Continuing on with this silliness. GMO.

This message was edited May 19, 2013 7:26 AM

A lot of the people who push those substances do believe that they're safe, though. Long ago the head of the county agricultural department, with a Ph.D. in a relevant area, was convinced that Sevin was perfectly fine and didn't mind getting it all over him. That was before it was discovered that it was seeping into wells on Long Island and causing a lot of problems.

We need to remember that the county extension services employ grads from land grant colleges/universities, and those are all supported by BigAg. So, guess what slant their education has?

Solace,

I do not have any way to prove it either, but my observation has been that people are pretty much the same everywhere, and if 10 or 15 ,or whatever the number is, of us ordinary people eat Organic, then i am pretty sure about the same percentages of the corporate employees eat it too.

I could afford to pay the extra Organic food costs, but i ate enough bug crap and insect damaged food as a boy, so i am not attracted to the Organic food i have seen. But like most of the members here, i do prefer the better tasting stuff, organic or not, that we discussed above.

But for sure, i would never campaign against Organic Food, as i do think you have the right to choose for yourself.

Ernie

Greenhouse,
That is a good point you brought up, about people making honest mistakes, not just everyone on the other side intentionally doing evil things.

Solace,
>> Most of the studies done with results in FAVOR of GM are done by the companies that produce them, people in government who are or have been employed by them, or universities who are funded by them, so, "click" I don't take anything they say for stellar truth.

First, I'll make again the distinction betwen the chemical glyphosphate/Roundup or genetically modifed organisms. Second, I curbed my prejudice against papers that rant and use emotionally charged, unquantifiable words and citge the Million Mom March as a source of scientific data ... until I bumped my head against a blatent and obvious lie. Now, I'm not urging propagandists to come up with more subtle and decptive lies, but when they insult my intelligence THAT badly, I resent it.

>> And, yes, they should be tested adequately by neutral (if there are any left in this country that aren't bribed) labs

That's why I listed the cites from Wikipedia. Peer reviewed journals. Reputable journals. Not "Science in Society" propaganda. Sorry to come down on them harshly, but now that I've seen a copy, they've earned my disregard. If they want me to believe ANYthing they say, they have to avoid obvious and gross lies.

I have to make my own judgement, and I'll let SiS prove themselves guilty 10 times on each page, rather than believe that every university in the world has been bribed".

Why disbelieve a global conspiracy of deceit? If one Ag grad student blew the whistle, his career would be guaranteed and all the professors who mad ehis life miserable would be shamed. Motive, means, opportunity!

Honybee,
>> I predict, that RoundUp will be replaced with something "better" and that 20 years from now, gardeners like us will be taking sides as to whether or not it is "safe".

Yeah, especially since weeds are developing resistance already! I just hope the Agrobacter plasmids they use to do the genengineering don't make imported genes more "mobile" from crops to weeds!

>> RoundUp will be replaced with something "better"

Unfortunately, I bet it will be replaced by something more effectiove aginst weeds but more toxic to US. Now that I've seen the numbers, I doubt any other herbicides will be discovered that are THIS benign.

Darious,
Thnak you for not taking it personally.

>> WHO PAID for the studies. Very few are independent of some kind of funding, corporate or governmental (which are usually also corporate funded in the background).

I also like to know the bias, and sometimes it can be deduced from the articles. In the SiS case, the bias was in 72-point font on the title page.

Government agencies - I go back and forth. In the '70s, I thought most were muck-raking activists eager to stick it to the commercial sector (and/or Protect The Common Man And Woman). (Except for Connecticut OSHA, which either had at least one very gullible inspector or one who was willing to have his palm crossed with silver). Since the Bush era, it seems that most inspectors have been laid off or handcuffed, so maybe the "protective" bias has shifted to "protect the companyies that donate to campaign funds". I truly don't know.

Dreaves:
>> a lot of the paranoia with herbicides goes back to the hazards of Agent Orange

Totally yes! And deserved paranoia, since a lot of governmental lying went on then, too. But times change faster than we change our prejudices. I still wash my apples, especially uif the4y come from Mexico, but finding out what the actual toxicity is of glyphosphate makes me feel better about a few PPM in processed food.

