This is a great argument to whip people into a frenzy, but it's a little bit of a straw man. The US has labeling laws as well - it's not that the government doesn't care, it's that they're nearly impossible to enforce at scale. Without genetic analysis of literally every shipment, how is a regulatory authority to know what's what if the paperwork is otherwise "in order?"
Look, as somebody that's lived many years in Europe and in US, the situation is incomparable. I don't know why - either you have crappy laws, or you have crappy enforcement. If you read the article, it claims both. The FDA has super-low requirements to do anything - and manages to do even less than required to.
The european market is significantly bigger than US one (380m people) but manages to have much better labeling standards.
The reality, as in so many other areas with regard to the US, is crappy enforcement. If inspection authority was enforced at the state level (while still being funded by the federal government) I suspect you'd see much greater results.
EU does enforce food safety and labeling laws quite well. That might be because every EU country has its own FDA equivalent that provisions much smaller market. Sure, incidents happen, but fake food is nowhere such widespread in EU than USA.
Speculating, I wonder if there's the echoes of an historical effect too: frontier peoples make do with whatever food they can get, in contrast many regions in Europe have centuries old traditions requiring very specific treatments of food items; does USA have that sir of tradition (the only one I know of is putting off-milk flavour in chocolate).
also all EU producers ferociously compete with each other and won't esitate to force the local health authority to inspect foreign products at the slightest hint
The point is, which many commenters seem to be missing, is UK Trading Standards and equivalent EU bodies regularly test to see that foods meet claimed ingredients and are not adulterated. Prosecutions, sanctions and bans are frequent. The periodic outrages are relatively rare and become front page news.
If you claim on the label that your product is 52% tuna it can be (and frequently is) randomly tested and if it's not tuna, or 52% you can be open to prosecution.
By the sounds of the US system you're probably eating horse regularly, but no one ever tests to establish this.
In the case of the UK, austerity has resulted in Trading Standards being stretched to breaking point or beyond as funding has sunk way below actual need. Presumably the Tories will soon point to this as proof that a state owned system cannot work so let's privatise it.
Brexit leaves me deeply concerned the UK will resemble the US more.
Sorry, I thought you were claiming that fake food was not widespread. ("because every EU country has its own FDA equivalent that provisions much smaller market")
> if the last scandal you have found is dated back to 2013, that only confirms my point.
Words fail me at your reasoning. How closely do you think I follow foreign food purity issues?
Well if you don't follow foreign food purity issues (closely) then, please, try to comment a little bit more humble. Maybe asking instead of definitive statements?
If you can't increase the number of tests, increase the punishment and let it affect the entire chain from supermarket to producer. You want being found guilty of a violation to be a nightmare scenario that will end people's careers and entire companies.
In USA you need not label GMO food as GMO. [1] Because "The FDA has determined that the fish is as safe and nutritious as nongenetically modified fish, and will therefore not require the company or retailers to label the fish as genetically engineered."
Which is fine (I say as European). Requiring GMO labeling is is about as sensible as requiring DHMO labeling - it's scaremongering not based on science.
While I tend to agree that the actual food is probably safe , there are several valid ideological justifications for such labeling. I would also support seed variety labeling wherever it is reasomably practical, as consumer choice can only be choice if fact are available. The history should also have taught us that if the industry tries to avoid labeling, they should generally be required labeling. They are likely not afraid of ink expenditures, rather they want to sell me one thing and tell me it is something slightly different, for profit.
Patenting mechanics of life and GMO are two separate issues not really connected to each other. There's plenty of plant development, for instance, that is covered by patents or patent-like protections, even if it's not GMO in the sense you talk about.
(It's often GMO in the sense "let's take a bunch of seeds, expose them to radiation and carcinogens, and experiment with whatever comes out.)
In some countries (e.g. mine), these rights are not called "patent" but are not substantially different from what they are where the name is patent.
> Patenting mechanics of life and GMO are two separate issues not really connected to each other. There's plenty of plant development, for instance, that is covered by patents or patent-like protections, even if it's not GMO in the sense you talk about.
You can maybe get a patent for the process, but can you get a patent for the resulting lifeform or its individual genes? My understanding is that you can not, but if that's wrong I'd love to be corrected.
I agree that gene patents and whether to use GMO manufacturing are two different issues, but given that all of the GMO companies seem to be grabbing patents on their products, not buying GMO products seems like a good way to not support these practices. Especially since we already have GMO labeling in some places, whereas patent-information markings are very unlikely to ever be implemented.
