I don’t usually post this sort of thing but there is a very interesting list in the article Man Boycotts All Companies Who Fought Against Prop 37 Read the list and make your own choices. It is good to know who your enemies are.
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Walter Jeffries Tinker, Tailor… A bit eclectic & a tad eccentric, polymath, quantum mechanic & Farmer. Also lucky at cards.
I’m gonna stick my neck out on the other side of the argument on this one. There is a long list of enemies on that blog, but none of them are GMO. The enemies I see are soft drinks, candies, confections, sugar and sodium laden processed foods. That guy will no doubt be far better off once he cuts their products out of his diet. Not because of GMO content but because he’ll have no choice but to return to a diet of food that has not been over-processed and manipulated after it’s left the farm.
One day I hope that the two sides of the GMO debate will be able to sit down and have a rational, logical, science based discussion involving the facts of the issue rather than much of the overhyped rhetoric that surrounds the discussion now.
A rational discussion starts with disclosure. If they are so proud of their creations then the GMO companies should label their products as such. The fact that they refuse and even sue people who oppose them on this demonstrates their evil.
It has nothing to do with evil (GMO crops are not inharently any different from any other crop that has been developed by selected breeding. The danger comes from the pesticide resistant crops that have buckets of poison dumped on them, making them into poison laden trojan horses.) and everything to do with greed.
I would prefer full disclosure to secrecy on every issue, from patents to ingredients to government.
It is the greedy people producing the GMOs that are evil.
Unfortunately with the advent of Roundup Ready technology some farmers fell into the trap of thinking that they could use only one mode of action to control weeds. That has always been the root of resistance forming. It’s just bad agronomics to rely on one chemical exclusively. All forms of weed control should be balanced and no single form used exclusively. While we do use RR tech on our farm we also utilize other chemicals pre-plant to lessen the weed pressure so that the Roundup isn’t overwhelmed by weeds. GMO is only as good as the farmer who uses it.
I’m with you on this one Walter. If there’s nothing wrong with GM stuff being in processed food, then there shouldn’t be a problem disclosing it on the labelling. If as “they” say, there’s a lot of negative misperception out there about GM produce, then they could spend, oh -about $45 million educating us poor dumb eaters, couldn’t they?
As an aside, since they “no” group complained that the labelling would be costly, they could possibly save money by getting rid of the little nutrition table on most junk food, to make room for the GM disclosure – everyone knows there’s no food value in a chocolate bar and not a lot of fibre in water – we don’t need to check the little table to figure it out.
I’m with you on this walter. The very fact that they refuse to label and spend tens of millions of dollars fighting labeling proves they are hiding something. They’re scared we’ll stop buying their products if we know what’s in them. GMOs have been shown to cause cancer and other problems. They are not doing enough testing. I’m not anti-GMO. I’m Anti-Greed. Full disclosure is what is needed. Other countries require it and we should have the right to know what is in our food here in the good old us of a.
Thanks for sharing this, Walter. I’m going to pass it on. It’s insane: At one end of our country we have a city telling people they can’t buy big sodas because the city knows better than the consumers what’s good for them. At the other end of our country we have a state refusing to give consumers important information they need to decide what food is good for them because the state has decided the consumers don’t need that information.
I’m with Europe on this one!
What insanity allows companies to trademark GMO seed because they have created a unique product, yet allows other companies to avoid declaring GMOs in their food because they are not significantly different than non-GMO ingredients?
Daniel you really are mistaken. This proposition had nothing to do with science. It was about information. Labels are required to explicitly state the ingredients in foods. Most people are concerned about GMOs in their food. It is completely reasonable that GMO contents should be so noted on the label so that the buyer can make a personal choice. Some people won’t care. Most of those surveyed (96%) did want GMO’s labeled. The fact that corps spend almost 50 million dollars fighting this is based on their greed. They want to hide what they’re doing so consumers won’t know what is in their food and be able to make choices.
I just had a look at the polling results for Prop 37 and the highest “yes” county was in the mid 60s…overall it was 47% yes, 53% no…a far cry from 96% for labelling. Hard to understand such a difference between pre-ballot survey numbers and actual results, especially in an ahead-of-the-curve state like California.
Perhaps rather cynically, I question the value of labelling anyway. There has been Nutritional labelling for over 20 years now, offering Americans the means to pick the healthiest and best food options for themselves and their family and yet America is at it fattest ever…seems that the idea of labelling really doesn’t do much.
If the information isn’t science-based, where does it come from? This may be an emotional, motherhood type issue, but if it can’t be quantified in solid facts and numbers, it all becomes nothing more than “he said, she said” rhetoric.
I think the 96% Yes quoted probably had to do with the pre-vote polling. I had read that somewhere. After Monstersanto and friends did their $47 million dollar media blitz scare tactics the pro-Prop 37 dropped. This is a prime example of how money influences politics, in a very bad way at that. A few people with a lot of money took over the election by spreading lies.
If we are required to put the nutritional information and ingredients on foods then it is perfectly reasonable to also say whether or not it contains GMOs since that is a big concern for people. What is really sickening is that Monstersanto sued people for labeling their foods, correctly, as not containing Monstersanto’s GMOed rBGH. That demonstrates what a bully and monster that company really is.
If you don’t want to read the label that is your privilage. But allow other people who do care to have the information so they can make informed decisions. It is science based labeling. The fact is the product has been genetically manipulated. That’s fact. That’s science. So label it.