P.S. Thanks for reminding me: I kept saying "glycophosphate " out of habit, and that's wrong.

greenhouse_gal,
>> A lot of the people who push those substances do believe that they're safe, though.

I think you're right, and I think that some of that comes from denial and loyalty: "my side, right or wrong!"* That's one reason it's hard to ferret out MEANING from individual scientific papers. Not all bias is conscious. It is much easier to lie well if you yourself BELIEVE the untruth.

I suspect there is also a fairly wide-spread bias BY scientists in favor of things that "sound scientific" and against vague or mystical-sounding attitudes. But every truth was vague and la-la until some one found the way to measure it and make it "Science".

In the Middle Ages, scholars sneered it the ignorant, superstitious louts who foolishly believed that "rocks could fall from the sky". Ooops. You DON'T know until you KNOW.

My own belief is that some of the "subtle pollutants" ARE worth worrying about, and some aren't. But we should remember that all life is risk, and no one lives forever.

I was upset to learn that a lot of New England granite releases RADON gas, so much that it can be detected with a cheap little canister. When you sell a house with a basement, in some states, now you have to pay for the little cansiter, and find out whether you have b een sucking RADON into your lungs all your life. No one, not even people besotted with boosterism and rah-rah tech fever are disdainful of the health effects of RADON.

Gee, if everyone upset about minor hazzards got behind CO2 pollution and pushed, maybe we could avoid a MAJOR envioronmental disaster, not just arguments about whether rats drowned from emersion in Roundup, or from liver damage. That just my opinion, and I'll admit to bias about greenhoue gas cliamte effects. I had a traumatic experience when I was younger: I saw a graph of actual, meausred CO2 concentrations. Call me scarred for life.

* Stephen Decatur's actual toast:

'Our country!
In her intercourse with foreign nations,
may she always be in the right;
but our country, right or wrong.'

Ernie,
>> That is a good point you brought up, about people making honest mistakes, not just everyone on the other side intentionally doing evil things.

I agree with you, agreeing with greenhouse_gal.

Sadly, the well-intentioned people making systematic but honest mistakes are much harder to detect than the blatant propagandists who shoot themsleves in the foot! I think they are also science's "canaries". When evidence appears that IS clear enough to overcome their unconscious bias, the ones who are honest enough to change sides take the whole community with them.

Few people are as sincere as those admitting they were wrong!

Now here's a thought...

Our Idea of a Label

Slow Food’s concept of a “narrative label” has been around for a few years now, sparked by the observation that too often the labels of products do not contain enough information for consumers who want a more detailed understanding of the products they are buying.

Even when food labels meet legal requirements they often do not answer many of our questions – like whether a food has been produced in a way that respects ecosystems and the environment, or whether social justice and workers' rights have been respected in the process. At present very few labels provide real information and communication is often deliberately misleading, vaguely conjuring up rural worlds full of poetry and supposedly authentic techniques, with vague references to old flavors.

So Slow Food launched the idea of a label that goes beyond the detailing the legally required information, and tells the story behind the product. Slow Food first talked about the narrative label at Cheese 2011, and in 2012 the first 70 labels for Italian and international Presidia were created.

Fortunately the introduction of clearer and more comprehensible labeling to protect consumer interests and health is also being considered at the European level. Slow Food has therefore welcomed Regulation (EU) n. 1169/2011 which will be applied in all EU member states from December 13, 2014, and introduces some important new elements to the previous regulation. For example, there is now an expanded requirement to also indicate product origin for sheep, pig, goat and poultry meat. There is still, however, a lack of more detailed information, which would help us to know the real background to the products we eat.

