I'm not sure the point of this article. She didn't spend much time attacking specific myths.
I see so many people these days running to defend these giant corporations and their processes from creating food as quickly and cheaply as possible. They don't need defending. They've won. Most Americans rely on their products, whether they like it or not. I can't make the schools serve my kids healthy foods, I can't make the prisons serve prisoners real foods or make my local grocery store stock foods that are safe and healthy. Let them defend themselves. They'll be fine.
If I make the decision that I don't want HFCS in my bread or certain GMO products in my lunch, why do you care? Why block the nutrition label from saying that a product is GMO? It doesn't effect you. If you're positive that no negative consequences come from us engineering our food, then go ahead and eat as much as you want. But stop attacking those of us that want to be able to find foods that meet our own personal standards. We all should have the right to know what's in our food and where it comes from.
I care a lot about what I eat and the foods I make for my family. I know a lot of misinformation is out there but the appropriate response is to correct the misinformation, not attack everyone that is just trying to do what's best for themselves.
For those of you that want to start caring about what you put in your body, http://examine.com is a good place to start. Good luck.
Advertising a food as GMO free is banned for good reason. Labeling is supposed to be informative to the consumer, and alert them to nutritional information about the food which could impact their health--and GMO foods have decisively been shown to have no health impact.
If food manufacturers were free to advertise the absence of irrelevant nutrients, they would immediately begin barraging consumers with useless or harmful information--
"now free of pyridoxal phosphate!"
"no phylloquinone used in the production of this cereal!"
Should the average consume have to know that these are actually vitamin K and B6? Of course not, the nutrition facts are there to inform them, and the FDA makes sure it cannot be used just for branding purposes or to confuse the consumer. Since GMO food is unequivocally proven safe, the manufacturer will not be helping the consumer make an informed decision by advertising the absence.
The science is never done. I hate, HATE, hate when people treat science like we already have all of the answers.
> and GMO foods have decisively been shown to have no health impact.
No, the studies done thus far, with specific controls they've used and the ideas they've test for, haven't found anything. There is no such thing as decisive in science. The science could change tomorrow. What's harder to change is the laws we've put in place because of industry interests.
The United States has a long history of taking the side of big business. Even with food. Look at the food pyramid that I was taught as the "healthiest" way to eat when I went to school. Today things have changed and we've learned a lot of backstory on how much of what we learned during that period was based on industry lobbying and not science.
I don't want us to make the same mistake again. Genetic engineering is a very young science. It doesn't belong in our food yet. I'm not saying we should ban GMOs. But I think it's fair to label foods that have GMOs in them for those of us that don't want to take part in the giant human trial.
At one point we were all cool with asbestos in our homes, lead in our paint, chemicals in our water and doctors endorsed smoking. Stop pretending like this isn't a big gamble.
Actually, genetic engineering is one of the oldest sciences. There are more modern methods of genetic engineering, but the discipline itself is as old as civilization. Most of the foods we eat are not found in the wild. They were developed through genetic engineering.
For example, look at wild apples and apples found in the store. Better yet, actually taste them. They are hardly alike. In fact, none of the apple varieties we consume today were around just a few hundred years ago. They did not magically appear. They were developed through genetic engineering.
Genetic engineering is a very young science. It doesn't belong in our food yet. I'm not saying we should ban GMOs. But I think it's fair to label foods that have GMOs in them for those of us that don't want to take part in the giant human trial.
Electronic computing is a very young science. It doesn't belong in our homes yet. I'm not saying we should ban computers. But I think it's fair to label products that have computers in them for those of us that don't want to take part in the giant human trial.
Wireless telegraphy is a very young science. It doesn't belong in our air yet. I'm not saying we should ban wireless communication...
The electric car is a very young science. It doesn't belong on our roads yet...
At one point we were, as you pointed out, "all cool" with asbestos, lead paint, etc. Stop pretending like the inventions above aren't a big gamble!
etc., etc.
At this point, for all of the "young" inventions above, we have at least a decade and typically more of evidence showing either that the "young" inventions are not biologically harmful to human life, or are no more biologically harmful to human life than what they're replacing.
And the same is true of GMO food. The track record is solid, and the "wait and see" approach is essentially an infinitely-shifting goalpost (no matter how long we wait, and no matter how much data we get, it miraculously never seems to be quite long enough or quite enough data for those folks, and they impose standards of "safety" which would require essentially infinite time and data to comply with).
Thus the urge to label when the data does not support classifying GMO as a risk is essentially the urge to push people to give in to blind fear rather than evaluating available evidence, and encouraging reactions out of blind fear does not make good public policy.
Pretending for a moment you couldn't see without a label that these technologies are contained somewhere: What would be the problem of labeling a product as containing a computer? Or a "wireless telegraphy" machine?
