GMOs = The Smart Future of Food

The champions of GMO-based foods made a terrible strategic error by fighting GMO labels--in fact, fighting to forbid the use of even "non-GMO" labels.Like most Americans, I'll eat almost anything without protest.But I won't swallow the notion that I have to remain ignorant for my own good.A few observations:BioFortified is cataloging supportive articles? Perhaps they should just catalog all the relevant science. That would be truly useful. My research shows they are independent and accept no corporate funding. Still, they are an advocacy site on this issue.I'm curious about the increase in pesticide use with GMO crops being termed "supposed", given that some major GMO crops incorporate pesticidal chemicals into the genetic structure of the plant. Other GMO strains offer the advantage of being resistant to specific herbicides (e.g., Roundup-ready corn and soy), vastly increasing their use.I found Joe Ballenger's remarks about organic operations--that they increase pesticide use--vague and misleading. His claim that organics use more, and more highly concentrated pesticides, is a major claim, but one he presents without any evidence. I'm skeptical, given the limited number of limited-effect, bio-derived pesticides that can be used while retaining the organic label.I am also concerned about the migration of GMO-food genes into the wild, reducing the gene pool of native plants and conferring pesticide-producing and herbicide-resisting genes into wild cousins.More trivially, this really bothered me:

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n fact, even Penn and Teller have taken the organic industry to task on their show Bullshit for the fact that they are increasing their market share through fear-mongering and propaganda. One interesting fact is the current standing of Whole Foods versus Organic’s demon Monsanto in the Forbes top 500 list for 2013. Both of these companies stand relatively near one another in the rankings, with Monsanto being number 206 and Whole Foods is number 232.

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Penn and Teller! Even! Irrelevant.Fear-mongering? Like you'll starve if you don't support GMO foods?Propaganda? Like suggesting that I conclude Whole Foods at 232 and Monsanto at 205 in the Forbes 500 suggests something bad about Whole Foods and organics?For decades Monsanto has helped develop the plant varieties that make vegetables look great, ship hard and taste like cardboard. I'm more than a little reluctant to put all our fields into patented monocultures of pablum.GMO foods were approved mostly on the idea that there was no reason to think they weren't safe--and the aggressive lobbying of Monsanto. Consumers are to be kept ignorant of the source of what they eat--due to aggressive lobbying by Monsanto.Monsanto dug their own hole. Now, rather than continuing to dig, they should stop maligning organics and ridiculing legitimate concerns. If Monsanto is right, they need to educate the consuming public on why they are right, and offer persuasive science on both the safety of GMO foods and their safe ecological impact.I'm a science enthusiast, and they haven't sold me on GMOs yet. And their heavy-handed efforts against farmers and consumers do not inspire confidence.

You'll forgive me for not engaging in the fine grain exchange of quotes and responses. It's just too much damn work.I called the Penn & Teller thing on organics irrelevant because organics are irrelevant to this discussion. What would the logic even be: that organic produce can't prove any nutritional edge, so whatever chemical treatment we give your spud is okay?So having called their thing irrelevant, I was surprised when you suggested I'd attacked the source. Perhaps I was unclear: irrelevant due to content, not source.I think people who believe that big corporations don't have their best interests at heart are right, whatever else they think about GMOs. And I don't see why shopping at a big business whose products and policies you admire makes criticizing a big business you deplore contradictory.I think it's been a long time since an absolute lack of food was the primary cause of most starvation.If GMOs are the best thing since sliced bread, it shouldn't be so hard to sell them to the public. Many people have moral or religious or icky concerns about unwitting consumption, whatever science says about how safe it is; people whose organic fields were pollinated by Monsanto's GMO fields chose their way of life for philosophical reasons, whatever Bullshit thinks about them. Some people aren't sure yet and would rather watch and wait. Forcing all those people--and any other people who care--to consume anything by prohibiting an otherwise free and legal choice to do otherwise is simply wrong.Personally, I think the future will eventually be brilliant for GMOs. How and how fast that should happen are separate questions.

There is a gulf between our understandings that we are not bridging. For now, I'd just like to address the above.Proponents of GMO food are selling more nutritious and cheaper food; proponents of acting to meet the challenges of climate change are selling difficult and expensive proposals for change. One is selling food; the other is selling a great problem. Americans consume mass quantities of industrialized food, and most wouldn't have blinked at GMOs if not for Monsanto's (and their advocates') offensive tactics. They resorted to arm twisting, and now they complain that they are losing an arm twisting contest.I noted several times in your posts that you liken opponents of GMO food to creationists: loony people, shady tactics, science deniers.While always a fan of science, and especially evolution, it is the creationist intent to infiltrate religion into public school science classes and government policy that brought me to this site. But GMO food "doubters" have no such invasive agenda: they don't want it, and they don't want to be denied the info that lets them avoid it. Monsanto insists on the right to feed it to you without your knowing. Who is the zealot? The citizen who claims the right to express a private choice, or the corporation that claims science gives them the right to deny that choice?The position of the FDA, unless things have changed recently, is that no one can label a food product non-GMO; my understanding is that reflects Monsanto's position, lobbied for and won. The FDA, ironically, simply says that the non-GMO label would be inappropriate because GMOs so pervade our food industry that it is virtually impossible to make a non-GMO product.You paint a portrait of an irrational, science-hating, granola-headed liar (or puppet) of a GMO hater--kinda like a commie : as noted above by me and others, there are reasons beyond the scientific on which to base that preference.In this particular case, science is being used to coerce behavior when the rightness of that behavior is not a purely scientific question. People have a right to their personal choices, whether it goes against a scientific consensus or not. I don't care what creationists believe--just keep it out of our schools and governments. Similarly, I don't care what Monsanto thinks: if I refuse to consume something, for any reason whatsoever, that is my right. Trying to coerce me otherwise with policies justified by science is as wrong as teaching creationism in Bio 101. Resisting that coercion is not an abuse of science.

I'm sure that "emotion, fear, and misinformation" exist among those who advocate mandatory GMO labels, just as they (and greed) exist among those who oppose them.Much of what you have written in this thread attempts a special pleading to our experience here with creationists to demonize those who disagree with you about GMO regulation. That does not inspire confidence. Those tactics were used to promote lead and tobacco.GMO advocates over-reached, creating de facto mandatory consumption; now they inherit the whirlwind of public push-back and find that unfair. So, true, now industrial agricultural interests tout voluntary compliance on GMO labels; the FDA has toughened its industry-cozy positions. But that's not how we got here, and, of course, there is legislation in the House to neuter any meaningful regulation.Blue Jay did a much better job than I have expressing his (and my) discomfort with industrial agricultural practices and Monsanto's role in them.

The world makes enough food now to feed the world, and enough vitamin A to prevent deficiency blindness. What it lacks is the political will. I'd prefer GMOs that can produce a clean fuel from kudzu or turn spilled oil into shrimp food. Maybe some miracle organism could turn high fructose corn syrup into real food. Don't fuck with my beer.

Good point--it's time we took a closer look at those plant breeders.