Reading a product’s narrative label enables us to discover the story behind a product. For example the label on Provola delle Madonie from Sicily not only tells us that this is a raw cow’s milk cheese, but also that producer Grazia Invidiata has around eighty cows raised in a semi-wild state with full respect for their welfare. We find out that these cows feed on pasture during the summer and are given local hay during the winter, and furthermore, the grass and the hay are supplemented with a mixture of cereal flours produced according to organic farming principles. We know that neither corn silage nor GMOs are included their diet. And we will have information on processing methods, aging and proper storage.

Slow Food is not only pursuing fully transparent labeling for Presidia products but is also working with Alce Nero, a brand identifying more than a thousand farmers and beekeepers around Italy who are committed to producing good, healthy and nutritious food. In Alce Nero we have found an important partner in this area and we are working together to also provide a narrative label for their products—rice, tomato puree, honey, etc.

We strongly believe that a narrative label makes a difference, for the consumer, who will see their health safeguarded and their questions answered, and also for the producer, who can tell their story and see it properly recognized.

http://www.slowfood.com/sloweurope/eng/news/170541/our-idea-of-a-label-

I don't know what chance this bill has of becoming law, but it's interesting that they're making an effort:

Boxer, DeFazio Introduce Bill to Require Labeling of Genetically Engineered Foods
More than 90 Percent of Americans Support the Right to Know What Is In The Foods We Feed Our Families

http://www.boxer.senate.gov/en/press/releases/042413.cfm

I saw that in my email earlier. Thanks for posting it. I give it scant hope of passing.

When you think about the ramifications of a GMO labeling bill, you should consider what Country Gardens said, concerning the handling of the Soybean Harvest. The growers truck their harvest into Farmer Co-ops, where both the Non GMO and the GMO soybeans are dumped together as one commodity. Those mixed Soybeans are then sold to Salad Oil producers, Tofu producers and anyone else that uses the soybeans.

So, if you are a manufacturer that uses Soybeans, and realize that you do not really know, and without analyzing every bean, no way to ascertain, whether the soybeans you are using in your products are modified or not, what would you do to protect yourself from the lawyers looking for a reason to sue you for mislabeling?

You would probably do like all the businesses in CA did when a hazardous materials labeling law was passed. Every gas station and other business that used or sold Petroleum products had to post a sign or label stating, "Materials on this site MAY contain chemicals that are Hazardous to your health." And that is the only result from the tens of millions of dollars that were spent to pass and, and the millions more being spent to enforce, the law, and that was passed on to the consumer.

So, while the cost of all of this will also be passed on to the ultimate Soybean consumers, you will have a label saying this product MAY contain GMO soybeans, whether it does or not. And what little bit of actual provable, non modified Soybeans that are sent to market and kept separate and verified, will be so expensive to handle in the limited quantities, that the supply will be very limited and not available to most people.

All of this trouble and expense for a hypothetical danger that may or may not exist and that, so far as all of you have found, has not yet killed a single person simply does not make much sense.

Ernie

I was thinking about that. I've read that many European countries have laws requriing GM foods to be labeled (or do they forbid them?)

Also, I think that the US probnably does export many foods to Europe.

I wonder whether those production lines already take the trouble and expense to acquire non-GM soybeans and non-GM corn to sell to Europe?

IF they do, and if GM-labelling laws DO pass in the US, the companies with those lines and suppliers already lined up would have an edge in the market, and could make organic-and-non-GM-eaters happy for only the same increased costs that European production has to pay.

And the marketplace would have a chance to "vote" on how many people care enough about GM food to pay 10%, 20% or whatever extra.

P.S. We need a snappy name for "people who want strongly NOT to eat any GM-sourced food produc ts". Something like "Vegans", just a few sylables. "Non-GMs", pronounced "non-jims"?

Rick,
The Laws of the Marketplace generally rules that the Best and Cheapest product wins the Money War.

And there is always a small boutiqe segment of the market that is based on fashion, or choice, where price does not dominate. Whole Foods Markets have found a niche, and they will undoubtedly seek out and carry Non GMO foods as they become available, but I know of only one Whole Foods Market, and one or two of a smaller chain called Sprouts, while i know of twenty or thirty or more Supermarkets that do the cheaper, high volume lines. So, perhaps 5%, {I do not know the percentage} of people will have easy access to the more expensive Non GMO products while most people will not pay the extra cost.