If you want to make an informed decision you need information. And if someone starts to hide that information I get a bit suspicious.
If you want to make an informed decision you need information.
Except people who want labeling -- voluntary or otherwise -- of GMO have demonstrated already, beyond any possible doubt, that "informed decisions" are not their goal.
Besides, if you're really that scared, I've got some homeopathic pills you can buy. They are guaranteed to prevent any negative impact to your health from GMO foods.
The problem with labeling is that it implies it's relevant. How would you feel about adding a label to food that indicates the ethnicity of the person that packed it? Applying your logic, not putting it on there is just hiding information used to make an 'informed decision'.
Because whether or not something is produced using genetic engineering techniques does not explain whether its safe.
For example, I could genetically engineer corn to produce to tetrodoxin poison, and kill a bunch of people with it. Does that prove GMO food is unsafe? No, it proves tetrodoxin is dangerous.
GMO labelling initiatives set out to inflame and spread fear, because no one ever wants to try and label exactly what has been altered, deleted or added. They just want to stick a big "Genetically modified!" sticker on there because their interest group has their public polling data which they know will make consumers react negatively.
>>GMO labelling is of no value though.
Because whether or not something is produced using genetic engineering techniques does not explain whether its safe.
Ah, now here's the thing. If you don't know whether it's safe or not which side do you error on? For me and my family, all I know is that my family has no particular history of health problems eating mostly "organic" in that I'm the first generation born in America and the rest of them grew up in Nigeria eating food from plants & farm animals raised with centuries-old tribal techniques. Not saying this was 100% of their diet, but certainly a great deal more natural than USA. I have a relative who doesn't need their diabetes medicine when in Nigeria to control blood sugar level. I'm guessing it's because in Nigeria 97% of the food isn't loaded with HFCS and other sweeteners.
I have no idea wether GMOs are safe, but I'm not interested in being the experiment for it. GMO labeling should be allowed. Or at the very, very least I should be able to go online to see the GMO status of a brand of food product.
GMO labeling should be allowed. Or at the very, very least I should be able to go online to see the GMO status of a brand of food product.
Another part of this is probably from the core belief I hold; that human beings messing around with mother-nature is generally hubris and risky. I do respect the fact that many, many amazing things have come out of medial science but I treat it all with caution rather than just whatever-the-scientists-say-must-be-right. Then I watch something like "Food Inc."[1] and become just a bit more skeptical of foods enhanced by science via processing, GMO, pesticides, whatever. I want my food grown with plain ol' water & sunshine & animal feces fertilizer... at least for now.
And this entire line of reasoning is based on the naturalistic-fallacy.
Nature is out to kill you. The harmonious balance of an ecosystem is a brutal stalemate in an endless war, and this is why you definitely shouldn't eat the berries you find in the forest without knowing what they are (nor eat fish from the ocean if you don't know what they are etc. etc.)
Moreover, your entire spiel on GMO is powered by a completely unrelated area of food manufacture and preparation which has much more to do with the negative health outcomes people have from food. Do you demand labels indicating what type of processing has been done on every package? Or would that be surprisingly unhelpful without more detail?
Funny you mention Nigeria, a country scrambling to work out a proper biosafety framework and educate farmers [1] so that they can feed a population that is #40 on the hunger index [2], with nearly a tenth undernourished [3]. With the current life expectancy of ~50 years [4], there's a ways to go for Nigerians to see any negative health effects from GMOs among the noise of malnutrition and stunted growth, if there is any to be found (and we've been trying for a while now).
But that's not the thing. The argument is that labeling something "GMO" gives NO information about whether it's safe. You cannot use this label to err on the side of safety, because the same argument can be used for food labeled as "GMO-free": this also gives NO information about its safety. What side would you err on in this case?
Just look at this: organic, gluten free, wheat free, whole grain, nature's path, happy panda!
Yet the nutritional info shows 2g protein, 2g fiber, 3.5g fat, 7g sugar (almost 2 teaspoons!) per 30g serving. Also no vitamins. Not much nutrition there.
Imagine dropping 2 teaspoons of sugar into a child's glass of milk. You wouldn't do that, would you?
> Advertising a food as GMO free is banned for good reason.
Well, except that it isn't banned (plenty of foods are advertised as GMO free [1]), and if it was, the reason you state would be bunk.
> and GMO foods have decisively been shown to have no health impact.
No, they haven't, though regulatory approval of individual GMOs for food use does require a number of steps intended to minimize the risk of health impacts.
