FDA won't allow food to be labeled GMO free page

[Dirlot]

FDA won’t allow food to be labeled free of genetic modification: report | The Raw Story

Didn't see this before but madness.

[Mike in Virginia]

Sad, but not surprising. The FDA represents the big agri-businesses and pharmaceutical companies.

[JoanieL]

Right. It's the whole BGH bullshit all over again. I noticed that someone in that article said that labelling would just confuse the consumer. I would have laughed, but I was too busy trying to reach my hands through the computer screen to choke him 'til his eyes popped out of his head.

[sbhikes]

I was trying to tell people this when California had the proposition on the ballot to enforce labeling of GMO foods. Nobody knew that labeling foods as not GMO isn't allowed. I would prefer the scenario where if your food doesn't have GMO in it you can state that on the label rather than the scenario in the proposition, but since it was already not allowed, I voted for the proposition. It didn't pass.

[JoanieL]

It didn't pass because the other side always has more money. I heard they ran ads stating that it would cost $1M a year to enforce. $1M? That's a drop in CA's budget. But the average person can't figure out that $1M divided by the 37.7 million people in CA comes out to about 2 and a half cents per person.

[namelesswonder]

That is beyond stupid. GMO-free is still applicable to a damn strawberry, even if it's not an "organism". Then again, I guess that

Why don't they just come up with another term for labeling? Wouldn't anything organic be automatically non-GMO (in the way we understand it)? This would be a good opportunity for organic companies to advertise and gain more visibility and support.

[sbhikes]

It didn't pass because the other side always has more money. I heard they ran ads stating that it would cost $1M a year to enforce. $1M? That's a drop in CA's budget. But the average person can't figure out that $1M divided by the 37.7 million people in CA comes out to about 2 and a half cents per person.

Most of the other issues that had a lot of money poured into them failed so I don't believe that it was just the money that make the prop fail.

As for whether or not implementing the labeling would actually result in additional or overly burdensome costs, I really don't believe that either. They already use software to track the supply chain so they already know what is or isn't in the product. They already have labels. They already pay marketers and graphic designers to make changes to the labels all the time. What's one more thing added to the label? Somehow all the fast-food restaurants managed to put calorie counts on the menu without going broke, so I'm not buying that adding something to the label is cost prohibitive.

[Dirlot]

What kills me is they are allowed to label whole grains as "healthy" but not the the truth about a GMO food.

[JoanieL]

namelesswonder, yes, the Organic designation does not allow for GMOs.

sb, good point. And even on the cheapest product (a can of carrots maybe), they can pass the penny per label (if that much) on to the consumer without hurting the consumer too much.

Dirlot, I totally agree with you. The other thing I don't get is that most food manufacturers operate on pretty small margins; i.e., they make their money by selling a huge quantity, not because they make a large profit per piece. Even though Paleo/Primal people are still a small minority, by their deceit, they are sending us to alternative suppliers. It seems short sighted to me.

The good news is that farmers' markets are thriving in most areas. A google search of the history of farmers' markets gives hope.

[Him]

Aren't basically all current-day agricultural products genetically modified? The pigs we get our bacon from are nothing like wild pigs... they are a gentically distinct species as a result of a whole bunch of deliberate tinkering. Same with our bovines, our strawberries, our tomatoes, our tubers and grains and spices and everything else. They are made things, developed by systematic genetic manipulation.

Genetics: The science of heredity, dealing with resemblances and differences of related organisms resulting from the interaction of their genes and the environment.

It is the nature of farms to select and cultivate what they grow. That selection isn't natural, and results in changes to the selected species. While the FDA could arguably allow "wild" foods to be labled as non-GMO, they really can't honestly call any cultivated species (plant or animal) non-GMO, can they?

How would they seperate, "Modified by means of genetic (hereditary) manipulation" from "modified by means of genetic (molecular) manipulation?" Is it a meaningful distinction? They are both artificial in the technical sense, and (as the paleo argument against grains demonstrates) it isn't as though something should be considered wholesome simply because it was developed through selective breeding instead of another form of genetic manipulation.

Just my thought for the moment.