Science and the Labeling of GMOs

However, when answers are not clearly pro­vided, then one can’t sim­ply argue that these are fears raised in an anti-science appeal because one would then have to answer the ques­tion of what pos­si­ble dif­fer­ence such a posi­tion would make. After all, what dif­fer­ence if some­one is anti-Newton or anti-Einstein. Even those that oppose Darwin are largely irrel­e­vant except for one thing…. it isn’t about the science.

The only time anti-science is raised as a posi­tion is when the issue isn’t about sci­ence in the first place. It’s about pub­lic pol­icy and eco­nom­ics. It doesn’t par­tic­u­larly mat­ter if I think GMO foods are safe or unsafe, unless some­one is try­ing to use the power of the gov­ern­ment to force me to con­sume them [espe­cially if it's with­out my express knowl­edge]. Just as AGW opin­ions aren’t rel­e­vant unless some­one is attempt­ing to estab­lish an eco­nomic pol­icy or leg­is­late actions.

This brings us to the crux of the prob­lem. We all have our polit­i­cal views, and clearly there will be some items we agree with and other we don’t based solely on our polit­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion in some cases. So, when our polit­i­cal views are chal­lenged, it doesn’t auto­mat­i­cally mean the oppos­ing side is “anti-science”, or “anti-capitalism”, or anti-whatever. What it does mean is that, in the absence of accepted evi­dence, we have a dis­agree­ment about some­thing that is being pushed for pub­lic pol­icy decisions.

Here’s some of the exist­ing prob­lems with GMO foods that have NOT been ade­quately addressed.

1. If the objec­tive is to feed the world’s hun­gry, then how do GMO foods solve the political/economic/distribution prob­lems that have pre­vented exist­ing food sup­plies from reach­ing those in need?

2. If GMO foods are tar­geted for this envi­ron­ment, then why are they being mar­keted in areas that have no need of them?

3. What is the eco­nomic model that is sup­posed to resolve feed­ing the world’s hun­gry [who, by def­i­n­i­tion, have no money]?

4. Why are the cor­po­ra­tions so opposed to let­ting the free mar­ket decide by proper label­ing of GMO foods?

It’s this last one that is par­tic­u­larly trou­bling. In the first place, we already know that it is a bla­tant lie to claim that noth­ing ever has a neg­a­tive effect. So, sci­en­tific hon­esty would argue that while GMO foods are as safe as any­thing cur­rently pro­duced, we already know that peo­ple die just as read­ily from com­mon foods. So in truth, we would expect that some peo­ple, for what­ever rea­son, may react adversely to GMO foods.

This doesn’t make GMO foods unsafe or unhealthy, it’s sim­ply rec­og­niz­ing there out of 7 bil­lion peo­ple, there will be some per­cent­age that will suf­fer some unex­pected con­se­quence or reaction.

We do know that many peo­ple are unusu­ally sen­si­tive to aller­gies* as they per­tain to foods, so with­out spe­cific evi­dence to the con­trary (which is impos­si­ble to obtain), we would again have to argue that pru­dence dic­tates we accept that some per­cent­age of indi­vid­u­als may be affected.

Once again, this isn’t an argu­ment against GMO foods, since such sen­si­tive indi­vid­u­als will always be at risk for some foods.

Certainly we can improve things by hav­ing bet­ter infor­ma­tion, but this is where the label­ing issue becomes really troublesome.

If we are seri­ous about intro­duc­ing a sig­nif­i­cant change in our food sup­ply, then what’s the rush? We can read­ily intro­duce it. People are free to pur­chase it or not. We can use it in parts of the world that would ben­e­fit the most. What’s the problem?

The prob­lem is that if we don’t label the food, then we can’t ever deter­mine whether there are neg­a­tive effects. In short, we would be run­ning a mas­sive sci­en­tific exper­i­ment on the world’s food sup­ply with absolutely no data to cor­re­late any pos­si­bly neg­a­tive [or pos­i­tive] results.

So, if we’re going to talk about being anti-scientific. Then let’s acknowl­edge that the most un-scientific aspect of this whole thing is to restrict the data being col­lected so that some cor­po­ra­tions that want to reap the ben­e­fits of this tech­nol­ogy can escape lia­bil­ity in the event that they’re wrong.

I’m not being anti-corporation in this. Instead I smell a rat when cor­po­ra­tions are look­ing for legal pro­tec­tions to sell me a prod­uct that I don’t need. I don’t need GMO foods… and I don’t need a sci­en­tific com­mu­nity that would be will­ing to give up its abil­ity to col­lect data so that someone’s eco­nomic fore­cast looks rosier. However, for those that think I’m being unduly crit­i­cal of cor­po­ra­tions and their abil­ity to bring prod­ucts to mar­ket, con­sider this. Perhaps some­one can explain why cor­po­ra­tions would be will­ing to spend mil­lions of dol­lars lob­by­ing leg­is­la­tors pre­cisely to ensure that no one knows they have a prod­uct on the market?

As I’ve said before. It’s a sim­ple solu­tion. Label the foods and let the free mar­ket decide how accept­able they are. This would also ensure that we can read­ily track the data on how well these GMO foods per­form. Without that, its sim­ply another form of marketing.

1. The pre­cau­tion­ary prin­ci­ple or pre­cau­tion­ary approach states that if an action or pol­icy has a sus­pected risk of caus­ing harm to the pub­lic or to the envi­ron­ment, in the absence of sci­en­tific con­sen­sus that the action or pol­icy is harm­ful, the bur­den of proof that it is not harm­ful falls on those tak­ing the action. Source: Wikipedia