> Since GMO food is unequivocally proven safe
Nothing is "unequivocally proven safe", and newly-engineered foods (whether actual traditional breeding methods, or the advanced modern techniques that are called traditional breeding rather than GM, or actual GMOs) are most emphatically not "unequivocally proven" safe before being introduced, though GMOs (and pretty much only GMOs) actually have to have some evidence that certain particular source of risk are addressed.
> Advertising a food as GMO free is banned for good reason. Labeling is supposed to be informative to the consumer, and alert them to nutritional information about the food which could impact their health--and GMO foods have decisively been shown to have no health impact.
Ummm so enforce the labelling of foods as containing GMOs. Hence the absence of a label is an indication that foods contain no GM ingredients. I don't think mandatory labelling is undue administrative burden, the only reason manufacturers would object is because it would affect people's purchasing choices, which is the point.
> If I make the decision that I don't want HFCS in my bread or certain GMO products in my lunch, why do you care? Why block the nutrition label from saying that a product is GMO? It doesn't effect you. If you're positive that no negative consequences come from us engineering our food, then go ahead and eat as much as you want. But stop attacking those of us that want to be able to find foods that meet our own personal standards. We all should have the right to know what's in our food and where it comes from.
Bullshit. In the United States the FDA has had an advisory on GMO labeling for over a decade [1] and the EU has a regulatory framework which has been up almost as long [2]. Neither ban GMO-free labeling or its counterpart.
If you want too, you can email, call, and snailmail all the businesses that your neighborhood grocery stores buy produce from and demand that they put labeling on them. But stop trying to stuff your personal boogeyman down the throat of a populace sensitive to volatility in food prices while you eat organic food sprayed by bacillus thurengiensis and other bacteria, organisms that humans have been haphazardly messing with at an evolutionary scale for almost a century in industrialized/organic farming and have been genetically modifying for more than half that.
What is engineering of food? If GMOs are "bad" what about hybrids developed via selective breeding? Am I poisoning myself by planting a "Better Boy" tomato that is disease resistant, or should I plant some heirloom tomato?
There is no answer to these questions. There are opinions.
The purpose of GMO labelling (and all labelling) is to give people the opportunity to make decisions on the basis of their opinion in the absence of any clear answers.
If I decide that I want to stop eating palm oil because I love orang utans, how can I make that decision if all labels just say "vegetable oils" as the ingredient?
If I decide I want to boycott Monsanto because I don't like their logo, by eating only foods that contain no genetically modified ingredients, how can I make that decision unless the food is labelled adequately?
In short, I should be able to decide what ingredients I wish to avoid or prefer for any reason; it's no-one else's business to say that my reasoning is invalid or I am dumb because Monsanto's logo is clearly awesome or orang utans are pests and we should eat more palm oil. Shit, if you hate orang utans or love Monsanto, maybe you want to eat MORE palm oil and GM foods... If they aren't labelled how can you know you're destroying the most lives of farmers and orang utans?? Food labelling is good for everyone.
So then should the food be labeled by the race, sex and sexual orientation of the person/people that grew/produced/shipped it? Maybe you'd also like to avoid food made by people of a certain race? Or maybe you'd like to avoid food made by people of a certain sexual orientation because you're afraid you'll catch their "disease".
Just hopefully pointing out there's a spectrum of arguably good and bad labeling. Which side GMO falls on is clearly a personal opinion but it's not an obvious good.
This isn't a matter of personal opinion. Even if a company wanted to it would be illegal for them to discriminate on this basis. There are examples of labelling being used to promote certain types of working conditions, though such as fairtrade; or certain production methods such as pole and line caught tuna.
No, it isn't. Labeling is there is express facts so you can make informed decisions related to nutrition.
If you want to eat organic, no GMO popcorn without palm oils made in Brazil, you'll need to either find a manufactured product that is oriented towards your beliefs, or source the raw materials yourself.
Labelling is so I can make an informed decision about anything to do with the products I buy (it doesn't only apply to food either). Which facts are relevant is a changing landscape but the more comprehensively any product is labelled, the more information I have on which to base my choices.
It is easy for a few reasons (I am not saying all these are 100% sound just presenting a few of them):
* FDA and the supposed agencies entrusted by public to protect the public from poisons in the food have deemed to have failed many times. There is a revolving door between large agribusinesses and FDA. Department heads and CEO/COOs play musical chairs back and forth between. Trusting FDA to police the industry is like trusting the industry to police itself at this point.
* People are not educated enough to understand what is what. They see strange things on the labels and get scared.
* Everyone only has only one life + the life of their children to experiment on. So while a "rational" argument to "we don't know if it will poison us", is let's apply "science" and do an "experiment". Ok who wants to ingest this new formulation to be the guinea pig? Who wants to give to their infant son or daughter to later monitor and find out if they'll get cancer by the time their are 5 or not... Because the thing is, you don't get a do-over like you do with other things. "Oh the program segfaulted. Darn,..., fix bug, recompile and restart".