So, we would be paying for 100% of the food supply containing Soy products to be labeled, but only 5%, and it may be much less than that, of the people would be using the labels.

So, a much more practical and easier way to handle this, would simply be for the people that believe GMO is harmful, to seek out and pay the extra price for the guaranteed non GMO products, and not be concerned about the mass market.

Perhaps some of the readers are familiar with online or other sources, that provide Non GMO products. I am willing to pay extra for imported cheeses, and if i desired the Non GMO, that is the way i would procure it. That seems a much better way than waiting and fighting to get all of it labeled when the vast majority of people simply do not think it is necessary.

Ernie

That brings to mind another situation. If a sheep rancher has 100 sheep, and a steep cliff that drops, say, 75 feet down to a patch of boulders, and they start running toward the cliff at break-neck speed, except 5 of them, would the sheep rancher say, 'good for the five, let them be safe and the 95 perish' or would he be a wise rancher to put up a good sturdy fence along the cliff? Personally, I believe the vast majority of people would prefer to know if there were pesticides and viruses in their food, and more and more are finding out about GM products, so I believe the number to be much higher than 5 percent. I also believe if you want to eat GMO foods, you should certainly be allowed to. However, cheaper is not better, necessarily. Usually when you go cheap, you end up paying more in the long run. But you guys, by all means, chow down on that GMO corn and soybean oil, tofu, beef that's corn-fed- that is your right. In every other thing, except the percentage of hidden ingredients the law has allowed for and GMO, things are labeled. They're used to labels. They're already labeled. What's the cost of one more line on the label? It's made to seem like it's going to cost millions....nah, just one more line or symbol on the label, or a tiny sticker to replace the ones that are already on the apples, etc. that's all. Did you know that they spray apple trees with tetracyclene? And thousands of people are allergic to tetracyclene? There was an article, recently in the news, about what the farmers who are organic are going to do, as they've been allowed to sell their apples as organic after spraying with tetracyclene. There are gaps and loopholes in the laws, brought about by commercial lobbyists, I suppose, that need to be closed. People die from allergic reactions. We just don't know how many are dying or are becoming sterile from GMO. The hog producers in Iowa have already learned about the sterility issue. Funny none of those kinds of stories make the mainstream media news. Is it because of the Pork Council, Beef Council, etc. and the advertising dollars they spend? It's always follow the buck.

>> The Laws of the Marketplace

Maybe in an ideal world, where actual competition is the main driving force, and monopolistic practices were never heard of. When my company gave us training on business ethics, the sheer number and complexity of all the different unethical practices we were supposed NEVER to do convinced me that a great many inventive people had spent a LOT of time thinking them up and refining them.

It was like the joke about missionaries trying to teach native Hawaiians what kinds of naughty sex they were NOT supposed to practice.
- - "What do yhou mean, 'naughty sex'?"
- "Done't do this, or this ... and NEVER do THAT."
- - "YIKES! I mean .... umm ... sure, OK, I won't ever do THAT. But tell me more of these thin gs I shouldn'/t do ..."
- - -
- - - - - - - - "These missionaries are some KINKY dudes! We never thoguht of HALF that stuff!"

I thought it was interesting that even Ayn Rand acknowledged (Atlas Shrugged) that when "real world" forces intervened, the railroad company had its most proftiable year ever when government intervention did something or other that was hiideously unfair .

The academic joke about "real vs. ideal" goes something like:

"A dairy knew that physicists were really smart, so they hired one to tell them how to operate more effciently. He thoguht and thoguht, and covered many blackboards with arcane equations. Then he asked to meet with the dairy's Board of Directors. 'Gentlemen!' he said. 'Consider a spherical cow ...'

I thought I would try to overcome my usual thread drift and get with the title of this thread!

Is contemporary (and historical) America more like Galt's Gulch / Mulligan's Valley, or like Jim Taggert's buddies? I'm thinking 70% Jim Taggert, but I wish it was the other way.