>...can you get a patent for the resulting lifeform or its individual genes? My understanding is that you can not, but if that's wrong I'd love to be corrected.
Yes, you can get a patent. There are even organisations that aspire to patent organic plant variants that obviously aren't GMO. [0]
>given that all of the GMO companies seem to be grabbing patents on their products
No, not all are. First of all, not all developers of GMO technology are even companies - they may be universities or government agencies, for instance [1]. The widespread and misguided opposition to GMO technology works to the benefit for large companies (like Monsanto), though, because they have the resources to hire enough lawyers to manage the process where it matters.
Secondly, there's nothing "grabbing" about filing for patents or equivalent IPRs for plant variants; it's what you need to do to protect your variant even when you plan to release it into public domain (so that a malicious party would not claim them).
The public is not made only/mainly of science-challenged people as you're subtly implying.
There are other reasonable motivations for labeling GMO, ie. political and environmental (not all environmental reasons are "GMO is frankenstein food").
Moreover, the GMO scaremongering will last, as any other fad, for a limited amount of time. The part of public who rejects GMO for shallow (no) reasons, will quickly forget and move one to be scared of something else.
I'm not so sure. People are still sure that MSG will slowly kill them, when it's actually been proven to be 100% harmless as far as we know. You still see "No MSG" labels on tons of food.
Mandatory labeling gives the impression that it's relevant information. Whether your food is GMO is totally without consequence. I don't see why the government should burden and mislead the rest of us so you can more easily wage your political campaign from the comfort of your local Whole Foods.
I'd actually be fine with mandatory labeling if it said something like "GMO. Totally harmless but the food hipsters wouldn't shut up until we forced everyone to read this stupid label."
The scientific literature doesn't show MSG to be completely harmless. Some people definitely have negative reactions it and other sources of free glutamates.
>"Excitotoxicity is the pathological process by which nerve cells are damaged or killed by excessive stimulation by neurotransmitters such as glutamate and similar substances." //
Is excitotoxicity of glutamates a myth, it must be if the claim that 'MSG is completely harmless' is true.
> Some people definitely have negative reactions it and other sources of free glutamates.
And some people have an allergy to water. I think GP meant "harmless" as referring to general population. There are always people who are allergic or otherwise harmed by things that are harmless to the 99.99% of humanity. Additional labeling might be justified if their number grows beyond a rounding error. And that still doesn't change the fact that unless you're the confirmed rare case for which X is harmful, you have no reason to fear it or to believe (and spread) misconceptions about it.
Funny that you quote from the excitotoxicity article but not the MSG article, which lists study after study proving that MSG in food is harmless. All reports of negative effects are anecdotal and unsubstantiated. This is for one of the most widely consumed chemicals in the world.
>study after study proving that MSG in food is harmless //
The side issue is objective truth here. So, you're telling me that no one has ever been harmed by consuming normal quantities of MSG? That's what "proven harmless" means.
It only requires one study to show some link between MSG and negative health effects to make it rational to seek that information, something like this http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27312658 maybe, suggesting neuronal destruction (using mice as a model). It's not proof.
For example, from the Wikipedia article on "Glutamate flavoring":
>"At a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in 1990, the delegates had a split opinion on the issues related to neurotoxic effects from excitotoxic amino acids found in some additives such as monosodium glutamate."
If neuroscience experts don't have consensus, that would be a reason to avoid "additives such as MSG", no?
I still think that if we're going to do this democracy thing that people who want "no MSG" labels ['no free glutamate' would probably be more useful] should get them regardless of my view of their scientific basis.
Personally MSG doesn't really bother me, I don't like the "enhanced" taste with foods that are rich in it but a little seems fine. I do get headache and bloatedness after having the UK version of Chinese Restaurant food, seemingly more so than with other food types, but I'm pretty sure that's just over-eating [perhaps the enhanced flavour encourages it?].
This might not be obvious but the primary problem with GMO is that as a farmer you have to buy (in FSF terms) proprietary seeds and fertilizers. After the first harvest the the soil has been "contaminated" with GMO seeds. Even if you stop using the GMO seeds immediately you can still be sued by the seed manufacturer.
> People are still sure that MSG will slowly kill them, when it's actually been proven to be 100% harmless as far as we know. You still see "No MSG" labels on tons of food.