Those are a few of the reasons. So as the article points out people try to figure out it on their own and kind of feel around in the dark. Facebook groups. Friend of a friend found out about this new superfood item or something. Or I read on Facebook that pickles have lead in them. Whole Foods type place and other "health" food places take advantage of this fear and uncertainty. Others make fun that. Gee so and so is such a hippie eating sprouted beans or thinking GMOs are going to kill you. They don't know science, haha! The other side is making fun of those that don't eat organic hand massaged free range cows and how they are poisoning their kids with pesticides.
There are those who want to live the libertarian dream. Just abolish the FDA and let everyone go shopping with a radiological, chemical and bacteriological assay kit. Gee I would buy this cabbage but my portable DNA sequencer shows its DNA structures has been modified and it has been spliced with a DNA of a frog. I am afraid, I'll have to find another seller. Funny thing is -- these places exist. Just go to any poor country where government regulation is even more non-existent. That is the above dystopia. You want to buy baby formula? Ah well. It could be baby formula or could be chalk mixed with water and poisons chemical that someone packaged in a basement. Who knows, you decide.
> FDA and the supposed agencies entrusted by public to protect the public from poisons in the food have deemed to have failed many times.
Like a lot of protection jobs, we only recognize when the job isn't being done right. So the occasional failure is evidence that they have "failed many times" (which is strictly correct, but not nearly as bad as it sounds).
"...libertarian dream. Just abolish the FDA..."
I just do not get why folks think that 'libertarian' -- means abolish regulatory bodies of any kind.
I would suggest that you take the following view:
Libertarians in US would like to reduce federal government regulation. This means regulatory function just like general economic and political power has to be split across states, local government, and free consortiums'.
While not clearly articulated (and and indication that Libertarian party platform is far from fully developed), I think the Libertarian platform must include a position about 'normalized contract language' for common contracts.
Otherwise this is where lawyers working for larger corporations -- always win the disputes and this would cause a completely unfair system.
Are there federal government regulations that must remain? -- yes of course.
A FDA related discussion (albeit subjective) is here
well, in the case of the glibertarians, because Ron Paul, one of the so-called leading lights, explicitly advocates for ending the fda.
Reporter: So in that particular case would the reasonable alternative being
no FDA?
Ron Paul: I think so because, I don't think, I think they've done more harm
than good because sometimes it might take them 25 years to allow a good drug
to come onto the marketplace and the rules and regulations inhibits the
options of the physician to use drugs for anything other than not approved
by the FDA, which means it slows up research and the cost goes up and then
when it's approved by the FDA, guess what happens? If you're on the inside
track of that- I'm the FDA- today I approve this drug, tomorrow, their drug
company's value, their stock goes up fifty fold. Just because a bureaucrat
made this decision. So, it's a protection of the corporation is basically
what it is. People weren't dying from bad drugs before we had the FDA. I
mean, it just didn't happen. There'd be other agencies that would do this.
There'd be no reason to assume that all of a sudden, the drug companies have
it in their interest to give you a bad drug.
Just abolish the FDA and let everyone go shopping with a radiological, chemical and bacteriological assay kit.
Do you really think that having an "FDA" somehow alleviates all concern about the content/quality/integrity of the food you buy and eat?!????? C'mon, man...
I, for one, can't see why anybody assigns any particularly special level of trust to a government agency. Government agencies have been shown to be corrupt, incompetent, ineffective, and/or some combination of "any or all of the above" time and time again.
There are plenty of good reasons to get rid of the FDA, and "I just plain don't trust them" certainly belongs pretty high on the list.
> Do you really think that having an "FDA" somehow alleviates all concern about the content/quality/integrity of the food you buy and eat?!????? C'mon, man...
I do, if FDA worked better. I certainly do not subscribed to the idea of abolishing it because it is broken. I subscribe to the idea of fixing it. Closing the revolving door as much as possible, making it stronger.
I have lived for many years in a country with an effectively missing FDA. It was there de-facto but it was a joke. So anyone could sell you anything. The joke about baby formula and chalk mixed with water was not a joke, it has happened. Other foodstuff is just like that.
"Organic" farmers live there too. You know what they do, the spray the shit of their produce with pesticides and put those in a different garden plot from the real organic food they grow for themselves. I have seen it myself (a relatives' neighbor does it). "Organic" there is a joke.
The best eggs and produce we got was a from a relative out f the "growing for yourself" lot not from the "growing for selling lot". Otherwise we just kind of guessed in the dark.
The alternative without the FDA is many many times more scary and only those who have no idea what it looks like would advocate for it.
This is not science fiction. You can buy a plane ticket and be within a day in a such a place in the world.