By the way - last off topic joke for today - back when the Wall was still up in Berlin, a woman from East Germany was visiting a friend of mine. She was very annoyed that American politiicians called each other "Socialists".

"NO! This is not socialism!! East Germany ... THAT is socialism!!!"

Solace,
You have made some good points there, and i will try to debate them.

First, among other things i have also raised a lot of sheep. And as a wise rancher, i would have sent my dog to turn them back from letting a panic run them over a cliff, similar to what i have been trying to do here, is prevent panic from running our country over another cliff.

Second, Personally, i am pretty sure that most of us do know that our foods contain a lot of different poisons, chemicals, preseratives, artificial coloring and sugar, salt, etc, a huge list of things that are bad for us. Some people even smoke. But inspite of all that bad stuff, we are living longer than people did back when all the food and water was pure. So, some of us simply figure our bodies will last longer than our legs and minds will, so why worry about the chemicals.

Third, Cheaper food is very seldom better, but it allows a lot more people to have enough to eat that they do not go to bed hungry.

Fourth, What good would just another line of print on a label do, for goodness sake? If that is not monitored closely, tested, analyzed, confirmed, and recorded CONSTANTLY, by both the producer and an inspector, the line on the label has no value at all. My main career was as a Highway Building Contractor, and in order to guarantee good highways, An Inspector was at the Asphalt Plant constantly, checking to see that each batch of concrete going to the job was exactly as the printed line in the Specs called for. Both the Contractor and the Inspector was focused on making sure it was exactly as stated. So do not believe for a minute that a printed label offers you any protection whatsever. Performance to the standards given on that label is what protects you.

Fifth, I am very allergic to the those hard, tasteless, round red little things they sell for apples now, so unless i can find a good thin skinned apple bred for eating and not shipping, i just do not eat it, so the tetracyclene is not a problem for me.

I am sorry for the loophole you mention about the tetra on the Organic apples, as i said above, Labels should be truthful and believeable.

I expect to keep eating the GMO and other scary stuff or another 13 years or so, and by then, i will have lived 100 years eating all that scary stuff, so it may not really be as dangerous as some people think. I know a lot of the pills the doctors prescribe are poison, too, but a little bit of it seems to be okay.

And Lastly, your final sentence is absolutely right on. It is alway, follow the money. Bu that money path runs both ways. No new wealth is being created, so everyone on all sides are fighting for that one small pot of money.

Ernie

Rick,

The Ethics training your company gave you, confirms my thinking. Your company knew as well as i do, that companies will not survive very long if dishonest or unethical behavior is allowed to prevail, And yes, the jails are full of people that thought they could get by with cheating and stealing. Madoff for one, and thousands of others.

One of the best things i learned as a young businessman, was simply three old aphorisms.
"A Person that will Lie for You, will Lie To You."
"A Person that will Steal for you, will Steal from You."
"A Person that will Cheat for You, Will also Cheat you."

And there you have it. Your company was trying to protect both its customers and itself by demanding ethical behavior from its employees. I have know companies that tried it both ways, but cannot recall any of the deliberately dishonest ones that lasted very long.

In the Real World, Competition is the main driving force, Except in companies that do have a Monopoly or patent, or are subsidized by the Government, either directly or indirectly.

And that fierce competition is what keeps prices down to within 4 to 10% for most businesses.

Less profit than that, and the companies cannot grow and prosper, and more profit than that makes it too easy and too tempting for additional competition to come in, and if that happens the extra competition will drive prices even lower. A glance at the stock market data will show you that companies do not make very much profit, which is why every penny of costs must be passed on in their prices.

I appreciate your humor, as we all need some of that, too.

I do not think what we have now is Socialism, but it seems very obvious that we are much closer to it than we were 20 or 40 or 60 years ago.

Ernie

Interesting article on buying trends: http://www.agweek.com/event/article/id/20804/

The nice thing about that trend, Solace, is that it makes organic foods much more readily available and in more types of commodities than before. My ShopRite now offers a much wider range of organic foods and it seems to be increasing regularly. I can now buy organic chicken and beef there, as well as organic baked beans.

