural companies like Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) are pursuing GMOs is, what the conspiracy theorists say it is: that they want to patent seeds so as to turn them into an ever increasing profit center and to have as few farmers as possible use saved seeds.  These agriculture companies have the farmers they sell to sign contracts that stipulate that the farmers won't use any saved seeds but will buy new seeds every year.

Monsanto and maybe other large agricultural companies have done research into developing GMO 'terminator' seeds that don't reproduce. Monsanto denies they've ever sold terminator seeds commercially, but they don't deny doing research into them, and this is obviously a legitimate concern to those who are anti-GMO: what would happen if terminator seeds got into the wild and 'mixed' with natural seeds?.  Given this obvious potential risk and that they deny they have any interest in commercializing these seeds, why did they do research into them in the first place?

Given all this, I don't know how anybody can be legitimately suspicious of big-business and still claim that anybody who is anti-GMO must also be anti-science.