> I do, if FDA worked better. I certainly do not subscribed to the idea of abolishing it because it is broken. I subscribe to the idea of fixing it. Closing the revolving door as much as possible, making it stronger.
I have lived for many years in a country with an effectively missing FDA. It was there de-facto but it was a joke. So anyone could sell you anything. The joke about baby formula and chalk mixed with water was not a joke, it has happened. Other foodstuff is just like that.
Your argument is broken as well. There's no way that the FDA can guarantee everything, because they would need 1000 times more inspectors if they wanted to do a reasonable job at it. Currently as long as a site is visited ONCE by the FDA and considered safe, it won't be years before that site is visited again by the same body. Everything that happens in between is basically completely out of the FDA loop, so anyway you have to trust in the products you buy.
Food traceability is a myth. You still don't know, more than 50 years ago, what's inside the products you buy, and whether these ingredients are consistent in concentration or not from one batch to another. You don't know what your animals eat before they become meat in your supermarket. You don't know what fertilizers were used to grow the crops you consume. You know virtually nothing about the food you buy, and guess what, the food has never been safer to consume than now, EVEN in countries where there's no FDA - Don't worry, Communist China also had issues with chemicals in the baby milk powder, except that people did NOT know or hear about it before. And China actually has a pretty strong FDA-like body and that does not prevent any of these issues from happening.
If tomorrow you got rid of the FDA, suddenly all manufacturers wouldn't put poison in your food, as if they were just waiting for that. Even before the FDA there were industry associations and consumer groups pushing for better quality standards - Health supervision was not born with the FDA.
The alternative without the FDA is many many times more scary and only those who have no idea what it looks like would advocate for it.
I don't see how the presence of the FDA alleviates any of the problems you just listed off. But, again, I plain don't trust them. If $MEGACORP wants an FDA rubber-stamp on something, I'm sure they have enough money to buy it.
As an employee of a $MEGACORP that just spent two+ years on a Corrective Action to satisfy an FDA finding, I'd be ROFLMAO'ing all over the place if dealing with it hadn't been so aggravating on a daily basis.
Seriously, where do you people come up with this shit?
In countries with reasonably effective/trustworthy government agencies
I'm still not convinced that such a thing exists. Of course, my direct experience is limited to the USA, but human nature being what it is, I'm skeptical that "government" in any place is much better than "government" in another place.
So you're talking out of your ass and that's the best evidence you've got? Because the person you're replying to apparently has some first-hand experience (which I've also seen but to a much lesser degree) and I'm sure as hell thankful that there's even a modicum of regulation in the food industry.
Actually, no. If you bothered to actually try and understand what I'm saying, you'd realize that's not the case. What I'm saying is, we know the "first principles" (eg, human nature being what it is) and we can reason from first principles using deductive logic. So you can call that "talking out your ass" if you want, but I don't think that's accurate at all.
If you think deductive logic is enough to reason about a system as profoundly complex, chaotic and difficult to model as the food industry + business and government interests then I suggest you step away from your naive mental model and look at how those entities are actually studied in real life and realize that data and evidence are substantially more important.
And the data and evidence point to the fact that governments with strong and healthy regulatory bodies do a far better job at public safety than any commercial enterprise by itself. Even the very reason why commercial verification and safety inspections by companies like UL and reinsurers work is because there's a strong legal process behind that and government institutions that are willing to put the foot down given enough public pressure.
Also, please, do me a favor and find me a social scientist who thinks that our "first principles" are anything but a crude and profoundly erroneous way to think about institutions and that those principles will do anything even remotely decent to approximate social reality.
I stick to the facts of food safety, and from my empirical experience of what few places me and my loved ones have been to in the world, I'd rather eat food certified as safe by an EU state any day over, say, a commercial institution in Namibia, massive warts and all.
But that's not the point. This is much bigger than "food safety". But I get the feeling we aren't making any progress towards any shared understanding here, so I'm done.
> There are those who want to live the libertarian dream.
Surely, there are people that care about the quality of what goes in their body (certainly you and I do, at least). Those people would be willing to pay a small price to ensure that what they eat is not poison. Without the FDA, there would probably be numerous entities that evaluate food products and place their mark of approval on those products that pass a rigorous set of tests. Consumers that care about food quality will be willing to spend more to buy food with that mark of approval. If the company approves too many bad products, they lose reputation and go out of business.
In fact, there are already organizations that test the quality of products, like Consumer Reports. Personally, I find Amazon reviews to be very helpful when purchasing things, and if I bought my food from Amazon (I hope so one day!) I would read the reviews before buying food I don't know about.
> FDA and the supposed agencies entrusted by public to protect the public from poisons in the food have deemed to have failed many times.