"People" is sure of that... and so what? Food with additives sell. Have a walk in the street and observe what's the volume of organic (I'm using "additive-free-as-possible" for comparison purposes) food sold against "regular" one.
Talking at home about good intentions, irrational fears and so on translates little to purchasing habits. I actually heard only two people in my life talking about MSG, and only one is the "food hipster" who doesn't buy.
Of course, cases like associating skulls and crossbones with microwave ovens are an entirely different story.
> so you can more easily wage your political campaign from the comfort of your local Whole Foods.
I'm not sure if you're intentionally disingenuous here; the supermarket (generalizing, purchasing of goods) is actually the least comfortable place where to wage political campaigns, because it's the place where one puts the money where the mouth is if he really believes in his ideas, and doing so is expen$ive.
> Totally harmless but the food hipsters wouldn't shut up until we forced everyone to read this stupid label.
Let me make sure I understand you correctly.
In the jar of yogurt I have in front of me, whose main readable are is ~250 cm², an OGM writing would take an estimated 0.8 cm² (it would necessarily follow the typical guidelines of mandatory warnings), and it would also be in a part which has no immediate visibility. I therefore exclude that as "forcing everyone to read".
I also extremely rarely see advertisements in the supermarkets with warnings - this would cannibalize a part of their own offer.
Can you explain who and how would exactly "force" the public to read such warnings?
Note that of course some food would, for marketing purposes, shovel "GMO free" in shiny colours. That's advertisement, it's not government-regulated mandatory warning.
BTW there seems to be a development for some more sensible marking of GM foods beyond the GMO/non-GMO labeling which really tells you nothing of value.
The idea with this is that you put much more information available:
A vast majority of what you eat has been developed, not thousands of years ago, but some years or decades ago, using processes such as induced mutagenesis and selection. The variance in genome produced by GMO technology is very small compared to the changes in developed plants, which is not researched at all prior to feeding to humans.
Do you think you should get to dictate to others what food they eat?
It doesn't matter if you think how people choose their food is not sensible, what matters for GMO labeling is whether you think they should be allowed to choose.
Don't know what you mean by DHMO in this context, are you trying to make a joke about water? FWIW we have labeling for food dosed with water, eg bacon, such labeling is perfectly proper.
The problem isn't with labels per se. Sure, informed choice is best and all. But people are asking for GMO labels not because of a need to exercise informed choice - the campaigning is done because of irrational fears of GMO. Call it asking for an OK-ish thing for very wrong reasons.
And DHMO in this context means the GMO fear makes about as much sense as DHMO fear. People are afraid because it sounds "chemically".
>the campaigning is done because of irrational fears of GMO.
But not allowing be to have the data to make a choice because a certain undefined cadre of society considers that choice to be irrational seems exceedingly likely to have a chilling effect.
So now you can't label your goods as phthalate-free because someone somewhere decided, perhaps with the help of a plastics manufacturer (yes I'm cynical), that "there's no rational reason to avoid them"?
This prevents people from being more conservative with risk than the authority who decides we're not allowed to have that information; yes it also means people can make a decision that you wouldn't but we all have the information available.
You're assuming and generalizing what people think based on nothing but your own prejudice. Maybe GMOs pose no risk (even though the definition of 'GMO' is so vague that it is impossible to be so generally affirmative), but what if I want to eat traditional varieties, what if I don't want to support multinational companies which ruin the lives of small farmers around the world, don't I have a right to do so ? Should that right be taken away from me because you don't think personally it is something worthy of concern ?
If you the GMO products are consistently 15% cheaper (thanks to better yields and lower waste they are promising) and routinely labeled organic (thanks to the promised reduction in pesticides requirements), consumers will be attracted to it.
If GMOs have nothing to offer, why would the consumer want them, harmful or not?
> and routinely labeled organic (thanks to the promised reduction in pesticides requirements)
Except they won't be, because "organic" doesn't involve less pesticides - it often involves more pesticides but of a more "natural" flavour. It may have started from the desire of some consumers to buy food that's made locally and with a more pre-industrial feel to it (because they believe it's healthier), but now it's just a way to milk people who have strong opinions about food.
In the EU (as we still are in the UK for the moment) this http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/organic/eu-policy/eu-legisla... is the situation with food labelled "Organic". It's certainly not about being pre-industrial, it's about being sustainable and cautious with natural resources and health.