This message was edited May 19, 2013 7:29 AM

Ernie - you will not have not been eating "scary stuff" for 100 years.

When I was a child, pesticides, herbicides and fungicides were not around - or if they were, our family did not use them, and I'm guessing neither did yours.

It could well take two or three generations before the final implications of GMO's will be fully realized - either for better or worse.

In the meantime, I would prefer that they be labeled so that I, and 95% of those polled, can make an informed decision.

CG - perhaps you never see people putting organic items in their basket at your supermarket because the 20' isle is too short.

I stopped using the supermarket which is 2 miles from my home when Trader Joe's opened 7 miles from my home. TJ's has pledged on their web site:
NO artificial flavors, colors or preservatives
NO MSG
NO genetically modified ingredients
NO added Trans Fats

I regularly purchase organic eggs, milk, butter, yoghurt, fruit, vegetables, chicken, beef, mayo, bread, and rBGH free (imported) cheese. And somehow manage to keep my weekly spending on groceries to $100 for the two of us.

Many of TJ's items are priced lower than similar (organic) items at Walmart.

If you drop in at TJ's try to do so during the week. On weekends their store is so crowded, that we can barely get around. I go on weekends, because I get a ride with my daughter - who, incidentally, makes most of her grocery purchases there for the same reason as myself.

This message was edited May 19, 2013 7:30 AM

CG - I was born in 1944 in the United Kingdom. It's possible that the pesticides you mentioned were available, but my parents did not use them. I remember my mother sprinkling rye flour on damp leaves in the evenings to kill pests. She said it had to be rye flour to work.

We grew lots of fruits and vegetables in our large backyard. My mother used our home as a "guest house" during the summer months, because we lived in a "tourist" town. I've eaten mostly organic fruits and vegetables my entire life.

>> NO genetically modified ingredients

I'd love to know the nuts-and-bolts behind that claim!
First and formost, I hope thay aren't hinding behind the obvious fact that you CAN'T genetically modify an "ingredient", you can only gentically modify the plant variety it was made from.

Presumably they mean "none of our products have any ingredients made from NO genetically modified ingredients GM plants".

Also, hopefully, they don't mean something like "we take every reasonable precaution to be sure that our suppliers CLAIM something that sounds reassuring".

If it really is possible for Trader Joe's suppliers to buy corn and soy products PROVEABLY not from GM soy or GM corn, then our discussion about the possibilty of a "GM Free" sticker was very wrong.

If TJ has suppliers with "GM free" suppliers, then those supply chains do already exist somewhere. Maybe there are some non-GMO farm coops, as there must be some organic-only coops.

If so, then a GM-labelling law could be passed and the (few) manufacturers that wanted the sticker could buy from those existing, small supply chains and cause them to grow. Assuming that "Big Ag" doesn't find ways like FSMA to deter that kind of competition, the market could play out with truth-in-labelling in place.

We might only find that, yes, 90% of the population can't aford it or is oblivious to the issue (or wisely considers it mostly frivolous ... take you pick).

Or maybe trustable labelling WOULD increase the % of organic food sold, and that might drop its price slightly.

I thought it was hilarious (in a very bad way) that the "Food Safety and Modernization Act" tightens up and requries testing and proofs about the use of manure and composting methods! As far as I know it did not tighten up on herbicide and pesticide use or inspection. It really opened my eyes when Republican administrations didn't ease pollution and food safety LAWS, they just took away a huge number of INSPECTORS.

I really, really, really hope I am excessively cynical! I would really love to be wrong about that. I used to be overly naive and trusting, but exposure to the real world flipped me to the other side.

An NPR broadcast about business ethics described a reporter overhearin g a conversation on a bus to the grad level business school. One student saw someone carrying a textbook titled "Business Ethics".

"What's Business Ethics?" he asked.

"Oh, sometimes ya gotta do bad stuff. But you should think about it."