> Without the FDA, there would probably be numerous entities that evaluate food products and place their mark of approval on those products that pass a rigorous set of tests.
And who decides that those tests are rigorous? What prevents me from creating a more lenient, "anything but blatant toxins" goes certification agency that puts it's seal of approval on things?
For that matter, what prevents these agencies existing today, in parallel with the FDA? We already have things like fair trade coffee, for example.
How many agencies with rotating names do you want to keep up with?
This is actually happening in the organic food certification industry in Germany, where a ton of different certificates exist.
The EU-own certificate is the most lenient (AFAIK it allows of up 0.9% GM food in feed for animals if there is no alternative), the most strict one is the Demeter certificate, a pretty old one based on the slightly crazy teachings of Rudolf Steiner, complete with cosmic energy. Then there's Biokreis, Bioland, Biopark, Ecoland, Ecovin, and more, all of which have different requirements. No-one can keep up with these.
Really? Who decides those things now? That's the whole point: look at all the disasters the FDA has approved (and the high barrier to entering the marketplace they create, which kills an unknowable number of things that could be tremendously beneficial).
People have to make decisions with the best information that they have. At least with a commercial entity, you can see where the interests are aligned, instead of operating under the delusion that benevolent agents of the state are out there working on your behalf.
Here's a parallel example: the FDIC exists to insure bank deposit holders up to $100k (formerly $250k, but oh well). Now, with the FDIC, you have every incentive to ignore your bank and assume that your deposits are safe. What about without the FDIC? Maybe you're more concerned with how your bank invests your money. Maybe you ask to see their balance sheet. Maybe you see how disastrously over-leveraged they are and take your money elsewhere. If that happens enough times, look at all the financial crisis you SUDDENLY DON'T HAVE.
That's a pretty over-simplified example, so here's a more direct one: there's a program operated by FEMA called the National Flood Insurance Program. The purpose is to provide affordable flood insurance for houses which the market has decided are too flood-prone to be insured, but for a very expensive policy, if at all. Just consider that for a second: FEMA is literally reinforcing their own existence by incentivizing people to live in places where floods might destroy their homes and kill them. I don't think it gets any more perverse than that (though realistically it probably does).
The state can't help you. All it can do is provide concentrated centers of control to attract those with power and influence, and all you get in return is a false sense of security. You're literally walking into a trap and turning your brain off.
"Here's a parallel example: the FDIC exists to insure bank deposit holders up to $100k (formerly $250k, but oh well). Now, with the FDIC, you have every incentive to ignore your bank and assume that your deposits are safe. What about without the FDIC? Maybe you're more concerned with how your bank invests your money. Maybe you ask to see their balance sheet. Maybe you see how disastrously over-leveraged they are and take your money elsewhere. If that happens enough times, look at all the financial crisis you SUDDENLY DON'T HAVE."
The consumer decides how rigorous the tests are by preferring foods with certain tests. Obviously, more rigorous tests will cost more, so the consumer can decide the optimal balance between price and testing. Companies that test too thoroughly, or more than consumers prefer, will drive the cost of food too high. Companies that test too little will not earn the trust of consumers, and health-conscious consumers will avoid those products.
> How many agencies with rotating names do you want to keep up with?
Well currently we have one (the FDA), and it is awful. I am willing to try a few more.
On second thought you can ignore my entire post. We already tried that in America. I suggest you read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. It didn't work.
--------
... You would be willing to trust what you put into your body to Consumer Reports? A magazine where, for a small fee, you can buy a positive review?
Your argument would be sound if, and only if, we could assume that the public would or could be fully informed as to the validity / accuracy of the various services that would pop up to replace the FDA.
Instead what would happen is the various services would simply find it more profitable to pend good reviews most of the time, just enough to be seen as good or slightly better than their peers for their particular advertising demographic. All of their peers, of course, would also take money to buy good reviews, so no single agency, or group of agencies could be trust worthy for any real amount of the time.
And while the FDA may fall into some similar traps as the above, the biggest difference would be that the FDA, by being seperate from the marketplace, has only its reputation and fear of its wrath to keep its value and budget. By contrast, the free market agencies that would pop up would have as a primary tool the ability to use advertising and marketing to ensure that even if their service is completely illegitimate, a portion of the marketplace would be convinced of its validity, because customers are not 100% knowledgeable on every matter.
And the best part, why would any of these agencies ever spend research money on their products? Sure, enough for the marketing to sound legitimate, perhaps, but not enough to thoroughly test their products, that could only shrink out number of corporate clients. So you can say goodbye to any science that might have come from agencies like the FDA actually conducting investigations.
So in short, all you would have created is a group of competing standards, non of which would have their customer's health as a primary concern, all actively advertising potential poisons to consumers, while simultaneously hurting agricultural research.
You would be willing to trust what you put into your body to Consumer Reports? A magazine where, for a small fee, you can buy a positive review?
Do you have a source for the claim (which I'm pretty sure is an extraordinary claim) that one can buy a favorable review in Consumer Reports magazine, published by the nonprofit organization Consumers Union? I did the expected Google search before replying here, and I can't find any evidence for that claim, much less the extraordinary evidence I would need to believe that claim as a long-time (occasional) reader of Consumer Reports.
I totally disagree. You are holding these hypothetical companies to a standard above that of the FDA.
>You would be willing to trust what you put into your body to Consumer Reports? A magazine where, for a small fee, you can buy a positive review?
> All of their peers, of course, would also take money to buy good reviews, so no single agency, or group of agencies could be trust worthy for any real amount of the time.
Oh, so kind of how corporations spend money to lobby the FDA in their favor? Or large pharma companies bribe FDA regulators to approve only their drugs so they can have a monopoly on the market?
> has only its reputation and fear of its wrath to keep its value and budget
In what world is a government agency's reputation more important than a real business' bottom line? If the government doesn't do their job, they still take your money, everyone keeps their jobs, and the only recourse you have is to vote another representative in office who might try and change things. With a business, you stop giving them money, and they see the effect immediately.
> even if their service is completely illegitimate, a portion of the marketplace would be convinced of its validity,
Kind of like how the FDA uses the force of law to convince people that they actually look out for the consumer.
> And the best part, why would any of these agencies ever spend research money on their products?
If they didn't they would probably endorse bad products and go out of business.
Almost all of your criticisms could be applied to the FDA, but you think that they just need "reform." I don't need the government to tell me what to put in my body.
> If they didn't they would probably endorse bad products and go out of business.
Keep in mind that "No immediately noticeable harm" is all they have to go for to stay in business. Long term health of your consumers isn't that important if you want to make some money.
I'd far rather have agencies that aren't motivated by making a quick buck keeping track of my food safety.
Especially since there is nothing preventing these hypothetical more rigorous companies from existing today, right now, if people don't trust the FDA.
You would be willing to trust what you put into your body to Consumer Reports
I'd trust Consumer Reports at least as much as I trust the FDA. It's not like the FDA isn't a "member in good standing" of the agri/pharma/military/prison/industrial complex. Government Agency / Megacorp? Just two sides of the same coin.
So your objection is that some federal agency is interfering by telling people what they can and can't call 'food' and sell as such - and your solution is to replace that with a system of marks and branding that helps consumers identify 'good food'. Hmm. So who's going to stop me, in this libertarian utopia of yours, from sticking a 'spam' label with a 'consumer reports approved 100% certified' logo on it on tins of rancid horsemeat and selling those? You've got rid of the FDA, and now we're going to rely on the USPTO to enforce trademark law as a way to assure consumer safety?
Or if you're consistent, then you presumably abolished the USPTO as well, and now we're back to hiring our own personal food tasters...
As for amazon reviews, I'm reminded of the XKCD argument: an ebay seller can ship a live bobcat in place of the expected product one time in ten and still get 90% positive feedback...
This is a good summary of the information trade-offs consumers deal with in deciding what foods to eat. The author identifies some of the worst purveyors of misinformation about food in this interesting article. As a good teacher, she tries to understand her students' preexisting misconceptions, misconceptions that often show up in Hacker News threads about food or nutrition.
I especially like the author's curated collection of hyperlinks in the article, which lead to several important sources of information on some of the hottest nutrition debates we often see here on Hacker News. Her recommendation of the Grist series on GMOs[1] is especially helpful.
Sugar is the stuff life runs on but at our modern level of consumption it's undoubtedly the number one food toxin. Sugar is the secret to addicting the consumer and peddling high profit mush. It doesn't really matter much what form it's in sugar, evaporated cane juice (euphemistic term for what sugar actually IS), corn syrup a.ka. HFC (vilified but not substantively different than table sugar), molasses, wheat, corn starch, rice flour, etc. Modern wheat actually has a higher glycemic index than table sugar! Most of our food isn't toxic, just barely acceptable and sometimes poisonous e.g. food born illnesses. Our food is great at killing us slowly, lowering the quality of life and overall health and most of all attracting huge government $ubsidies! It's all about the money after all. Anyhow, I blathered on about this because it's probably the single most effective thing anyone could do for their health, keep their blood sugar stable and avoid cheap high glycemic addictive foods. BPA in tomato cans and other 'problems' deserve very low priority in relation to the sugar epidemic.
It's so easy to believe our food is toxic because the people selling it have no long term concern for our health. If it doesn't cause an acute health issue they've done their job. Food that is sweet, long lasting and attractive is what we are told to buy with marketing dollars and shelf space that is paid for by food companies. Supermarkets in the US devote 80%-90% of it's food space on products that are not fit for regular human consumption. Companies driven by quarterly profits are not worried about some health problem that might happen at some future date. The C level executives will be retired and cashed out the stock options long before they'll be called on the carpet. I know it's supply and demand, but it's also deceit and manipulation.
> ll this misinformation is a version of the Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt tactic that’s been recognized as a marketing tool in other contexts.
This reminds me of computer security. With the recent exponential growth of vulnerabilities and backdoors, people are talking about moving to more secure languages like Haskell and Rust, installing airgaps, etc. But when you think about it, why does it matter? Look how "vulnerable" credit cards are, every time you use with a new vendor, you increase the risk that one of those vendors will take all your money. But this never actual is a problem in practice because the credit card company actually knows you in person, and if they see that any suspicious behaviour happened, they will just revert the transaction.
With the advent of the third wave of computing, the cloud, the Internet of Things, and whatnot, I think everything will just become a pseudo-intelligent big ball of semantics. Take the web for example. Nobody actually knows what a web browser should do. They just know that when you use a well battle tested browser, it will probably work on most sites, and usually wont be more than slightly degraded even on the sites it doesn't work well on. These days protocols are evolving more into, just say what you want, and the machines will figure it out through their vast pools of information. This same kind of thing will make security issues irrelevant, because the Internet of Things will just know who you are (by various means obtained by their evolution), and you'll never have to worry about an actual attacker doing damage to you.
1. How credible is the bio safety of GM products. Why is the consumer not having the choice to know if a product uses GM ingredients?
2. What is the level of pesticide residues in food we eat? What are the harmful effects? For example, many organo chlorides are known to be persistent pollutants and can cause severe damage to nervous and endocrine systems and can even affect fetuses.
3. Why there is no transparency of information regarding toxicity of chemicals found in food?
That's a good article on why it's good to be skeptical of people claiming "our food is toxic," however there are a at least two important pieces of evidence that anyone can observe:
1. Obesity rate, along with diabetes or "metabolic
syndrome" has skyrocketed in the past 2-3 decades.
Food supply is on a very short list of probable
causes for this.
2. Processed foods often contain additives you would do
without given the option, regardless of whether
there was any scientific evidence about adverse
effects.
If you have to "Get educated" to select and eat food then i would avoid. The issue with GMO is that there is a very little observation done. I agree that for that matter many of the other food/medicine is same. We really do not know if i take all GMO food for say 5 years what will happen? Does some not-GMO react differently with GMO? how about places like India where you can get anything certified as long as some professor or doctor says it is no problem to eat unless it is related immediate death.
> But behind the unified front (all processed food is dangerous!) lies a tangled web of factoids. Some are clearly not true [...] Others are true, but [...]
A factoid, by definition is untrue or at least uncertain. The suffix -oid denotes that it resembles a fact, but cannot be classified as one.
(Or if you like recursion... "Factoid: A small fact is a factoid.")
You may define a word whatever you please in your text, but you cannot state the definition for the common use of the word. This prerogative are for its users, as a group.
Dictionaries (which do not define, but only catalogs accepted meaning) defines "factoid" not only different than you do, but also in accordance to the intended meaning of the text [1][2][3].
Some people (specially engineering and math types, myself included) tend to put too much weight in a word morphology to extract its meaning. But linguistics is not that straightforward and meaning for a word can even change over time.
> an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print
Are you blindly copy-pasting? That's exactly what I just said about it not being a real fact.
In addition, your second link specifically denotes the "small fact" interpretation for what it is: A very recent and predominantly-north-American neologism.
I see so many people these days running to defend these giant corporations and their processes from creating food as quickly and cheaply as possible. They don't need defending. They've won. Most Americans rely on their products, whether they like it or not. I can't make the schools serve my kids healthy foods, I can't make the prisons serve prisoners real foods or make my local grocery store stock foods that are safe and healthy. Let them defend themselves. They'll be fine.
If I make the decision that I don't want HFCS in my bread or certain GMO products in my lunch, why do you care? Why block the nutrition label from saying that a product is GMO? It doesn't effect you. If you're positive that no negative consequences come from us engineering our food, then go ahead and eat as much as you want. But stop attacking those of us that want to be able to find foods that meet our own personal standards. We all should have the right to know what's in our food and where it comes from.
I care a lot about what I eat and the foods I make for my family. I know a lot of misinformation is out there but the appropriate response is to correct the misinformation, not attack everyone that is just trying to do what's best for themselves.
For those of you that want to start caring about what you put in your body, http://examine.com is a good place to start. Good luck.